One of the goals generally included in the Wiki 1.0 discussion is the creation of a paper Wikipedia. This sems to have an assumption that lot's of material gets dropped or summarized. I agree with the necessity of that, since paper must be more limited that a hard drive file to be practical. But what about those areas where we have lots more info than a general encyclopedia?
This is a thought about some of the leftover material. I don't mean to imply a well thought out procedure, but a procedure outline sems the most direct way t explain this idea. So, here comes a three step procedure.
1. Complete a list of possible additional paper books to go with the paper Wikipedia 1.0. Examples would be "The Encyclopedia of Rock", "The Enc. of Science Fiction, with Character Ibdex", "Star Trek Encyclopedia", "Enc. of American Biography", etc., etc.
2. When reviewing Wiki articles to include in the paper 1.0, see if a copy goes in any other stacks. For articles droped, put them in their specialized stack.
3. When finished, examine the other stacks to see which have publishable volume and content. Then see if a publisher is interested.
Just a thought....
Thanks, Lou Imholt (LouI at Wiki)
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limholt@excite.com wrote:
One of the goals generally included in the Wiki 1.0 discussion is the creation of a paper Wikipedia. This sems to have an assumption that lot's of material gets dropped or summarized.
Well, I don't *think* so. Right now, we're in the ballpark of the size of Britannica, possibly a bit bigger. But then, we have a fair amount of questionable fluff lurking around. So if we're thinking of 1.0 being approximately equivalent in size and quality to Britannica, we shouldn't have to cut anything good from where we are today.
In the future, this will likely be a problem. If Wikipedia 2.0 follows 1.0 by a 3 year time span, for example, it's likely that it would be twice as big and totally problematic as a print version.
But for 1.0, I don't envision a lot of cutting.
I can totally imagine in the future that we'll have multiple sifted editions, for example:
Wikipedia 2.0p - full version, paper Wikipedia 2.0d - desktop paper, a highly shortened version Wikipedia 2.0e - electronic, no size constraints at all Wikipedai 2.0r - raw, sifted articles plus everything else, too
But rather than get into a game of excessive a priori design, I think we should stick to "1.0 is just 1.0" as a mantra. And what I mean by that is that we keep a 1.0 release simple, a single release, and the approval process focussed on openness and reliability of articles, rather than infinite flexibility for potential printers/publishers/distributors.
I do also like the idea of Wikipedia: History of Rock Music and similar. But "1.0 is just 1.0". :-)
--Jimbo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
limholt@excite.com wrote:
One of the goals generally included in the Wiki
1.0 discussion is
the creation of a paper Wikipedia. This sems to
have an assumption
that lot's of material gets dropped or summarized.
Well, I don't *think* so. Right now, we're in the ballpark of the size of Britannica, possibly a bit bigger. But then, we have a fair amount of questionable fluff lurking around. So if we're thinking of 1.0 being approximately equivalent in size and quality to Britannica, we shouldn't have to cut anything good from where we are today.
In the future, this will likely be a problem. If Wikipedia 2.0 follows 1.0 by a 3 year time span, for example, it's likely that it would be twice as big and totally problematic as a print version.
But for 1.0, I don't envision a lot of cutting.
I can totally imagine in the future that we'll have multiple sifted editions, for example:
Wikipedia 2.0p - full version, paper Wikipedia 2.0d - desktop paper, a highly shortened version Wikipedia 2.0e - electronic, no size constraints at all Wikipedai 2.0r - raw, sifted articles plus everything else, too
But rather than get into a game of excessive a priori design, I think we should stick to "1.0 is just 1.0" as a mantra. And what I mean by that is that we keep a 1.0 release simple, a single release, and the approval process focussed on openness and reliability of articles, rather than infinite flexibility for potential printers/publishers/distributors.
I do also like the idea of Wikipedia: History of Rock Music and similar. But "1.0 is just 1.0". :-)
--Jimbo
Although I agree with you in theory, it would just take too much time. If we set up a project where a group of known wikipedians would systematically go through every article would be of great benifit to wikipedia, but we shouldn't halt the wiki development process. After a lot of math, I found that we'd need 45 people to do this over 3 years. Although this makes it seem impossible, think how long and how many people it would take to make wikipedia.
It would be nice if we had a feature of the software for this reviewing thing. It could give a random page from a subset of wikipedia yet to be reviewed, and then you'd edit it. After editing it, you would say if it is britannica-quality yet. If two people said yes for the same article, it would be taken out of the subset of articles to be reviewed. It could still be edited, but it would be assumed that all new edits would be checked and if they were destructive, the article would be returned to encyclopedic quality. All new articles would go to this reviewing subset. Were there any other schemes for article reviewing? LDan
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
After a lot of math, I found that we'd need 45 people to do this over 3 years. Although this makes it seem impossible, think how long and how many people it would take to make wikipedia.
How'd you get that figure? I'm trying to make estimates, too.
If 75,000 articles is a goal, and we require 2 independent 'sign-offs' on a version of an article, then we need 150,000 'sign-offs'. If we have 100 people doing 10 a day each, that's 1,000 a day for 150 days.
Obviously, we'd have some people doing 25 a day, and some doing 1 a month, and some doing 10 a month, etc.
It would be nice if we had a feature of the software for this reviewing thing. It could give a random page from a subset of wikipedia yet to be reviewed, and then you'd edit it. After editing it, you would say if it is britannica-quality yet. If two people said yes for the same article, it would be taken out of the subset of articles to be reviewed.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
It could still be edited, but it would be assumed that all new edits would be checked and if they were destructive, the article would be returned to encyclopedic quality.
My thinking is that it could still be edited OF COURSE, because we don't want to interrupt the wikipedia flow. But if it's edited, well, maybe we come back and reapprove a newer version, or maybe we don't. The approval is for a specific version, not for the canonical URL, so even if an article gets all screwed up after approval, hey, that's just part of the wiki process.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
It would be nice if we had a feature of the software for this reviewing thing. It could give a random page from a subset of wikipedia yet to be reviewed, and then you'd edit it. After editing it, you would say if it is britannica-quality yet. If two people said yes for the same article, it would be taken out of the subset of articles to be reviewed.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
While that might be a nice feature, I'd like to go to some page (say, [[Biology]]), and see which articles *that are linked from there* are approved and which are not. That way, I can move through a field where I know I can give approvals (or fix it first).
Which brings me inevitably back to the sifter project, where one could see unapproved articles just by looking for red/"?" links.
Also, we'd automatically approve a specific version of an article, which is then copied to the sifter. Edits would have to be made on wikipedia first, if necessary.
The sifter would, at the end of the project, automatically contain what Jimbo called the "e" version. If that's different from "p" in version 1.0, we'll have to see.
A 2.0 project could be started with a copy of sifter 1.0, or a clean sifter.
Best of all, it would technically run indepentently of the wiki, maybe on a different server. If we force the approval process into wikipedia itself, that wikipedia (en, at the moment) will inevitably suffer speed losses from all the approval work.
Last not least, software changes will be much easier just opening a sifter, with an additional special page (for importing), and enhanced user permission management (no edits on the sifter, editors need some approval to work there, etc.)
Magnus
Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
It would be nice if we had a feature of the software for this reviewing thing. It could give a random page from a subset of wikipedia yet to be reviewed, and then you'd edit it. After editing it, you would say if it is britannica-quality yet. If two people said yes for the same article, it would be taken out of the subset of articles to be reviewed.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
While that might be a nice feature, I'd like to go to some page (say, [[Biology]]), and see which articles *that are linked from there* are approved and which are not. That way, I can move through a field where I know I can give approvals (or fix it first).
Approved? What do you mean by "approved"? Approved by whom, in what way?
RickK
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Approved? What do you mean by "approved"? Approved by whom, in what way?
RickK
That was described in a previous letter, but basically a person with a username (possibly with a special "approver" ranking) would just click a button to approve it. Two people would have to do this for it to be deemed print-quality. LDan
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How does giving someone special "approver" ranking jibe with the supposed equality of Wiki?
RickK
Daniel Ehrenberg littledanehren@yahoo.com wrote:
Approved? What do you mean by "approved"? Approved by whom, in what way?
RickK
That was described in a previous letter, but basically a person with a username (possibly with a special "approver" ranking) would just click a button to approve it. Two people would have to do this for it to be deemed print-quality. LDan
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--- Rick giantsrick13@yahoo.com wrote:
How does giving someone special "approver" ranking jibe with the supposed equality of Wiki?
RickK
I'm just throwing out ideas, but I think we were considering implimenting some loose hierarchy for exclusively approval. Idealistically, it would be great if any anon could approve pages, but for a printed book, if we make one, we will have to make sure the approvers are good and not making multiple accounts to make their own work approved. LDan
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Rick wrote:
How does giving someone special "approver" ranking jibe with the supposed equality of Wiki?
Well, Rick, I'm appreciative of your concerns. But I wonder what ideas you might offer for a viable methodology for selecting particular revisions of articles for a 1.0 release?
Wikipedia the website and Wikipedia the process are excellent. The strength is the openness. But of course the openness means that at any given moment in time, an article may be full of nonsense, or may be simply grammatically incomplete. Sometimes articles have things like <need to write more here> in the middle of them.
So, we need to have trusted people go through and flag the articles.
YES, that trust should be widely distributed, and yes the process should be open and transparent. But it also seems to me that it needs to be _trustworthy_ first and foremost.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
Rick wrote:
How does giving someone special "approver" ranking jibe with the supposed equality of Wiki?
Well, Rick, I'm appreciative of your concerns. But I wonder what ideas you might offer for a viable methodology for selecting particular revisions of articles for a 1.0 release?
See the thread "Do we really need a Sifter project?" http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-July/011072.html on Wikipedia-L for a process which does not require special privileges other than for the final approval (similar to the deletion process).
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
See the thread "Do we really need a Sifter project?" http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-July/011072.html on Wikipedia-L for a process which does not require special privileges other than for the final approval (similar to the deletion process).
I think this is sensible, but of course your caveat of 'other than for the final approval' might still generate some concerns about there being special privileges or whatnot.
In order to make it convenient for people to follow the kind of process that you describe, would you advocate some minor software changes, i.e. a simple button-click for people to nominate things to the 'candidates' page?
And then perhaps, knowing that you're fond of voting ;-), a simple button-click for people to register an opinion on each article, with some kind of rules (unanimity, 4/5ths majority, 2/3rds majority, minimum number of yesses over nos, that sort of thing) determining the move to the 'elected' page?
And then those articles would be the 1.0 articles, subject perhaps to final FINAL approval if we found that to be necessary?
I could tweak the rules over time to balance quality versus quantity of production. If it looks like too much questionable stuff is making it through, the voting rules could be made more strict. If it looks like we're moving way too slow, then the voting rules could be made more lax.
And perhaps, but I'm getting ahead of what we need to really agree on right now, there needs to be a way for anyone to raise an appeal, within reason, on any article that gets to the end of the process -- thus preserving the ability for anyone, even at a fairly late date, to find an egregious error and be able to send an article back to the approval stage.
I could get behind something like that.
--Jimbo
Jimmy-
In order to make it convenient for people to follow the kind of process that you describe, would you advocate some minor software changes, i.e. a simple button-click for people to nominate things to the 'candidates' page?
More or less. Whatever software scheme is used should be reasonably generic to be applicable to similar situations. For example, Votes for deletion, Votes for undeletion and Requests for adminship are all pages that work according to the same "express dissent within given timeframe or [x] happens" model. It would be most useful to have some generic voting queue module instead of a hack that is adjusted specifically to the sifting process.
Regards,
Erik
Erik Moeller wrote:
Jimmy-
In order to make it convenient for people to follow the kind of process that you describe, would you advocate some minor software changes, i.e. a simple button-click for people to nominate things to the 'candidates' page?
More or less. Whatever software scheme is used should be reasonably generic to be applicable to similar situations. For example, Votes for deletion, Votes for undeletion and Requests for adminship are all pages that work according to the same "express dissent within given timeframe or [x] happens" model. It would be most useful to have some generic voting queue module instead of a hack that is adjusted specifically to the sifting process.
Well, after my voting feature was removed at some point (I think during the change to Phase III), I am certainly not opposed to reintroducing it. But, I don't think it will work nicely for a "stable version" (or "1.0").
The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were: * no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community - I don't see that happening.
* feedback from all Wikipedians, not just those specializing in the discipline in question -- besides being complete and accurate, articles also must be reasonably well written and easy to understand - Changes will still happen on wikipedia. Also, I propose that noone is restricted to certain topics; anyone can approve any article ;-) as long as s/he can be trusted to use common sense in what s/he is able to judge
* establishes trust in Wikipedia - changes still occur in wikipedia, so the content will be the same for any article at the time of approval. What happens next is up to wikipedia entirely...
* simple, easy to use and completely open - same as sifter, except that I would not let anons approve articles...
* requires only one change to the software (permalinks), which is useful anyway for external authors trying to provide a permanent reference to the revision of the Wikipedia article they cite - sifter requires *no* visible change to the wikipedia software. We *could* add an "approve this article" to be displayed as a user option, which would then link to the appropriate sifter page
Now to my "pro-sifter" list: * fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc. Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like: - Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually - That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg" - Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image
* going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage
* user access is much easier to manage on a separate project
* sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the clutter, otherwise.
* sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon, right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on wikipedia itself
* software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks
Magnus
Magnus Manske wrote:
The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were:
- no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community
- I don't see that happening.
But, do you agree that it is desirable, to whatever extent we can achieve it?
- feedback from all Wikipedians, not just those specializing in the
discipline in question -- besides being complete and accurate, articles also must be reasonably well written and easy to understand
- Changes will still happen on wikipedia. Also, I propose that noone is
restricted to certain topics; anyone can approve any article ;-) as long as s/he can be trusted to use common sense in what s/he is able to judge
I agree with that. We learned from Nupedia that excessive a priori formalization is a killer. Better to start from a very open point of view, and then upon review, if our end product is starting to be bad in some way, make adjustments based on what we've learned.
- simple, easy to use and completely open
- same as sifter, except that I would not let anons approve articles...
I would tend to agree with this. The main things to remember here is that 'anon' is a misnomer (though one that we are stuck with because we all say it) because not-logged-in is *less* anonymous than logged-in. :-)
Having people logged-in allows for the development of reputation, which is a great incentive for doing a good job.
Before other people like Erik explained this to me again, I was still thinking of having an appointed class like sysops, with appointment being open and easy, to have quality control. But on further reflection, it seems like quality control can be had in other ways that don't force us to have a separate class of users.
Of course, if we start in on a process and the end result starts to look problematic, we'll have to bite the bullet and make a change.
Now to my "pro-sifter" list:
- fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc.
Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like:
- Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually
- That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg"
- Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image
That's obviously a benefit, but doesn't point to a need for a separate project, per se, but a need for making sure that the 'version' being approved is the *entire* article, including text and images. This does complicate things a little bit.
- going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get
only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage
Well, the exact url where people may browse 1.0 could be anything. In my private thinking about it, I've been thinking of it as www.wikipedia.org/1.0/wiki/
But the exact url where someone could view what has been approved so far is not really important.
- user access is much easier to manage on a separate project
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on implementation.
- sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while
wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the clutter, otherwise.
I think having a separate RC (or Recent Approvals) is vitally important, but again I'm not sure it's really relevant for a question of 'separate project' or 'added features to existing project'.
- sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon,
right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on wikipedia itself
Maybe! But this could complicate some things.
- software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks
Well, that's a huge plus of course, because rough consensus and running code makes the world go around.
After reading all this and writing all this, I'm not sure that "internal" versus "separate project" is really a useful concept. I guess I'm for an 'internal' project, but with most of the features that you've identified.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Magnus Manske wrote:
The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were:
- no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community
- I don't see that happening.
But, do you agree that it is desirable, to whatever extent we can achieve it?
I'm not sure I understand that sentence. I don't believe there will be aseparate "sifter" and "wikipedia" groups. I'd think they'll overlap in huge parts. Those who don't care about the stable version thingy at all won't participate either way. Maybe a separate project would even attract some academics who'd shy away from the "pure" wikipedia ;-)
Before other people like Erik explained this to me again, I was still thinking of having an appointed class like sysops, with appointment being open and easy, to have quality control. But on further reflection, it seems like quality control can be had in other ways that don't force us to have a separate class of users.
Of course, if we start in on a process and the end result starts to look problematic, we'll have to bite the bullet and make a change.
I used to be in favor of the "appointed class" model, but now I think we should try "logged-in only" open for everyone. It worked before :-)
Now to my "pro-sifter" list:
- fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc.
Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like:
- Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually
- That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg"
- Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image
That's obviously a benefit, but doesn't point to a need for a separate project, per se, but a need for making sure that the 'version' being approved is the *entire* article, including text and images. This does complicate things a little bit.
Let's see: We'd need an additional image management routine, a new table in the database to keep track of what-image-was-when-where, probably interface to deltete wrongly approved images (and another one to undelete them, of course;-)
Then we'll need another implementation of Recent Changes, or some kind of filter; a search mode for just-the-stable-versions; URLs to the stable version; making sure that stable versions have not been deleted; and some new user options to spice the soup up a little ;-)
I probably forgot some of the necessary changes, but you get the picture...
OTOH: Sifter project needs a few more lines of code for importing images, then it's basically ready to go.
- going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get
only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage
Well, the exact url where people may browse 1.0 could be anything. In my private thinking about it, I've been thinking of it as www.wikipedia.org/1.0/wiki/
But the exact url where someone could view what has been approved so far is not really important.
I wasn't talking about the URL, I meant there's an actual place to go to for "reliable" information. Wikipedia-with-an-addon will be quite confusing for some people, I'd guess; "You can edit this page" is scary enough already :-)
- user access is much easier to manage on a separate project
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on implementation.
Try to answer "Who's been working on the 1.0 version, and how much?" in both schemes, and you'll see what I mean.
- sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while
wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the clutter, otherwise.
I think having a separate RC (or Recent Approvals) is vitally important, but again I'm not sure it's really relevant for a question of 'separate project' or 'added features to existing project'.
Maybe not relevant, but a pain to hack (see above), and it has potential for confusing the users.
- sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon,
right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on wikipedia itself
Maybe! But this could complicate some things.
No it wouldn't, as long as both servers (the sifter and the 'pedia one) are in your server farm. I'd only have to change an IP in the sifter LocalSettings.php .
- software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks
Well, that's a huge plus of course, because rough consensus and running code makes the world go around.
Ah, the good ol' times :-)
After reading all this and writing all this, I'm not sure that "internal" versus "separate project" is really a useful concept. I guess I'm for an 'internal' project, but with most of the features that you've identified.
Well, basically the choice is to * implement many things twice within the same source (or include so many IF statements that it will blur your eyes;-) or * use the code we have
Magnus
At 05:41 AM 8/19/03 -0400, Lou wrote:
One of the goals generally included in the Wiki 1.0 discussion is the creation of a paper Wikipedia. This sems to have an assumption that lot's of material gets dropped or summarized. I agree with the necessity of that, since paper must be more limited that a hard drive file to be practical. But what about those areas where we have lots more info than a general encyclopedia?
This is a thought about some of the leftover material. I don't mean to imply a well thought out procedure, but a procedure outline sems the most direct way t explain this idea. So, here comes a three step procedure.
- Complete a list of possible additional paper books to go with the paper
Wikipedia 1.0. Examples would be "The Encyclopedia of Rock", "The Enc. of Science Fiction, with Character Ibdex", "Star Trek Encyclopedia", "Enc. of American Biography", etc., etc.
Some of these exist, and probably more thorough than we could manage any time soon. There are very thorough encyclopedias of science fiction and of fantasy, for example. The online Encyclopedia of Arda is probably a better/more thorough work than we'd have if we pulled out all our Tolkien articles.
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 05:41 AM 8/19/03 -0400, Lou wrote:
- Complete a list of possible additional paper books to go with the
paper Wikipedia 1.0. Examples would be "The Encyclopedia of Rock", "The Enc. of Science Fiction, with Character Ibdex", "Star Trek Encyclopedia", "Enc. of American Biography", etc., etc.
Some of these exist, and probably more thorough than we could manage any time soon. There are very thorough encyclopedias of science fiction and of fantasy, for example. The online Encyclopedia of Arda is probably a better/more thorough work than we'd have if we pulled out all our Tolkien articles.
I agree. It's really easier for us to compete with a general encyclopedia like Britannica than with specialized works as mentioned above. The people who produce specialized works have had years of focusing their attention on a pet subject. Without considerable specialist attention our topic based encyclopedias can never be much more than extracts of WP.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 05:41 AM 8/19/03 -0400, Lou wrote:
- Complete a list of possible additional paper
books to go with the
paper Wikipedia 1.0. Examples would be "The
Encyclopedia of Rock",
"The Enc. of Science Fiction, with Character
Ibdex", "Star Trek
Encyclopedia", "Enc. of American Biography",
etc., etc.
Some of these exist, and probably more thorough
than we could manage
any time soon. There are very thorough encyclopedias of science
fiction and of
fantasy, for example. The online Encyclopedia of Arda is probably a
better/more thorough
work than we'd have if we pulled out all our Tolkien articles.
I agree. It's really easier for us to compete with a general encyclopedia like Britannica than with specialized works as mentioned above. The people who produce specialized works have had years of focusing their attention on a pet subject. Without considerable specialist attention our topic based encyclopedias can never be much more than extracts of WP.
Ec
What's wrong with extracts of Wikipedia? I have a book called "Micropedia of World History" (that looks like it's part of a series) which is 300 pages of historical events in timeline form. As I look through it, I see that wikipedia could do better than this if we put some work into it consolidating our timeline and historical articles and condensing them. Specialized encyclopedias don't have to be that specialized. For example, I think we would have done excelently on that encyclopedia of American Biography, but it would be better if we extended it to all biographies. We could call it the encyclopedia of people or something. All of our stubs on people would still help, because it's better than nothing if it is used as a reference book. Haven't you seen a 2-sentence entry in a real encyclopedia? I have, at least in World Book (I'm not sure if it counts as a real encyclopedia, though). LDan
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
What's wrong with extracts of Wikipedia? I have a book called "Micropedia of World History" (that looks like it's part of a series) which is 300 pages of historical events in timeline form. As I look through it, I see that wikipedia could do better than this if we put some work into it consolidating our timeline and historical articles and condensing them.
On my shelf I have "The Timetables of History" which does the same thing (but only to 1990) in 631 pages. What would be unique and distinctive about a Wikimedia publication of this sort?
Specialized encyclopedias don't have to be that specialized. For example, I think we would have done excelently on that encyclopedia of American Biography, but it would be better if we extended it to all biographies. We could call it the encyclopedia of people or something. All of our stubs on people would still help, because it's better than nothing if it is used as a reference book. Haven't you seen a 2-sentence entry in a real encyclopedia? I have, at least in World Book (I'm not sure if it counts as a real encyclopedia, though).
The same thing for biographies. If we are just reproducing what is already easily and widely available, our publication will not have the intellectual value that we want it to have. The citizen of a third world country is likely to be far more interested in the biogrphies of his fellow citizens than of Americans. Selling him biographies of Americans is more likely to reinforce his existing attitudes about Americans. We've got a long way to go before we can produce a credible biographical directory that would be acceptable in the third world. The problem is not so simplistic as permitting 2-sentence entries.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
What's wrong with extracts of Wikipedia? I have a
book
called "Micropedia of World History" (that looks
like
it's part of a series) which is 300 pages of historical events in timeline form. As I look
through
it, I see that wikipedia could do better than this
if
we put some work into it consolidating our timeline and historical articles and condensing them.
On my shelf I have "The Timetables of History" which does the same thing (but only to 1990) in 631 pages. What would be unique and distinctive about a Wikimedia publication of this sort?
Specialized encyclopedias don't have to be that specialized. For example, I think we would have
done
excelently on that encyclopedia of American
Biography,
but it would be better if we extended it to all biographies. We could call it the encyclopedia of people or something. All of our stubs on people
would
still help, because it's better than nothing if it
is
used as a reference book. Haven't you seen a 2-sentence entry in a real encyclopedia? I have, at least in World Book (I'm not sure if it counts as a real encyclopedia, though).
The same thing for biographies. If we are just reproducing what is already easily and widely available, our publication will not have the intellectual value that we want it to have. The citizen of a third world country is likely to be far more interested in the biogrphies of his fellow citizens than of Americans. Selling him biographies of Americans is more likely to reinforce his existing attitudes about Americans. We've got a long way to go before we can produce a credible biographical directory that would be acceptable in the third world. The problem is not so simplistic as permitting 2-sentence entries.
Ec
What's so special about a wikimedia encyclopedia? LDan
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--- "limholt@excite.com" limholt@excite.com wrote:
One of the goals generally included in the Wiki 1.0 discussion is the creation of a paper Wikipedia. This sems to have an assumption that lot's of material gets dropped or summarized. I agree with the necessity of that, since paper must be more limited that a hard drive file to be practical. But what about those areas where we have lots more info than a general encyclopedia?
Wikipedia isn't exceptionally big as far as encyclopedias go.
This is a thought about some of the leftover material. I don't mean to imply a well thought out procedure, but a procedure outline sems the most direct way t explain this idea. So, here comes a three step procedure.
- Complete a list of possible additional paper
books to go with the paper Wikipedia 1.0. Examples would be "The Encyclopedia of Rock", "The Enc. of Science Fiction, with Character Ibdex", "Star Trek Encyclopedia", "Enc. of American Biography", etc., etc.
Encyclopedia of lists, wikipedia would be great for.
- When reviewing Wiki articles to include in the
paper 1.0, see if a copy goes in any other stacks. For articles droped, put them in their specialized stack.
I'm not exactly sure what your review process is. Could you explain it in more depth?
- When finished, examine the other stacks to see
which have publishable volume and content. Then see if a publisher is interested.
Or we could self-publish from preorder money if no publisher is available.
Just a thought....
Thanks, Lou Imholt (LouI at Wiki)
LDan
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Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
- When reviewing Wiki articles to include in the
paper 1.0, see if a copy goes in any other stacks. For articles droped, put them in their specialized stack.
I'm not exactly sure what your review process is. Could you explain it in more depth?
I don't think anyone really knows yet.
--Jimbo
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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--- Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com wrote: ---a whole bunch of stuff---
Did ya'll notice I was behind in my list-reading when I wrote this?
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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
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?
Exactly. You can have any non-fiction book in wikibooks, not just textbooks.
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.
No, it would be of great benefit to Wikipedia if someone printed it. I hate to invoke Objectivism, but in this case, everyone acting in their own self-interest will create the greatest benefit for all in this case. Wouldn't a printed version of wikipedia be great, even if we didn't have an opertunity to make money off of it?
(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
LDan
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