As those of you who read the meta pages will know, I'm applying the Wiki idea to a slightly different project, with the object of creating a "science hypertextbook". Like Wikipedia, this will all be under GNU Free Documentation License.
I note that the Wikipedians muster a good deal of technical expertise among themselves, and I'd like to invite anyone interested in a more teaching-oriented approach (i.e. building from basic subjects to advanced ones) to participate. It's at http://www.renaissoft.com/april/cgi-bin/wiki.pl for those who are interested.
Also, I'd like to ask something of an etiquette question - to Jimbo Wales in particular, and to the Wikipedians in general. How do people feel about Wikipedia material being ported over and adapted for use in the textbook project? I know what the "public domain" rules are, but I don't want to do anything that would create bad feeling or set up for trouble between the sites. I do, of course, have Wikipedia linked back from a couple of places. ;)
Thanks for any constructive input, -- April
Rosa Williams wrote:
Also, I'd like to ask something of an etiquette question - to Jimbo Wales in particular, and to the Wikipedians in general. How do people feel about Wikipedia material being ported over and adapted for use in the textbook project? I know what the "public domain" rules are, but I don't want to do anything that would create bad feeling or set up for trouble between the sites. I do, of course, have Wikipedia linked back from a couple of places. ;)
I think it's wonderful!
I think that the Right Thing To Do is to link back to us on any pages that have our stuff as a source. Something as simple as "This page partly based on http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Whatever" would be great.
I don't intend to be a real stickler about this sort of thing, meaning the linkback. The one thing that I don't want, is for Microsoft or AOL or Yahoo or someone like that to take our content without attribution. I think that's going to be a huge opportunity for the free content to grow like crazy, and so letting people know we exist is great.
And we should have a prominent page somewhere for "fellow travelers", i.e. other people who are doing neat things with wiki and a free license, like you, and like the Sevilla group, etc.
--Jimbo
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