Gareth Owen wrote: I cannot quite understand what makes this orthodox/exclusive/purist point of view so attractive. By your definition, would Diderot's encyclopedia qualify as an encyclopedia? If not, is that good or bad for your definition? Diderot's vision (which seems to have been shared by Vannevar Bush, Ted Nelson and Tim Berners-Lee) was to *include* all of the world's knowledge into one (net-)work, and *not* to exclude knowledge that could be called geographic (gazetteer) or lingustic (dictionary). How could they be so wrong (what idiots!), when your own (and Larry's) purist wisdom should have been obvious to them? So much of the distinction between these kinds of reference works were forced upon their creators by the limitations of the print medium. With the World Wide Web we are no longer bound by these limitations. Only our preconceived notions, our prejudice bind us now. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik Teknikringen 1e, SE-583 30 Linuxköping, Sweden tel +46-70-7891609 http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/