How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business 623
prostoalex writes "Don't remember an encyclopedia salesman knocking at your door lately? Turns out, fewer Americans are purchasing layaway plans for heavy-bound multiple-volume sets (once sold at $1,400) and turning to the Web for answers, according to AP/Miami Herald. What's more interesting is that even the software encyclopedias are not selling as well, with Google changing the landscape of finding good reference information. 'Microsoft's $70 Encarta is the best seller but industrywide sales for encyclopedia software fell 7.3 percent in 2003 from 2002,' says Associated Press article."
Re:Something that should've been in the original p (Score:5, Interesting)
NO loss (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, after having worked on Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] for a few years more or less, I learned that books in the library may be "authoritative", but that doesn't mean crap most of the time. They are often biased, faddish, outdated or just plain wrong. More and more I'm learning that as far as learning goes, it's getting less important that sources are "authoritative" and more important that the source is verifiable and defensible.
Wikipedia is a world treasure.
the web really? (Score:2, Interesting)
He called in advance, and I explained to him that if anything, I would be interested in an electronic version of it and possibly in a subscription for a web based version.
The guy sayd those things were available and I asked if he could demonstrate them and he said he would.
Wgen arriving at my place, he had a suitcase of paper with him, which looked all nice but was noit what I asked for. He did not have an electronic version with him.
The guy got rather pissed at me when I told him that I was not going to do any business with him because of this.
Now, EB could have sold me an encyclopedia but didn't due to this stupid salesman, not because of the web or anythign else.
I'm happily using the web now, and used encarta for a while. They will do for many things.
I _WILL_ buy a printed set for my offspring (Score:4, Interesting)
1. they are still available
2. i actually end up with kids one day]
I spent a lot of time when I was 6-12 years old reading my parents encyclopedia's and old college textbooks from cover to cover. I can still recall a lot of things (over 20 years later) that I read when I was a kid that have stuck with me, without further exposure or reinforcement.
Actually, scratch #1 up there, if they aren't available, I'll find an antique set for them.
Re:in other news... (Score:5, Interesting)
You ever read Ayn Rand's Anthem? If not you should, it's a really good book. As a matter of fact, one of the premises of the book was what would happen if there was a society more interested in the status quo and change (modeled after the commies). There were a lot of interesting points -- one of which was that light bulbs would never be made because the industry of candlemakers would be put out of business. And if you don't benefit your fellow man, you must be evil.
Sometimes I wish I were a literary nerd so I could explain things better. Oh well, here's [wikipedia.org] a link to a Wikipedia summary.
Encyclopedias as Resources (Score:2, Interesting)
As for written assignments, encyclopedias aren't too valid as sources of info, so as a child hits his teens and the assignments get more "challenging," the need for an encyclopedia diminishes.
Gone also are those "Internet Yellow Pages" books with URLS in them, and any other compilations of information that change more rapidly than any print publication could.
Encyclopedia salesmen (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I remember encylopedia salesmen a bit too well. During mid 1980s I received an offer that said "free desk reference set if you respond". I responded and when the salesman went to schedule a sales appointment, I told him "you are welcome to come, but I have no intention of buying encyclopedia Britanica." He said then he wouldn't come. I pointed out that their offer still said, "free desk reference set" and this seemed like a fraudulent business practice. His response was, "then take it up with the FTC."
So, I wrote the FTC and the local BBB. I also sent a copy in care of "Presidents office, Encyclopedia Britanica". My letter didn't get any visible response from FTC or BBB, but I did get a phone call from the legal office at Encyclopedia Britanica. They carefully explained that what happened was not their policy. Shortly thereafter a local rep of Encyclopedia Britanica called to apologize, indicated that the salesperson had been fired and came to provide both a sales call and desk reference set. I listened politely, said "no thanks" and still feel bad for causing someone to lose their job.
Re:A few nits to pick. (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, it would be *far* more likely if Google had never come around. Google is the single driving force that has pushed and pushed at the other search engines to try and keep up ( sites like Teoma and the new Yahoo are getting closer in terms of accuracy, but Google has been at the top for so long now that it has found its brand name being added to the dictionary as a verb, and is constantly appearing in pop culture references like TV shows and Movies. You can't pay for that kind of advertising ).
If it weren't for Google pioneering the slick, streamlined search interface, the massive popup banners and "portal" monstrosities of AltaVista and Yahoo would still be the standard.. in fact, they would probably be even worse.
And thus, if it weren't for Google, searching for stuff on the internet would still be so incredibly painful and take so long that I could probably find it faster in the Britannica.
People just don't give Google enough credit. They totally revolutionized their space, and are still revolutionizing it( check out Google labs [google.com] if you don't believe me ). You don't see many companies doing that nowadays.
At one time... (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't used the DVD version, but I assume the articles are as good. By comparison MS Encarta is a joke. It has a lot of articles but they're half the length of Britannica's at best. The atlas is good though and is probably the killer feature in the 'Deluxe' version and it's the reason I own it.
I guess the ultimate encyclopedia would combine the articles from Britannica with the atlas from Encarta.
Still, neither of them is free. Happily Wikipedia has filled that vacuum quite nicely. I'm sure some of the content is pretty dodgy (or pointless), but it does benefit from a great breadth of articles and a keen team of volunteer editors to keep it going.
Re:Something that should've been in the original p (Score:4, Interesting)
With Wikipedia, there's the assumptions that there is at least a few people who might know something about a topic who happen upon it. Just because there's no "formal" criticism of the content doesn't mean that it doesn't get critiqued and fact-checked.
Google, on the other hand, has no fact checking ability. And, making things worse, for Google to fact check itself would ruin all of the reasons why people would want to use it in the first place.
So there's really no way to prevent somebody's kid from somehow managing to confuse neo-nazi websites for reliable sources while writing a paper about Hitler.
Re:A few nits to pick. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:in other news... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Not just the internet (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:You are correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Porn (Score:1, Interesting)
Playboy simply stuck with what has always worked for them: beautiful women (far more attractive than those in harcore porn) tastefully presented. They also maintained an exceptional quality of writing in their print magazine, so much so that most people actually buy playboy for its articles, not its pornographic content. In fact, the ratio of nudity to text in the magazine is quite low. It's really "Entertainment for Men," rather than porn - but it's not sleazy and stupid entertainment like what you'd find in Maxim or Stuff. Playboy is really the sort of magazine that I have no problem leaving on my coffee table - the articles are great, and it makes for a good conversation piece.
As for the internet... playboy has a subscription-based site, where they have archives of pictures and such from magazines going back years. All the softcore porn you could ever want, with the most beautiful women every photographed naked. There are plenty of people who pay, and gladly.
Playboy is the perfect example of a business that adapted to changing market conditions and came out as strong as ever.
It's more than facts that need checking (Score:3, Interesting)
You also need checking that an entry reads well, makes sense, and is informative.
A few people have mentioned Wikipedia - my first experience of it came when someone on slashdot linked to an article in a comment a few weeks back.
It was an article about Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower [wikipedia.org]. Not knowing what it was, but knowing Tesla was generally an interesting guy with some weird theories, I decided to have a look.
Go and have a look, and see if you can work out what the hell the Wardenclyffe Tower is, or what it is for. I was at least halfway through the article before I had much of a clue, and even then I don't think I was sure. That's just bad writing.
I love this part from the 3rd paragraph of the article:
Me: "Yeah, but you haven't told us what the function is yet!"
Too bad... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parents should really consider postponing their child's computer training and let them spend a few quiet afternoons with books. Besides, I want my kids to see computers as a tool to get things done, and not an end unto themselves(lest I create one more slashdot reader).
And no, I don't sell encyclopedias.
Re:Something that should've been in the original p (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. I was contacted to block a website through our school district web filter.
www.martinlutherking.org [martinlutherking.org]
It's purely a hate/descrimination web site and the domain name [internic.net] is owned by a known white supremacist [stormfront.org] organization. But the kids that find sites like these view them as if they are fact! Kids don't do a whois search. It doesn't even enter into their minds that someone would post misleading and false information on the web. A simple Google search [google.com] turns up all sorts of "information" that points to this "factual" website.
Part of me needs to block it, but kids need to see this stuff too, otherwise they'll leave school and suddenly vast swaths of the web are now "unhidden" and they won't know what to believe. Maybe I don't give kids enough credit, but it's a troubling thought that our censorship of the web might be doing more harm in the long run, and I'm a part of that.
brittanica has been mishandling the web for years (Score:3, Interesting)
"Owning" perhaps the greatest body of encyclopaedic content at one point and:
1. Refusing to come up with a CD-ROM strategy, for fear of cannibalizing book sales. Encarta comes along and eats their lunch.
2. Refusing to come up with a web strategy for many of the same reasons. The Internet itself eats their lunch.
3. In their defense, they did eventually try to come up with a number of ways to sell/license/share the content, but they were unwieldy and involved dividing the information into about 9 different online/CD/library/educational properties (I'm not kidding). Even their developers could hardly keep them straight.
4. Along the way, they came up with a crazy homegrown network to deal with global access, user profiles, and content updates. From what I heard, it was cutting edge, but it essentially was an attempt to "Akamai" the content in-house. After spending many, many millions of dollars, they outsourced the hosting and management after all.
5. One of the early "Jedi masters" of Search Engine Optimization spent considerable time and effort advising them on how to optimize their site. They made this a back-burner job for about a year, and eventually declined to execute it. Had they executed this correctly, today the entire body of content would be well-googled and highly ranked, giving them traffic potential revenue streams (if they hadn't eventually just closed ranks and made the whole thing a pay site, of course.)
6. Instead, they spent their time and money on things like this: paying $150k per month for a tiny text link on lycos' home page. I know a bunch of companies blew money on things like this (usually with AOL extracting the cash) but they were literally re-strategizing several times a year, and throwing out millions of dollars worth of development hours.
With all that said, it's really too bad, because I found that the developers and some editors are among the most brilliant people I've encountered. For the most part, they had educations of a completely different caliber (MIT, Oxford, Carnegie-Mellon, etc.) but were surprisingly down-to-earth, not name-dropping their Universities in the first 12 seconds of your conversation, for example.
Sadly, the management did not fit that mold. Privileged, self-righteous, cocky, arrogant PHBs. Piss away $millions a year on aforementioned goose chases and blame it on everyone else. I think the only reason it went on like this (and still does) is because the entire operation is owned by an 85-year-old Swiss billionaire who really doesn't seem to care about it, and the executive team keeps him in the dark.
It doesn't surprise me at all to see it all dying, considering this was once one of the premier brands of the medium.
Wikibooks should do the same for textbooks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You are correct (Score:3, Interesting)
As I said in a sibling post [slashdot.org]: Not everyone edits all articles - people tend to stick to what they know. Therefore, articles are generally edited by informed users. (B) A lot of Wikipedia's changes (50%, if I had to guess) come from a relatively small pool of very active contributors (200 or so), most of whom are very well educated. If you look up an article on Nuclear physics, you'll probably get something that was written by someone majoring in/with a BS in physics or chemistry. So it's not PHDs, but it's not Joe Q Average either.
As far as your claim that Wikipedia is a bunch of geeks and hackers - it's not true. While geeks make up a disproportately large portion of the contributors, but *most* of our contributors are not geeks or hackers. Off the top of my head, two of our most active contributors are an earth science graduate student and a Brit with a degree is psychology. In short - our contributors tend to come from all walks of life.
Re:What will save the industry (Score:4, Interesting)
Friends of mine started home-schooling their kid, after some terrible experiences with public schooling at grade 2. She's in grade 8 now. It was a big jump for them, and they were a bit nervous about it, but it's turned out great.
What surprises a lot of people, though, is how well socialized she is. She's gregarious, has friends from many age groups (rather than just those in the same grade she is), participates in lots of group activities (some of them organized with other home-schoolers, some classes like French or Spanish, some just general extra-curricular stuff). She's way more well adjusted than a public school kid like myself was at her age.
She decided she wanted to try public school for a year in grade 6. She stuck it out, but it was a generally negative experience. All it took was a couple of truly evil and ignorant teachers and the general prison-like atmosphere of public school to make her withdrawn and sullen. (She wasn't ready to sign on with a gang or anything, but the change was dramatic, and it took a while for her to regain her naturally more social demeanor). This was in one of the best schools in our city. Scholastically, she's ahead of her grade by a couple years in most subjects (I did some science with her last year, and went through two years of curriculum before hitting stuff she didn't know).
The poor socialization thing, from what I've seen, is pretty much a myth. If the parents are zealots keeping their kid out of school and away from people so they're not exposed to Evil Thoughts, then sure the kids going to be poorly adjusted. In a case like that public school may be their only salvation. But it's only like that if the parents make it that way.
And to keep this sort of on-topic, the internet is an invaluable resource for home schooling. There are a ton of sites dedicated to it, published lesson plans, and there is still the .edu domain out there. I used the internet heavily when putting together science lesson plans.
Re:Something that should've been in the original p (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd have to be a fool to rely on Wikipedia for anything important. The way it is now, it's not an encyclopedia. It's nothing but an interesting social experiment.
Yeah, I'm an armchair critic.
Re:You are correct (Score:1, Interesting)
Speaking from experience as a contributor of sorts (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on this experience, I've decided that it's FAR, FAR easier to work on a Wikipedia article than one that would go in a commerical encyclopedia. Not just because there's peer review without any institutionalization required(someone reviewing generally reviews the article itself and not the database info), but because the amount of research any one person has to do is minimal for most topics; if you know something, you put it in, else you leave it open for the next guy and mark the article a stub. Eventually someone comes along who knows the bits that are missing, and the article is completed with a minimum of tedium on everyone's part. The articles that nobody knows about, you can post bounties for, and eventually someone brave and passionate about the subject will take on the adventure of searching through dusty archives in the real world looking for the letters or documents that would give him material for an article. There's not really any commercial interest to spoil this picture, since it's all entirely voluntary.
Vandalization is less of a problem than one might think; if the article is simply turned into whitespace, you roll it back from the history, which covers 100 edits IIRC. If there's bad information, someone had to work hard to come up with it and put it there; it can't be done on a massive scale like other forms of Internet abuse, and it takes at most an equal amount of effort to give the bad information a place as a "minority viewpoint," and much less to just roll the page back. If rival factions fight over an entry, then either it gets hammered out over time into something acceptable to both sides, or it gets locked.
However, I admit that I still am hesitant to cite Wikipedia as a source, and turn to the library's Britannica for all my encylopedia citations and fact-checking, just because of that "you never know" tendency. It'll probably go away as the Wikipedia becomes better developed and respected. I know that the development of Internet citations took a similar path while I was in school. In middle school(the mid-to-late 90s), the Internet was still "new enough" that many teachers just banned citing from it outright. Later, by high school, they had developed lists of trusted sites to access. Now in college, I can feasably cite anything I want off the Net if I think it's trustable, but most of what I end up using are official documents in PDF format from some research or government group, because they all post them online these days. Wikipedia citations will probably follow in a year or three.
Re:Computers are much better for looking things up (Score:5, Interesting)
I completely agree. However, I would also add that print indexes still retain an enormous value. I've often discovered a thread while browsing in an index that was perfect for the task at hand--and something I might not have otherwise thought to consider.
Public libraries (Score:2, Interesting)
But more and more whenever I have a chance to set up people's computers I set the local public library's website as their browser's homepage.
Re:I _WILL_ buy a printed set for my offspring (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe this just attests to my particular weirdness, but I thought it was fascinating. You might as well.
Who Next? Lexis Nexis (Score:4, Interesting)
Could we ever see it git rid of paying for electronic information?
Will Google or some search engines ever create an "Oraganized factual" area that does the equiv of Lexis Nexis.
This will be very interesting over the next 20 years.
Most software geeks don't need or use Lexis Nexis, however, if you've ever supported a large legal office, you know all about it, and how expensive it is.
Nobody educated believed in the flat earth. (Score:5, Interesting)
"No doubt true?" It's an urban legend that it used to be generally believed that the Earth was flat. Eratosthenes successfully measured the circumference of the Earth around 200 BC. In medieval heraldry, only the Holy Roman Emperor could use the symbol of the "closed" or arching crown; everyone else had to use the "open" or pointy crown. This was because the Holy Roman Emperor's dominion was over the entire (spherical) world, which the dome symbolized. And persons living in seaports have always been able to see vessels coming up over the horizon. None of these were innovations in Galileo's time, and the idea of the spherical earth was hardly perceived as ridiculous or unacceptable.
I would also point out that Galileo died in 1642, a hundred and twenty years after Magellan's circumnavigatory expedition was completed!
Re:Wikipedia and attribution (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, my original intention on replying to this article was to mention that while I would not buy a paper encyclopedia, (the major benefits of the Wikipedia being: content flux; contribution; instant searches; massive amount of content along with an infinite space for growth) I would gladly give money to the Wikipedia. The latest fund drive for the Wikipedia generously exceeded its goals within hours, so obviously I'm not the only one.
If I may be bold for a moment, I'd also like to point out that the spirit of the first encyclopedia was to be knowledge of the people and for the people, so that everyone may be educated. If the web (again, a series of "ends") were available in the sixteenth century, the encyclopedia, I'd argue, would not have been published in medium as expensive, bulky and unportable as paper. When was the last time you sat down and opened the encyclopedia instead of using the web?
To read more about the concept of encyclopaedia in dozens of languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
Encyclopaedy Abides (Score:2, Interesting)
Books don't boot, books don't crash and they still work when the lights go out. I can find information in them faster and more reliably than Google. When I look in an index in an encyclopedia, the page I am referred is 100% guaranteed to be there (caching aside.) Showing people how to use computers and software is my living, but I collect reference works as my hobby. I have a dozens of 100 year old books and a few over 200 years old. Yes, they are 'out of date' -- but all information asserts itself in the moment of its promulgation, and most all of it will pass. As stated earlier in the thread, Information is actually always in flux, in any age people have their beliefs of knowledge and in time the collective knowledge-base looks back and laughs. And as another poster said, information about some historical events can be highlighted in one decade vs. the next. Anybody who loves words should see what is contained in dictionaries before the medical-chemical-industrial-complex of post WWII supplanted so many great words and definitions with 'science'. (I love science, but not at the offing of language and culture.)
There will always be a wonderful need for great gobs of information at your fingertips via the Internet, but if you care for a book, it will last centuries. I don't know of too many things that people have created that has the usefulness and durability of books. They may waste a bit of space, but they are nice to look at and hold in your hands too.
Oh yeah one more thing, anybody who wants to bring up the 'save a tree' argument, should be appalled at what the internet and computers has done to the use of paper. People print out 340 page
PS: If anybody is chucking out a 9th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, I'm looking to buy.
Re:still valuable (Score:1, Interesting)
An article on Heat by a Scottish academic named William Thomson (not yet become Lord Kelvin), Electricity and Magnetism by James Clerk Maxwell (and he really does not dumb down the equations!), English Language by James A.H. Murray, editor of the New English Dictionary [oed.com]...
Re:Computers are much better for looking things up (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not just suggesting we're more susceptible to manipulation by malevolent conspiracies, in a tinfoil-hat sort of way, but also wondering if we're in danger of losing the archive trail our civilisation has had up to now.