On 3/24/07, Michael Santora bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is limited by the number of at least marginally notable and verifiable things which exist. After every notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so on have their own article, we'll run out of things to write about. Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, it will happen.
I think this premise is wrong. Here are some reasons: * New notable things are created much faster than they are forgotten. How many films, actors, inventions, discoveries, albums, tourist attractions etc become notable each year? * There is no definitive list of abstract concepts that don't correspond to some real-world referent. There is scope for lots of "criticism of X" or "issues in Y" or articles that cut across several different concepts in some new way. Like lists :)
Also, if you imagine the breadth of all Wikipedia articles (places, albums, people) as an X axis, and the depth in certain fields (suburbs in US towns, songs by some singers, borderline as a Y axis, then imagine filling out the whole table. Can you imagine Wikipedia with an article on every suburb in every town of India, with an article about every song by every Chinese pop star, and about every historical figure of Saudi Arabia? It would be a few more than 4 million articles!
Steve