Wikipedia has more coverage, is generally fairly high quality re information accuracy, and it’s free. With this in mind what’s Enciclopedia Britannica’s value proposition to make people pay for access to it?
Generally fairly… yeah.
There is a bias against Wikipedia cites - even on this board. I’d say Britannica still has more clout. If I were a student turning in a paper, I’d know which I’d prefer to have on my bibliography.
For many, it’s a question of trust. Your wiki cite could be gone tomorrow. Just who wrote that wiki cite anyway?
I think Britannica’s value is based on inertia. People who grew up with Britannica feel it’s more reputable than Wikipedia. Objective studies have shown this isn’t really true. As the people who are growing up with Wikipedia move into positions of academic influence, Wikipedia will become an acceptable reference source. Of course by then there’ll probably be some new encyclopedia that the Wikipedians can distrust because it wasn’t around during their formative years.
There’s glaring errors in Wikipedia pages, even the most popular ones. Recently, I found a rather substantial error on a popular page that was credible enough to remain unchallenged for ages.
But as Little Nemo pointed out ojective studies show just as many errors in other encyclopedias and those in print versions are there for ever. I am sure that many of *Wiki’*s popular pages aren’t covered by other sources.
Sure, Nature compared 42 science related articles, and found Wikipedia had an average of four errors an article, versus EB’s 3. Is this really convincing, though? What counts as an error? If EB misspells a word, and Wikipedia claims faster than light travel is possible, are they both counted as errors?
Very many Wikipedia articles are shockingly badly written, or would benefit from severe editing. It’s a case of too many cooks. Often people seem to chip in their own little contribution without checking if it’s already in the article. I think this kind of chaos is inevitable if there’s no authoritative editor.
Exactly, there’s more to comparing encyclopedias than simple statistical tests comparing factual (in)accuracies.
Actually, reading more about Nature’s comparison between the two encyclopedias, it seems the comparison was fatally flawed.
Do you have any evidence that this type of thing happened? Unless I know otherwise, I’ll presume that Nature counted the same types of errors in both sources.
There are areas in which Wikipedia has an indisputable lead: it has a substantially larger number of articles and it is kept much more current. If I want to find information on my current Congressional representative, which source should I check? I know Wikipedia has an article on him. Britannica probably doesn’t have articles on every Congressman. And if they did, they’d probably have one on the one who was voted out of office in 2006.
There are undeniably factual errors in Wikipedia (as there are in Britannica). But the errors in Wikipedia get fixed much quicker than the ones in Britannica. You’ll be much more likely to find a three year old error in Britannica than in Wikipedia.
No you are quite right, the Nature article classified all the errors by type and severity.
Apart from many of the errors Nature identified in EB don’t seem to be errors, but matters of style, and in many cases, Nature’s referees are simply wrong. For example, the “error” Nature identified in EB’s article on Acheulean Industry criticizes EB for use of the term “early Homo Sapiens”. However, EB contends that this is a valid alternative:
Nature didn’t require its referees to divulge sources for their own criticisms, as it would “simply be too time consuming” (cite). When you have two opposing groups of experts disagreeing over the content of a work, this isn’t really acceptable.
It’s not simply a matter of factual accuracy. Equally important is readability and comprehensibility.
The vast majority of Wiki articles that I’ve read on technical subjects go so far to be thought of as scientifically accurate that they are comprehensible only to those who are already experts in the subjects.
But the point of an encyclopedia is to give a good introduction to the subject to people who are not already experts on that subject. Wiki fails miserably on that basic requirement time after time.
Wiki’s only strength, ISTM, is that is does provide easy access to a great many facts on a great many current subjects. This is a true strength. Wiki is indispensable in this regard.
But Wiki is terrible as an encyclopedia because it can’t compel its many hands to cohere into a narrative on a subject that makes the subject understandable to one approaching it for the first time.
Wiki is actually lucky that it has been able to sidetrack the discussion to quibbles about accuracy. That plays up its strength while ignoring the real issue.
I’ve written several pieces for Wikipedia, mostly on theater and music. I’ve sometimes gone back to an article I wrote, and found that it’s been hacked to pieces and re-written by someone for whom English must have been a 3rd or 4th language.
It’s a valuable tool, and SOMETIMES offers much better writeups than comparable listings in more reputable encylopedias. But sometimes, they give us semi-accurate, awkwardly written, horribly organized crap.
I don’t automatically discount what I read in Wikipedia. But if Britannica says one thing and Wikipedia says another, I’m going to believe Britannica.
But you can get valuable primary sources from articles that are properly cited. I wouldn’t quote an uncited source in a paper, but that goes for any source, not just Wikipedia.
This. Not to mention links that are hacked and end up going to a very different topic (personal experience, and good thing I wasn’t in a work computer).
Have you tried using the “random article” thing? It amazes me how many of the articles I get are poorly written (and I’m by no means an expert editor, but yikes!).
To give a concrete example of the kind of chaotic writing that crops up all over Wikipedia, here is a paragraph I happened to notice just now while looking up eBay for another thread:
“In some countries, eBay requires sellers to use their Paypal service to facilitate payment, which has led to consumer backlash[sup]50[/sup] with the view that Paypal is the only choice that makes sense and so should be the only choice available.”
Clearly, what has happened here is that somebody has inserted the “which has led to consumer backlash[sup]50[/sup]” part. Never mind that the modified paragraph now makes no sense.
That kind of thing is so Wikipedia.
EB doesn’t have sentences in it that say “citation needed” in the middle.
Speaking as a professional biologist, really, there is no comparison. Brittanica wins hands down. If I am seeking real, reliable, professionally vetted information on something, I am far more likely to find it on Brittanica.
The real problem with Wikipedia is that it is wildly erratic. There is no consistency of treatment or style. As Exapno mentions, many articles are excessively technical; others, however, may be much too simplistic. While it is true that a few articles are relatively professional in treatment, the vast majority are not. There are often large gaps in the discussion, and the articles are very often poorly written and organized.
The supposed benefit of Wikipedia that “errors can be corrected rapidly” strikes me as naive. Whether articles get corrected or not is again entirely hit or miss; and new errors can be introduced just as easily by almost anyone.
Wiki does have a lot of value as a “quick and dirty” intro to information. And some articles are quite good. However, the overall lack of serious quality control is a severe problem with its usefulness.
Part of it is wiki has a definate slant toward their articles. The key thing is there are tons of “Wiki-Nazis” who you cannot make changes to their articles. Even if you source it, it reverts quickly so you’re stuck trying to make your revision stick or giving up.
I’m sure the info is generally accurate, but there is so much missing.
Also I found a lot of the sources on wiki aren’t accurate. They either lead to pages you have to pay for to get in, (not register but pay to be a member) or they are sourced by blogs.
Having a pages sourced to a blog is not correct, and if the people checking accuracy look at that they will say “Wiki is accurate.” Well sure it is but the source is poor or not even real.