[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia spanks Encarta, Brockhaus

[Elisabeth Bauer]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Two words: PRESS RELEASE! 
> 
> Seriously, once the fund drive is over we should have a press release about
> this and also mention the fact and result of our 'recent successful fund
> drive.' We should also quote Jimbo when he said that commercial encyclopedias
> will be out of business in 5 years if they keep doing as they have been. 

I've seen that work already started on 
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_press_releases/Wikipedia_vs_Brockhaus_and_Encarta

I'm not entirely sure if it's a good idea to send a separate press 
release. We discussed this yesterday among the german wikipedians, 
feelings were mixed.

It's one thing to have an independent media giving wikipedia credit as a 
valuable encyclopedia, but we know that in many areas it's still far 
from being that. If we pick up the results of this test and boast about 
them, we will be measured by this in the future. Closed season would be 
over for us.

Please let's stick to "we are a project building an encyclopedia" and 
let the media do the job of praising us. They do it quite well, as we 
can see. Let's mention the c't test discreetly in future press releases 
(like the one about the fund raising drive), but not send a separate one.

For the german wikipedia, we are planning to mention the test results in 
our next press release about the publication of the wikipedia cd version.

One last important thing: If something like this happens, please don't 
start actions without consulting the local people involved. So far we 
have good contacts to the c't. But things like a full text translation 
of the article can seriously damage this relationship. And it would fall 
back to us, not the international crowd.

greetings,
elian