I would personally like to see the capability of creating "custom" encyclopedias, similar to college books where the teacher of the particular course can decide which chapters to include and which not to.
For Example:
"Wikipedia On the Middle Ages" vs "Wikipedia on 20th century Pop Culture"
I would also remark that "paper" does not have to be actual printed, in color, glossy, hard-bound with leather and catchy picture. Paper can be printer-ready work, like that which is commonly available for large open-source and community projects.
Example: Documentation for Postgresql database. http://www.postgresql.org/docs/ Click on V7.3 reference guide.
This would be a lot easier to produce than an actual "paper" encyclopedia, would be available to anyone with a fast printer, would drastically reduce time-to-market, and would "paper" users to update particular sections instead of relying on the addendums.
A note on time-to-market: While Herbert's "Dune" and "The Lord of the Rings" fear not the passage of time, encyclopedias do. I would guess that few people would pay anything for a 6months+ old encyclopedia.
This would also allow "enterprising folks" (us or them) to make a quick buck printing and delivering decent "actual paper" books without involving the Ws (Wikipedia and Wikimedia) into the whole publiching business, because it can be nasty and is fraught with potential loss. (ever figured out what one could do with 80,000 extra copies of the "Lun-Mag" 2004 volume?).
Chris Mahan
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