World History
Here is a notice from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Long a standard reference source for scholarship, largely because of its tightly controlled editing, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced this week it was throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the ?user community? (in the words of the encyclopedia?s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces.
This seems to be a response to the runaway success of the user-edited online reference tool Wikipedia. (See for yourself. Do a Web search on a topic and note whether Wikipedia or Britannica shows up first.) Scholars have been adamantly opposed to Wikipedia citations in academic papers because the authors and sources are always changing. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia?s co-founder, agrees with this, but in next week?s issue of The Chronicle (click back to our home page on Monday for more) he also points to some changes in the reference tool that may make it more palatable to scholars.
I am very interested to see how the new EB works. I can only imagine (assuming tight editorial control) that the wiki approach will work for the EB. You do not need to pay people to write an encyclopedia. People do it for free in mass everyday and generally do a good job.
This model for EB will not work though unless they open the content up for free. Wikipedia wins because it is open license and that there is no cost to read articles. Hence, it generates more links and does better in Google. Most users of Wikipedia do not edit it. Opening up the content for surfers to read freely would do them better than opening articles for editing. If EB had opened up articles years ago for people to read for free, I bet they would be doing much better in the Google rankings right now.
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Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. This article is from the Journal of American History, Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46. It was written by Roy Rosenzweig. Obviously, this article deals with the coverage of history...
- Encyclopaedia Britannica's Guide To Normandy 1944
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- Cunnan
Cunnan This is a user edited encyclopedia of the middle ages operated by the Society for Creative Anachronism. It is very well done. From the site: Welcome to Cunnan, a Wiki collecting information for re-enactors of the Middle Ages and Renaissance...
World History
Encyclopaedia Britannica Goes -- Gasp! -- Wiki
Here is a notice from the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Long a standard reference source for scholarship, largely because of its tightly controlled editing, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced this week it was throwing open its elegantly-bound covers to the masses. It will allow the ?user community? (in the words of the encyclopedia?s blog) to contribute their own articles, which will be clearly marked and run alongside the edited reference pieces.
This seems to be a response to the runaway success of the user-edited online reference tool Wikipedia. (See for yourself. Do a Web search on a topic and note whether Wikipedia or Britannica shows up first.) Scholars have been adamantly opposed to Wikipedia citations in academic papers because the authors and sources are always changing. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia?s co-founder, agrees with this, but in next week?s issue of The Chronicle (click back to our home page on Monday for more) he also points to some changes in the reference tool that may make it more palatable to scholars.
I am very interested to see how the new EB works. I can only imagine (assuming tight editorial control) that the wiki approach will work for the EB. You do not need to pay people to write an encyclopedia. People do it for free in mass everyday and generally do a good job.
This model for EB will not work though unless they open the content up for free. Wikipedia wins because it is open license and that there is no cost to read articles. Hence, it generates more links and does better in Google. Most users of Wikipedia do not edit it. Opening up the content for surfers to read freely would do them better than opening articles for editing. If EB had opened up articles years ago for people to read for free, I bet they would be doing much better in the Google rankings right now.
- See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, The Cia, A Campaign
The CIA edits at Wikipedia. So do Congressional staffers and people working for companies trying to better the article about their employer or make a competitor's article worse. All of this has been suspected for years but now there is proof. John...
- Citizendium - An Alternative To Wikipedia?
I read in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education that there is a move being made to create an alternative to Wikipedia. It is called Citizendium. Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, is attempting to create an academic version...
- Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia And The Future Of The Past
Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past. This article is from the Journal of American History, Volume 93, Number 1 (June, 2006): 117-46. It was written by Roy Rosenzweig. Obviously, this article deals with the coverage of history...
- Encyclopaedia Britannica's Guide To Normandy 1944
Encyclopaedia Britannica's Guide to Normandy 1944 - The story of the Normandy Invasion through the spoken recollections of veterans who fought it, the newsreels that recorded the events, and written collections of historians who studied the campaign....
- Cunnan
Cunnan This is a user edited encyclopedia of the middle ages operated by the Society for Creative Anachronism. It is very well done. From the site: Welcome to Cunnan, a Wiki collecting information for re-enactors of the Middle Ages and Renaissance...