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What was life like before Wikipedia? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 7 months ago by Sunshine@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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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!

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[-] ace_garp@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

In the long-long-ago, encyclopaedias were on paper, 28 volumes, and weighed 14kg. Quite comprehensive.

Then encyclopaedias were on a CD or two, around 100g.

Before Wikipedia, everything2 was a previous example of a massively-interlinked-website. You could search and maybe turn up some details.

Or prior to google being created, you would just do a search in metacrawler.com to usually turn up some OK answers.

[-] truxnell@infosec.pub 2 points 7 months ago

Metacrawler takes me back, as well as having to use paper encyclopaedias for school!

this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2024

143 points (98.0% liked)

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