Proposal talk:Create Broader Book Interface

Latest comment: 14 years ago by Graeme E. Smith in topic Wikisource

Impact?

Some proposals will have massive impact on end-users, including non-editors. Some will have minimal impact. What will be the impact of this proposal on our end-users? -- Philippe 01:09, 4 September 2009 (UTC)Reply

Sorry it took so long to get back, I hadn't bookmarked the page, and couldn't find a link to it.

The main impact I see, is that this will increase the number of different types of books that are available to be read on-line. I had a devil of a time, suggesting that I start a self-help book on intuition because it smacked of original research, and wikibooks doesn't like original research. So I prepared it in my User space, instead of putting it onto the main book space. So far, now that it is there, nobody is complaining about it anymore, but that is what I think is scaring serious editors away. While I don't think that Wikibooks would be able to change to make such a broad change, I think that there might be sub-communities created on a similar template that each contribute a different type of book, all linked to a central library site, like the commons. Then the end-user could read the book at the central library site without worrying about the politics in the authorship sites. The idea of being able to search both wikisource, and wikibook outputs from a central library, has some value, I would think to the reader. On the flip side, Authors, I think are interested in moving from concept to book, an author that has the ability to promote his own projects, is much more likely to be willing to edit others. One of the problems I see especially with Pediapublishing, is that it promotes collaboration too early in the process. Instead of letting an author claim his own ideas, it insists that what is more important is that they were thought up by wikipedians. I think for each book project you need someone who is the "Soul" of the book, why shouldn't they get some recognition for their work guiding the project, even if others contributed to it? In other publishing schemes there is an "Editor" for major works but the approach used by wikibooks is more communistic, where they refuse to allow anyone to claim the Editor position, even if they are the major author, and have contributed the lions share of the editing. Instead why not let them claim editorship for a specific edition, and store multiple editions? What I see happening in Wikibooks, is that authors who want to create valid artworks, and just want a little help editing their content, are being repelled, and books seldom seem to get to the point where they can be published because the rate of publishing is glacial. I think this is caused by the insistence by the community on extinguishing the ego of the writers. No ego, no need to write...--Graeme E. Smith 17:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Wikisource

Hi, you have mentioned Wikisource in this proposal. Do you know of any book which has been turned away from Wikisource? The standards of each Wikisource differ, however I have not heard of works being turned away because of the type of work. On English Wikisource, we have many different wikisource:Category:Works by type, including wikisource:Category:Advertisements and internet-only "published" works like wikisource:Category:Plosone. The criteria is that the work must be free, and published in a respected venue. (i.e. no internet-only publishing without peer-review) John Vandenberg 11:19, 1 November 2009 (UTC)Reply

Please don't feel that I am negative towards wikisource, I am not, I simply note that last line excludes new works that are internet-only published without peer-review. I can't afford thousands of dollars to get my work peer-reviewed. So as a rule of thumb anything that I personally publish would fall under that restriction.--Graeme E. Smith 00:28, 24 November 2009 (UTC)Reply
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