Wikibooks:Editorial control

Wikibooks is a project intended to be used for the collaborative creation of textbooks that are free for any person or institution to use. Our goal is to create high-quality, up-to-date materials to be used in classrooms or by individuals. The texts we create here are free for all to use, as they are licensed under the CC-BY-SA License and GFDL.

As a collaborative text-creating project, Wikibooks is and must be open to all contributors. Those who have worked long and hard on their books must be willing to welcome those who wish to collaborate in order to improve the book. Noone, regardless of their contributions, has a right to "defend" a book from further development on this project by discouraging new contributors. New contributors should be welcomed and encouraged. If the book follows an established Manual of Style, the new contributors should have this described to them. If a new contributor has ideas, they should be taken into consideration. Established contributors must by all means be civil and welcoming.

Every time we edit a page, the message below includes the sentence: "If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here." Wikibooks are meant to be written by anyone and everyone who is familiar with the topic and wishes to make the textbook better. Wikibooks grow as the community involved writing the book grows.

Communication is important for collaboration

Collaboration requires communication. The easiest way to communicate when working on a book is to include descriptive edit summaries, to let other contributors know why you made a particular change or addition. If it is a "radical" change, it might also be a good idea to leave a more detailed note on the talk page.

More general discussions of the book as a whole may belong on a "project page" (if there is no project page, the discussion page of the main book page is usually the best place, contributors should always add this to their watchlists). If you ask a question but receive no answer, it may be that nobody else is currently working on the book, or perhaps they are not watching the page you left a note on. Past contributors can be found by browsing the page history.

Wherever you leave a message (edit summary, talk page, user talk, etc.), remember to be civil. Communication quickly breaks down where civility and mutual respect are absent.

In case of dispute

Sometimes contributors of good faith are just unable to agree on something.