I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia. The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (2067 pages).
The Britannica Concise has 28,000 entries. The Columbia has 51,000 entries. I have no idea of estimated word or byte counts for those.
One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st, in time for the holiday gift season. I'm unsure of how early before that *we* would need to be ready.
I've only begun talking to them about it, which is why I won't say who it is just yet. But they understand our license and want to work with us.
The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have something like that ready in time? Or should we shoot for next year?
I have long stated a goal that "Wikipedia 1.0" be ready in December of this year, although we haven't actually made any formal decisions about how we're going to do that.
So this is more ambitious and less ambitious. More ambitious in the sense that we'd be trying to meet an earlier deadline. Less ambitious in the sense that we'd be trying to do something smaller than a full Britannica-killer.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia. The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (2067 pages).
...
The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have something like that ready in time? Or should we shoot for next year?
Well, part of that would hinge on what exactly we're going to be doing for them. Are we going to give them wikitext and they're going to properly format it and work out the GFDL issues and whatnot? Or are we expected to provide them material in whatever their preferred format is, and with all the details worked out?
If the former, it should be doable, but we'd need to get started quickly with selecting articles and refining their opening sections to be suitable as stand-alone "concise" articles. With long articles this is ideally already the case (a short summary at the beginning), so can be edited in-place on Wikipedia, but with medium-length biographies we don't usually want to give the 5-sentence summary of their life followed by a 15-sentence elaboration, so a fork of the content might be necessary there to produce a separate "concise version".
And of course a bunch of coding stuff is needed to handle this gracefully.
-Mark
Delirium wrote:
Well, part of that would hinge on what exactly we're going to be doing for them. Are we going to give them wikitext and they're going to properly format it and work out the GFDL issues and whatnot? Or are we expected to provide them material in whatever their preferred format is, and with all the details worked out?
I'd say that's open ended at this point. Everything is. We should brainstorm about it.
Of course any publisher can come in and take the wikitext and make their own "Joe's Publishing Company Encyclopedia", without consulting us.
But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the Wikipedia name. And for that we probably want to do as much of the work as we can.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for
us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the Wikipedia name. And for that we probably want to do as much of the work as we can.
--Jimbo
We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status. I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company would have to be set up.
I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag it as a potential issue.
Caroline
It should be no problem. Any revenue from the book sales would be taxable as unrelated business income. I'll get specific guidance before doing anything, though.
Caroline Ford wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for
us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the Wikipedia name. And for that we probably want to do as much of the work as we can.
--Jimbo
We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status. I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company would have to be set up.
I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag it as a potential issue.
Caroline
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
--On Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:00 PM +0000 Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for
us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the Wikipedia name. And for that we probably want to do as much of the work as we can.
--Jimbo
We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status. I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company would have to be set up.
I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag it as a potential issue.
Caroline
It's an issue to some extent - but non-profit groups - college honor societies, churches, etc do fund raising activities all the time. I believe the issue is in what the money can be used for - and it can be and is used for employee salaries, specifically.
Nathan
Nathan Russell wrote:
--On Thursday, February 26, 2004 9:00 PM +0000 Caroline Ford caroline@secretlondon.me.uk wrote:
We need to check how this affects our not-for-profit status. I guess that the plan would be for the wikimedia foundation to get some sort of profit share? In the UK this could count as primary purpose trading under UK Charity Law (depending on what the objects of the charity were) - and would be legal. In some cases a trading company would have to be set up.
I know _nothing_ about US not-for-profit law - I just thought I'd flag it as a potential issue.
Caroline
It's an issue to some extent - but non-profit groups - college honor societies, churches, etc do fund raising activities all the time. I believe the issue is in what the money can be used for - and it can be and is used for employee salaries, specifically.
Any gross revenue that is subject to tax may be reduced by all relevant expenses. As long as we continue to need donations it suggests that the expenses exceed revenue, in which case taxes are a non-issue. Having employees, however, could intrduce us to the wonderful bureaucratic world of tax wihholding and other employment standards.
Ec
--On Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:45 PM -0800 Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Well, part of that would hinge on what exactly we're going to be doing for them. Are we going to give them wikitext and they're going to properly format it and work out the GFDL issues and whatnot? Or are we expected to provide them material in whatever their preferred format is, and with all the details worked out?
I'd say that's open ended at this point. Everything is. We should brainstorm about it.
Agreed. And we should clean up some stuff, for example "list of obscure things" articles before we gather content for any such project.
Of course any publisher can come in and take the wikitext and make their own "Joe's Publishing Company Encyclopedia", without consulting us.
But what makes more sense for us, and for a publisher I think, is for us to use this to "prove" our quality by going to print, under the Wikipedia name. And for that we probably want to do as much of the work as we can.
--Jimbo
Do you/somebody still hold trademark on "Wikipedia?"
Nathan
Nathan Russell wrote:
Agreed. And we should clean up some stuff, for example "list of obscure things" articles before we gather content for any such project.
That has nothing to do with the first Print edition. Lists of obscure things are a constructive fact of life on Wikipedia, and they can provide an endless source of fascination to readers. Wallechinsky's "Book of Lists" was very popular when it came out, so we shouldn't rule out this sort of thing for future editions. The "clean up" proposal sounds ominous.
Nevertheless, I don't think we're ready to handle this sort of thing for a first edition with a tight publishing deadline, so it would just not be imported.
Ec
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Ray Saintonge wrote: | Nathan Russell wrote: | |> Agreed. And we should clean up some stuff, for example "list of |> obscure things" articles before we gather content for any such project. | | | That has nothing to do with the first Print edition. Lists of obscure | things are a constructive fact of life on Wikipedia, and they can | provide an endless source of fascination to readers. Wallechinsky's | "Book of Lists" was very popular when it came out, so we shouldn't rule | out this sort of thing for future editions. The "clean up" proposal | sounds ominous. | | Nevertheless, I don't think we're ready to handle this sort of thing for | a first edition with a tight publishing deadline, so it would just not | be imported.
I *meant* not importing it, NOT deleting it from WP!
Nathan
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia. The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (2067 pages).
The Britannica Concise has 28,000 entries. The Columbia has 51,000 entries. I have no idea of estimated word or byte counts for those.
One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st, in time for the holiday gift season. I'm unsure of how early before that *we* would need to be ready.
I've only begun talking to them about it, which is why I won't say who it is just yet. But they understand our license and want to work with us.
The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have something like that ready in time? Or should we shoot for next year?
I have long stated a goal that "Wikipedia 1.0" be ready in December of this year, although we haven't actually made any formal decisions about how we're going to do that.
Considering that just last night, I raised the complaint that 1.0 was the sort of thing that was all talk and no action, I have to react positively to this news. I also believe that getting this project under way may ease the inclusion/deletion wars. The kind of deletions that have raised so many objections on Wikipedia may actually be welcome in 1.0.
How does ready for market by October 1 translate into when the material needs to be ready for printing? The publisher will need time to do his work.
To work in that time scale the first edition has to be quite modest. A lot more can go into the second edition. For now there is a need to decide what topic areas can be included. I think it would be better to have fewer areas, but ones where we can feel sure that a comprehensive presentation can be made. [[Countries of the World]] would be an obvious area, but someone will need to go through all the articles to ensure that all countries have been brought to the same standard.
Editing will need to be a lot more disciplined than has been the case on Wikipedia, with little time for wrangling.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
How does ready for market by October 1 translate into when the material needs to be ready for printing? The publisher will need time to do his work.
That's an excellent question. I'll try to get that clarified.
I suppose it depends in part on how "finished" the product would be upon delivery. Formats, things like that.
--Jimbo
On 02/26/04 18:37, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia. One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st, in time for the holiday gift season. I'm unsure of how early before that *we* would need to be ready. The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have something like that ready in time? Or should we shoot for next year?
This sounds 100% more interesting than getting annoyed at the latest problem user :-D
Call it 'Wikipedia 0.8.' What's a criterion? And how can J. Random User (e.g. me) help?
- d.
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia. The concept that they are most interested in at the moment is a single large volume, something similar to the Columbia Encyclopedia (a desktop encyclopedia, 3200 pages) or Britannica Concise Encyclopedia (2067 pages).
The Britannica Concise has 28,000 entries. The Columbia has 51,000 entries. I have no idea of estimated word or byte counts for those.
One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st, in time for the holiday gift season. I'm unsure of how early before that *we* would need to be ready.
I've only begun talking to them about it, which is why I won't say who it is just yet. But they understand our license and want to work with us.
The question was asked of me, and I ask of the community: can we have something like that ready in time? Or should we shoot for next year?
I've been toying with the idea of creating my own "Geoff's 0.9" snapshot of Wikipedia, just as a proof-of-concept. Unfortunately, the work would involve a lot more than one person can do in a few days, but here are the steps I considered, after getting a complete dump of the Wikipedia database:
1. Compile a list of articles, organized by links. This would include non-existant articles. From this list, decide that only the top 30,000 to 50,000 articles will be included.
2. Comb through all of the articles that have been the subject of great disagreement, read the arguments in the Talk: pages, & make a final decision on which side is right, & make the edit.
3. Finish any stub articles that appear in this listing.
4. Review every article that has either not been edited for a year or has hed less than, say, 5 edits. If more work needs to be done, do it.
5. Monitor the New Articles list, to fill in any non-existant articles.
6. Write non-existent articles, using public domain material, or material from Talk: pages. (I actually consider this would be the least pleasant step.)
7. Remove all Talk: pages, User: pages, unlinked Disambiguation pages, history pages, & other material that can be considered housekeeping. (Although the Wikicivics pages should be kept.)
8. Verify that all external links work.
9. Offer for review. Yes, it will be uneven, biassed & widely criticised -- but at least it will offer everyone concerned a high-level view of what needs to be done, & those of us more interested in a finished product can devote themselves to that -- & leave the current version of Wikipedia to those who want to deal with certain contributors.
Of course, the first step after 1.0 would be to figure out how to integrate that version into the pre-1.0 Wikipedia material. (In other words, if you thought dealing with certain contributors was a pain, this would be even worse. :-()
Geoff
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I've been approached by a major publisher about the possibility of working with us to producing and publish a print edition of Wikipedia.
One goal would be to have something ready for market by October 1st, in time for the holiday gift season. I'm unsure of how early before that *we* would need to be ready.
I suppose what we most need for this is a system whereby we can mark articles (rather: specific article revisions) as "ready for print".
For now, I think we can do something similar (or perhaps even identical) to "Featured Articles" (formerly "Brilliant Prose"), except of course making it clear that this is for a print encyclopedia. Ideally, we should keep a running total of the number of articles and the total number of bytes in them as we build up this list.
So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?
Timwi
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Timwi wrote:
So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?
I think it needs to be more systematic than that.
Please do elaborate! I want to hear your thoughts.
On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Timwi wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Timwi wrote:
So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?
I think it needs to be more systematic than that.
Please do elaborate! I want to hear your thoughts.
Perhaps we should build up a list of topic we should have methodologically (going through categories like coutries, sciences, arts,etc.) and then import those articles in.
Imran
Imran Ghory wrote:
On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Timwi wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Timwi wrote:
So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?
I think it needs to be more systematic than that.
Please do elaborate! I want to hear your thoughts.
Perhaps we should build up a list of topic we should have methodologically (going through categories like coutries, sciences, arts,etc.) and then import those articles in.
That would be a good place to start. Looking at the top level topics referenced from the Main Page would be good, and including general articles about what each of these subjects is would be important. Those articles should be level in quality. The big risk for 1.0 is to bite off more than we can chew. If 1.0 is seen as reliable but small, then people will look forward to the expanded 2.0
We also need to do some serious fact checking. I just looked at the page for the year 1237. We show 11 items. The book "The Timetables of History" has only 3 items. Two of them we didn't have. We had an error in the one that we did include. (The Mongols invaded Russia in 1237, but not as The Golden Horde since it did not come into existence until 1242) People will judge the work on the reliability of these obscure details. When it is published we should be prepared for a flood of claims saying that this or that is in error.
We need to consider the way that the work is organized. Since Wikipedia is not paper we have not had to deal with most of the exigencies of a paper encyclopedia. A seemingly simple issue, such as should all articles be in alphabetical order, can become a significant one. We have well over 2,000 year pages that are worth including, but not alphabetically.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote
We need to consider the way that the work is organized.
I'm a published author, and (more to the point) saw my 'Teach Yourself Go' (Hodder Headline/NTC) through all stages from an outline template through to the book on a zip disk ready for the printers. I'd like to say this, about the copy editing and proof reading stage - I really don't think it can be done live on Wikipedia, in a meaningful way. It would really have to be the case that any publisher started with the Wikipedia text and let loose a team of pro copy editors to hack it into some sort of shape. From the publishers' point of view this is probably only feasible for cost by having people work from home; but that is hardly a Wikipedia concern.
It is really easy to come up with a list of issues of consistency, mark-up, demarcation of areas and so on. I find it hard to believe this can fruitfully be discussed here, though.
By the way, this is good, positive news, to add to the new servers (which have hardly been mentioned here).
Charles
On 02/27/04 00:42, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Timwi wrote:
So, someone wanna start [[Wikipedia:Articles selected for print]] as well as [[Wikipedia:Print candidate articles]] (or [[Wikipedia:Vote for inclusion in print]] or whatever)?
I think it needs to be more systematic than that.
It needs to be a separate branch, taking stuff from the trunk as it sees fit. See [[fork (software)]] and think of the process that led to [[EGCS]] or [[Mozilla Firefox]] applied to Wikipedia: an internal fork.
Tag it "Wikipedia Concise Print" or something.
- d.