[LINK] access to Britannica full articles

[Craig Sanders]

On Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 12:24:19AM +1000, Stephen Loosley wrote:
> >> from: http://web-owls.com/
> >> 
> >> Encyclopedia Britannica has put much of their content onto the web
> >> but usually only the first hundred or so words ... When the URL of the
> >> article has been clicked from a link on a page, the full text is displayed.
> [...]
> Copy and paste this code into your page :     <a href="http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9404276/wiki"> wiki</a> 

smells of desperation(*), and too little too late at that. compare, for
example, the above EB article with the following wikipedia article:

<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki"> wiki </A>

the wikipedia article has links to translations/versions in several
other languages, numerous links to both other related wikipedia pages
and external references, and the ability to browse the remainder of the
wikipedia site (either via the links or via search).

the EB article seems to be only in English, has no links to external
references, and the full text of linked EB articles can only be viewed
by subscribers.

the wikipedia article also has significantly more detail about wikis
than the EB article....and while that's only a sample of one, it's not
surprising. the output of one paid author cannot compete with the output
of dozens of unpaid volunteers.

one might argue that that's to be expected in a general article, but
that more specialised articles in EB (e.g. on a particular scientific
discipline) would be written by a paid expert in the field. however,
wikipedia also attracts several (unpaid volunteer) experts in the field
to write and edit articles about their discipline.

and that accords with my experience of wikipedia - the more
fact-based/objective an article's topic is, the higher the quality
of the article, the greater the convergence to current scientific
consensus, and the less prone it is to vandalism and subversion.



IMO, wikipedia is far from perfect but it is far better than closed
encyclopedia like EB. bias, vandalism, and subversion in wikipedia
articles is obvious, AND the reader can easily see both a history of
changes to the article and any previous version of an article. in EB,
the bias of the author is hidden behind the mantle of authority, and
there is no access to either the revision history or previous versions
of an article.




(*) desperate and on the horns of a dilemman. if they're not open
access, then they're utterly irrelevant on the web, but they're for
profit and need paying subscribers: if they're too open then their
business model fails.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>