Das Wall Street Journal Online hat ein Streitgespräch zwischen Jimbo Wales von Wikipedia und Dale Hoiberg von Britannica: Will Wikipedia Mean the End Of Traditional Encyclopedias?

At a gathering of Wikipedia contributors last month, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales urged them to put more emphasis on quality instead of quantity. In a bid to battle vandalism, the German version of the site is testing a new feature that will let administrators flag versions of articles as „nonvandalized,“ and those are the pages that will be shown to most visitors.

Can Wikipedia’s everyone’s-an-editor approach produce a reliable resource tool without scholarly oversight? Are traditional encyclopedias like Britannica limited by lack of input?