The Britannica was a major source of information for me for many years. May it have a long life on the Internet.

Personally I haven’t used a library since 4 years ago at uni, all my research is online now. I do miss real encyclopaedia britannicas though, the pictures used to keep me entertained for ages.

I hope Britannica does continue. I learned a lot from it over the years — the pre-Internet years anyway.

And I’ve learned a lot from the Encyclopedia Britannica. When I traveled through Europe in 1985, I read many EB articles in many libraries, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. (Wikipedia link!)

Great example Dave, and that’s why few Wikipedia articles are written by top experts. I personally haven’t written anything for Wikipedia, even though I really like the site and do you use it frequently, in part because I don’t want to deal with someone editing my work and having to check on it.

That said, there are a lot of smart people who are willing to write for Wikipedia and deal with edits and hassles. They may not be the top people in the field, but in many cases they don’t need to be. They just need to have a very good understanding of the topic and be able to explain it well.

Blogging is definitely not well rewarded in academia. I do know of a few profs who blog regularly, but it’s usually in conjunction with promoting popular books they’ve written or their field is specifically education itself.

Academics typically have to work very hard, so they must do those activities with the highest payoff.

EB was citeable to some extent. Not, perhaps, for graduate level work, but still, eminently more authoritative-from-an-expertise perspective. EB authors were selected according to true expertise in their fields. So it’s too bad wikipedia drove them out of business.

Let’s do a little thought experiment.

Suppose I’m a world class authority on implicit discrete element methods, where this authority is granted by peers, colleagues and superiors in the field of study. This kind of authority cannot be “earned” via SEO, or even by publishing papers. It has to be earned over time, incrementally, as one’s expertise is demonstrated. In short, one can do the mathematics, or one cannot, and over time it’s clear.

Now, supposing I wanted to share my expertise on wikipedia. Seems reasonable, right?

Ok, so I spend many hours polishing my material, writing in a more audience friendly form, ensuring the math is, in fact, correct.

Then I publish it on wikipedia.

Where it can be immediately edited by anyone with a wikipedia account regardless of their expertise.

What then? Re-edit to “fix” the changes? Put the article in my RSS feed to monitor changes?

For no personal credit and no money?

Makes no sense to me.

Evidently, it doesn’t make much sense to very many other world class authorities either.

It would, however, feel stupendous to be selected as an EB author for my field.

Anyway, I’m volunteering to teach all day tomorrow (Saturday), so I better leave it here.

Just to be clear, I believe academics *should* do a little more blogging, it’s just not part of the reward structure