[lifthrasiir]

Wikipedia articles are not consumed like traditional encyclopedias anyway. I would say that encyclopedias became much less relevant in general, but being one of the first influencial online encyclopedias, Wikipedia came to be used as a volatile source of information even though it didn't strive to be one.

[emj]

We used them for further research or quick look up of facts you should know. That seems to be how people use Wikipedia.

[lifthrasiir]

That's how people should use Wikipedia, but people generally don't do so in my understanding.

[blowski]

How do they use it then?

[chgs]

We used to copy articles out of them for homework. The more things change…

[szundi]

As a meager pedestrian, I consume Wikipedia instead of Encyclopedias - that I sometimes did when I was a kid

[bawolff]

Idk if it was the first. Microsoft encarta was a pretty big player in that space back in the day.

[dagw]

Was Encarta ever released online? I only remember the CD-ROM version.

[bawolff]

Yes, i think starting around 1999 so quite a bit after the cdrom releases. Admittedly that is only 2 years before wikipedia.