I think that Wikipedia is much more useful than Encyclopedia Britannica to some extent. Firstly, I searched "web 2.0" in Wikipedia ,where I got a long article which contained many subtitles such as the introduction, characteristics of "Web 2.0", Technology overview, innovations associated with "Web 2.0", criticism, trademark and so on. As well known, wikipedia is open for everyone to edit, so all the contents are created collaboratively by volunteers and edited by other contributors as well. We could also go to the See also in this article where we could be linked to other correlative pages for reading more comprehensive information about "Web 2.0". Additionally, if readers know something else, they could refresh the contents as well. Athough there are many editors hired by Wikipedia for correcting the contents in this site, more that thousands of new and refreshed articles appear per day will be quite tough work for these limited editors to correct. Thus, the articles maybe not trustful in Wikipedia. I am also happy with the multiple languages system they have in this site, since I could find the Chinese version about "Web 2.0" in this site.
However, I feel a little bit unsatisfied with the searching result in Encyclopedia Britannica, since I couldn't get the adaptive information about "Web 2.0" instead of some links to Wiki, Wikipedia and Libraries. Although the rearching result is incorrect, I still clicked to the linked pages for checking it with my curiosity. The article I got without any subtitles which is different from Wikipedia article's format.
"A great encyclopedia is inevitably a sign of national maturity and, as such, will pay tribute to the ideals of its country and its times"In my opinion, we live in the age of information explosion, since everyday we get thousands of information and messages actively or passively. From anohter aspect, people like us will act as media to transfer these information to others by oral or written way. Wikipedia is playing as a free platform role on the internet for the global people, where everyone could create the texts with images by themselves. For the globla people, Wikipedia provide the possibility more than 100 different languages users to edit contents in their own language. Traditionally, encyclopedia should be the most authoritative and reliable texts. Wikipedia is open to everyone and may include the mistakes in its contents, but this makes information transfer quicker than the traditional way. This is my simple thinkings about Wikipedia as a cultural and global phenomenon.
