[Foundation-l] Evil Book

Ryan Kaldari rkaldari at wikimedia.org
Mon Nov 1 20:09:15 UTC 2010


It is actually becoming somewhat difficult to search for books on 
obscure subjects on Amazon or Alibris without being completely spammed 
with matches for "robo-books" automatically generated from Wikipedia 
articles. Recently, I was doing research for a Wikipedia article on a 
rather obscure type of spider, and I came very close to buying a book on 
it before I realized that it was actually just a reprint of the content 
I had already written for the article. So I almost paid someone for my 
own writing! Perhaps we should put together a project to keep track of 
these robo-book publishers so that we can start asking for some 
royalties (or else sue them for not giving us proper credit).

Ryan Kaldari

On 10/31/10 9:41 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
> There is a book review of a 98 page book supposedly about Ukita
> Kōkichi (who apparently prematurely invented the hang glider)
>
> http://blog.seattlepi.com/travelforaircraft/archives/226709.asp
>
> Which consists of this Wikipedia article:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukita_K%C5%8Dkichi
>
> and a few others
>
> Listed on Amazon for 50 bucks:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/6131076278/
>
> together with a bevy of other sellers:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/6131076278/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new
>
> Fred
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>    



More information about the foundation-l mailing list