[WikiEN-l] What's so bad about Comixpedia?

Thu Sep 15 13:01:49 UTC 2005

dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>I truly don't get it. I personally own a print set of the Encyclopedia 
>Britannica, 11th edition, as well as the current Britannica on CD. But I also 
>must own at least a dozen specialized "encyclopedias" that cover narrow 
>topics of interest to me in depth.
>
>I thought that there was consensus that Wikipedia a) is an encyclopedia, and 
>b) is not "an indiscriminate collection of information." If so, Wikipedia has 
>bounds, set not by disk space, but by a shared vision of what should be in a 
>general-purpose encyclopedia.
>
>What's so bad about dedicated organizations creating Wikipedia-like 
>encyclopedias devoted to in-depth coverage of narrower topics? How is this 
>different from Wikipedia breaking off "sister projects?"
>
>As far as the end-user is concerned, if you want specialized knowledge of 
>webcomics it makes sense to go to Comixpedia. And if you do a Google search 
>on some relatively obscure webcomic that is in Comixpedia but not Wikipedia, 
>it will find it for you just as effectively as if it had been in Wikipedia.
>
>This sounds like a Good Thing to me. 
>
>I mean, it's not like "I, my Wikipedia, am a jealous Wiki. Thou shalt have no 
>other Wikis." How do specialized Wiki-based encyclopedias hurt us in any way? 
>
>  
>
Not in the least, if they are GFDL'd, as their more notable and 
encyclopedic material can be beamed up to the mothership in due course.

-- Neil