On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, David Gerard wrote:
Whatever happens, it'll be a horrible shitfight trying to cut the majestic sprawl of en: Wikipedia down to a single concise volume. Say, fifty thousand articles. WHICH FIFTY THOUSAND?
- Whole areas will be cut out.
- Areas we're particularly good in will get cut *way* back.
- Endless, fractious and bloody wars over what gets in and what doesn't.
Is there a way around this which doesn't require someone making the decision and choosing between pissing off half the community and pissing off half the community?
Would a first step be to include every article listed at [[WP:FAC]]? As that list currently stands, we have 1% of that 50,000 selected, & unless we figure out a way to select the other 99% within a few years, we may end up finding that we have 50,000 Featured Articles & render the question of how to select moot.
I believe it's possible we could have that many featured articles in that short of time. As a whole, EN has settled into a doubling period of about 15 months, despite hardware problems, software constraints, & the behavior of people; unless checked by a lack of submissions & reviewers, there's no reason why our body of Featured Articles couldn't settle into its own doubling period too.
And if it does happen, then at least few folks in the community will decide it's not worth throwing a fit over & can talk about how the Wiki Way has once again solved our problem. But if you want a shitstorm, you can settle for half of the commentators arguing that Libertarianism proved itself thru the Bazaar, pace Eric Raymond, & the other half arguing that true Cyber-Anarchism proved itself thru Pure Communism.
Me? I'll be happy if I can get one freaking article accepted as FAC, whether it makes it into print or not.
Geoff