German Wikipedia To Be Published As a Book

David Gerard writes "Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. It will cost 20 Euros, and 1 Euro from each copy will go to Wikimedia. They're editing down the most popular 50,000 articles for the 1,000-page book, to be released in September. Because of the open-source origin of the material, the publisher cannot claim copyright in the book." The German-language Wikipedia is second in size only to the English version, which has 2.3 million articles.

Comments

Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[gbulmash]

When I was working at IMDb.com (the Internet Movie Database), I asked Col Needham (the founder and managing director) why they never released it as a book. His answer was that the database was constantly changing. With the lead time you had to give for the actual printing, by the time any book hit the shelves, it would be months out of date.

I think Wikipedia falls victim to the same problem. It might be a very good book and they might select the most stable entries, but like IMDb, Wikipedia is a living, breathing thing that grows and changes on a regular basis. In fact, that's part of its appeal. A book is basically just freezing a snapshot of selected articles in time, but how much does something where part of its value is in its dynamic nature lose from being frozen like that?

- Greg

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[harmonica]

Obviously, this book isn't for those with net access everywhere from their work place to their living room couch. There are still a lot of people without any net access, for that matter. This book with its emphasis on popular topics which may not be covered in your other tree-based encyclopedias could be useful for all those without access to that living thing. After two or three years, at the price of 20 Euros, people can get the new edition of the book to catch up.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[eldavojohn]

Wikipedia is a living, breathing thing that grows and changes on a regular basis. Uh, it also requires an internet connection. I'm lucky enough to live in an area where we have electricity always and internet 99% of the time.

Apparently they think that people in Germany would like to have a hard copy. I'm certain my grandparents (who read tons but do not have a computer) would be interested in a $40-50 edition of this book.

Or even, you know, the local library.

There's a reason we put things into hard copy. It's so that we always have them. Might be a waste of trees, also might be a great idea if the world has an unfortunate energy crisis looming ...

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[Chris Burke]

I see your point, but on the other hand, new movies are always being created and thus the filmographies of all the people involved are constantly changing. Unless you restricted the print-form to solely those entries of actors etc. who had passed on and made it essentially a film history book, you're necessarily putting a short window on its relevance.

Whereas with Wikipedia, while further edits are certainly possible, there's nothing actually new happening wrt say the Expressionist Movement, or Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Juniper Bushes. If the article as it stands is good and essentially complete, then it isn't inherently a bad idea to capture it and put it in a fixed format. There may be further edits that improve the article, but that's not so different than a future edition of a print encyclopedia, and in fact if the print version takes off then there would almost certainly be such.

So while it is true that making a print version of Wikipedia loses some of the inherent appeal of the WP, it also makes a lot more sense than a print version of IMDB, and could actually be a useful and cheaper alternative to other print encyclopedias which never had that dynamism to begin with.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[siriuskase]

No reason to worry. Wikipedia will continue to live and breath, just as your cat, child, or spouse continue to live and breath when you take a snapshot of them. A snapshot might not be completely up to date, but it can be much more convenient than having your cat, child, or spouse on your desk or in your pocket everyday.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they think that people in Germany would like to have a hard copy. I'm certain my grandparents (who read tons but do not have a computer) would be interested in a $40-50 edition of this book.

Or even, you know, the local library. Dude, you just mentioned two things that are obsolete: your grandparents and the local library.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[turing_m]

"Might be a waste of trees, also might be a great idea if the world has an unfortunate energy crisis looming ..."

Is it that expensive (in energy terms) to manufacture most of the means of storage such as HDD and flash? Even so, the energy involved with producing a library of congress versus storing one on HDD would be in favor of the HDD.

The methods of reading are getting smaller (read: use less energy in the manufacturing) and less power intensive to run. At the moment, the only problem with the miserly power consuming PCs is putting up with slower speed. That will change over the next ten years as technology improves.

Not to say that paper isn't useful. Barring fire and bugs, failure is fairly graceful and very slow as opposed to digital. But I'd be surprised if the energy crisis caused us to dispense entirely with digital.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> the most popular 50,000 articles

Can't wait until they do this with the English version, and people pick up the book and try to find the Shakespeare article, only to find printed pages of The Hulk's primary foes, Wolverine's origin, and a detailed description of Blue Beetle's flying beetlecar.

5% too low...

[adam]

I didn't see a reference [in linked article] to percentage of sale paid to Wikimedia, but found one here. My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me. The article does note that a staff of ten was required to edit the articles for content and length, but it still sounds like the publisher is profiting perhaps a bit more than normal off of the work of others. And knowing that many people will likely purchase the reference to support Wikipedia, it would be nice to see around 10-15% gross sale returned to the author (or, in this case, to Wikipedia).

My ballpark of "10-15% of gross" comes from the fact that although I am not in the literary world, I do work in entertainment (aka: cinema), and it's common for DVD producers to receive between $1.50 and $4 on each sold copy. On two of my films I receive around $3.50 after each wholesale transaction (when a chain retailer buys copies at $12/each wholesale to sell for $19.99 on their shelves). The second film in question was offered distribution to WalMart, and because of the bulk they buy in, the deal with them was closer to $1.50. (In the end, for artistic reasons that had to do with creating a specially "WalMart-friendly" edited version, we passed on the WalMart deal). I wonder if someone in book publishing can speak to whether the numbers I'm used to from video publishing are generally commensurate? I don't know what the cost-of-goods-sold for books is, so perhaps it's substantially high enough that it pushes authors' margins to a fraction of what they are in video publishing, but my kneejerk reaction is that 5% is too low.

Citing

[jeffy210]

So does this mean you can cite wikipedia as a valid source since it's in print! (yes, i'm joking)

Re:Citing

[Chairboy]

Who cites an encyclopedia? It's not a primary source. It doesn't matter if it's electronic or print, but this is one of those long standing annoyances with the "zomg you can't cite Wikipedia!" folks. Of COURSE you can't cite it, it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA! Citing encyclopedias becomes unacceptable once you pass the 5th grade.

I know you were joking, but someone modded you INSIGHTFUL for crap's sake. +3 Funny, sure! But modding it up as insightful suggests pretty strongly that my mean ol' response here is appropriate.

Re:Citing

[iNaya]

You realise that modding as funny doesn't give the poster any karma. Modding as insightful does... that's the most likely reason someone modded it as such.

Re:Citing

[wvmarle]

OK getting off-topic here.

A moderator should not care about the karma of the author. If a post is funny, mod it funny. That's what it is. And whether the poster gets karma or not that's not up to the moderator to decide.

Re:Citing

[grm_wnr]

Omg how clever. That is in fact what you should always be doing, even with Britannica. I'm amazed that they don't teach this very basic method in universities these days.

Most Popular Articles?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they go by popularity in terms of the number of visits, I'm guessing that the entries like 'breast' and 'lesbianism in erotica' are very likely to make the final cut. But will it include all the pictures?

I may disagree

[adam]

Apprehensions about Jimmy Wales' character aside, my main gripe with Wikipedia is that I am suspicious of everything I read there. Mostly this stems from the fact that in any topic on which I am an expert, I can generally stumble across several very glaring errors. Of course, reading topics on which I am not an expert, I find myself to be generally entertained and educated-- provided that I don't think about the likelihood of errors in those articles. I will grant that the errors usually don't take away from the overall education that a novice would receive.

With a staff editing the articles for content, fixing some of the more glaring errors, and selecting the more stable articles, I think a Wikipedia tome will nicely bridge the gap between meatspace and cyberspace. Keep in mind, not everyone has Internet connection at all times, nor is Wikipedia guaranteed to be functioning 100% of the time.. DNS errors, routing problems, etc.. they all occur. The last couple of years, have begun an interesting transition of merging between various forms of entertainment and education. It's no longer divided into books (paper), tv/radio (static electronic entertainment), and Internet (chatting, web forums, other forms of dynamic entertainment). You have tv shows producing extra content for web playing, you have individual content publishers using youtube and other outlets to publish stuff that would never otherwise have an audience, you have radio shows (NPR, etc) offering podcast downloads, you have paper books also being published electronically (Kindle, Googlebooks, etc), and now you have an electronic encyclopedia almost ironically making the jump to paper edition.

Call me an old fashioned geek, but I like paper, and given the chance, I'd buy a Wikipedia print edition.

Re:I may disagree

[Chris Burke]

Apprehensions about Jimmy Wales' character aside, my main gripe with Wikipedia is that I am suspicious of everything I read there.

That's a good thing. The fact that WP's nature makes you inherently suspicious means that you have the correct mentality when reading it, as opposed to say Britannica which naturally tends to have an air of authority about it when in reality you should be equally suspicious of what you read there.

Mostly this stems from the fact that in any topic on which I am an expert, I can generally stumble across several very glaring errors.

How many of them would seriously damage the understanding of a layman browsing the subject? As in, they're not trying to actually put what they read into practice, but are trying to gain a general and basic knowledge set?

I remember reading through aforementioned Britannica when I had a copy in my parents' home years ago, and finding quite a few errors in the computer-related articles. But like a lot of the errors I find on WP, they're mostly factual errors of some minutia which while clearly false wouldn't actually matter much unless you were for some reason depending on them to re-create what the article is talking about.

Which you should never do, whether it's WP or EB.

Re:I may disagree

[Zibblsnrt]

How many of them would seriously damage the understanding of a layman browsing the subject? As in, they're not trying to actually put what they read into practice, but are trying to gain a general and basic knowledge set?

Spending some time trawling the Hellenistic parts of Wikipedia a few years ago, this was the current incarnation of the article on Philip II Philomaerus. Not only would I say that qualifies as pretty fucking seriously damaging a layman's understanding of the subject - compare it to the current version - but it was stable in that form for seven months.

Re:I may disagree

[Lapsarian]

I sincerely hope that when you read topics upon which you are an expert and find they contain flaws you edit them accordingly.

Re:I may disagree

[David Gerard]

Check out the SOS Children DVD distro. They checked it over for use in their own schools.

If you keep in mind how Wikipedia is written and that the website is a live working draft - like running CVS HEAD - you'll be fine. But of course many readers want to be able not to think when reading. (I bet they have fun on teh intarweb.)

Fifty articles on each page?

[Mr2001]

How on earth is that going to work, cramming 50,000 articles into 1000 pages? They could edit each article down to a single paragraph and you'd still need a magnifying glass to read it.

Re:Fifty articles on each page?

[hansamurai]

Plus most of the popular pages on the English wikipedia are about busty "actresses" and sex positions. If the German wiki is anything like that, the pictures are going to be too small to enjoy.

Re:Fifty articles on each page?

[Anne_Nonymous]

In German, the book's text can be combined to a single word, thus saving on all those pesky spaces and the overhead that is punctuation.

This is amazing

[Trouvist]

It's going to be self referential! By the time the 50k articles get picked out, there will be an article on the book and hopefully the book will contain the article on itself! Sweet!

5% higher than required.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me

My kneejerk reaction is that if nothing is required to be contributed back to Wikimedia, then 5% is awesome!

Remember wikipedia's content is licensed under the GNU FDL, which states:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

I see potential in this as *not* an encyclopedia

[BlueStile]

Rather than publish the X "most popular articles," I think a more fun compilation would be a collection of the most unique, un-Encyclopaedia Brittanica articles on Wikipedia. Things that would never have made it into a real encyclopedia before the web, but that have flourished on Wikipedia. Or, along the same line, anything that showcases it as not just another encyclopedia would be cool. I'm sure there's some other cool ideas out there. (P.S. - My first ever Slashdot post!)

Oh, great.

[Anonymous Coward]

A book that contains 50,000 poorly cited articles about David Hasselhoff.

I can't wait...

[Ihmhi]

...for some troll edit to end up getting into the book. I hope they edit it really well and carefully read through it all.

"Rammstein is a German band that was formed in kyle is a big fag, Germany. They..."

Re:I can't wait...

[Chris Burke]

"Rammstein is a German band that was formed in kyle is a big fag, Germany. They..."

I have to admit, reading your post was the first time I've ever felt the temptation to vandalize a Wikipedia article...

And for some reason, I can't help but feel that among those who would want to buy a Wikipedia book, this factor will only increase the appeal.

Re:I can't wait...

[atrocious cowpat]

Actually Rammstein was formed in Kyleisabigfag, Germany. The members of the band would rather have the general public not know this, so whenever this bit of information pops up on wikipedia they mobilize their mindless metal-minions towards another edit-war (DER GRÖSSE EDIT KRIEG)... or so someone would like to have you believe.

Technically it's just Hans-Peter Gümpel, a 14-year old student from the suburbs of Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, who simply can't stand the idea that his favorite DEUTSCHE-TÖT-METALL-ROTZ-KREÜZÜBER-BAND stems from the idyllic town of Kyleisabigfag (Thuringia). Kyleisabigfag, incidentally, is worldwide renown for its floral clock and the biannual Käse-Fest, where the locals let milk go stale for weeks on end, and then have a party about it by rolling the resulting cheese to the nearest train station.

P.S.: The rest of Germany is actually rather embarrassed by the antics of RAMMSTEIN, and would like to apologize in all due form. We know how, and why this happened, but what with censorship on one hand and pseudo-fascist prancers on the other... it was kinda impossible to prevent. Basically you had us coming and going, so we felt we'd just let them do their thing and be ridiculed by the world. Didn't quite work out that way, so sorry, again.

Re:I can't wait...

[David Gerard]

But friends of gays are not allowed to edit articles!

"While being proud of one's gay acquaintances isn't necessarily a negative characteristic, Wikipedia is not the place to publicly announce a friend's sexual orientation or proclivities. Note that there are almost no vandalism instances that say, "I AM VERY GAY" or "I, Anita Flugelhorn, appreciate a good roll in the hay every once in a while with another woman." It can be inferred that gays and lesbians are exceptionally good Wikipedia contributors, and only some of their very proud but misguided acquaintances feel the need to broadcast their friends' sexual orientation."

(Everyone knows Wikipedia is run by a gay cabal. It's actually a requirement before you're allowed onto the Wikipedia IRC channels.)

you want money for

[textstring]

wikipedia w/o hyperlinks? no thanks. or does it come with a box of bookmarks?

Its all in the editing

[Tmack]

How on earth is that going to work, cramming 50,000 articles into 1000 pages?

Earth: Mostly Harmless

Tm

Math must be in error

[duh P3rf3ss3r]

Editors will distil 50,000 of the most popular entries in the German version of Wikipedia into the 1,000-page volume to go on sale in September.

How in the world do they intend to fit 50'000 articles into a 1'000 page book? 50 articles per page -- what is that -- like one line per article?

A good thing

[schoschie]

It's a good thing for Wikipedia. A lot of people are media-conservative in the sense that they don't take Web content seriously, particulary an encyclopaedia that is written by volunteers. Example: I wanted to prove a point to my dad a while ago using a Wikipedia article, and his reply was essentially "that article has no value and cannot be trusted as it was written by people hanging around on the Web". A printed book made by a real, large and well-known publisher might change this attitude, especially of those people who think Web content is worth less than printed content.

Also, I'd expect it to push Wikipedia contributions and the overall article quality. If people may expect to see their work in a printed book hopefully sold in large numbers, it will motivate them to contribute higher-quality content to Wikipedia. You can go to a book store and tell your friend: hey, look, I wrote some of the stuff in this article!

On the downside, I agree with those who wonder how they will fit 50K articles into a 1000 page book. 50 articles per page will mean one short paragraph per article on average. It's not possible to represent the nature of Wikipedia content in a space that small. Most articles will have to be edited down to the kind of content you would expect in any conventional (printed) encyclopaedia.

Also, I wonder how much Bertelsmann will benefit from this deal. 1 EUR per book for Wikimedia is not exactly generous. On the other hand, we can expect to see this book prominently on display in most every book store. If they sell 100K copies, Wikimedia will get 100K EUR, which means a lot to them.

Re:I see potential in this as *not* an encyclopedi

[mistersooreams]

Sounds like you'd probably like Wikipedia's list of unusual articles. A print version of that would be awesome.

Re:1 euro to wikimedia...

[David Gerard]

It's a thousand-page book. $30 cover price is cheap.

That's NOT the summary text I submitted

[David Gerard]

This is:

"Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia, in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. 20 euros a copy, 1 euro from each copy to go to Wikimedia. They're taking the intro section from 25-50,000 articles for the 1000-page book, to be released in September. Who says open source writing can't work?"