On Tuesday 30 October 2001 03:54, you wrote:
Can you imagine what this project could be like in ten years, if we stay on track? It really *could* beat out Britannica in terms of quality. And *everybody and his grandmother* will be wanting to use Wikipedia content.
Forget Britannica. This obsession with "beating" an obsolete concept is something we need to get rid of *fast*.
Instead, let's look at what is going on on WP right now. The people handling the 9-11 reporting are putting up pages for WTC victims.
Think about that. In the past, to get your name into britannica you first needed to get famous (or infamous), to do something extraordinary. To get a page up on WP, all that is needed is for someone to think that you should be remembered. Hypothetically, we could have a page for every one of the six billion people on the planet. And one for every one of their ancestors yea unto the seventh generation. [[At this point, Jimbo looks nervously at his hard disk capacity]].
This is something new, and I don't think any of us can really predict where it will go. But there is no need to obsess about Britannica. It was a great product in its time, but moving an 18th century concept to the web does not move the concept itself into the 21st.