Wikipedia down? Try these alternatives

Melanie Gross
May 21, 2012
Updated • Feb 19, 2014
Internet
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Wikipedia in recent years has become the go-to address for Internet users when it comes to looking up information on the Internet. For many, it has replaced the paper encyclopedia almost completely, which is further fueled by encyclopedias shutting down the production of paper editions like Encyclopedia Britannica did.

It is rare to see Wikipedia go down, but it can happen. But that is not the only reason why you may want to include other encyclopedias in your online research. Maybe Wikipedia does not have an article yet on the topic that you are interested in, or the article that is available on the site is not providing you with the answers you are looking for.

Sometimes you may also need a specialized encyclopedia instead, for instance when it comes to medical research. While you usually find the topic covered on Wikipedia, you will also notice that it is usually not as thorough as it is covered on specialized sites. Please note that we have only included free alternatives in this list, so no Britannica Online for instance.

Citizendium is a much smaller site than Wikipedia is. The encyclopedia offers more than 16,000 articles at the time of writing, of which 159 have been approved by experts.  Everyone can join the site as an author, but only some will be recognized as experts in a particular field. Rules are a lot stricter when it comes to writing articles, with authors having to use real names and abide by the site's rules.

Debatepedia is a site catering to pro and contra arguments. It calls itself the Wikipedia of debates and offers an interesting approach to information that you may want to look up online.It is a great source for topics that you can debate about, and not so much for other topics. [Update: no longer available]

debatepedia

Encyclopedia lets you search over 100 encyclopedias and dictionaries. It is a meta search engine that is providing you with links and contents from a variety of sources.

encyclopedia

Google Scholar, a search engine for scholarly literature. While not an encyclopedia itself, it can find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions about the research topic.

google scholar

Infoplease is maintained by Pearson Education, one of the world's largest educational book distributors.  Like The Free Dictionary, Infoplease republishes articles from source such as the Columbia Encyclopedia on its site. The benefit here is that the articles are usually correct, but less often updated than articles on free to edit encyclopedias.

infoplease

Scholarpedia uses the same software that Wikipedia uses to power its encyclopedia. The editorial process is much stricter though, as article updates need to be approved by experts before they are visible on the live site. While this has an impact on the availability of articles and updates, it also ensures that information are correct, and that false information or even vandalism is not a big issue.

scholarpedia

The free Dictionary contains over 100,000 terms drawing from The Columbia Encyclopedia, the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, the Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, and the Collins Discovery Encyclopedia. It does not offer user generated contents, nor the option to alter or modify existing items.

the free dictionary

Wikia is a wiki-hosting service that anyone can use to create Wikipedia-like sites for specific topics they are interested in. The main focus lies on popular culture, which includes video games, TV, movies, sport, fashion and current events.

wikia

This is just a small selection of available Wikipedia alternatives. If you know of another service that should be in this list, feel free to add it to the comments below.

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Comments

  1. Archives said on May 23, 2012 at 8:11 am
    Reply

    Thank you Vitor I. The sites you posted are really excellent; informative and professional.

  2. Vítor I said on May 22, 2012 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Some suggestions:

    Encyclopedia of Life http://eol.org/

    About.com http://www.about.com/ a mixture of portal with directory and encyclopedia.

    The Digital Universe http://www.digitaluniverse.net/ encyclopedic directory of knowledge.

    Ancient History Encyclopedia http://www.ancient.eu.com/

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on May 22, 2012 at 11:48 pm
      Reply

      Vitor, thanks for posting those, I’ll definitely check your suggestions out.

  3. Archives said on May 22, 2012 at 4:11 pm
    Reply

    Thank you for this informative list. I prefer an alternative to the not so accurate Wikipedia.

  4. Stevan, Belgrade said on May 22, 2012 at 2:53 pm
    Reply

    Thank you on this usefull links. Even if Wiki is working some articles could be too shallow or short. Its always good to have alternative and some e-book encyclopedia. Torrents are full of them..
    PS. I just check, I have some 324 e-books (7 gb) which have “encyclopedia” in their name… :)

  5. Dan said on May 22, 2012 at 12:42 am
    Reply

    I would suggest using Answers.com, which uses Wikipedia and other sources for info. It is usually more comprehensive than Wiki itself.

    1. Dan said on May 22, 2012 at 12:44 am
      Reply

      And BTW, Conservapedia is one of the worst misinformation website ever. The right-wing reality distortion field is strong in that one.

  6. Ross said on May 21, 2012 at 11:05 pm
    Reply

    Conservapedia should definitely be in your goto list – but only if you want the truth.

  7. anonymous said on May 21, 2012 at 6:52 pm
    Reply

    I hesitate to bring this up, but Conservapedia should definitely NOT be in your goto list.

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on May 21, 2012 at 7:02 pm
      Reply

      Where did you see that site listed?

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