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Microsoft recently announced that they’re pulling the plug on Encarta, their once mighty encyclopedia software. Tom Corddry, who was part of the team that created Encarta, talks about designing the first digital encyclopedia, the surprising backroom negotiations that surrounded its launch, and plastic that smells like leather.
If law-school professor Eric Goldman is to be believed, the seeds of Wikipedia's "doom" have already been planted.
The Publicradio program "Future Tense" ran a story back in February wherein the good professor contended that Wikipedia is faced with going one of two directions -- less "wiki" content editing v. more rampant hacker invasions -- and choosing either route will result in the ultimate demise of Jimmy Wale's good intentions.
REF: http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2009/02/law-professor-a.html
Oh, yes, I almost forgot. Wasn't it this segment where you mentioned "doing your preparations for the interview"? Good line and point taken.
They just aren't always the ones listeners wish or expect you to make.
the seeds of Wikipedia's "doom" have already been planted.
But will they sprout? For WP to die, something has to replace it. The only thing out there might be google. As far as vandalism goes, I remember the print encyclopedias at the library, with pages ripped out and pornographic scrawls here and there. I do think a professionally edited encyclopedia could sell, the problem is that they won't admit that reading an article on George Washington is probably worth about $0.00001 .
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