dpbsmith(a)verizon.net wrote:
Incidentally, article size is one area in which
"Wikipedia is not
paper" serves us poorly. In the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, the article on the Bible is approximately one megabyte in
size. That decision was presumably made on the basis of style,
organization, and readability. You can riffle through twenty pages a
second or more and still glimpse running heads. And the articles in
the old Britannica are so well-written that you can sit down with them
and read them from beginning to end.
I think Britannica goes for a different style than we do, largely
because it *is* paper. In a paper encyclopedia, cross-references are
much more of a hassle, and the reader can't flip between articles and
volumes in the click of a mouse. Thus, articles tend to be longer and
fewer. With Wikipedia, there's no trouble breaking up a major topic
like, say [[United States]], into an overview article with separate
articles on [[History of the United States]], [[Economy of the United
States]], and so on, because it doesn't place much of a burden on our
users to click through if they want the long articles. Even the way we
format it---"Main article: [[History of the United States]]"---really
only makes sense in a hyperlinked encyclopedia.
It does bring up the interesting point that perhaps there should be a
little more editing in making a paper version besides just validating
articles. For example, it might make sense to collate these all into
one article for print publication.
-Mark