End of the Line for Encarta

Terry Olaes

Terry Olaes

I Used to be the [H] News Guy
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
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Microsoft’s venerable Encarta encyclopedia software is out of time. The once-ubiquitous software will no longer be sold and the website will be taken down later this year. The NYT has a piece about Encarta and its history and speculates about why it failed.

It’s hard to look at the end of the Encarta experiment without the free and much larger Wikipedia springing immediately to mind. But Encarta arguably would have failed even without that competition.
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In a way it's sad. The main difference between any published encyclopedia and wiki is that with a published encyclopedia you know the sources and their perspective. Wiki is anonymous and the context of the information is unknown. The average 12 year old intarweb geek has as much input as someone who's spent their life's work researching the subject and it's relationship to our society.

The lack of context is further compounded by the tendency of the same 12 year old intarweb kiddies to view wiki as the first, last and, only source for information.
 
That's one argument, but you can also point to the fact that there's a ton of free and credible sources of information just a google away. Most teachers worth their salt aren't accepting wiki as a credible quotable source anyways without anotther source to back it up.
 
DonInKansas said:
That's one argument, but you can also point to the fact that there's a ton of free and credible sources of information just a google away. Most teachers worth their salt aren't accepting wiki as a credible quotable source anyways without anotther source to back it up.
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That only bolsters my argument. Most young users of the internet think that everything is available online when in fact, most knowledge remains in printed material and is not online.
 
Are you seriously suggesting the small MS Encarta team is perfectly capable of correcting all that information just because it is "not online"?

The difference is with online materials you can click away and decide to laugh or not. With dead trees, you simply believe what you see or not.

Earlier generations were allowed to get away with writing up any references that were in printed materials (i.e. dead trees don't lie). The most important thing I took away from writing up a history paper (pre-google) was that it almost certainly wasn't true. It was perfectly academic, and quite probably the most likely true answer. On the other hand my physics class taught me something called "propagation of error", and my paper made too many claims from things that were barely documented.
 
First, the encarta team did not write the articles, they embellished them with multi-media.
Second, no, printed materials are no more infallible than online ones
Third, did you miss the part about lack of context in wiki?
Fourth, critical thinking is just as important when reading printed material as in clicking online. Or, do you need a laugh track to tell you when somethings funny?
 
My freshman year of college, my astronomy teacher told us to never, ever, EVER cite Encarta, as it's a "joke of a reference" or something like that.
 
I LOVED Encarta. Way back in the day, during the first few iterations of Encarta, I use to sit at the computer and go through the software. I was captivated by the multimedia aspects within the software, which were new at the time :D
 
I was wondering when this was going to happen, let's face it, nobody pays for general information anymore but I do like the Encarta dictionary.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I LOVED Encarta. Way back in the day, during the first few iterations of Encarta, I use to sit at the computer and go through the software. I was captivated by the multimedia aspects within the software, which were new at the time :D
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Same here; when I got it with Win95, that program was awesome.

I'd like to say I'm sad to see it go, but I haven't used the software in years.
 
I liked Encarta because more teachers are willing to accept it as a scholarly source than Wiikipedia.

Same here; when I got it with Win95, that program was awesome.

I'd like to say I'm sad to see it go, but I haven't used the software in years.
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QFT. I loved the first few versions of that software. I never use it anymore, but it's always been nice to know that it's there.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I LOVED Encarta. Way back in the day, during the first few iterations of Encarta, I use to sit at the computer and go through the software. I was captivated by the multimedia aspects within the software, which were new at the time :D
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I think I had the 97 two disc edition. I had a kick playing the orbit simulator, trying to get the moon to orbit earth as close as possible with out armageddon.

And before the age of google maps and the internet it was the best thing for getting quick maps for school assignments.
 
I remember messing around with Encarta back around the time I was in elementary school. I'm kinda sad to see that its niche is gone.
 
I'm sorry to say that printed materials can't cope with the speed and amount of information that we need anymore. Tell me when was the last time you opened up a printed dictionary to look up for a word? Would you rather wait for the next morning newspaper to know what is happening or would you rather read the news feed live on internet?
 
DeathFromBelow said:
I remember messing around with Encarta back around the time I was in elementary school. I'm kinda sad to see that its niche is gone.
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Not at all. The reason that Encarta is going away is that its niche has exploded in popularity and is pretty much free now thus no profit in it. Encarta is a victim not so much of its success but of the success of digital information in general.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I LOVED Encarta. Way back in the day, during the first few iterations of Encarta, I use to sit at the computer and go through the software. I was captivated by the multimedia aspects within the software, which were new at the time :D
Click to expand...

I was the same with with Encyclopedia Brittanica. When I was younger, I would take my dad's collection and read them all the time.

Funny thing was my dad used to yell at me for taking them off of a high shelf because of how expensive these books were and I shouldn't be touching them, then one day I got tired of being yelled at, I snapped back at him "dad, you're a fraud. You bought encyclopedias to display them just because of status quo, whereas I want to put them to good use and learn from them." He sent me to bed for that. Then the next evening he called me into the living room and said he was thinking about what I said, and that I was right. I should be able to read them and learn from them whenever I want.

I've always loved encyclopedias. There's always something in there that makes you go "oh wow, I didn't know that." History channel has the same effect on me.

It's too bad about Encarta. Perhaps someday Microsoft will come up with something else. Sometimes a person doesn't know a good thing until it gets taken away from them first.
 
Brent_Justice said:
I LOVED Encarta. Way back in the day, during the first few iterations of Encarta, I use to sit at the computer and go through the software. I was captivated by the multimedia aspects within the software, which were new at the time :D
Click to expand...

Same here. I played with it and learned a lot for no real reason. But, that was mid-90's. I thought they stopped Encarta years ago. :confused:
 
Magnus said:
In a way it's sad. The main difference between any published encyclopedia and wiki is that with a published encyclopedia you know the sources and their perspective. Wiki is anonymous and the context of the information is unknown. The average 12 year old intarweb geek has as much input as someone who's spent their life's work researching the subject and it's relationship to our society.

The lack of context is further compounded by the tendency of the same 12 year old intarweb kiddies to view wiki as the first, last and, only source for information.
Click to expand...

You do know that most stuff on Wikipedia has sources to the information at the bottom of the page.
 
Wow, can't remember the last time I saw a reference to Encarta. Remember getting a copy of it with my brand spankin' new Acer PC (486DX4...100MHz, bitches!) back in high school. Pretty amazing stuff back then.

Skillz said:
You do know that most stuff on Wikipedia has sources to the information at the bottom of the page.
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Right, so you don't use Wikipedia as your source, you use the source referenced by Wikipedia.
 
Skillz said:
Well apparently his only accomplishment was passing 5th grade with an A and you're surprised? ;)
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You make a good point. Soooo, should we complain about the end of the line for Encarta again and somehow tie it into Windows 8 or the Office Ribbon?
 
Last time I saw that name (don't remember using it much) was back in 1995 lol

And I am not even old. I am handsome.
 
Wow ... is this like the Zombie Apocalypse of Necro threads ... resurrecting a 4 year old thread and it isn't even Easter or anything :eek:
 
Encarta, man I did hear that name is years. Reminds of the the 90s and middle/high school, fun times.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
You make a good point. Soooo, should we complain about the end of the line for Encarta again and somehow tie it into Windows 8 or the Office Ribbon?
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I think we all know that the problem comes down to fantail goldfish.
 
Tudz said:
I think we all know that the problem comes down to fantail goldfish.
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I'm eleventeen million percent certain within a 90% confidence interval (based on a sample size of two) that this has everything to do with some horrible comet goldfish plot. :mad:

Or maybe it was the Xbox 720 getting hacked by PSN people who were hired by Nintendo in an attempt to get a copy of an Android app for their tablet controller now that the Sega Dreamcast's VMU isn't a valid piece of technology due to an Apple patent for wirelessly rounded edges that someone is holding wrong when they play day one DLC included on their Call of Duty: Brown Orifice 5 that doesn't work because the initial release was buggy and the servers that store your saved games in the cloud are broken by Starforce DRM because the Titan GPUs Ubisoft is using for packet encryption are experiencing AMD style microstuttering which only happened because the software they use was the result of a failed Kickstarter project originally intended to introduce a dislike button in Facebook by a set of angry developers who recently left Twitter when their sepia filter was denied introduction because it wasn't compatible with Firefox 33.0.1.1224 or Chrome 391: Super Hyper Turbo Edition thanks to a security flaw in Adobe Flash that wasn't patched for months on Apple computers since it was held up in a dispute about revenue collection in the Windows Store that no one could access because they didn't have a touchscreen to use with Modern UI and someone hid it under an invisible Charm that no one likes to use because it consumes a lot of battery power and confuses modern SoC, but it did help the people at Blackberry realize they should stop calling their company RIM so no one can toss around cheap jokes when they announce a round of layoffs that are obviously caused by TSA nude scanners implemented in public restrooms to thwart hackers and intercept satellites that have mind control lasers you can only stop by wearing a tinfoil hat and turning off GPS in your phone.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I'm eleventeen million percent certain within a 90% confidence interval (based on a sample size of two) that this has everything to do with some horrible comet goldfish plot. :mad:

Or maybe it was the Xbox 720 getting hacked by PSN people who were hired by Nintendo in an attempt to get a copy of an Android app for their tablet controller now that the Sega Dreamcast's VMU isn't a valid piece of technology due to an Apple patent for wirelessly rounded edges that someone is holding wrong when they play day one DLC included on their Call of Duty: Brown Orifice 5 that doesn't work because the initial release was buggy and the servers that store your saved games in the cloud are broken by Starforce DRM because the Titan GPUs Ubisoft is using for packet encryption are experiencing AMD style microstuttering which only happened because the software they use was the result of a failed Kickstarter project originally intended to introduce a dislike button in Facebook by a set of angry developers who recently left Twitter when their sepia filter was denied introduction because it wasn't compatible with Firefox 33.0.1.1224 or Chrome 391: Super Hyper Turbo Edition thanks to a security flaw in Adobe Flash that wasn't patched for months on Apple computers since it was held up in a dispute about revenue collection in the Windows Store that no one could access because they didn't have a touchscreen to use with Modern UI and someone hid it under an invisible Charm that no one likes to use because it consumes a lot of battery power and confuses modern SoC, but it did help the people at Blackberry realize they should stop calling their company RIM so no one can toss around cheap jokes when they announce a round of layoffs that are obviously caused by TSA nude scanners implemented in public restrooms to thwart hackers and intercept satellites that have mind control lasers you can only stop by wearing a tinfoil hat and turning off GPS in your phone.
Click to expand...

Hmmm ... seems like any doubts I had as to whether Uncle Google was actually a Skribbel Kat in disguise are evaporating quickly :p
 
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