Goodbye, Encarta. A cautionary tale for newspapers?
By John Yemma | 03.31.09
Wikipedia killed Encarta.
Encarta was the early digital encyclopedia. It began life as CD/ROM and increasingly went online. What it never did was truly embrace the power of the Internet.
What does that say about how we get information? And about the future of newspapers?
Updating the online encyclopedias
Try this. Go to the third paragraph of the Encarta entry in Wikipedia. As of an hour after the announcement by Encarta’s parent, Microsoft, this sentence had been added:
“All editions of Encarta except Encarta Japan are being discontinued as of October 31, 2009 … Encarta Japan will be discontinued on December 31, 2009.”
Who added it? Who knows? But that’s the kind of instant updating that an organic, crowd-sourced encyclopedia born on the Internet can do.
Encarta.com, of course, has the news of Encarta’s demise, too, but as Techcrunch.com points out, it’s in a Microsoft product announcement FAQ on the site. It’s impossible to find an Encarta entry on the subject of “Encarta.”
The self-aware Web
More mad science: Go to Wikipedia.com and search for Wikipedia. (Don’t worry, it won’t cause a cognitive meltdown of the Internets.) Among other things, you get an extensive article with this self-aware passage:
“Wikipedia has been accused of exhibiting systemic bias and inconsistency; critics argue that Wikipedia’s open nature and a lack of proper sources for much of the information makes it unreliable. Some commentators suggest that Wikipedia is generally reliable, but that the reliability of any given article is not always clear. Editors of traditional reference works such as the Encyclopædia Britannica have questioned the project’s utility and status as an encyclopedia.”
Then look at Britannica.com. A search for Encarta in the free portion of the Britannica site turns up nothing. And a search for Wikipedia provides one paragraph plus a pop-up window telling you you are trying to access premium content.
You can subscribe to premium content for $69.95/yr (the sales pitch includes this amazing fact: “Save $1,325.05 off the print Encyclopædia Britannica.” $1,325.05!)
New ways, old models
Britannica is a wonderful publication. Any bookish kid remembers curling up with “A-Aardvark” on a rainy day and following the serendipity of knowledge where it led.
Encarta was a wonderful product, too. First as a CD/ROM, Encarta was a very cool digital encyclopedia for the ’90s. It incorporated the old Funk & Wagnall’s and Collier’s encyclopedias. No more paging through dusty tomes.
Pleasant as that was, it was a fairly inefficient way of checking facts.
Encarta was modern when information providers (newspapers, databases, encyclopedias) were still considering whether it made sense to go online at all — and if so whether to charge users for the experience.
Encarta was Web 1.0. It was interactive, but it still was based on the old “push” model that Britannica, Americana, Funk & Wagnalls, and other encyclopedias used. Britannica, for its part, is planning to adopt Wiki techniques, as Encarta did, but is not likely to go whole hog into open-source editing. Hiawatha Bray over at Boston.com gives the details here.
The future of news
That’s the model that news organizations have long used as well.
Every information provider is changing. Encarta eventually included some crowdsourcing, for instance. And newspapers have been embracing the Internet as never before.
But there’s a cautionary tale here for newspapers mulling the idea of all joining together and putting their journalistic expertise behind a pay wall.
That lesson is that general knowledge, whether under the brand name of a giant like Britannica or Microsoft, can’t withstand an effort that was developed specifically for the Internet and that harnesses gifted amateurs.
Born on the Web
If all the big newspapers at once adopted a pay model, some upstart would come along and use a small group of journalists and a larger group of Wikipedia-like amateurs to build a multimedia newspaper. Like Wikipedia, it would be the butt of countless jokes about unreliability.
Maybe it would even report on its own unreliability.
But it would grow stronger because it would be organically constituted on the World Wide Web. That’s the power of open-source knowledge. And that’s the challenge the news media face as they dive into the Internet:
You can’t take the old model with you. You can take your organization’s values with you. But you can’t take its work habits, as we are learning this week in our first week of Web-first Monitor.
The Web is its own universe with its own rules.
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2. Richard Anonymous | 03.31.09
I got a friend whose disciplined in computer science, while I study liberal arts and we get together sometimes to observe the phenomenon of the Internet on a ethical and technical scale. I think this article did a good job in summarizing how real world models don’t translate well into the Internet’s peculiar virtual space.
3. Lawrence J. Goodrich | 03.31.09
I simply cannot consider Wikipedia to be authoritative. At the same time, it can often give useful background information and point the way to more authoritative sources. I find mysef using it more than I want to.
4. Laurie Saunders | 03.31.09
You’ve identified a central aspect of the economics of Internet-based information - the price will continuously be driven down for commodities as supply increases. As information is increasingly commoditized, its price will drop to zero. So, what will users pay for? Creative content, most likely, in the same way that they will pay more for unique or innovative tangible goods. I am more likely to pay to be educated on a subject if it is presented more engagingly or efficiently than what’s available for free. I am looking forward to the Monitor’s creative response to the challenge to newspapers in the years ahead.
5. John Heater | 03.31.09
As I select subjects to view and read - waiting all the time for the computer to down load the content - I wonder if there isn’t a way to present the e-Monitor like it was on paper - a real page at a time?? I can see page one on opening, then turn through the Monitor a page at a time, just like I did in the old days. Mmmm??
Is tis a FAQ ?
6. Jimbo Whales | 03.31.09
Wikipedia has a lot of problems. I’d really love to see one of these big companies produce their own crowdsourced encyclopedia to compete with Wikipedia. Maybe with some competition Wikipedia will be forced to update their policies and methods to make some rational sense.
7. Janet Seitlin | 03.31.09
I have long been a fan of the Christian Science Monitor. While, I, unfortunately, was one of the millions who did NOT subscribe to the hard copy version, I nonetheless find it a valuable source of information online.
This article on Wikipedia is a word to the wise. I know that in your own efforts to reinvent your fabulous newspaper, you, too, are finding your own level for sharing and spreading information.
Thanks for the quality work and insight. And keep exploring that information universe!
8. Tony Williams | 03.31.09
I am not sure whether a Web 3.? world without newspapers will have news items on things like city council and planning committee meetings that affect peoples’ lives and that are not “canned” releases. And investigative journalism and serious muckraking, rare already, may vanish.
9. Stan Wright | 03.31.09
Encarta? An Encarta CD came with my first 486, back in the 80s. I stuck it in the drive, once. Didn’t they die years ago?
10. Nathan | 04.01.09
Yeah, go to university and reference the Wikipedia for your papers! The Wikipedia is a disgrace to education, and dictated by wannabe scholars, perverts, and teenagers.
11. Chester Wesman | 04.01.09
The web may be its own universe with its own rules but let us not forget the beauty of English, correctly used. Let us not tarnish our prose with “those kind” or “the reason is because”. Let us be aware of the distinction between “among” and “between”. Let us not stoop to write “less” when we mean “fewer”. And, please, despite widespread misuse, can we avoid making a speaker read his notes from a “podium”?
12. John S. | 04.01.09
As good as it is, wikipedia requires a bit of savvy by its users. They do a good job of pointing out where information is tainted by opinion or not properly footnoted, for instance, but it is still the user’s responsibility to do full research to authenticate any data. I like and use wikipedia but I always verify my data with another source. I don’t think you would have to do the same with Britannica.
13. Matt | 04.01.09
Why can’t both models exist? Some people are satisfied with the info on Wikipedia, and that’s fine. Others, however, want something more authoritative, and you can’t beat Britanica for authority. Wikipedia might be written by gifted amateurs, but Britanica is written by professional experts. On many topics, I’ll take that over crowdsourcing.
By the way, I found that if I go through the Web site of my local public library I can access Britanica and other sources for free just by entering my library card number. For me, at least, that negates the main draw of Wikipedia–its freeness.
14. Rob Bates | 04.03.09
It is the paradox of our time. We have gotten so accustomed to free stuff on the internet that we have begun to feel a sense of entitlement, as opposed to a sense of being privleleged. Wikipedia is useful, but as others have stated, it should not be considered the be-all-end-all final source. With any article or paper requiring research, one source should never be considered enough.
In response to #9. Stan Wright | 03.31.09
” An Encarta CD came with my first 486, back in the 80s. ”
According to Intel’s website, the earliest model of the 486 processor was introduced in September of 1991. Perhaps you were thinking of a 386?
15. Rob Bates | 04.03.09
Ahh, I should have double checked! I do feel the fool now. The first 486 was introduced in 1989. I stand corrected. Mea Culpa!
16. Jeff Guy | 04.03.09
I’m sad to see the demise of Encarta. It was an excellent, authoritative and reliable source. It’s disconcerting to see scholarship and great newspaper journalism threatened with extinction by the internet.
17. David Gerard | 04.03.09
I added it, as you can tell from clicking on the “history” tab 
It’s a sort of game, seeing who can be first to add an important new fact to an article. I was surprised I was first on this one. Which is your point, really.
18. Peg Librarian | 04.03.09
Interesting commentary - it is as wide and varied as the content on the Internet. The writer fails to mention: that although …You can subscribe to premium content for $69.95/yr (the sales pitch includes this amazing fact: “Save $1,325.05 off the print Encyclopædia Britannica.” $1,325.05!)
As Matt in #13 tells us, you don’t need to subscribe to the premium content - it is available through most state library databases for free. A little cyber-trip to your public library and the use of your library card sets potential users up with so much content for free.
In my teaching I remind students that you need three, or even better four, sources to make sure you have a sturdy base of information on which to base conclusions. One of these sources may be Wikipedia, but it’s not the only source. I use the analogy of building a table with one spindly leg vs. using four spindly legs. Which table will keep your plate from hitting the floor? (Ok furniture makers - if the one leg is a pedestal you may use one leg, but that’s semantics.)
19. MD | 04.03.09
“Yeah, go to university and reference the Wikipedia for your papers! The Wikipedia is a disgrace to education, and dictated by wannabe scholars, perverts, and teenagers.”
–Nathan
Try citing Britanica. Encyclopedias are meant to provide background information, they are not the basis for research.
20. Subbiah Arunachalam | 04.03.09
There is an attempt to produce an authenticated encyclopedia. It is called Citizendium and it was founded by one of the founders of Wikipedia and he calls it the world’s most trusted encyclopedia. But it is growing rather slowly.
Arun
21. Matthew Ryan | 04.03.09
As relevant as Wikipedia is to the information landscape of the Web, how relevant would it be without the sources it relies upon? In essence, it is an aggregator. A crowdsource-tuned aggregator, but it’s the same thing.
Disregarding that one does not cite the encyclopedia in academia, if attention is diverted from the source, the source looses revenue and fails. Without fodder, the aggregator will fail just the same. This has aspects of a parasitic relationship.
Are we training the Web to be turtles all the way down? And how will that warp information and democracy?
This is not the most comprehensive of theories, but one I think about from time to time.
22. Mike Sundown | 04.05.09
Richard Anonymous, your posting is a great example of how even people who “study liberal arts” can’t write in English. It should be “I’ve got,” not “I got.” And “who’s,” not “whose.” And “an ethical,” not “a ethical.” I say this not to attack, but to show that every writer needs an editor, and an awful lot of stuff in the Wiki world doesn’t get edited at all.
23. Sarco | 04.05.09
My wife did some freelancing for Encarta back in the early 90s, writing short articles about world cities as well as captions for photos. Her instructions were to go to the Britannica and rewrite the info so the plagiarism wouldn’t be obvious. Encarta was a toy encyclopedia based on Funk & Wagnall’s, which used to be sold one volume at a time in grocery stores in the 1930s. It reflected the pervasively juvenile philosophy of Microsoft in the early 90s. About time it died. Oh yes, we were also hired to “check” a Danish spell-checking program. Method? Type in as many Danish words as we could think of. The program would often suggest Dutch words as options (gee, they bought the program from Holland, big surprise). A lot of fools made plenty of money in that company!
24. Jacquie Henry | 04.07.09
How will journalists be paid, when everything is given away for free? What is the new model that will pay for expertise? Certainly, newspapers are in danger of going the way of Encarta. Information just wants to be free, yada, yada yada….. And right now the people prefer free to accurate. Stil, most people would be horrified at the idea of getting their medical information from amateurs. What about the health of our brains - our ability to think? Our brains need to feed on dependable information. I’m all for updating the current slow and expensive publishing model - but so far I don’t see a dependable model to replace it.
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1. Michael | 03.31.09
Regulation following strict style guides is breaking down; numerous minor variations in writing style are becoming more prevalant; few lexographers just 15 years ago would have predicted how the English language is imposed today. Sites like Associated Content along with the numerous blogs are already a step toward having a “Wikinews” concept. There’s only the author and no backup editors; just some site moderators. I never thought 1994 (the last year before the Internet/Celluar Phones went mainstream) would seem so ancient so quickly!