Wikipedia v. Britannica

The news over the past few days has been pretty heavy. Here's a little light relief. A group has compared the accuracy of articles in the internet-based Wikipedia with those in the encyclopaedia Britannica. Despite the fact that anyone can post and/or edit Wikipedia articles, they were just about as accurate as Britannica's. I'm not sure whether that's a plus for Wikipedia or a minus for Britannica.

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, home to nearly four million articles contributed by volunteers, covers scientific topics about as accurately as Encyclopaedia Britannica, according to experts.

In a comparison of 42 articles from the two sources, covering a broad swath of the scientific spectrum, the respected journal Nature found little disparity in accuracy.

The findings were published in an online article on Wednesday which, according to its author, was the first time peer review had been used to compare the two encyclopaedias.