On 2/14/08, David Gerard dgerard@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