Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's way more effort than writing some text. That kind of content doesn't make itself for free.
But they get millions of dollars in donations every year.
of which about $0 goes to actual content creators.
I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
111–120 of 202 posts
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#112Convenience replaces nostalgia: Why miss Encarta when you have Wikipedia? I liked the Encarta experience: it was amazing to see videos, photos and everything in a nice UI back then, but today we have Wikipedia, Wikimedia, etc. It's a way superior experience and there's x100 content.
Encarta was charged with multimedia. It was a really new and exciting experience for a kid growing up before Flash sites started really even became popular. Loading up Encarta, you'd get a musical intro with flashes of footage from shuttle launches, famous speeches, native American tribes, animals, etc. Then immediate after, you get a button called "Explore". Clicking that zooms you into a web of categories, with each one zooming further and further down into more fine-grained topics where you could get previews about what you were about to discover.
The articles were concise and full of video or other interactive pieces. Certain topics would have a brief sound recording as an introduction. I even remember you could assemble a dinosaur to learn about the different parts.
Every prominent UI interaction, from a button click to expanding a context menu, had a unique and satisfying sound. That would be a huge problem for most people with most UI today, but given that there was so much media being played, it fit in naturally.
The interface itself was basically a web browser, so it helped to teach kids about simple concepts, like navigation, hyperlinks, bookmarks, internal vs external resources, and so on. It was a great pre-introduction to surfing the web.
For a kid, I think Encarta would be a much more fun and engaging experience than Wikipedia when choosing an encyclopedia. If you want to see what Bill Gates envisioned for multimedia learning around the time, you should check out the (hilariously cheesy) videos that came with his book "The Road Ahead"
And don't even get me started on how cool the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia was at the time.
(Am I really getting nostalgic over encyclopedias over here? ...)
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#113I miss books. The kind of "Encyclopedia of" style that had pictures, text, diagrams, and maps that were all part of a whole. Written for a general audience of curious people and not needing to cater to such a wide audience as Wikipedia.
Are there good books like this? Maybe even for niche topics?
The The Encyclopedia of Mammals is pretty amazing.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#114I remember when I've got the Encarta 1995 and I was light years ahead of my school friends when doing researches and gather material. I guess an hypothetical Encarta 2020 would not even fit in 5/6 Blue Rays, especially considering the better quality of images and videos
You mean Microsoft Azure Encarta Series X 2020 Edition Ultimate Plus Pack?
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#115even if offline MS Encarta existed in 2020 it would be the same Global LEFT authorian corruption that wiki has
I doubt any books has the uncensored truth anymore the entire mainstream is anti white, anti truth, and corrupt
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's way more effort than writing some text. That kind of content doesn't make itself for free.
But they get millions of dollars in donations every year.
They don't spend money paying people to create content. Volunteers create that content for free.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's odd, I'd rather go to a library and read a book than dig on the web now. to be honest: I like the web for shallow access, but when I need focus and depth, a library and a book is way more fit for my brain.
Me too - since the rise of ad-funded SEO 'content farms', it's become damn hard to find information written by someone who has even a passing familiarity with the topic.
This is largely my attitude right now. I may have also described the current internet as "giant steaming shithole" a time or two because it's so polluted with dubious information and algorithmically generated content.
At the same time I've been going through some old books (mid-19th century) that were in my grandfather's house. There are some that cover extremely specific subject matters. They are well indexed, so that finding good information might indeed be easier than googling for it. I'm not saying that it's superior to internet search, but sometimes we forget that there is actually information that has never been digitized.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
But they get millions of dollars in donations every year.
of which about $0 goes to actual content creators.
They don't pay people to create content directly but in their most recent annual report they state that 32% of their expenses are supporting the community.
> The Wikimedia projects exist thanks to volunteer communities around the world that create and maintain them. We strengthen these communities through grants, programs, events, trainings, partnerships, tools to augment contributor capacity, and support for the legal defense of editors.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2019-annu...
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I remember from those times : even knowing there was an encyclopedia on the school library computer, I would not use it, because it just sounded impractical. I would need to ask for permission to use the computer, then wait for it to start, then figure how to do a search, while the competitive proposition was just picking the encyclopedia volume for the correct letter and finding my page! How much a few dec…
It's odd, I'd rather go to a library and read a book than dig on the web now. to be honest: I like the web for shallow access, but when I need focus and depth, a library and a book is way more fit for my brain.
In our country there are no public libraries, you only get access to a library during high school and university studies. When Microsoft Encarta arrived it was amazing because of the animations and color images but content is shorter compared to the ones on the libraries. Internet changed everything on information availability.
Re: I miss Microsoft Encarta (2019)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's way more effort than writing some text. That kind of content doesn't make itself for free.
This. If we get tools that enables simple creation of video/interactive assets then Wikipedia will get those more. As a life long graphics geek and programmer, currently the content creation ecosystem is not really on "bicycle" level - more like unicycle while juggling chainsaws - although it's getting better. I mean I've done graphics stuff all my life, and would be quite lost how to "do a quick animation" in someth…
I think we have Adobe to thank for stagnation in creator tools. There are smaller, harder to find companies doing pieces of the work (i.e. Photopea for Photoshop) and lots of video editing apps that have grown up around Instagram and TikTok. Blender is great for 3d modeling and more.