Printing Wikipedia

rtnair writes "Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday."

Comments

This makes sense.

[Murasaki Skies]

Am I joking? You decide.

Re:This makes sense.

[b100dian]

I think you're after karma:p

Then again.. it doesn't make sense. Even the CD versions make less sense than the live database.

I mean.. if you cannot postback your comments and annotations, the why is it still called wikipedia ?!?
You're jokin'..

Re:This makes sense.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the CD versions make less sense than the live database. I mean.. if you cannot postback your comments and annotations, the why is it still called wikipedia ?!?

They're releasing it on CD-RW.

Re:This makes sense.

[giffnyc]

It's pretty clear from TFA that they are just now "talking to several agents and publishers about what they would be interested in", to quote Wales. They clearly don't plan to print out the whole damn thing and drop it from helicopters. They're just talking about making some articles available, such as ones on public health concerns as opposed to say, the history of the Marvel Universe. And they're mostly talking about CDs for libraries with computers, since telecomm infrastructure is unavailable to millions there even with the delivery of something as wonderful as a $100 terminal.

It's a community project that provides a unique and interesting source of information -- its not a reliable single resource tool. Who is it that you all think would clean up and "verify" all this information? The whole point of the thing is an experiment to see how a community manages its information as a collective, and a limited print or CD project for the third world fits in with this innovative mission. Somewhere along the line people started yakking about how lazy researchers might mistake it for an authoritative, edited resource and that this makes the _Wikipedia Project_ the bad guy.

Next thing you know they'll be believing something just because the President said it. Who's fault is that?

RTFA. RTFA. RTFA.

Mis-information?

[phase_9]

Great, so now people in developing countries will learn the truth... or just read lots of entires which have been "vandalized" with the word "boobies!"

Re:Mis-information?

[PornMaster]

Haven't you ever read National Geographic? They already have boobies there!

Re:Mis-information?

[Anonymous Coward]

AsciiArtFarts sums up wikipedia the best: http://www.asciiartfarts.com/20051026.html

Re:Mis-information?

[Dogtanian]

Great, so now people in developing countries will learn the truth... or just read lots of entires which have been "vandalized" with the word "boobies!"

Stop being so damn cynical. I personally think Slashdot would be much improved if it were possibly to edit and improve any material on the site, including comments. This would allow POOOP!!!!! HA HA PORTLAND SCHOOL IS GAY insertion of constructive criticism.

Re:Mis-information?

[smallguy78]

I remember a few weeks ago when Pegging appeared in the 'Did you know...' section on the front page (with a description!).

I wonder if this and others will make it into the print version?! Here's a few others that will help to educate the children

Tea bagging
Scissor sisters
Soggie biscuit

Re:Mis-information?

[Dogtanian]

Great, so now people in developing countries will learn the truth... or just read lots of entires which have been "vandalized" with the word "boobies!"

Don't be so cynical. I believe that Slashdot would be vastly improved if it were possible for anyone to edit and improve stories POO!!!!!!!!! PORTLAND SCHOOL ARE GAY LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO and other users' comments.

Re:Mis-information?

[argStyopa]

you apparently didn't get the memo:

surging, perky, young, firm, attractive breasts: pr0n
droopy, dirty, 3rd-world, saggy, working breasts: education

They're like food. If you like them, it's bad for you. If you don't like them, they're good for you. Or you're gay. Not sure how that works into the metaphor though.

Re:Mis-information?

[bigman2003]

You know, the first time you posted the comment I thought to myself, "hmmm...interesting.."

But the second time you posted it, I thought, "Wow, this guy is really onto something! I like what he says, and I want to read more!"

Could you post it again?

Re:Mis-information?

[aKumudzi]

Look am in developing country in Southern Africa and I wonder how they mean to distribute this book, free? Cant afford Internet = cant afford book. Besides most of us are connected already. Efforts sould be made to increase the literacy of the developing world not distribute the wikipedia. Empower people to access it online.

Re:Mis-information?

[CokeBear]

Please warn that above links are NSFW!

Re:Mis-information?

[Dogtanian]

You know, the first time you posted the comment I thought to myself, "hmmm...interesting.." But the second time you posted it, I thought, "Wow, this guy is really onto something! I like what he says, and I want to read more!"

More information? Okay then... Portland School *really* is GAY, and it's going out with the Oregon College of Performing Arts. I appreciate that this is going to shock all the homophobic 14-year olds who've spent the previous 3 years of their life inside a building that happens to be GAY, but it's true. However, Portland School would like me to point out that it considers its sexuality to be irrelevant, and would prefer people to focus on its good work providing classrooms and amenities to the students of Portland.

In fact, it's a little-known fact that 93% of buildings and houses are in fact homosexual, and the other 7% are known to be bi-curious. If this disturbs you, or anyone reading this, the solution is obvious; stay outside at all times.

Enough garbage; first off, I was damn sure I'd not posted that message the first time, and even checked that this was the case. But obviously not hard enough...

I'm trying to figure out if the "troll" moderation was because I'd posted it twice (and it was assumed I was trolling), or if the person moderating had simply never read Wikipedia and didn't recognise a parody of vandalism when they saw it.

I mean, it wasn't an all-time classic, but it was worth at least a +1, Funny...

Re:Mis-information?

[r3m0t]

Yes, the book will be free to schools. It will hitch a ride on other charities' deliveries.

Re:Mis-information?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're such a karma whore... anyone who couldn't tell what those links were about is some sort of moron.

Re:Mis-information?

[smallguy78]

My point was would you find those definitions in Encyclopedia Britanica?

Re:Mis-information?

[yesteraeon]

And what on earth is wrong with that?? What I love about Wikipedia is that just about ANYTHING I might care to look up is probably in there. The fact is there are articles on most things in a printed encyclopedia, but also articles on many other things. And why shouldn't there be? If there's a reasonable chance someone might want to know it, then it should be in there. You can't do that with a physical book, but that's what's great about a purely web based resource like this. The day I can't look up both the Crimean War and Cmdr. Data in Wikipedia will be a sad one.

Of course, this also means that printing it is pretty stupid.

Re:Mis-information?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just maybe it will lead to a 'stable'/'trusted' arm of Wikipedia which will be used in print and as a more reliable form of reference. Something which people have been demanding for a long time.

Re:Mis-information?

[nickptar]

I'm sure entries will be validated first, using a process like this.

Re:Mis-information?

[nickptar]

Book: $10-$20 once. Internet: $20-$40 a month.

Big, big difference. Plus, there are libraries. Plus, books can indeed be given for free - much easier than Internet.

Re:Mis-information?

[TheoMurpse]

They're like food. If you like them, it's bad for you. If you don't like them, they're good for you. Or you're gay. Not sure how that works into the metaphor though.

If you like bananas, you also suck cocks?

Interesting

[SYSS Mouse]

You know, "free" knowledge in no longer limited to developed world, where they have access to something called internet.

Re:Interesting

[NevDull]

Wasn't the information "free" when people would spread news and legend by going from town to town singing songs?

Re:Interesting

[stymyx]

No, these people were generally fed by the town that they came to, in return for telling a story, news, or a song.

Re:Interesting

[Silver Sloth]

Your pinko-commie statement Don't we all know that freedom, rights, free speech etc are totally limited to that glorious land called the United States of America? will be reported to various agencies under the Patiot act. You can expect to spend a plesant break in Guantalemo Bay where the full extent of your freemdoms will become aparent.

Re:Interesting

[weierstrass]

but was it free as in freedom?

Re:Interesting

[IngramJames]

No, these people were generally fed by the town

Or fed to the town, if they weren't very good, and there were cruisaders resident.

800,000 English articles

[gtoomey]

With 800,000 articles its going to be one heluva long book.

Re:800,000 English articles

[b100dian]

It's like printing the Internet!
wget -R . > /dev/lp0

Re:800,000 English articles

[Pichu0102]

You're right, it is considerably large for an English printed version of Wikipedia.
However, most likely the printed Wikipedias will be in the other Wikipedia languages, which contain considerably less articles than the English version.
It'll still be a large book no matter what language it's in, but it will be considerably smaller than the English version of Wikipedia.

Re:800,000 English articles

[zerocool^]

Yeah, but how many of us have a world book encyclopedia set? There's 20 books or so in the set, and they're all chock full of 12 pt. font. My parents bought one in the early 80's, and it helped me do reports for elementry school and middle school.

When I first saw the headline - I thought, what a great idea! Print the whole thing! But I do realize it's a bit long. I wish there was some way to trim it down a bit and sell it in dead tree format. Wikipedia was extremely useful - even when I was in college: as a history major, emphasizing on classics, I used it to look up names and places that I would find in reading primary sources; it was a wonderful reference (well, it and the 1911 encyclopedia brittanica).

~Will

Re:800,000 English articles

[Jugalator]

If this is about the "Wikipedia 1.0" he's been talking about before (no, I didn't RTFA), they're going to have just a certain number of verified articles included.

If it's not, yes, then it's a lot of articles, and a lot of risks it won't even be as accurate as you may wish a printed encyclopedia to be.

Re:800,000 English articles

[KDan]

If it's not the english version it might also be considerably less retarded.
Daniel

Re:800,000 English articles

[sootman]

That's been done.

Re:800,000 English articles

[ajs]

There are a lot of estimates out there, but generally they hover around 10% of Wikipedia content being both encyclopedic enough, complete enough, and well written enough for such an effort. That may sound like a low number, but keep in mind that there are far more "stubs" for things like backwater towns in the U.S. than there are for interesting topics like particle physics.

So, a printed version would have something like 100,000 or fewer articles, not the full content of the site.

No matter what, it would be a monumental effort. Simply proof-reading it would be every bit as large an effort as proof-reading any other encyclopedia. It's a hell of a good head-start on producing the content, though.

Re:800,000 English articles

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they will print it in Esperanto. That would make their 50-volume set of encyclopedias even more useful to the rest of the world.

Another problem solved

[LaughingCoder]

So now we have someplace to send all of those out of work encyclopedia salesmen! They can hawk wikipedia in the third world! I can see them trapsing about, lugging a satchel full of CDs. "You don't want to deprive your children from having access to these wonderful volumes!"

Problems

[springbox]

I like Wikipedia, but it usually ends up being a good idea to double check the information presented there some times. It certainly has some errors (like the "prant" statement for the Mathematica hello world program), but if you present this in book form to a thrid world country, which I'm assuming doesn't have internet access because of this, then it would be way too easy for people to take everything inside of it as error free facts.

Re:Problems

[JaredOfEuropa]

then it would be way too easy for people to take everything inside of it as error free facts.

You mean, just like they do with traditional encyclopedias? These are not error free either.

Re:Problems

[dslauson]

If I were going to take on a project of this magnitude, I would freeze a snapshot of the current Wikipedia so that the version we were editing was not constantly changing, and then I would get some people (either paid or volunteer) to go through and do some fact checking and editing. Sure, that would be costly and time-consuming, but with all the critics WikiPedia has amassed, they really can't afford for something like this to be a half-baked disaster. It's a bad idea to publish print copies of these articles if they haven't been subjected to some kind of critical eye aside from the general internet public.

Also, a disclaimer might be necessesary. People should be fully aware of what Wikipedia is, and where the information came from.

I think this is a great project, and that there's great value in it. Wikipedia is an awesome source of information. However, just like any other single source of information, it cannot be taken as the final authority on any topic. Most of us in the internet community already know this. Still, you cannot completely disregard what a magnificent thing it is to have such a massive collection of information, even if some of it is more like conventional wisdom than pure fact.

That said,

Re:Problems

[zippthorne]

I have found wikipedia to be a much better source of refined search terms than my old method of poking through usenet postings for same. as for the actual information in the Wiki? only a fool would trust it as his only source.

Re:Problems

[sickofthisshit]

Yes, people sometimes take what they read as accurate when it is demonstrably false. But the probability of that occuring is hugely dependent on the amount of error in the work in question!

The fact that people are generally gullible does not lessen the burden on the providers of information to avoid error; in fact, it is *increased.*

I suppose you keep poisons well within the reach of children, because, hey, you know, people drink polluted water all the time in the third world, so we shouldn't worry about them drinking drain cleaner.

Re:Problems

[westlake]

You mean, just like they do with traditional encyclopedias? These are not error free either.

No, but the Britannica does have a tradition of publishing signed articles by contributers as significant as Einstein and Freud.

It believes in the vigor and intelligence of prose that is not written by a collective.

Re:Problems

[bigpat]

I like Wikipedia, but it usually ends up being a good idea to double check the information presented there some times.

you could apply that to any source of information: I like ________ , but it usually ends up being a good idea to double check the information presented there sometimes.

Re:Problems

[sickofthisshit]

Except for the "usually" part.

If I have a resource that I believe to be accurate 99.99% of the time, it is much less necessary to be double-checking than a source I believe to be accurate only 50% of the time, assuming what I am looking up has roughly equal value riding on the correctness of the information.

What is it with you people that "everything might have mistakes" becomes equivalent to "oh, mistakes don't matter"?

Re:Problems

[SketcheeBoy]

"If I have a resource that I believe to be accurate 99.99% of the time, it is much less necessary to be double-checking than a source I believe to be accurate only 50% of the time, assuming what I am looking up has roughly equal value riding on the correctness of the information." No, that just means you shouldn't believe that a resource is 99.99% accurate. Ever.

Re:Problems

[sickofthisshit]

What kind of world are you living in?

99.99% accuracy is quite achievable. I believe, for instance, the table of prime numbers in the handbook on my desk to have fewer than one error in 10000 entries. I believe my computer can test primeness of integers (that fit in my computer memory) with fewer than one error in 10000.

Yes, it is true that no source of information could be guaranteed 100% accurate. Cosmic rays can cause my computer to produce unreliable results. Even the simplest things like 1+1=2 could be changed tomorrow, for all we know. The sun could rise in the west. (I estimate the chances of these events to be *far* lower than 0.01%, by the way.)

That doesn't mean in a practical sense we disbelieve *everything*, because there is no point in doing so. You have to do *something* in the face of uncertainty. One has to make some kind of risk-reward calculation: I could decide to trust this source, and believe the likelihood of being wrong to be X%, and if I am wrong it will have a cost C.

Now, I could decide to double-check (or triple- or quadruple-check) any result using another source. This could result in several outcomes:

1) The new source has a different answer than my original source.
1a) The new source is right, and my original source was wrong.
1b) The new source is wrong, my original source was right.
1c) *Both* sources are wrong, in different ways.

2) The new source has the same answer
2a) Both are right
2b) Both are still *wrong*

The various outcomes have likelihoods that depend basically on the "reliability" of the various sources. Is the extra effort and potential benefit worth the cost and the risk that I could actually get worse information?

A crappy source laden with typos and inaccuracies gets thrown in the trash can in favor of a high-quality proven source. For good reason.

Re:Problems

[SketcheeBoy]

You said you "believe" these sources are 99.99% accurate. You also said you don't feel it necessary to fact check them.

Your belief in the accuracy of sources is not the same thing as them being accurate. If you did check for errors and came to the conclusion that a source was accurate, that would be reasonable but that isn't what you said. The probable existance of a nearly error free source doesn't in anyway defend the assumption of a source as error free.

It may not be worth it to double check in all cases, but then you have to admit the possibility of error not just assume that it's 99.99% accurate because it's not worth it to read further.

Re:Problems

[sickofthisshit]

You miss the point entirely. (Or, you fail to understand that 99.99% != 1)

One cannot, in principle PROVE accuracy in any sense. Because ANY proof technique requires an assumption that your technique is reliable. How do you PROVE a technique reliable? You come up with some other proof, which might or might not be reliable, and so on. It's turtles all the way down.

The only recourse is a pragmatic "belief" that there is some estimated likelihood of error for some things that I am NEVER going to get around to checking.

I cannot spend my life double- and triple- checking things that were compiled or constructed by careful experts who were basically less likely to make a mistake in their work than *I* am likely to make a mistake in verifying it.

A table of prime numbers in a well-respected mathematical handbook, for instance, is less likely to have mistakes in it than a quickly-hacked together primality testing algorithm that I whip up to "check" it. Because the poople who put it together probably spent weeks (perhaps longer) coding, checking, rechecking, and checking again.

I can't justify spending weeks of my life doing careful coding and cross-checking simply to increase my confidence in Abramowitz & Stegun's list of primes. On the other hand, if I need to code the algorithm for some other purpose, I can use A&S to check my work, increasing my confidence close to (but not above) that of the handbook when extended beyond the limits of that table.

See, this is the key to human civilization: I sometimes put faith in other people to do a good job, and not screw it up. So, yes, I do believe certain books to be basically 99.99% correct WITHOUT wasting my life double-checking EVERY damn thing.

Now, wikipedia demonstrates OVER and OVER that it is vulnerable to all kinds of subtle and not-so-subtle screwups, and that the people who take the *most* care to do a good job are the *least* likely to have their particular version up at any given instant. So I HAVE to double-check it, so I might as well skip that step and find the source I would have double-checked with, and forget about wikipedia at all.

Printed Wiki

[Pointdexter]

Presumaby each copy will be written in pencil and supplied with an eraser?

Re:Printed Wiki

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they'll get a sticker every time an article is updated.

Re:Printed Wiki

[zexxxx]

Just an eraser? No pencil?

What's the point again?

[TripMaster Monkey]

I thought the whole point of Wikipedia was that it was constantly changing...adapting...growing...evolving. A static version of Wikipedia obviates all of its advantages, while leaving its disadvantages (inaccuracies, vandalism, etc.) nicely intact.

In short, this is a dumb idea.

Re:What's the point again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they would have to pick the most important entries and edit them.

Re:What's the point again?

[tdvaughan]

I think that this idea comes at the same time that other complementary ideas are being discussed. This include making certain pages static when they reach a certain level of quality. It may be that this printed version of Wikipedia will include only articles with the production-quality flag set. Additionally, having a printed version of Wikipedia doesn't obviate its greatest advantage - information which is both free and Free.

Re:What's the point again?

[Bill Hayden]

A static version of Wikipedia obviates all of its advantages

No, for this purpose its most important advantage is intact. It's FREE. In a culture where people may make cents per day, you can't underestimate this advantage.

Re:What's the point again?

[interiot]

Wikipedia audiobooks are being made available, and are also static. The goal is to make Wikipedia content available in other forms when those media will be more convenient (eg. when offline, when in your car).

Also, only a subset of wikipedia will be available offline. Wikipedia's featured articles for the most part don't suffer from Wikipedia's usual disadvantages as they are more thoroughly reviewed than most articles.

Re:What's the point again?

[haggar]

The part about featured articles not suffering from Wikipedia's "disadvantages" is bullshit. They suffer, just as well. The amount of imprecision, wrong formulations and sheer sloppyness in Quantum mechanics, just to cite one example, should disprove your point.

There is absolutely nothing inherent in the featured articles to make them any better at whitstanding anonymous vandalism.

Re:What's the point again?

[Short Circuit]

You just gave me an idea...Why not include a serverside text-to-speech synthesizer accessible through mp3 streams? You open the stream with a specific URL derived from the address of the content in the wiki.

You'd probably want to cache the source file generated to save on CPU power. Wipe the cached file if the original article is modified.

Re:What's the point again?

[interiot]

Outright vandalism still occurs, but is reverted, and presumably the version of each article that's printed would be checked for recent vandalism before printing.

In terms of imprecision/sloppyness, well, I don't know if that will be fixed any time soon.

On the other hand, all the text and images are available for free (as in beer), so Wikipedia's content is one more legal alternative to those with fewer means. Given that the field exists of only older encyclopedias (eg. 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), Wikipedia definitely has some value, though print/DVD Wikipedia is probably most valuable to users when compared/contrasted with Encyclopædia Britannica.

Re:What's the point again?

[sootman]

Yeah, because obviously Wikipedia is run by a bunch of incompetent retards who wouldn't think of *reviewing* the content before printing. Besides, the dynamicness of Wikipedia is just *one* of its advantages. A printed Wikipedia is still a great product, especially for people in the developing world, where this project is aimed. Or did you not even RTFS?

Re:What's the point again?

[indifferent children]

The amount of imprecision, wrong formulations and sheer sloppyness in Quantum mechanics, ...

So the article on Quantum Mechanics reflects Uncertainty! That's kind of like making the article on Poetry have rhyme and meter.

Re:What's the point again?

[at_slashdot]

How do you follow the links in the print version?

Re:What's the point again?

[drsquare]

No, the 'point', is that it provides information.

Its changing, adapting and growing is just the means by which it is able to provide more information.

Do you think that a huge printed encyclopedia full of knowledge has no advantages because it can't be changed? In that case we may as well throw away ALL printed information in the world.

Re:What's the point again?

[Fred_A]

Then it should be called Freekipedia.

If it is spelled a little differently, it would also serve as a useful warning.

Re:What's the point again?

[lgw]

Well, did you edit the page you complained about, or did you merely whine?

Re:What's the point again?

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I've heard about revert wars and no one listening to experts, I say why bother? Most likely someone with more free time will revert it and then drag you into a worthless "discussion" about the changes. Ever been in an argument with someone who knows little about a subject but thinks they're an expert, and not being able to say "you're a f***ing moron, shut up"?

Re:What's the point again?

[haggar]

I did edit the page, because bullshit bothers me.

Re:What's the point again?

[Rydia]

I'm really sick of hearing this argument when people point out inaccuracies. He did fix it. Good for him. I'm not going to fix it, because I think wikipedia is bunk and that for every intelligent bit of information there's going to be at least an equal amount of subjective, incorrect or inaccurate junk. I'm not going to waste my time working on fixing something I don't believe in, and pointing out an error in it doesn't give me an obligation to.

Re:What's the point again?

[lgw]

Kudos to you, good sir!

Re:What's the point again?

[haggar]

It may be uncertain, before I have a look at it, but once I go there and read it, it has to actualize :o)

Re:What's the point again?

[haggar]

However, it's Sisyphus' work, i.e. pointless, repetitive and painful.

Did I mention it's pointless?

But please

[Anonymous Coward]

don't print all of it... just that stuff that had a quaility check on it before hand... as all we need is a big mistake on one of the bigger and more importaint article to misiform people in an uneditible format... I'll let you use you imagination from here on.

Cost and earnings

[El_Muerte_TDS]

How much would it cost? Just the price to break even?
And if they make a profit, how will it be divided? How will they give it back to the community that wrote it?

I think it's best to keep the cost as low as possible, so break-even plus a tiny percentage. Where the tiny percentage (the profit) will be invested into the wiki directly.

Re:Cost and earnings

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever the profit, it still could be invested into the wiki. Just remember the donation rush there was some time ago, when the servers were dying from excess growth rate, and think it may need be no more if there was profit of any kind supporting the wikipedia.

Re:Cost and earnings

[w1cked]

I fully agree. The articles that were submitted or edited by 'the Community' were doneso because those people chose to. They never really wanted anything in return, save seeing Wikipedia get even bigger and better.

I agree that whatever money raked in from sales of a hard copy -should- in fact go right back to Wikipedia to further the growth of the Site, and the Community. :D

Re:Cost and earnings

[Eightyford]

If someone decides to sell it a a profit, then you are free to sell your own version for free. Same as linux as far as I know.

ooooohhhh gooodie!

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Personally I can't wait to get the hardcopy of the Robocop disertation.

Re:ooooohhhh gooodie!

[Mitaphane]

Aw that's nothing. Check out the article for the Star Wars Holiday Special and its absurd 20 paragraph plot synopsis.

Printed?!

[Rik Sweeney]

may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world

I've never read anything so stupid in all my life! Surely they'd need a computer to view the article on the web before they can even print it!

Does anyone else see the irony?

Re:Printed?!

[FirienFirien]

I'd love to assume that the +Funny mods are accurate in assuming you're being amusing, but it's too deadpan for me not to snag. Consider me successfully trolled if so...

Anyway, if you're being serious, here's a serious answer: wikipedia already has printing functionality; there's a print page link on every page, including the not-so-useful ones like lists and categories. The point of the article is that for those that don't have computers, paper versions will be made by printing companies and those made available to the developing world, just like the printing of a normal book.

Re:Printed?!

[somersault]

er... when it says available in print, it means ready printed. Like a magazine. Surely if they had a computer they could already print out a wikipedia article. Do you see the irony?

Re:Printed?!

[tomhudson]

Surely if they had a computer they could already print out a wikipedia article.

From the article:

He said content from the Web site may also be burned onto CDs and DVDs

... well, they better have a computer if they want the DVD version - I don't think its going to work in that older technological relic - the VCR.

may soon be available in print

Then again. probably not. When you see a quote like this:

"We are talking to several agents and publishers about what they would be interested in," Wales said of the book project.

... its like out-of-work movie stars who go on about how they're "in talks" for several roles, when what they really mean is "in talks for job as a waiter/waitress/bellhop/pool cleaner/etc".

Slow news day? Only time will [tt]ell

A better idea...

[ledow]

I think that something that Wikipedia needs more urgently are -stable and -current version of the data. Have a working copy that anyone can edit, yes, and then on a completly seperate domain name, have the articles copied, checked for accuracy, cleaned up etc. and locked down. Thus, once an article reaches maturity, it's static so it's much easier to refer to it from websites and other citations, the quality is more reliable, it's kid-safe so schools etc. can use it as a reference, the accuracy can be checked and wikipedia doesn't keep it's reputation among academics which is usually expressed in terms of monkeys and typewriters.

Re:A better idea...

[zecg]

Wonderful idea - also, let people choose the level at which they read encyclopedia-wide.

Re:A better idea...

[pubjames]

Excellent idea - there should be a "stable" and "development" version of each page.

What wikipedia needs is a few good "benevolent dictators" like Linux has that can create stable versions of articles. Perhaps all wikipedia editors should be able to vote for, say, half a dozen chief editors.

Re:A better idea...

[interiot]

Wikipedia has stated that no article will be locked down for reasons of maturity. Wikipedia is considering causing edits to be delayed, so that vandalism has a chance to be checked and removed before it's visible to everyone, but articles on Wikipedia will never be considered to be "finished".

People who really need to refer to a solidifed version of a page can include the time of access in the reference (just as you'd do when using any webpage as a proper reference), or using a URL that points to a specific historic version (example).

Re:A better idea...

[interiot]

Considering that the english version of Wikipedia is adding over 1 new page every minute, there's no way that a small cabal of editors could properly filter everything.

There is a small-ish group of editors who have been voted on, and confirmed to be mature editors with a sizable edit history. And there are protected pages which can only be edited by people in that group. However, page protection is intended to only be used sparingly.

Re:A better idea...

[ashooner]

I think the system could adopt the Slashdot ranking method to a degree. Articles get 'modded' by fellow contributers that have themselves earned the mod points by writing good and modded articles. Modding would need to be seeded by trusted staff to get that 'economy' of credibility rolling, but once it did, there you go, self admined wiki. Then like you say, you can just set the level of credibility as you are browsing.

Re:A better idea...

[pubjames]

Considering that the english version of Wikipedia is adding over 1 new page every minute, there's no way that a small cabal of editors could properly filter everything.

But they wouldn't have to do everything, just the core info.

Re:A better idea...

[xtracto]

I think it would be better to have a "maturity threshold value", which you can specify when browsing/searching wikipedia. That way, you could select a "Only Featured articles" if you wanted to see only the good articles or you could slide it to "Even stubs" if you wanted to see those almost unuseful stub articles.

And btw, I think the printed wiki should print JUST the featured articles.

Re:A better idea...

[David Gerard]

The least-worst idea I've seen is a massively distributed article rating system — an editorial committee can't possibly scale (we've currently got about two Britannicas of text), but lots of people clicking "Rate this page" has a chance. Particularly as our readers currently outnumber our editors 50:1 or so.

See Article validation feature and En validation topics - which would put a "Rate this page" tab at the top of every page. The feature is currently waiting on a version of the code that won't overload the database if it's put into production ;-)

See also my plan for 1.0 (I dashed this off about a year ago and it's still the best working plan we have) and Category:Wikipedia 1.0 (a bunch of writings on producing a stable version).

Re:A better idea...

[rufty_tufty]

Doesn't this then suggest the idea of an automatically chosen set of admin team based upon their contribution/use of the site.

In all serious kind of like the mod system for /.

As in once you've edited/added enough articles without serious objections, you get the rights to moderate other people's changes. Do enough of that without complaints then you get god status.
God status should be very hard to get limited to top few %?

As suggested above it would be open to abuse (e.g. I'll create 1000 new pages rather than 10 good ones to get my stats up) but it might be a start...

Re:A better idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

err, that is a lot of work man. We prefer to shoot our suggestions from the hip without doing any pesky research or even thinking.

Re:A better idea...

[ajs]

This already exists. Many organizations fork Wikipedia content for various reasons. Some just put up raw Wikipedia database content. Some prune for various flavors of "correctness". Some pull out everything but some specific areas that interest them.

You are, of course, free to create your own "Wikipedia stable".

However, the value proposition of Wikipedia is this: with thousands of people editing it constantly, you get more raw information on which to base your research.

Having said that, I've rarely discovered a page on Wikipedia which wasn't at least a very decent start for investigating the topic at hand, and often I find it to be the most valuable single reference online.

Re:A better idea...

[haggar]

That's actually a terrible idea. A highly rated page would only mean that many find it agreeable, rather than that the content is good and accurate.

Want an example? I'll give you two: Amazon Customer Reviews. These reviews are rated, but almost always -not- based on their quality, but on the opinion the one giving the rating, has on the product (book, CD, DVD, video game). So if a review is perceived negative on the product, and a majority of people like that product, the review will receive negative ratings, regardless of the quality of the review itself!

And the second example is IMDB movie reviews. Same thing as with the Amazon customer reviews.

Does Wikipedia really want to sink to that level? If so, I think I'll really completely stop contributing to it.

Re:A better idea...

[Sithgunner]

That is one good idea in my opinion. The problem is every article is in beta quality that even someone does have a fact written, the page has to be continuously been watched so it stays true.

On top of that, why don't they allow multiple entries on a same subject? In some cases, no one knows what actually happened on a subject or the subject is in term of no perfect definition. Reading from multitude of angles isn't a bad practice, just like reading different newspapers. And would stop all the conflict on editing the same subject by one side and the other...

It must be true...

[ladybugfi]

First we had "it must be true, I read it in a book somewhere", then we had "it must be true, I read it in the internet somewhere". Now we have come a full circle - it must be true since it is in a printed encyclopedia.

I'm not a great supporter of disclaimers, but here I think it would serve well.

Re:It must be true...

[CommiePuddin]

I'm not a great supporter of disclaimers, but here I think it would serve well.

"This book was supposedly written with an intelligent design. Approach it with an open mind, and you be the judge."

Re:It must be true...

[maxwell demon]

It must be true, it got Score +5 on Slashdot!

I assume they will use an "old" version

[G4from128k]

If this project is to avoid erroneous and vandal edits, it needs to use a well-reviewed version of each entry. Only entries that have been seen X times in the last Y days with no edits would be printable.

And if they do use a stable version for printing, then the could offer that as a version for those that don't want beta entries. Entries with less than a certain viewer/edit ratio would be deemed "beta" and not show to people or coded as such.

Wiki could even color-code the text by recency of edit. Readers would know which sections are too recent to trust and editor would see what's changed.

Re:I assume they will use an "old" version

[poot_rootbeer]

Only entries that have been seen X times in the last Y days with no edits would be printable.

That's not a reliable indicator that the content of the entry is factually accurate, though. At best, it indicates that none of the recent viewers identified any errors. Depending on the expertise of the viewers, that could mean a lot or nothing; and since people more often read encyclopedia entries about things they DON'T know than about those they already know, I'd lean towards the latter.

Wouldn't it make more sense....

[teewurstmann]

... to invest in the development of that $100 computer that the MIT is developing (http://news.com.com/The+100+laptop+moves+closer+t o+reality/2100-1044_3-5884683.html)? By the time Wikipedia is printed, it will already be out of date. Maybe investing in cheap internet terminals and a couple of printers would make more sense...

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[gonzo-wireless]

I agree completely. If Jimmy Wales wants to give wikipedia to the developing world he shouldn't just be printing out what those with broadband have created. Much ink is often spilt on the subject of the digital divide and this latest plan will only go to widen the gulf. Wales wants an internet using, western centric view of the world to be bound and shipped off to Africa. He'll be creating second class citizens of the information world; Africa will will be disseminating the information we throw away. If Jimmy Wales cared at all and had any faith in Wikipedia, he'd create a way for everyone around the globe to use it. He wouldn't, as he has planned to do, create Wikipedia imperialism and ship western, geek, ideas to developing nations. And that was all said without even questioning the quality of the resource....

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[RPoet]

By the time Wikipedia is printed, it will already be out of date.

A few entries, yes, but most information does not become outdated that quickly. You can still pick up the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, and find a lot of information that is correct and relevant. If you freeze a part of Wikipedia onto paper, it's the same. Things like the date Germany invaded Poland, or the gravitational constant, don't change overnight.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[teslatug]

Does that computer come with a built in satellite modem and lifetime free internet access? Because if it doesn't I don't see how it solves the problem.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[Short Circuit]

Some articles don't change much. Such as ones about mathematical concepts, or physics, astronomy, or chemistry. Sure, some details change, sometime there's new supporting details, but the base concepts remain the same.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[GerritHoll]

How will Wikipedia be out of date in comparison to that other encyclopedia whose contents can freely be redistributed - the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica?

Most information does not get out of date quickly. That is especially true for data that is relevant to people who do not have internet access.

This is a very good idea.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[nagora]

You can still pick up the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia Britannica, and find a lot of information that is correct and relevant. If you freeze a part of Wikipedia onto paper, it's the same

Except for the "correct" and "relevant" parts.

Things like the date Germany invaded Poland, or the gravitational constant, don't change overnight.

Sadly, on Wikipedia such things can and do change overnight.

TWW

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[Burz]

I would agree. Which is why the static page dumps I have gotten from the download site will not be going to the printer. Instead they are being processed for eventual use on a PDA or notebook (sans discussions, and graphics for now). I am not sure yet, but will probably choose either wik2dict (creates a compressed dict database) or Plucker to generate the portable Wikipedia.

A version is available for download in the proprietary TomeRaider format, which can be read on Windows and Palm.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[sickofthisshit]

Unchanging does not mean that the article is factually accurate, informative, or well-written. It just means that it hasn't attracted the attention of people motivated to change it.

Unchanging crap would still be crap.

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[Short Circuit]

I didn't mean to say the article didn't change much, I meant to say that, at this point, the base subject doesn't change much. Which makes it a much easier target to write and maintain a Wiki article for.

And you can bet that the articles for well-understood science and math catagories are going to be well-maintained, since they're likely to be referenced a great deal by people who have some knowledge of the subject. (If for no other reason than Wikipedia formatting policies typically make it easier to digest than some random professor's web page.)

Re:Wouldn't it make more sense....

[Chuq]

Wales wants an internet using, western centric view of the world to be bound and shipped off to Africa.

See WikiProject:Countering systemic bias. In other words, a bunch of editors going out to specifically improve Wikipedia's coverage of non-western articles. People don't go out to intentionally spread US propaganda (there are enough more liberal readers/editors to balance that), but ''systemic bias'' - bias that people don't even know they are introducing due to the culture/geography of where they live/have lived. See the page for more details.

I don't think you seem to understand that Jimmy Wales has nothing to do with the direct editorial content of Wikipedia. Or rather, he does, as much as you do.

How long ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... until we find Wikipedia articles in Google Print?

Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now people in 3rd world countries all over the world will be able to know of the wonders of goatse.

It's like OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

IT's constantly changing, it's always being developed, but you get verified snapshots from time to time.

Isn't This Irrelevant?

[OctoberSky]

Didn't we decide last night that the Internet is killing printed Newspapers? Is this an evil ploy to save books?

Down with books! Internets forever!

True, but not a big deal

[brunes69]

Just yesterday Iw as reading an article on homeostasis, and ran into some obviously erronious material. The article had been defaced (one point even had "ALEX IS GAY" in huge letters"). So, I went in to edit the article, but the copy in the edit tab did not have the errors. At first I thought it was some kind of bug, so I refreshed the article to try to edit it again. To my surprise, it had already been fixed.

Now, I can not say for sure how long it had been defaced before I got there, but that experience left me with the impression that, while you do need to be careful, there are lots of people looking after Wikipedia.

And just to be frank... when you say but it usually ends up being a good idea to double check the information presented there some times, I hope you realize that that should be true with *any* source of information. A critical reader should never trust any one source. Every source has bias, and even if it is 100% factual, every source presents the material with its own slant on the facts.

Of course wikipedia sould neve rbe your sole source, but neither should Britannica, or any other single source.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[interiot]

That was the RC patrol at work there (RC = recent changes). There is some percentage of vandalism that stays around for a while though, so yes, it's doubly important to triple check facts. (for instance, somebody completely made up a soccer player, and the page ended up sticking around for several months before someone did a little more googling than normal, and found out that the player clearly didn't exist).

Re:True, but not a big deal

[haggar]

Do you realy believe that edits like "LINUX IS TEH GHEY" are what is the problem? Those that have vandalism written all over them arenot a problem at all. The ones that are a problem, are the edits that you have not even noticed. And the inaccuracies which you have not noticed. For example, in that article on homeostasis, "stasis" is erroneously implied to be a prefix, which it is not. I found this in 15 seconds. If I spent more time, I would find dozens of minor inaccuracies like this, and then would have to spend some time correcting them, but I digress.

Vandalism which is hard to spot is the apparently correct information, throwin in together with a bunch of irrelevant but correct edits. Those you won't notice, unless you have been maintaining the article from it's inception.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Skuldo]

Hehe take a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Slashdotted

Re:True, but not a big deal

[domspe]

wow! only 5 articles in wikipedia linked from slashdot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Linked_from_ Slashdot

Re:True, but not a big deal

[sootman]

Like any OSS project, Wiki will soon reach a point where some articles are reviewed and frozen--for the 99% of the stuff in there that isn't current events, this will be pretty easy. (Well, not *easy*, but... you know... doable.) Then updates will not go right into the live page but rather to a "sugestions for the next build" page. Then they'll probably change the structure so articles default to displaying the frozen page, with a "Click here for current version - caution, may be inaccurate" link leading to a live page, and hopefully an option to have differences highlighted. Once vandals' contributions are not immediately world-visible, malicious edits will drop by about 99%.

In short, development of Wikipedia is not dead. It's not stuck in it's current model, condemned to have the "Douche" page vandalized and cleaned 20 times and hour for all eternity. It will adapt and become even better than it is now.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Jugalator]

They're probably removed as they aren't recently linked to anymore...
It's really just a protection against Slashdot vandals.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

The problem I have with wikipedia is that there is clearly a bias amongst both the users and editors.

A friend of mine used to run a popular local BBS. I helped to write the article about it, because I wasn't associated with it, my perspective was a little more "NPOV" than his. Then, a day later, some users get mad, because of the controversial opinions that were associated with this BBS and puts it up for VfD. The VfD wasn't going well for the article (most people were voting to delete because they never heard of it, the primary chief cop out reason). Then an editor comes along and decides its a candidate for "Speedy Deletion" and it gets deleted pretty quickly. The reason was non-notability.

This is rediculous because, as you state, a non-existant soccer player gets ZERO questions because its not controversial or expresses any opinions against the grain of Wikipedia groupthink. Considering how popular the BBS was back in the day, the arguments were totally rediculous. The editors and users voting on the VfD were citing cross-links in Google as a guide for "notability" of something that existed before the Internet was a mainstream (or even something that you or me could access). Then you have to also note the number of other articles that are totally pointless in terms of cultural relevance to anything - less than the BBS in question was.

Until Wikipedia fixes issues like these, I will never take them seriously. Yes, I have tried to talk to some of the higher ups, they are no better. They just call you a "troll" and ignore you.

Wikipedia is the perfect example of pitifully poor organizational structure marred by populist tendencies and groupthink.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[EpsCylonB]

Show me another error free encyclopedia.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Cerv]

"rediculous ... rediculous"
Stop that.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[sickofthisshit]

Ah, yes, don't let the best be the enemy of the good.

All human activity includes the possibility of error. That doesn't mean that we completely abandon error as a criterion.

A work that is jam-packed with deliberate or easily avoidable errors has less value than a work that has been carefully and professionally reviewed to detect and prevent error.

We shouldn't have to prove that something can be error-free before we say errors are a bad thing.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[brunes69]

For example, in that article on homeostasis, "stasis" is erroneously implied to be a prefix, which it is not.

Could you specify where? I don't see anywhere in the article where it is even *used* as a prefix.

About the closest thing to this would be where they explain the etymology of the word, but even there they clearly explain its roots, and nowhere do they infer that stasis is a prefix, suffix, or any other modifier..

Re:True, but not a big deal

[interiot]

This is rediculous because, as you state, a non-existant soccer player gets ZERO questions

Actually, the non-existant soccer player got unanimously deleted as soon as it was discovered. I simply saved a copy because it was one of the more unique examples of vandalism I'd seen (most are almost exactly the same).

VfD's can be stressful, especially for new editors. It's hard to not take it as a personal afront.

What's the BBS, by the way?

Yes, there are a lot of gray areas in terms of what should be included in Wikipedia. Notability is especially contentious.

Then you have to also note the number of other articles that are totally pointless in terms of cultural relevance to anything - less than the BBS in question was.

Well, the most extreme examples don't count. AfD/VfD is sometimes a bit of a random process, and you never know if something will be kept or not. So sometimes things aren't deleted, or aren't deleted right away, or, better yet, aren't merged yet, and current editors often disagree with previous precedent.

Wikipedia is the perfect example of pitifully poor organizational structure marred by populist tendencies and groupthink.

Wikipedia is also different from things like Slashdot and such because the goal is to have one big, cohesive database of human knowledge. On Slashdot, comments are only read for a couple days. On Wikipedia, I might think something should be phrased a certain way, but someone else might think it would be better phrased another way, and we have to actually settle those disagreements.

The fact that everyone has to cooperate on Wikipedia a lot more means that things won't always go my way. And that's not something that will ever change.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the hell would anybody want to read an article about an old BBS? Wikipedia did well by getting rid of that crap. Idoit.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Had my own experience with this recently. I was reading their article about Sean Hannity (for non-Americans, he's a far-right political pundit/radio talk show host, and has his own show on Fox News) and about halfway through the article it started getting a bit more comical than I expected. It started off being very subtle ("and his family hates him" after a short statement about his bio) and eventually ended up with a relatively long, but well written rant paragraph about how Sean Hannity is universally regarded as an uneducated and offensive ape. Refreshing the page reverted it back to its normal version, but I got a kick out of it all the same.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Free shit is still shit, no matter HOW hungry you are...

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Actually, the non-existant soccer player got unanimously deleted as soon as it was discovered. I simply saved a copy because it was one of the more unique examples of vandalism I'd seen (most are almost exactly the same).

I never said otherwise. The problem is a double standard - some things don't get throughly scrutinized right away while others do because of how people precieve certian topics or issues.

What's the BBS, by the way?

American Nihilist Underground Society, back in the late 80's, in Houston. Known for anti-social activities, nihilist, and worhsip of death metal.

Sure, its not like it was some big thing (and it wasn't huge by any means) but if Wikipedia is going to call this non-notable, then I can cite plenty of articles regarding things that are unquestionably obscure and barely known at all on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is also different from things like Slashdot and such because the goal is to have one big, cohesive database of human knowledge. On Slashdot, comments are only read for a couple days. On Wikipedia, I might think something should be phrased a certain way, but someone else might think it would be better phrased another way, and we have to actually settle those disagreements.

The fact that everyone has to cooperate on Wikipedia a lot more means that things won't always go my way. And that's not something that will ever change.

I don't think the goals of having a database of human knowledge requires the structure that Wikipedia has.

I also don't call what goes on "cooperation". Alot of times, things are done arbitarily by editors (by editors, perhaps I should have defined my terms earlier, I mean the "administrators" or people who have more power than the common user). I also don't call someone who doesn't like a particular article and unilaterally changing it to fit their ideology or interpertaion cooperation either.

I could care less whether or not Wikipedia wants to accept my article. What makes me miffed is the hypocrisy, bias, and double standards that exist (and this isn't the only example, just one).

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail trolling.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Well, genereally speaking, I tend to think that people should get a grip on their own spelling before criticizing others.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[interiot]

I never said otherwise. The problem is a double standard - some things don't get throughly scrutinized right away while others do because of how people precieve certian topics or issues.

No, things just aren't uniformly scrutinized. Period. Some vandalism sits around for a year or two before it's noticed. Some things get AfD'd two minutes after they're created. It's random and doens't have anything to do with topic.

but if Wikipedia is going to call this non-notable, then I can cite plenty of articles regarding things that are unquestionably obscure and barely known at all on Wikipedia.

One of my problems with "notability" is that it's really very much in the eye of the beholder. If someone says "that's not notable", it can simply mean that they don't know very much about the topic, and maybe there are some obscure 13th century specialist academics who think it is very much notable.

I could care less whether or not Wikipedia wants to accept my article. What makes me miffed is the hypocrisy, bias, and double standards that exist (and this isn't the only example, just one).

A lot of the gray-area votes are arbitrary.

I wouldn't say double standards, it's just different editors have different standards because there's no single policy that specifies what's notable and what's not.

I don't think the goals of having a database of human knowledge requires the structure that Wikipedia has.

Well, there are some procedural things about wikipedia that unnerves me. I would like to see a competing project give a serious go at an alternative structure, to see if things can be done better.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[haggar]

OK, it is fair for you to ask, and hence for me to answer:
The term is most often used in the sense of biological homeostasis. homeo- similar or same. stasis- standing or stopping.

The hyphen implies that stasis is a prefix, as I said.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

No, things just aren't uniformly scrutinized. Period. Some vandalism sits around for a year or two before it's noticed. Some things get AfD'd two minutes after they're created. It's random and doens't have anything to do with topic

Its definitely not random. They choose only to pay attention to something that doesn't fit within their ideological norms. i.e. a group that espouses social contrarian views. Something like a soccer player "looks normal" and thus does not get scruitinized.

One of my problems with "notability" is that it's really very much in the eye of the beholder. If someone says "that's not notable", it can simply mean that they don't know very much about the topic, and maybe there are some obscure 13th century specialist academics who think it is very much notable.

Right.

A lot of the gray-area votes are arbitrary.

I wouldn't say double standards, it's just different editors have different standards because there's no single policy that specifies what's notable and what's not.

I disagree.

Ideological attitude is reflected within Wikipedia's admins. Sure there may be some diversity that exists, but the most active editors tend to be the most ideological at the same time. They don't look at everything they see with an objective eye. Otherwise, this garbage about notability wouldn't be so contentious. They wouldn't include some of the most boring and mundane topics and then try to exclude other topics that are obviously more noteworthy.

Case in point - an article about neo nazism and a wikipedia admin (I'll have to dig this one up in a bit - I don't have all the documentation handy).

Wikipedia does very little to control the arbitary nature of the standard of how articles are written and how they are "administrated". Since very little structure existts to control these problems, the ideological nature of those who are given power is showing.

Well, there are some procedural things about wikipedia that unnerves me. I would like to see a competing project give a serious go at an alternative structure, to see if things can be done better.

While I hold Wikipedia in somewhat high regard for their noble efforts, I dont think we need new encylopedias. Brittanica does a wonderful job. So does Google and a bit of cross referencing. In reality, the information is already out there.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The nazi article - the Wikipedia admin held an ideological viewpoint that nazis do not deserve to be noted at all and deserved to be erased from history.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[saskboy]

Hopefully Wikipedia has some kind of alert filter, that sends someone to a page to clean up if it detects a string like "VARIABLE IS GAY" or "X WAS HERE"?

Re:True, but not a big deal

[haggar]

I am pretty sure you're just karmawhoring, but that argument won't fly anymore: a general fact of life that what we do is not perfect, but that doesn't mean we have to give up on trying, and just let everything fall apart.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[interiot]

Something like a soccer player "looks normal" and thus does not get scruitinized.

Well, vandalism starts to look very much alike after a while. Story about one kid and his backyard and his ambitions in life; delete, autobiography. Story about a company you've never heard of that reads like ad copy; delete, advert. Story about a band you've never heard of; delete, autobiography. Story about a soccer player with lots of specific dates and awards that make them sound notable; don't bother googling (I guess, I don't know).

They wouldn't include some of the most boring and mundane topics and then try to exclude other topics that are obviously more noteworthy.

Like individual pages for Magic The Gathering card sets? Or individual pages for SNL skits? Yeah, I agree.

While I hold Wikipedia in somewhat high regard for their noble efforts, I dont think we need new encylopedias. In reality, the information is already out there.

Yeah, I agree the huge bulk of information on Wikipedia comes from either Googling various stuff online, or sometimes from more or less credible experts who are bored or distracted enough to type stuff in. But I still think it's useful to pull all the stuff that's scattered across www/usenet/etc into one (semi-)cohesive whole, so that people don't have spend 45 minutes googling stuff to answer one little question. (on the other hand, Wikipedia is clearly not trustworthy enough to simply spend 2 minutes answering a question by only reading wikipedia)

Re:True, but not a big deal

[UserGoogol]

I wouldn't call it erroneous, because it was a purely stylistic action. Nobody would assume "stasis-" was a prefix, because anyone who knows what a prefix is knows that they never go at the end of words. Thus, anyone smart enough to know what a prefix is would merely assume that it was some sort of weird way to signify that the 'stasis' was merely part of a word rather than a full word. I suppose it's a bit less-than-ideal, so I changed it, but it wasn't wrong as much as it was weird.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[maxwell demon]

I guess those hyphens should actually have been dashes.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[SketcheeBoy]

THe main problem here is that the article was SPEEDY DELETED--one person decided to delete it. It was subject to that one person's bias.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[SketcheeBoy]

A lot of the information ISN'T out there. I took a college courses on African American music and African American art. To my suprise, a great number of the most highlighted artists in the class had no information available to them on the internet. I started the Wikiprojects on Composers and Visual Arts after that and we've discovered a large number of composers aren't only neglected on Wikipedia, but on the internet. It's especially sad considering a good book on the subject would have at least a little of the information. The textbook I have on African American music isn't even that big, but even a few sentences on a few of the people mentioned is more than I can find in the whole internet. The internet hasn't caught up with print yet outside of the most popular topics.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[Chuq]

What was the article name? I'll check the deletion history for you.

Re:True, but not a big deal

[arodland]

They don't look at everything they see with an objective eye.

Of course not. Objectivity is officially nonexistent on Wikipedia. ;)

Re:True, but not a big deal

[haggar]

They should have, I agree. Even then, it would have been a slightly awkward place to use them. What I mean, is: if you use a dash to logically divide one sentence from another, in compaund sentences, you don't do that twice in a row, in the same sentence. Not usually. At least, I have never seen that happen.

Anyhow, someone's removed the etimology completely, now.

Which third world?

[tgv]

Which third world would that precisely be? The one where they can read English and have enough money to buy an encyclopedia with mainly useless entries (Startrek anyone)? Does this third world happen to be located between Canada and Mexico?

Re:Which third world?

[nickptar]

"Informative"? You've got to be kidding. Wikipedia has plenty of good non-geek coverage, as well as editions in many, many languages other than English, and this book will likely be donated or made available damn cheap.

Re:Which third world?

[tgv]

Giving a book with misleading/unverified information CAN BE HARMFUL!

And with regard to the languages for the biggger Wikipedias: Swedish is not generally spoken in the third world. Nor is Finnish, Bokmal, Danish, and Czech. Esperanto, don't make me laugh. Catalan and Asturian, Oh My God, I see all Spanish regiolects there!

Then we come to the smaller ones: Welsh! Euskara! Limburgs (that's really embarrasing). And Indonesia hardly qualifies as a third world country, does it?

There is hardly a language there that's spoken in real third world countries. Not surprising, since real third world countries don't have a whole group of people with nothing to do but edit Wikipedia.

No, this is a bad, bad, bad idea. It's a waste of resources.

Hoorah! our own encyclopedia...

[Assassin bug]

... that will be painfully out of date in 2 seconds.

Thank you wikipedia

[hobotron]

Now the third world will no longer be held back by having no knowledge of these important and historical pieces

Re:Thank you wikipedia

[mark2003]

Fantastic - who said Wikepedia wasn't both accurate and useful....

Electronic Encyclopedia

[chadamir]

I'm in the humanities so sometimes having my computer with me is well...distracting. I definitely don't rely on wikipedia as a primary source (more of a quick reference or a jumping off point), but often you get lost in wikipedia. What I'd like is an encyclopedia akin to an electronic dictionary. I dont know if this is possible or maybe I should just block every site except wikipedia.

Re:Electronic Encyclopedia

[DemingBuiltMyHotRod]

Try searching google including the term " site:wikipedia.org "

Contents of Print Version

[A_Pryd3]

Aardvark
-ref: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Aardvark

Bear
-ref: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Bear

Cougar
-ref: http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Cougar

etc...

Useless entries???

[OctoberSky]

Your example of a useless entry is Startrek? Obviously you have never seen the article about "Slashdot Subculture"

Re:Useless entries???

[tgv]

True, I never could have guessed there would be an entry on that. And it wouldn't tell you what you would need to know, just the superficial stuff. It is badly written and only informative to those in-the-know. In the introduction, it says this:

The Slashdot subculture is a mixture of juvenilia, sarcasm, deliberately bad jokes, intellectual arrogance and highly developed and artistic attempts to provoke outraged responses from other forum users, amuse them, or challenge their thinking on the popular Slashdot technology website. Many of these are older phenomena which originated in common slang culture, later migrating to Usenet and eventually Slashdot.

A sub-culture is not a mixture of communication styles, to begin with, as the Wikipedia entry points out. And of course sarcasm is a phenomenon older than Slashdot, and it didn't originate in Usenet either.

But well, I suppose Wikipedia is very much like the internet: there's a lot of information, provided it's somebody's hobby, without commercial interest, and given up after a short initial effort.

C'mon

[sagenumen]

What with the people that immediately have to bad mouth everything? Wikipedia is available in multiple languages and I'm pretty sure they don't have to include articles like the one about MacGuyver. Give it a rest, people, and stop being so cynical.

Priorities?

[Mr. Cancelled]

Less than two weeks ago we heard about Wikipedia having some major quality issues, and now we're talking about distributing it in print fashion to poor and developing nations?

Shouldn't the content be corrected & verified before we start putting out hard copies of the data, which will be interpreted as "the truth" by whomever learns from these tomes?

And really... how often can you use the term "tome" in a /. posting?

Re:Priorities?

[The Ape With No Name]

Read the entry on 'Capitalism.' It is a paean to Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman in direct conflict with the historical fact that most countries in the world do not practice Uncle Miltie's brand of capitalism and Ayn Rand is one of the most hysterically bad 'philosophers' ever.

Re:Priorities?

[Sockatume]

Problem is that it's always being corrected and verified. In fact, some areas are in constant flux owing to different viewpoints of the editors (although compromises are reached, minor details still waver back and forth). So if you wait for it to become "correct" it'll never get printed. Much as I love the wikipedia, I can't see this working.

Re:Priorities?

[Red Flayer]

" Less than two weeks ago we heard about Wikipedia having some major quality issues [slashdot.org], and now we're talking about distributing it in print fashion to poor and developing nations?
Shouldn't the content be corrected & verified before we start putting out hard copies of the data, which will be interpreted as "the truth" by whomever learns from these tomes? "

Why would we want to do that? Obviously, this is a scheme to make sure the developing world does not educate its children well.
Sabotage the future job competition and all that...

Re:Priorities?

[lgw]

So your argument is "I disagree with a Wikipedia article, so it must be wrong and the entire Wikipedia worthless"? The article on capitalism seems slightly sub-par by the Wikipedia editorial standards - a bit too much weasel-wording such as "it has been argued" "some believe" "some economists". Ayn Rand is mentioned only as an advocate of the role of self-interest in capitalism, which is certainly the case.

If you think it could be better, fix it!

Re:Priorities?

[The Ape With No Name]

Ayn Rand shouldn't be mentioned at all. If you want a conservative philosopher, try Michael Oakeshott.

Re:Priorities?

[lgw]

You may not like her, but she's well-known, historically significant within the topic, and famous for one very specific part of the modern philosophy of capitalism. History is relevant.

Re:Priorities?

[The Ape With No Name]

Horseshit. She wrote popular books, smoked cigarettes and was pissed because nobody read her philosophy texts. She was picked up by neocons who aren't sharp enough to grasp Leo Strauss. I'm thinking Karl Rove here...

Catch 22

[elgatozorbas]

Don't think the printed version will ever get beyond the word 'recursive' and the book will be _mighthy_ thick...

Clicking Printed Hyperlinks?!!

[Tikicult]

Once they solve the "Clicking Hyperlinks in Print Form" problem I'm sure that this will be an amazing success! The scroll bar in print form would be nice, also.

- tiki

Defeating the purpose in one fell swoop.

[kinglink]

Wasn't the original idea of the site that you could have anyone edit the document and fix errors or add information. I understand we have trolls too but the purpose of the site was simply that.

Now we have them trying to give this tool to foreign countries but first off it's a encyclopedia, no single book will hold a good enough amount of the knowledge anyways. But more importantly with in a year most of the information will have changed multiple times on that site.

Hell the best thing about that site is if you search a current event you tend to get precise info even if the events have happened that day. That alone makes the site worthwhile, however the book will have none of these features and likely just become a normal encyclopedia. Sadly I have to say there's no reason for that. It's an encyclopedia that nerds wrote but from what I've seen it's not statistically better then a real encyclopedia. In fact because it's open to all to write it's statistically worse for the reader because there's no validation exception a public consesus.

Why that's bad is easy, Public consesus tends to be less then 100 percent perfect. Salem Witch Trials, LA riots, and so on. There are leaders who watch over the site, but I still don't believe it to be worthwhile to take out all the uniquest features on that site and try to make a book out of it....

Now a autoupdating PDA with the full information of the site? that'd be bitchin'....

Re:Defeating the purpose in one fell swoop.

[maxwell demon]

If printed on acid-free paper, it may be worthwhile for future archaeologists to partially recover from the digital dark age.

Re:Defeating the purpose in one fell swoop.

[kinglink]

that's why we freaking beam all our shit into space in random directions, including all the updates... and especially aim one dish at alpha centauri, then when people finally hit speeds close to the speed of light they'll pass the waves, and recieve them when they land.. and thus hear all our information (and if I have any say hopefully enjoy Penny-arcade as well as useful stuff, and Baby Got Back, that alone should surely confuse the hell out of them.)

But which version?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. Printing that website is a terrible idea, but it ought to make the psychotic wikitrolls who have guarded it ceaselessly year after god-awful year very satisfied. Actually, I'll bet the ridiculous notion that you would publish an encyclopedia plagued by so many grotesquely inaccurate 'controversial' entries was probably theirs to begin with. They have lived for this day.

Editing Wikipedia?

[lotus_out_law]

How are they going to edit it now?
Using post cards? :-)

kR/\/

Singularly appropriate:

[rathehun]

I'd buy that for a dollar!

*ducks*

Can't you see

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all part of the same scheme! We are already dumping:
- unsafe medication
- outlawed pesticides
- waste
in the third world

and now also unreliable encyclopediae (probably to keep them uneducated about all of the above)

No.

[tjic]

Computers break much more easilly than books do. Even when broken, books degrade gracefully.

Computers require energy (at the very least, solar panels). Books do not.

Computers, even the pie-in-the-sky, not-yet-delivered $100 ones that MIT is attempting to create, cost more than books. For one $200 computer, we could print up 20 $10 hardcover books.

Computers overheat, choke on sand, and have moving parts. Books do not.

We still have 500+ year old books around.

How many 20 year old computers are still running?

The argument that "printed copies go out of date" is a vast exaggeration. Encylopedias from 1950 are still quite interesting, and have perfectly acceptable information on 95% of all topics.

Computers are good for some things, but books are a great solution to many other problems.

Sometimes I feel wikipedia can't be fixed

[haggar]

I have just finished editing the nationalistic ramblings (disguised as "facts") in a wikipedia entry about a famous scientist and engineer, whose name shall stay secret. I know, however, that this nationalistic vandal will be back, do his edits and then I would have to do mine all over again. Except, at one point I will give up, because I will realize that it's pointless, and I don't have all the time in the world to maintain that entry and protect it from defacement.

As a longtime and way too busy Wikipedia contributor, I say: let it die, or then do some extensive and expensive maintainance. Basically, it will have to resamble more the printed things which Slashdot users so like to deride.

Re:Sometimes I feel wikipedia can't be fixed

[Work Account]

Stop deleting my changes and I'll stop editing them back in again! ;)

Re:Sometimes I feel wikipedia can't be fixed

[interiot]

I don't think vadanlism is so much of a problem, because that can be more or less easily removed by many different people. I think it's more of a problem that poor editing can bring down the content of Wikipedia overall. Someone who is both an expert in their field and also a great writer can post some brilliant prose, with subtle and precise meanings throughout, that accurately expresses the current consensus of experts in their field. And then someone else can come along and blow away all the subtle distinctions without knowing better. And it's somewhat difficult to remove the less experienced person's edits, because reverting well-intentioned edits can be very contentious unless you can clearly state why the new edits should be removed (which requires still more brilliant writing).

Re:Sometimes I feel wikipedia can't be fixed

[haggar]

You say vandalism is not a problem, but the inaccuracy (lie?) I had to correct, could have unnoticed for weeks. How often does a person knowledgeable of european 19th century history, visit an wikipedia entry on a famous physicist?

Re:Sometimes I feel wikipedia can't be fixed

[pjp6259]

You shouldn't have to make your edits again, you can just revert to a version of the article before the defacement. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds.

How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[wocky.jabber]

In many so-called 3rd world countries like China, India, Thailand, internet access is available in many places so they don't need the printed Wikipedia. In places where internet access is not available, they are really too poor and too busy just staying alive to read Wikipedia. Waste of money. The money would be better spent providing a selected villages with internet access. Then they can get to read the real Wikipedia. Printing Wikipedia is going two steps backwards

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[Don_dumb]

Yes, because in China, they will have internet access to Wikipedia, especially the entries like 'democracy'. Which might well be blocked by Chinese government firewalls.

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think the Chinese Gov would be open to having printed versions of banned websites avaliable to its citizens?

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[jmccullough]

China isn't the third world. What gave you that idea? The world classifications come more from political alignment in the cold-war. In that respect, China is very much "Second World", but they hold an large amount of economic power.

Giving out first-world encyclopedia can be culturally harmful to third-world countries. It would be very interesting, if they did have access, to see what information they would add or whether they would even be interested in adding anything.

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[ichigo 2.0]

If they're too busy staying alive, printing articles about Star Strek and Michael Jackson probably is a waste of time. But how about articles on water purification or farming techniques. While they're at it, maybe even AIDS. Education is the key to economic prosperity, and giving some in the form of printed wikipedia to those who can only dream of internet access is a good thing in my book.

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[Don_dumb]

Well yeah, there is that as well.
Which I guess adds weight to the point about using Wikipedia as a method of educating third-world countries. There are other stumbling blocks than simply an internet connection and a computer.

Re:How many 3rd world countries has he been to?

[wocky.jabber]

OK, I admit I haven't researched this thoroughly but I think it was the newspapers and magazines that I've read since I was a kid that's been telling me that China is a 3rd world country. That have a habit of doing that even though if one were to look at the current economic and political facts, it wouldn't be right to lump China together with Somalia and Bangladesh.Also, when you consider that China has lent hundreds of billions to a certain large country with irresponsible fiscal policies, one wonders which is the 3rd world country. And I read recently the infant mortality rate in Beijing is lower that than of DC. Outrageous.

Oh good.

[solomonrex]

Now Wikipedia can set 3rd world education back, too.

Re:True, but not a big deal - clarification

[ed_g2s]

Now, I can not say for sure how long it had been defaced before I got there,

Actually you could if you looked at the edit history.

The vandalism started at "12:22, 31 October 2005 212.85.13.142" and continued until it was reverted "12:34, 31 October 2005 JoanneB", so 12 minutes. (The vandalism continued but was reverted in about a minute each time).

This just in....

[Anonymous Coward]

Last tree on Earth was just harvested for printing wikipedia.org.

What about Botswana???

[design by michael]

Yeah, the English version of Wikipedia is going to be extremely useful in Botswana. Last time I checked, Setswanese wasn't in Wikipedia's list of supported languages.

Re:What about Botswana???

[BenjyD]

But they don't need an encyclopedia, they just ask Mma Ramotswe.

Re:What about Botswana???

[MonkeyCookie]

As Botswana is a former British colony and is next door to South Africa, where English is commonly used, English is widely spoken in Botswana. No doubt there are many who don't speak English, but English texts would certainly be very useful there.

Re:What about Botswana???

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.wikipedia.org/ is not a comprehensive list of Wikipedias--only the larger ones.

The full list appears to be
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

where Setswana is given to be at
http://tn.wikipedia.org/

though it appears that Setswana speakers havnt been able to find it yet either.

Ever heard of Brittanica!!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already "encyclopedias" available..on CD at least and better authenticated and less full of sci-fi than wikipedia. What a lot of nonsense. Look where Mr. Gates' puts his cash. Get a cure for malaria, AIDS, etc first, the last thing the developing world needs is Wikipeida (i love it of course but I get the "dynamic" version.

Wikipedia should move toward the open source model

[balls199]

I bet you're thinking "duh, they already do", but I don't think it really follows the open source model of development from my experience.

In the open source model of development you have several levels of "contributers". (I probably missed a level or two)

1. Maintainer
2. Commiters
3. Submitters
4. Users

These levels represent levels of trust, with the Maintainer the most trust worthy, and the Users being the least. Anything contributed by those with lower trust levels gets reviewed by the higher trust levels, and appropriate action is taken (either the change is accepted or rejected). If you do something to ruin that trust, you are forced down the levels by your peers.

The only problem with this scheme in wikipedia is there will be more forking and competing articles. However, this can be mitigated in a similar fashion to what wikipedia is doing now with links at the top of articles linking to competing pages.

If anyone is interested in setting up this kind of encyclopedia, or knows of one already in use out there, send me a link.

Dumb Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a absolutely stupid idea and I don't say that often. The reason Wikipedia works is that it's every changing and self-regulating. A print version destroys 75% of the value of wiki. Also it's a ridiculously expensive idea. Spend the money on developing communication infrastrucutres and providing low cost computers capable of accessing Wikipedia if you really want to do some good in this area. Or better yet spend the money on aids and malaria research, farming technology improvements, or debt relief efforts rather than printing and distributing a semi-useful book.

Re:Dumb Idea

[rocketsled]

But not printing it would deprive the developing world of such wonders as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Re:Dumb Idea

[MrCopilot]

But not printing it would deprive the developing world of such wonders as the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I think you meant the Flying Spaghetti Monster @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Mons terism

Re:Wikipedia should move toward the open source mo

[Anonymous Coward]

More like this --

1. Maintainer
2. Commiters
3. Submitters
4. Users
5. Troll
6. Users
7. Troll
8. Users
9. Troll
10.Users
11.Troll
12.Troll
13.Troll
.
.
.
n. Troll

Too dynamic.

[Raven42rac]

It just makes no sense to me, it's not like it's a static, unchanging entity.

I have a great name for it

[Hoi Polloi]

They could give it a classic sounding name, something regal, like...say..."Britain". Then make it Latin sounding, "Britannica". Voilá! "Encyclopedia Britannica"

Seriously, why bother with a print version of ANYTHING that is heavily cross indexed? One of the greatest things about digitized docs is the ability to do fast, complex, searches across the entire document. Having it in print reduces you to slogging through the very limited index. Plus there is the issue of having an entire shelf taken up with books vs using a few DVDs.

Re:I have a great name for it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it should come out in electronic format, you know those new electric paper from Panasonic. And for a name now..

Why not the Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy. It's already famous! five books, 1 movie, 1 tv serie and much more.

And + most people who have added an entry could say that they are researcher for the Hitch Hiker Guide to the Galaxy. That would be great!

Patte De Lapin

Re:I have a great name for it

[maxwell demon]

No sorry, for something which is so gigantic, you need some name which resembles the gigantism ... galactic, yes, that's it. Let's call it the Encyclopedia Galactica!

So many pages...

[PhotoGuy]

Wow...This will be a huge job for Google books to scan in...

save trees, money, and help, not bother the poor

[Anonymous Coward]

Problems (most already pointed out):

This thing costs money. The only way a print version would be superior is if the internet is not at hand. Then you're poor, then you don't want to buy some crazy book from people from another world.

This thing will cut down trees. Now, it may be a drop in the bucket compared with current trends, however aren't projects like Wikipedia meant to serve as beacons for a better philosophy of life? The beauty of the internet is that you can create and distribute content ad nauseum without having to ruin the biosphere.

This thing is dynamic. I believe that it will be outdated as soon as it is printed.

Which articles to choose?

Of course, maybe if the best written, most thoroughly reviewed articles are chosen, and put into a reasonably brick-sized (not shelf-sized) book, then us RICH people (ie, people who can already access it) can enjoy a relaxing read of miscellaneous encyclopedic articles which happen to have a different format, and possibly quality and maybe even price from others already available.

Though I wouldn't buy it. Anything involving a growing body of knowledge and understanding would always make me look towards my computer.

Goodie. Poo for all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world

What did they ever do to us to deserve such treatment?

They will learn the true identity of Darth Vader

[Anonymous Coward]

Noooooooo

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Missing the point

[nagora]

The only virtue of Wikipedia at the moment is that, being online, at least it isn't a waste of paper. This plan undermines even that.

TWW

I don't get it!!!

[andrelix]

OK, I just don't get this. I thought the power (and maybe the purpose) of the wiki was to allow for a dynamic document. Once printed, you are just a bad encyclopedia. Not to say that wiki is bad, but it is not necessarily proofed in quite the same way an encylopedia would be. Plus you loose the dynamics. Look at the *cough* Commander and Chief of the US, based on his "hard work" you need to constantly update his bio, not to mention the dictionary! I understand that we are all capitalists but this just seems like a way of taking advantage of developing nations, not helping them. Get them $100 laptops from MIT and let them huddle around one to read what is happening in the world, or better yet, go to WebMD to look up what they can do for that sore on their back, and that will really help them...

Good for college freshmen

[athia]

College freshmen writing essays for composition courses across America can now compile a works cited list based entirely off of the hardcopy version of Wikipedia; they'd usually only be able to use two web articles, if they'd drawn them from the online version.

non english wiki

[uberjoe]

Wait a minute, I thought everyone in the foreign world spoke english if it was spoken loudly and slowly enough.

Re:non english wiki

[TheoMurpse]

I thought everyone in the foreign world spoke english if it was spoken loudly and slowly enough.

If the lameness filter wasn't there, I'd reply in all caps.

In any case, I had this happen to me while I lived in Japan -- I was getting a medical examination, and a nurse walked right up to me, looked me dead in the eye, and spoke in the clearest, slowest Japanese I'd ever heard (which I speak, for bonus humor in this example):

NIHOOOONGO GA WAKARIMAAASU KAAAAA? (DOOO YOOOU SPEAK EEEENGLIIIIIIIISH?)

Re:non english wiki

[TheoMurpse]

NIHOOOONGO GA WAKARIMAAASU KAAAAA?

Actually, that reads "Do you speak Japanese?" not "Do you speak English?" It's 4am. Give me a break.

Silly Mods

[rathehun]

The oddball TV show with its catchphrase "I'd buy that for a dollar!" seen throughout the movie, Robocop, is called "It's Not My Problem". This is not shown in the movie, but is rather revealed by script writer Ed Neumeier on the commentaries track of the Robocop Trilogy DVD release.

From Wikipedia.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Sole Source

[guisar]

I wouldn't assume Third World users are so ignorant as to rely solely on Wikipedia or any other source- but some information is better than none isn't it? It's not as if the Wikipedia is a front for any particular agenda.

Ideally I think the scheme could distribute low-cost or discarded PCs (hosting OSS of course) with the information in areas with adequate power. It's great people will be able to have a low-cost, distributable reference source but the print version tosses out the ability explore using the links to other wikipedia topics. Curiosity usually leads me to explore beyond what I originally looked up. Some might call that exploration a waste of time- I prefer to think of it as recharging my enjoyment of learning.

Don't bad-mouth him, he directed Frankenstein

[elrous0]

Well, that's what someone said in his Wikipedia entry, anyway.

-Eric

I can only hope...

[greginnj]

I, for one, dream of the day when a handsome, leather-bound set of Wikipaedia articles will sit on a shelf in my parlor next to the Victrola... now THAT would be progress!

Re:I can only hope...

[narcc]

Can your victrola play MP3 wax cylinders?

reprint

[honeypotslash]

And after they finish printing it, it will be completely outdated...

Problems everywhere

[elfguygmail.com]

Every encyclopedia, in fact every reference books have errors. There's an article that lists all the Encyclopedia Britanica ones. So while Wikipedia may have more since it has a lot more content, it's a good idea to fact check regardless if it's wikipedia or not.

Re:Problems everywhere

[sickofthisshit]

Guess what. If you pay money for Encyclopedia Britannica, and you have a doubt about some point, you can write a letter to them and, last I heard, they'll unloose a U. of Chicago grad student on the problem to investigate it for you and write a response. As in somebody trained to do research, with the resources of a university library at their disposal, without a particular axe to grind on the issue, who presumably has agreed to undertake the task while meeting certain standards.

And they will respond to you with something like this:

http://hamsa.org/britannica.htm

Whereas, if you have a question about the accuracy of a Wikipedia, you've got to do the grunt work yourself, AND you have to be willing to jump into the mosh pit of reversions and edits and vandalism to get the fix to be made and to stick.

Who the hell can even know whether the Wikipedia listing of "corrections" to EB is accurate? It is certainly self-serving.

FINALLY!

[Spy der Mann]

The phrase "but does it run linux" (in the slashdot subculture article) will be printed worldwide! :D

We're gonna be famous, guys!

Contradiction

[Tordek]

Hmmm... seems The Wiki is contradicting itself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipe dia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_paper_encyclopedia

Re:Contradiction

[wootest]

Exactly how would printing an edition of Wikipedia turn the original Wikipedia into a paper encyclopedia? They could even have someone else entirely print it (if they confirm with the license, which is what allows it) and that wouldn't change the goals set forth by Wikimedia at all.

wiki2pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

I once wrote a script for this. You'll need xsltproc, latex-ucs and imagemagick. It worked quite well a year ago, but it is hard to keep up with wikipedia, because it's changing all the time.

http://wiki2pdf.berlios.de/

Usage: ./wikipdf Leonhard_Euler

Bad idea in many ways

[NewIntellectual]

First - even the guy who runs Wikipedia recently admitted that it has lots of accuracy problems. Somebody with enough expertise to take the time to write something good, will realize that it can immediately be chopped up by any anonymous hack - and probably won't waste their time in the first place. Leaving what...? I mean, would you even want to post to *Slashdot*, much less something that is supposed to be more serious such as an encyclopedia, if any AC could come along and trash your words, and you to "monitor" such trashing till the end of time?

Secondly - backward (e.g. "third world") countries do not, by and large, speak English. What language is Wikipedia largely written in...?

Thirdly - if somebody wants to go to the trouble of wasting paper on this effort, they should at least use a decent and reliable source. Go make a special deal with Encylopedia Brittanica - they probably have warehouses full of unsold paper containing far higher quality material than Wikipedia, in the wake of DVD-ROM technology and the net.

Re:Bad idea in many ways

[Chuq]

Secondly - backward (e.g. "third world") countries do not, by and large, speak English. What language is Wikipedia largely written in...?

Most of it is not english, at the moment.

Globalization of Information

[Da3vid]

I think this is great! I absolutely adore Wikipedia in many ways. Its a wonderful project. While the reproduction in print will only be a simulation (not a simulacra) and will in most ways (if not all) be inferior, that doesn't warrant it as bad. Wikipedia is people from all over the world coming together to share information. I'm impressed at how far our collect intelligence and work has come already just in Wikipedia. Now, by sharing the globalized world with the people who don't have access to it, we are branching out even further. I love this, and as a philosopher, this even excites me, maybe not as much as the idea of Wikipedia itself excites me... mmm...

-Da3vid-

ANUS.com

[Anonymous Coward]

American Nihilist Underground Society, back in the late 80's, in Houston. Known for anti-social activities, nihilist, and worhsip of death metal.

Don't you mean "American Nihilist Underground Society, a trolling group known for trying to get links to anus.com on as many reputable sites as possible"?

Re:ANUS.com

[Kiaser Wilhelm II]

Maybe you should do a little research first. As seeing as I know the guy who started the whole group back in the 1980's (something that Wikipedia's admins and users voting in the VfD continued to not believe as they deleted the article) and having access to some of their old content, I think I know what I "mean".

In regards to their trolling activities, your reply PROVES that ideology constantly gets in the way of Wikipedia. One of the many reasons stated in the VfD is that "trolls" do not deserve to be noted in Wikipedia. This shows an inability for people to distance themselves from ideological viewpoints and common social attitudes. If Wikipedia states to be "NPOV" then I would expect it to actually be NPOV. But of course, Wikipedia is trying to be a psuedo-"democratic" encyclopedia where everyone gets a say. Being objective an NPOV is obviously exclusive to appealing to masses of people who do hold differing attitudes.

Can they eat it?

[Teechur007]

...Is it on rice paper or something? As a teacher, we learn that Maslow's hierarchy of needs says that seeking knowledge comes after one's base needs (food, water, shelter, safety, etc.) are filled.

Why would someone in the developing world want knowledge if what they are seeking is something to eat? I doubt equally that one is going to settle down with a nice copy of Wikipedia while the bullets from rival militias are zipping through your house...

Good luck to them though. Hope it works!

Insulting

[seabasstin]

If I was from the developing world I would be insulted by such a saying action.
oh wait I am from the 3rd world, well then this really feels like getting expired cigarettes, expired medicine, old text books (which are taken out of circulation in the states because they are not accurate or just plain offensive.)
etc.

This really continues in a long tradition of giving really disturbingly dangerous material to people who can't complain...
yuk.

needless to say Wikipedia is a festering hole of misinformation rumor and hearsay.
the worst kind of "data".

Great News!

[LarryLong]

Now YOUR history can be written by the winners too!

problems with Wikipedia

[i41Overlord]

I think the biggest problem with Wikipedia isn't the minor technical errors but the constant advocacy by extremely vocal groups. I often find information that clearly doesn't belong in the article but is put there by people advocating some cause. For instance, an article about dogs I read a while back had a disproportionate amount of information about vegetarianism in dogs. The article was supposed to be about dogs in general, not about veganism as it relates to dogs.

Also, the neutral point of view often gets in the way of accuracy. If you state something that is common sense and I put forth a lunatic fringe point of view that is highly unlikely, our views must be given about equal credibility in the article even though my point of view could be rubbish. If the poor reader was reading the article to get information about the subject, they wouldn't know what to believe.

Another major problem is that authors seem to forget who the target audience is for an encyclopedia. Instead of making the article simple and easy to read, the author instead seems to be concerned with making a name for himself by using the most advanced vocabulary possible. Remember, you're trying to educate someone who doesn't know much about the subject yet (hence them reading an encyclopedia article), you're not trying to impress your peers with your literary complexity.

Obviously Grammar Still Isn't Free...

[Scorpious]

What exactly were you trying to say? I lost you in the mistax- Although internet access is available...most people in 'underpriveledged' third world countries don't have access to the internet.