Encyclopedism

Encyclopedism is a term used to describe the practice of structurally indexing readily sourced information into referential works known as encyclopedias.

History

The practice of encyclopedism dates back to the days of the Roman Empire, with Pliny the Elder's Natural History having been one of the earliest extant encyclopedias to survive antiquity.

As with other media practices such as journalism, encyclopedism benefited greatly from the invention of the movable type printing press in Renaissance-era Germany, allowing for a greater number of professionals and libraries to attain cheaper editions of encyclopedias in the following centuries, with revised editions of encyclopedic series being issued every few years. But by the 20th century, encyclopedias were increasingly criticized for being verbally inaccessible to younger audiences and lacking in recent updates regarding topics.

One of the earliest individuals to advocate for a technologically enhanced encyclopedia indexing all the world's information was H. G. Wells, who put forward his idea of a World Encyclopedia in his essay World Brain. Others would put forward similar ideas, but a significant revolution in encyclopedism would not take place until after the advent of the personal computer, the Internet and the World Wide Web in the late 20th century. Hypermedia-based encyclopedias were released on CD-ROM in the 1990s, most of the text of which was directly copied from recent editions of print editions but was also enhanced by the addition of video, audio and interactive media.

21st century

The launching of Wikipedia in the 2000s, however, stood out from prior editions of encyclopedias due to its usage of the World Wide Web as its primary platform, its lack of a monetary price for access, and its free licensing. The most controversial aspect of Wikipedia was its usage of the wiki, a type of server-side software which was first created by Ward Cunningham in the early 1990s; the wiki allows for all users to create and edit the content of wiki articles, without regard to the academic credentials of editors.

The Wikipedia model of encyclopedism proved to be both a boon and blight, as the number of articles on a wide variety of topics soon numbered far higher and article sizes were larger than those of print-based encyclopedias, but non-sourced or malicious edits could just as easily be written into articles (but can also be removed if sighted by other editors).

As a practice

Since the creation of the first wikis, encyclopedism has been largely divided between the limited resources of academic, print-based encyclopedias and the less-limited resources of wikis on the World Wide Web. Print-based encyclopedias are still printed for library and personal usage, and are usually published as alphabetically grouped portions of each year's iteration. They are also more likely to be authored or edited by academicians, and are far less likely to be updated with newer information for every iteration.

Wikis, on the other hand, are more likely to be edited by knowledgeable or investigative users who are not academically accredited. They are also more likely to be updated with references to recent journalistic articles.

Genres

• advocacy encyclopedism - Also like advocacy journalism, "advocacy encyclopedism" can also be skewed toward ideological biases depending upon the target audience of the publishers or administrators. While Wikipedia is administrated on the basis of the neutrality of articles and edits, smaller wikis such as Conservapedia and SourceWatch can also take openly ideological, non-neutral stances which differ them extensively from the aims of Wikipedia.

Areas

• Arts encyclopedism - Like arts journalism, arts encyclopedism is intended to focus on the details of artistic works, especially works of fiction. These are often edited by fan communities related to such works, and heated debates between editors can focus on the canonicity of portions of the work.
• Political encyclopedism focuses upon politicians, candidates, polls, elections, bills, laws, campaign promises and political positions.
• Sports encyclopedism focuses upon games, teams and competitors in various sports or competitive games.
• Disaster encyclopedism - in which man-made or naturally caused disasters and catastrophes are covered, with articles on victims, hotspots of conflict or struggle and means of contact with loved ones. This is especially useful to aid workers who are involved in the delivery or preparation of humanitarian relief.

See also

• New encyclopedism - modern movement proposed by H. G. Wells