[Foundation-l] Free edition of Norways national encyklopedia Store Norske Leksikon

[Andre Engels]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 8:17 AM, John at Darkstar <vacuum at jeb.no> wrote:
> The release has been given a lot of press coverage, and some comparisons
> between the encyclopedias has been done. Two of them, in Dagbladet[1]
> and Dagsavisen[2], has concluded that Wikipedia is best. According to
> Aftenposten the new edition will cost Kunskapsforlaget and their owners
> Aschehoug og Gyldendal NOK 25 mill over the next 3 years, approx USD 3.6
> mill.[3]

The first comparison I find not so good; the points he mentions are
indeed points where Wikipedia is better, they are not the main points
I would judge an encyclopedia by. The second one looks much better,
giving good points of comparison, and stating where one or the other
is better. The points that are mentioned are (using a machine
translation to read the articles):

Wikipedia better:
* easier to use
* better usage of the possibilities of HTML: tables, images
* more interlinking
* SNL uses two different sources by just putting them on the same
page, which means things are told double
* more up-to-date
* better on popular culture subjects and current events
* more open to (quick) improvements

SNL better:
* more academic emphasis
* authors are identified
* Wikipedia articles are more uneven in both language and content


In general a nice list, but I do also want to point at our minus point
number two - I really think it is worthwhile to see what can be done
about it. Of course the same holds for the other two, but those are
much harder to improve in a general manner (but we should all look at
improving them at the page level).

-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com