On 13 November 2010 17:53, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:

I'm all for that. But, did anyone actually ask the Foundation to have his button included there (besides spammers et al.)? It's not like an email is hard to write...

Robert Horning has noted in this very thread:

=== Based upon my own experience, I tried to get into the printed Wikimedia game at about the same time as PediaPress first started to get involved, but was openly dismissed and in fact my efforts thwarted. I admit that the group I was working with at the time wasn't quite thinking of the direction that PediaPress went with their tool chain and there were some differences, but in the end it does explain some of the reception we got from the WMF board in terms of support for our little project (made up of mainly volunteers from Wikibooks at the time).

There have been other groups who have tried to get into the role of printing materials from Wikimedia projects besides PediaPress, and I think it is disingenuous to suggest that the relationship is non-exclusive. At the very least, the process for getting accepted as "an approved partner" has been very murky at best and seems more like political back scratching. ===

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-November/062385.html

I leave the question of disingenuity to the reader.

- d.

On 11/13/2010 11:08 AM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

What's the URL for Robert's service? I would love to try it out. If the service isn't mature yet, is there a code repository somewhere?

Ryan Kaldari

Much of what I was trying to get started was covered on this very mailing list. If you go into the archives and look up Wikijunior to see some of the efforts that were made, including some initial publications that were made through Lulu (that were also removed from Lulu at the request of the WMF). The organizing efforts were being done on Wikibooks as much as could be done, and that was pretty much where it ended too.

The problem was that PediaPress offered money, which we didn't. There isn't really a name to the group as it was only loosely organized, but there were several volunteers working with me at the time we were trying to put things together. I also paid out of my own pocket for a couple of trial runs to see how the system could work, and tried to make a business case for the effort. I was also looking for some kind of partnership and noting that handing money was quickly going to be a major issue. It was also something that the WMF did not want to get directly involved with for reasons that I understand completely too.

Much of the motivation for the whole effort I was involved with centered on the original promise that Wikijunior was going to be set up for making printed versions of the Children's books created by that project. Apparently some money was given to the WMF by some donor with some guidelines on how the project was to be set up. To the best of my knowledge that money has never been fully accounted for other than being swallowed up by the operations of the server farm and the general operations budget of the WMF. As an administrator on Wikibooks at the time, I felt personally responsible for maintaining the Wikijunior community and to follow through with the promises that were made in terms of getting those printed versions of Wikijunior books out to the public.

It never happened, however. When the PediaPress deal was announced, it sort of sucked whatever wind was left in the effort out, and some other needs in my own life came up that also took precedence.

I keep holding out hope that eventually things are going to change, and I wouldn't mind trying to put together some other similar effort again to restart the momentum that was lost years ago. Unfortunately most times I try to do that it falls flat on its face with nobody else interested in helping out or even considering the idea. I was hoping to have a more volunteer effort like what is being done with the wiki projects or perhaps more like Distributed Proofreading that would help prepare and publish the books. I still think something like that is needed, but at the moment there is no home and the only URL I can give is my e-mail address at the moment.

There have been some semi-recent changes in the publishing industry that I think makes a volunteer effort work out much better where everything that is going on including how the funds are raised and spent being more out in the open can happen. My problem is merely getting people together that are interested in something like that at the moment or even finding a forum to present the idea. I have hoped that Foundation-l would be that forum, but apparently it isn't.

-- Robert Horning ____________________________________________________________ Refinance Now 3.4% FIXED $160,000 Mortgage: $547/mo. No Hidden Fees. No SSN Req. Get 4 Quotes! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4cdef42d13dde1d3a9dst04duc

On 11/13/10 12:25 PM, Robert S. Horning wrote:

Much of what I was trying to get started was covered on this very mailing list. If you go into the archives and look up Wikijunior to see some of the efforts that were made, including some initial publications that were made through Lulu (that were also removed from Lulu at the request of the WMF). The organizing efforts were being done on Wikibooks as much as could be done, and that was pretty much where it ended too. The problem was that PediaPress offered money, which we didn't.

So you're saying that the Foundation should have partnered with a completely proprietary service (Lulu), that wasn't interested in donating any software or income back to the Foundation? That doesn't sound like a very appealing partnership, nor can I imagine the community supporting such a decision (especially considering how skeptical they've been of the PediaPress partnership).

Ryan Kaldari

On 11/13/2010 03:17 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

On 11/13/10 12:25 PM, Robert S. Horning wrote:

...

Much of what I was trying to get started was covered on this very mailing list. If you go into the archives and look up Wikijunior to see some of the efforts that were made, including some initial publications that were made through Lulu (that were also removed from Lulu at the request of the WMF). The organizing efforts were being done on Wikibooks as much as could be done, and that was pretty much where it ended too. The problem was that PediaPress offered money, which we didn't.

So you're saying that the Foundation should have partnered with a completely proprietary service (Lulu), that wasn't interested in donating any software or income back to the Foundation? That doesn't sound like a very appealing partnership, nor can I imagine the community supporting such a decision (especially considering how skeptical they've been of the PediaPress partnership).

Ryan Kaldari

No, I'm saying that a completely private effort that attempted to publish content through Lulu was thrwarted on the grounds of trademark infringement. It was published under the title "Wikijunior Big Cats" and had some other problems that sort of implied that the WMF was more involved in the publication than was really the case.

Trademark usage guidelines never have really been spelled out very well and it still is mostly make an attempt and the WMF will bite back if they think you are wrong.

Lulu was selected mainly as a starting point as they did print on demand, one of the first such services that allowed you to upload PDF files over the internet instead of having to hand-carry your manuscript physically to a printer or using snail mail. The relationship with Lulu was not exclusive either and they were used simply as a printer, not as a publisher. Lulu give you lots of options on how you can do things, and as I pointed out, the whole issue about how money was going to be dealt with never really got squared away. These books were being sold on Lulu at cost, so the editors involved with setting them up on that site weren't making a dime of profit. As I also said, it was very preliminary but there were some books being offered at the time made up of content from the Wikijunior efforts.

Remember, the goal here was to distribute the content, not to make a profit. That is the point I'm trying to drive home here.

Every effort was made to look at other options, and in terms of community consensus the general feeling was rather favorable to Lulu, knowing full well that other options could be found at a later time.

The difference between PediaPress and this other effort is that PediaPress came from the top down with money in hand, and the group I had was mostly grass roots with little money to start with in terms of getting things going. That was precisely why we were using Lulu. Perhaps PediaPress was a better choice even in hindsight, but I am saying that they were selected over other efforts including ones emerging from the community that might possibly have turned out in a substantially different way than the current relationship between PediaPress and the WMF.

-- Robert Horning ____________________________________________________________ Moms Asked to Return to School Grant Funding May Be Available to Those That Qualify. http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4cdf1ebdb3ee329542cst02vuc

On 11/15/2010 12:10 PM, Ryan Kaldari wrote:

On 11/13/10 3:26 PM, Robert S. Horning wrote:

...

The difference between PediaPress and this other effort is that PediaPress came from the top down with money in hand, and the group I had was mostly grass roots with little money to start with in terms of getting things going.

Do you have any evidence that PediaPress offered the Foundation money up front for consideration as a partner? If so, how much money did they give? This is a very serious accusation that requires some evidence in my opinion, especially as it is contradicted by what Erik says.

Ryan Kaldari

Let's turn this question around to something more legitimate to ask: how much money or other consideration has the WMF received from this effort? Obviously some developer time went into the PDF maker and some of the things that you see with the button, and that certainly represents some "other considerations" as well. I am not suggesting that the money went into the pockets of anybody but the WMF general fund that is being used to pay for the servers and the rest of the program and is certainly well accounted for. I haven't looked at the financial disclosure statements recently for the WMF to see if the PediaPress money is broken out from other general donations either.

All I'm trying to say here is that once the deal with PediaPress came through, it sort of blew out of the water any other effort to try something different, especially stuff that was being done by a largely adhoc group of Wikimedia volunteers doing stuff out of their own pocket without substantial financial backing. PediaPress obviously was more established and certainly had the finances in place to get something done. That this volunteer effort isn't going any more (mind you, I was not the only person working on it either) should say something at least that it discouraged other efforts to provide printed materials. That is the point I'm trying to make here.

I also am not a huge fan of the automated preparing of texts, at least all of the automation that is happening. I think books are a work of art unto themselves and the current content preparation sort of misses something in the process, making the books that are produced somewhat sterile and missing some of the flavor that comes with hand crafting the content. There were certainly some tasks that could be automated, but I think it also goes a bit too far for my taste as well. It gets raw content out there, but the process could be improved and right now that is being blocked because what is being done is "good enough" for most casual efforts to print books. To take it to the next tier and get a really professionally published book would take much, much more effort and the development of tools that are in my opinion now being blocked because of the presence of PediaPress.

This is not to say that the WMF can't look into alternative fund raising options, and it certainly is within the right of the WMF to consider legitimate offers that come along. This offer from PediaPress certainly filled a niche and has proven to be fairly useful to at least a small number of Wikimedia users, and the question that ought to be raised now is if this level of participation and usage of printed materials is sufficient or is there a potential for other options to also be tried to perhaps step it up a notch or two. There is some excellent content on the Wikimedia projects that is often laying around quite hidden and I think printing the content would be a useful thing to spread that knowledge to a wider audience.

Unfortunately, stepping the effort up a notch is going to take some significant effort and possibly some financing... something that also could potentially increase liability for the WMF if they were more directly involved too. Increased liability plus being at least for awhile a fiscal sink doesn't sound too appealing to the WMF, and I understand why things are being done the way they are being done right now. Still, I see printed content with inferior quality content compared to what I see on Wikimedia projects selling in much larger volumes in major publishing markets... so why is that gap there?

-- Robert Horning ____________________________________________________________ Obama Urges Homeowners to Refinance If you owe under $729k you probably qualify for Obama's Refi Program http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL3241/4ce1d698a3ad02ecc71st01vuc

On 16 November 2010 01:10, Ryan Kaldari rkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

I'm sure the amount of money the Foundation receives from its cut of actually published books is negligible - probably a few hundred dollars a year. I'm more interested in your insinuation that PediaPress bought their partnership status. Since you managed to avoid answering either of my questions, I'll assume you have no evidence for these aspersions.

You seem to be making a point of harping on an aspersion that only you can see. It's not clear that doing so adds more light than heat.

There is no reason to assume the PediaPress mess is anything more than SNAFU and that everyone at Wikimedia is anything other than as sincere and honest as we know they are.

*However*, that is orthogonal to whether a privileged private closed source partnership is an acceptable arrangement to keep around. And the consensus appears to be that this is a question that needs some serious thought.

- d.

On 11/15/2010 07:37 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

2010/11/15 David Gerarddgerard@gmail.com:

...

*However*, that is orthogonal to whether a privileged private closed source partnership is an acceptable arrangement to keep around. And the consensus appears to be that this is a question that needs some serious thought.

Well, I don't agree with your characterization as a "closed source partnership" -- it's a partnership that has resulted in development of key open source technologies. If you want to take the PDF generated using the open source toolset based on ReportLab and send it to a printer (or hack it to make it prettier or more suitably formatted), you can do that today. What you're not getting as open source is a LaTeX renderer that generates books using the same typesetting and print tweaks that PediaPress provides.

What I do agree requires serious thought is whether we should or shouldn't acquire or develop an open source LaTeX renderer. One argument in favor of doing so is that it will make it easier for other commercial services to do what PediaPress is doing, creating a more competitive marketplace for the provision of actual printed books.

To me, this is not the strongest argument -- given the scale of the current print-on-demand operation, we're unlikely to see significant commercial interest unless/until we decide to significantly expand the visibility and scope of the feature. That's not to say it wouldn't be a good thing to have (more quality open source code always is), but I'm skeptical that it would have dramatic impact.

There are other arguments for developing such a renderer. For one thing, it will make it much easier for people like Robert to then take the generated LaTeX, manually improve it, and create books with a "personal touch" that's missing from the PDF pipeline. It would also be useful to many of the open source textbooks projects out there. (BTW, people interested in this space should check out http://www.booki.cc/ , which is a great new open source authoring/print platform.) I'd be curious to hear other arguments in favor of such a development project.

An engineer contacted me off-list offering to write a LaTeX renderer plugging into mwlib (the open source parser library). Once we have an initial estimate of cost and complexity, we can make a considered decision whether that's an effort worth supporting.

One of the things that got me so passionate about bringing physical printing of texts is that I feel Wikibooks isn't living up to its potential, in part because it is not really meeting the needs of the educational community in terms of textbook development. There are also some heartbreaking stories I could mention, including some personal stories too that are worth sharing.

More importantly, for anybody who has had a university level education knows full well that textbook prices are something that a typical college student has to face which can be even an insane price and all kinds of games that get played with how textbooks are selected and made available to students.

I know that on-line collaboration for the creation of open-source college level textbooks can work, and as proof of that I can give this particular example of a completely college-level Physics textbook:

http://www.lightandmatter.com/

I was even able to recruit the primary editor/author of this book (Dr. Ben Crowell) to help participate on en.wikibooks for awhile and even a little bit in the greater community, although mainly he stuck to a couple of Wikibooks that he was passionate about (rather typical for a Wikibooks contributor, I might add).

This particular textbook has an ISBN number, is published as a dead-tree version, and is actually being used by college students in a couple of colleges around America and elsewhere. In other words, it is everything that Wikibooks has promised to do. In fairness to Ben Crowell, he started the idea a couple of years before Karl Wick started to make waves with an Organic Chemistry textbook on Wikipedia and even lacked licenses like the GFDL or CC-by-SA to work with, but always intended to make it "open source" if at all possible. This book actually pre-dates Wikipedia.

I realize that e-book readers and some other similar things are starting to show up on some college campuses, but the physical book is still very much common even in this setting. Unfortunately, I can't point to much in the way of Wikimedia content on college campuses and in fact there is a visceral hatred for Wikipedia and anything associated with it with many professors. I do know of some college classes that are using [[b:Blender 3D]] in their curriculum, but it is at best a supplemental text rather than a real textbook for instruction.

Part of this is due to the fact that they can't get textbooks printed out that are of a quality that can be sold in a college bookstore and I suppose a bit of a giggle factor when you say it came from a Wikimedia project. I know there are other factors involved here, but it seems like there is some sort of barrier past which a Wikibook simply doesn't make the cut, a sort of glass ceiling if it were. There are some outstanding texts on Wikibooks and other sister projects that are getting looked at, but the audience is still astonishingly small and Wikibooks mainly is seen as a sort of on-line reference library.

Going back to my experiences at trying to make a physical printed book myself, I should point out the effort that went into the Wikijunior project. Some interesting "rules" went into developing the first couple of Wikijunior books, including some things that none of the current sister projects would even find acceptable. One of them was a strong focus on trying to get one thing done and done well, where at least initially the Wikijunior effort restricted all contributions to just three "books". One thing that also came out here was a promise that once the books were put together, proofread, reviewed for accuracy, and then by community consensus "ready for prime time" that the books would be shipped to a printer for eventual release.

I don't know how it happened, what was promised or why it was said, but somehow there was a small pile of money donated by some organization interested in helping further Wikimedia projects that was presumed by the community to be there to help pay for at least the first initial printing of these books that was in the hands of the WMF. A PDF was put together, and then when some enquiries about when the book was going to actually be printed kept getting a sort of empty response until I had enough of it and decided to simply act and try to get at least something printed regardless.

The important thing to point out here, however, is that there was some extra motivation to participate when there is something tangible at the end of the process. Somehow this final process of getting the book ready for publication brought out what I think was the best of what I've ever seen with the Wikimedia volunteers, including some very passionate work and long hard hours spent.... including some volunteers who were working incredibly hard to meet a formal deadline. I had to tell a couple of them to lighten up and realize there is an outside world to enjoy as well.

Where I'm trying to get with all of this is that I believe that something similar, a focused effort perhaps on one or two texts might just get the ball rolling to the point that there could be some enthusiasm generated that would not only benefit the individual project, but it could also close that gap and actually get some stuff "out there".

The question that needs to be asked in regards to this mailing list is in terms of how much effort or support would the WMF offer in terms of putting something like this together or what other resources might be available in terms of getting the publication of these text happening? Is it one of promotion (spreading the word that the context exists at all)? Is this a problem where the quality of the "finished product" (aka the PDF file or LaTeX file) isn't quite up to standards of other publications produced elsewhere? Would a physically printed textbook in hand help to persuade a university professor to consider Wikibooks or some other Wikimedia project like Wikisource or Wiktionary to be used in their classroom? Would digging up sponsorships help out in terms of getting some other non-profit or philanthropic organization involved that would help pay for this? Would the WMF even be willing to help coordinate funds raised for the physical printing of books, presuming that they would be given to a school (like some Wikibooks being sent to Kenya or even printed there to help stock school libraries)? Is this something that perhaps needs a completely different board and organization independent of the WMF instead for dealing with printed books?

Something is missing here. I'd like to think it is this tangible medium of a physical book that is what is wrong, but I'm really not sure. If there are other ideas, I'd like to hear them. I do think that once Wikibooks starts to get used in the classroom as has been the promise, that the site will really take off like you never saw it before and that enthusiasm would also spread to the other sister projects as well. With the legitimacy of at least a book or two which shows the potential of Wikibooks, that other books would be produced over time. The basics are already there in terms of basic policies, editing and content writing are concerned. Those are in fact usually some of the hardest things to get accomplished typically for book publishing, but in this case it is only getting about half way there. I feel more like a new writer with a finished manuscript but no publisher willing to read that manuscript when I'm working with Wikibooks material, and the publisher doesn't even want to send a rejection letter. What is wrong?

-- Robert Horning

____________________________________________________________ Get Free Email with Video Mail & Video Chat! http://www.netzero.net/freeemail?refcd=NZTAGOUT1FREM0210

I really enjoyed reading your mail, Robert, because I could literally feel the love you have for this project.

Quoting Amir, I too would like to share my 2 cents about this.

1 cent: I reflected a lot on some slides Eric Moeller showed us in Gdansk. He compared sister project using some parameters, and one of them was the "work unit": Wikipedia has a lot of granularity, you can do little changes and they are still effective. Wikisource and Wikibooks have big work units (you start or edit books, not smaller articles). It saw a leap (everyone saw that) in the contribution on Wikisource after we installed the Proofreading extension and promoted widely a single "Proofreading of the Month". People started proofreading single pages, they felt their contribution to be tangible and useful, and this literally changed everything. Wikisources still have a long way to do, but they are growing fast, and I definitely believe that reducing the "work unit" was a crucial factor.

2 cent: in Italy, there is a community of high school teachers called "Matematicamente", and last year they wrote and published a mathematical textbook releasing it under Creative Commons. Long story short, the founder of the project told me they tried working on Wikibooks, but the vast majority of the teacher was not comfortable with the wiki mark-up, and at the end of the day it had been easier to work on OpenOffice (I just let you imagine how difficult it was for them to collaborate on a single book...). Moreover, for that project NPOV worked as an additional obstacle, plus all the community rules they had to face. The guy told me he still like Wikibooks, but it did not work, mainly for the people's "wiki illiteracy".

My bests

Aubrey

2010/11/16 Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il

On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 08:11, Robert S. Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:

...

Something is missing here. I'd like to think it is this tangible medium of a physical book that is what is wrong, but I'm really not sure. If there are other ideas, I'd like to hear them. ... What is wrong?

<my_theory> My theory about the very high profile of Wikipedia and the mostly low profile of the other projects is that in Wikipedia it is very easy to predicate. People love to predicate. Look it up in a dictionary - i refer to all of that word's meanings.

Put simply, Wikipedia is the world's largest and most convenient soapbox. There's a policy page in the English Wikipedia that says that Wikipedia is not a soapbox ([[WP:SOAP]]). But people try to use it this way anyway. It is very, very attractive. Some of them eventually understand that NPOV is a good thing and become good Wikipedia editors.

An encyclopedia, by its nature, is the perfect platform for saying things like "X is a Y". We are all familiar with that: Kosovo IS A country / unrecognized country / partially recognized country / de-facto independent country / province of Serbia / occupied province of Serbia. This opportunity to easily disrupt the NPOV - even temporarily - with one's own version of the predication is a necessarily evil that makes Wikipedia so popular. Other projects are nowhere near offering the opportunity to say such things, at least not as easily.

Wiktionary is supposed to consist of almost nothing but predications, but it's too linguistic. Wikisource is a great place for lovers of archiving and typesetting (like myself), but you can't be original there. Wikinews and Wikiquote... nobody is quite sure what they are at all.

Wikibooks can, theoretically, be a place for making predications and for spreading POV. But most people, given the choice of writing a book about a subject or an encyclopedic article about it, will write an encyclopedic article. Not just because it's shorter, but because it looks like a more natural way of answering the question "What is X?"... the way they want to answer it.

</my_theory>

How to solve it? Sorry, no idea. I love textbooks for all ages, so i would love to see Wikibooks flourish. I made a few corrections to existing Wikibooks, but i find it strange to start a Wikibook from scratch.

-- Amir E. Aharoni

---

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If I'm the only person who can see this aspersion, I must be the only person bothering to read Robert's emails:

* "The problem was that PediaPress offered money, which we didn't." * "The difference between PediaPress and this other effort is that PediaPress came from the top down with money in hand..."

I'm not sure what conclusion you could make from these statements other than that PediaPress bought their partnership. I have no interest in causing extra drama on Foundation-l (god knows it has plenty), but if someone is going to casually imply that the Foundation's favor can be bought and sold (without any evidence to that effect), I don't see why we should just accept that. I agree there are more important points to discuss, so I'm dropping the issue, but I still reserve the right to question any spurious accusations in the future.

Ryan Kaldari

On 11/15/10 5:30 PM, David Gerard wrote:

On 16 November 2010 01:10, Ryan Kaldarirkaldari@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

I'm sure the amount of money the Foundation receives from its cut of actually published books is negligible - probably a few hundred dollars a year. I'm more interested in your insinuation that PediaPress bought their partnership status. Since you managed to avoid answering either of my questions, I'll assume you have no evidence for these aspersions.

You seem to be making a point of harping on an aspersion that only you can see. It's not clear that doing so adds more light than heat.

There is no reason to assume the PediaPress mess is anything more than SNAFU and that everyone at Wikimedia is anything other than as sincere and honest as we know they are.

*However*, that is orthogonal to whether a privileged private closed source partnership is an acceptable arrangement to keep around. And the consensus appears to be that this is a question that needs some serious thought.

• d.

---

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2010/11/15 Robert S. Horning robert_horning@netzero.net:

Do I wish things would have gone perhaps a bit differently?  Yes.  But the issue is where to go from here and not to undo things that happened in the past.

My whole point in bringing this issue up in the first place is to express that there were other roads that the WMF and Wikimedia projects could have gone but didn't, for various reasons, and that perhaps other choices in the future could be selected if we think about it.

I still don't really agree with your characterization, but that's OK as you say. I do totally understand where you're coming from. If you'd like to get quick feedback or help from WMF regarding alternative publishing approaches, don't hesitate to contact me directly and I'll see what we can do. Philosophically, I don't think the approaches of semi-automated generation and manual development are mutually exclusive and indeed, can build on each other or at least complement each other usefully.