I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
We at the dutch Wikibooks have developed an own system: *http://nl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Wiki_Standaard_Boeknummer (Wiki Standard Book Number)
It is not yet fully developed, but it is not copyrighted and could be a starting point for an international system.
In my opinion we can set a new standard for internet-books. I think we have the power to set us apart from paper textbooks and the systems used for that.
This is not answering your questions, but to let you know that there have been some Wikians thinking about this as well.
Kind regards nl:b:Londenp
2007/6/15, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org:
I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Peter van Londen wrote:
We at the dutch Wikibooks have developed an own system: *http://nl.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Wiki_Standaard_Boeknummer (Wiki Standard Book Number)
It is not yet fully developed, but it is not copyrighted and could be a starting point for an international system.
In my opinion we can set a new standard for internet-books. I think we have the power to set us apart from paper textbooks and the systems used for that.
This is not answering your questions, but to let you know that there have been some Wikians thinking about this as well.
Kind regards nl:b:Londenp
2007/6/15, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org:
I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
The page I started to help push for this effort, and to perhaps come up with different methods of cataloging books, was on this page of Wikibooks:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Card_Catalog_Office
Due to the overwhelming support for this page (nearly none at all), this page went from something very prominent and listed on the sidebar to something shoved into the Wikibooks background, almost lost completely. Another sign of how much effort has been put into this idea can be found here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Classification_Guidelines
Actually, this is just a blank page and nothing else. This is certainly something that could use quite a bit of improvement and try to come up with some system or concept of organizing Wikibooks content. There really is nothing else like this on Wikibooks either, although there are side references on other Wikibooks help pages that encourage new users to "advertise" their books by placing them on bookshelves.
I started this effort, realizing that Wikibooks really needed this sort of effort to develop and grow, but political infighting within the Wikibooks community kept me heavily distracted from continuing this effort. There is some dated discussion on the Card Catalog Office talk page, and some acknowledgement that this is something which should be done. Any effort to push start this concept would be encouraged, and it should be noted that you don't need any special "administrator" tools in order to help out with this effort.
If you or anybody else is interested, please help out on these pages and make some reasonable suggestions.
Other suggestions including using European coding systems have been brought up, as well as other classification systems. The reason the Dewey system keeps coming back (seemingly from the dead) is that so many libraries, particularly in North America but also elsewhere, use this system and many educators are familiar with this coding system. Nearly every time the Dewey coding format is presumed dead, somebody comes along and picks it up again and pushes it just a little bit further on Wikibooks.
I hope this helps.
-- Robert Horning
There was a discussion about using the categry system last autumn, which would at least give us a way of keeping track of what we have:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Categories
This might be even further improved soon, since I know some folks are working on a category watchlist (which would, if I understand correctly, also keep track of when a page is *removed* from a category, as well as changes made to pages in the category).
-johnny
--- Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org wrote:
I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
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Please, forgive me for the diversion, but... I have to know; Should I volunteer my time, effort, et cetera... Would I ever get paid by Wikimedia for all my work? I love Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, et al... But I gotta have an answer to this question before I take the plunge!
John McC sb_johnny@yahoo.com wrote: There was a discussion about using the categry system last autumn, which would at least give us a way of keeping track of what we have:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Categories
This might be even further improved soon, since I know some folks are working on a category watchlist (which would, if I understand correctly, also keep track of when a page is *removed* from a category, as well as changes made to pages in the category).
-johnny
--- Cary Bass wrote:
I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
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_______________________________________________ Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
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Stanley "Toshmann" Ozoemena wrote:
Please, forgive me for the diversion, but... I have to know; Should I volunteer my time, effort, et cetera... Would I ever get paid by Wikimedia for all my work? I love Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, et al... But I gotta have an answer to this question before I take the plunge!
The real question is is not if you will ever get paid by Wikimedia (highly doubtful, even if you are doing some major administrative service like keeping track of the financial records.... this has been done by volunteers in the past), but the question is if what you are doing will be siphoned off by somebody else and will they get paid for your work?
Everybody who participates on Wikibooks at the moment are all volunteers, and to my knowledge nobody has earned a single euro or dollar from activities directly related to Wikibooks, even though there is a tentative attempt at trying to "sell" Wikibooks content in the form of printed books. If you are going to expect to get paid, it would be through these ancillary services and products, and not through any actual content development or organization work within the Wikibooks website itself. And you will not be ever receiving a paycheck from the Wikimedia Foundation, unless you directly apply for one of the very, very few staff positions that are offered directly by the Wikimedia Foundation. Nearly every one of those positions is significant support position that involves a task that simply must be done in order to keep what amounts to be a significant non-profit internet service provider up and going, and the funds necessary to keep those positions paid for is very hard earned with each position that open up is something that is reviewed very carefully not only by the WMF board, but by the community at large as well.
I would also like to point out that both Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley have a significantly diminished role in the operation of the Wikimedia Foundation currently (by their own choosing) compared to what it was even a year ago. Angela resigned her position as a board member, and Jimbo (Jimmy Wales) resigned as chairman even though he still retains a seat on the board at the moment. The current chair of the Wikimedia Foudation, Florance Devouard, has been doing a very good job under the circumstances especially as she still is in the shadow of Jimbo but trying to sustain a sort of life after Jimbo for both the Foundation as well as the Wikimedia projects.... and notable as well that Jimbo is keeping a strong "hands off" approach to the process. So to even note governance of the Wikimedia projects has been changing, and I expect it will change significantly in the future. The upcoming elections for positions within the board is going to be rather significant.
The one thing that keeps others from making money off of the volunteer work (or at least keeps it from getting out of hand) is the Gnu Free Document License (GFDL). If you have ever studied or looked at its "sister license", the GNU Public License (also General Public License or simply GPL), a multi-billion dollar a year industry has grown up around products that support mainly computer software written under the terms of that license, most notable is the computer operating system known as Linux. In the realm of general written content, the major dominant "player" is Wikipedia, followed by the various Wikimedia sister projects.
The major point about the GFDL that keeps profit making actitivity to a minimum is that there is never any "exclusive" right to republish Wikibooks content granted to any one person or company. There are companies who do make a modest income from the publication and sales of public domain literature such as Shakespearian plays or classical novels like "Moby Dick", but these are either side lines to a normal commercial publishing business or by companies who are into the crafting aspect of making outstanding quality books instead of trying to churn out the latest round of bestsellers that will be thrown away and forgotton at this time next year. If there is a business model for content like Wikibooks, it would be nearly identical to that of public domain books. Unfortunately, this also sets a very high standard in terms of the quality of the content we must have within Wikibooks in order to be taken seriously. Any company or group that starts to charge unreasonable prices for Wikibooks that are physically printed (if there is even a demand at all) will find a competitor starting up and selling the same thing but at a cheaper price.
As the Wikibooks website itself is offering the content absolutely free, and free of advertising, it seems nearly impossible that anybody is going to offer a price any cheaper unless they are going to somehow pay people to read Wikibooks content. I saw stuff this bizzare during the dot-com boom, but I don't see how that is going to apply to Wikibooks directly. There are a few companies who have tried to set up "mirrors" of Wikibooks content such as http://www.wikibooks.net/ (this used to be a nearly identical copy of the "wikibooks.org" website), but I have seen nearly all of these mirrors abandon the effort except in a few very specialized situations. And those websites are only copying a portion of Wikibooks and not the whole thing.
An orientation page should not be too difficult to create, especially if we know the target audience (librarians, or other specialists in organization). We have written a very helpful FAQ page for Wikipedians who migrate to our project, and I see no reason why we could not have another specialized FAQ page for other migrating volunteers.
What kinds of people are you looking to bring in? Where are you going to look, and who are you going to talk to? What can I do to help?
--Andrew Whitworth
From: Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: Wikimedia textbook discussion textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Textbook-l] Cataloging Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:47:55 -0400
I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
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Andrew Whitworth wrote:
An orientation page should not be too difficult to create, especially if we know the target audience (librarians, or other specialists in organization). We have written a very helpful FAQ page for Wikipedians who migrate to our project, and I see no reason why we could not have another specialized FAQ page for other migrating volunteers.
What kinds of people are you looking to bring in? Where are you going to look, and who are you going to talk to? What can I do to help?
--Andrew Whitworth
I'm going to announce it on this page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Volunteer_opportunities.
Then I'm going to have them make this page more prominent.
As far as the kinds of people, I'd like you to help me iron that out.
Cary
Cataloging for Wikibooks should not be a problem, because of the dynamic nature of its structure. We can have multiple cataloging methods living together in harmony, so each person can have multiple options for how to find books.
Karl
On 6/19/07, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org wrote:
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
An orientation page should not be too difficult to create, especially if we know the target audience (librarians, or other specialists in organization). We have written a very helpful FAQ page for Wikipedians who migrate to our project, and I see no reason why we could not have another specialized FAQ page for other migrating volunteers.
What kinds of people are you looking to bring in? Where are you going to look, and who are you going to talk to? What can I do to help?
--Andrew Whitworth
I'm going to announce it on this page: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Volunteer_opportunities.
Then I'm going to have them make this page more prominent.
As far as the kinds of people, I'd like you to help me iron that out.
Cary
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
I've invested a little time and energy on updating the cataloging and categorization schemes on Wikibooks recently. I've updated the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress pages to use automatic page categorization, instead of relying on manual entry. This is, of course, just a small measure but one of many steps forward that need to be made at Wikibooks.
We are all open to ideas, of course, about how we can organize things better (and, by extension, make wikibooks better). What we really need is the man power to apply the necessary templates and categories to our existing books, and to help with adding these to new books as they are created. Once we have everything current organized, it will be trivial to add new books to the system as they are created. At that point we can move on to the next task, whatever that may be.
--Andrew Whitworth
From: "Karl Wick" karlwick@gmail.com Reply-To: Wikimedia textbook discussion textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Cataloging Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 11:13:40 -0700
Cataloging for Wikibooks should not be a problem, because of the dynamic nature of its structure. We can have multiple cataloging methods living together in harmony, so each person can have multiple options for how to find books.
Karl
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Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I've invested a little time and energy on updating the cataloging and categorization schemes on Wikibooks recently. I've updated the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress pages to use automatic page categorization, instead of relying on manual entry. This is, of course, just a small measure but one of many steps forward that need to be made at Wikibooks.
We are all open to ideas, of course, about how we can organize things better (and, by extension, make wikibooks better). What we really need is the man power to apply the necessary templates and categories to our existing books, and to help with adding these to new books as they are created. Once we have everything current organized, it will be trivial to add new books to the system as they are created. At that point we can move on to the next task, whatever that may be.
--Andrew Whitworth
I've added the section to the meta draft page here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering#English_Wikibooks. Your input is greatly appreciated--this is not yet live on Foundation.
--Cary Bass
2007/6/22, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org:
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I've invested a little time and energy on updating the cataloging and categorization schemes on Wikibooks recently. I've updated the Dewey
Decimal
and Library of Congress pages to use automatic page categorization,
instead
of relying on manual entry. This is, of course, just a small measure but
one
of many steps forward that need to be made at Wikibooks.
We are all open to ideas, of course, about how we can organize things
better
(and, by extension, make wikibooks better). What we really need is the
man
power to apply the necessary templates and categories to our existing
books,
and to help with adding these to new books as they are created. Once we
have
everything current organized, it will be trivial to add new books to the system as they are created. At that point we can move on to the next
task,
whatever that may be.
--Andrew Whitworth
I've added the section to the meta draft page here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering#English_Wikibooks. Your input is greatly appreciated--this is not yet live on Foundation.
--Cary Bass
Only of interest for the English Wikibooks? Londenp
_______________________________________________
Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
Peter van Londen wrote:
2007/6/22, Cary Bass cbass@wikimedia.org:
Andrew Whitworth wrote:
I've invested a little time and energy on updating the cataloging and categorization schemes on Wikibooks recently. I've updated the Dewey
Decimal
and Library of Congress pages to use automatic page categorization,
instead
of relying on manual entry. This is, of course, just a small measure but
one
of many steps forward that need to be made at Wikibooks.
We are all open to ideas, of course, about how we can organize things
better
(and, by extension, make wikibooks better). What we really need is the
man
power to apply the necessary templates and categories to our existing
books,
and to help with adding these to new books as they are created. Once we
have
everything current organized, it will be trivial to add new books to the system as they are created. At that point we can move on to the next
task,
whatever that may be.
--Andrew Whitworth
I've added the section to the meta draft page here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Volunteering#English_Wikibooks. Your input is greatly appreciated--this is not yet live on Foundation.
--Cary Bass
Only of interest for the English Wikibooks? Londenp
For this particular project, I was approached by the English wikibookians. If there is a similar page on another project, and someone is willing to translate my volunteering page on Foundation to another language, then we'll be able to add other language projects as well.
- Cary
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org