QUOTE(John Limey @ Thu 18th March 2010, 4:51pm)
QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Thu 18th March 2010, 1:14pm)
QUOTE(WikiWatch @ Wed 17th March 2010, 8:47pm)
QUOTE(GlassBeadGame @ Thu 18th March 2010, 1:41pm)
People willing to spend countless amounts of time "building an encyclopedia" are in some sense aberrant and deformed.
I'm sure the people behind
Britannica,
World Book, and
Encarta might disagree.
Then again they got paid. Emphasis added aboveThere you go.
Then again, many projects have not paid their contributors. None of the contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, a resource of unsurpassed quality, were paid. Generally speaking, contributors to various specialized Encyclopedia of X variants are not paid either. They are experts who work as part of the general enterprise of academia or to spread knowledge or to advance their careers.
It is interesting to compare the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and its predecessor the Dictionary of National Biography, with Wikipedia. In both of them the articles on recently deceased people were frequently written by their relatives or friends. Even if not, there are often references to unpublished information obtained from relatives. This would of course not be allowed on Wikipedia under WP:NPOV, WP:RS and WP:V. I have heard the author of an article on ODNB, a professional historian, criticise the article on DNB that he replaced (written by a friend of the subject) as "a complete white-wash".
I recently wrote to the ODNB pointing out differences between one of their articles and what was said in obituaries. They have referred it to the article author. I have no way of knowing what "the truth" is in this case or if it even exists, but the ODNB is not infallible.
While I have no doubt that the great majority of articles on the ODNB are of high standard, it is at least possible that in a few cases WP will be better.