On 9/15/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 15/09/05, dpbsmith@verizon.net dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
I thought that there was consensus that Wikipedia a) is an encyclopedia, and b) is not "an indiscriminate collection of information."
I must say, I'm sure I've read: "Imagine a world where every single person is given free access to the sum of human knowledge. We don't have to imagine it. We're doing it" attributed to Jimbo, and I have never squared that with "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information."
Personally, I don't mind indiscriminate information - that's what the whole world wide web is. Search engines like Google have made it their mission to make it usable, and I don't see why Wikipedia need be any different in our little web-within-the-web. (Tagging - which is what our categorisation could be seen as - seems to be the other approach, but as far as I can tell that's more hype than useful).
I do mind indiscriminate information. I mind it very much. However, I find a large gap between "information" and "knowledge", so I don't find the statements at all incongruent. Just as there's a difference between raw data and information, I see a similar gap between information and knowledge, although strict dictionary definitions don't show them quite as distinct. My personal view is that data is raw, information is data organized to become useful, and knowledge implies an understanding of the information.
I do think that the mission of giving "free access to sum of human knowledge" absolutely demands that we address far more topics than any conventional encyclopedia has ever considered, even including a proportional number of "silly" topics.