But the fact that Wikipedia exists is amazing, right? Imagine if the main reference site on the web was corporate controlled. Actually, I've often wondered: Was it inevitable (due to the nature of the internet) that the primary reference site on the web would be open, free and wiki-style, or are we just incredibly lucky that that happened?
It'd be interesting to see how the future-people interpret the dominance of Wikipedia.
I guess other people made mistakes. MS didn't think the Internet was important early enough; they didn't make Encarta available sensibly; MS was deeply unpopular with a sizable section of the population.
Other people got stuck in a reference library mode - and thus they concentrated on selling DVDs to libraries rather than making access public.
I will, grudgingly[1], admit that Wikipedia is amazing. Probably a Wonder of the World.
[1] I actually hate it, and try to avoid it where possible. If I had the money I'd fork it and create a lower-cruft, more accurate, closed for edits, version. Every article would have a 3 sentence 'elevator pitch' style introduction. Sourcing would be fixed. And the focus would be on "accurate", not "verifiable".
Imagine if a corporate controlled online encyclopedia has become dominant. It would probably be ad supported, with ads targeted to the subject the page covers. It would be so depressing, and make research feel like shopping. Looking up medical conditions would give you a faceful of snake-oil adverts.
For certain (history, science) topics Internet was usable more than 10 years ago. (1998 comes to mind.)
I was a teenager back then and it all happened so gradually I didn't understand until later what I had witnessed. (Then came some dark years of webspam before Google. Web rings were a good way of navigating. : )
