On 10/16/07, cohesion cohesion@sleepyhead.org wrote:
On 10/16/07, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Enwikipedia_articles_bios_pct_200710...
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Thank goodness it seems to have peaked, definitely interested in the next couple months though... I'm a little surprised the percentage is so high, but I don't think it's bad really. Biographies of many living people are useful. Who's to say what the right percentage is. As long as it's somewhat stable of course :)
Indeed, that's the right question to ask: What percentage should it be? What's the percentage in other encyclopaedias?
Presumably, in a complete Wikipedia, the percentage would be much lower (I believe the current estimates are that ~5% of all humans are currently alive, and I'd guess our existing biographies are more about alive people than that). But how does it compare to other encyclopaedias?
Cheers WilyD