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 [ edit ]

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:

Depth = Edits Articles ⋅ NonArticles Articles ⋅ ( 1 − Articles Total ) {\displaystyle {\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:

Depth = Edits Total ⋅ ( NonArticles Articles ) 2 {\displaystyle {\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 1026 = 18.92 × 54.25 and is the deepest one for Wikipedias with number of articles greater than 10000.

For the unblocked Wikipedias, the Ripuarian Wikipedia has the largest depth, at 1052 = 153.93 × 6.83.

The egyptian Wikipedia has the smallest depth, at 0.085 = 2.56 × 0.033.

Background [ edit ]

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.

10,000+ articles [ edit ]

The table shows the list of Wikipedias with over 10,000 articles. It can be sorted by Depth.

Data on this page is automatically updated every day ( ) .

N.B.: Default sorting is by language code, but it is possible to sort the table by any column.





Trends [ edit ]

Trend of article depth.

The table shows how the depth of the largest 30 languages[2] of Wikipedia has developed over time.

See also [ edit ]

Lists of Wikipedias by various criteria: