[WikiEN-l] Britannica attempts to become Wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

On 03/06/2008, Chris Howie <cdhowie at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>  > we have tons of articles that literally haven't been
>  > updated since 1849 (not to mention 1911).
>
>
> Wow, I didn't know Wikipedia was *that* old!

You may be joking, but just in case I'll explain. Many of Wikipedia's
articles are copied from public domain sources, like the 1911 edition
of Encyclopaedia Britannica. A lot of them (hopefully most of them,
but I don't have the statistics) get updated to include more modern
information (and match them to the house style), but a significant
number don't. Those articles, therefore, are essentially unedited
since 1911 (or earlier, in some cases).