In a study published in the August issue of Communications of the ACM entitled "The Collaborative Organization of Knowledge," computer scientists Diomidis Spinellis and Panagiotis Louridas analyze the relationship between references to non-existent articles ( redlinks) and the creation of new articles. The study, based on the February 2006 dump of English Wikipedia because more recent dumps were unavailable (for shame!), finds that the ratio of complete (i.e., non-stub) articles to incomplete (non-existent or stub) articles remained nearly constant between 2003 and 2006 (about 1.8 incomplete articles per complete article). A trend in either direction, according to the authors, would indicate an unsustainable growth pattern. If the average number of redlinks per article is increasing, it means that Wikipedia is becoming diffuse and will become less useful as more and more the terms in the average article are not covered. If the average number is decreasing, it suggests that Wikipedia's growth will slow or stop as the number of links to uncreated articles approaches zero. The stable redlink ratio suggests that Wikipedia is a scale-free network, in principle capable of unlimited growth.
The study also notes that most new articles were created within the first month that they were referenced in another article. Furthermore, only 3% of new articles were created by the same user who created the first link to that article (whether as a redlink or a bluelink). This implies that the connection between redlinks and new articles is a collaborative one, and that adding redlinks actually spurs others to create new articles.-- ragesoss ( talk) 00:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think we are experiencing the slow-down in the article growth. I can tell this from my experience, and I'm sure many other experienced users would concur. What is interesting is that, according to History of Wikipedia, the article creation by anonymous users was disabled in 2005, but it, apparently?, didn't affect the growth at the point. Also, since the growth rate is the number of articles created minus that of ones deleted, I suspect the notability policy is quite possibly the culprit of the declining growth, rather than the dearth of uncovered topics. -- Taku ( talk) 05:35, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
In a study published in the August issue of Communications of the ACM entitled "The Collaborative Organization of Knowledge," computer scientists Diomidis Spinellis and Panagiotis Louridas analyze the relationship between references to non-existent articles ( redlinks) and the creation of new articles. The study, based on the February 2006 dump of English Wikipedia because more recent dumps were unavailable (for shame!), finds that the ratio of complete (i.e., non-stub) articles to incomplete (non-existent or stub) articles remained nearly constant between 2003 and 2006 (about 1.8 incomplete articles per complete article). A trend in either direction, according to the authors, would indicate an unsustainable growth pattern. If the average number of redlinks per article is increasing, it means that Wikipedia is becoming diffuse and will become less useful as more and more the terms in the average article are not covered. If the average number is decreasing, it suggests that Wikipedia's growth will slow or stop as the number of links to uncreated articles approaches zero. The stable redlink ratio suggests that Wikipedia is a scale-free network, in principle capable of unlimited growth.
The study also notes that most new articles were created within the first month that they were referenced in another article. Furthermore, only 3% of new articles were created by the same user who created the first link to that article (whether as a redlink or a bluelink). This implies that the connection between redlinks and new articles is a collaborative one, and that adding redlinks actually spurs others to create new articles.-- ragesoss ( talk) 00:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I think we are experiencing the slow-down in the article growth. I can tell this from my experience, and I'm sure many other experienced users would concur. What is interesting is that, according to History of Wikipedia, the article creation by anonymous users was disabled in 2005, but it, apparently?, didn't affect the growth at the point. Also, since the growth rate is the number of articles created minus that of ones deleted, I suspect the notability policy is quite possibly the culprit of the declining growth, rather than the dearth of uncovered topics. -- Taku ( talk) 05:35, 1 August 2008 (UTC)