With the dawn of the 21st century, the internet of things became a much diverse place, with the ‘explosion’ of great numbers of websites of all sorts – such as forums, file-sharing sites, social media, lifestyle websites, and niche sites of their own diversity. And, inevitably, came the rise of the internet encyclopaedia, or rather, the * singular* internet encyclopaedia – that is, Wikipedia. Within a fairly short amount of time, Wikipedia would become fairly realised as perhaps the sum of knowledge of any major thing, though this is not to say that its existence led to it becoming the sole encyclopaedia on the internet. Whilst some major encyclopaedia brands, such as Britannica and Encarta would perish in the footsteps of Wikipedia, a number of smaller encyclopaedias, especially wikis, would become rather fruitful. And so, it was only right that an encyclopaedia, accessible, would find its foot on the internet – in 2004, the Wildscreen ARKive was born out of media accumulated by numerous high-grade wildlife photographers, and video from the archives of Bristol-based Partridge Films, known for its work prior in wildlife filmography. That is to say that around this time, again, numerous smaller internet animal encyclopaedias, in turn, would find their way onto the internet. But, ARKive remained the ‘major’ animal encyclopaedia on the internet. That is, perhaps, until 4 years afterwards..
In November 2008, another website comes into this fray – namely A-Z Animals, an encyclopaedia of animals made mainly for younger readers, curated by Millie Bond. In early years, this website mainly fed off information from Wikipedia, the major encyclopaedia of the internet, though later on, would source information from numerous printed animal encyclopaedias. [In these times, photographs were also sourced from Wikimedia Commons.] The site, aimed towards children, also contained a variety of animal cartoons throughout the site – including but not limited to: ‘Kai Coyote’ – “the one who does all the work around here making A-Z Animals work whilst Betty and the others just sit there all day”, ‘Betty the Butterfly’, a cartoon butterfly which hosted the website’s blog [and was also said to write the content of the website], ‘Greg the Gorilla’ – a cartoon gorilla icon of a ‘phobia filter’ which censored images of animals the user claimed to be afraid of, ‘Bernie the Bear’, presenting the Animal of the Day, ‘Simon the Snail’, presenting the animal of yesterday, ‘Percy the Penguin’, hosting a section of the website where viewers showed pictures of their pets [this section was depreciated in 2011] and a tortoise logo icon [who at one point was the centre of a competition as to who could name the tortoise; apparently with a plush toy of the tortoise as a prize; though I am not sure if anyone one the competition]. And so, not much of this would change in the years to follow – by 2016, A-Z Animals had grown to 591 animals in all. In 2017, a Ukraine-based website ‘animalia.bio’ would open; though the website is essentially Wikipedia-based information with Wikimedia Commons images and so not too much to speak of, though the UI design of the website is good.
Though perhaps in 2019, things would slope down hill where animal encyclopaedias of the internet are concerned – as in January 2019, ARKive.org announced closure of the website due to insufficient funds. The closure took place a month afterwards, though Wildscreen assured that the Arkive.org collection of media had been securely saved for perpetuity. And so, a proficient source of animal video and imagery on the internet was lost to time, without an efficient equivalent. Around this time also, numerous facets of A-Z Animals were depreciated – users could no longer contribute to the website as they could before, the ‘Games’ section of the website had gone, likely in anticipation of Adobe’s depreciation of Flash to come in 2020. In 2020 also, the site appeared to be undergoing a large-scale renovation – the quiz section had disappeared, and the animal cartoons nowhere to be found. The blog’s style also appeared to have become rather different. Later on, social media would confirm that A-Z Animals was now based in the United States, though details of the acquisition remain unheard of. Later on, the elusive ‘AZ Animals Staff’ on the blog page would be joined by a number of other writers, mainly of freelance. As well, later animal articles would seemingly come full-circle for what it is worth – Wikipedia is listed amongst references. Today, the nature of A-Z Animals is rather commercialised, pandering to an American audience, what one may call ‘a content farm’. A sizable section of the website is dedicated to pet product reviews, where the blog section of the website is what could be described as ‘indifferent’ from what may be found elsewhere.
I guess from an ‘Average Joe’’s eye view, such a site is a resource of fairly good information, and perhaps fits in nicely of the ‘Americanisation’ of the popular internet, in that a number of websites are to sing a similar song about any given thing. But, for those truly interested in comprehensive biodiversity knowledge with high-quality multimedia, there really are not many options on the internet – sure, there is Wikipedia, which is fairly good at staying up to date, though its media-provider, Wikimedia Commons, whilst having what one could call a few ‘hit images’, is perhaps more in the district of ‘quantity’ necessarily than ‘quality’. That, or the illustrations are those of books well in the Public Domain. And, if you happen to be the ‘tenth dentist’ who is put off by the lax nature of Wikipedia’s editorial policy and is interested mainly at looking at high-quality images of real animals, then.. perhaps it’s a pity you are not of the other nine.
[I hope that this makes some sort of sense]
In November 2008, another website comes into this fray – namely A-Z Animals, an encyclopaedia of animals made mainly for younger readers, curated by Millie Bond. In early years, this website mainly fed off information from Wikipedia, the major encyclopaedia of the internet, though later on, would source information from numerous printed animal encyclopaedias. [In these times, photographs were also sourced from Wikimedia Commons.] The site, aimed towards children, also contained a variety of animal cartoons throughout the site – including but not limited to: ‘Kai Coyote’ – “the one who does all the work around here making A-Z Animals work whilst Betty and the others just sit there all day”, ‘Betty the Butterfly’, a cartoon butterfly which hosted the website’s blog [and was also said to write the content of the website], ‘Greg the Gorilla’ – a cartoon gorilla icon of a ‘phobia filter’ which censored images of animals the user claimed to be afraid of, ‘Bernie the Bear’, presenting the Animal of the Day, ‘Simon the Snail’, presenting the animal of yesterday, ‘Percy the Penguin’, hosting a section of the website where viewers showed pictures of their pets [this section was depreciated in 2011] and a tortoise logo icon [who at one point was the centre of a competition as to who could name the tortoise; apparently with a plush toy of the tortoise as a prize; though I am not sure if anyone one the competition]. And so, not much of this would change in the years to follow – by 2016, A-Z Animals had grown to 591 animals in all. In 2017, a Ukraine-based website ‘animalia.bio’ would open; though the website is essentially Wikipedia-based information with Wikimedia Commons images and so not too much to speak of, though the UI design of the website is good.
Though perhaps in 2019, things would slope down hill where animal encyclopaedias of the internet are concerned – as in January 2019, ARKive.org announced closure of the website due to insufficient funds. The closure took place a month afterwards, though Wildscreen assured that the Arkive.org collection of media had been securely saved for perpetuity. And so, a proficient source of animal video and imagery on the internet was lost to time, without an efficient equivalent. Around this time also, numerous facets of A-Z Animals were depreciated – users could no longer contribute to the website as they could before, the ‘Games’ section of the website had gone, likely in anticipation of Adobe’s depreciation of Flash to come in 2020. In 2020 also, the site appeared to be undergoing a large-scale renovation – the quiz section had disappeared, and the animal cartoons nowhere to be found. The blog’s style also appeared to have become rather different. Later on, social media would confirm that A-Z Animals was now based in the United States, though details of the acquisition remain unheard of. Later on, the elusive ‘AZ Animals Staff’ on the blog page would be joined by a number of other writers, mainly of freelance. As well, later animal articles would seemingly come full-circle for what it is worth – Wikipedia is listed amongst references. Today, the nature of A-Z Animals is rather commercialised, pandering to an American audience, what one may call ‘a content farm’. A sizable section of the website is dedicated to pet product reviews, where the blog section of the website is what could be described as ‘indifferent’ from what may be found elsewhere.
I guess from an ‘Average Joe’’s eye view, such a site is a resource of fairly good information, and perhaps fits in nicely of the ‘Americanisation’ of the popular internet, in that a number of websites are to sing a similar song about any given thing. But, for those truly interested in comprehensive biodiversity knowledge with high-quality multimedia, there really are not many options on the internet – sure, there is Wikipedia, which is fairly good at staying up to date, though its media-provider, Wikimedia Commons, whilst having what one could call a few ‘hit images’, is perhaps more in the district of ‘quantity’ necessarily than ‘quality’. That, or the illustrations are those of books well in the Public Domain. And, if you happen to be the ‘tenth dentist’ who is put off by the lax nature of Wikipedia’s editorial policy and is interested mainly at looking at high-quality images of real animals, then.. perhaps it’s a pity you are not of the other nine.
[I hope that this makes some sort of sense]