Wikipedia article depth

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The depth or editing depth of Wikipedia is one of several possible rough indicators of the encyclopedia's collaborative quality, showing how frequently its articles are updated.

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.

Definition

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:

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

The depth can be simplified to the equivalent formula below:

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

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

English Wikipedia has depth of 841 = 21.53 × 39.06 and is the deepest one for Wikipedias with number of articles greater than 10000.

The largest depth for the unblocked Wikipedias has Aromanian Wikipedia which has the depth 3544 = 59.34 × 59.72.

The smallest depth has Minangkabau Wikipedia which has the depth 0.0018 = 2.11 × 0.0009.

Background

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.

Still 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 new value for the English Wikipedia was 288. 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.

100 000+ articles

The table shows the list of Wikipedias with over 100,000 articles sorted by Depth.

N.B.: Table sorted by Depth on 28 January 2014.

No. Language Language (local) Wiki Depth Articles Edits Total
1 English English en 840.9 4,468,450 697,407,424 32,396,930
2 Hebrew עברית he 253.2 155,506 16,121,560 653,843
3 Arabic العربية ar 244.1 264,975 15,243,265 1,610,553
4 Turkish Türkçe tr 212 225,391 15,144,242 1,116,571
5 Persian فارسی fa 183.8 365,328 16,862,361 2,122,358
6 French français fr 176.3 1,484,492 103,940,756 6,359,556
7 Spanish español es 172.3 1,086,920 78,464,008 4,505,189
8 Portuguese português pt 117.7 822,278 39,388,309 3,470,189
9 Russian русский ru 111.3 1,095,811 73,429,081 3,685,714
10 Chinese 中文 zh 111.9 755,242 31,953,578 3,336,762
11 Simple English Simple English simple 115.9 110,295 10,344,583 318,774
12 Hungarian magyar hu 99.1 256,706 15,142,243 868,913
13 Italian italiano it 98.9 1,105,320 69,849,429 3,601,455
14 Romanian română ro 90.6 241,687 8,737,432 1,032,815
15 German Deutsch de 89.6 1,695,810 134,070,998 4,700,847
16 Korean 한국어 ko 81.2 269,257 13,924,555 878,647
17 Danish dansk da 68.6 186,319 7,877,641 618,974
18 Japanese 日本語 ja 66.3 899,204 51,986,080 2,506,977
19 Serbian српски / srpski sr 62.8 243,506 9,961,725 785,287
20 Uzbek oʻzbekcha uz 57.1 127,425 2,267,229 638,501
21 Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia id 55.1 337,193 8,698,854 1,307,012
22 Hindi हिन्दी hi 49.8 110,370 2,440,253 441,974
23 Finnish suomi fi 45.3 342,818 14,751,968 919,023
24 Armenian Հայերեն hy 41.5 111,073 2,233,407 422,365
25 Czech čeština cs 38.9 290,355 11,664,456 748,941
26 Ukrainian українська uk 37.8 487,778 14,183,711 1,445,698
27 Croatian hrvatski hr 35.2 143,972 4,450,709 400,068
28 Estonian eesti et 31.4 121,579 3,988,575 312,052
29 Bulgarian български bg 28 158,606 6,449,117 355,609
30 Catalan català ca 28.1 423,391 13,334,873 1,053,739
31 Norwegian (Bokmål) norsk bokmål no 26.8 414,105 14,069,565 979,820
32 Basque Euskara eu 30.5 166,390 4,596,228 455,542
33 Slovene slovenščina sl 20.9 139,912 4,335,805 311,480
34 Galician galego gl 19.4 111,097 3,311,309 243,673
35 Norvegian (Nynorsk) norsk nynorsk nn 18 112,758 2,838,630 256,803
36 Polish polski pl 18 1,033,513 38,758,906 2,038,371
37 Esperanto Esperanto eo 18.3 193,374 5,500,094 422,292
38 Slovak slovenčina sk 18.1 191,060 5,750,451 407,539
39 Lithuanian lietuvių lt 18 163,757 4,751,438 353,171
40 Vietnamese Tiếng Việt vi 17.5 886,826 15,987,648 2,289,990
41 Serbo-Croatian srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски sh 53.4 113,210 2,411,912 483,402
42 Malay Bahasa Melayu ms 16.6 243,614 3,734,427 661,233
43 Volapük Volapük vo 15.5 119,127 3,294,618 247,751
44 Latin Latina la 10.8 103,801 2,802,157 193,689
45 Swedish svenska sv 11 1,613,054 26,292,835 3,593,893
46 Dutch Nederlands nl 8.4 1,765,549 41,689,382 3,181,608
47 Kazakh қазақша kk 7.9 205,389 2,080,594 482,870
48 Cebuano Cebuano ceb 2.9 892,570 4,533,757 1,879,240
49 Waray-Waray Winaray war 2.8 959,458 4,858,582 1,979,955
50 Minangkabau Baso Minangkabau min 0.002 220,921 480,395 227,396

Trends

Trend during 2008.

The table shows how the depth of the largest 30 languages[2] of Wikipedia has developed over time.

Date en de fr pl ja it nl pt es ru sv zh no fi ca uk tr ro vo cs hu eo sk da id he ar ko lt sr
Today 841 90 176 18 66 99 8 118 172 111 11 112 27 45 28 38 212 91 16 39 99 18 18 69 55 253 244 81 18 63
1 July 2013 769 89 164 19 64 95 9 112 170 106 15 100 28 45 26 38 212 88 15 39 100 18 18 66 112 249 235 82 18 64
1 Jan 2013 731 89 165 17 61 91 18 103 175 104 38 108 28 44 24 38 214 81 15 38 99 18 15 62 88 242 243 77 17 57
1 July 2012 688 88 157 16 58 89 19 96 166 99 44 148 28 44 22 36 207 101 13 38 98 17 15 58 89 236 241 76 16 52
1 Jan 2012 648 89 151 14 56 85 18 88 158 92 50 90 29 44 20 35 207 97 12 37 92 16 24 39 72 231 230 74 17 51
1 July 2011 613 89 145 13 54 81 30 82 163 91 48 83 27 43 18 34 192 93 12 37 90 16 22 36 63 227 225 71 17 47
1 Jan 2011 572 87 140 10 51 77 29 71 179 90 46 80 25 41 17 33 185 86 11 34 86 16 20 35 61 220 208 62 17 40
1 July 2010 522 88 139 11 49 75 30 77 189 91 35 68 24 39 18 31 177 73 10 32 81 15 19 34 61 208 197 51 19 47
1 Jan 2010 478 86 128 10 46 71 27 74 141 87 31 63 23 37 17 25 159 54 9 33 71 14 16 31 42 205 167 43 19 46
1 July 2009 440 84 121 10 43 66 25 71 116 81 28 63 22 35 17 26 132 36 8 32 70 13 14 28 35 184 142 39 17 56
1 Jan 2009 413 81 115 9 41 57 23 66 94 74 24 71 20 32 17 15 95 30 8 28 64 13 10 26 30 177 117 36 15 52
1 July 2008 368 77 101 8 38 47 21 58 69 63 19 56 20 30 15 10 66 25 8 26 51 12 8 24 24 159 108 34 14 46
1 Jan 2008 302 70 79 9 33 43 20 49 51 56 15 59 18 27 14 12 43 17 3 24 39 11 7 21 20 132 107 27 12 35
1 July 2007 320 100 59 15 36 59 23 31 39 32
1 Jan 2007 224 87 45 12 32 37 19 25 34 24