Jump to content

Talk:The World Factbook

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by The Anomebot (talk | contribs) at 10:46, 9 September 2003 (moving link to point to user namespace). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

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.
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; © Copyright Bartleby.com, Inc. (Terms of Use).

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
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:The_World_Factbook&oldid=2423753"