Wikipedia Vs. Britannica

I looked up Chicago in both Wikipedia as well as Britannica Online. Since this isn’t a small topic, it was easy to find exact matches for ‘Chicago’ in both sources.

Attribution:

Wikipedia: There is no identifiable author name, though it is stated that you can ‘edit’ each section, making it obvious that it could have been anyone. When the history tab is clicked, it comes up with a confusing list of users who have edited that page, and when it was edited. If you click on the user, it will give you a list of other entries that user has also edited. It does not really tell you if the author knows what he/she is talking about or not.

Britannica: There are two author’s names at the end of the article. They are Perry R. Duis and Cathlyn Scallhorn. When you click on their names, another page comes up showing what other articles they have contributed to, as well as who they are. For instance, Duis is a Professor of history at the University of Chicago, and has written the book Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life. The information about the authors of the article show that they have some knowledge about the subject. Each of this people would be much easier to contact than the authors of the Wikipedia article. Duis could probably be found on the University of Chicago website.

Recency:

Wikipedia: At the bottom of the entry, it says it was updated at 2:02 am on November 14th (this made me laugh, because it is still November 13th here…). Also, on the history tab, it tells you exactly when the entry was edited.

Britannica: I could not find an exact date that this was written, but I could find that it was included in the 2007 edition.

References:

Wikipedia: At the bottom of the page, there is a bunch of references listed, and each has a link to a page that pertains to the information used in this text. Almost all of them are ‘click-able’. The first reference is from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Britannica: I could not find a list of references.

Links:

Wikipedia: The links under the references can be used as links to other pages.

Brittanica: There is an ‘Internet Guide’ that links you to another page that gives reliable websites to go to, as well as magazines and other forms of information to use. All the links I clicked on worked.

Consistency:

I feel both entries contain basically the same amount of information, and the same type of information. The only difference I really found was that the Wikipedia entry seemed to be geared a bit more towards entertainment and the ‘fun’ parts of Chicago, then the Britannica entry was.

Bias/Controversy:

Wikipedia has a section for discussion. In there, it is told that the article is not considered a ‘good article’ and it needs to be improved. Then there are people discussion what is wrong with the entry. The only thing I could find like this on Britannica was were you could send an email to Britannica making suggestions about how to improve.

Overall Quality/Impressions:

Overall, I feel that Wikipedia is a good source to find out information on a topic from ‘regular people’, but if you are looking for information to use in a research paper, then Britannica would be a better choice. There is some good information to be found in Wikipedia, but not all of it should be counted on to be true. Wikipedia seems to require some picking apart to find the usable information, while Britannica can be used at face value.