[WikiEN-l] Concise Print Wikipedia is a Fork

[mapellegrini at comcast.net]

Just to lay out what *I* think are going to be the biggest hurdles to creating 
a print Wikipedia
A) Articles in en.wikipedia must not be frozen (or this would kil the Wikipedia 
project), but must be stable enough that they can be verified a print-ready. 
B) Weblinks and interlinks have to be removed from our print articles, but not
from our regular database. 
C) While Wikipedia is not paper, a printed version is. Wikipedia doesn't have to be
concise, but a printed version does. By the same token, electronic Wikipedia doesn't
have to define terms very precisely when interlinks can be used, but a paper 
encyclopedia, to a larger degree, should. So we absolutely cannot just copy the 
articles as they exist in the en database. 
D) Forks, with the inevitable loss of effeciency that occurs from repeated efforts, 
are always bad. 

To summarize the ideas presented regarding the 
print version: 
1) Some people argue that we should create a print Wikipedia project (ala the
simple english project).  
2) Others argue that we should do it behind the scenes, by changing our 
markup language or using a hidden flag
3) My idea was to create a talk-page like "Print version" page 

I'm sorry to repeat myself, but I still think my idea is the best. Getting a 
full, printed version of Wikipedia is going to require a LOT of effort. IMO, 
those side projects fall short of it by orders of magnitude. Plus, it would mean 
that users would have to keep track of two seperate Wikipedia namespaces - not 
something that most people are going to do. 

Meanwhile, the do-it-behind-the-scenes idea falls apart completely on point C, (and 
point B to a lesser extent). 

My idea of a talk-page like structure is distinct from the normal Wikipedia articles
that it doesn't require major changes to the markup langugage, but not too far 
removed as to cause ineffeciency. Changes to the printed version would show up in the 
watchlist, just like changes to talk pages do. The print-version page could, in many 
cases, simply be the first paragraph of the main article. 

--Mark Pellegrini
User:Raul654