Wikibooks:Reading room/Assistance

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[edit] thank you

Hello Wiki I am so please with this site,I am learning slowly on gettting round on the site, I am studying Introduction on canine pysychology Are there any books out there on this subject, Thank you again jancroucher1@hotmail.com

[edit] Interwiki Citing

Am I allowed to cite wiktionary or wikipedia in a book? --Popsike (talk) 02:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you're allowed to cite anything that is useful. You're not, however, allowed to copy content over without proper attribution as required by license. If you want to base a module on a Wikipedia entry, please place a request at WB:RFI. We don't have imports enabled for Wiktionary. What do you want from them? --Swift (talk) 03:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Copying material from other Wikibooks

Suppose I wanted to reuse some material from another Wikibook, but also wanted to modify it significantly to meet the needs of the new book. If I just create a new page and copy in a large chunk from another book, does this create any copyright issues. As far as I understand Requests for Import, WB:RFI this just applies to imports from other Wikimedia projects. Recent Runes (talk) 00:11, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Just include in the edit summery a permanent link to the revision you used for copying contents and you should be covered by current requirements for reusing contents from Wikimedia projects. --darklama 00:18, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I disagree with the above opinion, the comment on the edit history won't suffice.
If you copy content in quantity from one book to another you have to give the original work a reference (in project or outside of he project, depending also if there is a copyright attribution page) or merge the edit histories (you should place, by courtesy a note on the talkpage of the source book as well), another solution that has been defended in the past is to use trasclusions but I don't see that as something you would be interested or a good idea to be used across book projects in any case. Basically you use the same requirements for using content from Wikipedia, etc... (I think that darklama above is only mentioning copy content inside the same Wikimedia project not across projects. I would agree that it would be the general practice for copies made on the same book.) --Panic (talk) 20:19, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I am not talking about contents copied from within the same Wikimedia project. This applies for copying contents from any Wikimedia project including any Wikibooks language project. Whenever someone edits now the text below the textbox says "You agree to be credited by re-users at minimum through a hyperlink or URL to the page you are contributing to." This was suppose to be changed on all projects to apply to all Wikimedia Foundation projects. If I wanted to reuse or distribute a copy of a book from Wikibooks, I would only need to include a link to the book to satisfy the requirements. I don't see this being any different for copying between language projects. --darklama 20:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
I never saw it mentioned before as a accepted way to acknowledge copied content, even for instance from Wikipedia (it would make even more problematic the discussion we have been having about tagging that content as a copyvio in place of fixing the issue), but in any case I disagree that a comment on the edit history would suffice even to enable coping from Wikipedia, just because after a book is removed from Wikibooks project that mention would most probably disappear.
You also know that the click through is yet to be verified as valid (at best you should acknowledge that its use has a more informative and protective function than a legally binding one, this has been discussed elsewhere, and that particular change would at best cover recent edits). In this particular case it continued not to apply in general as it doesn't take in consideration of the contributor using third party content. Consider for instance copies from Wikisource were edit histories are mostly irrelevant...
"If I wanted to reuse or distribute a copy of a book from Wikibooks, I would only need to include a link to the book to satisfy the requirements.", this is extremely wrong as a generalization and as a practice. This seems a rehash of our previous discussion that you objected to having the authors mentioned in the print version of a book. One has to respect the rights of others, Darklama, because it is at least morally correct to do so. The Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 even mentions in the dumbed down version "You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor..." (this is more or less the same requirement made on the GFDL, the GFDL requires the specific mention the name of the source book/work). --Panic (talk) 21:42, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
What is an acceptable way to acknowledge copied content from any Wikimedia project changed awhile ago. If clicking submit isn't a legal binding way to show that a person agrees to give up certain copy rights, then all contents on all wikimedia projects would be under a copyright with all rights reserved. By clicking submit the author has agreed to a manner specified by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is to include a URL or hyperlink to the work. I choose to assume that the Wikimedia Foundation consulted a lawyer to ensure they would be in compliance with any relevant laws and have adequately safeguarded against the possibility of any licensing agreement and and manner of attributing authors from being voided if challenged in a court of law. Can we stop with the wikilawyering now? --darklama 00:24, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
That is not so and if you don't remember other discussion on the subject on this project about that, I do. At least I know several problem we are opened to because the way changes have been proceeding in that subject, and I'm not as certain as you that Wikimedia Foundation consulted a lawyer, there are known problems even on the adoption of the dual licensing, but the legality is not extremely relevant (at least to me) what is important is the safeguard of the intentions and aspirations of contributors, because even if they can't be said to be equally shared by all they run mostly in parallel, I doubt any legal issue will arise from those minor mishaps. Again this was the reason I objected to have content from Wikipedia deleted as a copyvio.
This is not wikilawyering by my part only my response to your invocation of click through notice. See if you agree with what Adrignola stated, I'm in agreement with that view. --Panic (talk) 00:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

A link to the book allows viewing of the edit history and viewing of the book's title. You can choose to reuse content under the GFDL or CC-BY-SA. If you choose the latter, attribution can be a minimum of a link or you can go through the trouble of listing every editor to every page of the book (the PDF generator does do that for you automatically, however). When content is imported through Special:Import, it brings over the edit history for the GFDL but also has a link to the original in the edit history for CC-BY-SA. If the full history import fails, bringing over a single revision still satisfies CC-BY-SA through a link to the original in the edit history, which you can follow for the full edit history up to that point in time. Printing out a book shows "Retrieved from ..." at the end of the copy. Where exactly is the problem? -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:17, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

What you said is more or less what I stated above, Adrignola (you have even generalized to any usable content and made clear the link to other projects/books edit histories). So we seem to agree that a simple comment on the edit history alone (as advanced by Darklama) will not suffice, am I reading it correctly?
If so I don't have any issue with that. On the other hand I did fail to notice that change on the click through (I did notice the inclusion of the CC-BY-SA) and it seems the wording is not clear enough, when has the text changed to include "at minimum, through a hyperlink or URL to the page you are contributing to". Where, when did that discussion took place ? --Panic (talk) 00:37, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

As a relative newbie here, I don't feel qualified to get involved in a debate. What would be more useful are some references to official policies that cover the scenario I have outlined. Recent Runes (talk) 01:01, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use --darklama 01:13, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
In practice, if I were looking to do such a thing, I would consult, and adapt however seemed appropriate, w:Wikipedia:Splitting#Procedure. --Pi zero (talk) 01:29, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
The Wikipedia project has a different structure and attributions requirements. The URL Darklama provided is better detailed and covers almost any instance and Wikimedia project (it is hard to cover clearly all the projects needs under the same text). If no one is opposing the Adrignola statement above (the most complete so far) it answered Recent Runes doubt. The rest of the discussion can be dismissed, even if pertinent it constitute minor corrections, that complemented the information that was provided. --Panic (talk) 01:53, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

[edit] Releasing Material

Hello, this is in response to your query about The Entrepreneur's Almanac. I am an attorney and this is a handbook created by the Maryland State Bar Association. I have been asked to post this for the public and for attorney's to add to and modify using your Wikibooks forum. Please let me know what authorization you need from us so that it can be published. Im not that familiar with how the structure works here and I need guidance. You can reach me either here on the wiki discussion or at 410-385-4233.

Thank you, Bill McComas Esq.

I have moved this from my talk page as it is better here. QU TalkQu 23:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)
Hello Bill, if the material is already licensed under an acceptable copyleft license or is public domain, then just provide a link (to a web site if possible) to the original source, or to the copyright holder's web site where the license is stated. Although it is on Wikipedia, the policy here is pretty much the same so these pages copyright permission and this one are useful. QU TalkQu 23:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

[edit] How To Beat The Draft Board says "This document may be freely redistributed without any restrictions." Is that a problem?

Hi,

When User:DraftBoard wrote the first revision of the "How To Beat The Draft Board" table of contents, s/he included the sentence "This document may be freely redistributed without any restrictions." That sentence is still there. Do those words mean that the text might not really be GFDLed or Creative Commons licensed?

  • If so, maybe someone should try to contact the author via User Talk and Special:Emailuser, and if s/he doesn't reply after a month or so, a Wikibookian who has their own website should move the book to their own website. If you'd like me to do it, leave a message on my enwiki talk page.
  • If not, someone should remove the sentence in question.

Cheers, --Unforgettableid (talk) 16:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

You are correct. Our licenses impose certain limitations (the GFDL more than the CC) and that makes the phrasing contradictory as you state above. That doesn't change the validity of the content, since contributors are informed about the licenses this project uses before committing any contribution. One could argue that it was somehow an extension of normal licenses (nothing new we used dual licensing before, but of compatible nature), it could be discusser and agreed upon by that project community but would require at least a clear statement to be included on the work...
In any case I removed the phrase. --Panic (talk) 18:41, 9 February 2010 (UTC)