[Ffmpeg-devel] Re: [OT] Wikipedia

[Diego Biurrun]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 03:33:45PM -0800, Mike Melanson wrote:
> M?ns Rullg?rd wrote:
> >The Encyclopaedia Britannica has a solid treatment of quite complex
> >scientific topics.  IIRC, there is an article on calculus spanning on
> >the order of 100 pages in fairly fine print.  It's not comparable to a
> >proper book on the matter, but that's not the purpose of an
> >encyclopedia.
> 
> 	Then again, calculus has been around for quite a long time, like at 
> least 20 or 30 years, probably even longer. EB has had time to get it 
> right. But they certainly can't compete on emerging topics. But these 
> are all trade-offs.

I don't see anything else compete on sheer volume, pop culture, emerging
topics and also some natural sciences.  I've used it more or less
extensively for computer science and math and I don't see any other
general-purpose encyclopedia cover these subjects well if at all.

Note that I don't consider pop culture items and similar stuff secondary.
Being able to look up bands, songs, movies, computer games, companies,
computer programs and finding these topics covered is invaluable to me.

> 	It's fascinating that Wikipedia is able to feature a lengthy 
> 	write-up of EB itself:
> 
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica

Excellent point, I could not find an article about Wikipedia at
britannica.com, though, which is a serious omission IMO.

Diego