Examining the Nature Study of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica
George Johnson expounds on the differences between Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia the recent Nature study highlights.
After explaining the complex differences in the number of siblings Dmitri Mendeleyev had, he observes that the number typically isn’t an important detail. For many people, though, one error–no matter how minor–jeopardizes the reliability of the entire source.
One of Wikipedia’s strengths, of course, is that some of its errors will probably be corrected faster than the staff of the Encyclopedia Britannica can correct that work’s errors.
I appreciate the last few lines:
"The idea that perfection can be achieved solely through deliberate effort and centralized control has been given the lie in biology with the success of Darwin and in economics with the failure of Marx.
It seems natural that over time, thousands, then millions of inexpert Wikipedians - even with an occasional saboteur in their midst - can produce a better product than a far smaller number of isolated experts ever could.
Meanwhile the competition has some catching up to do. While Wikipedia includes a good, balanced article on the history of Britannica, Britannica has not a word to say about Wikipedia, as it rapidly becomes one of the most significant phenomena on the Net."
