Merritt L. Perkins wrote:
What is an encyclopedia?
Larry Sanger, Wikipedia's former project leader, spend some time pondering this question. Specifically, he wrote "The elements of an encyclopedia project", which you can find at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_elements_of_an_encyclopedia_pr oject . There are other essays at http://meta.wikipedia.org/ that you might enjoy as well. Feel free to post your own thought on the subject!
Stephen G.