On 3/24/07, Michael Santora <bobolozo(a)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