Via the Sydney Morning Herald we learn that the Encyclopedia Brittanica is inviting the hoi polloi to edit, enhance and contribute to its online version. But it may not all go according to plan; in the interview, Brittanica’s president Jorge Cauz lets rip on Wikipedia’s 100% UGC model and pours scorn on Google for (as far as I can make out) having search algorithms so lame that Wikipedia links are the best they can do when delivering search results, clearly demonstrating his lack of understanding as to how Google search ranking works.

Nate Anderson at ArsTechnica writes a thoughtful analysis of the move, saying:

“Whether Britannica’s new openness is itself “good enough” to attract a vibrant community remains to be seen; given the company’s repeated comments on user-generated content, it certainly won’t attract many Wikipedians. But it might tap into a community fed up with Wikipedia’s problems but not yet willing to work with such a fledgling project as Citizendium. But how many of these people are hard-core computer users with time to spare for a corporation that profits from their work?

One thing is sure: Wikipedians move quickly. The Wikipedia entry on “Encyclopedia Britannica” already contains links to the Sydney Morning Herald interview and has a summary of Cauz’s comments. Britannica hopes to approve suggested edits within 20 minutes, but it’s hard to see how this solution could scale if the encyclopedia does generate a substantial community.

When speed matters, the much-maligned “wisdom of crowds” certainly has something to offer. When it comes to accuracy, Britannica believes its more deliberate approach wins out.”

Elsewhere on the web:

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb writes a reflective commentary on the news that a man murdered his estranged wife after becoming “enraged” when she changed her marital status on Facebook to “single”, saying:

“Of course the violence isn’t Facebook’s fault in any way, but in trying to understand human relations, interpersonal and domestic violence, this is an undeniable example of the way that the internet is changing our world. It could have been MySpace, or any other social network – this is a story about increased connectivity, privacy controls and the speed with which information is transmitted. … Do we need to teach children new social skills about dealing with semi-public information online, like the end of a relationship?”

More news on the Obama administration’s transition into the White House comes from MSNBC, which explains how the people behind the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history are coping with a creaking tech infrastructure that makes the possibility of online social networking, well, an impossibility. The story quotes one spokesman as saying: “It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari.”

Digg’s Jay Adelson has blogged about the startup’s plans to cut 10% of their staff and focus on profitability in 2009. TechCrunch has added the company to its Layoff Tracker.