Talk:History of encyclopedias

Contested deletion
This page should not be speedy deleted as an unambiguous copyright infringement, because... it was split off from the Wikipedia article Encyclopedia. I'm looking into the source of that article's material right now, and will report my findings below. --The Transhumanist 21:34, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * The source cited by madbot appears to be a mirror of Wikipedia. The material appears to have originated right here on Wikipedia (in the article Encyclopedia, which is undergoing a split.  The Transhumanist 21:52, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Outline changes ! + Rename into History of Western Encyclopedias ?
Hi there, I reorganised a bit the outline to get away from "centuries-based" and now adopt a "stages-based" outline. The article may need some love, more subsections, and to move around some contents. I'am also embarassed about the western-based POV we have here. Being fair, Chinese and Arabic encyclopedias are fairly cited. But 1) not as much as due (Persian ? India ? Sure the Library of Alexandria had some encyclopedia-like scholars, etc.), and 2) I'am not sure we can mix and cover these diverse traditions in a single article. We can do sections by civilisation (Western, Chinese, Indian subcontinent, Islamic), like in the article Calligraphy, pointing to specific traditions. But we cannot honestly mix together widely different civilisation, traditions and timelines. Yug (talk)  19:35, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Any takers ?
Greetings,

A bit different topic. We all know Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. While every 11 January Wikipedia adds up one more year to it's age, encyclopedias and Compendiums too add up a year more to their much longer history.

When did you last visited wikipedia articles Encyclopedia Compendium and History of encyclopedias? What is their status ? When I visited those the last two are tagged for lack citations. In Encyclopedia section too almost six paragraphs are missing in citations.
 * 1) After reading all three articles on Wikipedia as a reader I do not get information what a reader of an encyclopedia is supposed to expect from encyclopedia or readers part many commercial encyclopedias might have done marketing putting those points forward so can one find any such information in any source? (I am not expecting discourses of Wikipedians but discourses of Non Wikipedian intellectuals or marketeers of traditional encyclopedias.
 * 2) Another missing point is how an encyclopedic entry needs to be written features tools challenges etc. again not Wikipedian point of views but editorial or intellectual discourses of traditional encyclopedias writers or editors.
 * 3) How an ideal Compendium and Encyclopedia content quality is supposed to look like (beyond it's alphabetical etc organizational aspects) again not Wikipedian point of views but editorial or intellectual discourses of traditional encyclopedias writers or editors with critique of some Compendium and Encyclopedia.
 * 4) Is there any (Non Wikipedia) source that would say or suggest Compendium and Encyclopedia as  'up to date' state of information / knowledge ?

Actually one anon IP helped with a list of sources too on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities. If topic interests some one following is list of sources with which one can support the articles.


 * Sanford, Eva (1949) Famous Latin Encyclopaedias
 * Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin (1952) A History of Bibliographic Classification in China
 * Preece, Warren (1965) The Organization of Knowledge and the Planning of Encyclopaedias: The Case of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica"
 * Sullivan, Lawrence (1990) Circumscribing Knowledge: Encyclopedias in Historical Perspective
 * Burke, Peter (1996) Reflections on the history of encyclopaedias
 * Binkley, Peter (ed.) (1996) Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts.
 * Fowler, Robert (1996) Encyclopaedias: definitions and theoretical problems
 * Twomey, Michael (1996) Towards a reception history of western medieval encyclopaedias in England before 1500
 * Harvey, Steven (1998) The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy
 * Stockwell, Foster (2000) A History of Information Storage and Retrieval
 * Toshio, Yokoyama (2007) Some notes on the history of Japanese traditional household encyclopedias
 * Würth, Stefanie (2008) Historiography and Pseudo-History
 * Burke, Peter (2013). A Social History of Knowledge.
 * Hope this is a helpful start. If you can’t read any of the paywalled articles, you can request them at WP:RX because you are using them to improve Wikipedia.

Any takers for the task?

Thanks and warm regards.

Bookku (talk) 06:31, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Merge of Encyclopedia
The corresponding section in this article's parent article, Encyclopedia, had diverged, with new material added, or by material being deleted from this article. The content forked off in different directions.

I've merged the distinct material from the parent article into this one, except for the following material. It seemed somewhat dated and not necessarily within the scope of the article. I've included it below, for the community to discuss how to deal with it...

"Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced, multilingual, open licence, free online encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and open source MediaWiki software opened in 2001. Unlike commercial online encyclopedias such as Encyclopædia Britannica Online, which are written by experts, Wikipedia is collaboratively created and maintained by volunteer editors, organized by collaboratively agreed guidelines and user-roles. Most contributors use pseudonyms and stay anonymous. Content is therefore reviewed, checked, kept or removed based on its own intrinsic value and external sources supporting it."

Traditional encyclopedias' reliability, on their side, stand upon authorship and associated professional expertise. Many academics, teachers, and journalists rejected and continue to reject open, crowd sourced encyclopedias, especially Wikipedia, as a reliable source of information, and Wikipedia is itself not a reliable source according to its own standards because of its openly editable and anonymous crowdsourcing model. A study by Nature in 2005 found that Wikipedia's science articles were roughly comparable in accuracy to those of Encyclopædia Britannica, containing the same number of serious errors and about 1/3 more minor factual inaccuracies, but that Wikipedia's writing tended to be confusing and less readable. Encyclopædia Britannica rejected the study's conclusions, deeming the study fatally flawed. As of February 2014, Wikipedia had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors each month. Critics argue Wikipedia exhibits systemic bias. It seems more a comparison of encyclopedic types than a historical treatment, and I leave it for you to decide what should and should not be included in the article. Sincerely,  &mdash; The Transhumanist   22:33, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Add Lu Shi Chunqiu
If Pliny the Elder’s work is worthy of mention here, I’d suggest also including Lu Buwei’s. Many scholars compare them. Other Wikipedia article use “encyclopedia” to describe it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCshi_Chunqiu 80.216.10.58 (talk) 18:15, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 29 February 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: withdrawn. Steel1943 (talk) 23:20, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

History of encyclopedias → History of the encyclopedia – Seems to be a clearer title, especially per other [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&from=History_of_the_a&prefix=History+of+the&hideredirects=1 titles that begin with "History of the..." (starting with "History of the a" for lowercase 4th words)]. See next comment in discussion. Steel1943  (talk) 02:03, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Per Walrasiad's comment, I would like to withdraw this proposal, but cannot due to the "Support" vote by Graham11. Steel1943  (talk) 21:43, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I won't object if you wish to withdraw the proposal (but I very much appreciate your tagging me here). Graham (talk) 21:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Reference works has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 08:01, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject History has been notified of this discussion. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 08:02, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose, a good faith idea but my first thought was "Which encyclopedia?" Randy Kryn (talk) 15:40, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * All of the articles listed in my PrefixIndex link seem to assume to be ended with the phrase "in general" without it being part of the title. Steel1943  (talk) 22:14, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:SINGULAR. Graham (talk) 22:32, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose, on similar wonder as RandyKryn. I would expect this to about the Encyclopedia of 1756. This is not really a technology, but a type of work with multiple titles, and "the" would make it a bit awkward, as if we were selecting one.  Plurals have often be used where there is this sort of ambiguity, e.g. History of books, history of scrolls, history of video games, etc.  Walrasiad (talk) 10:43, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Oppose – per Kryn and Walrasiad. Remsense  诉  12:44, 3 March 2024 (UTC)