Some problems; What are we going to do with all that money? If we can't spend it, would that jeopardize our nonprofit status? I think it would be a step backwards for Wikimedia to become a for-profit organization.
I think we should hire full-time editors especially for the non-English Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge) never had such luxuries. As I said before, I would propose Brion Vibber (technical support, non-English wikis) and Arno Lagrange (Esperanto Wikipedia editor) as full-time employees. Arno is now trying to start a Wikipedia organization in France to be able to legally work full-time for the Esperanto Wikipedia.
Also, I've never heard of having too much money as being a problem. I mean, we're a foundation! Lots of foundations have millions of dollars... We could use the money to hold Wikipedia seminars and conferences. We could also use the money to finance other worthy educational projects like other foundations do. "Sponsored by Wikimedia"
Chuck
===== We are the Esperanto speakers who say "Ni!" http://www.esperantomobilo.org/
_________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Información de Estados Unidos y América Latina, en Yahoo! Noticias. Visítanos en http://noticias.espanol.yahoo.com
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Chuck Smith wrote:
We could also use the money to finance other worthy educational projects like other foundations do. "Sponsored by Wikimedia"
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
Imran
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
--Jimbo
I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or a little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on Bartelsby at
http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/
Early volumes and perhaps all of the first edition of the Oxford English dictionary too
Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better old libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an evaluation made.
Fred
From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:38:02 -0800 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hi, Why not some textbooks, I'm sure many professors will give us there works. That might push wikibooks a bit.
ciao, tom
Here is an example of an organization that does this with newspapers: www.oldpapers.org
Alex Roshuk
----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Bauder" fredbaud@ctelco.net To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2003 12:10 PM Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Buying public domain books
I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or
a
little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on
Bartelsby
at
http://www.bartleby.com/cambridge/
Early volumes and perhaps all of the first edition of the Oxford English dictionary too
Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better
old
libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an
evaluation
made.
Fred
From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 07:38:02 -0800 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain
books
(e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used
for
creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks
coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Fred Bauder wrote:
I could do this as I am always searching for books. This can cost a lot or a little, luck has a lot to do with it. Make a list and I can start looking then email likely purchases to Jimbo.
One we could probably use and would be worth paying a bit for would be the Cambridge History of English and American Literature. It is up on Bartelsby at
A whole 14 vol. set of the 1931 reprint of the 1917 edition of the English Literature portion recently sold on eBay for $41.00!
A 15 vol. 1967 set is currently being offered with a $60.00 opening bid, but no takers. I would not hesitate to bid that on the older version.
Most of the really good public domain reference books are in the better old libraries such as Yale and Oxford and can be viewed there and an evaluation made.
Fred
Luck is only part of it. You also need a nose for bargains, and sometimes a willingness to take risks. When the best opportunities present themselves there is no time to thoroughly check things out at a major library. Two of my recent purchases John Howard Brown's 1897 "Cyclopædia of American Biographies" in 7 volumes for $25.00, and William Shaw's 2 volume1905 "Knights of England" (autographed) for $27.00. The 1976 and 2000 reprints normally sell for about $100.00 when you can find one.
From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
From a Wikisource perspective this is a useful idea, but buying these books should not be a central organization function. It should be the contributors that do this since they are the one who will keep the books after they've been scanned. I would be surprised if Wikimedia had any intent to start a rare and old book library.
Cost may not be the problem with this proposal. Scanning and proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit everybody's temperament.
Ec
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
From a Wikisource perspective this is a useful idea, but buying these books should not be a central organization function. It should be the contributors that do this since they are the one who will keep the books after they've been scanned.
As I said in one my previous messages, if you're willing to destroy the book in the process you can scan it with the minimum of work and time by using a high-speed destructive scanner.
Scanning by hand means you don't need to destroy the book, but it involves a lot of work and you can only scan at a maximum speed of about 350 pages/hour.
Cost may not be the problem with this proposal. Scanning and proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit everybody's temperament.
Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading easier by distributing the process across many people.
Imran
On Dec 26, 2003, at 6:21 AM, Imran Ghory wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote:
Cost may not be the problem with this proposal. Scanning and proofreading the OCR results is a long and tedious job that may not suit everybody's temperament.
Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading easier by distributing the process across many people.
Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge information gathering and processing easier by distributing the process across many people. ;)
Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant. Just pointing out that we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia network.
Peter
--- Funding for this program comes from Borders without Doctors: The Bookstore Chain That Sounds Like a Charity. --Harry Shearer, Le Show
On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 12:59:57PM -0500, Peter Jaros wrote:
On Dec 26, 2003, at 6:21 AM, Imran Ghory wrote:
On Fri, 26 Dec 2003, Ray Saintonge wrote: Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading easier by distributing the process across many people.
Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge information gathering and processing easier by distributing the process across many people. ;)
Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant. Just pointing out that we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia network.
FYI: There's a project digitalizing the German Meyers Konversationlexikon from 1888 and most of the content in included to the German WP after proofreading and such. I don't know excact figures but google-search indicates that about 200 articles already were imported, though this is surely only a fifth of the real imports. * http://www.meyers-konversationslexikon.de/ * [[de:Meyers_Konversationslexikon]]
Personally I'm against buying encylopedias in the major languages from en: to pl: and would like to suggest to give WPs with less than 5000 articles an helpfull basis.
Images and drawings would be a very good thing, even more than text.
ciao, tom
Peter Jaros wrote:
Have you seen www.pgdp.net, it's a PG project that makes proofreading easier by distributing the process across many people.
Have you seen www.wikipedia.org, it's a project that makes huge information gathering and processing easier by distributing the process across many people. ;)
Sorry, I really don't mean that to be flippant. Just pointing out that we could probably handle the proofreading within the Wikimedia network.
Thinking of Wikisource where the material could be added in relatively large chunks, I would be ashamed of contributing unproofed ocr gibberish. :-)
Ec
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with minimal changes to form useful stubs.
Imran
Cheapest set I can find is
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227
There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342
Fred
From: Imran Ghory imran@bits.bris.ac.uk Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 18:05:08 +0000 (GMT) To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with minimal changes to form useful stubs.
Imran
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
I just put in a preliminary bid on a partial set (missing 2 volumes) at eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3575193499&catego... There's an unspecified reserve on this.
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
Cheapest set I can find is
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227
There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342
Fred
From: Imran Ghory imran@bits.bris.ac.uk
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
What a terrible way to mistreet a book!!!
If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with minimal changes to form useful stubs.
I expect the reserve is well over $500.
Fred
From: Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 12:49:59 -0800 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] what to do with the money?
I just put in a preliminary bid on a partial set (missing 2 volumes) at eBay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3575193499&catego... d=1 There's an unspecified reserve on this.
Ec
Fred Bauder wrote:
Cheapest set I can find is
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=214483227
There are odd volumes availble, such as this 1885 Volume 1
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=224154342
Fred
From: Imran Ghory imran@bits.bris.ac.uk
On Wed, 24 Dec 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Imran Ghory wrote:
Something else we could do is use the money to obtain public domain books (e.g. biographical encyclopedias) that can be scanned/ocred and used for creating basic articles in areas which wikipedia currently lacks coverage.
What would something like that cost, anyway? My guess is that if someone wanted to do this, the cost would be close to zero anyway, am I wrong?
The cost is primarily in buying the books, we could work with Project Gutenberg to get them scanned (they have several high-speed destructive scanners - you just remove the covering and spine of the book and put the pages into a feeder system), ocred and proofread.
What a terrible way to mistreet a book!!!
If we wanted to get something major like the full 1st edition of the "Dictionary of National Biography" (20 volumes) we'd be lucky to find it for under a couple of hundred dollars. Although if we're just looking for any works that we could use we might be get lucky just by looking in second-hand bookstores. There are many books such as Joseph Thomas' "Universal pronouncing dictionary of biography and mythology" which have articles which we could import into Wikipedia with minimal changes to form useful stubs.
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Chuck Smith wrote:
Some problems; What are we going to do with all that money? If we can't spend it, would that jeopardize our nonprofit status? I think it would be a step backwards for Wikimedia to become a for-profit organization.
I think we should hire full-time editors especially for the non-English Wikipedias.
Until we are very clear about the function of such an editor, this is definitely something to be avoided. It often means that editorial policy is then centralized in one person. That needs to remain in the community. Some short term (say 3 months) editorial contracts might be worthwhile when we want to give a boost to a particular language which has had very limited activity. Sometimes, a person to manage and organize the transition between Wikipedia and paper could be worthwhile in making the paper contents less random. There are certainly strong arguments for a technical person.
The English Wikipedia had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge) never had such luxuries. As I said before, I would propose Brion Vibber (technical support, non-English wikis) and Arno Lagrange (Esperanto Wikipedia editor) as full-time employees. Arno is now trying to start a Wikipedia organization in France to be able to legally work full-time for the Esperanto Wikipedia.
I would avoid speaking of particular individuals, until the general issue is settled.
Also, I've never heard of having too much money as being a problem. I mean, we're a foundation! Lots of foundations have millions of dollars... We could use the money to hold Wikipedia seminars and conferences. We could also use the money to finance other worthy educational projects like other foundations do. "Sponsored by Wikimedia"
Too much money can be a bigger problem than not enough. Money completely changes the social dynamics.
Ec
Chuck Smith wrote:
I think we should hire full-time editors especially for the non-English Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge) never had such luxuries. As I said before, I would
What is the hurry?
A lot of the Wikipedias who have now a active comunity and many articles have started very slow whit only 1 or 2 members.
I remember the very early period of the Dutch Wikipedia, it looks now so long ago... Very few people. Every new vistor used to be a real event. The first 100 articles... Trying to find out how to be a Wikipedia, a real one, not just a copy of the Mother of all Wikipedias, the English.
Yes, it takes time. But you need it. It creates a social structure and a history. Whit hired full-time editors you do the opposite of the Wikipedia way. Wikipedia is a encyclopedia by the people for people. If the people of a language are not interested to create a wikipedia the do not get a wikipedia.
Look at the Frysk Wikipedia. The first version is from +/- september 2002. Many months almost no activity. Now it is a very small but active Wikipedia. The change from a usemod Wikipedia to the MediaWiki version, that can give a jump to a wikipedia.
I know there are not enough Brion's to do all the work. But faster technical support and reponds to requests from small Wikipedias is important.
On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 22:25, Walter Vermeir wrote:
Chuck Smith wrote:
I think we should hire full-time editors especially for the non-English Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia had a full-time Larry Sanger to help jump-start the Wikipedia, but the other languages (to my knowledge) never had such luxuries. As I said before, I would
What is the hurry?
A lot of the Wikipedias who have now a active comunity and many articles have started very slow whit only 1 or 2 members.
With all respect to the good work done by busy people may I point out that the money is better spent on technical support issues.
I am a member of 3 people who have shown interest in the 'ta' module (already one is uncommunicative which probably isa good thing as wikis go :). But I am very concerned about the requests to correct the totally misleading interpretation of the licence terms (free as in 'gratis' instead of 'libre') not being attended to in the LanguageTa.php or request on how to set up a mailing list being unanswered. This stops me from giving publicity in the correct places (I believe to be iseal in the correct time etc....)
I understand the money/resources at hand is not a great amount (at the moment) but why not spend it toWards getting the important technical/legal matters like these sorted out as a priority.
I remember the very early period of the Dutch Wikipedia, it looks now so long ago... Very few people. Every new vistor used to be a real event. The first 100 articles... Trying to find out how to be a Wikipedia, a real one, not just a copy of the Mother of all Wikipedias, the English.
Exactly. A copy of 'en' is a bad idea. Especially if an artificial pace is set to mirror the inequality in printed material (by DP like mechanisms). I hope you give considerations to the negative effect of hegemony of English (or any European language for that matter) had contributed to non-free information.
Yes, it takes time. But you need it. It creates a social structure and a history.
... and captures informed free knowledge.
Wikipedia is a encyclopedia by the people for people. If the people of a language are not interested to create a wikipedia the do not get a wikipedia.
hear hear.
Regards,
Ramanan
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org