[Textbook-l] Anonymous contributions

Fri Aug 1 17:54:07 UTC 2003

Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
>If we just do that, we'd need some way to know 
>their name in order to cite it, which is impossible. 

We have already gone over this while you were gone (I forgot which list..). 
Anon contributors work under the pseudonym which happens to be their IP 
address. It is their choice to do so. Real names are not needed.

>Why not have it all just be the same as Wikipedia is? 
>That seems to be working. I don't like ownership of
>knowledge, and I'd rather that everything contributed
>to wikibooks, anonymous or otherwise, is considered
>authored by wikibooks, just like Wikipedia.

No Dan, that is not how Wikipedia works. All unique content is owned by the 
contributors on Wikipedia (same here). However, by placing their work on the 
Wikimedia server they all agree to license a copy of their work to Wikimedia 
under terms of the GNU FDL. 

>Additionally, some textbooks (like my Algebra I
>textbook, for one) are partially based on Wikipedia
>content, so it would be nearly impossible to say that
>all of the non-anonymous contributers in any way 
>own the content; that would just be too broad.

In order to comply with the GNU FDL you need to do more to cite just what 
material you are using from Wikipedia. On the Algebra I authors page, IMO, 
you should list (maybe in a subpage) the Wikipedia articles you copied and 
provide link backs to them. 

Come to think of it, we need to form a policy on how to use Wikipedia content 
(how to cite being the most important thing to consider). 

Aside: It would also be nice if links to other Wikimedia projects looked 
different than external links. A green color would be nice..

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)