Archives for April 4th, 2006

Wikipedia easily wins a Googlefight against rival Britannica.

The magazine Nature recently caused a brouhaha by publishing a study that compared the accuracy of the free, volunteer-written encyclopedia Wikipedia with the professional, centuries-old Britannica. In comparing a series of science entries, they found four "serious" errors in both encyclopedias, and 162 smaller ones in Wikipedia vs. 123 in Britannica.

It was a considerable slap in the face for Britannica, since accuracy is (or was) its greatest competitive advantage. Otherwise, it has ten times less articles than Wikipedia, is not updated quickly, and you have to pay for it. As one might expect, Britannica hit back [pdf] saying that the study was flawed and that the article should be retracted. Nature responded, [pdf] saying it was not, and would not.

At roughly the same time, esteemed reader AZ2SI sent me a link to this Britannica article about Slovenia, which contains the following glaring error:

"The European Community recognized Slovenian independence in December 1991, although the war continued for several more years."

Of course, the war only lasted 10 days, not "several years." It’s a basic fact that Wikipedia manages to get right. Let’s wait and see how long it takes Britannica to fix it.

(Thanks AZ2SI!)