Stephen Hutcheon, via The Sydney Morning Herald, posted a story about Encyclopedia Britannica’s recent initiative to allow readers to contribute and edit its online version in a bid to surpass Wikipedi’a's popularity. (Thanks to ResourceShelf) Snippets:
New features enabling the inclusion of this user-generated content will be rolled out on the encyclopedia’s website over the next 24 hours, Britannica’s president, Jorge Cauz, said in an interview today. … the changes were the first in a series of enhancements to the britannica.com website designed to encourage more community input to the 241-year-old institution and, in doing so, to take on Wikipedia in the all important search engine rankings.
“What we are trying to do is shifting … to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and – importantly – by maybe creating his own content or her own content,” he said.
Mr Cauz said that any changes or additions made to Britannica entries online would have to be vetted by one of the company’s staff or freelance editors before the changes were reflected on the live site. …
Many of those changes will eventually appear in the printed version of the encyclopedia, which is published every two years.
In addition to the community editing features, Britannica.com will enable approved users to add their own creative input which will sit beside the authorised articles. ….
Would-be editors on the Britannica site will have to register using their real names and addresses before they are allowed to modify or write their own articles.
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