Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Nupedia

[Jimmy Wales]

Mike Warren wrote:
> I checked out the Nupedia site, but couldn't see a place for people
> interested in the coding and data representation; are such interests
> needed?

Absolutely!  Needed and most desired.  We have a strength in
content-people (academic professors who are writing and reviewing
and editing), but we could use technical help.

We have lots of mailing lists, but tools-l is the one you want.
That's where the technical people hang out.

> Is the code under the GPL? Where do I look for this
> information?

Yes, all the code is under the GPL.  I will make sure, later today,
that it is easier (possible?) to find the code online.

The website is written using PHP (apache's mod_php).  I'm a perl
guy myself.  The main programmer for Nupedia (Toan is his name)
is a php guy.  We're open to changing anything.  :-)

> I'm not sure that less restrictions on content are always better,
> especially in these encyclopedia situations.  Certainly it is useful
> to be as inclusive to contributions as possible, but a large part of
> the value of an encyclopedia is not what's in it but what's left out;
> every time I consult one, I don't want to dig through lots and lots of
> questionable content to get to the nugget of information I desire.

I agree with you completely.  There are plenty of websites full
of random crap.  An encyclopedia can be much more.

> Of course, some sort of interesting way to allow individual users of
> the online encyclopedia to automatically filter most (ideally,
> ``all'') of the content they won't find useful might allow all content
> to be included, yet still retain the advantages of well-edited and
> pertinent content.

Yes, this is a dream for the future.   But one of our strengths at
Nupedia has been a commitment to not doing too much dreaming.  We
try to make technical decisions that don't close off any paths for
the future, but we worry today about the problems of today, and take
action on that... but with one eye on the future.

-----------

Toward this end, we have thought long and hard about what the canonical
form of the data should be.  Hector's idea (expressed on the new
gnupedia website) of using HTML is a singularly _bad_ idea.  HTML
is a confusing mishmash of structure and presentation.  What we want
to do is _not_ control how people might present the data.

One idea I have for the encyclopedia is for competing publishers
to pick up the data and use it to print very cheap encyclopedias
for sale and distribution to 3rd world countries.  These countries
will not be able to afford computers and internet access to the home
for quite some time now.  But I would love to see every household
in the world have an inexpensive (for the competitive cost of printing,
which is quite low compared to the cost of Britannica for example)
encyclopedia _in their native language_.

Nupedia can make that happen, but only if we aren't narrow-minded about
our data format.  I shudder to think about the difficulties of going
from HTML to print.

Additionally, XML lets us do (in the distant future) some really
interesting and clever things with a search engine.  "Give me a list
of all the Presidents of the United States born before 1914."  This
is possible if all the of President biographies are marked up with
an appropriate amount of XML.  Coool!

> It is indeed a tough problem, and certainly a delicate balancing act:
> too much exclusion might scare off both contributers and users while
> too little might make the result far less useful.

Well, this is a constant and ongoig lively debate within the Nupedia
community.  :-)

To date, we have erred on the side of _quality_.  We wanted to make
sure that our first 100 articles would impress the world that this is
a _serious_ project, not just another website full of random crap.

I think that Stallman says it very well in the Gnupedia announcement:
A project of this type will not be completed in a year -- it may be
20 years, but that's only a blink of the eye in the grand scheme of
things.

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