Thought number 1: Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it? That should distinguish us from the Columbia Encyclopedia and the Britannica, all right! Leaving Wikipedia subject to attack only by the clan Wallechinsky... (and, conceivably, disgruntled members of the list who object to their inclusion).
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest. If we claim to be producing an encyclopedia, and do not have any other way of knowing what should be in it other than to compare its contents with some other encyclopedia, we're certainly leeching off of someone else's work, regardless of whether or not they can conduct a successful lawsuit over the matter.
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some
other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest.
It's a fair point, but I bet it's a stage other encyclopedias go through, to check that their coverage doesn't have obvious gaps. Which is even more likely to be true at WP, given that no one is actually responsible for anything. As far as I can see we're going to end up with much fresher treatments of most topics - this shouldn't be allowed to impinge, of course, but it's not daft in the context of looking to provide a reference work.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some
other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest.
It's a fair point,
It would be a fair point, if it weren't a complete and total straw man argument. No one has suggested that we do any such thing, and I have spoken against it several times.
Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.
Wikipedia the website is going to be comprehensive in every sense of the word, meaning that of course we will eventually have articles covering everything that's in every other encyclopedia ever written plus more. It's totally and completely legitimate for us to rely on reference works -- including other encylopedias, all of them -- to ensure our goal of the widest possible coverage of every possible encyclopedia topic.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote
Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.
A propos that, I had a look last night at the Cambridge Encyclopedia (ed. David Crystal), which is a very large single volume hardback. The stats were:
- 40000 articles - 2 million words.
Charles
Charles Matthews wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote
Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.
A propos that, I had a look last night at the Cambridge Encyclopedia (ed. David Crystal), which is a very large single volume hardback. The stats were:
- 40000 articles
- 2 million words.
It could be interesting (if it weren't so much work) to produce a comparative table showing on an article by article basis whether or not each encyclopedia has an article on the topic. :-)
Ec
It certainly will, and might very well land us in court. I am not at all sure about that list and how authoritative it is.
Fred
From: dpbsmith@verizon.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 11:26:29 -0600 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org, wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selecting content of print version
Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it?
Fred, until I appoint you Editor-in-Chief of the print version, I'm going to ask you not to speak authoritatively about what it will or won't include. And I'm not going to appoint you Editor-in-Chief.
In fact, we're going to have a community process to determine what belongs, and that process is going to have as it's goal a particular sort of end result, with as clearly-defined parameters as I can make, based on the requirements of print and the overall design needs of a concise encyclopedia.
Random lists of trivia are very unlikely to make it. Remember, the size of Columbia (a typical concise encyclopedia) is 1/10th the size of Wikipedia. This means that 90% of what's in Wikipedia will *not* make it.
--Jimbo
Fred Bauder wrote:
It certainly will, and might very well land us in court. I am not at all sure about that list and how authoritative it is.
Fred
From: dpbsmith@verizon.net Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 11:26:29 -0600 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org, wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selecting content of print version
Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Thought number 1: Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it? That should distinguish us from the Columbia Encyclopedia and the Britannica, all right! Leaving Wikipedia subject to attack only by the clan Wallechinsky... (and, conceivably, disgruntled members of the list who object to their inclusion).
I don't find any need to add this list, but your right in saying that it would distinguish us from the others.. . . (and, what about those members off the list who object to their exclusion.) :-)
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest. If we claim to be producing an encyclopedia, and do not have any other way of knowing what should be in it other than to compare its contents with some other encyclopedia, we're certainly leeching off of someone else's work, regardless of whether or not they can conduct a successful lawsuit over the matter.
But we do have other ways, which will point to other exclusions. Why not use them all, including Columbia? This does not imply that we will have the same contents.
Ec
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
[snip]
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest. If we claim to be producing an encyclopedia, and do not have any other way of knowing what should be in it other than to compare its contents with some other encyclopedia, we're certainly leeching off of someone else's work, regardless of whether or not they can conduct a successful lawsuit over the matter.
But we do have other ways, which will point to other exclusions. Why not use them all, including Columbia? This does not imply that we will have the same contents.
Did I miss something -- or more likely, misspeak myself? I thought this exercise was simply to find out where Wikipedia's coverage was unacceptably thin & ask our contributors to focus on those holes.
And my comment in an earlier email about Columbia's boast of an article for every proper noun from the Bible seems to have taken on a life of its own. I'd only be worried if the _Print_ Wikipedia had that; & frankly speaking, if the editor of the Print version was faced with choosing whether to include the name of a personage who appears once or twice in the Old Testament & is known only to the most serious Rabbinical students & their Christian equivalents at the seminary, or to ensure that there is an article for every president of Venzuela, I would vote for the latter.
Further, even if after this research we learned where Wikipedia was unaccepably thin, we can decide not to address any of these weaknesses. if I may fall back on my credentials (I have a BA in English), I wouldn't lose sleep if Print Wikipedia failed to have an article on John Skelton, a 15th century English poet. Thumbing through my copy of _The Norton Anthology of English Poetry_, I can easily find a dozen names that I would trade to ensure that Wikipedia could boast, say, a complete listing of all of the common songbirds in Australia.
What will happen with the Print Wikipedia (unless Jimbo has negotiated some special deal) is that the publisher will take a snapshot of Wikipedia, extract some 30,000-50,000 articles, subject them to copy-editting & legal review (e.g., finding every mention of "Kyle is a fag" & removing it), then publish it. Completing even a few hundred stubs would burn up the savings any publisher hoped to realize from reprinting an existing source.
I've complained elsewhere that all we do on Wikien-l is talk endlessly about things. I feel that a small group needs to be selected to address this project, & do the required work to bring it off. Or at least let's create another mailling list to discuss this, so that Wikien-l can go back to talking incomclusively about things like who needs to be banned, & the endless edit wars about the proper names for Eastern European rivers & cities, & Middle Eastern topics.
Geoff
Geoff Burling wrote:
On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
[snip]
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest. If we claim to be producing an encyclopedia, and do not have any other way of knowing what should be in it other than to compare its contents with some other encyclopedia, we're certainly leeching off of someone else's work, regardless of whether or not they can conduct a successful lawsuit over the matter.
But we do have other ways, which will point to other exclusions. Why not use them all, including Columbia? This does not imply that we will have the same contents.
Did I miss something -- or more likely, misspeak myself? I thought this exercise was simply to find out where Wikipedia's coverage was unacceptably thin & ask our contributors to focus on those holes.
Not at all, but I can't say that of some of the others. I read it exactly as you say, and thought it was a good idea. Some of our brilliant colleagues took it as an introduction to the topic of copyright violation.
And my comment in an earlier email about Columbia's boast of an article for every proper noun from the Bible seems to have taken on a life of its own.
We should have been making our boasts two years ago, rather than letting Easton take the blame..
I'd only be worried if the _Print_ Wikipedia had that; & frankly speaking, if the editor of the Print version was faced with choosing whether to include the name of a personage who appears once or twice in the Old Testament & is known only to the most serious Rabbinical students & their Christian equivalents at the seminary, or to ensure that there is an article for every president of Venzuela, I would vote for the latter.
Some of these personages are so far down in the begats that one wonders if they might have been misbegotten. If we claimed that one of them had been President of Venezuela, who would notice?
Further, even if after this research we learned where Wikipedia was unaccepably thin, we can decide not to address any of these weaknesses. if I may fall back on my credentials (I have a BA in English), I wouldn't lose sleep if Print Wikipedia failed to have an article on John Skelton, a 15th century English poet. Thumbing through my copy of _The Norton Anthology of English Poetry_, I can easily find a dozen names that I would trade to ensure that Wikipedia could boast, say, a complete listing of all of the common songbirds in Australia.
Red Skelton would mean more to some readers than John Skelton.
What will happen with the Print Wikipedia (unless Jimbo has negotiated some special deal) is that the publisher will take a snapshot of Wikipedia, extract some 30,000-50,000 articles, subject them to copy-editting & legal review (e.g., finding every mention of "Kyle is a fag" & removing it), then publish it. Completing even a few hundred stubs would burn up the savings any publisher hoped to realize from reprinting an existing source.
I hope they're not waiting for us to do it.
I've complained elsewhere that all we do on Wikien-l is talk endlessly about things. I feel that a small group needs to be selected to address this project, & do the required work to bring it off. Or at least let's create another mailling list to discuss this, so that Wikien-l can go back to talking incomclusively about things like who needs to be banned, & the endless edit wars about the proper names for Eastern European rivers & cities, & Middle Eastern topics.
These are great subjects for some people to show how brilliant their ignorance really is.
I completely sympathize with this point. If a print edition is going to be a reality, which I hope it will, people will need to make decisions about it. Excuse me if I appear cynical about that prospect.
Ec
The other day, the community portal "tip of the day" included an IRC channel where one can follow changes to Wikipedia as they are made. How about adding the channel name to the boiler plate on recent changes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges
That way, users following changes would always have that information at hand.
Cheers,
Bill
Bill wrote:
The other day, the community portal "tip of the day" included an IRC channel where one can follow changes to Wikipedia as they are made. How about adding the channel name to the boiler plate on recent changes:
[[Special:Recentchanges]] already contains a link to [[Wikipedia:IRC channels|Chat]], which in turn lists the "recent changes" channels.
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Thought number 1: Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it? That should distinguish us from the Columbia Encyclopedia and the Britannica, all right! Leaving Wikipedia subject to attack only by the clan Wallechinsky... (and, conceivably, disgruntled members of the list who object to their inclusion).
It strikes me as unlikely that such "list" articles will make the cut.
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest. If we claim to be producing an encyclopedia, and do not have any other way of knowing what should be in it other than to compare its contents with some other encyclopedia, we're certainly leeching off of someone else's work, regardless of whether or not they can conduct a successful lawsuit over the matter.
Well, since absolutely no one has defend the idea of doing that, I don't really know what you're speaking out against.
--Jimbo
On Thursday 04 March 2004 18:22, Jimmy Wales wrote:
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Thought number 1: Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it? That should distinguish us from the Columbia Encyclopedia and
It strikes me as unlikely that such "list" articles will make the cut.
Surely they can't be used as regulary articles but they could be used for making a themed index at the end of the book.