[WikiEN-l] Re: Eternal Ephemeral

Fri Oct 31 20:02:52 UTC 2003

> From: Louis Kyu Won Ryu
> I gave up on Wikipedia being an encyclopedia long ago.  It's not; it's
> merely an aggregation of articles.  As a consequence of giving up the
> vision of an encyclopedia, I no longer have any interest in having
> things deleted.  So, no, I myself don't seek out the deletion of
anything.
> 
> We write articles reasonably well, with many excellent examples;
> further, the work of many have made for some excellent topic areas,
> particularly in the sciences.
> 
> Perhaps someday there will be interest in editing these articles into
an
> encyclopedia.
> 
> Encyclopedias are unique works that share certain characteristics
beyond
> topical breadth and NPOV:
> - They are secondary source works;
> - They are comprehensible to a lay person;
> - They are edited for a certain uniformity of style and content across
> articles;
> - They cover topics that in nearly all cases can be checked and
> researched further in any undergraduate college library
> - They are editorial in nature, that is, they are not mere
aggregations
> of data such as sports scores or stock prices
> - They serve a specific niche in a reference collection, with other
> publications having related roles.
> 
> At present, Wikipedia is a repository and means for consensus editing
> for a wide variety of articles, perhaps putting it somewhere next to
> UseNet and GeoCities in 'netspace.
> 
Let's analyze the above. LKWR makes a claim: Wikipedia is not an
encyclopedia. He establishes criteria for what he considers an
encyclopedia. 
He concludes the Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia.

What's missing?

That's right. He fails to show how Wikipedia does not meet his criteria.

Looking at them, I suppose one could argue that Wikipedia's articles
don't have sufficient uniformity of style and content, and that the
articles are not sufficiently editorial in nature.

But he didn't make that argument, and to do so would require examples.

So there's more needed.