别了，大英百科全书
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登陆维基百科（Wikipedia），输入“重商主义”和“马六甲海峡”这两个词条，显示的结果都要优于在《大英百科全书》（The Encyclopaedia Britannica）的移动应用中查询到的结果。 这对于大英百科全书来说可不是件好事，因为这些内容本应是大英百科全书的长项。尽管维基百科的涵盖范围要广泛得多【甚至就连已经播了22季的美国动画片《辛普森一家》（The Simpsons】，维基百科也不厌其详地记录了它每一集的剧情。此外维基还收录了英国乐队平克•弗洛伊德的所有唱片），但人们还是觉得大英百科全书在学术问题上更权威些。但事实往往并不是这样。《大英百科全书》的“马六甲海峡”词条里没有地图，而维基却有。而且维基百科对“重商主义”一词的解释也更具可读性、更清晰、更详尽。 正如同外界长期预测的那样，近日《大英百科全书》宣布，将停止销售自1768年发行至今的印刷版百科全书。现在大英百科全书将完全依赖它的数码产品，也就是它的网站和应用。虽然它的部分信息是免费的，但大多数内容还是要收费。 大英百科全书有限公司（Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc.）的总裁乔治•考茨对美联社（Associated Press）称：“这件事与维基百科或谷歌（Google）都没有关系，主要是由于现在《大英百科全书》已经在向大量人群销售数码产品。” 当然这并不全是真话。该公司表示，《大英百科全书》大概有50万付费用户，而有1亿多用户则是通过图书馆和学校访问《大英百科全书》。说印刷版大《英百科全书》的终结与维基百科和谷歌“完全没有关系”，这是在否认事实。《华尔街日报》（Wall Street Journal）指出，超过一半的谷歌搜索都会把维基百科的相关页面排在第一位。相比之下，只有不到0.5%的关键词搜索会把《大英百科全书》的页面列到搜索结果里，并将搜索者导向它的网站。 这并不是说《大英百科全书》的实用性已经不复存在了。由于它的编写和编撰工作非常谨慎，因此只要是它所涵盖的内容，它仍是一个非常权威的来源，至少在可靠性和精确性上是勿庸置疑的。比如说，如果你想在学年论文里引用人类登月的确切日期，你绝对可以相信《大英百科全书》登载的内容是正确的。维基百科的词条可能也是正确的，但由于任何人随时都可以编辑词条（或者在网站上搞破坏），因此特定事实必须与其它来源交叉引用——引文链接往往位于维基词条页面的底部（为了保证安全性，交叉引用大英百科全书也不失为一个好主意）。 不过，在许多情况下，人们只是想看到对某个事物的综述，对像“重商主义”这种词汇有个大体的了解即可，不必深究细节。在这种情况下（或者一个读者想知道月球背面是什么样时），维基百科往往和大英百科全书做得一样好，甚至往往还要胜出一筹。不过维基百科词条的质量波动很大，比如许多关于“马六甲海峡”的事实都未注明来源，该词条页面顶端就严正注明了这一点（“本文需要额外的引文作为验证。请引用可靠消息来源帮我们改善这篇文章。无来源的材料可能遭到怀疑和删除。”——维基百科）但是对于大多数情况来说，维基的内容完全可以满足大多数用户了。 |
Wikipedia's entries for "Mercantilism" and "The Strait of Malacca" are better than the entries in The Encyclopaedia Britannica's mobile app. This is bad for Britannica because subjects like those are supposed to be right in the venerable encyclopedia's wheelhouse. While Wikipedia is far more wide-ranging, with exhaustive entries for each episode of The Simpsons and all of Pink Floyd's albums, Britannica is often assumed to be superior on academic subjects. But often, it isn't. Its "Strait of Malacca" entry includes no map; Wikipedia's does. And Wikipedia's "Mercantilism" article is vastly more readable, clearer, and more exhaustive (at least, as of March 14, 2012 at 7:58 a.m. PDT.). As had been long expected, Britannica has announced that it will stop selling printed versions of the encyclopedia, which has been published since 1768. It will now rely entirely on its digital products -- its Web site and apps, where it makes some information available free, but puts most of the content behind paywalls. "This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google," Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. President Jorge Cauz told the Associated Press. "This has to do with the fact that now Britannica sells its digital products to a large number of people." But of course that's not entirely true. The company says about half a million individuals pay for access, while more than 100 million get access through libraries and schools. But to say the demise of the print edition has "nothing" to do with Wikipedia and Google (GOOG) is to deny reality. The Wall Street Journal notes that more than half of Google searches put a Wikipedia page in the No. 1 position in the results. And less than a half-percent of searches on terms that put Britannica pages in the results actually draw searchers to the site. None of which is to say that Britannica has outlived its usefulness. Thanks to the fact that it is carefully written and edited, it remains an authoritative source on the subjects it covers, at least in terms of reliability and accuracy. If you need to cite the date of the first lunar landing in a term paper, you can rest assured that Britannica has it right. Wikipedia probably does, too, but because anyone can edit (or vandalize) the site at any moment, particular facts must in all cases be cross-referenced with other sources -- which are often linked to right at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry. (It's usually a good idea to cross-reference Britannica as well, just to be safe.) In many cases, though, people just want an overview of a subject, to gain a general understanding of, say, mercantilism. In cases like that (and certainly in cases where a reader wants to know all about Dark Side of the Moon), Wikipedia is often at least as good as, and often better than, Britannica. Quality fluctuates wildly on Wikipedia - many of the facts in its Strait of Malacca article are unsourced, for example (which is duly noted at the top of the page), but for perhaps the majority of uses, it suits most users just fine. |
