[vonmoltke]

> It seems to me that any information - in an encyclopedia or anywhere else - on a subtopic must assume knowledge of the parent topic.

I would argue that any subtopic that requires more than basic understanding of the parent topic is too specialized for a general knowledge encyclopedia.

[ethanbond]

That's why "general knowledge encyclopedia" isn't a good term.

If you mean general knowledge in the sense of "knowledge which is generally held," or even "knowledge which is generally accessible," then a general knowledge encyclopedia wouldn't be that useful, by definition, to most people.

Crucially, it would be useless to the people most likely to use an encyclopedia!

A general knowledge encyclopedia should aim to curate knowledge with no discrimination in terms of category. This is what Wikipedia is, and it's really good at it.

I think there is room for improvement in linking topics and subtopics, even potentially in-line within an article. See a word you don't understand? Click the "+" next to it to expand a sentence that fills its place syntactically and semantically!

[RadioactiveMan]

Try logging in to Wikipedia and enabling Hovercards[1] in the beta features. It creates a pop-up with a summary of linked pages when you hover over the link.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Preferenc...

[ethanbond]

Oh wow, awesome. I'll give that a shot!

[ivansavz]

> Click ... to expand a sentence that fills its place syntactically and semantically!

proof of concept of something like what you're describing: http://www.telescopictext.org/text/pFjkqQY9bmfvQ (not the best example, but telescopictext is very cool)