[Foundation-l] Re: A community the size of...

Fri Nov 11 03:31:00 UTC 2005

Michael Snow wrote:

> At the time of the Arbitration Committee election, the number of 
> ballots cast on the English Wikipedia was about the same as several 
> cities with populations ranging roughly from 3,000-6,000 people. The 
> upper end of this range is quite close to the number of people who 
> edited five times or more last December, according to Erik Zachte's 
> statistical reports. So it seems this may be the number that is 
> closest to a real-world population for our community. Since those 
> statistics have just been updated (thanks, Erik) we can see that the 
> English Wikipedia is now nearly equivalent to a town of 15,000 people.

Or, as another way to look at it, consider a similar-sized university. 
Considering the heavy turnover in population, and the way in which many 
people tend to spend time focusing on particular intellectual interests 
more than the wider community, this seems like an especially apt comparison.

With a "population" of 15,000, the English Wikipedia is thus comparable 
to a medium-sized university. The Wikimedia projects overall are 
probably the equivalent of one of the larger universities.

--Michael Snow