[Foundation-l] Glycerol information

[John Vandenberg]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 9:51 PM, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.rs> wrote:
> On 11/11/2010 11:16 AM, John Vandenberg wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 8:35 PM, Nikola Smolenski<smolensk at eunet.rs>  wrote:
>>> Back when we were under sanctions, it was impossible to buy antifreeze
>>> (or it was prohibitively expensive). So, my father remembered that in
>>> one of the books in our home library he once read that it it is possible
>>> to make antifreeze by mixing glycerine, alcohol and water in appropriate
>>> amount. It took him weeks to search through the home library, but he
>>> eventually did find the book and made his own antifreeze.
>>
>> What is the year of publications of this book in your library?
>> It might be out of copyright, or out of print and the author (or their
>> estate) willing to release it into the PD early.
>
> It would take me weeks to find it again :) Anyway, it's most likely not
> out of copyright and not in English.

If it is released under a free license, after you have transcribed it,
you can create an English translation on English Wikisource.

>> When was this first discovered?  Glycerol was well known before 1923,
>> so it is quite likely that there are PD sources which cover this in
>> detail, and they can be added to Wikisource.
>
> Wikisource texts could not be updated with new information and will not
> be as well linked with Wikipedia articles as the articles are among
> themselves.

English Wikisource permits annotations, but hasnt developed any
guidelines around this.  Providing corrections to old scientific
information sounds like a good use of annotations.

>>> It probably would be allowed on Wikibooks. But for one reason or
>>> another, people simply aren't interested enough in working on Wikibooks;
>>> Wikibooks don't show high enough in Google because the articles are not
>>> highly interlinked; and the Wikibooks howto in the opposite fashion
>>> could not have encyclopedic information in it (for example the very
>>> important section "Historical cases of contamination with diethylene
>>> glycol" that is present in the Wikipedia article and that would
>>> obviously be very important to someone who needs to make his own
>>> antifreeze).
>>
>> Wikibooks is also an option.  I don't see why Wikibooks can not
>> include this historical information.  Once the Wikibook pages are
>
> Because of WB:NOTWP.

They dont like encyclopedia articles, but they do like instructional material.
I think that if you have a good Howto on the topic, Wikibooks will not
have a problem if you also include a chapter about historical
information where it is useful.
Maybe a Wikibooks admin can answer this?

>> reasonable quality, you can add {{wikibooks}} to the Wikipedia page,
>> allowing readers to easily find this information.
>
> If by "easily" you mean "at the very last place they would ever look,
> hidden behind a link with a meaningless name".

You can use {{wikibooks|Page name|How to make antifreeze, or blow up
your house}}

;-)

--
John Vandenberg