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Ask Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales About Online Collaboration
Back in 2001 we did a "double" Slashdot Interview with Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg and Jimmy Wales of the then-brand-new Nupedia, which has since become the amazingly useful Wikipedia. This is a perfect time to catch up with Jimbo (as friends call him), and learn not only how he managed to make Wikipedia work and grow so well, but what we can do to help -- and what future plans he has for this outstanding Web resource. (10 of your highest-moderated questions will be sent to Jimbo by email. We'll post his answers as soon as we get them back.)
Yes, see Wikipedia:School and university projects
Jimbo has said before that Wikipedia will never show ads.
The community portal highlights things that could be done to enhance the encyclopedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_P ortal
One example is a request to create the article "Tibet independance movement". Articles wich are really small are often listed as "stub" and a list of them is available. Often editors looks at those stubs and try to enhance them somehow (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Find_or_fix _a_stub ).
There is also a lot of translators that keep importing / exporting articles. A good example is the Român wikipedia that import french articles :o)
I am almost sure a big organisation will eventually give found like UNESCO or UN
Some wikipedians are currently writing an application for a grant of $500,000 from The National Endowment for the Humanities.
It needs to be done by tuesday (tomorrow!), and they seem to be far from finished...
What do you mean? The GFDL is very friendly to dead-tree publishing.
The only "hurdle" is that no publisher can get exclusive rights to publish it. Is that what you mean? Do you think that is really a practical limitation in this case? (I don't, as I think it is too big and would take too much startup cost with too small a market for some other publisher to come in and poach.)
-Peter
Until now, word of mouth. For instance, I have talked about 10 people into participating. Jimbo has been saying advertising is one of the things that needs to be worked on. You can help. Put a link to it on your website for starters. Limited print editions of wikipedia (called "wikireaders") are being tried out; if it takes off perhaps the revenue could be used for advertising. Currently, though, the priority is to buy more hardware and keep the site going.
Wikipedia currently has several organized quality control efforts - Cleanup, peer review, and feature article candidates. As the name implies, cleanup is for articles that are really in need of TLC. Peer review is for people to assess the factual/neutrality of an article, and featured article candidates is the promotion process for our featured articles (from which I choose the daily main page article). In addition, watchlists let people see when an article changes, so factually incorrect changes do not last very long on well-watched articles.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
The short answer is probably No, but the long answer is more involved. Wikipedia prefers to implement access controls in wetware where possible, to prevent abuse by technically saavy trolls and/or vandals. So, while there may be facilities (eventually) for a web of trust of some sort, and an article review/verification-type system is often spoken of speculatively (ideas and plans bandied about), Wikipedia is not Everything2 and does not, will not have coded experience of that sort.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
http://download.wikimedia.org/
Also, formatted nicely:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:TomeRaider_ database
Besides, everyone knows that there is no Cabal.
For those not in the know, and are interested enough to type shortcuts of the form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/shortcutgoeshere- WP:VFD is Votes for Deletion, where pages are sent to be voted on for deletion, WP:RFA is Requests for Adminship (now featuring at least one completely ludicous candidate), and you can look up the WP:RULES which this user finds so oppressive.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
In a word: yes.
Short answer: nothing. Longer answer: startup costs, lack of a market, etc. Bottom line is that it would be perfectly legal.
The FDL is a Copyleft license. You are encouraged to copy FDLed works and, if you'd like, sell them for any price you can get*.
-Peter
*This like is specifically about Free Software, but both the GPL and the FDL are by the FSF. They are two implementations of the same philosophy.
Hrm, I work at a printshop. Does that mean I could take some articles (based on a particular subject), put it into print (with all proper acknowledgement of course)
Yes and yes
and profit off of it (charging only the printer fees)?
No need to limit your profits to printing fees. You can charge whatever people will pay. Note that if you distribute more than 100 copies the license requires you to distribute a machine-readable copy with each printed copy, or provide a pointer to the on-line sources.
And if so, what's stopping anybody from doing it in the first place (aside from the constantly changing data)?
Not a thing! And that's the idea. From the GFDL preamble:
Seems kinda shady to me...
Why? The authors of the Wikipedia content have explicitly given you and everyone else permission to do these things, as long as you follow the terms of the license. What's shady about doing what the owner has given you permission to do?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.