how many different type of people work in a private encylopedia project like britannica?

Question

wikipedia is contributed by so many people on the internet, but i wonder how other encyclopdia's like encarta or britannica manage with a limited set of people.

Answer 1

Really nice question.

Wikipedia is a free to edit online ecyclopedia ao basically anyone with a computer and a net connection can edit it. The articles available on wikipedia are typically not as structured and critically edited as any other printed encyclopedia or even Encarta but the sheer number of articles makes up for it.

Encyclopædia Britannica employees About 400 (300 in Chicago, 100 worldwide) but they are not the ones who contribute to the articles .

The current version of Britannica was written by over 4,000 contributors, including noted scholars such as Milton Friedman, Michael DeBakey and Carl Sagan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannica

Encarta simply bought in-circulation companies publishing encyclopedia and so the research work and contributions made by schoolars to these got incorporated into the Encarta.

In the late 1990s, Microsoft bought Collier's Encyclopedia and New Merit Scholar's Encyclopedia from Macmillan and incorporated them into Encarta. Thus the current Microsoft Encarta can be considered the successor of the Funk and Wagnalls, Collier, and New Merit Scholar encyclopedias.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encarta

Encarta had started user editing early in 2005, the online Encarta started to allow users to suggest changes to existing articles.

Articles are not immediately updated. Instead, user feedback is submitted to Encarta's editors for review, copyediting, and approval. Contributors are also not paid for their submissions.

Still Encarta is very slow at updating its articles.

Have a nice day .

;)

Answer 2

Wikipedia can manage because they have an restricted set of rules. Any article that gets written has to follow the same format.
And that's what encyclopedias are all about, the only difference is that Wikipedia is 'free' in the sense that anyone can contribute to the making of different kinds of articles.

In the making of Britannica there are a lot of people working there too, but the difference is that they have to be certified, unlike wikipedia where you only need a computer and good network connection.

Answer 3

As many people as there are articles and then some. Probably a large staff to type colate and file edit and refine all that info. I would guess it would take 500 to 1000 people just for the physical aspect of it.