Jimbo wrote:
>This whole discussion makes #1 [GFDL only]
>seem like our only recourse.
That's what I thought... Which is a real shame because at first glance dual
licensing seemed like such a neat idea. But if we cannot easily use Wikipedia
as a text resource then that would hamper the project.
>Let's discuss this for a few days, and then
>I'll chat with RMS and Lessig about it.
That sounds like a good idea.
>I know RMS is going to say "why don't you
>just use GNU FDL?" because part of the point
>of GNU licenses is just this sort of 'viral' spread
>that forces people to stick with GNU licenses.
I'm not so sure RMS is so religious when it comes to the GNU FDL though.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html states:
:Licenses for Other Types of Works
:
:We believe that published software and documentation should be free software
:and free documentation. We recommend making all sorts of educational and
:reference works free also, using free documentation licenses such as the GNU
:Free Documentation License (GNU FDL).
Note especially:
:For other kinds of works, we recommend you consider the licenses proposed by
:Creative Commons.
>But maybe I can convince him to release (someday?)
>an FDL 2.0 that is a lot more general and easy to
>understand.
Or simply a FDL that requires derivative works to be licensed under one of a
select list of similar viral copyleft licenses like the Creative Commons
Share Alike license. That would make it possible for us to import GFDL only
text into the textbook projects and then downstream users of the textbook
text could choose between GFDL or Creative Commons Share Alike.
But I'm not sure if that would be legal.
--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav
Now that the wiki is set-up I think it is imperative for us to decide about
the dual licensing issue. I'm all for it but I do have one major concern:
Specifically I want to know if it would be possible to import Wikipedia text
to the textbook project without having to get the permission of every
Wikipedian who contributed to the Wikipedia article to agree to dual-license
their work.
For more detail please read my previous post on this topic:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-July/000089.html
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
Here is another link to a group seeking to develop open
content textbooks:
http://otp.inlimine.org/
A bit of text from their site:
>The mission of the open textbook project is to develop
openly copyrighted (copylefted) textbooks using the free
software development model. The books, developed
collaboratively, would be freely available to download,
modify, print and distribute. Not only are textbooks
unavailable to a great number of students in the US and
abroad simply due to cost, few textbooks are universally
suitable for courses in any given subject and many are
simply sub-standard. The Open Textbook Project aims to
address these issues by using a collaborative development
model which has proven its effectiveness in the world of
free software.
>Development has begun!
>We are currently working on the website and the
interactive tools with which individual textbook projects
will be developed. We'll make a more formal announcement
when there is more ware and less vapor.
And from the main page:
>in Limine strives to find innovative and thoughtful ways
to improve education and the arts. Our efforts take the
form of well-focused, low cost projects. Our organizational
model is an incubator in which we nurture small, sometimes
risky projects with administrative and financial support
until they are able to stand on their own. We are
constantly seeking new ideas. We don't aim to change the
world (just small pieces of it).
Jimmy: Have you been in any more contact with those Cali
folks, the Creative Commmons fellow or anyone else?
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Brion wrote:
> Should now be editable:
> http://textbook.wikipedia.org/
>
> No special features so far; like meta, it's running
> in UTF-8 mode. Has
> not yet been thoroughly tested, so be warned. :)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Thank you Brion! :)
-- mav
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Should now be editable: http://textbook.wikipedia.org/
No special features so far; like meta, it's running in UTF-8 mode. Has
not yet been thoroughly tested, so be warned. :)
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I have an idea on how to do the URLs for the Textbook wiki.
As much of textbook structure is divided into chapters and
subsections, and this structure lends itself well to the
web, maybe we could reflect this in the URLs of the
textbooks. I know that this was not appropriate for the
general nature of the WP but as we move into the specific
nature of the textbook subsite it could work.
http://textbook.wikipedia.org/organic_chemistry/foundational_concepts/histo…
could be the full nested URL of a section on the vital
force historical idea of organic chemistry. The name of the
page would be only the words after the last slash, here,
"Vital force".
Maybe the page could have a series of links at the top to
each level of the heirarchy:
Organic chemistry > Foundational concepts > History of
organic chemistry > Vital force
All of the sections of the book on organic chemistry would
be housed under
http://textbook.wikipedia.org/organic_chemisry/ and the
software to compile the "next" page function for each
module could just read thru the URLs nested in the
/organic_chemistry/ section. If someone wanted to create a
different book on the same subject they could just come up
with a slightly different opener, like /ochem/ or
/organic123/ etc.
Check out the link I sent once before,
http://test.wikipedia.org/Organic_textbook , for an idea of
how a book could be structured, it shouldnt hold any big
surprises.
The software could also have the feature of telling after
each link of the total number of links nested below so the
reader can have a relative idea at each step of where the
bulk of the content lies.
One final idea is to use an idea similar to that employed
by the Yahoo briefcase where you can copy modules from one
folder to another, for example to create a derivative
textbook or just take a couple of modules from one to
another without having to open each page and copy out the
code.
The idea of using nested URLs will also help us get around
funky URLs and/or page names for pages with common names
like "Problem set". Plus this structure of URL hierarchy
should be familiar to most internet users already so there
is little learning curve.
--Karl
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http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_textbook
I have the basic structure down now and navigational
hierarchy .. maybe y'all could give me some constructive
feedback. Except for the last sections, which we have not
gone over yet in class so I have no idea.
PS Thanks Toby for the hand with some corrections.
Also thanks to whoever got the test.wikipedia server back
up and running today, it was a great workday for me today
because of it.
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I've been chatting with Larry Lessig about copyright and license
issues, and of course he's a big proponent of his own Creative Commons
licenses.
http://creativecommons.org/license/
The GNU FDL is confusing and difficult to apply in a wiki context, and
a lot of the language presumes software documentation.
The Creative Commons licenses are much simpler.
I believe that the 'Attribution-Share Alike' license or the 'Share
Alike' license is going to be the right one to use if we did choose to
go that route.
Actually, what I think we should do, from the outset, is dual-license
everything under both licenses. That ensures that the text is
compatible with Wikipedia.
It's a bit late for Wikipedia proper to do much good with dual licensing,
but for textbooks, it might be a good idea to do it from the outset.
--Jimbo
Jimbo wrote:
>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>> The reason why our encyclopedias
>> have to be NPOV is because our
>> audience is a general one. The
>> reason why our textbooks have to
>> be DPOV is because our audience is
>> very focused (the biology student,
>> for example) and we need to bring
>> that student through the material
>> in a logical and efficient way.
>
>Hmmm, don't be so quick to dismiss
>NPOV in this context. Consider:
>
>1. Within various disciplines there
> are legitimate and ongoing disputes
> of which students should be made aware.
Yes, exactly. But our current NPOV policy states that
we should include all major viewpoints in a neutral
manor (notice the lack of focus). This makes perfect
sense in an general focus encyclopedia but doesn't
make much sense in a textbook. I was planning all
along to take the NPOV text and make some minor
qualifications in reference to the scope under which
the new policy (DPOV) would operate.
>2. If "outside" views are likely to
> be encountered by students, then students
> should be made aware of them, including
> the weakness in their arguments.
It depends on the focus of the particular course you
are writing for. An intro class in biology shouldn't
spend too much time defending the underlying premise
that modern biology is founded on (namely, evolution).
There is a great deal of material to get through and
therefore the arguments of creationism needn't be
given much space or much credibility in such a
textbook. However, if we can figure out how to
organize chapters into modules then we can potentially
create a very wide-foccused (and huge) textbook
reference edition on all aspects of biology (including
many counter-arguments to evolution and alternate
interpretations of other aspects). That way
instructors would be able to assemble textbooks from
these modules into a variety of different
configurations with each having a different emphasis
(there would have to be a core set of modules that
would form the foundation and framework of the
textbook though).
>> Same thing is true for a section of a
>> medical textbook on abortion ; we leave
>> out most of the history and the different
>> political views on the subject and just
>> talk about the procedure itself and maybe
>> have a single paragraph at the end sating
>> something about access to the procedure
>> and that risks doctors face when they
>> choose to specialize in this area.
>
>Right, but that's not POV-editing, that's
>just restricting topical focus. Here's how
>to tell -- an article which describes the
>procedure neutrally (and in medical detail,
>say) could be agreed upon by all reasonable
>people, regardless of their political or
>ethical views on the matter.
Our current NPOV policy does not restrict topical
focus; that was my point. It reads in part "A general
purpose encyclopedia is a collection of synthesized
knowledge presented from a neutral point of view. To
whatever extent possible, encyclopedic writing should
steer clear of taking any particular stance other than
the stance of the neutral point of view." Simply
replacing "encyclopedia" with "textbook" will not do
for a textbook editing policy. If NPOV (as written)
were applied to the evolution chapter of the above
biology textbook example then we would have to present
creationism viewpoints on an equal footing with the
viewpoints of biologists. This is not acceptable when
trying to explain evolution in a biology textbook
because no serious biologist gives any credence to
anti-evolution ideas. But NPOV can and should be
applied to the major viewpoints that exist from within
the biological sciences. There could still be optional
modules that deal with the viewpoints of society as a
whole - the larger debate (so that the same textbook
could be used in a class that deals with those types
of issues). The core modules need to be very specific
in focus, though. Otherwise students won't know what
to think (yes, part of education is indoctrination
into the POV of a discipline).
So yes, we can write about the current understanding
of what evolution is and how it is theorized to
operate but we cannot mix that with creationism
viewpoints in the same module. So a modified NPOV
("DPOV") would need to operate in a compartmentalized
fashion; within a core module it operates from within
the context of whatever discipline the textbook is
being written for; but in an optional module it can
operate with a wider focus (although most optional
modules are going to be more detailed treatments of
certain topics raised in a core module). In short, the
goals of what each module needs to do need to be
focused. That requires restricting NPOV to that
context.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
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