[WikiEN-l] Largest encyclopedia

Fri Dec 10 23:34:35 UTC 2004

Jay JG wrote

> >Surely the fact that revisions per article is rising just as much as the
> >number of articles is hopeful for the article quality.  (Medians rather
> >than
> >just means would be good to know, of course.)
>
> Hopefully it is that, rather than an indication of an increasing frequency
> of edit-warring.

I really can't give any credence to the idea that edit wars could pull up
the numbers much, averaged over the 400000 pages of the English Wikipedia.
Not enough editwarriors to go round.

In fact I would argue the diametrically opposite position.  The general line
of talk that WP is in some way failing/is getting filled with rubbish/is
losing credibility/has a serious IP vandal problem/is not applying adequate
scholarly standards is based, as far as I can see, on very thin anecdotal
evidence.  Except for the last of those gripes, it all seems itself to be
very much open to a counterattack along the lines that it is only marginally
credible, and depends on a highly selective, even panicky, reading of the
quantitative facts.  Putting it another way, no decent Wikipedia article
about WP could contain a sentence like 'in 2004 unregistered vandals were a
serious threat to WP'; that would get shouted down as POV, and probably with
a hidden agenda.

And I think clicking Random Page 100 times supports the  impression that
things improve.  One example is that the category system has come on well,
over the past three months.

Charles