The power of the present

I've long said that one of the greatest benefits of Wikipedia is its ability to harness the widespread attention being given to a particular event. So while Wikipedia is good at slowly accumulating obscure details about something that happened long ago (e.g., Confederate railroads in the American Civil War), it's phenomenal at recording obscure details of events that are happening right now.

Case in point is the ongoing Writer's Guild of American strike, which is a particularly good example because the Writer's Guild happens to be a flighty bunch and decides to strike all the damn time, like every twenty or thirty years. This leaves us with three instances of approximately the same event, each with approximately the same duration ("months" and not "days" or "years") and presumably the same crazy issues that television writers care about: smoke breaks, and the number of dead hookers they can legally pile up in the writer's offices. Oh, and less important stuff like rights and money.

So let's compare the relative reporting on the three instances of the WGA strike:

• 1960, which features a half-page of text outlining the things writers had to strike about back in 1960. Interestingly this page didn't exist whatsoever until a week after the current strike started.
  
• 1988, which is a little richer than 1960, but not by much. This page was also started during the rumor boom in the days preceding the 2007 event.
  
• And finally, 2007, which is excrutiatingly detailed and even includes its own subarticle on which shows will be replaced entirely by reruns of Press Your Luck. Compare the 2007 article to the 1988 and 1960 articles.
  

I actually didn't realize that all three articles were launched in early November 2007, but that supports my opinion that Wikipedia is great at capturing excitement about events currently ongoing.

Update: It seems I got so wrapped up in the article I totally forgot to add my conclusion.

So assuming that Wikipedia is still around in the next 20 years¹, I suspect we'll have some sort of archival line drawn between events that happen before Wikipedia's critical mass, and those that happened afterward.

Happened in 1999? Tough. Good luck finding data on that.
Happened in 2008? Fantastic—there's a Wikipedia article all over that. Although even in 2028, I'm sure the articles will still be crap.

¹ This is less a commentary on Wikipedia's ability to stick around for 20 years, and more a commentary on our ability to stick around for 20 years, in a way where Wikipedia is still relevant.