Britannica and Free Content

jwales writes: "Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of the Nupedia and Wikipedia sister projects, has written a fabulous response on k5 to Britannica's decision to start charging fees for access. It's all about freedom (in the sense of free speech), but there are implications for freedom (in the sense of free beer)."

Re:Dot coms getting real

I wish RIAA or other such companies thought this way.

I've proposed way back when Napster first started that the record companies ought to release music tracks as MP3 but recorded at some very low bit rate, like 56k or the like. Enough that you aren't missing the music, but it's not good enough quality to sit around and listen to all day. Then release them into the 'wild'.

Those that would have never bought the music track will still mooch these, but they're not getting a good quality track, and thus will have no incitive to share again.

Those that never heard of that CD have a way to try out the music and see if they like; if they like, they buy the CD. If not, no other money is lost. Again, the quality of the free track makes it worthless from a 'sharing' standpoint.

Those that probably would have bought the CD (for example, one that follows a specific band) have a way to listen to try before they buy, and that includes all the an album, not just the one or two songs that are radio-featured or at those listening kiosks in the record store. (Eg, I know a lot of people would have avoided DMB's "In These Crowded Streets", knowing the other 8 or so tracks outside of the two for radio play).

Additionally, the music companies could then combine this with an online music program such that one can buy those tracks at a reasonable cost (.25 to .50 a track) at a very high bitrate (196k).

Unfortunately for us, the record companies first played ostrich, then denial, then litigation, in regards to online music. Very much like a Mr. Gates regarding the internet in his book "The Road Ahead".

Re:Encyclopaedic

Thats a long term aim, but no reference work started out comprehensive

Errr, come on! Most reference works start out as comprehensive. Not perfect, but comprehensive. Let's see, the first "Complete works of Shakespeare", was, I bet pretty comprehensive. Maybe an obscure sonnet was missing, added in edition 4. But, no one in the real world is publishing something called "The works of Shakespeare" with 4 plays in and a preface saying that with so many members of the public contributing other works, they hope to have at least 12 plays by edition 2!

The value of reference works is in their comprehensiveness. Who wants a guide to the Java class libraries that just leaves out 400 assorted methods because no-one got round to writing the entries for them? Do you think people would still say it was a useful book? If you were teaching chemistry, would you advice students to pay for a full periodic table of elements, or encourage them to use a free one that still have a few elements missing, but was copyright free!

I currently work for a medical journal (www.bmj.com). I can attest the the value and importance of running expert reviews, medical specialist editors, technical editors, copy editors and the rest of it. You don't get that for free.

Encyclopaedic

The thing about these Encyclopedias is that they are meant to be comprehensive. So far, none of the free ones are. I mean they are nowhere close to it.

So, there are lots of arguments about why it is possible for people to create a free encyc. but the proof of the pudding is, let's face it, in the eating.

So far, there is simply no evidence (regardless of what predictions might be plausible) that these kind of free info repositories work.

The Internet itself (+google) is the closest thing to a free 'as in beer' encyclopaedia.

Re:way to go

Note that the article is available. The comments just won't appear right away, on the full-article page.

I'm kind of pleased at beating the slashdot effect this time. :-)

--
There is no K5 [kuro5hin.org] cabal.

Re:Quality Control

Britannica's reputation has been suffering of late. (Well, this is about 5 years ago.) Not because it was bad, but because it was difficult to use. The original CD version of the Britannica wasn't particularly useful. I, personally, compared it to Comptons rather than to the print edition that I grew up with. And at their prices (and my frequency of use) I haven't re-subscribed. Now it sounds like during the period that I have ignored them they have revamped the indexing and price structure. Again.

Do we need an open source edition? Yes. Given the DMCA, I'm not willing to trust any important work to solely being available in proprietary form. The CRC math handbook isn't available anymore because of copyright issues. (Well, this may have changed again. This was a few years ago.) And people were being told that they couldn't use the table of sines in building interpolation routines. I'm sure that a decent lawyer, a few years, and a bunch of cash could have gotten around that, but the people being challenged didn't have those resources.

Yes, an open source version is needed. Commercial entities can't be trusted with exclusive control of anything. (Actually, I don't think that anyone can, but we are arguing about Open Source here.) History shows that they will press the exclusive control of one resource into associated areas, in a kind of embrace and devour strategy. (No, Microsoft didn't create that strategy. They merely articulated it.)

Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.

Re:Encyclopaedic

no reference work started out comprehensive

And what exactly are you basing that observation on? I have a facimille of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and, while some of the articles are a bit shorter that we would expect in a modern volume (famously the complete entry for Woman runs: "the female of man. See Homo.") but it is comprehensive with few, if any, obvious omissions.

Similarly, the French L'Encyclopédie was, with its original 28 and first edition 35 volumes in folio size, a remarkably comprehensive work.

Indeed, I would argue that (commercial) encyclopaedias have a history of being very comprehensive from the first edition onwards. In this spirit, none of the free versions are anywhere close, not even beta.

The point of an encyclopaedia is, indeed, to be comprehensive and also authoritative. I had a look at the "best of Wikipedia" [wikipedia.com] pages, and while the writing was sometimes engaging, on these two counts the articles simply did not measure up.

As an example, look at the article on Calendar [wikipedia.com]. On the first count, that of being comprehansive, it fails obviously by missing half of the articles to specific calendars it mentions at the bottom. (This may change over time.)

On the second count, that of being authoritative, the Encyclopædia Britannica [britannica.com] (subscription required, yadayada) runs to 17 double column pages in my printed edition. It mentions over 15 specific calendars, as opposed to the 6 of Wiki (3 of which has no content).

And - I almost forgot! - the Wiki page is factually incorrect. A calendar does not measure time, a clock does. The printed Britannica definition "a calendar is a means of grouping days in ways convenient for regulating life and religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes" is much better.

For the computer programmers out there, think of the calendar as the thing that translates time (time_t or whatever; an event in the Universe) into a date; a date having a legal or social meaning. In this context it is interesting that the calendar can change with eight to ten weeks' notice [dtic.mil].

So I guess I'm not impressed yet. Still, it is early days and the project may grow.

Bravo!

It's early, and I'm not at optimum caffeine level yet, but it strikes me that this hits it right on the head. and so - please all repeat after me:

First.
The freelibre philosophy, which works very well for software, is not universally appropriate.

Second.
It does not follow that if someone/thing/company is non-freelibre, or non-freegratis that they are automatically evil/bad. Some people just prefer to be paid for their work/knowledge directly. People are different. Love the diversity. See rule the first.

Third.
Empowerment is not Entitlement. Just because you are able to, does not mean it is right or clever that you should. Exercising your freedom to will in many cases take away someone elses freedom from. See rule the second.

Fourth.
Freedom from is, in many cultures, more important than Freedom to. It is this fundamental difference in thinking that seperates Microsoft and the GNU/Linux community, Adobe and the Russians, the RIAA and Napster and so on and so on. See rules the first, second and third.

If half of the time spent on this non-sensical freelibre jihad was spent actually working on the product, whatever it is, all this ra-ra-ra we-are-great-you're-non-free-you-suck would be redundant.
and now, back to the coffee.

The One Thing I Want You To Know!

Moderators, please moderate this up so that people will stop asking the same questions over and over! :-) 1. Why should you trust the content in Nupedia, since it is a free encyclopedia? Because we have a staff of volunteer PhD peer reviewers who go over the content carefully! Our review process is vastly superior to that of Britannica. 2. Why doesn't Nupedia have the comprehensiveness of Britannica? Because we've just gotten started a year ago, that's why! Join us! Get involved! 3. Why should anyone care about "free content"? What's up with the GNU license? If you don't know the answers to these questions by now, why are you reading Slashdot? :-)

Nupedia has rigorous peer review!

You ask this question as if it is an unanswerable challenge. Nupedia [nupedia.com] has a comprehensive system of peer review. We have review boards made up of people with PhDs in their fields. We also have an "open review" step where anyone may post their comments. Even after an article is published, it's always open to revision. Spot an error? Fix it and send in a diff! The maintainers (the editors) of that section will review it and make the fix.

Asking who is going to pay these editors and quality controllers is like asking who is going to pay the maintainers of free software. If GNU/Linux and all the free BSD variants didn't exist, you'd be justified in your skepticism.

But we already know this will work.

What about wikipedia [wikipedia.com]? Well, here you have to judge for yourself. The review process is open and eternally ongoing. Being less rigorous, the quality of the final product is lower than Nupedia. But if you look through it, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how good it really is.

Hooray!

Now that Nupedia and Wikipedia have been advertised on Slashdot and Kuro5hin, we'll soon have the many Slashdotters and K5ers contributing scholarly, erudite articles. This will really make the quality of the articles go up. Hooray for Nupedia and Wikipedia! Hooray!

Microsoft already put Brittanica out of business

When Microsoft was doing Encarta, they went to Brittanica and talked to them about doing a CD-ROM version. Brittanica wasn't interested. So Microsoft went ahead and did Encarta on their own, priced it far lower than Brittanica, and took over the encyclopedia business.

A few years later, the Brittanica people went to see Bill Gates about a possible buyout. He told them they now had negative value, because their big outside sales force that sold print encyclopedias door to door was a liability, not an asset. That seems to have been a valid assesment.

Since then, Brittanica has been looking for a revenue model. They tried bulk licensing for universities (Stanford used to have a site license), a free online service, and now a pay online service. Nothing worked. Brittanica has since laid off most of their staff.

Brittanica's big problem was price. The print version lists at $1250. Encarta lists at $30. Brittanica faced the classic problem of a high-margin company faced with low-margin, high-volume competition. Very few companies make that transition successfully.

Re:Well that's just ridiculous....

Are you being sarcastic? I can't tell, perhaps because it's 4:30 AM. Anyway, we'll assume you're being serious.

Don't be ridiculous. I'm sure that thousands of hours of research and editing go into an encyclopedia such as Britannica. The authors and editors make this effort so you don't have to. What you are paying for is convenience and accuracy.

If you want to take the time to go research everything yourself and not pay Britannica, that's fine. But if you want to find information on a ton of topics that you can count on to be well organized and accurate, go to an established encyclopedia such as Britannica.

An encyclopedia isn't a scientific journal where you go to find newly discovered facts. It's a research tool.

Re:Encyclopaedic

I have a facimille of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and, while some of the articles are a bit shorter that we would expect in a modern volume ... it is comprehensive with few, if any, obvious omissions.

Erm ... Bull. I have the 1911 version here. No reference to the modern Olympics (15 years, and 5 games, old), no music outside the western classical tradition, two references to baseball (over 70 years old at this point), neither giving any description of the game. No references to Chartism and its role in universal suffrage, to luddites, or anything that might be described as social history. No Babbage, or Lovelace, or the Wright brothers, ... Well, you get the picture.

A calendar does not measure time, a clock does

Semantics.

Re:Encyclopaedic

an encyclopaedia must be semantically correct

But you could argue semantics and say clocks don't measure time either, they measure some physical phenomena that (it is hoped) relies on time, and is regular in time (whatever that means. As soon as you start discussing such matters, you run into such conumdra, since it is so very hard to define what time is, that to argue whether calendars measure it is just pedantry.)

Quality Control

So where's the quality control in these 'open' encyclopaedias? They're only as good as the information they contain, and if you let any old fool write stuff for them without any editing or quality control then they're useless.

And who's going to pay these editors and quality controllers?

Sorry, I think I'll stick with established sources of information myself.

Hacker: A criminal who breaks into computer systems

Open Source Info and Controversial Subjects

I wonder how well the open source encyclopedia will function when dealing with controversial subjects. Some folks get rabid on certain points, and you can even get disputes of what are the facts.

In the town where I went to High School, there was an English Edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. It was completely fascinating to read, often at complete variance with the western version of the same information. Although it was often the only source of detailed regional information like the politics and history of Estonia in the Middle Ages.

In a similar vein, I can see Microsoft publicists contributing their take on the History of the Open Source movement. Obviously, there could be problems. You could have the History of Microsoft as well. Should MS be trusted or distrusted here as well?

It comes down to what world view do you want to promote? and if it is open source who do you let in to write the articles? I can see the controversy in the writing of articles covering the history of the American Elections of 2000. The variety of Vested interests would have a blood bath over the details.

Never mind those hot button issues near and dear to the open source community. It is one thing when you are dealing with code that implements widget X. You can see if it works or not. But when you get into areas outside of technology, it is not so simple.

Re:Quality Control

"Suprisingly high quality" according to whom? According to some open source advocate? What the hell is this supposed to mean? This proof of something?

I've had plenty of students who would claim that their papers are of surprisingly high quality. "My roomate thought so. And he's a senior!"

Um, yeah. Whatever.

Bottom-line: the "open source" encyclopedias are noble ideas, but they'll never be accepted mainstream. They'll never be institutionalized the way that Britannica has and will continue to be.

And -- I don't see anyone writing about this -- bear in mind (just naming a few names off the top of my head) that Buckminster Fuller and Aaron Copland (among many, many others) have written and contributed articles to Britannica. This is part of what Britannica such an interesting, ongoing historical document. And this is part of what has "institutionalized" Britannica.

The question we should be asking -- and one, again, that I see no one concerned about -- is this: do we really need an "open source" enclopedia?

We might. I'm not sure. But then: why? Why do we need it? Do we need it because Britannica lacks quality content? Or do we need it because Britannica is charging five bucks a month and a couple people think: "Hmmmm. Monthly charge bad. Must start from scratch."

Dot coms getting real

This looks like a very reasonable idea for generating true revenue from information. In particular, since they provide a "teaser" (the first few paragraphs of each entry) you can find out if it's something useful or not. And unlike a website which only covers a narrow range of topics, an encyclopedia is useful for just about any kind of general research.

The issue that will hold people back is just the bother of registering and paying, when it's easier just to go back to Google and see if you can find it in an unrestricted site. (Microsoft Passport to the rescue? *shudder*)

Pointless aggressivity?

Well, I could have posted this countless times before; this basically applies to most discussions about the respective strengths/weaknesses of open source (free) vs closed.

Sanger's article is well written and makes a number of very good points but I couldn't shake an unnerving feeling:
Why does he claim that he will put Britannica out of business?

And more generally, I keep reading posts on /. or elsewhere claiming that Linux will kill MS, ***SQL will kill Oracle and so on. Though I recognize the benefits of these claims in motivating troops or getting momentum and coverage, I feel that they are immature and short-sighted.

My understanding is that closed and open source are very different "methods of development" that yield very different products addressing very different needs. I am not a technologist (actually I'm more of a business guy) but from my experience, I think I can quickly sum up the plusses and minuses of each "method of development" :

Open source plusses
- robust
- reliable
- standard and adaptative
- constantly improving

Open source minusses
- designed for coders
- no respect of deadlines
- never completed

Closed source plusses
- designed for users
- meets deadlines

Closed source minusses
- unrelialable
- hard to maintain / upgrade

Of course, these are generalities and could (will) not apply to any specific situation. I could also add a few plusses or minusses to each method but you get the idea.

I think that each method addresses a different segment of the market and I would not be surprised if in 10 years, both worlds coexist peacefully. Many people in the open source field are starting to realize that. A very interesting discussion about "Why Linux will never make it to the mass-market?" (or something along these lines) took place on /. the other day. Some guy essentially said that Linux would never reach mass-market acceptance before it was half as user-friendly as Win is; another one said that he didn't even care.

Back to Nupedia and Wikipedia, Sanger makes a pretty convincing description of what these projects could become when (if) they reach critical mass, but I think he misses a point about what it takes to create a good encyclopedia.
Writing a good encyclopedia is not only about getting the largest number of the best writers submitting the largest number of the best articles. It is also about coherence, completeness and absolute accuracy.
Benevolent writers will offer articles on their pet subjects, but how do you find a writer for a specific article if nobody is voluntary? All articles will probably improve in quality over time, but at a given time won't lots of articles still be bug-ridden?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these projects are dommed or will never meet a significant success. I do think, though, that Nupedia and Wikipedia will eventually be dramatically different from Britannica and will fill dramatically different needs.

Adopting this perspective, I think that open source advocates should commit less resources in religious wars and more in thinking about what needs they want to address and which market they are targetting.

I will fight for the right to be right