The World and Wikipedia - Andrew Dalby Options Rating

[Andrew Dalby]

Now you're talking! Evidence not just from Britain and USA but from Europe too: the surprising number of encyclopedias, in several languages, that have announced they won't be publishing any more. German, Dutch, Norwegian, French, others. They still exist, yes; they still have websites, mostly free; you can buy them on DVD for practically nothing. Their business models no longer sustain professional revision.

But is that directly related to Mr. Wales' magical web site or the state of book publishing, which has been in a decline (particularly in the US) for a number of years?

Wikipedia might be a reflection of the so-called "dumbing down" of society, but I have not seen any evidence that reference publishing has lost one cent due its presence.

Yes, I have plenty of quotations directly relating to that question. Wikipedia is frequently named by publishers when explaining these decisions; most poignantly in Germany, where Wikipedia gets significant government grant support and the 200-year-old Brockhaus encyclopedia will produce no new editions after 2008.

[Somey]

Wikipedia might be a reflection of the so-called "dumbing down" of society, but I have not seen any evidence that reference publishing has lost one cent due its presence.

Other than the fact that smaller and less-successful entities have gone out of business in recent years? It may be that the survivors of the shakeout caused by WP (such as Britannica) are aided by that too, but ultimately they're in the same sort of trouble as the others. Moreover, it's not so much the traditional-reference-work publishers themselves that we should be concerned about, but rather the professional editors who staff them. The publishing companies will do whatever they can to keep their profit margins intact as long as they can survive, and that usually means layoffs, pay reductions, and a variety of other cost-cutting measures that would reduce bottom-line impact, almost up to the point of complete dissolution.

Anyway, for good or ill, I'd say Mr. Dalby is in the right place - I myself have been going on about this issue for over three years:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...408&#entry16408

This is why people like me say you can't put the general public, i.e., just anybody in charge of a major collaborative knowledge-gathering project which, if allowed to continue, could ultimately destroy traditional encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other professionally-produced publications, not to mention undermining traditional standards in academia. That would be a tragedy, and what's even sadder is that most people probably won't realize what a tragedy it is until it's too late, and all of the quality alternatives to unregulated (not to mention plagiarized) content are gone.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?act=S...osts&hl=&st=100

Microsoft vs. Linux is a misplaced analogy. Wikipedia is more like "dumping" in the sense of international commerce. You know what dumping is - countries with low standards of living use cheap labor as a means of producing low-quality goods at prices too low for higher-quality manufacturers to compete with, and when their competitors in more affluent societies go out of business, that's when they start raising their prices. Only those laborers keep getting paid the same paltry amount, don't they? And now the people in the affluent societies are worse off too. Great!

And also this:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showt...527&#entry47527

[Jon Awbrey]

Okay, I think I've read enough.

Like a trew blew Wikipediot, Andrew Dalby exhibits no more ability and no more desire to address the real questions raised by the social disease of Wikipedism than SlimVirgin or any other you might name.

Jon Awbrey

[A Horse With No Name]

Wikipedia might be a reflection of the so-called "dumbing down" of society, but I have not seen any evidence that reference publishing has lost one cent due its presence.

Other than the fact that smaller and less-successful entities have gone out of business in recent years? It may be that the survivors of the shakeout caused by WP (such as Britannica) are aided by that too, but ultimately they're in the same sort of trouble as the others. Moreover, it's not so much the traditional-reference-work publishers themselves that we should be concerned about, but rather the professional editors who staff them. The publishing companies will do whatever they can to keep their profit margins intact as long as they can survive, and that usually means layoffs, pay reductions, and a variety of other cost-cutting measures that would reduce bottom-line impact, almost up to the point of complete dissolution.

The book publishing industry (at least in the US) has been a mess for years. The Internet has not helped, of course, but many of the problems facing the publishers have been self-induced and were in place long before WP showed up.

[EricBarbour]

The book's real aim is to make non-Wikipedians think about how this resource, used by them every day, gets to be the way it is. All the 220 users in the index of usernames are in there as examples. They did something, good or bad, to an article whose history I want the reader to follow: created it, improved it, categorised it, vandalised it, unprotected it, added irrelevances to it, talked endlessly about it, etc.

Greetings, Mr. Dalby. There's a lot of WR regulars who would likely give your book a grade of D-, if they had a copy.

If you wrote this for non-Wikipedians, I think you have already failed. Because it's full of obscurity, and obscure activities. The average Joe who picks this up will most likely put it down in disgust, finding it obtuse and scattered.

If this was intended to illustrate the WP edit process, why in the hell did you devote so much space to the flaps involving Larry Sanger, Essjay, and David Boothroyd? If it's a critique or a sociological examination, why do you call Durova and SV "brave Wikipedians" and soft-pedal the much feared lunatic Shankbone, all on page 172?

And furthermore, as long as I've got you tied up:

There is no mention of Eloquence's softpedaling of child-sex (to the news media), nor of the by-now-notorious WP pedophilia gang's activities.

Nothing about FT2 or Guy Chapman, nothing about Jayjg and his Israel-cabal. No Ryulong. No JoshuaZ and his obsessive personal crusade to put everything possible on WP. Nothing about Chip Berlet's involvement, and nothing about the related (ongoing) LaRouche wars. No mention of Raul654's titanic ego.

Also no mention of the titanic (and also ongoing) cold-fusion flap, featuring that Golden Shower Of Wiki-Love, William Connolley/Mathsci/Abd.

No Rachel Marsden, no mention of Jimbo's tendency to blow his travel expense funds on party-time. Very little about the WMF's internal functioning, or lack thereof as some would prefer to put it.

All of the above is archived for you in past threads on WR's database, in exquisite and voluminous detail, with disturbing links and diffs galore. (If they are too difficult for you to parse, my I recommend the summaries available in places like the WR blog and Akahele?)

However, there's quite a bit of spluttering in your book about Andrew Orlowski's nasty Register articles. How dare he criticize our Glorious Wiki, eh? Plus a bunch of blather about Larry Sanger vs. Cunctator, a situation that verges on ancient history, given that Cunctator disappeared a long time ago (but Larry is still around).

In short, your book fails as a guide to understanding the edit process. It fails as a critical examination of WP as a community, as an "encyclopedia", and as a meta-community or word-gaming facility. It even fails as a tell-all or gossip rag, as it contains very little detail on the few controversial things it does report.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way ....... may I have my $19.53 back?

This post has been edited by EricBarbour: Mon 9th November 2009, 4:29am

[Malleus]

The book's real aim is to make non-Wikipedians think about how this resource, used by them every day, gets to be the way it is. All the 220 users in the index of usernames are in there as examples. They did something, good or bad, to an article whose history I want the reader to follow: created it, improved it, categorised it, vandalised it, unprotected it, added irrelevances to it, talked endlessly about it, etc.

Greetings, Mr. Dalby. There's a lot of WR regulars who would likely give your book a grade of D-, if they had a copy.

If you wrote this for non-Wikipedians, I think you have already failed. Because it's full of obscurity, and obscure activities. The average Joe who picks this up will most likely put it down in disgust, finding it obtuse and scattered.

If this was intended to illustrate the WP edit process, why in the hell did you devote so much space to the flaps involving Larry Sanger, Essjay, and David Boothroyd? If it's a critique or a sociological examination, why do you call Durova and SV "brave Wikipedians" and soft-pedal the much feared lunatic Shankbone, all on page 172?

And furthermore, as long as I've got you tied up:

There is no mention of Eloquence's softpedaling of child-sex (to the news media), nor of the by-now-notorious WP pedophilia gang's activities.

Nothing about FT2 or Guy Chapman, nothing about Jayjg and his Israel-cabal. No Ryulong. No JoshuaZ and his obsessive personal crusade to put everything possible on WP. Nothing about Chip Berlet's involvement, and nothing about the related (ongoing) LaRouche wars. No mention of Raul654's titanic ego.

Also no mention of the titanic (and also ongoing) cold-fusion flap, featuring that Golden Shower Of Wiki-Love, William Connolley/Mathsci/Abd.

No Rachel Marsden, no mention of Jimbo's tendency to blow his travel expense funds on party-time. Very little about the WMF's internal functioning, or lack thereof as some would prefer to put it.

All of the above is archived for you in past threads on WR's database, in exquisite and voluminous detail, with disturbing links and diffs galore. (If they are too difficult for you to parse, my I recommend the summaries available in places like the WR blog and Akahele?)

However, there's quite a bit of spluttering in your book about Andrew Orlowski's nasty Register articles. How dare he criticize our Glorious Wiki, eh? Plus a bunch of blather about Larry Sanger vs. Cunctator, a situation that verges on ancient history, given that Cunctator disappeared a long time ago (but Larry is still around).

In short, your book fails as a guide to understanding the edit process. It fails as a critical examination of WP as a community, as an "encyclopedia", and as a meta-community or word-gaming facility. It even fails as a tell-all or gossip rag, as it contains very little detail on the few controversial things it does report.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way ....... may I have my $19.53 back?

... but apart from that it was OK?

[EricBarbour]

Yeah, sure. (urp)

[Andrew Dalby]

Now that I've gotten that out of the way ....... may I have my $19.53 back?

Bad luck. I advise thinking laterally. You could tear up the book (itself a satisfying activity) and burn it during one of those cold winter evenings? Or give it to your worst enemy as a Christmas present?

[Andrew Dalby]

Wikipedia might be a reflection of the so-called "dumbing down" of society, but I have not seen any evidence that reference publishing has lost one cent due its presence.

Other than the fact that smaller and less-successful entities have gone out of business in recent years? It may be that the survivors of the shakeout caused by WP (such as Britannica) are aided by that too, but ultimately they're in the same sort of trouble as the others. Moreover, it's not so much the traditional-reference-work publishers themselves that we should be concerned about, but rather the professional editors who staff them. The publishing companies will do whatever they can to keep their profit margins intact as long as they can survive, and that usually means layoffs, pay reductions, and a variety of other cost-cutting measures that would reduce bottom-line impact, almost up to the point of complete dissolution.

The book publishing industry (at least in the US) has been a mess for years. The Internet has not helped, of course, but many of the problems facing the publishers have been self-induced and were in place long before WP showed up.

True, but -- up to now -- general book publishing has continued and numbers of new books have increased year on year. It's the encyclopedia market that seems threatened; certainly destabilised by Encarta, and maybe succumbing to Wikipedia. Where now is Encyclopedia Americana? Britannica's still going; it hasn't collapsed, but it's struggling. I'd love to be proved wrong on this.

[A Horse With No Name]

True, but -- up to now -- general book publishing has continued and numbers of new books have increased year on year. It's the encyclopedia market that seems threatened; certainly destabilised by Encarta, and maybe succumbing to Wikipedia. Where now is Encyclopedia Americana? Britannica's still going; it hasn't collapsed, but it's struggling. I'd love to be proved wrong on this.

Yes, the number of new books have increased due to the rise of indie print-on-demand labels and the proliferation of niche specialty publishers. Book sales, on the whole, are not rising (at least not in the US). If anything, you can walk into any Borders or Barnes & Noble in the US any day and find it conspicuously lacking in book-hungry customers. If those retailers didn't have cafes, they'd be completely empty.

I will admit that I am not an expert in the encyclopedia side of the US publishing industry, but from what I understand there is no hard evidence that Wikipedia (as a standalone entity) was responsible for collapsed sales of paper-based encyclopedias. Considering that many U.S. schools refuse to allow their students to use WP as a reference source, it would seem that the school and library markets are still viable for such texts.

[GlassBeadGame]

I was curious just how this drivel got published. From looking at its website Siduri Books was created in 2008, has only one author (Dably) and publishes only one book (W&W.) Is this an elaborate ruse to hide self publication? Having a real company make an independent business decision to publish a book gives credibility to an author. I'm wondering if that credibility has been Essjayed.

[Cock-up-over-conspiracy]

... but apart from that it was OK?

And, more to the point, does it have any hard core porn images in it? You know, perhaps like one of those numerous animated cumshot on the Wikipedia, portrayed like a Victorian flip book in one top corner so readers can flip, or fap, their way through it and see with their own their eyes what it is all about. Or may be some anal?

You see, I am trying to educate my kids ... "and Im finding thees imgs vry useful, thanx.", as they say.

Once those teams of specialist editors have dispersed, they won't be reassembled.

I was going to write something intelligent on this but Somey beat me to it ...

Yes, now all the professional encyclopedia editors are unemployed, they will have more time to work for nothing on the Wikipedia, I suppose.

Incidentally, the edit history for Ejaculation is a scream and the discussion page confirms our worse nightmares about the Pee-dia ... The dominant editors do not seem to think it is wrong to have such images on the site, they are just all wound up over whether the quantity of semen is representative or not.

[thekohser]

I was curious just how this drivel got published. From looking at its website Siduri Books was created in 2008, has only one author (Dably) and publishes only one book (W&W.) Is this an elaborate ruse to hide self publication? Having a real company make an independent business decision to publish a book gives credibility to an author. I'm wondering if that credibility has been Essjayed.

Indeed, Siduri Books has never been mentioned in the news, and if you take away the "Dalby" angle, it receives only 29 Google hits. Their home page is not ranked by Alexa nor by Compete.

With a benchmark like this, I'll have less embarrassment self-publishing my upcoming e-book on Lulu.com.

[A Horse With No Name]

As someone who did book PR for many years, I am curious to know how Andrew is promoting the book. Is his PR focused primarily in the UK, or is he seeking out reviews and interviews in the US media?

[GlassBeadGame]

I was curious just how this drivel got published. From looking at its website Siduri Books was created in 2008, has only one author (Dably) and publishes only one book (W&W.) Is this an elaborate ruse to hide self publication? Having a real company make an independent business decision to publish a book gives credibility to an author. I'm wondering if that credibility has been Essjayed.

Indeed, Siduri Books has never been mentioned in the news, and if you take away the "Dalby" angle, it receives only 29 Google hits. Their home page is not ranked by Alexa nor by Compete.

With a benchmark like this, I'll have less embarrassment self-publishing my upcoming e-book on Lulu.com.

If I just started a publishing house in the past year and it was a bona fide project I would think I would want my name to appear somewhere on the website. Not so on Siduri Books website. The only contact at all is:

General enquiries, submissions: liz@siduri.co.uk
and
Media, freelance enquiries: richard@siduri.co.uk

Richard might be Richard Jones of Draycott Somerset who a domain lookup shows to be the person who registered the site. Mr. Jones appears to also give music lessons.

So my questions to Dalby are what is your relationship to Mr. Jones, Liz and Siduri Books? Do any of these people have any background in publishing? Is this really just a vehicle for your self publication?

[Somey]

Now, c'mon guys, it hardly seems necessary to cast aspersions on Mr. Dalby's means of publishing this particular tome - he's already established authorial credibility (he's published books before), and for all we know he's getting a better deal this way. Besides, it's a niche market - it's not like he's writing a spy thriller or a historical novel about sex-crazed teenage vampires.

Let's just be happy that The Cult of the Amateur got the support it did, and not worry so much about it. Self-publishing and small-imprint direct bookselling are probably the waves of the future, but that's not necessarily bad as long as people get paid once in a while. And like I was saying before, it isn't the publishing companies we should be concerned about, it's the editorial staffs those companies have assembled.

[GlassBeadGame]

Now, c'mon guys, it hardly seems necessary to cast aspersions on Mr. Dalby's means of publishing this particular tome - he's already established authorial credibility (he's published books before), and for all we know he's getting a better deal this way. Besides, it's a niche market - it's not like he's writing a spy thriller or a historical novel about sex-crazed teenage vampires.

Let's just be happy that The Cult of the Amateur got the support it did, and not worry so much about it. Self-publishing and small-imprint direct bookselling are probably the waves of the future, but that's not necessarily bad as long as people get paid once in a while. And like I was saying before, it isn't the publishing companies we should be concerned about, it's the editorial staffs those companies have assembled.

My concerns are not with open self publication. They are with creating the impression that something is vetted by someone with independent editorial judgment when that was not the case. This matters even if the editorial decision is commercial and not academic. I'm not certain that this is what has happened here but I would like Dalby to respond. If it is a legitimate publishing business, let him say so. If it was self publication and was never meant to fool anyone, let him say so. If it was an attempt to deceive I think he has something to answer for.

[Andrew Dalby]

If it is a legitimate publishing business, let him say so. If it was self publication and was never meant to fool anyone, let him say so. If it was an attempt to deceive I think he has something to answer for.

I'm surprised by the unfriendly tone of this question ... but I don't mind answering. During the last ten years I've made a living by writing. It hasn't made me rich, but it has made me happier.

When it came to this book, my impression was that publishers in Britain -- with whom I normally work -- weren't ready to see the importance and potential threat of Wikipedia and therefore wouldn't give it the priority I thought it deserved. I happened to discuss this with a couple of friends who (I didn't know this in advance) were intending to develop a publishing business. They decided they were prepared to make this their first book.

[Andrew Dalby]

There's quite a bit of spluttering in your book about Andrew Orlowski's nasty Register articles. How dare he criticize our Glorious Wiki, eh?

Mild correction ... The Register is a major source for my book. Both Cade Metz and Andrew Orlowski are in the bibliography, there are many citations in the endnotes, and the Register is discussed several times in the text. On two major points (at least) I note that Orlowski went straight to the heart of a Wikipedia issue while other commentators were lost in the forest.

Yes, I do also say "I'd be mad to believe everything that Andrew Orlowski says about" Wikipedia. Just like I say that Wikipedia Review is "penetratingly boring". I stand by those lines: but if you read my books, you are also encouraged to read between the lines. No extra charge for that.

[GlassBeadGame]

If it is a legitimate publishing business, let him say so. If it was self publication and was never meant to fool anyone, let him say so. If it was an attempt to deceive I think he has something to answer for.

I'm surprised by the unfriendly tone of this question ... but I don't mind answering. During the last ten years I've made a living by writing. It hasn't made me rich, but it has made me happier.

When it came to this book, my impression was that publishers in Britain -- with whom I normally work -- weren't ready to see the importance and potential threat of Wikipedia and therefore wouldn't give it the priority I thought it deserved. I happened to discuss this with a couple of friends who (I didn't know this in advance) were intending to develop a publishing business. They decided they were prepared to make this their first book.

Except that her email has posted elsewhere on the internet in promoting your book. In at least one such post she also included a phone number. That phone number belongs to someone who I assume is related to you. So these are not some friends who unbeknownst to you had an interest in publishing who saw the merit in your book. I gave you a chance to correct the record but you prevaricated further. I believe that Siduri was created solely to promote your book. Real publishers are not interested in your book because it is rubbish.

Moderator note: Personal details removed as per request