Sue Gardner wrote:
Hi folks,
I wrote here earlier about the process we're imagining for this project; I'm going to take a minute now to write about the substance of the work. This isn't a direct response to any of the comments made here thus far, but I hope it'll indirectly speak to some of the issues you've brought up.
As always, I would love your input. The goal here is to work towards a small number of sharply-focused highest-priority questions, so we can explore each one deeply, and come up with actionable priorities.
- How do we ensure our materials are protected and preserved in usable
form, so they continue to be available forever?
Besides the off-planet complete database-backup I envisioned, another intriguing conceit would be to start on the process of transcribing wikipedia onto vellum with non-corrosive and persistent ink (I don't think there are enough stone tablets, or even clay for tablets to ever suffice, but vellum is clearly unlimited, if a little slow to come by).
Naturally it would be reasonable to start the work on either the 1000 articles each wikipedia should have, or perhaps the featured articles or the like in each language. Or on the other hand, on the general theory of wikipedian ethos, simply as the spirit moved each actual artisan skilled in the art of old-fashioned calligraphy.
I am not saying this should necessarily be something the foundation should devote great resources towards, but I am putting it out there for people to be inspired by...
There could be great art to be had with this. Consider for instance the possibility of putting the metadata of the article (references, footnotes, etc.) as glosses in the margin, possibly even in a number of levels of margin glosses.
And the oft agonized question of attribution and license inclusion. My suggestion is that it would be cool to actually impregnate each piece of vellum with an invisible ink palimpsest of the full GFDL, in very small print (not by hand, but some more mechanical process), and maybe the contributors too, and perhaps even crosswise printed, so there could be two levels of invisible ink palimpsest present). Then there could be a very small visible note in the bottom of each sheet to read the vellum with an UV- light source for the full license and list of contributors.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen