Well, sometimes it is really nice being right :)
Erik shared with me the following news item about Britannica launching a wiki-based version of their website. I actually blogged about very similar idea about a year and a half ago. Now we will have to wait and see whether or not they will do it well.
June 11, 2008 at 12:37 pm |
It’s worth noting that Microsoft Encarta tried and failed to go Wiki. They failed miserably because they said they were retaining all the rights and profits. Clay Shirky chronicles the experiment briefly in his new book, Here Comes Everbody. Basically—and this is Shirky’s telling—early on, people were skeptical of whether Wikipedia would try to make a profit off their work, to the extent that their concern was making the project shaky. So the founders went and made it a non-profit with an open license, and people stayed. They liked the idea of contributing to the commons for posterity. But they staunchly refused to get in on the Microsoft version, because Microsoft was going to be profiting off their work, and basically giving them nothing in return. The commercial product wasn’t for posterity in the same way the WikiMedia one was.
June 11, 2008 at 1:37 pm |
Agreed! As i wrote, we will have to wait and see whether or not Britannica will do it well. Simply putting a wiki out there will not work (as we have learned :).
June 11, 2008 at 4:56 pm |
Ah, crowdsourcing@mdash;a bitch-goddess if there ever was one.