Turn this into a proposal

There is some talk about turning this page from a wikiproject into a policy proposal. Implicit in this talk is the idea of making the editorial board more then simply a casual group project into a standing entity with some "authority" over specific matters here on wikibooks. An editorial board constructed in this matter would either be:

1. A local analog of the wikipedia Arbcom, or
2. A local counterpoint of our own local Arbcom (which is also in a proposal stage).

The second option would open up the idea of decentralized authority, which many people might agree with. Barring the details, should this be a policy proposal or a wikiproject? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:10, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm all for making it a policy proposal. We can have an elected group of several talented book-writers who are well-versed with book production and are also experts in one or more fields. We won't have full coverage of all subjects possibly, but I think such a group of perhaps five or seven individuals will form a very nice board. This way we can keep behavior issues separate from book production, a thing that could certainly slow down progress here. -withinfocus 22:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what is intended here, what does the editorial board have to do with arbcom? I think that it might be a better idea to keep it as a wikiproject so that it doesn't encourage people to go to arbcom with editorial disputes. I think instead the editorial board should probably be more involved with books in which the editors are not directly involved so that a more NPOV decision on what's a good book can be reached, and more appropriate decisions can be made. Of course, the actual authors of the book would have a say on why a book could deserve to be recognized and what should be improved, just the "authority" on whether something qualifies as a good book should be left to a more neutral party IMO. If this became part of the policy, of course, I would probably support it. Mattb112885 22:43, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The idea is that content disputes (disputes between one or more editors concerning the content of a page) is not the same as a behavior dispute (although there is plenty of potential for one to turn into the other). I think it would be a bad idea to make the arbcom, which is essentially a disciplinary committee, handle content disputes as well. We would invoke the editorial board to handle disputes that did concern the authors of the book: if those authors are stalemated by a content dispute, we need to have a "higher authority" on matters of content to turn to. Beyond this "official duty" of the editorial board, there would also be a number of unofficial duties, such as reviewing, editing, and publishing good wikibooks. An editorial board would likely be kept small, and be able to call upon "experts" in various fields to help answer questions on particular subjects. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Changes, Moving forward

I have made a few small changes to the text of this proposal, some of which are relatively small. In particular, in response to some criticism, I have removed mention of the editorial board being able to resolve disputes. The task of content dispute resolution will be left to Wikibooks:Decision making, and Wikibooks:Dispute resolution, and this board will not be an official part of that process. That said, however, I have added text that the board can lend guidance to wikibookians if asked, which means that the board could potentially be asked to act as a mediator in a content dispute. I leave it up to the discretion of the board as to whether or not to participate in such activities.

I really want to move forward on this issue, even if the current text of this policy is not satisfactory. I do want to have some kind of editorial-board-ish entity here, and I do want to work towards editing and eventually publishing (depending on a local definition of "publish") some of our better books. Changes to this proposal are fine, but in the interest of progress, I would ask that all criticisms be constructive. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

The new text about guidance seems more appropriate to me. I like your most recent change as far as having a centralized point of contact because, indeed, though there are many contributors to the project anyone who would be interested in using our books for classes and such, and they'd need someone to contact for more information (the staff lounge seems to be the place where this kind of thing occurs at the moment). Question: Would you want this to be a liaison to publishing companies too? Though I guess this could be considered a part of the "etc", but IMO this would a different ball of wax than a liaison to consumers because with publishers you have to make sure they follow the GFDL, which is fundamentally different from traditional publishing methods, and this could require the assistance of a lawyer and the courts and all of that if they decide they want to try and break the law and claim exclusive rights or something... maybe not a direct issue for the editorial board but probably is one for the publishing board, unless the books are to be published independently or something. Regards. Mattb112885 01:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

My vision basically includes printed versions, and versions of our books on CD being distributed to schools and libraries. I don't think we should follow the traditional "publication" model, where books get an ISBN number, and are sold for profit. Our books are already freely available from our website, So i dont think we need to worry about getting our books to appear on Google Books, or Amazon, or anything like that. We can call PDFs of our book the "finished product", and then distribute those books directly to consumers electronically. Once the teachers/libraries had our books in PDF form, they could print them for the students, or distribute them in some other manner. As to the legal issues, I want to get the WMF involved in this process. Jimbo has expressed some interest and support in the past, and that's something that I think we need to exploit. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:09, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, the PDFs are available here but we could distribute them on CD for convenience and such, and I agree with your wish to get WMF involved, they have more legal weight than a couple of volunteers (I know they usually are the ones that want to know about major copyright stuff). And the money we make from the CDs would simply be used to help keep the project running, kind of like a fundraiser. Regards. Mattb112885 02:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not particularly interested in making any money off our books, and I think that making any kind of profit off our books would probably just create more legal problems. Of course, we can work on these details later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah, but what if an individual author (say, he is the primary author of an excellent book) wants to make profit? I would say, he can go and publish it on his own, with the "wikibooks" version being edited by the board. He can request it to be taken off and we should be kind enough to comply. I doubt it has to be written down, but I think it would be optimal for the members of the board to keep something like that in mind. (it seems like common sense to me) --Dragontamer 04:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I dont think that's an issue. Any person can sell a GFDL textbook for profit, whether or not they are the author of the book. There are no restrictions on the ability to profit from GFDL texts, although since they are freely available here, it is unlikely that anybody is going to pay much for them. Since all text contributions here have been expressly released to Wikibooks for use under the GFDL, a request from an author to remove those materials from our site isn't binding and cannot be enforced. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)