User:Mbecker/Theory: The future of Encyclopedia Britannica

What is this?!

What follows is my personal theory on the future of Encyclopedia Britannica. It was partially inspired by this article in the BBC. I hope to one day develop a proposal for Encyclopedia Britannica to choose the second path. Feel free to leave comments on the talk page.

The Theory

Encyclopedia Britannica is eventually going to have to admit it is slowly being marginalized by the advent of the information age. Their business model will not hold up forever, they won't be able to stay competitive in the future, especially with Wikipedia around. A parallel can be drawn between the Open Source movement and Wikipedia. Some companies like IBM can see that the Open Source community is an enormous resource for them to harness and that if they do not jump on board them will eventually be crushed. By adopting and supporting the Open Source movement companies like IBM are ensuring their survival in the long term. Encyclopedia Britannica and other resources also have a similar choice to make. They have two choices on the direction to take their company in the future. Choice one, which seems to be the path they are taking, is to try and discredit the competition, i.e. Wikipedia. This is an option that will only work in the short run. If Wikipedia has proven anything over its few years of existence, it has shown that it will only continue to grow and improve in an exponential fashion. It's tireless and continuingly growing army of contributors will continue to power that growth and improvement over the long run. Encyclopedia Britannica could not ever claim to have accomplished as much as Wikipedia has in the short five years it has been in existence!

This brings me to the second path Encyclopedia Britannica can take. They can choose to adjust with the times, and ultimately ensure the survival of their product and company in the long run, like IBM. They could easily become part of the movement. They could assign their writers to improving Wikipedia’s article, adding and improving content, and in return, the vast resource know as Wikipedia would be their to use as they see fit. Imagine the fiscal opportunity THOUSANDs of Wikipedians represents to a company like Encyclopedia Britannica. Thousands of editors working for free to scrutinize, improve, fix, and maintain content which Encyclopedia Britannica can then use in their product. Encyclopedia Britannica would be making a huge mistake by not taking advantage of the power of Wikipedia as a resource. They simply can not keep up with the growth of a publication like Wikipedia, and as the saying goes, “if you can’t beat them join them.” By taking advantage of the huge power and resources that is the Wikipedia community, Encyclopedia Britannica can ensure their survival in the long term. To come out with new revised print versions of their encyclopedia, they would simply have to decide what content from Wikipedia that they want to harvest. They could assign employees to find good articles, and trim them down if they like, and then put those articles in their next edition. This would allow for them to quickly and cheaply update their print edition, saving large sums in editorial costs and increasing their turn around rate of publishing. This would also help them come up with a better electronic edition since they could work with easily create an electronic edition with the MediaWiki software. Taking this route would allow them to stay current and relevant in the not so far away future when their encyclopedia quickly is overwhelmed by Wikipedia.

So here is the choice Encyclopedia Britannica is presented with, fight against change like so many before them, and become just another article in Wikipedia, or choose the long term sustainable path, of acceptance of change, and take advantage of new technologies such as Wikipedia and continue to thrive as a cutting edge resource.

The future will not wait for Encyclopedia Britannica to make up its mind, if they do not act soon enough, they will quickly realize the error in their ways. Wikipedia doesn't hate Encyclopedia Britannica; in fact it is much more realistic to say that we aspire to be the Encyclopedia Britannica of the future, for all of man-kind. We once aspired to be as big as Encyclopedia Britannica, but we have long since surpassed it in number of article. Now we aspire to become a complete and high quality a resource comparable in quality to Encyclopedia Britannica. We are already well on our way to this goal, with a large portion of our content is already on a par with or superior to Encyclopedia Britannica's content. We get closer to that goal with every edit made by our army of devoted editors.

It is obvious to me which choice Encyclopedia Britannica should take here. The question is; will they see it before it is too late?