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Wikipedia's Accuracy Compared to Britannica
Raul654 writes "Nature magazine recently conducted a head-to-head competition between Wikipedia and Britannica, having experts compare 42 science-related articles. The result was that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per article, while Britannica had about 3. However, a pair of endevouring Wikipedians dug a little deeper and discovered that the Wikipedia articles in the sample were, on average, 2.6 times longer than Britannica's - meaning Wikipedia has an error rate far less than Britannica's." Interesting, considering some past claims. Story available on the BBC as well.
Slashdot Article Compared to Earlier Slashback: Found To Be Identical
Story available here.
Wikipedia has less errors, you say? We'll be fixing that shortly...
-- The Britanica Team
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Does Britannica have extencive articles on Lightsaber combat?
Wikipedia: 1
Britannica: 0
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
...but which one can you go back to and correct?
Both. Doing it to one of them is likely to get you kicked out of the library, though...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
What does Britannica say about "Goatse"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse
One of my fav sayings (which also translates well into a coding practice when people want multiple copies of the same data in separate locations)
"A man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two watches never knows."
Unless of course one of the watches is a nixie watch and that the batteries have run out after 2 days usage, or the cathodes have busted from all that shaking.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Which one is more likely to grow links to goatse.cx between the time you cite it and the time your professor reviews your paper?
So, what you're saying is that Britannica has a long way to go before it will be useful as a wiki?
I was thinking something like:
In many of the more relaxed areas of the Internet, Wikipedia has long supplanted the great Encyclopedia Britanica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper, and secondly it has the words Don't Panic! printed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Well, OK... except for the Don't Panic part...
What an accurate and concise summary of Slashdot - you should work for Wikipedia.
Which one is more likely to grow links to goatse.cx between the time you cite it and the time your professor reviews your paper?
Lets just say I'm banned from using the color copier at my local college library.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)