1. Schiff's main point is to share Wikipedia's birth and development as an online encyclopedia. She also touches on past attempts to create an encyclopedia long ago. I also think the author addresses the point that Wikipedia provides information about topics that are truly random. For example, she states that the traditional encyclopedia was not written to contain information on "Sudoku or about prostitution in China." Schiff brings to light that Wikipedia is a limitless outlet of information.
2. "The encyclopedic impulse dates back more than two thousand years and has rarely balked at national borders. Among the first general reference works was Emperor’s Mirror, commissioned in 220 A.D. by a Chinese emperor, for use by civil servants. The quest to catalogue all human knowledge accelerated in the eighteenth century. In the seventeen-seventies, the Germans, champions of thoroughness, began assembling a two-hundred-and-forty-two-volume masterwork. A few decades earlier, Johann Heinrich Zedler, a Leipzig bookseller, had alarmed local competitors when he solicited articles for his Universal-Lexicon. His rivals, fearing that the work would put them out of business by rendering all other books obsolete, tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the project."
The supporting evidence in this passage is effective because the topic sentence is followed by facts that state previous attempts to create reference books, like an encycloypeida. Schiff gives more information regarding previous attempts instead of simply stating for how long it has been attempted. I found this passage interesting because it shared the evidence that not only Americans, most recently, sought to create an encyclopedia.
3. Obviously, Wikipedia seems to be more informal in regards to who can access, edit, and glean from their information. Wikipedia's design set up appears to be more simple. Any user can simply type in a keyword, or subject and find information. Encyclopedia Britannica has created various categories such as featured video, this day in history, and world atlas; it appears to be much more complex. Wikipedia breaks a topic in to various subtopics and also includes a table of contents. Encyclopedia Britannica does not work as well, because it lacks a table of contents and subtopics (the information on the subject is a long article). The design of Wikipedia might appeal more to an individual looking for fast information and Encyclopedia Britannica might appeal more to someone conducting research on a subject.
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