[Foundation-l] "All human knowledge", by Jimmy Wales (?)

[Robert Rohde]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 12:01 PM, emijrp <emijrp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the phrase meaning refered to Wikipedia is "the sum of all
> human knowledge which is notable and encyclopedic".
>
> Not ALL, ALL, ALL human knowledge. MySpace discarded.

When you look back to when that quote was issued (at least 2004), I
think I tend to see it as broader and more aspirational.  Wikipedia
was already the biggest project, but we still imagined ourselves
making a statement with Wikinews and Wiktionary and everything else.
Back in the day, I can certainly imagine Wikimedia wanting to
encompass all forms of human knowledge, including projects going far
beyond the confines of what we now see as notable and encyclopedic.
We have retreated from that quite a lot.  Even within Wikipedia our
notions of what was acceptable and what was not were far more fluid.

The projects have accomplished an incredible amount, and we should all
be very proud and amazed at what we have done.  However, I do think we
have lost some of that early dream.  Back in the day, it was easy to
imagine that we would eventually encompass all human knowledge, and
now we tend to draw our goals more narrowly.  In part, I think our
perceptions of that famous quote have been evolving alongside our
perceptions of what Wikimedia and Wikipedia have become.

-Robert Rohde