[WikiEN-l] Britannica attempts to become Wikipedia

[geni]

2008/6/3 Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com>:
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> 2008/6/3 David Goodman :
>> Quote from it worth some attention
>>
>> We update the database at the rate of about 30-35 percent per year. A
>> third of the database is completely revised on a yearly basis thanks
>> to the input of our contributors. That's something that is probably
>> much more speedy than Wikipedia. Obviously Wikipedia cannot do that
>> because they are several times as large as we are
>
> What an odd thing to claim. Wikipedia must have many hundreds the
> number of contributors that Britannica has. Most of the articles I
> come across have been edited in the last 6 months. I'm not sure how
> "update the database" is defined here, but if we take it to mean an
> article being edited, the majority of Wikipedia's database must be
> updated every year. I would guess that over 75% of Wikipedia articles
> have been edited in the last year. Are there any statistics on this?

It would depend heavily on what you count as an edit. Most articles
people will look at are edited fairly regularly but once you move to
the less visited articles edits tend to be either bot or highly
automated AWB stuff. Yes there are many articles where a year can go
by without a significant edit. For example
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMY_Mary may appear to have a fair number
of edits but it hasn't had much in the way of significant edits since
july last year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattewater_Wreck no
content changes since nov 2006. This isn't always a problem. In the
case of those two ships there is little need for updateing unless
something significant happens to the wreck.


-- 
geni