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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."
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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!"
You know, "free" knowledge in no longer limited to developed world, where they have access to something called internet.
With 800,000 articles its going to be one heluva long book.
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!"
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
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.
Presumaby each copy will be written in pencil and supplied with an eraser?
Party Time: Excellent
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.
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'..
gtkaml.org
Personally I can't wait to get the hardcopy of the Robocop disertation.
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?
Summation 2
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.
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.
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
... 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...
Get a free Video iPod!
... until we find Wikipedia articles in Google Print?
Now people in 3rd world countries all over the world will be able to know of the wonders of goatse.
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.
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.
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?
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.
NJ Local Music Scene
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?
/. posting?
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
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.
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'....
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.
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.
Sigged!
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
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.
Sigged!
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.
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.
401 - Attention span not found
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.
Wow...This will be a huge job for Google books to scan in...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
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...
Wait a minute, I thought everyone in the foreign world spoke english if it was spoken loudly and slowly enough.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
And after they finish printing it, it will be completely outdated...