On 6/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That's close, but not quite it. I think what it is
more about is that
previously encyclopedias were written by fairly homogenous "elites",
if you will, and that the inherent economic limits meant that they
were forced to stay within the area of "no-brainers", subjects which
were to them obviously encyclopedia-worthy, which they could easily
reach consensus on, being fairly homogenous elites. But by the same
token, that means that they never had to grapple with any edge issues,
whereas we do, as en has by and large exhausted a good many of the
obviously encyclopedia-worthy articles (though not all, or else we
wouldn't have the missing encyclopedia article project), and so must
confront the margins; and of course, Wikipedia is hardly written by a
fairly homogenous elite, regardless of whatever it may have started
life as, or the realities of its power structure.
Also, we have large numbers of people extremely willing and ready to
write detailed articles on topics of dubious interest. 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.
Steve