On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 9:17 PM, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote: > 2008/12/22 Milos Rancic <[email protected]>: >> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 4:14 AM, Tim Starling <[email protected]> >> wrote: > >>> The following Firefox bookmarklet may be useful: >>> javascript:(function(){Darwin.Upsell.deactivate();})() > >> Thanks! It works well :) > > > They called the function "upsell"? *facepalm* Wikipedia doesn't need > to do anything to compete with Britannica, just leave them to collapse > under the weight of their own ineptitude. > > We should probably run a large public "Save Britannica!" campaign - > how to save a great historical encyclopedia, second only to the OED as > one of the great works of Anglophone non-fiction, from its own > business stupidity. I'm halfway serious. What could we do with a "Save > Britannica" campaign? > > (There are many ways in which it sucks, but it still manages > *consistent* quality better than en:wp. Better writing, too. A lot of > us wouldn't be doing this Wikipedia thing if we weren't encyclopedia > fans in the first place, and that includes Britannica.)
One idea came into my mind nearly after I wrote the first email in this thread. Britannica is a project which is in decline. So, why not to buy it? Yes, I know that it is a lot of money *now*, but it may be achievable in a couple of years (I saw now that Geni mentioned that we can't buy it). Then, I wanted to see what is the value of Britannica; without success. It is a "private company" (in US sense of that meaning; "public companies" in European sense are just companies owned by some local or state government; and in some specific circumstances). It is owned by Jacqui Safra, a billionaire [citation needed] [1], who may be an interesting partner to WMF. So, if it is not possible to buy it, I think that it is possible to make some deal to work together. And I think that it shouldn't be just about Britannica. There are a lot of high quality encyclopedias all over the world. WMF may think about some kind of cooperation with them. It is not possible anymore to have encyclopedia as a profitable company, so I think that the institutions which own encyclopedias will be more open for cooperation; including giving the content under the same license(s) as under Wikipedia content is. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Safra _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
