No more EB

[Sil_liS]

Wikipedia gives a good summary and sources for the information. Maybe the teachers can explain how to use if rather than dismiss it.

[QuantumIguana]

The Wikipedia article on Boron has 122 references. The article on fish has 71 references. The article on the potato has 122 references. While it shouldn't be treated as gospel, it can point you to reliable sources.

[kacir]

The greatest virtue of Wikipedia is its up-to-dateness.
When I look up some person or place, because I have just heard about it in the news, there usually already is reference to that piece of news.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

The Wikipedia article on Boron has 122 references. The article on fish has 71 references. The article on the potato has 122 references. While it shouldn't be treated as gospel, it can point you to reliable sources.

The Wikipedia article on Wikipedia has 259 references; while the article on Encyclopedia Britannica only has 122 references.

Wikipedia wins again

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by kacir

The greatest virtue of Wikipedia is its up-to-dateness.
When I look up some person or place, because I have just heard about it in the news, there usually already is reference to that piece of news.

People die quicker in Wikipedia than they do in Encyclopedia Britannica.

[howyoudoin]

To be fair to Encyclopaedia Britannica, they don't have this staring at you on every page:

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Is MobileRead worth what you pay for it?

Varies between bargain and vastly overpriced q.v. Giggleton

[tubemonkey]

[pidgeon92]

Interesting. I bought my set in 2006, and just got the Book of the Year for 2011 a week or so ago. I wonder if they are going to discontinue those as well.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by howyoudoin

To be fair to Encyclopaedia Britannica, they don't have this staring at you on every page:

or this

Spoiler:

[ProfCrash]

Number of references means little if the references are to pages that I would not consider reputable.

[mrscoach]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

or this

Spoiler:

I am so glad I wasn't taking a drink at that particular time, because I would be cleaning my screen off. I'm also glad I was home alone. That picture, with that particular subject under it, and the 'please help' button?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

But if the information they are offering is now available for free, any time on any computer, how would the above have helped keep them from going out of business?

eP

Over the past 20 years Britannica went from a respected publishing company to slowly bleeding to death; laying off the editors and content producers instead of expanding it.

If they had actually taken advantage of the cdrom publishing era to move to digital and diversified their portfolio they could've raked in all the money (Billions) that MS made off encarta. Properly invested, they could have grown their business and now they wouldn't be an afterthought.
The problem is that they paid to heed to digital until the mid-90's and by then Encarta was entrenched and like old doddering generals have been fighting the last war. By the time they got into CDs, CD encyclopedias were a commodity; by the time they got online Wikipedia was already in place.

The problem, as pointed out in the NYT piece, is that Britannica online is much smaller than it needs to be a proper competitor to Wikipedia. Their scope is too narrow and they are getting squeezed out by Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, and even Google.

Wikipedia is popular and useful but it is hardly the ultimate information service.
There is still room for alternatives and the Britannica brand would be very valuable in that arena but their management still doesn't get the digital realms.

[Penforhire]

Wikipedia is pretty darn reliable when the topic is something other than politics and personalities. It is my go-to encyclopedia. Crowd sourcing works more than it doesn't.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

For starters they could've allowed Microsoft to license their name and information, which may have prevented Encarta from springing up. Then, come the advent of the internet, they could've beaten Wikipedia to the punch by offering up their own encyclopedia online, free of use and supported by advertising.

Exactly.
And in fact, they were *told* to do so.
Circa 1990, Bill Gates tried to get a non-exclusive limited license to the Britannica texts to do a cdrom encyclopedia to promote Windows 3.x multimedia. He offered to do all the work and give Britannica practically all the revenue; he just wanted the bragging rights for Windows over OS/2 and MacOS.
Britannica said no. They didn't want to alienate the door-to-door salesmen who were their *key* competitive advantage. Anybody could sell encyclopedias to libraries and universities, but only *their* salesforce could guilt middle class families into buying encyclopedias and the endless bounty of the yearbooks!
Which isn't to say Britannica was uniquely stupid.
World Book also turned Gates down.
So did every single encyclopedia vendor not named Funk & Wagnall.
At that point Gates simply bought a data dump, went and hired a recently retired Britannica Editor and proceeded to build his own in-house staff to compie and mantain a new encyclopedia: Encarta.
It took a couple years to get it going, but then in 94 Egghead ran a sale on Encarta and sold out all the quarter's production in a week. At which point MS realized just how much money there was in *cheap* CDROM encyclopedias. Two years later, Britannica was peddling a pale imitation of Encarta that never caught on.

At its peak, Encarta netted hundreds of millions in profits and over its entire life a couple billion.
A lot of that could have gone to Britannnica and helped grease a smooth transition from dead tree pulp to online information service.
It may still end up that way; after somebody else buys the brand and resurrects it.
Which might be Google or Amazon or Facebook.