[Wikimedia-l] Fwd: European Mathematical Society and Springer create Encyclopedia of Mathematics wiki...

[phoebe ayers]

Springer in cooperation with the European Mathematical Society creates
"Encyclopedia of Mathematics" wiki:
http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Main_Page

Invitation to contribute: http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/node/2671

Notice that it is seeded with 8,000 entries from the Kluwer-published
"Encyclopaedia of Mathematics"; these articles remain under copyright
to Springer/Kluwer. However, new contributions and edits will be
licensed cc-by-sa. Seems like a fun copyright time to me...

They are also using MathJax, which I know we are exploring enabling on
Wikipedia (and maybe already have?) They also have an editorial board.
I didn't delve into it deeply but it's not clear to me what having
"full scientific authority over alterations and deletions" means;
though it looks like they are discussing various models of review.

As the librarian who sent this around said.... why wouldn't
mathematicians who were so inclined just contribute to Wikipedia
articles instead? There is some debate about that point on the EoM
talk page. http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Talk:EoM:This_project#EoM_and_WP

This does raise an interesting sourcing issue though -- the published
Encyc. of Math is certainly a reputable source, and should be cited in
the appropriate Wikipedia articles, though I know there's a lot of
debate around whether to cite other wikis as sources. And on the
Encyclopedia of Math wiki talk page there's a debate about whether
they should copy material from Wikipedia!

-- phoebe