[WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

[dmehkeri at swi.com]

> > And please stop asserting 80% of our articles are unsourced, when my
> > informal check suggests that the number is more like 20%.
>
> Ah how great random page is for sampling articles...  Here's my 10
> article "study":
[...] 
> 40% no sources or external links, 30% one external link, 10% one
> broken external link, 10% one ISBN link, 10% two external links.  Of
> the working external links, 3 were to primary sources, and 2 were to
> secondary sources.
> 
> Of course, 10 articles is hardly a scientific sample size.
> 
> Anthony

Bah. I'll stick my neck out and say 50% of our articles have no sources or
external links. Give or take 40%. 19 times out of 20. SCIENCE!!

No really, I think people doing their own small samples of Special:Random is a
great idea. Truly random sampling is more "scientific" than you might realize. I
am not a statistician, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but if all
you're trying to do is rule out the <20% and/or the >80% claim, then 25 clicks
on Special:Random ought to be more than enough, 19 times out of 20.

Dan