Charles Matthews wrote:

There are these other challenges:

• quality writing (doesn't come easy)

I'd like everyone here who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click "Random page" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose you find without sacrificing any factual content. I'll be doing this tonight.

• get the other breaking-new media to say 'uncle'

So far, asking nicely is much more Wikimedia-ish ;-)

• put hard-copy encyclopedias out of business

Nah. I'd rather see if we can synergise with them. I understand Brockhaus is trying to work out how the heck to work *with* de: Wikipedia instead of getting economically trampled by [[worse is better]]. Britannica has really quite a lot to be arrogant about, but when you're already haemorrhaging red ink, then arrogance is just that close to hubris.

OTOH, any Wikipedian who runs down the general quality of Britannica is IMO being foolish. They do set a *consistently* very high standard. I suspect Wikipedia will always have about the same percentages of great/good/mediocre/rubbish articles as it expands, we need to find ways to get people to find the good stuff more easily.

- d.