Goodbye Encarta & Wikia, we hardly knew ye

Mention “Encarta” to the cyber-generation and you’ll probably draw blank stares. Yet in its time, Encarta was the best of breed for digital encyclopedias.

The Internet – Google and Wikipedia – helped kill it though. After sixteen years of existence, Microsoft has decided to stop offering Encarta either in DVD or online format.

The online version will shut down globally on October 31, 2009 while the Encarta software will no longer be sold after June this year.

Encarta’s heyday was in the mid-90s, right when CD-ROMs exploded into the computer scene. You could say Encarta and CDs were made for each other.

In time, as DVDs entered the scene, Encarta took full advantage of the added capacity and offered high-quality images, audio files and video clips to enhance its content.

And when the Internet became widespread, Encarta went online too, offering a free version (limited access) as well as a Premium version (full access).

To its credit Microsoft tried hard to offer interesting online features. For example, it leveraged on its popular Windows Live Messenger to offer Encarta Instant Answers.

It even allowed users to send in suggestions on how the articles could be improved.

But this was not enough. Wikipedia – though less accurate – is completely free of charge. And so is Google. And between those two, people were able to find the information they wanted without the need for something like Encarta.

Ironically, a Wikipedia-related service has also decided to close shop. Wikia Search –co-founded by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales – was meant to introduce the human touch to web search, instead of relying on algorithms. It didn’t catch on.

Wales recently announced through his blog: “If there is one thing that I’ve learned in my career it is to do more of what’s working, and less of what’s not.”

The search engine is based on distributed search indexing service called Grub. In line with the open source ethos, anyone interested can take a peek at the algorithms employed. It was tested extensively and launched last year. And now it’s going to be stopped.

Wales believed that crowdsourcing – tapping on the wisdom of crowds – would produce better results than anything a purely-algorithm based service could offer. That’s because a global fellowship of search users could help to refine the search results.

The problem is, the crowd was too small. Unlike with Wikipedia, which has legions of contributors, people didn’t flock to Wikia – either to use it or contribute to improving it.

Encarta might be gone for good but Wikia Search might not. Wales says he is still very keen on search. Just that the economic conditions of the day don’t allow him to continue with his Wikia Search service.

“In a different economy, we would continue to fund Wikia Search indefinitely,” he wrote in his blog. “It’s something I care about deeply. I will return to again

Comments

[word crunch]

Encarta has absolutely served its worth to me as a student, and even in teaching my child on new word pronunciation. It's in my fav list. Willdefinitely miss it.