Editing Interpedia (section)

==History==
Interpedia was initiated by [[Rick Gates (Internet pioneer)|Rick Gates]], who posted a message titled "The Internet Encyclopedia" on October 25, 1993 to the PACS-L (Public-Access Computer Systems Forum) [[LISTSERV|Listserv]].<ref>[https://archive.today/20120628204704/http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9310d&L=pacs-l&T=0&P=1418 PACS-L Listserv message "The Internet Encyclopedia", Oct 25, 1993] (archived)</ref>  That message included the following musings:

{{blockquote|The more I thought about this, the more I realized that such a resource, containing general, encyclopedic knowledge for the layman, would be an important tool for some types of research, and for the Net.Citizenry in general.

Ahh.. but what about contributors... where will you find authors to write the short articles you need? Well, I'd first have to start out by finding some way of communicating with an extremely diverse set of people... everyone from [[linguistics|linguist]]s, to [[molecular biologist]]s, from [[animal rights]] activists to [[zymurgist]]s, and from [[geographer]]s to gas [[chromotographer]]s. Guess what? :-) The Net provides just such an arena! So I thought about it some more...and came to the conclusion that this is a good idea!
}}

In November 1993, discussions moved to a dedicated [[mailing list]],<ref>[http://listserv.uh.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9311C&L=PACS-L&P=R2797&I=-3 PACS-L Listserv message "Internet Encyclopedia (Interpedia) group project and mailing list", Nov 17, 1993]</ref> supplemented later by [[Usenet newsgroup]] {{mono|comp.infosystems.interpedia}}.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.landfield.com/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/comp/comp.infosystems.interpedia |title=RFD: comp.infosystems.interpedia |access-date=2003-01-26 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011106225801/http://www.landfield.com/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/comp/comp.infosystems.interpedia |archive-date=November 6, 2001 }}</ref><ref>[https://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.interpedia/browse_thread/thread/a0adc2203f87191c/e92420e978d2c3a0?lnk=st Interpedia FAQ] (February 1994)</ref>

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.<ref>[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.infosystems.interpedia/6hzoH_WQdPs Interpedia FAQ 15-MAR-94], section 4.2: "What are Seals of Approval (SOAP)?"</ref>

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]].<ref>Joseph Reagle: [http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/historical/digital-works.html#heading5 Wikipedia's heritage: vision, pragmatics, and happenstance] — section 3.2, ''Interpedia''</ref>