Wikipedia:Random pages test

“ 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?

This visualisation of Wikipedia's coverage is based on a random pages test (User:Smallbones/1000 random results).

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

Selected examples of random pages tests

Link	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.