Comparision of Polish Wikipedia and Polish edition of Larousse in Polish edition of Newsweek

[Tomasz Ganicz]

In Polish edition of Newsweek from 31.12.06 there is a supplement called
"Future of information". Although it is not pointed clearly this
supplement is obviously sponsored by Larousse Poland and in fact it is a
kind of "smart" advertisement of Polish edition of "Popular Larousse
Encyclopedia".

Among other articles describing advantages of Larousse over Polish
Scientific Publishers (PWN, http://en.pwn.pl/) encyclopedias and other
potential "paper" competitors of Larousse in Poland, there is also large
article comparing Larousse's encyclopedia with Polish Wikipedia.

The comparison is based on three articles "Anatomia" (anatomy), "Islam"
and "Ogniwo słoneczne" (solar cell). One of these articles is marked
"stub" in Polish Wikipedia, the second one is disambig, the third one is
normal, long article. What is interesting, there is no claims that there
are factual mistakes in Wikipedia, however the comparison points out
that the consistency of text, amount and quality of pictures and ease of
reading is much better in Larousse than in Wikipedia. As I personally
can agree with better consistency of text and ease of reading, the
claims that amount and quality of pictures is better is based only on
the pictures one can see in articles, completely ignoring what can be
found in linked galleries in Commons and after clicking on bigger
versions of pictures. Of course the selection of articles for comparison
was also not random but made by choice of guys from Larousse. Other sets
of articles could probably give completely different results.

Anyway, I think the fact that this sponsored supplement put much more
place to compare their encyclopedia with Wikipedia (three pages long
article) and not to the other formally more serious competitors like PWN
encyclopedia and Polish edition of Brittanica is interesting by itself.
It shows that Larousse is more afraid of us than of PWN or Brittanica...
or  we were simply easer target of not very fair negative comparison.

--
Tomasz "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Polimerek
http://www.poli.toya.net.pl/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/pl/TomaszGanicz.html
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[Oldak]

On 23/12/06, Tomek Polimerek Ganicz <[hidden email]> wrote:
> What is interesting, there is no claims that there
> are factual mistakes in Wikipedia, however the comparison points out
> that the consistency of text, amount and quality of pictures and ease of
> reading is much better in Larousse than in Wikipedia.

Well, these faults are very fixable and can easily be changed. Unlike
claims of factual accuracy, they do not come down to the fundamental
model in which we are working.

Still, with Commons available, I'm surprised "quality of pictures" was
a criticism. Wikimedia seems to have a wide range of high-quality
pictures at its disposal.

Could you explain what you mean by "consistency of text"? Consistency
in writing style?

--
Oldak Quill ([hidden email])
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