Editing Encyclopedia (section)

== Digital encyclopedias<span class="anchor" id="Digital"></span> ==
=== Physical media ===
By the late 20th century, encyclopedias were being published on [[CD-ROM]]s for use with [[personal computers]]. This was the usual way computer users accessed encyclopedic knowledge from the 1980s and 1990s. Later, [[DVD]] discs replaced CD-ROMs, and by the mid-2000s, [[internet encyclopedias]] were dominant and replaced disc-based software encyclopedias.<ref name="humanities" />

CD-ROM encyclopedias were usually a [[macOS]] or [[Microsoft Windows]] (3.0, 3.1 or 95/98) application on a CD-ROM disc. The user would execute the encyclopedia's software program to see a menu that allowed them to start browsing the encyclopedia's articles, and most encyclopedias also supported a way to search the contents of the encyclopedia. The article text was usually [[hyperlink]]ed and also included [[photograph]]s, [[Digital audio|audio]] clips (for example in articles about historical speeches or musical instruments), and [[digital video|video clips]]. In the CD-ROM age, the video clips usually had a low resolution, often 160x120 or 320x240 pixels. Such encyclopedias which made use of photos, audio and video were also called [[Multimedia|multimedia encyclopedias]]. 

[[Microsoft]]'s ''[[Encarta]]'', launched in 1993, was a landmark example as it had no printed equivalent. Articles were supplemented with video and audio files as well as numerous high-quality images. After sixteen years, Microsoft discontinued the Encarta line of products in 2009.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://encarta.msn.com/guide_page_FAQ/FAQ.html |title=Important Notice: MSN Encarta to be Discontinued |publisher=MSN Encarta |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20091027213618/http://encarta.msn.com/guide_page_FAQ/FAQ.html |archivedate=October 27, 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Other examples of CD-ROM encyclopedia are [[Grolier]] Multimedia Encyclopedia and ''Britannica''.

Digital encyclopedias enable "Encyclopedia Services" (such as [[Wikimedia Enterprise]]) to facilitate programmatic access to the content.<ref>{{cite web |title=Encyclopedia Service Are About To Become A Huge Market |url=https://www.stillwatercurrent.com/encyclopedia-service-are-about-to-become-a-huge-market-investopedia-techpedia-wikipedia-baidu-baike/ |website=www.stillwatercurrent.com |access-date=September 27, 2021 |archive-date=September 27, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210927161417/https://www.stillwatercurrent.com/encyclopedia-service-are-about-to-become-a-huge-market-investopedia-techpedia-wikipedia-baidu-baike/ |url-status=live}}</ref>

=== Online <span class="anchor" id="Online"></span> ===
{{Excerpt|Online encyclopedia}}

==== Free encyclopedias ====
{{Redirect|Free encyclopedia|the website that uses the term as its motto|Wikipedia}}
[[File:Otros enciclopedias libres from EL.png|thumb|List of other free encyclopedias, from Enciclopedia Libre.]]
The concept of a free encyclopedia began with the [[Interpedia]] proposal on [[Usenet]] in 1993, which outlined an Internet-based [[online encyclopedia]] to which anyone could submit content that would be freely accessible. Early projects in this vein included [[Everything2]] and [[Open Site]]. In 1999, [[Richard Stallman]] proposed the [[GNUPedia]], an online encyclopedia which, similar to the [[GNU operating system]], would be a "generic" resource. The concept was very similar to Interpedia, but more in line with Stallman's [[GNU]] philosophy.

It was not until [[Nupedia]] and later [[Wikipedia]] that a stable free encyclopedia project could be established on the Internet.

The [[English Wikipedia]], which was started in 2001, became the world's largest encyclopedia in 2004 at the 300,000 article stage.<ref>[http://linuxreviews.org/news/2004/07/07_3000k/ "Wikipedia Passes 300,000 Articles making it the worlds largest encyclopedia"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927210350/http://linuxreviews.org/news/2004/07/07_3000k/ |date=September 27, 2007}}, ''Linux Reviews'', 2004 Julich y 7.</ref> By late 2005, Wikipedia had produced over two million articles in more than 80 languages with content licensed under the [[copyleft]] [[GNU Free Documentation License]]. {{As of|August 2009|post=,}} Wikipedia had over 3 million articles in English and well over 10 million combined articles in over 250 languages. Today, Wikipedia has [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}]] articles in English, over 60 million combined articles in over 300 languages, and over 250 million combined pages including project and discussion pages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=List of Wikipedias - Meta |url=https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias |access-date=August 20, 2023 |website=meta.wikimedia.org |language=en}}</ref>

Since 2002, other free encyclopedias appeared, including [[Hudong]] (2005–) and [[Baidu Baike]] (2006–) in Chinese, and Google's [[Knol]] (2008–2012) in English. Some MediaWiki-based encyclopedias have appeared, usually under a license compatible with Wikipedia, including [[Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español|Enciclopedia Libre]] (2002–2021) in Spanish and [[Conservapedia]] (2006–), [[Scholarpedia]] (2006–), and [[Citizendium]] (2007–) in English, the latter of which had become inactive by 2014.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Herring |first=Mark Youngblood |title=Are libraries obsolete? an argument for relevance in the digital age |date=2014 |publisher=McFarland & Company |isbn=978-0-7864-7356-4 |location=Jefferson, N.C}}</ref>