Re: Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

>Well, it seems to me that the purpose of Wikibooks is to be "the
>open-content textbooks collection", not "the open-content textbooks
>collection that anyone can edit".  But perhaps this is a matter that
>the Foundation should be consulted on.  I know that Jimbo has stepped
>in to reorient the site in the past, with the game guides and so on.

It's a little pretentious to think that wikibooks should change itself, or 
that it should be changed by the WMF to allow any one particular book. Since 
it's inception, Wikibooks (and all WMF projects for that matter) have been 
primarily concerned with open content and collaboration. The rejection of 
one or both of these ideals is not one that should be encouraged or 
accepted.

Even if the professor's motivation is not financial, the desire for 
recognition still counts as personal gain. If the selection as wikibooks as 
the webhost for the book is made only because of readership traffic, and it 
benefits the author more then it benefits the project, then I would 
certainly call it an attempt to use Wikibooks as a personal webhost.

> > This point is true, but wikibooks is not supposed to be an advertising
> > platform or a personal webhost.
>
>No, but it is supposed to get quality textbooks to as many readers as
>possible.  That goal is better served, leaving aside for the moment
>how fundamental wiki is to Wikibooks, by accepting a quality textbook
>than by refusing one.

The stated goal of wikibooks is "the creation of open content textbooks". No 
part of that statement may be omitted and still have it be truth. We are 
more concerned with content creation then content hording, and the books 
must be "open content" (and therefore free from unilateral editorial 
control). Plenty of quality textbooks have been turned away from wikibooks 
in the past, and many will likely be turned away in the future. We are not 
currently desperate for new books enough to compromise our policies.

>Now, she's perfectly happy for other people to modify it.  She would
>be fine if there were two copies, each linking to the other, one
>written by her and one editable by anyone.  In her words:
>
> > I'd also be happy to have a version of it
> > available for people to revise, so long as that one is clearly marked
> > as an open mss and, this is the key point, so long as the one I wrote
> > (perhaps revised as per some of the suggestions, as I have with the
> > comments of 150 CCNY students and various art historians) remains
> > posted, clearly marked as the work I wrote.
>
>Perhaps this would be acceptable?  Possibly the unmodifiable one need
>not even be hosted by Wikibooks, just linked to by it, which would
>neatly solve all the problems.  I assume that Wikibooks would be happy
>to put a prominent link to the original at the top of every module, if
>it's available online somewhere.

This would be perfectly acceptable. As has been done in the past, if a book 
is donated to wikibooks, prominent links will be displayed to the original 
version of the book, and information will be posted about the original 
author. If she has a PDF or other version of the book already, that version 
could even be uploaded to our server for reference (although we can't make a 
guarantee that any files uploaded won't be modified or overwritten, but it 
is more difficult).

--Andrew Whitworth

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