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After 244 Years, the End For the Dead Tree Encyclopedia Britannica
Rick Zeman writes "According to the New York Times, it's the end of the road for the printed Encyclopedia Brittanica, saying, '...in recent years, print reference books have been almost completely wiped out by the Internet and its vast spread of resources, particularly Wikipedia, which in 11 years has helped replace the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds.' The last print edition will be the 32-volume 2010 edition."
That actually sounds like a really "cool" thing to own.
...because there's no information from authoritative experts on Wikipedia?
On the other hand, I'd love to own print copy of Britannica. Well, if it were up-to-date and not $1,400.
This is quite sad. I obviously prefer my source of knowledge to be up-to-date, and easily accessible, so online encyclopedias make sense. But...I find it quite charming flicking through copies of encyclopedias that are more than 20 years old, seeing a snapshot of our knowledge at the time, and seeing how we've moved on since then. And what library was complete without a complete set of these on their shelves?
Is this, like, someone trying to print Wikipedia or something?
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Not going to miss the obnoxious 80's commercial though.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
The same applies to britannica though. If you're at the point where wikipedia isn't a valid reference, then no encyclopedia is really good enough, and if you just have teacher who doesn't get it, well, you have a teacher who doesn't get it. Happens with anything.
You will never be able to cite Wikipedia in a paper without looking foolish. It really isn't designed for that. You CAN use Wikipedia to get an understanding of a topic, and the references they use are usually pretty good and CAN be used as a cite without looking fooling.
Wikipedia is a great tool, but it will never replace paper encyclopedias, by design. Then again, any paper that only cites encyclopedias (paper or otherwise) isn't a good paper. Even Wikipedia requires multiple sources, as should any good paper, for a balance of perspective and confirmation of key points.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
A well-written Wikipedia article should include citations to the relevant statements. So, instead of citing Wikipedia, you can look up where the Wikipedia contributors got the information from and cite that. In some areas one doesn't even need to do that- the well written math articles generally contain proofs of the major claims in question, so you can verify the proofs yourself.
They will still have their website, software and other products still around. They are just discontinuing the book series and blaming Wikipedia (not modern progress) for this change.
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
But it just did. Replace paper encyclopedias, I mean. That's what this story is about, after all.
If you were citing the Encyclopaedia Britannica, then your papers weren't worth much in the first place. Look up the citations on Wikipedia, read them, and cite those.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
How did the hipster burn his mouth?
He ate pizza before it was cool.
phone books?
- Your stupidity got you into this mess, why can't it get you out? -Will Rogers
http://xkcd.com/978/
You will never be able to cite Wikipedia in a paper without looking foolish.
This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia -- things change so quickly that citing Wikipedia makes it very difficult for anyone to actually look up whatever you were citing. If there were "snapshots" that were widely distributed, say at the end of each year, one could simply cite those snapshots.
Paper encyclopedias are great for citing because they are frozen in time. They also contain errors that are hard to correct, out of date information that is hard to update, and searching them is not nearly as convenient as searching online encyclopedias. Wikipedia will win in the end because it can be updated and corrected so quickly, and because as you yourself noted, the ability to cite encyclopedias is not terribly important.
Palm trees and 8
On the one hand it makes perfect sense to end publication of a very resource intensive and expensive product that is easily digitized. On the other hand, It feels like a very cold future where the charm of a dusty old book with the feel of leather and paper, the sound when you flip a page and smell of aging is gone. To look back into what was at the time, and unable to be changed or modified, as it was set in print is sad to be leaving.
I've been the biggest proponent of Wikipedia for all my life, and avidly used it in school (citing it, and the sources it cited, to my teacher's ire) since 5th grade. But jesus, just hearing about this causes my heart to ache. Encyclopedia's are great endeavors, and are important as a long term collection of knowledge that could help restart civilization in case, I don't know, Israel and Iran start throwing nukes.
I think the best investment my parents ever made in us kids was buying an encyclopedia. I can't tell you how many hours I sat in our library (a room filled with books on two walls and a giant map on the third) reading about all sort of subjects under the sun and subjects far beyond the sun. Lots and lots of time. I would just pick up a volume and open it at random and start reading. So it's kind of sad that the printed version is going away. Once in sixth grade, in response to some knowledge I gleaned from my encyclopedias, said, "Do you just sit around and read encyclopedias!?" I replied, "Yes, I do."
You will never be able to cite Wikipedia in a paper without looking foolish.
I've cited wikipedia when reviewing journal papers before when someone has got a basic piece of maths wrong. It makes the point very well that there was no excuse for that kind of ignorance.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Phone companies: provide paper copies only to those customers that explicitly ask for one (opt-in), and charge for the printing / shipping costs.
Customers: don't ask for one, unless you have a very good reason to keep a paper copy around.
Oh wait - where I live (NL), that's already how it works... (and the vast majority of people do without a paper copy these days).
I hope they don't stop printing the "Great Books of the Western World" series too. I plan to buy the series in the next few years. Of course that collection is timeless and will not change like contemporary topics do.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Growing up in the 70s and 80s I always thought I would have my own Brittanica on a shelf in my office/library/den one day. I'm in my 40s now and never got around to it, although I've been tempted in recent years but the problem with keeping the information current always made me decide against it. Knowing this may be my last chance, I might just have to finally splurge.
>This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia --
This is mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of those in academia (=higher education) consider Wikipedia to be absolutely unreliable. And the foregoing is usually with good reason. Most Wikipedia articles on anything from Mexico to traffic lights, are a sophomoric collection of random facts without any overall coherence or structure-- the latter being the exact thing, that higher knowledge attempts to impart.
Add to that rampant inaccurracies, which are often hidden and hard to root out, and you *might* understand why academics think Wikipedia is low value.
The bottom line is that Wikipedia isn't written by experts, or for the large part by people who have expertise in *any* field, and for topics outside CS and parts of the sciences, it's pretty poor because non-expert "crowds" don't have much judgment. In short-- there's no wisdom in crowds, only amplified ignorance.
You should never have been citing encyclopedias in the first place. They're not a primary source.
spins in his grave
When my teachers started prohibiting use of encyclopedias for reports since the articles were considered to be too terse. Never looked at one since. OT, that reminds me that I tried reading them from A-Z as a kid, only got to C though.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You will never be able to cite Wikipedia in a paper without looking foolish. It really isn't designed for that
Encyclopaedias in general were not designed for that. The method you outlined should have been used if your got your information from EB as well, and you would have looked foolish if you'd cited any encyclopaedia in any university-level paper.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
You will never be able to cite Wikipedia in a paper without looking foolish ... Then again, any paper that only cites encyclopedias (paper or otherwise) isn't a good paper.
These statements are both true, but far too specific -- replace "Wikipedia" with "an encyclopedia" in the first sentence and strike the word "only" in the second, and you've got it. You should never cite an encyclopedia in a paper, period, unless you're writing a paper about encyclopedias. Any encyclopedia is best use as a tool for gaining an initial understanding of a subject and as a starting point for further research; Wikipedia is no different from Britannica in this regard.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
...but how will Luddites teach their children?!?
Log in or piss off.
"Scientists have been wondering why historical records mysteriously ended sometime around the year 2012. It's as if humanity decided to just stop writing things down, and left everything to oral tradition. It's sad that we will never know what happened between then and the eventua downfall of one of the greatest ancient civilizations that ever lived."
I loved having a set as a kid. Not so much to look up information, but to randomly peruse and get a general idea of what is important in the world. Wikipedia has a "random" feature, but I feel more likely to get some Manga cartoon reference than the article on Hadrian's wall. Now that I have kids, I wanted them to enjoy them as well, without burning out their eyes on computer/TV screens any more than they already do.
Then I saw that a new set is something like a thousand dollars, and even 10 year old used sets are quite expensive. Perhaps the printing quality warrants that kind of a price, but I wonder they couldn't have tried to do it cheaper before dropping that part of their business model altogether.
Or, this might sound like blasphemy to Britannica, instead of fighting Wikipedia, they could join them by collaborating on articles and cut down costs that way. Provide some needed quality photography to Wikipedia, and get something in return?
The bottom line is that Wikipedia isn't written by experts, or for the large part by people who have expertise in *any* field, and for topics outside CS and parts of the sciences, it's pretty poor because non-expert "crowds" don't have much judgment. In short-- there's no wisdom in crowds, only amplified ignorance.
That's simply not true. Wikipedia's articles on manga and anime characters are second to none.
#DeleteChrome
I can't find the setting to show the thread scores. And YES MUTHAFUCKERS, I've looked everywhere.
Lacking written records certainly facilitates revisionist history. I just read online that Encyclopedia Britannica stopped putting out printed editions over 25 years ago. So how is this news? ;-)
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia -- things change so quickly that citing Wikipedia makes it very difficult for anyone to actually look up whatever you were citing. If there were "snapshots" that were widely distributed, say at the end of each year, one could simply cite those snapshots.
There are stable snapshots, and you don't have to wait for the end of the year to get them:
There, you now have an URL to an immutable version of the article as it is when you read it. Even if the base article is edited afterwards, your link will never change.
Dilbert RSS feed
When I was in school, citing encyclopedias was forbidden. If an encylopedia was used, it was only as a tool to find 'real' references.
Since I was out of school long before online sources became acceptable for citing, I have no idea how that was handled, but I wouldn't imagine Wikipedia being off limits is really different than how encyclopedias were used.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
After reading the story title I immediately looked up Encyclopedia Britannica's article on Wikipedia. As expected, more than half of the article (714 out of 1378 words) was spent on the Issues and Controversies section.
And if they resubmitted the paper with the math corrected and citing Wikipedia for their choice of method?
Yeah...
But I guess, if you're reviewing journal papers, you already knew that reviewers comments aren't 'citations' - merely pointers to the author to consider adjustment/correction/expansion/inclusion. Except the cases where said reviewer is obviously wanting to bump up their own / a colleague's citation count.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
I wanted a copy of this Encyclopedia for my library.
I am John Hurt.
You're the guy who would never have started the project in the first place. The truth about Wikipedia is that the process delivers a quality level that never previously existed. How one assesses its quality really depends on how one approaches it. When you arrive from a blank slate, it's a pretty good first meal. If you're trying to reach escape velocity to intellectual purity and enlightenment, well, endurance athletes classify three quarters of the human diet under poison: sugar, alcohol, cholesterol, additives, and on and on. So true. To an endurance egghead, Wikipedia is outright poison. To a starving African, it's a Swedish buffet.
We're on the familiar terrain here of purity narcissism. Not good enough for my fine brain. Definitely, Wikipedia is not ever going to get there. Out of the 4 million articles, there are maybe 5000 where I'm qualified to heap my scorn. For all the rest, amplified ignorance is vastly superior to no signal at all. In fact, amplified ignorance makes for a pretty good road map for charting the quickest route out of town to the lofty hilltops, if you've got a week to kill. Click. 5001.
... if it were to be printed on vellum. I can't trust anything written on paper : it doesn't get past a few centuries and it's clearly a rather cheap way of transmitting anything.
They probably brought their "experts" to Wikipedia to "fix it up," then got reverted and blocked for improper sourcing, POV edits, and edit warring!
Wikipedia is extremely useful as a reference, it provides links to papers that you can cite. Looking to Wikipedia or any encyclopaedia to use as a citable reference is just a little bit lazy really.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Paper encyclopaedias are not great for citations, they are not current, or contemporary - they don't reflect the state of research as it is now. You certainly can't use them past grade school if you want to make a decent effort on that paper.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Wikipedia does not trust academics either. Academics don't understand the byzantine Wikipedia rules so that they can fix obvious errors that they are experts on, and Wikipedia puts up rules to ensure that people who are not long time frequent Wikipedia editors are not able to do any edits. Even when there's a firestorm over ridiculous Wikipedia obstinance they'll finally let the expert make the changes but still telli all the media about how the rules are not broken and the expert just was too naive to do things the right way.
Part of the problem is that Wikipedia learned early on that the wisdom of crowds is a mostly a myth. So to fix that they added many rules over time that filter out both crowds AND wisdom.
No, you have it entirely wrong your insults notwithstanding. Even in middle school, which was 25+ years ago, I was not allowed to use an Encyclopedia reference. I was taught that an encyclopedia is a good starting point, but for the facts contained, you had to go to the source that the encyclopedia referred to. The encyclopedia, in and of itself, is not a source of information but a collection of sources.
So if you don't understand that, then perhaps you had a poor education.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
particularly Wikipedia, which in 11 years has helped replace the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds.'
No bitterness in *this* part of their press release. No sir, we're not bitter one little bit because of those fuckers at Wikipedia. We'll even feel a little emotion here and there while they roast in hell like they so properly deserve.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The alleged "authority of experts" is questionable marketing bravado. In the last century, a large percentage of their articles were gleaned from popular media sources of the day and the authors were newspaper and magazine contributors.
I happen to have a set that I inherited from my grandfather. He was kind of a hustler and wore a lot of hats in his life, including drummer in a swing band, bootlegger, and minister. At one point he tried his hand at selling encyclopaedias. What I have is his demo set. It's dated 1929. Since the articles were written one or two years before the edition went to print, the article on the booming stock market and the forecast of endless prosperity is both chilling and hilarious. It's written by a financial editor from the Wall Street Journal. Equally amusing are the ones on being a proper and obedient wife and homemaker from an article in a women's magazine.
Nothing worthwhile ever happens before noon
Their books were generally filled with errors, and older volumes are mostly filled with information that's extremely out of date/incorrect. We are better off with niche books that offer much more information on any specific topic, at a much lower cost. Who, exactly, was even able to afford EB's sets, year after year, or even one of the over 30 volumes from a set?
As long as the computers continue to function, there will always be information available from experts - and it will often be free. Of course, many of the online experts could also be "experts", but there was really nothing stopping the EB employees from also being "experts".
I'm not talking about Wikipedia, either, because I really wouldn't use Wikipedia for anything more than just the gist of a topic, and mostly only for information on media (TV shows, music, anime, etc). If you actually bother to use your brain (yes, I know, it's a lot to ask for), you can usually find expert information from the same people who provide expert information offline.
Information really does want to be free, it's just that sometimes there are people who wish it wasn't, making it seem like it isn't readily available from proper sources.
Many encyclopedias don't have good references anyway. Those that did were very expensive. Wikipedia for all it's massive failings at least has some references.
Sadly many of these references are to online sources which are unreliable to track down after a period of time. Or they're just silly online references in the first place. They don't attempt to get the best references they just want some references. Maybe they're accurate for the most part but when a historical article references about.com or h2g2.com and those references don't have any further references, it all looks like a house of cards.
Far from me to be called a "tree hugger", but in the 21st century, we are still reading PRINT material? Maybe its a generational thing...most my age (mid 50's) probably still read from dead trees, but I stopped a few years ago. Magazines, newspapers, books, reference material. It's EASIER to find something in a pdf or online publication than from something printed. Maybe in 10 years or so dead tree printing will pretty much go the way of the horse & buggy.
But those citations are often very flimsy themselves. Luckily they have lots of citations to choose from and a few of them may actually pan out.
"Sun Finally Sets on Britannica Empire."
Boom! Boom!
Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'm curious what the Wikipedia article you cited had for it's own citations and why you didn't just skip the middle man and cite those instead?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Yeah. I can tell you, there's nothing quite as effective as a 23-year old, jumping down the throat of an 75-year-old emeritus professor because they made a syntax error using WikiPedia's reference system-- which, mind you, is about as ideal as making calls from COBOL to a PIC database.
There's a certain disease of online forums, of the false expert -- the guy who gains the arcane knowledge necessary to run some system and maintain their little hilltop, and knock anyone down who attempts to come near. Wikipedia is the tragedy of the kudzu.
Its not poor, well let me rephrase that, it may be poorly written in places, but its not content poor. Nature compared Wikipedia to Britannica and guess what? They were about the same. Nature defended their study here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7084/full/440582b.html Subsequent studies have come to the same conclusion, its really not better or worse then anything in print. Fact is: you cant believe what you read. You must follow through with loooking up the facts or read the editing history and disputed facts.
You should never cite an encyclopedia in a paper, period, unless you're writing a paper about encyclopedias.
I understand that's the "rule", but I think it's a stupid one. The reason for the rule is legitimate: you ough to rely mainly on primary sources. You don't want to cite the encyclopedia entry on Adam Smith; you want to cite Wealth of Nations directly. That's fine, but if mindlessly enforced (as it is), it means many facts that are useful but not necessarily central to your point aren't given sources at all; they're treated as "common knowledge".
For example suppose you are doing a paper on the history of computer privacy, and you cite the landmark 1973 HEW report "Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens". But if you look at the report itself it's clear that the report while delivered in July 1973, was started in the Spring of 1972. This means it was developed as the Watergate Scandal was unfolding. That particular tidbit explains a great deal that is curious about this report, for the report lays out a strong case for privacy restraints on private aggregators of commercial data, but then actually recommends *against* such restraints in the conclusion. On January 30, 1973 HEW Secretary Eliot Richardson shifted to Defense, after most of the report had been compiled. The conclusions were written under the his more conservative replacement, Caspar Weinberger.
Now you have three choice for dealing with a fact like that. You can just allude to it without citations. You can cite an encyclopedia entry on Eliot Richardson. Or you can try to dig up original references in US government documents. Well, the search for original sources for a fact like this isn't really worth the trouble, and the encyclopedia citation is forbidden, so what people do in cases like this is simply go ahead and use the fact without citing a source.
I think the *rational* standard would be to have a source for *every* fact, but allow any reputable reference work as a source for auxiliary facts where there is no question on interpretation of paraphrasing. The "no encyclopedia" rule bans encyclopedias but allows similar kinds of references to be used, even though those references are not primary sources either. I could cite the CRC handbook on, say, the atomic weight of iron, but it's not a primary source. That'd be the papers in chemical or physics journals used by the CRC editors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
By 7th grade I was taught not to use an encyclopedia for reference. And that was in them olden days before Internet. You use the encyclopedia to give you general knowlege so you have enough to know where to go for real source material.
Wikipedia does the same. Go to Wikipedia for basic knowlege so you can go to real sources.
For example you get passed a buzzword for a technology that you need to implement. You Wikipedia the buzzword and you get a quick view on what it is about them you know what to Google for real information.
In say 15 minutes you know enough to talk integantly about the product.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wikipedia's Article on Britannica
60 paragraphs on Britannica's history, status, organization, awards, etc. 15 paragraphs on criticisms, bias, racism/sexism. Cites over 100 sources.
Britannica's Article on Wikipedia
2 paragraphs on Origin and Growth (one of which is devoted to suggesting that Wikipedia is running out of steam or somehow failing in its mission), 4 paragraphs on "Issues and controversies," including a suggestion that Wikipedia was a haven for child pornography. Everything about the article says, "parents, keep your children away from this new-fangled, dangerous, unreliable Wikipedia thing!" Cites no sources. What is really amusing is that Britannica's stated slogan (at the top of every page) is "facts matter." I guess attribution does not. Their home page features an image of a 1st-gen iPad with the caption "looking ahead." If Britannica considers 2010 to be the future, that explains a lot.
as someone with 6000 wikipedia edits, i would hope in my dream of dreams that every single one of them was directly attributable to the writings of an expert.
wikipedia is not the 'wisdom of crowds', rather it is the liberation of facts from the academic institutes , the translation of those facts into somewhat simple language, and their arrangement together for easy access. something libraries should have been doing a long time ago.
also a good article will present the work of various experts, and indicate which expert holds which point of view.
i do not always meet my goal on wikipedia, but basically, without experts, wikipedia would be a gigantic pile of worthless trash.
I wouldn't count on it. I just tried browsing through their 2007 crawl. All the sites I tried were 404'd.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
i have had edits 'disappeared' from wikipedia. the technical capability is there, and it wouldnt be there if it wasnt used, and it has been used.
furthermore, the tracking of this usage is not good, its not transparent, and the wikimedia administrators are loathe to do so.
now granted, , its a very tiny subset that is censored, and it typically revolves around crap like decryption codes. (my edits were discussing the Sony playstation3 keys... ironically the stuff i was posting had little or nothing to do with the actual keys that could actually jailbreak it... but someone thought it might so they 'wiped it' away.)
the point is that there is no guarantee wikipedia 2010 will always be wikipedia 2010. but if you have encyloepdia britannica 1960, it will almost always be encyclopedia britannica 1960. now, the JSTOR organization found out that even paper editions of periodicals are not always consistent, and archives are not always definitive, but still, the point is, its much harder to go back and censor a book than to censor electronics.
my favorite example is 'Mein Kampf'. you can find paper versionf ot hsi book that mention Hitler's admiration of Henry For.d You can also find editions where this passage has been removed. eraseed. in an all electronic world, the versions with henry ford included are... going to be found on archives, but not necessarily.
the diff with encyclopedia britannica etc is that we had a whole social system called 'libraries' that were based around the idea of storing those things for decades or centuries.
having a few dozen random people with copies in dark corners is interesting, but is it really equivalent? in some ways it may be better, but in other ways, it may not be better.
A well-written Wikipedia article should
There's that word again...
a good wikipedia article will cite every paragraph at least. when writing about the holocaust, it is a good idea to cite every last sentence.
now, if you want to cite wikipedia, instead just copy the citations, go find those works that were cited, and use them in your paper.
I seriously use it for that, actually. Though even THOSE articles have had some errors, mostly trying to interpret vague statements from interviews as support of their personal fanon.
It's sad. I used to have a house full of bookshelves, and I'd read all the books when I bought each one. When I moved several years ago, most of the books remained in boxes. I've been going through them, keeping a few, giving some to the local library, selling some to a used bookstore, sending some early technical books to museums, and dumping the rest into the recycling bin. I just dumped all the original Sun Java manuals, finance books like "Bankruptcy 1995" (the author was a CEO, and he thought the US would go bankrupt in the 1990s. Instead, his company did.), and some reasonably good paperback SF. There's just no point in having wall to wall bookshelves any more. I used to have three six-shelf bookcases of technical books in my home office. Now I have three shelves.
I never owned a Brittanica, although I did have the Oxford English Dictionary, the one in tiny type with the magnifying glass.
Borders is gone, Barnes and Noble is in trouble, and Amazon is moving to downloads. When Amazon goes download-only, it will be over for good.
We would have priced it at $999.99. Dumb limeys, they had it coming.
Apparently you did not realize that since 1900 the Encyclopaedia Britannica has been published by a US company and has switched its content, if not its name, to become a heavily American Encyclopaedia (at the risk of rubbing salt into the wound here is the Wikipedia link). I wonder who's feeling dumb now...
I did the same thing when I was a kid. But now, I find Wikipedia even more fun to read! Not only does it have so much more depth, but there are all those links everywhere in the article, leading to all kinds of other subjects. Now, I sometimes catch my kids reading article after article online!
...Wikipedia, which in 11 years has helped replace the authority of experts with the wisdom of the crowds.
Finally, I can start citing Wikipedia as a credible source!
I used to spend hours randomly browsing through the articles. At some point, over many moves, they were given away. Now, I find I do the same thing, but on Wikipedia.
It used to be that when you visited someone's home for the first time, you could learn a bit about them by seeing what books they had on their shelves... which ones were worn, how chaotic or organized the books were, how many they had, what they were about, how many were lying around in mid-read... and if there was a set of encyclopedias somewhere. And, of course, if there was not a single book in the house, there was something suspect about them.
I suspect that in a decade or two, what I'll learn from seeing books in someone's house is that they are old. I'm sure I'll be included in that.
They just announced that the version presumably from 2 years ago is the last one? Man they really do have a hard time finding experts to keep their info current. I'd hate to be the person that was saving up for the 2013 version. Now what are they going to do with the money buy a car?
Fsckin' wife knows everything!
For example suppose you are doing a paper on the history of computer privacy... Well, the search for original sources for a fact like this isn't really worth the trouble, and the encyclopedia citation is forbidden, so what people do in cases like this is simply go ahead and use the fact without citing a source.
If you're writing a history paper and you can't be bothered to look for primary sources, and are using wikipedia (wikipedia!) as your reference or even Encyclopaedia brittanica, you should find another career.
I grew up with the Encyclopedia Britannica. Apparently, though, your reading skills are poor. No, I wasn't steered wrong. The point isn't the quality of the encyclopedia, it is the fact that it IS an encyclopedia. It is not original work, and oughtn't be treated as if it were.
Your insults are weak, misdirected and repetitve. You can't get a simple concept through your head and instead misconstrue it as if we are putting down the Encyclopedia Britannica. We are not. Encyclopedias should not be used as a reference source, only the sources they reference. If you yourself really read articles in the Encyclopedia, you would find they have quite a bit of cross reference. Unless you are a lazy researcher, which you certainly appear to be, you go to those sources, read the material for yourself and then write your paper referring to the original sources.
You call me and the OP "fast fooders". You are the one who lazily reads an encyclopedia and then cites it as a source. Grow up. Learn to read, and argue the point being argued.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Not true. I cited Wikipedia as an example of culture in flux. Also I used Wikipedia a lot to find sources.
Never cited Wikipedia itself out of context with itself.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I have more faith in material printed in the Britannica than some random screed posted on the web. I value my Britannica's because they are a reminder that human knowledge in printed form will outlast the mediums of today.
Do you think your elementary and middle school teachers are the best voices of reason about new technology, its impact on society, and the best ways to use it?
In the very limited academic world of middle school, the rule makes sense. They want to expose you to primary sources. I still remember my English teacher taking us down to the school library, showing us how to use the card catalog system, etc. It was fun picking a bunch of books, skimming them, and selecting semi-relevant quotes for my papers. It shows you that there is a lot more depth to any given subject than what you find in the condensed encyclopedic entry on it. It makes you less lazy.
But.. after those lessons are learned, sticking to it? Applying it to your whole life? It seems a bit silly. You weren't taught to not cite encyclopedias because they're *wrong*, it was a gimmick to fulfill an educational goal.
In a couple of hundred years, assuming civilization survives, a set of these would probably have considerable collector value. Especially if you also owned a first edition of the FIRST EB.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
You argue passionately for your point, but you are wrong. An Encyclopedia may be cited, just as any other credible reference. If you do not believe me, perhaps you might believe the Harvard Style Guide. Or any of a large number of other available style guides. And have you read through a style guide for a peer reviewed publication lately? I have. You should too, then get back to me with your assertions about what may or may not be cited. Or try out your opinion that Encyclopedia Britannica may not be cited on somebody with a peer reviewed article to their name.
By the way, I find it odd the way you fling about accusations of insulting posting sytle, when your own posts tend to be more than a little insulting themselves. Another point you might consider: use your real name when you post, as I do. Perhaps then you would be more polite.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
There, you now have an URL to an immutable version of the article as it is when you read it. Even if the base article is edited afterwards, your link will never change.
Is this strictly true? I was under the impression that deleted articles had their history deleted, that merged articles sometimes have their histories merged, and that renaming can also change the history URL. I have no expertise in these matters, though.
...just how much we need "The Encyclopaedia Britannica."
I actually sold the Britannica for a number of years. I love that set of books. My copy is the Bicentennial Edition but I would love to get another nearly-up-to-date edition, plus a complete set of the Great Books of the Western World with accessories. The CD/DVD version (which I have 2010) is good in concept, but the articles are not as comprehensive and it is not easy to browse. My older set had articles by Einstein and other original 20th Century thinkers. In an age when books were hard to come by, the EB educated many people. In later years, as public school destroyed people's ability to read and think, it became less relevant; People didn't go to the encyclopedia to learn, but only to get facts.
Basically, the EB is outmoded as a reference work. About 25 percent of the material is changing at a very rapid rate. Back in 1979 Britannica was exploring the possibility of a computerized edition. One of the criteria was that it be easily updateable as new knowledge arrived and another was that it be easy to use. What killed it at that time was that the illustrations were too massive for the type of storage available in 1979. By the time it was feasible to computerize it, the Encarta was free and people were too ignorant to judge the difference in quality between the larger, more authoritative EB and the pitiful little Encarta. So Britannica got sold to a marketing company incapable of making the necessary changes. Britannica got stuck with a slow Java-based interface, a paid online edition and lousy hyperlink service while Encarta got bigger. Then Wikipedia started making inroads as people's reference work and showed the world what was possible in an online reference (even though it is much inferior academically).
Luckily I still have the editon with major introductions by Mortimer Adler and a volume of reprints of original articles from the 1928 edition with which to stimulate my mind. I also have other reference systems including the DVD version of EB, the complete National Geographic (with its lousy interface and microfilm-type usage), the complete Mother Earth news to 1990 and some others. The new paradigm for a knowledge system will have to be something like a "university in a box" that includes articles, exercises tests, progress reports, review sessions and achivement scoring. I guess I know what my new life's mission is....
BTW... http://www.robertwservice.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=884
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I remember I politely told the fellow I was speaking with at the kiosk that the price they were asking for was simply unjustifiable, given the cost to reproduce a CD was on the order of pennies, and the price was going to have to come down by about factor of 10 or even more before people would really start taking the CD version seriously. I offered the reasoning that if a person was going to spend that kind of money, they might as well spend what was, relatively speaking, just a bit more and get the attractively bound books.
The guy at the kiosk told me quite flatly that would never happen... that they'd be more likely to simply stop selling the CD version.
I shook my head, suggesting he was wrong... and left.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Uh, encyclopedias aren't always written by "experts" either (depending on your definition of expert). Some will take any freelancer that seems to know what they're talking about - and with all the easily checkable errors in encyclopedias, we know the editors aren't experts at the subjects nor at fact checking.
And I'd take a crowd with real life experience over a guy that has a paper saying he sat through some classes any day. You often have no way of knowing where this "expert" learned what he knows, and if his teacher was correct. Very often the knowledge that is taught to "experts" is found to be wrong.
The reason I have seen higher education refusing to let anyone use Wikipedia as a reference is because education is suppose to teach you how to think, not help you recite facts. Reading Wikipedia requires little thought, but going to the citations, deducing which are reputable and which aren't, etc. makes you think.
If you're so much smarter than everyone on Wikipedia, or if you know experts that are smarter, go fix it/get them to go fix it. Stop trying to hoard the wisdom, instead share it with the crowds.
If he can't read and understand the rules of wikipedia, if he can not learn new things, if he can not ask a colleague that CAN follow the wikipedia rules for help, then I am seriously going to doubt his ability to read about, understand, learn new things about, and interact with colleagues to keep up with the new developments in his field of expertise.
One flood or fire at your house and those books will be gone. Wikipedia is backed up in countless places and can always be transferred to a new form of storage technology.
I must side with the guy with the real name clearly this adds to his credibility, and the wikipedia article on credibility will agree with me when I edit it and cite this slashdot post.
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Wit is best appreciated dry.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Actually, Encyclopedia Britannica hasn't ceased to exist. It just isn't 'free to access' like the Wikipedia. It continues to be available as a resource, and continues to be maintained and updated.
I cannot agree. There is nothing about something's being an encyclopedia that makes it unreferable. Sometimes encyclopedia articles are eminently referable. If you wrote a thorough-going article on Desgabets and you didn't refer to Easton's article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy then I would wonder whether you did your research.
>If you're so much smarter than everyone on Wikipedia, or if you know experts that are smarter,
>go fix it/get them to go fix it. Stop trying to hoard the wisdom, instead share it with the crowds.
1) It's hard work and there's little motive. Why would someone take off time from a career, to do so?
2) The editorial infighting of the Wikipedia process is not acceptable.
Also, your comment about "a piece of paper that shows you took some courses" is just about Wikipedia quality. Gaining a Ph.D., and then a permanent academic posiiton at any US institution of note, requires so, so much more-- qual exams, dissertaion, defense, multiple publicaitons, interviews, vetting, and a 7-9 year review process-- that your glib comment betrays the problem of Wikipedia.
Uh, no.
1) Wikipedia's usability is very poor. Quite dismal, actually, in the sense of mollases. And who wants to learn *YET ANOTHER* quirky, unusual UI which doesn't follow many basic principles? I mean, sheesh, these guys obviously never talked to Jakob Nielsen, now did they :P ?
2) You don't understand the pecking order of academia. No one who's senior, does their own editing or typesetting, and often, basic research. They have paid staff to do those things for them. Good or bad, this is the way it is-- they're experts, because they devote 60-80 hours a week to their subject, not wordprocessing technique.
Your comment betrays the problem of higher education. The motive in sharing knowledge is to stop ignorance. If knowledge was not hoarded, it would not require all of that hard work you listed to become an expert. What is the motive in hoarding knowledge to yourself? Sure you can then refuse to give it out unless people pay, so then you may have money, but you are surrounded by ignorance, and when you die your money means nothing. Do you enjoy living like that? Do you want future generations to live like that?
1) The difference between intelligence and knowledge; Intelligent people can learn and think, knowledgeable people have memorized things.
2) I was just replying to your example of "jumping down the throat of an 75-year-old emeritus professor because they made a syntax error using WikiPedia's reference system".
I bought an app for my iPod touch that is an 'offline' version of Wikipedia. I don't fancy paying $50+ a month since I hardly ever call anybody on the phone, so I don't carry an 'online' anything in my pocket for every day.
I find it somewhat useful as a quick reference, but one of the things I sometimes do when I'm bored and have a few minutes to waste is use the 'random article' button on the app.
There are far, far too many instances where what it pulls up is an individual Album Title for a contemporary rawk band I have never heard of, or arcana about some form of Anime. Based on my random sampling, at least 20% of the thing is that kind of stuff. Trivia that doesn't matter to anybody but the kind of geeks who hang out online.
Also, what is the motive behind taking time off your career to post on Slashdot about how much smarter than everyone else you think you are?
On one hand, I am really sad about this. On the other hand... As Douglas Adams said in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica 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 inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
Well, while I personally usually call the universities and their professors "hoarders," and believe that online media would and will help in the spread of knowledge, I think you also dramatically underestimate the amount of training involved in higher education, especially post-undergrad education.
Sharing for sharing's sake is fine, but a person has to eat. Academic jobs are few and far between, and the pressures very great-- while the compensation is mediocre. Today's academy may be full of failings, but Wikipedia is far from a replacement. People need to be paid for work. A grand, collectivist, "knowledge is free, as in beer" regime is not going to emerge.
Food can come out of the ground for free, you know. The knowledge of how to make this happen is free on the internet.
There's a lot of bravado about how the web fills all their needs but I hate to point out the web in it's current form is younger than most of the people posting here. Britannica is older than the country. I've already found many web sites over the last 15 or so years vanishing and they were my sole source of some information so there's an impermanence to all web based and even computer based information. I can pick up and read one of the first editions of Britannica today. The only issue would be they'd be too valuable to read. There's already debate about how long the current form of the web will survive. Sources like iTunes are fussy about what they'll accept. We've built a house of cards and we all should be afraid. People boasted about bandwidth increases and unlimited data but the movement has been in the opposite direction. Still most of the country lacks high speed internet and the rest faces caps. I'm sorry but Wikipedia is not the same. I use it all the time but it has always been a shadow of the old encyclopedias. It wins out on volume of articles but I'd still rather thumb through and old encyclopedias. I grew up doing that very thing.
This scifi attitude of it'll just keep getting better doesn't reflect reality. Already country's and people's budgets are tightening and everyone is facing massive debts that need to be paid, got no debt? The national debt would beg to differ. The point is how much longer will society be able to aford iPads and even desktops which some are already viewing as antique. Many libraries no longer have books. If you loose access to high speed internet, and many people have no internet access, you are cut off. We aren't facing a golden age of information we are facing a rationing of information.
That's a bold claim, and, as in turns out, entirely false. The very first one that I tried referred to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrice and the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy once. Four encyclopedia references in an article in a peer-reviewed publication by a leading scholar in his field.
The article:
Block, Ned. "Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience" in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2007) 30, pp. 481â"548.
There will be no paper records left of our knowledge. I can see people trying to play these shiny round "seedy-rom" things using a needle "I'm sure there's knowledge encoded on this thing - try playing it backwards!"
At least until somebody figures out how to build a wind generator to power their laptop, printer, and 1TB hard drive full of ebooks.
now granted, , its a very tiny subset that is censored, and it typically revolves around crap like decryption codes.
Or political views, or religion, or anything touching it
Doesn't get what, exactly? You are saying that a teacher who doesn't allow Wikipedia citations "doesn't get it"?
I think I'll side with the guy who's making the most sense.
The arguments that occur over such things as citations ("you CAN cite $FOO!" "no you CAN'T!") have always struck me as moronic anyhow. The one and only question one should ask oneself before citing a source, is, "Is this source CREDIBLE?" If the answer is no........don't cite it! It's that simple. Brittanica IS a credible source. Wikipedia is NOT. This is why we don't cite Wikipedia.
You typically wouldn't cite things that are common knowledge, no, but just because something is in Brittanica doesn't make it common knowledge, even to other self-described experts. How many of those folks do you know who've read the encyclopedia cover to cover? Take your audience into account when writing anything, including research papers.
To a starving African, it's a Swedish buffet.
It's just one of 233,921 search results
I would never have looked up the "Smothers Brothers" today if it weren't for Wikipedia
Yeah, and I would have never taken Highway 11 today if there wasn't a wreck on 59.
You think so, until your legs get blown off by a falsely marked mine and you're laying on the ground screaming in agony. Then you will curse the day you got your minefield map off Wikipedia.
Posted like a truly arrogant person who clearly has ZERO understanding (just like the rest of those responsible for Wikipedia) about usability.
I frequently use the web for research and Wikipedia is my auxilliary brain of choice, so I'm by no means a Luddite. However, I think this is very sad news - a processed tree carcass, especially something like a set of Encyclopdiae, is a truly beautiful thing
Interestingly for the nostalgic amongst us, creation.com today released a story about the first edition of Britannica, published 1771, which speaks of Noah's flood as having covered the globe (with an illustration) and suggests a creation date of around 4007BC.
Imagine living back when these things were part of the mainstream understanding of world history.
Censorship is the opposite of education. If neo-darwinism were defensible, people would not need to try and censor ID.
I wouldn't mind having the entire set nicely as EPUB's on my e-reader. That'd be something I'd pay a reasonable amount for...do they have it?
Ditto for Wikipedia, btw...for offline access.
Now you have three choice for dealing with a fact like that. You can just allude to it without citations. You can cite an encyclopedia entry on Eliot Richardson. Or you can try to dig up original references in US government documents. Well, the search for original sources for a fact like this isn't really worth the trouble, and the encyclopedia citation is forbidden, so what people do in cases like this is simply go ahead and use the fact without citing a source.
It depends also on whether the fact you're talking about is the primary focus of the paper or not. If it is the primary focus, your only real choice is to do the work and look at the original sources (and much else besides). When it isn't the primary focus though, the best option is to cite some other peer-reviewed scholarly article (or book) for which it was the primary focus. You don't have to do all research from scratch (there's not enough time in the universe for that) but it is right to justify your arguments; if those are really the arguments of others (fair for a non-primary point of the work) then doing so by citation is entirely correct.
If there isn't such a paper out there, you've identified an opportunity to fill a "gap in the market". You might need to read things outside your comfort zone to do the job properly, but that's just how life is sometimes.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Because wikipedia access is free, incredibly convenient, trivial UI, and usually pretty high quality.
To access a "scholarly journal" costs thousands for an annual account, or dozens for the "right" to read one article. A byzantine pain in the ass.
If
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_function
does what you need it to do, and you're trying to spread information to others instead of exert superiority over them, then wiki is the logical choice.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"Historians are at a loss to explain the demise of the first pan-human civilisation, as although they agree that the populous dwindled and went almost extinct at around AD 3500, there seems to be no surviving written historical records that can be dated any later than circa AD 2000."
"It can only be assumed that around this time, that there was a sudden uptake of illiteracy, maybe caused by a new religion or global-governmental policy. There are surviving references to an organisation or group known as the Inter Nets. We can only guess at what this actually was, but the commonly accepted theory is that it was actually some type of wearable mesh harness that prevented humans of this era from actually writing anything down."
Read More: http://www.mattowen.net/2012/03/the-importance-of-information-preservation
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
They were writing them in ancient Greece and Rome.
If you genuinely want them out of your way (not sure from your post if so or if you are making a comment on it not being completely dead until the copies that are out there are gone) then I suggest contacting local libraries or schools - someone will be able to make use of them so you don't have to feel bad about that much dead tree going to waste. They'll probably arrange to pick them up too so you don't have lift a finger much.
without looking fooling.
Personally, I refuse to looking fooling wherever possible.
Are you functionally retarded, or where you just born hydrocephalic?
What an asshole. I love how, in the course of your flaming rant, you took the time to correctly spell "hydrocephalic" yet totally misspelled "were." Perhaps you suffer from a similar affliction yourself.
Evolution is a lie.
Global warming is a lie.
The holocaust is a lie.
Sadam had WMD.
Smoking does not cause cancer.
The world is flat.
Stay tuned for Volume 2.
A pox on web designers who feel that window.innerWidth == screen.availWidth
Why should you ever need to cite a Wikipedia article? Or the EB, for that matter? Their articles are based on scientific publications, and those you should cite. An encyclopedia can only ever serve as a reference, as you rightly called it yourself, not as a source. It condenses years or sometimes decades worth of scientific research into a five minute read and translates it into terms that a layperson can make sense of with little or no prior knowledge, using only other entries as references. Unless you are writing a paper on an encyclopedia, you should never cite one.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia -- things change so quickly that citing Wikipedia makes it very difficult for anyone to actually look up whatever you were citing. If there were "snapshots" that were widely distributed, say at the end of each year, one could simply cite those snapshots.
There is actually, an effort to change some of this. The Encyclopedia of Life (eol.org), which imports Wikipedia articles about species, has a process underway where curators will be able to edit a Wikipedia article, mark it as "curated", and then have that expertly reviewed article available for reference. Think of it sort of as an EOL branded version of the article, lending more weight to its accuracy. The main article can still continue to be edited and changed.
Twenda Learning: Educational Apps that Engage.
If an article is deleted or merged out, it is only because the topic has been deemed "not notable" by a consensus of editors. There are not typically the types of subjects you would be doing a term paper on. If you "really really" wanted a copy of a deleted article, you can likely talk an admin into userfying a copy of the article for you, as deleted articles aren't really deleted, they are just removed from general access. Same with merged articles. Admins have access to everything, including "deleted" material.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've always meant to buy a set for my kids who are about to enter school. I read encyclopedias growing up more than any other type of book, and if it wouldn't have been for them I don't know what I would have done. So now's the time... I just ordered a set. Some things will get outdated, but the interest it will stir in my children will be so worth the cost to me. I silently thank my tightwad parents for at least buying a set of encyclopedias if not much else during my childhood! I can at least pass that on to my kids. I am really sad these things are going extinct. Damn.
How about renaming? That seems like the most common possible source of broken links.
We have a lot of complaining here about the nostalgia of flipping through the encyclopedia, but consider just how amazing the information revolution we are a part of is. Before, the quality of printed encyclopedias on most subjects was pretty high, but they were very expensive, and only published in limited languages. If you were lucky enough to grow up in a family able and willing to spend $1400 on books, or be near a library with one and have time to go there, then you have a great information source. Everyone else is just kind of boned.
Now, anyone with access to some sort of computer with an internet connection can access an incredible and unprecedented amount of knowledge and information, all more up to date and in more languages than any set of books. What will the next generation do with all of this knowledge at it's fingertips? Stick around, and we'll find out. The golden age is right now.
I don't reply to ACs
The argument at hand fits right into this larger drama. You got some people on one hand who are so blinded by the need to obey the rules!!, they can't pull their heads out of their asses for half a second to look around and see that there is really no good, logical reason why you can't source from any cite you like, Wikipedia included.
And apparently, you should never call them "fast fooders" whether it makes sense or not. I can only imagine that I accidentally hit some nail right on the head.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Renaming (actually, "moving") automatically creates a redirect from the old name, to the new name, and bots comb all the articles that have the old link, and fix them to have the new link. As for all old links that you saved, the redirect will automatically take you to the new named article. renaming/moving doesn't break links, it just redirects them back to the original content. The only way a link breaks is if the link is to a subsection, and the subsection changes, but it doesn't matter, as the "broken" link will still always take you back to at least the top of the article, regardless of how many times it has been "moved".
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Thanks for the info.
Yes, deleted articles are really deleted and even links to a certain revision of that article won't work anymore.
I think that merged articles usually don't have their histories merged, so that should be fine.
And renaming doesn't affect this, the history link uses a revision id, which won't change even after a rename.
>This is mainly due to the fact that there is no "stable" Wikipedia --
This is mainly due to the fact that the vast majority of those in academia (=higher education) consider Wikipedia to be absolutely unreliable.
Everyone should consider Wikipedia unreliable.
Advice: on VPS providers
I was reading World Book from 1960s from a previous house owner. It was interesting to read and see its old drawings on ants. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).