Re: Offer to upload a book, subject to conditions

On Thu, Feb 08, 2007 at 03:18:16PM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
> But this is hopefully not an argument we need to continue, because I
> think everyone will be happy with Wikibooks having a modifiable copy
> and linking prominently to the main copy.

Yes, I believe that would be very acceptable to everyone (wish I'd
come up with the idea myself ;-).

I'm sorry for what may appear like a hostile tone in parts of this
discussion. I would like to point out that there is some background to
why the community is so strictly defending the collaborative control.
We aren't just blindly following the old means, but also trying to
protect the ends.

In the Wikibooks community, it is practically near impossible to
attribute a contributor with status of "main editor" and give that
user more editorial control than others. This /has/ been suggested and
discussed in the past and the community found that the drawbacks and
pitfalls were to many and too severe to accept this.

I don't think anyone would contend to say that some books wouldn't
benefit from a main author. But because of the current structure of
the project it is unfeasable.

Similar arguments apply to the topic of "free webhosting". I certainly
don't think that your friend was looking to leach of Wikibooks. Most
academics that I've interacted with are deeply dedicated to their
field, and to furthering our collective understanding of the topic.
Still, while your friend most likely has the best of intentions, at
Wikibooks we don't allow conditions set on content.

Again, it's not because we're hard headed and unwilling to deliberate
the options. It's because we're an open community without any formal
ranks (e.g. admins have no more authority in discussion and disputes).
If your friend is looking to publish in a community with control based
on expertese, she might want to - ehemm - look to academia...

More seriously; your friend might actually want to explore whether
there is some project like MIT's OpenCourseWare open to her:
  <http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm>
  "a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students,
  and self-learners around the world."

I have no delusions about the superiority of Wikibooks over academia.
It's just one method of content creation and still in it's infancy.

Thank you for contributing,
Martin Swift

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