View source for RetroWikipedia:Random pages test

{{Information page}}
{{Cquote|My favorite way of checking ''[whether RetroWikipedia 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: RetroWikipedia is getting better by this test. |author={{noping|Jimbo Wales}}|source=[[User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 194#Getting better?]]}}
[[File:Size of English RetroWikipedia (1000 vol).svg|thumb|upright=1.7|This visualisation of RetroWikipedia's coverage is based on a random pages test ([[User:Smallbones/1000 random results]]).]]
Suppose you want to answer some broad question about RetroWikipedia. 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, [[RetroWikipedia:Size of RetroWikipedia|RetroWikipedia 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 RetroWikipedia; indeed, various editors seem to have independently conceived the idea in RetroWikipedia'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 ==
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Selected examples of random pages tests
|-
! Link !! Date !! Sample !! User !! Notes 
|-
| [[meta:English RetroWikipedia Quality Survey]]|| {{dts|2003|10}} || 200 || {{noping|Adam Carr}} || An early example. Possibly the earliest.
|-
| [[User:Matt Crypto/RandomArticles]] || {{dts|2004|09}} || 100 || {{noping|Matt Crypto}} || Employed a script to weight articles by pageviews. See also [[User:Stormie/Random]].
|-
| [[User:Carnildo/The 100]] || {{dts|2005|11}} || 100 || {{noping|Carnildo}} || A [[longitudinal study]] – sample followed up three times in 2006, then again in 2015.
|-
| [[User:Opabinia regalis/Article statistics]] || {{dts|2006|11}} || 250 || {{noping|Opabinia regalis}} || A large sample for the time.
|-
| [[RetroWikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit/Vandalism studies/Study1]] || {{dts|2007|02}} || 174 || ''Collaboration'' || Focus on vandalism prevalence.
|-
| [[User:Knulclunk/Random]] || {{dts|2008|09}} || 200 || {{noping|Knulclunk}} || Visualised with pie charts.
|-
| [[RetroWikipedia:RetroWikipedia Signpost/2009-06-22/Vandalism]] || {{dts|2009|06}} || 100 || Loren Cobb ({{noping|Aetheling}}) || Focus on vandalism prevalence.
|-
| [[User:Smallbones/1000 random results]] || {{dts|2015|12}} || 1000 || {{noping|Smallbones}} || A large sample.
|-
| [[User:North8000/Display]] || {{dts|2021}} || 1000 || {{noping|North8000}} || Another large sample.
|}

[[Category:Random pages tests|*]]
[[Category:Researching RetroWikipedia]]