NSK wrote:
On Saturday 23 October 2004 03:13, Phil Sandifer wrote:
I think the fact that Wikipedia describes itself as "The Free Encyclopedia" provides a somewhat convincing reason to be an encyclopedia.
Well, I do recognise that this claim ("the free encyclopedia") may have helped you in WP marketing. I wonder whether WP's popularity would have achieved if you hadn't made that claim. Have you ever thought about that?
As Wikipedia has claimed all along to be a free encyclopedia, and in fact keeps this as its main goal, I have no doubt that this is the reason we are popular. In fact, I have no doubt that is ONE of the reasons we remain popular!
Wikipedia claims to be a free encylopedia, and has always claimed this. We have never claimed to be a knowledge-base. Sure, there are articles that are not encylopedic, but these are articles that need to be either a) moved to wikibooks, or b) altered to make them encyclopedic. A good example here would be the [[Internet Explorer]] article, where there was the potential for including a howto on removing it from the O/S. This would be inappropriate for the article, and I would move this to Wikibooks.
TBSDY