geni wrote:
On 3/27/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
G'day David,
Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000 articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor) has over a million?
Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor? Where does that leave /World Book/ and /Encarta/? And why can't I think of more than four encyclopaedias at the moment? Gah.
Because Encarta drove most of the others into bancrupcy?
While I can't be sure that Encarta was specifically responsible for this, in principal that's what happened. For Britannica, Encarta was the first shoe to drop, and Wikipedia was the second. Among other general encyclopedias there were Collier's, Funk and Wagnalls, Encylopedia Americana and I could find many others if I chose to research it. We are now at the point where we treat subjects in such depth that even the topically specialized encyclopedias can feel threatened.
Ec