Talk:Encyclopedia/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Cross-references and indices

I removed the paragraph claiming that cross references and indices were an innovation of encyclopedias during the 18th and 19th centuries. Cross references were already common in medieval manuscripts; does anyone have information about when subject-matter indexes became common? David 21:40, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

According to the introduction to the Classified table of contents of EB1911 (Vol 29,p 879, the classfied list of articles (pp 891-947) was the first attempt in any general reference work. Some early enclopaedias ed EB6ed listed contributors. Rees's Cyclopaedia (1802-1819) does have cross-references at some of the longer articles. Apwoolrich 21:55, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is now defunct

"Projects like the now defunct Nupedia, h2g2, and Wikipedia"

Fictional encyclopedias

Where did the fictional encyclopedias go? - RoyBoy 800 20:30, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Look in the List of encyclopedias. And in the category for encyclopedias; and within that, there's a category for fictional ones, though not much used at this point.

Non-Western Encyclopedias

This article makes it sound as if encyclopedias were unique to Europe after the middle ages, when this is not true. In Japan, for example, encyclopedic works have been produced constantly since the ninth century C.E. This discussion would benefit from a broader perspective, especially given the fact that encyclopedias purport to encompass all of human understanding.

science

what was the name of the sciencist that preformed the rock experiment which rock drps fist

Are you referring to Galileo's experiment to show that gravity applies a constant force regardless of mass? Not sure why you are asking this on the encyclopedia page. njh 10:09, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

What is an encyclopedia?

Is it a book that we read from the first to the last page? A newspaper, in which we read each article which interest us, from the beginning to the end? A place where we come to get the information that we search? --Aïki 04:06, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

It's a reference book. Like a library, compacted. When you want to know about something, you find the information on that subject. flux.books 23:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
The definition of encyclopedia is a little more complex than what has been offered above. In the 21st century I think we can all agree that an encyclopedia no longer has to be in the form of a book, therefore the concept of a physical object needs to be sat aside. However, there is a glaring fundamental flaw in calling Wikipedia an encyclopedia. I argue that Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia and should be removed from this list.
Encyclopedias use the input from selected text writers (as stated on the page) and frequently those text writers have academic credentials adding authenticity to their contribution. Open source lists, such as Wikipedia, do not necessarily use input from credible people such as text writers qualified in specific field. This, however, is not the fundamental weakness of Wikipedia.
Wikipedia lacks an editor or publisher. Wikipedia lacks any one person or company or board or committee to stand up and take responsibility for what is published. An encyclopedia is produced by a publishing company and there is often an editor who assumes (on behalf of that company) responsibility for content. If there is a mistake, or erroneous content, or fabrication, or plagiarism, then that editor and subsequently the publishing company stand up and take the heat. Wikipedia is an anonymous list of words with nobody (not even Jimbo himself) willing to take responsibility.
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. Wikipedia is more akin to a chalk board bolted to the back of the stall door in a public toilet. Anyone can sit on the toilet and write anything they want. Subsequent visitors can remove, add, edit, vandalize… they can do anything. Nobody will stop them from doing anything they want because nobody is willing to stand up and assume responsibility. WikiPolice and WikiThugs (you know who you are) make sure their favorite chalk boards contain only the words agreeable to them. Any dissenting opinions are doomed to a hasty removal or alteration to conform to the WikiThug’s demands. (check out any controversial topic and review the history of the edits to see clear validation of this charge. A good place to start is the Ivory Coast page – a month’s long raging debate is being held in check by a few WikiThugs who demand their opinion about the name of the country is presented and preserved and any other opinion is swept aside. Check out Liancourt Rocks and the argument between pro-Japan and pro-Korean naming aficionados.)
Encyclopedias have editors deciding what is and what is not included. If you, as a contributor to Wikipedia, offer input on a topic deemed trivial by WikiPolice and WikiThugs, then your entry might quickly be removed because, after all, they decided it was trivial. Add it again, and it might be hastily removed again. Those wars can also be seen across Wikipedia where a page is created and yanked within minutes and the process goes on and on and on until somebody gets weary of the game and retreats. Encyclopedias do not experience such content tugs of wars because an editor makes a call and the matter is decided. “Wikipedia's articles are not necessarily peer reviewed and many of those articles are of a trivial nature.” Who decides an article is trivial? Basically it is consensus. If enough people agree that the world is flat, then the Wikipage on Earth will state that the world is flat and those people will make sure (through WikiThugs) that this is the view put forth.
Encyclopedias are not anonymous. Though the actual writer of the text may not be clearly named, there is a publisher and an editor listed and they take responsibility for the content. Wikipedia is completely anonymous. The identity information provided by some contributors is just as worthless as an IP Address or no name at all. Anyone can claim to be anyone and therefore the contribution from a completely anonymous contributor is as valid as a contribution from someone who has taken the time to create an extensive identity within Wikipedia. Those contributors who fall back on the demand that contributors presenting conflicting information, and who happen to do it anonymously, should not be given recognition due to anonymity are – by the nature of Wikipedia – inane. All contributions are completely anonymous on Wikipedia until there is a legitimate means of presenting real identity. Therefore any argument against an “anonymous” contributor is moot.
“Legitimate concerns have been raised as to the accuracy of information generated through open source projects generally.” Recent controversy substantiates this claim. The class action suit against Wikipedia is evidence that there are at least some people out there displeased with the free-for-all nature of Wikipedia and the way the scribbling on the toilet stall door is presented as fact.
Oh, Jimbo, what have you unleashed?


Sign me 120.67.332.874, or Fl@shGirl, or A.G.Smith, or any other pen name you might like… it’s all meaningless.
Actually, your apparent claim that every single Wikipedia contributor is completely anonymous and there is no responsibility or face behind any edit is false. Besides Jimmy Wales being responsible for the edits of User:Jimbo Wales (unless he has shared his password or if his password ever leaks out or if his password is guessed), numerous Wikipedian identities are verified. See for example User:Charles Matthews. He went to a Wiki-meet up and acknowledged being User:Charles Matthews (hmm...he might be lying though); all Wikipedians at a given Wiki-meet up are by default acknowledging their Wikipedia accounts (of course, not in all cases: if someone shows up at a Wiki-meet up and claims to be the editor behind a random IP but there is no evidence, then it is just a claim, etc.). So there is a growing number of established identities. 69.111.13.246 06:11, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Of course, there are numerous cases where I don't know if an identity claim has been verified. See for example User:Morven (excuse the example): is he who he claims to be? Has he assumed someone's real identity? :-) One can imagine a future case (it's probably happened already) where someone starts an account and assumes the identity of a real person. 69.111.13.246 06:22, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

While the section above reads like a rant (repeating the "public toilet" bullshit, which has been thoroughly refuted and which a certain former Britannica editor ought to ashamed of), there does seem to be a recent groundswell of opinion among some commentators that trustworthiness (which Wikipedia is alleged to not possess) is a prerequisite to being called an encyclopedia. As I noted in Talk:Wikipedia, the stimulus for much of this seems to be Wikipedia itself--this line of argument seems to be a recent phenomenon, generated as a reaction to Wikipedia. As nothing like Wikipedia has existed before, it isn't entirely surprising that Wikipedia has generated a new line of argument in opposition.

And, to be fair to Wikipedia, turstworthiness is the objection against Wikipedia. Many critics allege we don't have peer review, expert editors, or other things--whereas it is easily shown that Wikipedia does have peer review, editors who are subject-matter experts, etc. in many (most) cases. Ignoring the accusations that are plainly false, questionable, or refutable, the arguments against Wikipedia seem to boil down to the following:

1) Wikipedia doesn't guarantee that each and every article has been vetted by experts and multiple peer reviewers.

2) Many contributors to Wikipedia are pseudonomyous (and some, using IP addresses are outright anonymous).

3) Contributors are unlikely to suffer harm (such as being fired, sued, or suffering professional humiliation or scorn) if they "get it wrong", so they lack incentive to exercise the extreme caution which allegedly guides editors and writers at traditional publications.

Now--the question remains: Should any of the above disqualify WP as an "encyclopedia", or is an encyclopedia merely a compendium of facts about some subject matter, without regard to how those facts are discovered, compiled, and set forth?

Currently, the authoritative definitions of what constitutes an "encyclopedia" (including definitions in existing dictionaries and encyclopedias, excluding WP and Wiktionary), seem to not mention any requirements for a particular editorial model. Most of the suggestions that WP isn't an encyclopedia come from sources who are biased, unauthorative, or both--there's no reason we should give a fig what Andrew Orlowski thinks the proper definition of an "encyclopedia" is; he's not an authority on the subject. For that matter, pronouncements by Britannica editors that aren't part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica proper should also be similarily disregarded; just as claims made by Jimmy Wales concerning the EB wouldn't constitute evidence of anything. Now, if Britannica were to put their money where their mouth is and write an article (doing the necessary research, of course) demonstrating that open-edit publications such as WP don't qualify as encyclopedias, that might be worth looking at. (Of course, Britannica 's neutrality on the subject would be questionable). But at this time, the reliable sources out there advance a definition of "encyclopedia" which most definitely includes Wikipedia.

--EngineerScotty 17:55, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm correcting the definition

I'm changing the definition in the article of an encyclopedia to more-closely match historical precedent and lexicographical usage. Here's how Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defines an encyclopedia:

a work that treats comprehensively all the various branches of knowledge and that is usually composed of individual articles arranged alphabetically.

The word comes from the Greek words enkyklios paideia, meaning "general education".[1] However, in the article's lead paragraph, there was no mention of how general encyclopedias deal with all areas of knowledge, so I corrected this. I think the "Wikipedia is not a random collection of information" policy has thrown people off as to what an encyclopedia is versus what Wikipedia chooses to be. Whether Wikipedia wants to differ from what people generally consider an encyclopedia is up to it. Historically, how focused an encyclopedia is has been a function of how much space it has at its disposal. Since Wikipedia, per the WP:NOT page, does not have a "practical limit to the number of topics we can cover other than verifiability" we can cover just about anything. Encyclopedias always retain roundedness, so they cover the whole world and not just a part of it. For example, the Enciclopedia universal ilustrada europeo-americana, an 119-volume work almost as large as Wikipedia, has integrated dictionaries of English, German, Spanish, Esperanto, Portuguese, and Italian words. It also has maps of small towns, making it effectively a guide book, as well. Another example would be anything from Larousse, which also contain embedded dictionaries. The Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste at 162 volumes only halfway completed is certainly larger than Wikipedia. I cited M-W's Third above--the second-largest English-language dictionary. Here's how Encyclopedia Britannica defines an encyclopedia:

Today most people think of an encyclopaedia as a multivolume compendium of all available knowledge, complete with maps and a detailed index, as well as numerous adjuncts such as bibliographies, illustrations, lists of abbreviations and foreign expressions, gazetteers, and so on.

Later in the intro, it says the following:

In this article the word encyclopaedia has been taken to include not only the great general encyclopaedias of the past and the present but all types of works that claim to provide in an orderly arrangement the essence of “all that is known” on a subject or a group of subjects. This includes dictionaries of philosophy and of American history as well as volumes such as The World Almanac and Book of Facts, which is really a kind of encyclopaedia of current information.

Further, here's how the most complete and respected English dictionary, the Oxford English Dictionary, defines an encyclopedia (most quotes and etymology omitted, except where needed):

1. The circle of learning; a general course of instruction.
1708 Motteux Rabelais v. xx, In you are lodg’d a Cornucopia, an Encyclopedia, an unmeasurable Profundity of Knowledge.
2. A literary work containing extensive information on all branches of knowledge, usually arranged in alphabetical order.
1841 Myers Cath. Th. iii. ii. 4 The Bible is..by no means indeed an Encyclopædia.
The word in this sense appears first as the title of certain works published in the 17th cent. esp. that of Alstedius (see quot. 1819).
b. Sometimes applied spec. to the French work ‘Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers’ (1751­-1765), by Diderot, D’Alembert, and other eminent scholars and men of science.
3. An elaborate and exhaustive repertory of information on all the branches of some particular art or department of knowledge; esp. one arranged in alphabetical order.
hence
en"cyclo'pædiac a.
[see -ac], = ENCYCLOPÆDIC; . . .

I have heard people often misinterpret the word encyclopedia on Wikipedia to meaning that an encyclopedia is not a "how-to guide" (I understand that this is a policy, WP:NOT.) However, every student encyclopedia I know of (e.g., World Book, Compton's) gives instructions on how to do things, like write letters and act in formal situations (see the "etiquette" article in World Book). I'd like to close with a quote from Jimbo Wales:

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.[2]--Jimbo Wales

--Primetime 21:01, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

regarding "encyclopædia"

This is a legitimate spelling. I can be found in the OED, as well as Encyclopædia Britannica. If someone wants to make a sub-section in the article to explain in more detail about it, that's fine. Or even better, in Wiktionary. But the fact is, it's usage can be found in the real world and we report on what the real world does, not what we think the real world should do. -- Stbalbach 17:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

No, it can not be found in the Britannica. The Britannica's article "encyclopaedia" begins as follows: "encyclopaedia, also spelled encyclopedia (from Greek enkyklios paideia, "general education"), reference work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or that treats a particular branch of knowledge in a comprehensive manner." This is the best proof that the ligature is archaic, for if the Britannica thought it weren't archaic (and therefore inappropriate) it would certainly mention it at least as an alternative spelling, if not use it as the main spelling, in accordance with their proper name (which obviously they do not alter for tradition's sake). As to the OED, its main corpus, including the "encyclopædia" entry, dates from 1928 as is thus itself archaic. It does not make any difference ever between "ae" and "æ", it just generally uses "æ", thus it also has "archæology", without mentioning "archaeology" at all, etc. If you go by that, you'd have to conclude that "archaeology" is not a proper spelling and thus move the Wikipedia article of that name. But obviously we don't go by the OED. Current dictionaries do not include the ligature version. And the article already has a section about the spelling, mentioning that the ligature is archaic. Including it at the top as if it were a current variant makes the article self-contradictory. Kroliv 17:41, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
I can see some reasoning there. I was going by the title of Encyclopædia Britannica, but that is simply a product name. I think as long as we have a discussion about the archaic form in the main article. And that that lead section be clear that it is an archaic form (or not mention it for that reason). Another discussion of similar lines is "Medieval", see Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle Ages/British spelling of Medieval. -- Stbalbach 17:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
Little of this is convincing. Not only is the above an arguably subjective diatribe – which even the titular Encyclopædia Britannica (brand or otherwise) refutes – but said edit warrior has created at least three user names (two of which have been blocked) to insinuate this viewpoint. None of the above obviates the ligature variant (though rare) and see no reason to not note it herein ... for more words and variants, consult this article. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 17:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
The note is acceptable (but needs to be tweaked); however, I have restored the alternate spelling upfront which, for balance, is just as correct as the simpler rendition. And assertions of not 'going by the OED' are, frankly, senseless – e.g, Athenaeum, coeliac disease, et al. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 18:03, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
It's actually an interesting exercise to search on "Encyclopædia" at http://a9.com (millions of books full-text). I only found the below 5 that post-date 1960 (and not EB), and I think they are all out of print. It is a clear trend, most of the cases are from 19th century, and as time moves forward there are fewer and fewer each decade. So yes it's very rare and getting even rarer.
--Stbalbach 18:44, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
While this demonstrates that the ligature rendition is uncommon, it does not demonstrate that it is incorrect ... and that's the point. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 18:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
The authority in favor of the ligature is mixed at best; note that even the 1910-1911 11th edition did not use the ligature in the articles. See this discussion and the images it links to. Ligatures were only used in archaic (eg Old Norse/English) or words literally translated (eg from French). And the current usage, and realities of how wikipedia is used, are clearly against the ligature. flux.books 12:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Definition - "branches"?

What is a "branch of knowledge"? The lead definition mentions this twice, but the body text has no mention of this. It seems to refer to a very particular idea of how knowledge can be classified and categorized. Unless a reference to "branches of knowledge" is made in the body text, or the "branches" of knowledge described, I would propose to remove these terms.

Pusle8 (talk) 19:43, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

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Draft outline

Just a note but there's a draft for an outline of this topic at Wikipedia:WikiProject Outlines/Drafts/Outline of encyclopedias. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 11:17, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

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