Delirium wrote:
In that case can we do the same for the Canterbury Regional Council elections?
[...] Given that the California recall election was covered on the front page of several European newspapers, I'd say there's some empirical evidence
The true "empirical evidence" for Wikipedia would be the access log. The obvious plan is only to print the most visited articles. But some times the most visited articles can be obscure topics that draw visitors through Google just because they aren't covered anywhere else on the web. People who google for, say, "Seattle" or "Paris" will find thousands of other websites.
One of the most visited pages on susning.nu is the name of a Swedish governmental agency that changed its name a couple of years ago. People are googling for the old name and get a hit nowhere else than on susning.nu, where they can learn that the agency has changed its name and a link to its current website. This page serves its purpose, but doesn't really fit in the classic definition of an encyclopedia.