Same here. This and the World Book Encyclopedia 2001 CD that I still have. I did like taking the quizzes Encarta had on their site. bibliomaniac15 --- On Mon, 3/30/09, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> wrote: From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Monday, March 30, 2009, 3:34 PM On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:39 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: "Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past." I wonder what different ways they could be talking about? :-) "we believe that we can use what we’ve learned and assets we’ve accrued with offerings like Encarta to develop future technology solutions" So they might try making a comeback in another form? I liked Encarta - it was the first real encyclopedia I used. So I feel a bit torn here. Carcharoth _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Indeed it will, and hopefully that wiki will have worked out the kinks we haven't managed to fix. bibliomaniac15 --- On Mon, 3/30/09, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: From: doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Monday, March 30, 2009, 3:45 PM You realise, someday the announcement will read: "Wikipedia has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional wiki encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past." Civilisation proceeds obsolescence by obsolescence.... _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Ad infinitum...you have to love it. bibliomaniac15 --- On Mon, 3/30/09, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: From: doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Date: Monday, March 30, 2009, 3:58 PM And then someone will come up with a better way of delivering information than a wiki... Scientia Potentia est wrote: haven't managed to fix. years. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 30/03/2009, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Probably, but I think people, if they still live, will still be talking about the wikipedia in a thousand years, like they still talk about the Library of Alexandria. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though.

Ian Woollard wrote: Ha, hyperbolic optimism, I trust, otherwise perhaps the delusions of a very "true believer" [note to self - avoid koolaid cliché] The Library of Alexandria was with us for between 350 and a thousand years (depending on which history book you read), Wikipedia has been with us for a total of 8. Now, I don't want to underestimate the achievements of Wikipedia, however, Encarta (1993-2009)has had a longer run, and was part of an equally ground-breaking genre of knowledge provision at its start. I do suspect that Wikipedia will be cited in future histories as a significant example of a collaborative community. It will be to online libraries as E-bay is currently to online auctions. Whether wikipedia will prove to be a significant milestone in the collection and dissemination of knowledge, remains to be seen. It rather depends on what the next generation brings, and whether it will owe a recognisable debt to Wikipedia, or whether it will take us in another direction altogether. (If, for example, global copright laws were to change, the future might look more like wikisource - a library - than wikipedia, an encyclopedia.) Further, I'm no historian of technology. But the lesson surely is that not much lasts for long. Few organisations have been able to dominate any field for more than a decade or so. (Microsoft is perhaps the (dis?)honourable exception - and even then.) Today's unassailable phenomena, which no one can see anyone displacing, is tomorrow's footnote. BASIC anyone? Sinclair? Plastic records? The other reason I suspect that Wikipedia's shelf-life will, in fact, be shorter than most imagine, is that in the fast-changing evolution that is the internet, the ability to adapt is critical to survival. The browser that doesn't update is history. Sadly, for a relatively young phenomenon, Wikipedia, and particularly en.wp has shown an enormous conservatism about adapting. An initial winning formula that gave the breakthrough is regarded as sacred dogma - and a demand for consensus before change gives the dinosaurs an advantage. At the moment it matters little, as there is no real competition. But if/when a competitor get the magic formula right, I doubt Wikipedia has the structures to compete. The community hasn't really woken up to the fact that Wikipedia is no longer only an open shelf needing to be stacked, but it is a depository of a huge wealth of material that needs to be protected, sorted and (urgently) sifted. Alexandria's library didn't fail because it stopped importing knowledge, it failed because it was unable to effectively protect the knowledge it had already acquired.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:45 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote: There's change, and then there is the seeming of change. I don't think its cynical to oppose processes that appear to be helpful, but may actually set progress back. On the particular issue I assume you refer to, that Scott of all people opposes it should be a major cause for reflection on the part of those who support it. On the Library of Alexandria - the failure of a community to protect a knowledge resource is something that seems to take a form appropriate to the age. I don't think Wikipedia will find such a dramatic end, though; the problems we face are ultimately common ones. We're organized as an unlimited number of committees, and all the downfalls of governance by committee and direct democracy are thus multiplied. Even the founders of the U.S., as afraid as they were of the power of a monarch, understood the need for an executive leadership. Nathan

On 31/03/2009, Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote: I'm pretty sure it's inevitable in the long run though. In the early days of anything like wikipedia drastic changes are going to be the norm; the articles aren't worth protecting much, almost any change improves the articles, in some cases even those by vandals! Later, when the articles are in a generally good state, changes have to mulled over more carefully, because you're protecting the information and effort that was put there over several years; most changes are likely to lower the quality. So you would expect that vandal protection and stabilisation and quality control in general will need beefing up as the wikipedia approaches a finish. The only question in my mind is how soon or late we do this, not whether we do this. It looks like there's a convincing argument that says that BLP articles need it right now, so that's the current need, and it will spread out into the wikipedia from there; perhaps into FA quality articles after that. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though.

Carcharoth wrote: The proposition is like this: X is to WP as WP is to Encarta. Solve for X, both conceptually (as a visionary), and in practical terms (if there is a transition to manage, let's be the far-sighted ones ourselves). I suspect Douglas Adams did the first part. What people will want is something designed for display on a hand-held device. You summon up first short versions of our "lead sections" and then, instead of a long scroll, you get a menu with options like TOC, basic image, gallery, "simple English", "stable version", "live version", '"see also"... The inherent simplicity of article = single live webpage is an artefact of chunky great monitors. Charles

On 31/03/2009, doc <doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Yes, and it's been ranked about 8 on the entire freaking internet for a lot of that time! Things that happen relatively early on in the course of something (like the internet) tend to get 'frozen in' and have much longer life than you would expect they could have, google for example is not going away any time soon. When you look at the useful man-hours that have gone into the Wikipedia, and are still going in, it's on an upward trajectory that shows every sign of continuing for about another decade or more. Once you have a mass of information that big, it's not going away any time soon. It would take something really spectacular to eclipse it; machine summarisation might do it, but I suspect even the machines will be thumbing the wikipedia over to find out what's important and for a place to start their research ;-) -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though.

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 5:57 PM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: <snip> Isn't that because people don't label, keyword or otherwise tag images properly? If they did, then Google would be able to find them and provide a good search facility. It might also be because lots of images are locked up in websites that only allow internal searches (though some are Google-able). The worry there is that overuse of templates raises the barrier for humans to contribute. The trick is to harness the powers of both humans and machines, and make sure they work together and don't get in each other's way. But that's been the case all along, right from the start of the Machine Age, and onwards into the Information Age. Leave the grunt work to machines. Let humans do the clever stuff. Teach machines to approximate what humans do, or run on data and input from humans. The other worry is that humans coupled with machines can work at a rate that runs the human body into the ground. So you have to have things set up so the human can take a break and recharge itself. Less long sessions editing Wikipedia, and more targeted editing, adding more value-per-click (ugh, I can't believe I just said that). Carcharoth

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:57 AM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: None of the tools were that well promoted, really - Altavista had been a research experiment that Digital tried to capitalize on, and Yahoo was too stuck on directories / organizing and too little on content. PR as we know it was still very primitive on the net. But Google did rise by being better. -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

Absolutely. And the model that replaces Wikipedia will also needs critics as well. On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 11:45 PM, doc &lt;doc.wikipedia(a)ntlworld.com&gt; wrote:

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:15 AM, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Hmm. Can you get $$$ from that? <me dreams about making fortune from this> Some Wikipedia mirrors seem to be trying to do this already. Carcharoth

My money is on a Hitchhiker's Guide. Has the advantage of being extremely wide in coverage, handheld, and pretty damn funny. Nathan

2009/3/31 Carcharoth &lt;carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com&gt;om>: The technology isn't there yet and when it is you will likely hit the problem that rather a lot of other people will also be able to do it. Not in the way I meant. -- geni

2009/3/31 FT2 &lt;ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: You missed whatever comes next useing parts of wikipedia. Even if you weren't interested in wikipedia content would you really want to go to the effort of recreating wikipedia's redirect and disambiguation system? -- geni

2009/3/31 Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt;et>: Those are not something you want out of a redirect or disambiguation system. You want something that can tell the differences between cases like [[HMS Victory]] where it's safe to assume that people are talking about the one that was nelsons flagship and [[HMS Iron Duke]] where you are better off questioning further. You also want a system that highlights the key distinguishing features of whatever is being disambiguated. -- geni

David Goodman wrote: Well, I suppose adding a category to redirects from names "in standard form" could definitely be done now; and it would be possible (?) to make it a "Preferences" option to display standard form names as article titles. As for rationalisation of dab pages, the MOSDAB people constantly work on this. I have reservations, certainly, because (unlike the redirect case) the idea that a dab page is solely for shunting people on to another page strikes me as ideological rather than in the best interests of the encyclopedia. Charles

On 31/03/2009, Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: All encyclopedia articles are supposed to define their topic; they're just not supposed to define multiple topics as dictionaries do. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though.

Depends on what it's about. bibliomaniac15 --- On Mon, 3/30/09, Soxred93 &lt;soxred93(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: From: Soxred93 &lt;soxred93(a)gmail.com&gt; Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta To: "English Wikipedia" &lt;wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt; Date: Monday, March 30, 2009, 6:37 PM I just took one of those quizzes. I think a 1/5 is bad, right? X! On Mar 30, 2009, at 6:36 PM [Mar 30, 2009 ], Scientia Potentia est wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

2009/3/31 David Goodman &lt;dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: Oh totally agreed. I haven't used Encarta recently, but in its heyday (and my schooldays) it was a fantastic educational resource. I think it was also my first introduction to hypertext, and I suspect so for many others too. In fact for students at the time, I'd go so far as to say it was Microsoft's "killer app". I think the challenge now is for Wikipedia to try and fill the gap it has made. Despite Encarta's disadvantages (cost, slow to update) it had excellent multimedia - something Wikipedia is sadly lacking in. Also its structured guides to topics were great, especially in the later versions. Pete / the wub

On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 12:27 AM, David Goodman &lt;dgoodmanny(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: One reason we might be pleased is if we take the explanation from the FAQ (which seems to have been taken down) at face value: "Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business. Microsoft’s vision is that everyone around the world needs to have access to quality education, and we believe that we can use what we’ve learned and assets we’ve accrued with offerings like Encarta to develop future technology solutions. In doing so, we feel strongly that we are making the right investments that will help make our vision a reality." If the people at Microsoft are going to put resources behind serious innovation in the educational reference space, then the loss of an encyclopedia could be offset with the gain of something better. It's not hard to see that the writing is on the wall for Britannica as well. The recent subscriber-submitted edits thing is just a gimmick to drum up a few more subscribers, and evidence of how bad their situation is. But this is part of a bigger story... the market for newspapers is crumbling as well (a situation I think Clay Shirky explains very well in a recent essay: http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkabl… ), and if anything, Wikipedia has had a small hand in slowing their decline. We don't run ads (and so don't further dilute the ad-space marketplace) and we intentionally privilege newspaper content over the blogs and other new media that usually get blamed for the newspapers' decline...which both reifies their authority and drives traffic to their archival content. (The decline in newspaper journalism is going to spell trouble for Wikipedia as more and more often there will be no simple rubric for identifying reliable sources. What happens when Huffington Post, with its new endowment for investigative journalism, starts breaking stories and newspapers are the ones simply doing analysis after the fact?) If Wikipedia hadn't killed Encarta, would it be dying anyway by now? I think probably so. (Remember, Britannica's present difficulties started in the 1990s, in part because of Encarta and in part because of the Internet in general.) -Sage (User:Ragesoss)

On 31/03/2009, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen &lt;cimonavaro(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I just had a quick play with it, but I soured on it when I discovered that the second article I looked at was about 4 months old, and vandalised, and this was a well looked-after article. They don't seem to have stabilised the versions they took, they just picked them at a random point in time. -- -Ian Woollard We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly imperfect world would be *much* better. Life in an imperfectly perfect world would be pretty ghastly though.