“Fitting words for an epitaph…” — an encyclopedic smackdown!

Boing Boing alerts us to this debate between Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia’s founder and chairman of the Wikimedia Foundation) and Dale Hoiberg (senior vice president and editor in chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica). There seems to be some legitimate animus bubbling below the surface… which adds some spice to a fairly clear summary of the respective positions, and I’d say both articulate their points quite well. Thinking of Wikipedia as something of a synecdoche for open environments and loosely-structured practices, it’s a fun mental exercise to apply these arguments to a broader academic context. Play to win exciting prizes!

Earlier: Jimmy Wales to Beijing: Wikipedia won’t censor

(Cross-posted to Textologies)

2 thoughts on ““Fitting words for an epitaph…” — an encyclopedic smackdown!

  1. I guess you could call it a debate…it’s more like a smackdown! “Wales pile drives the wussy Britannica guy into the floor – oooh, that’s gotta hurt!” I especially loved the piece where Wales refers to wikipedia’s page on “criticisms of wikipedia” – body slam!

    On another note, what are we, chopped liver? Re-posts from your class blog? Well I never! (Just kidding, nice to hear you’re still breathing after start of term 😉

  2. I thought Jimmy got the better of it as well, but I’m biased. And to be fair, for a wussy authoritarian I thought the Britannica really did make some good points.

    And I thought you were all about promoting reusable content dude!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.