It's true the admins take notability pretty seriously, but to be fair, so does Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wikipedia folks freely admit that they're elitist in that regard, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. They set it to that level for the sake of maintaining quality and relevancy (which is a measure of notability) to an acceptable degree.
The foundation's ultimate goal is to make a reliable resource for knowledge after all.
What we need to "balance it out" if you will, is maybe another entity(ies) with a broader scope and maybe a looser threshold for notability, but hopefully with more reliability with expert verification ( Citizendium comes to mind : http://en.citizendium.org , but it's no where near as comprehensive ). Still it's not easy to run something like Wikipedia, so whoever will do it would have to have deep pockets and seriously dedicated.
Britannica actually accepts user generated content. They are superior to wikipedia, however, in that they have credible experts vet the content.
The complaint about wikipedia is that it fails to live up to its ideals. If you had ever been a wikipedia editor you wouldn't talk the way you do. Even as a domain expert it's intolerable to deal with the wikipedia amateur hour culture. It's far more rewarding to submit your articles to Encyclopedia Britannica.
It's true the admins take notability pretty seriously, but to be fair, so does Encyclopaedia Britannica. Wikipedia folks freely admit that they're elitist in that regard, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. They set it to that level for the sake of maintaining quality and relevancy (which is a measure of notability) to an acceptable degree.
The foundation's ultimate goal is to make a reliable resource for knowledge after all.
What we need to "balance it out" if you will, is maybe another entity(ies) with a broader scope and maybe a looser threshold for notability, but hopefully with more reliability with expert verification ( Citizendium comes to mind : http://en.citizendium.org , but it's no where near as comprehensive ). Still it's not easy to run something like Wikipedia, so whoever will do it would have to have deep pockets and seriously dedicated.