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The Encyclopedia Britannica has decided to join 'em, since it hasn't beaten 'em:

In a move to take on Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia Britannica is inviting the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version.

New features enabling the inclusion of this user-generated content will be rolled out on the encyclopedia's website over the next 24 hours, Britannica's president, Jorge Cauz, said in an interview today.

He also used the opportunity to take a swipe at Britannica's upstart nemesis and Google for helping to promote Wikipedia via its search rankings.

"If I were to be the CEO of Google or the founders of Google I would be very [displeased] that the best search engine in the world continues to provide as a first link, Wikipedia," he said."Is this the best they can do? Is this the best that [their] algorithm can do?"

Mr Cauz, who is visiting Australia, said the changes were the first in a series of enhancements to the britannica.com website designed to encourage more community input to the 241-year-old institution and, in doing so, to take on Wikipedia in the all important search engine rankings.

"What we are trying to do is shifting ... to a much more proactive role for the user and reader where the reader is not only going to learn from reading the article but by modifying the article and — importantly — by maybe creating his own content or her own content," he said.

Clearly, their initial tactic of deriding the Wikipedia model — where any Tom, Dick, or Fatima could actively edit anything — has not paid off the way they'd hoped, so this is their remaining best option. I suspect their benchmark of 20-minute turnaround for user edits will be unsustainable . . . unless they fail to attract enough active users, which would be the nightmare scenario.