Re: Cataloging

Stanley "Toshmann" Ozoemena wrote:
> Please, forgive me for the diversion, but...
>   I have to know;
>   Should I volunteer my time, effort, et cetera... Would I ever get paid by Wikimedia for all my work?  
>   I love Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, et al... But I gotta have an answer to this question before I take the plunge!
>    
>      
>   

The real question is is not if you will ever get paid by Wikimedia 
(highly doubtful, even if you are doing some major administrative 
service like keeping track of the financial records.... this has been 
done by volunteers in the past), but the question is if what you are 
doing will be siphoned off by somebody else and will they get paid for 
your work?

Everybody who participates on Wikibooks at the moment are all 
volunteers, and to my knowledge nobody has earned a single euro or 
dollar from activities directly related to Wikibooks, even though there 
is a tentative attempt at trying to "sell" Wikibooks content in the form 
of printed books.  If you are going to expect to get paid, it would be 
through these ancillary services and products, and not through any 
actual content development or organization work within the Wikibooks 
website itself.  And you will not be ever receiving a paycheck from the 
Wikimedia Foundation, unless you directly apply for one of the very, 
very few staff positions that are offered directly by the Wikimedia 
Foundation.  Nearly every one of those positions is significant support 
position that involves a task that simply must be done in order to keep 
what amounts to be a significant non-profit internet service provider up 
and going, and the funds necessary to keep those positions paid for is 
very hard earned with each position that open up is something that is 
reviewed very carefully not only by the WMF board, but by the community 
at large as well.

I would also like to point out that both Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley 
have a significantly diminished role in the operation of the Wikimedia 
Foundation currently (by their own choosing) compared to what it was 
even a year ago.  Angela resigned her position as a board member, and 
Jimbo (Jimmy Wales) resigned as chairman even though he still retains a 
seat on the board at the moment.  The current chair of the Wikimedia 
Foudation, Florance Devouard, has been doing a very good job under the 
circumstances especially as she still is in the shadow of Jimbo but 
trying to sustain a sort of life after Jimbo for both the Foundation as 
well as the Wikimedia projects.... and notable as well that Jimbo is 
keeping a strong "hands off" approach to the process.  So to even note 
governance of the Wikimedia projects has been changing, and I expect it 
will change significantly in the future.  The upcoming elections for 
positions within the board is going to be rather significant.

The one thing that keeps others from making money off of the volunteer 
work (or at least keeps it from getting out of hand) is the Gnu Free 
Document License (GFDL).  If you have ever studied or looked at its 
"sister license", the GNU Public License (also General Public License or 
simply GPL), a multi-billion dollar a year industry has grown up around 
products that support mainly computer software written under the terms 
of that license, most notable is the computer operating system known as 
Linux.  In the realm of general written content, the major dominant 
"player" is Wikipedia, followed by the various Wikimedia sister projects.

The major point about the GFDL that keeps profit making actitivity to a 
minimum is that there is never any "exclusive" right to republish 
Wikibooks content granted to any one person or company.  There are 
companies who do make a modest income from the publication and sales of 
public domain literature such as Shakespearian plays or classical novels 
like "Moby Dick", but these are either side lines to a normal commercial 
publishing business or by companies who are into the crafting aspect of 
making outstanding quality books instead of trying to churn out the 
latest round of bestsellers that will be thrown away and forgotton at 
this time next year.  If there is a business model for content like 
Wikibooks, it would be nearly identical to that of public domain books.  
Unfortunately, this also sets a very high standard in terms of the 
quality of the content we must have within Wikibooks in order to be 
taken seriously.  Any company or group that starts to charge 
unreasonable prices for Wikibooks that are physically printed (if there 
is even a demand at all) will find a competitor starting up and selling 
the same thing but at a cheaper price.

As the Wikibooks website itself is offering the content absolutely free, 
and free of advertising, it seems nearly impossible that anybody is 
going to offer a price any cheaper unless they are going to somehow pay 
people to read Wikibooks content.  I saw stuff this bizzare during the 
dot-com boom, but I don't see how that is going to apply to Wikibooks 
directly.  There are a few companies who have tried to set up "mirrors" 
of Wikibooks content such as http://www.wikibooks.net/ (this used to be 
a nearly identical copy of the "wikibooks.org" website), but I have seen 
nearly all of these mirrors abandon the effort except in a few very 
specialized situations.  And those websites are only copying a portion 
of Wikibooks and not the whole thing.