One “very senior Wikimedian,” we are told, “came to think of the project as a ‘city built by Asperger’s.’ ”
If you get the paywall, it’s readable at http://archive.today/R2rnW
One “very senior Wikimedian,” we are told, “came to think of the project as a ‘city built by Asperger’s.’ ”
If you get the paywall, it’s readable at http://archive.today/R2rnW
Do you mean print encyclopedias? If so, heavy disagree.
Less errors, more content, more up to date, more accessible. That said, I’ll admit the smell of a rarely opened tome is missed.
I doubt the number of errors is significantly different. The horrible mistakes I’ve had to correct on WP suggest otherwise, even if that’s just anecdotal.
Sometimes, less is more. I don’t think we really need trivia from the film set of the Infinity War or whatever. Selecting the most relevant material is an art in itself. A scholarly monograph might be used to dump info; an encyclopedia has to make sense of it for the layman.
Up to date, mostly yes (unless the editors get their info from outdated sources, which does happen), and accessible, definitely.
I do agree that condensing an encyclopedia to a limited size and keeping the most significant information was a very difficult art that was performed admirably by the old encyclopaedias.
I however think it’s an art that would be innappropriate and harmful if applied to Wikipedia.
Just because you can condense the information doesn’t mean you should. Encyclopaedias are not for reading through, so limited length was an artificial limitation imposed by the printed format not for any good reason.
I’m sure there’s articles that go on a bit about irrelevant minutia, and they should be trimmed, but that’s an article specific flaw.
FWIW I think I misremembered the accuracy point, looks like most studies have put it similar or slightly lower accuracy. Citation needed I guess.
Sometime, less is more, but not for an encyclopedia, which is, by definition, literally supposed to contain all knowledge. The previous encyclopedias were limited by their volume, as they must be physical, but not Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia wins 100% on this front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia#Etymology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars
(emphasis mine)
We have limited time in our lives. “Everything” can be the goal of a library collection. An encyclopedia gets the important gist of the “everything” in a practically readable and understandable format, and directs you to other places where you can learn more if needed. A balance has to be struck. Sadly, I guess Wikipedia has become a symbol of all knowledge on the web, since most other places are so dogshit and uninformative, that we can now expect or demand it to do beyond what an encyclopedia should normally do.
I don’t think this is the gotcha you think it is. You posted the etymology which is the origin of the word but not the modern definition.
Def.: Encyclopedia -
a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject
Emphasis is mine.
what are their advantages over wikipedia?
Being written by professionals, each article written by a single person with an editor controlling their work – these two things lead to far better written text, more consistently organised material cross-article, with a good selection of the most relevant information in each article. Wikipedia is amateurs dumping all sorts of info (which they don’t always even understand properly) that they come across elsewhere online onto the site, and even the “deletionists” can’t really contain this tendency. Carefully written articles with a head and tail are rare and largely products of individuals who really know their shit, but that meticulous type of work is inevitably diluted in the overall landscape of the site.
Note: I’m a fairly regular Wikipedia editor. It’s useful and fun.* But when I need some non-trivial info in fields I’m somewhat adept in, I prefer skipping Wikipedia.
* Although WP in some smaller languages isn’t, some versions are actively harmful due to the amount of misinformation or propaganda, and I would vote for deleting them entirely, including my own contributions. I don’t think there’s any print encyclopedia so hopelessly bad that I’d throw it into the fire. But this is kind of outside the frame of discussion, I admit.
That control is usually about political correctness as defined by the organization making the encyclopedia in question. People often say Britannica is good, no fucking way, those people have just forgotten how miserable it is compared to Wikipedia.
It isn’t. Yes, political control exists and has shaped encyclopedias (it has also shaped Wikipedia). The editorship however mainly has to focus on keeping stuff consistent and meaningful for the reader. You have to have no real involvment with scholarly writing if you think just letting random scholars write whatever they think is important will lead to a good encyclopedia.
To put it more concretely, I’ve read extensive editorial notes by the editor-in-chief of Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia from 1950s/60s, i.e. a govt project in an authoritarian country - the editor was an avowed Marxist and it was no secret, yet his notes were absolutely leading the project in the right direction, he was insistent on critically revising the inherited nationalist political narratives, pruning lots of rhetorical fluff and nonsense, “saying it like it is”. It had its bias (pro-Yugoslavian, pro-communist), and it was pretty clear about it, you know where to expect it if you don’t like it, and frankly the critical stance was justified. The second edition from 1980s actually caused controversies because lots of powerful people disliked it interfering with their own nationalist narratives. Even in an authoritarian country you can’t keep everything under control. The encyclopedia is to this day a treasure trove of valuable information that the existing Wikipedias of ex-Yugoslavian countries can only lick the balls of (in part because they are or have until recently been managed by illiterate fascists, as is the case for Croatian and Serbian WPs).