2009/2/16 Phil Nash <pn007a2145(a)blueyonder.co.uk>uk>:
I think that this was bound to happen; any venture
based on describing the
known universe has an inherent limit in any case, and it seems obvious that
once you've reached some level of coverage, what happens then is more
determined by the pace of real life events. However, like software, it's
arguable that an encyclopedia is never really finished. Good Articles may be
good, and Featured Articles better, but something will always come along to
require additions. As for relaxing notability guidelines, I think we very
largely get it about right at present, and opening a can of worms does not
commend itself to me as a policy.
If we get to the point where virtually no new articles are being
created (beyond current events) and a very large proportion of the
existing articles are at least Good, then it might be worth relaxing
the guildlines - what would be the downside? I think a lot of people
that like writing new articles don't like the fine tuning that is
required to get from Good to Featured, so if we don't let them write
new stuff we'll just lose them. We might as well have them doing
something.