On 10/16/07, Wily D <wilydoppelganger(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 10/16/07, cohesion <cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org> wrote:
On 10/16/07, Gregory Maxwell
<gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Enwikipedia_articles_bios_pct_20071…
Discuss amongst yourselves.
Thank goodness it seems to have peaked, definitely interested in the
next couple months though... I'm a little surprised the percentage is
so high, but I don't think it's bad really. Biographies of many living
people are useful. Who's to say what the right percentage is. As long
as it's somewhat stable of course :)
Judson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
Indeed, that's the right question to ask: What percentage should it
be? What's the percentage in other encyclopaedias?
Presumably, in a complete Wikipedia, the percentage would be much
lower (I believe the current estimates are that ~5% of all humans are
currently alive, and I'd guess our existing biographies are more about
alive people than that). But how does it compare to other
encyclopaedias?
Cheers
WilyD
Here's a historical tidbit from a lovely book I'm slowly reading by Robert
Collison called "Encyclopedias: their history throughout the ages" (1966) --
he claims that Johann Heinrich Zedler's "Grosses vollstandiges
Universal-Lexicon", first pub. in 1731, was the first encyclopedia to
include biographies of living people. Not sure, in turn, how he figured this
out (extensive historical research, I think) but it's nice to know that
living bios have at least as long a pedigree in the modern encyclopedia as
philosophical articles (e.g. the "Encyclopedie", first published in 1751)
and technical/practical articles (e.g. Chambers' "Cyclopedia", first
published in 1728).
Incidentally, if any of you are encyclopedia fans and you find an
inexpensive copy of Collison's book, buy it -- it's out of print and
difficult to find.
-- phoebe