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# Wikipedia commentary/Breadth and depth

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I don't know if anyone wants to discuss this topic of breadth vs. depth. Originally I was going to say that breadth should be preferred to depth in the beginning; then I considered the wonderfully in-depth articles some people have written, and I was thinking we should encourage more of that; but now I think we should encourage everything!

One very prolific member has been writing a wonderfully in-depth guide to poker. Meanwhile, lots of other card games, and other games, go undiscussed. But that's fine. In other areas (e.g., computing, we're achieving excellent breadth, but rather little depth so far. In many cases, people are content to simply write definitions of the subjects in the title.

I counsel patience. In fact, I think it's great that people feel completely free to pursue topics either way. One of the great things about Wikipedia is that anyone can come in and do as little or as much as they like.

I have a feeling that experts (snobs, some might say) might happen upon Wikipedia, and look at selected areas of the wiki and, failing to understand what's going on here, will point to the lack of depth as a sign that there are only dilettantes on board here, who are only interested in bite-sized pieces of knowledge. But such snobs simply will have to explore further and bethink themselves that, once the breadth of topics is explored, depth is all that's left.

I think that both breadth and depth on Wikipedia are nearly inevitable. As some of us exhaust the breadth of various subjects, others of us will have written stuff that, being more in-depth, appears to be more "intellectually respectable" to the aforementioned experts. I think we've already come from the point where, to Nupedia, Wikipedia seems to be a silly game, to the point where we're now at least a source of abundant information, some of it surprisingly good. And that's just in the space of three months. In three years, if we and the many, many more who will arrive, keep at it, this is going to be just really quite an amazing resource. --LMS

Bite sized chunks are the right size. It forces review of previously written material, easier classification of articles, and easier cross-linking of the different meanings of a term.

With respect, I would point out that when it comes to very technical, specialized material, it is difficult to break discussions easily into parts. See, e.g., the articles in mathematics. A great deal of specialized knowledge, e.g., in my own field of philosophy, consists of what might be called "narratives"--that is, familiar accounts of problems, solutions, arguments on both sides, etc. Parts of such accounts can be broken down (as I've started to do with Larrys Text) but then again, other parts just can't, without interrupting the "narrative." --LMS

I come down in favor of depth over breadth. Here's why: In-depth articles, and your poker example is an excellent one, will bring in links and with that Google searches. More Google visitors are our best avenue to growth.

If an article is researched in 10 minutes and written in 5, then it doesn't do much good: everybody who is seriously interested in that topic could have just spent 10 minutes researching and would have come up with the same results. So it doesn't really help the non-experts; the experts of course will giggle about it. But an article that took a week to research is a truly valuable gem, may even give the experts something to think about and will increase the perceived status of the Wikipedia. --AxelBoldt

  On the other hand, short articles encourage improvement. I often check the recent changes list, and if I think I know a lot about a topic, I'll look at what's been written and see if I think I can improve on it. So just having a new topic can inspire new pages that end up being reasonably substantial. --Belltower

See Modular content creation and encyclopedia and or versus dictionary

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Last edited August 9, 2001 11:37 am (diff)
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