[Foundation-l] Message to community about community decline

[Nikola Smolenski]

On 03/29/2011 01:11 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:
> Let's say that there is Wikipedia in X language with just one editor.
> That editor is expert in, let's say, medieval history and has passion
> toward chess. That person would spend years in: (1) writing basic
> articles -- although he is not astronomer, he knows that it is
> important to have articles like "Sun", "Earth", "Jupiter" etc.; (2)
> writing articles in medieval history; (3) writing articles about
> chess; (4) and, finally, writing articles about surrounding areas of
> medieval history and chess (let's say, ancient history and go).
>
> If that person didn't stop because of lack of time or lack of
> satisfaction, it is reasonably to expect that he will at some point
> come to the situation where all articles are written according to his
> level of knowledge. (That's the ideal situation, but it also assumes

I don't fully agree, because this person could continue editing in this way:

1. Read a book / watch a film
2. Write an article about it
3. Repeat

Or in this way:

1. Buy a specialist encyclopedia or a biographical dictionary
2. Write anew a biography of every person featured in it
3. Repeat

The problem isn't that all the articles will be written according to his 
level of knowledge, but possibly that:

1. All the articles that he was interested in and are at his level of 
knowledge he already wrote.
2. All the unwritten articles that he is interested in writing are above 
his level of knowledge.
3. All the unwritten articles that are below his level of knowledge he 
does not find interesting to write.