Releasing Wikipedia CD – few concerns

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8 Responses to Releasing Wikipedia CD – few concerns

  1. Ravi says:

    +1

    People are free to distribute Wiki content by all means but if it is in fixed form like book / CD, then they should consult with the community and publish only selected articles after careful review.

  2. Pingback: Releasing Wikipedia CD – few concerns « abundance of the heart | cd

  3. Dhaval says:

    I even agree with those questions, idea looks fancy, but the content should not be locked. Not only that, but the question here is on what basis the articles are selected? just the length of content? Whether the people selected articles, are knowledgeable to decide whether the content of articles is neutral? etc. So better avoid doing so.

  4. Ravi says:

    Hi Dhaval,

    Please see

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_CD_Selection

    Selection happens even in English.

    If you trust a Wikipedia community to produce content, then why not trust them for selecting relevant articles?

    Basis for article selection can vary from community to community.

    Some criteria:

    1. Completeness / usefulness of the article ( not just length )

    2. Mistake free ( grammar, punctuation, facts )

    3. Images having proper license.

    4. Catering to the knowledge level of school children

  5. Nikhil Sheth says:

    Hi Shiju, thanks for publicizing the WFSOE effort, albeit in an IndiaTV -style fashion ;)

    I’d have appreciated it if you’d bothered to cross-check facts, as this post is pretty much barking up the wrong tree (starting from the “trend among few people” phrase) and seems to have made a mountain out of one email of mine you have misread. (Actually ‘misread’ is an understatement). Anyways, it is pretty amusing seeing where all we go to when we let fear take the wheel. I had to write a lot to clarify, so have made my own blog post to escape the ugly long comment syndrome and am linking it up here. I request readers to read this to get a clarification from the one unfortunately charged with… well, crap.

    http://nikhilsheth.blogspot.com/2011/03/clarification-about-wfsoe-and-english.html

  6. Shiju Alex says:

    You didn’t yet the message from my post Nikhil, and you are answering some thing different. The blog post is NOT directed towards you(or some folks in Pune). Also please be informed that there are many people working in similar effort (in India itself) for releasing wikipedia content in CD/DVD or some other offline format. This post intend to provide few guidelines for them also.

    Unlike what the more well-off folks like to believe, most computers in schools out there don’t have working DVD drives or any optical drives at all, and the WFSOE is 2.8 GBs in size, making any CD impossible. (I never quoted a CD myself – an HT article simplified DVD/USB to CD obviously for its layman readers and this blog post seems to have followed suit despite the facts)

    :) you are trying to say that, Hey man, we never gave a Wikipedia CD; it was a Wikipedia DVD. You are fooled.
    :) :) :)

    By saying so, you prove that you didn’t got the message of the blog post.

    I am very much aware of Wikipedia CD/DVD project across world and about the different initiatives around it. In fact I was the project coordinator for the Malayalam wikipedia CD. Malayalam wikipedians had done a thoroughly study about all Wikipedia CD releases and Wikipedia for Schools project and their release of special edition of English wikipedia CD.

    Rest of the comments in your blog post are unwarranted for the topic of this blogpost (like IndiaTV channel story and all). It is really difficult to understand things from Indian perspective.

    My blog post clearly says:

    – Indian language wikipedias also require wikipedia for schools or English wikipedia official CD release like efforts. But for that, much effort and cooperation with respective language wikipedians are required. It is not as simple as taking the dump, convert it into zim, and create Wikipedia CD/DVD.

    – the content that we give to school children need to go through good review process.

    – Even the official release of wikipedia CD/DVD, (that is, CD/DVD that is not directed towards children) need to have some process. For the best example, look at the wikipedia CD effort by Martin walker and team for English wikipedia CD/DVD (I must say I am forced to write DVD along with CD everywhere :) )

    -The copyright of content and images are most important.

    -the inclusion of explicit images and content in offline releases (let it be CD/DVD/Book/USB/Blue-ray disk, or any offline material) will have serious after effect in India.

    Since you can find it yourself, I am not providing links to some of the explicit and copyrighted images (and content also) that contained in Hindi/Marathi/Gujarati wikipedia CD/DVD that you already released.

    Understanding the things from Indian context is a big thing. I think Ashwin Baindur had tried to explain this through 2 emails. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/001960.html and http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2011-February/001964.html I request all of you who are involved in offline efforts take those feedback seriously.

    Before I close this reply, let me tell one thing. Malayalam wikipedia CD was not a wikipedia CD released for school children. It was a general release. We made all efforts to make it error free and free from copyright issues. Still the CD release ran into controversies (for the inclusion/non-inclusion of certain articles, images, and so on). So we do not want other Indian communities ran into similar issues especially because many of the so called big languages in India (like Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and all) doesn’t have a big community to take up all these. See the statistics report to understand the current state of different Indic language wikipedias. http://shijualex.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/indian-language-wikipedias-2010-statistical-report/

    And last but not the least, working in an Indic language wikipedia and in English wikipedia are two different things. You need to be part of an Indic wikipedia to understand the community and the problems that they face.

  7. click here says:

    Odd , this post turns up with a dark color to it, what shade is the primary color on your site?

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