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Milos Rancic wrote:
> If I understood well, the content of the online edition of Britannica
> became free (as in "free beer", of course). They are putting some
> irritating screen with recommendation to buy access to their edition
> every 10 seconds (or so), but, in fact, it is possible to copy-paste
> the content somewhere else and read it. Hm. Wikipedia doesn't have
> that irritating screen. (OK, banner is irritating, but it is not of
> that kind ;) )
>
> Does anyone have some more informations about it? Also, may someone
> (who owns some newer edition of Britannica: paper or electronic)
> check, let's say, this link [1] and confirm that this is the complete
> article.
>
> [1] - http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/268173/Hittite-language

I checked a larger biography, and it looked complete to me. Note that it
uses ajax to load article sections as you scroll to them, so you have to
scroll up and down the page to trigger all the ajax loads before you can
copy the text out.

The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:

javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()

Put it in a bookmark in your toolbar and click it to get rid of the
annoying box. It doesn't come back until you go to another page.

-- Tim Starling


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2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> If I understood well, the content of the online edition of Britannica
> became free (as in "free beer", of course). They are putting some
> irritating screen with recommendation to buy access to their edition
> every 10 seconds (or so), but, in fact, it is possible to copy-paste
> the content somewhere else and read it. Hm. Wikipedia doesn't have
> that irritating screen. (OK, banner is irritating, but it is not of
> that kind ;) )

One thing that is totally awesome about Wikipedia is the categories.
Britannica is nowhere near Wikipedia in categorization and searching.
I've seen people criticizing Wikipedia's categorization; what they
don't realize is that no other encyclopedia comes near.

And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.

And i saw articles in the current online Britannica that are much
shorter than their counterparts in the PD 1911 edition. (E.g.
[[Wilhelm Gesenius]].)

And the article on Occitan language in Britannica contradicts itself
and has no {{Contradict}} on top. It drives me nuts that i can't fix
it. Wikipedia's [[Occitan language]] may have {{POV}} on its top from
time to time, but at least we admit it and welcome corrections.

So Britannica is written by experts and is free as in beer. So what.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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2008/12/22 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com>:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
> itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
> is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
> it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.

... And of course, i forgot to mention that it is not free in the
Stallman-Lessig sense, so copying text from is not only inconvenient,
but possibly illegal.

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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"but possibly illegal" you can omit the word "possibly". I dont see a copy
left license at their site.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com>wrote:

> 2008/12/22 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com>:
> > 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> > And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
> > itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
> > is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
> > it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.
>
> ... And of course, i forgot to mention that it is not free in the
> Stallman-Lessig sense, so copying text from is not only inconvenient,
> but possibly illegal.
>
> --
> Amir Elisha Aharoni
>
> heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
> cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com
>
> "We're living in pieces,
> I want to live in peace." - T. Moore
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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2008/12/22 teun spaans <teun.spaans@gmail.com>:
> "but possibly illegal" you can omit the word "possibly". I dont see a copy
> left license at their site.

It may be possible to copy from EB under fair use terms. On Wikipedia
i don't even need to think about that (except some images...).

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni

heb: http://haharoni.wordpress.com | eng: http://aharoni.wordpress.com
cat: http://aprenent.wordpress.com | rus: http://amire80.livejournal.com

"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore

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teun spaans wrote:
> "but possibly illegal" you can omit the word "possibly". I dont see a copy
> left license at their site.

You can copy it for your personal use :°♫

> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com>wrote:
>> 2008/12/22 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com>:
>>> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>>> And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
>>> itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
>>> is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
>>> it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.
>> ... And of course, i forgot to mention that it is not free in the
>> Stallman-Lessig sense, so copying text from is not only inconvenient,
>> but possibly illegal.

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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>
> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()
>
> Put it in a bookmark in your toolbar and click it to get rid of the
> annoying box. It doesn't come back until you go to another page.

Thanks! It works well :)

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2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:

>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()

> Thanks! It works well :)


They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
under the weight of their own ineptitude.

We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
Britannica" campaign?

(There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages
*consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of
us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia
fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)


- d.

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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 1:27 PM, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>> If I understood well, the content of the online edition of Britannica
>> became free (as in "free beer", of course). They are putting some
>> irritating screen with recommendation to buy access to their edition
>> every 10 seconds (or so), but, in fact, it is possible to copy-paste
>> the content somewhere else and read it. Hm. Wikipedia doesn't have
>> that irritating screen. (OK, banner is irritating, but it is not of
>> that kind ;) )
>
> One thing that is totally awesome about Wikipedia is the categories.
> Britannica is nowhere near Wikipedia in categorization and searching.
> I've seen people criticizing Wikipedia's categorization; what they
> don't realize is that no other encyclopedia comes near.
>
> And Britannica has this totally weird feature - the article loads
> itself as soon as the scrollbar progresses through it. So even if it
> is free as in beer, it is obnoxiously inconvenient to copy text from
> it, 'cuz Ctrl-A doesn't work as expected.
>
> And i saw articles in the current online Britannica that are much
> shorter than their counterparts in the PD 1911 edition. (E.g.
> [[Wilhelm Gesenius]].)
>
> And the article on Occitan language in Britannica contradicts itself
> and has no {{Contradict}} on top. It drives me nuts that i can't fix
> it. Wikipedia's [[Occitan language]] may have {{POV}} on its top from
> time to time, but at least we admit it and welcome corrections.
>
> So Britannica is written by experts and is free as in beer. So what.

Wikipedia's most important advantage is that it is free as in free
speech. I would prefer much smaller Wikipedia, as I am preferring to
use free software alternatives for a long time, even alternatives were
worst than proprietary software counterparts.

But, we need a basic level of honesty. Not just because some ordinary
reader of encyclopedic content, but, first of all, because of
ourselves. I am preparing now exam in comparative grammar of
Indo-European languages and here is the situation related to the
description of the first attested Indo-European branch, Anatolian
group:

* 14 volumes Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics has just a small
description of Anatolian languages; it doesn't have anything about
Hittite language (the major language from that group).
* Wikipedia has very inconsistent set of articles about all languages.
To be honest, I don't know where to start with fixing them.
* Britannica has a very good article about Anatolian languages and
good introducing articles about all Anatolian languages.
* Cambridge edition "Ancient languages of Asia Minor" (ALAM) has very
good articles about all of them. Even it is a book, the concept is
close to a very specific (and good) encyclopedia of those languages.

The styles of articles in Britannica and especially ALAM are superior
toward the style in (those) Wikipedia articles. Articles in Britannica
and ALAM are very useful to me, while articles in Wikipedia are far
from being useful.

Of course, we may fix our articles. Britannica has an error in
description of Serbian/Serbo-Croatian language at least since 1995
edition: instead of Serbian letter Ђ, it has letter Ъ (hard sign).
But, we need to find a way how to improve the quality of our articles,
systematically.
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2008/12/22 David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>:
> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>
> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
> Britannica" campaign?

Very little. We can't afford to buy it. Britannica's survival in some
form is not a concern. The brand and the content are worth enough that
if it's current owners give up there will always be someone looking to
buy. If it were sold tomorrow likely candidates would be Microsoft
(who wanted it for encarta and would probably still go for it if the
price was low enough), Google who might try using it to populate knol,
Yahoo to annoy google. It fits answers.com's profile if they survive
that long.

Then there are various media companies that might think about it. News
Corp for example.


--
geni

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Upsell is the name of the leading market research company in
publishing--probably they are the ones who designed it. I'm suprised,
for they are generally known as competent.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 3:17 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()
>
>> Thanks! It works well :)
>
>
> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>
> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
> Britannica" campaign?
>
> (There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages
> *consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of
> us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia
> fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>



--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:17 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()
>
>> Thanks! It works well :)
>
>
> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>
> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
> Britannica" campaign?
>
> (There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages
> *consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of
> us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia
> fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)

One idea came into my mind nearly after I wrote the first email in
this thread. Britannica is a project which is in decline. So, why not
to buy it? Yes, I know that it is a lot of money *now*, but it may be
achievable in a couple of years (I saw now that Geni mentioned that we
can't buy it).

Then, I wanted to see what is the value of Britannica; without
success. It is a "private company" (in US sense of that meaning;
"public companies" in European sense are just companies owned by some
local or state government; and in some specific circumstances). It is
owned by Jacqui Safra, a billionaire [citation needed] [1], who may be
an interesting partner to WMF. So, if it is not possible to buy it, I
think that it is possible to make some deal to work together.

And I think that it shouldn't be just about Britannica. There are a
lot of high quality encyclopedias all over the world. WMF may think
about some kind of cooperation with them. It is not possible anymore
to have encyclopedia as a profitable company, so I think that the
institutions which own encyclopedias will be more open for
cooperation; including giving the content under the same license(s) as
under Wikipedia content is.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Safra

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Sorry, wrong company name--I was thinking of another one --a truly
competent one, Outsell, that has undoubtedly nothing to do with this
nonsensical method of protection.

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:20 PM, David Goodman <dgoodmanny@gmail.com> wrote:
> Upsell is the name of the leading market research company in
> publishing--probably they are the ones who designed it. I'm suprised,
> for they are generally known as competent.
>
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 3:17 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>>>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>>>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()
>>
>>> Thanks! It works well :)
>>
>>
>> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
>> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
>> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>>
>> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
>> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
>> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
>> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
>> Britannica" campaign?
>>
>> (There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages
>> *consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of
>> us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia
>> fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
> --
> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>



--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

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2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:

> Then, I wanted to see what is the value of Britannica; without
> success. It is a "private company" (in US sense of that meaning;
> "public companies" in European sense are just companies owned by some
> local or state government; and in some specific circumstances). It is
> owned by Jacqui Safra, a billionaire [citation needed] [1], who may be
> an interesting partner to WMF. So, if it is not possible to buy it, I
> think that it is possible to make some deal to work together.


I don't know. He appears to have bought it to keep it going, as a
valuable entity in itself.

So maybe what we need to do is talk to him about Wikipedia ;-D


> And I think that it shouldn't be just about Britannica. There are a
> lot of high quality encyclopedias all over the world. WMF may think
> about some kind of cooperation with them. It is not possible anymore
> to have encyclopedia as a profitable company, so I think that the
> institutions which own encyclopedias will be more open for
> cooperation; including giving the content under the same license(s) as
> under Wikipedia content is.


Britannica is notoriously antagonistic toward Wikipedia in its
advertising, but Brockhaus for instance isn't anywhere near as
obnoxious (they're not *fans* of Wikipedia, but they have more class
than to trash a perceived competitor the way Britannica try to). What
other important language encyclopedias of comparable renown are there?


- d.

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2008/12/22 David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com>:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>
>> Then, I wanted to see what is the value of Britannica; without
>> success. It is a "private company" (in US sense of that meaning;
>> "public companies" in European sense are just companies owned by some
>> local or state government; and in some specific circumstances). It is
>> owned by Jacqui Safra, a billionaire [citation needed] [1], who may be
>> an interesting partner to WMF. So, if it is not possible to buy it, I
>> think that it is possible to make some deal to work together.
>
>
> I don't know. He appears to have bought it to keep it going, as a
> valuable entity in itself.
>
> So maybe what we need to do is talk to him about Wikipedia ;-D
>
>
>> And I think that it shouldn't be just about Britannica. There are a
>> lot of high quality encyclopedias all over the world. WMF may think
>> about some kind of cooperation with them. It is not possible anymore
>> to have encyclopedia as a profitable company, so I think that the
>> institutions which own encyclopedias will be more open for
>> cooperation; including giving the content under the same license(s) as
>> under Wikipedia content is.
>
>
> Britannica is notoriously antagonistic toward Wikipedia in its
> advertising, but Brockhaus for instance isn't anywhere near as
> obnoxious (they're not *fans* of Wikipedia, but they have more class
> than to trash a perceived competitor the way Britannica try to). What
> other important language encyclopedias of comparable renown are there?
>

Well in Poland we have PWN:

http://www.pwn.pl/

which actually is quite well in terms of profit it produces. Among
them and us it is a kind of gentle "elegancy". They talk about us in a
gentle manner, and we about them in the same way :-) In fact for us
PWN Polish language vocabulary and their encyclopedia is quite often
cited in Wikipedia as a source of "serious knowlege". We even ask
their language help-desk to solve some our language/terminology
problems and we treat them as a kind of " language oracle" and they
are happy to help us. So, we think our advantage is that we are faster
and we cover the things they are not interested in, but their
advantage is their high level of professional acuracy (at least with
language problems) so we can friendly coexist.

I don't like guys from Wikmedia projects speaking in some sort of
"supremacy" language. Our goal is to create: "a world in which every
single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." so
if the Britannica or PWN or any other commercial provider of the
knowlegde is making their content free we should be simply happy. And
it is not very clever to say that it is just because they feel the
pressure from us (which in fact might be the true anyway :-) ). They
have many values and advatages which we should still learn from them.


--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html

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2008/12/22 Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek@gmail.com>:

> I don't like guys from Wikmedia projects speaking in some sort of
> "supremacy" language. Our goal is to create: "a world in which every
> single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." so
> if the Britannica or PWN or any other commercial provider of the
> knowlegde is making their content free we should be simply happy. And
> it is not very clever to say that it is just because they feel the
> pressure from us (which in fact might be the true anyway :-) ). They
> have many values and advatages which we should still learn from them.


Yes. As I said, just because Britannica is rude about Wikipedia is no
reason to be rude in return. It's good to see we're catching up in
many areas, but they remain the gold standard that en:wp works to in
many ways. The Wikipedia writing style is different - Britannica is
not NPOV, it's "authoritative" - but at our best we do very well
indeed. But at our worst we're still terrible. Lots of work for the
future! :-D

(A tangential note: I consider NPOV to be our most important
innovation - much more radical than merely letting anyone edit your
encyclopedia. The concept of "neutrality" has existed in various
guises, but not like Wikipedia does it, with the consequences it has
as a source of information for the world.)


- d.

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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 5:38 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> (A tangential note: I consider NPOV to be our most important
> innovation - much more radical than merely letting anyone edit your
> encyclopedia. The concept of "neutrality" has existed in various
> guises, but not like Wikipedia does it, with the consequences it has
> as a source of information for the world.)

Full agreement.

My view on WP innovations:

(1) NPOV information resource.
(2) Website with a permanent historical record (we're not the first,
but the first popular).
(3) Large scale free-content useful reference.
(4) Website anyone can edit.


There are all sorts of interdependencies between these and other
differentiators— It's easy to argue that without (4) the rest wouldn't
be possible… but in terms of the lasting impact on society and our own
uniqueness I think those are ordered about right.
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2008/12/22 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 5:38 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:

>> (A tangential note: I consider NPOV to be our most important
>> innovation - much more radical than merely letting anyone edit your
>> encyclopedia. The concept of "neutrality" has existed in various
>> guises, but not like Wikipedia does it, with the consequences it has
>> as a source of information for the world.)

> Full agreement.
> My view on WP innovations:
> (1) NPOV information resource.


I'm thinking of things like areas that never got NPOV coverage *ever*.
Scientology is a good example - pro-Scientology sources are saccharine
and tend to leave out bits of great concern to the critics, and the
critical sources have lots of well-sourced information but are so
*bitter* they're all but unreadable. en:wp has some of the very best
information available on the topic.


> (2) Website with a permanent historical record (we're not the first,
> but the first popular).


What others are there?


> (3) Large scale free-content useful reference.


I'd put that below "anyone can edit" - (3) wasn't true until the last
two or three years. In 2004, when I started, en:wp was a
somewhat-useful source on computing topics, but very much one big stub
on most things. Now it's actually useful in all sorts of places.

(During the recent IWF/[[:en:Virgin Killer]] furore, our crappy work
proxy blocked *all* Wikipedia reading because of the block on the
page. And we felt the effects, because Wikipedia is such a good first
reference work on computing topics.)


> (4) Website anyone can edit.
> There are all sorts of interdependencies between these and other
> differentiators— It's easy to argue that without (4) the rest wouldn't
> be possible… but in terms of the lasting impact on society and our own
> uniqueness I think those are ordered about right.


- d.
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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I checked a larger biography, and it looked complete to me. Note that it
> uses ajax to load article sections as you scroll to them, so you have to
> scroll up and down the page to trigger all the ajax loads before you can
> copy the text out.
It even works with Javascript turned off, but then you have to click
all the subheadings in the topic box to progress to the next piece of
text (which can be just a few lines long). The Javascript version is
not very user-friendly too, because you have to stare at the loading
animations before you can read the text.

-- Hay / Husky

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I noticed that Britannica is using some creative commons images from
Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Example:

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic-art/589288/113374/Courthouse-in-Denton-Texas

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_Courthouse_Denton_TX.jpg

-Aude
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David Gerard wrote:
> (A tangential note: I consider NPOV to be our most important
> innovation - much more radical than merely letting anyone edit your
> encyclopedia. The concept of "neutrality" has existed in various
> guises, but not like Wikipedia does it, with the consequences it has
> as a source of information for the world.)

I guess I don't really agree on this--- it's been the trend in reference
works for decades to split tertiary reference material (neutral
summaries of scholarly consensus, published as encyclopedias) from
critical surveys and novel arguments (published in journals or as
non-reference books). The trend was becoming dominant by at least the
1970s I'd say; a good example of the modern encyclopedia in this style
is the [[Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire]] (published 1971-1992)
which explicitly aims for a neutral summary of scholarly consensus on
each of its subjects, which scholars can all use as a reference point.
(Where scholars disagree, it simply notes that fact, sometimes
summarizing each side's argument.)

-Mark

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David Goodman wrote:
> Upsell is the name of the leading market research company in
> publishing--probably they are the ones who designed it. I'm suprised,
> for they are generally known as competent.

No, that would be upsell as in:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up-selling

I'd give you a Britannica reference for that as well, but they don't have it.

They call the box that pops up the upsell, as in

activities: {hideUpsells: "", hideAds: "false", showDivType: ""},

It's also referred to as annoyware:

Darwin.Upsell.init(_config.userDataConfig.annoywareConfig);

The company responsible would be:

var mboxCopyright = "Copyright 2004-2007 Offermatica (tm) Corporation";

a.k.a. http://www.omniture.com/

-- Tim Starling


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David Gerard wrote:
> 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <millosh@gmail.com>:
>
>> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <tstarling@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful:
>>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})()
>>>
>
>
>> Thanks! It works well :)
>>
>
>
> They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need
> to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse
> under the weight of their own ineptitude.
>
> We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign -
> how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as
> one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own
> business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save
> Britannica" campaign?
>
> (There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages
> *consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of
> us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia
> fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)
>
>
> - d.
>
> ________________

I don't think you can be more clear than:

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2006&post=2006-03-24,3


Yours,

Jussi-Ville Heiskanen




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On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 11:06 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@gmail.com> wrote:

> Britannica is notoriously antagonistic toward Wikipedia in its
> advertising, but Brockhaus for instance isn't anywhere near as
> obnoxious (they're not *fans* of Wikipedia, but they have more class
> than to trash a perceived competitor the way Britannica try to). What
> other important language encyclopedias of comparable renown are there?

Well. The BIFAB AG (Bibliographic Institute & F. A. Brockhaus inc.)
has announced last week ("happy x-mas") to sell the usage rights and
brand name of "Brockhaus" to Bertelsmann (section Arvato, subsection
inmedia one, business unit wissen media Group). The remaining staff of
60 editors of Brockhaus at Leipzig was not bought and will receive
pink slips.

Brockhaus might be transformed into an "imprint" of various content
for door-2-door sales people.

Mathias

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