Encyclopaedia Britannica & Wikipedia

It seems that the battle is heating up.

Ars.Technica is reporting:

Quote:

The Encyclopedia Britannica has stepped up its attacks on the journal Nature by taking out large ads in both the New York Times and the London Times this past week. The unusually public dispute began last year when Nature published a study showing that Britannica and Wikipedia had almost the same level of accuracy. Britannica was obviously not pleased with this conclusion, but made no objections until March, when it at last published a set of objections to the study. Not pleased with Nature's response, Britannica is now taking the controversy to the masses.

The ads call on Nature to issue a "full and public retraction of the article," and the Britannica editors give five major reasons why they believe the methodology of the study was deeply flawed.

• You reviewed text that was not even from the Encyclopedia Britannica
• You accused Britannica of "omissions," on the basis of reviews of arbitrarily chosen excerpts of Britannica articles, not the articles themselves
• You rearranged and re-edited Britannica articles
• You failed to distinguish minor inaccuracies from major errors
• Your headline contradicted the body of your article

You can read Britannica's full-print ad, copied from the New York and London Times, here.


I wonder how far this dispute will go? I've got money that says Britannica will take Nature to court.

There's nowhere I can't reach.