On 12/12/05, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
I think that's implied in what I said. We're building an encyclopedia. We haven't produced one yet, at least not in English.
Suggested soundbite: "It's not a polished encyclopedia, it's the raw materials for one."
But considering this obvious beta is a top-30 website, there's clear demand for what we offer. Saying "no no no we produce the materials for others to distribute" may well be as disingenuous as when Mozilla claimed the same.
Beta is stretching it. I'd say more like pre-alpha (what you get when you do a cvs update on the main trunk). But yeah, you do make a valid point. We produce a lot of material that people want, fact checked or not. I'm not sure the best way to reconcile that, and one of the reasons I don't really bring up the "are we really an encyclopedia" question very often is because I think eventually the issue will be resolved, either in house or out of house.
It's frustrating though that that eventually isn't even really in sight.
German Wikipedia arguably *has* produced an encyclopedia.
With considerable assistance from Directmedia, the outside company that actually publishes it.
But I think commercial republishing of our content is entirely within not merely the GFDL, but our mission: USE OUR STUFF! THAT'S WHY IT'S THERE!
- d.
Yeah, I think the German Wikipedia DVD is a tremendous accomplishment. Sometimes I wonder why it isn't being talked about more on the mailing lists. And I think it is an answer to those people who occassionally come along and question why we're so friendly to commercial reuse.
And I don't really understand why this hasn't happened in English. The barriers that were there, such as the questions over the copyright status of the images, have mainly been addressed through tagging.
Anthony