Wikipedia Moves to Bookshelves

The online community-generated encyclopedia will be testing out a print version in Germany

By Gregory Mone Posted 04.24.2008 at 7:06 am 3 Comments

Bertelsmann Lexikothek Daniel Ullrich

Bertelsmann AG announced plans to release a single-volume, printed and bound version of the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, in September. And it's already out of date.

Kul Wadhwa of the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that promotes the site, tells the San Francisco Chronicle that the move is "groundbreaking"—it's his job to figure out how to make some money through Wikipedia, even though the site doesn't post ads and all the content is free. The head of publishing at Bertelsmann's encyclopedia group says the book will be condensed to roughly 50,000 of the most popular articles, each of which will be just eight to ten lines each. So, if you're wondering, the answer is no, that little stub you wrote about yourself probably won't be included. Bertelsmann also says at least some of the entries will be fact-checked.

Via Google News

Previous Article: The .su Boom

Next Article: Tracking Racers with RFID

3 Comments

Link to this comment

Tor

04/24/08 at 9:11 pm

This has got to be one of the worst ideas I've ever heard

Link to this comment

dontbother

04/25/08 at 1:45 am

You don't like the idea because you don't understand its purpose. Maybe you don't realize that not everybody can be (or wants to be) tethered to a computer to get info.
And since print encyclopedias are still somewhat in demand, why not harness the power of the best?
But I do get the point that you'll lose Wikipedia's exhaustive coverage of 'everything, ever'.

Link to this comment

yongoro

04/28/08 at 10:14 pm

Shouldn't they have released this on 04/01/08?