Looking at just those two fragments, I prefer the wikipedia style by a country mile. To me, the scholarpedia style is excessively wordy e.g. "in the years just prior to" and has a tortured sentence construction. Its the type of pretension that stings as you read it whereas I find the wiki style is straight-forward and easy to absorb.

I don't think it's helpful to pick a single article from either Wikipedia or Scholarpedia and judge the site on that. I do think that the SEP/Scholarpedia model of trusted experts has significant advantages over the Wikipedia model. With Wikipedia it is sometimes painfully obvious that the text is a compromise between different editors.

this was the best resource for Philosophy 101!

I read a random introduction to an article every single day. I was a philo undergrad and use it to keep up to date with high-level philosophical concepts. It's great.

Kudos where kudos are due. I find the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy clear, concise, and readable even when dealing with the most complex and controversial of ideas.

Wow! During my philosophy undergrad this was pretty much the only internet site from which we had readings.

What I find so amazing is that the SEP isn't for the faint of heart---it is rigorous and challenging to a fault, and rarely ever holds the reader's hand. Amazing it has had so much success, really.

Maybe now I will get a decent mark in Philosophy :P

I'd guess there have been attempts to do something like this in most fields, and this is one of the few that worked. Why?

One hint may be in http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#policies

"Contributions to the Encyclopedia are normally solicited by invitation from a member of the Editorial Board. However, qualified potential contributors may send to the Principal Editor or an appropriate member of the Editorial Board a proposal to write on an Encyclopedia topic, along with a curriculum vitae." "By qualified, we mean those persons with accredited Ph.D.s in Philosophy (or a related discipline) who have published refereed works on the topic of the proposed entry..."

Also perhaps http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#copyright . I don't know how much non-cs academics think about copyright and licensing, but as most accomplished academics are authors, I am guessing it may matter to them that they keep ownership.

"Copyright Notice. Authors contributing an entry or entries to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, except as provided herein, retain the copyright to their entry or entries. By contributing an entry or entries, authors grant to the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University an exclusive license to publish their entry or entries..."

This is just one facet of course. I'm sure there are many other factors such as possibly the stature of the Stanford lab, and particular personal relationships and technical skill of those involved, good timing, etc. I'd be very curious to hear from those with personal knowledge of the details.

See also:

http://blog.scholarpedia.org/2013/11/04/wikifying-scholarly-...

Don't know about Dr. Orend or the philosophy of war, but the authors are typically quite well regarded philosophers, if not necessarily the world expert on X (if people can even agree on that).

That said, I think writing an SEP article is a nice line item on a resume but not the sort of thing that makes your career. I think the authors typically write the articles after receiving some recognition.

There is no such thing as "the canonical living expert" in most philosophical fields, since the most important figures in any given field tend to disagree with one another very strongly. You could call them experts in their own positions, but they are hardly the ones that you could rely on to deliver a balanced introduction to the field as a whole.

Most SEP articles seem to have been written by younger professors (mostly in their 40s) whose daily job is to teach balanced, comprehensive, introductory courses on general topics. They might not be world-class experts in any single field, but they have broad knowledge and teaching experience. They might have edited anthologies or organized conferences on the topic. They know what points students are prone to miss. They know which theories are frequently misunderstood. This breadth, not depth, makes them ideal authors of encyclopedia articles.

My interpretation has always been that philosophy students and professors just really like to share and discuss ideas as an ends unto itself, with little regard for self-interest.

Indeed, one of the most authoritative sources. They should expand the fields treated, imo.

Here's a review of Wikipedia's math articles by a mathematician:

http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-...

If you don't already know what you are reading, you can't distinguish knowledge from nonsense.

It is a really great guide. I had a failed plan to translate into Chinese years ago. Fortunately, the companion website has Google Search feature: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html

Flat-out the most useful resource in my Philosophy undergraduate work. Any new concept I encountered would be investigated on this website.

For what it's worth, it also lacks an entry on ice cream.

There are many, including:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-topics/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/femapproach-pragmatism/