David Gerard wrote:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/22/1336241
I found this anonymous Slashdot comment interesting:
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That's exactly the problem, and one which the Britannica guy doesn't
get. I'm only minimally interested in what some expert at Britannica
thinks is the right answer, and a bunch of citations back to the print
version of their encyclopedia as justification is useless.
[...]
Well, to be fair, their previous model (ca. EB1911) was reasonably
interesting: get some of the most well-known people in each area to
write a broad overview of the area, suitable for general audiences.
Opinionated, sure, but the opinion of someone with some claim to be
worth reading, generally. The real problem is that they still have the
authoritative voice and lack of citations, but no longer manage to
recruit suitably authoritative authors to write (and sign) the articles.
Even if they did, I'd find Wikipedia more useful for many things, such
as getting overviews of fields that have multiple competing viewpoints,
and pointers into the literature for further research. But I'd probably
read Britannica, too, whereas currently I don't really.
-Mark