[Foundation-l] PediaPress

[Robert S. Horning]

On 11/12/2010 10:02 AM, phoebe ayers wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 12:47 AM, MZMcBride<z at mzmcbride.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> I also don't understand who would want a printed copy of a Wikipedia
>> article. It seems antithetical to the point of the Internet and the creation
>> of an online encyclopedia.
>>      
> The last time I used the Special:Book extension was not on Wikipedia
> at all, but on the Strategy wiki, where it is enabled. Before the last
> Board meeting, I used the tool to make a collection/pdf of the final
> strategy documents, which I then printed out and read on my lunch
> break, on the train, etc. -- places where I didn't have a computer and
> my aging smartphone just wouldn't cut it. The benefits of doing this,
> rather than just printing each page one-off, was that it was nicely
> formatted (and thus easier to read), included a de-duped list of
> contributors at the end so I could check who worked on the page
> without printing off the history as well, and was in a single pdf that
> I could both point other people to and also download to my computer,
> email to myself, etc. So about a minute of clicking saved me quite a
> bit of frustration and work, and made me quite a bit more efficient
> when it came to reviewing the strategy proposal.
>
> My only point here is that if you provide the tool people will put it
> to surprising and useful purposes. I think Erik clarified that the
> extension is something we can and intend to use regardless of
> PediaPress (as can any MediaWiki installation -- I intend to install
> it on my workplace wiki, when I get around to it) and I think Liam
> raises a good point that if there are other organizations doing what
> PediaPress does in the printing department we should consider adding
> them to the list as well (which we can certainly do, as it is a
> non-exclusive partnership).
>
> And yes, the Foundation's mission *is* to help disseminate knowledge,
> and specifically to encourage the dissemination of our project
> content, in any way that is useful to our readers and potential
> audience -- whether that's by DVD, wikireader, OLPC laptop, regular
> laptop, printed book, mobile phone... that's why we have a free
> license.
>
> -- phoebe
>    

Based upon my own experience, I tried to get into the printed Wikimedia 
game at about the same time as PediaPress first started to get involved, 
but was openly dismissed and in fact my efforts thwarted.  I admit that 
the group I was working with at the time wasn't quite thinking of the 
direction that PediaPress went with their tool chain and there were some 
differences, but in the end it does explain some of the reception we got 
from the WMF board in terms of support for our little project (made up 
of mainly volunteers from Wikibooks at the time).

There have been other groups who have tried to get into the role of 
printing materials from Wikimedia projects besides PediaPress, and I 
think it is disingenuous to suggest that the relationship is 
non-exclusive.  At the very least, the process for getting accepted as 
"an approved partner" has been very murky at best and seems more like 
political back scratching.

I'm willing to let bygones stay in the past and move forward from this 
point on, although it would be nice to know what it would take for 
support from the WMF in terms of putting together some other competing 
group that is printing and distributing Wikimedia materials.  Yes, I'm 
fully aware that you can simply take the raw HTML pages from the 
projects and manipulate them into content to produce materials (I did 
that on multiple occasions) and that the "Special:Book" tool produces 
PDF files that can also be used for publication purposes as well by 
independent printers.

As far as I've seen, however, the PediaPress deal was rather exclusive 
and I'm stating here for the record that other printing/publishing 
groups were not considered when the deal was being made nor have those 
other groups been given similar kind of coverage.

-- Robert Horning
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