On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 09:32:54PM -0800, Larry Sanger wrote:
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, David Merrill wrote:
One interesting phenomenon, though, is that as the content broadens, people might tend to work more on existing articles and new article creation slow correspondingly. Not that that's a bad thing. It's better to have 50,000 excellent articles than 500,000 rambling, incoherent, or incorrect ones.
I agree with this, by the way. I have a little theory that, as the easy and broad topics get pretty much filled in, the project is going to start looking more interesting to specialists, and I'll see a gradual influx of Ph.D.'s and researchers filling in the blanks on the frontiers of their fields.
I could see that happening.
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's also possible Wikipedia just can't ever be really "authoritative" in any field. And that is fine with me. Perhaps the big draw of Wikipedia will be that it contains much more accessible general information than anything else. I don't know if that will be the case or not, but I also really don't care. However, it finally shapes up, it will be (and is) great. :-)
It's not the kind of thing you can force. It will become what Wikipedians want it to be. As a Wiki, it really can be all things to all people.
One thing I already notice about Wikipedia is that the content is much broader than any other encyclopedia. Almost an Encyclopedia Galactica or H2G2. That's what I like most about it. In fact, once or twice I have been interested in finding out about something little-known, and started an article with nothing but a few questions I had. In each case, the information was forthcoming. What a cool thing that was!
Anyway, enough meta-discussion on content.
Brace yourself for a huge announcement tomorrow. :-)
Oh? Can't wait. :-)
Later,