Interesting news on how Brittannia is taking on Wikipedia by allowing users to contribute contribute for the first time in its history. Especially like the fact this will feed through to the printed version of the encyclopedia – which is published every two years:
In effort to compete with Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica company is opening up their online version to editing by contributors everywhere. Unlike Wikipedia, however, all changes will be reviewed and edited before being posted.
The new website features will enable the inclusion of user generated content, and will be available on the site within the next twenty four hours.
Encyclopedia Britannica is a 241 year old publication, and they are making these changes to their site to encourage more community input, more use, and – most importantly – to increase their rankings on search engines.
Unlike Wikipedia updates, all of the additions and changes made on Britannica will have to be reviewed and edited before the changes go live on the site. The company has set a 20-minute turnaround to update the site with user-submitted edits to existing articles – though with the popularity of Wikipedia, this may not be possible if the service takes off.
The concept behind user generated content is that much of it will eventually appear in the printed version of the encyclopedia – which is published every two years.