I would imagine it was harder to get information on topics as you would’ve had to buy/borrow encyclopedias to do.

Were there proprietary predecessor websites?

Tell me about the dark ages!

  • morbidcactus
    8·
    3 days ago

    I had a Microsoft Encarta on a cd that I used for projects when I was young, Wikipedia launched midway through my grade 5 and by grade 6 I was using it for research (despite the “you can’t trust Wikipedia, anyone can edit it!” that was still a thing into grade 12 from my teachers) for any school project. My parents also had a copy of the Oxford’s Canadian English dictionary that was an absolute time, used that a heck of a lot too.

    I use Wikipedia as a jumping off point, good to get information, get the details from citations. I wasn’t old enough to do complex work pretty wikipedia, but I’d imagine it’d be the same thing, encyclopaedia to lookup a topic, dive into reference materials for details from there.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I remember being amazed by that disc, and how it seemed to contain the summation of all human knowledge at the time.

      • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I think Wikipedia without media files and only text and formatting can fit on a lot a single USB drive