as with most other things named 'britannica', the encyclopaedia is also taking a beating. from 'good morning silicon valley':
At Britannica, something wiki this way comes: Lord, how it must gall the folks at Encyclopedia Britannica — spend a couple of centuries building one of the most authoritative brands in reference, only to be left behind online, overshadowed by that ... that ... Wikipedia thing, written and revised by just anybody. "It's very uneven, the facts are not always correct, the model contains a lot of pitfalls," sniffed Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, in an interview. "What is really unfortunate is that when it comes to knowledge — which is really what makes humans evolve or not evolve into the future — we tend to be non-discriminating. And that's really the troublesome thing." And all that Google page-rank juice that pushes Wikipedia entries up near the top of so many search results — it's just shameful. "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," Cauz said. "Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [displeased] algorithm can do?"
Well, Britannica is not just going to sit back in its leather wing-back chair and let this happen without a fight. No, it's not doing anything as radical as dropping the paid-subscription barrier to its online offerings, but if those subscribers think they have something to contribute, they will now be given a chance. Cauz said new features enabling user-generated content are being rolled out today. "What we are trying to do is shifting ... to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and — importantly — by maybe creating his own content or her own content," he said. The "maybe" is built into the process — any changes or additions offered by the masses must be submitted with the author's real name and address and will be vetted by one of the company's staff or freelance editors before seeing the light of day — a review that shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes, by Cauz's optimist estimate.
As long as Wikipedia stands as a reasonably reliable, if not definitive, reference starting point, free to browse and free to cite, such courtesy nods to interactivity are not likely to move the needle for Britannica. But Nick Carr, a member of Britannica's board of editorial advisers, thinks the encyclopedia may have a point when it complains about Google page rank. "What we seem to have here is evidence of a fundamental failure of the Web as an information-delivery service," he writes. "Three things have happened, in a blink of history's eye: (1) a single medium, the Web, has come to dominate the storage and supply of information; (2) a single search engine, Google, has come to dominate the navigation of that medium; and (3) a single information source, Wikipedia, has come to dominate the results served up by that search engine. Even if you adore the Web, Google, and Wikipedia — and I admit there's much to adore — you have to wonder if the transformation of the Net from a radically heterogeneous information source to a radically homogeneous one is a good thing. Is culture best served by an information triumvirate?"
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