@laurenshof

It is fascinating isn't it? Another wonderful example that we could likely contribute to organisational silos:

The team working on Russia is likely not the same team as the one working on Africa. By one way of measuring the figure for Africa is correct (for the land mass continent straight across at the longest point). And for another way of measuring Russia it is correct (if you go across all bodies of water, including ocean and allow for a slanted measurement than a strictly horizontal one.) Both can be verified in their own way (almost) but there appears to be no standard for these types of measurements,

The interesting thing about the community notes though is that they did not set out to measure the lines in the image, they just went after answers in text and made an assumption. I can see how this is appealing… and likely also feels obviously correct because of the Mercator distortion.

But yes, I do wonder about the 9,000km figure for Russia and how that really got approved for Britannica.

Great way of illustrating how one distortion sticks and then the distortion supports further false assumptions. The high status of Britannica ensures that many simply won't believe the truth…