Niche Encyclopedias: an Intellectual Analysis

[Anyone]

Several prominent Wikipedia critics have set up their own online encyclopedias. I'm talking of course about Auggie, Dysklyver and Guido den Broeder. But IMO these projects are a waste of time and will always fail. As far as "general encyclopedias" are concerned, none of us can compete with Wikipedia.

Niche Encyclopedias
Believe it or not -- and you shouldn't believe what you read on the internet -- I set up a niche encyclopedia way back in 2008. It was all about cheese. The domain was cheeseopedia.com [cheesepedia.com wasn't available at the time], but the site is now offline and unfortunately was never indexed by the Wayback Machine. You can check the domain's history here:

https://whoisrequest.com/history/

You'll see that in 2008 the domain was hosted on https://24webhost.com/, one of the companies I use for Thailand-based web hosting. If you have the tools to investigate further, you'll see I was the domain owner.

It was an interesting project. I used it mainly to learn about relational databases, database management systems, PHP and SQL, but reviewing and writing about different cheeses was also good.

Let's Get Started
Here are two niche encyclopedias I particularly like:

1. Encyclopædia Iranica
http://www.iranicaonline.org/

2. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://plato.stanford.edu/

In this this thread I'll be reviewing these and other niche offerings. I invite you to submit your thoughts.

Finally
Of the many cheeses I reviewed and added to my [admittedly rather lame] encyclopedia, this was my favorite:

[Anyone]

Encyclopædia Iranica

http://www.iranicaonline.org/

IMO, this is a magnificent resource and one of the finest niche encyclopedias on the net. The site's coverage of Persian history, arts and culture is superb. Check it out if you're ever interested in issues pertaining to Iran.

Persian Embassy to Siam (1685–1687)
When I joined Wikipedia my plan was to write 5 Featured Articles from scratch. One of the articles I never uploaded was about a Persian Embassy to Siam in 1685. Though incomplete, it was a long, detailed piece that included numerous sources from Encyclopædia Iranica. I eventually gave the article to Paul Bedson over on Everipedia. For reasons I don't understand, the article has now been gutted, but this is hardly an issue since Everipedia was a joke pretty much from the word go.

https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/persian-embassy-to-siam-16851687

Final Points
My girlfriend is a Schwarzkopf hair model of Indo-Iranian descent. Encyclopædia Iranica has helped me a lot to understand how Persian traders settled in Siam during the 17th and 18th centuries, and establish themselves in positions of authority from central Thailand right down to the Malaysian border. Wikipedia, by contrast, is an error-prone disaster that should be avoided at all costs when researching Southeast Asian history.