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The Wikipedia/Encyclopaedia Britannica Controversy
A dialectical timeline
  1. 1768. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is founded. Today it is a privately-held, for profit, company. Note the spelling. A convenient source of information, ironically, about the Encyclopaedia Britannica is the Wikipedia. You can see an "annoying ad" for the Encyclopaedia Britannica on YouTube.

  2. 2001. Jimmy Wales founds the Wikipedia. According to its own article, "Wikipedia," "Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project. The name Wikipedia is a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by almost anyone with access to the website." Note the disclaimer at the at the top of this article: "Because of recent vandalism or other disruption, editing of this article by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled."

  3. 15 November 2004. Robert McHenry, former Editor in Chief of the Encyclopędia Britannica, publishes "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia" on TCS Daily.*

  4. 15 December 2005. Nature publishes an article by Jim Giles, "Internet encyclopaedias go head to head." Nature 438, 900-901.

  5. March 2006. Encyclopaedia Britannica publishes a 20-page article, "Fatally Flawed. Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature" (available as a PDF file).

  6. 23 March 2006. Nature responds formally (available as a 2-page PDF file).

  7. 30 March 2006. Nature responds in an editorial.

  8. 31 March 2006. The editors and the board of directors of Encyclopaedia Britannica print a half-page ad, "An Open Letter to the Publisher of Nature," in the New York Times, p. A19. As Ray Cha, the author of a posting in the Future of the Book blog, points out about this ad, "Several interesting things are going on here. Because Britannica chose to place an ad in the Times, it shifted the argument and debate away from the peer review / editorial context into one of rhetoric and public relations. Further, their conscious move to take the argument to the 'public' or the 'masses' with an open letter is ironic because the New York Times does not display its print ads online, therefore access to the letter is limited to the Time's print readership. (Not to mention, the letter is addressed to the Nature Publishing Group located in London.)"

  9. n.d. Nature responds to the ad with a 3-page PDF file point-by-point rebuttal.

  10. The controversy continues, for example, on the "Colbert Report." As Ray Cha sensibly observes, "The main point is that Wikipedia works amazingly well and contains articles that Britannica never will. It is a revolutionary way to collaboratively share knowledge. That we should give consideration to the source of our information we encounter, be it the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, Nature or the New York Times, is nothing new."

    * Thanks to Chris McConnell at UT-Austin for the pointer to McHenry's article. According to Chris, a doctoral student working on the Wikipedia, McHenry's critical editorial "seemed to launch overt comparisions between the two projects."

    Created by Ellen Strenski for WR 139W, Fall 2006, UC Irvine
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