George Herbert wrote:
There are whole fields of engineering and science that we have barely scratched the surface of at the moment.
I think that's right. Engineering is not one of Wikipedia's strong areas, I believe, though I hardly spend time on that.
I do spend time on history - looks like 2009 will be the year of the seventeenth century - and there is clearly a great deal of "placeholder text": stuff that will do until someone gets round to putting in an effort, but easy to add to in detail. I'm working today on [[John Wilkins]], the really big single name in getting the Royal Society founded - and there was a huge amount to do just to make the article reasonably comprehensive.
I believe we have another decade before Wikipedia lives up to its potential as a comprehensive reference. My main hope is that life around the wiki stays dull enough so that the job largely gets done.
Charles