Wikipedia on book shelves

Brockhaus and Wikipedia in comparison

Part of the comparison between Wikipedia and other encyclopedias are the book shelve comparisons: How many volumes would a printed Wikipedia fill?

I made some clicks on the “Random article” button of Wikipedia in German, and then made a PDF of the articles. Then I estimated that one PDF page is the equivalent of two-thirds of a page of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie (the 30 volume edition of 2005/2006).

So I calculated that the 1,250,000 articles of Wikipedia in German could fill 675 Brockhaus volumes. This picture here tries to give an impression. Of course it were better if a skilled graphic artist took over the task and show a library with Wikipedias in different languages, as well other encyclopedias.

 

The least empathetic social media: Wikipedia

Does Wikipedia the website belong to the so-called ‘social media’? Considering the anti social behaviour on the site you might doubt. Take this: If a person is afraid of (seeing) spiders, and comes to know that this is called ‘arachnophobia’, would it be a good idea to check it out at Wikipedia?

Maybe not. The article ‘Arachnophobia’ exists in 28 languages, and in 22 of them you see a picture of a spider. In af, cs, de, eo, et, is and ru it is even a photograph, usually of an especially big, fat spider. The others show a drawing. Wikipedia in Russian, to make sure to scare off really everybody, put in the drawing and a photograph.

On some of the talk pages, there has been actually controversy. User:Thomas, der Bader (a physician, by the way) on the German talk page said: ‘Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, no cosy forum for arachnophobics.’

 

Decennial ABC: T as in Teachers

Teachers are possibly the target group number one for encyclopedias. It is teachers who consult about knowledge acquisition, and they were likely to have an encyclopedia in their home. One third of the buyers of Der Große Brockhaus in the 1950s were teachers.[1]

Harvey Einbinder mentioned already in the good old times the gap between the image and the actual content of Encyclopaedia Britannica:

‘Some teachers and professors believe it is not a reliable source of information and caution their students against blindly reproducing its material in their reports and term papers. This warning, however, has not been widely publicized. As a result, some students who obtain the set may be disappointed when they discover it does not live up to their expectations.’[2]

When I talk to teachers about Wikipedia I am amazed about the trust I meet. Many don’t hesitate to find Wikipedia very reliable, such as the previous printed encyclopedias. When we had a meeting of our Schulprojekt of Wikimedia Deutschland, we accidentally met a couple of student teachers. According to my notes, they wanted to know or answered:

• How reliable is the information?
• References: very very important for us. Also interesting for further reading.
• We don’t want pupils to use Wikipedia as source because the paper would then be more or less complete already (if the article is good).
• What about controversial issues, e.g. about bioethics? Who is writing an article, maybe someone from a company?
• I don’t know about copyright and Wikipedia.
• Only very few teachers check the quality in other languages.
• Brockhaus: well… Maybe if you have guests you can show off with it. But it plays no role when it comes to acquire information.
• Sexuality-related articles: we don’t let pupils do research about such subjects via the internet. Not suitable. They could be distracted too easily.

Nando Stöcklin in his book Wikipedia clever nutzen – in Schule und Beruf describes a future school of 2025 where pupils have a display on their internet glasses and type on a virtual keyboard. A teacher sees a pupil who is studying books. ‘Are you already finished with reading up on your subject?’ The pupil says no. The teacher: ‘But you should before starting to read books. Have an overview first, for example via Wikipedia. Otherwise you’ll drown in details.’[3]

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, … S as in Sister Projects

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[1] Thomas Keiderling: F. A. Brockhaus 1905 – 2005. Brockhaus in der Wissensmedia. Leipzig, Mannheim 2005, p. 247.

[2] Harvey Einbinder: The Myth of the Britannica. MacGibbon & Kee, London 1964. Reprint: Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York, London 1972, p. 72.

[3] Nando Stöcklin: Wikipedia clever nutzen – in Schule und Beruf. orell füssli Verlag AG, Zürich 2010, p. 10.

Brockhaus back in Business?

Leipzig, gravestones of members of the Brockhaus family

The 30 volume Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, the largest print encyclopedia in German language, is history. In 2005/06 the last edition appeared, and in 2008 a short-lived online experiment failed. A year later, Bertelsmann bought Brockhaus, and even the German anti trust agency said: Yeah, it’s a monopoly, but the market for print encyclopedias has shrunk so much that the Bertelsmann monopoly would be the least problem to a newcomer.

History? Last edition? Bertelsmann now surprised the literary world with the announcement of a new edition, to be expected for 2014 or 2015. The 22nd edition will be available for tablet pc and other mobile instruments, and the buyer can order excerpts from it by print-on-demand.

We’ll see.

(According to buchreport.de, thanks to Mathias Schindler for the link.)

Decennial ABC: R as in Readers

What kind of readers you have in mind when you write in an encyclopaedia something like this: The Abyssinians are ‘black, or almost black, but not as ugly as the negroes.’

Probably, when Encyclopaedia Britannica editor William Smellie wrote (or copied) this in 1768, he did not imagine that black people read it. [1]

Dennis de Coetlogon, nearly a contemporary, seems not to have been very fond of craftsmen, servants and the lower classes. In the articles he complains about them. He preferred to write for gentlemen, and so his Universal history ‘features a strong stream of elitism’, with articles about falconry and other subjects for princes, Loveland explains. Among the subscribers were actually some craftsmen, but they must have been extraordinary rich to afford such an expensive work. [2]

Considering the immense costs, the readers of encyclopedias have been a very small group for a long time. According to Luff, the prefaces of medieval encyclopedias usually did not limit themselves to a certain readership. But even the more than 380 manuscripts of the Elucidarium came ‘practically never came into the possession of laymen’. The Livre de Sidrac, again, was read only by noblemen. An extreme example is the Hortus Deliciarum: Abbess Herrad compiled it exclusively for the nuns in her abbey. There it stayed for three and a half centuries. [3]

In the high time of encyclopedias, the 19th and 20th centuries, publishers liked to flatter their buyers and stressed out how smart a person must be who uses an encyclopedia. And when someone complained that encyclopedias provide only superficial knowledge and don’t really educate the readers, the answer of the publishers was: Our readers are educated already.

What makes Wikipedians so smart?

As Harvey Einbinder noticed, the Encyclopedia Americana of the 1960s boasted its ‘accuracy, thoroughness, and ease of use make it equally indispensable to the junior high school student and the most advanced scholar.’ He doubts that a text can really be indispensable for both, but ‘such difficulties are ignored by the copywriters and executives responsible for such exaggerated statements’. [4]

And Wikipedia? Some people believe that a new medium is a chance for a new culture, that now the time has come to give every single person on the planet access to the sum of all human knowledge. Indeed, they get the access, but as always the smart will be become smarter and the others… don’t, or worse.

Ulrike Spree at the end of her thesis says that the best reference works are those which listen to the motto of the publisher of Junior Pears Encyclopaedia: ‘A book like this one ought to be shaped not only by a body of contributors but by a body of readers.’“ [5]

She might give Wikipedia a chance, I hope.

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, Q as in Quality

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[1] Frank A. Kafker, Jeff Loveland: William Smellie’s edition: a modest start. In: Frank A. Kafker, Jeff Loveland (ed.): The Early Britannica (1768/1803). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2009, pp. 11-68, here p. 29.

[2] Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal history of arts and sciences (1745). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 74-76.

[3] Robert Luff: Wissensvermittlung im europäischen Mittelalter. ‘Imago mundi’-Werke und ihre Prologe. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1999, pp. 423/424.

[4] Harvey Einbinder: The Myth of the Britannica. MacGibbon & Kee, London 1964 (reprint 1972), pp. 321/322.

[5] Ulrike Spree: Das Streben nach Wissen. Eine vergleichende Gattungsgeschichte der populären Enzyklopädie in Deutschland und Großbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert, Niemeyer 2000, p. 328.

Decennial ABC: Q as in Quality

With regard to Wikipedia, many people ask about the quality of the content, whether one can trust the information, how reliable the whole thing is. We then explain about our procedures, and yes, amazingly they work.

But – how about the quality of earlier, ‘traditional’ encyclopedias? It is not a tit-for-tat-response if the question is returned to them.

In the middle ages, quality meant that the writer of an encyclopedia was a faithful compiler of already existing texts. The encyclopedias were more like anthologies. When in early renaissance the person of an author received a different status then also the requirements for a good encyclopedia started slowly to shift.

Publishing an encyclopedia was and is not only a scientific or educational, but above all a commercial enterprise. Of course, a thorough and newly written, up-to-date text costs a lot of work of a skilled lexicographer.

In his Myth of the Britannica, Harvey Einbinder named a lot of examples for low quality but also some reasons. The 1963 edition of EB told anecdotes about the youth of Francisco de Goya, about his involvement in street gangs and a trip to Rome. Einbinder: ‘No documentary evidence exists describing this trip, but the idea that Goya joined a group of bull-fighters fits the popular image of the artist.’ (S. 122/123.)

Britannica showed a lot of dubious or dated articles because it is difficult to write a good article on a complicated subject; copyediting costs time and time is money. Taking over an article from a previous edition is cheaper than writing it new. And this given the fact that Britannica authors have not been paid well.

Britannica claimed in 1960 that, from 1950 on, 34 million words in 49,000 articles had been revised. But that does that mean? With in total 38 million words in 42,000 articles, does that mean that several articles had been altered several times, Einbinder asked. (S. 265.) ‘Apparently’ this is how it went: If someone made some minor changes in an article then all words of the article were counted as ‘revised’. (S. 279/280.)

Maybe someone likes to calculate how many million words are ‘revised’ in English Wikipedia every day?

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, P as in Plagiary

Decennial ABC: P as in Plagiary

If you want to know how people thought about something in previous centuries, it is useful to consult an encyclopedia from that time. No lack of encyclopedias since the 18th century.

Let’s have a look what Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia of 1728 said about plagiary:

„PLAGIARY […]

Among the Romans, Plagiarius was properly a Person who bought, sold, or retain’d, a free Man for a Slave; so call’d, because the Flavian Law condemned such a Person to be whipp’d, ad plagas. See SLAVE.

Thomasius has an express Treatise de plagio litterario; wherein he lays down the Laws and Measures of the Right which Authors have to one anothers Commodities.

Dictionary-Writers, at least such as meddle with Arts and Sciences, seem exempted from the common Laws of Meum and Tuum; they don’t pretend to set up on their own bottom, nor to treat you at their own Cost.

[...]

So committing plagiary not nothing to be proud of, except if you are writing an encyclopedia. No crime in that, as you are supposed to take parts from older works anyway. That’s the way dictionaries are made, isn’t it?

What did people half a generation later think? The great Encyclopédie by Diderot and others, 1751-, states:

PLAGIAIRE […]

Chez les Romains on appelloit plagiaire une personne qui achetoit, vendoit ou retenoit comme esclave une autre personne libre, parce que par la loi Flavia, quiconque étoit convaincu de ce crime, étoit condamné au fouet, ad plagas. Voyez esclave.

Thomasius a fait un livre de plagio litterario, où il traite de l’étendue du droit que les auteurs ont sur les écrits des uns des autres, & des regles qu’on doit observer à cet égard.

Les Lexicographes, au moins ceux qui traitent des arts & des sciences, paroissent devoir être exemts des lois communes du mien & du tien. Ils ne prétendent ni bâtir sur leur propre fonds, ni en tirer les matériaux nécessaires à la construction de leur ouvrage.

[...]

If you don’t understand French, you did not miss anything.

Title engraving of Chambers' Cyclopaedia

According to Jeff Loveland, the main parts of this text originates in the Dictionnaire written by Furetière (1690), and possibly via the Dictionnaire de Trévoux it went into Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, and from there to Diderot’s Encyclopédie. [1]

The most positive effect of modern copyright laws on the making of encyclopedias was that since the 19th it was no longer possible to produce it with a pair of scissors. Lexicographers had to write articles by themselves – or make others write them for peanuts.

I wish you all a happy new year 2011!

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, O as in Order

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[1] Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal history of arts and sciences (1745). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 82.

Decennial ABC: O as in Order

What is the best order for the contents of an encyclopedia?

When people think about an encyclopedia, they have usually in mind the encyclopedia they grew up with. In most cases this was an encyclopedia with articles in alphabetical order. This order became dominant only in the 18th century, as the name ‘encyclopedia’ itself. Before, and in some cases also after, encyclopedic content was presented in a ‘systematical’ order, or let’s say ‘non-alphabetical’ because the alphabet can be regarded as a system, too.

The larger public likes the alphabetical order for quick reference, while many scholars and lexicographers found that order arbitrary: Abbasides comes between Abacus and Abdomen. They seemed also to be afraid that the user of a quick reference work obtains only bits of knowledge and misses the big picture. Their pet child was a ‘tree of knowledge’, often a scheme of the sciences and disciplines presented at least shortly in the preface to the encyclopedia.

As Spree and Loveland point out, the decision for the alphabetical order is not the end of the story. You still have to figure out whether your encyclopedia should have rather short articles or long articles. And if it’s long articles, they need an internal order, and sometimes it is difficult to decide under which of several suitable keywords you should describe one peticular thing.

Wikipedia combines short articles with long articles often within one article: the introduction (exposition) to each longer article should suffice to understand what the lemma is about, and for the rest of the article there is a guiding table of contents. Wikipedia has portals and categories for a non-alphabetical approach, and also a complete alphabetical index. Anyway, most readers use the search engine.

But how to help the searching reader in the age of printed works? Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB) since the 1970s tried to provide several solutions to the problem in one work. EB was divided into essentially two parts, with two extra parts for the search:

• Micropaedia, a large number of short articles for ‘ready reference’,
• Macropaedia, a limited number of long articles for ‘knowledge in depth’,
• Propaedia, the systematical ‘outline of knowledge and guide to Britannica’, and later also an
• Index.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition. At the beginning the one volume of Propaedia, green-spined. Following red-spined Micropaedia and then Macropaedia, and two blue-spined Index volumes.

In an essay or preface at the beginning of the Propaedia volume, Director of Planning Mortimer J. Adler explained ‘The Circle of Learning’. He cannot deny that every systematical outline of knowledge is arbitrary, but knowledge has no beginning and no end, comparable to a circle. Propaedia serves as a table of contents for the articles in Macropaedia and Micropaedia.

The idea is also that Propaedia helps you to find something even if you don’t know its name. So I tried it myself, having the EB of 1998 to my disposal. Imagine those computer programs you use to write texts, and that you don’t know the proper term for them. You are looking for the term and also want to know since when these programs exist.

Searching with Propaedia starts with ten major categories. ‘Part Seven: Technology’ (p. 12/13) sounds promising. Alright, there I see the sub category ’735. Technology of Information processing and of Communications Systems’. There on p. 290 I find ‘C. Office maschines’ with the keyword ‘word processors’. But there are also the sub categories ‘D. Computers’ and ‘H. Information processing and systems’… It does not matter: After these sub categories there follows ‘Suggested reading’, with a list of suitable articles in Macropaedia and Micropaedia, and these sub categories play no role there.

Mortimer J. Adler: ‘… the Propaedia provides the reader who wishes to pursue the study of a whole field of knowledge with an easily used guide.’

‘Suggested reading’ offers me for Macropaedia, among others, ‘Computers’, ‘Information / Processing and Information Systems’, and ‘Printing, Typography and Photoengraving’. For Micropaedia, I am offered only some ‘selected entries of information’. Theses entries (articles), by the way, follow a new division. Among them there is ‘word processing’.

Now imagine that I did not recognize that ‘word processing’ is actually the term I am looking for. So I go to the most general Macopaedia article in the list, name ‘Computers’. In volume 16, it covers pages 639-652. Thanks to the table of contents at the beginning of this article, I find the section ‘Computer Software’ and its sub section ‘Language processors’. Sounds good, but does not help. Bingo: There is also a section ‘Applications of computers’, with the sub section ‘Applications of personal computers’, p. 646.

That sub section starts with an introduction e.g. about ‘document preparation’. Then there are three (sub) sub sections, the first one has the title ‘text editing programs’. It says that these programs are very useful, but does not answer my historical question (since when they exist). That’s my result after 10-15 minutes.

SELECTRIC

Luckily, I now have learned the term ‘text editing program’, and I take the two Index volumes . On p. 957 of ‘L-Z’, I find the entry ‘text editing program (computing)’, with the explanation: ‘applications of personal computers’: volume 16: 646: 2a. That’s where I already have been, in Macropaedia article ‘Computers’. But then follows the decisive hint: ‘see also: word processing’! On p. 1169 of the same Index volume, the entry ‘word processing’ leads me to volume 12: 751: 2b.

They mean volume 12 of Micropaedia, the short-article-part of EB. There I find a nice article that tells me that the first modern word processing machine was the ‘Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter’ by IBM, 1964. Finally.

I should have read not the preface to the Propaedia, but the preface to the Index, saying that ‘Encyclopaedia Britannica is so vast a work that it cannot be used to greatest advantage without first consulting the Index.’ (My emphasis.)

May I complain to Mortimer J. Adler that his ‘Circle of Learning’ turned out for me more like a ‘Circle of Searching’?

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, N as in Neutrality

Decennial ABC: N as in Neutrality

Is an encyclopedia necessarily entitled to neutrality?

Most encyclopedias claim to represent the knowledge of their time, so it is not surprising that they reflect common normative thoughts. One tends to say that an encyclopedia is inherently conservative.

The French Encyclopédie by Diderots and his collaborators in the mid 18th century was an exception, writes Jeff Loveland, and if later Encyclopaedia Britannica attacked France and its Revolution, this was a certain conservative statement. But only in later ages encyclopedias got an explicit political agenda, for example the Nazi version of Meyer 1936-1942. [1]

Another branch of non neutral encyclopedias were Christian works, with one of the oldest the Etymologiae by Isidor of Seville.This tradition goes forth to the 19th and 20th century with its Catholic encyclopedias. The Dutch De Katholieke Encyclopedie (1932) tells why a general encyclopedia does not suffice to a Catholic: ‘That impartiality – especially in an encyclopedia – is nonsense and even nearly dangerous needs hardly explanation. [...] numerous items cannot be judged without a firm basis.’ [2]

But what exactly is ‘conservative’ or ‘progressive’? Does this not primarily depend on the opinions of the critic? Harvey Einbinder tells us in The Myth of Britannica that some claimed that Britannica was pro-catholic, others that it was anti-church. [3] Some claim that German Wikipedia is terribly left-wing (Welt commentator Bettina Röhl), others that is a ‘Nazipedia’. Ulrike Spree wrote: ‘The neutrality weisenheimer is easily at risk to become a self-proclaimed judge about true and false and consequently also about good and wrong.’ [4]

 

To a communist, neutrality is a crime because it would include to be neutral also about fascism. And about communism, you certainly should not be neutral. Here the 'Great Soviet Encyclopedia'.

 

To show how difficult it can be to determine the political point of view, let’s take the Universal history as an example. Its author Dennis de Coetlogon had a very polemical character; as he was a Catholic and advocated Jacobitism in 18th century England, he is usually considered to be a conservative. His biographer Loveland noted that Catholicism then was illegal, and that De Coetlogon was a Catholic ‘albeit an unorthodox and ecumenical one’. [5].

De Coetlogon in the Universal history often makes fun of Protestants for their anti-catholicism; he shows few sympathy for Calvinists because of their fanaticism and anti-monarchism. But he also criticizes the Inquisition and the corruption in Vatican. People telling ghost stories should be severely punished. He advocated the reunion of Western Christianity and tolerance for all religions, also for Jews. The English Jews De Coetlogon calls decent and ‘very good subjects’. Although it was not subversive, Loveland states: ‘For its audacity in questioning the orthodoxies of its milieu, especially in religion, the Universal history is ultimately most comparable to the Encyclopédie.’ [6]

Encyclopedias became less dependant from the views of a single author as they became the cause and property of publishing houses. In the 19th century, no encyclopedia gave up the goal of objectivity, says Spree, even the religious ones. They categorically excluded the possibility of the existence of several truths. Within this framework there ware several positions:

• Taking side: They claim to serve to the literate classes, to a specific denomination, to a political party (for example Wurm’s Social Democratic encyclopedia). They want to break monopolies of knowledge and set things straight but still claim a universal validity.
• Pluralism: Different groups of interests have their word in different articles, or in an article several positions are mentioned.
• Neutrality: An encyclopedia stands above the parties by a) referring to academical works, or by b) searching for the middle way. This is still no warranty against extremist positions, according to Spree. [7]

So also Wikipedia calls itself a neutral encyclopedia entitled to objectivity. Of course, Wikipedians are not so naive that they believe that there is perfect neutrality. But instead of some, who consequently want to drop the goal of neutrality, they try at least. Otherwise it would be difficult to write an encyclopedia collaboratively.

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, M as in Monopoly

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[1] Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal history of arts and sciences (1745). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 179.

[2] Introduction. In: De Katholieke Encyclopedie. Proeve van bewerking tevens prospectus. Uitgeverij Joost v. d. Vondel, Amsterdam 1932 [p. 2].

[3] Harvey Einbinder: The Myth of the Britannica. MacGibbon & Kee, London 1964 (reprint 1972), p. 67.

[4] Ulrike Spree: Das Streben nach Wissen. Eine vergleichende Gattungsgeschichte der populären Enzyklopädie in Deutschland und Großbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert, Niemeyer 2000, p. 28.

[5] Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal history of arts and sciences (1745). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p.p 193/194.

[6] Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon’s Universal history of arts and sciences (1745). Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 194-197, 200, 209.

[7] Ulrike Spree: Das Streben nach Wissen. Eine vergleichende Gattungsgeschichte der populären Enzyklopädie in Deutschland und Großbritannien im 19. Jahrhundert, Niemeyer 2000, pp. 316/317.

Decennial ABC: M as in Monopoly

Which encyclopedia ever had a monopoly of knowledge?

In June 2010, the Wikipedia convention Skillshare hosted Kai Gniffke, the head of the news section of Germany’s ‘first television’ ARD. Gniffke explained about the values and goals of the ARD and recalled complains around the Kachelmann case. The weather presentator Jörg Kachelmann had been accused of rape but ARD did not report about the initial inquiries of the prosecutor (there was still no preferral of charges). This was all according to the rules of ARD, but some people accused ARD of protecting their own weatherman, abusing its monopoly of information.

Of course, such accusations have no ground. There is nothing like a monopoly of information, at least not in a free democracy. Even when ARD was the only tv station in Germany in the 1950s (a monopoly of medium), there were always newspapers.

And what about encyclopedias?People suffered from limited access to books, from illiteracy and from the fact that most books in the middle ages were in Latin, but there was no author or publisher with a ‘monopoly’: there were always several encyclopedias. This is even more true for later ages. (True: In small linguistic communities the choice was and is often very limited.)

When we think of the prototype of an encyclopedia in Germany, it is Brockhaus’ Konversations-Lexikon. In the 19th century there were actually three big encyclopedias: Brockhaus, Meyer and Pierer, later also Herder. After 1945, Brockhaus had a certain monopoly in the market section of large encyclopedias: Although the publishers lost most of their possessions in the 1943 air raid on Leipzig, and later fled to Western Germany, they saved their keyword files. Meyer lost its and had to start all over and could publish a new large encyclopedia in the late 1960s.

But in all those years, there were a number of competitors on the market section of small and medium encyclopedias. Especially in the 1970s other publishers came up with encyclopedias, for example Bertelsmann and Knaur. It was because of this competition that Brockhaus and Meyer fused in 1984, and then in 1988 with dictionary publisher Langenscheidt in response to an offer by Robert Maxwell.

In 2009, Brockhaus-Meyer-Langenscheidt had lost the battle against CD-ROM and online encyclopedias. It became a part of the media giant Bertelsmann. Then, Federal Cartel Office (the German Antitrust Agency) had to examine whether this is an impermissible market concentration. The report eventually declared that Bertelsmann indeed had a monopoly on the market of general encyclopedias but that this market has declined so much that to a new competitor this monopoly would be the least problem.

And Wikipedia? It certainly has no monopoly of knowledge. Wikipedia even makes it appallingly easy to competitors because the content is ‘free‘. Everyone can copy it and start an online encyclopedia of his own. The problem would be to create a community that expands and maintains the content. In this way one can say that Wikipedia has a monopoly on the market of online encyclopedias.

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Previously: A as in Advertisement, …, L as in Links