In Sweden, Sverker Johansson and His 'Bot' Have Created 2.7M Wikipedia Articles

For example, the 1910 Encyclopaedia Britannica's complete entry for "denim" is "(an abbreviation of the serge de Nimes), the name originally given to a kind of serge. It is now applies to a stout twilled cloth made in various colours, usually of cotton, and used for overalls, &c."

The entry for "Gimli" is "In Scandinavian mythology, the great hall of heaven whither the righteous will go to spend eternity."

It's not hard to find more examples. But I don't think people considered the EB less of an encyclopaedia for its use of one-sentence descriptors.

The heart of the matter is that there's precious little difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. Indeed, the EB's full name is "The Encyclopædia Britannica: a Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information"

To double check that it's not limited to the EB, I looked in Harmsworth's Universal encyclopedia. The entry for "fulcrum" is "(Lat. fulcrum, a prop) Fixed point in the mechanical system of a lever about which the lever can rotate. See Lever." The entry for "gumboil" is "Small abscess on the gum arising in most cases from decay at the root of a tooth."

See http://menvall.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/on-wikipedias-attemp... for an analysis of the distinction between the two, and the conclusion that "everything that is included in a dictionary also can be included in an encyclopedia, whereas all that is included in an encyclopedia either can or can’t be included in a dictionary. This relation is, however, completely misunderstood by some editors of Wikipedia."

(Had you written that it wasn't appropriate for Wikipedia, than that's a different issue. I speak now only of the broad category of "encyclopedia".)

Triple-checking, the entry for "gumboil" in Wikipedia (at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gumboil) redirects to "Intraoral dental sinus". The complete entry is two sentences long:

> Intraoral dental sinus (also termed a parulis and commonly, a gumboil) is an oral lesion characterized by a soft erythematous papule (red spot) that develops on the alveolar process in association with a non-vital tooth and accompanying dental abscess.[1] A parulis is made up of inflamed granulation tissue.

By your definition, this "(almost) one-sentence" article should be removed from WP, no?

I've read pages like that before, and it never once occurred to me that they were anything other than the result of sheer human bloody-mindedness. They're not `exciting', but they're very clearly written in an easily parseable way that doesn't scream ``machine-generated'' to me. If this is indicative, the quality of output of these bots is excellent, and a good use of automation --- let the bots fill out the dry factual stuff, and the humans write the less tangible, non-statistical stuff.

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Agency,_Missouri&a...

Secondly, I didn't demand complete excision with the kind of frothy fervor you're implying. I said a better format for these "X is type Y, discovered by Z, listed in Q" is collating them all in a list format. WP has list article like this aplenty - dense, easily digestible information on similar topics, allowing quick and easy comparison and scanning.

As for your link, one of the bold highlights is "explains subjects in greater detail than a dictionary". Another of the three definitions of 'encyclopaedia' your link provides says "with data on and discussion of each subject identified" (my emphasis). So that's two out of three definitions that quite strongly indicate non-brief articles - your linked article is wrong from it's own source material, and hasn't made the case that dictionary-like brevity is suitable for an encyclopaedia.

By your definition, this "(almost) one-sentence" article should be removed from WP, no?

What, are you trying to 'catch me out' here? Do you think that's a good quality article? It's a stub, it's not what WP wants to encourage, and it's more like a dictionary definition than either "explaining a subject in greater detail" or "discussion of the subject". Yes, I think it's a bad article for any encyclopaedia - it's quite brief, and full of technical jargon. If you didn't already know the specific jargon, it's completely useless as a "general course of instruction" (the etymology argument from your link). And if you do know the jargon, you have a pretty good chance of working it out from the name alone; the article merely confirms the topic if you're unsure, but you don't get any more insight into it.

As 'trick questions' go, this one sucked.

I ask that you clarify your reasoning.

You say my linked-to reference "hasn't made the case that dictionary-like brevity is suitable for an encyclopaedia". The link isn't trying to make that delineation between the two. It's arguing (and I agree) that a dictionary is a type of encyclopedia, not that they are two different things. You mentioned some quotes, in bold. The author later comments on those exact same quotes (with bold translated to italics):

> These definitions show that whereas dictionary is defined by words alone: “reference work that lists words, usually in alphabetical order, and gives their meanings and often other information such as pronunciations, etymologies, and variant spellings“, encyclopedia is defined either as synonymous to dictionary: “the term is often interchanged with the word “dictionary,” as in the present work” or by a larger extension than dictionary: “explains subjects in greater detail than a dictionary”. There is thus no conflict between dictionary and encyclopedia. They are either synonymous or only have different extensions (i.e., encyclopedia including dictionary, but covering a larger set of phenomena).

I checked with the OED, at http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/52325 . It concurs, since its definition 1b. for dictionary is (italics mine):

> In extended use: a book of information or reference on any subject in which the entries are arranged alphabetically; an alphabetical encyclopedia

Yes, I'm saying that the article for "gumboil" in WP is not a stub, does not need to be longer than it is, and very much like what WP should support. While I agree with you in that the older print definition of the term is easier to understand than what WP has, that's at most one more line, and more likely solved by rewriting.

BTW, I also looked up Gimlé in WP. That's three sentences long, so a full two sentences longer than the 'Gimli' entry in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Why must everything require more than a few lines to fit into your concept of an encyclopedia? Certainly Gimlé doesn't fit in a dictionary, so where else would it go?

Or bots could be taking something in a weird set of scans, OCRing that, and then putting it in a stub. This would be troubling unless there was a human checking the quality of the OCR.

There is plenty of stuff that is public domain and not online in a useful form.