Software:Encyclone

Encyclone is a web application for indexing and searches of online encyclopedias and representing the search results in unbiased and a unified representation.

Encyclone

. The logo of Encyclone
Screenshot
Type of site	Distributed networking
Available in	English
Country of origin	United States
Owner	Knowledge Standards Foundation (KSF)
Website	Encyclone.org
Commercial	No
Registration	No
Launched	January 15, 2023 (2023-01-15)
Current status	Active
Written in	Java

Search can be performed in more than 40 encyclopedias with different publication policies. English is the primary language of the included encyclopedias.

Encyclone is based on the YaCy project, a free distributed search engine implemented in Java. Encyclone is built on the principles of peer-to-peer (P2P) network to ensures a decentralization. The search index of Encyclone is shared by similar projects based on the YaCy software. Unlike the default YaCy setup, Encyclone does not import the search indexes via the P2P network from other clients to ensure the restrictive set of domains with knowledge content.

Encyclone is one of the projects of the Knowledge Standards Foundation (KSF). The Encyclone is affiliated with the Encyclosphere project of the Knowledge Standards Foundation (KSF) led by Larry Sanger.

Difference with similar projects

Commercial search engines usually deal with diverse web resources but prioritize advertising content. The results of Encyclone are focused on encyclopedic content. The presented results of Encyclone are free from advertising.

Some search companies, like Google, also prioritize Wikipedia over other encyclopedias with different article acceptance and registration policies. These were several reports that Google does not attempt to index such alternative encyclopedias due overlaps of the content with Wikipedia.

Unlike the other two projects by the KSF, Encycloreader and Encyclosearch, Encyclone does not accumulate articles in the ZWI file format. The task of the Encyclone is to crawl online encyclopedias, create a Lucene index files, and share such files with similar projects based on the YaCy software.