I saw David's post from a week ago at wikien-l... Which remembered me to ask: Did anyone from WFM anytime talked with people from Britannica about possible cooperation? Their most important advantage we will never have: reliability in the strictly scientific sense. And both projects may benefit from cooperation (if they adopt our license, of course [at least for some part of their content]).
BTW, sorry for heresy :)
I saw David's post from a week ago at wikien-l... Which remembered me to ask: Did anyone from WFM anytime talked with people from Britannica about possible cooperation? Their most important advantage we will never have: reliability in the strictly scientific sense. And both projects may benefit from cooperation (if they adopt our license, of course [at least for some part of their content]).
BTW, sorry for heresy :)
It is not a heresy Milos. It is a good idea, even if they don't want free licenses, they have a big experience. We don't fight with Britannica, but we make the Internet, not suck :) Our relations with Britannica are not similar to relations between Microsoft and FSW, not in all aspects. In Poland we think about talking/meeting with PWN - we want it, they... I don't know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wielka_Encyklopedia_Powszechna_PWN
We could talk about fields of cooperation.
Przykuta
Hm, what exactly are our relations with Microsoft then? :) We are not in a fight with them either, are we? Also Encarta for instance would be an interesting partner imho (If only because they know a lot about distribution), although again the big quetsion is whether *they* are willing for a cooperation of course (and to have any result of that under a free license)
BR, Lodewijk
2008/6/9 Przykuta przykuta@o2.pl:
I saw David's post from a week ago at wikien-l... Which remembered me to ask: Did anyone from WFM anytime talked with people from Britannica about possible cooperation? Their most important advantage we will never have: reliability in the strictly scientific sense. And both projects may benefit from cooperation (if they adopt our license, of course [at least for some part of their content]).
BTW, sorry for heresy :)
It is not a heresy Milos. It is a good idea, even if they don't want free licenses, they have a big experience. We don't fight with Britannica, but we make the Internet, not suck :) Our relations with Britannica are not similar to relations between Microsoft and FSW, not in all aspects. In Poland we think about talking/meeting with PWN - we want it, they... I don't know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wielka_Encyklopedia_Powszechna_PWN
We could talk about fields of cooperation.
Przykuta
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On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 1:05 PM, effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
Hm, what exactly are our relations with Microsoft then? :) We are not in a fight with them either, are we? Also Encarta for instance would be an interesting partner imho (If only because they know a lot about distribution), although again the big quetsion is whether *they* are willing for a cooperation of course (and to have any result of that under a free license)
2008/6/9 Przykuta przykuta@o2.pl:
It is not a heresy Milos. It is a good idea, even if they don't want free licenses, they have a big experience. We don't fight with Britannica, but we make the Internet, not suck :) Our relations with Britannica are not similar to relations between Microsoft and FSW, not in all aspects. In Poland we think about talking/meeting with PWN - we want it, they... I don't know.
Encarta is not the main Microsoft's business, so some secondary reasons may be crucial in their decision to go or not to go to the free knowledge. And because of that I didn't think about them.
But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we are the free knowledge partner.
2008/6/9 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
Encarta is not the main Microsoft's business, so some secondary reasons may be crucial in their decision to go or not to go to the free knowledge. And because of that I didn't think about them.
In Encarta's case - Live Search used to cover stuff in Encarta links. Now they notably favour Wikipedia. I'm wondering if there's room for an arrangement of the sort that entails us getting money. Windows is a supported platform for MediaWiki after all :-)
But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we are the free knowledge partner.
It's a pity they've been so antagonistic to Wikipedia in the past few years, as if that would have helped them. I think the success of Wikipedia is that it fills a niche that was basically unfilled before. I can't believe that any significant number of the people making wikipedia.org the #8 website in the world have opened a paper encyclopedia since they were at school. I'm happy for those people to look at Britannica, Citizendium or whatever from looking at Wikipedia - it spreads the idea that people can do active research for information beyond just entering a term into a search engine.
- d.
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
2008/6/9 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
Encarta is not the main Microsoft's business, so some secondary reasons may be crucial in their decision to go or not to go to the free knowledge. And because of that I didn't think about them.
In Encarta's case - Live Search used to cover stuff in Encarta links. Now they notably favour Wikipedia. I'm wondering if there's room for an arrangement of the sort that entails us getting money. Windows is a supported platform for MediaWiki after all :-)
But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we are the free knowledge partner.
It's a pity they've been so antagonistic to Wikipedia in the past few years, as if that would have helped them. I think the success of Wikipedia is that it fills a niche that was basically unfilled before. I can't believe that any significant number of the people making wikipedia.org the #8 website in the world have opened a paper encyclopedia since they were at school. I'm happy for those people to look at Britannica, Citizendium or whatever from looking at Wikipedia
- it spreads the idea that people can do active research for
information beyond just entering a term into a search engine.
- d.
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Part of the problem with Brittanica is that their coverage on some things is crap. For instance, their article on Bender, Moldova, a major city in Moldova, uses the name Tighina, which has been out of use for hundreds of years. It contains very little useful information, most of which is sorely out of date. Encarta is even worse. Part of the problem is not the book-based model or the expense, its the lack of updated and correct information that causes people to abandon Brittanica (for example, my experiences with it have been so poor that I cannot trust it to be a source for information anymore).
-Dan
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
In Encarta's case - Live Search used to cover stuff in Encarta links. Now they notably favour Wikipedia. I'm wondering if there's room for an arrangement of the sort that entails us getting money. Windows is a supported platform for MediaWiki after all :-)
This is the issue related to money. I am sure that WMF may get money from MS or from Gates' foundation with or without a relation with Encarta.
But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we are the free knowledge partner.
It's a pity they've been so antagonistic to Wikipedia in the past few years, as if that would have helped them. I think the success of Wikipedia is that it fills a niche that was basically unfilled before. I can't believe that any significant number of the people making wikipedia.org the #8 website in the world have opened a paper encyclopedia since they were at school. I'm happy for those people to look at Britannica, Citizendium or whatever from looking at Wikipedia
- it spreads the idea that people can do active research for
information beyond just entering a term into a search engine.
Part of the problem with Brittanica is that their coverage on some things is crap. For instance, their article on Bender, Moldova, a major city in Moldova, uses the name Tighina, which has been out of use for hundreds of years. It contains very little useful information, most of which is sorely out of date. Encarta is even worse. Part of the problem is not the book-based model or the expense, its the lack of updated and correct information that causes people to abandon Brittanica (for example, my experiences with it have been so poor that I cannot trust it to be a source for information anymore).
Whenever I want to test accuracy of some encyclopedia, I go to see how the fields of my knowledge are covered (linguistics). Sometimes it is so stupid that I forget immediately about that encyclopedia. Britannica definitively gives not stupid articles, but I was very surprised by the fact that 1995 edition didn't have correct Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the same edition (maybe newer, too) refers to some books from the 1920s (in English; "completely outdated") and 1930s (in German; "partially outdated") as the best sources for researching Sumerian language (in 1997 i found very good grammars of Sumerian in English at Internet).
I would say that a really good information about some issue may be found at Wikipedia and through external links and bibliography. And I don't see a sense in reading 10 times shorter article without good bibliography about some issue at Britannica or Encarta.
But, strictly speaking, their informations are scientifically reliable, and ours are not. They have a rich field for gathering articles from Wikipedia and sell the redacted copies with Britannica's stamp. And we may get a number of high profile scientists who are evaluating our articles. This may sound as a good deal.
We are open to the possibility of working with Britannica and/or if it makes sense for everyone and compliments our mission objectives. At this point, it would be better if they approached us with an idea and/or proposal (instead of us going to them) because Britannica is still trying to figure out how to be successful in a world that is increasingly moving online that values community and collaboration:
http://www.pandia.com/sew/672-britannica-follows-in-wikipedias-footsteps.htm...
and I'm not sure if anyone knows what Microsoft's plans for Encarta are at this point...but we're open to exploring the possibilities...
Milos Rancic wrote:
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 10:55 AM, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
In Encarta's case - Live Search used to cover stuff in Encarta links. Now they notably favour Wikipedia. I'm wondering if there's room for an arrangement of the sort that entails us getting money. Windows is a supported platform for MediaWiki after all :-)
This is the issue related to money. I am sure that WMF may get money from MS or from Gates' foundation with or without a relation with Encarta.
But, for Britannica this is a very important question. At the era of Internet [and Wikipedia] the most of people are not willing to spend more money on their books or CDs or DVDs. So, they need to find some other business model. Which means that they may to try to copy free software based business model of big corporations, like IBM is. And we are the free knowledge partner.
It's a pity they've been so antagonistic to Wikipedia in the past few years, as if that would have helped them. I think the success of Wikipedia is that it fills a niche that was basically unfilled before. I can't believe that any significant number of the people making wikipedia.org the #8 website in the world have opened a paper encyclopedia since they were at school. I'm happy for those people to look at Britannica, Citizendium or whatever from looking at Wikipedia
- it spreads the idea that people can do active research for
information beyond just entering a term into a search engine.
Part of the problem with Brittanica is that their coverage on some things is crap. For instance, their article on Bender, Moldova, a major city in Moldova, uses the name Tighina, which has been out of use for hundreds of years. It contains very little useful information, most of which is sorely out of date. Encarta is even worse. Part of the problem is not the book-based model or the expense, its the lack of updated and correct information that causes people to abandon Brittanica (for example, my experiences with it have been so poor that I cannot trust it to be a source for information anymore).
Whenever I want to test accuracy of some encyclopedia, I go to see how the fields of my knowledge are covered (linguistics). Sometimes it is so stupid that I forget immediately about that encyclopedia. Britannica definitively gives not stupid articles, but I was very surprised by the fact that 1995 edition didn't have correct Serbian Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the same edition (maybe newer, too) refers to some books from the 1920s (in English; "completely outdated") and 1930s (in German; "partially outdated") as the best sources for researching Sumerian language (in 1997 i found very good grammars of Sumerian in English at Internet).
I would say that a really good information about some issue may be found at Wikipedia and through external links and bibliography. And I don't see a sense in reading 10 times shorter article without good bibliography about some issue at Britannica or Encarta.
But, strictly speaking, their informations are scientifically reliable, and ours are not. They have a rich field for gathering articles from Wikipedia and sell the redacted copies with Britannica's stamp. And we may get a number of high profile scientists who are evaluating our articles. This may sound as a good deal.
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objectives. At this point, it would be better if they approached us with an idea and/or proposal (instead of us going to them) because Britannica is still trying to figure out how to be successful in a world that is increasingly moving online that values community and collaboration:
Actually, to me it sounds exactly as a reason to approach them. If they are still undecided about their global policy, they might as well be succeptible to reasonable argument. And Microsoft core values are very much different from ours.
Cheers Yaroslav
Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote:
objectives. At this point, it would be better if they approached us with an idea and/or proposal (instead of us going to them) because Britannica is still trying to figure out how to be successful in a world that is increasingly moving online that values community and collaboration:
Actually, to me it sounds exactly as a reason to approach them. If they are still undecided about their global policy, they might as well be succeptible to reasonable argument. And Microsoft core values are very much different from ours.
I don't think that it matters which side initiates contact, but if we do it should be from the highest level, and with great diplomacy. EB has a history of financial disasters going back to the 1820's, but the brand name keeps surviving. Investors seem to want the prestige more than anything else; they're often rich enough to not care if they lose big money.
Is there anything available as an offer they can't refuse? O:-)
Ec
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