On 2/8/07, Andrew Whitworth wknight8111@hotmail.com wrote:
I think that the idea of this professor wanting to maintain creative control over her book is a difficult one to reconcile with Wikibooks, and one that I don't think a compromise is going to be found on. the primary goal of wikibooks is the collaborative authoring of textbooks, not simply a compilation of existing textbooks.
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.
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. In that regard, it benefits everyone more to allow a good textbook to piggyback on Wikibooks' and Wikipedia's success. The issue of wiki or not does remain, of course.
On 2/8/07, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Honestly, another "alternative" to this perhaps might be Wikiversity. The policies are not quite as firm there, but I would have to say that the definition of a textbook on Wikiversity would be much stronger than perhaps what you would find on Wikibooks, where more general purpose "How-to" books are allowed. If this could be integrated into a Wikiversity "course", there might even be some very real interest in having this hosted on Wikiversity. Certainly this is something to bring up on the Wikiversity "Collequium" (the Wikiversity village pump).
That's possible, of course, but I think that the issue of wiki (which is the point of contention here) would be just as much of an issue there as here. And while of course there's some overlap between Wikiversity and Wikibooks, I think it makes substantially more sense for Wikibooks to take a textbook than Wikiversity.
try to find out why she is insisting on maintaining control over the word of the book and not opening it up for collaboration.
Well, as I see it, the openness of wiki and the openness of traditional academia are similar in some ways but not the same. In academia, it's common to allow others extensive use of your work for free (after distribution costs, which are now close to zero with the advent of the Internet), but to claim credit for the work. That is, she wrote this book, and so it goes on her CV. If it's widely used, that probably also goes on her CV, along with the publisher and so forth. But "Wrote a textbook that other people modified and that is now used" isn't the sort of thing that's customary among academics, I don't think. Coauthorship, yes, but then you coauthored it with a few defined experts. The wiki idea of not really claiming credit for the work doesn't sit well with her, I don't think.
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.
Another very real possibility, and something I'm just trying to dig up right now, is the Academia Wikia, which you can find at: http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
Again, the basic idea here is to get the textbook to a broad readership, which tying into the WMF sites would do admirably. If it's not put at the WMF or some other prominent place, it may as well go on a personal or college website.