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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.
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?
...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.
A 32 volume printed set and "up to date" are mutually exclusive.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
"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
OVER 9000!
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.
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
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
You can probably find the answer to that question on wikipedia.
I own a complete set of the 1958 Encyclopedia Americana. I do not own it because it is up-to-date, and I got it for free. I keep it because it reminds me of how quickly the sum of human knowledge changes. Many people would consider this a waste of space for what is only a sentimental reason.
In 1958, this was probably one of the best summaries of human knowledge available.
"God does not play Minecraft with the world." - Albert Einstein
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.
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.
A well-written Wikipedia article should
There's that word again...
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.
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.
Since you're obviously an authority on a vast number of topics, please feel free to contribute your wisdom to the encyclopedia you can edit.
Write failed: Broken pipe
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.