User:Maunus/Vitality

What makes a particular topic vital for an encyclopedia to cover? This is the question I ask myself before deciding whether I think a given topic should be included in wikipedias list of vital articles.

Encyclopedic vitality for me is a function of how significant a phenomenon is for an educated human being to know about - and consequently what is the knowledge that, if lacking, can prompt a reasonably educated person to look up a topic in an encyclopedia.


 * I dont believe in automatic or inherent vitality much. Inherent vitality in the sense of "this is the third Xest Y of the world ergo it must be vital". The worlds fattest, stupidest or hairiest person is not vital by virtue of that feat. An encyclopedia is not Guinness Book of World Records. In the same way a river is not vital simply by virtue of being really long. Vitality does not come from being the oldest, first, or biggest - but from being the best known.


 * I also don't believe in historical vitality, in the sense that entity X caused vital historical event Y and is therefore vital. Vitality is not inherited in this way. Entity X which caused event Y is vital only in so far reasonably educated people can be expected to know that it caused vital event Y. This means that the Manhattan Project is vital not because it created the Nuclear Bomb - but because anyone who wants to engage in informed conversation about the nuclear bomb can be expected to know that it did.


 * I also don't believe in vitality by quotidianity, in the sense that most people use object X every day, or see object x everyday, therefore it is vital. Skidmarks in underpants are exceedingly common, and most people know about them, but knowledge of them are unlikely to be a requirement for participating in a reasonably educated discussion. Often times it is exactly the most quotidian things, like lint or skid marks in underpants, that are least vital for an encyclopedia, simply because noone will ever have the need to look it up.

What we can draw from this is that a topic that is is vital for an encyclopedia is a topic that lies in a specific zone of knowledge in between the very specialized that only experts are expected to know and the very general that everyone is expected to know. It is a topic that many people are likely to be somewhat familiar with but also one are likely to want to know more about. It is a topic that a person is likely to be able to claim some amount of prestige for knowing about, particularly in well to do, well read circles. This, somewhat elitist or bourgeoise view, is a function of the role of encyclopedias as an instrument that mediates cultural and intellectual capital. Encyclopedists therefore are brokers of knowledge and they need to know their market, and the relative value of different kinds of knowledge. Vital topics are kinds of knowledge that must be on the shelves for the encyclopedia to be able to perform that function.

As in all cases on Wikipedia the best guide to what is vital or relevant or not are reliable sources. That a person was included in several prominent lists of "the worlds most important people" is a better guide to vitality than the fact that he invented something we all know. That an historical event has been the topic of a wide literature is a better sign that the event is vital than that the event sparked another event that is of extreme importance for the way the world works today. That a technology is featured in the book "technologies that changed the world" is a better sign of vitality than the fact that most Americans use the technology at home. Sources like this, that demonstrate that other humans have found a particular topic to be extremely significant, should weigh way more in vitality discussions than subjective judgments of its importance by editors.

By choosing what topics are vital we are creating a vision of what types of knowledge are valuable and which ones are less so, and in doing this we are carrying out an educational function. Education is a two-sided sword, because it allows us to give our readers knowledge that they need, but it also imposes assumptions about what kind of knowledge they need. Therefore education, and encyclopedias, are inherently both liberating and oppressive. This is what requires us to be highly cognizant about the criteria by which we choose vital articles.

Objections

 * 1) The concept of the reasonably educated person is ethnocentric and elitist.
 * That is in fact correct, but so is the concept of an encyclopedia itself. Some people think that encyclopedias, and wikipedia in general, are meant to be a compendium of all human knowledge. But this is somewhat incorrect - for such a compendium to be useful it can only be assumed to be a compendium of all human knowledge that most humans deem to be useful. That is there is a sorting process, inherent in the selection of knowledge, and that process is necessarily guided by culture and by cultural norms that tend to be imposed by a cultural elite. What makes wikipedia a non-elitist and democratzing project is exactly the fact that we are putting this knowledge, access to which was previously restricted to the elite that had the money to buy paper encyclopedias at the disposal of groups that are not part of this elite.