[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia - An infinite number of lists

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

Michael Santora wrote

> The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is
> limited by the number of at least marginally notable
> and verifiable things which exist.  

Or have existed. Let's not be presentist.

> On the other hand, the potential number of lists is
> almost infinite, as there are a virtually unlimited
> number of ways of slicing up portions of reality.

Well, only two to the power of the number of things (unordered subsets).

> End result: en.Wikipedia, in the year 2050, will have
> 5 million articles, and 500 million lists.

On a rough calculation at the first London meet-up, I thought 7 million articles was a reasonable estimate of the number, if we simply covered the rest of the world in the detail given currently to US placenames. We could get there by 2015, rather than 2050.

But these estimates have always missed quite how deep the pockets of the academic literature have become. One million compounds in organic chemistry: pretty much a drop in the ocean. In the humanities, there are thousands upon thousands of secondary figures, about whom decent papers have been written and published in respectable journals. How many myths are there? And how many mythical characters?

Charles

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