
Here comes Britannica 2.0 - nreece
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/here-comes-britannica-20/2009/01/22/1232471469973.html
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greyman
>>> "If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be
very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to
provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is
this the best that [their] algorithm can do?" <<<

This remark convinces me that they still do not get it...

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thwarted
One of the few ways Britannica could make themselves at all relevant in the
online world today would be to take the contents of Wikipedia and verify it
using whatever method they use to verify and vet their own content.
"Wikipedia, verified by Britannica" _could_ be very powerful branding (but it
might be too late for that also).

Consider the Britannica website and the Wikipedia website. The Wikipedia
website is designed for mass consumption of content. The Main_Page has
interesting, topical and relevant links and blurbs on it that _encourage_ you
to click and go deeper -- true browsing. When you click on "browse" in the
upper right on the britannica.com home page, you are presented with a popup
listing the alphabet. This isn't browsing. Britannica's navigation down the
right side, with the sliding tabs, is relatively bare in the content topic
headings: there are only four or five entries under each one. Compared to
Wikipedia, just the "Did you know..." box (one of seven major content
divisions on Main_Page) has (as I write this) _23_links_ plus a "nominate an
article" link, further encouraging interaction, and deep exploration. And
these get updated (most likely automatically) every day. Britannica's
interface doesn't seem to encourage exploration. The experience appears to be
a direct translation of using a hard-copy of a reference work. Britannica.com
is really becoming a poster boy for the complete irrelevance of the ivory
tower model of information dissemination (if they aren't already).

Guh, this is embarrassing. Maybe you get more if you pay for a subscription
(in which case Wikipedia already has a significant lead), but these two pages:

    
    
       http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1494445/Challenger-disaster
       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_disaster
    

are incomparable. Ignoring the content for a moment, wikipedia has a
references list, external links, related wikipedia links, and the edit
history. If you don't believe that Wikipedia is accurate, you are well on your
way to verifying the content yourself. Britannica's entry contains none of
that.

Britannica.com, the company and the website, seems to have barely changed in
the nine years since I worked there.

~~~
greyman
This could be done, but only on some subset of wikipedia articles. One of the
strong points of W is that it reacts to new events very quickly...for example,
look at how detailed is the page for Obama inauguration
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_2009_presidential_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_2009_presidential_inauguration)).
And, there are many more current events happening which are continuously
updated on W...how could Britannica staff verify it in a timely manner? They
will still be behind...

My feelings is, that the Britannica approach, taking the explosion of
information and speed everything changes, just can't catch up anymore. They
need to reinvent themselves in some more radical way to survive.

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manny
"Would-be editors on the Britannica site will have to register using their
real names and addresses before they are allowed to modify or write their own
articles."

And thats why its going to fail.

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pclark
too little, too late.

Britannica should have partnered with Wikipedia, rather than attack them:

Mr Cauz characterised Wikipedia as containing "plenty of cracks on it in terms
of the quality".

"It's very uneven, the facts are not always correct, the model contains a lot
of pitfalls."

