Dear Mr. Fasoldt, Dear Ms Stagnitta,
I read your article in the Post-Standard "Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source" at http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/10933389721..., where you wrote: I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia. If you know of other supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send a note to technology@syracuse.com and let me know about them.
Have you visited britannica.com?
http://corporate.britannica.com/termsofuse.html
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Information at britannica.com can be edited by anyone who was given permission from the company. It might be a PhD who hasn't done anything else than writing about this specific topic. It might be someone else who feels competent. You never know.
Just compare http://www.britannica.com/eb/dailycontent?eu=422756#e%0Avent " Haile Selassie" with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Selassie
At wikipedia, you can see a) who wrote b) when c) which part of the text, who changed it, who altered the order who removed parts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Haile+Selassie+of+Ethiopia&ac...
The authors, such as David Parker can be emailed or asked for clearification in doubt.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Parker
You and Susan Stagnitta are perfectly right to advise people never to "trust" unreliable sources but I can't see a difference in this case between a "black box" company and a group of academics and skilled laymen who make the process of encyclopedic writing transparent.
Several wikipedians have created a document called "Making fun of Britannica" http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Making_fun_of_Britannica, which contains a list of "errors" (in a broader sense). This does not change the level of trust towards Britannica.
If you spot a mistake in Britannica, what are the consequences? If it was in a book, there is no chance to correct it and the risk might be that a student relies on wrong information. She/He will not be able to get a refund from Britannica or even a discount on the new and (hopefully) corrected version.
Ms. Stagnitta said "Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and there is no editorial review of the content." Even if the first part of that sentence is correct, the second part does not describe the reality.
Just have a look at the procedures at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates. It might be hard to get used to the fact that editorial review might be ad-hoc or it might be a constant effort. If an article was found fit for being a "Featured article", the process of improving that article does not stop.
I would like you to encourage you to ask Britannica if they feel that their content is "authoritative" in a sense that they will guarantee any given fact in their Encyclopedia. Ask them if they are able to attribute every sense to a specific author who can be contacted. Ask them if they will make their decision transparent, which lemma does get into the EB and which lemma does not get into it.
Yours, Mathias Schindler neubau@presroi.de
Ringelstr.50 60385 Frankfurt am Main Germany