Jimmy Wales wrote:
Particularly since textbooks are, by their nature, not
as general as
an encyclopedia, there is a smaller pool of authors *per book*, so
that we need to be very careful about any barriers to participation.
The smaller pool of authors is the very reason I'd prefer logged-in
edits only, as less "real" authors means shifting the author:vandal
ratio in favor of the vandals.
On the other hand, keeping anonymous edits might be good as well, as
vandals then wouldn't log in, and *potential* (!) vandalism could be
rather easily on Recent Changes by the very fact that it's an anonymous
edit (most "real" authors are probably logged in).
Here's the thing that I want to keep reminding
everyone: the whole
idea of wiki is completely insane. It's obvious to me, based on
everything I know about human nature, that it just can't possibly
work. But... it does.
So my inclination is to discourage 'a priori problem solving', as
least to a degree. Nupedia was an exercise in excessive a priori
community design, and it failed miserably. But trusting people to do
the right thing seems to work remarkably well.
Even so, it's entirely possible that the community dynamic for writing
a textbook is very different from the community dynamic for writing an
encyclopedia. So experience might teach us that radical-wiki-openness
really can't work here.
Still, isn't that something that we should let experience teach us,
rather than making assumptions beforehand?
OK, I'm convinced! Let's keep anon edits in until all hell breaks loose ;-)
Oh, one motivational issue:
So far, in Germany the state paid for all the books in school. Just
today, it was announced that due to Germany's financial sorta crisis,
the parents will have to pay for the books in the future.
Too bad there's no free source for such books...
Magnus