On 2/14/08, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Britannica may be theoretically higher quality, but is
not right there
on everyone's desktop - it fails on practical availability. Most of
Wikipedia's readers - the people who make it #8 or #9 site in the
world - wouldn't have opened a paper encyclopedia since high school.
Lately I've been buying a couple of oldish specialist encyclopaedias
from op shops, thinking I could add the information to Wikipedia.
Instead, it seems like often Wikipedia, the ultimate generalist
encyclopaedia, has greater depth than even the specialist
encyclopaedias...
I think it'd be a bad thing for Britannica and
Brockhaus to go bust.
I'm not sure how to save their business though.
Release all the content under CC-SA. Merge with Wikipedia. Reinvent as
a publisher of existing encyclopaedic content, not a content provider.
Publish beautiful leather bound "Britannica Wikipedias".
Steve