[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia's scope

[lsanger at nupedia.com]

[I am writing this as a "letter-to-the-editor," if you actually have such
a feature.  If not, feel free to ignore this.]

Dear editor,

I'm writing in response to your article about Wikipedia published a few
days ago.  I'm Wikipedia's main organizer.  I simply wanted to comment on
one remark reported in the article, which was as follows: "Walter Bender,
executive director of MIT's Media Laboratory, believes that what makes
Britannica a valuable resource is the scope and depth of its editing, and
free Web-based encyclopedias such as Wikipedia will probably never be able
to compete with that."

Of course, right now Britannica has a greater scope and depth than
Wikipedia--but that's not surprising, because Wikipedia got its start just
eight months ago.  But in the interim we have created over 10,000
articles--the best of which are easily comparable to Britannica's
articles--and are now adding nearly 2,000 articles per month, according to
one resident statistician.  These articles are all constantly improving,
as well.  Many of our active participants have Ph.D.'s or other advanced
degrees, and are college professors and graduate students or are
highly-trained professionals.  Significantly, Wikipedia's *rate* of growth
has been steadily increasing--in terms of article numbers and quality,
traffic to the website, and attracting more highly-qualified contributors.
So it seems very reasonable to think that within a few years the project
will surpass Britannica in both breadth and depth.  There's nothing
stopping us.

Best regards,
Lawrence M. Sanger, Ph.D.