[WikiEN-l] Re: Print edition

Fri Feb 27 10:59:31 UTC 2004

On Thursday 26 February 2004 22:27, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> We have 214,720 articles.  Let's assume that this is a total of X
> pages.  But we need to hypothetically pare it down to X/3, i.e. 1/3 as
> much total content.
>
> We can pare it down by editing longer articles into shorter articles.
> Or we can (also) pare it down by simply omitting articles that aren't
> as "important" in some sense.

Just a few thoughts: 

While looking for articles that should not go into the paper, I think that 
there shoud also be a consideration of articles that should go into the paper 
but are not there. Of course, not everything could be added, but it would be 
very stupid and easy to fix, for example, if there would be articles on all 
kings from some royal house except one or two, or on all electronic 
components except one or two, or on all battles of the Second World War 
except one or two... at least stubs on the absent articles should be created.

One of criterias for inclusion probably should be importance for other 
articles. For example, it might be decided that only places with more then 
10,000 inhabitants go onto paper, but a smaller place should also go if it is 
birth place of a famous person who will have a paper article or a site of a 
battle which will have a paper article etc.

Paper encyclopedias also have "links" among articles, for example marked with  
-> . Now, for obvious reason they are not as often as links on Wikipedia. I 
think that there should be a way of marking some of links as more important 
then others so that they would be preserved on paper. Perhaps these should 
stay in electronic edition as well, it would be nice to know which links are 
the most relevant; if so, it would not even require changes in software.

I hope that lists will also go onto the paper. Having a themed index at the 
end would be wonderful - is there an encyclopedia that has it?