[WikiEN-l] Hypothetical print version (was Paper is not paper)

Wed Oct 5 00:11:59 UTC 2005

On 10/4/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Here's a plan. What if we lower the threshold for speedy deletion, but
> keep
> > speedily deleted articles viewable by all logged in users for one week?
> Lower? Certainly it's ok now, other then the controversial new copyvio
> stuff. And most speedily deleted articles either should not be viewable,
> or just wouldn't be very useful. Almost all speedied articles look
> something like "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" (which needs to be removed very
> quickly, as we will run out of these letters!), or otherwise are patent
> nonsense. And there are attack pages, etc, etc.

Obviously the threshold for speedy deletion isn't OK now if we still have
all those articles nominated for VFD. Does it help to keep patent nonsense
viewable by logged in non-admins for a week? Well, actually, I'd say yes, it
does, because it makes the process more open. But either way, I certainly
don't see the harm. We're only talking about a week.

Additionally, since we have been talking about wikipedia not being
> paper, and paper not being paper, and publishing costs, etc...don't
> forget that there could (and SHOULD) eventually be a print version of
> wikipedia. If the foundation doesn't do it, someone else probably will.
> Of course, to be comprehensive enough in the mainstream topic areas that
> would be expected in an encyclopedia, we will also gain a lot of extra
> stuff that would not be expected in an encyclopedia.

There will eventually be a print version of a subset of Wikipedia. Most
likely a very small subset of it. As for whether or not there should be one,
I'm actually not so sure of it. Yeah, Jimbo wants to hand them out to people
in third world countries, but maybe it'll be possible, by the time the print
version is ready, to just include the digital version on the $100 laptops
being handed out by that MIT project (http://laptop.media.mit.edu/). I guess
you could argue that dead trees are less expensive, but are they really that
much less expensive? How much would it cost just to print a single volume
1200 page encyclopedia? I'm thinking $50 or so in heavy bulk, but maybe I
have no clue what I'm talking about. Then add in the distribution costs, and
maybe we'd be better off just hitching a ride on a laptop.

Incidently, has someone from Wikimedia talked to the MIT group about
including Wikipedia on the laptops? They'd be kind of crazy not to - I think
the two projects fit together perfectly.

No way would we fit in the 30 volumes of Britannica for this
> hypothetical print release! Anyway, what if we had a feature in the
> Wikipedia 1.0 idea, where we could rate how useful the inclusion of an
> article in a print version would be. This would allow anyone making a
> print version, be it the foundation, or someone else, to trim wikipedia
> easier. Certainly you could do it by hand, but eek. that's huge. With
> our current database dumps, it would already not be unreasonable to make
> a script to automatically remove articles with stub tags in them.
> Obviously these would be worthless in a print version.
>
What do you all think?
>

Actually, when I think about such a question, I come to the conclusion that
it's too much work to be worth it. Even for a 1200 page encyclopedia (I use
this figure because I have one in front of me), most articles wind up being
about a paragraph long. That would be an insane amount of work cutting down
all those articles. You could include fewer articles, and make them longer,
but I doubt you'd be able to include any of the Wikipedia articles in their
entirety without producing a focussed encyclopedia (e.g. encyclopedia of
baseball players) rather than a general purpose one.

I used to be really keen on the whole print encyclopedia thing. I started to
reconsider when I realized you could buy an encyclopedia from Goodwill (a
thrift store) for less than money than you could print one (even in bulk, I
paid $3 for this 1200 page encyclopedia in front of me). After tying this in
with the MIT Media Lab's $100 laptop project, and thinking about it all
right now, I'm now convinced that a print Wikipedia is a bad idea.

Anthony