kwadhwa at wikimedia
Jun 9, 2008, 4:31 PM
Post #8 of 10 (968 views)
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Re: Britannica [ In reply to ] We are open to the possibility of working with Britannica and/or
if it makes sense for everyone and compliments our mission
objectives. At this point, it would be better if they
approached us with an idea and/or proposal (instead of us
going to them) because Britannica is still trying to figure
out how to be successful in a world that is increasingly moving
online that values community and collaboration:
http://www.pandia.com/sew/672-britannica-follows-in-wikipedias-footsteps.html
and I'm not sure if anyone knows what Microsoft's plans for Encarta
are at this point...but we're open to exploring the possibilities...
Milos Rancic wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard wrote:
>>> In Encarta's case - Live Search used to cover stuff in Encarta links.
>>> Now they notably favour Wikipedia. I'm wondering if there's room for
>>> an arrangement of the sort that entails us getting money. Windows is a
>>> supported platform for MediaWiki after all :-)
>
> This is the issue related to money. I am sure that WMF may get money
> from MS or from Gates' foundation with or without a relation with
> Encarta.
>
>>>> But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of
>>>> Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend
>>>> more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some
>>>> other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free
>>>> software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we
>>>> are the free knowledge partner.
>>> It's a pity they've been so antagonistic to Wikipedia in the past few
>>> years, as if that would have helped them. I think the success of
>>> Wikipedia is that it fills a niche that was basically unfilled before.
>>> I can't believe that any significant number of the people making
>>> wikipedia.org the #8 website in the world have opened a paper
>>> encyclopedia since they were at school. I'm happy for those people to
>>> look at Britannica, Citizendium or whatever from looking at Wikipedia
>>> - it spreads the idea that people can do active research for
>>> information beyond just entering a term into a search engine.
>> Part of the problem with Brittanica is that their coverage on some things is
>> crap. For instance, their article on Bender, Moldova, a major city in
>> Moldova, uses the name Tighina, which has been out of use for hundreds of
>> years. It contains very little useful information, most of which is sorely
>> out of date. Encarta is even worse. Part of the problem is not the
>> book-based model or the expense, its the lack of updated and correct
>> information that causes people to abandon Brittanica (for example, my
>> experiences with it have been so poor that I cannot trust it to be a source
>> for information anymore).
>
> Whenever I want to test accuracy of some encyclopedia, I go to see how
> the fields of my knowledge are covered (linguistics). Sometimes it is
> so stupid that I forget immediately about that encyclopedia.
> Britannica definitively gives not stupid articles, but I was very
> surprised by the fact that 1995 edition didn't have correct Serbian
> Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the same edition (maybe newer, too) refers to
> some books from the 1920s (in English; "completely outdated") and
> 1930s (in German; "partially outdated") as the best sources for
> researching Sumerian language (in 1997 i found very good grammars of
> Sumerian in English at Internet).
>
> I would say that a really good information about some issue may be
> found at Wikipedia and through external links and bibliography. And I
> don't see a sense in reading 10 times shorter article without good
> bibliography about some issue at Britannica or Encarta.
>
> But, strictly speaking, their informations are scientifically
> reliable, and ours are not. They have a rich field for gathering
> articles from Wikipedia and sell the redacted copies with Britannica's
> stamp. And we may get a number of high profile scientists who are
> evaluating our articles. This may sound as a good deal.
>
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Po długim okresie krytyki modelu działania Wikipedii oraz zawartych w nich treści encyklopedycznej, Encyklopedia Britannica zdecydowała się na otworzenie swoich zasobów i pozwoli użytkownikom przesyłać poprawki do artykułów.

Nie będzie to jednak kopia modelu rozwoju Wikipedii. Przedstawiciele Britanniki zastrzegają, że w ich modelu nie ma miejsca na demokrację, a poprawki przyjmowane będą w specjalnie skonstruowanym do tego celu serwisie nieopierającym się o mechanizm wiki.

Mimo, że w Wikipedii pewne decyzje podejmowane są na drodze konsensu lub także głosowań, to także na jej stronach można znaleźć zapis, że  nie jest ona demokracją.

Na liście Fundacji Wikimedia wczoraj rozpoczęła się na ten temat także krótka dyskusja, w której główną kwestią było pytanie o to, czy w przyszłości Britannica zdecyduje się na publikowanie treści na wolnej licencji. Pojawiły się także wątki związane z kwestią ewentualnej współpracy miedzy twórcami Wikipedii i Britannici.