This could be done, but only on some subset of wikipedia articles. One of the strong points of W is that it reacts to new events very quickly...for example, look at how detailed is the page for Obama inauguration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_2009_presidential_...). And, there are many more current events happening which are continuously updated on W...how could Britannica staff verify it in a timely manner? They will still be behind...

My feelings is, that the Britannica approach, taking the explosion of information and speed everything changes, just can't catch up anymore. They need to reinvent themselves in some more radical way to survive.