[WikiEN-l] That's a Micropaedia

Thu Sep 15 19:57:08 UTC 2005

> >Actually on "one-line articles", my preference
> >is for articles (or at least article intros)
> >that can fit into the first screen. This is an
> >internet encyclopedia and if you can't say
> >something useful in the first
> >paragraph then the reader will wander off
> >to another site.  If an article
> >can be written well as a single sentence,
> >I think that's a good
> >thing--indeed an ideal to aim for.
> 
> "Article intros that can fit into the first screen." Oh, absolutely, by all
> means.
> 
> Now I'm going to pretend that I didn't read that key qualification and tear
> off onto a rant.
> 
> ARTICLES that can fit into one screen? No, no, no. That's not an
> encyclopedia, that's the Britannica MICROpaedia.
> 
> An encyclopedia is not about data, it's about knowledge.
> 
> An encyclopedia's job is to make knowledge _accessible_. An encyclopedia
> explains. An encyclopedia _instructs_. That's what the "-pedia" part is all
> about. An encyclopedia is supposed to synthesize and make sense of topics.

And this is where I stopped reading your mail, which I found to be way
to long. I (and almost everyone else) do the same thing for articles.

-- Mvh Björn