G'day folks,
Deutsche Welle reports that Germany's Brockhaus encyclopedia will go online and be supported by advertising.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3125497,00.html
The German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus said it would place its reference works on the Internet to offset falling revenues. Unlike popular reference work Wikipedia, it will be ad-sponsored and professionally edited.
It's the paper death of a classic. The German publisher Brockhaus has been printing its encyclopedias for nearly 200 years, and anyone who's had the money has boasted a collection of the handsome works on their bookshelves for all the world to admire.
But the Internet has been a thorn in Brockhaus' side years now, forcing the company to reevaluate its strategy. The German version of the democratic digital reference work Wikipedia has been seen as cutting into Brockhaus' profits.
"Though official figures are not yet out for 2007, we can expect losses of around several million euros," a Brockhaus spokesperson said earlier this week.
(more in link)
Regards
*Keith Old*
Are thee any studies on the comparative accuracy of Brockhaus and de:WP? I ask because I always had the sense that de:WP had a lower tolerance for content trolls than we have.
I wonder how the EB's doing.
RR
On Feb 14, 2008 2:09 AM, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
G'day folks,
Deutsche Welle reports that Germany's Brockhaus encyclopedia will go online and be supported by advertising.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3125497,00.html
The German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus said it would place its reference works on the Internet to offset falling revenues. Unlike popular reference work Wikipedia, it will be ad-sponsored and professionally edited.
It's the paper death of a classic. The German publisher Brockhaus has been printing its encyclopedias for nearly 200 years, and anyone who's had the money has boasted a collection of the handsome works on their bookshelves for all the world to admire.
But the Internet has been a thorn in Brockhaus' side years now, forcing the company to reevaluate its strategy. The German version of the democratic digital reference work Wikipedia has been seen as cutting into Brockhaus' profits.
"Though official figures are not yet out for 2007, we can expect losses of around several million euros," a Brockhaus spokesperson said earlier this week.
(more in link)
Regards
*Keith Old* _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Another one bites the dust!
If traditional encyclopedia's are going to start placing all their content free to access online, then Wikipedia has already won (even if this might hurt the German version in web traffic).
On Feb 13, 2008 1:34 PM, Relata Refero refero.relata@gmail.com wrote:
Are thee any studies on the comparative accuracy of Brockhaus and de:WP? I ask because I always had the sense that de:WP had a lower tolerance for content trolls than we have.
I wonder how the EB's doing.
RR
On Feb 14, 2008 2:09 AM, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
G'day folks,
Deutsche Welle reports that Germany's Brockhaus encyclopedia will go online and be supported by advertising.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3125497,00.html
The German encyclopedia publisher Brockhaus said it would place its reference works on the Internet to offset falling revenues. Unlike
popular
reference work Wikipedia, it will be ad-sponsored and professionally edited.
It's the paper death of a classic. The German publisher Brockhaus has
been
printing its encyclopedias for nearly 200 years, and anyone who's had
the
money has boasted a collection of the handsome works on their
bookshelves
for all the world to admire.
But the Internet has been a thorn in Brockhaus' side years now, forcing the company to reevaluate its strategy. The German version of the democratic digital reference work Wikipedia has been seen as cutting into
Brockhaus'
profits.
"Though official figures are not yet out for 2007, we can expect losses
of
around several million euros," a Brockhaus spokesperson said earlier
this
week.
(more in link)
Regards
*Keith Old* _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Feb 13, 2008 5:16 PM, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Another one bites the dust!
If traditional encyclopedia's are going to start placing all their content free to access online, then Wikipedia has already won (even if this might hurt the German version in web traffic).
Well.. Thats one way of thinking about it.. but I'm not so sure.
Wikipedia is much more than just an encyclopedia available at no cost to people with internet access. Wikipedia is free content. You can take the content, transform it into other things, put it in other mediums.. change it... etc.
Other people might make arguments about the importance of the transparency that Wikipedia's revision control offers, or the benefits of accepting input from a broad audience.
.. So even if all existent encyclopedias were always available for reading at no cost on the web there would still be a lot of reasons for Wikipedia to exist.
However, a lot of people emphasize Wikipedia as a "no cost online encyclopedia" and events like this highlight why advertising Wikipedia in this way is a mistake: If people only think of Wikipedia as a "no cost online encyclopedia" then incremental steps like Brockhaus' may be misunderstood as something the reduces the value provided by Wikipedia.
Of course, Brockhaus is not the first commercial encyclopedia to allow online access at no cost. So really that hasn't been something that made Wikipedia unique for a long time.
Cheers.
Not so sure. If all encyclopaedias stopped being paper and went online free, it could seriously bite into the number of people donating to Wikipedia. It stands to reason more people may spend their internet time looking at these encyclopaedias for information, than Wikipedia.
On 14/02/2008, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
Another one bites the dust!
If traditional encyclopedia's are going to start placing all their content free to access online, then Wikipedia has already won (even if this might hurt the German version in web traffic).
Meg
On Feb 13, 2008 6:34 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Not so sure. If all encyclopaedias stopped being paper and went online free, it could seriously bite into the number of people donating to Wikipedia. It stands to reason more people may spend their internet time looking at these encyclopaedias for information, than Wikipedia.
... If they had all the qualities of Wikipedia then why would we need donations? Mission accomplished!
But they don't. Thus my prior post.
So how do we emphasize qualities W,X,Y of Wikipedia when the public still thinks of it mostly in terms of Z?
On 13/02/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 13, 2008 6:34 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Not so sure. If all encyclopaedias stopped being paper and went online free, it could seriously bite into the number of people donating to Wikipedia. It stands to reason more people may spend their internet time looking at these encyclopaedias for information, than Wikipedia.
... If they had all the qualities of Wikipedia then why would we need donations? Mission accomplished! But they don't. Thus my prior post. So how do we emphasize qualities W,X,Y of Wikipedia when the public still thinks of it mostly in terms of Z?
It's not clear to me how they could compete with Wikipedia without becoming Wikipedia.
Wikipedia gained its present hideous popularity through convenience - an encyclopedia with a ridiculously wide topic range, with content good enough to be *useful* no matter how often we stress it's not "reliable" (certified checked) as such.
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.
So the paper encyclopedias put their content online. Can they provide a better website than Wikipedia? Ignoring the process, just looking at the resulting body of text? It'll be interesting to see. I bet it'll work to improve us too.
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.
- d.
If all encyclopaedias stopped being paper and went online free, it could
seriously bite into the >number of people donating to Wikipedia.
Our goal is not hoard donation money. Our goal is to freely distribute the sum of all human knowledge. If our efforts force other publishers and websites to do what we've done (publish information for free), then we've won.
As for threatening the project's existence, this is not going to happen just with Brockhaus or Britannica publishing online. We are a wiki, and that means we will always update faster and better than static sites.
On Feb 13, 2008 3:55 PM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 13/02/2008, Gregory Maxwell gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote:
On Feb 13, 2008 6:34 PM, Meg Ireland megireland99@gmail.com wrote:
Not so sure. If all encyclopaedias stopped being paper and went online free, it could seriously bite into the number of people donating to Wikipedia. It stands to reason more people may spend their internet time looking at these encyclopaedias for information, than Wikipedia.
... If they had all the qualities of Wikipedia then why would we need donations? Mission accomplished! But they don't. Thus my prior post. So how do we emphasize qualities W,X,Y of Wikipedia when the public still thinks of it mostly in terms of Z?
It's not clear to me how they could compete with Wikipedia without becoming Wikipedia.
Wikipedia gained its present hideous popularity through convenience - an encyclopedia with a ridiculously wide topic range, with content good enough to be *useful* no matter how often we stress it's not "reliable" (certified checked) as such.
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.
So the paper encyclopedias put their content online. Can they provide a better website than Wikipedia? Ignoring the process, just looking at the resulting body of text? It'll be interesting to see. I bet it'll work to improve us too.
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.
- d.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 14/02/2008, Steven Walling steven.walling@gmail.com wrote:
As for threatening the project's existence, this is not going to happen just with Brockhaus or Britannica publishing online. We are a wiki, and that means we will always update faster and better than static sites.
Some arrogant pontification:
http://davidgerard.co.uk/notes/2008/02/14/worse-is-better/
Worse is better, yet again.
Could Brockhaus or Britannica become Wikipedia? If so, what would that entail? Could they keep their marketed reliability? (We'll gloss over for the moment the fact that Britannica's content disclaimer leaves Wikipedia's in the shade.)
- d.
On 2/14/08, David Gerard dgerard@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
And who then is going to publish an actual peer-reviewed encyclopedia for the purposes where this is the appropriate source? Citizendium. That's whom they should merge with. It is much closer to their authorship model.
On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/14/08, David Gerard dgerard@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
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 2/15/08, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
And who then is going to publish an actual peer-reviewed encyclopedia for the purposes where this is the appropriate source? Citizendium. That's whom they should merge with. It is much closer to their authorship model.
Careful now. I am still very much at Ghandicon 2 with Citizendium.
Steve