points by keiferski 2 days ago | 0 comments
No, that is not the point of an encyclopedia. The point is to condense an entry as much as possible while being thorough enough to cover most relevant information.
[–] pixl97 2 days ago
[–] 05hundred 2 days ago
"most relevant info" is highly subjective though. One mans "most relevant info" is another mans "unsatisfying read".
[–] gwbas1c 2 days ago
The difference with Wikipedia is that additional articles can be added for more details; they don't all need to be crammed into a single article.
A digital encyclopedia has different constraints, and the hard part was always trying to figure out what to leave out. Also in encyclopedias, you get what you get from the one or two people that worked on that particular article. If they had biases it would shape what everyone in the world saw. In an online article it can become a battle on what people want to see.
It is a difficult problem.