Left vs Right mindset on lots and lots of issues.

Though I’m a sucker for information visualisation I should disclose. Data and concepts such as this can (and should) be interesting.

As an aside, here’s a TED talk showing some pretty funky visualisation:

I posted that up earlier as one of my “ten wow must see TED videos“.

That said, wikipedia has significant issues because it opens the doors to anyone to edit and because it lacks the required basic functionality needed to cope with different types of English e.g. Australian, British, Canadian, US etc). It also sucks because there’s no accountability and the place has its “elite” untouchable editors who can get away with things that would have other editors permanently banned. Britannica could do well to learn from those lessons and require real names and make sure the English is at least consistent.

Reading reading.. Oh, and so it has! Well done Britannica!

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.

Fantastic. It already beats wikipedia because it cancels out a whole bunch of spooky secretive abrasive editors. That means at least there’s a hope in hell that people who are working with an agenda to promote a company, skew definitions or simply muddy an issue will be detected eventually.

I do have to agree on the comment about how wikipedia rises to the top entry on many search results (thanks to its technical policy of never rewarding source articles as far as marking links as “not to be considered” by search engines).

“If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia,” he said.”Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?”

I think wikipedia also benefits in web popularity from being the equivalent of the McDonalds of information: cheap, generally roughly good enough, cooked by a large staff of unskilled people and lots of people go there, even if it isn’t that good for you sometimes. Britannica’s more of a high class restaurant: expensive, more exclusive, but a limited menu prepared by gourmet chefs. So perhaps this new addition to their offering is like offering a buffet on the side.