To put this process to the test, the journal Nature recently commissioned a study to compare the accuracy of a sample of articles drawn from Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica respectively. Nature's experts found 162 errors in Wikipedia's articles and 123 errors in Britannica's. Jorge Cauz, Britannica's president, immediately claimed victory because Wikipedia had “a third more errors”.
Privately, however, Britannica's editors were shocked to have to concede that their creation contained any errors at all. Total accuracy, after all, is the main selling point for the old media. So Dale Hoiberg, Britannica's current editor-in-chief, commissioned his own review of the study and found that “Nature did everything wrong that they could possibly have done wrong.” Last month Nature issued a rebuttal. But if it did get it wrong, it is not clear why it would have erred more for Britannica than for Wikipedia. Mr Hoiberg puts a brave face on it, claiming that “our model, although not perfect, is the best.”
For a lot of new-media watchers, the most interesting thing about the episode was something entirely different: that Britannica, somewhat representative of old media in general, instinctively regards Wikipedia as a threat, whereas Wikipedians are not the least bit tempted to reciprocate.
- Economist Survey on New Media, "The wiki principle