As those of you who read the meta pages will know, I'm applying the Wiki idea to a slightly different project, with the object of creating a "science hypertextbook". Like Wikipedia, this will all be under GNU Free Documentation License.
I note that the Wikipedians muster a good deal of technical expertise among themselves, and I'd like to invite anyone interested in a more teaching-oriented approach (i.e. building from basic subjects to advanced ones) to participate. It's at http://www.renaissoft.com/april/cgi-bin/wiki.pl for those who are interested.
Also, I'd like to ask something of an etiquette question - to Jimbo Wales in particular, and to the Wikipedians in general. How do people feel about Wikipedia material being ported over and adapted for use in the textbook project? I know what the "public domain" rules are, but I don't want to do anything that would create bad feeling or set up for trouble between the sites. I do, of course, have Wikipedia linked back from a couple of places. ;)
Thanks for any constructive input,
-- April
On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Lars Aronsson lars(a)aronsson.se XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
[snip]
> Could a Wiki devoted to history have a place outside of Wikipedia?
> When describing London, it would focus on the city's historic
> features, not on the facets of today's London. Then again,
> Wikipedia's entries on many things are focused on history. It is
> almost as if Wikipedia is that history Wiki. History, after all, is
> so much more in line with the contents of an encyclopedia than is
> object-oriented software development.
I think the history of London certainly has a place in an encyclopedia.
One problem I think Wikipedia is facing, but is sorting out, is how to
deal with large amounts of text about a subject. I don't think we should
force people to decide between linking to page about current London and
its history. The current solution seems to be to have an opening page
[[London]] and then [[London (History)]] or [[History of London]].
> Could a leftist-point-of-view Wiki exist side by side with Wikipedia?
> It would carefully point out any misuse of power, and list activist
> and political groups. Its logotype could be a hammer-and-sickle or
> simply a red star on white background. (There is already a leftist
> encyclopedia (non-Wiki) in Danish on http://www.leksikon.org/)
Um, no. If it did, it would be sit next to in the same way Nupedia sits
next to Wikipedia.
> A youth culture Wiki might list all the hot dance clubs in London, but
> forget the British Museum. (Does Wikipedia list any clubs at all?)
> The entire Wiki could be white text on black background.
>
> I think target groups, focus, design, logotypes would be different
> for each one of these Wikis. Just like websites are different today.
> Some titles (like "London") would exist in several of them, but with a
> different slant. Some titles (like "British Museum") might only exist
> in Wikipedia.
>
> If all of these Wikis existed side by side, how would Wikipedia best
> take advantage of this expanded network? Should Wikipedia be its
> backbone, or try to be self-sufficient, ignoring the outside world?
>
> Just to be clear: I'm not suggesting a fork of Wikipedia.
>
If such places are created and released their stuff under a usable
license or public domain, we could list them on the Public Domain
resources page with the rest of them. None of them are really within the
mission of Wikipedia.
Ian Monroe
http://mlug.missouri.edu/~eean/
On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Hannes Hirzel hirzel(a)spw.unizh.ch XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wrote:
> That's not possible from the point of view of the copyright law as
> scanning is not a creative expression and the copyright of the original
> material has expired. The only thing which is possible is to claim
> copyright on additional markup, layout, presentation and additional
> graphics.
>
> HJH
Then how come in Project Gutenberg, as I understand it, you have to use an
actual old copy of the book? If you want to digitize Mark Twain, you can't
pick up a copy at Wal-Mart, you have to go to the used book store.
Perhaps I'm mistaken.
Ian Monroe
http://mlug.missouri.edu/~eean/
>>I assume there will be similar changes in many geographical entries.
>
>there will be changes in nearly everything in the encyclopedia that
>wasn't historical already, and in some of the historical entries as
>well (people discover new facts about old events/characters). It's
>simply not a valuable resource *on its own*, and I'd be disappointed
>to see the entries scripted into wikipedia. The entries all need a
>very diligent or expert person to go over them to see that they are
>still accurate.
I'm definitely with KQ here. Not only do many of the articles
lack a lot of important research of the past decades, but they
tend to be pretty blatantly Anglo-centric, and written from a
point of view that just isn't considered up to academic standards
these days.
One of the first things I did was to look at the articles on
playing cards and poker; It's surprising how much of the pre-1911
history in those fields is just plain wrong.
It's a great resource, and I've made use of it, but it took two
days of work just to make appropriate article /titles/ for the "A"
volume, much less bring the articles themselves up to snuff.
0
>I assume there will be similar changes in many geographical entries.
there will be changes in nearly everything in the encyclopedia that
wasn't historical already, and in some of the historical entries as
well (people discover new facts about old events/characters). it's
simply not a valuable resource *on its own*, and I'd be disappointed
to see the entries scripted into wikipedia. The entries all need a
very diligent or expert person to go over them to see that they are
still accurate.
kq
0
>> Probably, they will claim some kind of copyrights over the
>> digitalisation of the 1911 Encyclopedia.
>That's not possible from the point of view of the copyright law as
>scanning is not a creative expression and the copyright of the
>original material has expired. The only thing which is possible is to
>claim copyright on additional markup, layout, presentation and
>additional graphics.
I think they fully deserve the legal copyright on their markup,
layout, presentation and additional graphics :-)
More seriously: even if the quality of the scanned text will be
improved, I do hope that nobody will whip together a script to suck
the 1911 contents into Wikipedia wholesale. Every article needs to
be read, checked for OCR mistakes, accuracy and outdated language,
wikified and merged with whatever material we already have on the
topic. Many technical articles will be useless because the terminology
has changed. In mathematics for instance, it is next to impossible to
read a paper that was written in the 19th century.
Axel
>The 1911encyclopedia.org domain was registered by
>Pagewise, inc
>Pagewise.com is a for profit organization:
>
>Probably, they will claim some kind of copyrights over the
>digitalisation of the 1911 Encyclopedia.
Any such claim would be hot air: Feist v. Rural made it very
clear that only /creative expression/ is copyrightable.
It doesn't make one whit of difference whether they hire 20
editors to clean up the scans and build a fancy search engine
or anything else--only their /original creations/ can be
copyrighted; nothing they do to the 1911 text will ever give
them any right to restrict its use. It's OURS. Now and
forever. Amen.
0
It is my understanding, from the edition of the 'A' volume of this
encyclopedia published by the fine folks over at Project Gutenburg,
that it is "uncool" to use the name "Britannica" in association with
this book. The reason is that although the _copyright_ has indeed
properly expired, the _trademark_ is still that of an active company.
So, while the text is fair game, the name is not.
I'm cc:'ing this message to editor(a)1911encyclopedia.org, just so that
person will know about this. But my opinion is not very
authoritative. I'd just suggest getting the word 'Britannica' off the
site _in the logo_, while feeling free to use the word in a text
explanation of where this information comes from. (My understanding
is that it's o.k. to say a trademark in just about any context, but
not o.k. to use it in a fashion that might mislead people into
thinking that you are the organization in question.)
The site, as it stands, doesn't really make clear that the people
behind it are not the official Britannica people.
What a wonderful thing to have online.
--Jimbo
>> Whilst this is very good news, on my limited sampling
>> it's not something I'd be sucking into the Wikipedia
>> using a conversion script.
>
>What was the process for adding the A's?
>Were the A's all complete, without typos?
The "A" articles were compiled and edited by hand by
the folks at Project Gutenberg. Many of them were then
added to Wikipedia more or less automatically, after
which many of them were further hand-edited where
appropriate (for example, I updated "Almond" to reflect
more recent biological classification).
The same process will be needed for these, so that
should keep me and others busy for a long time. I'm
also curious whether they plan to scan the illustrations.
Those, too, are now in the public domain, and some of
the articles make little sense without them (look at
"Abbey", for example).