The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society , until 2019 known as the Benton Foundation , is a nonprofit organization set up by former U.S. Senator William Benton and his wife, Helen Hemingway Benton. Their son, Charles Benton , served as chairman and CEO until his death in 2015.
116-706: The Benton Foundation was the owner of the Encyclopædia Britannica from 1974 until 1996, when it was bought by Jacqui Safra . The formation of the Benton Foundation was announced at the bicentennial banquet for the Britannica in 1968. The mission of the Foundation was re-vamped somewhat in 1981 by Charles Benton, but it has always focused on using media for the public good, particularly for educational purposes. Since 2001, Benton
232-512: A hierarchical outline of knowledge. The Micropædia was meant for quick fact-checking and as a guide to the Macropædia ; readers are advised to study the Propædia outline to understand a subject's context and to find more detailed articles. Over 70 years, the size of the Britannica has remained steady, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Though published in
348-515: A wiki created a catalyst for collaborative development, and that features such as allowing easy access to past versions of a page favored "creative construction" over "creative destruction". Any change that deliberately compromises Misplaced Pages's integrity is considered vandalism. The most common and obvious types of vandalism include additions of obscenities and crude humor; it can also include advertising and other types of spam. Sometimes editors commit vandalism by removing content or entirely blanking
464-711: A "Britannica Checked" stamp, to distinguish it from the user-generated content. On 14 September 2010, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. announced a partnership with mobile phone development company Concentric Sky to launch a series of iPhone products aimed at the K–12 market. On 20 July 2011, Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated announced that Concentric Sky had ported the Britannica Kids product line to Intel's Intel Atom -based Netbooks and on 26 October 2011 that it had launched its encyclopaedia as an iPad app . In 2010, Britannica released Britannica ImageQuest,
580-425: A database of images. In March 2012, it was announced that the company would cease printing the encyclopaedia set, and that it would focus on its online version. On 7 June 2018, Britannica released a Google Chrome extension , "Britannica Insights", which shows snippets of information from Britannica Online whenever the user performs a Google Search , in a box to the right of Google's results. Britannica Insights
696-462: A for-profit business. Misplaced Pages gained early contributors from Nupedia, Slashdot postings, and web search engine indexing. Language editions were created beginning in March 2001, with a total of 161 in use by the end of 2004. Nupedia and Misplaced Pages coexisted until the former's servers were taken down permanently in 2003, and its text was incorporated into Misplaced Pages. The English Misplaced Pages passed
812-548: A 💕 of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language". Though each language edition functions more or less independently, some efforts are made to supervise them all. They are coordinated in part by Meta-Wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation's wiki devoted to maintaining all its projects (Misplaced Pages and others). For instance, Meta-Wiki provides important statistics on all language editions of Misplaced Pages, and it maintains
928-401: A given page. Less common types of vandalism, such as the deliberate addition of plausible but false information, can be more difficult to detect. Vandals can introduce irrelevant formatting, modify page semantics such as the page's title or categorization, manipulate the article's underlying code, or use images disruptively. Obvious vandalism is generally easy to remove from Misplaced Pages articles;
1044-530: A list of articles every Misplaced Pages should have. The list concerns basic content by subject: biography, history, geography, society, culture, science, technology, and mathematics. It is not rare for articles strongly related to a particular language not to have counterparts in another edition. For example, articles about small towns in the United States might be available only in English, even when they meet
1160-515: A month, "according to the ratings firm comScore". As of March 2023 , it ranked 6th in popularity, according to Similarweb . Loveland and Reagle argue that, in process, Misplaced Pages follows a long tradition of historical encyclopedias that have accumulated improvements piecemeal through " stigmergic accumulation". On January 18, 2012, the English Misplaced Pages participated in a series of coordinated protests against two proposed laws in
1276-485: A new website redesign, called "Vector 2022". It featured a redesigned menu bar , moving the table of contents to the left as a sidebar , and numerous changes in the locations of buttons like the language selection tool. The update initially received backlash, most notably when editors of the Swahili Misplaced Pages unanimously voted to revert the changes. Unlike traditional encyclopedias, Misplaced Pages follows
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#17327651082591392-594: A partnership with YouTube in which verified Britannica content appeared on the site as an antidote to user-generated video content that could be false or misleading. Krishnan, an educator at New York University 's Stern School of Business , believes in the "transformative power of education" and set steering the company toward solidifying its place among leaders in educational technology and supplemental curriculum. Krishnan aimed at providing more useful and relevant solutions to customer needs, extending and renewing Britannica's historical emphasis on "utility", which had been
1508-539: A professor and scientist, said that the reason he thought the number of male contributors outnumbered the number of females so greatly was because identifying as a woman may expose oneself to "ugly, intimidating behavior". Data has shown that Africans are underrepresented among Misplaced Pages editors. Distribution of the 64,014,109 articles in different language editions (as of November 28, 2024) There are currently 339 language editions of Misplaced Pages (also called language versions , or simply Wikipedias ). As of November 2024,
1624-627: A single article; however, 64 contributed to three articles, 23 contributed to four articles, 10 contributed to five articles, and 8 contributed to more than five articles. An exceptionally prolific contributor is Christine Sutton of the University of Oxford , who contributed 24 articles on particle physics . While Britannica 's authors have included writers such as Albert Einstein , Marie Curie , and Leon Trotsky , as well as notable independent encyclopaedists such as Isaac Asimov , some have been criticized for lack of expertise. In 1911,
1740-401: A sometimes convoluted dispute resolution process, and learn a "baffling culture rich with in-jokes and insider references". Editors who do not log in are in some sense " second-class citizens " on Misplaced Pages, as "participants are accredited by members of the wiki community, who have a vested interest in preserving the quality of the work product, on the basis of their ongoing participation", but
1856-405: A study guide, as it puts subjects in their proper perspective and suggests a series of Britannica articles for the student wishing to learn a topic in depth. However, libraries have found that it is scarcely used for this purpose, and reviewers have recommended that it be dropped from the encyclopaedia. The Propædia contains color transparencies of human anatomy and several appendices listing
1972-460: A topic that is encyclopedic and is not a dictionary entry or dictionary-style. A topic should also meet Misplaced Pages's standards of "notability" , which generally means that the topic must have been covered in mainstream media or major academic journal sources that are independent of the article's subject. Further, Misplaced Pages intends to convey only knowledge that is already established and recognized. It must not present original research. A claim that
2088-518: Is a City award for competitive civic innovation which find groundbreaking and creative solutions to local challenges. Recipients include: On 9 February 2007, Benton Foundation Chairman and CEO Charles Benton received the Susan G. Hadden Pioneer Award from the Alliance for Public Technology for "pioneering efforts in telecommunications and consumer access." Encyclop%C3%A6dia Britannica This
2204-661: Is a website with more than 120,000 articles and is updated regularly. It has daily features, updates and links to news reports from The New York Times and the BBC . As of 2009 , roughly 60% of Encyclopædia Britannica's revenue came from online operations, of which around 15% came from subscriptions to the consumer version of the websites. As of 2006 , subscriptions were available on a yearly, monthly or weekly basis. Special subscription plans are offered to schools, colleges and libraries; such institutional subscribers constitute an important part of Britannica's business. Beginning in early 2007,
2320-432: Is an accepted version of this page The Encyclopædia Britannica ( Latin for 'British Encyclopaedia') is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia . It has been published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. since 1768, although the company has changed ownership seven times. The encyclopaedia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. The 2010 version of
2436-552: Is done by "insiders". A 2008 study found that Wikipedians were less agreeable, open, and conscientious than others, although a later commentary pointed out serious flaws, including that the data showed higher openness and that the differences with the control group and the samples were small. According to a 2009 study, there is "evidence of growing resistance from the Misplaced Pages community to new content". Several studies have shown that most Misplaced Pages contributors are male. Notably,
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#17327651082592552-462: Is for children aged three to six (issued 1974 to 1991). There have been, and are, several abridged Britannica encyclopaedias. The single-volume Britannica Concise Encyclopædia has 28,000 short articles condensing the larger 32-volume Britannica ; there are authorized translations in languages such as Chinese created by Encyclopedia of China Publishing House and Vietnamese . Compton's by Britannica , first published in 2007, incorporating
2668-488: Is home for the US center for OneWorld.net , a global information service, search engine, and network of organizations working for sustainable development and human rights. The foundation has been most famous for its championing of digital access and for demanding public responsibility by mass media. The Benton Foundation has pushed for a national broadband policy at the highest levels of U.S. government. It has also been pushing
2784-415: Is likely to be challenged requires a reference to a reliable source, as do all quotations. Among Misplaced Pages editors, this is often phrased as "verifiability, not truth" to express the idea that the readers, not the encyclopedia, are ultimately responsible for checking the truthfulness of the articles and making their own interpretations. This can at times lead to the removal of information which, though valid,
2900-734: Is not impersonation or anti-social, but rather edit warring and other violations of editing policies, solutions tend to be limited to warnings. Each article and each user of Misplaced Pages has an associated and dedicated "talk" page. These form the primary communication channel for editors to discuss, coordinate and debate. Misplaced Pages's community has been described as cultlike , although not always with entirely negative connotations. Its preference for cohesiveness, even if it requires compromise that includes disregard of credentials , has been referred to as " anti-elitism ". Misplaced Pages does not require that its editors and contributors provide identification. As Misplaced Pages grew, "Who writes Misplaced Pages?" became one of
3016-463: Is not properly sourced. Finally, Misplaced Pages must not take sides. As Misplaced Pages policies changed over time, and became more complex, their number has grown. In 2008, there were 44 policy pages and 248 guideline pages; by 2013, scholars counted 383 policy pages and 449 guideline pages. Misplaced Pages's initial anarchy integrated democratic and hierarchical elements over time. An article is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor, nor by
3132-493: Is on the subject of the United States, and it resulted from merging separate articles on the individual US states . A 2013 "Global Edition" of Britannica contained approximately 40,000 articles. Information can be found in the Britannica by following the cross-references in the Micropædia and Macropædia ; these are sparse, however, averaging one cross-reference per page. Readers are instead recommended to consult
3248-491: Is quite unique in organization studies, though there has been some recent interest in consensus building in the field. Joseph Reagle and Sue Gardner argue that the approaches to consensus building are similar to those used by Quakers . A difference from Quaker meetings is the absence of a facilitator in the presence of disagreement, a role played by the clerk in Quaker meetings. The Arbitration Committee presides over
3364-496: Is the case for the English edition). These differences may lead to some conflicts over spelling differences (e.g. colour versus color ) or points of view. Though the various language editions are held to global policies such as "neutral point of view", they diverge on some points of policy and practice, most notably on whether images that are not licensed freely may be used under a claim of fair use . Jimmy Wales has described Misplaced Pages as "an effort to create and distribute
3480-682: Is the largest and most-read reference work in history, and is consistently ranked among the ten most visited websites ; as of August 2024 , it was ranked fourth by Semrush , and seventh by Similarweb . Founded by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001, Misplaced Pages has been hosted since 2003 by the Wikimedia Foundation , an American nonprofit organization funded mainly by donations from readers. Initially only available in English, editions of Misplaced Pages in more than 300 other languages have been developed. The English Misplaced Pages , with its over 6.9 million articles,
3596-497: Is the largest of the editions, which together comprise more than 64 million articles and attract more than 1.5 billion unique device visits and 13 million edits per month (about 5 edits per second on average) as of April 2024 . As of November 2024 , over 25% of Misplaced Pages's traffic was from the United States, followed by Japan at 6.2%, the United Kingdom at 5.6%, Russia at 5.0%, Germany at 4.8%, and
Benton Institute for Broadband & Society - Misplaced Pages Continue
3712-625: The Columbia Journalism Review identified Misplaced Pages's page-protection policies as "perhaps the most important" means at its disposal to "regulate its market of ideas". In certain cases, all editors are allowed to submit modifications, but review is required for some editors, depending on certain conditions. For example, the German Misplaced Pages maintains "stable versions" of articles which have passed certain reviews. Following protracted trials and community discussion,
3828-414: The Britannica 's Board of Directors. In 2003, former management consultant Jorge Aguilar-Cauz was appointed President of Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated. Cauz is the senior executive and reports directly to the Britannica 's Board of Directors. Cauz has been pursuing alliances with other companies and extending the Britannica brand to new educational and reference products, continuing
3944-590: The Britannica has been revised on a regular schedule, with at least 10% of the articles considered for revision each year. According to one Britannica website, 46% of the articles in the 2007 edition were revised over the preceding three years; however, according to another Britannica website, only 35% of the articles were revised over the same period. The alphabetization of articles in the Micropædia and Macropædia follows strict rules. Diacritical marks and non-English letters are ignored, while numerical entries such as " 1812, War of " are alphabetized as if
4060-425: The Britannica included five Senior Editors and nine Associate Editors, supervised by Dale Hoiberg and four others. The editorial staff helped to write the articles of the Micropædia and some sections of the Macropædia . As of 2012, Britannica had an editorial board of advisors, which included a number of distinguished figures, primarily scholars from a variety of disciplines. Past and present members of
4176-479: The Britannica made articles freely available if they are hyperlinked from an external site. Non-subscribers are served pop-ups and advertising. On 20 February 2007, Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated announced that it was working with mobile phone search company AskMeNow to launch a mobile encyclopaedia. Users will be able to send a question via text message, and AskMeNow will search Britannica 's 28,000-article concise encyclopaedia to return an answer to
4292-493: The Britannica turned to focus more on its online edition. The Encyclopædia Britannica has been compared with other print encyclopaedias, both qualitatively and quantitatively. A well-known comparison is that of Kenneth Kister , who gave a qualitative and quantitative comparison of the 1993 Britannica with two comparable encyclopaedias, Collier's Encyclopedia and the Encyclopedia Americana . For
4408-540: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to determine the public interest obligations of digital television broadcasters. Finally, it has sponsored studies that suggest that concentration of media ownership in a few hands is not in the interests of the United States. Leonard Jay Schrager became new chairman of Benton in 2015 following the death of Benton Foundation Founder and Chairman Charles Benton who died on 29 April 2015. In 2019,
4524-519: The Philippines . In addition to the top six, twelve other Wikipedias have more than a million articles each ( Russian , Spanish , Italian , Polish , Egyptian Arabic , Chinese , Japanese , Ukrainian , Vietnamese , Waray , Arabic , and Portuguese ), seven more have over 500,000 articles ( Persian , Catalan , Indonesian , Serbian , Korean , Norwegian , and Turkish ), 44 more have over 100,000, and 82 more have over 10,000. The largest,
4640-688: The Royal Society of Edinburgh , and cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch . The Propædia and its Outline of Knowledge were produced by dozens of editorial advisors under the direction of Mortimer J. Adler . Roughly half of these advisors have since died, including some of the Outline's chief architects – Rene Dubos (d. 1982), Loren Eiseley (d. 1977), Harold D. Lasswell (d. 1978), Mark Van Doren (d. 1972), Peter Ritchie Calder (d. 1982) and Mortimer J. Adler (d. 2001). The Propædia also lists just under 4,000 advisors who were consulted for
4756-816: The United States Congress —the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA)—by blacking out its pages for 24 hours . More than 162 million people viewed the blackout explanation page that temporarily replaced its content. In January 2013, 274301 Misplaced Pages , an asteroid , was named after Misplaced Pages; in October 2014, Misplaced Pages was honored with the Misplaced Pages Monument ; and, in July 2015, 106 of
Benton Institute for Broadband & Society - Misplaced Pages Continue
4872-418: The deletion of articles on Misplaced Pages , with roughly 500,000 such debates since Misplaced Pages's inception. Once an article is nominated for deletion, the dispute is typically determined by initial votes (to keep or delete) and by reference to topic-specific notability policies. Content in Misplaced Pages is subject to the laws (in particular, copyright laws) of the United States and of the US state of Virginia , where
4988-830: The procrastination principle regarding the security of its content, meaning that it waits until a problem arises to fix it. Due to Misplaced Pages's increasing popularity, some editions, including the English version, have introduced editing restrictions for certain cases. For instance, on the English Misplaced Pages and some other language editions, only registered users may create a new article. On the English Misplaced Pages, among others, particularly controversial, sensitive, or vandalism-prone pages have been protected to varying degrees. A frequently vandalized article can be "semi-protected" or "extended confirmed protected", meaning that only "autoconfirmed" or "extended confirmed" editors can modify it. A particularly contentious article may be locked so that only administrators can make changes. A 2021 article in
5104-485: The 15th edition, which spans 32 volumes and 32,640 pages, was the last printed edition. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia . Printed for 244 years, the Britannica was the longest-running in-print encyclopaedia in the English language. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh , in three volumes. The encyclopaedia grew in size;
5220-436: The 2000s, it has improved over time, receiving greater praise from the late 2010s onward while becoming an important fact-checking site . Misplaced Pages has been censored by some national governments, ranging from specific pages to the entire site. Articles on breaking news are often accessed as sources for frequently updated information about those events. Various collaborative online encyclopedias were attempted before
5336-500: The 2007 Micropædia has roughly 65,000 articles, the vast majority (about 97%) of which contain fewer than 750 words, no references, and no named contributors. The Micropædia articles are intended for quick fact-checking and to help in finding more thorough information in the Macropædia . The Macropædia articles are meant as authoritative, well-written commentaries on their subjects, as well as storehouses of information not covered elsewhere. The longest article (310 pages)
5452-483: The 20th century, successful competitors included Collier's Encyclopedia , the Encyclopedia Americana , and the World Book Encyclopedia . Nevertheless, from the 9th edition onwards, the Britannica was widely considered to have the greatest authority of any general English-language encyclopaedia, especially because of its broad coverage and eminent authors. The print version of the Britannica
5568-698: The 7,473 700-page volumes of Misplaced Pages became available as Print Misplaced Pages . In April 2019, an Israeli lunar lander , Beresheet , crash landed on the surface of the Moon carrying a copy of nearly all of the English Misplaced Pages engraved on thin nickel plates; experts say the plates likely survived the crash. In June 2019, scientists reported that all 16 GB of article text from the English Misplaced Pages had been encoded into synthetic DNA . On January 20, 2014, Subodh Varma reporting for The Economic Times indicated that not only had Misplaced Pages's growth stalled, it "had lost nearly ten percent of its page views last year. There
5684-552: The Benton Foundation became the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. Revenue and support as of 2018: $ 378,188 Expenses as of 2018: $ 984,656 The Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion Award honors governance and commitment to improving digital equity which ranges from propagating accessible and affordable communications technology for all Americans and its successful implementation. Award winners: The Charles Benton Next Generation Engagement Award
5800-652: The English Misplaced Pages introduced the "pending changes" system in December 2012. Under this system, new and unregistered users' edits to certain controversial or vandalism-prone articles are reviewed by established users before they are published. However, restrictions on editing may reduce the editor engagement as well as efforts to diversify the editing community. Although changes are not systematically reviewed, Misplaced Pages's software provides tools allowing anyone to review changes made by others. Each article's History page links to each revision. On most articles, anyone can view
5916-499: The English Misplaced Pages, has over 6.9 million articles. As of January 2021, the English Misplaced Pages receives 48% of Misplaced Pages's cumulative traffic, with the remaining split among the other languages. The top 10 editions represent approximately 85% of the total traffic. Since Misplaced Pages is based on the Web and therefore worldwide, contributors to the same language edition may use different dialects or may come from different countries (as
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#17327651082596032-579: The Google Chrome browser that served up edited, fact-checked Britannica information with queries on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Its purpose, the company said, was to "provide trusted, verified information" in conjunction with search results that were thought to be increasingly unreliable in the era of misinformation and "fake news." The product was quickly followed by Britannica School Insights, which provided similar content for subscribers to Britannica's online classroom solutions, and
6148-798: The Life and Works of the Bard (Wiley, 2006). The Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2012 DVD contains over 100,000 articles. This includes regular Britannica articles, as well as others drawn from the Britannica Student Encyclopædia , and the Britannica Elementary Encyclopædia. The package includes a range of supplementary content including maps, videos, sound clips, animations and web links. It also offers study tools and dictionary and thesaurus entries from Merriam-Webster . Britannica Online
6264-585: The North American market. In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt "continuous revision", in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted, with every article updated on a schedule. In the 21st century, the Britannica suffered first from competition with the digital multimedia encyclopaedia Microsoft Encarta , and later with the online peer-produced encyclopaedia Misplaced Pages . In March 2012, it announced it would no longer publish printed editions and would focus instead on
6380-597: The Nupedia mailing list to create a wiki as a "feeder" project for Nupedia. Misplaced Pages was launched on January 15, 2001 as a single English-language edition at www.wikipedia.com, and was announced by Sanger on the Nupedia mailing list. The name originated from a blend of the words wiki and encyclopedia . Its integral policy of "neutral point-of-view" was codified in its first few months. Otherwise, there were initially relatively few rules, and it operated independently of Nupedia. Bomis originally intended for it to be
6496-462: The President of Encyclopædia Britannica announced that after 244 years, the encyclopaedia would cease print production and all future editions would be entirely digital. Misplaced Pages Misplaced Pages is a free content online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers , known as Wikipedians , through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki . Misplaced Pages
6612-632: The United States since 1901, the Britannica has for the most part maintained British English spelling . From 1985, the Britannica consisted of four parts: the Micropædia , the Macropædia , the Propædia , and a two-volume index. The Britannica 's articles are contained in the Micro- and Macropædia , which encompass 12 and 17 volumes, respectively, each volume having roughly one thousand pages. The 2007 Macropædia has 699 in-depth articles, ranging in length from two pages to 310 pages, with references and named contributors. In contrast,
6728-427: The alphabetical index or the Propædia , which organizes the Britannica 's contents by topic. The core of the Propædia is its "Outline of Knowledge", which aims to provide a logical framework for all human knowledge. Accordingly, the Outline is consulted by the Britannica 's editors to decide which articles should be included in the Micro- and Macropædia . The Outline can also be used as
6844-480: The automated rejection of edits may have contributed to a downturn in active Misplaced Pages editors. Over time, Misplaced Pages has developed a semiformal dispute resolution process. To determine community consensus, editors can raise issues at appropriate community forums, seek outside input through third opinion requests, or initiate a more general community discussion known as a "request for comment". Misplaced Pages encourages local resolutions of conflicts, which Jemielniak argues
6960-518: The board have included: non-fiction author Nicholas Carr , religion scholar Wendy Doniger , political economist Benjamin M. Friedman , Council on Foreign Relations President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb , computer scientist David Gelernter , Physics Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann , Carnegie Corporation of New York President Vartan Gregorian , philosopher Thomas Nagel , cognitive scientist Donald Norman , musicologist Don Michael Randel , Stewart Sutherland, Baron Sutherland of Houndwood , President of
7076-506: The committee does not dictate the content of articles, although it sometimes condemns content changes when it deems the new content violates Misplaced Pages policies (for example, if the new content is considered biased). Commonly used solutions include cautions and probations (used in 63% of cases) and banning editors from articles (43%), subject matters (23%), or Misplaced Pages (16%). Complete bans from Misplaced Pages are generally limited to instances of impersonation and anti-social behavior . When conduct
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#17327651082597192-444: The company announced that the 2010 edition would be the last printed version. This was part of a move by the company to adapt to the times and focus on its future using digital distribution. The peak year for the printed encyclopaedia was 1990, when 120,000 sets were sold, but sales had dropped to 40,000 per annum by 1996. There were 12,000 sets of the 2010 edition printed, of which 8,000 had been sold by March 2012. By late April 2012,
7308-420: The company would be accepting edits and additions to the online Britannica website from the public. The published edition of the encyclopaedia will not be affected by the changes. Individuals wishing to edit the Britannica website will have to register under their real name and address prior to editing or submitting their content. All edits submitted will be reviewed and checked and will have to be approved by
7424-442: The contribution histories of anonymous unregistered editors recognized only by their IP addresses cannot be attributed to a particular editor with certainty. A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that "anonymous and infrequent contributors to Misplaced Pages ... are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register with the site". Jimmy Wales stated in 2009 that "[I]t turns out over 50% of all
7540-700: The edit of another editor who then, in sequence, returns to revert the first editor. The results were tabulated for several language versions of Misplaced Pages. The English Misplaced Pages's three largest conflict rates belonged to the articles George W. Bush , anarchism , and Muhammad . By comparison, for the German Misplaced Pages, the three largest conflict rates at the time of the study were for the articles covering Croatia , Scientology , and 9/11 conspiracy theories . In 2020, researchers identified other measures of editor behaviors, beyond mutual reverts, to identify editing conflicts across Misplaced Pages. Editors also debate
7656-454: The edits are done by just 0.7% of the users ... 524 people ... And in fact, the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." However, Business Insider editor and journalist Henry Blodget showed in 2009 that in a random sample of articles, most Misplaced Pages content (measured by the amount of contributed text that survives to the latest sampled edit) is created by "outsiders", while most editing and formatting
7772-417: The encyclopaedia's professional staff. Contributions from non-academic users will sit in a separate section from the expert-generated Britannica content, as will content submitted by non- Britannica scholars. Articles written by users, if vetted and approved, will also only be available in a special section of the website, separate from the professional articles. Official Britannica material would carry
7888-459: The encyclopaedias had an article on sexual harassment in 1994. In the accuracy category, the Britannica received one "D" and seven "A"s, Encyclopedia Americana received eight "A"s, and Collier's received one "D" and seven "A"s; thus, Britannica received an average score of 92% for accuracy to Americana 's 95% and Collier's 92%. In the timeliness category, Britannica averaged an 86% to Americana' s 90% and Collier's 85%. In 2013,
8004-607: The former Compton's Encyclopedia , is aimed at 10- to 17-year-olds and consists of 26 volumes and 11,000 pages. Since 1938, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. has published annually a Book of the Year covering the past year's events. A given edition of the Book of the Year is named in terms of the year of its publication, though the edition actually covers the events of the previous year. The company also publishes several specialized reference works, such as Shakespeare: The Essential Guide to
8120-587: The founding editorial director of USA Today and founder of the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University , called Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales and asked whether he had any way of knowing who contributed the misinformation. Wales said he did not, although the perpetrator was eventually traced. After the incident, Seigenthaler described Misplaced Pages as "a flawed and irresponsible research tool". The incident led to policy changes at Misplaced Pages for tightening up
8236-550: The growth is flattening naturally because articles that could be called " low-hanging fruit "—topics that clearly merit an article—have already been created and built up extensively. In November 2009, a researcher at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid, Spain found that the English Misplaced Pages had lost 49,000 editors during the first three months of 2009; in comparison, it lost only 4,900 editors during
8352-636: The growth rate of the English Misplaced Pages in terms of the numbers of new articles and of editors, appears to have peaked around early 2007. The edition reached 3 million articles in August 2009. Around 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia in 2006; by 2013 that average was roughly 800. A team at the Palo Alto Research Center attributed this slowing of growth to "increased coordination and overhead costs, exclusion of newcomers, and resistance to new edits". Others suggest that
8468-427: The historian George L. Burr wrote: With a temerity almost appalling, [the Britannica contributor, Mr. Philips] ranges over nearly the whole field of European history, political, social, ecclesiastical... The grievance is that [this work] lacks authority. This, too—this reliance on editorial energy instead of on ripe special learning—may, alas, be also counted an "Americanizing": for certainly nothing has so cheapened
8584-463: The influence of rival editing camps, the conversational structure, and the shift in conflicts to a focus on sources. Taha Yasseri of the University of Oxford examined editing conflicts and their resolution in a 2013 study. Yasseri contended that simple reverts or "undo" operations were not the most significant measure of counterproductive work behavior at Misplaced Pages. He relied instead on "mutually reverting edit pairs", where one editor reverts
8700-414: The latest changes and undo others' revisions by clicking a link on the article's History page. Registered users may maintain a "watchlist" of articles that interest them so they can be notified of changes. "New pages patrol" is a process where newly created articles are checked for obvious problems. In 2003, economics PhD student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in
8816-538: The majority of Misplaced Pages's servers are located. By using the site, one agrees to the Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use and Privacy Policy ; some of the main rules are that contributors are legally responsible for their edits and contributions, that they should follow the policies that govern each of the independent project editions, and they may not engage in activities, whether legal or illegal, that may be harmful to other users. In addition to
8932-905: The mark of 2 million articles on September 9, 2007, making it the largest encyclopedia ever assembled, surpassing the Yongle Encyclopedia made in China during the Ming dynasty in 1408, which had held the record for almost 600 years. Citing fears of commercial advertising and lack of control, users of the Spanish Misplaced Pages forked from Misplaced Pages to create Enciclopedia Libre in February 2002. Wales then announced that Misplaced Pages would not display advertisements, and changed Misplaced Pages's domain from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org . After an early period of exponential growth,
9048-540: The median time to detect and fix it is a few minutes. However, some vandalism takes much longer to detect and repair. In the Seigenthaler biography incident , an anonymous editor introduced false information into the biography of American political figure John Seigenthaler in May 2005, falsely presenting him as a suspect in the assassination of John F. Kennedy . It remained uncorrected for four months. Seigenthaler,
9164-637: The number had been written out ("Eighteen-twelve, War of"). Articles with identical names are ordered first by persons, then by places, then by things. Rulers with identical names are organized first alphabetically by country and then by chronology; thus, Charles III of France precedes Charles I of England , listed in Britannica as the ruler of Great Britain and Ireland. (That is, they are alphabetized as if their titles were "Charles, France, 3" and "Charles, Great Britain and Ireland, 1".) Similarly, places that share names are organized alphabetically by country, then by ever-smaller political divisions. In March 2012,
9280-430: The online version. Britannica has been assessed as being more politically centrist compared to Misplaced Pages, which is considered to have a more left-leaning orientation. The 15th edition (1974–2010) has a three-part structure: a 12-volume Micropædia of short articles (generally fewer than 750 words), a 17-volume Macropædia of long articles (two to 310 pages), and a single Propædia volume to give
9396-570: The open PubMed Central library of the National Library of Medicine . The Internet tends to provide more current coverage than print media, due to the ease with which material on the Internet can be updated. In rapidly changing fields such as science, technology, politics, culture and modern history, the Britannica has struggled to stay up to date, a problem first analysed systematically by its former editor Walter Yust. Eventually,
9512-456: The page-view decline was due to Knowledge Graphs, stating, "If you can get your question answered from the search page, you don't need to click [any further]." By the end of December 2016, Misplaced Pages was ranked the fifth most popular website globally. As of January 2023, 55,791 English Misplaced Pages articles have been cited 92,300 times in scholarly journals, from which cloud computing was the most cited page. On January 18, 2023, Misplaced Pages debuted
9628-408: The past 30 days. Editors who fail to comply with Misplaced Pages cultural rituals, such as signing talk page comments, may implicitly signal that they are Misplaced Pages outsiders, increasing the odds that Misplaced Pages insiders may target or discount their contributions. Becoming a Misplaced Pages insider involves non-trivial costs: the contributor is expected to learn Misplaced Pages-specific technological codes, submit to
9744-421: The process of vetting potential administrators had become more rigorous. In 2022, there was a particularly contentious request for adminship over the candidate's anti-Trump views; ultimately, they were granted adminship. Misplaced Pages has delegated some administrative functions to bots , such as when granting privileges to human editors. Such algorithmic governance has an ease of implementation and scaling, though
9860-451: The quantitative analysis, ten articles were selected at random— circumcision , Charles Drew , Galileo , Philip Glass , heart disease , IQ , panda bear , sexual harassment , Shroud of Turin and Uzbekistan —and letter grades of A–D or F were awarded in four categories: coverage, accuracy, clarity, and recency. In all four categories and for all three encyclopaedias, the four average grades fell between B− and B+ , chiefly because none of
9976-586: The query. Daily topical features sent directly to users' mobile phones were also planned. On 3 June 2008, an initiative to facilitate collaboration between online expert and amateur scholarly contributors for Britannica's online content (in the spirit of a wiki ), with editorial oversight from Britannica staff, was announced. Approved contributions would be credited, though contributing automatically grants Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated perpetual, irrevocable license to those contributions. On 22 January 2009, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz , announced that
10092-476: The questions frequently asked there. Jimmy Wales once argued that only "a community ... a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers" makes the bulk of contributions to Misplaced Pages and that the project is therefore "much like any traditional organization". In 2008, a Slate magazine article reported that: "According to researchers in Palo Alto, one percent of Misplaced Pages users are responsible for about half of
10208-482: The remaining 53.3% split among other countries. Misplaced Pages has been praised for its enablement of the democratization of knowledge , extent of coverage, unique structure, and culture. It has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias , particularly gender bias against women and geographical bias against the Global South ( Eurocentrism ). While the reliability of Misplaced Pages was frequently criticized in
10324-450: The remaining copies of the 2010 edition had sold out at Britannica's online store. As of 2016 , a replica of Britannica's 1768 first edition is available via the online store. Britannica Junior was first published in 1934 as 12 volumes. It was expanded to 15 volumes in 1947, and renamed Britannica Junior Encyclopædia in 1963. It was taken off the market after the 1984 printing. A British Children's Britannica edited by John Armitage
10440-429: The results of a Wikimedia Foundation survey in 2008 showed that only 13 percent of Misplaced Pages editors were female. Because of this, universities throughout the United States tried to encourage women to become Misplaced Pages contributors. Similarly, many of these universities, including Yale and Brown , gave college credit to students who create or edit an article relating to women in science or technology. Andrew Lih ,
10556-409: The same interview, he also claimed the number of editors was "stable and sustainable". A 2013 MIT Technology Review article, "The Decline of Misplaced Pages", questioned this claim, reporting that since 2007 Misplaced Pages had lost a third of its volunteer editors, and suggesting that those remaining had focused increasingly on minutiae. In July 2012, The Atlantic reported that the number of administrators
10672-479: The same period in 2008. The Wall Street Journal cited the array of rules applied to editing and disputes related to such content among the reasons for this trend. Wales disputed these claims in 2009, denying the decline and questioning the study's methodology. Two years later, in 2011, he acknowledged a slight decline, noting a decrease from "a little more than 36,000 writers" in June 2010 to 35,800 in June 2011. In
10788-642: The scholarship of our American encyclopaedias. As of 2007 in the 15th edition of Britannica , Dale Hoiberg , a sinologist , was listed as Britannica 's Senior Vice President and editor-in-chief. Among his predecessors as editors-in-chief were Hugh Chisholm (1902–1924), James Louis Garvin (1926–1932), Franklin Henry Hooper (1932–1938), Walter Yust (1938–1960), Harry Ashmore (1960–1963), Warren E. Preece (1964–1968, 1969–1975), Sir William Haley (1968–1969), Philip W. Goetz (1979–1991), and Robert McHenry (1992–1997). As of 2007 Anita Wolff
10904-455: The second edition was 10 volumes, and by its fourth edition (1801–1810), it had expanded to 20 volumes. Its rising stature as a scholarly work helped recruit eminent contributors, and the 9th (1875–1889) and 11th editions (1911) are landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Starting with the 11th edition and following its acquisition by an American firm, the Britannica shortened and simplified articles to broaden its appeal to
11020-439: The site's edits." This method of evaluating contributions was later disputed by Aaron Swartz , who noted that several articles he sampled had large portions of their content (measured by number of characters) contributed by users with low edit counts. The English Misplaced Pages has 6,916,922 articles, 48,330,049 registered editors, and 121,836 active editors. An editor is considered active if they have made one or more edits in
11136-582: The six largest, in order of article count, are the English , Cebuano , German , French , Swedish , and Dutch Wikipedias. The second and fifth-largest Wikipedias owe their position to the article-creating bot Lsjbot , which as of 2013 had created about half the articles on the Swedish Misplaced Pages , and most of the articles in the Cebuano and Waray Wikipedias . The latter are both languages of
11252-726: The staff members, advisors, and contributors to all three parts of the Britannica . Taken together, the Micropædia and Macropædia comprise roughly 40 million words and 24,000 images. The two-volume index has 2,350 pages, listing the 228,274 topics covered in the Britannica , together with 474,675 subentries under those topics. The Britannica generally prefers British spelling over American ; for example, it uses colour (not color ), centre (not center ), and encyclopaedia (not encyclopedia ). There are some exceptions to this rule, such as defense rather than defence . Common alternative spellings are provided with cross-references such as "Color: see Colour." Since 1936,
11368-449: The start of Misplaced Pages, but with limited success. Misplaced Pages began as a complementary project for Nupedia, a free online English-language encyclopedia project whose articles were written by experts and reviewed under a formal process. It was founded on March 9, 2000, under the ownership of Bomis , a web portal company. Its main figures were Bomis CEO Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger , editor-in-chief for Nupedia and later Misplaced Pages. Nupedia
11484-569: The strategy pioneered by former CEO Elkan Harrison Powell in the mid-1930s. In the fall of 2017, Karthik Krishnan was appointed global chief executive officer of the Encyclopædia Britannica Group. Krishnan brought a varied perspective to the role based on several high-level positions in digital media, including RELX (formerly known as Reed Elsevier, and one of the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index) and Rodale, in which he
11600-796: The subject of the article. Editors in good standing in the community can request extra user rights , granting them the technical ability to perform certain special actions. In particular, editors can choose to run for " adminship ", which includes the ability to delete pages or prevent them from being changed in cases of severe vandalism or editorial disputes. Administrators are not supposed to enjoy any special privilege in decision-making; instead, their powers are mostly limited to making edits that have project-wide effects and thus are disallowed to ordinary editors, and to implement restrictions intended to prevent disruptive editors from making unproductive edits. By 2012, fewer editors were becoming administrators compared to Misplaced Pages's earlier years, in part because
11716-465: The terms, the Foundation has developed policies, described as the "official policies of the Wikimedia Foundation". The fundamental principles of the Misplaced Pages community are embodied in the "Five pillars", while the detailed editorial principles are expressed in numerous policies and guidelines intended to appropriately shape content. The five pillars are: The rules developed by the community are stored in wiki form, and Misplaced Pages editors write and revise
11832-692: The ultimate dispute resolution process. Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how an article should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on the specific view that should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the English Misplaced Pages committee ignores the content of disputes and rather focuses on the way disputes are conducted, functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate. Therefore,
11948-399: The unsigned Micropædia articles. In January 1996, the Britannica was purchased from the Benton Foundation by billionaire Swiss financier Jacqui Safra , who serves as its current chair of the board. In 1997, Don Yannias, a long-time associate and investment advisor of Safra, became CEO of Encyclopædia Britannica, Incorporated. In 1999, a new company, Britannica.com Incorporated ,
12064-548: The verifiability of biographical articles of living people. Misplaced Pages editors often have disagreements regarding content, which can be discussed on article Talk pages. Disputes may result in repeated competing changes to an article, known as "edit warring". It is widely seen as a resource-consuming scenario where no useful knowledge is added, and criticized as creating a competitive and conflict-based editing culture associated with traditional masculine gender roles . Research has focused on, for example, impoliteness of disputes,
12180-685: The watchword of its first edition in 1768. As the Britannica is a general encyclopaedia, it does not seek to compete with specialized encyclopaedias such as the Encyclopaedia of Mathematics or the Dictionary of the Middle Ages , which can devote much more space to their chosen topics. In its first years, the Britannica 's main competitor was the general encyclopaedia of Ephraim Chambers and, soon thereafter, Rees's Cyclopædia and Coleridge's Encyclopædia Metropolitana . In
12296-428: The website's policies and guidelines in accordance with community consensus. Editors can enforce the rules by deleting or modifying non-compliant material. Originally, rules on the non-English editions of Misplaced Pages were based on a translation of the rules for the English Misplaced Pages. They have since diverged to some extent. According to the rules on the English Misplaced Pages community, each entry in Misplaced Pages must be about
12412-473: Was created to develop digital versions of the Britannica ; Yannias assumed the role of CEO in the new company, while his former position at the parent company remained vacant for two years. Yannias' tenure at Britannica.com Incorporated was marked by missteps, considerable lay-offs, and financial losses. In 2001, Yannias was replaced by Ilan Yeshua , who reunited the leadership of the two companies. Yannias later returned to investment management, but remains on
12528-800: Was a decline of about 2 billion between December 2012 and December 2013. Its most popular versions are leading the slide: page-views of the English Misplaced Pages declined by twelve percent, those of German version slid by 17 percent and the Japanese version lost 9 percent." Varma added, "While Misplaced Pages's managers think that this could be due to errors in counting, other experts feel that Google's Knowledge Graphs project launched last year may be gobbling up Misplaced Pages users." When contacted on this matter, Clay Shirky , associate professor at New York University and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society said that he suspected much of
12644-500: Was also available as a Firefox extension but this was taken down due to a code review issue. The print version of the Britannica has 4,411 contributors, many eminent in their fields, such as Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman , astronomer Carl Sagan , and surgeon Michael DeBakey . Roughly a quarter of the contributors are deceased, some as long ago as 1947 ( Alfred North Whitehead ), while another quarter are retired or emeritus . Most (approximately 98%) contribute to only
12760-519: Was also in decline. In the November 25, 2013, issue of New York magazine, Katherine Ward stated, "Misplaced Pages, the sixth-most-used website, is facing an internal crisis." The number of active English Misplaced Pages editors has since remained steady after a long period of decline. In January 2007, Misplaced Pages first became one of the ten most popular websites in the United States, according to Comscore Networks. With 42.9 million unique visitors, it
12876-490: Was initially licensed under its own Nupedia Open Content License, but before Misplaced Pages was founded, Nupedia switched to the GNU Free Documentation License at the urging of Richard Stallman . Wales is credited with defining the goal of making a publicly editable encyclopedia, while Sanger is credited with the strategy of using a wiki to reach that goal. On January 10, 2001, Sanger proposed on
12992-677: Was issued in London in 1960. Its contents were determined largely by the eleven-plus standardized tests given in Britain. Britannica introduced the Children's Britannica to the US market in 1988, aimed at ages seven to 14. In 1961, a 16-volume Young Children's Encyclopaedia was issued for children just learning to read. My First Britannica is aimed at children ages six to 12, and the Britannica Discovery Library
13108-518: Was listed as the Deputy Editor and Theodore Pappas as Executive Editor. Prior Executive Editors include John V. Dodge (1950–1964) and Philip W. Goetz. Paul T. Armstrong remains the longest working employee of Encyclopædia Britannica. He began his career there in 1934, eventually earning the positions of treasurer, vice president, and chief financial officer in his 58 years with the company, before retiring in 1992. The 2007 editorial staff of
13224-411: Was ranked #9, surpassing The New York Times (#10) and Apple (#11). This marked a significant increase over January 2006, when Misplaced Pages ranked 33rd, with around 18.3 million unique visitors. In 2014, it received 8 billion page views every month. On February 9, 2014, The New York Times reported that Misplaced Pages had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors
13340-400: Was responsible for "driving business and cultural transformation and accelerating growth". Taking the reins of the company as it was preparing to mark its 250th anniversary and define the next phase of its digital strategy for consumers and K–12 schools, Krishnan launched a series of new initiatives in his first year. First was Britannica Insights, a free, downloadable software extension to
13456-466: Was significantly more expensive than its competitors. Since the early 1990s, the Britannica has faced new challenges from digital information sources. The Internet, facilitated by the development of search engines , has grown into a common source of information for many people, and provides easy access to reliable original sources and expert opinions, thanks in part to initiatives such as Google Books , MIT 's release of its educational materials and
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