Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia

Most of the earlier entries were drawn from Wikipedia Announcements. Later entries are taken from observations of the new software's built-in article count features.

See also: Wikipedia:Size comparisons

How it's measured

• user:Malcolm Farmer/How many Wikipedia pages are there
• Larry Sanger's m:Estimating article numbers
• The new scheme: m:Article count reform

The general goal has been to make a conservative count, by excluding pages that are obviously not articles or articles in progress.

A few notes on features of the graph:

• The start of the project showed a slow rise, which slowly increased in speed with time;
• The big slowdown in the rate of article creation in June 2002 - July 2002 was caused by major server performance problems, remedied by extensive work on the software;
• The sudden jump in article count in October 2002 is due to roughly 30,000 stub articles on U.S. towns and cities generated from a database being added by an auto-posting robot: it is controversial as to whether these are "real" encylopedia articles or merely as yet only "stub" articles containing raw data;
• The single outlier point in December 2002 is the result of a software glitch which affected the counter, now corrected;
• The flat portion, followed by a small jump in May 2003 comes from first freezing the counter for performance reasons, then changing from the mpacIII criteria for determining what a page is to a slightly different set of criteria, called mpac3.1.

Note that the previous slow-down in the growth of the site coincided with the phase II server performance problems, and that according to recent data the previous quasi-exponential growth pattern appears to have resumed. Bearing in mind how severe these problems were, the continued growth of Wikipedia during that period is a testament to Wikipedia's strength.

See Wikipedia:Modelling Wikipedia's growth for more on this.

Chronology of software versions

• Phase I UseMod Wiki-based software: January 10, 2001 - January 25, 2002
• Phase II PHP-based software: January 25, 2002 - July 20, 2002
• Phase III PHP-based software: July 20, 2002 - present

This data set notes the fact that these figures are drawn from multiple data sources and different estimates (see the key below for details), and presents them as a spreadsheet-ready table for graphing. The original data sets are archived: see the links below. Note also that the figures are sampled at random times of day.

The data set

Key to the data below:

• approx: this figure is an approximation
• lowerbound indicates that there were at least this many pages
• mpac3.1: main page article count from the Phase III software since May 25, 2003: article namespace, not redirects, containing at least one internal wiki link
• mpacIII: main page article count from the Phase III software up to May 22, 2003: article namespace, comma, not redirect
• mpacII: main page article count from the Phase II software
• spII: stats page article count from the Phase II software
• all: total of all pages of any sort
• commapp: pages which include a comma, a crude way of finding "real" articles
• conscnt: "conservative count" taken by removing the count of various types of non-article from the comma page count

• MF: Malcolm Farmer

• LMS: Larry Sanger
• WA: Wikipedia:Announcements

Now extended and annotated with (somewhat gnomic) source information.

Note: The current mpac3.1 article count is 0 articles

 Date          Articles    Source   Notes
 2003 Jul 04,  139031,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jul 01,  136737,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 27,  135963,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 25,  135504,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 22,  134869,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 19,  134256,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 16,  133411,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 11,  132267,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 9,   131900,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 6,   131249,     mpac3.1
 2003 Jun 4,   130797,     mpac3.1
 2003 May 31,  129884,     mpac3.1
 2003 May 28,  129240,     mpac3.1
 2003 May 25,  128475,     mpac3.1  (correction of broken counter, new algorithm)
 2003 May 22,  120704,     mpacIII  (installation of a new webserver on May 14 fixed this count at 120704)  
 2003 May 12,  120173,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 29,  117658,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 23,  116408,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 22,  116259,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 21,  116066,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 20,  115879,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 18,  115361,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 15,  114861,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 12,  114469,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 11,  114274,     mpacIII
 2003 Apr 1,   112564,     mpacIII
 2003 Mar 28,  112035,     mpacIII
 2003 Mar 15,  109933,     mpacIII
 2003 Mar 7,   108593,     mpacIII
 2003 Mar 5,   108298,     mpacIII
 2003 Feb 27,  107243,     mpacIII
 2003 Feb 26,  107027,     mpacIII
 2003 Feb 24,  106700,     mpacIII
 2003 Jan 22,  100321,     mpacIII
 2003 Jan 12,   98475,     mpacIII
 2003 Jan 8,    97913,     mpacIII
 2003 Jan 4,    97137,     mpacIII
 2003 Jan 2,    96664,     mpacIII
 2002 Dec 26,   95735,     mpacIII
 2002 Dec 23,   95452,     mpacIII
 2002 Dec 16,   94497,     mpacIII, (so; is the counter fixed now?)
 2002 Dec 13,   93834,     mpacIII
 2002 Dec 10,   93301,     mpacIII, Corrected counter drift

 2002 Dec 10,  100046,     mpacIII, RAMBOT causing Error in counter.
 2002 Dec 4,    94165,     mpacIII
 2002 Dec 1,    93880,     mpacIII
 2002 Nov 27,   93263,     mpacIII
 2002 Nov 25,   92777,     mpacIII, ~775 bot generated articles added.
 2002 Nov 22,   91580,     mpacIII, some recent performance problems
 2002 Nov 18,   90905,     mpacIII, article counter is back, after being switched off
 2002 Nov 9,    90266,     mpacIII
 2002 Nov 7,    90003,     mpacIII
 2002 Nov 6,    89375,     mpacIII
 2002 Nov 1,    88597,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 30,   88292,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 27,   87285,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 26,   87206,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 25,   87037,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 24,   80887,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 23,   76958,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 22,   74005,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 21,   66738,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 20,   66372,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 19,   61128,     mpacIII, rambot in operation
 2002 Oct 17,   54339,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 14,   53174,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 11,   52571,     mpacIII

 2002 Oct 10,   52435,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 8,    52092,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 4,    50953,     mpacIII
 2002 Oct 3,    50804,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 30,   49724,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 27,   47448,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 26,   47152,     mpacIII

 2002 Sep 25,   46133,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 24,   45707,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 23,   45462,     mpacIII

 2002 Sep 22,   45159,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 21,   44920,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 17,   43962,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 16,   43762,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 10,   42268,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 9,    42021,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 7,    41559,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 5,    41141,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 4,    40934,     mpacIII
 2002 Sep 3,    40718,     mpacIII
 2002 Aug 31,   40093,     mpacIII
 2002 Aug 22,   38780,     mpacIII

 2002 Aug 14,   37508,     mpacIII
 2002 Aug 12,   37259,     mpacIII, upgraded to phase III software after major performance problems
 2002 May 17,   33333,     spII approx (WA)
 2002 Apr 16,   32000,     spII approx (WA)
 2002 Mar 28,   30000,     spII approx (WA)
 2002 Feb 4,    23000,     mpacII approx (WA)
 2002 Jan 9,    20000,     estimate approx (LMS WA)
 2001 Dec 14,   19000,     conscnt approx
 2001 Dec 7,    18000,     conscnt approx
 2001 Nov 6,    16000,     conscnt lowerbound
 2001 Oct 25,   15053,     conscnt (LMS WA)
 2001 Oct 19,   14000,     commacnt lowerbound 
 2001 Oct 4,    13182,     conscnt (MF WA)
 2001 Sep 19,   12502,     conscnt (LMS)
 2001 Sep 9,    11208,     conscnt (MF)
 2001 Sep 7,    10000,     conscnt lowerbound
 2001 Aug 22,    9043,     conscnt
 2001 Aug 7,     8000,     conscnt
 2001 Jul 27,    7243,     conscnt
 2001 Jul 26,    6947,     conscnt
 2001 Jul 8,     6000,     conscnt lowerbound
 2001 May 20,    4985,     commapp
 2001 May 10,    3969,     commapp
 2001 Apr 27,    3281,     commapp    
 2001 Mar 30,    2221,     commapp
 2001 Mar 24,    1910,     commapp
 2001 Mar  7,    1323,     commapp
 2001 Feb 12,    1000,     all lowerbound
 2001 Feb  8,     900,     all lowerbound
 2001 Jan 31,     617,     all
 2001 Jan 25,     270,     all
 2001 Jan 10,       0,     all

These pages hold the earlier source data in its original ad-hoc tabular format:

• Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - 2002 archived data
• Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia - 2001 archived data

See also : Wikipedia:Statistics, Wikipedia:Non-English Wikipedias