[Foundation-l] Lack of research on Wikipedia

[David Gerard]

2009/8/20 Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:
> David Gerard wrote:

>> Yes, completely. Do other Wikipedias show the same S-curve of growth?

> I don't think it's an S-curve. I think we are seeing linear
> growth, with a few exceptions in the very early days (years).
> But hey, that's growth in the number of articles.  We shouldn't
> focus on the number of articles, but on the overall usefulness.
> Day 1: Create article "Apple is a fruit".
> Day 2: Create article "Pear is a fruit".
> Day 3: Extend article about apples. Add photos. Cite sources.
> Day 3: Zero growth in the number of articles. Panic!!!


How about word count?

en:wp is currently estimated at about 1.6 BILLION WORDS:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_in_volumes

"3 million articles", that somehow doesn't sound as big as A BILLION
WORDS. Can you wrap your head around what A BILLION WORDS actually
means, how big that really is?

(For comparison: Tolkien's 'Lord Of The Rings' is about 470,000 words;
Proust's 'À la recherche du temps perdu' is about 9 million words.)


- d.