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

[Thomas Morton]

On 17 Sep 2011, at 09:41, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> On 09/16/11 12:38 PM, Robert Rohde wrote:
>> 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.
>>
>
> Strictly speaking, "the sum of" is a redundancy, but its English
> idiomatic use tends to emphasize comprehensiveness. For those of us who
> saw the dream earlier on being "notable and encyclopedic" was never part
> of the dream, and still isn't. A literal interpretation of "the sum of
> all human knowledge" is still impossible; it's simply too big and
> constantly growing. It still warns us to avoid restrictive
> preconceptions about what is notable and encyclopedic.
>
> Ray


"sum" is a representation of the total value of a sequence.

Similarly the sum of all knowledge is the representation of our
sequence of knowledge.

So we take a large body of disorganised information and collate it
into something of greater value.

Statements like that are not so much about size or scope; but about value.

Tom