[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[William Pietri]

Delirium wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>   
>> How?  Have you ever looked at a paper encyclopaedia?  Every article is
>> verifiable from numerous published sources.  [...] if we step
>> over that edge we cease to be an encyclopaedia and become something
>> else.
>>   
>>     
>
> I'm not going to argue we should follow their lead, but this isn't 
> universally the case.  Britannica, to pick only the most famous 
> encyclopedia, is well known for hiring famous people to write original 
> research for their articles. [...]
> The previous conception of an encyclopedia was that it be a compendium 
> of *true* things, even if the truths flatly contradict the existing 
> secondary literature (sometimes Britannica will explicitly say things 
> like, "most commentators say [x], but this is false").  The 
> justification for the truth was not sourcing to existing literature, but 
> the combined prestige of the article's author and Britannica itself.
>   


When I'm chewing over something I've read in some Wikipedia discussion, 
I'll often go and flip through the reproduction I have of the first 
edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I take a certain pleasure in 
entries like this one:

    BOTARGO, a kind of sausage, made with the eggs and blood of the
    sea-mullet, a large fish common in the Mediterranean. The best kind
    comes from Tunis in Barbary: It must be chosen dry and reddish. The
    people of Provence use a great deal of it, the common way of eating
    it being with olive oil and lemon juice. There is also a great
    consumption of botargo throught all the Levant.

    Botargo pays on importation 2 87/100d the pound; whereof 2 58/100d
    is repaid on exportation.


Shamelessly POV, with dollops of cookbook, dictionary, and tax guide. 
But I think they were ok with that.

In the preface they open by saying, "Utility ought to be the principal 
intention of every publication. Wherever this intention does not plainly 
appear, neither the books nor their authors have the smallest claim to 
the approbation of mankind." They then go on to say, "We will, however, 
venture to affirm, that any man of ordinary parts, may, if he chuses, 
learn the principles of Agriculture, of Astronomy, of Botany, of 
Chemistry, &c, &c, from the Encyclopaedia Britannica."

William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri