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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!)
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The war actually lasted for more than 10 days. Slovenia was recognised as a country the 15th of January 1992. Evropska skupnost je pred božiÄ?em 1991 sklenila, da bo 15. 1. 1992 priznala neodvisni državi Slovenijo in Hrvaško. Sledilo je množiÄ?no priznavanje in aprila 1992 so Slovenijo priznale ZDA, 22. maja 1992 je bila Slovenija skupaj s Hrvaško in Bosno in Hercegovino sprejeta v OZN, maja 1993 pa v Svet Evrope.
Actually about recognition and facts… Vatikan recognised us on 13. January 1992, a few days before EU. EU made a decision to recognise us in December 91 but they acted and officialy recognised us later, in the middle of January, after Vatican… But there was one country that was ahead… Germany did it on 19. December 1991… Not that anything of this today really matters…
The war actually lasted for more than 10 daysAFAIK, the hostilities themselves lasted ten days. Slovenia’s struggle for independence may have been longer, but the war stopped at Brioni, no?
Many years of shame on Brittanica!In 2000, I had a flight to Venice, and went looking to rent a car. I was told by a number of car rental company employees that I couldn’t rent a car and drive into Slovenia, because, well, you know, the war and everything.
Sweet Lord, Patrick. The stories about the neighbors always pain me the most. The fact that Venice is visible from parts of Slovenia makes your story particularly hard to hear.
Michael is right - Germany formally recognised Slovenia on Jan 15 1992, together with the rest of EU. The first countries to recognise Slovenia were Croatia (Jun 25 1991 - couple of hours before Slovenia actually declared independence), and on Jun 27 Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. One might overlook the fact that none of the above countries were recognised by the int’l community at that time
Matty is right about the recognition facts… that means there is another error in the same sentence in britannica
This website, signed by a prominent slovenian historian, states that the official recognition by the EC came on january 15th 1992, while other sources confirm, that Germany and Vatican did the thing a bit ahead of the EC.I am naturally all in favor of the free spirit of wikipedia, eventhough there are some drawbacks to it. In britannica, at least people can’t edit their own bios to make them look better, like some US representatives had done in wikipedia.
This does not surprise me! In my eyes Britannica are useless! It’s a surprise they didn’t confuse Slovenia with Slovakia, which in its self is a true miracle! It’s the same shit here in Australia, the so called reporters always have different views on when the war started in Slovenia, but most of the time they refer it to Slovakia, as the ex Yugoslavian state. Don’t worry; the Aust/Melb Slovenian community are slowly winning the fight on “we are not Slovakian” view.
You are all wrong. The first country to recognise Slovenia was the Republic of Iceland (Islandija).
spot on marbit. aside from the formally unrecognized countries mentioned above, the first “real” country was iceland. the first country that “mattered” was germany (kohl seemd to have a soft spot for us and croatia). some people would have you believe vatican was first, but that’s just clerical propaganda…
Well I am pretty sure that some people were ready to recognise it already when TITO died :-P!
Shame on you, Britannica!
I noticed that the Slovenia article on Student Edition of Britannica is now longer available without a free trial — it was last week. Anyway, if anyone wants to contact Britannica to correct them, this is one place to do it.Patrick: What the reps said was just silly, but back in 2000, many car rental companies would not allow their cars to be driven to post-communist countries, so your experience was not that unusual or even unique to Slovenia. In fact, in 2004, one company in Madrid told me that their cars could not be driven to France — not returned there, mind you (only one company even had THAT as an option), but just DRIVEN across the border — even though there are, of course, no border controls between the two countries. A united Europe indeed!
Whoops… "no longer"!
I believe it was Molvania that first recognized Slovenia. I believe the Molvanian govt was looking for a seaport for its land-locked fleet.
The city of Los Angeles or San Diego recognized it the first i think ;p iirc ofc.
Oh, and I have to clarify one thing: This mistake is only present in the Britannica Student Encyclopedia. The Slovenia article in the standard edition gets it right.Also, the sentence immediately preceding the one quoted was about the civil war in Yugoslavia breaking out after Slovenia’s declaration of independence. It’s possible that the article was originally meant to say that the war elsewhere lasted for a few more years, but that a junior editor misunderstood this. In any case, things like that shouldn’t happen to an institution like Britannica.
I thought it was Sluvenia who first gave it the nod. Oh, wait — they weren’t around yet. I must be thinking instead of Slovevavonika.http://www.carniola.org/theglory/2006/03/the_sloveniacro.htm
There’s a theory being propagated among the smart set in Nove Jarše that the World Trade Center disaster was engineered by the American government in order to distract 20th century historians from the fact that the U.S. was not the first to recognize Slovenia as a separate state. While that might initially seem implausible, just think about it for a moment.
@#*k Britannica and their employment of ‘Slovene’ and placement of Slovenia in the Balkans. (Two things Wikipedia generally avoids.)
Ahhh, |=|=| , my love, you are back.
j**** Encyclopedia Britanica bilo kako, they are totally full of inaccuracies, and the article on Slovenia is only the begining of the g**** pile of inaccurate articles!
recognition of Slovenian independence:
Croatia - first (immediate mutual recognition)
Lithuania - first internationally recognized country
Iceland - first “old” country
Same here in kanada! slovakia wtf? North Americans only care about themselves i am going to mover back to slovenija