One example of the difference is in internal references (or q.v. entries). Even if the 'news style' first section approach is used, the first section of the full Wikipedia article would contain links to articles that don't exist in the concise version.
Oh come on. That is easy to fix - don't mark what would be dead links in a concise version as anything special. This could be done automatically.
Another difference was raised by Mav himself, when he asked that 'we have no forks and no freezing of Wikipedia articles.' I give firm support to the idea that we should never freeze a Wikipedia article in the process of creating the Concise Print version. But the urgency of creating the print ready version imposes two areas of discipline. The first is (IMHO) that we will need to freeze an article as ready.
Sifter software has already been written that exports the current article version of selected articles to another site. It is therefore a fallacy to think that freezing the article is the only option. Just edit the Wikipedia article into news style and then select the resulting version as ready for print. Let a script take care of the rest (removing everything but the lead section, converting links to something that would work in print, removing what would be empty links, etc.).
The second was raised by Ray Saintonge (Ec), and that is that the project will probably need to restrict editing rights, something that we'd never want in Wikipedia.
Only give selected people the ability to use the sifter software. Fixed without the need for a fork or freezing Wikipedia content.
When I wrote the first note about using the 'Language Wiki' method of creating a fork, I just assumed that the fork was going to happen.
So long as I'm still breathing I will strenuously fight against any Wikimedia-sponsored fork.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
Daniel Mayer wrote:
So long as I'm still breathing I will strenuously fight against any Wikimedia-sponsored fork.
Me, too, so let's not sweat about that part too much.
I'm not yet convinced that there's any need for it, but we really need some wordcount statistics to have a grasp of what would be needed.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
So long as I'm still breathing I will strenuously fight against any Wikimedia-sponsored fork.
Me, too, so let's not sweat about that part too much.
I suppose this begs the question, "When is a fork a fork?" Many of Wikipedia's sister projects have some characteristics of a fork, but they all come under the same umbrella.
Ec
I haven't really been paying attention, but it seems like the possibility of a printed snapshot of Wikipedia is under discussion.
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/docs/legal.html .
Zero.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
zero 0000 wrote:
I haven't really been paying attention, but it seems like the possibility of a printed snapshot of Wikipedia is under discussion.
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
I don't see that as possible unless the contributors have signed away their copyrights. In previous discussions about possibly changing from FDL to something else, there was a strong feeling that getting these rights from all who had them would be impossible.
Ec
This is an excellent cautionary tale. Rest assured, I approach all contracts with extreme paranoia born of many, ahem, interesting experiences as a small business dealing regularly with very big name Internet companies.
zero 0000 wrote:
I haven't really been paying attention, but it seems like the possibility of a printed snapshot of Wikipedia is under discussion.
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
See http://mathworld.wolfram.com/docs/legal.html .
Zero.
Do you Yahoo!? Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, zero 0000 wrote:
I haven't really been paying attention, but it seems like the possibility of a printed snapshot of Wikipedia is under discussion.
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
My understanding of this case was that Weisstein thought he was selling the rights to only _ONE_ version of his online mathematics encyclopedia, when the lawyers at Chemical Rubber actually snuck language into his contract that enabled them to claim _ALL_ of his encyclopedia.
I assume that Jimbo, being a somewhat successful businessman, usually has any contract he considers signing reviewed first by a lawyer. In this case, I hope he picks a lawyer familiar with publishing law.
Twenty years ago, when I was considering a career in writing, I had the impression that publishers have an ethical standard higher than the music industry (where an artist can sell a million copies of an album, & still make less money than had she/he worked at McDonald's). I am no longer so sure of that impression.
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote:
On Sat, 28 Feb 2004, zero 0000 wrote:
I hope you are all very very VERY familiar with the disastrous experiences of Eric Weisstein when he gave a publisher permission to print a snapshot of his online mathematics encyclopedia.
My understanding of this case was that Weisstein thought he was selling the rights to only _ONE_ version of his online mathematics encyclopedia, when the lawyers at Chemical Rubber actually snuck language into his contract that enabled them to claim _ALL_ of his encyclopedia.
I only briefly reviewed Weisstein's "short" summary, but did note that much of what had been contributed to the MathWorld website was by volunteers. How could he possibly speak for them?
I assume that Jimbo, being a somewhat successful businessman, usually has any contract he considers signing reviewed first by a lawyer. In this case, I hope he picks a lawyer familiar with publishing law.
Jimbo does not own the copyrights so he does not have the authority to sign them away. I'm sure that any attempt by the publisher to usurp those rights would be met by new forks from several other members who already have downloaded the database into their own machines, some of them outside of the United States. Many Wikipedians already have concerns about copyright laws, so the publisher's lawyers could be kept very busy.
Twenty years ago, when I was considering a career in writing, I had the impression that publishers have an ethical standard higher than the music industry (where an artist can sell a million copies of an album, & still make less money than had she/he worked at McDonald's). I am no longer so sure of that impression.
Riiight! And many musicians still believe that the recording companies' campaigns against MP3's are to protect the rights of the artists. :-)
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
So long as I'm still breathing I will strenuously fight against any Wikimedia-sponsored fork.
Me, too, so let's not sweat about that part too much.
I suppose this begs the question, "When is a fork a fork?" Many of Wikipedia's sister projects have some characteristics of a fork, but they all come under the same umbrella.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
I think what Mav is against, and what I'm against, is that we should copy a ton of articles out of Wikipedia proper and into another space (of whatever kind) and then edit edit edit those, while having the regular versions go off in their own direction. That seems like a lot of wasted effort.
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.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
So long as I'm still breathing I will strenuously fight against any Wikimedia-sponsored fork.
Me, too, so let's not sweat about that part too much.
I suppose this begs the question, "When is a fork a fork?" Many of Wikipedia's sister projects have some characteristics of a fork, but they all come under the same umbrella.
Yes, you're absolutely right.
I think what Mav is against, and what I'm against, is that we should copy a ton of articles out of Wikipedia proper and into another space (of whatever kind) and then edit edit edit those, while having the regular versions go off in their own direction. That seems like a lot of wasted effort.
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.
In some respects I feel that I have ended up in a role reversal here. I have clearly expressed myself as a committed inclusionist on Wikipedia, but find myself arguing from the opposite side in relation to the print edition, or at least the first printed edition. Some of the issues that are germane to the first edition may fade away for future editions.
To me the key to the success of this venture will be the establishment of realistic production minded goals. It's about what works. It's about saying there is no time to debate some esoteric point anymore. It's about being cautious around adopting untested software based solutions without even knowing how some of our very good but otherwise technically challenged contributors will confront any learning curve that such software implies. (We still have many contributors who feel that all html markup should be banned.) It's about making tough, accurate time-constrained decisions based on a realistic acceptance of all our limitations.
Philosophically, it doesn't much matter to me whether or not this is accomplished by way of a fork. The question, "Does it work?" is more significant here.
There is the old saw that "there is never a second chance to make a first impression." One of the most unrelenting arguments about a project such as Wikipedia is that you can never rely on it for accurate information. Those are the people that you want proven wrong! Making the first edition as big as possible is a high risk strategy which, if it fails, could have a devastating impact on any project of this kind by anybody in the future. This should explain my own strong feelings that a first edition would be better to have more modest goals in which size rather than accuracy is sacrificed.
I hope that this didn't sound too much like a rant. :-) Ec
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
-- ---<>--- -- A house without walls cannot fall. Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org -- ---<>--- --
Daniel Mayer wrote:
One example of the difference is in internal references (or q.v. entries). Even if the 'news style' first section approach is used, the first section of the full Wikipedia article would contain links to articles that don't exist in the concise version.
Oh come on. That is easy to fix - don't mark what would be dead links in a concise version as anything special. This could be done automatically.
But we also often use links to be explanatory, which isn't appropriate for print. On Wikipedia we can say "follower of [[so-and-so]]", but in print, you really should say "follower of [[so-and-so]], who was blah-blah-blah".
Of course, the non-fork solution is to make Wikipedia articles like that. Which I do to some extent, because I don't like, even on the web, the idea of having to click through to another article to make sense of the current one. But it's a massive task, as currently a lot of Wikipedia articles are not fully intelligible on their own, without the links.
-Mark