Christopher Mahan wrote:
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"
Isn't this what the Wikibooks fork is supposed to be about?
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.
If we're talking about specific articles anybody can print out as many as he wants.
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.
Hmmm! I wonder about the ethics of individuals who use the efforts of hundreds of Wikipedians just to make a buck for themselves.
(ever figured out what one could do with 80,000 extra copies of the "Lun-Mag" 2004 volume?).
I hope we're a little more level headed than to start with print runs of 80,000!
Ec