less_retarded_wiki/encyclopedia.md

Encyclopedia

Encyclopedia (also encyclopaedia, cyclopedia or cyclopaedia, from Greek enkyklios paideia, roughly "general education") is a large book (or a series of books) providing structured summary of wide knowledge in one or many fields of knowledge (such as mathematics, history, engineering, general knowledge etc.), usually structured as a collection of alphabetically ordered articles on terms used in the field. Paper encyclopedias are oftentimes printed in several volumes as the amount of contained information is too great for a single book (in large ones you may even see one or two volumes dedicated ONLY for the index). The largest and most famous encyclopedia to date is the online Wikipedia created by volunteers in free culture spirit, however Wikipedia suffers from significant issues such as censorship, high political propaganda and low quality of writing, therefore it is important to also stay interested in other encyclopedias such as Britannica, Americana or LRS wiki.

Encyclopedias are awesome, get as many of them as you can, especially the printed ones -- they are usually relatively cheap (especially second hand books) and provide an ENORMOUS amount of information, FOREVER (no one can cancel your physically owned paper book, you will retain it even after the collapse when such books will become practically your only source of human knowledge). Also remember, paper books are still of much higher quality than online resources such as Wikipedia -- even if they lose in terms of shear volume, they make up in quality of writing and still many times contain information that's not available online, and the older ones are more objective and trustworthy, considering the decline of free speech online. Shorter articles may also do a better job at providing overall summary of a topic and filtering out less important information, as opposed to a gigantic Wikipedia article. Furthermore even if such a book isn't free as in freedom, the knowledge, information and data contained in it is in the public domain as such things cannot (yet) be owned, therefore it is possible to legally paraphrase the information into a new source which we may make public domain itself (however watch out to not merely copy-paste texts from encyclopedias as text CAN be copyrighted, as well as e.g. the mere selection of which facts to include; always be very careful).

{ A favorite passtime of mine is looking up the same term in different encyclopedias and comparing them -- this can help get to the essence of actually understanding the term, as well as revealing censorship and different views of the authors. ~drummyfish }

Similar terms: encyclopedias, which also used to be called cyclopedias in the past, are similar to dictionaries and these works often overlap (many encyclopedias call themselves dictionaries); the main difference is that a dictionary focuses on providing linguistic information about the terms and has shorter term definitions, while encyclopedias have longer articles (which however limits the total number of terms it may contain). Encyclopedias are also a subset of so called reference works, i.e. works that serve to provide information and reference to it (other kinds of reference works being e.g. world maps or API references). A universal/general encyclopedia is one that focuses on human knowledge at wide, as opposed to an encyclopedia that focuses on one specific field of knowledge. Compendium can be seen almost as a synonym to encyclopedia, with encyclopedias perhaps usually being more general and extensive. Almanac is also similar to encyclopedia, more focusing on tabular data. Micropedia is another term, sometimes used to denote a smaller encyclopedia (one edition of Britannica came with a micropedia as well as a larger macropedia).

Notable/Nice Encyclopedias

Here is a list of notable encyclopedias, focused on general knowledge English language ones that are preferrably publicly available (or easy to get).

{ See also https://wikiindex.org/. ~drummyfish }

name	year	legal status	format	~articles	comment
Britannica 11th edition	1910	PD (old)	29 vol.	40K	legendary enc., part of "Big Three", digitized (gutenberg, txt), uncensored facts on race etc.
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia	2002	proprietary	1 vol. 2000p	28K	nice, short descriptions, condensed from the main multivol. Brit., piratable pdf
Britannica online	...now	proprietary	online	130K	bloated, high quality articles, unpaid is limited and with ads
Citizendium	2006...	proprietary? (NC)	online	18K	Wikipedia alternative, censored, faggots have unclear license
Collier's New Encyclopedia	1921	PD (old)	10 vol.		NOT TO BE CONFUSED with Collier's Encyclopedia (different one), digitized on Wikisource (txt)
Columbia Encyclopedia	1935...	proprietary	1 vol. ~3Kp	~50K	high quality, lots of information { Read the 1993 edition, it's super nice. ~drummyfish }
Conservaedia	2006...	proprietary	online	52K	American fascist wiki, has basic factual errors
Desk Reference Encyclopedia	1995	proprietary	1 vol. 800p	200K?	by James Hughes, nice illustrations, quality general overviews { I bought this, it's nice. ~drummyfish }
Domestic Encyclopaedia	1802	PD (old)	4 vol.		shorter articles, partially digitized on Wikisource
Encyclopedia Americana	1820...	PD (old)	~30 vol.		longer articles, part of "Big Three", several editions (1906, 1920) partially digitized on Wikisource
Encyclopedia Dramatica	2004...	PD (CC0)	online	15K	informal/fun/"offensive" but valuable info (on society, tech, ...), basically no censorship, no propaganda
Everybodywiki	2017...	CC BY-SA	online	~300K	alternative to Wikipedia allowing articles on non notable things and people
Google Knol	~2010	proprietary	online		failed online enc. by Google, archived on archive.org
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia	2003	proprietary	CD
Illustrated Family Encyclopedia	1997	proprietary	2 vol. 920p	5K	kid-friendly, nice pictures, USA bias, piratable
Infogalactic	2016...	CC BY-SA	online	2M	Wikipedia fork, no SJW censorship, FOR PROFIT (you can buy article control lol), can't make accounts
LRS wiki	2021...	PD (CC0)	online/elec.	500	best encyclopedia, focused on tech/society, no censorship
Metapedia	2006...	GFDL	online	7K	Wikipedia fork, online, no SJW censorship, ATM limited account creation, "pro-European" fascism
Microsoft Encarta	...2009	proprietary	electronic	62K	Micro$oft enc., low quality articles (errors), MS propaganda (no free software etc. lol), is on archive.org
Simple English Wikipedia	2001...	CC BY-SA	online	200K	Wikipedia with simpler language and simpler explanations, censored
The New American Cyclopaedia	1879	PD (old)	16 vol.		partially digitized on Wikisource (txt)
The New International Encyc.	1905	PD (old)	20 vol.		partially digitized on Wikisource
The Nuttall Encyclopaedia	1907	PD (old)	1 vol.	16K	short articles, oldschool, digitized (gutenberg)
Vikidia	2006...	CC BY-SA	online	4K	"Wikipedia for kids", probably as censored as Wikipedia
Webster's Unabridged Dictionary	1864	PD (old)	paper	476K	short descriptions, digitized (gutenberg)
Wikipedia	2001...	CC BY-SA	online	6M	largest and most famous, EXTREME PSEUDOLEFTIST CENSORSHIP AND POLITICAL PROPAGANDA, free culture
Old Wikipedia	2001	GFDL	online	19K	archived old Wikipedia, less censorship, https://nostalgia.wikipedia.org
Pears' Cyclopedia	1897	PD (old)	1 vol. 740p		contains dictionary, general knowl. maps, reference etc., scanned on archive.org
World Almanac and Book of Facts	1868...	some PD (old)	1 vol.		interesting and useful information, data and facts from old to new age, US-centered
The World Book	1917...	proprietary	22 vol.	17K	best selling print enc., large, probably high quality
The World Book 1917	1917	PD (old)	8 vol.	3K	nicely readable
Uncyclopedia	2005...	proprietary (NC)	online	37K	parody, fun enc.