On 8/22/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, it is. We've got a really long way to go before we reach anything like comprehensiveness. We still have articles to write that are treated in other general encyclopedias. Go see the Missing Encyclopedia Articles Project, for example. Or take a look at this thing Piotrus wrote, wherein he estimates en will be largely complete in terms of article entries at 400 million entries: [[User:Piotrus/Wikipedia interwiki and specialized knowledge test]].
Yes, I talked to Piotrus about his research. ... I also contributed one of the longest lists of missing articles (the missing music subjects, 46k subjects).
I'm still skeptical. I too can generate numbers to support a postion, for example Wikipedia's word count is what.. 10x Britannica? Article acount... 18x?
Lets start with a simple question: What percentage of new articles created today fulfil requests from the Missing Encyclopedia Articles Project? Of the ones that do, what percentage of those are created by 'new' users?
To the first part, we know the answer must be vanishingly small because there are a huge number of new articles created every day (>5k). If more than a tiny fraction were created every day we would be done already. I can't guess at who created them, but it would be easy enough to check the lists and see who created them... Anyone want to try?
The argument I think you're presenting here is counter productive: that we are still working on making an encyclopedia. We're not. We've made an encyclopedia. Now need need to move on and work on making an encyclopedia that doesn't suck.
New articles are still important, as you've pointed out... But I've seen no evidence that new article creation belongs even on the top 100 task list for making our encyclopedia not suck.
Just because we know a lot more about new article creation than things like stability, verifiability, and consistency is not a reason to give new article creation more importance than it is due.