[WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

[doc]

Ian Woollard wrote:
> On 30/03/2009, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> And then someone will come up with a better way of delivering
>> information than a wiki...
> 
> 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.
> 

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.