Internet Encyclopedia Project

DIGITIZATION OF OLD CONTENT

A key branch of this activity is the digitization of old printed encyclopedias. In January , the latest ''Britannica'' was digitized by its publishers, and sold first as a CD-ROM and later as an online service. Other digitization projects have made progress on other titles. One example is '' Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) '' digitized by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library . Probably the most important and successful digitization of an encyclopedia was the Bartleby Project's online adaptation of the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2000, which was put online at
http://www.bartleby.com/65/ in early 2000 and is updated periodically.

CREATION OF NEW CONTENT

Another related branch of activity is the creation of new, free contents on a volunteer basis. In '', a fictional encyclopedia used in the works of Douglas Adams . It became known as Project Galactic Guide . Although it originally aimed to contain only real, factual articles, policy was changed to allow and encourage semi-real and unreal articles as well. Project Galactic Guide contains over 1700 articles, but no new articles have been added since 2000 ; this is probably partly due to the founding of H2g2 , a more official project along similar lines.

HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF ENCYCLOPEDISM

As a part of the German Enlightenment, philosopher G.W.v. Leibniz envisaged an encyclopedia that might contain the whole of human knowledge. He associated this with his other projects of a '' Characteristica Universalis '' and '' Calculus Ratiocinator ''. That is, the need for a Universal Language by which any person could make a contribution to a truly universal encyclopedia. Recently philosophers like Pombo have made a link between Leibniz's ideas and the internet encyclopedia project. This view seems to reveal a remarkable continuity in the history and implementation of ideas over the last 400 years.

ENCYCLOPEDIAS THAT ARE NO LONGER ONLINE

Interpedia

Nupedia , a slow-moving project to produce a free peer reviewed encyclopedia. Nupedia shut down on September 26, 2003, and much of its content has since been assimilated by Wikipedia.

GNUpedia , an initiative which did not come to fruition but had some interesting philosophy.

CURRENTLY ONLINE ENCYCLOPEDIAS

Bulbapedia is a Pokémon encyclopedia, founded by the Pokémon fansite and forum, Bulbagarden

Consumerium , a project to provide consumers with product information and increase the power of the consumer in a market economy.

Rehber Ansiklopedisi Online version of the Turkish Encyclopedia "Yeni Reber Ansiklopedisi" which means "New Guide Encyclopedia", commonly used in Turkish Wikipedia as a reference source. http://kitap.hakikatkitabevi.com/cgi-bin/cgi.exe/rehber?

Turkcebilgi -- A new project like Wikipedia in Turkish

Ekşi Sözlük -- an older Turkish variant with the same concept as h2g2

Project Galactic Guide -- an older project inspired by '' The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy ''.

Everything2 has a wider range and does not exclusively focus on building an encyclopedia; its contents are not available under a Copyleft license.

H2g2 , a collection of sometimes humorous encyclopedia articles, based on an idea from Douglas Adams's ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Articles are not freely redistributable.

NeoDex is a Neopets encyclopedia, founded by the Neopets fansite, Pink Poogle Toy

EvoWiki is "a Wiki about evolution and origins. The focus is on evolution education, particularly addressing the arguments of Creationism and Intelligent Design from the perspective of mainstream science. It is inspired by webpages such as talkorigins.org and talkdesign.org, and the goal of EvoWiki is to complement rather than duplicate these online resources".

SourceWatch (formerly called Disinfopedia ), a project to expose Propaganda and paid spin doctors.

Wikitravel , a free travel guide started in July 2003 .

Wikipedia

Yellowikis aims to be to Yellow Pages what Wikipedia is to the '' Encyclopædia Britannica ''.

Several online encyclopedias focus on mathematics:

MathWorld , a proprietary system hosted at Wolfram Research.

PlanetMath is a free Wiki-style mathematical encyclopedia which was originally built to replace MathWorld , a proprietary system hosted at Wolfram Research which was down for some time due to legal difficulties. Since MathWorld has returned, PlanetMath has still thrived.

The QED Project is building a "distributed, computerized repository that rigorously represents all important, established mathematical knowledge."

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Internet Encyclopedia Project