Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke... and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
so the books could be uploaded to wikibooks, or wikimedia commons, one could produce an epub or openzim file out of it for the people not having a kindle? sounds great to me ...
rupert.
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 8:26 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke... and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 26 November 2013 07:26, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually attribute Wikipedia. They are being offered for free on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke... and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
My first impression is "that sounds excellent!"
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
We could work with them to fine-tune the attribution.
But yeah, if they check out as doing the right thing then this is complete success for us.
- d.
The new textbooks in Tamil Nadu state in India have images from the Commons and links to articles printed at the end. This was discussed on the Wikimedia India mailing list in the latter half of 2011. You can check the archives.
Sent from the touchscreen equivalent of a Nokia 1100, pardon the sender. -- Srikanth Ramakrishnan, Treasurer. On Nov 26, 2013 2:23 PM, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 November 2013 07:26, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do
eventually
attribute Wikipedia. They are being offered for free on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke...
and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
My first impression is "that sounds excellent!"
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free
available?
We could work with them to fine-tune the attribution.
But yeah, if they check out as doing the right thing then this is complete success for us.
- d.
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Nov 26, 2013 12:08 PM, "Srikanth Ramakrishnan" srik.ramk@wikimedia.in wrote:
The new textbooks in Tamil Nadu state in India have images from the
Commons
and links to articles printed at the end. This was discussed on the Wikimedia India mailing list in the latter half of 2011. You can check the archives.
I never knew that, thank you for sharing. I can at times get a little glum about our projects, but things like these demonstrate we are still on the right path doing good.
Sent from the touchscreen equivalent of a Nokia 1100, pardon the sender.
Srikanth Ramakrishnan, Treasurer. On Nov 26, 2013 2:23 PM, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 26 November 2013 07:26, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen
here
http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do
eventually
attribute Wikipedia. They are being offered for free on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke...
and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
My first impression is "that sounds excellent!"
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could
generate
position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding
this
textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free
available?
We could work with them to fine-tune the attribution.
But yeah, if they check out as doing the right thing then this is complete success for us.
- d.
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
I'm meeting with the Boundless team tomorrow.
How could they improve attribution? What download formats or APIs would we like to see to enable reposting to Wikibooks, or better cross-platform collaboration?
Is anyone on wikibooks currently working on importing such materials, in Tamil or English or other languages?
SJ
On Tue, Nov 26, 2013 at 2:26 AM, James Heilman jmh649@gmail.com wrote:
Have come across a collection of basic college textbooks that appear to be more or less based on text from Wikipedia. There are 21 of them. The company claims that they are being used by more than 2 million students.
They are under a CC BY SA license and if you follow the links seen here http://books.google.ca/books?id=7avpAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2058 they do eventually attribute Wikipedia.
They are being offered for free on amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-ke... and are being sold for $19.99 on their website. https://www.boundless.com/
So the question is should we have a response? I think this could generate position press for our movement. Attribution could be better (I would consider theirs to be borderline). Additionally should we be adding this textbooks to Wikiversity or Wikibooks to make sure they stay free available?
-- James Heilman MD, CCFP-EM, Wikipedian
The Wikipedia Open Textbook of Medicine www.opentextbookofmedicine.com _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On 6 February 2014 21:41, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I'm meeting with the Boundless team tomorrow.
Excellent!
How could they improve attribution? What download formats or APIs would we like to see to enable reposting to Wikibooks, or better cross-platform collaboration?
Yeah, this is it. Our entire raison d'etre is: "Use our stuff! Please!"
*But* we want collaboration and upstreamed fixes and so forth in return. What can we do to make that easier?
- d.
On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 1:41 PM, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
I'm meeting with the Boundless team tomorrow.
How could they improve attribution?
Looking at the g-book that James linked (and without paying for a download etc) I don't see any particular attribution at all in the book itself. The inside front cover should have a publisher credit (boundless), a date, and a) authors/editors; b) a list of sources where they've taken info from... the wikipedia articles (perma-urls), other sources. Also, license??
Without that (and any other useful info: place of publication, URL, ISBN, etc) not only is it not attributed for our purposes, it's a nightmare for any hapless library cataloger who might want to add it to a library collection :P
-- phoebe
Samuel Klein, 06/02/2014 22:41:
How could they improve attribution?
What Phoebe said. A link to each history page *might* be enough but, especially if they're ebooks, a full list of names costs little (even though it can be ugly).
What download formats or APIs would we like to see to enable reposting to Wikibooks, or better cross-platform collaboration?
Making books or ebooks out of wiki pages is not a trivial task. If a publisher does so for us, fantastic! Even just giving "us", i.e. the public, a copy of said ebooks in a free format, for free, would be a gain. For instance, they could just upload them all as ePub on archive.org. Then, if they have a continuous production and update, Wikibooks could establish some interlinking, telling users that there is an ebook version at X.
Is anyone on wikibooks currently working on importing such materials, in Tamil or English or other languages?
Do they have any original content? In that case it would be nice if their "fork" shared the sources with us, so that the content can be remixed. I doubt they use wikitext and at least for some time we won't have an integrated HTML import in MediaWiki, but having TeX or DocBook sources, or whatever, would be great.
Nemo
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