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I’m old enough to have used paper dictionaries and yet I don’t miss them. Today I have a dictionary of every language I speak in my pocket. The serendipity of

I’m old enough to have used paper dictionaries and yet I don’t miss them. Today I have a dictionary of every language I speak in my pocket. The serendipity of using paper dictionary exist online. Some dictionaries (like Merriam Webster show neighboring words). Others shows random words. Many offer to subscribe to a word of the day via email or an app. If anything I find serendipity to be greatly improved by hyperlinks. The dictionary is this flat shallow lexicographically ordered collection of word definitions. It can’t compete with the depth of the internet. Wikipedia is a lot better than any paper encyclopedia I have used. It is updated with recent events. And following links you can go from rabbit hole to rabbit hole effortless. I have spent countless hours on topics I did not even know anything about in this fashion. I think nostalgia gives people pink colored glasses that really distort reality. I have not owned a paper dictionary I over a decade and I really don’t miss it.

keiferski 7y ago
Two points: 1. The experience of flipping through a paper dictionary or book is more-or-less impossible to replicate on a screen. Even the most hyperlink-heavy Internet article is limited in comparison to a book that can be flipped through instantaneously. With hyperlinks, you're necessarily limited to the context of the article. 2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. Furthermore, they are all written like advertisements. This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries - the introductory paragraph is nothing but accolades, rankings, and tourist attractions. This is a far cry from an actual encyclopedia, which is about data.
- deathwarmedover 7y ago
  >Wikipedia articles [...] are all written like advertisements. Editors do actively work against this. I've seen this template in the wild often enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising
  - keiferski 7y ago
    I don't mean to be pompous, but they clearly are not very effective. Every single article on a city is written with a subtle advertorial tone, whether to promote tourism or simply give the city a positive reputation.
- adrianN 7y ago
  I found almost all Wikipedia articles I read to be way, way better than the equivalent article in a paper encyclopedia. The most important lemmas get maybe a few hundred words in a paper encyclopedia, whereas Wikipedia articles about relatively obscure topics provide much more detail.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  > 2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. Do you have any examples? Or is this just a vague impression? There have been studies done about this by neutral outside researchers which found that generally Wikipedia was more comprehensive and more reliable than other encyclopedias.
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Take the Vienna page as an example. In the introductory paragraphs, we have the text below. While it isn't incorrect or false, it's quite obviously included only facts that portray the city in the best possible light. If the purpose of an encyclopedia is to present information in a neutral, objective way, this doesn't seem to fit the bill. I say this as someone who likes Vienna and thinks the quality-of-life studies are correct. But this information belongs in a sub-header, not in the introduction of the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San Francisco) for the world's most liveable cities. Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne.[20][21][22][23][24] In 2018, it replaced Melbourne as the number one spot.[25] For ten consecutive years (2009–2019), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its annual "Quality of Living" survey of hundreds of cities around the world.[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Monocle's 2015 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within."[34][35][36][37][38] The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013.[39] The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure, and markets.[40][41][42] Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.[43] Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world's number-one destination for international congresses and conventions.[44] It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.
    - ziddoap 7y ago
      And what does your favorite paper encyclopedia have to say in the first few paragraphs?
- FoeNyx 7y ago
  > 2. Wikipedia articles (...) pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. (...) This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries (...) I'm not claiming Wikipedia is perfect (they are not claiming this themselves) but in contrast most of the small cities worldwide are not even entitled to get an entry in "actual encyclopedia".
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Yet I still quite regularly refer to our Shorter Oxford (3 - 4k A4 pages). Usually after failing to get a correct or adequate answer online. It gives far more definitions, etymology and usage than any and every online resource. For dictionaries, the internet has no depth, just a barely scratched surface. Somewhat equivalent to a simplified school or pocket dictionary - at best. I've probably spent as much time down paper encyclopedia rabbit holes as Wikipedia. Both have their pluses which can't be easily replicated in the other. Same for dictionaries. Something that came up in a recent discussion on Encarta: I have a century old encyclopedia set - the fact it is not constantly updated makes it a fascinating piece of history. Sometimes with better - manual - shortcut ways of calculating that I never heard of in my schooling, and a glimpse of skills that have declined. Reading about steam engines while they were still cutting edge, etc. I've learnt all sorts of little bits of history none of the many history books I read and Wikipedia time I've spent have ever got near. Having a snapshot is as useful, but differently useful, to having an always updated resource.
- Tomte 7y ago
  > I have a century old encyclopedia set - the fact it is not constantly updated makes it a fascinating piece of history. Absolutely! I've got a German encyclopaedia from the beginning of the 20th century, and looking up societal terms is fascinating. "Feminism" is "female behaviour by men", and only the secondary meaning references the women's movement. "Women's question" is about the quest to give those rights to women that are "according to their their ability and potential".
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Aye, some of the implicit societal assumptions are rather hard to read, or comical from today's perspective. From the era when Western confidence was probably at its height, there's a presumption in everything that Christianity, Western society and values are the right ones. That empire is a force for good - but quietly not mentioning both sides, or the deprivation caused, and this right after the scramble for Africa. Though King Leopold's "Free" Congo is a catalogue of atrocity, that was infamous even back at the height of Empire building. Yet see current stories on the Arctic and competing moves to develop and claim it, and it doesn't seem so very different, just who's playing has changed. Then there's the extensive coverage of anachronisms that have changed hugely or vanished; like the hierarchy of flowers, class, the importance of the King's English (received pronunciation), obsolete medical treatments, crime and punishment and so on.
EliRivers 7y ago
We can all only speak for ourselves; I bought The Compact Edition of the OED on eBay for a song (postage cost more than the dictionary itself). It comes in two volumes with a magnifying glass, and is now my first stop (ahead of the mighty internet) for looking up a word. Even when the word I want to look up is something I've come across on the internet, and I have the internet at my fingertips. I find the results usually to be significantly more satisfying than looking up the same word online. I should say it clearly has a different mission, a different audience, to the typical online dictionary (although many online dictionaries do now provide the etymology as a matter of course, which is a big improvement).
- wyclif 7y ago
  That's the edition of the OED that I have. I think this edition is more useable than the newer 1-volume edition, it's a little handier and less unwieldy.
ubermonkey 7y ago
Same. I have a nice Oxford, and I haven't touched it in YEARS. I mean, why?
- gerbilly 7y ago
  No tracking, no dependence on power (I go writing at an off grid cottage), simplicity. Lots of reasons.
  - ubermonkey 7y ago
    I mostly use nontracking search engines, or the build-in dictionary in iOS, so I'm not super worried about the first. To me, right-clicking is way simpler than pulling a book off a shelf. Power could I guess be an issue, but I can't imagine writing at this point without using a computer. ;) 30+ years at a keyboard have done a real number on my handwriting, which was never very good to being with.
posterboy 7y ago
This is understood. That's why the featured author felt a need for the minority opinion to be expressed. There's a general point that needs support, perhaps. Your criticizm in the end is ad-hominem. As far as the body of the critique is directed at the content instead, without adressing it explicitly, then perhaps because the TFA made an ad-hominem via proxy, without resorting to the meta-level to that you have taken it. The argument rests on the fact that e.g. a news-paper article would barely invite not just readers' letters but whole discussions. It's rather quaint and not all that hyper. Thus it is kind of ironic and almost self-defeating for the article to be published online (online first I guess). As I have said, the trend is obvious and needs no defense.

keiferski 7y ago

Two points: 1. The experience of flipping through a paper dictionary or book is more-or-less impossible to replicate on a screen. Even the most hyperlink-heavy Internet article is limited in comparison to a book that can be flipped through instantaneously. With hyperlinks, you're necessarily limited to the context of the article. 2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. Furthermore, they are all written like advertisements. This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries - the introductory paragraph is nothing but accolades, rankings, and tourist attractions. This is a far cry from an actual encyclopedia, which is about data.

deathwarmedover 7y ago
>Wikipedia articles [...] are all written like advertisements. Editors do actively work against this. I've seen this template in the wild often enough: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advertising
- keiferski 7y ago
  I don't mean to be pompous, but they clearly are not very effective. Every single article on a city is written with a subtle advertorial tone, whether to promote tourism or simply give the city a positive reputation.
adrianN 7y ago
I found almost all Wikipedia articles I read to be way, way better than the equivalent article in a paper encyclopedia. The most important lemmas get maybe a few hundred words in a paper encyclopedia, whereas Wikipedia articles about relatively obscure topics provide much more detail.
jacobolus 7y ago
> 2. Wikipedia articles are a mile wide and an inch deep and pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. Do you have any examples? Or is this just a vague impression? There have been studies done about this by neutral outside researchers which found that generally Wikipedia was more comprehensive and more reliable than other encyclopedias.
- keiferski 7y ago
  Take the Vienna page as an example. In the introductory paragraphs, we have the text below. While it isn't incorrect or false, it's quite obviously included only facts that portray the city in the best possible light. If the purpose of an encyclopedia is to present information in a neutral, objective way, this doesn't seem to fit the bill. I say this as someone who likes Vienna and thinks the quality-of-life studies are correct. But this information belongs in a sub-header, not in the introduction of the article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna Vienna is known for its high quality of life. In a 2005 study of 127 world cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked the city first (in a tie with Vancouver and San Francisco) for the world's most liveable cities. Between 2011 and 2015, Vienna was ranked second, behind Melbourne.[20][21][22][23][24] In 2018, it replaced Melbourne as the number one spot.[25] For ten consecutive years (2009–2019), the human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Vienna first in its annual "Quality of Living" survey of hundreds of cities around the world.[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] Monocle's 2015 "Quality of Life Survey" ranked Vienna second on a list of the top 25 cities in the world "to make a base within."[34][35][36][37][38] The UN-Habitat classified Vienna as the most prosperous city in the world in 2012/2013.[39] The city was ranked 1st globally for its culture of innovation in 2007 and 2008, and sixth globally (out of 256 cities) in the 2014 Innovation Cities Index, which analyzed 162 indicators in covering three areas: culture, infrastructure, and markets.[40][41][42] Vienna regularly hosts urban planning conferences and is often used as a case study by urban planners.[43] Between 2005 and 2010, Vienna was the world's number-one destination for international congresses and conventions.[44] It attracts over 6.8 million tourists a year.
  - ziddoap 7y ago
    And what does your favorite paper encyclopedia have to say in the first few paragraphs?
FoeNyx 7y ago
> 2. Wikipedia articles (...) pale in comparison to an actual encyclopedia. (...) This is easy to see on pages for cities and countries (...) I'm not claiming Wikipedia is perfect (they are not claiming this themselves) but in contrast most of the small cities worldwide are not even entitled to get an entry in "actual encyclopedia".

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Yet I still quite regularly refer to our Shorter Oxford (3 - 4k A4 pages). Usually after failing to get a correct or adequate answer online. It gives far more definitions, etymology and usage than any and every online resource. For dictionaries, the internet has no depth, just a barely scratched surface. Somewhat equivalent to a simplified school or pocket dictionary - at best. I've probably spent as much time down paper encyclopedia rabbit holes as Wikipedia. Both have their pluses which can't be easily replicated in the other. Same for dictionaries. Something that came up in a recent discussion on Encarta: I have a century old encyclopedia set - the fact it is not constantly updated makes it a fascinating piece of history. Sometimes with better - manual - shortcut ways of calculating that I never heard of in my schooling, and a glimpse of skills that have declined. Reading about steam engines while they were still cutting edge, etc. I've learnt all sorts of little bits of history none of the many history books I read and Wikipedia time I've spent have ever got near. Having a snapshot is as useful, but differently useful, to having an always updated resource.

Tomte 7y ago
> I have a century old encyclopedia set - the fact it is not constantly updated makes it a fascinating piece of history. Absolutely! I've got a German encyclopaedia from the beginning of the 20th century, and looking up societal terms is fascinating. "Feminism" is "female behaviour by men", and only the secondary meaning references the women's movement. "Women's question" is about the quest to give those rights to women that are "according to their their ability and potential".
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Aye, some of the implicit societal assumptions are rather hard to read, or comical from today's perspective. From the era when Western confidence was probably at its height, there's a presumption in everything that Christianity, Western society and values are the right ones. That empire is a force for good - but quietly not mentioning both sides, or the deprivation caused, and this right after the scramble for Africa. Though King Leopold's "Free" Congo is a catalogue of atrocity, that was infamous even back at the height of Empire building. Yet see current stories on the Arctic and competing moves to develop and claim it, and it doesn't seem so very different, just who's playing has changed. Then there's the extensive coverage of anachronisms that have changed hugely or vanished; like the hierarchy of flowers, class, the importance of the King's English (received pronunciation), obsolete medical treatments, crime and punishment and so on.

EliRivers 7y ago

We can all only speak for ourselves; I bought The Compact Edition of the OED on eBay for a song (postage cost more than the dictionary itself). It comes in two volumes with a magnifying glass, and is now my first stop (ahead of the mighty internet) for looking up a word. Even when the word I want to look up is something I've come across on the internet, and I have the internet at my fingertips. I find the results usually to be significantly more satisfying than looking up the same word online. I should say it clearly has a different mission, a different audience, to the typical online dictionary (although many online dictionaries do now provide the etymology as a matter of course, which is a big improvement).

wyclif 7y ago
That's the edition of the OED that I have. I think this edition is more useable than the newer 1-volume edition, it's a little handier and less unwieldy.

ubermonkey 7y ago

Same. I have a nice Oxford, and I haven't touched it in YEARS. I mean, why?

gerbilly 7y ago
No tracking, no dependence on power (I go writing at an off grid cottage), simplicity. Lots of reasons.
- ubermonkey 7y ago
  I mostly use nontracking search engines, or the build-in dictionary in iOS, so I'm not super worried about the first. To me, right-clicking is way simpler than pulling a book off a shelf. Power could I guess be an issue, but I can't imagine writing at this point without using a computer. ;) 30+ years at a keyboard have done a real number on my handwriting, which was never very good to being with.

posterboy 7y ago

This is understood. That's why the featured author felt a need for the minority opinion to be expressed. There's a general point that needs support, perhaps. Your criticizm in the end is ad-hominem. As far as the body of the critique is directed at the content instead, without adressing it explicitly, then perhaps because the TFA made an ad-hominem via proxy, without resorting to the meta-level to that you have taken it. The argument rests on the fact that e.g. a news-paper article would barely invite not just readers' letters but whole discussions. It's rather quaint and not all that hyper. Thus it is kind of ironic and almost self-defeating for the article to be published online (online first I guess). As I have said, the trend is obvious and needs no defense.