[WikiEN-l] Microsoft kills Encarta

[Charles Matthews]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 9:31 AM, doc <doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>> 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.
>>     
>
> Agreed. Though is it annoying when you see people working on things to
> address this, and then see critics, who inspired some people, carry on
> criticising the meta-processes, instead of supporting efforts made to
> improve those meta-processes. 
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