[Wikipedia-l] Quality vs Quantity

[Mark Clements]

"Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote in
message news:46337960.3030906 at telus.net...
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>The point being that I would expect stub article creation to be pretty
high
> >>in new Wikipedias, and to tail off as the Wikipedia in question comes to
be
> >>seen as more authoritative.
> >>
> >>
> >That's a very valid point. That would contribute to an upward trend of
> >stub ratios with increasing edits, which is exactly what I see for
> >Wikipedias with less than 20,000 edits, but after that it levels out,
> >and becomes much less variable. I can't think why.
> >
> Perhaps it's the point at which a project becomes more authoritarian
> than authoritative.  It's where people become concerned that stubs
> somehow reflect badly on the project, and they start to delete the stubs
> on that basis.
>

While that may be true, that's not the point I was trying to make.  The
issue is not with people deleting stubs so much as people no longer creating
them once the Wikipedia has reached a critical mass.  If I search for an
article on en and it doesn't exist, my assumption (unless it's something
very obscure) is that there is a reason it doesn't exist, e.g. it is under
another name, or covered as part of a wider article.  If I did anything it
would be to create a redirect to some other article, not to create a stub.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)