What ever happened to that book a bunch of dudes were going to write about Wikipedia?

Well, that "bunch of dudes" took their work with them to that Other Website™.

Yo' momma declined to publish it!

So, it looks like they're currently negotiating with yo' otha' momma. It sounds like she's somewhat more amenable to a deal, but wants more "points."

Cool status update.

If they're going to self-publish, Warbucks should subsidize leatherbound gold leaf editions for the entire 300 Club. It's only fair.

If any lesson was ever learned on WR it is that unvetted work is worthless. Peer review and barrier to entry presented by an editor (in the true sense of the word) of a publishing firm willing to invest money in a writer's works are two basic safeguards of quality. If the "writers" who once lurked in the basement of WR abandon that lesson they will look foolish and hypocritical.

BTW which one is Warbucks?

I figure the one working for the fortune 500 company making top 5 percentile income (as we've been told) should have some fundage, and a self-published book seems like the logical next step. Not that the others might not have more.

Assuming you actually wanted a serious answer, then as I understand the situation, the plan has always been to try to use various personal or "friend-of-a-friend" contacts in the publishing industry in hopes of getting a quick turnaround - not that there are all that many such contacts among the participants. If that doesn't pan out, the effort of trying to "shop around" the manuscript would probably be too time-consuming and counterproductive, so yes, self-publishing is likely in that case. The point here has never been to make (or lose) lots of money, but rather to put the story out there as expeditiously as possible without sacrificing accuracy, completeness, or to some extent, entertainment value.

Mr. Beadgame makes a good point about the value of a conventional publisher in ensuring quality control, but these are talented writers (at least when they want to be). I'm sure a professional editor would help, but IMO not so much that the idea should be scrapped in the face of a few publisher rejections.

I'm sure there's a tendency among some folks to pooh-pooh the idea that such a book would be picked up or ever gain any attention, but the fact is, these days it's almost entirely a matter of luck if your book is successful or not (assuming it's not just a piece of total dreck to begin with). And with non-fiction, you have topicality, slow news days, and Comedy Central to consider. Don't be too shocked if something actually happens with it.

I hope that you do not refer to the esteemed gentleman who claims not to know what data fusion is or even how many domestic televisions there are in the USA.

I don't think self-published stuff is necessarily worthless. I have two friends who published good stuff that way. I just need to know how impressed to be if they actually finish this thing.

I do suspect that GBG is right and the book is going to focus on pathetic wiki personalities and how awful they are. The response will be "weirdos on the internet?!" It's not the kind of material that's even funny enough for Comedy Central.

Also it remains to be seen how polluted this book will be with mothball-smelling fascist ideology and antisemitism.



Yes that guy, but watch what you say or he'll sue you for DEFAMATION!

Thanks, Somey.

PS: we now have more than TEN MEGABYTES of text information, notes and biographies of insiders. We could probably write several textbooks, just out of the available material--and there's still a bunch of freaks, arbitrations, backstabbings, manipulations, and other Wiki-nonsense that we haven't covered yet.

So a compendium of obsession would be an improvement over your present warehouse of weirdness. Thank God for the internet or you'd be pushing around a shopping cart full of yellowed documents mixed in with baby-food jars of odd brown liquids.

GBG, I sort of understand your thinking that a book that ostensibly exists to criticize WP, but actually contains a collection of amusing (or "obsessive" if you prefer) anecdotes about various WP nutcases and weirdos, would ultimately be of little value to the cause - whatever we're currently defining that to be. But assembling a purely academic and scholarly series of serious essays (or something like that) on WP-related subjects simply wouldn't have the kind of impact that's called for here.

The strategy actually seems perfectly sensible to me - first you come out with the juicy tell-all scandal-sheet, and assuming you get some traction with that, then you back it up with the scholarly essays. Not the other way around. Maybe Eric can confirm or deny that this is the sort of approach they're hoping to take, but in any event, in a situation where you're trying to influence hearts and minds, you always go for the hearts first.

It's unfortunate, but that's just how people are these days, and indeed, probably how people have been since time immemorial.

That's the gist of pretty much everything you have posted here over the years. A lot of complaining and little doing. It about matches the lone contribution you once made (under this name, at least) to the Wikipedia itself. Whining with nothing to show for it.

No. No. No. Get it right please. Wikipedians suck. The rest follows.