Declarations by a few historians regarding their declaration of the Wikipedia project to be nearly complete proved quite provoking to many dedicated editors and chroniclers, but this pronouncement—certainly not of demise and redundancy but quite the opposite in terms of utility and comprehensiveness—does pose an interesting point of departure for the open encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, despite what the critics and academics say and inherent imperfections, is a storehouse of human knowledge in all disciplines as well as a virtual gloss of that which only exists in human imagination, describing in great detail fantastic universes that would make our small, contradictory and poorly understood one envious for attention.
Historians argue that there only is so much that one can distill in the form of an article before passing out of the bounds of the project—Wikipedia is not meant to reflect the whole of its platform, the internet, and has standards of notoriety, endurance and significance as well as a duty to scholarship, and with over four million articles in English and over a million auf Deutsch (stubs excepted) one begins to tax his creativity and resources looking for something fresh to write about.
Of course, Wikipedia is expanding through translation into other languages and complimenting translated outlines, sister-projects and speciality portals, as well as encapsulating current events in an archival fashion, but, aside from the high quantity of topics covered, it seems that this assertion of approaching conclusion is based on the lack of emendations and counter-edits of established and heady historical articles and many other broad subjects.
While no one is saying that fewer changes equates to a lack of engagement or new authors going away having found that everything’s already been written, I don’t think it signifies anything more (nor less) than a level of maturity in style and presentation and execution that was crafted and molded by the forum itself, and curiosity, whether with or without a vehicle for immediate expansion or expression, and the sense of discovery and re-discovery are inexhaustible and will probably never become moribund or again seek out the protection of the slant of the victorious and influential.
