Interpedia was the first-proposed
online encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Digitization of old content
In January 199 ...
which would allow anyone to contribute by writing articles and submitting them to the central catalogue of all Interpedia pages.
History
Interpedia was initiated by
Rick Gates, who posted a message titled "The Internet Encyclopedia" on October 25, 1993 to the PACS-L (Public-Access Computer Systems Forum)
Listserv
The term Listserv (styled by the registered trademark licensee, L-Soft International, Inc., as LISTSERV) has been used to refer to electronic mailing list software applications in general, but is more properly applied to a few early instances o ...
. That message included the following musings:
In November 1993, discussions moved to a dedicated
mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...
, supplemented later by
Usenet newsgroup
A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distin ...
.
Several independent "Seal-of-approval" (SOAP) agencies were envisioned which would rate Interpedia articles based on criteria of their own choosing; users could then decide which agencies' recommendations to follow.
The project was actively discussed for around half a year, but never left the planning stages, perhaps partly due to the unprecedented growth of the
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet.
Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
.
[Joseph Reagle]
Wikipedia's heritage: vision, pragmatics, and happenstance
— section 3.2, ''Interpedia''
See also
*
Online encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Digitization of old content
In January 199 ...
*
List of online encyclopedias
This is a list of well-known online encyclopedias—i.e., encyclopedias accessible or formerly accessible on the Internet.
The largest online encyclopedias are general reference works, though there are also many specialized ones. Some online en ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
Interpedia's disclaimerby John Hunt
*
{{Wikipedia, state=collapsed
American online encyclopedias