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.

Citing

[jeffy210]

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

Most Popular Articles?

[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?

This is amazing

[Trouvist]

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!

Oh, great.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Fifty articles on each page?

[hansamurai]

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.

I can't wait...

[Ihmhi]

...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...

[Chris Burke]

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

I have to admit, reading your post was the first time I've ever felt the temptation to vandalize a Wikipedia article...

And for some reason, I can't help but feel that among those who would want to buy a Wikipedia book, this factor will only increase the appeal.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[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.

Its all in the editing

[Tmack]

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

Earth: Mostly Harmless

Tm

Re:I can't wait...

[atrocious cowpat]

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.

Re:I can't wait...

[David Gerard]

But friends of gays are not allowed to edit articles [wikimedia.org]!

"While being proud of one's gay acquaintances isn't necessarily a negative characteristic, Wikipedia is not the place to publicly announce a friend's sexual orientation or proclivities. Note that there are almost no vandalism instances that say, "I AM VERY GAY" or "I, Anita Flugelhorn, appreciate a good roll in the hay every once in a while with another woman." It can be inferred that gays and lesbians are exceptionally good Wikipedia contributors, and only some of their very proud but misguided acquaintances feel the need to broadcast their friends' sexual orientation."

(Everyone knows Wikipedia is run by a gay cabal. It's actually a requirement before you're allowed onto the Wikipedia IRC channels.)

Re:Fifty articles on each page?

[Anne_Nonymous]

In German, the book's text can be combined to a single word, thus saving on all those pesky spaces and the overhead that is punctuation.

Re:Why Freeze A Living Thing?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

> the most popular 50,000 articles

Can't wait until they do this with the English version, and people pick up the book and try to find the Shakespeare article, only to find printed pages of The Hulk's primary foes, Wolverine's origin, and a detailed description of Blue Beetle's flying beetlecar.