On 13/10/2007, Anthony wikimail@inbox.org wrote:
Well, I suppose an encyclopedia is limited in some way by the number of atoms in the universe, but for practical purposes the only real limit is whatever the writers impose on it.
I think there are well over a billion topics to write about. The theoretical limit hasn't been approached yet.
Right. But perhaps that's not the question. The question is are there a billion topics that are encyclopaedic? Presumably for something to be encyclopaedic it would have to be potentially interesting to a large number of people, not just people that happened to have physical contact with a particular street or school for example. A lot of a 'billion topics' would be only interesting to very few, so most of the article wouldn't be notable, and the article would (or should) be very short- and there would be less contributors to it.
Don't encyclopaedias emphasise generality by their very nature and isn't generality a summary? And isn't a summary inherently relatively short?
You know what? Ultimately, I have my suspicions, but I don't know. But if the graph does continue to come down, then I think we will begin to know.