Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by somenameforme 901 days ago
Among Britannica's authors are Einstein, Trotsky, Asimov, Milton Friedman, and many such others. [1] In Wikipedia, Trotsky himself could not opine on e.g. communism. By contrast, the words of a random junior journalist in an opinion piece published on a newspaper website are perfectly legitimate for publication in an article on communism. Wikipedia is simply a very different sort of project than an encyclopedia.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica#P...
1 comments
bazoom42 900 days ago
Perhaps you misunderstand what “encyclopedia” means? Britannica itself classify Wikipedia as an encyclopedia (https://www.britannica.com/topic/encyclopaedia/The-kinds-of-...)
link
somenameforme 900 days ago
Now you're shifting the goal posts to semantics. You implied Wikipedia and encyclopedias used the same methods, which is incorrect. Britannica is written by field domain experts, many of them world leading. Wikipedia is instead, as you described, a collection of citations of other work, written by random people, and which relies heavily on the US media as a source for any sort of cultural, social, or political topic.

There was a pretty interesting paper written looking at the biases in Wiki vs Britannica. [1] You might find it interesting.

[1] - https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/do-experts-or-collective-intellig...

link
bazoom42 900 days ago
> You implied Wikipedia and encyclopedias used the same methods, which is incorrect.

I just pointed out that Britannica (like Wikipedia) is not a primary source. “Primary source” have a specific meaning and encyclopedias are not primary sources - regardless of the editorial process and the credentials of the authors.

Try citing Britannica in an academic paper and se how well it goes.

link
somenameforme 900 days ago
It'd go just fine. Here's a quick Google Scholar search for the header of the MLA citation standard for unattributed Britannica articles. [1] There are thousands. Encyclopedias are fine sources, but Wikipedia is not. Encyclopedias biggest shortcoming would be that for specialized topics one would of course be far better served by books, papers, and the likes.

[1] - https://scholar.google.com/scholar?lookup=0&q=%22Britannica,...

link