[IPython-dev] Listing books on the home page, a policy proposal. Feedback?

[Brian Granger]

+1

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 4:35 PM, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> we just went over this on the dev meeting, but I'd like to give it a day or
> two here on-list for feedback in case anyone who wasn't at the meeting has
> further comments...
>
> For a while we've had on the homepage a link to Cyrille's IPython book, and
> we've been contacted by a publisher of an upcoming title asking for a new
> listing there. So I'd like to have uniform criteria that we use to make that
> decision in a fair manner with *any* publisher.  Here's what we discussed
> during the meeting, with some additional refinements I just thought of to
> make things clearer.
>
> One quick note: Brian noted that the website is way too busy already, which
> is true. But I want to decouple this specific decision about books from an
> entire website redesign conversation. I think that books are one of the
> things that actually should belong on the main homepage, as they are a very
> important resource related to the project and that benefits it in multiple
> ways.  So let's assume that any redesigned home page will have *some* space
> for a small image pointing to a book, and the discussion here is about what
> to put there and how to provide a policy publishers can all know about.
>
> Any feedback welcome.
>
> Cheers
>
> f
>
> #### Proposed language
>
> Our policy for listing books on the website is as follows. This will be
> uniformly applied across publishers, so the project can maintain its
> neutrality regarding IPython-related books (all language below would apply
> in the future to Jupyter-oriented books).
>
> 1. Criteria for inclusion in the homepage
>
> We will list books that are specifically and mostly about IPython itself,
> rather than just mentioning IPython in a chapter or two (though see Note in
> #2 below).
>
> For example, the currently listed book by Cyrille Rossant amply qualifies,
> but Wes McKinney's "Python for Data Analysis", while having an excellent
> chapter devoted to IPython, would not get a link on the home page.
>
>
> 2. Our "Books" page:
>
> We will create a main page listing in reverse chronological order the
> various books that are mainly devoted to IPython. For each book, we simply
> list its title, author and actual publisher page (or Amazon, whatever the
> author prefers), along with a cover image.  No editorializing/reviews/etc.
>
> There may be a section at the bottom listing books that include some useful
> material about IPython (more than just a sentence but less than say 1/2 the
> book).  These would be listed for reference but would have no front-page
> link (e.g. Wes' book).
>
> Note: the core team reserves the right to *not* include a book in this
> listing. If someone out there publishes a book that we deem to be absolutely
> terrible, we reserve the right to simply not list it.
>
>
> 3. What we show on the homepage
>
> We will have a single image for books, and that will be a randomly rotating
> screenshot of all currently available books.  That image will be a link to
> that book's entry in the "Books" page.
>
> Since now we'll only have at most two of these (the current one and
> Cyrille's upcoming one), we can make the distribution give say 2/3 of views
> to the new book and 1/3 to the old. If eventually there's multiple books, we
> can figure out a *simple* distribution to highlight newer ones more often
> while still showing the older ones (as long as they are in print).
>
> --
> Fernando Perez (@fperez_org; http://fperez.org)
> fperez.net-at-gmail: mailing lists only (I ignore this when swamped!)
> fernando.perez-at-berkeley: contact me here for any direct mail
>
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-- 
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
@ellisonbg on Twitter and GitHub
bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com