Thoughts

[The Beatles]

I was reading up today on Britannica's response to the Nature study:
http://corporate.britannica.com/britann ... sponse.pdf
and Nature's response to that:
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Br ... sponse.pdf

It would be a pity, it seems to me, if Wikipedia ever pushed the EB out of business. Because the two represent quite different niches, and Wikipedia's major advantages over the EB are:
1. It's free (gratis).
2. It has broader non-encyclopaedic coverage (when Ruddertail mentioned this weird character from Star Wars, Thrash I think, I looked it up on WP).
3. It has up-to-the-minute coverage.

By the way about Britannica's response, it does seem to bring up quite valid objections, which are then unaddressed by Nature's response. (Misrepresentation of the goal of the study -- "it's the websites" -- and the numbers -- "we say it's close" -- and the stringing together bits of articles...) But in any case, I don't think there's any point in comparing Wikipedia and the EB (partly because a bunch of WP articles come from the public-domain 1911 EB...) because after all, they cater to different audiences.

So in conclusion I don't think the EB is going out of business soon -- most schools and universities will buy copies -- but it is going to lose a lot of marketshare to Wikipedia. And that might even impact its quality.

(Disclaimer: I'm a Wikipedia user.)

[Ruddertail]

Just a note: It was Grand Admiral Thrawn I mentioned. He has a brother named Thrass.

There may be a Star Wars character named Thrash, but I've never heard of him...