Wikipedia talk:Milestones/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Milestones. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

19

This has reached 19000 articles. That has reached 19000 articles. English has reached 190000 articles... Something special about the number 19? Κσυπ Cyp 14:50, 4 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Joining ODP

moved talk about joing Open Directory Project to Wikipedia:Village Pump

Prime numbers

English wikipedia has reached 199,637 articles, a prime number.

I think that's a bit silly. There are lots of prime numbers. Primes up to 200,000, for example:

199637, 199657, 199669, 199673, 199679, 199687, 199697, 199721, 199729, 199739, 199741, 199751, 199753, 199777, 199783, 199799, 199807, 199811, 199813, 199819, 199831, 199853, 199873, 199877, 199889, 199909, 199921, 199931, 199933, 199961, 199967, 199999. Evercat 18:49, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Other language Wikipedia announcements

We have lots of announcements of the form "xx language wikipedia reached yy,000 articles?" This page is supposedly for en announcements. Should we change the remit of this page to include the good tidings from our other-tongued cousins? (It could duplicate the equivalent meta page), or should we boldly remove them, with a swift "moved to meta" summary comment? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 11:15, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Alas - I think you are right. Wikimedia News is better for X language X articles announcements. --mav

I think that is in line wwith what is supposed to be. But those quick short annoucements hurt nothing don't they? -- Taku 17:00, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

I also agree with Taku. They don't clutter that much, even though they should not be here. It's not like we have that many announcements anyway. Dori | Talk 17:08, Feb 9, 2004 (UTC)

These 'X Wikipedia X milestone' posts results in new announcements every other day. Each day at least one new announcement is listed the Announcements link on RC should be bolded. Since most of the announcements are just noise that does not pertain to the English Wikipedia, I imagine that many people ignore the bolded announcement link on RC. meta:Wikimedia News is the place for that type of stuff. Right now Wikimedia News is more or less a copy of the English Wikipedia's announcement page and that may result in many people ignoring that page as well. --mav

They have nothing to do with en, and end up sounding like a desperate competition. It also furthers the idea that here (En WP) is the mother/main WP, where anything other WPs do must be report to the superior. Wikimedia is where we all belong under. It is a false idea these other WP # reporters are having. Why exactly aren't these #s reported in the German or Malay WP, for example? --Menchi 17:19, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Most of the Wikipedia traffic comes to en. In the future this may not be true, but until then en is the most visible place. That's probably why most people post the announcements here. Dori | Talk 01:05, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, the German announcement page currently has announcements regarding the Croatian, Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, Polish and French Wikipedia article counts. Not to imply that these should be there, but this isn't strictly an English phenomenon.—Eloquence 02:27, Feb 10, 2004 (UTC)

I updated the boilerplate at the top of the page to try to reflect opinion offered here. It seems to me that this discussion is a microcosm of the wider use of meta: vs Wikipedia: namespaces. Meta would, in an ideal world, be used more and Wikipedia: less . But its not an ideal world because we don't have things like integrated (or side-by-side) recent changes, integrated watchlists and single sign-on. They would be brilliant features in my opinion. Until they come online I don't think it is reasonable to really make a "push for meta", and so the current status quo is going to be maintained. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:22, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I updated your update. :) The status quo is what we make it. By ignoring Meta you ensure that it will remain ignored. --mav

I am happy with your slightly bolder update. We can try to move the status quo but without new software features to lower the barrier of entry I fear it is like pushing a big and every growing boulder up a steep hill :) Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:51, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

My own view is a little different. I am of the opinion that what is happening to other versions is of major interest to the English Wikipedia. In a real sense, EN is the "parent" Wikipedia, and is by far the largest. In a number of places, Wikipedia calls for people to help with translation from EN to other languages. Thus as English speakers were have a vital interest in what's going on in the wider Wikiworld. And as someone else has pointed out, keeping track of other languages is not confined to EN. The German version does; so does the Afrikaans version - where their MAIN PAGE compares the progress of their version to that of the English and Dutch ones. And yes, I agree with Pete - we MUST get some new software features, to allow for seamless navigation between the different languages of Wikipedia, as well as the different Wikimedia organs (Wiktionary, Wikisource, etc).Davidcannon 10:02, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Then they could just go over to Wikimedia News to get that info. I'm going to move the other language notes to meta in a day or two. This announcements page needs to focus on the English Wikipedia. --mav 02:52, 15 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Article counter drift

For the record, en.wikipedia hit 200,000 a few days before it was announced, as the article counter had drifted due to some bugs that didn't update it correctly in some operations. --Brion 23:40, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Publicity from press release

I doubt that the press release can have had that much to do with the increase in traffic. So far I have only seen it on one german news site and on kuro5hin. That can't possibly have caused much new traffic.Jrincayc 15:23, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The German news TV program was watched by 2.2 million people. So if as many as 0.1% visited Wikipedia then that would be 2,000 visitors... how many extra did we have? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:22, 27 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Time zones

Sorry, Simon. It's the 29th where I am (New Zealand) - I'm on the other side of the international dateline. I'll be more careful in future to make sure I go by ETC. Davidcannon 22:54, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

It's not a problem, I'm beginning to appreciate the difficulties; daylight saving has come into operation here, so now British time doesn't match UTC. Oh well, can't wait for the simplicities of Autumn
*(I do know that GMT is not UTC, but it's near enough)
SimonMayer 22:58, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Alexa references

Regarding the comment on March 22: Alexa Internet flags wikipedia.org as a reference site, says Wikipedia should show up on their Top 50 Reference Sites list "within days". This does not seemed to have happened. Any ideas? Fuzheado 08:56, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Over to User:Sj who got in touch with Alexa. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:05, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Good question. I wondered the same thing myself; they have definitely updated their (weekly?) shuffle since then. Wrote them yesterday; hope they didn't think it was a joke. The contact who responded so quickly before was Kelly Dragoo, at "help@alexa.com".

Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 16:25:55 -0500 (EST)
To: Alexa Support <help@alexa.com>

Dear Kelly,

Happy April Fool's Day, and thank you for your lightning-fast response
last week!  I wrote the ODP the same day, and have yet to hear from them.
I notice that the Reference list has been updated, but that Wikipedia is
not on it.  Perhaps the latest ODP update overwrote the category change
made to your backend?  (Wikipedia *is* categorized by the ODP, but only
under "Open Source".)

Our Alexa reach hit 1.7% today!  Your metrics may not be "representative
of the global Internet population", but they are certainly fun.  :-)

Hopefully they'll be in touch soon... (it's already 2 hrs into their business day) +sj + 18:43, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

Other languages (parte deux)

Following on from the above discussion, note that of the 43 announcements made last month, fully 28 of them were about other language Wikipedia passing various article number milestones. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:05, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I might add that many of those were minor milestones indeed. I understand fully that reaching 1000 articles is a large feat for a language that recently kicked off. But reporting the next 1000 and so on is overdoing it. The news value of this page is devalued by all these minor announcements. I think only round numbers should be reported, e.g. only 1000, 5000, 10000, 25000, 50000, 75000 etc.

Same goes for Alexa records highs, too many of those Erik Zachte 11:15, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes! Please report more on content, quality standards, highlighting new templates (a good template or model article is worth a hundred decent stubs in my book)... +sj + 18:47, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

Speaking for myself, I rather like the reporting of milestones on this page. I think its good for us (Britons, Americans, and other English speakers) to keep an eye on what is happening with the other language wikis. I can see your point, though. As a compromise, how about putting the milestones under a separate heading, at the bottom of the page? That way, those coming to the page would first see matters relevant to the English wikipedia, but would be able to scroll down the page (or follow the link in the TOC) to the MILESTONES section. I'll set it up that way in the next day or two. You can tell me how you like it (I think you will, but if you don't, you can revert it - no offence taken). Davidcannon 10:48, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is a page for that already - it is called Meta:Wikimedia News. That is where they should go - this page needs to be for and about English Wikipedia matters. I will move them myself in a few days. --mav 03:55, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that the Meta is far less known, and has much less traffic, than the English Wikipedia. I am of the opinion that Britons and Americans tend to be a bit too insular with respect to other languages; compare that with the attitude of speakers of other languages such as German (whose Wikipedia keeps track of what's happening with other languages) and Afrikaans, whose MAIN page gives comparative statistics for English and Dutch, as well as Afrikaans. That's their MAIN page! Not one of us has suggested doing anything like that with our own main page, and I would not support such a move, but what's the harm in having it on our announcements page?

Having said all that, I believe in majority rule, and will gladly comply with it. To determine what the majority verdict is, I'm starting a POLL at the bottom of this page. As I said, I will abide by the result. But having said that, I believe it is in everybody's best interests if we (AND every other language in which Wikipedia is published) has information about what is going on in the wider community.

Page rank?

What's the page rank of the main page now? Backlinks have passed 100k on Google. +sj + 21:06, 2004 Apr 2 (UTC)

Page rank is 8/10, backlinks 107,000. :) Catherine 02:03, 4 Apr 2004 (UTC)

POLL

What do you think of removing foreign-language milestones from the ANNOUNCEMENTS page of the English Wikipedia, and publishing such stones only on the Meta?

Meta only

Menchi 07:50, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC): Doing so ingrains the popular and ever-growing misconception that the English WP is the superior leader of all 20+ WPs. Meta is appropriate. And if you really care about other-language WPs painstaking growth. You can check it out there.
I've never seen it as ingraining the stereotype of the superiority of the English Wikipedia. On the contrary, I see it as doing the exact opposite: it shows that there is a life outside of English, and gives the other languages their due acknowledgement. Davidcannon 13:37, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Acknowledgements due under WikiMedia, not under English WP. --Menchi 18:59, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 09:27, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC). Menchi has it right. I think it would be very valuable to break the cycle of people not reading meta because meta does not have the information, but also people refusing to put information on meta because meta does not have readers. En is not the be all and end all.
I'm not saying that such information shouldn't be on the Meta. It should be. But should it be only there? I don't think so. I might change my mind if a few structural changes were made (such as seamless integration of the Meta with all language Wikis, etc, which wouldn't require separate watchlists and separate logins for the users of multiple WPs, or for users of a Wikipedia and the Meta) I'll be far more willing to remove information of this type to the Meta if and when such upgrades are forthcoming. I'll explain my reasoning behind all this in an article I've got planned for publication on the Meta in a few days.Davidcannon 13:37, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I have been of the same mind. However such structural changes are a long way off. I think we should push meta regardless - if you have long-lasting log in cookies you barely notice the difference anyway. As for data being only there... the only two logical choices are to have the data just on meta, or all data on all wikis ... having the data on meta and en gives undue prominence to en. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 16:41, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Erik Zachte 11:10, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) Major milestones can be reported in a new section at Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics
Dori | Talk 13:48, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC) They're getting to be too many. With so many Wikipedias, there will probably be some sort of milestone every day.
Support. People need to go to Meta more often. Angela . 16:31, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
Dump em. I don't need to hear that the Esperanto wikipedia has hit 4,500 articles. →Raul654 16:07, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC)
There is no point in mirroring content here and on Meta. The fact that any other wiki has done anything is not relevant to the English Wikipedia's announcements page. As it is, announcements by and for the the English Wikipedia are drowned out by milestone announcements. Meta is for inter-wiki coordination and is therefore the natural place to have such inter-wiki announcements. --mav 00:30, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Keep significant announcements on en as well as meta

Donar Reiskoffer 08:24, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) (but only real milestones i.e. 1k 2k 5k 10k 20k 50k 100k 200k ...)
Kpjas 12:48, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) but leave only significant milestones
Jrincayc 13:02, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) But only significant milestones
SimonP 16:48, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC), but significant milestones only
DavidWBrooks 17:00, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC) yes, keep significant ones
Okay, I get the point. Yes, the milestones have been a bit inflated with the inclusion of many trivial ones, and I've had a part in that also. I agree that they need to be streamlined, and only major ones should be reported here. Davidcannon 13:37, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Real milestones only, and moderation over alexa (considering that it is google toolbar only). Secretlondon 18:23, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Tuf-Kat 16:19, Apr 7, 2004 (UTC) (significant only = formation, 1000, 5000, 10000, 20000, 50000, 100000, every 50000 after that)
Nice round number announcements are good. "Swedish wikipedia reaches 24,000" isn't. -- Cyrius|&#9998 03:49, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

Keep status quo

David Gerard 07:25, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)
Taku 16:19, Apr 6, 2004 (UTC)

-- What is the status quo?! Isn't it the same as Proposal 2? (Both here and on Meta, as of now). --Menchi 19:00, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The status quo is: Lots of announcements of non-significant milestones reached by non-en wps on en and (to a lesser extent) on meta. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 20:15, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I see the point that people are making - that too many minor events are being classified as "milestones" and are cluttering the page. I agree that we (including I) should avoid posting such trivia in future. Depending on which way the vote goes, I will continue to post milestones - but only really significant ones (e.g. the Romanian Wikipedia reaching 5000 but NOT the Spanish Wikipedia reaching 21,000). As for moving the milestones to the Multilingual Statistics page, as Eric Zachte suggested: thanks for that idea, Eric. I didn't think of that. It seems a good idea to me. As for moving them entirely to the Meta, please stay tuned for an article I'll be posting on the Meta in the next day or two about the need for an upgrade to allow seamless navigation between the Meta and Wikipedia (and also among the different language Wikipedias, and the sister projects as well). IMO, that's the only think that's going to make the Meta a success any time soon. Anyway, now that I've read what everybody has had to say, I can agree that some significant adjustments in the publication of milestones are needed. Where I continue to differ somewhat with some members is how these adjustments are to be carried out. Davidcannon 11:29, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Suggestion

How about we simply have a table where people can put the latest milestone?

i.e.

Wikipedia	Milestone	Date
Welsh	1,000	April 9, 2004
German	75,000	April 7, 2004
Romanian	5,000	April 7, 2004
Simple	1,000	April 7, 2004

Don't put the entire list, but anytime someone wants to put an announcement, and their language isn't there, it gets added. They're all sorted alphabetically by language code. Dori | Talk 04:02, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

That's an excellent idea, Dori. It's a win-win solution for both sides. Let's go for it! Davidcannon 09:28, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, I put some announcements there. I am afraid to remove the announcements while leaving the table as so many people voted for them. Someone who knows how should probably align the entries. Dori | Talk 17:57, Apr 9, 2004 (UTC)

I removed them since no one complained. If there is some big disagreement, just revert it. Dori | Talk 04:51, Apr 12, 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. This makes it quite difficult to find out when the last milestone happened, which can be done now by just going back through the history of annoucements. Jrincayc 13:37, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You could just look at the dates. Dori | Talk 14:04, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure what the term would be, but I mean the milestone before the displayed one. So if the current milestone is 5000, when did they hit 1000? Announcments is starting to become harder to read, because many of the annoucements are no longer placed with the date, so I can't just read from the last date that I looked at it and work my way from there. Jrincayc 20:09, 14 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no need to clutter up Announcements for that. [1] and [2] are much better. Dori | Talk 16:43, Apr 15, 2004 (UTC)

How about we ~~create~~ use Wikipedia:Milestones and put the whole darn thing there. I think that announcements should be a linear list of annoucements by time. I would have no objection to a seperate paged dedicated to milestones that was not a linear list of annoucements by time. Jrincayc 13:23, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Milestones Table Edit

I have removed several milestones from the table. Yes, I pushed for milestones to be retained, but the "consensus decision" was that only major milestones should be included, and I think it is important to hold ourselves to that decision. Accordingly, I have removed a number of milestones that are not round numbers. Please don't take offence, User:Alfio - given the recent dramatic growth of the Italian Wikipedia, you'll get your turn in just a few days, so don't run away just yet :-) Davidcannon 13:55, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I heartily approve of presenting the milestones in a table-like fashion. It is much more helpful to the reader... in this form I am more relaxed about the data being on en... I would prefer meta, but am happy if it is on both. As for the layout of the table... do we intend to only have one entry for each language or, as further milestones are reached, would a language have more than one row (e.g. when en reaches 250,000 do we drop 240,000 or keep it?). I would prefer keeping it, as otherwise we lose historical data, and miss out on the rate of progress. On the flip side, this means the table will eventually become quite substantial in size. Might it be more appropiate to have the table on another page, clearly linked from this one and others? I recommend upgrading Wikipedia:Milestones for this purpose, which isn't widely used right now. Any comments? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:02, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I can see the merit of your suggestion, Pete, but speaking for myself, I'd prefer each language to have only one entry - its latest milestone. Taking up your suggestion of upgrading the Wikipedia:Milestones page, however, we could have more detailed tables on that page that would keep track of the rate of progress. The Milestones page could record milestones not only for the number of articles, but also for registered users, edits, and other interesting data. Davidcannon 14:17, 12 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Well, the rate of progress is clearly visible in tabular and graphical form in the international statistics. Erik Zachte 14:43, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)

100 article Wikipedias?

Why were the 100 article Wikipedias deleted from the milestones list? There is no consensus about which milestones are important and which aren't, but 100 articles basically means the Wikipedia has become seriously active... that's the majorest milestone there is. Tuf-Kat 04:22, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

Interesting that you should say that, Tuf-Kat. In the vote we held earlier, you yourself were one who suggested 1000 as the first milestone (just scroll up the page and you'll see it). Don't get me wrong, Tuf-Kat. I myself am very much in favour of keeping milestones on the Announcements page, and I pushed for their continued inclusion. But let's get one thing straight: Only a VERY narrow majority voted for their retention - and only for MAJOR milestones; only two voted for the indiscriminate inclusion of whatever one fancies to be a milestone. Almost half voted for their complete removal - and that included a number of "names" that have been around Wikipedia much longer than I. While not in sympathy with their views, I think we've got to factor them into the equation. In a nutshell, 89 percent voted either for no milestones or very significant ones only; of these, 50 percent favoured keeping significant milestones, and 39 percent favoured dumpingthem. 61 percent voted for milestones altogether, but only 22 percent for indiscriminate ones.

My interpretation of these figures is that while a majority exists for milestones to be kept, it is a tenuous one, and those of us who favour them can't just throw our weight around and include everything that we fancy to be a milestone. When the number 1000 was proposed as the smallest milestone (by you and I think one or two other persons), nobody suggested a smaller figure. And no, I wouldn't say that 100 articles "means that the Wikipedia has become seriously active," as you put it. The Occitan Wikipedia has almost five times that number - and it's been stuck at 487-493 for months and months now. Is it "seriously active?" Not by my standard of reckoning! If 493 articles is insufficient to render a Wikipedia seriously active, I hardly think 100 is. 1000 is a much more realistic figure. What do the rest of you think? David Cannon 10:27, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I understand, but respectfully continue to disagree. I originally voted for formation as the first milestone, but on further thought that made little sense, since Wikipedias are created (i.e. a Main Page exists at xx.wikipedia.org) before there are any contributors (sometimes somebody does push for the creation of a particular language wiki, but not usually), so the Wikipedia is often "formed" before there are any Wikipedians. I think 100 articles establishes that there are (or were) at least one Wikipedians. Certainly, 100 articles is not a guarantee of continued growth, but pedias like Occitan are the exception, I think (Basque and Afrikaans also had some major activity but have since dropped off, IIRC). Tuf-Kat 01:18, Apr 20, 2004 (UTC)

Milestones ordered by size?

I see that the milestones have been reordered by size, rather than alphabetically, as previously. I don't mind, but it will make a lot more work for those uploading them, as their relative sizes will inevitably change. I think alphabetical listings would be much easier to handle. David Cannon 19:47, 20 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think it's nicer to see the relative sizes. It can't be that much more difficult to update -- if the Wikipedia your updating just hit ten thousand articles, you know the milestone it would have been listed at last time. People don't generally do more than update at a time anyway, I think. Tuf-Kat 04:07, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

Relative sizes give you a much better idea of how the sub-projects are doing. en obviously dominates over the rest, but you can see that de is doing even better, given its relative number of speakers. In contrast, es and zh should have a lot more articles.

This is of course a simplistic analysis tool, and ignores socio-economic inequities and article quality. But it does give you a rough idea of how a language-specific Wikipedia is doing. Sorting alphabetically gives no information aside from the milestones themselves. -- Cyrius|&#9998 10:39, Apr 21, 2004 (UTC)

Changing attribution for an edit

An option for reorganization of Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit is at the corresponding talk page.

I removed this. It isn't an important enough announcement to put on this page as it does not affect the whole project. If anything, it should go to Wikipedia:requests for comment. Angela . 21:20, May 16, 2004 (UTC)

Election

Why does the election notice on the Announcements page go to an empty page with an error message, No such article? David Cannon 01:57, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Where is the report from the election? -- Kaihsu 22:43, 2004 Jun 21 (UTC)

It was linked from RC a short while and a link appeared on last week's Goings-on. It is here. ✏ Sverdrup 22:49, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

June 15 alexa.com rank announcement

"After a steady climb, Wikipedia's Alexa rating has fallen to a daily traffic rank of 819. This may be the effect of the server trouble we had last week, or it may be partly due to the fall of traffic from China (see China block below)." Looking at alexa's daily traffic rank plot [3], I honestly fail to see anything unusual. Traffic rank is oscillating all the time; there's nothing unusual in the past couple of days, and especially nothing that would justify an announcement. Or what does everyone else think? -- Schnee 17:46, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I agree - it's far too soon to put an explanation on this fall, or even treat it as more than a blip. sjorford 08:31, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I believe several factors may have caused the change in ranking, but I believe a significant cause was due to Nick Berg. For a couple of weeks Wikipedia was the top search result for 'Nick Berg' and similar searches on both Google and Yahoo. 100,000s of people were searching for the video and ending up visting Wikipedia trying to find it. In May the Nick Berg article got almost half a million hits [4]], even those stats probably understate the true number. I believe this greatly increased Wikipedia's ranking in late May 2004. However Wikipedia's Nick Berg article dropped from the top spot on Google and the number of searches dropped off dramatically going into June, causing a decrease in the Alexa rank. Or it could be something else. -- Popsracer 11:12, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Nick Berg got a lot of hits, that's true, but 500,000 hits out of 81,000,000 should hardly be enough to influence the traffic rank in any significant way. -- Schnee 16:09, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well, decapitation got 300,000 hits and presumably most of those came via the link from Nick Berg. Likely, most visitors read at least a couple of related articles. Fredrik | talk 01:47, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion the falloff of traffic is noteworthy. Wikipedia has seen fairly steady growth in traffic, apart from times of server overload. The traffic has definitely fallen off in the last three weeks, so much so that the weekly averages are below the 3-month average. I, for one, am very curious why. --Fritzlein 05:28, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

My pet theory is that the drop-off corresponds with the rise of the "second generation" of Wikipedia mirrors that now how to work the Google algorithm. For example thefreedictionary.com always hammers WP in the rankings, which has dropped off dramatically for many searches. The timing matches. Pcb21| Pete 08:55, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's a very plausible theory. I just did a Google search on Zsuzsa Polgar, and the Wikipedia article was not in the top 140. That rankles because six of the cloned articles are in the top 100, with two of them in the top 10! Perhaps Google, which once drove Wikipedia growth doesn't do so as much. But what I don't understand is this: if all of the clones are compliant and link back to the original Wikipedia article, won't that push the Wikipedia rank higher than that of any single clone? Peace, --Fritzlein 08:01, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Lots of factors. First some clones are in very poor compliance. Others link only to the main page not the original article. Not surprisingly we are #1 hit for "Wikipedia". Others hide deliberately awkardify the links so when the click a link they don't go directly to our site.. it runs a tiny script on the mirror site which redirects them to WP for the ordinary user, but stays at the mirror if you are the Googlebot, thus stopping us from getting pagerank from them - not surprising since we are their competitor! Pcb21| Pete 08:49, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The reason I added that announcement was to counter all the announcements about the good raising. Thought we should be NPOV...imagine that. Dori | Talk 13:36, Jul 4, 2004 (UTC)

Sure we should. But the announcement is (was) misleading in that it made it seem as if the drop in Alexa rank was a significant or unusual event, which it wasn't - you could write similar announcements every week. In other words, NPOV is good, but you don't have to add non-news to the page for that. -- Schnee 15:05, 4 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was just as significant as the other alexa announcements we had (when was the last time it was 800? and 700? for a while). Dori | Talk 13:17, Jul 5, 2004 (UTC)

I never saw those myself. Still, if you actually *look* at the current Alexa rank plot, you'll see that there was *nothing* special about June 15 at all. I'm all for announcements, no matter whether they're announcements of good or bad news, but it should be *news*, at least. We're not announcing that Wikipedia currently has 298873 articles, either, for example - even though it *is* a milestone, it's not an interesting or newsworthy ones. -- Schnee 18:41, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think the meat of the announcement is that we fell, this a new thing and there is a good case for reporting it as soon as it was seen. Pcb21| Pete 19:00, 5 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If you actually look at the Alex rank plot, you'll see that a drop in rank is not news at all. -- Schnee 16:14, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Alexa Traffic Rating

IS now 620 :) Ilyanep 18:50, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Number of article milestones

On top of the 'Number of article milestones'-section a number of significant milestones are mentioned. Is there any reason why the English and the Dutch language mention a milestone that is not in this list (300,000 and 30,000 respectively)? Donar Reiskoffer 15:05, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Yes, because the list is not very well thought out. Do we really expect to have no announcements between 350k and half a million articles? A milestone should be recognized at every 10,000 articles, then after 100,000, perhaps every 25,000 articles. Fuzheado | Talk 16:34, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Because someone put it there. The English milestones are different, since this is the English Wikipedia. We have regular announcements at every 100K for the English Wikipedia. Dori | Talk 16:52, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)

Since the list of major milestones was arbitrary anyway, I'm going to change it to something mathematically reasonable, but I don't suspect it will matter. Folks can add announcements about English Wikipedia article milestones whenever they like, as far as I'm concerned, since this is the English Wikipedia announcements page. I wish people would stick to the schedule for non-English Wikipedias, though. True, it doesn't clutter things up because the table stays the same size. The weirdness is that the Dutch appear to be ahead of the French, because the French didn't announce 30,000. --Fritzlein 17:20, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the new measures to:

Every 1,000 articles, up to 10,000
Every 10,000 articles up to 100,000
Every 50,000 articles thereafter

Feedback welcome. Fuzheado | Talk 23:42, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

That's the most sensible scheme I've heard of yet. Later today, I'll edit the table to conform to it, provided that nobody objects. David Cannon 00:36, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

You won't be saying that when in five years time we are getting 50,000 articles per day :). But for now it seems like a very good suggestion! Pcb21| Pete 08:22, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

If we're getting 50,000 articles a day, I think all our heads will have exploded and we won't really care that much about article count announcments. -- Cyrius|✎ 13:11, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I have no objection. My only concern is that the people who voted to only announce major milestones will feel these aren't major enough. But if they don't mind, let's go for it. --Fritzlein 18:00, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

*raises hand* I feel that the older series was more "major", even if its jumps were a bit more irregular. It's true that it made it harder to reach milestones when you already have lots of articles, but *shrug*. But eh. I won't die if we keep the current measures. -- pne 10:03, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

On top of the 'Number of article milestones'-section a new list with significant milestones is mentioned. Is there any reason why the following languages are mentioned with a milestone not in this list?

German 120,000
French 45,000
Polish 25,000
Swedish 25,000

Donar Reiskoffer 08:04, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I hereby appoint you to keep all announcements in line with the stated policy :). I guess these things get out of line because no-one cares that much. Pcb21| Pete 12:53, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia Performance

The announcement on July 11 mentions that the performance should improve. Does Wikipedia track performance? If so, where can I find that?

The response time at (daily combined) (weekly separate) is a simple indicator. Dori | Talk 04:00, Jul 14, 2004 (UTC)

Break out the Champgne

Due to the breaking of the 500 barrier in the alexa traffic rank (471 as of July 23rd)...I think that's a cause for celebration! Ilyanep (Talk) 22:46, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Don't get too excited, it's just the daily ranking. -- Cyrius|✎ 23:07, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you can get excited about this: [5]. They said they would do this a while back, but they just changed it. Dori | Talk 16:13, Jul 25, 2004 (UTC)

Or maybe this one [6]. Jan Pedersen 09:44, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

THe 389 rank is nowhere to be found in their chart. I watch regularly and it often happens that a major increase or decrease has disappeared later on the day. So better announce a day or two later after their figures have settled in. Erik Zachte 18:26, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Fastest growth

This is moved from the main page.

July saw the fastest rate of monthly growth in Wikipedia's history. The total Wikipedia project (in 100 languages) posted a net gain of 81,859 new articles, shattering the previous record of 75,223 new articles in March. The English Wikipedia gained 21,507 articles - breaking the March record of 21,037; other languages to make record gains included Italian (8659 new articles - the previous record was 1668, in May), Portuguese (4127 - the previous record was 1855, in May), Swedish (3095 - the previous record was 2874, in March), and Norwegian (1475; the May and June figures of 1001 and 1004 new articles had themselves been records). On current trends, Wikipedia will number one million articles by mid-September.

I don't know where this claim is grounded. I mean what kind of growth? I added monthly but numbers suggest definitely not montly growth. Worse, it has no reference to those numbers; where do they come from? -- Taku 01:26, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, it is monthly. See Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics. --denny vrandečić 11:29, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

Those stats seem to differ significantly from the automated stats. Which seem to suggest the number of new articles across all languages was big in July 2004, but not as big as it was in March 2004. -- Popsracer 11:57, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The automated stats are broken at the moment, and several of the stats are under estimates, including that one. Pcb21| Pete 17:51, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Which stats are broken? Please provide an url. And why are you so sure the stats are under estimates :) Erik Zachte 18:21, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Hi Erik. There is a prelimary discussion of which stats are wrong at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by number of edits. Certainly the CSV file that outputs the number of edits isn't screwy somehow. People are reporting that their total number of edits has gone down! Also it says there were 7k new articles on EN in July (from 283-290K). However the count on the main page went from 283K to 315K. The number of new editors (again on en - http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm) is listed as 168 - the lowest since April 2003. However the webalizer stats say that July was by far the busiest month on record. The growth in database size (in MB) is consistent with webalizer - not the stats related to number of articles/number of wikipedians. I am pretty certain there is a problem somewhere - I for one would be extremely grateful if you could track it down. Pcb21| Pete 22:38, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"However the webalizer stats say that July was by far the busiest month on record." This is the number of page requests. The number of visitors was high but equal to 5 months ago. Page requests is a shady figure. It includes all robots. With official partnership to Yahoo and 10ths of mirrors (many of whom make money over the back of Wikipeda but that is another story) that get their act together and keep their sites up to date, instead of relying on a half year old dump this is bound to rise more rapidly than number of contributions to database. This does not mean all is well. I will have to look into it. Erik Zachte 00:39, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I found the culprit. Now if someone would have alerted me to this problem earlier :( It was relatively easy to spot once I stripped the original script to bare bones for specific tests. The script thinks it is ready reading the cur database when on 75% it encounters the SQL statement that signals end of data, but here as part of an article text. It was bound to happen sometime. Thus new articles which are all in the back of cur database are only counted after two edits (when they appear in old database). I'll send an update soon. Erik Zachte 01:33, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Article milestones redesign

Davidcannon redesigned the article milestones section. It's much nicer now, by far. Congrats. My one comment is the bright colors. I think I might have a seizure. - Plutor 00:19, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

My eyes!!!!11 -- Cyrius|✎ 00:33, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I admit that I love bright colours. But if the majority would like something milder, I have no problems with changing them:-) David Cannon 01:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Davidcannon! I would vote for muting the colors somewhat, but the new format is much preferable to the old one. My only question is mathmematical. If the progression of milestones is 1, 2, 5, 10, etc., shouldn't the latest milestone for the English Wikipedia be 200,000 rather than 100,000? --Fritzlein 07:08, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I agree. I suppose I didn't go for that option this time, because it would create three rows with only one entry - but then, there's really nothing wrong with that. I admit that my spacing of the milestones was pretty arbitrary - it would probably make more sense mathematically to follow Fuzzheado's suggestion (every thousand up to 10,000, every 10,000 up to 100,000, and every 50,000 thereafter). When we have literally hundreds of languages on Wikipedia, we'll probably do something like that. At the moment, I think it would create an unnecessarily large table with lots of empty space, which I'm trying to avoid. When several wikipedias reach 100,000 (Japanese almost certainly will before the end of the year; French is about to hit 50,000 and, with a bit of luck, might double before the year's out), we'll create a new level (200,000) for English. And oh yes, if others express the same sentiments as you, I'll certainly tone the colours down a bit when I get around to it over the next few days. I'm quite happy about that.

Upload caveat

The following was removed from the main page.

Please stop uploading images where permission is granted for non-commercial use only, effective immediately. Under official Wikipedia policy, these images are no longer accepted. [7]. It is anticipated that existing images with the {{noncommercial}} tag will be deleted at some point in the future (once untagged images are uncommon; likely after a new upload form has been introduced).

This is true but how come is it an announcement? -- Taku 01:10, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

1,000,000 articles sitewide

look on meta's milestone page for more ino, but i think we are really close to getting to 1,000,000 articles with all wikis combined.. surely this is a milestone?

Lightning 16:17, Sep 14, 2004 (UTC)

According to [8], there were 984K articles total on 8 September. Help translate the milestone press release! - Plutor 19:44, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, we are really close. My own count shows 980k for 12 September (slightly lower than the Wikistats count). Either way, it's time to order the champagne! BTW, I'll try to find time today to update the tally on Wikipedia:Multilingual statistics. David Cannon 23:06, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The stats will be updated at the weekend. The official announcement should not be made before Monday when the press release goes out, preferably late on Monday to help reduce server load on an already busy day of the week. Angela . 04:32, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

I've been keeping an eye on quite a number of wikipedias over the past few days. Am I the only one who has noticed that most of our projects are growing faster than usual, and that this month is going to be an all-time record for quite a number of languages? Portuguese has exploded - 4500 new articles since the beginning of the month - more than 2500 of them in the last two days. Serbian has exploded too. Even Luxembourgish has come from nothing to be grazing a thousand articles. I realize that bots may have been employed - but am I alone in thinking that they were deliberately unleashed at this time, as each language's wiki strives to play its part to make the million article milestone happen? It's exciting; I only hope they keep it up after the milestone is announced.

Of this I'm sure: the day will come when we shall look back on our million-article milestone as only a tiny start. My own dream is for a billion articles in the world's 6500 languages by 2010. Let's all work hard to achieve that goal. (If you've got an even bigger dream, go for it! It won't be hard to convert me:-) David Cannon 13:13, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Premature announcement

I reverted the premature anouncement of Alexis 349 position. I look at Alexis sometimes several times a day: the stats for the current day are notoriously untrustworthy and will almost change markedly before tomorrow. Often a sharp increase has then been changed into a small decrease and vice versa. Erik Zachte 16:39, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Erik I look also daily the alexia stats. this http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&compare_sites=slashdot.org&url=wikipedia.org#graph says 349 to me for the 21. I think the 409 was from 20 september.Sometimes the graph is updated before the traffic rank. The graph shows the stats for from yesterday (the 21 september) as daily but tomorrow the 21 september will be drawn as a 3 day average. so it will be changed bye a small decrease. And at the weekend you will they will be drawn higher.

Yes they print the figure 349, but please look at [9]. I always look at that one. There is no reason to show a 3 day average here, as there are 5 or 6 pixels available for each day. Yet the very high or low value shown at the far right usually has disappeared 12 hours later, nowhere to be found. Erik Zachte 21:15, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Try this one? Κσυπ Cyp 05:01, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

From the site :

How Are Traffic Trend Graphs Calculated? 'The Trend graph shows you a three-day moving average of the site's daily traffic rank, charted over time. The daily traffic rank reflects the traffic to the site based on data for a single day. In contrast, the main traffic rank shown in the Alexa Toolbar and elsewhere in the service is calculated from three months of aggregate traffic data.

Daily traffic rankings will sometimes benefit sites with sporadically high traffic, while the three-month traffic ranking benefits sites with consistent traffic over time. Since we feel that consistent traffic is a better indication of a site's value, we've chosen to use the three-month traffic rank to represent the site's overall popularity. We use the daily traffic rank in the Trend graphs because it allows you to see short-term fluctuations in traffic much more clearly.

It is possible for a site's three-month traffic rank to be higher than any single daily rank shown in the Trend graph. On any given day there may be many sites that temporarily shoot up in the rankings. But if a site has consistent traffic performance, it may end up with the best ranking when the traffic data are aggregated into the three-month average. A good analogy is a four-day golf tournament: if a different player comes in first at each match, but you come in second at all four matches, you can end up winning the tournament

Daily Alexa Rank seems to be cyclic by week

It seems as though the Alexa page ranking [10] is cyclic by week, peaking on Tuesday. Why is that?

One million articles - add to September 20?

Would it be appropriate to mention the one-million-article milestone on the date page September 20? —Etaoin 20:50, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

No.

I thought it violated Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, but then I checked Wikipedia Day -- it is linked to from January 15. Not that such a link is definitive, but it suggests we may have decided in the past that it was acceptable. Important question -- would we note the date that Brittanica hit its millionth article? If so, I think we can add it. If not, however, I think we leave it alone. Jwrosenzweig 20:53, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

There is no definitive date for that. Unless they keep detailed records of when articles are paid for, you'd have only the option of mentioning when the first edition of Britannica with 1m went to print. Does anyone else think Wikipedia:September 20, etc. would be advisable. Essentially an alternative archive to Wikipedia:Announcements. -- user:zanimum

It doesn't really violation Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, which says that "Wikipedia can, of course, write about Wikipedia, but context is important." In this case I think it's in bad taste, though, as Wikipedia hitting one million articles has too low an impact on the world to be chosen as one of the fewer than 100 events in the last 2000 years which gets put on that page. anthony 21:16, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

That puts things into the appropriate perspective. --Ardonik.talk()^* 21:20, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

Good point. Are articles like Wikipedia:September 20 appropriate? The way announcements are now aren't that timeless. -- user:zanimum

I agree with Anthony about the big picture. The appropriate place to put this is generally on Meta (remember, this milestone is all Wikipedias, not just the English one). Pages there include Wikipedia timeline and Milestones. I find that better than Wikipedia:September 20. --Michael Snow 21:33, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Anthony also, though I will note that some events make it onto dates without meeting quite so strict a criterion. And I want to note also for anyone's benefit that a fairly decent list of important Wikipedia dates is at History of Wikipedia -- since the days are wikified, a what links here from a given day (say, September 20) will note it's linked to from History of Wikipedia. I don't know how useful that is, given the number of articles linking to days. But I thought it worth mentioning. Jwrosenzweig 21:50, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

October 10

Brewster Kahle proposes the scanning of the complete Library of Congress, potentially releasing a vast amount of raw public domain reference material for Wikipedia. (BBC)

I think this is a good thing but why does this need to be put in annoucements? -- Taku 17:38, Oct 10, 2004 (UTC)

WikiProject announcements

I added an announcement that Wikipedia:WikiProject World music has completed an article on the music of every independent country in the world. I think it would be a good idea to have more WikiProject announcements for events of this sort. Any other opinions? I seem to recall there being an announcement once for the completion of an article on every German province or something, or I may be imagining that... WikiProject announcements seem more interesting and relevant, I think, than more Alexis stuff or obscure languages reaching 100 articles. Tuf-Kat 22:13, Oct 12, 2004 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia:Village pump (news) is more suitable for those sorts of announcements. Angela .

Wiki wars

This probably should not be in annoucements but I thought it is interesting:

Wiki wars [11]

Wikis have become the latest battleground in the presidential election as users of Wikipedia squabble over entries related to President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry. Red Herring

-- Taku 16:32, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

See also Jimbo's mailing list post about that article. Angela . 01:39, Oct 21, 2004 (UTC)

Server Names mis-linked

Seems to me that when mentioning the server names, their names should be linked to the people they were named after. Hope it's OK that I am making that change, albeit belatedly, to the entry about the new web servers.