Encyclopedia Britannica to Take User Contributions

Barence writes "Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia's user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Surprisingly, then, it is rolling out a new system allowing readers to potentially contribute to articles, Wiki-style. But Britannica is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it 'as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.' You can try out the new Britannica beta site."

Comments

Re:Britannica is still around?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Encyclopaedia Brittanica is nearly dead in the online world but it still has application in the real one. Libraries still buy it and students too because it's a good starting point when you're researching something you know absolutely nothing about.

At uni we're specifically told NOT to research using Wikipedia, mostly because a lot of students don't know how to check what's been changed recently and what 'facts' are actually crap. Wikipedia's come a long way but it still has psuedoscience on a lot of articles.

The other thing is that EB provides entry level info in articles, Wikipedia's articles tend to cover beginner to advanced stuff and it's not always the best way to learn about something if you're a newbie.

I think this is more an education flaw (not teaching students how to research, check resources etc) than a failing on Wikipedia's behalf but at the moment, EB still carries more weight in the academic world.

Re:Kafka said it

[Skrapion]

I've always wondered what the deal is with not being allowed to use wikipedia for school etc. Generally, you're not supposed to use any tertiary sources (e.g. encyclopedias) in research papers. However, you can use them to find primary and secondary sources, and Wikipedia is no different in this regard.