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

First impressions

[consonant]

Waaay too much "rich content" for my tastes. When visiting a site for information, I, for one, do NOT want:

• Videos auto-running
• Random elements zooming around
• Mouseover actions that surprise (I still don't think mainstream WWW pages are ready for a http://www.dontclick.it/ - like UI)

This also sounds suspiciously a LOT like Google Knol. Encyclopaedia Britannica is reacting to Wikipedia the way Microsoft reacted to Google/Firefox. Giant established behemoth in its field getting its comeuppance from upstarts due to its inability to adapt to changing times, and trying to pick itself off the ground to play catch-up..

Re:Kafka said it

[Slimee]

Aw man, now THAT is a flashback...Yosemite Sam...ahhh Bugs Bunny. But honestly, I think there's way too much focus on the accuracy of Wiki Articles...Everyone attacks their validity, but let's face it, 90% of the things on there are cited and true...Sure, I wouldn't use Wiki to find out information of political figures or celebrities for a paper, but it's frustrating to be denied use of a wiki article when it comes to things like music and art, because such specific things just don't get the same attention on the net, and the best resource for finding information out about your favourite 80's cartoon is Wikipedia. When someone enters in a BS entry, it gets pulled so fast that the intended joke of the entry is seen by only a small handful of people.

People are just too afraid of change, and too afraid of not being able to 100% control the information that flows.

Information wants to be free, yo.

Re:Britannica misses the point,... again.

[bsDaemon]

Second, facts are not democratic. You can't VOTE on what will be true. Trust me, it's been tried. That may be true for maths and science articles, however anything remotely political is going to be biased as hell in one way or another, and those that agree with the bias will say its a "fact" and those that don't will say its lies.

For instance, in the article about Benito Mussolini, they go out of their way to talk about how he was violent and evil right up front.

In the article on Che Guevara, there is only a passing mention about how some people find his methods controversial, and its buried half way down.

Was Mussolini heavy-handed? Yes. But Guevara killed hundreds of people with his own gun, sentenced kids to prison for sassing their parents, etc. He exported violent revolution from Cuba to Africa and the rest of Latin America which lead to the deaths of tens of thousands, if not more.

Che Guevara was NOT a nice guy who gave candy to kids. However, clearly Wikipedians love him.

This is an example of "facts" being "voted on," and an example of why reliance on wikipedia for anything other than science or maths is a bad idea.

hell, be wary even of that, no matter what sort of good news that it espouses for African elephants.

Re:Open Source (sorta?)

[Anonymous Coward]

The peer reviewed journals do one better: we write the papers and then we pay the journal for the privilege of them publishing it. Then we pay a subscription fee to read the journal and we lose the copyright to the published version of the paper.