On 20 January 2012 14:10, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> wrote: > This is the interesting (if now quite old) debate about traditional > encyclopedias. Yes, Britannica or any other old-style commercial > encyclopedia is keen to tell you about expert authors. Less keen, for > example, to tell you when the article was written, as opposed to who wrote > it; the expert not having a crystal ball rather affects the value of an > article (say in science or technology). This was the starting point of > Harvey Einbinder's "The Myth of the Britannica" (1964), which even > Wikipedians might find rather unfair to EB (though the detail is > fascinating - seems Einstein got the same $80 as anyone else for an article > which allowed them to promote the work using his name ... wonder how hard > he worked to write it). > > One should note that the market works to favour encyclopedias with a > business model that allows later editions in which revision is kept to > essentials. That's how it is: initiating a new high-quality print > encyclopedia requires money up front, and the investment is paid off by > having later editions that require substantially less writing bought in, > rather than done in-house. I don't know this for a fact, but I doubt > encyclopedia writers get a contract in which they are guaranteed the right > to revise their work for each edition - implausible given the way > publishers' minds works. > > Anyway we know that (for English speakers at least) market forces, given > the barriers to entry, did not really drive quality right up. Einbinder > pretty much gets that correct, as I recall. >
Not related to Britannica, but I came across a stunning omission from a printed encyclopedia a while back while editing Wikipedia... http://blog.tommorris.org/post/11947599442/encyclopedia-of-the-harlem-renaissance-vs-wikipedia -- Tom Morris <http://tommorris.org/> _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
