Wikipedia goes off-line
In what might just be the oddest news I’ve come across in the past couple of weeks, the German chapter of Wikipedia has agreed a deal with German publisher Bertelsmann to publish their entries into book form. Wikipedia, or as I like to think of it ‘the font of all human knowledge’ in your hands? Surely this should be in some sort of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy format rather than a humble page turner.
As you might have guessed the book will be in German and only available to the German market. It will contain 50,000 of the most popular entries in a sort of Wikipedia annual – a snapshot of popular Wikipedia knowledge for the year. Bertelsmann will be using their own staff to verify that the entries picked are accurate and I hope that if they find any mistakes they’ll be popping online to fix the original.
The most intriguing aspect of this venture is that the whole entry won’t be going into the book – only the abstracts or first paragraphs. That's only about 100 –150 words per entry, I'd have to think that's more like a taster than any meaningful content. As hyperlink technology is a bit tricky to implement, readers will be required to thumb through the pages to find any cross-linked entries.
The book will be out in autumn this year and will cost around 20 euros (approx $30), although €1 of each book sold will be paid to Wikipedia. I suppose the obvious question is if you can get the whole fully functioning website online for free are you really going to buy a truncated version in a book?
This is a really interesting step back in technology for Wikipedia. After all I thought the whole point of the site was that anyone could log on and amend an entry to keep it fully updated. An off-line snapshot version does go along with their requirement for making all human knowledge accessible to everyone, but wasn't it suppose to be with no price tag? I daresay if Germany falls in love with the book there will be talk of expanding the range to include other Wikipedia chapters.
Still, I’m a big fan of Wikipedia so I should point out that if future versions of the book are electronic and talk to me in a sexy voice I shall be first in the queue. I just hope it’ll be able to teach me German.