Wikipedia talk:Articles that are more comprehensive than on Encyclopædia Britannica

MfD Result Notice

This page was the subject of an MfD discussion closed on 26 August 2007. The result was keep, tag as historical. Xoloz 00:20, 26 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do we limit this to shared articles? If we include all the fancruft and the articles about every hamlet in the US we beat them hands down, but I don't know that we end up with a very meaningful comparison. Guettarda 30 June 2005 12:42 (UTC)

By all means... however, almost every article in the EB, from what I understand, is comprehensive. And the EB prides itself in not including fancruft articles :-) (we definitely beat them in this regard!) - Ta bu shi da yu 30 June 2005 12:53 (UTC)

I'd tend to say that the intent here is to compare 'real' articles to 'real' articles—we'd like to show we can beat them at their own game, as it were. I might suggest looking through the Featured Articles and FA Candidates to find possible entries for this page. I also suspect that Wikipedia will have a distinct edge when it comes to more technical topics: computers; molecular biology; particle physics and cosmology; that sort of thing. Where a subject-matter expert has taken the time to edit here (sometimes with followup by a copyeditor who speaks lay English), the result is often very good stuff. --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 30 June 2005 12:57 (UTC)

Hey... one thing I forgot to add is: you need to have a copy of EB... which (stupid me) I forgot I don't have a copy of!!!!! Gah! Maybe time to get a subscription to them? Now that would be ironic: they make money from Wikipedians getting subscriptions to see if our content is just as good :-) - Ta bu shi da yu 30 June 2005 13:05 (UTC)

What about content that they don't have? You can search them online and see an article summary. In some cases (like "my" recent FA, Democratic Labour Party (Trinidad and Tobago)) you don't need to see their article. They also claim to offer a free trial, though that feature is down at the moment. Failing that, there's always the option of heading over to the library, pull the book off the shelf, and (assuming that the library has internet access) pulling up Wiki and comparing. Would a 2003 or 2002 EB work? I doubt they change that much from year to year. You could always list the edition to which you're comparing article X. Guettarda 30 June 2005 13:18 (UTC)

Perhaps I should have said "articles that EB has or should have". Democratic Labour Party (Trinidad and Tobago) would definitely fall into that category. Articles about Star Wars Grand Moffs might be detailed and well-written, but they're not really the sort of thing that one expects EB to cover. --TenOfAllTrades(talk) 30 June 2005 14:32 (UTC)

Nah, you can't compare an existent Wikipedia article to a non-existent Britannia one. That's too easy - we have twice as many articles than they do, and by definition any amount of text is more comprehensive than no amount of text. If both articles exist, then we have something to compare. R adiant _>|< June 30, 2005 17:43 (UTC)

I think that FAs should qualify, once they are on mainstream topics. OTOH, maybe we need two separate lists, one of existing and one of what's missing. Guettarda 30 June 2005 18:06 (UTC)

So ours is bigger than theirs. Can we demonstrate that our longer article is "better" than their shorter one? I'd suggest that this kind of comparison should not be made by us, but by independent experts who can evaluate the content of the articles, and not just the size. Filiocht | Talk July 1, 2005 07:52 (UTC)

This is not so much an external "look how good we are" sort of page, this is really an internal "look how far we have come, but look how far we have yet to go" sort of page. You'll notice that I have specific things to look at when comparing articles. My hope is that this leads to be better articles and a more quality place for people to read. - Ta bu shi da yu 1 July 2005 07:54 (UTC)

OK, have hit my limit for the day

Can't see any more EB article summaries. I've shown a suggested standard, let's give that a shot. We'll need to do a distributed check. - Ta bu shi da yu 1 July 2005 02:42 (UTC)

Thoughts

I think this page is a great idea, it's nice to see where we are providing better information than established sources. However, I think it would also be good to see where we are not doing so well, so we can see where to target efforts. Maybe this page could broaden out into a general comparison of articles we have in common with Britannica, and with Encarta also, where people could identify where our standards need to be raised? One approach might be to start with the Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have and compare those systematically with what our competitors offer.

The other way around

Actually, we need a page like "Articles that are less comprehensive than on Encyclopaedia Britannica" which can be used for people who are will to fix gaps in wikipedia. A "work done" section would be pretty much the same what you did. -- 84.176.230.70 3 July 2005 15:25 (UTC)

Take a look at Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles for ideas there. slambo July 3, 2005 15:30 (UTC)

Some general remarks

Wikipedia tends to be better with narrow topics, where Britannica often fails to have an article. On the other hand Britannica often has good overview articles which Wikipedia lacks.

As an example Britannica has a great overview article on the Icelandic sagas - whereas our article is basically a list (see also Norse saga - which is a mess). On the other hand Britannica doesn't have an article on Hrafnkels saga (though it is mentioned briefly in their overview article), where we have a featured article.

When the "missing articles" project is finished I dream of a project where we go through every Britannica article and compare it with the relevant Wikipedia article, with the goal of being more comprehensive in each case :)

- Haukurth 3 July 2005 16:06 (UTC)

Shortcut

Do you think we can create a shortcut for this article/page? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 3 July 2005 22:48 (UTC)

Sure, if we can find something better than WP:ATAMCTOEB. --cesarb 3 July 2005 23:07 (UTC)

WP:AMCEB. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 3 July 2005 23:11 (UTC)

Done. --cesarb 3 July 2005 23:27 (UTC)

discussion moved from article page to here

I like this idea, but how do we see the Britannica articles to compare? Also, why restrict to Featured Articles if we have candidates? alteripse 3 July 2005 03:40 (UTC)

I understand the objection, but if they are good enough to be comparable to the EB then they should be on FAC, then become featured and then we should compare them against the EB. This page is not a means of seeing which articles we have that exist on EB and Wikipedia (there is a project for this already), rather it is to compare the quality of our articles against the EB. We really need to compare the best of our articles with their own, otherwise I don't really feel there will be a purpose to this. - Ta bu shi da yu 3 July 2005 05:42 (UTC)

I repeat, do you have a suggestion on how to see the Britannica articles for comparison if we (or our usual library) don't happen to own the 2005 edition? Do you happen to own one or have easy access? alteripse 3 July 2005 12:08 (UTC)

Sorry... just noticed this (watchlist not working at the time). Sorry, I don't have it. Do any of our contributors have access to the EB? - Ta bu shi da yu 7 July 2005 15:14 (UTC)

I just discovered I have online access to Britannica through my university connection. Each of our first 3 articles I checked are far more detailed and comprehensive than the closest Britannica article: try puberty and glucokinase and Jeffrey Hudson. Brit's puberty article is much briefer and less detailed, with at least one error I spotted. Their GK coverage is especially bad: this has turned out to be a key regulation point, controlling insulin release and probably the brain's perception of blood sugar level, and their only mention of it is simply incorrect, as if it is of secondary importance and only operates at unusually high glucose levels. They have no article on Hudson. In my opinion these are good articles, but haven't been featured because they are of specialized interest or don't have pictures. I can offer many more but what do you want to do with this? alteripse 3 July 2005 12:32 (UTC)

OK, I will try to find some comparable articles between the two and will list results here for whatever you want to do with it. alteripse 3 July 2005 23:05 (UTC)

Inaccurate EB

Lachung [1] article is factually incorrect. It is 125 km from Gangtokno 43 as the EB article states. =Nichalp «Talk»= 18:45, September 2, 2005 (UTC)

Restricting this to featured articles is inappropriate

There are many non-featured articles which are better than those in Britannica and they will be in a majority among such articles for years, probably decades, to come. This page is almost dead, but maybe it wouldn't be if it was less restrictive.

Anyway, I came here to add Race and intelligence. Britannica only has a subsection five paragraphs long. The first three are not strictly on topic, and simply provide preparatory material for the predictable argument in the final two paragraphs that the topic does not merit discussion. There is no reference to recent (post 1930s) research or debate and the section is also highly U.S. centric. Hawkestone 21:33, 4 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]