Durova wrote:
EB trades size for reliability. They may get a fact wrong here and there or be slightly out of date, but they aren't going to publish absolute hoaxes and they're relatively family-friendly.
With the heavy caveat that this story itself may be a complete urban legend, I remember reading (no idea where) about one case where Britannica had written about the tribal customs of an islander culture, and about the communal rituals for launching their wooden boats, and somebody was so impressed by the elaborateness of these rituals as described in Britannica, that they wanted to go see the rituals first hand. When they arrived on that particular island, they found the island to have never grown any kind of wood from which boats could be fashioned, and all the ritual customs as described in Britannica to have been drawn out from whole cloth.
Like I say, this story itself may be an urban myth, and certainly even if it happened to be in fact true, it would reference a very early edition of Britannica, perhaps even one of the very first editions. I am sure even their editorial standards have not always been as high, as they are today.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen