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This page analyzes the article count data in Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia and attempts to fit a simple numerical model of past and future growth to the observed article count size and growth data.
The rate of new articles initiated within the English Wikipedia grew exponentially until around 2007, though this is no longer the case. The rate of article creation is declining very slowly from its then-peak of around 50,000 new articles created per month. The two most credible growth models for the whole life of Wikipedia are a Gompertz function model which predicts that article creation will eventually asymptotically approach zero, and a modified Gompertz model (see below) which predicts that growth will continue indefinitely, but at a significantly lower rate than in the early days of Wikipedia. As of November 11, 2024, there are 6,908,947 articles. In recent years the increase in the number of pages has fallen from 372,000 in 2010 down to 164,000 in 2022 and 169,000 in 2023.
On the other hand, the total amount of text in Wikipedia articles has been increasing essentially linearly, and the growth rate is essentially unchanged since 2006. However, there is an increase in the growth rate in 2020. This implies not that contribution to Wikipedia is fading over time, but that relatively more of the work done is on expanding existing articles or even merging articles that are similar in scope rather than creating new ones.
- ^ Data from en:Wikipedia:Database download