Boundary lines

From Studyplace

Here are a few, tentative indicators of the differences between StudyPlace and Wikipedia:

• Whereas the typical educational background of contributors to Wikipedia is probably at the undergraduate level, that for StudyPlace should probably be at the graduate level.
• Bibliographies in Wikipedia tend to be sparse and privilege sources available in general libraries or open to the world on the Internet, those in StudyPlace should generally be more thorough and include the full spectrum of academically important resources even if most of these are to be found only in major research libraries.
• A policy requiring a neutral point of view controls contributions to Wikipedia, whereas one aiming at an authoritative point of view should inform contributions to StudyPlace, for a neutral overview of a subject is essential in a general encyclopedia while an authoritative assessment of the state of knowledge among experts in a field is key to a specialized encyclopedia.

Such differences aside, StudyPlace should prove complementary to Wikipedia. One suspects that as cooperative, peer-produced work on the Internet develops over time, as it surely will, there will emerge a powerful structure of specialized encyclopedias and associated journals serving as a foundation for a mature and ubiquitous Wikipedia.