Encyclopedia Britannica to Take User Contributions

Barence writes "Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia's user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Surprisingly, then, it is rolling out a new system allowing readers to potentially contribute to articles, Wiki-style. But Britannica is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it 'as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.' You can try out the new Britannica beta site."

Open Source (sorta?)

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Let me get this straight. The encyclopedia Britannica will now be powered through user generated (but not user selected) articles... To me, it sounds like they're getting free work for a paid product.

1. Make encyclopedia
2. Get a lot of people to submit articles for free
3. Pay a few people to edit and select the best articles
4. ???????
5. Profit!

A grab for unpaid labor is all this is

[analog_line]

From the terms of service on the linked Britannica site:

By sending information or material, you automatically grant to Britannica, a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display it alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicensees.

Wikipedia may have serious accuracy problems in a lot of areas (not all of coruse, but it's not hard to find them) but at least they aren't using me as unpaid labor to save them from having to hire researchers.

Brilliant strategy

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

1 - Capitalize on the buzz created by Wikipedia, falsely open Britannica to contributions
2 - Keep hand on content, unlike Wikipedia, edit contributed content and sell as own
3 - Profit

I know there's truth in their beef against the wiki process, but really what I mostly see is a great way for Britannica to get raw material faster without having to pay anybody.

Encarta tried it

[Anonymous Coward]

Encarta already tried it. [slashdot.org]

It didn't work because it doesn't feel like you're collaborating and "owning" the submission, it feels like you're giving your time and effort to some large entity which has control over the content.

Clay Shirky explains it better in Here Comes Everybody [amazon.com] but the basic idea is that WikiPedia belongs to the people who submit, in a way, which means people are more likely to.

Britannica misses the point,... again.

[nharmon]

But Britannica is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it "as a collaborative process but not a democratic one."

First, Wikipedia is not a democracy [wikipedia.org].

Second, facts are not democratic. You can't VOTE on what will be true. Trust me, it's been tried [youtube.com].

Britannica is still around?

[alen]

shocking, who still uses it?

What about small changes

[wile_e_wonka]

It sounds like the article is suggesting people can offer whole articles for submission. It seems that Wikipedia works because people can write just bits and pieces. And then, if I see something wrong, or if something changes, I can just make that minor little change myself. So, to fix some minor error in an Encycopedia Britannica article, I have to write a whole article? What if the article has some error within an article, or something has changed making the article no longer up-to-date and I want to just suggest a correction?

Still hopelessly clueless

[bbasgen]

  First, it has taken them 7 years to figure out how to respond to Wikipedia, let alone have any kind of tenable internet strategy? Good for them.

  Second, they are still clueless about wikipedia, and can't even critique it properly. Wikipedia is not a democracy, it is based on consensus decision making, which has a different set of flaws. Their straw-man concept of editor versus the masses is literally stolen from the 20th century.

  Third, have any of you checked out their site? Are you kidding me? It is full of junk! Adds, photos, stupid celebrity information, etc. I mean, this is web design 1990s style, covered with the "modernizing" sheep's clothing of flash. They just don't get it: we don't go to an encyclopedia to get bombarded by useless information and junk. On the contrary!

  Finally, they've got the whole paradigm upside down. You don't build a website by making it closed and proprietary, and then let the "community" trickle in amidst various and sundry rules. You have to start the site completely open, and slowly develop structure in response to your community.

  Britannica, I have no idea who is paying your bills anymore, but do us all a favor: read your entry for evolution then obsolescence, again and again, until you get it.

Re:Britannica misses the point,... again.

[JasterBobaMereel]

No go to a peer reviewed history book and read up on the same people .... look familiar? yes they are biased as well ....

As Henry Ford said "History is more or less bunk"

Mussolini was not a particularly nice person, but must have done some things people approved of or he would have not been in power .... the same goes for Che Guevara

History is not decided democratically it is decided by the winners, and by peoples bad memories ...

Re:Kafka said it

[owlnation]

I've always wondered what the deal is with not being allowed to use wikipedia for school etc. If you learned to research anything with some efficacy you would know that you CAN go to wikipedia and use the cited references there to write your own information. You are also not allowed to use someone else's paper from last semester.

You are terrifying. If you are the future of our race, we're screwed. You need to try to see the wood for the trees more.

In the unlikely event you find a Wikipedia article with a primary source. Then why not quote the primary source? You need to understand that many, if not most Wikipedia articles are written by people who are NOT experts on a subject, but believe themselves to be experts. If you are an expert on a subject, go to that Wikipedia entry and you will find errors. If you are lucky it will be a page that isn't protected by a cabal, and you'll be able to correct the errors. If it is protected, you can forget it. Wikipedia articles have nothing to do with real truth, only the truth the admins want you to accept.

Most articles sources are NOT valid sources -- random web pages, tabloid magazine articles, some guy's blog etc. aren't peer review, or accountable journalism. Things like your post, and the and the earlier story about "why do we need scientific journals anymore" are conclusive proof that the FoxNews/Wikiality generation is in some way brainwashed. Homo Sapiens is doomed if you guys get into power.

Trust your teachers and their ban on Wikipedia, you teachers are much wiser than you are!

Re:Kafka said it

[zappepcs]

Slow down, take the lens cap off for a bit.

I said "If you learned to research anything with some efficacy you would know that you CAN go to wikipedia and use the cited references there to write your own information."

So, lets say this, if you find me terrifying, perhaps you should rethink your opinion of yourself. If you go to wikipedia and find the cited references are not any good (circular, tabloid, etc.) then keep searching, unless of course you want to cite such references, but don't blame me or wikipedia, or anyone because you did not do YOUR part in researching the information that you need. DAMN!

I heartily reject the idea, and your assertion that my teacher are wiser than I am. They may well be more educated, but that does NOT make them wiser. meh

Encyclopedias as sources

[intellections]

Generally Encyclopedias are not considered valid sources for research papers anyway. They're great for getting a quick handle on what you're supposed to be doing your paper on but there aren't too many circumstances where they are considered okay for that use. I still feel wikipedia is just as good if not a better source than any other encyclopedia, it's amazing how fast those articles are updated. As long as you're careful not to believe every little thing you read you are probably going to get the best and most updated information from wikipedia

Re:Still hopelessly clueless

[Daniel Phillips]

Third, have any of you checked out their site? Are you kidding me? It is full of junk! Adds, photos, stupid celebrity information, etc. I mean, this is web design 1990s style, covered with the "modernizing" sheep's clothing of flash. They just don't get it: we don't go to an encyclopedia to get bombarded by useless information and junk. On the contrary!

Worse, the interface is clumsy, it is really hard to navigate with the keyboard because of the heavy use of frames, the Javascript is buggy with the keyboard focus randomly shifting away from the article text to the outline and scrolling is horribly sluggish, and can run on for 20 - 30 seconds with the interface unresponsive. During that pain I'm getting served with intrusive ads.

Other problems: the articles are very thinly hyperlinked with typically less than one link per page of text, betraying the print media origin of the material. They tend to be written in a flowery, self absorbed language. In general, I want to be impressed by the content and not the form.

The Britannica articles are often longer and more informative than Wikipedia ones but generally not to a compelling degree. With Wikipedia evolving much faster I don't see any chance at all for Britannica's current (partial) advantage in content to overcome its huge drawbacks compared to Wikipedia: subscription model and bespoke content.