From: Timwi timwi@gmx.net Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
A weak point of Wikipedia is that people write about what they are interested in, so given several topics of apparently comparable importance, the length, depth, and quality of the articles may differ widely.
This is true. This is called "Systematic bias": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: Replies_to_common_objections#Systematic_bias
This largely escapes notice in the web edition, but will become much more apparent in a print edition.
Is that really so bad, though?
Not on the Web, no.
I'm sure most people will understand. :)
Yeah, right. I'm sure they'll understand why Phillips Exeter has an article and Choate (now Choate Rosemary Hall) doesn't.
Why Bronx High School of Science has an article and La Guardia High School of Music and Art (of _Fame_ fame) does not.
Why Cal Tech gets five paragraphs, Princeton gets seven, Harvard gets fourteen, and MIT gets thirty-six. (This means the section on MIT's _architecture_ is longer than the _entire article on Princeton._)
Why Radiology has nine paragraphs and Cytology gets one sentence.
Why Marianne Moore gets eight paragraphs and Vachel Lindsay gets "Vachel Lindsay (1879 - December 5, 1931) was an American poet born in Springfield, Illinois."
It doesn't bother me at all on the Web, but I think the slogan "Wikipedia is not paper" may turn out to have an uncomfortable amount of truth in it.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@world.std.com alternate: dpbsmith@alum.mit.edu "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
On Sunday 29 February 2004 22:41, Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
Yeah, right. I'm sure they'll understand why Phillips Exeter has an article and Choate (now Choate Rosemary Hall) doesn't.
Why Bronx High School of Science has an article and La Guardia High School of Music and Art (of _Fame_ fame) does not.
Why Cal Tech gets five paragraphs, Princeton gets seven, Harvard gets fourteen, and MIT gets thirty-six. (This means the section on MIT's _architecture_ is longer than the _entire article on Princeton._)
Why Radiology has nine paragraphs and Cytology gets one sentence.
Why Marianne Moore gets eight paragraphs and Vachel Lindsay gets "Vachel Lindsay (1879 - December 5, 1931) was an American poet born in Springfield, Illinois."
It doesn't bother me at all on the Web, but I think the slogan "Wikipedia is not paper" may turn out to have an uncomfortable amount of truth in it.
If this becomes a serious issue, I think that it could be solved by publishing separate topical encyclopedias. For example, "Wikipedia of Informatics", "Wikipedia of Mathematics" and so on, for every topic that is complete.