On 7/19/06, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
I was making the assumption (an assumption which I maintain isn't invalid) that having put the Wiki infrastructure in place, and having done a little advertising, the project would have been successful. I don't think Wikipedia was successful because it grew from the FLOSS community. It was successful because anyone could edit it (you could argue that this was entirely because Wikipeida grew out of the FLOSS community). Britannica could have been just as successful if they had allowed anyone to edit.
....
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
Is this so certain, though? It seems fairly clear that Britannica wouldn't be using copyleft licensing, but proprietary licensing of some sort. Speaking for myself, I know I would not be contributing to a proprietary EB wiki. A lot of the initial seed for Wikipedia (for starting the virtuous cycle/exponential growth) seems to have been essentially ideologically motivated, and I do not think any significant segments of technically literate, motivated, educated and willing-to-donate-their-time people would have tossed their lot in with an EB wiki, except perhaps some academics.
~maru