Wikibooks:Reading room/Projects

Welcome to the Projects reading room. On this page, Wikibookians can talk about subjects related to books, book projects, and other tasks here on Wikibooks that require discussion and organization.

New project proposal – collaborative annotated edition of Lost People by David Graeber

Hi all, I’d like to check whether the following project would fit within Wikibooks' scope and policies. The David Graeber Institute is thinking of creating a collaborative edition of Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar – the first book Graeber wrote (though the second one published). The idea is to publish the main text on Wikibooks and supplement it with archival material from the DGI collections – things like field photos, scans of his notebooks, and audio recordings – to support learning and engagement with the ethnography. Would something like this be considered appropriate for Wikibooks? Thanks in advance for your thoughts. vp Vaspigindustry (discuss • contribs) 15:42, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

@Vaspigindustry This should be fine. If it's only the book (and nothing else), we'd ask you go to Wikisource instead, but since you're enhancing (in Wikibooks policy, annotating) the book, Wikibooks would work. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 15:51, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks – that's great to hear. Yes, the plan is to annotate and expand, not just upload the text. We'll move ahead accordingly. Vaspigindustry (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

To piggyback off of Leaderboard, there are some locally-hosted annotations of works that are not freely licensed (e.g. Annotations of The Complete Peanuts) and Wikisource has annotations of works which are themselves uploaded to Wikisource (e.g. s:en:What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?/Annotated). You can learn more on Wikisource's process at s:en:Wikisource:Annotations. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:34, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer – very helpful. In this case, the idea is for the annotations to be produced by members of the David Graeber Institute and, ideally, by the wider Wikibooks community as well. So it feels like a better fit here than on Wikisource. 80.44.50.1 (discuss) 18:04, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. If the work itself is not free culture, but only the annotations, then this is the correct project. Let me know how I can help: David Graeber is a personal hero. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:06, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

That would be very welcome - I’m still new to the platform and definitely not across all the technicalities yet. The team seems to prefer working from here: madagaskardotdavidgraeberdotorg - I’ve started putting together the main page, but I’m already struggling a bit with setting up chapters and navigation. Are you familiar with this setup by any chance? Vaspigindustry (discuss • contribs) 10:53, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd be happy to help with all that. It seems like the content is currently being posted here: https://madagaskar.davidgraeber.org/ but it doesn't really have any content yet. What I'd recommend is that right off the bat you make it explicitly clear on that wiki what the license is of the material. The easiest way to do that is to put something on the main page that says "All content on this wiki is licensed CC0 1.0/CC BY 4.0/CC BY-SA 4.0, unless otherwise noted" (choose one of those options). If you guys want to work here instead, it will already be appropriately licensed and I can do any help with formatting, etc. I'm here to help you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:48, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks so much - your note about the copyright was really helpful, I’ve just added that to the main page. I’m going to start uploading bits of chapters soon, and later on, when I have a bit more time, some scans from the notebooks too - we’ll be adding things gradually, always with the rights-holder’s approval. I’d gladly take you up on your offer to help with formatting as things take shape Vaspigindustry (discuss • contribs) 14:48, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

I can donate a book on software architecture

Hello,

I wrote a compendium of architectural patterns and can donate it to Wikibooks. However, it contains hundreds of diagrams and probably above a thousand of cross-links, therefore it will take a lot of effort to translate it into the Wikibooks' web layout without some automation. I am too lazy to do that on my own. Moreover, the book is based in original research, which is not welcome here, as far as I know.

Please see if you want to accept the book and if you have volunteers to input it. I can provide access to the original Google Doc and LucidChart diagrams. Descri (discuss • contribs) 16:15, 15 May 2025 (UTC)