Wikipedia as a Printed Book – Seriously!

I guess it’s not free anymore is it? :P

Anyway, some of the information in that book could easily be outdated quick, or even incorrect.

But it is interesting, no?

Of course it would only be half that height if he had printed the pages double sided.

That looks bigger than four iPod touches to me…what a weird way to measure.

…but how big is the font?

Geez, how does one read a book that tall? You almost need a specially made display just to make sure it don’t break in two the moment you crack it open.

What has the world come to when we use iPods as a unit of measurement for something that has nothing to do with iPods.

Anyway, neat book. hard to believe all that is only 1/10000 of Wikipedia. What size font did they use? Maybe if they used 3pt Arial they could fit more.

When you everything accessible online why u need a printed version which u cannot even carry with you for reading ?

What a waste of paper ..

SAVE PAPER

That’s gonna be real stupid, look, the cover says : “Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia” And yet he’s going to sell it?

This is interesting, but the numbers don’t add up. If that book was really 0.01% of the total, that means it would take 10,000 such volumes for the whole thing, and that book is way bigger than one volume of Brittanica (probably more like ten volumes, so that would mean 100,000 Brittanica volumes total). Yet the story says it would equal just 952 Brittanica volumes. So, one of those numbers is way off.

David – 0.013% of 3 million Wikipedia articles is roughly around 400 and that’s the number of articles that were used to print this Wikipedia hardcover.

“The Free Encyclopedia” no longer becomes free then…

“I’m comparing the internet Wikipedia to a traditional encyclopedia by putting it in the same format, therefor suggesting that Wikipedia is dysfunctional compared to a normal encyclopedia.”

This guy’s point is way off base. What’s shown to me is how dysfunctional physical mediums are for informational reference. I see (1) the physical waste of encyclopedias, (2) the difficulty in updating this info, and (3) the advantage of electronic encyclopedias to have a limitless number of articles.

I was going to applaud his concept, but after reading his intent, the book is less satirical than I first thought.

And it’s so tall because computer paper is thicker than what it should be printed on (which should have been something akin to dictionary paper) and thus be able to fit way more in it, plus having the pages double sided, you could easily fit twice, maybe even thrice, as many articles into a book that tall. That’s why the math isn’t adding up.

Well, that reinforces my original point. If the guy claims that “I’m comparing the internet Wikipedia to a traditional encyclopedia by putting it in the same format,” he’s way off base, as pointed out in the comment above. Apparently, he’s off by about a factor of 100.

If the kid charges for it, he is no doubt intending to charge for the cost of making the volumes, not for the intellectual property contained within. So though the information is free, the paper, ink and work necessary to create a hard -copy form of Wikipedia will of course not be free.

Why print when its available for free online? Does the guy have nothing important to do?

I think the cost comes from its novelty quality not because of the knowledge it contains. So think of it more as a deco peice (which the digital wiki can’t be) and less of a book a la Prisoner of Azkaban. I’d buy it!