Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as the year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in print such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a new project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia based on Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were formulated some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found who would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles. The paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately. They are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other single-volume encyclopedias. At a price of €19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages, it will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume will be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected for German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of current but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
1) The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit parts of their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
2) The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider range of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
3) For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement as well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland
Wikimedia Deutschland did a great job of putting this together and everyone here at the Foundation can't wait to get a copy to enjoy (although most of us will have to learn German in a hurry...but I'm sure it will be worth it). I blogged about it on the Foundation website:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/
Kul Takanao Wadhwa Head of Business Development Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. kul@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 ext. 603
Sebastian Moleski wrote:
Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as the year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in print such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a new project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia based on Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were formulated some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found who would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles. The paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately. They are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other single-volume encyclopedias. At a price of €19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages, it will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume will be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected for German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of current but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
- The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit parts of
their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
- The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider range
of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
- For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement as well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Can you give us any information on the financial aspects of this event? I'm assuming that any proceeds remaining after the Bertelsmann share accrues to the Wikimedia Foundation rather than Wikimedia Deutschland (given the ownership of the marks and website etc.) but if this isn't the case can you outline how it works? Great job, it will be very interesting to see how this venture turns out.
Nathan
On 4/22/08, Kul Takanao Wadhwa kwadhwa@wikimedia.org wrote:
Wikimedia Deutschland did a great job of putting this together and everyone here at the Foundation can't wait to get a copy to enjoy (although most of us will have to learn German in a hurry...but I'm sure it will be worth it). I blogged about it on the Foundation website:
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2008/04/22/wikipedia-in-german-book-form/
Kul Takanao Wadhwa Head of Business Development Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. kul@wikimedia.org (415) 839-6885 ext. 603
Sebastian Moleski wrote:
Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as
the
year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in
such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a
new
project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia
based on
Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were
formulated
some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found
who
would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles.
The
paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately.
They
are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other
single-volume
encyclopedias. At a price of €19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages,
it
will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume
will
be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected
for
German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of
current
but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
- The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit
parts of
their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
- The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider
range
of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
- For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement
as
well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
I was curious how the German press will react. Up to now, Google news reports about 103 newspaper on-line articles. Most of them simply tell by their own words what they learned from the news agency dpa. Frankfurter Allgemeine, the most important newspaper (center-right), has even two commentaries about the Bertelsmann edition, both somewhat mocking. One of them said that the ideals of Wikipedia have been betrayed, because Wikipedia now trusts more to the literary editors of a big business group than to the Wikipedia contributors, who were not asked whether they want to become unpaid Bertelsmann collaborators. But most of the papers were neutral or slightly positive. By the way, I myself consider to buy a copy for my parents to christmas. Ziko
A little press review: Two authors of Frankfurter Allgemeine, Germany's most important daily paper, make a mockery of the Bertelsmann edition.
Netzzeitung
2008/4/22 Sebastian Moleski sebmol@gmail.com:
Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as the year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in print such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a new project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia based on Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were formulated some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found who would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles. The paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately. They are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other single-volume encyclopedias. At a price of €19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages, it will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume will be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected for German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of current but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
- The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit parts
of their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
- The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider
range of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
- For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement as well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2008/4/22 Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
I was curious how the German press will react. Up to now, Google news reports about 103 newspaper on-line articles. Most of them simply tell by their own words what they learned from the news agency dpa. Frankfurter Allgemeine, the most important newspaper (center-right), has even two commentaries about the Bertelsmann edition, both somewhat mocking. One of them said that the ideals of Wikipedia have been betrayed, because Wikipedia now trusts more to the literary editors of a big business group than to the Wikipedia contributors, who were not asked whether they want to become unpaid Bertelsmann collaborators. But most of the papers were neutral or slightly positive. By the way, I myself consider to buy a copy for my parents to christmas. Ziko
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Frankfurter Allgemeine of what Wikipedia is. Is it not commonly understood that Wikipedia content is free to reuse by whomever wishes to use it (under the terms of the GFDL), even for commercial purposes?
Why does a particular reuse of Wikipedia content (which we can't, and wouldn't want to, control) reflect anything on Wikipedia?
On 23/04/2008, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Frankfurter Allgemeine of what Wikipedia is. Is it not commonly understood that Wikipedia content is free to reuse by whomever wishes to use it (under the terms of the GFDL), even for commercial purposes?
This is where we try to gently educate as we go :-)
- d.
2008/4/23 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 23/04/2008, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
This betrays a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of Frankfurter Allgemeine of what Wikipedia is. Is it not commonly understood that Wikipedia content is free to reuse by whomever wishes to use it (under the terms of the GFDL), even for commercial purposes?
This is where we try to gently educate as we go :-)
- d.
Perhaps the peeved approach is not the best way to respond =] Assuming that I am not misinterpreting what Ziko said regarding FAZ, does the newspaper provide an opportunity to respond?
On 23/04/2008, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps the peeved approach is not the best way to respond =] Assuming that I am not misinterpreting what Ziko said regarding FAZ, does the newspaper provide an opportunity to respond?
Matthias does lots of .de media, I assume someone will write a suitable editor's letter :-)
- d.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23wiki.html?ref=technology
Article today by Noam Cohen in the NY Times.
Nathan
On WDR Teletext a popular computer journalist, Jörg Schieb, blogged about the Bertelsmann edition. He was sceptical that the printed edition will provide new target groups to Wikipedia, because Wikipedia is online for free, always up to date and so on. Because of the Digital Divide, I do believe that the printed edition can reach some people who hardly ever use the net, although they are connected. Maybe those people get interested in the online Wikipedia having seen the printed edition. Actually, the printed edition already had an important effect on Wikipedia's image: the journalists stress out how useful the internet encyclopaedia is compared to a printed book... Ziko
2008/4/23 Nathan nawrich@gmail.com:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/business/media/23wiki.html?ref=technology
Article today by Noam Cohen in the NY Times.
Nathan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 12:37 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps the peeved approach is not the best way to respond =] Assuming that I am not misinterpreting what Ziko said regarding FAZ, does the newspaper provide an opportunity to respond?
FAZ wrote three articles on that news yesterday and two more today. I spoke with two of the journalist and it was an honest exchange of ideas and facts.
There was some irony in this conversation when they complained to me that this news was blown out of proportion by the media and that there are much more interesting topics at wikipedia to talk about. In return, I gave them a list of topics they at least should be interested in, for example Semantic MediaWiki.
All in all, it was a good thing we spoke :)
Mathias
This is interesting, but it raises a lot of questions:
1. So much for "free," I guess.
2. How will this "make wikipedia material accessible to a wider range of readers" than wikipedia on-line? Can you be more specific about that?
3. Is it really right to call this "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" -- it's not really Wikipedia. It's some version of Wikipedia but it's certainly not Wikipedia.
4. Only one dollar to Wikimedia per copy? That's a measly 5% royalty. Who gets the rest?
5. Who's listed as "author" or "editor" or whatever .... according to the print way of doing things? Who signed the contract with Bertelsmann?
Sebastian Moleski sebmol@gmail.com wrote: Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as the year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in print such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a new project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia based on Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were formulated some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found who would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles. The paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately. They are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other single-volume encyclopedias. At a price of 19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages, it will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume will be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected for German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of current but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
1) The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit parts of their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
2) The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider range of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
3) For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement as well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
This is interesting, but it raises a lot of questions:
- So much for "free," I guess.
In what sense? For free as in beer: de.wikipedia.org isn't going anywhere.
For free as in speech: The Free Encyclopedia is about free content, free licenses. Freedom for the reader to use, adapt and distribute. Free cultural works are not anti-commercial. So a commercial product does not in any way encroach on the freedom of the works -- any more than offering pre-compiled software for convenience means that software is not "open source".
- How will this "make wikipedia material accessible to a wider range of readers" than wikipedia on-line? Can you be more specific about that?
Our mission is to "disseminate [our content] effectively and globally". I'm not speaking on behalf of WMDE, but it's clear to me that there are many people (and institutions) around the world who are not comfortable with purely internet-based things. Books, they can grok.
Congrats WMDE, I think this is really exciting and I look forward to seeing the German reaction.
cheers Brianna
Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
- How will this "make wikipedia material accessible to a wider range of readers" than wikipedia on-line? Can you be more specific about that?
Our mission is to "disseminate [our content] effectively and globally". I'm not speaking on behalf of WMDE, but it's clear to me that there are many people (and institutions) around the world who are not comfortable with purely internet-based things. Books, they can grok.
1. Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
2. And free as in anyone can use and re-use it? I hope so. However, can, say, Indian printers make even cheaper editions and sell them wherever they want in all parts of the world, even Europe?
It's not a silly question. Books, publishers, and the structure of that business come with a lot of old traditions that aren't so easy to get around.
3. This is German encyclopedia--an important but hardly global language. It is a commercial endeavor by a publishing behemoth for a prosperous European audience. Ideals of global distribution to those underserved by the Internet hardly seem to apply here.
Perhaps the real value to wikipedians is the increased "branding" of wikipedia? I don't know, but I think this print projects feels like a diminution of wikipedia. ButI respect people's labor, always, and I don't want to denigrate that. I just wonder why this is any sort of priority to wikipedians.
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On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.
- And free as in anyone can use and re-use it? I hope so. However, can, say, Indian printers make even cheaper editions and sell them wherever they want in all parts of the world, even Europe?
Yep - except possibly the Wikipedia trademark, which is a trademark matter and not a copyright matter.
(An analogy: you can buy Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or you can download the same thing free from centos.org minus the Red Hat trademarked graphics.)
- This is German encyclopedia--an important but hardly global language. It is a commercial endeavor by a publishing behemoth for a prosperous European audience. Ideals of global distribution to those underserved by the Internet hardly seem to apply here.
It's a very important proof of concept for the idea of open source content production. Wikipedia DVDs in German have already sold very nicely (as commercial products). A book further demonstrates the viability of the model for producing a "real" encyclopedia.
Perhaps the real value to wikipedians is the increased "branding" of wikipedia? I don't know, but I think this print projects feels like a diminution of wikipedia. ButI respect people's labor, always, and I don't want to denigrate that. I just wonder why this is any sort of priority to wikipedians.
Ever since the wikipedia.com days, producing printed final editions has been a goal. This involves crass commerciality to make it a happener, because dead trees with ink on cost money to make and distribute.
See Erik Moller's essay "NC Licenses Considered Harmful" for a detailed opinion of why commerciality is good for free culture, as it provably has been for free software:
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/9/11/16331/0655
- d.
2008/4/23 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.
Yeah. 20 EUR is, what, fifteen quid? That's pretty cheap for a hardbound general reference work, especially one run off with decent print standards (ie, colour throughout)
Britannica Concise is £50 for 2k pp.; DK's illustrated childrens' encyclopedia is £30 for 800pp; some random A-Z Reference Book is £25 for 1400pp; Hutchinson Encyclopedia is £40 for 1000pp.; Penguin Concise Encyclopedia is £19 for 1000pp (but is a rather cheap-looking paperback, probably not much in the way of colour)
Assuming the German one-volume quick-reference market is about the same as ours, it's priced well.
Andrew Gray wrote:
2008/4/23 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell wrote:
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.
Yeah. 20 EUR is, what, fifteen quid? That's pretty cheap for a hardbound general reference work, especially one run off with decent print standards (ie, colour throughout)
Britannica Concise is £50 for 2k pp.; DK's illustrated childrens' encyclopedia is £30 for 800pp; some random A-Z Reference Book is £25 for 1400pp; Hutchinson Encyclopedia is £40 for 1000pp.; Penguin Concise Encyclopedia is £19 for 1000pp (but is a rather cheap-looking paperback, probably not much in the way of colour)
Assuming the German one-volume quick-reference market is about the same as ours, it's priced well.
Indeed, anyone who would put an excessive price on an open source work runs the risk that anyone could legally reprint the same work, and undercut the overpriced edition.
Ec .
At 12:04 +0100 23/4/08, Andrew Gray wrote:
2008/4/23 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.
Yeah. 20 EUR is, what, fifteen quid? That's pretty cheap for a hardbound general reference work, especially one run off with decent print standards (ie, colour throughout)
Britannica Concise is £50 for 2k pp.; DK's illustrated childrens' encyclopedia is £30 for 800pp; some random A-Z Reference Book is £25 for 1400pp; Hutchinson Encyclopedia is £40 for 1000pp.; Penguin Concise Encyclopedia is £19 for 1000pp (but is a rather cheap-looking paperback, probably not much in the way of colour)
Assuming the German one-volume quick-reference market is about the same as ours, it's priced well.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
And consider these two copyright expired texts:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hung-Lou-Meng-Dream-Chamber/dp/1406512605/r
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hung-Meng-Dream-Chamber-Book/dp/1406512613/
A snip at 36 quid for two volumes?
The text is freely available at Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9603
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9604
or
Gordo
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 5:48 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
Not bad for a 1000-page lump of dead tree, I'd say.
Eh, I can get an entire encyclopedia from the thrift store for $0.50/volume (less when there are sales). Sure, it'll be a few years old, but the overall quality will probably still be better.
2008/4/23 Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com:
Brianna Laugher brianna.laugher@gmail.com wrote:
- How will this "make wikipedia material accessible to a wider range of readers" than wikipedia on-line? Can you be more specific about that?
Our mission is to "disseminate [our content] effectively and globally". I'm not speaking on behalf of WMDE, but it's clear to me that there are many people (and institutions) around the world who are not comfortable with purely internet-based things. Books, they can grok.
- Free as in $19.95-a-pop beer, yeah.
You are free to take a selection of Wikipedia articles (or the whole thing), copyedit it, format it, lay it out for print, print it, bind it, source it to book stores, &c. This is a necessary (and intended) consequence of the GFDL. If you did all of these things, producing a 1000 page book containing 50, 000 articles formatted and printed to a high standard, how much would you charge?
I don't think anyone is under the impression that this is in any way a replacement of the online, live (i.e. "real") Wikipedia. This is merely reuse of Wikipedia content by an unrelated and independent organisation. I would hope that the print encyclopedia clearly states on its jacket what Wikipedia is and where the content came from.
- And free as in anyone can use and re-use it? I hope so. However, can, say, Indian printers make even cheaper editions and sell them wherever they want in all parts of the world, even Europe?
It's not a silly question. Books, publishers, and the structure of that business come with a lot of old traditions that aren't so easy to get around.
Absolutely anyone is free to take Wikimedia content and use it for whatever purpose they want - including commercial use. The only restrictions on this is that any derivative work has to be similarly copy-left licensed (GFDL), and a few more things.
Because a big print house has decided to print Wikimedia content, doesn't mean the license has changed. The license is inviolable - once something is committed to the GFDL, it cannot be uncommitted. All derivative work based on GFDL licensed content must be GFDL. It actually says a lot about the way in which traditional print is adapting to copy-left licenses. Many traditional print houses which previously relied on restrictive copyright are now being forced to cope with copy-left licensing as a consequence of the juicy fruits borne by copy-left projects.
- This is German encyclopedia--an important but hardly global language. It is a commercial endeavor by a publishing behemoth for a prosperous European audience. Ideals of global distribution to those underserved by the Internet hardly seem to apply here.
German is the most widely spoken first language in the European Union, and is second after English in terms of the number who can speak it. It ranks as the 10th most widely-spoken langauge in the world and has a place in most supranational and intergovernmental organisations. I'm not sure why I'm defending a language, no matter how large or small...
Many people do not have access to the internet and many people prefer print publishing. To name a few, this opens up Wikipedia content to schools, older people (who may not have internet access, or who may prefer print - no generalisations intended :)), libraries and anywhere not immediately connected to the internet.
Perhaps the real value to wikipedians is the increased "branding" of wikipedia? I don't know, but I think this print projects feels like a diminution of wikipedia. ButI respect people's labor, always, and I don't want to denigrate that. I just wonder why this is any sort of priority to wikipedians.
I, personally, think the Wikipedia branding being associated with this book is the most controversial part of the whole plan. Although the articles may be sourced from Wikipedia, they are partial representations of the original articles with strong copyediting. As far as I know, Wikipedia has had no part in the process of selection, copyediting, presentation, or preparation. My concern is that the Wikipedia brand is associated with something that is not a Wikipedia venture and we may bear responsibility for things we have not done to the content. As another poster seemed to indicate, Frankfurter Allgemeine made comments about Wikipedia betraying its ideals associated with this project despite our lack of involvement.
Finally, you indicate that Wikipedians have laboured for the print house - I don't think this is a case. I believe the print house has simply taken Wikipedia content and done everything with it (hence, in part, the price tag).
This is great for Wikipedia and can only help the project. It is important to understand that due to the GFDL, there is (thankfully) no need to consult Wikipedia to use its content or request permission; and using/modifying Wikipedia content is free. That is kind of the whole point of the entire copy-left venture. As I said, the only potential down-side is the association of the Wikipedia brand with something we played little part in.
On 23/04/2008, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
This is great for Wikipedia and can only help the project. It is important to understand that due to the GFDL, there is (thankfully) no need to consult Wikipedia to use its content or request permission; and using/modifying Wikipedia content is free. That is kind of the whole point of the entire copy-left venture. As I said, the only potential down-side is the association of the Wikipedia brand with something we played little part in.
WM.de have been closely involved at all stages, and I assume this'll continue, so I'd be surprised if it fails to enhance our good name.
- d.
I'd like to see a book publishing contract that is committed to GFDL. Does anyone have one they could share?
Again, I'm not try to criticize or denigrate this project. I just think it raises a lot of questions that can't so easily be answered because we love copyleft licensing. It's a cross-breeding of legal frameworks, and I'm not sure the hybrid would automatically be what we might like it to be (i.e., the best of both worlds).
Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Absolutely anyone is free to take Wikimedia content and use it for whatever purpose they want - including commercial use. The only restrictions on this is that any derivative work has to be similarly copy-left licensed (GFDL), and a few more things.
Because a big print house has decided to print Wikimedia content, doesn't mean the license has changed. The license is inviolable - once something is committed to the GFDL, it cannot be uncommitted. All derivative work based on GFDL licensed content must be GFDL. It actually says a lot about the way in which traditional print is adapting to copy-left licenses. Many traditional print houses which previously relied on restrictive copyright are now being forced to cope with copy-left licensing as a consequence of the juicy fruits borne by copy-left projects.
--------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.
On 23/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like to see a book publishing contract that is committed to GFDL. Does anyone have one they could share?
I don't have one to hand, but O'Reilly published a pile of books under various free content licenses, including GFDL. Dead tree books anyone can copy. It's a model that's worked for others.
- d.
On 24/04/2008, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like to see a book publishing contract that is committed to GFDL. Does anyone have one they could share?
Yep, I know one: The Django Book. http://www.djangobook.com/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590597257?ie=UTF8&tag=jacobianorg-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1590597257
regards, Brianna
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:06 AM, Mary Murrell mary_murrell@yahoo.com wrote:
I'd like to see a book publishing contract that is committed to GFDL. Does anyone have one they could share?
"How Wikipedia Works," a book about using and contributing to the English Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects by myself (en:user:phoebe), Charles Matthews (en:user:Charles Matthews) and Ben Yates (en:user:Tlogmer) is due to be published this spring/early summer by No Starch Press under the GFDL. More details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phoebe/book
[[No Starch]] is a small technical press based in San Francisco; they have typically published books about Linux and other open source software. Their books are distributed by O'Reilly, so you'll see them in lots of shops, and they are typically very high quality. We had some negotiation about what license to use; and agreed that for a book about Wikipedia, maintaining GFDL-compatibility would be important. (Unfortunately, CC license compatibility still seems a bit far off for this project).
It's a risk for the publisher to take -- they are putting in lots of editing time on our manuscript, and obviously the license means others could reprint that text. Nonetheless, they are enthusiastic about supporting open content and free culture, and (regardless of how our book turns out) they should be commended for that.
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
best, Phoebe Ayers
2008/4/24 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com:
[What a strange attribution line Gmail has taken to.]
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
Has anyone *ever* gotten an answer from licensing@fsf.org regarding a GFDL question that is more helpful than a Magic 8-Ball? "Reply hazy, try again later, ask your own lawyer."
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2008/4/24 phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com:
[What a strange attribution line Gmail has taken to.]
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
Has anyone *ever* gotten an answer from licensing@fsf.org regarding a GFDL question that is more helpful than a Magic 8-Ball? "Reply hazy, try again later, ask your own lawyer."
Basically, no, but people have heard Richard Stallman suggest semi-publicly that some of the worries about it are overblown (of course, since he's largely responsible for the license he probably would think so). In particular, it *doesn't* seem to be necessary to reprint the full wiki editing history of an article to comply with the GFDL's "publication history section" requirement, especially since we don't present it in the original transparent source as such.
More importantly, since Bertelsmann are definitely not doing so (it would take much more space than the actual stub articles to print the full editing history for each one), and presumably their lawyers have vetted that as okay, this provides some good precedent for other reusers.
-Mark
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 1:14 AM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
In particular, it *doesn't* seem to be necessary to reprint the full wiki editing history of an article to comply with the GFDL's "publication history section" requirement, especially since we don't present it in the original transparent source as such.
More importantly, since Bertelsmann are definitely not doing so (it would take much more space than the actual stub articles to print the full editing history for each one), and presumably their lawyers have vetted that as okay, this provides some good precedent for other reusers.
-Mark
Violations of the law are not precedent. It's only a precedent if Bertelsmann is sued and wins in a court within the same jurisdiction as you.
I assume Bertelsmann is going to at least be listing the names of all the authors in order to satisfy the basic essence of the history requirement. The GFDL makes no requirement to "reprint the full wiki editing history". It says "If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence."
Anthony wrote:
I assume Bertelsmann is going to at least be listing the names of all the authors in order to satisfy the basic essence of the history requirement. The GFDL makes no requirement to "reprint the full wiki editing history". It says "If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence."
Listing all the authors "as given on its Title Page" is a pretty empty requirement, since Wikipedia articles don't have any title page that lists any authors.
-Mark
From the very first post:
"The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected."
-Dave
On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony wrote:
I assume Bertelsmann is going to at least be listing the names of all the authors in order to satisfy the basic essence of the history requirement. The GFDL makes no requirement to "reprint the full wiki editing history". It says "If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence."
Listing all the authors "as given on its Title Page" is a pretty empty requirement, since Wikipedia articles don't have any title page that lists any authors.
-Mark
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On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 8:21 PM, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony wrote:
I assume Bertelsmann is going to at least be listing the names of all the authors in order to satisfy the basic essence of the history requirement. The GFDL makes no requirement to "reprint the full wiki editing history". It says "If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence."
Listing all the authors "as given on its Title Page" is a pretty empty requirement, since Wikipedia articles don't have any title page that lists any authors.
I've always taken "as given on its Title Page" to only modify "publisher of the Document".
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
best, Phoebe Ayers
Come to think of it, this is actually a good idea. At least having some type of guide, or a condensed version, would be really helpful to be able to educate various parties out there...and I could really use this as well.
--Kul
2008/4/24 Kul Takanao Wadhwa kwadhwa@wikimedia.org:
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
Come to think of it, this is actually a good idea. At least having some type of guide, or a condensed version, would be really helpful to be able to educate various parties out there...and I could really use this as well.
I started this page for the express purpose of reducing the number of phone calls I got asking how people could reuse images from Wikipedia:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse
(Asking for clarification on the trickier bits was where I discovered how licensing@fsf.org seem to use a Magic 8 Ball for GFDL questions. The FSF don't have a clue about the license either.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
2008/4/24 Kul Takanao Wadhwa kwadhwa@wikimedia.org
In the meantime, I am struggling with the details of adhering to the letter of the GFDL -- because there is little precedent we are having to work things out as we go. Someday, I would love to see a "dummy's guide to publishing under a free content license" -- half of the problem of using many licenses, even CC, is they're hard to figure out for the average person.
Come to think of it, this is actually a good idea. At least having some type of guide, or a condensed version, would be really helpful to be able to educate various parties out there...and I could really use this as well.
I started this page for the express purpose of reducing the number of phone calls I got asking how people could reuse images from Wikipedia:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse(Asking for clarification on the trickier bits was where I discovered how licensing@fsf.org seem to use a Magic 8 Ball for GFDL questions. The FSF don't have a clue about the license either.)
If you really believe that such a page will inhibit the phone callers, I'm afraid that you are suffering from pathological optimism. ;-)
Ec
2008/4/24 Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net:
David Gerard wrote:
I started this page for the express purpose of reducing the number of phone calls I got asking how people could reuse images from Wikipedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reuse
(Asking for clarification on the trickier bits was where I discovered how licensing@fsf.org seem to use a Magic 8 Ball for GFDL questions. The FSF don't have a clue about the license either.)
If you really believe that such a page will inhibit the phone callers, I'm afraid that you are suffering from pathological optimism. ;-)
Well, yes. But it's linked from the WMF press page, and it gives me somewhere to send them :-)
- d.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this project.
5% royalty is a good rate as B. could theoretically grab the stuff for free and will probbaly do additional copy-edting.
For the free culture this is an important step as I think this is one of the first great cooperations with a commercial giant.
That this project will be criticized by some need not surprise or deter you.
I wish you happiness and health
teun spaans
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Sebastian Moleski sebmol@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
2008 has started as the year of old school encyclopedias permanently relocating to the internet when Brockhaus announced that the current 30 volume edition would be the last one available in print. It may end as the year when trees can yet again wither in the hope that they will end as repositories of human knowledge. In a few hours, a well-known publishing house will announce the production of a single-volume Wikipedia to be available in stores this fall. Prior to this announcement, we wanted to provide you with some background and details on this project.
There have been a number of approaches to publish Wikipedia content in print such as the community-developed WikiReaders of a few years ago or the WikiPress series of paperbacks produced by DirectMedia in Berlin. Now a new project has started with the goal to produce a general encyclopedia based on Wikipedia articles. First ideas for a single volume edition were formulated some years ago but it wasn't until this year that a publisher was found who would turn this vision into reality: this fall, the Bertelsmann Lexikon Institut (Wissen Media) will publish the "Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume" in German language.
The first edition will contain 50,000 articles consisting of the introductory paragraphs taken from the corresponding Wikipedia articles. The paragraphs usually provide a compact overview of the topic and its significance so they are well-suited for being published separately. They are comparable in depth and structure to full entries in other single-volume encyclopedias. At a price of €19.95 and its size of about 1,000 pages, it will be a pretty good value in comparison to similar works. The volume will be printed in full color and published as a hardcover with about 100 pictures taken from Wikipedia as well.
Topic selection for the first edition was based on page hits collected for German Wikipedia. The data was taken from Domas Miuzas' Wikistats ( http://dammit.lt/wikistats/) and adjusted to reduce the impact of current but short-lived events in favor of lastingly popular topics. The list of authors for each article will be included in the finished volume and the GFDL will be observed as would be expected.
There are a number of ways in which we see Wikipedia profiting from this project:
- The Bertelsmann editors working on the first edition will submit parts
of their work--such as improvements to article introductions--to Wikipedia under the GFDL.
- The accessibility of Wikipedia content will be broadened to a wider
range of readers. We may even recruit some new authors as a side effect.
- For every copy sold, one Euro goes back to Wikimedia.
We're looking forward to the response of this forthcoming announcement as well as the public availability of the first edition later this year.
Sebastian Moleski Board of Directors Wikimedia Deutschland _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
At 07:45 +0200 23/4/08, teun spaans wrote:
Congratulations to everyone involved in this project.
5% royalty is a good rate as B. could theoretically grab the stuff for free and will probbaly do additional copy-edting.
For the free culture this is an important step as I think this is one of the first great cooperations with a commercial giant.
That this project will be criticized by some need not surprise or deter you.
I wish you happiness and health
teun spaans
It is a great experiment. I have a German WikiReader (of 75 pages or so) that I picked up in Frankfurt at the first Wikimania . It is about time somebody tried a "cut" of Wikipedia in print. The publisher will take the risk and the Foundation (or German Chapter?) will take the putative gain.
Gordo
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:36 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
There is a large number of possible options how to design and implement a printed encyclopedia. And when it comes to usefulness, one-volume concise encyclopedias are very much limited anyway.
This is not an XOR decision. Anyone can come up with a practical solution how to fill content originating in Wikipedia into dead trees. And I would like to hear them all :)
Mathias
On 23/04/2008, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:36 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
This is not an XOR decision. Anyone can come up with a practical solution how to fill content originating in Wikipedia into dead trees. And I would like to hear them all :)
The SOS Children DVD takes a few thousand en:wp articles at greater length. The press release estimated it as equivalent to 15 volumes.
- d.
I disagree with that. In my opinion, for a general encyclopaedia having one volume with say 10K one-paragraph articles is much better than 1K one-page articles. The latter format would be good for a specialized one, like Encyclopaedia of Music or of Chemistry. But if one really wants to get a quick idea what the name or the subject he/she has overheard is about it is much better to have more shorter articles. Additional information is readily available anyway, in particular, in Wikipedia.
Cheers, Yaroslav
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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On 23/04/2008, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
A well-formed English Wikipedia article - and evidently a German Wikipedia one too - should have a lead summary section that constitutes an informative short article in itself, and be written as an inverted pyramid. The first sentence should be informative and standalone, the first paragraph should be informative and standalone, the intro as a unit should be informative and standalone. See [[:en:WP:LEAD]].
So it's not as good as having the whole thing right there, but it supplies more information than none for someone who wants the ten-second summary. A book of those could be quite useful.
And it comes with a free website you can go to for expanded versions once you know you want one ;-)
- d.
"Andre Engels" andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
If enough (potential) readers share your view, Bertelsmann will incur a loss and perhaps some of their competitors will take the opportunity.
The nice part of this deal is that unless you are a stockholder of Bertelsmann you do not have to worry about any of this.
Tim
I think that there are so many different ways to tackle the idea of a printed version of Wikipedia and this way may or may not be the best way...and there is only so much market research you can do...especially when you are doing something that is outside the standard publishing model. I think the German chapter did a lot of investigation into the process and options, and sometimes we have to just see how this goes and learn from it. It is so difficult to gauge how content deals turn out (even for a reference book such as this) so if your primary measure of "success" is the number of units sold...then we will just have to wait and see. But with this project in particular, there are several things we are trying to accomplish so in some sense, several "successes" have already been achieved. I am sure that even if this is a "success" as defined by traditional publishing industry metrics, and if we continue to do other deals like this, we will always try to improve the next project and some of these other ideas may be tried as well.
--Kul
Tim Landscheidt wrote:
"Andre Engels" andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
If enough (potential) readers share your view, Bertelsmann will incur a loss and perhaps some of their competitors will take the opportunity.
The nice part of this deal is that unless you are a stockholder of Bertelsmann you do not have to worry about any of this.
Tim
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According to the NYT interview, this book will center around popular issues and B. sees it as a kind of yearbook.
Though I only occasionallly wrote on .de, i cannot tell if the german language version has the same abundance for telly, sport and movies related subjects as some other large wikis. If so, wikipedia may be a good choice for them. If this succeeds, they may turn to more specilized subjects, encyclopedias for soccer, golf, other sports, mammals, geography and such may well come up somewhere in the future.
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:36 PM, Andre Engels andreengels@gmail.com wrote:
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread is that by taking only the introductions (which is indeed necessary to get anything close to 50,000 articles into 1000 pages), Bertelsmann in my feeling is removing most of the usefulness from Wikipedia. There will be articles where that's okay, but there will plenty of articles which are excellent in the current form, but become worse-than-trivial if reduced to one-paragraph stubs.
I guess for Bertelsmann and for Wikipedia such a book would be ok, but a reader would be more served with one volume out of a series of books, each of them containing something like 1000 or 2000 complete Wikipedia articles on some broad subject.
-- Andre Engels, andreengels@gmail.com ICQ: 6260644 -- Skype: a_engels
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2008/4/23 teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com:
According to the NYT interview, this book will center around popular issues and B. sees it as a kind of yearbook.
Though I only occasionallly wrote on .de, i cannot tell if the german language version has the same abundance for telly, sport and movies related subjects as some other large wikis. If so, wikipedia may be a good choice for them. If this succeeds, they may turn to more specilized subjects, encyclopedias for soccer, golf, other sports, mammals, geography and such may well come up somewhere in the future.
I think even more specialised selections of articles may be a good place to look. Generally, I would imagine, the more specialised a subject, the less competition there is in terms of reference works for that subject.
Specialised areas which might generate a fair amount of demand are guides to fictional worlds. Obviously, there is a lot of interest associated with these, and there may be a fair amount of competition in terms of reference works. en.Wikipedia has a good number of articles about fictional worlds associated with fantasy (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune). Contributors tend to be very interested in these areas and their coverage tends to be very good (where coverage hasn't been deleted). If a guide to say... Lord of the Rings, or (dare I mention) Pokemon, were compiled from Wikipedia content and published and sold in book shops, a fair bit of funding could be generated for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Other specialised areas we might look at are collectors areas (stamps, coins), enthusiast areas (airplanes, ships, cars), gardening...
If there were the drive to compile articles into books and copyedit them, would there be any effective way to print, bind and put them in bookshops to be sold?
2008/4/23 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
Specialised areas which might generate a fair amount of demand are guides to fictional worlds. Obviously, there is a lot of interest associated with these, and there may be a fair amount of competition in terms of reference works. en.Wikipedia has a good number of articles about fictional worlds associated with fantasy (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune). Contributors tend to be very interested in these areas and their coverage tends to be very good (where coverage hasn't been deleted). If a guide to say... Lord of the Rings, or (dare I mention) Pokemon, were compiled from Wikipedia content and published and sold in book shops, a fair bit of funding could be generated for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Let's see how the Rowling case resolves first!
- d.
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:12 PM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
Specialised areas which might generate a fair amount of demand are guides to fictional worlds. Obviously, there is a lot of interest associated with these, and there may be a fair amount of competition in terms of reference works. en.Wikipedia has a good number of articles about fictional worlds associated with fantasy (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune). Contributors tend to be very interested in these areas and their coverage tends to be very good (where coverage hasn't been deleted). If a guide to say... Lord of the Rings, or (dare I mention) Pokemon, were compiled from Wikipedia content and published and sold in book shops, a fair bit of funding could be generated for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Is there any precedent for whether or not that'd be legal, though? [[Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group]] comes to mind, though an encyclopedia has more potential for transformative use than a trivia book. No one's going to sue the WMF over something like that, of course, and even if they did the non-commercial aspect would be a strong factor in its favor, but adding a commercial factor and putting it all in print might push it from fair use into copyright infringement.
Ah, while posting this I see David Gerard has pointed out a more recent and appropriate case: [[J.K. Rowling v. RDR Books|Legal disputes over Harry Potter]]
Other specialised areas we might look at are collectors areas (stamps, coins), enthusiast areas (airplanes, ships, cars), gardening...
Not sure how many of those are already started at Wikibooks, but one I thought of before is apparently already started at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Field_Guide/Birds_-_Eastern_US_and_Canada
(http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Gardening, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_Stamp_Catalogue, are already started)
If there were the drive to compile articles into books and copyedit them, would there be any effective way to print, bind and put them in bookshops to be sold?
I'm skeptical. The kind of books you're talking about (airplanes, ships, cars, gardening, field guides) are typically the ones you find in the bargain section of the bookstore for prices small publishers can't really compete with. And for the even more frugal you can usually find that kind of content at the thrift store at prices which are less than the value of the paper it's printed on (if the paper were blank the price would probably be higher). That's probably why Bertelsmann is going for the current event/yearbook angle. Wikipedia does tend to produce decent content in that area before it makes it to the bargain section.
Now, this skepticism is based on my US-centric view of things. I'd suspect it's similar in any well-populated first world country, though.
True.
There is one thing we have to be carefull with, and which is a good reason to leave these topics to commercial publishing houses: most of the illustrations we have on these topics are incorporated as "fair use".
And i actually think we dont have much stuff on gardening, and i feel some doubt on the qualities of the stuff we have on plants, but perhaps that is because as a contributor i see what is wrong with it.
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:12 AM, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
2008/4/23 teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com:
According to the NYT interview, this book will center around popular issues and B. sees it as a kind of yearbook.
Though I only occasionallly wrote on .de, i cannot tell if the german language version has the same abundance for telly, sport and movies related subjects as some other large wikis. If so, wikipedia may be a good choice for them. If this succeeds, they may turn to more specilized subjects, encyclopedias for soccer, golf, other sports, mammals, geography and such may well come up somewhere in the future.
I think even more specialised selections of articles may be a good place to look. Generally, I would imagine, the more specialised a subject, the less competition there is in terms of reference works for that subject.
Specialised areas which might generate a fair amount of demand are guides to fictional worlds. Obviously, there is a lot of interest associated with these, and there may be a fair amount of competition in terms of reference works. en.Wikipedia has a good number of articles about fictional worlds associated with fantasy (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Foundation, Dune). Contributors tend to be very interested in these areas and their coverage tends to be very good (where coverage hasn't been deleted). If a guide to say... Lord of the Rings, or (dare I mention) Pokemon, were compiled from Wikipedia content and published and sold in book shops, a fair bit of funding could be generated for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Other specialised areas we might look at are collectors areas (stamps, coins), enthusiast areas (airplanes, ships, cars), gardening...
If there were the drive to compile articles into books and copyedit them, would there be any effective way to print, bind and put them in bookshops to be sold?
-- Oldak Quill (oldakquill@gmail.com)
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On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 1:39 AM, teun spaans teun.spaans@gmail.com wrote:
True.
There is one thing we have to be carefull with, and which is a good reason to leave these topics to commercial publishing houses: most of the illustrations we have on these topics are incorporated as "fair use".
And i actually think we dont have much stuff on gardening, and i feel some doubt on the qualities of the stuff we have on plants, but perhaps that is because as a contributor i see what is wrong with it.
I'm not sure whether the German Wikipedia has any fair-use images, but I'm sure we could easily ensure that, on an English version, that the fair-use images were excluded.
On 24/04/2008, Ryan wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure whether the German Wikipedia has any fair-use images,
It doesn't.
but I'm sure we could easily ensure that, on an English version, that the fair-use images were excluded.
Yep, very easily. A commercial paper publisher would also want to check each image's licensing was good themselves, of course.
- d.
On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 3:42 AM, Ryan wiki.ral315@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure whether the German Wikipedia has any fair-use images, but I'm sure we could easily ensure that, on an English version, that the fair-use images were excluded.
Alternatively, you could subvert the whole concept of free content completely and get special permission to use those images. Then you cut down on competition as well.
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