Nupedia-l

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The Nupedia mailing list was set up on Thu, 9 Mar 2000 by Larry Sanger. The original archives, now lost, are still in the Internet Archive.

See this post about the problem of the lost 'advisory-l'.

March 2000

  • sanger1@nupedia.com sanger1@nupedia.com Thu, 9 Mar 2000 16:32:29 -0600 “nupedia-l I am a clueless newbie”
    • “Nupedia.com building the finest encyclopedia in the history of humankind!”
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Fri, 10 Mar 2000 13:45:34 -0500 Nupedia aims to be as unbiased as possible; of course, some people will regard *this* as a political statement. We can't make everyone happy in this regard. In any event, we intend to represent all points of view, including those held by any significant minority of experts in a field, as fairly as possible. This would include creationists, Marxists, capitalists, and all manner of incendiary points of view. This should make for interesting reading at the very least. It should be added that Nupedia's contributors are expected to keep their own views in the background as much as possible. In other words, the point isn't merely to mention other views not favored by an article's author; it is to write in such a way that one cannot tell what view is favored by the article's author.
  • 10 Mar 2000 20:33:57 -0500 – mentions pc world article
  • Hans Paijmans paai@kub.nl Sat, 11 Mar 2000 11:02:16 +0100 Let me introduce myself (for the details go to my website). Hans Paijmans, aka 'Paai', 51 years old. Long-time Linux user and Open Source partisan. I am an assistant professor at Tilburg university, and I think it an extremely good idea to create an 'Open Source' encyclopaedia.
  • Jimmy Wales jwales@aristotle.bomis.com Sat, 11 Mar 2000 12:17:51 -0600 (CST) We just announced the project, but we already have around 180 members in just 3 days. We are planning to promote the site to academics in all fields. And we are planning to promite the site to the public through advertising the articles as they are completed. The company behind Nupedia, Bomis, Inc., has a great deal of experience designing and promoting high-traffic websites. We intend to put that experience (and the profit from that!) behind the Nupedia project to insure that it is a success.
    • My dream is that someday this encyclopedia will be available for just the cost of printing to schoolhouses across the world, including "3rd world" countries that won't be able to afford widespread internet access for years. How many African villages can afford a set of Britannicas? I suppose not many...
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Wed, 15 Mar 2000 18:59:28 -0500 Yep, as of last count Nupedia has 602 members. Around 140 of these have filled out a member profile, and about 25-40% of these (or 35-56) are Ph.D.'s or otherwise clearly bona fide experts. No doubt a good many of the others who haven't filled out profiles are also bona fide experts in something or other, so I estimate that we now have over 100 people (and possibly as many as 200 people, although I doubt it) who are genuinely qualified to write and peer review Nupedia articles! The foreign tech press really loves this story. There are mentions of us in publications from Sweden, France, Brazil, Japan, and many points in between. Consequently we've got members from Costa Rica, the U.K., China, and Macedonia, and many other countries... Our efforts at hiring a Nupedia programmer continue apace. An announcement re: Nupedia mailing lists and how to subscribe to them should appear tomorrow. Regards, Larry
  • Jimmy Wales jwales@aristotle.bomis.com Mon, 20 Mar 2000 14:24:57 -0600 (CST)
    • 1. Our intention is to have the fundamental units of data (essentially, articles) stored as simple XML files. XML is a "markup language" similar to HTML. We will be coming up with a simple set of tags that authors, editors, or people who just want to help with markup, can easily learn and use.
    • 2. Our intention is also to develop a set of open source (GPL) tools for working with the data. I (Jimbo) and our lead programmer (to be hired as soon as I can find a good candidate) will be seeking input and assistance from the tools-l list. If you are a programmer and want to help with this, or (especially) an XML whiz, we'd love to have you on tools-l. --Jimbo

September 2000

  • Hans Paijmans j.j.Paijmans@kub.nl Fri, 29 Sep 2000 08:59:32 +0200
    • Hi all. After re-reading the cathedral and the bazaar, and after looking around to what actually is achieved so far, I think I have a few suggestions that I would like to put to you. Yes, I suppose that Larry and the other organisators of the first hours already have pondered these factors, but perhaps it is time to ponder them anew.
    • The manner in which Nupedia has been organized so far is very much the cathedral-approach as described by ESR. Tight organization of an number of highly gifted collaborators, and the progress of the work is kept from the public until it is finished.
    • Well, ESR thinks that this is not the way to do a OS software project. He says that, on the contary, the source should be submitted to the users as soon as possible, and that this very fact enables the users to find bugs and submit them in a very short time "Under many eyes all bugs are shallow". This is what he means with the 'bazaar'.
    • Perhaps it would be a good idea to follow this procedure for Nupedia too, or at least experiment with it.
    • My recommendation would be to do away with the ponderous system of editors and proofreaders. Leave that to the public, the actual users of the encyclopaedia. Publish the articles as soon as they are readable. Of course put a flag next to them, that indicates whether the article still is a draft, or that it is finished. As long as it is a draft, put two buttons next to it, one to give comments to the author, and a red one, to tell the editors that there are really bad errors and that they should consider to pull the article from the encyclopaedia until the errors, or worse, are corrected.
    • I feel very much, that this approach will have a number of positive effects. Firstly, Nupedia will grow faster and will rapidly enther the stage where it is usable. Secondly, the egos of the authors will get a boost, because their work is immediatly visible. Thirdly, it will cut back on overhead and organization, and will make the process much, much simpler for the authors. And four: you will have the best proofreaders that exist; the interested public.
    • Oh - and a second recommendation: do away with the moderation of this list. If we want Nupedia really to become a group process with positive interaction, we have to allow for the occasional flamewar. Such things put personalities in better contrast, and in the long run it is more productive. At least, that is my experience.
    • Please think about this and let me knwo what you think.
    • Paai -- Dr. J.J. Paijmans

January 2001

  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Wed, 10 Jan 2001 12:50:32 -0800 Let's make a wiki
    • No, this is not an indecent proposal. It's an idea to add a little feature to Nupedia. Jimmy Wales thinks that many people might find the idea objectionable, but I think not.
    • "Wiki," pronounced \wee'-kee\, derives from a Polynesian word, "wikiwiki," but what it means is a VERY open, VERY publicly-editable series of web pages. For example, I can start a page called EpistemicCircularity and write anything I want in it. Anyone else (yes, absolutely anyone else) can come along and make absolutely any changes to it that he wants to. (The editing interface is very simple; anyone intelligent enough to write or edit a Nupedia article will be able to figure it out without any trouble.) On the page I create, I can link to any other pages, and of course anyone can link to mine. The project is billed and pursued as a public resource. There are a few announced suggestions or rules. The concept actually seems to work well, as you can see here with the original wiki: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki
    • Links are indicated by using CapitalizedWordsBunchedTogetherLikeThis. If a wiki page exists, the word is underlined; if not, there is a question mark after the word, which is clickable, and which anyone can use to go and write something about the topic.
    • Setting up a wiki for Nupedia would be very easy; it can be done in literally ten minutes. (We've already found this out.)
    • As to Nupedia's use of a wiki, this is the ULTIMATE "open" and simple format for developing content. We have occasionally bandied about ideas for simpler, more open projects to either replace or supplement Nupedia. It seems to me wikis can be implemented practically instantly, need very little maintenance, and in general are very low-risk. They're also a potentially great source for content. So there's little downside, as far as I can see. We can make wiki versions of all new Nupedia articles, too, and that can be a place where additional changes and commentary can be gleaned (authors could ignore what goes on on the wiki, of course--it's up to them). The content can be licensed under an open content license.
    • A Nupedia wiki would instruct users to try to make their entries resemble encyclopedia articles, but the usual wiki sort of banter would be permitted. This would make things more interesting to many users, who could *instantly* create, edit, and comment on articles. If a wiki article got to a high level it could be put into the regular Nupedia editorial process.
    • We would not integrate the Nupedia wiki into the rest of Nupedia (though wiki pages could link to regular Nupedia pages, there wouldn't be links back). It would be a completely separate part of the website. The search engine would not return wiki pages, and wiki pages wouldn't be listed among other regular Nupedia pages. We'd just have a link on the left or right hand column of the website, "Nupedia Wiki", and let people explore it if they're curious what it is. On the front page of the Nupedia wiki we'd make it ABSOLUTELY clear that this is experimental, that Nupedia editors don't have control of what goes on here, and that the quality of articles, discussion, etc., should not be taken as a reflection of the quality of articles, review, etc. on the main part of the Nupedia website.
    • Does anyone have an objection to our trying this out? -- Larry
  • rose.parks@att.net rose.parks@att.net Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:29:58 +0000 Dr. Sanger and Members, I like the idea. We need some place that is less structured to toss around ideas and interact. As Ever, Ruth Ifcher
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:20:10 -0800 Here's the URL for Nupedia's wiki: http://www.nupedia.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NupediaWikiHomePage Told you we could make it fast. It hasn't yet been linked from the website, so if you're very concerned that we're going to make utter jackasses of ourselves and you want to stop us from doing this, speak up! :-) Larry
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Thu, 11 Jan 2001 16:22:39 -0800
    • > Maybe we could install the wiki under a totally different brand name, > and just let people who sign up for Nupedia aware that lots of Nupedians > tend to hang out there.
    • That'd be fine with me; I'm not sure how exactly it would be connected to Nupedia, though. We wouldn't call it "the Nupedia wiki" though that's what it would be. We might have a question on the "about" page:
    • "Q. Do you have a place where I can simply write down ideas, post articles, etc., for public consumption?
    • A. Yes. Use the _wikipedia_!"
    • On the "wikipedia" we would say that this is a supplementary project to Nupedia which operates entirely independently. Larry
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Wed, 17 Jan 2001 15:16:25 -0800 http://www.wikipedia.com/ Humor me. Go there and add a little article. It will take all of five or ten minutes.—Larry

March 2001

  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Fri, 23 Mar 2001 11:56:22 -0800 Ruminations about the future
    • Dear all, Yesterday I wrote a Nupedia newsletter (you should receive it soon) and in it I reported the basic facts about the creation and development of Wikipedia. Doing this put some things *about Nupedia* into perspective. I want to make some observations and ask for your input on a very, very important question. Let's begin with a caveat, and then consider some statistics.
    • Caveat: Nupedia articles are definitely better than the average Wikipedia article. (But many--not most, though--Wikipedia articles are quite good, and they are constantly improving.)
    • Statistics:
    • 1. We have 3440 Nupedia members who *do* receive the newsletter, and 1898 members who *do not* (not all of the latter are inactive). That's a *lot* of potential. http://www.nupedia.com/newsystem/stat.phtml
    • 2. Total assigned articles, the system says, is 237. Total completed articles, 14.
    • 3. By contrast, I estimate that somewhere between 40 and 80 people have worked on Wikipedia at some time; a mere 20 are currently active. Cf. http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedians
    • 4. Total "comma" articles on Wikipedia, as of this writing: 1,851. ("Comma" articles are pages on Wikipedia with commas, which indicates they aren't the tiny "stub" articles or redirection pages). http://www.wikipedia.com/ (search at bottom of the page for ",")
    • 5. Nupedia began serious, hard work in February, 2000.
    • 6. Wikipedia began serious, hard work on January 10, 2001.
    • Look, Wikipedia has made this fantastic progress. This seems to indicate that Nupedia *could* be making *even better* progress than Wikipedia--if we had a different system--for no other reason than that we've got more people!
    • What are some ways that we could simply redesign the whole project so that it would retain the same rigor, and yet lose a lot of the roadblocks/bottlenecks now in place, so that Nupedia could start harnessing this huge potential it has?
    • For now, we will indeed just forge ahead as we have been. But let's get some ideas on the table. Be creative. Maybe someone will think of something that retains the quality of Nupedia and yet *really* lets people get to work doing what we all came here to do--make an encyclopedia. Then, maybe, if we think we've got a superlative idea, we'll change the system.
    • The floor is now wide open. (I'm posting this separately on advisory-land nupedia-l.) Larry
  • Larry Sanger lsanger@nupedia.com Fri, 23 Mar 2001 18:34:44 -0800 The essential problem, briefly
    • Look, the essential problem with Nupedia in its present incarnation is that the review system is so incredibly inefficient. There are bottlenecks at every turn--nearly everything one needs to do in order to get an article through this present system is a potential bottleneck.
    • That is not going to change with time. Even if we get 100 times the number of people we have now (i.e., 400,000 people), the rate of article production, under this present system, will not be much more than 100 times of the present rate: about 1,200 per year. That's not enough to create the world's largest and finest encyclopedia.
    • Wikipedia has already created over 1,200 articles, in less than three months. In fact, it's nearing 2,000.
    • What if the people who had created *those* articles were all experts on the subjects of those articles? For example, what if they were limited to Nupedia's present editors and peer reviewers?
    • Think about that. That should give you an idea of the *potential* of Nupedia, if only we found a more efficient way to proceed, a la Wikipedia. Larry

March 2002

  • Tue, 5 Mar 2002 12:30:17 -0800 Jimmy Wales
    • So, Nupedians, we are without the guidance of Larry. I'd like to solicit your opinions about what to do in the future. How can the project be changed to empower more people to get involved?
    • Two facts are now starkly clear: in terms of absolute quantity of content generated, the Wikipedia model is vastly superior. In terms of absolute _quality_ of content generated, the Nupedia model is vastly superior.
    • But Nupedia is also very very very slow. We now have 23 articles, which is about 59,977 short of the 60,000 I estimate to be necessary for a complete-ish encyclopedia. At our current rate of progress, we'll never even achieve partial completion.
    • How can we leverage the lessons learned from Wikipedia, to make Nupedia into something that is _both_ high quality _and_ reasonably high volume in production?
    • And how can we do it with basically no money for the time being? I'd like to throw open the table here, to the active members who are participating on these mailing lists, for a week or two, and then I'm planning to issue our consensus report on the future to all the thousands of people who have signed up for Nupedia but never materially participated.
    • Here are the primary lessons learned from Wikipedia:
    • 1. Low barriers to participation encourage participation.
    • 2. There is a huge volume of energy in the world towards the idea of a free encyclopedia -- Nupedia can and should harness that energy.
    • Among the proposals I'd like to consider are such things as making Nupedia into a formalized approval board for versions of Wikipedia articles. The idea is to scrap -- almost entirely -- our current convoluted editorial system -- in favor of a more open process, more inviting of general participation, but with an eye towards formalized supervision of quality.
    • The Wikipedia content is huge, and is completely available to us as raw material, raw material which should suffice to cut production time of high quality articles to a fraction of what it would take the same authors to produce from scratch.
    • But -- this is _your_ project, and I'm willing to consider anything. I continue to support you fully, and I can tell you that the website and the hosting of it are not going away, nor will I make any changes to the project with a broad consensus of support from the people who have worked so hard on this to date. --Jimmy Wales

See also

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