Hello List,
I got here via Erik at the WM Foundation.
I'm working with Pratham Books [1] and we're a non-profit children's
book publishing house that seeks to put a book in every child's hand.
To further this goal, we are in the process of developing a reading
portal for India, on the lines of the water portal [2] that we hope
will ultimately be the de facto repository of information related to
children's books in India.
An integral part of this portal is a wiki-like platform where we hope
to upload all of our books, close to 1000 of them, and allow them to
be translated and edited and downloaded in high and lo res PDF's by
users. The goal of this project is to untie distribution of the books
from the physical medium to further our mission, as mentioned
previously.
However, given that it's children's books, maintaining and preserving
the layout of the books, the pictures with respect to the text, is
crucially important. We also contemplate uploading blank templates, of
only the layout and pictures, for people to use to write their own
stories.
A few areas we're looking for assistance are:
User Interface
Given the nature of the content we're seeking to create and enable use
and re-use of , the ease of use and the intuitiveness of the UI will
be crucial in building support from a user base.
Platform Design
Ideally, we'd like the platform to conform to the same standards that
the project does of being open, free and modifiable. However, the
deeper technical issues are, at this point, a little beyond our scope
of abilities.
Community Building
In particular, building an active and engaged community around the
idea and the content will define whether this platform works. Also,
issues and processes for moderation and administration from within the
community.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you.
Best,
[1] http://prathambooks.org/
[2] http://www.arghyam.org/
--
Please read our new blog at:
http://blog.prathambooks.org/
Join our Facebook Page too:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pratham-Books/9307274926
forwarding to local lists for reminders
mark
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Cary Bass <cbass(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 1:04 AM
Subject: [Wikimania-l] [[WM2008]] Scholarship submission deadline
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>,
"Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <
wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
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Just as a quick note, the Wikimania 2008 scholarship deadline will be
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have it submitted by then.
Scholarship information may be found at
<http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships>.
Cary Bass
Volunteer Coordinator
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia
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Phone: 415.839.6885
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If you remember back in November we were asked what would be on a technical
wishlist for Wikibooks. One of the things we said[2] we wanted was a way to
list all books & enumerate them (all *books* as opposed to all pages). Ramac
and Pietrodn have been working on an extension[2] which does this.
Darklama and I have taken an initial look at things, and Simetrical found
one error that has been corrected. Anyone who is technically-minded is
invited to review & test the code. Everyone else is invited to discuss
improvements.
The extension is documented at mediawiki.org, but here's a quick overview
for the sake of convenience:
*Adds the {{NUMBEROFBOOKS}} variable
*Adds [[Special:AllBooks]], which lists all books in specified namespaces
*List books beginning at some prefix using ?offset=whatever
*The regex used to determine what is a book and what isn't is a system
message, so administrators may edit it, though the default should work for
most (all?) Wikibooks languages
After this much time with apparently no interest in developing anything for
Wikibooks it's exciting to finally see such active development on something
needed specifically for this project. Many thanks to Ramac and Pietrodn for
their work, and also those who have helped them along the way. Hopefully
this is the beginning of a trend, and more tools will be developed to
fulfill our wishlist!
-Mike.lifeguard
[1]
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2007-November/001164.html
[2] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AllBooks
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jay Walsh <jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 8:56 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Blog is live
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Hi all,
We are pleased to notify you that today we flipped the switch on the Wikimedia
Foundation's official blog! Wikimedia Blog can be found at
http://blog.wikimedia.org
Some background info: this will be a space for WMF staff to post news and
information about the work we're engaged in. We'll also bring in guest
contributors, board members etc to post. Comments are pre-moderated
for the time
being, and we're hoping for lots of civility. Comments will be moderated by
several volunteer moderators and staff as necessary.
We have some basic posting guidelines (generally short, fairly simple english,
conversational etc) so we can keep it reader friendly and useful. We expect a
wide audience - media, public, users, you name it! And we'll work
hard to keep it
interesting - and regular (hopefully posts every other business day).
Always welcome your views, and your understanding about our work-in-progress :)
Hope you enjoy! Looking forward to hearing your views.
Thanks,
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609
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--
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023
---
Note: This e-mail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
Dear Wikibookians,
After years of blood, sweat, and tears, I present to you the culmination of
my editing and layout work on *Wikijunior Big Cats*. It is available for
viewing at Scribd.com and I hope to begin physical distribution next month.
As you may notice, the content was "frozen" before a few changes were made
to the structure of the chapters. I would like to ask a favour: read it. I
have tried to eliminate all instances of vandalism and errors that got
copied into the published version, but 12 eyes are better than 2.
I look forward to working with the Wikibooks community to help with the
physical distribution of more Free Texts.
Thank you for your support,
Gabriel Hurley
PS: I'm thinking of writing an Interdisciplinary text on Toast. Anyone
interested in helping?
1) I am new to this list so, please forgive me if this is the wrong
place, the wrong topic, the wrong anything for the following:
2) I am developing a series of mathematics texts under a GNU Free
Documentation License available at freemathtexts.org
3) It occurred to me that they may offer a contents base for a wikibook.
4) As the project described there is far from being completed and
still awfully time-consuming I am quite unable to do it myself but
would be quite happy to grant permission if permission is needed or
whatever.
Regards
--schremmer