QUOTE(ThurstonHowell3rd @ Mon 9th June 2008, 7:08pm)
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Britannica is not a technology leader. They were very slow putting their content on DVD and they were very slow putting their content online. And, they are still charging a subscription to view their content.
Even though Britannica now has the right idea about allowing non-expert contributions, their execution will likely be poor.
I know! I know!!! Look there's this thing called a "Wiki"-- I'ts a multiuser db thingie, invented by this guy named Cunningham, in 1994, as part of the WikiWikiWeb. Supposedly even the intelligence community has been using Intelli-wikis hosted by MediaWiki to do intelligence work!
This kind of thing could in theory be used by many people who don't know each other, to write an encyclopedia! Of course, you wouldn't just want to give everybody access to all levels of editing (that really would be stupid), but see Intelliwiki. You have to have pentagon clearance or something, to get on that. So the same kind of thing, allowing for levels of expertise, could be done with an encyclopedia. Britannica could do THEIR proposed project on Wikis. They've been around a dozen years, and they were invented by Cunningham. It's not like they're patented or copyrighted as a concept.
*&%$ me, this is brilliant. Why didn't somebody suggest it years ago?