[Foundation-l] Bertelsmann publishes "Wikipedia Encyclopedia in One Volume"

[Magnus Manske]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2008/4/28 Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com>:
>
> > On Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 6:44 AM, Waerth <waerth at asianet.co.th> wrote:
>  >  > Look at it from another side. A Pokemon encyclopedia might bring in a
>  >  >  lot more money than a serious one!
>  >
>  >  But is it worth to make a deal with Nintendo, even their Seattle
>  >  headquarters (not in Kyoto), and pass their quality control check
>  >  (they are very keen to keep quality of derivatives, seeing the Atari
>  >  shock impact in '80s) and pay them loyalties? IMHO it would not the
>  >  best way of using Foundation staff's energy ... Even it may bring a
>  >  lot of money, it would better to be done with a third party.
>
>  Since Wikipedia is largely run by volunteers, why not make it a
>  volunteer effort? I have no interest in Pokemon, but would happily
>  help compile a Pokemon encyclopedia to be published if it were to
>  raise funds for Wikimedia Foundation. I'm sure there are many other
>  Wikipedians, Pokemon fans or not, who would also help with such an
>  effort (or similar efforts).
>
>  Some Wikimedia Foundation staff time would be necessary to OK the
>  project with Nintendo, to seek trademark usage rights, to supply
>  Nintendo with drafts of the project and to act as general liaison
>  between Wikipedia and Nintendo. Even so, I don't think this would be a
>  massive drain on Wikimedia Foundation resources, and in light of the
>  funds the project hopes to source for the Wikimedia Foundation, I
>  think it would be worth it.
>
>  What's more, I'm only using Pokemon as an example here - there are
>  many potential projects that could do the same thing: fictional
>  worlds, special-interest areas (stamps, trains, planes, WWII info...),
>  &c.

I'd volunteer my Wiki2XML script to compile a book as DocBook, ODF, or
something, at least to get an impression of what it might look like
during creation.

That said, I don't think a WWII book (for example) would be a success
- there's enough of that around. Finding a cool, interesting topic
that
* includes lots of (good) Wikipedia articles
* hasn't been covered by thousands of "experts" already
is the real first challange IMHO.

Then, who'd publish it? A group of users could easily put a PDF on
lulu.com and pay for an ISBN, but would this group be liable for
copyright infrigment if it is discovered after the book has been
printed 10K times?

Magnus