On Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:41, SJ wrote:
Below is a letter that Britannica sent out today
to some of its
customers, in response to the December Nature article comparing the
accuracy of articles in Wikipedia and Britannica. A more detailed
review of the Nature study, including responses to each alleged error
and omission, is linked from the front page of
www.eb.com.
Interestingly, while I agree the study was very limited, all of the
methodological concerns Encyclopaedia Britannica raises could have also
affected the analysis of Wikipedia. In any case, the import of this
response is it took them more time to send a response to some of their
customers about the study than it took for all of the errors identified to
be corrected in the Wikipedia!
I don't think they have much experience in this kind of hand-to-hand
confrontation. The more they say, the more they dig themselves into a hole.
I took not of their comments regarding Dolly and Wolfram that they do
not consider the Yearbooks as part of their encyclopaedia, and that
those editors have a wider scope in what they do. The Yearbooks have
been sold with the EB as an extension for keeping the set up-to-date, a
perfectly rational solution for a dead wood product. In the public mind
the Yearbooks are seen to be as much a part of the EB as the numberred
volumes. It comes as a shock to now realize that they are less reliable.
Ec