People have been tracking the average size of articles as a measure of content quality. The problem has been that the average size has been dropping (or leveling off). I think there is a missing element to this debate. Each article, as it ages, presumably tends to get longer as people add content. New articles start small. People add facts, they get larger. They spawn incomplete links[?] and new articles are created, but start small.
They are like people in this respect, people are born small and grow up. Unlike people (hopefully) they don't die. So while the average article size may drop, that just indicates more young articles. Each article is likely larger than before (unless it is split into multiple articles, or slightly tightened by editing - going on a diet so to speak).
If we could have a graph/table (from the people who have access to run queries)
Something Like Creation Month /Average Size/Number of Articles Created Jan 2001 N2 150 Feb 2001 .... .... Sep 2002
I suspect (hypothesize) that the older articles would be longer, the younger articles would be shorter. Maybe this would resolve some of the fears about quality.
Second, looking at some of the smaller articles (e.g. Wallace Harrison), I suspect he warrants the size of stub he gets given the age of the project, it is a longer article than Encarta (which is 0). The EB article is of course longer, but they have over 200 years on us.
David Levinson levin031@tc.umn.edu