[WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Durova]

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics".  - Mark
Twain

Since Citizendium is all the rage on this mailing list, a review and
comparison of Alexa stats seemed like a good idea.  Here's how things stack
up:

TRAFFIC RANK:
Citizendium: 63,929
Wikipedia: 7

REACH:
(Percent of global Internet users who visit the site, 3 month average)
Citizendium: 0.00155%
Wikipedia: 8.711%

Of course, the numbers vary a bit depending on what ranking service one
selects.  But not by all that much.  It's been two and a half years since
Citizendium's launch.  The project has 10,500 articles and slightly over 100
approved articles.  English Wikipedia topped 100,000 articles in January
2003, just about two years after launch.  In January 2004 English Wikipedia
reached 200,000 articles.  Arguably, Citizendium both gains and loses by
launching later: the site can draw upon a large pool of existing free
content at Wikipedia, but Wikipedia had already become a prominent website
by the time Citizendium started.

With respect extended toward Larry Sanger and his undertaking, a few
questions are worth asking:
1. Is Citizendium a snapshot of what Wikipedia's growth would have been, if
Larry Sanger had remained with the project?
2. Will Citizendium become a top 1000 website within the next five years?
3. Is debate about Sanger's and Wales's respective cofounder/founder claims
regarding Wikipedia a worthwhile endeavor?

-Durova
-- 
http://durova.blogspot.com/