Talk:The World Factbook
From Academic Kids
There have been substantial changes to the World Fact Book since the last update. Many of the pages referenced in the article have been updated as of January 27, 2005. For example Tiawan now has it's own entry and many of the maps are .gif files not the high quality .jpg or .tif.
Looks like there needs to be considerable re-write about The World Fact book. I'm not up to doing this myself. Too many changes that are not covered in the main entry here.
--Wjbean 16:51, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The CIA World Fact Book has maps that are apparently public domain. Should we use these on Wikipedia as well as the text? We could put these on the Wikipedia server without too much trouble and load them from there. - TS
I wouldn't mind at all; the only reason I didn't post them already was that some of them are rather large; they go from just under 40k for some of the island countries to 238k for Indonesia and 279k for the world map. Even the small flags shown at the top of each country's main page are around 14k. Those are all .jpgs; I haven't yet tried saving them in different formats or at different compressions. But I do think it would be valuable to have them online.
JPG is a totally inappropriate format for these; they would be of much higher quality and similar size as PNGs, but converting them from their present web form won't work: they'll just become bigger with the same low quality they have now. Once they've been though the JPG lossy conversion there's no way to get the lost data back. They need to be rescanned from a paper copy and re-encoded as PNG. I don't have a copy of the paper myself, nor do I know what it would cost, but I could do the scanning work if I got my hands on one. --Lee Daniel Crocker
Actually the ones on the CIA site now look fine, I think. Take a look to see if you agree; maybe they can just be converted to PNG and used as-is. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/indexgeo.html
Nope, they are still JPG and they look awful. Even the icons on the page are JPG--those webmasters really don't have a clue. Converting them to PNG from those JPGs will just make them even worse. They really need to be rescanned from a paper edition into PNG originals which will be clear and sharp and probably compress even better than the JPGs on the CIA's site. --LDC
The CIA World Factbook contains uses non-standard country codes and currency codes. I think we should use the ISO standard ones, which are most common on the internet anyway. Thus the FIPS codes in the World factbook entries should be converted to ISO standard codes when wikifying the article. -- Simon J Kissane
I don't know what you mean. Can you give an example?
Please see article FIPS two-letter country codes. For example, BO maps to different countries in FIPS and ISO 3166 codings. -- The Anome
Does this information belong in the ARTICLE:
"Actually, http://www.cia.gov/ says Federal law prohibits use of the words "Central Intelligence Agency," the initials "CIA," the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central Intelligence Agency. Given that we are willing to use the words "Central Intelligence Agency," it seems to me that we should be willing to use the seal, since the restrictions are the same."
It seems to me that it should be here in Talk. --Zoe
Well, at any rate I've removed the speculation that we should be able to use the seal--I don't think anyone would argue that our use of the name will be "reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central Intelligence Agency." We write about everyone deserving an entry, and aren't much concerned whether they approve or not. We're an encyclopedia, and that's what encyclopedias do. Cheers, Koyaanis Qatsi, Saturday, July 6, 2002
I'd be interested to hear ideas on how Wikipedia pages whose text derives almost entirely from the CIA WFB could incorporate updates or corrections they make. It strikes me there's danger when grabbing large external texts that it just becomes too much trouble to check these sources regularly, and then to amend Wikipedia's entry suitably (which by then may well have had several Wiki edits). Can anyone conceive automatic methods that might work? -- Laurence
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2 biased?! |
Copyright on CIA World Factbook?
Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump
I was going to Bartleby.com. They have a ton of books online. While browsing their copy of the CIA World Factbook, they had this following info:
TITLE: The World Factbook. (http://www.bartleby.com/151/)
PUBLISHED: Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2002.
ISBN: 1-58734-113-1.
CITATION: The World Factbook. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, 2002; Bartleby.com, 2002. www.bartleby.com/151/. [Date of Printout].
ONLINE ED.: Published April 2003 by Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com/); © Copyright Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com/), Inc. (Terms of Use (http://www.bartleby.com/sv/terms.html)).
As you see below, it appears that Bartleby.com is claiming a copyright on the Factbook! Does this overide the CIA's declaration that the World Factbook is public domain?
-- hoshie
- IANAL, but that's basically a collection copyright claimed on their particular published edition. It may or may not have any validity if you, say, copy text from their pages without keeping their unique and creative page formatting. It certainly is irrelevant for material copied straight off of the CIA's web site. --Brion 18:18 27 May 2003 (UTC)
- Thanks for the answer. I just wish Bartleby.com would be clear on what they claim rights to... -- hoshie
- Does Bartleby actually have rights to any of the stuff up there? Isn't almost all of it actually public domain stuff? john 08:46 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)
- AFAIK, Bartleby ether uses PD works or licenses them from copyright holders like everyone else. BTW, if I want the Factbook, I get it from the CIA. Bartleby has too much noise if you know what I mean... -- hoshie
Editions of Factbook
- According to the Web site:
- The hardcopy represents information as of Jan. 1st of the year on the cover.
- Various firsts (well, the two listed since 1970) involving either medium have come in June, tho the first (hardcover, classified) edition was August of 1962.
- The article Wikipedia:Status of the porting of the CIA World Factbook noted the new year of the on-line edition
- in December 2002 (2002 edition) and
- between April and Aug of 2003 (2003 edition)
- And as of today, in Feb 2004, it is still the 2003 edition that is on line at [1] (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/)
(Hence it sounds to me as if each edition of the online version applies until the middle of the following year, tho it gets updated throughout that edition's term.)
... and As of 2003 Links
No big deal, except that at least 6 articles on Cocos (Keeling) Islands use a pipe-hidden as of 2003 link, well-meaningly, in lines reading
- Information from the CIA World Factbook, 2003 edition.
And we are months away from being able to turn them from 2003-edition references to 2004 ones.
These six are orphans, i think, and may be doomed. But whatever their future, there is no telling how many other as-of-linking pages like them are out there: only the "first" 500 as of 2003-linking pages can be displayed by What links here. Any in addtion to these six are lurking beyond that veil, also awaiting updating, and also acting as part of the crowd standing in the way of updating those even further down the list. In fact, there could be enuf of them to be, at sometime before June, the only thing keeping non-Factbook as of 2003 pages even further on in the list from being considered for updates.
I propose to create a redirect, in the article space, to CIA World Factbook 2003 edition. (I've already put this info at Wikipedia talk:Status of the porting of the CIA World Factbook as well.) It will serve an analogous purpose to as of 2003, without coming due 6 months before it can be acted upon. Those who watch this article should be aware of all this, IMO. --Jerzy 16:19, 2004 Feb 17 (UTC)
Try {{msg:2003}}. It's got a link to this main article, deals with the 'as of 2003' "what links to this" problem, and creates a page where we can easily track which articles have been tagged to the 2003 Factbook. It can also be updated for later versions of the Factbook. - Jonel 03:13, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)
biased?!
Despite the fact that many websites use information and data from the "World Factbook", i have a tendency to believe that the data may be biased,since it's been devised and collected by US agency and researchers. What do you think about this? I am sure that there are more balanced factbooks about countries out ther(either websites or printed materials).Isn't Wikipedia all about bringing different perspectives--i.e. from South/Third World research institutes, as well? — Rageangainstthemashine 01:58, Jul 28, 2004
- For the most part, the CIA factbook bases its information on material collected by other governments or international agencies- it's not like they collect literacy or life expectancy data of their own.
- This is not so much a bias as an indication that the data is often not very consistent. — 24.28.163.121 15:05, Aug 13, 2004
-: Why would the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip BE included as Israeli land? The comment was posited as though it was a glaring miscalculation of the CIA not to list it as Israeli land. Odd H. Rap Brown
crediting source of information
Shouldn't any articles using information from the Factbook contain some sort of source information? There are many articles that do not. Is there an existing template that could be used, similar to say Template:bioguide? older≠wiser 15:15, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
- Answering my own question, there is Template:factbook which can be added by inserting {{factbook}} to an article and which currently consists of the following text: This article incorporates information from The World Factbook, which is in the public domain. older≠wiser 15:32, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)
CIA/Diego Garcia link
On 24 March, User:Gregis17 deleted http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/5_cia-lies.html, a link critical of The World Factbook. I feel this is unfair because there are people who don't like the Factbook and it appears this guy linked is one of them. - Hoshie/Crat 23:00, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
- The article seems more critical of the CIA, the British and American governments, and the military status of the island, rater than the World Factbook per se. I think the link is also heavily biased and does contain some falsehoods, therefore it is not an appropiate link here, and should be removed. Astrotrain 11:01, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)
- There are a few falsehoods in the article:
- firstly the House of Lords can block non-finance bills for upto 3 years, and it is rare for the Commons to use the Parliament Act to override the Lords - the UK does have a constitution, although not a codified one - the UK House of Commons cannot vote to keep itself in power without elections, because the monarch can disolve Parliament at any time, and has the power to with-hold consent for any UK Act of Parliament - the court case in question ruled that it could not enforce the repatriation of the expelled citizens of BIOT.
The article does highlight the disgraceful treatment of these people. However in the UK, it is possible to expel people from their homes via complulsary purchase orders for example. I believe the court only sided with the islanders because they were removed from the entire island.
In any case, the article should not be linked from here because: - it only mentions the World Factbook briefly - the article is an attack on the US and UK govts, and the British constitution, which are not the subject of this article - if you feel it shoud be linked, maybe from the Diego Garcia or the BIOT page. However, it is basically an extreme and biased attack, and is not enlightening in any way. Astrotrain 10:19, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
