Wikipedia:Wikipedia has more...: Difference between revisions
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And any combination of the above.
There is never any suggestion of what the ideal situation should be
Apart from the logical fallacy (assuming that because X is better covered than Y, Y is badly covered), these claims are often
In the sections below references to "now" or "currently" should reflect the numbers (more or less) at the time of reading.
==Wikipedia has more information on ''Pokémon'' than on the Bible.==
* Source: Common meme
* Verdict: Not true.
* Reason: While at the time of writing there are 376 articles in the category ''[[:Category:Pokémon|Pokémon]]'' (now {{PAGESINCATEGORY:Pokémon}}), there are 1872 just on biblical manuscripts and 1211 on biblical scholars.
==Wikipedia has more articles on porn stars than on chemists==
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* Reason: The claimant simply compared the number of chemists on a list page with the number of porn stars in a category. Comparing ''all'' chemists categories with ''all'' porn star categories we have substantially more chemists.
==Wikipedia has four pages on [[Megatron]] and only one on [[Dylan Thomas]].==
* Source: Comment on Guardian blog
* Verdict: Not true. But certainly more on Dylan Thomas would be welcome.
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* Reason: Of the 4000 articles in the pornography project, most are stubs or very short start class articles. Even the one featured article – an actress who crossed over into the mainstream is only 80k, approximately comparing with the three lead geography articles in [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Basque|WikiProject Basque]].
==Wikipedia has more information on [[Britney Spears]] than [[Socrates]].==
* Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:B2B Socrates vs Britney Spears]
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Note we have 22 top-level articles in [[:Category:Socrates]] and we have 19 articles in [[:Category:Britney Spears]].
==Wikipedia has more articles on [[:Category:The Simpsons characters|''The Simpsons'' characters]] than on [[:Category:Mexican feminist writers|Mexican feminist authors]].==
* Source: [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/31/business/media/31link.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1402278002-VnQc7BHJc54ytGL3s4L2SA ''The New York Times'']
* Verdict: Apparently true at the time (January 2011), not true now.
* Reason: ''The Simpsons'' characters are easy to write about. All 45 articles have existed for years. Moreover, they are easier to categorise. At the time of writing we have 493,560 articles about writers, far more than all our fictional character articles. Note however that most, if not all, of the items that have been added to the writers category since, already existed either on English WP, or Spanish WP. (Thanks to [[User:Rosiestep]] for translation.)
"Is a category with five Mexican feminist writers impressive, or embarrassing when compared with the 45 articles on characters in ''The Simpsons''? "{{Break}}
Note the MFW's now number {{PAGESINCATEGORY
Pop quiz: name as many Mexican feminist writers as you can. Name as many ''Simpsons'' characters as you can.
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Same as the above except now we are comparing a '''category''' with a '''list'''.
==
"[T]he entry for "[[memes]]" is as long as the entry for [[Immanuel Kant]]. (Needless to say, there's no entry for [[Mary Midgley]]. We could go on, but you get the general idea)."
* Source: [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/23/wiki_fiddlers_big_book/ Orlowski] at [[The Register]]. (Way back in 2004
* Verdict: False then, and false now.
* Reason: Immanuel Kant at 122k is more than twice the size of [[Meme]] at 53k ([[memes]] has been a redirect since 2002). Moreover, we have 34 pages in the category Immanuel Kant, not counting 29 pages on Kantianism and 49 pages on Kantian philosophers. Even in July 2004 Immanuel Kant was a longer article, if not by as large a ratio
==
"[T]hat there are less Wikipedia articles on women poets than pornographic actresses, a depressing statistic."
* Source: [[James Gleick]], "Wikipedia’s Women Problem", ''New York Review of Books'', attributed to a Wikipedia editor.[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_24&diff=prev&oldid=552203555]
* Verdict: False then and false now
* Reason: There are (at the time of writing) 987 female pornographic actresses, compared with 2,828 female poets, according to [http://tools.wmflabs.org/catscan2/catscan2.php Catscan].
* Commentary: Like the item below, this fails to take into account female poets who were (only) categorised as poets. Moreover, it was possibly a throw-away remark by the editor in question, maybe half remembering the "porn actresses/chemists" claim.
** Gleick also makes poorly researched (or poorly expressed) statements like: "A typical hidden category is “[[Wikipedia:Categories for discussion]],” containing thousands of pages of logged discussions about the suitabilities of various categories."
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}}
==
"However, the claim holds true for American biography subjects: Category:American female pornographic film actors contains 667 biographies, while Category:American women poets and its subcategories contain 416 biographies."
* Source: Collida and Kolbe (29 April 2013) [http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/04/29/wikipedias-culture-of-sexism-its-not-just-for-novelists/ Wikipedia's Culture of Sexism- It's Not Just for Novelists] Wikipediocracy
* Verdict: False then and false now.
* Reason: Collida and Kolbe only looked at the ''categories''
==More articles on ''Lord of the Rings'' than on Sub-Saharan Africa.==
"More articles on ''Lord of the Rings'' than on Sub-Saharan Africa"{{Break}}
or
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* Verdict: False. Very very false. "The counts may be wrong" (Jimmy Wales 8 August 2014)
* Reason: Look it just is, OK?
* Real reason: At the time of writing there are 703 pages in the LOTR category according to Catscan with subcategories set to a depth of 7. On [[:Category:Sub-Saharan Africa]] the tool ''fails'' with <code>maximum number of objects exceeded</code> even with a depth of 4! With a depth of 3 there are 21,076 articles and 778 categories
* Even more: If you exclude [[WP:redirect]]s the LOTR list reduces to 191, the SSA to 21,050, outnumbering the LOTR by more than a factor of 100.
* Commentary: KingCantona says it best at [http://www.rollonfriday.com/Discussion/MainDiscussion/tabid/79/Id/10382711/currentPage/0/Default.aspx Rollonfriday.com] "[[One does not simply walk into Mordor|One does not simply]] write an article about Sub-Saharan Africa".
==
"[R]ight now, I suspect articles on 21st century porn stars outnumber those on 21st century women writers by a factor of a zillion to one" {{Break}}
* Source: [[Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender_Gap_Task_Force/Evidence]]
* Verdict: False, assuming a "zillion" is greater than 1/8
* Reason: We have 822 members of [[:Category:21st-century women writers]] and 733 living or recently dead members of [[:Category:20th-century women writers]] (including 4 levels of sub-cats)
==At one point there were articles on '''every''' episode of Star Trek, but '''none''' of the major cities in Africa==
"[A]t one point there were articles on '''every''' episode of Star Trek, but '''none''' of the major cities in Africa." Stephen Harrison.
* Source: [https://linksiwouldgchatyou.substack.com/p/wikipedia-says-no-individual-has Wikipedia says no individual has a monopoly on truth]
* Verdict: False.
* Reason: Let's look at the Nostalgia Wiki - frozen on 20 December 2001. Starting with Star Trek there are articles for some of the series (not seasons), but I could find no episode articles, although there is an episode list for the original series, the beginnings of one for "ENT", and an article about [https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek/tribble tribbles].{{Break}}At this time the following African cities had articles:
*# Algiers
*# Cairo
*# Cape Town
*# Dar es Salaam
*# Khartoum
*# Luanda
*# Lusaka
*# Nairobi
*# Soweto
*# Tripoli
==See also==
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