Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Britannica Goes After Wikipedia and Google

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the let-us-know-how-that-works-out-for-ya dept.

kzieli writes "Britannica is going to allow viewers to edit articles, with changes to be reviewed by editors within 20 minutes. There is also a bit of a rant against Google for ranking Wikipedia above Britannica on most search terms."

4 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. Linkage creates the ranks by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google ranks Wikipedia articles higher than Britannica articles because Wikipedia.com is linked to more than Britannica.com.

    In fact I would wager good money that Wikipedia.con is one of the top 5 linked to domains PERIOD, probably shortly after sites like cnn.com, myspace.com, facebook.com

    Google doesn't just manually set it's rankings. They're set by the web. If Britannica wants higher rankings they need to get more people to link to them as an authority.

  2. Re:FACTS, not "truth". by bunratty · · Score: 5, Informative

    As far as contributing to Wikipedia is concerned, it doesn't matter whether a piece of information is true or not. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth -- that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true. If you want to say something in Wikipedia, you should be prepared to cite a reliable source verifying what you say. It doesn't matter if it's true and you just know it.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  3. Re:FACTS, not "truth". by TeXMaster · · Score: 5, Informative

    You forgot the much more dangerous criteria of Notability, which is a considerably more arbitrary filter on what can and what cannot be on Wikipedia, and has abundantly misused throughout its history.

    --
    "I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
  4. Re:FACTS, not "truth". by hobbit · · Score: 5, Informative

    porn-peddler Wales managed to fob Wikipedia off as a "nonprofit" site, and convinced Google not to downgrade its linking weight according to the formula they use for all the other linkfarms out there.

    o rly? citation needed pls.

    Wikipedia gets its high PageRank from the millions of external sites linking to it that do not link to each other. It could easily get nil points from its internal links and still appear top of every search result.

    --
    "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato