[WikiEN-l] Print version skepticism, negativism...

Sat Feb 28 11:53:35 UTC 2004

I will follow with great interest the print version project. I would 
never have expected Wikipedia itself to work as well as it does so I 
hope to be pleasantly surprised and that the negativism I am about to 
spew will turn out to be utterly misguided. However...

I suspect that producing a print version will magnify many of 
Wikipedia's weak points and minimize many of its strong points. One 
point about web Wikipedia is that there is no overview, and 
consequently the variation in style, quality, and depth of coverage is 
not directly obvious. Flipping through a print book will make this much 
more apparent.

Another problem is that producing a respectable-looking print version 
will, I think, require a high degree of selectivity and quality control 
and a fairly rigid approval process by editors who in turn will have to 
be approved... and articles frozen after approval. That is, exactly the 
opposite of the Wikipedia creation process.

Another problem is that I think that to come up to peoples' expectation 
in print versions, a large fraction of the output will have to be 
actively edited (for tyops, repeated words words, and to fully 
complying with grammatical and language standards). Will people stand 
for a mixture of British and American spelling? How many minutes per 
article will it take to copyedit to print-Wikipedia standards.

And despite the perfectly clear disclaimer on the every edit page that 
explains that you are donating your work, I suspect that some people 
who see the work they did for free appear in a bookstore with a price 
tag on it will be upset. And I think copyright violations could be a 
minefield. Do you think every single one will be caught? Whatever the 
theory, I expect that in practice the consequences of a copyright 
violation in a print version will be more serious than on the Web. What 
if some print encyclopedia company were to act like SCO and assert that 
they have found tens of thousands of individual sentences lifted from 
their print version by hundreds of contributors (and that they won't 
tell anyone which they are?) Even assuming their case is no stronger 
than SCOs it could be a substantial nuisance.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate: 
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/