[WikiEN-l] Forthcoming book about Wikipedia, "How Wikipedia Works" -- feedback wanted

[Mike Johnson]

Phoebe,

Perhaps it's a done deal, but I would also suggest Creative Commons for your book's license. 

I assume the reason you're going with the GFDL is that you want to include article snippets in your book. Due to the nature of the book you may be able to do that through simple Fair Use. And there's a chance that Wikipedia may be CC-by-sa by the time the book hits the shelves, and it wouldn't matter at any rate.

There's plenty to consider on both sides, of course, but based on my limited knowledge of the project I wouldn't rule out using CC-by-sa. It's a better license for books.

Mike
user:johnsonmx

Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2007 10:46:50 -0800
From: "phoebe ayers" <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Forthcoming book about Wikipedia,    "How Wikipedia
    Works" -- feedback wanted
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
    <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>,     "English Wikipedia"
    <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
    <3034369e0712041046x226fa59fl4eaada774d715e56 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

All,
I'm pleased to announce that four Wikipedians -- myself (user:phoebe),
Charles Matthews (user:Charles Matthews), Ben Yates (user:Tlogmer) and
SJ Klein (user:sj) -- are writing a book about using and understanding
Wikipedia, tentatively titled "How Wikipedia Works". It will be
published by [[No Starch Press]] in early 2008.

This guide will be focused on helping readers understand Wikipedia and
helping new editors contribute. We hope to include enough detail to
make it a useful reference for current contributors as well. (Note
that this is a different project from the O'Reilly book that was
discussed earlier on the lists).

We welcome community feedback and ideas, and hope to make this a truly
community-based work. There is a project page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Phoebe/book
We'll add detail there over the coming weeks, and have asked for
feedback in some specific areas. Please do contribute and send us your
thoughts and ideas.

Some details:

* The book will be licensed under the GFDL and an online version will
be available. (No Starch has been a great partner in this and has been
very supportive of open licensing). Where the book reprints on-wiki
documentation, the authors of that documentation will be credited.
* We're primarily focusing on the English Wikipedia, but there will be
brief sections about the sister projects and Wikipedias in other
languages, so we definitely welcome feedback and ideas from those
communities as well.
* A portion of the authors' proceeds will be donated to the Wikimedia
Foundation.

If you have any questions, concerns or ideas, please let me or one of
the other authors know. I'll be updating the project page with
progress information as we get closer to publication.

best,
Phoebe Ayers
phoebe.ayers at gmail.com