well first i reject the whole suitable for a general encyclopedia argument because it's just not relevant wikipedia is more than that because it is not subject to the constraints that have bound traditional encyclopedias size is irrelevant i've got a half terabyte external usb drive on the linux server across the room that is smaller and lighter than a paperback well cryptonomicon at least assuming good bitonal tiff document images that will hold million scanned pages assuming moderately compact text files palmos reader format that jumps to million pages printing costs are also irrelevant since it's not printed as are writing costs monetary and temporal as the labor force is both free and unbounded in size so it's back to first principles the definition of encyclopedia is a book or set of books containing articles on various topics usually in alphabetical arrangement covering all branches of knowledge or less commonly all aspects of one subject dictionary com unabridged v since wikipedia is unbound by the constraints of other encyclopeidas then i truly believe that it should cover all branches of knowledge and cover them far more thoroughly than has heretofore been possible as far as sysadmin topics go wikipedia failed me this week if the article on domain name system had even so much as a link to resolv conf i could have save myself a lot of digging when i set up that linux system in fact i'll probably do just that along with showing the file format of resolv conf to that article now that i've figured it out why because it's useful information that i needed and failed to find when i looked for it it's not quite narrating the process but it certainly is within the scope of an article on the dns process to describe the steps taken by each part and one of those steps would be the client checks the list of dns servers see resolv conf etc to determine which name server to consult that's all i would have needed to find the information i needed to solve my problem as jimmy wales said our goal is to get a free encyclopedia to every single person on the planet empowering people everywhere to have the information they need to make good decisions that's my guiding principle when i work on wikipedia and i feel that the accurizing article fits that perfectly