Project Leads Discussion

Project Leads:

Purpose:
This thread is for project management discussions between the series and book editors of the Introduction to Philosophy open textbook series.

Hi @clhendricksbc, @geoslack and @cliftows! I thought we’d get started using this thread as a means of communication (rather than email) with some follow up after our meeting:

  1. I’ve made a few changes to the section threads we have set up, including adding a Google doc version of the section outlines and a more detailed TOC spreadsheet that we can use for chapter assignments. These can be updated once the outlines are settled. Any feedback on the new structure is very welcome – everything is editable.

  2. George & Scott, could I grab a couple of sentences as a section summary when you get a chance? This will go on the section thread header for when people land on the page.

  3. I’ve indicated May 8th for closing comments on the outlines & given anyone comment access to the docs (I’ll give you all edit access separately). We can promo this a bit and hopefully get some more feedback before finalising things.

  4. I’ve (kind of) figured out the pagination/scrolling issue - it looks like the global setting is overriden at the user level, so you can change it in your user settings if pagination is your preference (I’ve switched and it’s much better!)

  5. I’ll send you all access to a sample author guide that can be a starting point for an author guide for this project later this afternoon. This will likely require the most discussion at this point, so once you’ve had a look over it we can reconvene.

  6. I’ve put some possible times & dates in a Doodle poll to figure out our next call, but Scott, I think you said you’re not sure of your summer schedule yet, so say the word if you want to wait on that first.

Thanks all!

Thanks, Zoe! I’ll fill out the doodle poll and also change my settings to pagination. I wonder what the default is for most people and whether they have to change the settings individually, which they may not know to do?

I’ll also promote them in the main book discussion thread…

@clhendricksbc Yea, the default/user override looks a little confusing but I need to dig into the documentation a bit further to figure it out for sure. Very odd.

And yes, the Google docs are at the top of the section threads. It would be great if you could drop them into the main thread as well, and perhaps beyond? Same to @geoslack and @cliftows – if you have people in your networks who might be interested in commenting, please put the word out!

Hi everyone,

Should we “finalize” the ToC’s at this point? I mean, enough to start looking for authors?

And maybe we need to update the doodle poll for the next meeting since it’s been awhile?

Here’s a link to a draft author guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TlCo5mAoqkDGQEEPcaRX29pW2S-Z5okhi934_Iv3_qs/edit#heading=h.d6gcahfo43xx

Please read/edit/comment! @geoslack @cliftows
– also, George and Scott, are you subscribed to this thread here? I guess it’s called ‘watching’…

George posted an idea for terminology for parts of the book that I think makes sense. Here’s what he said over in the “ethics” thread. It makes sense to me. Okay with others?

"Also for the sake of clarity we should also decide on terminology regrading parts, sections, chapters and so on since we seem to be using them in different ways.

I’ve been using the terms from the world of LaTeX which are as follows:

Book (e.g., This Intro Book)
    Part (e.g., Ethics)
        Chapter (e.g., Is it all relative?)
            Section (e.g., Subjectivism)
                Subsection (e.g., Arguments for Subjectivism)
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I just added a bit more information on our author guide, specifically about accessibility requirements. This is due to a meeting held yesterday by Rebus and the Open Textbook Network about accessibility. See here and let us know what you think: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TlCo5mAoqkDGQEEPcaRX29pW2S-Z5okhi934_Iv3_qs/edit#

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Hi all,

I put out a call for interested authors on the PHILOS-L list and the American Association of Philosophy Teachers’ list. I also put it on the Phil-events site, here: https://philevents.org/event/show/34074

I’ve gotten quite a few replies via email and for most of them I’ve directed them to sign up here and post on the relevant discussion thread for the part they want to contribute to. There are already a few people signed up for chapters, which will be finalized in the Public TOC spreadsheet.

It would be great if Scott and George could get back to people on the discussion thread relatively quickly once they post, and give them a welcome and some thoughts on getting started. Point them to the author guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TlCo5mAoqkDGQEEPcaRX29pW2S-Z5okhi934_Iv3_qs/edit# And also maybe talk about process like if they want feedback along the way they could post to the board, etc.? And deadlines.

I realize July 4 is a holiday in the U.S., though! I’ll try to jump in too, but I also want people to get the sense that you two are the ones in charge of each section rather than me being the one they go to (which they might think because of the emails I sent out to the lists telling them to contact me…).

We’re moving right along!

Christina

Hi all,

Some updates from my end:

I’ll be doing the same for the other parts once those outlines come in, so keep an eye out here for the documents!

@apurva Thanks, Apurva! I looked over the general project description section and it says for new people to sign up on the google spreadsheet, which is good, but it would also be good if they introduce themselves on the new volunteer thread in addition to signing up on the spreadsheet. Could you add that in?

Also, the link to the spreadsheet goes to the TOC page on the spreadsheet, rather than the “people” page, and people might get confused. They can just go to the “people” tab at the bottom of the sheet but they might not think to do that!

@clhendricksbc Thanks for the suggestions! I’ve made both changes. It definitely is clearer now.

FYI, here is the new editing workflow document!

Hi all, here are the links to some documents for easy access: