Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-07-15/In the media

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Re "Reselling Wikipedia": When do editors get their cut? Serious question. EllenCT (talk) 01:30, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"By clicking the "Save page" button, you agree to the Terms of Use and you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL with the understanding that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient for CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution." -> CC-BY-SA 3.0: "You are free: to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work" -> ""Distribute" means to make available to the public the original and copies of the Work or Adaptation, as appropriate, through sale or other transfer of ownership". Serious answer. --Pres N 02:12, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's legal, just unethical, given the price point. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 03:48, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I fail to see how "charging too much" is in any way unethical, with the obvious exception being when someone is required to purchase something and there are no alternatives. Charging too much when the buyer can get the same thing elsewhere or can simply choose to do without isn't unethical. By the way, I have a Commodore 128 for sale, a bargain at $1000. Any takers? (smile) --Guy Macon (talk) 14:11, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, if a customer knows that they can get the same information for free from Wikipedia, it is not unethical to charge whatever the market will bear. But deceiving the customer, or even just allowing him or her to think that the book is in some way different from free material, is unethical, bordering on fraud. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:35, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is no legal or moral requirement that a seller must disclose that the same item is available elsewhere at a lower price, even if the lower price is "free" (ignoring the fact that Wikipedia does not provide content in printed form). (BTW, I am selling copies of Slackware Linux for $25. Any takers? (smile).) If they give proper attribution, that is enough. I would agree that they should provide attribution in the product listing, not just after you make the purchase and open the book. Not disclosing that information pre-sale would indeed border on fraud. --Guy Macon (talk)

Deliberately taking advantage of the ignorance of buyers is widely seen as unethical. Gamaliel (talk) 14:53, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

+!. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:13, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

+1. It's basically the same as when Dell charged people to install Firefox. —George8211 / T 16:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Freelance editor working from his outline" sounds more like ghostwriting than editing. Is it customary for university professors writing for academic publishers to employ ghostwriters? ~ Ningauble (talk) 16:07, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ghostwriters, per se, no? Freelance assistants and editors? Graduate students? Yes. So you can get away with a lot if you call it one thing and not the other. Gamaliel (talk) 16:41, 17 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, I did it. One of the last books I bought at Borders was "How Wikipedia Works" which is only a collection of articles. I learned; I enjoyed. Books are pleasant. Books are good. I agree with the girl in the excellent "Teens React to Encyclopedias" video; the loss of books is sad, though like her I mostly read glowing screens nowadays and a few people like to carry a non-glowing E-book. Price? Paid authors get only a tiny fraction of cover price; most the money goes for things that the Internet nowadays does quicker and cheaper and, except when I really want to read paper, better. Jim.henderson (talk) 16:03, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments like this in the media frustrate me greatly: "We know very little about the tiny world; its Wikipedia entry is 3,000 words shorter than that of Cybertron, fictional home planet of the Transformers." This fails to take into account all of the material in Category:Pluto, which goes into great detail. There is of course no such thing as Category:Cybertron. KConWiki (talk) 17:13, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The accessibility of material on Wikipedia to somebody more familiar with traditional media is certainly a problem. How would a reader of an article know that clicking on the "category" link would take them to related pages? And once in the category page it is not exactly easy to find and navigate to the material that is of interest. If done properly the books built from Wikipedia content can provide additional value to justify their cost by structuring and organising material in a way that suits other readers. QuiteUnusual (talk) 12:47, 21 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Internal links and WP:See Also are intended to take care of that. Wikipedia:Navigation templates were made to go even further. However, those articles that have a navbox generally have too many, and they are too big, so they are presented in collapsed form, which is fine for us insiders but not for our audience. Jim.henderson (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]