[WikiEN-l] The percentage of English Wikipedia articles about living people over time.

[phoebe ayers]

On 10/16/07, Wily D <wilydoppelganger at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/16/07, cohesion <cohesion at sleepyhead.org> wrote:
> > On 10/16/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Enwikipedia_articles_bios_pct_200710.svg
> > >
> > > Discuss amongst yourselves.
> >
> > Thank goodness it seems to have peaked, definitely interested in the
> > next couple months though... I'm a little surprised the percentage is
> > so high, but I don't think it's bad really. Biographies of many living
> > people are useful. Who's to say what the right percentage is. As long
> > as it's somewhat stable of course :)
> >
> > Judson
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cohesion
>
> Indeed, that's the right question to ask: What percentage should it
> be?  What's the percentage in other encyclopaedias?
>
> Presumably, in a complete Wikipedia, the percentage would be much
> lower (I believe the current estimates are that ~5% of all humans are
> currently alive, and I'd guess our existing biographies are more about
> alive people than that).  But how does it compare to other
> encyclopaedias?
>
> Cheers
> WilyD


Here's a historical tidbit from a lovely book I'm slowly reading by Robert
Collison called "Encyclopedias: their history throughout the ages" (1966) --
he claims that Johann Heinrich Zedler's "Grosses vollstandiges
Universal-Lexicon", first pub. in 1731, was the first encyclopedia to
include biographies of living people. Not sure, in turn, how he figured this
out (extensive historical research, I think) but it's nice to know that
living bios have at least as long a pedigree in the modern encyclopedia as
philosophical articles (e.g. the "Encyclopedie", first published in 1751)
and technical/practical articles (e.g. Chambers' "Cyclopedia", first
published in 1728).

Incidentally, if any of you are encyclopedia fans and you find an
inexpensive copy of Collison's book, buy it -- it's out of print and
difficult to find.

-- phoebe