User talk:Dcljr/Article counts revisited

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Since I didn't yet have any specific proposals to make about this, I haven't made this an actual RFC. I'd like input on what possible proposals could be made, and even whether an RFC is really necessary. It seems to me, we have a few different issues here:

  1. The current situation is, in effect, the result of a unilateral decision by a developer (albeit, no doubt, a good one) and not based on "real" community consensus. This is why I think it should be discussed here.
  2. Although the current "link" method of counting articles seems to match the decision reached after the very brief discussion in May 2003, the implementation of that decision was flawed and actually ended up counting pages merely containing the string "[[". (Please read the background information at User:Dcljr/Article counts if you haven't already.) This very different method was in use for many years, and people got used to (more or less) the counts it gave.
  3. Although the articles are being counted differently now, some wikis still have counts based largely on the old way of doing things. These wikis will see significant changes in their article counts when the updating script is run on them. (All the gory details are at User:Dcljr/Article counts.)
  4. In addition to the "link" method, which is the default for all new wikis, there are also "all" and "comma" methods. Some projects (e.g., say, Wikisource) might benefit from making the "all" method the default, in which case all pages in specifed "content namespaces" qualify as articles.
  5. We might consider totally new criteria for counting articles (e.g., "at least one link or category", "at least one link and a category", etc.). Obviously, this will require the input of developers to say whether the proposed criteria are feasible. (I started to discuss different possible criteria at User:Dcljr/Article counts#Other possible article counting criteria, but got sidetracked into modifying my article-counting script to deal with the huge English Wikipedia, then lost the [working] version I had been using to count all the other wikis — so, progress in this direction came to a screeching halt.)
  6. In light of all of the above, should we update the article counts on all the remaining Wikimedia projects now (as was done for Wiktionaries and Wikisources on 10 May 2012), or should we wait until we discuss these other issues?

So... comments? - dcljr (talk) 07:38, 15 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Possible RFC questions[edit]

OK, I'll just talk to myself for a while, until others chime in. [g] Here are some possible proposals we could include in one or more RFCs (please don't "vote" on these—you can discuss their wording and the like, but this is not yet an RFC):

  1. The article-count updating script (updateArticleCount.php) should be run as soon as possible on all Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikinews, and Wikiversity wikis (as was done for Wiktionary and Wikisource wikis on May 10, 2012).
  2. Category links (e.g., [[Category:Dogs]]) should count just like regular page links ([[Dog]]) in determining article counts.
  3. Image/file links ([[Image:Dog.jpg]] or [[File:Dog.jpg]]) should count just like regular page links in determining article counts.
  4. Interlanguage links ([[en:Dog]] or [[:en:Dog]]) should count just like regular page links in determining article counts.
  5. Interwiki links ([[w:Dog]] or [[WikiaSite:Dogs]]) should count just like regular page links in determining article counts.
  6. Template calls ({{Dogs}}) should count just like regular page links in determining article counts.
  7. A page should be counted as an article if it contains at least one page link ([[Dog]]) and at least one category.
  8. A page should be counted as an article if it contains at least one page link ([[Dog]]) and at least one <other type of link>.

Back later to add to this.... - dcljr (talk) 20:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Article counts have been corrected for all projects except Wikibooks[edit]

On 29 March 2015, the article counts were recalculated on all individual-language wikis in all of the main Wikimedia content projects (Wikipedia, etc.) except Wikibooks. The multilingual Wikiversity Beta article count was also recalculated. As predicted, this resulted in some huge changes in article counts, and has given rise to a lot of confusion. - dcljr (talk) 23:06, 1 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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