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