Microsoft shuts Encarta, Wikipedia gives up on Wikia Search

Microsoft will close the book on its online encyclopaedia on October 31. Wikipedia bears some of the blame, but has its own problems.

During the 1990s, Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopaedia, using content licensed from little-known Funk & Wagnalls, shook up the print industry.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica struggled against Microsoft’s upstart, which was delivered on CD-ROM with many new consumer PCs.

But the new decade saw Encarta move online, but on the web it has been overwhelmed by the community-generated Wikipedia, which has millions of articles to Encarta’s 50,000.

In 2005, Microsoft made a tilt at copying Wikipedia’s crowd-sourcing model, allowing subscribers to modify articles themselves.

But user-edits only appeared after moderation. Wikipedia, with its live edits - which often start with wild west arguments but usually settle as contributors find a level - grew and grew.

Now, Microsoft is throwing in the towel, telling its portal site, MSN, that Encarta will be phased out by the end of October.

Typically, Wikipedia updated its entry on Encarta to include this fact within an hour of its announcement.

But Wikipedia is not having things all its own way.

Today the site’s founder, Jimmy Wales, announced that is spin-off crowd-sourcing search engine, Wikia Search, will be shut down.

Mr Wales said that with the recession, his site, funded by user donations, can’t press ahead with Wikia Search, which is attracting only 10,000 unique users a month compared to tens of millions for his main site.

In November, Google introduced SearchWiki a new, Wikia Search style service that lets registered users comment on Google search results (for their own reference or for others to see), or move sites up or down Google’s rankings.