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
_________________________________________________________________
Get in the mood for Valentine's Day. View photos, recipes and more on your
Live.com page.
http://www.live.com/?addTemplate=ValentinesDay&ocid=T001MSN30A0701