I realise that raw numbers are of little use in and of themselves, but
it is a sign of how extensive Wikipedia's coverage is compared to
Britannica's. Think of anything you like. If it's worthy of being in an
encyclopedia, chances are Wikipedia has an article on it, and the
chances are that Britannica doesn't. People will use Wikipedia more
because they know that there's a fair chance Wikipedia will be able to
tell them what they want to know - and the article numbers are an
indication of that breadth, not necessarily important in their own right
Cynical
Mathias Schindler wrote:
David Alexander Russell wrote:
Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica
Online has about 100,000
articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor) has
over a million?
Out of all figures, the raw number of "articles" (including those pages
which are in namespace=0 and lack any attribute of an article, such as
lists) is the worst and most ignorable number. EB.com's 100K are
shrinking to some 20.000 "articles" when you look at what's online
without subscription.
Out of this 20K, there are stubs, substubs and subsubstubs.
Some of the more veteran internet users might be able to remember the
Britannica Online desaster when their business plan collided with reality.
If any, an Wikipedia that accepts fancruft and unverifiable information
about the unreleased demo tape of a gothic band that stopped to exist
before releasing any other medium as a single article should not start
to see large numbers of articles as a sign of quality.
Mathias
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