Interpedia

Interpedia was one of the first-proposed Internet encyclopedias which would allow anyone to contribute by writing articles and submitting them to the central catalogue of all Interpedia pages.

Interpedia was initiated by Rick Gates, who posted a message titled "The Internet Encyclopedia" on October 25, 1993 to the PACS-L (Public-Access Computer Systems Forum) Listserv. That message included the following musings:

The term Interpedia was coined by R. L. Samuell, a participant in early discussions on the topic.

In November, 1993, discussions moved to a dedicated mailing list, supplemented later by Usenet newsgroup comp.infosystems.interpedia.

There was some disagreement about whether all pages should be in HTML, plain text, or whether all formats should be allowed (e.g., as with ). Another point of discussion was whether outside Internet resources not specifically written for the Interpedia could become part of it by simply including them in the catalog.

Furthermore, 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.

The project was actively discussed for around half a year, but in the end never left the planning stages and finally died, perhaps partly due to the unprecedented growth of the World Wide Web.

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