German Wikipedia To Be Published As a Book

David Gerard writes "Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland. It will cost 20 Euros, and 1 Euro from each copy will go to Wikimedia. They're editing down the most popular 50,000 articles for the 1,000-page book, to be released in September. Because of the open-source origin of the material, the publisher cannot claim copyright in the book." The German-language Wikipedia is second in size only to the English version, which has 2.3 million articles.

Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[gbulmash (688770)]

When I was working at IMDb.com [imdb.com] (the Internet Movie Database), I asked Col Needham (the founder and managing director) why they never released it as a book. His answer was that the database was constantly changing. With the lead time you had to give for the actual printing, by the time any book hit the shelves, it would be months out of date.

I think Wikipedia falls victim to the same problem. It might be a very good book and they might select the most stable entries, but like IMDb, Wikipedia is a living, breathing thing that grows and changes on a regular basis. In fact, that's part of its appeal. A book is basically just freezing a snapshot of selected articles in time, but how much does something where part of its value is in its dynamic nature lose from being frozen like that?

- Greg

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[harmonica (29841)]

Obviously, this book isn't for those with net access everywhere from their work place to their living room couch. There are still a lot of people without any net access, for that matter. This book with its emphasis on popular topics which may not be covered in your other tree-based encyclopedias could be useful for all those without access to that living thing. After two or three years, at the price of 20 Euros, people can get the new edition of the book to catch up.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[eldavojohn (898314)]

Wikipedia is a living, breathing thing that grows and changes on a regular basis.

Uh, it also requires an internet connection. I'm lucky enough to live in an area where we have electricity always and internet 99% of the time.

Apparently they think that people in Germany would like to have a hard copy. I'm certain my grandparents (who read tons but do not have a computer) would be interested in a $40-50 edition of this book.

Or even, you know, the local library.

There's a reason we put things into hard copy. It's so that we always have them. Might be a waste of trees, also might be a great idea if the world has an unfortunate energy crisis looming ...

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they think that people in Germany would like to have a hard copy. I'm certain my grandparents (who read tons but do not have a computer) would be interested in a $40-50 edition of this book.

Or even, you know, the local library.

Dude, you just mentioned two things that are obsolete: your grandparents and the local library.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[Chris Burke (6130)]

I see your point, but on the other hand, new movies are always being created and thus the filmographies of all the people involved are constantly changing. Unless you restricted the print-form to solely those entries of actors etc. who had passed on and made it essentially a film history book, you're necessarily putting a short window on its relevance.

Whereas with Wikipedia, while further edits are certainly possible, there's nothing actually new happening wrt say the Expressionist Movement, or Dwight D. Eisenhower, or Juniper Bushes. If the article as it stands is good and essentially complete, then it isn't inherently a bad idea to capture it and put it in a fixed format. There may be further edits that improve the article, but that's not so different than a future edition of a print encyclopedia, and in fact if the print version takes off then there would almost certainly be such.

So while it is true that making a print version of Wikipedia loses some of the inherent appeal of the WP, it also makes a lot more sense than a print version of IMDB, and could actually be a useful and cheaper alternative to other print encyclopedias which never had that dynamism to begin with.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[siriuskase (679431)]

No reason to worry. Wikipedia will continue to live and breath, just as your cat, child, or spouse continue to live and breath when you take a snapshot of them. A snapshot might not be completely up to date, but it can be much more convenient than having your cat, child, or spouse on your desk or in your pocket everyday.

I may disagree

[adam (1231)]

Apprehensions about Jimmy Wales' character aside, my main gripe with Wikipedia is that I am suspicious of everything I read there. Mostly this stems from the fact that in any topic on which I am an expert, I can generally stumble across several very glaring errors. Of course, reading topics on which I am not an expert, I find myself to be generally entertained and educated-- provided that I don't think about the likelihood of errors in those articles. I will grant that the errors usually don't take away from the overall education that a novice would receive.

With a staff editing the articles for content, fixing some of the more glaring errors, and selecting the more stable articles, I think a Wikipedia tome will nicely bridge the gap between meatspace and cyberspace. Keep in mind, not everyone has Internet connection at all times, nor is Wikipedia guaranteed to be functioning 100% of the time.. DNS errors, routing problems, etc.. they all occur. The last couple of years, have begun an interesting transition of merging between various forms of entertainment and education. It's no longer divided into books (paper), tv/radio (static electronic entertainment), and Internet (chatting, web forums, other forms of dynamic entertainment). You have tv shows producing extra content for web playing, you have individual content publishers using youtube and other outlets to publish stuff that would never otherwise have an audience, you have radio shows (NPR, etc) offering podcast downloads, you have paper books also being published electronically (Kindle, Googlebooks, etc), and now you have an electronic encyclopedia almost ironically making the jump to paper edition.

Call me an old fashioned geek, but I like paper, and given the chance, I'd buy a Wikipedia print edition.

Re:I may disagree

[Chris Burke (6130)]

Apprehensions about Jimmy Wales' character aside, my main gripe with Wikipedia is that I am suspicious of everything I read there.

That's a good thing. The fact that WP's nature makes you inherently suspicious means that you have the correct mentality when reading it, as opposed to say Britannica which naturally tends to have an air of authority about it when in reality you should be equally suspicious of what you read there.

Mostly this stems from the fact that in any topic on which I am an expert, I can generally stumble across several very glaring errors.

How many of them would seriously damage the understanding of a layman browsing the subject? As in, they're not trying to actually put what they read into practice, but are trying to gain a general and basic knowledge set?

I remember reading through aforementioned Britannica when I had a copy in my parents' home years ago, and finding quite a few errors in the computer-related articles. But like a lot of the errors I find on WP, they're mostly factual errors of some minutia which while clearly false wouldn't actually matter much unless you were for some reason depending on them to re-create what the article is talking about.

Which you should never do, whether it's WP or EB.

5% too low...

[adam (1231)]

I didn't see a reference [in linked article] to percentage of sale paid to Wikimedia, but found one here [yahoo.com]. My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me. The article does note that a staff of ten was required to edit the articles for content and length, but it still sounds like the publisher is profiting perhaps a bit more than normal off of the work of others. And knowing that many people will likely purchase the reference to support Wikipedia, it would be nice to see around 10-15% gross sale returned to the author (or, in this case, to Wikipedia).

My ballpark of "10-15% of gross" comes from the fact that although I am not in the literary world, I do work in entertainment (aka: cinema), and it's common for DVD producers to receive between $1.50 and $4 on each sold copy. On two of my films I receive around $3.50 after each wholesale transaction (when a chain retailer buys copies at $12/each wholesale to sell for $19.99 on their shelves). The second film in question was offered distribution to WalMart, and because of the bulk they buy in, the deal with them was closer to $1.50. (In the end, for artistic reasons that had to do with creating a specially "WalMart-friendly" edited version, we passed on the WalMart deal). I wonder if someone in book publishing can speak to whether the numbers I'm used to from video publishing are generally commensurate? I don't know what the cost-of-goods-sold for books is, so perhaps it's substantially high enough that it pushes authors' margins to a fraction of what they are in video publishing, but my kneejerk reaction is that 5% is too low.

5% higher than required.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

My kneejerk reaction is that if only 5% of the sale price ends up in the pockets of Wikimedia: that sounds a little thin to me

My kneejerk reaction is that if nothing is required to be contributed back to Wikimedia, then 5% is awesome!

Remember wikipedia's content is licensed under the GNU FDL [wikipedia.org], which states:

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially.

Citing

[jeffy210 (214759)]

So does this mean you can cite wikipedia as a valid source since it's in print! (yes, i'm joking)

Re:Citing

[Chairboy (88841)]

Who cites an encyclopedia? It's not a primary source. It doesn't matter if it's electronic or print, but this is one of those long standing annoyances with the "zomg you can't cite Wikipedia!" folks. Of COURSE you can't cite it, it's an ENCYCLOPEDIA! Citing encyclopedias becomes unacceptable once you pass the 5th grade.

I know you were joking, but someone modded you INSIGHTFUL for crap's sake. +3 Funny, sure! But modding it up as insightful suggests pretty strongly that my mean ol' response here is appropriate.

Wait

[Idiot with a gun (1081749)]

Who are they going to fact check against? Wikipedia?

Most Popular Articles?

[by Anonymous Coward]

If they go by popularity in terms of the number of visits, I'm guessing that the entries like 'breast' and 'lesbianism in erotica' are very likely to make the final cut. But will it include all the pictures?

Fifty articles on each page?

[Mr2001 (90979)]

How on earth is that going to work, cramming 50,000 articles into 1000 pages? They could edit each article down to a single paragraph and you'd still need a magnifying glass to read it.

Re:Fifty articles on each page?

[hansamurai (907719)]

Plus most of the popular pages on the English wikipedia are about busty "actresses" and sex positions. If the German wiki is anything like that, the pictures are going to be too small to enjoy.

Its all in the editing

[Tmack (593755)]

How on earth is that going to work, cramming 50,000 articles into 1000 pages?

Earth: Mostly Harmless

Tm

This is amazing

[Trouvist (958280)]

It's going to be self referential! By the time the 50k articles get picked out, there will be an article on the book and hopefully the book will contain the article on itself! Sweet!

I see potential in this as *not* an encyclopedia

[BlueStile (1257910)]

Rather than publish the X "most popular articles," I think a more fun compilation would be a collection of the most unique, un-Encyclopaedia Brittanica articles on Wikipedia. Things that would never have made it into a real encyclopedia before the web, but that have flourished on Wikipedia. Or, along the same line, anything that showcases it as not just another encyclopedia would be cool. I'm sure there's some other cool ideas out there. (P.S. - My first ever Slashdot post!)

Oh, great.

[by Anonymous Coward]

A book that contains 50,000 poorly cited articles about David Hasselhoff.

I can't wait...

[Ihmhi (1206036)]

...for some troll edit to end up getting into the book. I hope they edit it really well and carefully read through it all.

"Rammstein is a German band that was formed in kyle is a big fag, Germany. They..."

Re:I can't wait...

[atrocious cowpat (850512)]

Actually Rammstein was formed in Kyleisabigfag, Germany. The members of the band would rather have the general public not know this, so whenever this bit of information pops up on wikipedia they mobilize their mindless metal-minions towards another edit-war (DER GRÖSSE EDIT KRIEG)... or so someone would like to have you believe.

Technically it's just Hans-Peter Gümpel, a 14-year old student from the suburbs of Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, who simply can't stand the idea that his favorite DEUTSCHE-TÖT-METALL-ROTZ-KREÜZÜBER-BAND stems from the idyllic town of Kyleisabigfag (Thuringia). Kyleisabigfag, incidentally, is worldwide renown for its floral clock and the biannual Käse-Fest, where the locals let milk go stale for weeks on end, and then have a party about it by rolling the resulting cheese to the nearest train station.

P.S.: The rest of Germany is actually rather embarrassed by the antics of RAMMSTEIN, and would like to apologize in all due form. We know how, and why this happened, but what with censorship on one hand and pseudo-fascist prancers on the other... it was kinda impossible to prevent. Basically you had us coming and going, so we felt we'd just let them do their thing and be ridiculed by the world. Didn't quite work out that way, so sorry, again.

1 euro to wikimedia...

[Ryukotsusei (1164453)]

So where does the other 19 euros go? Unless they're planning to print on gold paper, publishing costs can't be that much.

Think of the Children

[enoz (1181117)]

I can't vouch for the validity of these article stats [stats.grok.se], but they do appear to be legitimate.

Based on these top viewed pages, any book published using "popular" articles as a reference would be banal, amusing, and surreal. All at once.

You've got the all-time favourite internet searches "sex" and "naruto" along with recent political events, blockbuster movies and games, internet sensations and memes (2g1c, for example).

you want money for

[textstring (924171)]

wikipedia w/o hyperlinks? no thanks. or does it come with a box of bookmarks?

In the nature of wiki

[kylehase (982334)]

Anyone can edit their volumes with the included white-out and ball point pen.

New technology required first

[ian_mackereth (889101)]

Most of the 95% of the cover price is going into research into a new printing technology.

To keep the spirit of wiki alive in this tome, it'll be printed in pencil and be sold with an eraser and a pencil for readers to edit the articles as they wish.

I'm OK with a snapshot of Wikipedia, but...

[blind biker (1066130)]

... why a hardcopy? One of the greatest appeals of Wikipedia is its searchability and linking. You can take a snapshot of Wikipedia and put it on a CD or DVD - save a tree or two and have a more useful version of the information. And still accessible to those without Internet connections or when Wikipedia is down.

Moderator population: 0

[dauthur (828910)]

When I want to edit, do I have to cite?

Defamation?

[NewsWatcher (450241)]

I won't bore you with a detailed explanation [bghelsinki.org] of German defamation laws, but they are far more restrictive than the laws in the USA.

While online websites sometimes avoid defamation by quickly changing defamatory comments before they cause much damage, a published book does not have the same ability to be wiped clean in an instant.

What is to stop someone maliciously creating a defamatory article about themselves, waiting for Wikipedia to be published, then suing the company that produced the book?

I think it would be a brave publisher who would cede control to the millions of Wikipedia contributors.

Nope

[tidewaterblues (784797)]

Because of the open-source origin of the material, the publisher cannot claim copyright in the book."

Actually, that is completely wrong. The publish can't claim copyright on the book because they don't own the original copyrights and are making no effort to acquire them, because there is no need to. The original copyright holders still have their copyrights, and if someone could track them all down and get them to agree to it, they could, in theory, sell the copyright to the publisher, and dual license wikipedia. Of course, the publisher does own the copyright on any edits and corrections they make to the text. This does not, however, release them of the obligations that they have toward the license of the original source material.

Math must be in error

[duh P3rf3ss3r (967183)]

Editors will distil 50,000 of the most popular entries in the German version of Wikipedia into the 1,000-page volume to go on sale in September.

How in the world do they intend to fit 50'000 articles into a 1'000 page book? 50 articles per page -- what is that -- like one line per article?

Sounds Good...

[dbolger (161340)]

...as long as they don't include any articles about Harry Potter [cnn.com] ;)

Deletionism

[ultranova (717540)]

So, will this give the deletionists an excuse to go on a rampage, deleting articles they deem unworthy of being included in a dead-tree book ?

"This article is unnotable because it doesn't happen to interest me. Wikipedia is a real encyclopedia, not a collection of random facts, and we can't endanger our chances of getting published by including anything that Encyclopedia Britannica wouldn't. Besides, I'm in a bad mood and a little power trip might cheer me up."

Mod me troll if you will, but it's still true. The Deletionist Scourge will use any excuse. That's why I don't contribute to Wikipedia anymore: there's no point when the most likely result is to have said contributions deleted because Joe Powertrip hasn't heard of the subject previously.

The only thing it says on the cover is DON'T PANIC

[camomilk (1038262)]

In nice big friendly letters

A good thing

[schoschie (1006039)]

It's a good thing for Wikipedia. A lot of people are media-conservative in the sense that they don't take Web content seriously, particulary an encyclopaedia that is written by volunteers. Example: I wanted to prove a point to my dad a while ago using a Wikipedia article, and his reply was essentially "that article has no value and cannot be trusted as it was written by people hanging around on the Web". A printed book made by a real, large and well-known publisher might change this attitude, especially of those people who think Web content is worth less than printed content.

Also, I'd expect it to push Wikipedia contributions and the overall article quality. If people may expect to see their work in a printed book hopefully sold in large numbers, it will motivate them to contribute higher-quality content to Wikipedia. You can go to a book store and tell your friend: hey, look, I wrote some of the stuff in this article!

On the downside, I agree with those who wonder how they will fit 50K articles into a 1000 page book. 50 articles per page will mean one short paragraph per article on average. It's not possible to represent the nature of Wikipedia content in a space that small. Most articles will have to be edited down to the kind of content you would expect in any conventional (printed) encyclopaedia.

Also, I wonder how much Bertelsmann will benefit from this deal. 1 EUR per book for Wikimedia is not exactly generous. On the other hand, we can expect to see this book prominently on display in most every book store. If they sell 100K copies, Wikimedia will get 100K EUR, which means a lot to them.

That's NOT the summary text I submitted

[David Gerard (12369)]

This is:

"Bertelsmann is to publish a single-volume book of the German Wikipedia [monstersandcritics.com], in cooperation with Wikimedia Deutschland [wikimedia.de]. 20 euros a copy, 1 euro from each copy to go to Wikimedia. They're taking the intro section from 25-50,000 articles for the 1000-page book, to be released in September. Who says open source writing can't work?"

GFDL & Typographical Arrangements

[Half-pint HAL (718102)]

Now I only know about the UK, but I'd be interested to hear a judgement on the compatibility between the GFDL (or similar) and the UK classification of "typographical arrangements".

Basically, a typographical arrangement (TA) is a collection of multiple works into a single volume. A TA has copyright protection for 25 years from the end of the year of first publication.

The idea is that I can research, for example, 18th century hymns and gather them into a single book. The hymns themselves aren't under copyright, so it would be no great work for someone else to replicate my hymnal, right down to hymn numbers and page numbers, undercut me and devalue my life's work.

So TA protection came along to protect my work. You can make something just as good if you want, but you can't make exactly the same thing (or even something substantially similar). So there.

I'm sure other countries must have similar laws regarding collections, compilations, albums or similar TAs.

Let's have a look at clause 7 of the GFDL:

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

Does each Wikipedia article constitute a "separate and independent document"? If so, the GFDL allows copyright protection to subsist on the compilation ("aggregate" in the GFDL's terms), even though every scrap of text is individually GFDLed....

HAL.

Photos?

[Y-Crate (540566)]

Do we get a book of pixelated cell phone camera pics of the back of the subject's head just like the real, post-Photo Nazi Wikipedia?

I will buy it if...

[Badmovies (182275)]

...it is written in pencil, and comes with an eraser and a pencil so that I can treat it like the real Wikipedia.

No Copyright...but Is Someone Making Money?

[penguin_dance (536599)]

No they can't copyright the articles, but does the copyright still belong to the original author and can they revoke the right to have their article printed? Also they say 1 euro from each will go to Wikimedia, but where does the rest of the money go? IOW, is someone making a profit off of this and is that ok?

Arne Klempert, a spokesman for Wikipedia Germany, said the definitions would only be short summaries of the Wikipedia articles and there was no breach of the rights of Wikipedia contributors.

Commercial republication was allowed under the Wikipedia rules accepted by the site's users.

I can't believe Random House would have suggested this project without feeling they were going to make some money off of it. Their costs will consist of editing and publishing, but they won't have to worry about future writer royalties. I wonder if the writers have possibly given up their copyrights? As a writer, I might not have a problem contributing an article to something--say a special interest group's newsletter I was involved in--but I would want to retain all copyright claims to it, including the right to send it to a magazine at a later date and get a paycheck for it. I would NOT want to find that someone took my article from those newsletters and then published it (even in edited form) in a book. It seems to me that, even though Random doesn't hold the rights to the articles now, neither do the authors. Unless they (the book's editors) make the contributions so watered down that their value toward an encyclopedia of popular culture is negated.

I'll be interested to see if some of the contributors start to object.

Why Bother?

[killjoy966 (655602)]

Why bother going through the trouble of collecting the best articles and proofing/editing them for accuracy? Don't you just end up with an encyclopedia? Do they even make those anymore? Hold on, I'm going to go and check over at Wikipedia...

Re:Keep it digital!

[genericpoweruser (1223032)]

Not to mention the age old argument "you can't grep dead trees."

Re:The book may be new, the snapshop idea is not

[David Gerard (12369)]

Yep. And there's a editor-reviewed DVD derived from English Wikipedia [soschildre...ges.org.uk] that you are encouraged to download and spread far and wide.

Re:Keep it digital!

[Hognoxious (631665)]

The words are longer, but you don't need ans many of them. See, that would be one word in German.

Re:Why I (as a german) hate the german Wikipedia

[David Gerard (12369)]

There's a sort of Wikipedia house style on the English Wikipedia too, and it's really not very good writing either. Good writers are, unfortunately, much rarer than good researchers or fact checkers.

Re:Okay.

[David Gerard (12369)]

Thank you :-)

Re:What about GFDL?

[David Gerard (12369)]

Yes, which is why the GFDL is a goddamn pain for magazines or newspapers. Books (the GFDL was designed for books - just include the license text as an appendix) and websites are easy (Wikipedia links to the license on every page), everything else sucks. And audio versions of GFDL text are almost impossible under the license (legal exceptions for the blind are very limited and not enough to make it proper free content).

That's why the Wikimedia Foundation is working with the FSF and Creative Commons to make the GFDL and CC-by-sa compatible - the GFDL requires the entire license text to be present, CC-by-sa allows just a reference to the license.