Talk:Encyclopædia Britannica

Mention of Wikipedia in the lede

@Mewulwe: You reverted my attempt to add a line to the lede about Encyclopedia Brittanica's struggle to compete with Wikipedia. I offered Wired as a source, which you rejected. Would this article from The Next Web be sufficient? If not, there are presumably lots of alternatives—any source that covers Encyclopedia Brittanica nowadays has to confront the presence of Wikipedia, and we have a whole section about it at Encyclopædia Britannica#Internet encyclopaedias, so I think it's pretty unquestionably WP:DUE. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:42, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

That's another silly source talking about Britannica being "killed" when in fact just referring to the ending of the print version, which, like the undoubtedly lower standing Britannica (like any other traditional encyclopedia) nowadays has, is simply the result of the Internet itself. I see no hard evidence that Wikipedia in particular was crucial in this. Even before Wikipedia, people could easily "google" things that they might have looked up in an encyclopedia in earlier times. In fact, that's what they still do; it's just that Google tends to give out Wikipedia results at the top. Mewulwe (talk) 09:17, 7 April 2021 (UTC)

@Mewulwe: I think avoiding discussing Wikipedia in the lead would be omitting essential information. Is there a source you'd like to see supporting it? (If so, feel free to link.) If we disagree about whether a mention is warranted, we may want to list this at WP:3O. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:24, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It's up to you to find a source that's more than idle commentary. Britannica may have suffered more from Encarta. This is from before Wikipedia even existed: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-19-mn-23818-story.html. Britannica peaked in 1989. Today it is not even understanding itself to be competing in the mass market, just as a quality newspaper isn't competing with the trash tabloids that are bound to have the highest circulation. Mewulwe (talk) 09:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

3O Response: Undoubtedly, the article should include material about Britannica in the changing landscape brought about by computerized and later Web-based encyclopedias, like, say, this one. However, I think mention in the lead is probably not needed. As of now, the lead primarily just summarizes what Britannica is, and I think that's a good fit in this article. The body can then cover the details and its history; that's a bit much for the lead. If we covered one bit of its history there, we'd really have to touch on all of it, and that would make the lead much too long. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:05, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

The lead already covers a bunch of history (as it should per MOS:LEAD). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:31, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Third opinion : The question presented, however, is whether Wikipedia is the main reason for the demise of the printed Britannica, as opposed to other competitors or market forces. That supposition is not a statement of fact, but opinion. Since this is debated, the details should be discussed in detail in the body of the article, and not unduly mentioned in the Lede, unless specifically and strongly referenced. This does not appear to be the case in this situation. GenQuest ^"scribble" 08:10, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

An assertion was added about comparing bias in Wikipedia and Britannica around July 15, 2023. There's a sweeping generalization "is known to be" but that is not supported by the reference, a Forbes article from 2015 citing a Harvard Business School working paper from 2014... There's no evidence reported on responses to the paper, and the paper contains qualifications that limit the support of the sweeping statement (such as disavowing assessments of relative correctness). Danchall (talk) 11:11, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Fifteenth edition

The 15th edition is kind of a huge deal, with quite a history, and a major departure for the company, and even for encyclopedias as a whole. There are tons of sources for it, and I was surprised we don't have an article for it. I added a "with possibilities" redirect to indicate this (as well as a couple of variant spellings, +/- ligatures) and hopefully someone will usurp the redirect Encyclopædia Britannica Fifteenth Edition and create an article.

As an additional issue, there is a new template available to cite the 15th: see {{Cite EB15}}. For any questions or comments on the template, your feedback at Template talk:Cite EB15 would be appreciated. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 19:50, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Overhaul of citation style

Hi, I propose we change the citation style to something more comparable at Edgar Allan Poe. This is due to the high volume of books/encyclopedias being repeatedly cited. --Matr1x-101$_{when-replying}^{Ping-me}$ {_{user page @ commons} - ^talk - _contribs} 23:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Sections should be revised/combined to avoid repetition

Quite a bit of this article needs to be rewritten: There is a lot of repeated information in the article; also a lot of related information spread between two or more sections, particularly relating to the digital editions.

In the section entitled "Wikipedia", comparison is made with the 699 and 65,000 "printed articles". Surely an up-to-date comparison would be with the current, online Britannica? The most recent printed articles are from the 2010 print edition, which is 13 years old.

We are told how many articles there are in the 2007 print edition: would it not be more useful to know how many were in the last, 2010, print edition?

It would be good to have an estimate or estimates of the number of articles in the current digital Britannica.

Spel-Punc-Gram (talk) 02:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Britannica Dictionary

Some sources (GScholar, GBooks) mention it but never explain what it is. It exists today ([1]) and of course early editions of Britannica were called "The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information". Should this be a redirect or a disambig or a proper article? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:00, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I was wondering does that is not on the same license what Google dictionuary and Oxford University Press but I am not sure though. We would have to find sources, article or redirect with connection to wikidata could be useful. Dawid2009 (talk) 05:18, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Piotrus I think it's just a dictionary run by Britannica. They own Merriam-Webster, but they both give different definitions, so I'm inclined to believe that Britannica Dictionary is 'just a dictionary'. —Panamitsu (talk) 05:33, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

@Panamitsu and Piotrus: How about keeping redirect to Encyclopedia Brotannica (for now) and keep information that the Britannica Dictionurary is in very similar cilculation what Oxford Univereity Press, with maybe referencr when Britannica Dictionuary was introduced? Dawid2009 (talk) 03:20, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this change. —Panamitsu (talk) 03:51, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

If we can find such information? I think this service can be mentioned here, and redirect created, but we need at least one RS for this. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 06:51, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

Sixth edition's date

Good evening, all. Is there any source about the sixth edition being published between 1820 and 1823? All the copies I've seen of the first volume have 1823 as the publishing year, and one of the prefaces (again, in the first volume) is outright dated 1822. It would make sense for an edition which is basically a reprint to be published in one go (that is, in 1823), right? I'd be very glad to be corrected, though. Filippo Ottonieri (talk) 16:13, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

Advert

This article requires major cleanup. What's left of Cyrifa's edits need to be removed or rewritten. A lot of promotional content needs to be toned down or removed.

The structure of the article is weird, it starts with a section "Present status" and then a subsection called "Print version" even though there hasn't been a printed edition since 2012. Polygnotus (talk) 12:58, 22 December 2024 (UTC)