It's the season for books about Wikipedia!
I am very pleased to announce that "How Wikipedia Works", by myself
(Phoebe Ayers), Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates has now been published
by No Starch Press.
You can view a table of contents and find more information here:
http://nostarch.com/wikipedia.htm
We cover the background of Wikipedia and the motivations and core
values behind the project, how to edit existing articles and develop
new ones, policies and guidelines for content and editing, how the
editing community works, and how to get involved in the community.
Although we focus on the English-language Wikipedia, we also cover the
wider world of other language Wikipedias, the Wikimedia Foundation,
and Wikipedia's sister projects. We hope the book will be useful both
as a reference for current contributors and as a comprehensive
introduction to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects for newbies.
The book is licensed under the GFDL, and an online version will be
forthcoming shortly. Any printed copies purchased will help support
traditional publishers using free licenses successfully, and 5% of the
authors' royalties will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation.
We very much look forward to the community's feedback! For now, you
can leave comments on the wiki here:
http://wiki.phoebeayers.info
or email or leave a talk page message for any of us.
Many thanks to everyone who helped us out with this, particularly the
folks at No Starch press who were very supportive of developing a
free-content work; Benjamin Mako Hill, who provided technical and
licensing support; and SJ Klein, who helped develop the book.
best,
Phoebe ([[en:user:phoebe]])
--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
Farhad has a fatal flaw in his argument (I assume it is a *he*). His flaw
is believing that Knol is an encyclopedia and that it is "the next Wikipedia".
Neither situation represents what Knol actually is.
Knol is an online magazine -- multiple authors with bylines (credit),
writing mostly individual articles *with some small input* and doing so to promote
their business or themselves. That's not the reason d'etre of an
encyclopedia.
The next step for Knol is probably going to be the creation of
sub-communities and cities built *on top of* the content. Some of us have already made
baby-steps in that direction with indexes, but what we really need is
categories and better userfication with projects and portals.
Knol is only a few months old, but already it seems like a much more Randian
approach to the underlying issue than Wikipedia. That is, each artist is
allowed to fully express their art-form in their own way, and the best art
rises to the top of the heap. That's the intent, it may not yet be the fact. It
may never be. We'll see.
Will Johnson
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You're right it isn't. I was comparing Knol to Wikipedia though.
The only reason I brought up Ayn was because Jimmy is a Rand (or was a Rand)
enthusiast, and the more I thought about it, the less I perceived WP as the
sort of product she'd endorse. I don't recall clearly how at the end of
Atlas Shrugged, they decided on the rules for their new society. It's entirely
possible that Ayn would encourage the meta-Wiki while at the same time
discouraging the article-space.
My take on her view, is that she was very anti-committee, anything created
by committee was almost always fatally flawed vis a vis items created by an
individual. Instead of the final result being "here is AN item which is the
ultimate expression of X", you would have "here are several items, each
individually created, which each are AN expression of X, you the consumer decides
which is the best"
I'm not quite sure is the Knolian approach to how the consumer decides is
really going to work or not. But then every system has flaws. I'm willing to
give it a shot and see. I don't even think the Knol architects really know
what's going to happen or what they want to happen until a situation appears
directly in front of them. The Knolian approach *does* however almost
entirely remove the aspect of edit-warring doesn't it? And edit-wars are really at
the heart of 85% of WP problems.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 9/22/2008 6:55:01 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
This does not seem any more Randian than blogging does.
I mean, not that I disagree with your basic conclusion, but there's no
real reason to tie the observation that Knol is personality-driven
while Wikipedia attempts to meld personalities into a consistent
amalgamation to controversial schools of political thought.
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Wikipediahead by David Lynch (aka Eraserhead Part II)
A well-meaning if slightly eccentric individual is trapped in a world where
nothing makes much sense.
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"Elias Friedman" wrote
> Date: 2008/09/22 Mon PM 07:40:56 BST
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] "How Wikipedia Works" published
>
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 12:10 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > On the contrary! I expect our gripping tale of wikimystery will appeal
> > to all. Was it: arsenic in the AfDs? Perhaps a candlestick over the
> > head in the community portal? Or quite possibly the butler did it ...
> > everyone thought he was just a simple wikignome; little did they know
> > an RfA would prove his downfall.
> >
> > Please look for the GFDL-licensed mass-market followups, "Murder on
> > the Wiki Express" and "Editing on the Nile." And a sequel, "Jimbo
> > Investigates", is in the works...
> >
> >
> This could be fun, Wikipedia themed fractured titles...
"The Revert of the Pink Panther", starring a well-meaning if bumbling admin named Cluestick, happier at DRV, rashly assigned to investigate illicit mirrors who are stealing Wikipedia material in the middle of the night and posting it with taunting messages rather than the GFDL. Cluestick drives his boss, played by Herbert Arbcom, up the wall ...
Charles
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Evidently this one will be a comedy.
In a message dated 9/22/2008 9:11:18 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com writes:
And a sequel, "Jimbo
Investigates", is in the works...
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Well we see the first problem. Whether or not Harry Potter is a "trademark"
rests entirely on whether or not it's registered.
Unlike copyright law (currently in the US) you cannot infringe a trademark
unless it's registered.
Copyrights however do not require any sort of registration.
Also under trademark law, there has to be *evidence* of *actual confusion*
between one product and another.
You can only infringe if some member of the public would confuse Wikia's
site with an actual official Harry Potter product.
In a message dated 9/21/2008 12:20:34 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
wikimail(a)inbox.org writes:
In my opinion: "Harry Potter" is a trademark. In fact, it's probably a
famous trademark
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Explain why you think it's an obvious trademark (?) violation
In a message dated 9/21/2008 5:08:56 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
wikimail(a)inbox.org writes:
Forget copyright law, I never understood how Harry Potter Wikia isn't an
obvious trademark violation. But I guess it isn't?
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Phil (and others). Wasn't there a case recently where a guy made an
"Encyclopedia" of the Harry Potter universe ?
And then Rowling sued him? Or something like that. I vaguely remember it.
Will
In a message dated 9/20/2008 9:29:17 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
snowspinner(a)gmail.com writes:
Which is to say that the "transformative" aspect of fair use is a
very, very important one.
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