![]() | This is an information page. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting. |
“ | My favorite way of checking [whether Wikipedia is improving] is to "click random article" on 10 articles, and go back and look at them a year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago. Every time I have tried, it's unambiguous: Wikipedia is getting better by this test. | ” |
— Jimbo Wales, User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 194#Getting better? |
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/Size_of_English_Wikipedia_%281000_vol%29.svg/370px-Size_of_English_Wikipedia_%281000_vol%29.svg.png)
Suppose you want to answer some broad question about Wikipedia. Is it any good? What subjects does it cover? In what proportions? Is there much vandalism?
Finding a truly accurate answer would mean reading every article. However, Wikipedia has quite a few articles. Studying a random selection is a more practical approach to get a grasp on these questions – and compiling this sample is as simple as hitting Special:Random a bunch of times to record what comes up.
Random pages tests by various editors can be found in Category:Random pages tests, although the category is not comprehensive. The concept of random sampling is not exactly original to Wikipedia; indeed, various editors seem to have independently conceived the idea in Wikipedia's context several times over. The earliest tests date back to 2003. The number of articles in these tests ranges from as few as ten to as many as one thousand.
Selected examples
editLink | Date | Sample | User | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
meta:English Wikipedia Quality Survey | October 2003 | 200 | Adam Carr | An early example. Possibly the earliest. |
User:Matt Crypto/RandomArticles | September 2004 | 100 | Matt Crypto | Employed a script to weight articles by pageviews. See also User:Stormie/Random. |
User:Carnildo/The 100 | November 2005 | 100 | Carnildo | A longitudinal study – sample followed up three times in 2006, then again in 2015. |
User:Opabinia regalis/Article statistics | November 2006 | 250 | Opabinia regalis | A large sample for the time. |
Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Vandalism studies/Study1 | February 2007 | 174 | Collaboration | Focus on vandalism prevalence. |
User:Knulclunk/Random | September 2008 | 200 | Knulclunk | Visualised with pie charts. |
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-06-22/Vandalism | June 2009 | 100 | Loren Cobb (Aetheling) | Focus on vandalism prevalence. |
User:Smallbones/1000 random results | December 2015 | 1000 | Smallbones | A large sample. |
User:North8000/Display | 2021 | 1000 | North8000 | Another large sample. |