Talk:Encarta/Archive 1

Logo
Please see Wikipedia talk:Logos for my explanation of why using the logo of an encyclopedia or other reference work is a bad idea, and why I have reinserted a guideline suggesting that such logos not be used. I've carefully indicated the reinsertion as tentative, and am not doing anything about the logo presently on this page pending further discussion.

In brief: trademark law seems to turn heavily on whether the use of a trademark is by a company that is even remotely in the same business as the company that owns the trademark. Even if nobody in their right mind thinks that Wikipedia is trying to borrow Encarta's good name by using their trademark in the way we're using it, it is, nevertheless, closer to a grey area than using Howard Johnson's logo, because nobody is going to try to buy frozen Tendersweet fried clam strips from Wikipedia. Dpbsmith 20:47, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

oops forgot to enter my username
hi, in last post I didn't know how to insert by name with comments I thought it will appear automatically so I am inserting it now it is Zain 20:53, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC) (hope this works) is there any way that my username is inserted automatically at the end of my everpost along with time stamp. thanks Zain 20:53, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Link of Encarta on Encarta Website
Hi, I want to put a link to encarta website which describes encarta website. If I make it wrong or it is against copyright please correct me. (I have already entered the number of articles encarta offers for free and for charges) if any of these changes is wrong plz guide me because i am new in wikipedia and want to learn.

just by the way I tried to find wikipedia on encarta and there were no results :)

thanks


 * The link you added seems perfectly OK. Welcome to WP, and thanks!
 * Just a quick pointer - You appear to have indented your comments using spaces at the beginning of the line, which does not produce the desired effect. What you need to do to indent text is to add a ':' (colon) to the beginning of the line, which indents the paragraph, as you see here, commonly used on talk pages to seperate replies.
 * Adding spaces to the beginning of a line produces the stragely laid out code you saw before I removed them, as in this example:

example produced by adding a space to the beginning of the line.
 * This is mostly used for diagrams and formulae I think. akaDruid ([[User talk:Akadruid|Talk)]] 12:33, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Comments
I think this article has a couple of problems; chiefly, it has sections that would be suitable for a critical review, but not for an encyclopedia article. Specifically:


 * 1) Relatively insignificant information dominates the article, such as the  "Contents", "World atlas", "World statistics", "Copy and paste function". It's not a problem including this information, but to make this a balanced and scholarly article it needs reworking, and possibly pruning. Example snippet, from the "Virtual flight" subsection: "...to fly a virtual airplane over the coarsely generated artificial landscape while listening to music possibly unrelated to that part of the world. The quality of the landscape is pretty low and the 480 x 240 fixed window is small. This feature seems to be unrelated to the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator. When the airplane reaches the border of that area, it just stops." &mdash; too many specifics. It would be perfectly sufficient to simply say, "The DVD version contains a primitive flight simulator."
 * 2) The "A test search" section. This is original research, full of subjective opinion, and, moreover, far too small a sample size to provide a useful comparison of the encyclopedias. A good part of it is also off-topic, being related to other encyclopedias &mdash; "However, with Wikipedia, nothing is for sure." I think we should cut this out entirely.

Before I started hacking away, I thought I'd solicit some comments first! &mdash; Matt 09:06, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Misc.
In the Visual Browser section, there is the following text:


 * It may be necessary to scroll through a lot of irrelevant topics to move to the next level.

I don't know what it's trying to mean. Is it just me, or is the text not clear, even in its context?

eje211 18:20, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I know the Visual Browser first appeared in the 2004 edition.

Wiki-Encarta
From Encarta is letting users to submit edits to articles. 132.205.15.43 20:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * http://spaces.msn.com/members/Encarta/ (20:54, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC) version)
 * http://beta.encarta.msn.com/encnet/support/encartafeedback.aspx?page=editing
 * http://privacy.msn.com/tou/
 * http://developers.slashdot.org/developers/05/04/08/1658247.shtml?tid=109&tid=95&tid=8

drastically reducing image quality?
the article says:

"Encarta is also notorious for drastically reducing the quality of images copied using the built-in image copy menu option and adding a copyright notice at the bottom, often covering up important details."

i have copied about 5 or so encarta images in the past. i didn't notice image quality degradation. There is copyright and source notice inserted at bottom of course, but to say "covering up important details" seems defamatory.

Xah Lee 22:57, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)

not only in english language/wikipedia
http://fr.encarta.msn.com/ also in french language, introduction let us wrongly think that encarta is only in english language... another thing : you could mention that encarta doesn't mention Wikipedia in any article, and that wikipedia HAS an Encarta article... --130.83.244.131 01:06, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC) fr:Utilisateur:Moala

''Microsoft publishes similar encyclopedias under the Encarta trademark in various languages, including German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Japanese. Localized versions may contain contents licensed from available national sources and may not contain the full English version contents. ''

This implies that localized versions may be SMALLER than the English Encarta - they could also be BIGGER... Känsterle 10:34, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

firts edition of Encarta (1993) / Primera edicion de Encarta (1993)
I would like a lot them to provide me some data on the first edition of Encarta in the year of 1993, like exact date of their launching, how it was divided their content, the type of information multimedia that contained, as well as the tools for interactivity that could have.

Me gustarían mucho que me proporcionaran algunos datos de la primera edición de Encarta por el año de 1993, como la fecha exacta de su lanzamiento, cómo estaba dividido su contenido, el tipo de elementos multimedia que contenia, así como las herramientas de interactividad que pudo tener.

gabriel1z1z@yahoo.com- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.240.12.64 (talk) 18:47, 28 October 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this really needs a history section. The Encyclopaedia Britannica article touches on this a bit. --ProhibitOnions 14:33, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

Criticism section
I've just reworded a sentence slightly in this section (I still don't like the repetition of some in "Some Wikipedians have noted that some" but can't think at this moment how to rephrase to avoid it.) and spotted that there is much more criticsim hidden in &lt;!-- --&gt; comment tags. Why is this? If it belongs in the article it should be visible, if it doesn't why is it in the source? Thryduulf 10:10, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * I removed the self-reference, I don't think it's only Wikipedians that have noticed this, and even if it was it shouldn't really be worded like that (Avoid self-references). As to the commented out stuff, it looks like a couple of random excerpts with no context.  Not sure why it would count as criticism.  But certainly, if it illustrates, or can be made to illustrate, some percieved flaw, then it should definitely be in.  I seem to remember seeing some discussion about it being commented out, I'll have a root around. Worldtraveller 12:01, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've removed the paragraph in question, for consistency with my rewrite of the preceding section. How can it be a reaction to the success of collaborative projects if it does nothing to address that success? -- Tim Starling 03:07, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Huh? How about allowing and actively encouraging user feedback? And attempting to keep a centralized authority and control over the material while allowing partial collaborative efforts in the form of user submitted edits and comments on the articles. Encarta has been around for quite some time and their just recent consideration of user feedback is not just a random occurence with no correlation whatsoever to the goings on in the encyclopedia field. I mean come on, i looked at your bio and you are a phd student, you can do better than that. I have reverted your edits, and please try being a little more civil when referring to other peoples contributions, rubbish is not a proper term when attempting collaborative projects. You have also ommited the copyright issue in your rewrite, which is now back.

Encarta's source?
When I was younger (mid-nineties) we had the computer version of Encarta, and I also had an old set of the Funk & Wagnall's encyclopedia. I seem to remember that, for the most part, the text of the articles in the two sources were almost completely identical. Do we have information on where Encarta gets its documents? -Branddobbe 20:39, Feb 24, 2005 (UTC)
 * My old version of Encarta says it *is* The Funk and Wagnall's encyclopedia... 132.205.15.43 20:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * It is. --  user:zanimum
 * I added information about the origin of Encarta I got from Ken Kister, renowned encyclopedia expert. In short, Encarta 1993 was F&W with revisions. Then in the late 1990s, MS bought Collier's and New Merit Scholar's and incorporated the best of their stuff. Since none of them prints any longer, Encarta could be considered the successor of all three.
 * Although this sounds like Microsoft's typical killing spree, Kister visited their operations, and was extremely impressed with the quality of Encarta's editorial staff--this is a guy who has visited all the major encyclopedias, like Britannica and World Book. -- Chitu 16:58, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Article number
The into says 4,500 article are available for free online, while 68,000 are contained in the premium version that requires subscription. Later in the article, the number 41,000 for the "standard and online" version is mentioned. So there are three versions? Is that correct? If so, it should be clarified in the introduction. AxelBoldt 20:27, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
 * free online: 4,500
 * standard pay online: 41,000
 * premium pay online: 68,000

Encarta suggestion do actually work
They finally approved my submission of the fact that Jim Henson was nominated for an Academy Award. It took a few months, but they did it. Anyone else have any success with their tests of Encarta? -- user:zanimum


 * I'm not sure why you would contribute your work for nothing to assist the multi-billion dollar empire that is Microsoft with the building of their encyclopedia (that readers have to pay for), but each to his own.


 * I'm just wondering, has anyone considered submitting an artical about wikipedia to encarta? T-rex 21:15, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is mentioned in the 2006 Premium edition of Encarta, at the very bottom of the Encyclopædia article (spelled Encyclopedia in Encarta). It got a whole paragraph!
 * In the early 21st century a new type of online encyclopedia, known as Wikipedia, enabled readers to create and edit encyclopedia articles. A wiki is a type of server software that enables users to create or alter content on a Web page. Wikipedia was closely associated with the open source software movement and rapidly expanded to include hundreds of thousands of articles, many on popular culture topics, in a number of languages. The philosophy behind Wikipedia was that a community of volunteers could pool their knowledge and crosscheck their work to create a free encyclopedia. Due to Wikipedia’s openness, it is often the target of vandalism. Mga 04:27, 25 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I read the same article in the free online version. (Go to msn.com, click on encarta, search for encyclopedia, go to last page.) Is thewhole Premium edition now online for free? AxelBoldt 20:33, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Etymology
Greetings. I am an anonymous reader. I live in South Africa, and have a small knowledge of the Zulu language.

In the traditional Zulu clan structure, an urn called the "inkhata" was located in every village - this urn had the supposed magical power of the village's dead ancestors, and contained ALL WORLD KNOWLEDGE.

The Zulu word "inkhata" and the English word "encarta" are pronounced almost exactly the same, have a very similar meaning, and the Zulus had this word in their daily vocabulary before white settlers arrived.

Does anybody here know of the Etymology of the word "encarta"? This really intrigues me.


 * For what it's worth, the site smartcomputing.com claims that "The name Encarta is a combination of “encyclopedia” (en) and the Latin word for “letter” (carta)". But they don't give a source, and I can't find that information on the encarta site, so they possibly just made that up. Maybe you could ask around at the Encarta Blog, they should know. AxelBoldt 19:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

encarta_at_conversagent_dot_com
Recently I was told of this (Yes, it works like the Shakespeare Bot indeed). Should we include it in the article? Thanks. 199.111.230.195 07:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Technology
I was a developer who worked on the viewer engine used by the first encarta. It was actually sold as a toolkit so that other folks who wanted to make information titles could do so and get decent performance on the then very slow CD ROM drives. The information I added on the engine is verifiable in the following reference:

Microsoft Multimedia Viewer How-To Cd: Create Exciting Multimedia With Video, Animation, Music, and Speech for Windows/Book and Cd (Paperback)- still avaiable in some used bookstores according to Amazon.

I have original information on the technology and I acknowlege my bias, so please feel free to modify. -Mak Thorpe 19:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Editing process for Encarta
This article gives some inside details on the editing process for Encarta and why it applies hard vacuum. Someone earlier asked if Encarta could be trusted. The answer seems to be you can trust it to be full of easily spotted mistakes. Could this tale be linked in without seeming too anti-microsoft? --14:19, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

source
The references about scientific articles should be based on scientific references, for example the ones included in the citation index. e104421 — Preceding undated comment added 01:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

terms of use reference
Before my edit it said like "editors are not credited".... but the Windows Live "terms of service" link did not appear to back that up (IANAL however). In the ref description it said that rights were transferred but in the Windows Live one it says the person gives rights to the public. Also, I wonder why it points to windows live - maybe it was updated? Maybe it is just a link issue... RN 04:29, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Jesus, NPOS-biased Wikipedians
i wrote a full review in the early days of this article and now this article is reduced to pretty much bland empty content. The wikipedians, on the whole, are sticklers to their so-called "neutral point of view", but regardless cannot escape their collective point of "fuck everything non-opensource" view. Xah Lee P0lyglut 01:58, 2004 May 13 (UTC)


 * I just read the last version you edited, 11 Dec 2003. I agree that what you have said is valuable and that the current article has indeed been made more bland and empty.


 * It is appropriate for articles about encyclopedias to have (documented, supported, factual, verifiable) statements that help define the nature of and the differences between Encarta, Britannica, World Book, etc. A frequent problem in Wikipedia, of which I think this is an example, is that a contributor adds truthful, valuable, reasonably objective material on his own authority, which then gets removed as being apparently original research or POV. I think the stuff you contributed was probably accurate, but I'm not sure that you presented it in a way that made it verifiable.


 * Wikipedia IMHO does err on the side of blandness and safety. Never say anything and you'll never say anything wrong. I think too many Wikipedians' model of what an encyclopedia should be is the (ugh) World Book and not the (hooray!) Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition.


 * Judging from the tone of your remark, you probably aren't interested in revisiting this again, but I think it would be very valuable if you cared to put some of this information back, not as "a review," but in the form of statement about how Encarta relates to, say, Britannica, with some verifiable or objective backing for them.


 * BTW what does "NPOS" mean? Dpbsmith 13:04, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I think it's true that some Wikipedians have a bad habit of removing POV or "on own authority" or "quality judgment" stuff, rather than refactoring it. (Certainly, I've been guilty of this in the past). I think the difficulty lies in the fact that it's a lot more effort to cite sources than it is to insert your own opinions. For example, it's quite easy to write, "The content of Encarta is not as scholarly and in depth as the 20 or so printed tomes of Britannica", but it's a lot harder for another editor to NPOV it by providing sources and quotes, so it is often omitted instead. I think it is, however, marginally preferable that things are verifiable rather than interesting.


 * It is clearly preferable, though, to be both interesting AND verifiable. In this particular case, I would encourage P0lyglut (if still interested) to help find some sources and reviews for Encarta, so we can improve this article. &mdash; Matt 13:38, 13 May 2004 (UTC)


 * e.g. This (published) article &mdash; http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2002/alevizou.html &mdash; includes the statement:


 * "[Microsoft] in 1993 offered Encarta, a multimedia product on CD-ROM that was based on the print encyclopaedia Funk and Wagnall’s. Arguably Encarta did not have the deep information of Britannica. However it proposed an alternative value: better search capabilities, portability, entertaining media features, and was much less expensive"
 * &mdash; Matt 13:44, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the article is good now, there's no wikipedian bias or slant at all. --ISeeDeadPixels 22:42, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

number of free articles?
The article lists that there are 68,000 articles in Encarta. Do we have a source which indicates how many of these are available online for free currently? That seems like an important number for partially-ad-supported, partially subscription based software. The article center link provided for finding free articles says there are 4,500 searchable articles, but that number seems low. -- Bailey(talk) 00:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Encarta.png
Image:Encarta.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in Wikipedia articles constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 04:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

What happened to the criticism section?
I ll post it here verbatim from a 2006 version. There's no mention of such blatant errors as ommiting such notable political philosopher's passing (John Rawls) three years after the fact. Instead the critisism section has been renamed as reception. What? Reception for a product that's 10+ years in the market? You gotta be kidding me right? And instead what we are getting is some (supposed) praise from a couple of minor publications dating back to 1997, unanavailable of course for anyone to see on the internet...This, even for microsoft's standards is below pathetic.

Like I said I will past the original criticism section here. I am also retitling the laughable "Reception" segment to criticism, removing the ridiculous pov praises. I will add the disgracefull John Rawl's error too, it deserves more mention than some persons pov review/opinion dating ten years back.

Criticism of the encyclopedia has focused on some articles being slow to be updated. For example, an early 2005 edition of the article about the political philosopher John Rawls opens with "Rawls, John (1921- )", although he had died on November 24, 2002. Encarta failed to note the date of his passing until April 2005—about 2½ years after the event. As of July 2005, the web version of the Rawls article includes his date of death. [1].

Other critics dismiss Encarta as having neither the breadth, depth and authoritative contributors of other encyclopedias such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, nor the currency or open participatory nature of Wikipedia. Criticism has been leveled on Encarta's decision to accept users' editions of the articles to be submitted for approval, a move that is widely seen as a reaction to the success of collaborative projects such as Wikipedia in particular, but falling short of offering users editorial or copyright control over the result. Moreover, since Encarta remains primarily a paid subscription service, the users being asked to volunteer their work not only receive little reward, but may in fact be paying for the privilege.

Robert McHenry, while Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica, criticized [2] Encarta for its policy of 'localizing' versions of Encarta for national markets. McHenry described this as "pandering to local prejudices" instead of presenting subjects objectively.

Microsoft has been unable to maintain some local versions of Encarta. For example, the Brazilian version was published between 1999 and 2002, then discontinued. 84.254.52.80 06:07, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Before you edited that section, there were three paragraphs. Two criticized Encarta and one praised it. The praise was taken from publications devoted to a neutral point of view. Now, there are four paragraphs that criticize the encyclopedia. One of them says that, "Other critics dismiss Encarta as having neither the breadth, depth and authoritative contributors of other encyclopedias such as the Encyclopædia Britannica, nor the currency or open participatory nature of Wikipedia," but doesn't mention which critics. I honestly suspect that those critics are in reality a single person--you. Unfortunately, such statements are often allowed to remain on pages here on Wikipedia, because our citation requirements are often not enforced. But in this case, I will follow Encarta’s lead and ask that you cite which critics made such statements. Right now, the title of "Criticism" is appropriate, as it is just criticism. But, since I am restoring the praise made by those published (i.e., fact-checked) sources, the title will have to be changed back to "Reception." If you can think of another word that encompasses both praise and criticism, feel free to use it, instead. And, contrary to your insinuation, my sources can easily be checked at your local library. I dare you to check them.--Gnfgb2 06:44, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not here to argument on the ridiculous, you are citing two sources with appreciative statements on encarta, dating back to more than 10 years where most people wheren't even using a computer or didn't even have a cd rom, pre internet, and from some minor publications which you claim are npov but are very pov to their respective authors who are some pretty much unknown analysts/commentators on computers or encyclopedias and you are asking me to take your claims seriously? If I had the time, which I don't I could site you tens of negative reviews of encarta from that time onwards. There is absolutely no claim to notability to your sources to be quoted on encarta 97 a decade onward, when the internet has made such drastic changes to the dissemination of information. Had this been an article on encarta 97 I could, possibly, be acceptable, that and the "reception title" but this isn't. Let me also add that it's an irony in itself to quote one reviewer saying that the encyclopaedia is "up to date" when refering to a now 10 year old version of it, and to quote a star rating out of its context, with three stars say, but three stars out of what, five? Ten? Twenty? Like I said it's even ludicrous for me to discuss this. Microsoft has plenty of sockpuppets by their own admission in wikipedia no one needs another one. 84.254.51.188 17:49, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I seriously hope that you aren't over 15 years of age, because your primitive personal attacks and English usage are reflecting badly on you. I am not here to argue with someone from Greece who lacks a basic knowledge of how to punctuate their sentences what the word reception means. Like most words, it has more than one sense, and one of them is "response." Obviously, this article isn't just about the 2007 version of Encarta, and repeating yourself doesn't make you seem any more reasonable. I honestly could remove everything you added, because the other paragraph is original research. I only kept it to make you happy. But since I see you aren't here to compromise, then I can probably just trash it. Welcome to Wikipedia.--Gnfgb2 02:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Your racist ad-hominem remarks speak volumes about your person. Abiding by Wikipedia's rules I won't stoop to your level. Since you are unable or unwilling to engage in any civilized discource I will request editor mediation in this article. Allow me to distract you momentarily from your habit of insulting other users when you lack any arguments to support your position, by linking this article to chambers' online dictionary of the english language where the word reception is defined. http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=reception&title=21st&sourceid=Mozilla-search In your characteristic petty deceptive way, you failed to mention what follows the word "response" in the dictionary, which according to chambers is "a response, reaction or welcome; the manner in which a person, information, an idea, etc is received". For some reason you've missed that word "welcome". Now isn't that interesting...Let's have a "welcome" section for encarta with ten year old reviews because nothing else stands and we got to please the zealots. This is disgraceful. Like I said I will request mediation here. 84.254.52.103 00:11, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * You might want to take a look at Criticism. Quite a number of editors feel criticsm sections are usually unjustified. Reception sections is often an alternative. And I agree with Gn here, you cannot ignore 10 year old priase just because you think it's too old. However the mention does need to be worded to make it clear when that comment was made. I do agree that Gn bringing up Greece was inappropriate and unacceptable Nil Einne 01:20, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Note is a sock of hard-banned user. Any edits he makes to the project can and should be reverted. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 21:18, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Encarta online
How come this article doesn't talk about encarta.msn.com? Althepal 21:57, 25 July 2007 (UTC) diapositivas para power point —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.43.131.56 (talk) 19:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Encarta 2008 DOES contain the Mind Maze game, contrary otthe article
When you start Encarta 2008, you simply press ctrl+Z and Mind maze inititalizes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mike 302 (talk • contribs) 21:51, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I can confirm that. ctrl+z —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.193.165.150 (talk) 03:57, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Encarta Africana
There's no one word in the article that what was and what has happened with Encarta Africana? Totally discontinued? It was earlier included in the premium pack. Tgunda (talk) 21:37, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

les enfants du rue au maroc —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.248.21.20 (talk) 19:02, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Title
Why is the title of an article not simply Encarta? I don't think there is a conflict. If Encarta might mean something difference, the redirect of Encarta to Microsoft Encarta is misleading. -- Taku 23:16 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)


 * I note that this is now fixed. I'm just adding this comment to avoid future confusion arising from this being a seemingly unanswered question. - IMSoP 14:16, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Microsoft now calls it MSN Encarta when accessed from the web and the software product Microsoft Encarta, so leaving it at Encarta is best. --Pmsyyz (talk) 22:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Cite-Note Problem
There is a problem with cite-notes. Hover over any cite-note and it links to next number i.e. 5 links to 6, 6 links to cite-note 7 etc. Cite-note 8 appears three times and cite-note 1 is located after 7! Jaqian (talk) 08:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * All normal. The internal numbering starts at zero, so the data seen on a mouse hover is different (by 1) - clicking the links jumps to the correct cite.
 * Cites can be used more than once - hence you see multiples. They are shown "^abcd" in the reference list.   Ron h jones  (Talk) 19:15, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Encarta as cited in WP
There are over 3000 citations in WP that link to encarta.msn.com which will presumably break when it goes dark. Given that they're tertiary sources anyhow most should be replaced, but all of them will need some action.LeadSongDog come howl  22:12, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Good point. There's a site - I forget - that will archive specific webpages if requested. Pehaps an organized effort should be made to archive them.   Will Beback    talk    22:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The site is called the Internet Archive and its url is www.archive.org Jaqian (talk) 08:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


 * There is possibly a fast way of doing that - maybe by some Bot?. e.g. the link
 * http://encarta.msn.com/media_461543986/Major_Algae_Phyla.html
 * translates to
 * http://web.archive.org/web/20080115104823/http://encarta.msn.com/media_461543986/Major_Algae_Phyla.html
 * The 20080115104823 is the time/date stamp of when web archive got that page - which you find out when you enter the page URL manually into web archive's site. However if you enter the URL without the timestamp- i.e just add http://web.archive.org/web/ to the start of the current URL...
 * http://web.archive.org/web/http://encarta.msn.com/media_461543986/Major_Algae_Phyla.html
 * The web archive will find the last page and alter the URL to the previous (correct) one.  Ron h jones  (Talk) 19:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, I wasn't thinking of Internet Archive, which can be spotty in its coverage. There's another service that archives specific pages upon request.   Will Beback    talk    19:37, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Comments at NYTimes article
There are some interesting comments from some former Encarta team members here. Can anyone include the relevant information from there? - xpclient  Talk 06:26, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Additional references
As the Encarta site is essentially closing within a year, links to the site including the faq may become dead. I have added some news sources documenting the closure. Is this appropriate?Smallman12q (talk) 00:16, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

History Section: Date/Grammar mismatch
The History section has a couple dates that use the past tense to refer to dates that have not occurred yet.

It says: "Additionally, MSN Encarta web sites were discontinued by October 31, 2009, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which closed on December 31, 2009. Existing MSN Encarta Premium (part of MSN Premium) subscribers were entitled to refunds.[3]"

Was this supposed to say "were to be discontinued by October 31, 2009", "Encarta Japan, which will be closed on December 31, 2009" and "subscribers will be entitled to refunds"?

I don't want to edit these if the dates are supposed to be 2008 and the grammar is correct, or are the dates correct and the grammar is wrong?


 * Dates are correct. Grammar is wrong   Ron h jones  (Talk) 23:35, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Costs
Any sources on what it cost Microsoft to create the encyclopedia in the first place, and what it cost them to run it? I'm pitching a wikipedia-like project (yes, 100% gratis, libre, and ad-free, and not a direct competitor for any wikimedia project) and I want to compare costs of Wikipedia and Encarta. I saw figures when the cancellation was in the news, but I can't find them again now. Homunq (talk) 00:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * In fact, it would be great to get any RS's at all which relate Encarta's closing to Wikipedia's growth. An ars technica blog written in a "you and I already know..." tone doesn't really cut it for citation purposes. Homunq (talk) 19:33, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

wikipedia
Are they adding infomation from encarta into wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyclone39 (talk • contribs) 03:46, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

There's no way to prove this was really by him...
....so I'm not putting it in, but the Tom Corddry mentioned in references probably wrote this:

''I ran the team that created Encarta, so I’m standing up to say a few awkward words at its graveside memorial service. Encarta, may it rest in peace, deserves to be remembered more for its quality than you suggest. Your sources repeat several notions that were never true of Encarta-first, that the content from Funk and Wagnall’s was “low quality” compared to Britannica, and second that the value added by Microsoft was primarily “graphics and sound.” The text from Funk and Wagnall’s was far superior to Britannica’s as a starting point for a digital encyclopedia, because it was much more nearly “structured data,” meaning that the architecture of the text was very consistent from one article to the next. This allowed us to add a lot of “contextual” value–to compute the relatedness of every article to every other article, and build what was at the time a uniquely useful set of links and navigational tools across the entire content. Britannica, by contrast, was a bloated mishmash, a consequence of its long tradition of having articles written by many different celebrity authors. (I ghost-wrote one myself, in fact). By the standards of the print encyclopedia world, Microsoft invested heavily in expanding and updating the content of Encarta right from the beginning. We consciously invested in the contextual value just described, in expanding the core content, in creating the world’s first truly global encyclopedia, and in an efficient update cycle. We had enough “multimedia” in the original product to keep the reviewers happy, but focused on the overall usefulness of the whole product much more than on the relative handful of video clips, etc. I’d argue that within its first five years, Encarta became the best encyclopedia in history: it had tremendously consistent quality and usefulness across a very broad range of topics, and added a great deal of value by the relationships it illuminated between topics. All of that has been rendered a bit quaint now, but in it’s day it was an accomplishment worthy of a graveside toast. Encarta had more than “the potential” to unsettle the print encyclopedia business–it pretty much destroyed it. Print encyclopedias were dead, thanks to Encarta, before Wikipedia existed. We expected from the beginning that Encarta would eventually be superceded by online information-seeking. As brilliant as Wikipedia is, I don’t think that Wikipedia by itself killed Encarta. I think the Web as a whole made Encarta obsolete. I hope treasured old copies of Encarta will live on for a while in remote corners of the world, where people have scattered access to computers but little or no connection to the Web–school libraries in Africa, for example. In those places, even out-of-date copies of African Encarta, the only Encyclopedia of Africa ever published, will live on, and Joe Biden will forever be newly-elected. I’ll drink to that.''

And this:

''In response to Randonneur, post 15, a bit of explanation: Print encyclopedia editorial groups, even in their heyday, were actually quite small, and much of their work from year to year was devoted to removing content in order to make room for other content. The size of the multi-volume sets was fixed, so every word added had to be offset by a word subtracted. Since it was also expensive to touch more pages than necessary when making changes (a printing fact of life), the editors ingeniously found ways to remove content as close as possible to where they were adding content. Need a big new article on Bosnia? Better find stuff to cut from the articles about Bosporus or Boss Tweed. The senior editors at these publications estimated that at least half of the total editorial effort was devoted to this sort of non-value-adding work. At Encarta, by contrast, nearly all the editorial work added value–writing new articles, updating, expanding and improving existing articles, and, of course, adding the sorts of elements that computers could support that were truly valuable: the sound of a bassoon, the way gravity works in orbital models, and so forth. At its peak, the Encarta editorial staff was roughly four times the size of any of its print competitors, included many of the best people from those competitors, and was devoting much more effort to actual new and better content. Then there’s the whole international aspect… all print encyclopedias were highly nation-specific. Encarta was always global. In practice, this meant a core of universal content with “extensions” in each national area, and global licensing of content, which further increased the value created by the editorial staff. This model also works brilliantly for Wikipedia. By exploiting its advantages, The Encarta team, over a period of a decade (late 80s to late 90s), created a body of content that offered greater scope AND depth than its print competitors, then tossed in the advantages of navigation, multimedia, integrated updates, and low price. As a result, more copies of Encarta were sold, by far, in its 16-year run than were sold of all print encyclopedias combined in their several-century run. It reached many more school children world wide than any encylopedia had ever done before it. Wikipedia has since expanded greatly on that reach, and is a far superior resource, as long as you recognize the inherent uncertainty about accuracy–but even that is a useful lesson for life: there’s no such thing as ultimate authority. My reference to “treasured copies” doesn’t expect too much sentiment in the first world, just continuing usefulness in the third world, where computers are spreading faster than the Internet, and even an outdated copy of Encarta may be the best source of accurate information in the whole village.''

For whatever use it may be. occono (talk) 00:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

To be discontinued
http://encarta.msn.com/guide_page_FAQ/FAQ.html

Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued

''On October 31, 2009, MSN® Encarta® Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009. We understand that Encarta users may have questions regarding this announcement so we have prepared this list of questions and answers below. Please keep reading if you would like more information about these changes to Encarta.''


 * Courtesy of Mathias Schindler and David Gerard.   Will Beback    talk    22:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * This announcement is full of WIN for Wikipedia,... =) Dr. Cash (talk) 03:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * is there any chance the abandoned content may be released as CC? :) 213.239.210.117 (talk) 08:15, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Doubtful.   Will Beback    talk    09:40, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Can someone start a campaign to get the data released. Seems a waste to just let it die with the product. Give it to Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.24.121.246 (talk) 21:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I would love to see the multimedia aspects of Encarta incorporated into Wikipedia. It would be very cool to have all of videos and images on here, essentially making Wikipedia an even better learning tool as Encarta once was.Allemannster (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The article states that the Wikipedia Foundation is trying to acquire Encarta data, however the source cited does not support this. Indeed, there is no such quote that I could find on the web. This should be corrected. --Mr. Stein (talk) 16:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Animations, Videos and Some Articles
With Encarta now going with it not being much of Encyclopedia now Microsoft have given up with it. I think Wikipedia should have some of the Animations and Videos, with Articles and it can now be added to help improve Wikipedia with such new things as Animations and Videos. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.27.147.235 (talk) 19:03, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Bing
The Bing (formerly Live Search) section states: ''Users can get two free hours on MSN Encarta by using Microsoft's search engine at Bing.com. It is done by searching "Definition: (word)" and accessing a link leading to Encarta Online.'' - as this is no longer the case, suggest this section now be removed. 92.3.44.211 (talk) 11:23, 12 December 2009 (UTC)
 * As the page has now been unprotected, I've gone ahead and removed it myself. 92.3.44.211 (talk) 01:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Pointless?
Is there any point to Encarta now that Wikipedia exists? It has 10 times the articles, it's totally free (donations help, though), and it can be edited by anyone. Basically, what are the reasons that someone would sign up for Encarta's online encyclopedia subscription? CoolGuy 06:56, 30 July 2005 (UTC)


 * It's simply a case of trust. People trust an editor and a writer more than they trust 60,000+ registered eyes. --  user:zanimum

ha ha encarta sucks now. Eat it microsoft
 * I'm not sure about Encarta, because MSN Search only provides limited access to it, but in my experience, pay-service encyclopedias cover many important topics that Wikipedia doesn't. For example, Encyclopaedia Britannica and Encyclopedia Americana both have long articles on the Ebira, a people numbering over 300,000 in Nigeria, whereas Wikipedia has a short sentence on them. The same is the case for the Sahaptin people. Further, even though there's "60,000 registered eyes" Wikipedia still manages to have a higher error rate than one of the least-reliable encyclopedias (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Finally, Wikipedia is harder to read than any single publication I have ever encountered. I imagine if you deleted many of the articles that aren't found in professional encyclopedias, like "Trogdor" or "List of Futurama episodes," Wikipedia would be much smaller. Wikipedia's articles also are about half the size of those in Encyclopaedia Britannica. As much of Encarta is from a fine publication--Colliers Encyclopedia--I would rather reference Encarta for a report than Wikipedia any day. In fact, I've never cited Wikipedia in a single paper I've ever written. When I need information, Wikipedia is probably the very last place I look for it--after Google.--Hterjf 05:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * What a strange thing to write in Wikipedia! The examples listed are "cherry-picked," there are unsourced and unproven claims, and the author uses his own behavior to prove Wikipedia is inferior! Weird! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tumacama (talk • contribs) 01:25, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

To put it simply, Encarta do have better qualities of images and pictures than Wikipedia. It features probably the best multi-media systems (videos and animations) of all the online encyclopedias. --67.2.148.48 18:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Who needs Encarta anyway? We've got Wikipedia, baby! 71.107.100.235 18:31, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Untitled
Encarta is an online encyclopedia!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.88.40 (talk) 18:01, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Some possible changes to this article
Chapter 9 of Randall E. Stross' The Microsoft Way (Addison-Wesley, 1996) discusses the origins of Encarta, providing some details & insights that this article might benefit from. A few of them include:
 * Microsoft was contractually forbidden from altering the text they licensed from Funk & Wagnalls. (And it was shipped to them in unacceptable form, e.g. the tapes had not been cleaned up & still had internal codes.)
 * Many times, Microsoft's encyclopedia almost never happened; no one at a software company wanted to work on creating an encyclopedia to rival Encyclopaedia Britannica, even if it was an electronic one.
 * The PTB at Microsoft decided that Encarta was a viable project after discovering just how little World Book spent on updating & maintaining its encyclopedia.
 * And EB wasn't the only encyclopedia that rejected Microsoft's offers to license its content; World Book rejected them for the same reason. And so did others, until they came to Funk & Wagnalls, who had no elaborate network of salespeople.
 * Lastly, & this may be the most controversial point, what decisively ended Britannica as a successful enterprise wasn't Wikipedia -- it was Encarta. After anyone could purchase an up-to-date encyclopedia on a CD for $99, the market for a print encyclopedia that took up an entire wall at Britannica's pricepoint practically evaporated outside of institutional sales. Wikipedia's success has simply been the final nail in the coffin. -- llywrch (talk) 07:28, 21 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It would be better to get a more objective source for the last point, but if someone wants to make a proper citation, please do. It sounds about right to me Tumacama (talk) 01:38, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the last point in particular is something that really ought to be pointed out. Before the internet arrived, Encarta seemed (indeed it was) revolutionary, and print encyclopedias were instantly out of date. Quietbritishjim (talk) 10:47, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Unless you can quote a published source claiming that Encarta "put Britannica (or any other print encyclopedia) out-of-business," It is hearsay. I'm not disputing that the claim is true or objective, only that it is personal opinion until sources can be cited. Tumacama (talk) 01:32, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

It's still up
... at http://encarta.msn.com. Thought it was supposed to come down on October 31. Couldn't they even get that right? --146.79.254.10 (talk) 00:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

not anymore.... 71.224.136.30 (talk) 23:15, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

in Word 2010 the research options include Encarta Dictionary. 217.44.232.112 (talk) 17:13, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Etymology
What is the etymology of "encarta"?Curb Chain (talk) 07:14, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Opps, looking up, there is already a section which discusses this. I just want to note that the etymology should be included.Curb Chain (talk) 07:16, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Encarta 95 screenshots
We need some Encarta 95 screenshots to show the early implementation of microsoft's Metro (design language). Cogiati (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Why did microsoft stop encarta
Encarta is really nice... i still use it till date... i still don't understand why Microsoft had to stop publishing it?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.58.217.113 (talk) 13:42, 22 February 2014 (UTC)


 * You are looking at the reason right now. Wikipedia. When Wikipedia became more popular amongst those searching for information, wikis starting becoming the primary source of information, and the popularity of top-down encyclopedias started to decline. Honestly, I'm surprised it lasted that long. --68.112.176.36 (talk) 06:18, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Encarta printed version?
It's written in the article that: "Bookshelf was discontinued in 2000, and in later Encarta editions (Encarta Suite 2000 and onward), Bookshelf was replaced with a dedicated Encarta Dictionary, a superset of the printed edition".

I am a little bit confused right now; has there been a printed version of Encarta even? Jayaguru-Shishya (talk) 18:06, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
 * The dictionary is separate from the encyclopedia. Encarta World English Dictionary and then Encarta Webster's Dictionary were both printed volumes (why we have an article for the second but not the first is unclear to me). --&mdash;  Rhododendrites talk  |  14:53, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Not fair
I know this is Wikipedia and we hate Encarta, but can we move all the hate and non-neutral points of view to a critiques section? 197.130.23.77 (talk) 03:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

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Originally available for sale on a DVD??
Surely it was not originally available on DVD before the media was even invented in 1995, I would edit it myself but some wiki warrior would probably reverse my edit stating "well it was available on DVD after 1996 or something".. Originally it was CD-ROM only so I assume the very first sentence of the article should probably reflect the fact of the matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 101.174.39.235 (talk) 12:47, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Long kong (talk) 02:38, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 9 June 2020

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Mdaniels5757 (talk) 16:53, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Encarta → Microsoft Encarta – All Microsoft products were titled at the end, starts with "Microsoft" and then ends with [product name]. ZmeytheDragon16 (talk) 14:27, 9 June 2020 (UTC) —Relisting. Mdaniels5757 (talk) 15:11, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Question: Can you confirm that 'Microsoft Encarta' for an article title conforms to WP:COMMONNAME? I tried looking it up on DuckDuckGo, but they don't show the number of results for a search. I was sure they used to... anyway, I hate to say it, but I think a Google Search is necessary. Can you search for 'Encarta' and 'Microsoft Encarta' and compare the number of results if you are comfortable using that search engine? DesertPipeline (talk) 03:35, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I referred this article Encarta, in full name "Microsoft Encarta" is from the CD-ROM reference software, consisting almanac, world atlas, thesaurus, dictionary and encyclopedia. However, if this necessary, what other reference websites like Wikipedia, Britannica Online, and others. --ZmeytheDragon16 (talk) 01:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Did you read WP:COMMONNAME? It explains how one decides to name an article. Also, I can't seem to find any data on 'Encarta' being a word in the English language, therefore my vote is a weak oppose, but I might change my opinion if you can demonstrate that it's referred to as 'Microsoft Encarta' more often by more people than it is simply 'Encarta'. DesertPipeline (talk) 02:46, 11 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Oppose per concision Red   Slash  20:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:CONCISE and a lack of evidence showing the proposed title to be the WP:COMMONNAME. Many of the other Microsoft products (Windows, Word, Office, etc.) are simply common words that require some form of disambiguation. Encarta doesn't.  Calidum   15:33, 18 June 2020 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.