Pretty sure the hours-long rabbit hole thing didn’t start with Encarta :D But you still would have been considered a geek of the highest order doing it with Encarta. Wiki first popularized the experience.
I actually used to have a custom TVTropes Greasemonkey script, that would disable all the links on a TVTropes article. That way I could read it if someone linked an article through a forum or other, but I couldn't go down the rabbit hole. Super simple, little overkill, worked great as a deterrent/speed bump.
