Christopher Mahan wrote:
I personally would like to see a global page at www.wikipedia.com, one that shows the global reach of the product (for example a world map of languages rather than countries) stats about the project, number of contributors, articles in each language, as well as links to each of the language wikis.
This, I think, would really separate the project from all other book or web based encyclopedias: none are multilingual to the extent of the W.
Effectively, this would put the pressure on other encyclopedia to match our multilingual "feature", but of course they couldn't.
I actually believe that the multilingual environment is the second most important feature for distinguishing us from the other encyclopedias. The open contribution system is more significant. That approach carries the risk that some first draft articles will sometimes be highly POV or even outright goofy. At the same time this is the feature that allows us to react more quickly to world events in all areas of knowledge as well as to our own more highly opinionated contributors. An encyclopedia that is bound by traditional editorial structures cannot do this.
Ec