Re: Slightly Off Topic: GPL'ed Encyclopedia ?

[luther maxime u-strasbg fr]

On Fri, Nov 13, 1998 at 01:34:13PM +0000, John P.Looney wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 12, 1998 at 11:41:06PM -0500, Soren Harward mentioned:
> > Phew, that's a helluva idea.  Unfortunately, the GNU/OSS/FSF movement
> > if not a "free information" movement, it's a "free software" movement.
> > There's a huge difference: if you don't like your mail client or there
> > isn't a program that does something you want, you can just write one of
> > your own from scratch.  However, you can't just make up factual
> > information.  The research effort would be enormous, as would the entrophy
> > level.  You'd end up with stuff like supercomplex descriptions of quantum
> > particle physics while the "18th-century British Literature" article
> > forgets to mention Pope's _The Rape of the Lock_.
> > 
> > Can you imagine the FUD?
> 
>  Yes, but can you imagine reading through it, and taking offence at someone
> leaving some (what you consider vital) piece of information out of a piece,
> and mailing the maintainer reminding them of this, and then, it's in the
> next version a few weeks later.
> 
>  I can also imagine that there would likely be a massive imbalance in
> content - much more techy stuff, say than literatute, but then again, it's
> like that most of it's users would also be more techy than average...
> 
>  How could it be started ? Someone announcing a home page, and a request
> for submissions in (say) sgml format ? Wait two years for enough
> submissions to present something worthwhile...

a auto updating database, with one or more description for every word, with a
home page that has a search engine over it ? A by word classification as well
as a theme for each definition, a word having different meanings in different
context.

or perhaps a small comitee that would check all the contributions ?

I think it would be best not to wait for two years, but update the publicly
available word database often, maybee once a week, or something such.

And after that you go international ...

Nice idea, i like it ...

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER