<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 10:31:33 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, saintonge@telus.net writes:
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing direct
user
edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how if they don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried by
Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however. Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this way. Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly dignified. If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make direct edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Will
**************From Wall Street to Main Street and everywhere in between, stay up-to-date with the latest news. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000023)
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 saintonge@telus.net writes
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing direct user edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how if they don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however. Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this way. Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly dignified. If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make direct edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Sorry, but I hadn't realised that they had done all this just because of your letter. :-[
Ec
<<-----Original Message----- From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:52 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 saintonge@telus.net writes
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing
direct user edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and
corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how
if they
don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried
by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however.
Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this
way.
Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly
dignified.
If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make
direct
edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Sorry, but I hadn't realised that they had done all this just because of your letter. :-[
Ec>> -------------------------
Of course! Everything revolves around me and my needs and desires. The rest of creation in fact is just part of a dream I keep having.
W.J. "formerly the Artist"
Being bold here and expounding a little. If any of you have read the history of encyclopedias *Britannica* put out in its "Macropedia" from a few years ago, it's been clear their management has been living in a dream world. They go on at length about quaint little experiments from the 1980s, while neglecting to mention the existence of Wikipedia as it swam into their river and chomped on *Britannica's* market share like a swarm of piranhas. Meanwhile they portrayed themselves as a 'portal to the Internet', reflecting a top-down information management mentality that's obsolete to anyone who's ever heard of Google.
Bottom line for that organization: they may be cream of the crop as encyclopedias go, but in terms of general reliability hierarchies that's kind of like being the best in cuisine at microwave dinners. If the competition is nearly as good and free, why should the public pay to get their service? Their business plan never accounted for that possibility.
After the *Nature* study it looked very curious that, five months later, * Britannica* management revived interest in dead news by publishing a bitter rebuttal. That was lousy PR. And the head-to-head with Jimbo in the Wall Street Journal shortly afterward made it clear--with minimal reading between the lines--that ol' *B* must have been hurting financially. A venerable institution doesn't act that counterintuitively unless it's hemmorhaging readership and money.
Privately, I've been telling people for years that I doubt their business plan could survive another decade. They may have embraced wiki-ish modifications, but it's too little too late. They should have anticipated the Internet's real potential twelve years ago. Headlines may say 'Watch out Wikipedia', but Alexa says differently.
How many of you are shelling out hard cash to read *Britannica* online? Raise your hands. Yeah, just about none.
Sayonara, Durova
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:20 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<-----Original Message----- From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:52 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 saintonge@telus.net writes
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing
direct user edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and
corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how
if they
don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried
by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however.
Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this
way.
Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly
dignified.
If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make
direct
edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Sorry, but I hadn't realised that they had done all this just because of your letter. :-[
Ec>>
Of course! Everything revolves around me and my needs and desires. The rest of creation in fact is just part of a dream I keep having.
W.J. "formerly the Artist"
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think Brittanica's model *could* have worked if Wikipedia hadn't appeared on the scene.
I, revealing that I am an old fart, ( as if you couldn't tell by my cantankerous moods), bought the complete Brittanica when I was just a pup (more or less) and paid about $900 for it them.
(To you brits that's roughly in the neighborhood of 450 to 550 pounds).
This was about twenty *cough* years ago.
And I still have those. About 40 volumes with the Macropedia as well and a few annuals in case you know anyone looking for boat ballast.
I used to consult them more than daily. Now I consult them about once a month if that, usually when I find something strikingly bizarre in-project. Google Books has essentially removed any need to consult hard print anymore at least in *my* field.
At any rate, about ten years after I had purchased the set, they then came out with the full set on CD. But the catch, just in case people wanted to copy it and sell it or give it away free to their dearest friends, was that you had to also buy this hardware piece of woggle-mucky-mucky-junk whatever, that you plugged into one of your external plugs. Your computer saw that thingie bob, and said "Oh you have a legit copy". So they made sure there was no way to get it free.
That version had popped down to a measly $250. Of course they didn't have to kill any trees or pay guys to lug 100 pounds of books door-to-door to sell it.
After they had put their work up online, they realized that their ad revenue wasn't tip-top and to try to lure bloggers, they started giving away FREE subscriptions to online content creators. The details weren't clear, so I applied, and they gave me one. So I have been able to read the online content for free for a while, their intent being that I should cite, in my writings, to their articles, and thus get more people to click over into their content. Obviously to drive their ad revenue. But does this work?
One of the rather interesting problems with that is, I don't mind citing the EB for main references, but in today's world, we frequently cite many inline citations to incidental things:
"Yesterday in [[Arkansas]], a [[serial killer]] was apprehended declaring that she was driven by insanity and the prevalence of online [[pornography]]."
When citing in-project we can easily use the double-brackets, but when writing off-project, we have to cite to the full URL. So what does Wikipedia allow for this? URLs like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/serial_killer
What does EB use for this? URLs like http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/34888/Arkansas
another dumb move on their part.
I'm not going to *actually look up* the URL for every incidental article citation. Our project makes it easy to create incidental citations, because you don't have to actually *search* out each one.
Will Johnson
Durova wrote:
Bottom line for that organization: they may be cream of the crop as encyclopedias go, but in terms of general reliability hierarchies that's kind of like being the best in cuisine at microwave dinners.
It's probably more like cooking on old wood stoves. :-)
After the *Nature* study it looked very curious that, five months later, * Britannica* management revived interest in dead news by publishing a bitter rebuttal. That was lousy PR. And the head-to-head with Jimbo in the Wall Street Journal shortly afterward made it clear--with minimal reading between the lines--that ol' *B* must have been hurting financially. A venerable institution doesn't act that counterintuitively unless it's hemmorhaging readership and money.
The sentimental in me sees it as sad. Those at its helm should really let Ozymandias die with dignity.
Privately, I've been telling people for years that I doubt their business plan could survive another decade. They may have embraced wiki-ish modifications, but it's too little too late. They should have anticipated the Internet's real potential twelve years ago. Headlines may say 'Watch out Wikipedia', but Alexa says differently.
Their last opportunity was at the time that Encarta first came out. Encarta itself lacked the vitality to survuve, but it could still serve as a warning that the playing field was undergoing radical change. By the time Wikipedia hit the market it was already too late; the narrow window was closed, and Willy Loman had nowhere to go.
We no longer need to be drawn into a competition with EB. They will continue to announce the kind of initiatives like this most recent one, but they are little more than gasps for breath.
Ec
What is surprising is the fact that even though it shows it'd be succesful, given the example of Wikipedia, they refuse to accept edits instantly and they have to pass through a review process. Come on, morons may do vandalism on Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure only -or at least, the big majority- people that know will send edits to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
-- Alvaro
On 30-01-2009, at 0:07, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Being bold here and expounding a little. If any of you have read the history of encyclopedias *Britannica* put out in its "Macropedia" from a few years ago, it's been clear their management has been living in a dream world. They go on at length about quaint little experiments from the 1980s, while neglecting to mention the existence of Wikipedia as it swam into their river and chomped on *Britannica's* market share like a swarm of piranhas. Meanwhile they portrayed themselves as a 'portal to the Internet', reflecting a top-down information management mentality that's obsolete to anyone who's ever heard of Google.
Bottom line for that organization: they may be cream of the crop as encyclopedias go, but in terms of general reliability hierarchies that's kind of like being the best in cuisine at microwave dinners. If the competition is nearly as good and free, why should the public pay to get their service? Their business plan never accounted for that possibility.
After the *Nature* study it looked very curious that, five months later, * Britannica* management revived interest in dead news by publishing a bitter rebuttal. That was lousy PR. And the head-to-head with Jimbo in the Wall Street Journal shortly afterward made it clear--with minimal reading between the lines--that ol' *B* must have been hurting financially. A venerable institution doesn't act that counterintuitively unless it's hemmorhaging readership and money.
Privately, I've been telling people for years that I doubt their business plan could survive another decade. They may have embraced wiki-ish modifications, but it's too little too late. They should have anticipated the Internet's real potential twelve years ago. Headlines may say 'Watch out Wikipedia', but Alexa says differently.
How many of you are shelling out hard cash to read *Britannica* online? Raise your hands. Yeah, just about none.
Sayonara, Durova
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:20 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<-----Original Message----- From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:52 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 saintonge@telus.net writes
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing
direct user edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and
corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how
if they
don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried
by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however.
Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this
way.
Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly
dignified.
If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make
direct
edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Sorry, but I hadn't realised that they had done all this just because of your letter. :-[
Ec>>
Of course! Everything revolves around me and my needs and desires. The rest of creation in fact is just part of a dream I keep having.
W.J. "formerly the Artist"
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- http://durova.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Their main advantage in the current market is that their content is vetted. Question is whether they can afford the staff to keep up with submissions, and whether that value added is worth the price they charge for it. The market seems to be saying no. And if they walk away from that strategy what other working model is there?
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 4:33 AM, Alvaro García alvareo@gmail.com wrote:
What is surprising is the fact that even though it shows it'd be succesful, given the example of Wikipedia, they refuse to accept edits instantly and they have to pass through a review process. Come on, morons may do vandalism on Wikipedia, but I'm pretty sure only -or at least, the big majority- people that know will send edits to the Encyclopædia Britannica.
-- Alvaro
On 30-01-2009, at 0:07, Durova nadezhda.durova@gmail.com wrote:
Being bold here and expounding a little. If any of you have read the history of encyclopedias *Britannica* put out in its "Macropedia" from a few years ago, it's been clear their management has been living in a dream world. They go on at length about quaint little experiments from the 1980s, while neglecting to mention the existence of Wikipedia as it swam into their river and chomped on *Britannica's* market share like a swarm of piranhas. Meanwhile they portrayed themselves as a 'portal to the Internet', reflecting a top-down information management mentality that's obsolete to anyone who's ever heard of Google.
Bottom line for that organization: they may be cream of the crop as encyclopedias go, but in terms of general reliability hierarchies that's kind of like being the best in cuisine at microwave dinners. If the competition is nearly as good and free, why should the public pay to get their service? Their business plan never accounted for that possibility.
After the *Nature* study it looked very curious that, five months later, * Britannica* management revived interest in dead news by publishing a bitter rebuttal. That was lousy PR. And the head-to-head with Jimbo in the Wall Street Journal shortly afterward made it clear--with minimal reading between the lines--that ol' *B* must have been hurting financially. A venerable institution doesn't act that counterintuitively unless it's hemmorhaging readership and money.
Privately, I've been telling people for years that I doubt their business plan could survive another decade. They may have embraced wiki-ish modifications, but it's too little too late. They should have anticipated the Internet's real potential twelve years ago. Headlines may say 'Watch out Wikipedia', but Alexa says differently.
How many of you are shelling out hard cash to read *Britannica* online? Raise your hands. Yeah, just about none.
Sayonara, Durova
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:20 PM, wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<-----Original Message----- From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:52 pm Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Watch out Wikipedia, here comes Britannica 2.0
WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
<<In a message dated 1/29/2009 saintonge@telus.net writes
I had sent him a scathing email denigrating him for not allowing
direct user edits.
For some time, they allowed you to *email* them additions and
corrections,
and I pointed out how ridiculously last decade that was. And how
if they
don't shape up ...like now dude.... they would be history. Buried
by Wikipedia.
I notice they didn't mention my name in that article however.
Shameless!
It's hard to see what will be accomplished by taunting them in this
way.
Rubbing dirt in the faces of the losers is not particularly
dignified.
If we really are the winners we need to be more gracious about it.>>
Then you're not understanding what occurred. What was accomplished is that they *now* allow contributors to make
direct
edits to the articles. They didn't before.
Sorry, but I hadn't realised that they had done all this just because of your letter. :-[
Ec>>
Of course! Everything revolves around me and my needs and desires. The rest of creation in fact is just part of a dream I keep having.
W.J. "formerly the Artist"
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
-- http://durova.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ 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
Durova wrote:
Their main advantage in the current market is that their content is vetted. Question is whether they can afford the staff to keep up with submissions, and whether that value added is worth the price they charge for it. The market seems to be saying no. And if they walk away from that strategy what other working model is there?
Imagine: If each active Wikipedian chose to submit a single perfectly legitimate change to the EB website their system could quickly be overwhelmed.
Ec
Durova wrote:
Their main advantage in the current market is that their content is vetted. Question is whether they can afford the staff to keep up with submissions, and whether that value added is worth the price they charge for it. The market seems to be saying no. And if they walk away from that strategy what other working model is there?
Actually I don't know that the question is rhetorical. There is the hidden assumption: EB is the universal encyclopedia (for English-language readers). There must be ways of running a reference website for money that drop the comprehensiveness and timeliness (WP's major strengths) as the central ambitions.
Charles
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.
Whether consciously or by default, EB has opted for a niche market. Where can they reposition themselves if that niche market proves unprofitable? Their window of opportunity to go head to head on an open edit format probably closed in 2003.
-Lise
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 3:05 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
Durova wrote:
Their main advantage in the current market is that their content is
vetted.
Question is whether they can afford the staff to keep up with
submissions,
and whether that value added is worth the price they charge for it. The market seems to be saying no. And if they walk away from that strategy
what
other working model is there?
Actually I don't know that the question is rhetorical. There is the hidden assumption: EB is the universal encyclopedia (for English-language readers). There must be ways of running a reference website for money that drop the comprehensiveness and timeliness (WP's major strengths) as the central ambitions.
Charles
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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
On Sun, 1 Feb 2009, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen wrote:
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.
If you're not trying to imply anything about Britannica's current accuracy, and you're not even sure it's true, then I don't even get the point of mentioning it.
Charles Matthews wrote:
Durova wrote:
Their main advantage in the current market is that their content is vetted. Question is whether they can afford the staff to keep up with submissions, and whether that value added is worth the price they charge for it. The market seems to be saying no. And if they walk away from that strategy what other working model is there?
Actually I don't know that the question is rhetorical. There is the hidden assumption: EB is the universal encyclopedia (for English-language readers). There must be ways of running a reference website for money that drop the comprehensiveness and timeliness (WP's major strengths) as the central ambitions.
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.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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
With respect intended, it may be simpler than that. When a patient with advanced cancer changes his diet, it's seldom because he recently learned he also has a cholesterol problem.
*Britannica's* business plan for generations could rely on a steady stream of institutional purchases. From schools to public libraries to universities, virtually every organization that attempted to keep a general purpose library would buy a set of encylopedias, and then buy updates and new editions. It was a purchase they made if they possibly could even if the budget was small--especially if the budget was small--because if they couldn't obtain specialty texts in diverse areas the librarians could at least direct patrons to a basic overview of most subjects in the encyclopedia.
A lot of small town libraries and elementary schools probably scrambled for funds in order to get *Britannica*. If a free and reliable substitute existed, they'd have an excuse to deprioritize that purchase. Then *Nature*said, essentially, that *B* is wrong nearly as often as Wikipedia. I'd hate to have been a fly on the wall of their sales office during the months that followed.
That's their bread and butter.
What they've done in response to that loss has not been innovative. They're following trends. What they still have is a brand name and a reputation for respectability. In my country, most native speakers age 25 or older used to open a volume of *Britannica* now and then, or at least thought they ought to. Those people are parents now and grandparents. And one thing Wikipedia does not try to be is a babysitter. When Dad's fixing dinner and Mom's not home from work yet, a lot of parents would prefer to sit their little ones down to something educational without having to worry about what they'll find. And a lot of parents don't know diddly about installing screening software.
This may be blue sky speculation, but it wouldn't be entirely surprising if sometime in the next few years *Britannica* gets purchased by a conglomerate that cuts the price and cross-sells its other products. So in order to provide Junior a *guaranteed vandalism-free* article about a blue whale, the tyke will sit through movie promos and toy commercials.
-Durova
On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Charles Matthews < charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com> wrote:
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
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 Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen cimonavaro@gmail.comwrote:
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.
Was that before or after Veropedia dropped off the face of the planet, the company that runs it was administratively dissolved by the state, and the founder was spotted begging Obama for government handouts?