On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 8:06 AM, Martin Swift <martin(a)swift.is> wrote:
How about rather invite him to doing so himself. He
seems quite
prolific and would serve whatever project he joined well.
True, but it's a lot of work to have to go through and reformat all
his work from HTML to wikitext. I have a bot that can do the
translations automatically, which will be a very efficient process.
Plus, I don't think all his works are suitable for Wikibooks, and I
would hate for him to spend time translating things and later have us
say that they aren't suitable. I think it would be far better to do
the manual labor for him, and let him focus his energies on generating
new content.
On a related note, he claims to have had a bad experience trying to
use some of his content at Wikipedia, so he's more cautious about
using his material at Wikibooks (although I've assured him that we
don't bite!)
It seems
like a better idea to contact him first before leeching anything.
Granted, he put it in the public domain, but giving him the option of
having a say whether his works belong on Wikibooks and Commons might
be a more polite thing to do.
I have contacted him, and we have his blessing to start transferring
materials. He asked to be kept in the loop about what we transfer and
when, but besides that there's nothing he really wants. As a measure
of courtesy, I'm going to post proper attribution information even
though the work is PD.
--Andrew Whitworth