User:Gflores/Sandbox2

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You have new messages (last change).

1a. alpha, beta, final releases:

I think that's off in the distant future. I'm confused about what you mean by alpha, beta releases. Are you talking about each article or releases for WP1.0? I'll assume it's the latter. Do you mean they will be incomplete versions (with more articles to be added in subsequent versions) or that they are complete and in the testing period for readers to look out for any factual errors, blatant vandalism, pov, etc. I think development releases are a good idea. I think this also depends on the stages. We should also contact GWPs to see how they did it, however they had Directmedia Publishing to help out.

b. How many articles per stage?

GWP had approximately 300k articles, most, if not all, their articles. I assume we're including all the articles? This is where I have no clue what to do. This will make the encyclopedia very very large. If the GWP was 7.5GB for 300k articles and 100k images, this would make WP1.0 greater than 20GB. Stages... Not sure yet.

c. What should be included?

  • Lists: Yes.
  • Photos/images: GWP had two version, I think; one without images which was about 3gb, the other with images was about 7gb. I'm inclined to say yes, but I'm not sure about licensing and such. Obviously we can't sell copyrighted images, so those will need to be stripped. Images untagged will not be included. Hopefully, there'll be some drive to find acceptable replacement images. It would also increase the filesize of the dvd substantially.
  • What else is there?

Timeline (just tossing out ideas)

  • Stable versions - June 2006?
  • WP:DVD beta December 2006?

Thoughts:

  • We need more people. GWP had a minimum of 70 wikipedians for their first release.
  • Need to stress priority on core topics (COTW is a start). As is evident on the core topics assessment, some need massive improvements.
  • Need to coordinate with GWP. Find out their problems, things they would've done differently, criticisms from readers, etc.
  • I'm not sure a DVD/print version of WP is ready. There are a lot of ideas on stable verions and article validations. I think the development of a stable versioning system is critical before releasing WP1.0.

I'm still not sure of the articles. Will we just take a snapshot of WP, review as many articles as we can, and release? Or are we going to use "stable" articles. Or both?

I don't know if this has been settled but what is coming first, print or DVD? We should probably follow what the German WP did. Start with a DVD and follow with the print version later. Considering the English WP is almost 3x larger than the GWP, a lot more Wikipedians will need to be involved and considering that in general, WP receives more attention from the media in U.S. (especially after the recent controversies). I picture the release of WP Print as a big thing.

  • I would like to know about the process of the GWP1.0. I read the WP entry, but would like to see more detail.
  • Stable versions, what's going on with that? There seems to be a lot of activity on the talk page there. See here, especially.
  • Article validations, any progress with this?
  • Wikisort - I still have no idea what this is or when it will come to be.

Any plans for a concise Encyclopedia? Similar to Britannica. Probably after the first release. Also, maybe inclusion of Wiktionary into WP1.0 is a good idea; both Encarta and Britannica have the combination. Again, probably after the first release. Sidenote: This is what I initially envisioned, just the core topics. There are 28,000 articles for Britannica's Concise Encylopedia. I figured this would be the route to take since it's very difficult to manage 1 million articles.

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