Wikipedia talk:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica

Old talk is at Wikipedia talk:1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (archive 1).

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I wonder about the fate of Wikipedia a hundred years from now -- the nature of the Wikipedia is to keep itself current, and so the Wikipedia of 2102 is unlikely to have any of the historical context of 2002. It won't be possible to use Wikipedia in the same manner that we're using the 1911 EB, and that's unfortunate. There's something to be said for committing it all to paper...
--Bob Jonkman 11 September 2002

Well, even if the edit histories on the live server get cleared again, I for one intend to have a century's worth of backups in my petabyte storage crystal library when the times comes. :) --Brion 03:52 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia should use that 1911encyclopedia.org stuff without getting the copyright issues completely resolved. 1911encyclopedia claims copyright to spelling corrections they've made and stuff like that. Basically they mean they've sprinkled copyright traps all through the text to prevent legal copying. I think that shows unfriendly intentions on their part.

It's going to be necessary to OCR the EB again to get a really public domain text file. This is on Project Gutenberg's agenda to do, but don't expect it real soon. (Someone did volume 1 a long time ago and now there's renewed interest in doing the other volumes). --Paul Rubin, 10 oct 2002.

AFAIK spellchecking corrections and similar changes lack the "creativity" required to obtain the new copyright. --Imran

It is in process as of Jan 22, 2003. It is being prepared for input to Project Gutenberg by way of Distributed Proofreaders. Anyone can help proofread at http://texts01.archive.org/dp/ --AMillar

Fantastic! I've been wondering if DP would start working on EB1911. I'll be glad when the world finally gets a text without some company making dubious copyright claims. -- Stephen Gilbert 00:49 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)

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As we say on the subject page here, no one should use EB1911 as is. They may have made changes in the scanned material. They'd have to just to put it on the web, but I don't think they've done any concerted editing at all. For instance, they lost the entire entry on Plato.Ortolan88

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I read this talk page and the old one. I saw the copyright claim on their site '5. Use on Other Web Sites...' Someone mentioned it here before. Right now I am still a bit confused. So many opinions. Is the text in Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica the final conclusion or still subject to debate? Erik Zachte

I own two copies of the 1911 Encyclopedia. Every word we use was typed by hand from one or the other of them.

Lets say, just for argument, that someone simply cut and pasted an article from the online version of the encyclopedia, used a good deal semi-verbatim, edited a good deal more, quoted the encyclopedia directly on some occasions and it came out looking like Richard Francis Burton in the context of an online encyclopedia that looks nothing like the EB1911 and consists of 90 per cent non-EB1911 material. It's more than spellchecking, it's an entirely different use in an entirely different context.

They don't want someone to make money off their encyclopedia. Nothing we are doing is likely to cause us any trouble in the real world. And, if it does, we'll just rewrite it some more and press on. The Wikipedia does not depend on EB1911. I'm sitting here with two copies of the EB1911, six or seven dictionaries, and the entire Internet and the Minuteman Interlibrary Loan system at my disposal, not to mention a well-stuffed brainpan and hundreds of other people editing everything I see. I'm not just cutting and pasting from one source.

As long as we edit the EB1911 material, and it desparately needs it as the editing guide on the subject page makes clear, and we don't advertise that we are in any way the Britannica, and no more than ten percent of the Wikipedia even traces its ancestry to the EB1911, I am thinking that we'll have no problem, and, should we have a problem, it is easily fixed by rewriting some articles. There's no Britbot importing Britannica by the ton, there's a few people -- ten, a hundred, no more -- using a damn handy online version of an out-of-copyright reference book to make some articles.Ortolan88 04:38 Oct 27, 2002 (UTC)

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Item 6 says that "the presentation is British." Is this actually true? The Encyclopedia Britannica is an American encyclopedia (contrary to what its name might suggest). Why would an American encylopedia have used British spelling? soulpatch

See http://corporate.britannica.com/company_info --Brion

By the time the thoroughly revised fourteenth edition appeared in 1929, the principal operations of the company had moved to the United States., not yet in 1911. - Patrick 08:51 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

From what I've seen (from Distributed Proofreading[?]), is that it's basically British English, with a few dashes of Americanisms in some articles (mostly those pertaining to American topics) -- |||

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In light of Ortolan's recent advice on the mailing list, I'd like to propose the following boilerplate text for the foot of Enc1911 pages:

This article was originally based on material from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. Update as needed.

''This article was originally based on material from the [[Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica|1911 Encyclopedia Britannica]]. Update as needed.''

I'm pretty sure I said that should go on the talk page of the article, not in the text. I don't generally like editorial injunctions in the text. Ortolan88

Infrogmation's unanswered and important Q on 16:22 May 11, 2003 has been moved down.

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For the record, and the hell of it, encyclopedia is not a misspelling, encyclopaedia is the misspelling, but a very, very old one. According to the OED, the spelling with ae is "pseudo-Greek" and "an erroneous form (said to be a false reading) occurring in MSS. of Quintilian, Pliny, and Galen, for encyklios paideia 'encycyclical education', the circle of arts and sciences considered by the Greeks as essential to a liberal education. The spelling with ae has been preserved from becoming obs. by the fact that many of the works so called have Latin titles, as Encyclopaedia Britannica." At least half the citations in the OED are for the so-called "incorrect" spelling. The OED states no preference, nor does Webster's Unabridged. The OED puts the ae form first, Webster's puts it second. The Wikipedia explicitly has no preference between British and American spelling. Ortolan88 18:27 Jan 24, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, the official spelling of the flagship work of scholarly fluff is Encyclopædia Britannica (note the ligature tying the A and E together). How's that for an unpeeling, er, mispeeling? --Uncle Ed

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A while back there was some discussion that we should not put the name "Encyclopaedia Britannica" in such a note on articles as the name is still a copyrighted trademark. Has it been decided that we can use that name? Wondering simply, `` Infrogmation 16:22 May 11, 2003 (UTC)