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Will The Real Nupedia Please Stand Up?
jwales writes: "There was a bit of confusion recently regarding the announcement of a 'gnupedia' project. There already exists a free encyclopedia project, with all code GPL'd and all content FDL'd, and that project is Nupedia. I have written an article explaining what happened. Basically, RMS got confused." Clear as mud.
Which is, of course, why there's only one encyclopedia out there in the print-media world.
Oh, wait a second...
Besides, an encyclopedia is going to try to be a huge massive penultimate source of knowledge, right? Except that they're calling for volunteers from within a very specialized audience. No offence, but programmers and technogeeks aren't necessarily going to be the greatest authorities in non-geek-related subject matter. They may be good authorities, but I'd sooner commission a nuclear scientist than some guy with a WW2 itch he likes to scratch to talk about the atomic bomb. At least, if there are more than one such projects, you can reduce the risk that things will get missed, undercovered, or overcovered.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Or maybe GLinux,GEnlightenment, or Gnubbles...
I have recommended, and the consensus on the short-lived "gnupedia" mailing list is that this is a good recommendation, that the FSF instead sponsor a project to be called "Alexandria" -- a more general repository for free texts.
This sounds to me very much like the Gutenberg project, at least from this noe sentence from the article. Why is this just not a repeat of the same thing? RMS is going to start something up which is going to go in competition with a longstanding free project out there. The difference being, the Gutenberg project is more longstanding and much better known than Nupedia.
Yes, I realize that the Gutenberg project is mostly for "classic" texts who have passed into the public domain. However, I was under the impression that their mission could include current free texts. (I could be wrong.)
For the Gutenberg project, see: http://promo.net/pg
-Rob
Overview of the Editorial Process
Then go check out their reviewers in their categories. These people are usually college-level professors:
Not every category has reviewers yet, and some reviewers are bio-less, but this seems to be the direction that Nupedia is going.
I saw RMS last Tuesday when he gave a speech in Dallas. That man can drink a LOT of tea. Someone in the audience even asked him (after 2 1/2 hours and about 10 glasses of tea) if he needed to go to the bathroom yet.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Yes, it looks like they've thought out the peer-review process.
They have 12 (yes, twelve) articles currently posted. Hardly enough of a head start to preclude alternative projects from starting up, should someone conceive a better way of doing this.
I look forward to "The Final Nupedia"...
Off to Terminus with you. And take the tiger lady with you.
Elephant: a mouse built to government specs
> This story does clearly not flatter to RMS, who showed us again his desire to GNUlize anything out there, so that he, personally RMS, will be remembered as the one who created a great project(tm).
Mmm...flame bait on a Saturday morning. You know, Slashdot really *was* nicer in the old days when it wasn't fashionable to bash RMS at every turn and drone on with "what's the use?" anytime *any* new tech is announced. Ahem...
What is your evidence that RMS is trying to GNUlize things? The tired Linux GNU/Linux argument? RMS has explained his position on that quite clearly. If people never hear about GNU, then they are not going to hear about software freedoms. Open Source is nice and all that, but RMS is trying to educate users to value their freedom. The "Linux" movement is not trying to do that. So, people could be using Linux and GNU and have no idea *why* the system was constructed and *what* it represents. RMS and others would like to ensure that doesn't happen.
I don't think that RMS is seeking personal attention. I think he just tries to publicize GNU. Presumably, he thinks GNU is important since he has made it his Life's Work. RMS isn't the most diplomatic character, but I greatly respect the GNU project, both on a technical and philosophical level.
--Lenny
Root Mean Square? Yes, I am normalizing an audio file. Thanks for your interest! (It's meant as +1 FUNNY, not -1 Flamebait, moderators)
As a writer with little money but lots of time, I've often wanted to contribute something to the Open Source movement. So I've written a good deal for Everything, but with these more "serious" projects coming up, I've begun to reconsider my output of energies. Which do you propose I write for?
teleny, friend of cats.
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
Flamebait? If it's true, is it still flamebait?
The Assayer - free-information book reviews
Find free books.
I am very much afraid that we live in interesting times.
>In the meantime, Nupedia wants to make it known
>to the world that we are here and WE NEED YOUR
>HELP.
The article is hosted on themestream, which means that the author gets money for each hit (up to $50), so if you bother to read the article, the project is supported.
So read the Article, besides learning somehting, you are supporting the a worthwhile project.
I'll leave the ethical discussion to writing an article, placing it on a pay for hit server, and having slashdot link to it to the thread below
--
This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
"... [hoevekam: the] most important rule for pages in the encyclopedia is the exclusionary rule:
If a page on the web covers subject matter that ought to be in the encyclopedia or the course library [hoevekam: an probably also in the article library], but its license is too restricted to qualify, we must not make links to it from encyclopedia articles or from courses."
Why is this the most important rule?
Let's look at a lesson learned form GPLed software. There was and still is the danger of including non-GPLed code into GPLed code (as seen lately in the discussions when QT was GPLed). I do agree with RMS, that this should be avoided right from the beginning of working on an free encyclopedia. This might look kind of paranoid today, but our kids will be grateful for that. Or aren't you thankful that our parents began writing software from scratch in order to put it into the realm of the GPL? Without starting from zero, GPLed software would not be in the position it is right now.
Nupedia doesn't follow the exclusionary rule. This might be good for now and for gaining momentum on a short time scale, but in the long run RMS "exclusionary rule" will be the competitive edge. OK, it wouldn't take Nupedia much to adapt to this rule once the number of articles has overcome a certain thershold and they can link to other articles instead of citing to non-GFDLed articles and books.
...isn't this a Slashback?
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Now, the Nupedia folks seem to have given the encyclopedia idea far more thought than RMS. What RMS seemed to be announcing was little more than the web as we know it now plus a bit of resource description on top, but far from the Semantic Web of TimBL.
The Nupedia folks have really thought carefully about formal peer review, which is a very important feature of a real encyclopedia, and with the FDL, it's very promising.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Seriously, there must be more to this than meets the eye, because "RMS got confused" is very unlikely judging by the history of the man. Quite a lot of work went into preparing the ground for the GNUpedia project announcement, and it's just not the kind of thing that "got confused" can adequately explain.
I guess it'll all come out into the open eventually, hopefully in a clear note from RMS, because a lot rests on our faith in the people in the movement, and I'm sure he knows it. He wouldn't want any question marks hovering unanswered above this little episode, IMO, and he must value the goodwill of the many Nupedia authors. We'll have to wait and see what develops.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
A traditional encyclopedia has articles by staff
and are generally balanced and acurately researched. What controls exist in this endeavor?
Why should I accept as having a high degree of
accuracy anything in it?
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Richard M. Stallman! Say it! Say it!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This reminds me of what Karl Popper wrote about Freud and Marx: their claims are so broad and vague that virtually anything can be marshalled into "further evidence" for them. Would Popper feel the same way about ESR and "hacker culture"?
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
Nupedia isn't interested in your articles if you
don't have a Masters or PhD on the relevant topic.
GNUpedia, by contrast, has a more open editorial
style. If GNUPedia really is toast, then I think
someone, perhaps myself, should start a project
along RMS's ideas, as his system for who can
contribute and how are much more worthwhile than
Nupedia's more traditional model.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
No, RMS isn't confused, he's just making sure you pronouce a hard "G" each time you say "nu".
It's nice to see, for a change, some cooperation, not mutual assured destruction. I hope this works well - it'd be real nice to have an encyclopedia that maybe, just maybe, can readily be updated and corrected by everybody.
Lemon curry?
We all owe a debt to RMS, but it's clear he's out of touch with respect to the leading edge on net technology. It's taken the FSF over a year to acknowledge that the ASP hole in the GPL is actually a problem. Now this nonsense, clumsily botching the potential PR boost to an established, exciting free content initiative. Nice going, RMS.
As funny as this is, can someone please moderate it down to the depths from which it sprung?
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evil adrian
evil adrian
"There was a bit of confusion recently regarding the announcement of a 'gnupedia' project. There already exists a free encyclopedia project, with all code GPL'd and all content FDL'd..."
You know, I really hope this isn't the sort of things people are going to make a big deal out of. I mean, for all the outrage that people show here at the silly patenting of ideas, you'd think they'd actually embrace this sort of duplication. I mean, the last thing we need to see is peer pressure affecting the way these projects are looked at (who came up with the idea first, who's got RMS backing them up, who gets to be the official GNU version, etc.).
Why the hell COULDN'T there be two projects? Bleah bleah bleah redundancy of effort will lead to poor quality on both ends bleah. Right. Tell that to GNOME and KDE, why doncha?
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
He just forgot his tea.
So now the mystery is finally solved as to where Alatar has been hiding all these years. While Mithrandir was getting himself killed fighting the Valarauker, you were busy in the East, fighting the armies of JavaScript. :)
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
You mean, like linking in a ZDNET article? ;)
Real life is overrated.
A 7th-Day violation has occurred. In a raid on the FSF compunt today, evidence of a cloned project was uncovered. All executives, and employees directly involved in this heinous, and sacreligious project have been taken into custody and await arraignment.
Once found guilty, they'll be handed over to the local door-to-door Britannica salesman for "remedial treatment".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
A more interesting idea based on your point might be to make a place like nupedia a great backplane storing the data for the encyclopedia, then write an API in which other web sites and even standalone applications can retrieve, index, search, catagorize, and all-around produce different front-ends to. I could see a Knupedia and Gnupedia apps that allow for much more customization by the user.
"Evil beware: I'm armed to the teeth and packing a hampster!"
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Our complaint was that (1) RMS had offered to make an announcement with us, (2) in our discussions of our switch to the FDL, RMS never told us about Hector's project, and (3) we woke up one morning to find an announcement of a competing project with almost the exact same name and mission!
Fortunately, as I have said, sanity is prevailing. RMS apologized for his mistake, and we're happy with that.
And were on /., which will really help us with what we need most -- exposure.
Wikia
I'll donate $50 to the FSF.
Wikia
Actually, we follow an even stricter exclusionary rule at the moment -- the Nupedia FDL articles do not have outside links at all.
On the website, we do have outside links, as an interim measure to (hopefully) make the website useful as we increase the number of articles in our database. We have 150+ articles in the pipeline (I don't remember the exact number at the moment.)
It never occurred to me that we should have a rule of that type (i.e. no linking to non-free materials), but now that the idea has been raised, the community will certainly consider it. (I don't really try to have the final say here -- we're an open community.)
Wikia
Here at Nupedia, we feel that RMS has now done the right thing. The only thing unflattering about all this is perhaps that RMS is too busy and could use a better assistant to help him keep track of things. :-)
Wikia
For those of you who were excited by the idea of a totally free encyclopedia, go check out Nupedia. It turned out to be exactly what I had wanted GNUpedia to be. They have already set up most of their infrastructure, have an excellent review process, and need people with all sorts of talents and interests. They seem to especially need people in the Mathematics and Physical Science (mostly Physics and Chemistry) areas. They also need you Grammar-Nazi people out there to do copyeditting!
I was also impressed by how much they seemed to follow (though they did their work before RMS's announcement) RMS's suggestion that work be done in little steps. If you think you are expert enough to write 1-5 paragraphs on a specific topic, you have what it takes to submit an article to Nupedia. And in true open-source fashion, you can download the entire article database to date (not very big) and the software used to manipulate it.
I would suggested it for anyone who is itching to write an article, but doesn't want to wait for the dust to settle over in the GNU/Alexandria (GNUpedia) camp.
Nupedia
But seriously, this project seems to be under the directly of technically competent people who are experts in non-technical areas.
Britannica's demise would definitely not be in our best interest. Why can't the Nupedia people just work with Britannica? Only Nupedia's ego would lose.
__________________________________
"Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" --prosecuting lawyer, for the British government, arguing against permitting publication of D. H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" (1960)
Because both are using the FDL, GNUpedia could engulf Nupedia, and good articles from GNUpedia can be fed through the review process on Nupedia. I forsee a nice symbiotic relationship.
As for the issues with Nupedia's editorial control, I think they are taking a valid approach. In order to attract experts, they need to ensure a high standard of quality. However, I sincerely hope that undergrads can contribute, because I'd like to start filling in their very empty physics and mathematics sections.
to understand the joke, you would have to have seen Arnold's Sixth Day. Believe me, this post is on topic and fairly funny if you have seen the movie. No mod points for me == a post to explain that yeah, the above post is funny.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Until then, Britannica's market is secure and their financial problems will be their own making and no one elses.
This story does clearly not flatter to RMS, who showed us again his desire to GNUlize anything out there, so that he, personally RMS, will be remembered as the one who created a great project(tm). I consider it sad that people choose to spend their time to fullfillment of such ambitions, rather than peacefully code (or write articles).
I'm just curious, but is it even possible to READ Nupedia content? I surfed around the site for twenty minutes and didn't find anything (but I'm dumb so it's okay).
If I could think of something pithy to say, I'd put it here. No really.
According to Hari Seldon, it is just a diversion so the foundations can be setup. :-)
--Joey
At the end of the article, it seems to state that RMS and FSF are interested in a free text/etext archive project.
Uh, folks, shouldn't we be putting our efforts behind an already working project? I'm talking about Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Wiretap. wiretap.area.com has an pretty large archive of books that are no longer under Copyright. As far as I can tell, all of these texts or most of them were typed in by hand by various intrepid keyboarders.
This is nothing new. It's been in existence since the age of gopherspace, in 1991.
Maybe RMS can work with these people instead of duplicating effort?
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Grin, in the corporate world, the same thing would have likely happened, probably with a $1 settlement. Given the relationship between Nupedia and FSF, there normally would have been an NDA, so "gnupedia" would have been in violation. The main difference here is than FSF is small enough that rms should know what is going on (especially if he is doing both items).
Ooops, Brain Fart, an apology, and (probably?) an oops post on GNU.org at some point. At the very least, if gnupedia.(com|org|net) was acquired, they should point to nupedia.
In the real world, this stuff happens. When MS does the NDA violation, they usually pay a large sum (to the little company, not to MS) to either buy the company or settle so the company can launch a new business idea. When other companies do it, they either back down (and pay $1 + legal fees), or they fight and lose badly.
Now, if you don't use an NDA and give details, well, what can you do.
Now, as Nupedia is wide open, NDA isn't quite the perfect analogy. A non-compete would be, but contracts to divide the market are not looked on favorably by the anti-trust laws.
Hmm, enough ramblings, but I wonder, could a Free Software agreement not to compete be seen as anti-trust? It wouldn't really prevent "competition" as anyone can take the work for free... is it market dumping? Hmm... IP applies artificial scarcity to force IP based products to follow normal microeconomics (albeit with a monopoly/oligopoly), how do you reconcile this with Free Software...
Hmm...