Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:41, SJ wrote:
Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today to some of its customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica. A more detailed review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error and omission, is linked from the front page of www.eb.com.
Interestingly, while I agree the study was very limited, all of the methodological concerns Encyclopaedia Britannica raises could have also affected the analysis of Wikipedia. In any case, the import of this response is it took them more time to send a response to some of their customers about the study than it took for all of the errors identified to be corrected in the Wikipedia!
I don't think they have much experience in this kind of hand-to-hand confrontation. The more they say, the more they dig themselves into a hole.
I took not of their comments regarding Dolly and Wolfram that they do not consider the Yearbooks as part of their encyclopaedia, and that those editors have a wider scope in what they do. The Yearbooks have been sold with the EB as an extension for keeping the set up-to-date, a perfectly rational solution for a dead wood product. In the public mind the Yearbooks are seen to be as much a part of the EB as the numberred volumes. It comes as a shock to now realize that they are less reliable. Ec