[somenameforme]

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...

[bazoom42]

> 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.

[somenameforme]

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,...