[Foundation-l] Rethinking Wikibooks (was Re: PediaPress)

[Robert S. Horning]

On 11/15/2010 07:37 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> 2010/11/15 David Gerard<dgerard at 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

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