Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2016 December 1

= December 1 =

How many URLs make up wikipedia
So I'm thinking about things at 3 in the morning and I wondered how big is wikipedia, so I found the page about how many pages there are on wikipedia with is currently about 40 million including all languages but that didn't really appease my curiosity. So I'm wondering how many URLs total fall under the banner of wikipedia, of course this is debatable what counts as a variation but in my opinion that would be any different URL that doesn't lead you to the wikipedia error page. Just wondering if anyone somehow could know this or if there is an efficient way of figuring it out without a massive server farm constantly pinging wikipedia which would slow it down tremendously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dusteronomy (talk • contribs) 08:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * It depends on how you want to count the URLs. There are 5.3 million articles on Wikipedia and 40 million articles on all Wikipedias, but these are not the only pages. Including pages from every namespace (talk, user, project, etc), you are looking at about 13 million pages on the English Wikipedia alone, so 7.7 more than just the articles. But that's not all! There are also history pages, revision pages and beyond. There have been somewhere around 860 million edits to the English Wikipedia, and about 3 billion to all Wikipedias. Each of those has an URL. But wait, there's more! For every user account (30 million total), there is a contributions page. Even contributions pages for non-existent users take you to Wikipedia just fine! And for any pair of edits, you can compare the two revisions, so..860 million squared. But wait, it just never ends! There are still more functions you can pile into the URL and still have it take you to Wikipedia. So basically, you could wind up infinity URLs that will lead you to Wikipedia if you try hard enough. Someguy1221 (talk) 08:46, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Remember that if you are counting dynamic pages you can come up with an extremely high number. For example Nbnbnvbnbvngfgdfgdf. Or Special:WhatLinksHere/Nbnbnvbnbvngfgdfgdf. Or . And do you count that the same as ? Nil Einne (talk) 09:59, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * [//en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&ususers=A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z&usprop=editcount This] uses mw:API:Users to get the edit count for 26 selected users "A" to "Z" (some don't exist here). I don't know how many you can get in one call but if it's n then the number of combinations with existing English Wikipedia users is around 30,000,000n. A more meaningful url count may be what you can reach just by clicking without editing url's or enter data in forms. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:32, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally I don't think "how many URLs" is particularly meaningful. If you take possible parameters in query strings into account, the number of possible URLs is effectively infinite. See Special:Statistics and Statistics for some numbers that are a bit more meaningful. Remember as well that Wikipedia "offloads" some of its data to other Wikimedia projects: most freely-licensed files are on Commons, and a lot of database-type stuff is on Wikidata. --47.138.163.230 (talk) 04:14, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Newsweek's report on Trump's dealings in Cuba
Kurt Eichenwald reported in Newsweek that Trump's company had illegally traded in Cuba. Has there been independent confirmation?144.35.45.82 (talk) 14:46, 1 December 2016 (UTC)


 * For anyone unfamiliar, the IP is referring to this Newsweek story: Dragons flight (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

No one else attempted any independent reporting on it, not even to rebut it. Trump never said anything about it as far as I'm aware, but Conway did not even deny it in interviews. Seems like even if true, no one cares. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:39, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Model no: PA5024U-1BRS, Li-on 10.8v, 5200mAh

 * Transferred to Computing desk.

Cotton swab
The entitled article does not define different designs available. What are the design names and what is commonly/universally used? 103.230.105.23 (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * You mean something besides Q-tips and their various knockoffs? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 22:39, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any designs other than a bit of cotton on the end of a stick. Some have wood sticks, some paper, some plastic.  Some have cotton on both ends.  Some have cotton only on one end.  Otherwise, there's not a lot of variation.  It's bit of cotton on a stick.  There are no "design names".  -- Jayron 32 02:04, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * They used to advertise "Q-tips, the safety swab" presumably due to its "stick" being tightly wound paper instead of being rigid like with wood. As you suggest, "single tipped" and "double tipped" could qualify as "design names". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 06:50, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In the UK there tends to be a distinction between cotton buds - short, cotton wool at each end, sold for personal use - and cotton swabs - long, cotton wool at one end only, generally sterile, used in medicine and science. Wymspen (talk) 10:57, 2 December 2016 (UTC)