Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 December 20

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December 20

How many times has Wikipedia been edited?

I was hoping to discover how many times any Wikipedia page has been edited, since the inception of the encyclopedia. I found this page but the number seems ludicrously small considering there are over 5 million pages on the English Wikipedia alone. --Aabicus (talk) 04:52, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's probably not possible to get an entirely accurate count since I believe some of the early pre-wikipedia edits are still not accounted for, although their number is going to be well within the margin of probably a minute of edits or something. The number in the above page seems resonable to me. Per WP:Size of wikipedia, there are 41 million pages on en.wikipedia. En.wikipedia and to a much lesser extent commons predominantes among wikimedia project. I'm sure you can find some statistics somewhere but even if there are 8x the number of pages when you take into account all other projects (and this frankly seems too high), that's still only 328 million. That would give slightly under 10 edits per page on average. This may seem a little low, but remember for every George W. Bush with 400k46k edits (Wikipedia:Database reports/Pages with the most revisions), there's probably 100-1000 pages with maybe 2 edits. In fact, size of wikipedia gives an average of 21.08 revisions which is a little higher, but it wouldn't be surprising if other wikis have less average revisions or alternatively the total number of pages is wrong. Nil Einne (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

BTW Special:Statistics has the number of edits for en.wikipedia. meta:List of Wikipedias while only covering wikipedias has 158 327 989 pages in total (including en) and 2 299 548 087 edits. meta:Wiktionary has 30 665 041 pages in wiktionary. So it doesn't seem my 328 million figure can be that far off. And actually I just found meta:List of Wikimedia projects by size which gives 292 156 773 pages for all wikimedia projects although the edit count is a little higher than the above counter. Nil Einne (talk) 06:20, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Interesting, I never thought of the statistics like that. Thank you for your research into my question! --Aabicus (talk) 04:29, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Strange that they give a number of 865,168,899 which is considerably more than the current value of the referenceID (755962507 for this edit). Has so much of the early edit history been lost? Prevalence 07:36, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think so. I'm assuming the way special statistics counts edits is including some stuff which don't get a revisionid somehow but I don't know how. Nil Einne (talk) 13:01, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Virtually none of the history is lost - see Wikipedia:Wikipedia's oldest articles. Everything from February 2002 onwards is preserved and many earlier edits have been reinstated. Most of the remaining revisions which are not present in the database are in the January to August 2001 period; these were found and are available as a text file. The number of these is insignificant compared with the current total. Warofdreams talk 17:03, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Why never a herding dog in western films?

Good morning or good night from France, my dear "100 mouths Godess".
In Europe everybody taking care of cattle uses a herding dog, but in westerns I never see dogs. How can you explain this difference? Is it because using a horse makes dog useless?
I already asked this question on the French reference desk (called the Oracle) and I was explained that it's because in Europe we do intensive farming while at the time of westerns they did extensive one.
I thank you for your thinkings.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 11:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's a good question. The answer proposed cannot be the full story, because Australian farms ("stations") herd animals across huge distances, and yet that country has developed several species of herding dog. I wasn't aware that "sheepdog" covers two different types of animals; those that are Livestock guardian dogs lack the herding instinct. Carbon Caryatid (talk) 12:17, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Fun fact, you can herd cattle with helicopters, robots, drones and remote controlled cars. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:51, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

"In Europe everybody taking care of cattle uses a herding dog" - I'm very doubtful of that (at least in the UK, which is still technically part of Europe). I don't think I've ever seen cattle being herded with a dog (unlike sheep). Iapetus (talk) 13:21, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Yea, an adult cow, much less a bull, might be a bit much for one dog to control. StuRat (talk) 17:37, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@StuRat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHjA5IriDmA (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 18:58, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

@Wardog: see above. About six minutes in the dog gets kicked, and he basically ignores it. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 19:03, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I was about to reply to Iapetus and StuRat, but that video says it all. That dog is worth thousands! Dogs are regularly used where I live (northern England) for beef cattle, and perhaps less commonly and certainly less aggressively for milk cows that are usually more placid, though I've seen over-eager dogs nip at cows' heels unnecessarily. A bull or a cow with a calf will attack and maybe injure an inexperienced dog. Dbfirs 19:59, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

They did use bulldogs in the American West occasionally, mostly for tracking and catching strays. 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 03:33, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Ah, okay. You learn something new every day. I'd just never seen cattle being herded with dogs, despite living in relatively rural areas with quite a lot of cattle farms. Iapetus (talk) 11:10, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

There are westerns that feature a dog that herds sheep, like The Proud Rebel. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 16:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm the OP. No doubt Iapetus, the UK is in Europe. I went many times to GB and I remember seeing very smart dogs directing sheep.
I made a generalisation from what I remember about my grand parent's farms, my uncle's farms and now my cousin's farm. It took place in France. In all these farms, dogs easily and peacefully directed cows and young animals. The dogs showed no fear ; on the contrary, if the cows were too slow, my cousin would just "call" his dog using its name (in fact I think the dog reacted according to the tone of my cousin voice) ; the result would came so quickly that I think that the cows understood what was asked to the dog.
Thank you for all your answers and videos.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 09:16, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Despite all evidence to the contrary (plate tectonics, distance, and historical, cultural, ethnic, and language links, etc.) those in the UK insist that they are not part of Europe, and withdrawal from the EU is only the latest form of this insistence. StuRat (talk) 16:57, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Don't paint all of us with the same brush, we're not all idiotic Breixters, and there's plenty of Brits who are perfectly aware that we're in Europe. 86.28.195.109 (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

For the record, Brexit was NOT about whether the UK is (or should be) part of Europe geographically, but whether it should sacrifice its own national interests to appease hostile nations like France and Germany -- so whether one voted for Brexit is NOT an indication whether that person thinks that the UK is not in Europe geographically! 2601:646:8E01:7E0B:F88D:DE34:7772:8E5B (talk) 03:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Please read France–United Kingdom relations and Anglo-French War. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 01:23, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

All those wars were long before the American Civil War, and in wars last century the United Kingdom was defending European countries (Belgium and Poland respectively). Dbfirs 08:15, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Now I remember seeing dogs helping men to deal with cows in the Pyrénées (mountains between France and Spain). I was a great help for them because it was at an altitude more less 2500 m, and some men were rather old.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 13:59, 21 December 2016 (UTC)