Encyclopaedia Britannica is now in direct competition with Wikipedia. Although they will be keeping editorial approval for changes, they are inviting community submissions.
Even more interestingly they are allowing users to upload articles, essays, and multimedia presentations on their chosen subjects. This material will be accredited to the author and remain under their copyright. Will that be enough to make core Wikipedians desert?
7 Comments
Even more interestingly they are allowing users to upload articles, essays, and multimedia presentations on their chosen subjects. This material will be accredited to the author and remain under their copyright. Will that be enough to make core Wikipedians desert?
7 Comments
Comments
My only concerns about this is the scalability, if all changes still have to go through Britannica moderators. Also, does this make it more reliable as a source? I guess you would have less interested parties in control of key pages. The ability to upload contributing documents and essays looks interesting though. I’m guessing these are not under constent revision by users so again would spark interest in acedemics and less commited users. At the moment there is very little point editing Wikipedia unless you are prepared to defend your work indefinitely. The people who doggardly push their agenda seem to always come out on top when you commit to the wisdom of the crowds.
It is interesting that Encyclopaedia Britannica has decided to follow in Wikipedia’s footsteps. Britannica never thought that an open source product like Wikipedia would seriously challenge the credibility of its brand. They were wrong and Encyclopaedia Britannica’s staff seriously misread the global market. They are now very concerned about the widespread use of a free Wikipedia vs their paid subscription model From a corporate perspective, Encyclopaedia Britannica is in serious trouble. It will be interesting to see if Encyclopaedia Britannica survives.It is the combination of a) the success of Wikipedia and b) improved search engines that has put financial pressure on Encyclopedia Britannica over recent years. Many libraries, schools & individuals are questioning the need to pay to subscribe to Encyclopaedia Britannica when the content is free on the internet, and often much more comprehensive.
Bottom line, Encyclopaedia Britannica has more credibility with academic institutions as they maintain a paid team to fact-check material. Lots of content is free on the internet but schools worry about the credibility of the sources. Famous Wikipedia scandals don’t help, such as that of Ryan Jordan who was posing as a professor and held a senior Wiki position but in fact was a 24 yr old student relying on "Catholicism for Dummies". http://tinyurl.com/59n6loAlthough bias can still occur, it seems less likely if the editors are not maintaining pages they have a personal interest in and they are hired/veted by a company. It also stops people injecting their own agenda into the work. Too often on Wikipedia points are won by the person who fights the longest or puts in the most time to push their points. Similar to politics. Unfortunately the person who should have won gets worn down and apathetic or has responsibilities in the real world that take over.The way Google looks at authority sites, Encyclopaedia Britannica is onto a winner. They just need to find a way to scale with user input without loosing that credibility in their material. What’s interesting here is that the UGC that can be added next to the encyclopedia material will be under the control of the contributing editor, suggesting that opposing editors can not delete this. That’s going to be a hard one to balance.
So, in other words, Britannica is copying Citizendium. I’m not putting my money on Britannica if they wanna fight Wikipedia by merely copying Citizendium. Why did take Britannica this long to wake up anyway?
@Jeeb90True, they are becoming more of a web publisher now than a subscription service but there are some key differences between Britannica and Wikipedia/Citizendium. First they have a strong brand name that is recognised in educational circles. If they get the green light from schools/colleges then that may give them an edge over Wikipedia.The key difference though is their paid editors. Even though people are now being invited to suggest changes, these will be fact-checked by Briannica staff before being added to the encyclopedia. Controlling editors wouldn’t necessarily have an agenda for the pages they edit (they are simply getting paid). This is their USP at the moment and the reason they are trusted by the educational establishments that subscribe to their service. There are issues with scaling though if they want to take on the other players. Can they grow and still retain that quality control? It seems to me that they are directing this new public input into the additional content they will host rather than into editing the main encyclopedia. People can upload papers, essays, articles and multimedia presentations which will be listed alongside the encyclopedic content (and labeled as "less reliable" material)I’m also assuming they have some advertising model planned to increase revenue for this growth. They talk about greatly expanding the amount of material they have on the web. I wonder if Google will get in on the action here?
The only difference I see between Britannica and Citizendium is that Britannica has more name recognition. Giving the general populous the abilty to change/create articles as long as they pass the review of real experts (ie. not self-appointed experts like the editors at Wikipedia) was a concept that Citizendium seemed to start before anyone.
@Jeeb90I’m not completely familiar with Citizendium, but AFAIK there were no paid editors in their model? They were differentiating themselves from Wikipedia by demanding all contributors were publicly open about their identity? As you suggest, that was an attempt to stop "self-appointed experts" or the kind of situation Wikipedia found itself in with Ryan Jordan. Britannica is different from either of these two models by having paid staff research and edit the material, even when it is submitted by the public. That should reduce bias but not sure if it scales.