[WikiEN-l] Looking for thoughts on statistics

[Carcharoth]

On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 12:06 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28 March 2010 20:42, Carcharoth <carcharothwp at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Just as an example, I was taking part in the Military History World
>> War I contest recently, and there were at least 43 new articles
>> created (or expanded) for DYK. I'm currently trying to work out how
>> many articles were actually created (as opposed to expanded).
>
> It is to be expected that experienced wikipedians can find things to
> write about. However our new article creation has historically been
> for the most part driven by new users (and a handful of experienced
> users who managed to create very large numbers of articles) who may
> more legitimately be running out of things they can write articles on
> that won't get deleted on sight.

The presumption is that the initial article creation by "the masses"
in the early year of the project is a larger number than the "filling
in the gaps" by experienced Wikipedians. My hypothesis (OK,
speculation) is that filling in the gaps will create a *larger* number
of articles (over a longer period of time) than the initial burst of
article creation.

Think of it as the initial article creation staking out a territory.
And then slowly the gaps get filled in. Who is to say that the gaps
are not larger than the solid parts of the structure currently being
filled in?

Carcharoth