Ray Saintonge wrote: Hoi, The sources are a place where information can be verified. They are not necessarily easily available, they are not necessararily the best place to find more and better information. Sources refer to what was used to write an article or to prove a point. What I am on about is that given a factual article where do you turn to for more informative information that is readily available and goes beyond what can be expected of an encyclopedia. The point made in the program was that there is more than one source, people have to learn that one source however correct is not all there is to know about a subject. We try our best to be NPOV and it is good to know where to find the POV's. My point is that giving references for verification is defensive while pointing out where more can be found is one way of extending a helping hand to the people in our public who are looking for more information. Thanks, GerardM

On 5/28/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: Hogwash. When you go into a library it's highly likely that you could go directly to a detailed book on whatever subject you are interested in, but libraries still have encyclopedias. Readers have finite time, and very many have a literacy level much lower than the typical Wikipedia editor. By making our articles too detailed we run the risk of making the basic information inaccessible to the vast majority of the users who are only interested in the basics. Furthermore, while Wikipedia is not paper there are many other resources limitations that we face, for example: editors. How can we ensure the accuracy, quality, and NPOVness of a great many very long and detailed articles? Also we are source limited, as an article on a subject becomes increasingly long it becomes increasingly difficult to add to it without engaging in original research. So do have scaling limits of our own. There is a place in the world for large amounts of detailed material, but this shouldn't be the goal of an encyclopedia. The methods used to create, edit, and maintain very highly detailed works differ from the best methods for a higher level work and the community of editors most likely differs as well. There is great value in being concise and today we mostly look to an encyclopedia for a concise source.

On 5/28/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: So how do wikibooks, wiktionary, and wikiquotes fit into this? :)

Speaking of which, why on earth do we mention etymologies of words in articles such as [[en:Archaeology]] or [[en:Zoölogy]]? When [[scn:Trisceli]] was the Translation of the Week, I had a laugh over reading in Chinese "The etymology of the word 'three-legged figure'' is from the Greek 'triskelion'" or something along those lines because quite obviously the Chinese translation (a meaning-based translation meaning iirc "three-legged figure") is not related to the Greek, but it was amended so as to say that the _English_ name came from the Greek. Other Chinese articles including etymologies that are even more irrelevant than in the English versions are articles on the sciences; I mostly deleted those sections when /manually/ converting to Traditional for closed-zh-tw: (at the time, of course, it was zh-tw:). Mark On 29/05/05, Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: -- SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM POSSIT MATERIARI ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE

On 5/28/05, David Gerard <fun(a)thingy.apana.org.au> wrote: Hm. I haven't seen that one yet, ... That's grounds for pruning text or splitting an article and not grounds for deletion. I suppose there might be a case where there is so much inappropriate material that it would be better to restart.... but that would be a very special case. I'd really like to see an example so I could lart the culprit myself. Eh, there are some subarticles that are out of date because people find the main one and edit it while the sub article doesn't get any love and attention. Also, when you start splitting articles you end up with a lot of duplicated material that can make reading all of them (when you are really interested) tedious. For example, consider articles about characters in works of fiction vs the text on the characters all gathered up under the work in question, or an article 'Characters used in soandsos writings' + redirects. Wikipedia isn't the only place in the world to store knowledge. It's clear that we already are aware of that, which is why we have wikibooks, wikiquotes, and wiktionary. If I gave you an algorithm that generated an infinite amount of text without ever repeating itself I could rightly tell you that the answer to any question you might ask is in the output. But you find this very useful. There is value in being concise, there is value to partitioning, and there is value to excluding. *Wikipedia is not paper*. I see this often cited, but I think it is often cited by people who fail to grasp all of the implications, for example: We have a search engine, redirects, and hyperlinks, so every subject doesn't need an article of its own; people can be expected to find material inside other articles. We can provide instanious links to detailed information in millions of places all over the Internet as well as information contained in other wikimedia projects, so it is not optimum to provide all possible details in every article. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. This implies a relationship between the reader and the material (he is searching a lot and looking for more basic information on average), and it implies things about the creation of material (citations, avoiding original research, NPOV, trying to include a more general audience). Some content is best created and presented under a different set of criteria. By excluding this content, and perhaps giving it a home of its own, we improve useablity for everyone.

Gregory Maxwell wrote: No, not really. The reason we have Wikibooks, Wikiquote and Wiktionary is because the community wanted them. Again, it comes down to the community majority opinion. It is no surprise that, with there being a distinction between an "encyclopaedia" and a "dictionary" in the real world, a majority of contributors will want to mirror that distinction out of tradition. The statement that "Wikipedia isn't the only place in the world to store knowledge" is invented later to justify this. It is relatively obvious that it would be hypothetically possible to store all knowledge in Wikipedia; people do not deny this, but they only question that it is desirable. And again, it comes down to the community majority opinion. Timwi

On 5/28/05, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote: I'm aware of this, although it's clear that summarization is implied simply because it is necessary. :) Right, I don't argue that we don't want to eventually have everything... But rather that it's useful to have a concise resource as well as comprehensive ones, that we should call the concise resource an encyclopedia (since that meshes well with the common use), and that our rules and abilities make us better suited to producing the concise resource first. This doesn't mean I think people should write detailed information, bur rather that they should do whatever they want, but the details stuff probably belongs some place else, such as wikibooks.

--- Timwi <timwi(a)gmx.net> wrote: While I fully agree with that statement, I'd like to add that, from a usability perspective, having all that depth in one article is bad. Thus the use of summary style that allows readers to zoom to the level of detail they need. -- mav __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour: http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html