Britannica Attacks - Nature Returns Fire 217
An anonymous reader writes "Just in case you missed it, Nature has replied to Britannica's criticism of the Nature Britannica-Wikipedia comparison. I think it is fair to say Nature is not sympathetic to Britannica's complaints." The original piece regarding the accuracy comparison, along with the response from Britannica.
Where's the edit tab? (Score:3, Funny)
OT:Where's the edit tab? (Score:3, Funny)
We can't all get what we want.
Re:Where's the edit tab? (Score:2)
And make the "origional piece" link go somewhere, rather than just be green text.
~W
Re:Where's the edit tab? (Score:2, Interesting)
The original comparison article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The original comparison article (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The original comparison article (Score:4, Insightful)
The 33% does not make much sense if we do not know the number of articles that we wrongly found to contain errors - even if the study was done blind.
My point is that if for example these false errors constitute one per article for both Wikipedia and Brittanica, then the difference would suddenly be 50% (2 errors per Brittanica article and 3 errors per Wikipedia art.).
In my opinion Nature has not refuted the critique against the study until they have quantified the number of false positives. Without this number they have no basis for claiming that "...the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three."
Re:The original comparison article (Score:2)
As any accountant or auditor knows, a number by itself is no good. You need something to compare it to, or at least some context.
If there are 100 errors on a page with 200 facts, then of course 33% is huge, as it means there are 33 additional errors.
But if there are 3 errors on a page with 1000 facts, 33% is one additional error.
Sort of like, is gas goes up in price 33%- I remember in 1997 gas was 99 cents a gallon, so 33% increase would be about 33 cents. But if gas is 3$ a gallon, a 33% increas
Re:The original comparison article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The original comparison article (Score:5, Funny)
Wikipedia on Britannica [wikipedia.org]
vs.
Britannica on Wikipedia [britannica.com]
Re:The original comparison article (Score:3, Interesting)
From Wikipedia, "The Britannica was an important early English-language general encyclopedia and is still regarded as one of the most important reference books in the English language". About 2 pages of text at 1024x768 with a lively history and current direction the privately held company is heading.
Britannica, not a single word on perhaps the most important contribution to encyclopedia since Britannica. In a word disturbing.
Ho
Re:The original comparison article (Score:3, Insightful)
For $1000, you can buy several cheap laptops *and* an electronic encyclopedia and carry one around in a backpack.
I grew up with paper encyclopedias, but always found them almost completely useless. Full text search makes any reference an order of magnitude more useful. Being able to access it from anywhere adds even more value.
If you ask me, an electronic copy of a reference is worth far more than the paper copy w
Writing on the wall. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Other objections are simply incorrect. The company has, for example, claimed that in one case we sent a reviewer material that did not come from any Britannica publication."
That - right there is Brittanica getting desperate & flailing around attempting to attack anyone who criticizes them. Note - I don't think Wikipedia is going to 'take over' from Brittanica, its merely one of the many sources (albeit, currently the most important) you can turn to for free, online information.
The niche that Brittanica used to fill is simply closing - I suggest Brittanica concentrates on expanding its scope rather then attacking criticism if it wants to survive in future.
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:5, Insightful)
In one of the case's, the encyclopedia britannica claims that Nature used a 350 word introduction rather than the full 6000 word article on Lipids. If this is true I would say they have good reason to criticise Nature's article on the relevant merits of both encyclopedias.
Nature has been remarkably reticent in allowing anyone to see the unabridged reviewer reports to enable readers to make their own judgements, part of their own response to Britannica's allegations states that they 'provided reviewers with chosen excerpts, not full articles; this was done with entries from both Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia. www.nature.com [nature.com] Making such arbritary decisions, and not detailing this in the original article is not what is expected of such a respectable publication
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:2)
The article you link to refutes your point.
But this applied as much to criticisms of Wikipedia as of Encyclopaedia Britannica.Because the reviewers were blind to the source of the material they were evaluating, and ma
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now that's a very different statement than the one they brought out in response to Britannia's allegations that talks about 'chosen excerpts'. I don't think most people wo
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:2)
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed. Nevertheless it ought to be said that a product - and a business model - which survives for 240 years has done pretty well. Nothing lasts forever. Brittanica may have had its day, but it was a good long day while it lasted.
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:2)
It would be a valid complaint, if they hadn't actually published it.
Britannica shouldn't complain about being criticized for errors in work they've plagiarized, either. Everyone knows that before you copy someone else's work, you should make sure it's correct.
Re:Writing on the wall. (Score:3, Funny)
By Nature it meant the Magazine Nature (Score:3, Funny)
Re:By Nature it meant the Magazine Nature (Score:2)
It boils down to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2, Interesting)
If I was in a workplace and needed to research something, chances are that I wouldn't use EB, because I'd want more specific detail than an encyclopedia could give me.
Wikipedia quite often gives me enough to then go searching more of Google.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2)
9 times out of ten, the biggest problem (when I'm having a problem finding information) is that I don't know the specific technical terms to search for.
Sometimes that little detail can stymie even the best searchers if they're looking around in unfamiliar territory.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Informative)
And in some cases had direct links to more authoritative and in-depth info right on the page. No need to even go to Google.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:5, Interesting)
What if research libraries no longer have for-profit encyclopedias?
After some though we realised that encyclopedias are not really primary references anyway. Wikipedia is good enough (even with jackasses vandalising pages) to get you to the proper primary references to continue research and as such serves its function weel. It is certainly good enough to settle day-to-day curioisity and is an excellen primer for more detailed research.
Send a donation to Wikipedia, they deserve a little love.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Funny)
ARRR!!!! England shall prevail! The Union Jack shalt never set down, you miserable liberal hippie scumbag! x-(
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2)
4 of their education DVDs
their latest adult encyclopedia on DVD
Their CDROM children's homework helper
2 almanacs
2 different young children's encyclopedia in book form
and probably a few others I can't think of right now
and I think this year I'm buying their next DVD encyclopedia so I can get an update
I do fork over the cash. I still use Wikipedia most of the time. No question Britannica has higher quality bu
Re:It boils down to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Authoritative is exactly what the wikipedia is not.
Authoritative doesn't mean "accurate", nor does it mean "informative", although these qualities contribute to authoritativeness. But to say a source is "authoritative" means it can be cited, and what makes a source citable is predictability. Authorities have their own biases, but at least those biases are documentable and predictable. If one looks at a nineteenth century Britannica for an article on colonialism, their bias is going to be fairly predictable. With Wikipedia, you might end up with a better, more informative, less biased article. Or you might end up with propaganda from one side or the other of an issue. Furthermore which side you get may depend on the day you look.
Of course in practice this is less of an issue than it would seem. Hot button issues, may be Wikipedia's greatest strength, because many eyeballs expose the review process to the reader. However articles on obscure people or issues are unreliable in the extreme.
I've often said that Wikipedia would be an excellent platform on which to create an authoritative source. Since it's possible to track every version and change to an article, all one needs to do is keep a database of "reviewed and accepted" articles to make your own purpose specific Wikipedia. For example, you could include this version [wikipedia.org] of the George W Bush article in your database if you prefer the negative slant of the article lead. Then all anybody has to do is compare the version in your database to the version preferred by another group, e.g. like this [wikipedia.org], to know where your slant is.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Insightful)
Then by that measure Britannica is not authoritative either. No scholar would cite it. I couldn't even cite encyclopedias in high school.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2)
Generally, this is a comparison of their website with Wikipedia's - with their search engine with Wikipedia's.
They complained about having results taken from their student edition.
If they don't want people seeing their student edition for such judgements, then why is it part of the search engine?
Further, their conclusion seems a bit one-sided. It's not like they went through the Wikipedia articles to check to see which entries had errors that wer
Re:It boils down to this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, and that it is supposedly "Peer Reviewed" by subject matter experts. The final leg on the tripod, is that it has a centralized control system to restrict who can change the articles.
These are all seen as essential to the process of providing reliable information.
What we're seeing here is a challenge to accepted methods of producing an encyclopedia. To make it more interesting, we're seeing it happen between the two best examples of each method. ON the one hand you have
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2)
Entry: authoritative
Pronunciation: -thär--t-tiv, -, -thr-
Function: adjective
Date: 1605
1 a : having or proceeding from authority : OFFICIAL b : showing evident authority : DEFINITIVE
2 : DICTATORIAL 2
- authoritatively adverb
- authoritativeness noun
In other words official and respected. The social consensus is that it is a legitimate source.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:4, Insightful)
It means they go out and find the foremost experts (recognized as such within their field, e.g. Nobel prize winners etc.) and then ask them to produce an article which goes on to be peer-reviewed. This is then proofed, edited for conformity, cross-referenced and indexed.
The Wikipedia model is for someone to produce an article and hope that some genuine experts turn up to fix / correct the mistakes and that others turn up to give the article some semblance of form. If an article gets really lucky, many experts will pool their knowledge and shape the article. Wikipedia further hopes that some asshole(s) won't see fit to disrupt the article either through bias, malice or their own ignorance of the subject.
Generally speaking, the experts do win out in Wikipedia, although the more controversial the subject, the more supervision is required. Articles on George Bush, abortion, Church of Scientology, Adolph Hitler, Palestine etc. are subject to near constant vandalism by jerks, meaning someone has to be continuously watching those articles to revert the changes. There must also be a low level form of corruption going on too. It would not surprise me if polictical parties, marketing departments, etc. were engaging in subtle editing and embellishment of certain articles to cast a product / person in a better light. This form of vandalism is far harder to catch and might ultimately prove to be the biggest issue for Wikipedia.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2, Informative)
Really? They went to the foremost expert on Frank Zappa, and got an article that didn't get his first name right? And that factual error got through peer review? How'd that happen?
They went to the foremost expert on Alexander Pushkin, and got an article that said that he frequently visited Bohemia during a peri
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Informative)
In arguing about "models", "experts", and what "definitive" means, let us not forget that the study by Nature indicates Britanica is not substantially more accurate than Wikipedia, and both are substatially correct. In this context, I can't see how you can call one "definitive" and not the other using any definition I should care about.
Re:It boils down to this (Score:2)
Re:It boils down to this (Score:3, Insightful)
Old media attacks itself (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, what? (Score:5, Funny)
Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:5, Insightful)
Or in other words:
Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colorless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It says that the effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
Thats the difference.
--
Elephant Essays [elephantessays.com] - Custom-created essays and research papers.
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure that you really want to hold up the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a paragon of accuracy. Keep in mind that
Entries tend to get updated or not across the Sub-Etha Net according to if they read good.
Take for example, the case of Brequinda on the Foth of Avalars, famed in myth, legend and stultifyingly dull tri-d mini-serieses as home of the magnificent and magical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.
[snip]
Not surprisingly, the Guide's graphically enticing description of the general state of affairs on this planet has proved to be astonishingly popular amongst hitch-hikers who allow themselves to be guided by it, and so it has simply never been taken out, and it is therefore left to latter-day travellers to find out for themselves that today's modern Brequinda in the City State of Avalars is now little more than concrete, strip joints and Dragon Burger Bars.
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:2)
The point was not to hold up the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as a paragon of accuracy...
Entries tend to get updated or not across the Sub-Etha Net according to if they read good.
Take for example, the case of Brequinda on the Foth of Avalars, famed in myth, legend and stultifyingly dull tri-d mini-serieses as home of the magnificent and magical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.
[snip]
Not surprisingly, the
Laughing out loud (Score:2)
Here's a link to the entire article: Chapter 22 - Life, the Universe, and Everything [injustice.net.nz].
And, another quote: "Where you would be wrong would be in failing to realize that the editor, like all the editors of the Guide has ever had, has no real grasp of the meanings of the words "scrupulous", "conscientious" or "diligent", and tends to get his nightmares through a straw."
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:2)
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:2)
There is a difference between factually correct and useful. The Wikipedia errs on the side of useful, that's why you find many more current references and interesting connections.
I happen to have both on my computer. Encyclopaedia Britannica is sitting up there as an icon on my desktop, but I've only opened it twice in the time I've had it (and the first was to see it was working). Wikipedia gets looked at more than twice a week.
Until the Encyclopaedia Britannica people can deliver a service
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoda thunk that The Encyclopedia Britannica would be compared to Wikipedia in such an eerily similar manner, almost 30 years later?
And for a final bit of recursive irony, I discovered that nugget of information by searching the Wikipedia for "The HitchHicker's Guide to the Galaxy" [wikipedia.org].
Just try to extract the same information from Britannica Online.
Re:Encyclopedia Galactica (Score:2)
If you look up the article on Penguins [wikipedia.org], about half the article consists of pop-culture references. Does the main article on penguins need to mention that Sega made a 1982 game called "Pengo", or that there is a non-canonical Doctor Who comic-strip character who is a penguin?
Why does the article on Beethoven's Symphony Number 9 [wikipedia.org] need to mention that "the anime Gunslinger Girl used the fourth movem
Not just Wikipedia vs Britannica (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not just Wikipedia vs Britannica (Score:3, Funny)
A snapshot of wikipedia from 1000 years in the future is thought to have defined the sco corporation as a bunch of mindless idiots who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.
Free information vs. Paid information (Score:3, Insightful)
Britannica should justify why people SHOULD pay for their product, rather than argue with their free competitors.
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Obviously, we like to provide FREE information
Average_Joe_Sixpack's Test (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Average_Joe_Sixpack's Test (Score:2)
Re:Average_Joe_Sixpack's Test (Score:2)
Re:Average_Joe_Sixpack's Test (Score:2)
his definition of himself is likely quite good.
I can't wait ! (Score:4, Funny)
I can't wait for Britannica's reply to Nature's reply about Britannica's criticism of the Nature Britannica-Wikipedia comparison !
Self defense (Score:5, Insightful)
From the original Britannica "attack": In its December 15, 2005, issue, the science journal Naturepublished an article that claimed to compare the accuracy of the online Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikipedia, the Internet database that allows anyone, regardless of knowledge or qualifications, to write and edit articles on any subject. (emphasis added by me)
Does anyone think this isn't just Britannica watching its business get clobbered by an online startup, and trying to defend itself? Old guard versus young upstart. Britannica should just buy Wikipedia and maintain both, and just market them differently.
For what it's worth, there appears to be over 6,500 articles [wikipedia.org] on Wikipedia that use Britannica as a reference, which suggests that the folks writing Wikipidia consider Britannica as a reliable source of information. (Not surprisingly, you cannot find Wikipedia in Britannica [britannica.com].)
Finally, there is one possible problem with the Nature investigation... the question is not total accuracy at one point in time, but overall accuracy over a long period of time. Wikipedia is constantly changing; Britannica is less frequently updated. What does this mean for a researcher? Has Wikipedia been a reliable research tool for the last 365 days, just as Britannica has been?
Re:Self defense (Score:2)
Re:Self defense (Score:2, Interesting)
That depends. When the DJ John Peel died, it was on Wikipedia as soon as I'd heard. Naomi Campbell's recent arrest is listed in her Wikipedia Bio.
For me, it's also about the sheer volume of Wikipedia. Does Britannica have entries on bands like The Secret Machines, or the Dogme 95 cinema movement, the Cloudy Bay vineyard or the village of Pewsey?
I wish there was a better editing mechanism, particularly to kee
Uhm, you can't buy Wikimedia. (Score:3, Informative)
From the Wikimedia Foundation Bylaws [wikimediafoundation.org].
In general you can't just buy a non-profit organization and if you could you can't turn around and make
Re:Uhm, you can't buy Wikimedia. (Score:2)
I wasn't suggesting that Britannica would profit directly from Wikipedia. In fact, if Britannica acquired Wikipedia, I hope they would keep it basically intact.
Some benefits to Britannica of acquiring Wikipedia might be: (a) having a voice and brand presence in the next generation of academic research tools; (b) having a freely-market-driven source of hot topics and interesting new ideas to be possibly included in the next revision of Britannica; (c) having a freely-market-driven tool for identifying new
Nature dodged the issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why was Nature mixing Britannica and non-Britannica materials together for the reviewer? Was the intent to place the Britannica materials in a certain, and erroneous, context so that the reviewers would be led to an incorrect interpretation?
The more that surfaces about Nature's tactics (and possibly strategy) here, the more suspicious Nature's intentions look.
Was there any coverage here on /. of Britannica's rebuttal a week or so ago? I must have missed it.
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/e
"Only entries that were approximately the same length in both encyclopaedias were selected."
But when Britannica disputed this, nature replied:
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_r
"In a small number of cases, to ensure comparable lengths,
we provided reviewers with chosen excerpts, not full
articles"
That's the smoking gun, they were not truthful about this.
But this is absolutely devastating:
One Nature reviewer was sent only the 350-word introduction to Encyclopædia Britannica's
6,000-word article on lipids. For Nature to have represented Britannica's extensive coverage of
the subject with this short squib was absurd, and it invalidated the findings of omissions
alleged by the reviewer, since those matters were covered in sections of the article he or she
never saw.
As much as I love wikipedia, Nature should save it's integrity and retract the article!
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:2)
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially troubling to see was the quote from Nature justifying that they had done a good job "And of the 123 purported errors in question, Britannica takes issue with fewer than half."
Ok, I'm a Ph.D. research scientist. I've published papers. I can tell you right now, if I submit a paper to Nature and the reviewers have doubts about "fewer than half my data", there is no freaking way in hell that my paper is going to get published. Seriously. I can't believe that part of the defense from a scientific publication is that "less than half" of it's data was called into question.
I'm horribly disappointed in Nature. It's considered the top (or one of the very top) scientific journals. Keeping the actual raw data hidden, and these strange defenses of what appears to be a very very flawed study method is far below the level of journalism that they should hold themselves to.
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:2)
Nature should get out of the business of editorializing. I just skip straight to the back these days.
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, I'll even say this:- contrary to the general expectation out here, the whole point of this debate is not to gauge either Wikipedia's or Brittanica's reliability, but Nature's, and I'm afraid the magazine's half-hearted response, for reasons you've stated among many other rthings, has in no way been even remotely satisfactory.
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:2)
As for the response, no, it wasn't. I submitted a story about it that el reg ran, and it got rejected. That, along with all the predictable responses in this thread, illustrates rather well that people don't give a damn about figuring out what mode is a better solution for information disemination, and rather will simply yell and scream when their golden calf is attacked, regardless of how deserved that attack is.
Re:Nature dodged the issue. (Score:2)
I submitted that story also, and it was rejected as well.
It seems that those who are so in favor of WikiPedia are also in favor of suppressing any articles here that say anything but WikiPedia is wonderful.
That alone should cast a long shadow of concern upon WikiPedia and its supporters.
Let's check the history on this (Score:5, Funny)
00:51, April 3, 2006 Britannica (Basic concepts of Review - removed the OR, cleaned up the stating of the word history as spelled out in Terra Incognita)
00:37, April 3, 2006 Nature m (rv
00:14, April 3, 2006 Britannica (removed redundant disambiguation and restated the first sentence. Comparison has ideas but is an activity. See discussion page)
15:48, April 1, 2006 FactsGuy (RV another of Britannica's anti-consensus, POV, ill-written revisions. Britannica, please stop doing this!)
15:12, April 1, 2006 Britannica (Basic concepts of comparison - removed the OR, "may have been inspired by" because that is someone's conjection and OR conclusion and not cited here)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Urgh (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Urgh to you too (Score:4, Insightful)
To address your point directly, there is no discussion of error/accuracy/inaccuracy percentages, as such a measure is implausible. Would one count the number of facts and then state what percent are erroneous? Then who decides what in an article counts as a "fact" (and no, I'm not proposing relativism for truth)? Should all facts be given equal weight (e.g., is having the 5th decimal place wrong comparable to having the wrong stochiometric balance)? Since there is no logical framework to discuss these questions (and frankly, I can't see it would be worthwhile to do so), the only thing that can be studied scientifically (in the strict sense of the word) is error-rate and even that is misleading (as there is no ready way to compare magnitude of error).
Thus, Nature was wrong (both in the semantic and practical sense) in its headline. I would have preferred the title "Wikipedia-Britannica Error-Rate Comparison," followed by the data, some statistical analysis, and qualifications about the inadequacy of the comparison (but then, no one likes to admit that what they've done doesn't really get to the heart of the issue).
There are plenty of engineering-like judgements to be drawn about the practicality of Wikipedia over Britannica (given the cost difference and acceptably comparable error-rate/magnitude for day-to-day use), indeed any
Re:Urgh to you too (Score:2)
An error-rate IS a percentage.
If we were to use a non-percentage error metric I can easily write a reference source that beats the hell out of Britannica and Wikipedia. It goes like this:
1+1 = 2
You absolutely have to consider both the amount of content, and the number of errors. This is the percentage of errors.
Now it's non trivial to do this in a purely objective way, but that doesn't make the task hopeless, it just means you have to do your studies carefully.
And if Nature did it double-blind, that's ha
Re:Urgh to you too (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry, you lose. :-)
Re:Urgh (Score:2)
Suddenly their niche is disappearing and these people are stuck in a position defending their business model, which they have no
Re:Urgh (Score:2)
These people used to have a stranglehold on a particular niche market and their jobs were secure in the Britannica trademark, so long as they didn't screw up very badly.
This is going too far.
Brittanica did *not* have a stranglehold on the encyclopedia market prior to the advent of the web. There were real competitors, like World Book and Funk & Wagnalls. In fact, in terms of both market share and dollar sales, World Book exceeded Brittanica.
There's no doubt that Brittanica held the pre-eminent
Re:Urgh (Score:2)
"The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies;
Historic, albiet kinda boring... (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems to be happening on many fronts, and in many places with the advent of viral communication. But as this debate involves clear, historically relevant, as well as practically useful opponents it seems it will be pretty memorable. If you read the rebuttles to each others' works from a technologically historical perspective the arguments are interesting and can be applied to so much. And coming from two institutions which pride themselves on their intellectual merrits, such documents might be interesting to keep and look at in a few years when more and more of these same arguments pop up in less public and less known situations.
On the other hand it seems to retain the vigor and mundanity of a nerd fight.
Weak (Score:2)
Nature should release the full data (Score:2)
One valid point that Britannica made is that Nature should release the data (minus of course the names of the anonymous reviewers). or at least the full text of excerpts
New Wiki Slogans (Score:3, Funny)
Wikipedia: At Least You Can Correct Our Missteaks!
Wikipedia: Suck It, Trebek
Wikipedia: Nature Almost Likes Us!
Wikipedia: 3 out of 4 Slashdotters Prefer Us!
People staying away from Wikipedia because of (Score:5, Insightful)
FANATICS and ZEALOTS.
E.g. while reading an article about Apple Computer, for example recent fight with Beatles Record company, I have even seen people attacking the record company as some "crook company" "not doing anything". Erm, they own the rights of 165 million selling (just in USA!) Beatles.
Now, that same comment owner as these are "web 2.0" fashion days must have a Wikipedia account. Somehow you may need a very critical info about Apple Computers which _should be_ neutral as it can be.
Just imagine you read the "info" written by that person and rely on it.
That is the problem.
Oh BTW, IMHO Brittanica should make use of bittorrent technology and make site "totally same as the DVD set". That time, people will pay for it. People hates waiting for FedEx or DHL to deliver the freaking "plastic". That is the problem.
Dmitri Mendeleev's article (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia users in January found out on the talk page, trying to make sure they used written sources to correct articles, and not just Nature's word, that in actuality, conflicting sources say that he was the 13th child, and others say he was the 14th, because historians disagree. They made a note of this in the article.
About two and a half months later, after Wikipedia has already fixed the 'error,' Britannica comes out with the response, and does not directly admit they made an error, but goes on to disagree with Nature saying he was the 14th child, and brags about how they noted historians disagree on the issue of whether he was 13th or 14th. The new Britannica issue will be coming off the presses with the error corrected in about a year, probably. I see a lesson here.
Turn-Around Time (Score:5, Insightful)
0 errors in Wikipedia (Score:2)
Wikipedia works on the idea that there will always be errors, but they should always be easily fixable.
So to update the study: Britannica: 142 errors, Wikipedia: 0.
Re:0 errors in Wikipedia (Score:3)
And the same wanker who made the error can put it back immediately.
To update the study: Britannica: 142 (most of which turned out not to be errors), Wikipedia: unknown but fluctuates by the second.
TWW
So basically, (Score:2)
TWW
Jakob Nielsen weighs in on the hype (Score:2, Interesting)
Wikipedia vs Britannica - a personal perspective. (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, every now and then I'll encounter something on Wikipedia that is blatantly biased or wrong, but 99% of the time it's updated on the talk pages.
An example comes from a plague I was researching that devastated ancient Athens just as they were gearing up against the Spartans. Britannica is suitably vague about this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject has a great section about how, in 2005, genetic testing proved that it was typhoid fever which devastated Athens at that period. As this was the 2006 Britannica, why didn't it have that information?
A more obvious example of Britannica being less up-to-date is in the country histories articles. They almost all stop at about 1999-2001, without addressing any of the more recent years. Again, in a 2006 publication, why should this be the case? Wikipedia trumps again.
And lastly, people hold Britannica and other encyclopedias up higher than Wikipedia and other open-source content, but they do so erroneously. The point is, encyclopedia articles don't go through enormous peer-review, and are more likely to have errors than a non-vandalized Wikipedia article, simply because there are far fewer contributing eyes scanning the text, and far fewer people reviewing it and keeping it up to date.
Re:Wikipedia Page (Score:3, Informative)
Re:yeah so Britannica is the bad guy (Score:2)
Re:yeah so Britannica is the bad guy (Score:2)
Their news editors DO suck, but then I would never read Nature for the news section.
TWW
Re:My experience: Encyclopaedia Britannica is abus (Score:2)
You grew up with one. Lots of parents don't know how to "look something up", the 2 volume
Traditional encyclopedias are extremely limited. (Score:3, Insightful)
I tried searching for Nobel Prize winning genetecist "Barbara McClintock" in Microsoft Encarta 2000 encyclopedia. There were four (4) sentences which do not at all give t
Re:Traditional encyclopedias are extremely limited (Score:2)
Further McClintock doesn't have 70.5 linear feet out output, she might have