I believe that the future of the internet will be a proliferation of encyclopedias. I think there will be many online encyclopedias equivalent to Wikipedia in usefulness, but would focus on different subjects and creative styles. The purpose of these encyclopedias would be to allow greater flexibility and independence than Wikipedia.
It should be mentioned that there are already many online encyclopedias and wikis besides Wikipedia. A list of encyclopedia websites can be found at this link and wikis can be found at this link. Despite this fact, I still see encyclopedias as an opportunity for innovation as the internet develops into the future.
I imagine there would be new protocols and guidelines that allow encyclopedias to collaborate using compatible formats. This would allow users to mix and match their favorite articles across encyclopedias and build new collections. I think this could be useful for teachers and students. Along these lines, there would be competitions to create the best single article on a topic.
Some of the new encyclopedias would be built by volunteer communities and other encyclopedias would be managed by individuals and organizations. Some of these encyclopedias would be built as art projects, while others would be managed by public intellectuals. I also imagine that each university could have their own encyclopedia.
I believe that some encyclopedias would embrace minimalism, while others would have standard paragraphs and technical language. It depends on the goal of each encyclopedia. I also think there would be encyclopedias that organize principles and axioms of knowledge or specialize in quotations.
I love Wikipedia and it's an amazing website. Wikipedia is currently the leading encyclopedia on the internet but it has a rigid structure and articles cannot be easily changed. It's not easy for an editor to delete entire sections from an article or change the structure without having their edits reversed. It's usually not appropriate to delete somebody else's hard work. Despite its wonderful contribution to humanity, I see this as a limitation of Wikipedia.
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