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July 18, 2005
Reference & editorial quality
I was wondering what business model would work for encyclopedias these days. Dana and I had been talking about the editorial quality of reference information published on the world wide web. Such information is almost always of dubious origin, and most Internet publishers have such little incentive to go to the same lengths as paper publishers such as Encyclopedia Britannica that unsuspecting readers not keeping caveat lector in mind may eventually consider everything on the web should be taken with a grain of salt.
From a macroeconomic standpoint, it seems like one solution might involve funnelling some library funding to folks with an established reputation in exchange for their publishing to Googleable locations. Would it end up cheaper for society to handle the problem the way it handles other public information services?
Dana thinks perhaps not. He says money is one of the deciding factors in getting reference publishers to maintain their reputations through careful attention to editorial quality. I'm still undecided.
The current business models for those guys do seem a bit ridiculous, however, even though the information they contain is doubtless of much higher quality than most things one finds while surfing.
Posted by Mark at July 18, 2005 10:08 PM