[WikiEN-l] Germany's Brockhaus Encyclopedia goes online

[Steve Bennett]

On 2/14/08, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Britannica may be theoretically higher quality, but is not right there
> on everyone's desktop - it fails on practical availability. Most of
> Wikipedia's readers - the people who make it #8 or #9 site in the
> world - wouldn't have opened a paper encyclopedia since high school.

Lately I've been buying a couple of oldish specialist encyclopaedias
from op shops, thinking I could add the information to Wikipedia.
Instead, it seems like often Wikipedia, the ultimate generalist
encyclopaedia, has greater depth than even the specialist
encyclopaedias...

> I think it'd be a bad thing for Britannica and Brockhaus to go bust.
> I'm not sure how to save their business though.

Release all the content under CC-SA. Merge with Wikipedia. Reinvent as
a publisher of existing encyclopaedic content, not a content provider.
Publish beautiful leather bound "Britannica Wikipedias".

Steve