And I think that there is a huge difference between "the sum of all..." and "all...". By the way, the traditional encyclopedias described themselves by "the sum of all..."

I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic". Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded. 2011/9/16 Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk(a)googlemail.com> _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrp <emijrp(a)gmail.com> wrote: When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational. Wikipedia was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else. Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic. We have retreated from that quite a lot. Even within Wikipedia our notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid. The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all be very proud and amazed at what we have done. However, I do think we have lost some of that early dream. Back in the day, it was easy to imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly. In part, I think our perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become. -Robert Rohde _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

On 09/16/11 12:38 PM, Robert Rohde wrote: Strictly speaking, "the sum of" is a redundancy, but its English idiomatic use tends to emphasize comprehensiveness. For those of us who saw the dream earlier on being "notable and encyclopedic" was never part of the dream, and still isn't. A literal interpretation of "the sum of all human knowledge" is still impossible; it's simply too big and constantly growing. It still warns us to avoid restrictive preconceptions about what is notable and encyclopedic. Ray