[WikiEN-l] Re: Eternal Ephemeral

Fri Oct 31 22:00:30 UTC 2003

Louis Kyu Won Ryu wrote:

>
> 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; 

Check - I've seen very little primary material.

>
> - They are comprehensible to a lay person; 

Check - I'm a lay person in everything but CS, and I can understand 
random articles;
with the exception of math articles, most of which need more 
context-setting.

>
> - They are edited for a certain uniformity of style and content across 
> articles; 

Check - at least half of the torrent of edits are to enforce unformity. 
Noobs usually
learn pretty quickly to follow standard style if they want to see their 
text live
intact for more than a day. :-)

>
> - They cover topics that in nearly all cases can be checked and 
> researched further in any undergraduate college library 

Check - that's where I go for my source material. Actually, "any college 
library" is
setting the bar pretty low - college libraries aren't what they used to be.

>
> - They are editorial in nature, that is, they are not mere 
> aggregations of data such as sports scores or stock prices 

Check, although the unfinished articles will be lacking here.

> - They serve a specific niche in a reference collection, with other 
> publications having related roles.

Check - when I write articles, I'm hitting the highlights and key 
points, and make refs and ext
links point to the exhaustively in-depth stuff, and I see most other 
people doing the same thing.
References are too few and far between still, I've been thinking about 
efficient ways to fix that.

So that's great, looks like WP generally fits your criteria!

Stan