Talk:Wikipedia@20

Revision guidelines

Following these guidelines will help essays survive external review, avoid errors introduced during production, and attract readers' interest.

Writing

These guidelines further the engagement, accessibility, and coherence of the collection. When complete, please send your docx file to the editors.

• Ensure your thesis (i.e., a novel argument or insight) is connected to our theme of lessons learned, insights gained, or myths busted between your initial and present engagements with Wikipedia.
  • Ensure that your first or second paragraph tells the reader your thesis, don't leave it until the end.
• Your prose should be lively, and you can use your own experience/history/journey to frame your thesis, but avoid being chatty or too informal.
• Your essay should be accessible to anyone with an interest in Wikipedia. Please review internet journal First Monday's apt guidelines for accessible writing, in short:
  • prefer shorter words, sentences (10–20 words), and paragraphs (1-3 sentences); use pleasing variation in sentence and paragraph length to "help your readers pay attention."
  • delete extra words (e.g., "very"), jargon, and cliches;
  • be careful of using "it" and "this," especially at the start of sentences;
  • use the active voice and strong verbs; "she decided" is better than "a decision was made"
  • if in doubt, delete.
• Tools such as Grammarly can help you identify grammar, style, and clarity issues. Get as much feedback as you can, be it from friends, colleagues, or even professional line-editors.
• Limit notes: For bibliography, only cite when necessary and combine citations within a paragraph when possible. Avoid prose notes: if you need to say it, say it in the prose; otherwise, delete.

Formatting

The less those producing your manuscript touch it, the fewer inadvertent but inevitable errors will creep into your work.

• You must review the sections "Preparing the Manuscript" and "Notes, Bibliographies, and Reference Lists" in the MIT Press Author Guidelines.
• MIT uses the Chicago Manual of Style for prose and bibliography.
  • We are using Chicago end notes (full); because they are full, no redundant bibliography is necessary.
  • Periods and commas go within quotations.
  • Use the Oxford/serial comma.
  • Spell whole numbers at the start of sentences, from zero through one hundred and certain round multiples of those numbers including hundred, thousand, or hundred thousand (see this summary).
• You can include acknowledgments at the end of your essay, before the references (see note below).

Feel free to ask questions or for help! -Reagle (talk) 19:05, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Contributors' acknowledgments

Phoebe has acknowledgments at the end of her essay; that's a nice touch and, though I hesitate to recommend everyone be as prolific 😄, folks should feel free to do so on PubPub. (I hope it'd be okay in the book, but that needs discussion.) -Reagle (talk) 20:02, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, a small acknowledgment section at the end of your essay is appropriate for PubPub and the book. -Reagle (talk) 19:32, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Listing contributors

Would it be possible to add our other contributors (Melissa Tamani, Michael Mandiberg, and Jacqueline Mabey) to our byline? I've just added them on PubPub. Sorry and thanks!--Siankevans (talk) 18:24, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Siankevans, yes: in PubPub you can do that in Option/Attribution at the top of the page, whether they've created an account or not. I see you found it! I added it to the Meta project as well. -Reagle (talk) 19:00, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Publication?

When is this book going to be published? Liz (talk) 20:23, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Hey Liz, Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The book is being released on October 20. You can preorder now! [1] Best, Jackiekoerner (talk) 15:18, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

The publication together with all the essays is accessible at Wikipedia @ 20.--Ipigott (talk) 08:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

License

Saying "a" CC license is very bad practice. Is it going to be a free license? I see some chapters, like Phoebe's, are marked as cc-by-sa. Nemo 15:26, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jackiekoerner @Reagle do you mind responding to the above as editors? --Zblace (talk) 14:00, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

The published book is NC, but the PubPub version would be available and I believe it's otherwise identical except that it's missing the pagination information -- if that's maintained in any case. One could start by scraping the PubPub version and using Pandoc to convert it to MediaWiki syntax. -User:Reagle 14:33, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Possibility of adding to Wikisource?

Hi @Reagle: I've been working on adding some Wikipedia content to Wikisource recently, for example wikisource:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries: A Global Project. I'd be interested in doing the same with this book. However, I can't find a PDF or figure out the license - can you help? Is it published in a form that's compatible with Wikimedia Commons - e.g., CC-BY or CC-BY-SA? Or have you restricted it further than that as implied above? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:45, 3 May 2022 (UTC) (Also pinging @Jackiekoerner and Phoebe: just in case. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:46, 3 May 2022 (UTC))

The PDF/print chapters are CC BY-NC 4.0 and the PubPub versions are CC-BY 4.0. The later can easily be scraped, reformatted, translated, etc. You much check with User:Zblace about their efforts. -Reagle (talk) 12:31, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

@Reagle: OK, thanks! I'll PDF-ify and upload the version from PubPub at some point then, will let you know when things are looking reasonable. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:08, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Mike Peel, what's the point of creating a PDF version? It'll be inferior to the typeset and paginated one and if anyone would want to do something useful -- such as @Zblace: efforts to translate -- wouldn't a Wikitext version be more useful? If you want simply everything in a single PDF, you could download the PDF chapter and concatenate them. -Reagle (talk) 17:01, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

@Reagle: On Wikisource you start with a PDF or Djvu, then proofread into the wiki version. See for example the setup at wikisource:Index:Wikipedia and Academic Libraries.djvu. That way, users/readers can verify that the wikitext actually matches the original text. It's a bit of a long way around, but it's a system that works well, and importing text from a PDF works quite well so it's just formatting and checking. And then it's preserved on-wiki for the long term. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:41, 4 May 2022 (UTC)