[WikiEN-l] 2007 Nobel Prizes and the Completeness of Wikipedia

[Eugene van der Pijll]

One sign that en.Wikipedia is "nearing completion", is that we have
articles about subjects before they are in the news, and before people
would want to look them up. As an example, we had an article on the
[[I-35W Mississippi River bridge]] even before it collapsed last August.
There is not much statistics you can do on one isolated incident,
though. 

The Nobel Prizes are an opportunity to do a more systematic survey.
Today, the last of the 2007 prizes has been awarded, and we can be proud
of the results: we had articles about 11 of the 12 winners! Only the
article on [[Roger Myerson]] still had to be created.

Compare this with earlier years: in 2006, we had articles for 4 out of 9
winners (and one deleted copyvio); in 2005, 7 out of 13; in 2004, 3 out
of 12; in 2003, 0 out of 11; in 2002: 1 out of 13; and in 2001, 2 out of
15.

Of course, this year's physics prize was awarded for a itechnology used
in hard disk production, the literature prize went to a science fiction
author, and the peace prize to an American vice-president. Still, we've
done a good job here.

Eugene

P.S. Check out the earliest edit of [[Leonid Hurwicz]]. It's because of
that edit we had an article about him, even if we shouldn't perhaps
encourage these kind of contributions.