The gap between the dusty reference book on your desk and the wiki you could pull up on your smart phone is being bridged as Encyclopedia Britannica appears poised to change the game.
I have been tracking wiki development for years, using wikis, and writing about them (here and more recently here), and always wondered why a third player hasn’t emerged. Wikipedia rules the roost, warts and all. It has lodged itself into the lexicon of knowledge. To “Wikipedia” something is to poke around and be somewhat informed. Other encyclopedias have not engaged us as much.
If a third player IS emerging, it’s from within the bowels of Encyclopedia Britannica. Many have been quick to suggest that Britannica is biting the bullet and going all wiki. I think this is too simplistic. Maybe Britannica is responding to pressure and facing up to the reality that on-demand knowledge has to be more collaborative and accessible. But they seem to be moving in new directions, too.
Let’s take Collaboration. Britannica is making a very interesting point of differentiation, because it forces people to look at the back room edit wars that go on in Wikipedia (that Wikipedia calls a ‘breach of wikiquette’) as confrontation, not collaboration. Britannica plans to put contributors in touch with its ‘community of scholars’ and still allow individuals to retain control of their work.
Access. As far as following Wikipedia’s open source model, access isn’t the only value up for grabs–it’s accuracy. Britannica puts it this way:
Encyclopaedia Britannica itself will continue to be edited according to the most rigorous standards and will bear the imprimatur “Britannica Checked” to distinguish it from material on the site for which Britannica editors are not responsible.
Trust. This week I interviewed Tom Panelas, Encyclopedia Britannica’s director of corporate communications for an upcoming article, and he stresses the value of “editorial stewardship.” While reaching out to a wider audience it will not compromise on trust.
The battle over knowledge platforms has always been bitter and not so easy to predict. Think of how Google dethroned Yahoo, and Intranets are being made obsolete by internal blogs. How we access these knowledge repositories could determine how much we value accuracy and trust. Done right and delivered right Britannica could quickly reposition Wikipedia.
It is notorious for the giant arrow pointing to the dealership. Sort of an old world billboard made with its logo to cut through the forest of signs in a busy part of Phoenix.
“It sounded like a Vegas slot machine. My computer was just going ding ding ding.”
We have broached this topic here before, talking of grammar and accuracy. In the world of journalism this comes up a lot, and the deputy manager of New York Times’ digital journalism addresses this well.
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