<story><title>After 20 years, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrives on the web</title><url>http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/july/online-encyclopedia-philosophy-073115.html?a=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hackuser</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s sad how rare authoritative, free resources are on the web. It&amp;#x27;s cliche to say how incredible an opportunity the Internet presents to share the world&amp;#x27;s knowledge, but the most valuable knowledge, the serious scholarship, is effectively withheld from the public. Imagine how some debates would change if more authoritative resources were easily accessible (I don&amp;#x27;t want to exaggerate the value of &amp;#x27;authority&amp;#x27;, but it&amp;#x27;s a much better starting point than Wikipedia) and cited with a link, such as in HN discussions. Partly as a result the Internet is mostly rumor and popular notions, not knowledge.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve even turned to SEP for mathematical concepts (to the extent it covers math), for example, because there is no free authoritative resource in that field.</text></comment>
<story><title>After 20 years, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrives on the web</title><url>http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/july/online-encyclopedia-philosophy-073115.html?a=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dvt</author><text>I love the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; even though I don&amp;#x27;t use it as much as I did while I was in school, it&amp;#x27;s still something I read on a semi-regular basis (especially when I need to look something up).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m personally a much bigger fan of curated&amp;#x2F;academic encyclopedias like SEP as opposed to open encyclopedias (Wikipedia, etc.) so it&amp;#x27;s good to see it thrive.</text></comment>