Hello!
I recently made a "book" via the PediaPress Book Creator[1] prior to my
trip to India, and it has been delightful to use and read on the flight and
in my hotel room here. It had been awhile since I tried to make one, and I
wanted to say great work and good job to PediaPress! Also, the integration
with Kiwix was wonderful, and I love that it now shows up so seamlessly in
my "Library" within Kiwix.
I am not sure if you are aware, but in the recent Readership survey of
Wikipedia readers (from Sept 2011, which is only just now being analyzed),
the *number one request by readers was saving of articles for offline use
(as a PDF): *40% of readers said they would be MORE LIKELY to use Wikipedia
if such a service was available (note: this % is even higher in target
areas like India (50%) and Brazil (52%).* *This is fascinating, for it
shows that we (a) have a broader desire for offline content than just those
without Internet access, and (b) indicates there is great opportunity for
marketing the "Book Creator" tool.
*
*
I want to discuss the points needed to get to (b). The Book Creator tool is
great, and I think is the exact right type of tool to meet the needs of our
readers; but there is much room for improvements. Right now, I personally
find the experience getting to and from the Book Creator tool to be not as
straight forward as would be most beneficial. As this service has such a
huge demand, I think there are some opportunities for the refining of the
"book creator" tool and process. I'd love thoughts on the following and
more:
- *Rebranding: *What are our thoughts on the title "Book Creator"? I
wonder if the title itself is a bit confusing, since people are apparently
unaware of the ability to download as PDF at all! Plus, I personally don't
utilize the tools as a means for creating an actual book, though I
recognize this was the initial purpose: I view it as a way to read a couple
specific articles offline. I think using the word "collection," which we do
informally anyway, is likely more appropriate here. Perhaps "Offline
Collection Creator" or "Article Aggregator" (both terrible ideas, I know,
but I'm just throwing things out there:))
- *Website placement: *I think it is obvious the space the Book Creator
takes on the Left Hand tool bar is not enough to draw attention to the
feature. I wonder if we should attempt to have some sort of a "Save for
Offline Use" button on each article, which would then open a new window
into the collection creator screen? This could look similar to the "Share
this" links which exist on most information websites (for Facebook,
Twitter, email, etc.). This could be next to the "Print" button.
- *Marketing: *Once we feel a bit more confident about usability, it
would be great to market the tool. We can do this in three phases:
- Phase 1: emails to different mailing lists announcing the project,
and asking for suggestions and feedback on the tools
- Phase 2: "pilot" testing of the tool, with banner advertising to
logged-in users
- Phase 3: advertise this functionality via a banner at the top of
Wikipedia!
- *Measurement*: clearly, we should have careful tracking of *books
created* and *downloads by file type* by day. @PediaPress: is this
available yet?
I have some other ideas as well, but wanted to throw these out there for
some immediate reactions. What are people's thoughts? Any other ideas?
Anyone good with website design who could help with rearranging of the
"Book Creator"?? :)
Looking forward to the discussion (which should be moved onto a wiki soon) -
Jessie
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Book&bookcmd=book_creator…
Dear Emmanuel,
>From the beginning of this project, I have been weighing in my mind
whether or not to prepare a DEB package. That would deal with all of
the dependency issues, but would also require users to upgrade to
Debian Squeeze or Ubuntu Natty. I note that you prepared a DEB
package for KIWIX, so I hope to benefit from your advice on this
matter.
Sincerely Yours,
Kent
P.S. Either gmail or mailman truncated my last two messages, so I
resend this missing paragraph (above).
Dear Emanuel,
Let us explore the possibility that we have a dependency issue.
1) Please let me see the output of
$ ./wp-mirror-0.2.lisp --debug
It should be:
;debug: Processing command line arguments ...
2) Debian Sqeeze uses clisp 2.48. I think Ubuntu Lucid uses clisp
2.44. Please let me see the output of:
$ clisp --version
The first line of mine reads:
GNU CLISP 2.48 (2009-07-28) (built 3487543663) (memory 3506736573)
3) WP-MIRROR make use of functions such as `ext:probe-pathname' and
`posix:file-size' which were first introduced in clisp 2.47.
Please let me see the output of:
$ clisp -q
[1]> (ext:probe-pathname "/etc/hosts")
Mine reads:
#P"/etc/hosts" ;
#P"/etc/hosts" ;
3533434716 ;
2321751
Sincerely Yours,
Kent
Dear list members,
I am posting here for the first time, and at the suggestion of Sumana
Harihareswara.
I am pleased to announce the release of WP-MIRROR 0.2 which is a free
utility for mirroring a set of wikipedias (the use specifies a list of
language codes, the default being `simple').
WP-MIRROR 0.2 was released during the holidays under GPLv3, and may be
found at <http://www.nongnu.org/wp-mirror/>. Feedback is welcome.
Sincerely Yours,
Dr. Kent L. Miller
Out of curiosity, what's the status of the WP 0.9 release of the
English Wikipedia?
Thanks,
Erik
--
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate