When is an encyclopaedia not an encyclopaedia?

On the face of it the Encyclopaedia Britannica's decision to open up free web access seems like the ultimate victory for Wikipedia, or at least for the free over the expensive, but neither are perfect. There's just not enough information in them.

In a way Britannica's shortcomings are more understandable, they can't cover everything for reasons of space and editorial costs. The restrictions of the paper format and having to pay the editors, although most contributors are unpaid, gave rise to decisions about the relative merits of different subjects - information you could infer rather than read (Birmingham's entry gets 1271 words, Manchester's 5257, hmm). Wikipedia has no such constraints, but while it (or rather the community that controls it) doesn't seem to stop huge long posts on obscure topics - 5875 words on Star Trek as a franchise, not counting pages on each series or film - it does seem to have a downer on which topics are included.

Add an entry on Mr Egg, the café rather than the Scottish Musician, and it will soon be deleted with a message something like " Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed". This is because, while it's often called an uncontrollable lawless place by its critics, Wikipedia has a whole wiki full of rules (don't think you'll be able to edit those either).

It's that gate-keeping of what's considered important that stops Wikipedia becoming the free sprawling Hitchhikers' Guide of geek imagination. Where as Britannica carries restrictions of size (and even the Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy willont - that's why Earth was "mostly harmless" after all) Wikipedia doesn't have that excuse - which is sort of why, for the truly local interest there's Brum Guide.