On 22/07/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
This can be seen in a lot of EB1911 articles imported into Wikipedia, which have to have value judgments removed from them. EB has tended not to have a problem simply stating /ex cathedra/ things like "[X] is a terrible novel and not up to the quality we've come to expect from [Y]".
I don't have it to hand, but I recently acquired a 1898 copy of Pear's Cyclopedia, one of the "small encyclopedias" that were quite common around then - and, indeed, it still exists today.
It had a general encylopedic section. I think the most wonderfully opinionated article I found in this was on Russia, which after a few breathless passages on how wonderful and civilised the place was ended with "...which is why Russia simply must get a port on the Mediterranean!" Extreme case, but not rare...