Computer Science Encyclopedia Can Fill a Gap

It&#x27;s true wikipedia can be hit-or-miss sometimes, but in the STEM fields it&#x27;s mostly solid, so not sure why the need to start a new one from scratch. Maybe just make some initiative to fix existing pages and make them citable?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scholarpedia.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scholarpedia.org&#x2F;</a> has nice articles written by experts in the field. Usually pretty good and thorough reviews.

&gt; ...supported by appropriate professionally-relevant advertising. ... The nonprofit professional Encyclopedia will be self-supporting through appropriate professionally-relevant advertising carefully curated for high standards using existing advertising programs.<p>It blows my mind that something which purports to be so important couldn&#x27;t find a way to sustain itself without commercial advertising. This isn&#x27;t about improving the status quo of CS education; it&#x27;s about lining the pockets of a handful while reaping the rewards of volunteer experts.

&lt;quote&gt; There is an important gap in Computer Science education and professional collaboration that can be filled by an nonprofit online reputable, referenceable Encyclopedia... &lt;&#x2F;quote&gt;<p>The author spends a lot of words envisioning the encyclopedia, but says nothing about what gap needs to be filled.

Uhm... Why? I don&#x27;t see any gaps here. And the potential ammount of work is immense.<p>&gt; Over time, the Encyclopedia should be organized using ontological services supporting programmatic interfaces for a knowledge graph.<p>And this phrase shows how quickly this encyclopedia will become a memorial to itself rather than a source of up-to-date knowledge.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be a decent model for this. Especially for the more conceptual &#x2F; core areas of CS.

I had a nightmare once about something like this. In the dream, I woke up, went to work, wanted to check something online, found out stackoverflow no longer existed.<p>Is it possible we might put too much trust into this one source? I know it is amazing. I know we love it. But something like this could help.

«The Encyclopedia should be managed by a prestigious Editorial Board which appoints a hierarchy of editors to moderate articles. [...] Serving as a member of the Editorial Board could become a prestigious office for senior professionals to provide their experience and judgment»<p>Sounds a lot like the current peer-reviewing system and journal editors mafia. A bunch of old men with their hand on the system and doing the maximum so it does not change, for their own interest of keeping their position and dominance of the system.

Mr Hewitt has apparently disrupted Wikipedia [1] with excessive self-interested and self-promoting edits and so is not someone who should be involved in running a new Encyclopedia<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2007&#x2F;dec&#x2F;09&#x2F;wikipedia.internet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2007&#x2F;dec&#x2F;09&#x2F;wikipedia...</a>

Please don’t forget to launch a PDF&#x2F; EPUB version as well. Similar to Usenix’s full proceedings.

I&#x27;ve always wondered why something like this doesn&#x27;t yet exist.<p>Something like a Wikipedia of man pages, programming language documentation (and official tutorials), answered&#x2F;archived Stack Overflow questions, etc. A central (but maybe decentralised) collection of manuals and reference sheets and all the rest.<p>So often you go to find something and the site has expired because they gave up on the project (but it&#x27;s still being used), or the forum posts have been deleted, or it&#x27;s impossible to find because Google has decided you actually wanted to find &lt;insert something unrelated&gt; and they know better than you do.<p>An Archive.org for tech info, with machine readable formatting so we can have a comprehensive search function.<p>Then throw in a Wikipedia-style packaged archive you can download for Internet-free local searching and working while traveling or whatever.

According to [1] Carl Hewitt, the guy advocating for this encyclopedia has<p><i>disrupted Wikipedia for more than two years by using it for self-promotion, tampering with his own biography and manipulating computer science articles to inflate the importance of his own research.</i><p>How would be assured that the members of the &quot;editorial board&quot; of the encyclopedia wouldn&#x27;t use it for their own benefit inflating the importance of their research, like allegedly Carl did?<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2007&#x2F;dec&#x2F;09&#x2F;wikipedia.internet" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;2007&#x2F;dec&#x2F;09&#x2F;wikipedia...</a>

Similar to Princeton Companion to Mathematics perhaps?

All that stuff about registering with real names and having procedures for fairness and inclusivity <i>already exists</i>. M. Hewitt might want to learn about Citizendium and what has happened to it.<p>* <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.citizendium.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CZ:Policies" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.citizendium.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;CZ:Policies</a>

They should follow the model of The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy, which is accessible online for free.

Too much talk of prestige and reputation, perhaps unsurprising since it&#x27;s from a professional organization.

&gt; The Encyclopedia must establish procedures to be fair and inclusive on the basis of race, sex, religion, age, disability, and national origin.<p>No, first and foremost the Encyclopedia must establish procedures to ensure high-quality, accurate, and concise content. Being &quot;fair and inclusive&quot; is a secondary concern. If it has no users, no one cares whether it is &quot;fair and inclusive&quot;.

Ideas don’t matter much, execution is far more important and much harder.