[LINK] Measuring completeness of Wikipedia [was: Wikipedia's on the wane: study]

[Stephen Wilson]

Birch, Jim wrote:
> A more honest headline would be: Edit rates reveal Wikipedia's initial
> mission substantially complete.  
I'd like to test the idea that Wikipedia is nearing completeness.  There 
are many assumptions built into Wikpedia about disseminating knowledge, 
many of which seem to reflect tacit and unexamined (?) free market 
ideology. 

The edit rate drop off only indicates that the sum total of what 
contributers want to write is nearing completion.  But if the mission is 
something like to capture all the world's knowledge, then what matters 
more is the sum total of what everyone else needs to read. 

How do writers know the readers' needs?  It seems to me that the way 
Wikipedia is set up, and moreover its proud chaos, indicate a deep 
belief in an all-powerful free marketplace of knowledge.  But as we all 
know (everyone that is except almost all western politicians) free 
markets are only guaranteed to work when there is efficiency and 
transparency. 

Has anyone ever analysed these conditions?  Maybe copyright, peer review 
processes and the like introduce cost and power imbalances in the bazaar 
that is Wikipedia.

And while information may want to be free, that's not the point.  Here 
we're talking about knowledge: one level up.

Cheers,

Stephen Wilson
Lockstep Consulting
www.lockstep.com.au.