You know i’ve been buzzing around “getting a few things in place”. Can i just point you at this forum’s thread at Gizmo. http://forum.gizmoproject.com/viewtopic.php?t=8884

Gizmo won’t mean much to yu, but it’s a Skype look-alike which is open.i.e It can talk to other IP networks, which Skype never will. So you’ll understand why I’ve shied off talking so far.

So could I ask that you download & have a play with it, and we get together for a quiet chat below the radar soon. I’m looking at going to HP for funding to broaden the conversations outside the usual WMF world (and stuffed if I’m going to do that for nothing as well, or expect you to).

P.S. Liam, Will probably be meeting your mates at DoS on Thursday, so we’ll see what they (and the National Library) say. regards.

But overall my feedback is still basically the same,… MOAR PLZ!

Your point about return to basic principles like WP:DONTBITE and WP:BOLD is well-made. Wikipedia grew to be what it is because of these principles. However, as you also correctly say, what we need now is a different type of editor: experts willing to contribute from their field of knowledge, not hobbyists typing out some stuff they heard on Discovery Channel. The problem is that WP:BITE etc. attract weirdos as much as they attract experts, and weirdos tend to have a lot more free time on their hands. I think that a newbie expert editor understands the need for WP:CITE (after all, similar requirements are made for academic papers). Such an expert will not find it difficult to write a good article about, say, communism and religion in sub-Saharan Africa (to use your example). The problem will be to get the expert to put the article on his watchlist and keep fixing the inaccuracies placed by religious or communist POV-pushers. I have seen several expert users become exasperated with this and leave. We will have to find the golden path between the two parts of WP’s slogan: “the free encyclopedia” and “that anyone can edit.” That golden path may well have to change as WP grows and becomes more professional.

I have lots to contribute and would have a new application on my iPod Touch (iPhone with out the phone and surf the internet by wi fi) which is wikipedia. i would like to talk about where wikipedia will go in WEB 3.0 with iPhone.

I think Andrew’s main argument about future growth is dead on… the numbers don’t lie, but projecting them forward relies on the assumption of things (the social and technological context of editing) basically staying the same. To approach anywhere near “the sum of all human knowledge”, there will have to be major changes that make it more appealing to contribute, especially for professional knowledge workers.

Take a look at my new blog post, part of which is a response to the “future of Wikipedia” discussion: http://ragesossscholar.blogspot.com/2008/03/future-of-wikipedia-my-take-part-1.html