Encyclopaedia Britannica To Follow Modified Wikipedia Model - Wired News Options

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Encyclopaedia Britannica To Follow Modified Wikipedia Model
Wired News -35 minutes ago
In a bid to wed the comprehensive, grassroots information factory of Wikipedia with the authority of the traditional encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

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[Milton Roe]

<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Encyclopaedia Britannica To Follow Modified Wikipedia Model
Wired News -35 minutes ago
In a bid to wed the comprehensive, grassroots information factory of Wikipedia with the authority of the traditional encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

View the article

Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications, explained to Wired.com that the new site will include three main categories of content: content created by the site's existing community of experts, content created by users, and [content created by] Encyclopaedia Britannica itself, which will incorporate aspects of the first two once they have achieved a "Checked by Britannica" designation.

Ah, what I've been suggesting for years. In fact, I think it's a Wikipedia "Perennial suggestion".

The world is moving ahead on you, Jimbo. Back to making money off Star Trek cruft. And hurry, before Britannica scratches their heads and thinks of Britannica's Online Encyclopedia of Pop Culture ™. Same model, but fanboy-expert review before articles are stabilized.

[dogbiscuit]

<img alt="" height="1" width="1">Encyclopaedia Britannica To Follow Modified Wikipedia Model
Wired News -35 minutes ago
In a bid to wed the comprehensive, grassroots information factory of Wikipedia with the authority of the traditional encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

View the article

Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications, explained to Wired.com that the new site will include three main categories of content: content created by the site's existing community of experts, content created by users, and [content created by] Encyclopaedia Britannica itself, which will incorporate aspects of the first two once they have achieved a "Checked by Britannica" designation.

Ah, what I've been suggesting for years. In fact, I think it's a Wikipedia "Perennial suggestion".

The world is moving ahead on you, Jimbo. Back to making money off Star Trek cruft. And hurry, before Britannica scratches their heads and thinks of Britannica's Online Encyclopedia of Pop Culture ™. Same model, but fanboy-expert review before articles are stabilized.

Trouble is: which will get read more, the free pap or the paid for? It's an irrelevance.

[ThurstonHowell3rd]

Britannica is not a technology leader. They were very slow putting their content on DVD and they were very slow putting their content online. And, they are still charging a subscription to view their content.

Even though Britannica now has the right idea about allowing non-expert contributions, their execution will likely be poor.

[Milton Roe]

Britannica is not a technology leader. They were very slow putting their content on DVD and they were very slow putting their content online. And, they are still charging a subscription to view their content.

Even though Britannica now has the right idea about allowing non-expert contributions, their execution will likely be poor.

I know! I know!!! Look there's this thing called a "Wiki"-- I'ts a multiuser db thingie, invented by this guy named Cunningham, in 1994, as part of the WikiWikiWeb. Supposedly even the intelligence community has been using Intelli-wikis hosted by MediaWiki to do intelligence work!

This kind of thing could in theory be used by many people who don't know each other, to write an encyclopedia! Of course, you wouldn't just want to give everybody access to all levels of editing (that really would be stupid), but see Intelliwiki. You have to have pentagon clearance or something, to get on that. So the same kind of thing, allowing for levels of expertise, could be done with an encyclopedia. Britannica could do THEIR proposed project on Wikis. They've been around a dozen years, and they were invented by Cunningham. It's not like they're patented or copyrighted as a concept.

*&%$ me, this is brilliant. Why didn't somebody suggest it years ago?

[thekohser]

When I canceled my trial subscription to Britannica, I got this via e-mail:

Don't Lose Your Access to Britannica Online...
RENEW NOW FOR ONLY $3.99 A MONTH!*
Why go back to unreliable and time-consuming search engine results when Britannica Online is the only website that gives you a full library of resources you can't get anywhere else on the internet, such as:

Expert Contributors: Get real answers from real experts - scientists, professors, Nobel laureates, and Pulitzer Prize winners.
Comprehensive Coverage: Online access to the world-famous Encyclopædia Britannica with daily updates, along with more images, videos, and audio content than any other reference site.
Useful Tools: Stop jumping between multiple websites - Britannica Online gives you a world atlas, dictionary and thesaurus, and more - all in one convenient source.

How do they get away with the "more images, videos, and audio content..." claim? Is it that they don't consider the Wikimedia properties as "reference sites"?

Greg