[WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

Sat Jun 3 18:17:52 UTC 2006

On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> > > imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> > > created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> > > is it a peek into a work in progress?
> > >
> >
> > The principle of the Wikipedia is that it's a work in progress, surely?
>
> A perpetual work in progress? Do we never want to deliver a "complete"
> first version?
>
>
There are reasons why having a set of content that one can consider stable
enough to stop editing on or put on a CD or put on paper is beneficial, but
the project of Wikipedia can never be truly "complete". It will never be a
sum of all human knowledge, because that knowledge is always changing and
there are always different ways to write about it (and different points of
view, changing analyses, etc.) Without an over-arching editor who stamps
"DONE" on it, it will never stop. Since all users get to be that editor, it
seems unlikely that it will ever truly stabilize. Even relatively obscure
topics draw new people and editing to them after awhile, and it is usually
for the better, I think.

CD projects and paper projects are nice sub-projects, and motivate all sorts
of good group-editing efforts, but the "goal" of Wikipedia itself is not to
produce them (in the way that the goal of Encyclopedia Brit. is to produce a
sellable product). It *is* to produce an encyclopedia, but part of the very
nature of Wikipedia is to redefine that from a stodgy, out-of-date set of
books on a shelf, into something more dynamic, up-to-date, with a scope not
limited by the physical or economic limitations of paper. Let's remember
what makes us wonderfully different rather than getting "paper-envy". ;-)

FF