Before this term I hadn’t looked at the Encyclopedia Britannica website for some time, and when I did I was surprised to find how much the site seems to mimic some aspects of the Wikipedia site.
- Both sites feature a relatively sparse layout with seemingly little attention paid to graphic design;
- Both sites offer user interactivity on their opening pages: Wikipedia with its standard interactive tabs and discussion features; Britannica with links to blogs, forums, and other seemingly participatory features;
- Both sites prominently display links to new and featured information, news, and so on.
As I recall, in the past Britannica has not had so many apparently interactive features, and I wonder whether this design is in part an attempt to adopt some of the elements that have made Wikipedia popular. If so, I think the folks at ‘tannica are missing the point: it’s Wikipedia’s openness (in contrast to Britannica’s still-closed system) that makes it popular. Consider a few comparisons:
- Anyone with access to the internet and some relatively simple skills can become a contributor to Wikipedia; in contrast, Britannica is a closed system of experts. Even Britannica’s weblogs (almost by definition an open medium) are written by a select group of experts. (They do, however, seem to allow general readers to comment on the ‘blogs.)
- Wikipedia content is available for free, both to read and to republish; most Britannica content requires a paid subscription for full access, and none is available for free republication.
Depending upon your perspective, you might see either of these characteristics as a point in favor of either encyclopedia. In fact, discussions about whether Wikipedia is a reliable resource are focused on its “wide open” character as opposed to Britannica’s closed system of experts.
Most of us are accustomed to systems of expertise in which we rely on people in authority to provide reliable information. Think of how schools work, governments, hospitals, and so on. This is the model that Britannica relies on (check out their authors, board members, and so on.)
The expert model has to be closed, because it assumes that expertise is something rare and that potential experts must be evaluated and confirmed as experts prior to participating.
This is a model with proven success (though it isn’t always successful). And if we consider the Wikipedia model simply to be opening the floodgates, for example, to allow anyone to enter a hospital, a university, or another expert institution and to begin acting like an expert, then perhaps we should be skeptical.
But that isn’t exactly what Wikipedia does. Yes, anyone can sign up to contribute at Wikipedia, and the process tries not to constrain contributors much. But what this project relies on is a large community of users who, working online, not only write and edit entries, but they evaluate and discuss entries, they consider the strengths and weaknesses of material, and they have systems to control people who abuse their freedom on the site.
Some examples:
- At the front end of many articles (such as the open source article) are announcements about suggestions on how to improve the article.
- The discussion page of each article is used, well, to discuss changes, proposed changes, and other issues related to the article’s content.
- The history page provides a list of changes and a way to revert edited articles to a previous state.
These are just a few of the mechanisms that Wikipedia uses to allow members of the community to work to improve the site. But perhaps the most important element of the Wikipedia system is this: they rely on a community of users who focus on one major goal: to produce a reliable, authoritative online encyclopedia. In the end, Wikipedia can only work if the majority of people in the community work toward that goal in good faith.
