On Sat, 2 Oct 2004 01:46:25 -0400
Sj <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Brockhaus "must concede defeat" to Wikipedia
c't, the popular german magazine for computer engineering, just
released a study they conducted of the three major digital
encyclopedias in germany -- Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently)
Wikipedia. They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and
comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of
multimedia content.
The content test was the most elaborate : first they divided content
in three broad fields, Science, Society, and Culture. They further
subdivided these into 22 total subject areas, and within each subject
selected an easy, a moderate, and a difficult topic. They then
searched for the best matching article (and supplementary content) in
the encyclopedia.
Finally, they brought in experts in each broad field who rated the
articles from 1 to 5, based on technical correctness and completeness
of the texts, and on their comprehensibility. Once this was finished,
the results were totalled at each level of conceptual difficulty,
within each broad field, and across all 66 topics.
I'd be interested to see this list of 66 topics and what scores the three
candidates got. Also - did they use the German or the English Wikipedia?
Andre Engels