[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Stopping the presses: Britannica to stop printing books

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2012 at 7:22 PM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've been asked to write a short editorial about this development from
> a Wikipedian's perspective and am curious about (and would love to
> include) other Wikimedian experiences -- did you use print
> encyclopedias as a kid?


I loved encyclopedias as a kid.  My parents had a study hour for my sister
and myself every school night to work on homework or, if that was do, do
something educational.  I would do my homework early to spend the hour
before bed reading our copy of World Book.


> Was a love of print encyclopedias part of your
> motivation or interest in becoming a Wikipedian?


It was my ability to edit it or complain, really.  I registered my
account on the English Wikipedia in 2005 after fixing typos here and there
for a couple years in order to complain about the Main Page Featured
Article, History of Alaska.  The article was all messed up from an
ill-formatted edit, and I wanted to bring it to attention.  I figured it's
only fair to have an account to complain.  Since then I've been working on
support an maintenance to help the content others create.  I'm not an
article writer, so a fantastic feature of Wikipedia is that there are ways
to contribute if this is not your talent.

The fundamental difference between this and my beloved paper encyclopedias
was that you couldn't ask questions or fix something that was wrong.  Those
companies would issue an annual update and corrections, but that's a little
too late.  Placing the encyclopedia in the hands of the wiki format was a
brilliant move by Larry Sanger, it gave the encyclopedia geek white-out and
a pen.


> Is there any value in
> them still? Will you miss it?
>

I will miss it in the way that mine and previous generations value the
touch, weight, and volume of books.  It's a lot more comprehensible to
appreciate the work it takes in writing an encyclopedia when 32 volumes are
dwarfed by what you can create with space on the web.  You can't physically
measure the work put into the words.  But I weigh it out to future
generations not having this appreciate and just feel old when I imagine
myself making this speech in the future to my kid(s).

-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan