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

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.

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 By the time Wikipedia is printed, it will already be out of date.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

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

[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.

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

[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).