[FM Discuss] the presentation

[Andy Oram]

Fascinating article, and a strong viewpoint I didn't notice before in what you've said, Adam. When it's ready for public viewing, I'll point the O'Reilly editors to the article. Yes, as a traditional publisher we're threatened. But we aren't afraid of being threatened; we want to know what's out there.

I do have two immediate reactions.

First, regarding attribution. The idea of throwing attribution out of the window is about the most radical idea I've seen in the space of managing creativity. Even Eben Moglen thinks attribution is crucial. But sure, if you tell people to be selfless, to mix their input freely with other people's input, and to let it go anywhere without tracing it, content will be much more fluid--basically no friction.

Yet the desire to get credit (the need for reputation) is one of the strongest human drives, and most authors care more about it than the money. I once wrote an article that didn't have my byline on it, but I still did it more for reputation than money. Basically, the people whom I wanted to know about my work and respect me for it knew about it, and I didn't care about the wider public.

To some extent, simple web searches can turn up the source for documents--but many people won't bother to do those searches, and if it travels to some place on the other side of the globe (particularly in translation) the authors will feel deprived of attribution.

Second point: quality, an issue we come back to again and again. Note that FLOSS Manuals has two versions of each document, one for the Read section and one for the Write section. Ironically, FM plays a gatekeeper role, giving visitors some assurance that the Read version is stable and has been checked for accuracy. That's the publisher's role. One could substitute a rating system (which is what Google does merely by page ranking), but the web has not matured to the point where that's really trustworthy.

By the way, I'm not sure you need authors as stars to elevate the role of the publisher. If I go out seeking mushrooms, the mushrooms are not famous and haven't built up a reputation. I still separate the ones that taste good from the ones that poison me.

Andy

----- Original Message -----
From: "adam hyde" <adam at flossmanuals.net>
To: "floss" <discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net>
Sent: Thursday, August 27, 2009 1:38:53 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [FM Discuss] the presentation

so...i wanted to write a short essay to get my thoughts clear on the
presentation...so here it is...


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Experiences in Open Publishing
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