Talk:Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition/Archive 3

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There were two things seriously wrong with the assessment of the 1911 EB in the article, both blatantly POV, which I've attempted to correct. One is that the 1911 EB was viewed merely in its negative aspects; the other was a prescriptive section! which was quite extraordinary to see in Wikipedia. As has been pointed out on the talk pages of many Wikipedia articles, reader does not need to be told how they "should" use the information: it is sufficient to alert them to the virtues and flaws of the 1911, and they can make up their own minds how they wish to read it. Bill 17:58, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Regarding this paragraph:

On the other hand, in certain disciplines, as for example the classics and ancient history, the 1911 edition compares quite favorably, both in breadth and depth, with more recent revisions of the Encyclopedia. This is due in part to shifting interests that have led to the contraction of certain topics in recent editions, but also to the stellar group of experts who worked on the 1911 edition: no Encyclopedia Britannica since has succeeded in employing a group of equally good writers. The writing and copy editing is also in general far superior to that in the recent editions of the Britannica, and finally the 1911 editors allowed considerable play to the individual points of view of their writers: the articles therefore often have a freshness that contrasts favorably with the flat committee-written quality of the newer editions. For these reasons, despite its inevitable flaws and the progress of human knowledge since its time, the 1911 edition is widely regarded as the best Britannica yet written.

Completely POV. First off, I disagree with just about everything said here. I am a professionally trained historian with a Bachelors degree in History circa 1993 and modern day academia does not see it that way, if it did my training would have bee much different. The approaches to history have changed dramatically since the early 20th century, not to mention the amount of research done in the 20st century that has outdated almost every single article on a factual and methodology basis. The 20th century saw the rise of the "professional" and the 11th edition is one of the last "men of general learning" encyclopedias, replaced by specialists and professionals. I mean if you want to say the style of the writing is good, and the copyediting is good, and the authors were the best popular stars of their time, that's fine, but the above paragraph is pure hagiography POV, not to mention unsupportable original research. Even Amos who read the 11th and 14th editions by the 1930s said the 14th was a better version! "best Britannica yet written" is popular mythology and/or personal opinion. -- Stbalbach 18:30, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Well now we know what "POV" means! ("Completely POV. First off, I disagree with just about everything said here.") When I read this, I went to the first thing I thought of — I'm familiar with central Italy — so Pesaro came to mind. I own an EB15 (1973 printing), and I compared it with the 1911. The recent article of course includes material about WW2 and has no inaccuracies about transportation — which it manages by omitting any mention of it altogether. Other than that, the 1911, among things not found in the modern article, goes into fair detail about the local topography, the ancient history of the town, various natives, and the contents of the museums and churches. This is what I meant about breadth and depth. Tarring the above as "original research" — it merely reports a wide consensus (ah yes, that's, contradictorily, tarred as "popular mythology") is basically an ad hominem remark: you're not the only person in the world to study history.... The man who read the encyclopedias, is merely personal opinion — of a single person — at one remove; even if he was a successful groceryman and involved with chicle.

There is no need for us in 2006 to feel threatened by the excellence of a past work, although it ran on its own prejudices — as if we had none. Bill 18:57, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but a paragraph whose intention is to show that EB1911 is widely regarded as the "best EB encyclopedia ever written" is POV and original research. Your obvious personal leanings are clear. I have a hardcopy of the EB1911, in my bathroom in fact (and I don't use it for toilet paper), but I know what it is, and what it's not. -- Stbalbach 20:55, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Also see previous discussion above "often regarded as the greatest edition" -- no one has been able to provide a reliable source for this mythology. In fact the very notion originates from EB its self, as part of its original marketing campaign. I'd like to see a reliable source (ie. a published modern scholar) say these things about EB1911. -- Stbalbach 20:59, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Talk of assertions out of thin air! The reason for the general consensus in favor of the 11th is not because of publicity by Britannica — if so, why aren't the 10th or the 12th considered particularly good (and they're not) -- but because it was better. Of course my personal opinion is that this is so, just as it is yours that it is not: which is why the much vaunted "NPOV" of Wikipedia is a nonsensical impossibility. Yours is a minority opinion, you've been caught out, and are understandably embarrassed: so it's dukes up! My own opinion though has, alas, not a stroke of originality to it, and the most cursory websearch on the matter, even removing the search pollution from Wikipedia itself, turns up a great consensus to back it up, as for example very quickly this passing reference in a Reference Librarian mailing list, but there are dozens of others.

But Wikipedia, running on a democracy (and by and large, of the young and, like myself at least, the désoeuvrés), reproduces mindlessly the Zeitgeist of 2006, under the cover of "NPOV". This is in sum a battleground, and not being that much of a fighter, I'll slither away: but don't believe for a minute you've done something useful or correct, nor that everything good was invented or perfected in our own lifetime. It's a common error, but it's still an error. Bill 21:19, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh no doubt there are people who think it's "the best",. But we support our opinions with evidence from verifiable sources. No one has of yet been able to produce a verifiable appropriate source (see the help page for how these terms are defined on Wikipedia). Since this is an academic subject, an appropriate source would be a well known academic person confirming what you have said. All of the links provided here saying its great have been from people trying to sell the Encyclopedia! It started with EB its self when it was first released claiming "sum of all knowledge", then used book dealers kept pounding that idea for the last 100 years to sell the forests of EB1911 sets that no one ever throws away, and now since it has entered the public domain, there have been scores of people capitalizing on that mythology to sell electronic copies. The link you provided above is just one more example of that. None of these are appropriate sources for that claim and if you asked a Professor at a university if he would recommend his students to use EB1911 citations in their professional peer-reviewed publications I think they would take a very narrow view. Anyway some of the aspects you mentioned of EB1911 are already discussed in the article in the preceding section before the 21st century section. -- Stbalbach 00:50, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The value of EB1911 is for the material it contains that has been cut from later editions. My field is C19 history, and I find that a great number of very sound articles, especially in biography, have been dumped, and there is no mention of even key words relating to the topics in the 15th edition which I have on CD. A topic which has not been discussed anywhere is how much the EB1911 was the child of Horace Everett Hooper, the American-born publisher. He purchased the reprint rights to the 9th edition and pursuaded The [London] Times to issue a reprint of it. In 1902 was published an additional eleven volumes plus a reprint from the plates of the 9th to make the 10th edition. His association with 'The Times ceased in 1909, and he linked with the Cambridge University Press to publish the 11th edition we are discussing. In 1920 Britannica was bought by Sears Roebuck, and in 1923 they published an addition 3 volumes covering the events of WW1. Contrary to the impression given on the main page, the 11th edition was based on American influences, not only in increase of American and Canadian content, but also the efforts made to give it a more popular tone. American marketing methods also assisted sales. Apwoolrich 20:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I see the article no longer includes such an assertion, but in case anyone is tempted to put it back ... the 9th, 11th and 14th were all quite different, perhaps can be thought of on a rough continuum from scholarly to popular. To a different user, one or the other might be best. The 9th was perhaps the last to serve as a significant tool of scholarship; the 11th culturally significant; and the 14th easy to read and rather ubiquitous.flux.books 17:04, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

The article references this "article" - but it's just one person's opinion, not an authoritative source, so please treat it as that. In no sense is the author an expert; he's a bookseller. A few problems of note:

• He discusses it as a work of reference; the current version of the WP article does a good job of making it clear that it has to be used with great care in that way. ("Among all my reference books, there is one standout, a star")
• He's loose with the facts. The EB was of course published after the Encyclopedie;
• Unsupported opinions / bias: "19th century saw the descent of the form into an academic exercise in navel-gazing. New editions of the Britannica were very scholarly and learned but none were particularly readable or even useful to a general audience, as they featured tediously long and ponderously dense entries." What a shame that those poor 19th c. people had to settle for such an EB - it could have been so much more entertaining! I suppose serving as a major tool for the diffusion and advancement of knowledge might be some small consolation, but not much.
• It's superficial, and doesn't really get the story right. The parts about the edge or slant of editions are, in particular, not to be relied on.

Anyway, enough on that. If you want expertise, look elsewhere, including the authors at the bottom of encyclopedia.flux.books 16:59, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

I've revised this phrase in the first paragraph. As it stood, it was inappropriately prescriptive, and so sweeping as to be inaccurate. Rather than try to craft a way to inject this into the brief summary paragraph, better to just mention the issue and leave it for a proper discussion in the article. It is ultimately a discussion of something rather obvious, anyway. flux.books 12:35, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Some good new content has been added in the past couple months. But the use of this phrase creates some problems: "The eleventh edition pioneered a number of conventions of the modern encyclopedia."

"It was the first encyclopedia to be issued with a comprehensive index volume in which was added a categorical index, where like topics were listed" Not at all convinced the index of the 11th was innovative enough to be worth mentioning, that's an obtuse claim to fame. Both those features had been seen much earlier, if indeed this was the first time they were both included, it's not that remarkable.

And this ... "It was the first to break away from the convention of long treatise-length articles" is completely unsupportable. First for the EB, but not the first modern encyclopedia ... see the Encyclopedia Americana and any of the Conversations Lexikon versions dating back 100 years earlier. If anything, that was a perhaps belated competitive response by EB, and a result of the attempt to popularize it as American influence increased. flux.books 12:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

One positive and one negative quote is sufficient and balanced. It is POV to keep piling on quotes and bad form to have an article with so many quotes one right after the next, it reads like a war of the quotes, like editors trying to outdo each other with quotes. -- Stbalbach 01:41, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's a step in the right direction. But it's not POV if it's true, no need to toss out that epithet. "one positive and one negative" is not a good approach when there is no real debate; for example, there is no one who seriously thinks the 14th is an exceptional or unique encyclopedia in a broad view. A plausible contrary view might be more in favor of the ninth edition, or the third, but not the 14th. flux.books 16:09, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

By the way, Clark is hardly an authority on the subject, the quote is there for other reasons. flux.books 16:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

The quote by Shirk (who is he, anyway?) is silly and should have been deleted; it was just moved because I didn't have time to fix everything that day, and was trying to patch up the most obvious problems. For the record, it was as follows. Like everything, this is obviously subject to further discussion. flux.books 16:09, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

There are other opinions, however; Amos Urban Shirk, who read both the entire Eleventh and Fourteenth Edition in the 1930s, said he found the Fourteenth Edition a "big improvement" over the Eleventh, stating that "most of the material had been completely rewritten".

The racist quote I added is outrageous enough that I imagine some people will think it's a hoax. It's not; it's on page 344 of Volume 19. —Chowbok 04:17, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

That edited quote did indeed come from page 344 of Volume 19, but the article is on "Negritos", not "Negros". Wizened 22:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't think so... the scan of the page is here, and the quoted text appears to be in the Negro article. (The article does, to be fair, go on to attribute much of the claimed racial differences to environment, rather than only race; but so far as it goes, the quote seems accurate.) TSP 23:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

My source was the 1911 online enclyclopedia britannica (which is referenced in this article). The link is [[1]]. If you then go to the index and look up the article on Negros, you will find that the quote is not repeated there. Wizened 00:35, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Indeed - that version seems to have some text transferred from the Negro article into the Negrito article. If you look at the second paragraph of its Negrito article, you'll see the Negrito article end with its list of references; then some material from the Negro article starts in the middle of a sentence. The Love To Know] version has the text in its correct order, though numerous scanning errors make it hard to read. Because of the low quality of all the completed text versions, it's generally best to check stuff against the [en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling scans]. TSP 12:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I stand corrected. I tracked down someone who owns a copy of the original 1911 set and he verified that the OCR version which I referenced has mixed the two articles -- as you suggested. Your quote is correctly attributed. Wizened 19:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm a bit concerned about how some articles - such as Apocrypha - have large parts of 1911 entries simply lifted straight from Project Gutenberg and placed here on Wikipedia. Personally, I would prefer it if Apocrypha were a stub rather than over-inflated like it is now - the 1911 text makes up at least 75% of the article, and it is so jarringly un-wikipedic and large that nobody's taking a stab at fixing it. While I certainly think that the 1911 edition of the Britannica is a valid source when no other can be found, or when it is supported heavily by other sources, I think we should try to keep direct porting of entries to an absolute minimum - its style mostly doesn't match up with Wikipedia's, and while we'll never root out every bit of bias from the project we can certainly try to limit the amount of bias coming from texts, we should try to make a distinction between biased and unbiased material in the Britannica before it ever enters Wikipedia. To do that we HAVE to stop simply importing whole Britannica articles into Wikipedia. We especially shouldn't allow any bots to get approved to put in 1911 material - it just makes Wikipedia weaker. Rarr 02:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Also discussed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. There once was a time when Wikipedia was young and trying to make a name for its self by having lots of articles and uploading EB1911 text seemed like a good idea. Today it often gets in the way of articles from developing into modern and up to date .. I've never seen a EB1911-based article become Featured, it's like a death knell, better off starting from scratch. I've also never had anyone complain when deleting EB1911 text, even when it meant deleting the majority of the article. Most of the editors who uploaded EB1911 text did so hit-and-run style in large batches cut and paste with little regard, and rarely stayed around to watch the article or care what happens to it. -- Stbalbach 03:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

That's not a comment about this article, it's a comment about wikipedia. Also, there aren't any reliable generalizations; it would depend substantially on the topic of the specific article, as discussed elsewhere. flux.books 01:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

EB 1911 is an excellent resource, especially for topics of humanist education. Uploading a 1911 article to Wikipedia is a great start, editors should then just not be afraid to assimilate it to the WP MoS and expanding it. Look at

dab (ᛏ)

10:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with 1911's archaic tone and its dated view of encyclopedic style. After all, if you hit the Random Article link a few times, chances are you won't see something sourced from 1911, but you'll certainly see some fanboy article written in much worse style, and equally unlikely to be fixed (I know, that's not the greatest of defenses). But I do have a concern about dumped articles that have no warning signs: as I've started on the verification project I have found many text-dumps with no tags at all. At an absolute minimum, {{

update-eb}}, or {{1911POV

}}.

There's also a good point made in

WP:BIAS: "the material that has been modernized still often reflects the underlying methods and approaches of the original article", and I have no answer for that. Removing the tags should be handled with care. David Brooks

20:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree this article is a guide on how to write Wikipedia articles. There is already a Wikipedia guide on using EB1911 (see links top of this page). -- Stbalbach 01:43, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

In that case, I'm going to suggest that there's no need for most of the "1911 Britannica in the 21st Century" section. Most of this is OR, as far as I can tell, and not based on what reliable secondary sources say about the 11th edition. And there is certainly no need for the discussions of copyright status of the different online versions, which is not of any interest to anyone besides wikipedia editors.

john k

17:18, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. This information is relevant and accurate. -- Stbalbach 17:24, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with both (and thanks, Stbalbach, for waiting for a consensus). MO: Describing the online sources, and the different ways in which they may differ from the ur-version, are relevant and encyclopediac in the electronic age. Agreed that some of the text near the end, including what I added, was written from the POV of someone using it as a free source for WP (would not belong). However, you can argue (I'll let others judge) that it successfully acts as a guide on whether you can use the online versions as a free source for any purpose (would belong). To the extent it is WP-specific, I would move that somewhere else. The problem is where? We have about two too many project and talk pages on how to use the EB text as a WP source, as the 1911 subproject of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles has gone through several stages. David Brooks 17:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

If there's going to be a discussion of the online versions, it should not be written in the way that it is, and it should be in a section of the article, not the external links section (as we already do for the Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia). In terms of the "the encyclopedia in the 21st century" section, I think that Stbalbach ought to provide some citations for any of the bulleted points. Until that is done, it is OR and should be removed. I'll give him a couple of days to provide references. BTW, David Brooks, you're not that David Brooks, are you?

john k

18:06, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

No, and I'm not User:DavidWBrooks either, despite my middle initial being W :-). Back to topic - I see your point about OR (although the sections are a plain recitation of fact) but I would still urge that we keep the simple list of links with the important warning "Versions of this public domain work claiming copyright". Then we should move the warning about the IP taint somewhere it will be seen by any Wikipedians who might want to import from those sites. I just did that to Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. There aren't many of us left, anyway. When I want to add 1911 factoids, I retype from the TIFF scans. David Brooks 19:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think there needs to be some kind of change in the links. Whatever you think is best would be okay with me. And I don't think that bulleted list is a plain recitation of fact, if that's what you mean to say. Much of it is vague and unsourced, like the part about "hagiographies" of "nobility".

john k

20:54, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

So how about this: keep the introductory warning line in place, and reduce the lists to the external link and the sentence that duplicates their copyright notices. But first give Stbalbach and/or me time to (a) put some stronger warnings into any project pages that might be seen by users of 1911 text (b) move the bulk of those two current paragraphs into this talk page. David Brooks 22:50, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I've updated and expanded

Note this is a separate topic from that now being discussed in the next section. David Brooks 07:14, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure how the current version may vary from the version that started this discussion ... but there is definitely a place for a discussion of using the eleventh edition as a source of knowledge and for research today which is distinctly different from a discussion of using it as a source for wikipedia articles. That is, it's quite wikipedia-centric to assume that discussion refers only to writing wikipedia articles. There is a need for some kind of discussion, as there are many people who still throw around the inane idea that this is the last good encyclopedia, the last encyclopedia that really told the truth and was un-censored, etc. flux.books 13:18, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

If you want to add cite tags that's fine, but you don't delete things unless you think they are wrong, and can provide some rationale or reason on why they are wrong. If you think something is wrong, then delete it, and defend your position on the talk page. If you think it's OR, then add a cite tag. You did delete it, but you didn't defend your position on why it's factually wrong, just some wishy washy argument about schizophrenia that doesn't address why the section is factually incorrect. --Stbalbach 01:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The material is pretty blatantly OR. Are you saying it's not? Also, some of the points are incredibly dubious - the one about "hagiographies" of "nobility" for instance.

john k

10:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Now I'm confused, because I don't know what you are pointing to as OR. This discussion started with the descriptions of the external links but that's not where the hagiography stuff is. Can you provide a list? David Brooks 20:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

The discussion started with two points, actually - I removed the descriptions of the external links, and also greatly changed and shortened the "The 11th edition in the 21st century" section. I think this section consists very largely of OR (in that there is no evidence that anyone besides the writer of that section in this wikipedia article has actually made the claims being propounded there), and several of the points are not only OR, but inherently questionable (the claim that articles on nobility are hagiography, for instance, which, at best, is using a number of the wrong words and isn't saying what it intends to.)

john k

20:40, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree the three cited cases were OR - I had not written them originally and assumed they were accurate, but when I went to verify (I own a hard copy set), there are no entries for those three in the encyclopedia at all (perhaps under different names but I didn't pursue it). But the rest of it is objective and verifiable by looking at the EB1911. If you need more direct quoting let me know. -- Stbalbach 00:50, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Stbalbach, I'm happy to accept, in my capacity as an educated person, that you are correct in your characterization of the 11th Edition of Britannica. But looking through your copy of the 11th edition and finding examples of various problems that you identify is pretty clearly original research. What you need to find are reliable secondary sources which identify these problems with the 11th Edition. For some of the points, I'm sure this could be found - for instance, the introduction to the 14th edition of Britannica probably discusses the reasons that an update was felt to be necessary, and gives some of them. But as it stands it's OR.

john k

00:59, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

John, your missing the point of OR. OR was not written to keep out obvious facts. The source in this case is the EB1911, it speaks for its self - it is self-evident - it is not "research" to say the President of the United States made an error in his speech - you don't need to find a third party who said "the President made an error", you just say "The President made an error, here is the source/quote ..". Stating the obvious is not OR. We have tons of articles on WP that state plain facts. I mean, saying EB1911 has lots of errors because of its age and is therefore problematic for researching is mainstream, common knowledge. As for a EB14th intro I doubt it, they are usually not critical of their own products, and many of these problems would not become problems until much later so you would need a recent critical review of the EB1911 which probably does not exist (I sure can't find one). John, people normally cite OR when they disagree with something - you seem to agree that the section is correct - why are you making an issue over it? -- Stbalbach 01:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

It's more or less correct, but I think it's undue weight to have a long discussion of entirely predictable flaws of a hundred year old encyclopedia. Of course they have outdated racial ideas, and of course a lot of the science is wrong, and of course information about geographical locations is out of date. Why is this interesting? Is this providing any information beyond what the mere fact that it was written in 1911 gives us? Beyond that, it is pretty clearly original research. I think it's fine to say the EB1911 has a lot of errors because of its age, but getting into specific examples is original research, in that you are looking at the encyclopedia yourself, analyzing it, and putting your analysis into the article.

john k

16:54, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it may be obvious to you, but it is not to a lot of people. The EB1911 is being copied, quoted and reproduced probably more than any other reference work on the Internet. It specifically mentions that. As for OR, I really think your taking the rule to an extreme - you already agree that information is correct, your being technical about the rule for other reasons - your using it in a way it was not intended to be used. I could point to countless examples of similar situations on Wikipedia where we don't flag things as OR because there is a common understanding they are factually correct. Also it's hardly "research" or "original" to open the EB1911 and point out errors in it which are on every page, it's not like you have to hunt them out. The EB1911 is the source and the errors speak for themselves, you don't need a third party source to repeat what is self-evident. If the President of the United States says after 9/11 that we are going on a "Crusade", we quote the President directly and point out his "mistake", we don't need a third party source, it is self-evident, the Presidents quote is the source. -- Stbalbach 12:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course it is OR to open up a book and point out errors that nobody else has noticed before. That's the definition of OR - you're doing your own research and including it on wikipedia. And we can't call the president hypothetically calling a war a "Crusade" a "mistake." That would not only be OR, it would be POV, because "crusade" is a word which has a meaning in the English language beyond the strict sense. But even for basic factual errors, I don't think we're supposed to discuss them unless somebody else has (which usually they have). For instance, we can talk about Keats' mistake of "Cortez" for "Balboa" in "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" because this is a famous mistake that has been noted many times. But do you really think that it would be perfectly appropriate for me to mention that the 11th edition of Britannica contains the inaccurate claim in its article on

john k

15:51, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

(OK, so I lost count of the colons) But people ("stupid" is POV) using 1911 in an uncritical way has damaged Wikipedia. As I labor in the verification vineyard I find verbatim imports that aren't even tagged as 1911 material, let alone rewritten. Now, the damage may already be done and unlikely to be extended, bit I'd still like to ask - how would you (John) prevent people from damaging WP by using 1911 uncritically? I've made a suggestion (place a warning on the likely entrypoints for people using 1911 material, such as project pages and talk pages including this one) and started to implement it; is that enough? And I assume we agree that it's not our business to prevent people from abusing 1911 in any other part of their lives. David Brooks 16:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Any problem inspired by concern with editing problems should be dealt with in the Wikipedia namespace, not in the main namespace. Your suggestion sounds fine to me. It might be a good idea to create a page specifically about use of 1911 in wikipedia, and cautioning against misuse, and suchlike. Although, I fear, the damage has already been done. (For a fun example, see

john k

17:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

We already have a page

Wikipedia:1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. But Wikipedia is not written for Wikipedia editors, it is written for the general public, including kids in Africa and middle school students etc.. and EB1911 is notable as a resource for a number reasons: it was once marketed as "the sum of all knowledge" and this "myth" is still alive and active, it is out of copyright and is probably the number one most widely copied and distributed work of its type on the internet, CD-Roms, Project Gutenberg, etc.. thus discussing it in a critical manner is not only appropriate, but needed - not for Wikipedia editors (we already have a page for that), but for anyone who is reading the article. The problem is there are no recent modern critical reviews of EB1911 to satisfy the technical requirement of OR, but it is a common mainstream and widely accepted view and should not be excluded from Wikipedia on OR grounds. -- Stbalbach

18:32, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

The job of wikipedia is not didactic moralizing. That much of it is out of date is obviously true, but I don't see any particular need to go into detail, because the ways it is out of date are completely predictable, and can be deduced by anyone based on the fact that it was put out in 1911. And if your criticisms are a commonly held view, it should not be difficult to find citations. If there are no citations, then it is original research, and shouldn't be here. There are all kinds of positives that one could note about the 11th edition of Britannica, ways in which it has information that later versions do not (more detailed geography, for instance, and more detail on political events in medieval and early modern European history), but mentioning those would also be original research, because we don't have a source talking about them.

john k

19:21, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with morality, it is called "criticism", Wikipedia contains criticisms of works. 'it should not be difficult to find citations - than please find one. It is difficult no one has published a recent critical review of EB1911, that I can find. And they are not just my criticisms, they are yours, and just about everyones "who has a brain", as you put it. The real problem here is the OR rule has no qualifier or rule for "common knowledge with no source available". This is a known and recognized weakness in the OR rule and people are looking at it as we speak, this is not the first time the problem has come up. -- Stbalbach 21:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not my responsibility to find citations. It's yours. As I've said, I think the lengthy discussion of this issue in the article is unnecessary and unbalanced, so why on earth would I want to find sources? Personally, I'm against an overly broad understanding of "original research," and I think a brief general discussion of the main points of the section would be appropriate, even if no specific source can be found. But the presentation of these specific points is clearly OR, and should be removed.

Ok, can you post here "a brief general discussion of the main points of the section" as you envision it? In the meantime I'm still working on finding sources, and discussing OR and common knowledge. -- Stbalbach 04:26, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Few days ago I 've seen somewhere a .tar of the eb1911 but I cant find it today. Any ideas? —The preceding

Is a tarball one of the Project Gutenberg formats? But I think those only cover the first few letters of the alphabet. (SEWilco 20:30, 24 December 2006 (UTC))

A "tarball" (see

tar (file format)) of the entire EB1911 would most likely be a pirate copy as I am not aware of any full digital version in the public domain, scanned or otherwise. PG is working on creating one, but only part way through. -- Stbalbach

00:13, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

The entire 1911 Encyclopedia IS online fully scanned electronically here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Tim_Starling/ScanSet_TIFF_demo at wikisource. --Gary123 Apply now, exciting opportunities available at Continental Op Detective Agency! 21:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Interesting, thanks. -- Stbalbach 05:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Is it not more copyrighted in European Union? I think not all authors died from more than 70 years (See

The last time I checked UK copyright law (about ten years ago, some things have changed), works created "for hire" were owned by the body or organisation putting up the money, allowing organisational works (particularly encyclopedias) to have rights that persist independently of the lives and deaths of the writers. In the case of an encyclopedia, the organisation itself is the copyright owner, not the people who happen to have been hired to write individual articles. Since

King James Bible is still copyright. Or open the flyleaf of a recent copy of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, and you'll see that its still supposed to be the copyright of the University of California

(who produced that revised translation). Even though the people who worked on that edition of the book died a long time ago, the UoC is still "alive".

AFAIK, the idea associated with the EB1911 stub ... that any publication produced before a certain date is automatically non-copyright ... might be USA-specific. We shouldn't suggest that a work that is PD in the USA is also PD in the UK or Europe, unless we have further supporting information. ErkDemon 16:22, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the Copyright law of the United Kingdom article, the EB1911 is a joint work, and as such is protected only during 70 years from publication (note that this period is not USA-specific). The only exception, which actually makes copyright protection harder to implement, is that if someone wants to sue someone else for copyright infringement, then permission is required from all the original authors of the joint work. In any case, as far as I understand, there is no copyright problem here. -- Gabi S. 23:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Two different issues have been brought up here. The first was that of joint work copyright (related to work for hire). The second, which I will address, is translations of works already in the public domain, the example being Newton's Principia. Anybody who wants to can make and copyright their own translation of the Principia, though why one would do so given the excellent translation available is another matter.

If, however, one wanted to quote from Newton in English a passage longer than what fair use permits could without anyone's permission do (or pay to have done) their own translation of such passage. If they paid for it, the copyright of the translation would be one of work for hire; for issues of its duration see Work for hire section (2) Copyright duration.

Theoretically, one does not need the copyright holder's permission to translate a work not yet in the public domain, but doing so is very foolish, as one cannot publish it or circulate it beyond the limits of fair use, which are very limiting indeed! It is not uncommon for scholars to translate short passages of works under copyright for use in papers or talks, but the limit is the same as the amount that might be quoted from the original without permission. It is, however, good form to ask permission to do so, even if it is within fair use. Robert Greer (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not persuaded this is true. I notice there's a cite (to a non-internet source, so I can't verify its specifics) on this sentence; perhaps it should read, "So and so wrote, 'This uses a lot of dated...'" As I said, I find it a questionable claim anyway. It's a different style of writing, but saying it "confounds" people is a bit excessive. Unless someone can point to a passage that's truly so "alien" to modern sensibilities that an intelligent person can't figure it out. --GenkiNeko 19:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I have added law to the list "science, technology, and medicine, " in the section

the internal link to Charles Simmons within wikipedia itself is wrong. The Charles Simmons who put together with someone else an anthology of readings from the Britannica Eleventh Edition is NOT the lniked-to Charles Simmons....He could not have been born in the 1800s and I know he is a contemporary writer...he wrote Powdered Eggs among other novels. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.0.158.66 (talk) 01:04, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

(The above comment moved from an inappropriate location) Please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki. David Brooks 03:20, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I've created a disambiguation page to fix the obvious error but knowing nothing of the author I'll leave to others the writing.--

talk • contribs

) 02:16, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

(Excuse the lack of tagging/markup) "It also allows the original Encyclopedia Britannica text to be corrupted by contributors; for example, as of September 14, 2007, the article Mormons contains unreverted substantive changes to the main text that had been in place for five months." Corrupted? Sounds a bit like an opinion to me 71.167.31.98 (talk) 04:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I was using the term in a technical sense to indicate that the website's text could be intentionally changed from the ur-text. I think that's what you would call it if an old, established text is modified by intervening scribes and presented back to the reader. It wasn't intended pejoratively, as you seem to suggest. David Brooks (talk) 05:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to confirm that a couple of quotes removed for not being real really are. This is page 845 of volume 1, on which the success of the rebels in the US War of Independence is attributed in part to "a population mainly of good English blood and instincts" (last para of first column). This is the Negro article on page 344 of Volume 19, in which it is stated that ""Mentally the negro is inferior to the white... the arrest or even deterioration of mental development [after adolescence] is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro's life and thoughts." (last para of second column). (All links to Tim Starling's scanned pages on Wikisource, as linked to from our page

That isn't to say that these are crucial things which must be in; but they shouldn't be removed because they're not in Britannica, because they are :-) TSP (talk) 00:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your help

i am still not sure why the point about the contemporous racism/eugenics/sexism in the Eleventh Edition was removed - it's like those movies that depict 1907 as just a funny version of 2007 with no mention of the corsets or that you could be legally beaten by your boyfriend or husband - as my great grandmother was for daring to speak up to her husband during a dinner party.

Margaret Anne —Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.131.33.31 (talk) 00:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that people remove the quotes out of genuine belief that they are not real. I have to say that when I first read the 'Negro' quote I didn't believe it - this is under 100 years ago, after all - four centuries after there was first a black courtier in the English court, a century after slavery was abolished in the UK, and over 40 years after there was first an African-American US Senator. It really is there, though. Slavery in the United States#Historiography_of_American_slavery, though, records that attitudes regarding black people as essentially mentally incapable dominated historical writing until the 1940s. TSP (talk) 00:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Yep, I added that originally. I put a note on the talk page (Talk:Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition/Archive 2#.22Negro.22_quote) because I figured people wouldn't believe it.—Chowbok ☠ 01:10, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I knew the quotes were real, but I find their inclusion in the article somehow gratuitous, at best titillating and and at worst a backdoor way of continuing the insult. I really think the assertion (truism, really) that the encyclopaedia reflects its times stands by itself without the labored illustration. Maybe a simple citation pointing to the source would be more appropriate. I'd vote to remove. By the way, the subsequent sentences in EB1911 display a remarkably more modern view (that intelligence tests are culture-specific and western views of intelligence are essentially self-serving).

Quite separately, is it safe to create a permalink to Tim Starling's archive? I thought he regarded the scan dump as essentially temporary, although it's been there forever. David Brooks (talk) 06:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The entire paragraph about "contemporaneous beliefs about race and ethnicity" is superfluous and tendentious. Superfluous in that you would naturally expect a book published in 1911 to reflect attitudes prevalent at the time. Tendentious in that the continuing comment that these beliefs are "to the detriment of [the articles'] factual accuracy" is a non-neutral opinion. It would be better in this encyclopædic context to say that the prevailing attitude to race and ethnicity in the 11th Britannica does not correspond to current (200x) mainstream opinion. User TSP above's view is, if I may say so, naĩve. The views given as examples were unremarkable, among the "non-elite" anyway, during my 1950s childhood in England. There are plenty out there who hold to them today. Whether or not you abhor such views is not pertinent to encyclopædic neutrality. On the whole, I think the whole paragraph (bullet point) ought to be deleted. --Edwin Greenwood (talk) 12:12, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to say you can download the entire collection through BitTorrent at the Pirate Bay. I assume that because the original was gotten from Wikisource, in individual page tiff files, the torrent and data hosted at piratebay are legitimate. Yes, the material is under GNU FDLThis should be worth mentioning on the main page for those who may want to download chunks or the whole encyclopedia. Britannica collection, djvu --Randomuser756756 (talk) 06:45, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Anyone here able to verify a fact used in this Wiki article "Claude de Bourdeille, comte de Montrésor" that comes from the 1911 Britannica. Is it properly worded? What is the exact citation, volume, pages & etc? You'll see it in the article's lede where there is a citation needed tag. Best, Manhattan Samurai (talk) 11:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

You can just remove the cite quote; the source is clearly identified. The best place to verify is on the scanned image, which you can find here. Personally I like to put such POV assessments further down the article and flag them more aggressively (or just delete them if they are not particularly interesting). The article does need to be canonicized though; the EB mention should use the 1911 template, be in a References section, and contain an "article=Montrésor, Claude de Bourdeille, comte de" parameter. David Brooks (talk) 16:02, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi David:Thanks for the help. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to display the scan. It is just a blank box. I am continuing to work on the article but do you mind explaining what you mean exactly by "[t]he article does need to be canonicized"? Sincerely, Manhattan Samurai (talk) 02:48, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

You need a plugin that will show TIF images. The home page makes some suggestions. If you can't get it to work, look to see if the article is in wikisource or Project Gutenberg (it isn't). Checking with one of the other online sources need to be treated with suspicion because they aren't guaranteed to have the correct text.

Thanks. This worked. Manhattan Samurai (talk) 08:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Is there a way to figure out the author of this entry? There doesn't appear to be one, but perhaps you have an insight I don't have? Manhattan Samurai (talk) 11:46, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Some EB entries are signed with initials, and there may be a way of identifying the others, but generally we don't do that: the EB takes collective responsibility.

Okay. Not really worth it, unless the initials are upfront. Out of interest, I've seen those initials before, but is there a central location where the names can be gleaned? Occasionally the author will list his own works in the suggested readings, so it is easy to figure out. But what if that's not the case? Manhattan Samurai (talk) 13:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

They're in the front matter of each volume, and there's a master list in volume 29. Only "major" articles are signed. David Brooks (talk) 06:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

To make this particular article a little more like a canonical WP biography, you should insert the "Biography" subhead after the lede (see

1911}}. In addition, {{1911 talk

}} should be added to the talk page. The French wikipedia external link is not necessary; it's already linked in the "Languages" section.

I think "Biography" is already a subhead? It's currently a stub section which will eventually be worked on. I'm going to keep the link to the shadow version of EB1911 considering there isn't a link to EB1911 currently available (w/o the TIFF difficulties) Just got rid of it, and put in its place a good book Manhattan Samurai (talk) 08:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Paragaphs 1-4 are the biography. If you move the section heading to after the first paragraph (the lede) the article will more closely match

WP:MOSBIO

. Not to say it can't be improved, or replaced entirely, but for now that's what I would do.

I'll do that then. Eventually I'd like to write my own biography and use a version of the EB1911 text as a lede. But we'll see if that plan ever turns out. Manhattan Samurai (talk) 13:41, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The manual of style does give detailed guidance on the lede paragraph (often just onw sentence long). Unfortunately it's a little thin on how to construct the rest of the article. David Brooks (talk) 06:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Umm, take out the blank line in the "memoires" citation list for consistency. The citation markup can use the {{cite book}} template. The first sentence of the last para of the bio is redundant (see the first sentence in the next section). Look around the Internet for some free pictures of the man, although if you can understand all the relevant copyright restrictions you're doing better than I am. David Brooks (talk) 21:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I can't spot this redundant sentence. The prose is currently in a state of flux. It would be great if I could find a portrait of de Bourdeille. Thanks for your help. Manhattan Samurai (talk) 08:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

If you move the biography paras as I suggested, it becomes clearer that the text "He left his Mémoires, published posthumously in 1663." comes just before "The Count of Montrésor's Mémoires were published posthumously in 1663.", which feels redundant to me. There seem to be no images online, free or not.

Generally we aren't linking to the scanned images because they are not officially permanent there. The theory is that EB1911 eventually ends up on wikisource, although that's not getting updated these days. I can't find that volume on google books yet.

What makes the 1911 edition public domain? Is it simply that 70 years have passed, or some other simple factor of age? If so, why is not a later edition from pre-1939, such as the 12th or 13th editions, or whatever was put out after 1911 but before 70 years ago, the more commonly used, cited, as a public domain source?

Why did the Gutenberg Project choose the 1911 Edition, and not the 1912 or 1920 or 1925 or 1933 edition to publish online as a free document? LordAmeth (talk) 19:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I can't speak for Gutenberg's decision. The 12th edition is in the public domain on the same basis as the 11th: it was published before 1923. It's rarely mentioned because all it did is add three supplementary volumes to the 11th. The 13th only replaced those three volumes; the copyright was never renewed. The copyrights on the early 14th were not renewed for anything published before 1946. This may have been the result of a change of ownership; the new owners may not have had the right to make such renewals. Eclecticology (talk) 20:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The statement that "Contemporaneous belief ... often prevailed in the Encyclopedia's articles" is a truism. Any reputable encyclopedia exists to inform by stating contemporaneous (surely contemporary?) knowledge and belief. It it obvious that, as human knowledge expands and beliefs change, a large proportion of the articles will at a later time be found to be out-of-date in statements of knowledge or unfashionable in their statements of belief. The first example selected as noteworthy must have at the time have been a seriously considered statement, though unfashionable now, and that premise like anything that can be measured can be a subject of research, unless we live in a totalitarian state and afraid of discovery and approaching truths. If we consider "belief" being synonymous with "convenient opinion without tested foundation masquerading as knowledge" (this is my own definition), then at the time that was a belief. Now there are better methods of research, whether or not that belief was justified may now actually be quantifed. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that over a long period of time (we are talking about thousands of years and hundreds of generations) living beings would have different attributes attributable to the environment.

I would suggest that the first example may not as worthy of our scorn as it's inclusion intends it to be, and the second example was probable a quotation from a remark made in jest. My conclusion is that neither are very good examples.

There are examples of "strange" beliefs to be found in many articles in the 1911 encyclopedia. We take it for granted that knowledge moves forward (while beliefs wobble) because it was published in 1911 and it's now 2009. Don't pick on beliefs as examples, they may be there yesterday, gone today, and back tomorrow! P0mbal (talk) 22:08, 30 October 2009 (UTC)