On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Keith Old <keithold(a)gmail.com> wrote:
G'day folks,
From the Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/biztech/battle-to-outgun-wikipedia-an…
"In a move to take on Wikipedia, the *Encyclopedia Britannica* is inviting
the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version.
I am a big fan of Britannica and hope they stay in business. With that
in mind, I actually sat down to try this out today.
I encountered several problems:
* I can't tell if you have to pay for access to *edit* the articles
behind a subscription wall, as well as view them
* The site doesn't load properly in Firefox
* No style guide provided that I found; one has to be familiar with
Britannica house style, presumably
* I can't figure out where to enter "my real name and address"
* I found an article I know something about and made a few changes;
after hitting "submit", however, the flash-based window just hung,
spinning its wheels. Perhaps that is because I don't have the newest
version of flash here at work, which is the only place I have IE.
* all the ads everywhere, even in search results and as hotlinked
keywords in articles, is very unappealing
It's unfortunate that they still seem beset upon by technical
difficulties, because this would be an interesting experiment for
them.
-- phoebe