The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is limited by the number of at least marginally notable and verifiable things which exist. After every notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so on have their own article, we'll run out of things to write about. Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, it will happen.
On the other hand, the potential number of lists is almost infinite, as there are a virtually unlimited number of ways of slicing up portions of reality.
For example, one could make a "List of birds native to the Chicago area". If it were nicely wikified and contained a reasonable number of items on it, it would certainly not be deleted.
However, what you've actually done is create the first example of "List of X's native to the Y area", where X is any one of dozens or hundreds of types of creatures... insects, mammals, amphibians, trees, flowers, and so on, while Y is any one of tens of thousands of towns, cities, states, counties, countries, provinces, geographic areas, and so on.
Multiply 100 X's by 50,000 Y's, and you get 5 million lists.
Take the roughly 500,000 of our article topics which have been mentioned enough times in popular culture to make up a list, and you get 500,000 "X in popular culture" articles.
Take every one of the tens of thousands of diseases which exist, find evidence of notable people who have had the disease, and you get 25,000 "List of people who have had disease X" articles.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Even removing the obvious silly and ridiculous lists, like "List of blind left-handed Canadians who have worn blue jeans" still leaves us with more reasonable sounding lists than any of ever imagined we would have.
End result: en.Wikipedia, in the year 2050, will have 5 million articles, and 500 million lists.
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The vast majority of those lists can be merged into a significantly smaller number of lists. "List of birds to the Chicago area" can be merged into "List of animals native to North America", for example. If a list gets too long, it can be split up, but otherwise it's fine as one list. If such a list needs to be split up, it should be done in such a way as to reduce redundancy, eg. "List of animals native to the whole of North America" and "List of birds native to Chicago area but not the whole of North America" (if someone can come up with a shorter name, please do).
In the fullness of time, Wikipedia or some fork of it will be properly semantic, with a nice query interface that will let you ask questions like "what are all the birds native to the Chicago area?". In the meantime, people interested in such categorization have little choice but to create these explicit categories and lists, silly and overspecific though they sometimes seem to be. I don't see much harm in this, other than the dreadful waste of time (compared to, say, the time that could be spent implementing a proper semantic scheme once and for all) and the inevitable incompleteness and inaccuracy of the explicit lists.
When we come to the point Wikipedia becomes complete (which I don't ever think we will reach) we can start to reconsider the inclusion criteria for lists and reorganize them. Not have lists of animals, trees per city but by country or for example by North America. This isn't the time to think about it yet, though.
Mgm
On 24/03/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
In the fullness of time, Wikipedia or some fork of it will be properly semantic, with a nice query interface that will let you ask questions like "what are all the birds native to the Chicago area?". In the meantime, people interested in such categorization have little choice but to create these explicit categories and lists, silly and overspecific though they sometimes seem to be. I don't see much harm in this, other than the dreadful waste of time (compared to, say, the time that could be spent implementing a proper semantic scheme once and for all) and the inevitable incompleteness and inaccuracy of the explicit lists.
Indeed. Note how a lot of lists were made more or less superfluous by the category feature. Lists these days need to be of value by order and/or annotation.
- d.
On 3/24/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 24/03/07, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
In the fullness of time, Wikipedia or some fork of it will be properly semantic, with a nice query interface that will let you ask questions like "what are all the birds native to the Chicago area?". In the meantime, people interested in such categorization have little choice but to create these explicit categories and lists, silly and overspecific though they sometimes seem to be. I don't see much harm in this, other than the dreadful waste of time (compared to, say, the time that could be spent implementing a proper semantic scheme once and for all) and the inevitable incompleteness and inaccuracy of the explicit lists.
Indeed. Note how a lot of lists were made more or less superfluous by the category feature. Lists these days need to be of value by order and/or annotation.
- d.
You're behind the times, it's categories that are superfluous, according to the few users in CfD who have decreed it so.
The trend now is to remove categories and replace them with lists. Right now on CfD, without prior consultation of the community of Wikipedia editors who create and edit articles on biota (at least not through their various community portals) an editor who is against categories by geography has got together 2 like-minded editors and is ramming through deletion of biota by geography categories in a trial run to do away with all of them and replace them with lists.
I assumed that such a change in overall Wikipedia policy by a few editors would have been well-thought out and understood and would have been relevant to the area in which it was being implemented (biota and/or geography), and asked questions (I have no idea what lists do and categories do, and assumed that categories were created for a reason, but apparently not). The questions were not answered, or answered by editors defending the deletion who had little knowledge of physical geography (relevant to distributions of biota) or biota. For the latter I offer this closing quote: "Indeed, animals do not mind human borders, so anything found in one country is likely also found in the next country over." This essentially means that there likely nothing endemic to any country, which is purely original speculation (not OR, as no research was involved in the statement.) "List of birds native to Chicago area but not the whole of North America"
Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.
KP
"List of birds native to Chicago area but not the whole of North America"
Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.
No, that doesn't work. Something can be native to lots of places within N. America, while not being native to the whole of it. A bird found in Chicago and a neighbouring place should be mentioned in those 2 lists, not the main list, otherwise you lose the precision. Creating a list for "birds endemic to Chicago and X" would result in lots of very short lists for each possible combination of places.
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"List of birds native to Chicago area but not the whole of North America"
Endemic to Chicago is the terminology.
No, that doesn't work. Something can be native to lots of places within N. America, while not being native to the whole of it. A bird found in Chicago and a neighbouring place should be mentioned in those 2 lists, not the main list, otherwise you lose the precision. Creating a list for "birds endemic to Chicago and X" would result in lots of very short lists for each possible combination of places.
But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and X, just one native to Chicago. And there is a word for that. IF you have two small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely the species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere in between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or it has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than geographically defined.
Endemism is the word.
KP
But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and X, just one native to Chicago. And there is a word for that. IF you have two small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely the species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere in between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or it has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than geographically defined.
Endemism is the word.
"Endemic to X" means "native to only X", which is not what I was looking for. I was looking for a way to say "Native to X but not all of Y" where X is a subregion of Y. The region an animal is endemic to is not usually a region that would get a list in the "Animals native to X" collection, so it would have to appear on multiple lists, or on one more general list (which loses precision).
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
But you didn't request the wording for a species native to Chicago and
X,
just one native to Chicago. And there is a word for that. IF you have
two
small endemic populations, there is generally a reason for that, namely
the
species was once more widespread and has been extirpated from elsewhere
in
between, in which case its distribution is relictual and it IS properly called an endemic, just not of Chicago alone, but of the larger area, or
it
has been introduced in the second place, in which case it can still be endemic to the first, or it is actively speciating due to a founder floundering there, or its endemism is edaphic, or otherwise than geographically defined.
Endemism is the word.
"Endemic to X" means "native to only X", which is not what I was looking for. I was looking for a way to say "Native to X but not all of Y" where X is a subregion of Y. The region an animal is endemic to is not usually a region that would get a list in the "Animals native to X" collection, so it would have to appear on multiple lists, or on one more general list (which loses precision).
It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it is NOT native to the rest of the USA. Do you have an example animal here that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the USA? "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
KP
It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it is NOT native to the rest of the USA. Do you have an example animal here that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the USA? "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not "Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not endemic to Chicago, or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means it is NOT native to the rest of the USA. Do you have an example animal here that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of the USA? "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X, and if X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not "Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not endemic to Chicago, or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
The problem here is that the use of "endemic" by biologists is different from its use by the general population. For a biologist there are denotations of limitation or origination, while for the general population including epidemiologists there is a stronger tendency to view the term as saying only that the condition is regularly. The two groups would give a different answer to the question, "Is the European starling endemic to the Chicago area?"
Ec
On 3/25/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means
it
is NOT native to the rest of the USA. Do you have an example animal
here
that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of
the
USA? "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X,
and if
X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not "Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not endemic to Chicago, or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
The problem here is that the use of "endemic" by biologists is different from its use by the general population. For a biologist there are denotations of limitation or origination, while for the general population including epidemiologists there is a stronger tendency to view the term as saying only that the condition is regularly. The two groups would give a different answer to the question, "Is the European starling endemic to the Chicago area?"
Ec
In articles on species the word is wikilinked to its correct definition, and, because of this duality of meaning, I generally parenthetically include its biological meaning in the article.
On 3/25/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It's rather difficult to understand what you're asking, because BY definition, endemic to Chicago means it is native to Chicago, and means
it
is NOT native to the rest of the USA. Do you have an example animal
here
that is not endemic to Chicago, but is native to Chicago but not all of
the
USA? "Native to only X but not all of Y," if Y is not a subset of X,
and if
X is a subset of Y, is endemism, nothing else.
You're misquoting me. I said "Native to X but not all of Y", not "Native to *only* X but not all of Y", there is a big difference.
A bird which is native to Chicago and Rockford and nowhere else is not endemic to Chicago, or endemic to Rockford, or native to the whole of N. America.
Actually this is considered endemic if it both populations are relictual populations from a once more widespread area. This is the definition of endemic in biology and for relictual populations with bimodal distributions. It means what you keep saying it doesn't mean, and it is used in botany how you say it can't be used, so I don't think we can go any further discussing it.
On 3/25/07, *Thomas Dalton* thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Point remains, we don't use primary sources in the plant articles, such as the original research of a scientist published in a primary resource otherwise known as a peer-reviewed journal article, but rather we use the secondary information from the primary source, the primary source's introductory material or background material used in its conclusions, and use review articles (which, although this may be changing, not that I've seen) rather than conclusions originally and solely drawn in primary sources.
You could use primary sources, though. There is no rule against that. (You have to be careful to keep things neutral, but that shouldn't be too hard with papers about plants - just be careful if there is disagreement in the scientific community about something.) There is a rule against OR, which is why it's important to distinguish between the two. No, we can't realistically use primary sources for many things in a rapidly changing field like Botany or among the photosynthetic protists, because the primary sources are, today, proposing radically new taxonomies of various groups, some based upon controversial techniques such as environmental sampling of DNA, rather than culturing of organisms. What we do is quote the primary source if it is an important paper, but by the time it is an important paper, there are plenty of secondary sources confirming its importance with relevant discussions of it. Photosynthetic single-celled eukaryotic groups are placed at higher taxonomic levels all over the place, every once in a while we have someone come in and, in good faith, change the color code for these groups to lavendar or something.
We do use the primary sources, but under careful circumstances, and after confirmation of their importance. There was an article that blew me away a couple of months ago in AJBotany, yet has made hardly a splash in the academic community, so I have to wait. Another plant family that I have been studying in the Chinese fossil record as a major contribution to basal angiosperm evolution recently made Nature, so we're good to go there. But, if I went with primary sources, Wikipedia would not be a useful source for people to come to to find information about botany.
There is nothing neutral going on in botany today, it's massive upheaval, guarding of the old, fanning of the new, reassertion of the old, fights about molecular techniques versus morphology, cladistics or not, the entire basic classification scheme is in high disagreement. It's fun, but it's not neutral.
KP
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Endemic to X" means "native to only X"...
<snip>
And here I always figured that endemic meant a disease that affected a stable number of people in a given group, like "The common cold is endemic to the United Kingdom". I guess that's not all :)
Tell me, if the number of birds are increasing are they "epidemic to Chicago"?
--Oskar
On 3/25/07, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/24/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
"Endemic to X" means "native to only X"...
<snip>
And here I always figured that endemic meant a disease that affected a stable number of people in a given group, like "The common cold is endemic to the United Kingdom". I guess that's not all :)
Tell me, if the number of birds are increasing are they "epidemic to Chicago"?
--Oskar
In the biology of species distributions "endemic" means native to an area and only that area. Of course, the meaningfulness of the term varies with how the person defines the term. "Endemic to North America" isn't nearly as meaningful as "endemic to a single stream in Tennessee".
Obviously, in talking about diseases, "endemic" has a different meaning. The term "epidemic to" isn't used for species distributions, although the same sort of modelling tools can be used for the spread of diseases and the spread of non-native species (which are often called "exotic" species, just to confuse ordinary people).
Michael Santora wrote:
The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is limited by the number of at least marginally notable and verifiable things which exist. After every notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so on have their own article, we'll run out of things to write about. Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, it will happen.
You are grossly underestimating the number of articles. There are more than a million species of insects alone, and each should have an article. Levelling off is not likely to happen until we exceed 100 million.
Ec
On 3/24/07, Michael Santora bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
The number of articles which Wikipedia can have is limited by the number of at least marginally notable and verifiable things which exist. After every notable person, place, movie, scientific topic, and so on have their own article, we'll run out of things to write about. Whether this will happen at 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, it will happen.
I think this premise is wrong. Here are some reasons: * New notable things are created much faster than they are forgotten. How many films, actors, inventions, discoveries, albums, tourist attractions etc become notable each year? * There is no definitive list of abstract concepts that don't correspond to some real-world referent. There is scope for lots of "criticism of X" or "issues in Y" or articles that cut across several different concepts in some new way. Like lists :)
Also, if you imagine the breadth of all Wikipedia articles (places, albums, people) as an X axis, and the depth in certain fields (suburbs in US towns, songs by some singers, borderline as a Y axis, then imagine filling out the whole table. Can you imagine Wikipedia with an article on every suburb in every town of India, with an article about every song by every Chinese pop star, and about every historical figure of Saudi Arabia? It would be a few more than 4 million articles!
Steve