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

Thu Jul 13 09:34:48 UTC 2006

Hi Oldak,

thanks for your comments!

Oldak Quill wrote:
> Perhaps the only problem in this respect is that the
> articles will be unedited (I assume?) and unverified. Our mistakes
> will forever be distilled in ink. This is not a great concern since
> there is currently no way to get 100% verified Wikipedia articles yet
> anyway. 
Your assumtion is correct: all articles are not edited or verified by 
us. The articles we  print
are exact "copies" of the articles in the wikipedia dump we use.

> Will you include a description of what Wikipedia is and a
> disclaimer at the front of each book?
>   
We do not give a description of what Wikipedia is. But as you have 
probably seen, we clearly
state on the website and in the books that the articles are from 
Wikipedia. In the footer
of the pediapress website we also link wikipedia.org. If you think that 
we should include a brief
description about Wikipedia and make it more clear in the books where 
the articles are from
we could try to improve on that issue.

> Legally, there are some issues to take note of. As I'm sure you know,
> each book would need to contain a full copy of the GFDL 1.2 license
> and would have to provide the names of a certain number of authors for
> each article (as you mention in your post).
>   
The GFDL is included in every book.

> There have been some attempts at this kind of thing from within
> Wikipedia. They are called "Readers" - compilations of articles (on,
> say, Mammals) which are edited and presented in quite a pleasant
> format. I suggest you attempt to work with the users who have worked
> on Readers to get ideas for presentation/editing. 
We are familiar with the Wikipedia Readers. But since all layouting of 
books with pediapress
is done automatically we can't really focus on improving the 
layout/presentation of individual
articles. Nonetheless we try to find "general rules" on how to improve 
the layout of the books.
This is a rather hard problem - and we sometimes fail...

> It would be better
> for all parties if you stay in communication with the community rather
> than simply exist coldly outside.
>   
It is absolutely not our intent to develop pediapress on an "isolated 
island". We want to stay in
touch with the community for the mutual benefit.

> May I ask how you are planning on printing and binding these books?
>   
The books are printed by Instabook (http://www.instabook.net/). You can 
find more infos
on our info site or their website ;-) 
http://pediapress.com/info/

> Will they be hardback or softback? 
Softback with glossy finish.

> Will you provide "template books" (like the
> above readers) with precollated selections of articles on mammals or
> whatnot?
>   
We will not provide "template books". On the main page of pediapress we 
feature a couple
of books. These books were ordered by pediapress users and chosen by us 
to be featured.
The featured books are also not edited in any way. Featured books are 
books that have
been "published" by users who have ordered the book.
More info on publishing books can be found at 
http://pediapress.com/info/#affiliate

> Wikipedia's allowance for commercial use has always had these kind of
> projects in mind. I wish you luck again and hope you keep in
> communication with us.
>   
Thanks again for the comments! I hope I could answer your questions in a 
satisfactory manner!

- Volker

> On 12/07/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
>   
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> ....
>>
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