[Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

Wed Jul 12 16:32:28 UTC 2006

I invented something quite similar to Wikipedia back in August 2001 -
shame I didn't implement it! ;)

On 12/07/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a very good idea.
>
> Y'know, I came up with this same idea yesterday!
>
> On 7/12/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
> > wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
> > that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
> > individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
> > from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
> > satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
> > check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
> > order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
> > wikipedia articles.
> >
> > The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
> > publicly announced.
> >
> > I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
> > service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
> > also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
> >
> > Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
> > content for sale"
> > (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
> >
> > I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
> > the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
> >
> > * on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
> > stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
> >
> > * below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
> > original wikipedia article is shown
> >
> > * all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if
> > possible
> >
> > * pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
> > since we use the wikipedia dumps
> >
> > * we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
> > the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to  the
> > Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our
> > service
> >
> > Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
> > program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
> > after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
> > their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
> > publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
> > donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
> > in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
> > perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
> > automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
> >
> > I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
> > http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
> > financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
> > to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
> > good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
> > be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
> > building pediapress.
> >
> > Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
> > post their opinions.
> >
> > Volker Haas
> >
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> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
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-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)