Mreow! Wikipedia gets the claws out on the Encyclopaedia Britannica

Wikipedia:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia

It’s actually not that long a list, I’d have expected it to be longer if I had thought about it. Anyway it begins with a few little digs before launching into the list:

One statement that has been sometimes called an error is Britannica’s statement in the article “Encyclopedia Britannica” that it is the “oldest and largest English-language general encyclopedia.” If Wikipedia’s claim to be an encyclopedia is accepted, then this statement is erroneous because Wikipedia contains more words and articles than Britannica. Although Britannica has at times referred to Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, it has also referred to Wikipedia as “the Internet database that allows anyone… to edit” when responding to Nature’s defense of Wikipedia, apparently rejecting Wikipedia’s claim to be an encyclopedia. It is perhaps worth noting that the accuracy of the label “oldest English-language general encyclopedia” hinges on the meaning of the words “oldest” and “general”. Encyclopedia Britannica is certainly not the first English-language encyclopedia; though it may be considered the one with the greatest longevity, as many of the earlier English-language encyclopedias are no longer published.

They have a point about the “largest” but I think it’s pretty reasonable to use “oldest” to mean “oldest to have survived”.

I was actually thinking of getting the Encyclopedia Britannica again a while ago. Wikipedia is brilliant but if you were to list the errors that it has published at one time or another…