Article sizes of top 10 wikipedias (Oct 2008)
editArticle size (in bytes) seem to be distributed as a Log-normal distribution. See also Image:Hist article size enwiki.png (ignore the smaller sizes, that are not articles, but redirects) or Image:Length histo 2006nov.png.
I calculated the average article size and the ranges accordingly for the top 10 largest wikipedias.
 Article size top 10 wikipedias |
The average article size is growing slowly over the years. In the early years the article sizes fluctuates much, because of the small number of articles. Influences of high volume bot additions of relatively small articls can also result in a decrease in average article size.
The most stable growing wikipedias are German, Spanish and Japanese.
The wikipedias with the highest average article sizes in bytes (in Oct 2008) are German (1860 bytes), Spanish (1780) and maybe English. As no recent data for the English wikipedia was availabe average article size of the English wikipedia was unkown. (Update Jan 2010: the avarage size of en wikipedia is now 1845 bytes). The Japanese version has an average article size of 990 bytes, but since a Japanese character is a whole word it cannot be compared easily to the other languages. In general comparison between languages should be treated with care.
The range ( 1 σ) is fairly constant, and fairly equal for all languages. The range is roughly from x/3 till x*3, for instance 666 till 6000 bytes when the average is 2000 bytes. For a range of 2 σ it would be 222 till 18000 bytes.
 en: wikipedia (updated until Jan 2010) |
 de: wikipedia |
 ja: wikipedia |
 fr: wikipedia |
 it: wikipedia |
 pl: wikipedia |
 es: wikipedia |
 nl: wikipedia |
 pt: wikipedia |
 ru: wikipedia |
Data
editI took data from stats.wikimedia.org: from sections like below.
Articles that contain at least one internal link and .. characters readable text, disregarding wiki- and html codes, hidden links, etc.; also headers do not count (excl. redirects)
Date Articles
< 32 B < 64 B < 128 B < 256 B < 512 B < 1 kB < 2 kB < 4 kB < 8 kB < 16 kB < 32 kB < 64 kB
Oct 2006 0,0% 0,0% 1,4% 7,7% 20,5% 41,1% 65,1% 83,8% 93,4% 97,7% 99,3% 99,7%
Sep 2006 0,0% 0,0% 1,5% 8,0% 21,0% 41,7% 65,6% 84,3% 93,8% 98,0% 99,6% 100,0%
Aug 2006 0,0% 0,0% 1,6% 8,2% 21,3% 42,0% 65,9% 84,5% 93,8% 98,0% 99,6% 100,0%
Jul 2006 0,0% 0,0% 1,7% 8,3% 21,6% 42,4% 66,4% 84,6% 93,8% 97,9% 99,4% 99,8%
Jun 2006 0,0% 0,1% 1,8% 8,4% 21,9% 42,7% 66,8% 85,0% 94,1% 98,1% 99,6% 100,0%
May 2006 0,0% 0,1% 1,8% 8,5% 22,3% 43,1% 67,1% 85,2% 94,2% 98,1% 99,6% 100,0%
Apr 2006 0,0% 0,1% 1,9% 8,7% 22,8% 43,6% 66,6% 85,5% 94,3% 98,1% 99,5% 99,9%
Mar 2006 0,0% 0,1% 1,9% 8,9% 23,2% 44,0% 66,9% 85,8% 94,5% 98,3% 99,7% 100,0%
Feb 2006 0,0% 0,1% 2,0% 9,1% 23,5% 44,4% 67,0% 86,1% 94,6% 98,3% 99,7% 100,0%
Jan 2006 0,0% 0,1% 2,0% 9,3% 23,9% 44,7% 67,3% 86,5% 94,8% 98,4% 99,7% 100,0%
etc.