英国大不列颠百科全书

An interview at the Sydney Morning Herald with Encyclopedia Britannica president Jorge Cauz revealed that the encyclopedia plans to roll out on its web site user contributed content within the next 24 hours. The change in policy is clearly aimed squarely at Wikipedia, which Cauz criticized as being “very uneven” and containing “plenty of cracks.”

《大不列颠百科全书》总裁豪尔赫·考兹在《悉尼先驱晨报》上接受采访时透露，该百科全书计划在未来24小时内在其网站上推出用户贡献的内容。 政策的改变显然直接针对了维基百科，卡兹(Cauz)批评维基百科“非常不平衡”并且包含“大量裂缝”。

Cauz said that adding user created content to the encyclopedia would help readers to better learn about the subjects they’re researching by giving them a chance to edit, update, or create their own content. But if there was one theme the permeated the entire interview, it was that Britannica is sick of playing second fiddle to Wikipedia online. Cauz even took a pot shot at Google for allowing Wikipedia entries to rank so highly.

Cauz说，将用户创建的内容添加到百科全书中将使读者有机会编辑，更新或创建自己的内容，从而帮助读者更好地了解他们正在研究的主题。 但是，如果整个采访中都有一个主题，那就是大不列颠厌倦了在线播放维基百科的第二小提琴。 Cauz甚至因为允许Wikipedia条目排名很高而在Google上大发雷霆。

“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?”

他说：“如果我要担任Google的首席执行官或Google的创始人，我会非常不高兴，世界上最好的搜索引擎仍会继续作为第一个链接提供，” Wikipedia。 “这是他们能做到的最好的吗？ 这是他们算法所能做的最好的吗？”

We found in September that Wikipedia does indeed rank very highly on Google for the most searched for terms, appearing on the first page of results for the majority of them. However, the greater question is whether adding community created content will really help Britannica compete.

我们在9月份发现，对于搜索得最多的术语， 维基百科确实在Google上排名很高，大多数术语都出现在搜索结果的首页上。 但是，更大的问题是，添加社区创建的内容是否真的会帮助Britannica竞争。

Encyclopedia Britannica won’t just be turning over its content to the masses to edit wiki-style. Rather, community edits will be vetted by the company’s staff of expert writers before being posted to the site. Eventually, changes made via the community content submission process could find their way into the printed version of the encyclopedia, says Cauz, which is reprinted every two years.

不列颠百科全书不仅仅将其内容移交给大众来编辑Wiki风格。 相反，社区编辑将在发布到站点之前，由公司的专家作家团队审核。 Cauz说，最终，通过社区内容提交过程进行的更改可能会进入百科全书的印刷版，每两年重印一次。

However, Britannica is not the first Wikipedia alternative to try competing based on authority. Most notably is Citizendium, a Wikipedia competitor that requires authors to provide their real name (Britannica will, too), and only publishes articles that have been approved by “qualified” experts. I took a look at Citizendium in April 2007, a month after it launched, and found it lacking at the time. Though it was only a month old, the encyclopedia had just 13 approved articles and 1625 being written — leaving it well short of Wikipedia.

但是，大英百科全书不是第一个尝试基于权威进行竞争的Wikipedia替代方案。 最著名的是Citizendium ，它是Wikipedia的竞争对手，它要求作者提供真实姓名(Britannica也将提供)，并且仅发表经“合格”专家认可的文章。 在Citizendium推出一个月后的2007年4月，我看了一下它，发现当时还缺少它。 尽管只有一个月的历史，但该百科全书只有13篇已获批准的文章，并撰写了1625篇文章，远远低于Wikipedia。

Though it was difficult to make judgments about quality, especially with so few articles approved at the time, I found that Citizendium was not markedly better the Wikipedia, and was in some cases noticeably worse. Almost two years later, the site has just 89 approved articles and just over 9100 under development — compare that to Wikipedia, which is growing at a rate of over 1400 articles per day. The real measure of success, however, is traffic, and in that department Citizendium is not performing very well. Compete data shows that while Wikipedia gets almost 60 million visitors per month, Citizendium barely registers.

尽管很难对质量做出判断，尤其是当时批准的文章很少，但我发现Citizendium并不明显优于Wikipedia，在某些情况下明显更差。 差不多两年后，该站点只有89篇已获批准的文章，而正在开发的文章超过9100篇，与Wikipedia相比，后者每天以1400篇之多的速度增长。 但是，成功的真正衡量标准是流量，而该部门的公民表现不佳。 竞争数据显示，虽然Wikipedia每月有将近6000万访问者，但Citizendium几乎没有注册。

So can Britannica, taking an almost identical approach to Citizendium, really compete with Wikipedia? Well, there are some key differences that put Britannica in a better position to compete. First, while no where near the popularity of Wikipedia, Britannica is no slouch when it comes to traffic — Compete shows Britannica.com with a monthly audience of nearly 3 million visitors.

那么，大不列颠(Britannica)对公民身份采取几乎相同的方法，真的可以与维基百科竞争吗？ 好吧，有一些关键差异使大不列颠处于更好的竞争状态。 首先，虽然Wikipedia的普及率不高，但Britannica的流量却丝毫不逊色-Compete显示Britannica.com每月的访问者接近300万。

Second, Britannica has a much larger library of content to start with. Unlike Citizendium, which was starting from a basically blank slate. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Britannica’s database of articles has 46 million words — Wikipedia, meanwhile, had over 600 million words in 2006. But likely, no one visiting Britannica.com is going to complain about a lack of available material.

其次，不列颠尼加最初拥有一个更大的内容库。 不像公民公民，它是从一个基本空白的板块开始的。 根据《悉尼先驱晨报》的报道，大不列颠的文章数据库有4600万个单词，而Wikipedia 在2006年有超过6亿个单词。 但是很可能，没有人访问Britannica.com会抱怨缺乏可用材料。

So will user contributed content help Britannica to compete with Wikipedia? The bottom line answer is: probably not. Wikipedia will continue to be the web’s top general reference destination because its results are accurate enough for most people’s queries. Simply adding user content won’t make Britannica a more attractive reference destination.

那么，用户贡献的内容会帮助Britannica与Wikipedia竞争吗？ 底线答案是：可能不会。 维基百科将继续是网络上最常见的参考站点，因为它的结果对于大多数人的查询而言足够准确。 仅添加用户内容将不会使Britannica成为更具吸引力的参考目的地。

However, increased engagement with users can only be a good thing for the encyclopedia, and will undoubtedly raise traffic. Even though user generated content won’t ultimately help Britannica to take a bite out of Wikipedia’s dominance on the web, it will likely help strengthen their brand by building a community around it.

但是，增加与用户的互动对于百科全书来说只是一件好事，并且无疑会增加流量。 即使用户生成的内容最终不会帮助Britannica摆脱Wikipedia在网络上的统治地位，但它可能会通过围绕社区建立社区来帮助增强其品牌。

翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/britannica-plans-to-take-on-wikipedia-with-community-edits/

英国大不列颠百科全书