Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
I think in fact that the headline is misleading. This isn't really a case of Britannica taking on Wikipedia. It is more like they may have seen Veropedia in their rear view mirror, and gotten scared. A peer reviewed study that unfavorably compared Britannica with Veropedia in terms of timeliness, scope and accuracy would be quite devastating to Britannica, since Veropedia also vets its contents.
I suppose your point is since Veropedia fact-checks Wikipedia articles, but then makes no effort to update them, EB's timeliness would be poor if it lagged that effort. But there is a more traditional reference model, the almanac, where updates are on a one-year cycle. Part of the point I was trying to make is that there are these models between "instant" updating, which WP allows, and a long revision cycle traditional for encyclopedias (of the order of a decade).
Charles