Thursday, October 12, 2006

Fitting words for an epitaph.

The Wall Street Journal asked Mr. Wales--the founder of Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia--and Mr. Hoiberg--the editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, stodgy old-fashioned thing with pages and covers--to have a talk.

Mr. Hoiberg: No, we don't publish rough drafts. We want our articles to be correct before they are published. We stand behind our process, based on trained editors and fact-checkers, more than 4,000 experts, and sound writing. Our model works well. Wikipedia is very different, but nothing in their model suggests we should change what we do.
Mr. Wales: Fitting words for an epitaph…
Which would you rather have: A book that's obsolete the second it's published or an online resource that renews itself every day? Oh yeah... and one of them is free.

2 comments:

BubbaJoe said...

I think you have the names reversed in either your summary or your quote...

Shocho said...

Damn! You're right! Luckily, I'm using a web-based forum in which corrections can easily be made, as opposed to a published book which can't be changed after it's printed.