On Feb 29, 2004, at 10:30 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Pointers to "good enough" versions is going to be helpful, and then of course once we have a "manuscript", the publisher will probably want to copyedit it one last time, and may need to make some slight modifications in order to fit some technical print requirements.
(Note: this email is rated PG for minor suggestion of forking. Parental discretion is advised.)
I appreciate this idea, and until I heard a good deal of this thread I agreed, but I think there is a flaw. While a pointer system lets the online article grow with it's print cousin, most of the time any good online version is going to need more than a little copyedit and "slight modifications". Others on this list have mentioned that links explain information in the 'Pedia, and we need to add info at those reference points to compensate for that. This is one example; there have been others. In these cases, it seems more appropriate to work on a separate version.
Now we have the thesis and antithesis. The synthesis is to use pointers to cull articles, then go through those picked and "fork" (there, I said it). This fork will have good versions of good articles to make the minor edits to. The idea is that at this point there are no edits which need to be made which ought to be in the online 'Pedia too. The fork would be for edits necessary for a print version.
Peter
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