[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is not a dictionary (was: Re: Old Wikipedia backups discovered)

[David Goodman]

The point of our projects  as a whole, is to provide information,; it
is much more important to make the information easy to find so people
will not miss it, even by their usual habit of relying on the google
hit & not following even the most obvious of cross-references, rather
than argue about which of two places to put it.

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:30 PM, Stephanie Daugherty
<sdaugherty at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 8:26 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>> >>> What counts as "beyond a dictionary entry".  Are you talking about
>> >>> length, or content?
>> >>
>> >> The latter.  The aforementioned "Nigger" article contains a great deal
>> >> of material that one would not find in any dictionary with which I'm
>> >> familiar.
>> >
>> > It also contains a great deal of material that one would not find in
>> > any encyclopedia with which I'm familiar.
>>
>> And most of the material I think would be *more likely* to be in a
>> dictionary than an encyclopedia.  Meaning, etymology, usage,
>> derivatives.  These are all things more likely to be found in a
>> dictionary than an encyclopedia.
>>
>> Basically, if you took a dictionary, and removed the space
>> requirements, and then took an encyclopedia, and removed the space
>> requirements, the content of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger would
>> likely be in the former, and not the latter.
>>
>
> Well stated, and I think that clearly states the purpose of "not a
> dictionary". It's not anything to do with notability, it's what belongs
> where.
>
>>
>>
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-- 
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG