Slashdot Mirror
GNUPedia Project Starting
Hector Facundo Arena writes: "The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource (GNUPedia) Web page is online today. GNUPedia is a project for the development of a free encyclopedia. You can read more in the Richard Stallman's project announcement document. We invite you to participate in the project and join the mailing lists"
Why limit it to non-fiction!? Take a look at http://www.baen.com/library/ where you can download some great fiction for free. Make no mistake, Jim Baen and the authors want to make money off this little project, by spreading the word and getting the mid-list author's names out there, and they are bound to do better than the music industry, since they are embracing the web instead of denying its existence.
Dear Ben Crowell,
Two points:
As for prohibiting linking to non-free articles:
Easy enough to understand. It's a self-restriction. It's so that we don't get lazy, give 3 details, and then say, "For the other 100 details, go check out these 15 web pages."
It also ensures that it's Free, through and through. I really don't mind, all that much.
Again, no argument. What's your point? That ALL proprietary software is GNU derived? Because RMS is against ALL proprietary software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
There will be a segment of the population who will endeavour to do what is done on public forums such as slashdot: Troll and destroy the integrity of the project. On slashdot it isn't that much of an issue. Sometimes trolls don't get moderated down but usually it's just inane banter which is easy to detect. I also don't put much stock in slashdot as an information resource. It's entertainment to me. There is some useful content on some subjects and some insightful commentary (and some inciteful commentary as well!) but I wouldn't be caught dead citing slashdot in any meaningful report.
I've seen in other projects where credibility is more important, such as mindpixel (the projects thesis is that a system can be developed that reflects the average mind of an internet user) flooded with bogus information. Some of it may just be people answering outside of the area of their expertice, some of it was obviously malicious.
I know I sound very negative, I really hope the project succeeds and I'm airing these observations in the hopes that they're already addressed. I will contribute to this project in the areas that I consider myself well versed in.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
There should be NO proprietary standards... This is an opinion I share with many techies.
But it is not an opinion shared by general public. Getting back to the original topic, an article in GNUpedia written/edited by RMS that said "there should be NO proprietary standards" would be extremely biased.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
At least RMS practices what he preaches, more than I can say for most advocates of anything else.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Isn't the internet already an encyclopedia of sorts? Whenever I need information, I just go to Google and I'm able to find out what I need. The only thing that could be better is if the info was organized more efficiently, but doing that would be worthless effort in my opinion.
I like their copyright:
Copyright © 1997 by TheReference.
All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Richard is famous for his lack of tact, but come on, GNUpedia? Why choose this name when the Nupedia project (same concept -- free online encyclopeida) exists and is already very well established? This seems like either (1) a blatent attempt to confuse would-be users and steal audience through confusion, (2) a remarkable failure to do the required homework before starting a project (remarkable because Richard is supposedly so bright), or (3) just plain insensitivity. It's enough to drive any feeling, thinking person as far away from GNU as possible. Geesh...
--------
meta4
dw2-dont-spam-me-@opencontent.org
http://davidwiley.com/
English is a language from England. A country that 'steals' this language cannot make changes to it and then claim they are right. Color is incorrect spelling.
The Internet is global. The English language is also global. Colour is how it is spelt in all but one nation.
Will this 'GNUpedia' (which already has a spelling mistake in the title just due to ASCII issues) be biased towards one man's (RMS's) native flawed spelling, or will it be correct for a wider, if non-US, audience?
Anonymous because this will come across as a troll to anyone that thinks I am wrong.
We won't. It'll be up to other articles to point out inaccuracies.
Forgive me, but WTF?!?
An encyclopedia is meant to be a "comprehensive collection of knowledge", not information which is incorrect and left untouched, because (to quote RMS' announcement) "we dare not let any organisation have control over the content".
This sounds ripe to be a disaster, or calamity. Imagine the slashdot trolls getting into it.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
But honestly I'd work on a farm, for free, and give away everything I didn't need
... I grew up on a farm, and everybody except Cyno, just trust me on this one: Only a person who has ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING CLUE WHATSOEVER what farm work is like could say that with a straight face. I'd accuse Cyno of trolling, but *sigh* I do routinely meet city-raised kids that actually are this utterly ignorant, so the chances are pretty good that Cyno probably means it.
... ok, you keep thinking that.
... a modern farmer is more wired than probably two-thirds of the so-called 'geeks' on /.
Ohhhh-kayyyyyy
but I current do a job that no farmer could.
*raises eyebrow*
Ahhhh
Now, in the REAL world, everybody except Cyno, farmers are using software to optimize stock growth, calculate fertilizers needed, monitor soil conditions, pull down weather forecasts from the 'net, protect their incomes by hedge investing against the prices they expect to be getting down the road
The difference is the farmers are using their software and their software-writing abilities as a TOOL, not as some pathetic attempted assertion of self-worth like the typical freak around here.
Real encyclopedias are controlled by editorial boards that provide unbiased, fair and reasonable content. Judging from slashdot, and RMS' personal opinions I would conclude that is encyclodepia would be quite biased. In order to be of any use, it will have to be unbiased. If stallman is any judge of why people write free software, contributors will not want to write for it unless they can influence others opinions. We can see this right on the page with the comment about the "GNU system", sometimes called linux. Is this really the type of encyclopedia that you would want?
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
screams for something more than html. are there any existing xml dtd's or schemas for organising such information?
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
It's sure to have much more updated and technically accurate than any print encyclopedia I've personally seen, but the main point of an encyclopedia (IMO) is to concentrate knowledge of any given field of knowledge and give a solid, accurate portrayal. Sure, there can be many different points of view presented, but ultimately, it needs to wrap up conclusions and points in at least *some* manner. Ever seen a Usenet thread do this successfully?
*Pictures Johnny 11th grader trying to write a HS paper with this encyclopedia, with every paragraph starting like this: "However, Professor John Doe believes that...", "Dr. Paul Denton disagrees...", "Laura Croft, PHD, flamed Paul, however, and..." *
Anyhow, this is a really cool experiment.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Existing encyclopedias have a review process. Difference is, factual errors, once pointed out, will be corrected in the entry. Not by "corrective other articles" which will end up being someone's energy in going and verifying. Which is no more different than people to do. An encyclopedia is meant to be a collection of knowledge.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
In order to maintain editorial review & allow the authors some peer-review, why not setup a site running Slashcode or PHPNuke and post the incoming articles there? Separate them into 'volumes' (ala Gardening, AutoMechanics, SubParticlePhysics) separated into Topics or Sections. People who are interested in editing and 'fact checking' can surf by - at their leisure - and read the articles. If a person is knowledgeable in the subject they can comment on factual, technical or language problems in the 'proposed' article - the comments and the article are then sent back to the author for review/editing. Maybe a karma system could be developed where good reviewers/commenter/editors/fact checker types are rewarded so that they have some kind of increased 'voting' rights in 'approving' the article for inclusion. Meaning, the better you are received or recognized by your peers (through this karma hack) would empower these people to finally approve the articles.
/. that the best thing to end the present IP grab is to simply make the Patent, Copyright and Trademark systems run the gauntlet on a Slashcode/PHPNuke site... the idea that a Patent, Copyright or Trademark application should be secret is absurd - their worth should be self-evident and with merit... otherwise they should not be granted.
I really think this type of 'web-log' has allot of very valuable application -- without sounding like a twit, the idea that you can mechanize a 'karma' system and allow for open conversation where 'experts' are given proper weight is interesting....
Ive said allot here on
Stallman has started the First Foundation to build an encyclopedia. Yah right.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I would like to believe it was #2 (didn't do homework) or #3 (insensitivity), but I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. He couldn't possibly have gotten to the stage of proposing this whole project without already knowing about Nupedia.
What's really odious about his behavior is that he doesn't even acknowledge that Nupedia already exists.
If he has a gripe against Nupedia's license, he should say so. If he has a gripe against Nupedia's structure (and the fact that Nupedia has editorial control), he should say so.
The only reason I can think of for using a nearly identical name, and never referring to Nupedia at all in his proposal, is that he is trying to be deceptive and sneaky. Just how stupid does he think people are?
I guess it's the destiny of every zealot to end up being his cause's own worst enemy.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
I had this idea a while ago. Good thing somebody else had it and actually did something about it.
Now, if I can just find the time to implement my idea for a whole new kind of porn site that will revolutionize the industry...
Allowing links to non-GPL'd sites would not dilute the freedom of the encyclopedia. Look, everybody knows that when they surf someone's web site, there may be outgoing links. I'm sure that I can start on my local PTA's web site and, within six clicks, wind up on a page about goat sex. Does that mean the PTA shouldn't have had outward links? Of course not. People can normally tell when they've left one site and entered another. As long as every page on GNUpedia had some kind of consistent logo or banner, this wouldn't be an issue. The only reason for trying to pretend it's an issue is because RMS thinks it's his destiny to make everybody else do what he wants.
This policy has all the same ridiculous problems as the DeCSS ruling -- prohibiting people from linking is just plain stupid, and they'll just work around it. The announcement says:
- If a page on the web covers subject matter that ought to be in the encyclopedia or the course library, but its license is too restricted to qualify, we must not make links to it from encyclopedia articles or from courses.
In other words, an article on C# can't contain a link to MS's pages about C#? How pathetic!BTW, who's going to enforce this rule, and who's going to decide what sites are not free enough to link to ("too restricted to qualify"), or what sites "ought to be in the encyclopedia"? I suppose RMS will make pronouncements, and then there will be endless arguing with people who disagree with him, since there is supposed to be no central control.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
# man hallway
HALL(1)   House General Rooms Manual   HALL(1)
NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
DIAGNOSTICS
BUGS
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
1st Snowfox Home Distribution October 13, 1999
#
I'm sure the editors of Slashdot have never heard of this site, but there's a site called Everything2. The GPLed encyclopedia sounds an AWFUL lot like E2 while reading the description of what will go in to the encyclopedia. People submit articles about thier area of expertise. Sub-encyclopedias (meta-nodes), etc. make this sound like a souped of version of E2. I'm glad Nate already thought of this. Way to go, RMS
The famous 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica is not only in the public domain now, but it has been entered into ascii form as part of the Gutenberg project. They can't CALL it the Britannica, because that's still under trademark, but a comparison of the articles to the 11th edition on my shelf shows that's what it is. Good encyclopedia if a bit dated---and a great place to start.
There is of course h2g2 -- Douglas Adams' famous guide. But it's more a practical encyclopedia. So maybe we really need something like a "free as in free speach" clone of Britannica.
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Articles, and especially courses, will often include software--for example, to display a simulation of a chemical reaction, or teach you how often to stir a sauce so it won't burn. To ensure that the encyclopedia is indeed free, all software included in articles and courses should meet the criteria of free software (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) and open source software (http://www.opensource.org).
</i>
<p>
Good for RMS, not launching into a rant about Free Software vs. open source software, but instead embracing both philosophies as acceptable in this case. Since every time he gest sidetracked, he gets massively criticized, let's see a massive groundswell of positive feedback this time...
Can your IM do this?
I'm glad to see this. It has potential.
:-)
:-(
I've pondered the idea of having Open Travel Guides. People that are familar with a given location can add all the details they can on cities, hotels, transportation, things to do, etc. It would all be stored in an open XML and all kinds of clients could be written to display and search and print relevant items.
Sort of like Lonely Planet only better.
I'm not sure I have time to start this, but I wish I did. There are too many other things to work on.
In some ways this shows some promise for GNUPedia -- the real content is already coming from distributed individuals, usually people for whom writing is not a profession. OTOH, I think it shows the weakness as well -- what makes a bunch of articles an encyclopedia is the editorial influence. The web already has lots of articles, but it doesn't have the editorial influence.
Most of what the editors do is bitch at the contributors who are late submitting their articles. This is because an encyclopedia that covers 90% of the necessary material is a bad encyclopedia. Who's going to do the bitching for GNUPedia? And how would they possibly have any authority to bitch? They aren't paying anyone anything...
I think GNUPedia should place more emphasis on compiling and cataloging. Most of the content already exists. That's what OpenDirectory is all about... that's what the web is all about... and a lot of the content is from people who wouldn't mind giving up control, because they aren't receiving anything in return anyway. A little flattery could go a long way...
If already-existing resources were compiled and editted, released under a copyleft-license, GNUPedia could really be successful. But as it seems stated, it feels like GNUPedia is just a rephrasing of what the web already is.
Also, GNUPedia or some subset needs some exclusiveness. I think a lot of people who contribute to these encyclopedias do it because in a small way it makes them a published author. In academia the greatest rewards are things you can say about yourself, not things you have. If GNUPedia can make people rightfully proud of being contributors, then it can definately succede.
Add moderation and multiple entries,and it would basically be everything2 (www.everything2.com)
The whole project should be rated -1: redundant
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
As you can see, the working method is very simple. People send us articles, and we add them to the encyclopedia. That's all.
Really? No peer review? What about multiple entries? Who will determine which articles get published, and what criteria will be used? Who will check the validity of the factual information presented, and who will check the checkers?
As best as I can tell, the only answer that the GNUpedia page gives is
Although there are lot of things waiting to be defined. We want to hear from you....just send it to hf@gnu.org. He'll post it on the enclopedia.
I tip my hat to Mr. Arena, who has taken charge of a potentially very important project. However, neither he nor any other single individual is qualified to judge the content value of the entire sphere of human knowledge. The world of the intellect is not a democracy, and not every writer's entry will be of equal value when it comes to mastery of the subject and ability to convey ideas. Without a moderation system, this project could be fatally doomed to posting poor, or worse yet, signficantly inaccurate material.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Seriously, how does the accuracy check compare to something released by Encyclopedia Brittanica? Will there be any sort of verification, or am I going to be sifting through a few thousand "First post!" articles doing research?
My mom is not a Karma whore!
Also, the Linux kernel _is_ GPLed, so in an indirect way the FSF has actually "produced" an OS... The Linux kernel is GNU-licensed.
Non sequitur. The licensing of software has nothing whatsoever to do with the classification of that software into projects. Not all GNU software is released under a GNU license, and not all software released under a GNU license is part of GNU. Just because I speak English does not mean that I am an Englishman.
As I understood him, the GNU system is a _specification_ of an OS, or class of POSIX-compatible OSes, not one actual implementation.
The original announcement and the GNU Manifesto called it a "system". It's description made it very clear that it was to be an implementation, and not a spec.
Later documents made it clear that the goal was an actual operating system. Quotes from "The GNU Project": "The answer was clear: what was needed first was an operating system", and "The GNU operating system would include them too".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I'm will to write the html content in Microsoft Frontpage!
Does anyone really believe they can produce rational, bias-free entries for Microsoft and Linux? and who the hell will be able to write an entry about sexual intercourse?
"Smart companies save money by deploying MySQL instead of Oracle." - slashdot post
Close, but not exactly. An encyclopedia is informative and factual, whist many of the most highly rated nodes on Everything are subjective, funny and contrafactual, creative, or personal accounts and fiction about human experiences. And lots of-meta discussion of E2.
For instamce, cool nodes right now on E2 include "Step away from the fridge, lardass!", "just give him the damned fish", "How to annoy a fast-food worker on counter", "Could you please be more specific and less annoying?"
Hardly encycolpaedia material.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
"As you can see, the working method is very simple. People send us articles, and we add them to the enclopedia. That's all."
I hope this is just an oversight, but it seems they don't plan to edit/moderate the articles. I bet you end up with hundreds of submissions on hot topics and nothing on less well know subjects.
Speaking of moderations, may they should use Bender! I think it is about time Slashdot contribute something to make up for all those sites we /.ed ;-)
====
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
But what happens if some pages are erroneous, or even deceptive? We cannot assume this won't happen. But the corrective is for other articles to point out the error. Instead of having "quality control" by one privileged organization, we will have review by various groups, which will earn respect by their own policies and actions. In a world where no one is infalliable, this is the best we can do.
This seems like a community-based system similar to that used by slashdot. However, I think particularly for very detailed technical articles, allowing everyone in the world to decide who will earn their "respect" (quantified as a numerical value like slashdot kharma?) may be quite problematic at best, and fundamentally flawed at worst. The truth of the matter is that democracy does not work in polling the entire world about intellectual matters. Polling 10 million Americans about two conflicting articles about Elementary Particle Physics will not produce a more accurate result that polling 2 or 3 expert High Energy Physicists. Who decides whether those individuals are experts? A slightly larger, though still small, community of peers.
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Perhaps, but a nice solution for this would be to allow multiple entries for subjects. You write one, I write one, RMS writes one, MS writes one. The reader has the opportunity to read them all and parse accordingly.
Think this is crazy? That's how the Internet works *right now*. I know enough to take everything I read with a grain of salt; I research, I compare, I put facts together and compare motives. I make my own, informed opinion.
You can't do something like this with paper books because it is cost-prohibitive and ineffective, but on the internet where expansion is not only easily compensated for, it is expected.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
I think this idea is very good. I think that most of the comments agree on one thing though : Stallman's article doesn't give enough details on the practical side to make it seem real. He (as usualy) defends the ethical side of the problem, and rightly enough describes the way the content should be free (speech) but he leaves a huge blank area in the field of the practical (and technical) implementation of GNUpedia.
/. readers are probably the most qualified to talk/think about this if not to implement it themselves...
I think that Internet and the Open Source community is somehow ready to start such a project (and I don't think it was the case anytime before).
What we need to make it real is a deep deep thinking on the technical/practical side of it. And while we are here, why not talk about how you would technically do it ? I mean,
Here is how I would see it : I think that what we realy need in terms of encyclopedia is something that would sit between Shaslcode and QuestionExchange. Something where anyone could post comments, articles, pictures and all the shit, but where every willing people could also judge the pertinence of the content. Say for example that this article is a troll, this other one is "insightfull" and so on. People could also say "this article was usefull to my knowledge". So we would have two level of moderation : one on the "editorial scale" (troll/interesting), and one on the content quality/usefullness.
Why ? Because I think that Stallman is right on one point at least : it needs to be completly free (speech) to be interesting. Doing else would be doing something that has already be done (say britanica for example) and that perhaps doesn't need to be done again.
Making GNUpedia an "open to any post" system is a nice idea, but it also implies that we will have to face A LOT of content submissions. Even if we wanted to create an "editorial board" to decide what would be included and what would not (which we cannot if we want to remain free as in speech) it would be too much work for (volunteers) individuals to "separate the good from the evil".
So what we need is a system that allows anybody to feed it with his/her particular bit of knowledge, and them let the individual reader make the content "worth reading" by moderating it up or down.
Then, after a while, we might (might) have something interesting for anyone. In that case I'm sure it would be the greatest success of Open Source movment (aren't we talking about free knowledge, free information since the very beginning of Open Source ?)
Another thought I have too : why make it web (http) based ? Any rational reason for it ? I think we have now in our hands a better technical way to do it : why not build it as a peer-to-peer network (based on this or that) with a client/server program using Gecko to render the documents ? What do you think ? That was my 2 cents worth thoughts...
PS : Please forgive the english, it's not my mother tongue.
Isn't asking for the general public to submit articles asking for trouble, all it will take is one or two pieces of plagiarised information to cause a possible legal problem for GNU
That being said, I would love to see it work :)
NO CARRIER
Please refrain from using any term derived from ancient Latin(c). Latin Language(c) is copyrighted by Roman Empire, and only its certified descendands can use it or any work derived from it.
Ciao
----
FB
I've never used docBook but your right. users would need an easy to use interface and it doesn't have to be web based.
what I was trying to allude to was architecture. with a solid architecture you can do lots of neat things with data.
here are a few things I'd like to see
- editors
- trawlers
- data mining tools etc...
and so it can be pumped out to different interfaceswml etc
searching - needs a suitable search engine for searching. lots of data, a lot of users.
multi-lingual support - dont just want english.
it's important that anyone can add data, but it's critical that the underlying structure can handle the complexity and volume of the data required.
for these reasons xml is a nice starting point.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
There are several disadvantages of Everything2. Here are some, not all, I'm unimaginative today ;-)
*) Lack of clear editorial layout, rules and standards.
*) Lack of many properties which could easily automate knowledge searching, relationships, gathering and extracting. For instance using XML DTDs with one or more hierarchy structures.
*) Lack of multiple front-ends, like database query-support.
*) Lots of articles per entry, instead of one compiled article.
*) Lack of version control and diff-manipulations.
*) No pictures, no sounds, no videos. No tables, no graphs, no mathematic formula sheets.
I hope GNUPedia will meet these shortcomings properly. Don't get me wrong on Everything2, it's a nice system. It's just not perfect. Try some advanced, non-geek questions and you'll end up with a nodeshell. Try a geek-question, and get a geek-biased answer. Say this is all up to the users of the system, but it's still what it is.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
No wonder you have problems with really big words like colour and aluminium.
Or maybe you're referring to the spelling of people named Britt?
Deleted
I was reading through, thinking "What a dammned great idea", thinking "This is suprisignly rational from RMS", untill I read the restrictions on linking outside of documents.
Before I complain about the theory of it, here's the problem:
Scenario 1: You can not link to pages that contain links to pages that aren't under the appropriate license.
Result: You cannot link to anything, because nearly every site will eventually link out.
Scenario 2: You can link to pages that aren't under the same restrictive license, as long as it's "free enough". This effectively makes the rule useless, and IMHO is the way to go (ie lose the rule).
But why at all? Why does RMS feel it's his place to effectively censor the viewer from further non GNU-sanctioned learning? And yes, it's possible to find things without links, but it's a lot harder.
Why oh why do you have to do shit like this RMS? Your zealotry gets in the way of your ideals, and their acceptance, which is a shame, because they are truly great aspirations.
--Gfunk
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Real encyclopedias are controlled by editorial boards that provide unbiased, fair and reasonable content. Judging from slashdot, and RMS' personal opinions I would conclude that is encyclodepia would be quite biased. In order to be of any use, it will have to be unbiased. If stallman is any judge of why people write free software, contributors will not want to write for it unless they can influence others opinions. We can see this right on the page with the comment about the "GNU system", sometimes called linux.
Is this really the type of encyclopedia that you would want?
But the real question is, whatever happened to the Interpaedia? Remember, the web-based, user-written, free encyclopaedia? Sound familiar? It's what RMS is proposing, and it's what failed before. What is different this time? The only links I could find to the Interpaedia were a gopher link and an old broken link to an archived discussion.
Will it be GPL'd? Does that mean that if I print out the article on Phylum Nematoda and hand it in for my Biology report, I have to GPL my report card?
What if I just use a bit of the information in a report? Must it be GPL'd?