[pydotorg-www] Resource book lists are mostly one publishing house

[Betsy Waliszewski]

Hi all,

Thanks for raising this. We're working on a general policy for use of the
public wiki that will be posted on the website.

Best,

Betsy

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 9:59 AM Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:

> Escalate this to Board? There are clearly sponsorship issues to be
> considered, and I know Packt generates a portion of revenues to the
> Foundation so this needs to be considered where all the information is
> available. Copying PSF staffers in.
>
> As a member of the sponsorship committee I believe it's time for the
> Foundation to plant a clear stake in the ground, delete many or even all of
> the references to Packt publications and publish a blog post stating why
> the action was taken.
>
> I believe Packt have taken advantage of a liberal regime, but I think
> rather than being punitive we should simply "reset" them: our fault for not
> being clearer about the rules, now EVERYBODY knows what they are let's
> start again. Or maybe we just need wiki editors to start giving their
> publications some honest reviews. I withdrew as an editorial consultant
> from one proposed work that still went ahead despite
> serious quality issues, and I have heard enough similar stories from other
> authors/reviewers that I believe Packt's actions may be against the
> membership's interests in promoting works of dubious value. The ultimate
> decision, however, is well above my now happily lowly pay grade.
>
> Given that I start my Christmas vacation tomorrow evening, let me take
> this opportunity to wish all readers the very best of everything over their
> festive season, and a prosperous new year.
>
> Kind regards,
> Steve Holden
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 8:58 AM M.-A. Lemburg <mal at python.org> wrote:
>
>> Agreed. We had this discussion before, but no action was taken AFAIK.
>>
>> On 15.12.2019 13:48, Steve Holden wrote:
>> > They've already been warned once.
>> >
>> > Personal opinion: they should be stopped from spamming our Wiki, in
>> > which they currently have undue prominence.
>> >
>> > Kind regards,
>> > Steve Holden
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 5:20 AM Mats Wichmann <mats at wichmann.us
>> > <mailto:mats at wichmann.us>> wrote:
>> >
>> >     On 12/14/19 9:55 PM, Frances Hocutt wrote:
>> >     > Hello all,
>> >     >
>> >     > While going through the wiki working on Python 3 updates, I
>> noticed
>> >     > that these two pages now stretch to hundreds of books from a
>> single
>> >     > publisher:
>> >     >
>> >     >   https://wiki.python.org/moin/IntroductoryBooks
>> >     >   https://wiki.python.org/moin/AdvancedBooks
>> >     >
>> >     > This seems like it runs into spamming/broad self-promotion more
>> than a
>> >     > usefully curated list of resources, but I'm not familiar with how
>> this
>> >     > wiki usually handles that kind of thing. Could someone more
>> familiar
>> >     > with this wiki take a look?
>> >
>> >     We do have one publisher - Packt - that keeps updating all the time.
>> >     They produce books at an astounding rate.  I've looked at a fair
>> number
>> >     and they're not useless, although they're of fairly low quality in
>> my
>> >     personal opinion - it's a kind of "book mill".
>> >
>> >     I haven't a clue what we think we should do about them.  I think we
>> >     warned them a few times about changing the sorting to put their
>> >     books at
>> >     the top, and believe they stopped that and kept to the "alphabetical
>> >     order" we suggest. Beyond that... don't think we can say they're
>> doing
>> >     something wrong. Without someone curating the list for quality,
>> >     which we
>> >     don't have, it's not clear there's any actual complaint we can make.
>> >
>> >     Thanks for asking - it's a good question.
>> >
>> >     Anybody else?
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     _______________________________________________
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>> >     pydotorg-www at python.org <mailto:pydotorg-www at python.org>
>> >     https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pydotorg-www
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> > pydotorg-www at python.org
>> > https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pydotorg-www
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Marc-Andre Lemburg
>> Python Software Foundation
>> http://www.python.org/psf/
>> http://www.malemburg.com/
>>
>

-- 
Betsy Waliszewski
Event Planner / Sponsorship Coordinator
@ThePSF

As a non-profit organization, the PSF depends on sponsorships and donations
to support the Python community. Check out our Annual Impact Report for
more details: https://www.python.org/psf/annual-report/2019/

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