On Jun 9, 2006, at 5:09 PM, George Herbert wrote:
On 6/9/06, Jesse W <jessw(a)netwood.net> wrote:
On Jun 9, 2006, at 4:32 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
We have articles on every single episode of most
major TV shows, and
lots of
minor ones. You would never see that in any encyclopaedia.
You would not see that in the Encyclopedia of Late 20th Century
American Television? Really? Or do you mean in any "general"
encyclopedia. Because certainly, Wikipedia reaches the level of a
specialized encyclopedia in a number of areas, like television shows -
but (I hope), we don't go too much beyond that.
Out of curiosity, why?
I'll turn the question on it's head - what's an
example, in your
opinion, of a article topic that would be "beyond a specialized
encyclopedia devoted to a subject to which the topic is a part" (sorry,
little convoluted there, but I hope you get the gist) I ask, because,
I can't think of a topic like that that would not be, at the same time,
obviously "not encyclopedic", in the opinion of any random person you
cared to ask. Certainly, an article consisting only of polemic on
Macedonian independence is "beyond a specialized encyclopedia", no
matter what it's subject, but it's also obviously wrong for Wikipedia.
I can't think of a topic which fails the first criteria, without being
obviously unsuitable for Wikipedia. Can you come up with some
examples?
What, exactly, does an end-state Wikipedia project
look like, to those
who would want us to stop adding new articles at some point? How and
when would you say "stop"?
When we have articles on every topic for which
reputable sources can be
found. Of course, we'd have to start up adding new articles in a year
or so, when a lot of new material has been published, but we could stop
adding articles for a period, while enough new material was published.
Jesse Weinstein