[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia trumps Britannica

[AGK]

> What I discovered was that Wikipedia trumps Britanncia all the time because
> its articles are in more depth and provide better references. And the site
> design means that Wikipedia is easily navigable and focuses on the content,
> whereas Britannica’s site assaults the eyes with distractions.

Not to mention that Wikipedia is fully free.

> And more often than not I was finding original source material via
> Wikipedia. Because Wikipedia has a
> policy<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability> of
> linking to reliable sources it turned out to be a wonderful starting point
> for research.

> After a few weeks I canceled my Britannica subscription and worked solely
> with Wikipedia as a starting point for research. I never relied on Wikipedia
> as the sole source of information, but it was always a marvelous spring
> board to get me started.

Well, that's exactly where Wikipedia today fits into the research
dimension. It's a starting point; a springboard to further research
material.

> So Wikipedia’s supposed ‘unreliability’ actually plays to enhance its
> reliability and usefulness because it’s forced to continuously declare where
> a particular fact was found. At the same time Britannica is a walled garden
> of truth.

That walled garden seems in many cases to actually be less reliable
than Wikipedia. A proper study into the reliability of Britanica
relative to Wikipedia hasn't been done in a while, though:
http://bit.ly/a2WSI2.

Anthony