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)."

Comments

Encyclopaedic

[Jon Peterson]

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:Encyclopaedic

[cybaea]

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" 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. 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 (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.

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

Bravo!

[BenHmm]

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.

Nupedia has rigorous peer review!

[jwales]

You ask this question as if it is an unanswerable challenge. Nupedia 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? 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!

[gargle]

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!

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

[JiveDonut]

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.

Pointless aggressivity?

[ThinWhiteDuke]

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