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From: Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 01:46:25 -0400 To: wikipedia-l@wikimedia.org, English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Cc: Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus
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.
The net result: Wikipedia ran away with the top prize, a comfortable distance ahead of its stately predecessors. "Brockhaus Premium surpassed the competition from Redmond," the review reported, "but must however concede defeat to Wikipedia".
Happily, the full breakdown of the experts' ratings were published along with the article, so that each encyclopedia may benefit from the spot check.
A full translation will be available on meta presently : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia vs Brockhaus and Encarta
Grab a copy of the original at your local international-pubs shop, if you can.
Encyclopedias: Wikipedia vs. Brockhaus and Encarta (pg. 132)