The Wikipedia lexicon in one volume

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Detail of the book cover

The Wikipedia encyclopedia in one volume is a printed, popular science reference work that contains parts of the content and keywords of the German-language online encyclopedia Wikipedia . It was published on September 15, 2008 by Wissen Media Verlag , which was part of Bertelsmann .

content

The selection of articles included is essentially based on a list of the 20,000 Wikipedia articles that were most frequently accessed in 2007/2008, supplemented by those about countries and elements that did not appear on this list.

The lemmas are explained in the book with short texts that come from the introduction of the corresponding article on German Wikipedia (as of April 14, 2008). This is the part of a Wikipedia article that precedes the table of contents, or for articles without a table of contents, the first sentence or some of the first sentences of the article. Since the contents are under the GNU license for free documentation , around 90,000 authors are mentioned on 27 pages at the end of the book; However, it also contains a large number of authors who did not participate in the text fragments used.

The book is illustrated with almost 1000 images, which also come from the German-language Wikipedia.

Media coverage

The response to the publication of the work was subdued. Die Zeit called “content and development [...] a revolution in the industry” because a publishing house with a traditional lexicon institute “relies on the work of amateurs” for the first time. However, the publisher emphasizes the "yearbook character" of the lexicon, because "Wissenmedia does not quite trust free knowledge [...] - after all, you do not want to devalue your own lexicon corpus from which the publisher feeds its numerous lexicon editions".

The Handelsblatt stated that the Wikipedia lexicon was "not a classic reference work" and did not "meet any serious lexical requirements" and quoted a Bertelsmann manager who explained the publication of the printed Wikipedia lexicon as saying that the publisher wanted a "younger target group." win for the lexicon ”.

The Netzeitung devoted a comprehensive review to the lexicon: Maik Söhler emphasized that it would be unfair to expect Wikipedia to meet the same requirements "offline" as "online" and sums up what the lexicon can do as follows: " The book can […] provide brief overviews, including on topics that do not appear in other dictionaries. It can provide information in a confined space and also certainly disinform. "The entry" Data ":" D. are logically grouped information units (English, but also in information theory, 'date') that are transferred between systems or are stored on systems “for example, raise more questions than he answers. And, according to the reviewer, "the Wikipedia encyclopedia can also do one thing: be good on the shelf ..."

Boris Herrmann, a volunteer at the Berliner Zeitung , wrote: “One of the last questions that humanity had to answer until a few days ago was: How can you actually make money with an Internet encyclopedia like Wikipedia? Now Wikipedia has found an answer to that too: with the book on the Internet. ”He described the publication of Wikipedia in book form as a remarkable“ step forward into the past ”and reproached the“ online community ”for using the printed lexicon self refute.

Criticism within Wikipedia

The project was also viewed critically within the Wikipedia community: although there was broad consensus that Bertelsmann had the right to continue using the project's content due to the GNU license used for free documentation , many users spoke out against the official cooperation of the Wikimedia Germany association with Bertelsmann.

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Torsten Kleinz: Gebundene Netz-Weisheit, in: Die Zeit , September 18, 2008.
  2. Hans-Peter Siebenhaar: Who is actually Bruce Darnell? Wikipedia appears for the first time as a printed lexicon, in: Handelsblatt .com, September 18, 2008.
  3. Maik Söhler: Wikipedia encyclopedia has appeared: Offline looks more serious - and more boring, ( Memento from January 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) in: netzeitung .de, September 22, 2008.
  4. Boris Herrmann: The book on the network. In: Berliner Zeitung . September 19, 2008, accessed June 16, 2015 .
  5. Wikipedia's internal survey on cooperation with Bertelsmann