User:Snoyes/compare
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Feel free to discuss
See also/compare: Wikipedia:Size comparisons
Wikipedia compared to other encyclopedias:
| Wikipedia | Britannica | Encarta | |
| Number of articles | 120,000* | 75,000 (2004 ultimate) | 63,000 (2004 deluxe) |
| Number of words | 37.7 million** | 55 million | 26 - 44 million |
*End of January 2004 &mdash method:
(3/4)x(180'000 - 40'000) == 120'000
- 200,000 = standard article count
- 40,000 = "data-dumped" articles on USA towns. Actually it is more like 36'000 such articles, but I'll compensate against wikipedia because there are a lot of articles (eg. lists) which are useful but not proper encyclopedia articles.
- 3/4 = only three quarters of the articles in the english wikipedia are above 0.5Kb. My subjective feeling is that anything below that is pretty useless, so I've discarded the ones below. For comparison: Henry Hughes Wilson is roughly 0.5Kb (the July 2003 version, which ATM is the current one).
**End of January 2004 &mdash method (for now):
55 million - 15 million - 2.275 million =~ 37.7 million
- 55 million = the official count
- 15 million = all the 'junk' (US towns) articles. Average number of words per junk article: 360 (taken as a very unscienfic average from the following random 'junk' articles: 360 words, 361 words, 369 words, 358 words) Multiply by 40'000 'junk' articles: Makes 14.4 million words (which I'll massage to 15 million).
- 2.275 million = 35'000 (number of articles below 0.5Kb) x 65 (rough number of 5 character words in a 0.4Kb article)
Tada
References
- Encarta article count (http://www.microsoft.com/products/encarta/products/default.asp)
- Britannica article & word count (http://www.leabooks.com/Professional%20Books/Reference%20Works/Britannica-Engl-DELUXE-WIN-MAC.htm)
- Official Britannica article count (http://store.britannica.com/escalate/store/DetailPage?pls=britannica&bc=britannica&pc=B_2004URS&pls0affiliate_id=adtracking&pls1adtracking=SHOPPINGHSUB04URS1)