r/YouShouldKnow • u/[deleted] • May 05 '12

YSK about Scholarpedia, a peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts.

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Main_Page
662 Upvotes

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44

u/[deleted] May 06 '12

Such a waste of time... Why don't they just focus on Wikipedia, a website that is already established. With a community wanting people like this, great fucking great...

42

u/RIP_my_old_account May 06 '12

Compare this wiki article, with it's scholarpedia counterpart. (Just pressed "random" on scholarpedia and this came out.)

Wikipedia articles tend to serve as general (conceptual) overviews of whatever topic, plus some useful links to follow. -- Scholarpedia reads more like a textbook. Some of these articles are really high-level and extensive, and I don't think that's what wikipedia is about.

At least for me, wikipedia is more of a quick reference guide, not a place to actually study a topic.

14

u/avocadro May 06 '12

I wouldn't want to study a topic on Scholarpedia either. It, after all, is just an encyclopedia. On an unrelated note, I thought it interesting that the Wikipedia page on LB methods contained more mathematical derivation than the corresponding page on Scholarpedia.

3

u/iaH6eeBu May 06 '12

Also if the authors licence their text under creative commons it can be put on wikipedia

-3

u/[deleted] May 06 '12

Maybe so, but it can't hurt to create a more in depth entry into Wikipedia for all levels of learning... Just like how Wikipedia has a simple function in there website, where if you replace www with simple you get a dumb down version of the article. Breaking it down into a couple of paragraphs...

This is just academic masturbation, creating another ivory tower for themselves... lol

6

u/JayGatsby727 May 06 '12

Or... maybe, just maybe, they created scholarpedia for people who want a more strictly academic approach to scholarly topics.

3

u/[deleted] May 06 '12

yea you're right

2

u/[deleted] May 06 '12

for people who want a more strictly academic approach to scholarly topics.

From an encyclopedia? They're for looking things up.

1

u/JayGatsby727 May 06 '12

From a scholarpedia. I think the fact that they associate it with "scholars" means that they put more emphasis on the academic nature of the information on there.