[WikiEN-l] A quick references survey

Mon Jan 30 22:24:28 UTC 2006

Here's another challenge.  If you keep a list of the articles you started,
go through them and make sure than they have external links or references,
even if they are stubs.  Gotta start somewhere - might as well start on your
own stuff

Ian (Guettarda)

On 1/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [also originally sent yesterday but didn't seem to get through the
> moderator, perhaps due to my mail server?]
>
> Hi all,
>   I'd like to undertake a more thorough survey of wikipedia
> referencing standards, but I've started with a quick "pilot" study.
>
> Methodology: Click "random article". Discard results which are not
> articles. Count the number of "external links", "references",
> "paragraphs".
>
> Terms: A bit fuzzy, I'm treating a web page which gives more
> information as an "external link", and a page or book or whatever
> which is claimed to be the source of the information (or is clearly
> the source) as a "reference". Paragraphs are, well, paragraphs, but it
> must be said that longer articles generally have longer paragraphs
> than shorter ones do. So lines would probably be better...
>
> Preliminary results:
> Sample size:30 pages, of which 17 were stubs.
>
> Number with no links: 21
> Number with no references: 24
> Average number of links: 0.67
> Average number of references: 0.54
>
>
> I found very few book references, one of which was patently false
> ("James Maxwell's book of James Maxwells not as cool as me, by James
> Maxwell"). Similarly a list of newspaper articles turned out to all
> have been written by the subject (a journalist). One page (out of 30)
> actually gave ISBN references (Chepstow Bridge).
>
> Conclusions:
> None yet, really, since the methodology isn't very solid and the
> sample set is small. But notably: More than half the articles were
> stubs. Hardly any articles had any real "references". Most of the
> external links were band websites, company websites etc. Of the few
> refernces, one was blatantly false and a few were "bad". So it's
> probably a little early to be claiming that all material added to
> Wikipedia MUST be sourced or it will be removed. Because based on
> this, only around 15% of Wikipedia would survive. (Which is more than
> I would have predicted).
>
>
> Any suggestions for improved methodology? It might be nice to harness
> the wikipedia population to collect some more general article quality
> metrics...
>
> Steve
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