On 9/12/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/09/06, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
On 9/12/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase of it's good enough articles.
Alexa ratings are not everything.
Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion.
- d.
They do however illustrate the conflict between providing what people want (more articles on sex and pro wrestling apparently) and creating what we believe should exist.
We've comparisons with Britannica are difficult because we are different things. They work from the top down. We work from the bottom up. They are to a large degree a general education. We are tending to head towards the sum of all knowledge.
The sum of all knowledge. Before Wikipedia did anyone really think what that meant?
Of the various Si-fi encyclopaedias they mostly appear to historic encyclopaedias with expansions made for advances in science and the discovery of new planets. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does well in terms of realising there are areas of knowledge not normally covered by such works but is of course famously light in it's coverage of certain areas. Star trek's Memory Alpha does fairly well but it apparently misses geography and some other areas (incidentally [[Category:Fictional encyclopedias]] is seriously bare).
I don't think we really understand. And article on every school in Africa? An article on every village in India?
Comparisons with Britannica are of limited use because we are not doing what they are doing. We are doing something that has never been done before.