I think we first need to finetune the quality of such articles. Sure,
for every TV show, wikipedia has an article. But many (if not most)
articles are stubs, they are subject to vandalism and lack references.
First we need to bring them up to, say, good article status.
On 9/13/06, jasonspiro4 <jasonspiro4+news(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
Huge libraries (large / U.S. Ivy League universities' libraries, public
libraries in world-class cities, Library of Congress, etc.) spend unbelievable
amounts of money on buying books and magazines every year. Books and magazines
are great, but there are certain subjects with no relevant books or magazine
articles available. Example: TV. For any popular TV show, Wikipedia has a main
article and numerous subarticles on characters, episodes, and so on. For some
subjects, Wikipedia is truly the best choice for information.
I propose we band together and start a WikiPrint service. We could somehow make
it easy for schools, corporations and libraries to print out subsets of
Wikipedia: e.g. if they want a PDF of a whole category to send to an online
print-on-demand shop, we compile the PDF for them, add a nice cover page etc.,
and send it to the shop for them if they like. They would pay us for the
service.
I am not sure if this would be a for-profit service or a free service (e.g.
part of the WikiPress system). For-profit would mean we would be able to
promote ourselves more and we would be more motivated to do well.
Would this be a useful / popular service? What kinds of customers would come to
us? For example, a question for you librarians among us: would libraries be
interested in such a service?
Jason Spiro
Computer programming student and Wikipedian
Toronto, Canada
--
Jason Spiro: computer consulting with a smile.
I also do computer training and spyware removal for homes and businesses.
Call or email for a FREE 5-minute consultation. Satisfaction guaranteed.
jasonspiro4(a)gmail.com / 416-781-5938 / Skype ID: jasonspiro
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