[WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

[David Alexander Russell]

Sorry, I meant Britannica ONLINE. should have made that clearer. My 
point is that Wikipedia, as a freely-accessible online encyclopedia, is 
a direct competitor to Britannica Online, a subscription-based online 
encyclopedia: this is in the same way that (for example) Wordpress.com 
is a direct competitor to Typepad.

Cynical

Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day David,
>
>   
>> Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000
>>  articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor)
>> has over a million?
>>     
>
> Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor?  Where does that leave 
> /World Book/ and /Encarta/?  And why can't I think of more than four 
> encyclopaedias at the moment?  Gah.
>
> We're not *exactly* competing with Britannica.  We're providing a free, 
> detailed, comprehensive encyclopaedia ... where "encyclopaedia" is a 
> very broad description, and can include anything on any topic with 
> pretensions to the name (George Lucas gets his /Star Wars/ ideas from 
> us!).  We're *more* than Britannica.  Much, much more.
>
> At the same time, we're much, much less.  Wikipedia's greatest strength 
> --- our openness --- is also a weakness.  The damage left by edit wars, 
> our tolerance of insane amounts of cruft, even the constant vandalism 
> isn't that big a deal --- but inaccuracy *is*.  And Wikipedia is very 
> vulnerable to inaccuracy.  Where we're inaccurate about real people, 
> like John "have I spelled his name right yet" Siegenthaler, we can cause 
> actual pain in real life.  That's an issue we're trying to deal with, 
> with WP:NOR to cut down on kookery, WP:V to cut down on outright lies, 
> and WP:OFFICE to mop up anything we've missed ... but it's going to take 
> time.
>
> We aren't out there to create a new Britannica.  We're creating 
> something different.  We should look to Britannica, and its competitors, 
> as something to emulate.  We should *aspire* to be as good as them. 
> But, in the end, we're *not*.  There's always a niche market for 
> creatures like Britannica --- for people who are worried about accuracy 
> (but not money) and are not prepared to put in the effort required to 
> find out if a Wikipedia article is true or not, for example.
>
> Of course, unintentionally, we're hurting Britannica.  And we're hurting 
> the other encyclopaedias out there as well.  We're bringing an 
> encyclopaedia into the homes of people who couldn't afford the fees 
> charged by the others.  Decent and free will always trump excellent and 
> bloody expensive.  It's only natural that Britannica, whose management 
> presumably know one or two things about business, will see this and get 
> scared.  They don't want to peddle to a niche subset of the 'paedia 
> audience, and they don't want to risk going under if it doesn't work.
>
> And frankly, that's not just Britannica's problem --- it's ours as well. 
>   "Decent and free" is fine when there are better encyclopaedias out 
> there.  If we're the best the world can offer, then we *have* to be 
> great, not good, not decent, but *great*.  We'd owe it to the world, 
> after taking away their best encyclopaedias, to provide a valid alternative.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>