tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13679122.post1368594527506547737..comments2024-02-23T03:49:25.037-05:00Comments on Wikipedia Blog: The Final Wikipedia ArticleBen Yateshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11551938089613651798noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13679122.post-14317041394773202732008-03-09T14:27:00.000-04:002008-03-09T14:27:00.000-04:00.2% of articles are Featured class..7% of articles....2% of articles are Featured class.<BR/>.7% of articles are A class.<BR/>.3% of artcies are GA class.<BR/>4.4% of articles are B class.<BR/>26% of articles are Start class.<BR/>68% of articles are Stubs.<BR/><BR/>It's extremely easy to create a stub, but extremely hard to write an article. The number of "articles" by the loose definition used is a poor measure of how much work has to be done. The number of edits per article has been increasing faster than the number of articles created for years, and that trend will continue.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13679122.post-44711627612840681622008-03-04T13:54:00.000-05:002008-03-04T13:54:00.000-05:00Geoff,If you want to know how much your articles a...Geoff,<BR/><BR/>If you want to know how much your articles are being read, there's a hit count utility up now. (I don't know when it went live, but I just noticed it a few days ago.) http://stats.grok.se/Sagehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04259090314712198514noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13679122.post-87294198007397404772008-03-04T12:55:00.000-05:002008-03-04T12:55:00.000-05:00David Gerard's comment misses an important point: ...David Gerard's comment misses an important point: the "low-hanging fruit" theory doesn't apply to Wikipedia content in general, but to the current mode of content creation.<BR/><BR/>Based on my years of experience both improving content & watching or helping other editors do the same, our current mode of production is based on the premise of "I have a spare hour right now; what can I do?" So contributions tend to be of the easy-to-do variety: fix misspellings & typos, format articles, sort stubs. A few more imaginative types (like me) will grab a book, & add material from it to relevant articles as I read through the source. <BR/><BR/>But what about creating articles from scratch? Improving articles on general topics? Or writing articles on topics absent from most encyclopedias which require combining material -- while avoiding the problems of original research? This requires a lot more time, effort, & discipline. But what if after all of that effort the contributor runs into serious problems, say another editor starts making drastic revisions to this work? (Often the revisions are improvements, but almost as often they are not.) Yes, we are all supposed to check our egos at the door before we click on the "edit" button, but it would be a wrong to say that this always -- or even most of the time -- happens. <BR/><BR/>Retreating to the corners of Wikipedia to do this kind of work only delays the problem. An example is the current ArbCom case concerning PHG: an editor did just that & now a number of other editors are concerned about the quality of his work. (At least one of his articles under suspicion even passed a Featured Article review.) Anything a constructive contributor can do, so can a tendentious one. <BR/><BR/>Even if this were not the case, I can tell you from experience that working on articles in these little-frequented areas gets lonely; it would be nice to get some useful & timely input one the many articles I have worked on concerning Ethiopia. Or even receive more than the occasional clue that my contributions are being read. As a result, when I find that I have the time to start working on new articles for which I have collected ample source material recently I have decided to spend my time on other things.<BR/><BR/>This is how we lose the dedicated editors who actually try to reach up into the tree. <BR/><BR/>Geoffllywrchhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16618079769141974728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13679122.post-75791222192269637542008-03-04T11:56:00.000-05:002008-03-04T11:56:00.000-05:00The Wikipedia is a work in progress essay has link...The <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_a_work_in_progress" REL="nofollow">Wikipedia is a work in progress</A> essay has links to missing article lists at the bottom. One guess is at least 20 million possible articles we've yet to write, easily.<BR/><BR/>Every state-level politician ever in every country? Every town in every country, the way we have <I>complete</I> coverage of towns in the US? Every article in <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles" REL="nofollow">every existing encyclopedia</A> and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Piotrus/Wikipedia_interwiki_and_specialized_knowledge_test" REL="nofollow">every other Wikipedia</A>? The WikiProject <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_missing_topics" REL="nofollow">missing topic lists</A>? The <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_requested_articles" REL="nofollow">requested articles</A>? Editors' <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Red_list" REL="nofollow">own lists</A>?<BR/><BR/>It's not even the low-hanging fruit that's been picked - it's the fruit that was just lying on the ground. There's plenty still in arm's reach.<BR/><BR/><A HREF="http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2007/11/01/bored-policy-weary-write-something/" REL="nofollow">Bored? Policy-weary? Write something.</A>David Gerardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13057086390864018760noreply@blogger.com