Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

The R&R intro would be their copyright; it would have to be them post it on Wikipedia.

I'm not suggesting that it is cut and pasted into the Wiki, but used to gather the correct facts and terminology.

Copyright on words is just a lot of nonsense. For sure if you copy a book and call it your own, then you have breached copyright. A sentence, paragraph and even a structure cannot be subject to copyright.

I spent a lot of time with the author Graham Robson last year when building up my Lotus Cortina Information website. Graham has written over 160 books on cars, ghost written another 40 or so books, and has penned countless articles for magazines. Just type his name into Google or eBay!

We talked through this copyright issue at length, and his conclusion is that there is nothing that he can do about folks copying his stuff, and indeed, he's very happy for them to. It's a matter of courtesy to acknowledge the author, but remember, the author got his information from somewhere....parts manuals, workshop manuals, contemporary reports etc. And that is somewhat different to a novel like Lord of the Rings or Women in Love, creative work that certainly can be subject to copyright.

Back to the Wiki. I would strongly recommend that some sort of storyboard be established before a Wiki is started, to determine a few things....for example:

Purpose...To write up the .history of the car? development stages? change points? parts commonality? contemporary write-ups? brochures? photo library? maintenance / restoration? modifications? There are many more bits I'm sure.

Structure and style.....if for example we wanted to define all the models, how they changed etc., this could run into hundreds of 'logical' pages. It would be useful to have a similar structure and style for defining an Elan 1600 to that defining a Plus 2 S130, an S4....etc.

Process.....how do we do this? Do 60 people just hammer away at the keyboard for a few months producing 100s, possibly 1000s of pages of 'stuff' with lots of repeats? Or, once the thing is storyboarded, do we put up 'drafts' to be peer reviewed before being 'published' ? And how are things reviewed?

I know that some will say that the Wiki concept is self-designing and self-correcting, and for a small topic defining stuff at only a high level, that is true. Many corporations started Wiki-type knowledge bases 10 and more years ago, and most were abandoned because the initial design, structure and process work wasn't carried out. They ended up with thousands of pages of data, with zero information content.

If you look at the Wiki entries that currently exist for most cars, they cover 1 page or so. Robinshaw and Ross is 170 pages of good stuff, Brian Buckland's book goes to 800 pages, a library of brochures would probably be over 100 pages, all the contemporary write-ups a fair bit more than that. If we're to add value to what already exists, there is going to be a lot of pages!

This could be a really interesting and creative bit of work, and really energise the forum as well. But I really believe that it must be given a direction, purpose, structure and style before any serious work begins.

Mark

Hi mark,

Aye, copying a paragraph or two would be 'fair usage' but your original comment seemed to imply copying a whole chapter, which would be a breach of copyright. Whether or not a breach is enforceable is a totally different issue, with the cost of lawyers usually making it not worth while.

But the first chapter of R&R is too detailed and far too long for the intro on Wikipedia; which is an encyclopedia for those who want a quick summary of concepts in the intro and in a lot of cases is all they will read. The place for that detail in R&R is further down the Wikipedia page.


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A place more suitable for your comment about Wiki's in general would be:
lotus-talk-f50/what-you-think-video-tutorials-t28485.html
where Jeff has given a link to the initial design of the LotusElan.net wiki, so you could influence it at an early stage.

Ah Ha....hadn't seen the vid, so now I understand. I think that the thing I'm banging on about is the library, which for me is the real content for a future LotusElan.net.

I'll get back in my box now!

Mark

Elanintheforest wrote:Back to the Wiki. I would strongly recommend that some sort of storyboard be established before a Wiki is started, to determine a few things....for example:

I totally agree. Been working on the storyboard and overall structure for the last 5 months. After investing over 500 hours into the wiki, we are almost ready to turn it loose for the games to begin.

Elanintheforest wrote:Purpose...To write up the .history of the car? development stages? change points? parts commonality? contemporary write-ups? brochures? photo library? maintenance / restoration? modifications? There are many more bits I'm sure.

All of the above.

Elanintheforest wrote:Structure and style.....if for example we wanted to define all the models, how they changed etc., this could run into hundreds of 'logical' pages. It would be useful to have a similar structure and style for defining an Elan 1600 to that defining a Plus 2 S130, an S4....etc.

Yes. I have provided an outline to get started. It will develop based on our members passion and commitment to the effort.

Elanintheforest wrote:Process.....how do we do this? Do 60 people just hammer away at the keyboard for a few months producing 100s, possibly 1000s of pages of 'stuff' with lots of repeats? Or, once the thing is storyboarded, do we put up 'drafts' to be peer reviewed before being 'published' ? And how are things reviewed?

If it is posted on the wiki, it is available for peer edits. Any and every page can be edited by all 1st gear members. The end result is a wiki that is peer written. It becomes the collective knowledge of the community. When we have members that can not agree, we have them both write up their perspective and it becomes part of the record. There is not a formal process, but one of collaboration writing.

Elanintheforest wrote:If you look at the Wiki entries that currently exist for most cars, they cover 1 page or so. Robinshaw and Ross is 170 pages of good stuff, Brian Buckland's book goes to 800 pages, a library of brochures would probably be over 100 pages, all the contemporary write-ups a fair bit more than that. If we're to add value to what already exists, there is going to be a lot of pages!

Please do not compare Wikipedia to the LotusElan.net Wiki. Wikipedia's goal is to be an encyclopedia. Wikipedia wants the one page overview. Our goal is the definitive source of all Lotus Elan and Plus 2 information. My expectation is the Wiki will be several thousand pages in size within a year or so.

Printed books have limitations. The Wiki does not. If we end up with 100 pages of brochures, it is ok. My guess is we will end up with several hundred pages of brochures. With the wiki, we do not have to limit brochures to the popular models (Sprint and +2S 130/5). It is ok on the wiki to have 50+ brochures on a S3. It is ok, if we have a member how thinks the S3 is the greatest Elan ever made and decides to write 40 pages on every nuance of the S3.

I hope we have a member like that for the S1, S2, S3, S4, Sprint, +2, +2S, +2s 130, 26R, Type 26, Type 36, Type 45, Type 50, Shapecraft, IWR Elan Coupe, Hexagon Estate Sprint, JPS models, Chris Neil Convertible, etc......

The only limit is our members willingness to work on the wiki and what Lotus originally created.

Elanintheforest wrote:This could be a really interesting and creative bit of work, and really energise the forum as well. But I really believe that it must be given a direction, purpose, structure and style before any serious work begins.

There are multiple ways to create information stores. Top down approaches that companies use on wiki's sound good from a control and command structure, but remove the creativity of the members. With the LotusElan.net wiki we will use a crowdsourcing model. The members will create and add where they want the wiki to go.

We have provided tools and some structure to start. The rest is up to the members to create.

And yes, it will liven things up.....

That sounds excellent, Jeff. I was rather fearful that it was going down the 1 page per topic with no links and no photos Wiki encyclopeda style, and didn't really see the point.

So where is the split between the library (which I guess is a structured repository of photos, articles, brochures and other artifacts) and the Wiki write-up?

For example, I can imagine writing a section in the Wiki about the S3, and one section would describe the dash layout, with a photo of the bonnet pulls, a photo of the heater control....etc. etc. With all the sections, I can imagine several hundred photos per model varient, plus diags from the parts manual maybe....plus other stuff. From what you are saying, all that lives in the Wiki? Then, reference out to the library for the Autocar test of the S3, Jul '65,the road and Track test August '65, and the other 'n' tests, and the Press photos, the brochures, etc.??

I'd love to see the structure you have developed, and obviously you have been grafting behind the scenes!

Mark

Mark,
this is Jeff's link to the prototype Wiki, its a bit hard to find now on the other topic.
http://www.lotuselan.net/wiki/Main_Page

billwill wrote:Mark,
this is Jeff's link to the prototype Wiki, its a bit hard to find now on the other topic.
http://www.lotuselan.net/wiki/Main_Page

Remember it is work in progress and many photos and much text are just place holders.

can someone remind me what this thread was about?

Unfortunately gents I believe that wikis work by having one page per topic - its called structure!

I think that we are going to end up with a wiki like no other. Which If developed as you suggest Jeff will become a swamp of information rather than the definitive reference.

Several hundred brochures was, I confess, not what was expecting.

I'm not against what is being suggested, but it does appear to be trying to be all things to all people.