Wikipedia article depth

 

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The editing depth, or simply depth, of Wikipedia is one of several possible rough indicators of the encyclopedia's collaborative quality. It does not refer to academic quality, which cannot be computed, but to Wikipedian quality, i.e. the depth of collaborativeness—a descriptor that is highly relevant for a Wikipedia.

The formula assumes that a relatively high number of page edits and the presence of support pages means articles have been updated. And the latter support pages are assumed to be a more important factor.

In the list of Wikipedias, depth is currently defined as:

${\displaystyle {\text{Depth}}={\frac {\text{Edits}}{\text{Articles}}}\cdot {\frac {\text{Non-Articles}}{\text{Articles}}}\cdot \left(1-{\frac {\text{Articles}}{\text{Total}}}\right)}$

The depth can be simplified to the equivalent formula below:

${\displaystyle {\text{Depth}}={\frac {\text{Edits}}{\text{Total}}}\cdot \left({\frac {\text{Non-Articles}}{\text{Articles}}}\right)^{2}}$

• Non-Articles are user pages, redirects, images, "project" pages, categories, templates, and all talk pages.
• Total is simply Non-Articles + Articles.

Among editions with at least 10,000 articles the English Wikipedia has the most depth, at 1351.7 ( = 20.49 × 65.98).

Among editions with at least 10,000 articles, the Ladin Wikipedia has the least depth, at 0.002 ( = 1.31 × 0.002).

The measurement of depth was introduced after some limitations of the classic measurement of article count were realized. This insight is similar to the various suggestions to redefine the ordering of Wikipedias that appear on the international front page www.wikipedia.org. See Top Ten Wikipedias and Talk:Www.wikipedia.org portal.

In early February 2006, the list of Wikipedias only listed the article count. But on February 10, 2006, this changed into a table format that also listed the total edit count, number of users and admins.

The depth column first appeared on November 29, 2006. The initial definition was Edits/Articles, giving the English Wikipedia a value of 62. This definition changed already the next day to (Edits/Articles) × (Non-Articles/Articles), giving the English Wikipedia a value of 209. The next definition change occurred on October 9, 2007, when the stub-ratio factor was appended. The stub ratio is (1-(Articles/Total)).^[1]

The formula changed again on October 17, October 28, and finally on April 11, 2008.

The discussion of the introduction of the depth parameter is found in Talk:List of Wikipedias/Archive 4. Early on, there were discussions of whether depth implies quality. The changes in October 2007 were discussed in Talk:List of Wikipedias/Archive 5#Depth 2.0.

The table shows the list of Wikipedias with over 10,000 articles. It can be sorted by Depth. Data on this page is automatically updated every day (Purge).

N.B.: Default sorting is by language code, but it is possible to sort the table by any column.

The following graph and table show how the depth of the largest 30 languages of Wikipedia (on November 2008) have developed over time.

• Efficiency

More lists of Wikipedias by various criteria :  [ edit ]

• List of Wikipedias by article count, users, file count and depth and its source (both updated every 6 hours)
• List of Wikipedias by edits per article and depth (both updated every 6 hours)
• List of Wikipedias by language group and family (both updated every 6 hours) and language families as a tree (not just Wikipedias)
• List of Wikipedias by country (updated manually)
• List of Wikipedias by speakers per article (updated every 6 hours)
• List of Wikipedias by sample of articles and expanded sample of articles (both updated monthly)
• List of Wikipedias by featured and good articles (both updated manually)
• List of Wikipedias by creation date (incomplete)
• List of Wikipedias in multiple writing systems
• List of Wikipedias having local media files and zero local media files (both updated manually)
• List of Wikipedia milestones or en:Wikipedia:Milestone statistics (tracking of major article-count milestones)
• List of largest wikis (not just Wikimedia wikis)
• Wikimedia News (announcements and tracking of milestones for all Wikimedia projects)
• Tell us about your Wikipedia

• Wikipedia Article Depth Calculator