...was that they thought it was advantageous to respond to it at all. Their response struck me as being lame and as tending to call attention to the very things they'd just as soon have people forget: that Nature, which has a stellar reputation among its readership, even put Britannica and WIkipedia in the same category.
It is as if Nature were to say "Britannica eats shit and bays at the moon," and Britannica were to respond by saying "That conclusion is false, because Nature's research was invalid. We don't eat nearly as much shit as Nature claims we eat, and some of what we ate, which Nature imprecisely referred to as 'shit,' was actually putrescent offal, and as for baying at the moon, we take issue with that characterization of our vocalizations, and anyway we only do it when the moon is full, which is less than 3% of the time. So, when Nature says we eat shit and bay at the moon, our response is that we do not eat shit and bay at the moon, so when you think of eating shit and baying at the moon, don't think of us, and when you think of us, don't think of eating shit and baying at the moon, because it is really not very true at all, hardly. Eating shit. Baying. Moon. Not us. Not really. Not much. Did I mention we don't eat shit and bay at the moon? Even though Nature says we do?"
--- "Daniel P. B. Smith" wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
...was that they thought it was advantageous to respond to it at all. Their response struck me as being lame and as tending to call attention to the very things they'd just as soon have people forget: that Nature, which has a stellar reputation among its readership, even put Britannica and WIkipedia in the same category.
It is as if Nature were to say "Britannica eats shit and bays at the moon," and Britannica were to respond by saying "That conclusion is false, because Nature's research was invalid. We don't eat nearly as much shit as Nature claims we eat, and some of what we ate, which Nature imprecisely referred to as 'shit,' was actually putrescent offal, and as for baying at the moon, we take issue with that characterization of our vocalizations, and anyway we only do it when the moon is full, which is less than 3% of the time. So, when Nature says we eat shit and bay at the moon, our response is that we do not eat shit and bay at the moon, so when you think of eating shit and baying at the moon, don't think of us, and when you think of us, don't think of eating shit and baying at the moon, because it is really not very true at all, hardly. Eating shit. Baying. Moon. Not us. Not really. Not much. Did I mention we don't eat shit and bay at the moon? Even though Nature says we do?"
I thought the same thing, but without the hilarious analogy. They also created a strawman argument ; implying that Nature was dishonest when it did not exclusively use the adult version of Encyclopedia Britannica when the study was very clearly comparing the online edition of Britannica's products with Wikipedia. Not to mention that the reviewers were blind to the source of what they were reading and thus there was little to no opportunity for bias on that level. Nor did EB even try to prove actual bias for Wikipedia by comparing reviewers comments on the Wikipedia version vs what the acticle said and what the real facts were. They just implied bias.
That said, I really would have liked to see a more substantial study done; a 42 topic comparison is very small and they were only looking for errors. Being comprehensive is almost as important. Readability, layout, user-friendliness, links to other topics (esp subtopics that go into more detail) is also important.
--- mav
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On 4/5/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Britannica's products with Wikipedia. Not to mention that the reviewers were blind to the source of what they were reading and thus there was little to no opportunity for bias on that level.
I seem to recally from the original report a quote saying the reviewers, in practice, did know which one they were reading, because the styles were so different. Am I misremembering?
Steve
If Nature's method left Britannica's entries cut to Wikipedia size or collated from several Britannica sources, then they might have a case against some of the omissions, but whether text comes from the online BE, the paper one or some other Britannica sources shouldn't matter when they were being called on errors. An error is an error, no matter where they've published it.
Unless the errors in the online version are a selling point for the print version. "Buy the print version! Now with 20% less errors than online!"
Steve
On 4/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
If Nature's method left Britannica's entries cut to Wikipedia size or collated from several Britannica sources, then they might have a case against some of the omissions, but whether text comes from the online BE, the paper one or some other Britannica sources shouldn't matter when they were being called on errors. An error is an error, no matter where they've published it. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Yes, it should be "fewer errors".