[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and detail

[Stan Shebs]

Timwi wrote:

> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>> There is a place in the world for large amounts of detailed material,
>> but this shouldn't be the goal of an encyclopedia.
>
>
> Funny, and somehow I thought that the goal of Wikipedia is to "collect 
> the sum of human knowledge".

An oft-used definition of encyclopedia is "compendium of human
knowledge", where "compendium" means a summarized collection.
On the other hand, my OED defines "encyclopedia" as a "literary
work containing extensive information on all branches of
knowledge", with no reference to abbreviation or summarization.

So we have a situation where reasonable people can differ as to
whether summarization is desirable. Empirically, however,
I think if one were to take a recent scientific paper and make
a WP article embodying every last bit of its content, including
charts, tables, statistical methods, experimental technique, etc,
most editors would find the result "too detailed". But perhaps
when all the summary-type articles are done, this will be the new
frontier of development. (anything but endless recategorization,
please... :-) )

Stan