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Encyclopedia Britannica Goes To The Free
Cy Guy writes "You can now complete those research papers in half the time for free! EB has incorporated the full text of their dead tree and CD-ROM editions into a portal interface (with the typical web-based email, news headlines, etc.) A search of the Encyclopaedia, also searches "The Best of the Web", Magazines, and Books in Print. The results page also lets you pass your search to Searchopolis. They've released more information about it in the press release.
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If I had any moderator points today I'd give you one. 'Everything' is a step down the right path (it actually has a node / path model, which maps well to existing encyclopediae), but Slash (article / discussion model) is closer, in it's own way. The current moderation / karma system is quite good, and will get better, at showing me the good stuff and letting me ignore the crap.
As high-karma individuals wield more and more power in some hypothetical Encyclopedia Interneta, we will need to be more concerned with identity theft. Reputation management is an emerging technology that will ultimately make massive general knowledge databases useable. If it is compromised, such that any twit can claim to be Stephen Hawking, the value of the compiled information falls quickly.
topic drift: One thing I'd like to see is Karma adjusted by number of posts. People who gain karma by simply posting a whole damn lot, some fraction of which gains them points, should not have the same reputation as people who post once or twice a week, but consistently get moderated up.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Search engines may be getting smarter but by no means do they cover the net completely. Even worse, there is no control of the keywords. A PROFESSIONAL index will include controlling the list of keywords so you will know how to find something. There is no way this can be done on the web.
As far as scope, you have to realize that the goal of the EB is to cover a general body of knowledge completely as possible. With the internet there are large holes where there is no information at all. The Internet contains a tremendous amount of information on matters related to computers, however once you get off that topic and start looking at, say a comparison of greek language dialects you are very likely to come up with zilch on the internet.
What I do say is that along with all the crap out there, you can find primary sources
I think that the internet is very poor for anything to do with primary sources, or even high quality secondary sources. Very few scholarly journals are available on the internet, and certainly even fewer early sources.
I don't know what kind of parties you go to, but if they involve encyclopædias they're either really boring or really weird.
According to netcraft, www.eb.com ... which is also the encyclopedia britannica ... is running Netscape Enterprise Server on Solaris.
I think it's a reasonable assumption that www.britannica.com is the same. This doesn't speak badly of Solaris or Netscape, IMO... it's just, that there's nothing quite so spectacularly useful to such a broad cross-section of the population as a free, on-line, high-quality encyclopedia. They may need to increase their capacity, oh... to about a thousand times what it was when they were a pay site.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Down already...
Sniff sniff, sniff... (thinks)... Micrsoft web server?
I could recognise that smell anywhere. Pity.
Everyone is living in a personal delusion, just some are more delusional than others.
Wow! I just submitted the same story. Looks like I was a little late.
/.'ers did. For it to die at Microsoft's hand would be a crime against nature.
I'm very happy to see EB free on the web. Charging people monthly to use an encyclopedia never struck me as a very viable strategy. The fear I have though is that this bodes badly for those who hope to sell information over the web. If EB can't break even doing it, who can?
Encyclopedias are very expensive to maintain. I'm not at all sure an advertising model can pay for adequate work at all. According to the AP wire article, it looks like Microsoft is the main culprit here - they're very nearly giving away Encarta.
Now, Encarta is crap. Before MS, it was the grocery store quality Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia. I would hate to see MS take over yet another industry segment.
The death of Britannica would be a travesty. I grew up with one, and I suspect a lot of other
Perhaps we need an Open Source general encyclopedia to keep the Redmond minions out of this business?
The first things I tried to do was: 1) Access the Encyclopaedia Britannica online (had to pay) and 2) visit the Louvres (had to pay too, at the time.) That was a major bummer.
So this is a nice change of pace, and it's about time it came about, too. The simple fact of the matter is, you can't compete against a clever search engine and a modicum of intelligence when it comes to looking for information on the Web.
EB is doing a smart move, and they probably realise they'll make much more money with well-targeted ads than by charging a membership fee. However, I'm not sure if it means the EB won't be obsolete. Its strong point is a variety of expert writeups and a central collection of articles. Its weak points? It's still a book trying to become an Internet knowledge database.
When will we see an "Encyclopaedia Interneta"? A knowledge-oriented, peer-reviewed compendium of human knowledge? How could such a process benefit from the Slashdot model, as seen in the Jane Cyberterrorism story?
I'm certain the key to storing and indexing knowledge is in there somewhere, but I don't think it's been done properly yet. (And I mean no disrespect to Everything. :) )
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I'll try anyway, I'm sure you knew I would.
fifteen years ago my parents didn't buy an encyclopedia for me, they brought me a Spectrum instead and I don't know if they realise what a favour that did me. Information on paper is nice, but expensive. Information on a bitstream hasn't yet found the perfect presentation but it's evolving so quickly that God himself has to be impressed. Who in their right mind would have imagined, when I was playing Manic Miner and giving my uncle nightmares about jumping little white men that we'd have the whole of the encyclopedia available FOR FREE to anyone who was interested enough to read it IN YOUR OWN HOME for the cost of a local telephone call (Plus some overhead which isn't much more than the cost of that Spectrum)?
Nobody. Only the insane.
I find myself lost for words when I'm trying to explain to someone who's never done anything but look at corporate websites over a slow connection just what potential this medium of ours has. We really can change everything. We can give low cost education to anyone who wants it. We can supply documentation on anything people need documentation on. We can elucidate on any proplems anyone has understanding and IT ALL COSTS ALMOST NOTHING.
The distributed model works so well it scrambles my brain. One intelegent person can now reach thousands without even trying. And those thousands will listen becasue they're not as dumb as the traditional media (and myself at times) gives them credit for and even if they are a proper distributed moderation system sorts out the bullshit from the opinion from the truth more easily than any editor.
People have also mentioned Everything and I guess H2G2 will get there if they give up on human editors soon enough. How long will it be before I can type "Nutritional chicken feed" into google and practically immediately learn how to nurse my sick hen into health, probably getting a joke or two thrown in?
- You want info? - It's free.
- You want Music? - It's free.
- You want Software? - It's Free!
- You want Movies - Give it a year, tops.
The only problem people have that gives me any cause for concern at all is how all this stuff will get made when it's free for distribution.they say. That does worry me a little, especially with Movies which are EXPENSIVE to say the least, but I look at the software scene which people said the same things about and I look at MP3.COM and I look at news like this (It used to cost over a thousand and now it's FREE) and just figure that most talented people are vain enough that they don't need the money and that society wants to reward these people enough that they will get rewarded. And contributing to a properly distributed system so so inexpensive that people DO do it on their own time for nothing more than the desire to make things better.
The whole idea of information wanting to be free and people helping it to do so for no better reason than whim and a desire to enrich people with what they know: To TEACH gives me pause with my pessmism. It's about the only thing that does.