User talk:Shaitand

Welcome to Wikibooks, Shaitand!  First steps tutorial Wikibooks is for freely-licensed collaboratively-developed textbooks. You don't need technical skills in order to contribute here. Be bold contributing and assume good faith about the intentions of others. Remember, this is a wiki, so you're allowed to change just about anything, and changes can be made easily. Come introduce yourself to everyone, and let us know what interests you.

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Re: Copyrights and creative control
Hello Shaitand, how are you? I saw the discussion at WB:RFA seems to have gotten a little bit crazy since I last looked at it, and it seems like some incorrect information is flying around on both sides. I'm very happy to have you promoted to +Editor because it looks like you're going to be here a while and a few other people have supported you for promotion. However, I want to make a few points first to make sure you are aware of some things:
 * 1) There is no notion of "editorial control" on Wikibooks, and no one person has any amount of "authority" over a book here then any other user has. That is, with +Editor or +Rollbacker or any other priviledge, it is against our policy for you to restrict access, to limit the ability of other people to edit, etc. When you make an edit to Wikibooks you are granting wikibooks an unrevokable license to host your content for other people to freely modify. To this end, you also cannot demand that your work be deleted from here if the project doesn't work out (you can politely request it, of course, and we will consider the request fairly).
 * 2) You do claim that you only want these rights for use with your own book, but technologically that's not the way they work here. When you get a permission, it can be used throughout the project. A lot of people take this fact into consideration on WB:RFA, even if you claim you're only interested in one book.
 * 3) The FlaggedRevs extension (which introduces the sighting and +Editor) role is a relatively new addition to Wikibooks and is not without it's flaws. There are a number of changes that we could make to it's configuration, but we need to get feedback from users like yourself so we can tune it to make it better in the future. I was already an administrator here when FlaggedRevs was installed and I was automaticaly promoted to +Reviewer because of it, so I (and other admins) are not always aware of how difficult it is for new users. Your feedback on this issue would be much appreciated.

I would like to make sure that you understand #1 above and that you're okay with it. If you don't have any problems I'll be happy to promote you to +Editor. Also, if you have any questions or need any help as you contribute, never hesitate to ask. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Absolutely. I never had a problem with others being involved and contributing to the work. My primary concern was and is making the material available to others who need it. This particular book provides instruction that helps a great many people ease severe pain and nausea without the need to resort to highly addictive narcotic painkillers with significant side effects. Although the book is far from print quality at this stage it is easily complete enough for the material to be effectively used by those who need it. It was only after everything had been available for more than a week that I finally made my request. Up until that point I had hoped the individual who sighted the outline in the first place would return. It was then evident to me that the only way material would be made available in the timely manner was if I had the +editor permission myself.


 * It wasn't until after I made my request that I became truly concerned on two points. I am an open content advocate and in truth do not even believe that intellectual property protections should exist but I found the complete and utter lack of acknowledgment for the author and contributor of a large work to be frightening. I never intended to remove the work already contributed but I did find it quite alarming that the immediate reaction to me suggesting I keep the official version of the book elsewhere was that if I didn't wish my work presented on the site the staff would use a legal technicality to steal the work on behalf of the community. This is quite alarming because the larger open content community in which I participate certainly would not approve of using a work in a way the creator disapproved of without some sort of just cause. The creator of a work is generally given a certain level of respect and gratitude for his/her/its contribution and in general deference until such time as that deference is believed to be detrimental to a work that is largely composed of contributions


 * I suppose the biggest bit of feedback I can give to date is that it should be the official policy of the project to lean toward the will of primary authors. It is no small thing to write a book and it is an even greater thing to then give that book away. Once given others contribute and it slowly morphs from being the work of the original author to being that of the community but unless there is some pressing reason to disregard the will of the author it should not be done. Put that in an article and request comments in a place where the bulk of those who contribute (not merely those who follow the administrative pages on the site) can see it and I am certain you will find few who disagree. Additionally, I would strongly recommend a policy that permissions requests be considered without regard to auto-promotion requirements. One is an automatic system which must through hard coded metrics use a standard high enough to provide reasonable assurance of merit. The other is an actual manual human review where the specific judgement calls of the individual can be seen via their edit history. A human can tell more from prolific editing that all occurs within the span of a day than a machine can tell with months of history.


 * For example, how I handle contributions and the need for deletion can already been seen in my history. A non-native speaker made some small contributions to the draft, adding a navigation template (something I did not yet know how to do) and some content. Part of the content was made outside of the book outline, it didn't fit with the structure of the book and was already duplicated elsewhere (aside from being in broken and largely incoherent English). This I did remove with an edit comment to please follow the outline and that the content was duplicated elsewhere. The other part was written to fit within the outline structure in a section I had not completed yet. This was kept, though largely rewritten to more legible English, corrected on minor parts that may have been inaccurate due to translation and expanded with additional content.


 * As for the technical capabilities of the permissions model it really should be looked into. A more fine grained permissions structure that allows limiting permissions to a page or tree or name space would allow for enhanced permissions for a single book or even chapter in larger books and even the automatic granting of +editor for pages created by an individual and the subpage, etc. That is a system that rewards contribution with recognition and gives permissions automatically in a granular manner to those most likely to need them.


 * Sorry if this was more feedback than you had in mind. Brevity has never been my strong suit but it is my hope that the criticism is constructive and the suggestions are useful. --Shaitand (talk) 19:24, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Can never have too much feedback, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I have promoted you to +Editor now, please let me know if you need any help using that tool, or if you have any additional feedback about the mechanics of it.
 * What you say about the primary author of a work getting a certain amount of consideration from other community members is generally taken to be a de facto guideline, but for a number of reasons we cannot make such a sentiment "official" policy. Unfortunately we have had some history with subversive elements that attempt to exercise strict editorial control over books, often to the detriment of the larger community. We've also been confronted with a number of ultimatums from these kinds of users demanding significant concessions and "power" or else they will have their book deleted. So, it's with that experience in mind that some users were overly defensive and technical on WB:RFP. Please don't take it as any kind of personal affront, it is certainly not intended to be that way.
 * We have a number of technical hurdles here at Wikibooks that stem mostly from the fact that MediaWiki was designed and tuned for use with the Wikipedia. Even the FlaggedRevs extension was designed and tested originally for encyclopedia-based projects, where a notion of a "book" is completely foreign. We were hoping that we could bend and configure the extension to our specific needs, but I personally have developed a number of criticisms about the way the extension has been working so far. I've argued more then once in the past to have it disabled entirely, but there doesn't seem to be a critical mass of support for that yet. This is why feedback from users like yourself is so critical, because we are going to have to change the extension (if not remove it entirely) and we need to find the best way to do that. We also need to make sure that the entire community is aware of the problems experienced by ou newest users, because if FlaggedRevs is a major roadblock to usability, then it is a detriment more then it is a help.
 * All that said, thanks again for the feedback, good luck with your editing work, and don't hesitate to ask if you need help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 11:59, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not know if it was you logged out who restored the copyright notice on the Marijuana Cultivation book, but I placed it at Marijuana Cultivation/Introduction instead. Given that you were also the primary contributor and this email address and name may not be you, I wanted to verify that it really was you and not someone trying to take credit for your work. – Adrignola talk 03:33, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

That was awhile back and I honestly don't remember if that was me but it is my information. The introduction page seems like a logical place for the notice. I actually went ahead and removed the email address as it is no longer valid. Looking over the edits and contributions I am very glad to have contributed this material. Working with medical marijuana dispensaries I've encountered several who provide this book as a guide for patients who want to produce their own medicine. This has made a real difference in the quality of life of many sick people and it is a credit to everyone who has contributed and people like you who have worked so hard to help preserve and maintain this book. Shaitand (discuss • contribs) 23:02, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Revert
I guess this was a mistake. Happy new year, Savh (discuss • contribs) 22:31, 31 December 2013 (UTC)