Among the unlikelier announcements made at Wikipedia’s conference in Alexandria, Egypt, was the bold assertion on Friday that the online encyclopedia was about to make history in print publishing: creating the book with the most credited individual authors ever — approximately 90,000.
The book with so many authors is the product of an unusual alliance – a single-volume encyclopedia produced by the German publisher Bertelsmann from the 25,000 most popular articles on German Wikipedia. The volume will have very short articles, no more than a few paragraphs at most, and include photos and illustrations.
“The One-Volume Wikipedia Encyclopedia” is set to go on sale in September for 19.95 euros (almost $32), and a sample few pages for the letter K were floating around the conference. The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was in there, as well as a longish item on kaffee (coffee) and a short sentence on the painter Frida Kahlo.
According to the German Wikipedian who has been working on the arrangement with Bertelsmann, there are proof pages that list, tightly, anyone who could be construed to have contributed to any of the articles that have been condensed into the volume.
The Wikipedian, Mathias Schindler, said the credits page runs 27 pages “in a dense layout -– it’s a page full of names, separated by commas.” “I was able to spot my name within half a minute,” Mr. Schindler said. “And I was able to read it without any auxiliary devices.”
Mr. Schindler said the publisher was taking the safest route to meet the terms of the license that governs Wikipedia material by being sure to credit the authors and Wikipedia. For using the Wikipedia name in the title, Bertelsmann will pay one euro a copy. The initial press run is supposed to be 20,000.
Bertelsmann did not respond to an e-mail message requesting comment.
15 Comments
Stupid Germans. To print an online edition like Wikipedia. The bits & bytes can be updated every day. How will they update the paper-print? Stupid german money - good for Wikipedia to cash in.
— rudyguyThis may be the most exciting development in print since the Gutenberg. I can only imagine the editors in Manhattan having a hissy fit as they try to imagine what smacking down 90,000 contributors would feel like!
— A.FletcherI think that this a great idea. Freeze-framing a slice of our current objective view on some popular topics. It might be intersting to seee how out views on a topic change as we understand it “better.”
— patobrocksPhysical books counterpoint screen books perfectly. The distinctive attributes of the print Wiki are legibility or immediacy of meaning (no loading, network or screen drawing), haptic efficiencies of hands prompting the mind and persistence or default preservation. Screen books are self-indexing, but, surprise, print is self-authenticating; you see what you are missing. Just as with print book centuries old, new times and cultures will dependably read new meanings from an immutable reference.
— Gary FrostNo physical book can beat an online encyclopedia that has 40+ lenguages and millions and millions of articles..
— Santiago GarzaSantiago, no one is suggesting that this book is trying to beat the online encylopedia, either in depth, breadth or accuracy. It’s an interesting gimmick.
— paul90,000 authors. I thought it was the bible for a moment.
— laurence@ Gary Frost: ‘print is self-authenticating; you see what you are missing’ - you have just summed up why print is important. I love the idea, too, of capturing the moment/s - and 90,000 versions of the moments - in print.
— AnnAnd just how many pages is in this encyclopedia? The article left out this piece of info for some reason.
— Mark ColemanThe increasingly common practice of referencing info/articles from Wikipedia is often questionable, since the info found there is not stable. So one advantage of the book is that it provides a stable version that can be legitimately referenced.
— Paul GemosaThis book will just show a snapshot in time of a set of articles as it stood at the moment of printing (and never will again). I sincerely hope they have included the date and time in the book’s subtitle!
— SaraI don’t see it as an honest-to-goodness reference book, it’s a memento.
Whoever owns this book in 25 years when Wikipedia is simply a calm humanlike face floating in the Cloud waiting for your questions will realize how far we’ve come.
— Carlos@Paul Gemosa: actually wikipedia is stable. It preserves the history of every article and every edit. If an article has changed since it was referenced somewhere, that is no problem — one can easily go back and look at the version of the article that existed at the time the reference was made. Of course, it is important that any work that references a wikipedia article mention the date, so that the appropriate version can be brought up.
— Jon@10
I LIKE WIKIPEDIA. I think it is very helpful. However…
Who in their right mind would actually REFERENCE wikipedia ??
Surely if it’s important enough to need a reference, one would reference the wikipedia reference?
In fact, I don’t see why anyone would stay on wikipedia for important stuff, when really they should use it to get the basic idea or to narrow down where they need to go without clutter and ads, then move on to the references at the bottom.
Or just go off and do a google search for a more official page..
In fact, surely even the official webpage is based upon something in writing or something an individual/organisation said? So why not reference that instead of a webpage that will probably be gone within a year??
Personally I don’t see the point of the book. The only advantage is/would be that Wikipedia covers a LOT of specific things deemed noteworthy that you wouldn’t find in your usual encyclopedia. Like examples of fads, popular culture and people or events that are not widely known, or only specific to one country. Also things like their listings of bands by country, genre, bands on small labels, their discography etc.
But one of the greatest things about it is the easy cross referencing, the ability to move quickly and back and forth which you can’t do with a chunky book….(and obviously it’s main point- it’s free!)
Actually I bet the idea behind the publishing of the book is that all 90,000 ‘authors’ go out and buy it because their words are in it.
— jamieImagine 5 people submitting the bulk of info for 1 page. 5 people might buy it. 5 people buying it for 1 page equals a lot of books sold in the end…
Truth is a consensus
— Akiko