Daniel Mayer wrote:
This is sadly true and I'm part of the problem since I love to write about specific topics concerning geology yet have never added much to core geology-related articles such as [[geology]] or [[mineralogy]]. This also seems to be true for articles about specific species (we have many well-developed ones) vs articles about core biology-related topics (not many well-developed ones).
I think this may be because writing those "easy" articles is actually *harder*, even though they're more common in general encyclopedias. I can write a pretty good article about any specific topic in computer science, and many in philosophy, given my background knowledge and a bit of research. But writing [[computer science]] or [[philosophy]] (or even a sub-topic, like [[philosophy of mind]] or [[artificial intelligence]]) is much, much harder.
Fortunately, we're not the only ones who find it so. Our general articles are lacking compared to other encyclopedias, but none really have well-respected ones. If you take an article in Britannica on a general topic, like [[geology]] or [[biology]] or [[computer science]], and show it to someone in the field, 90% of the time the person is going to think it's a crappy article that misses the point in some important way, or leaves out something crucial. Of course, if that person writes what they think is a better summary (and many do, in the form of textbooks), generally only some of the field will agree it's a better summary, and a significant percentage will think *that* description sucks too. It's very hard to do an NPOV description of such broad topics that's at the same time readable as an intro...
-Mark