Essay:A Comparison of the Encyclopedias
In the mid-1700s, Denis Diderot with the collaboration of d'Allembert created the Encyclopédie, an expansive set of volumes detailing the arts and sciences that served as a principal work of the Enlightenment and a mark in the history of education.[1][2] It championed a new age of knowledge, defying the censorship of the printer for the sake of intellectuality and little fiscal profit.[3][4] In 1768, the Encyclopedia Britannica was published, edition after edition increasingly comprehensive and extensive in various arts and sciences, growing in volumes, re-organizing into the Micropedia and Macropedia, and Propedia in the 1980s.[5][6] Yet in the digital age, competitors online such as ERIC, Academic Search Premier, LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, and Project MUSE began to appear, all of which were later defeated in search results by the giant menace Wikipedia.[7] Yet some scholars question their immediate loathing of the site, as the site becomes better vetted, and this essay intends to calculate the value of the encyclopedias in education.
Analysis
The following is an analysis of encyclopedia quality, discussed aspect by aspect. Each aspect is represented by a variable in the formula below, meant to calculate the value of each publication.
Q=(c1+c2)÷2 • qberof(1-s)-(v+h)(1-d)
In this formula, the capital Q represents the overall quality, while other variables various measures:
| Variable | Aspect |
|---|---|
| c1 | coverage of science, mathematics, and history |
| c2 | coverage of current events, politics, and pop culture |
| q | quality of writing, ease of reading |
| b | political bias |
| e | ease of use for learning and access |
| r | reliability of information |
| o | ownership |
| f | editors, in kindness and respectability |
| s | self-glorification as shown in articles |
| v | vandalism, on a scale of 0 to 0.5 |
| h | presence of hoaxes, on a scale of 0 to 0.5 |
| d | ability to correct vandalism and remove lies |
Besides Q, v and h, each variable is on a scale from 0 to 1. Q is on a scale from -1 to 1.
Coverage
With over 5,000,000 articles in the English Wikipedia alone on a broad variety of subjects, Wikipedia is clear in its dominance of coverage. However, one can apply search terms to various encyclopedias to try to determine the identity of this content. Take for example the first extant Dutch novel, Sara Burgenhart by Betje Wolfe and Aagje Deken, dawn of literature in the Netherlands. It is only mentioned in 5 Wikipedia articles and 3 on Britannica, excluding the Dutch Wikipedia. Other encyclopedias are unfamiliar with it.
Next, consider Laura Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic". Wikipedia has a disambiguation page for the four pages with that title, while Conservapedia and Britannica bring only references to Nyro's article. Consider Linux: Wikipedia has an extensive article on it and devotes an entire WikiProject to the operating system, while Britannica writes a stub about it as part of the nascent history of computing.
Lastly, contrast "History of Mesopotamia" - Britannica's is far superior in word count to the Wikipedia article, as sadly this is only of interest to three WikiProjects, just like their article for Pepe Le Pew, while Linux is of interest to four. Comparisons were made to several other encyclopedias to form this score chart below over c-values, and tests were made searching for Rick Riordan, Geert Wilders, Roman du Renart, and techno music.
Meanwhile, in the study of music, Citizendium writes two sentences about Mozart and Scholarpedia says nothing, being about science.
For a last idea, look at the recent changes section of Wikipedia, accessed on March 29, 2017.
- (diff | hist) . . N User talk:192.222.143.147; 22:48 . . (+1,300) . . ClueBot NG (talk | contribs) (Warning 192.222.143.147 - #1)
- (diff | hist) . . m Page; 22:48 . . (-4) . . Noyster (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 92.99.190.128 (talk) to last version by ClueBot NG)
- (diff | hist) . . m 2014 FIFA World Cup; 22:48 . . (-33) . . ClueBot NG (talk | contribs) (Reverting possible vandalism by 192.222.143.147 to version by Davey2010. Report False Positive? Thanks, ClueBot NG. (2990317) (Bot))
- (diff | hist) . . Template talk:Single chart; 22:48 . . (+2,181) . . Colonies Chris (talk | contribs) (→UK charts links)
- (diff | hist) . . Hallmark Channel; 22:48 . . (+36) . . ANDREWs13 (talk | contribs) (→Programming) (Tag: Visual edit)
- (diff | hist) . . Sorites paradox; 22:48 . . (+295) . . Hyacinth (talk | contribs) (→Variations: {{Quote|Then tension between small changes and big consequences gives rise to the Sorities Paradox...There are many variations...[some of which allow] consideration of the difference between being...(a question of fact) and seeming...)
- (diff | hist) . . What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962 film); 22:48 . . (-138) . . Njorent (talk | contribs) (→Plot: Revised. Or, started to. Will continue later.)
- (diff | hist) . . Pawan (actor); 22:48 . . (+4) . . 2a01:cb00:4af:ac00:8c7b:4740:db2a:d2f4 (talk) (→Filmography)
- (diff | hist) . . SpongeBob SquarePants (film series); 22:48 . . (+40) . . 173.48.247.43 (talk) (→SpongeBob SquarePants 3 (2019)) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
And compare it to the Conservapedia changes made in the same time.
- (diff | hist) . . m New York City; 18:38 . . (+26) . . VargasMilan (Talk | contribs | block) (+ rounding method)
- (diff | hist) . . m New York City; 18:36 . . (+348) . . VargasMilan (Talk | contribs | block) (+ co-ordinates)
- (diff | hist) . . William F. Albright; 18:30 . . (-14) . . Korvex (Talk | contribs | block) (→Early Life: Fixing paragraph structure) *(Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
- (diff | hist) . . m Munich; 18:27 . . (+28) . . VargasMilan (Talk | contribs | block) (Recalcutated Hours, minutes, seconds longitude format (mistaken for degree, minute, second format) to decimal degree format)
- (diff | hist) . . William F. Albright; 18:22 . . (+1) . . Korvex (Talk | contribs | block) (→Influence) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
- (diff | hist) . . William F. Albright; 18:21 . . (-3) . . Korvex (Talk | contribs | block) (→Career) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
- (diff | hist) . . William F. Albright; 18:19 . . (+1) . . Korvex (Talk | contribs | block) (→Early Life) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
- (diff | hist) . . William F. Albright; 18:17 . . (+7) . . Korvex (Talk | contribs | block) (→Biography) (Tags: Mobile edit, Mobile web edit)
- (diff | hist) . . Washington, D.C.; 18:14 . . (+373) . . VargasMilan (Talk | contribs | block) (+ co-ordinates)
- (diff | hist) . . Munich; 17:49 . . (+347) . . VargasMilan (Talk | contribs | block) (+ co-ordinates)
- (diff | hist) . . Talk:Main Page; 17:47 . . (+333) . . Conservative (Talk | contribs | block) (→changing user name)
- (diff | hist) . . Talk:Main Page; 17:10 . . (+580) . . PeterKa (Talk | contribs | block) (→McCain fat shames Kim Jong-un: new section)
| Encyclopedia | c1 | c2 |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.8 | 0.9 |
| Britannica | 0.9 | 0.3 |
| Conservapedia | 0.2 | 0.4 |
| World Book | 0.6 | 0.3 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 0.5 | 0.2 - Encarta is notoriously out-of-date |
| Scholarpedia | 0.9 | 0.0 |
| Citizendium | 0.1 | 0.1 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.6 | 0.1 |
Quality
Imagine four people: Richard, Jayden, Elijah, and Jason. Richard is an expert in Roman history at the University of Oxford, distinguished in his field after writing a remarkable comparison of Rome at its peak to Britain at its, even comparing particular emperors, kings, cities, and wars. Britannica approached him with a high-paying writing position. Jayden is a sophomore in college majoring in Computer Science to get out of taking English classes who just, at the request of Randall Munroe, read Lessig's Free Culture and is convinced it is his destiny to write Wikipedia for free about his area of expertise. He knows that he can swear as he wants, not just in quotes but in arbitrary descriptions, as done on the "lies" page. Elijah tried editing Wikipedia once, but he tried to make a statement on the Christian Republic page saying how it applied to Latin America quite successfully, but is banned for adding irrelevant information and joins their competitor, Conservapedia. Jason is a longtime Microsoft employee and former schoolteacher who has chosen to switch jobs to writing Encarta for students, knowing that he cannot swear and collaborating with professional technical writers and educators.
Considering these people above, these stereotypical motivations for editing, the quality of writing is assumed below.
| Encyclopedia | q |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.3 |
| Britannica | 0.9 |
| Conservapedia | 0.5 |
| World Book | 0.7 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 1.0 (often supplemented by video, too) |
| Scholarpedia | 0.7 (somewhat overly technical) |
| Citizendium | 0.6 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.8 |
Political Bias
A Harvard business study found Wikipedia to be more biased liberally than Britannica and other neutral sources.[8][9] They were not the first to make that discovery.[10] Comparing hot-topic pages like "Abortion" and "Gay marriage" could reveal this easily and be expectable - said articles were often protected by admins hoping to preserve their words before worse ones could replace them. However, the bias creeps into articles like "Christian Republic," "Creationism," and "Lying." Other sources remain nearly neutral politically, save for Conservapedia.
Conservapedia is inundated with essays and blatant display of POV, and that earns it the b-value below of 0.3, a lower b-value refer to a stronger bias.
| Encyclopedia | b |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.6 |
| Britannica | 1.0 |
| Conservapedia | 0.3 |
| World Book | 1.0 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 0.9 (some articles paint Microsoft in too nice a light) |
| Scholarpedia | 1.0 |
| Citizendium | 0.7 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.9 |
Ease of Use
Once upon a time, when Billy Joel made CDs, Ronald Reagan was in office, and Cheers was on TV, Britannica needed in index and more often had entries scattered across the Micro and Macropedias. Now, Britannica has revolutionized itself, and is searchable online like any other. However, it also makes an effort to provide quizzes and other interesting learning tools, while Wikipedia does not. Conservapedia offers courses, while Wikipedia does not. Wikipedia writes that the Heaviside function is simplest in calculus, while those familiar with it know it as 9th grade algebra and a piecewise function. It is from here that the e-values were chosen.
| Encyclopedia | e |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.8 |
| Britannica | 0.9 |
| Conservapedia | 0.9 |
| World Book | 0.5 (boring article formats) |
| Microsoft Encarta | 0.5 (difficult to find and install) |
| Scholarpedia | 0.7 |
| Citizendium | 0.8 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.7 |
Ownership and Editors
It is a minor point, but being owned by a profiting corporation has the benefit of financial endowment, whether they make books or software. Non-profits may force their encyclopedias to beg for money or collapse at any time from lack of funds.
Meanwhile, consider the editors as stereotyped above. Here they are rated on kindness and respectability by someone familiar with many Conservapedia editors' stories of cruelty on Wikipedia talk pages and edit logs.
| Encyclopedia | o | f |
|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Britannica | 0.8 | 0.8 |
| Conservapedia | 0.2 | 0.6 |
| World Book | 0.8 | 0.9 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 1.0 | 0.7 |
| Scholarpedia | 0.4 | 0.5 |
| Citizendium | 0.1 | 0.6 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.9 | 0.9 |
Self-Glorification
How much does an encyclopedia's lead editor choose to write about the encyclopedia more than useful subjects? A litte is understandable, but so many essays and stories, or so many rules and a whole WikiProject Wikipedia is ridiculous. These s-values were chosen to represent that.
| Encyclopedia | s-value |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.7 |
| Britannica | 0.05 |
| Conservapedia | 0.9 |
| World Book | 0.05 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 0.05 |
| Scholarpedia | 0.01 |
| Citizendium | 0.01 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0.01 |
Vandalism and Hoaxes
Vandalism - any Conservapedia editor working a long time has seen that on the recent changes page. It's always removed quickly with convenient features, but ever present.[11] Vandalism of Conservapedia and Wikipedia was even endorsed on the Colbert Report.[12] However, most vandalism on Conservapedia occurs on popular pages and political ones rather than, say, the article for A Streetcar Named Desire.[13]
Then there are hoaxes - Wikipedia features an extensive list of hoaxes, and even keeps one. A society of editors called the Society for the Preservation of the Quazer Beast works diligently to maintain a page about a blatant hoax.[14] Hoaxes are easy add, as book citations are easy to fake.[15]
Of course, points were given for speed in correction, something Wikipedia loves to cite rather than admit the bias of its content. Four Wikipedia articles were vandalized and corrected to test this.
| Encyclopedia | v | h | d |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wikipedia | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.8 |
| Britannica | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Conservapedia | 0.5 | 0.1 | 0.95 |
| World Book | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Microsoft Encarta | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Scholarpedia | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Citizendium | 0.1 | 0 | 0.2 |
| Scholastic/Usborne | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Results
| Encyclopedia | Score |
|---|---|
| Wikipedia | |
| Britannica | |
| Conservapedia | |
| World Book | |
| Microsoft Encarta | |
| Scholarpedia | |
| Citizendium | |
| Scholastic/Usborne |
As if I could take results from that. It doesn't address multilinguality in favor of Wikipedia, or the fact that thanks to it, more and more photos are licensed through Creative Commons into the public domain. It doesn't consider, say, the coverage of O No Yasumaro, which Wikipedia provides a possibly inaccurate stub of and Britannica nothing of. It barely discusses other encyclopedias. It doesn't mention how each can be changed, and it doesn't address the "if you don't like the coverage, shut up and edit" argument of Wikipedians (who assume anyone unable to learn the wikitext language and rules to be a moron. It doesn't predict the future of each encyclopedia - someday later, in the future, it just might, but not now.
The Future
What do we, as researchers, do? Most people either give in to Wikipedia or turn to libraries, but there are some things to consider.
The Future of Wikipedia
Wikipedia's number of editors has decreased recently - understandable, but they still have plenty of active members,
and are seeking more.[16][17] This may be done completely in vain - editing conditions are harsh, people are obnoxious, pugnacious, and dominant, and a lone modicum of editors actually works on useful topics as most of what the average person knows in scholarly knowledge is already available. Yet the pages are still there - could they disappear, too?
Wikipedia will not grow without radical changes, but what happens when they lose too many editors, and they have no one to patrol new pages, to correct edits, and no one wants to? They could cave in to vandalism, as more and more new editors exist solely to have fun or treat the place as their social media page. Then there's the question of their servers - many are familiar with their message, "If everyone reading this right now donated $3, this fundraiser would be over in an hour," but they go on for days.[18][19][20] Clearly, not many are interested in funding it - and if they can't play their bills, they can't run their servers, and the site disappears. Then students have to turn to other resources, such as those in the External Links section, or Britannica, Oxford books, World Book, and other general references, or possibly specialty encyclopedias.
Specialty Encyclopedias
Nearly always more in depth on a given topic, specialty encyclopedias make great research tools. They can be as broad as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or as narrow as the New Georgia Encyclopedia (which focuses on the state of Georgia).[21][22] These are usually written by people with a passion for their given topic, and are ideal for Wikipedia. But also consider:
The Future of Britannica, CP, and the like
Conservapedia is the 14,780th most visited website in the United States as of March 31, 2017.[23] Meanwhile, Britannica is the 824th with britannica.com and the 4,115th with eb.com, their school version.[24][25] Conservapedia is above the website for Sing Out! magazine, but below k12.ms.us, the websites used by schools in the state of Mississippi.[26][27] They are barely above GodTube.[28] Britannica would shoot higher as an excellent Internet encyclopedia, and there would likely be more "anyone can edit" encyclopedias formed in its wake, but none would ever be as popular. Everyone would remember the failure and the death.
After that, Conservapedia might peak in popularity when people Google for Wikipedia alternatives, but they may not find this site too useful. They will probably turn to other sites. Many people have cited Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has cited them (forming information of questionable veracity).[29] There will be a permanent toll on knowledge, and historians of the future will have more sludge to trudge through, but maybe people will return to print books and accredited sources.
References
- ↑ "Diderot, Denis". Encyclopædia Britannica. 15th ed.
- ↑ http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/french-literature-biographies/denis-diderot
- ↑ "Denis Diderot. Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers". The Metropolitan Museum. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/591843
- ↑ "Diderot". The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/diderot/
- ↑ "Encyclopædia Britannica". Encyclopedia Britannica Online.
- ↑ Introduction of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th edition.
- ↑ Alexa Online Rankings.
- ↑ Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2014/12/wikipedia-is-more-biased-than-britannica-but-dont-blame-the-crowd
- ↑ "Is Wikipedia More Biased than Encyclopedia Britannica?" http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/is-wikipedia-more-biased-than-encyclopdia-britannica
- ↑ Conservapedia exists.
- ↑ Recent changes, see left.
- ↑ "Conservapedia". The Colbert Report.
- ↑ "Examples of Vandalism on Conservapedia". Conservapedia.
- ↑ "The Society for the Preservation of the Quazer Beast". Wikipedia.
- ↑ Howard, Brian. The Art of Writing. Everbind Books: 2003. See, I faked that book citation, how hard could it be to do another?
- ↑ http://techland.time.com/2011/08/05/dont-panic-yet-but-wikipedias-losing-contributors/
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_is_Wikipedia_losing_contributors_-_Thinking_about_remedies
- ↑ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/wikipedia-millions-bank-beg/
- ↑ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/20/cash_rich_wikipedia_chugging/
- ↑ http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wikipedia-fundraising-drive-should-you-donate-money-wikipedia-foundation-1531912
- ↑ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.https://plato.stanford.edu/
- ↑ New Georgia Encyclopedia.http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/
- ↑ "Conservapedia.com". Alexa Online Rankings. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/conservapedia.com
- ↑ "Britannica.com". Alexa Online Rankings. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/britannica.com
- ↑ "Eb.com". Alexa Online Rankings. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/eb.com
- ↑ "Singout.org". Alexa Online Rankings.
- ↑ "K12.ms.us". Alexa Online Rankings.
- ↑ "Godtube.com". Alexa Online Rankings.
- ↑ xkcd.com/978/
See Also
External Links
- Translation of Diderot's original encyclopedia
- ERIC
- Academic Search Premier
- ProQuest
- JSTOR
- Project MUSE
