David Gerard wrote:
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/22/1336241
I found this anonymous Slashdot comment interesting:
=== That's exactly the problem, and one which the Britannica guy doesn't get. I'm only minimally interested in what some expert at Britannica thinks is the right answer, and a bunch of citations back to the print version of their encyclopedia as justification is useless. [...]
Well, to be fair, their previous model (ca. EB1911) was reasonably interesting: get some of the most well-known people in each area to write a broad overview of the area, suitable for general audiences. Opinionated, sure, but the opinion of someone with some claim to be worth reading, generally. The real problem is that they still have the authoritative voice and lack of citations, but no longer manage to recruit suitably authoritative authors to write (and sign) the articles.
Even if they did, I'd find Wikipedia more useful for many things, such as getting overviews of fields that have multiple competing viewpoints, and pointers into the literature for further research. But I'd probably read Britannica, too, whereas currently I don't really.
-Mark