Re: Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

>Well, you can just protect the pages.  I assume that sysops won't go
>willy-nilly editing them.  Obviously then she won't be able to
>directly update it, but she could still use the equivalent of {{edit
>protected}}.

I think that the idea of this professor wanting to maintain creative control 
over her book is a difficult one to reconcile with Wikibooks, and one that I 
don't think a compromise is going to be found on. the primary goal of 
wikibooks is the collaborative authoring of textbooks, not simply a 
compilation of existing textbooks. While there have been some efforts in the 
past to "donate" existing books to our server, those efforts were only 
undertaken because the authors agreed to license the text under a compatable 
license, and were also willing to relinquish complete editorial control.

One point that is worth making, however, is that contributorship on 
wikibooks is reasonably small. So long as your professor actively monitors 
her book, it is unlikely that anybody else will ever edit it (except for the 
occasional small spelling or grammar fix). As an example of this, the United 
Nations have donated a number of free books to our server (about two dozen, 
I believe), and besides small fixes on occasion, nobody has substantially 
edited any of those books in months.

By being an active editor on this book, it is likely that your professor 
will maintain creative control by default, although if other interested 
contributors do try to make changes, there really isn't anyway that she 
could stop it from happening.

>This has pitfalls with respect to readership volume.  Basically,
>publishing it on Wikibooks will ensure that it reaches a comparatively
>large audience, through Wikipedia sister links if nothing else.

This point is true, but wikibooks is not supposed to be an advertising 
platform or a personal webhost. Getting the "wiki benefit" of readership 
requires that authors release there contributions under a particular 
license, and that they agree to let anybody edit it mercilessly. It's the 
price you have to pay, unfortunately.

--Andrew Whitworth

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