

Wikipedia Growth Animation - TheloniusPhunk
http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/animations/growth/AnimationProjectsGrowthWp.html

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yan
Really puts things in perspective once you switch to linear from log view (Top
left corner).

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tokenadult
Wikipedia chart of the "unsustainable" decline in administrator participation:

[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editor...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Wikimedia_Editors#Chapter_Three:_The_future_.282007-present.29)

This relates to how much editorial attention each article can get as the
number of articles grows. This has implications for Wikipedia's goal

[http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_P...](http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Plan/Movement_Priorities#Improve_Content_Quality)

of improving content quality.

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zyfo
That's such a deceiving graph. It started off at 910, then went up to 1010 and
then down to 850. It's not that big of a big deal. That graph makes it look
like it's the equivalent of the Great Depression.

There's rarely any reason to mark your y-axis from an arbitrary starting
point, unless your purpose is to manipulate people (wikipedia admins missing
on wikipedia?).

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sesqu
I generally agree, but this instance is an example of the one situation in
which it is reasonable, namely, trends. There really should be a zoomed-out
view as well for people who aren't familiar with past developments, but it's
okay to put the main focus on the small detail.

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jsilence
Anybody recognize that the number of articles stopped increasing after a
couple of years?

As of today it is virtually impossible for a new wikipedia author to add a new
article to the german Wikipedia. It will be deleted within a blink.

But hey, if this means that the world knowledge is asymptotically converging
to a maximum, there is hope that we'll someday know it all, after all.

-jsl

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beaumartinez
Confusingly, by default, the graph is on a logarithmic scale. You can change
it to a linear one, try it and see; it looks like its growth is constant.

Although I too would like to think we are converging towards having cataloged
all knowledge, if Wikipedia's growth _is_ slowing down, I'd bet it's because
of all of its bureaucracy.

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JonnieCache
These charts just don't feel right without Hans Rosling jumping up and down in
front of them like a little kid.

For the baffled: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUwS1uAdUcI>

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redthrowaway
It's interesting to see that en.wp was the only project that experienced
quadratic growth in the number of articles. en.wp and de.wp were pretty close
in size until the start of 2006, when en.wp took off and de.wp continued with
more or less linear growth.

I'm aware that the english speaking world is larger than the german speaking
one, and that a feedback effect exists in large networks with little downtime
(ie, no time of the day where contribution dies off, due to the geographical
dispersion of english-speaking countries), but I'm still surprised that en.wp
was the _only_ project to experience quadratic growth.

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idonthack
A significant portion of articles on any wikipedia are about cities, towns,
local governments, local businesses, minor celebrities, landmarks, &c. For
major locations like New York or Berlin, there will of course be articles in
many languages, but other things that are insignificant outside their locality
are likely to only have an article in their native language. Take for example
the Catalan wikipedia, which contains a large number of stubs with basic info
on locations in rural Catalonia. [1] The English-speaking world is vastly
larger in land area and population than the German-speaking world, so I
speculate that the difference in size is due to the number of location-
relevant articles.

[1]
[http://www.kmjn.org/notes/geographically_dense_wikipedia.htm...](http://www.kmjn.org/notes/geographically_dense_wikipedia.html)

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locopati
Thoughts on whether the plateaus are because of completeness or limited by the
number of editors able to handle the number of articles?

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jsmcgd
I think because the default setting is a log scale. If you change it to
linear, it doesn't plateau but growth does slow.

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benihana
Take it out of log view. It seems like languages quickly get to about 100,000
articles in a very short (relatively time span). I wonder if that's because
there are a few hundred thousand universal articles and which they are.

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TheloniusPhunk
I'm pretty surprised by a number of things here. First and foremost, how
popular Polish and Catalan are. Secondly, I thought that there would be vastly
more English articles than any other language, and this isn't the case.

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J3L2404
Also esperanto being fourth in total number of articles for a while.
Interseting and well executed, thanks for the link.

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redthrowaway
Unfortunately, on some of the smaller wikipedias (by users), automatic article
creation through algorithmic translation of en.wp is fairly common. The result
is a large volume of poor quality articles. Esperanto was one of the wikis
that fell victim to this at first.

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guard-of-terra
For some reason the animation is extremelly slow and laggy on my netbook.

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ajarmoniuk
Today I learned about the existence of the Bavarian language.

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ajarmoniuk
<http://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayern>

