[WikiEN-l] The viable competitors to Wikipedia.

[David Gerard]

On 11 April 2011 10:49, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> And there is no particular reason why paid staff couldn't be a viable
> route to a competitor. But that sounds like the annual budget. And I
> suppose the assumption is that doing content in English is enough. You'd
> have to sell a lot of advertising and/or subscriptions. There probably
> is a niche, at least, for a general encyclopedia that libraries would
> willingly pay for, written professionally. Would that worry us?


You assume libraries have any money whatsoever. I have anecdotal
comments by someone from 2005 on
http://reddragdiva.dreamwidth.org/277688.html -

"Libraries are glorified combination of internet cafes, OAP reading
rooms, care-in-the-community day centres and a half-way-house between
Blockbuster and CashConverter in terms of CD and DVD rental. In 10
years they'll look like Starbucks (probably due to being owned by
them), or be shut - the lot of them. My basis for this opinion - my
mother is Reference Librarian for Lancashire (and has been for about
10 years now), and if she had the funding for a Britannica in every
branch she'd spend the money on replacing several hundred other books
per branch instead."

That is, it would have to be quite a remarkable encyclopedia indeed to
actually spend money on.

I can't imagine library funding has actually gotten better since 2005
- there's Vodafone's tax break to pay for, after all.


- d.