However, compared to paper, it is cheap. I adimit you have to buy thousands
dollar machines but hard drive spaces are cheap. Since text don't take much
room, you can filled more and more and more. Maintaining it online are
cheaper than printing thousands of book. So in the end, wikipedia have more
space than those print encyclopedia books, who spends millions on millions
on millions of dollars printing, researchings, hiring, etc.
On 10/4/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/5/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam(a)inbox.org> wrote:
So what
DOES set the limit to what an encyclopedia can include? It is
not any physical characteristic, whether measured in quarto leaves or
in bytes.
You don't think it has anything to do with the cost of publishing?
The limit to what an encyclopedia can include is governed basically
by the available labor of editors to integrate,
synthesize, verify,
copy-edit, and fact-check.
I think you make an excellent point, with regard to the true limit of
what
Wikipedia can include, but I disagree that that
carries to what a
dead-tree
encyclopedia can include.
It should not be forgotten that WP costs money too. Everything from
maintaining the servers to purchasing bandwidth to employing Brian.
And entirely sourced from generous donations from the public.
Not that I'm advocating anything here, I'm just pointing out that
while Wiki is not paper there are real physical limits on WP's size
(albeit vastly greater than a traditional encyclopaedia).
--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain(a)gmail.com
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