Britannica now free for bloggers (i.e. ... bloggers without EB subscriptions?)

[Lando]

I am an user of Britannica since I can remember and owner of the books
for 20 years, even the Ultimate reference DVD for 48Euro since it came
out. It was always my main source of basic reference and standard of
excellence.

I applied and stated that I already own it. I got no reply.
(Update 23.04.2008: After a follow-up from Tom Panelas of EB, I searched my mail client and found a reply from JC Miller at EB with a complementary access for a year. It landed in the Thunderbird phishing bin, both in the Windows and the Linux versions. All suspected phishing attempts are filtered to a separate folder I created. It uses TB's phishing suspects in the filter. I will have to find out how to configure the filters for phishing in TB. It can be embarrassing like this case shows. Pardon EB!).
Anyone with the same experience? They seem to view this perhaps as a marketing
strategy to get Britannica sold and as a main reference in 'Wikis',
de facto as thé reference. We should surpass the standard Britannica sets,
especially as the post about "Citizendium is different" indicates,
a  democratisation of knowledge. Be also aware that Britannica,
even for it's excellence, is biased to a western frame of mind.
Citizendium should move beyond this barrier.

Furthermore we should consider the obligation and moral responsibility
we have to bring education in its broadest sense to all of humanity at a
cost each could afford, even for those who cannot get a formal
education. Projects like Eduzendium is a good start, but could have the
main focus not at increasing Citizendium's content, but the education of
all. The content will come by itself, like the philanthropists mentioned elsewhere.
Most of western tertiary educational institutions have become dependent on
corporate financing, thereby slanting its efforts to get people
'trained' for industry and commerce. Rather, we should work together
with projects like one laptop per child (OLPC ) and universal flaterate
internet hotspots for all, free wifi for all in larger communities and cities
(like Paris and San Francisco) and free access over mobile networks in
rural communities in Africa, South America and Asia.
I grew up in Africa, which experiences a boom in communication by
mobile phones for very remote areas where no one will ever lay cables
and provide landline telecommunication access, theoretically making
internet available to almost all of humanity. Affordability is still a problem.

Ultimately I wish to work toward a tertiary education for all, an 'open
source education'. No one should be prevented from the highest available
education he/she can master, just because they can't afford it or live
in too remote areas (i.e. a closed source education). Those who can
afford it may pay, those who can't shouldn't; nobody must - it is a
human responsibility of all to carry the burden together; social
justice?. Paying for education is just another frontier of human
oppression by others who have no natural rights to be more privileged
than any other human being to reach their highest potential, like
apartheid and slavery was. I believe Citizendium can be one element to
address this need of liberating people from 'illiteracy'. I am aware of
using an ideological language here, do it intentionally because it
should inflame our conscience and liberate us from the general
'innocence' we  in affluent western cultures have. We need to say
farewell to our innocence ("Farewell to Innocence" ISBN  0-88344-130-6,
Title of a remarkable dissertation by Alan Busak against apartheid,
which also liberated me from my innocence as oppressor).
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0883441306/ref=dp_olp_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1209720885&sr=11-1]

My warmest regards and thanking you all for the great work you all do in
Citizendium (CZ = freedom from Wikipedia innocence),
Lando L Lehmann

[Hayford Peirce]

I applied for the free subscription and told them that I was a contributor to both WP and CZ -- and also had articles about me. I thought that I was never going to hear from them but after about a week they gave me a membership.

I have tested it a little and the online EB looks to be nearly useless to me, with very short articles about some of the things I know about. Perhaps I'm not using their links correctly.  Also, their interface is weird....

Hayford

[Chris Day]

very short articles

Are you sure you are reading the whole article?  They tend to break them into small sections. Biology is broken into 58 sections.  You can see the whole document by clicking print at the top.

[Hayford Peirce]

Ah, thanks for the tip! I get large portions of blank screen.  I'll try looking at some other articles and will report back....

Hayford

[Chris Day]

Ah, thanks for the tip! I get large portions of blank screen.  I'll try looking at some other articles and will report back....

Hayford

Or tell me which ones you are looking at I'll send you a pdf version of what i get.  I have a full membership access.  Maybe you are getting less content?

[Hayford Peirce]

No wonder it took me so long to relocate this dumb Forum discussion -- it's in the freakin' Religion section!? What gives?

Anyway, I just took a look at the EB "articles," if you stretch the word slightly, about two of the greatest and most dominant tennis players in history, Bill Tilden and Pancho Gonzales.  Each of them have a couple thousand words here at CZ. At EB there are, supposedly 373 words about Big Bill and about 190 about Pancho. Both "topic" and "text" seem to be the same to me. And, a lot of the time, I have white space in some parts of the screen. I'm probably being dumb....

[Brian P Long]

Anyway, I just took a look at the EB "articles," if you stretch the word slightly, about two of the greatest and most dominant tennis players in history, Bill Tilden and Pancho Gonzales.  Each of them have a couple thousand words here at CZ. At EB there are, supposedly 373 words about Big Bill and about 190 about Pancho. Both "topic" and "text" seem to be the same to me. And, a lot of the time, I have white space in some parts of the screen. I'm probably being dumb....

I've been thinking for a while about the limits of comparing Citizendium and more traditional general-reference works like EB. The articles on EB on a large number of topics are really very limited. Articles about literature seldom have actual quotations from literary works, or in-depth discussion of the history of the subjects of these articles...

One gets the feeling that much of EB is still pretty close to traditional print-media reference works.

-Brian