User:Gutza/Wikipedia 1.0 rant

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I hope I won't look like a nay-sayer, but I personally am against the very idea of having a paper version of Wikipedia just yet. Let me emphasize that, I'm aware nobody says we should have a paper Wikipedia right now, I'm against us even considering that for now (i.e. I'm against "Pushing To 1.0"). Reasoning:

  • The project is not mature enough, in the sense of public awareness - who's going to buy it? Thousands of contributors doesn't automatically mean thousands of buyers: look at the marketing efforts made by Encyclopedia Britannica to sell--do you honestly think the Wikipedia Encyclopedia would sell a lot better on paper?
  • The printing costs are relatively huge. Sounds stupid, let me explain: when you print a newspaper or magazine in 10,000 copies you have relatively small fixed costs because of the small number of pages relative to the number of copies => small price per copy. When you print a book in the same number of copies you have relatively large fixed costs because of the large number of pages => relatively large cost per copy. But when you print an encyclopedia you have relatively huge fixed costs due to the huge number of pages.
  • The project is not mature enough, in the sense of content. I won't discuss this here, we all know what I'm talking about, and we all know that without either enough time or enough qualified contributors payed to review the content, we're not going to have proper coverage;
  • The two maturity problems above could end up in having negative reviews: imagine titles on the Reg, k5, Slashdot, The Onion etc saying "Wikipedia flops on printed version" or "Wikimedia digital dream shattered by real distribution" or "Wikipedia: failing to rebuild the Internet bubble" etc. Having negative reviews in itself might be enough to bury this project, just as positive reviews helped tremedously at making it a success.

I for one would wait a bit more before trying to make this move. Misunderstand me not, I'm as eager as the next wikipedian to see a printed version of Wikipedia become a hit, I'm just not sure that would happen, and moreover, I'm afraid it might be just the opposite in the long run.

Gutza 22:31, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)