Lawrence Nyveen wrote:
Near the beginning, the article says:
Its success has attracted harsh criticism from predictable quarters. In an article published recently on TechCentralStation.com, Robert McHenry, former Editor-in-Chief of Encyclopedia Britannica disdainfully said that using Wikipedia was like visiting a public restroom.
Yes, McHenry did write this. No, it did not come from "predictable quarters". What this article's author (and most people) seem to miss is that McHenry is a *former* Britannica editor-in-chief, who is *no longer* speaking for the old encyclopedias. Born in 1945, [[Robert McHenry]] left Britannica in 1997 at age 52, hardly an old age retiree. He has left that building, for whatever reason, and is not likely to return. He is now "out in the cold", free to write whatever he thinks.
The people currently working for established encyclopedias should probably feel a threat from Wikipedia, but they are the least likely to comment on its existence. If you have an enemy, you fight him, you don't smalltalk. But I think McHenry's article was an attempt to smalltalk the Wikipedia community. His critique of the [[Alexander Hamilton]] article was an all too obvious give-away that only proved Wikipedia's willingness to improve. Current Britannica employees would not help Wikipedia like that.
Larry Sanger is a similar but opposite out-in-the-cold case. If Sanger wrote a critique of paper encyclopedias, would you quote him as someone representing Wikipedia? Of course not.