Henry at Crooked Timber posted an essay discussing intellectual standards (or lack thereof) on display in analysis of Internet-based knowledge sources vs. traditional sources (e.g. Wikipedia vs. Encyclopedia Britannica). Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly also followed up.

Henry's essay generated this comment:

.> And I can’t stress how very standard

> Wikipedia is, in terms of the commune/cult

> pattern

which triggered my thoughts below.

Whereas I am always struck by how similar the goings-on at Wikipedia are to what acquaintances who have worked in commercial information publishing tell me happens behind closed doors at those entities. Very few encyclopedia insiders have ever broken the veil, but the essays by Asimov and Feynman tend to confirm what I have heard from much smaller players.

Does Britannica have access to substantial experts who can make definitive statements on certain topics? Yes. At the same time, topics where definitive statements can be made usually have pretty good entries in Wikipedia too. I have looked up Wikipedia articles on certain lesser-known electric power generation technology and found them more thorough and better written than Britannica's.

When you get to controversial historical and political topics, of course, Wikipedia's entries go crazy. But is that different from Britannica? Or just carried out in the open? What would a Britannica article on the Tuskegee Experiments written for the 1970 edition had said? Nothing. Yet some of Britannica's medical contributors _had_ to have known those experiments were going on. How would that compare to a crazy, "conspiracy theory" (parallel universe) Wikipedia entry on the same subject in 1970? Would the answer be different in 1974?

Perhaps this could be addressed by entities such as Britannica providing more of their reference and source information, and the identities of the authors of their entries. That would allow the concerned reader to dig deeper and judge the trustworthiness of the material (and the "experts") for themselves. Then again, wouldn't that make them more like Wikipedia?

sPh