Gotta love a good public dust-up. Here’s the background, in December 2005, Nature published an article and editorial that showed Wikipedia was better than Encyclopaedia Britannica and encouraged scientists to contribute to Wikipedia. Britannica struck back by publishing a response questioning the methodology and results of the original Nature article. This whole sequence of events is documented here and here . I even like the part about the Britannica calling Wikipedia a "Faith-based Encyclopedia" and comparing it to followers of Intelligent Design.