# 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 872 = 21.78 × 40.05 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 1183 = 53.43 × 22.13.

The smallest depth has Minangkabau Wikipedia which has the depth 0.0019 = 2.12 × 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 August 2014.

No. Language Language (local) Wiki Depth Articles Edits Total
1 English English en 872.16 4,594,291 733,175,308 33,670,378
2 Hebrew עברית he 256.49 160,843 16,815,153 678,154
3 Turkish Türkçe tr 209.91 233,459 15,613,678 1,152,363
4 Arabic العربية ar 199.25 321,570 16,584,572 1,828,940
5 Serbo-Croatian srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски sh 197.66 216,476 6,306,428 1,876,725
6 French français fr 185.41 1,540,531 109,386,314 6,752,134
7 Spanish español es 174.84 1,122,479 82,188,822 4,654,634
8 Persian فارسی fa 159.61 420,035 17,960,064 2,332,308
9 Simple English Simple English simple 128.8 115,956 12,263,782 332,716
10 Portuguese português pt 122.75 838,390 41,024,312 3,583,839
11 Chinese 中文 zh 122.19 784,528 33,916,895 3,616,291
12 Russian русский ru 114.27 1,143,411 77,538,463 3,876,292
13 Italian italiano it 102.83 1,141,148 73,208,643 3,765,641
14 Hungarian magyar hu 99.38 265,599 15,734,778 898,194
15 Romanian română ro 95.89 251,689 9,159,798 1,109,411
16 German Deutsch de 89.56 1,752,436 139,314,809 4,845,380
17 Korean 한국어 ko 82.23 287,296 14,715,878 948,813
18 Danish dansk da 69.96 191,058 8,112,010 639,888
19 Japanese 日本語 ja 68.04 924,501 53,792,828 2,601,592
20 Serbian српски / srpski sr 63.22 251,407 10,282,018 813,796
21 Indonesian Bahasa Indonesia id 62.26 347,602 9,167,834 1,431,378
22 Uzbek oʻzbekcha uz 57.88 127,684 2,291,210 641,781
23 Hindi हिन्दी hi 52.68 114,261 2,551,011 470,368
24 Greek Ελληνικά el 46.56 107,420 4,945,775 282,639
25 Finnish suomi fi 44.79 353,683 15,119,637 945,620
26 Czech čeština cs 38.75 303,461 12,199,730 781,644
27 Ukrainian українська uk 36.35 522,857 14,937,464 1,532,574
28 Croatian hrvatski hr 34.86 147,289 4,546,030 407,711
29 Armenian Հայերեն hy 34.27 131,732 2,543,597 459,486
30 Estonian eesti et 31 126,038 4,106,875 322,771
31 Azerbaijani azərbaycanca az 30.1 102,011 3,196,580 262,419
32 Catalan català ca 29.86 435,667 14,383,714 1,091,444
33 Bulgarian български bg 27.66 165,444 6,645,523 371,051
34 Norwegian (Bokmål) norsk bokmål no 26.15 429,276 14,443,775 1,009,665
35 Basque Euskara eu 25.45 199,047 4,750,060 536,529
36 Slovene slovenščina sl 21.31 141,894 4,416,284 317,557
37 Galician galego gl 19.67 115,963 3,445,206 256,213
38 Polish polski pl 18.9 1,062,030 40,321,528 2,121,114
39 Vietnamese Tiếng Việt vi 18.76 1,107,501 19,608,764 2,976,554
40 Slovak slovenčina sk 18.56 194,513 5,876,943 417,997
41 Esperanto Esperanto eo 18.13 200,962 5,606,895 440,901
42 Lithuanian lietuvių lt 17.88 166,859 4,812,256 359,782
43 Norvegian (Nynorsk) norsk nynorsk nn 17.67 116,487 2,869,357 265,384
44 Volapük Volapük vo 15.49 119,254 3,298,860 247,926
45 Malay Bahasa Melayu ms 14.06 268,401 3,841,553 697,217
46 Swedish svenska sv 10.65 1,896,582 27,251,942 4,377,162
47 Latin Latina la 10.3 110,997 2,880,727 206,309
48 Dutch Nederlands nl 8.81 1,788,691 42,988,230 3,247,720
49 Kazakh қазақша kk 8.35 208,358 2,239,930 489,853
50 Cebuano Cebuano ceb 3.41 1,145,221 5,453,728 2,606,045
51 Waray-Waray Winaray war 3.17 1,073,801 5,505,436 2,311,966
52 Minangkabau Baso Minangkabau min 0.002 221,050 481,779 227,636

## 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 872 90 185 19 68 103 9 123 175 114 11 122 26 45 30 36 210 96 15 39 99 18 19 70 62 256 199 82 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