Mathias Schindler wrote:
On 3/22/06, SJ 2.718281828@gmail.com wrote:
Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica. A more detailed review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
Those of you who are interested in the topic should come to #wikipedia-britannica on Freenode IRC.
We might be able to form an response to this which could be productive.
Is a response necessary? EB's response to the article is like so much spin, and I'm inclined to feel sorry for them. Being drawn into a flame war with them would be unseemly. The tone of their study seemed more focussed on defending their credibility, and they have a right to do that.
Our best position is to acknowledge the errors in Wikipedia that were identified by Nature, and to point out that we have worked to correct them. We needn't mention EB at all. We can hope that similar studies in the future will be helpful in discover further errors for us to correct. Admitting errors impresses the reading public more than defending them.. We need to remember that we are the ones arguing from a position of strength.
Ec