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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

Interesting comment about how pre-wikipedia encyclopedias were more engaging.

I felt this with encarta, and old printed volumes. It's written by someone, or told in a different way. While wikipedia feels more like a text book reference.

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The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1], while restricted in scope, takes the approach of having experts write the articles that are then revised and evolve with time. So a different approach is possible, but I think it would be hard for an encyclopedia with the breadth of wikipedia to do it. Maybe there is space for more specialised encyclopedias that take the approach of articles having authors and revisions instead of wikis. But all in all, I think both approaches compliment eachother.

[1]: https://plato.stanford.edu/

Scholarpedia[1] also exists, but is very sparse and mostly a specialist reference.

[1] https://scholarpedia.org/

Wikipedia is amazing, all things considered. But it's true that Encarta was a more integrated experience, with plenty of licensed images and video.

Wiki is open source, so it's limited by having access to CC-NA licensed assets only. It's also firmly an "Internet-first" encyclopedia so it's beauty comes from its SEO-friendly information architecture and internal link structure .

I'd bet it's easier for someone to find specific info on Wiki quickly, whereas Encarta would be better as a slow browsing experience.

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