Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia (under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established text books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good.
They won't stay authoritative very long, unless we were to finance further editions as as well.
On 10/24/06, sigmaman sigmaman@gmail.com wrote:
Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia (under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established text books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
"Historical reference material" is going to go out of date?
SKL
David Goodman wrote:
They won't stay authoritative very long, unless we were to finance further editions as as well.
On 10/24/06, sigmaman sigmaman@gmail.com wrote:
Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia (under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established text books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Its accuracy is downsward sloping, typically. =)
-S
On 10/25/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
"Historical reference material" is going to go out of date?
SKL
David Goodman wrote:
They won't stay authoritative very long, unless we were to finance
further
editions as as well.
On 10/24/06, sigmaman sigmaman@gmail.com wrote:
Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference
material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia (under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established
text
books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good. _______________________________________________ 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
and textbooks are not reference material. Most libraries discard them when the next edition comes out (or keep one edition back). Libraries with immense amounts of storage space put one copy in storage & throw out the others.
(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical interest). "In the 80s, this book was universally used & is therefore of significance in the development of ..."
On 10/25/06, Steve subsume@gmail.com wrote:
Its accuracy is downsward sloping, typically. =)
-S
On 10/25/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
"Historical reference material" is going to go out of date?
SKL
David Goodman wrote:
They won't stay authoritative very long, unless we were to finance
further
editions as as well.
On 10/24/06, sigmaman sigmaman@gmail.com wrote:
Mr Wales wanted it, so I am going to give him mine...
For me, I see two main areas where the money could be spent:
1- Text books copyright buyouts. Primarily historical reference
material.
2- Commisioning original photographic and illustrative content for Wikipedia (under the SA or GFDL, of course).
Let's face, $100 million can buy a lot of stuff. Certain established
text
books being licensed under a SA license would do a world of good. _______________________________________________ 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
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
David Goodman wrote:
and textbooks are not reference material. Most libraries discard them when the next edition comes out (or keep one edition back). Libraries with immense amounts of storage space put one copy in storage & throw out the others.
(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical interest). "In the 80s, this book was universally used & is therefore of significance in the development of ..."
This last bit is not realistic. While it is still preferable to cite the most recent edition, the fact is that people cite the edition that is available to them. We cannot require people to go out and buy the most recent edition before contributing. It's up to subsequent editors to update the information if they have something more recent.
Ec
We can expect our editors to use libraries. (And if you can't or don't want to work that way, there's an immense amount to write on WP. There's a great many topics--academic topics even--that can best be written with available Internet sources. )
Is your goal to produce a WP useful for 2006, or 1996? It would be very interesting to deliberately invent an encyclopedia appropriate for some specific earlier historical period, but many of the users may be more interested in the present.
On 10/25/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
and textbooks are not reference material. Most libraries discard them when the next edition comes out (or keep one edition back). Libraries
with
immense amounts of storage space put one copy in storage & throw out the others.
(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical interest). "In the 80s, this book was universally used & is therefore of
significance
in the development of ..."
This last bit is not realistic. While it is still preferable to cite the most recent edition, the fact is that people cite the edition that is available to them. We cannot require people to go out and buy the most recent edition before contributing. It's up to subsequent editors to update the information if they have something more recent.
Ec
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
David Goodman wrote:
We can expect our editors to use libraries. (And if you can't or don't want to work that way, there's an immense amount to write on WP. There's a great many topics--academic topics even--that can best be written with available Internet sources. )
Really? If I have in my personal library, a book that is not the most recent edition, I am _not_ going to go to the library everytime just to check if they have a more recent edition., and it would be thoroughly unreasonable to expect me to do that. Obsolescence in a topic or a textbook is not going to develop on any kind of uniform basis, nor will the texts of different publishers develop these ideas at the same rate. Your expectation of editors is unrealistic and demeaning.
Is your goal to produce a WP useful for 2006, or 1996? It would be very interesting to deliberately invent an encyclopedia appropriate for some specific earlier historical period, but many of the users may be more interested in the present.
Without the past there would be no present, and even less an understanding of the present.. The encyclopedia is not just a snapshot of 2006, but of everything that led to that moment. Your suggestion of a separate encyclopedia for some earlier time makes no sense.
Ec
On 10/25/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
and textbooks are not reference material. Most libraries discard them when the next edition comes out (or keep one edition back). Libraries with
immense amounts of storage space put one copy in storage & throw out the others.
(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical interest). "In the 80s, this book was universally used & is therefore of significance
in the development of ..."
This last bit is not realistic. While it is still preferable to cite the most recent edition, the fact is that people cite the edition that is available to them. We cannot require people to go out and buy the most recent edition before contributing. It's up to subsequent editors to update the information if they have something more recent.
"David Goodman" dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote in message news:480eb3150610252215r984ab43tabbbc82247690382@mail.gmail.com...
On 10/25/06, Ray Saintonge
saintonge@telus.net wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical
interest).
This last bit is not realistic. While it is still preferable to cite the most recent edition, the fact is that people cite the edition that is available to them. We cannot require people to go out and buy the most recent edition before contributing. It's up to subsequent editors to update the information if they have something more recent.
We can expect our editors to use libraries. (And if you can't or don't want to work that way, there's an immense amount to write
on
WP. There's a great many topics--academic topics even--that can best be written with available Internet sources. )
Is your goal to produce a WP useful for 2006, or 1996? It would be very interesting to deliberately invent an encyclopedia appropriate for some specific earlier historical period, but many of the users may be more interested in the present.
It appears that you are refuting the viability of creating an encyclopedia iteratively, and that only complete, accurate, verified and peer-reviewed articles should be allowed on Wikipedia.
Surely information from 1996 is still valuable, in the absence of anything more up-to-date? Don't tell me that a textbook about Shakespeare will have changed so much in the last 10 years that its information is worthless!
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org