John,
I think that the slowdown has a couple of reasons: the
newness has worn off so the initial burst is over and the
true longterm growth has not started yet. Also, I was
making a lot of contributions but am not currently due to
limited access to the Internet living in the Third World at
the moment. And, the more complicated nature of textbooks
requires a higher level of commitment than the regular
Wikipedia, where any person can work on any module without
concern for any other. Here, there is a higher level of
organization to make a book.
What will help: time will only help us, as even small
contributions snowball over time into something impressive.
Organized or institutional backing, like the grant the
WikiMedia Foundation recently recieved from the Beck
Foundation (do I remember that right?) to develop some
booklets for kids, or better than money, the dedication of
a group of educators working together with the tools
available on the site. That�s where I think that you folks
in Utah can help, showing that things can be done even if
it is with one book. Things get very exciting very quickly
when people start to work collaboratively on wikis over the
web, especially when you know what kind of a difference the
work will make.
As for the delay in getting the emails sent out, I think it
was an oversight by our very overworked volunteer Brion,
who seems to have the responsability of watching spam along
with so many other things.
Please let me know if there is anything else that you think
I can do for you at any time.
Karl
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