In its struggle to remain relevant, Britannica is planning to open its gates to the public for contributions, to a certain extent following Wikipedia's model. But even its announcement shows that commercial interests can prevail over truth. Although Wikipedia's influence is clear, it is not mentioned once! Instead, Jorge Cauz, president of Britannica Inc., adopts a superior attitude about Web 2.0 (read Wikipedia; funnily enough I went to Wikipedia to find out who he was, because I couldn't easily find it on Britannica's site).

Now, I think this is a good development. It will provide a bit of competition to Wikipedia which will make it stronger and it will make Britannica and bit more current which will make it more useful, even though my first steps will always lead me to the Wiki. But Mr Cauz's hauty tone about Wikipedia also gives us an opportunity to wonder about the nature of knowledge.

britannicanet.com But there are significant differences between our approach and what is popularly termed “Web 2.0.” First, and most important, we believe that the creation and documentation of knowledge is a collaborative process but not a democratic one, and this has at least three consequences.

Funnily enough, Wikipedia has been accused for not being democratic enough. And rightly so. It is meritocratic. And as I will try to show below, it is exactly the same as the Britannica model.

The first one is ownership. Here I am not referring to copyright
ownership but to owning the responsibility that comes with having
created or documented a set of ideas or a body of knowledge. That
someone is, or should be, responsible for what he or she writes and
shares with others is not a new idea. It has long been part of who and
what we are as humans. At the new Britannica site, we will welcome and
facilitate the increased participation of our contributors, scholars,
and regular users, but we will continue to accept all responsibility of
what we write under our name. We are not abdicating our responsibility
as publishers or burying it under the now-fashionable “wisdom of the
crowds.”

It is a common misconception that Wikipedia is completely anonymous. Sure, it is possible for any individual to change any page without logging in and I've used that facility many times to correct typos even though I have an account. But the bulk of the work is done by people with accounts and real names who have a real presence and reputation in the Wikipedia community. Assuming that Wikipedia is the result of 'wisdom of the crowd' is a huge misunderstanding. Occasionally it suffers from vandalism and sometimes anonymous agents use it to slander certain prominent names, but by and large, it is not anonymous and it is certainly accountable. Most readers just don't use it that way.

The second consequence of our collaborative-but-not-democratic
approach is that we recognize the voices and powers of experts. The
plan for the new site goes to great lengths to increase the
relationships we have with thousands of our current contributors as
well as with new experts recommended or identified by the user
community. We are calling this larger group our new “community of
scholars.” To this special group we will provide a set of editing
tools, promotional and community features, and incentive plans for them
to engage with Britannica content as well as a place at the site for
them to publish directly and under their own names for other Britannica
users. This content created by the community of scholars will be
controlled by each individual creator, and they will be responsible for
deciding what feedback they accept or reject from those reading their
work.

Again, this is not that different from Wikipedia. There are editors who oversee areas of knowledge and moderate contributions (sometimes well sometimes badly). Generally, experts are welcome but their subjectivity is also recognised. That's why Wikipedia discourages original research. Experts aren't always great at writing encyclopedic entries because they usually have an ax to grind. The prominent structuralist, Jan Mukařovský, wrote the entry on structuralism for Otto's Encyclopedia (the Czech Britannica) and it's a great article on whay Mukařovský believes structuralism to be but not a good general entry. Conversely, most experts will consider any encyclopedic attempt at their discipline too simplistic and/or inaccurate because of its inevitable reductionism. Frequently, entries written by true experts are incomprehensible to anyone but other experts. So again, not that different from Wikipedia and where it is different, it is not necessarily for the better. (Although this will vary by area.)

Finally, the third consequence of this approach is objectivity, and
it requires experts. Certainly, objectivity is difficult to attain, but
we’re committed to it. We believe that to provide lively and
intelligent coverage of complex subjects requires experts and
knowledgeable editors who can make astute judgments that cut through
the cacophony of competing and often confusing viewpoints on a topic.
In contrast to our approach, democratic systems settle for something
bland and less informative, what is sometimes termed a “neutral point
of view.”

Well, that, as I pointed out above, is nonsense. Experts are never objective about their own discipline. (Let's remind ourselves of Conquest's law "Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands". The collorary of which was suggested by Andrew Brown as "Everyone is reductionist about a subject they don't understand".) Also Cauz's statement is contradictory. On the one hand, it extolls expertise (erroneously equating it with objectivity) and on the other, it asks experts to 'cut through the cacophony of competing and often confusing viewpoints'. But experts should do all the viewpoints justice in order to be objective. So there seems to be a conflict of interest between clarity, objectivity and expertise.

Finally, can we take the statement of a president of a commercial entity about its own company's effort to be objective?