Number of speakers and participation

Five percent of the population active Wikipedia contributors? The idea actually scares me. It would mean we were the government. And fifty percent of the population all getting their information from the same source? A dangerous level of concentration. This is nuts. Let's keep things in perspective.

Personally, I don't care if Wikipedia ever gets any bigger than it is now. Quality, on the other hand, I would like to see improved. Major components of that are, I think, 1) reducing the degree of cultural bias in the encyclopedia; 2) being more inclusive of other cognitive styles.

Wikipedia is written by middle and upper class White guys. Its content reflects their interests and biases. People on this page seem quite aware of that; but in its daily workings English Wikipedia seems to trundle on more-or-less oblivious to it. The problem may be unsolvable: that demographic is the one with computers, internet, and leisure time -- the ingredients of a Wikipedian. Nevertheless, I think a frank and explicit admission of, and consciousness raising about, this phenomenon might of itself be somewhat revolutionary.

Cognitive Styles: Somebody is chattering about the "sum total of all knowledge." Is poetry knowledge? You sure can't put poetry in en.wikipedia. Not even close. Some people operate more on intuition, others more on reason. Clearly we cater more to the latter type. Again, partly inevitable: computers are linear, rational, rules-oriented machines. However, here I think there remains some room, we have some play, some possibilities for altering the situation with different policies and resource-allocations, if we want. How can we be surprised that women stay away in droves? They don't play chess either. Is there room for poets, mystics, and dreamers at Wikimedia? Should there be? Their output is certainly information. Whether it is knowledge depends on your definition. Arguably, it is very powerful and useful. If it is knowledge, then we've either got to include it or throw away that slogan about the sum total of all knowledge and admit that we're just an encyclopedia.

I concurr that we should be trying to connect with the global South. A caveat is that this carries with it a serious risk of cultural imperialism. We should consider not just telling them what the universe is like, but asking them.

I realise that these points differ in tenor from much else that is on this page. I hope you will not dismiss them out of hand. -- Ong saluri

I think your points are very well taken. We're aligned on the importance of diversity and also connecting with the global South (with your caveat in mind). I also agree that quality is more important than size, although I struggle with how we measure that.

One thing I'd like to note, and I've made the point in a number of other threads: The Wikimedia vision does not state that the sum of all knowledge should all come from Wikimedia. I think that's neither realistic nor desirable. However, the Wikimedia movement can help encourage the sum of all knowledge to be freely available through partnerships and advocacy.

Is poetry knowledge? You sure can't put poetry in en.wikipedia. Not even close. 

There is a lot of poetry in Wikisource. Wikipedia is not the only Wikimedia project and as Wikipedia comes closer to being completed other projects will get more attention - as commons has recently.

Possible future Wikimedia projects which would never have a place in Wikipedia:

• Original research - a wikimedia archive of new field recordings
• Non-notable facts - a wikimedia database of facts harvested from info boxes and usable by any language - could include items which are not notable enough to each get their own article
• Not neutral POV - Wikisource is already archiving lots of opinionated stuff.