Perhaps you could explain a bit better the rationale
behind this. It
might also build up interest among those who haven't realised what the
benefits of these tools would be.
Fair enough. The most important aspect for me would be the email
aliasing. Imagine a YOURUSERNAME(a)wikibooks.org, or even
@wikibookian.org. This would make it look more "official" for when we
are having to do business on behalf of Wikibooks. If we're trying to
keep in touch with a class project, or if we are trying to secure a
book donation, an "official" looking email address would do a lot for
our credibility. For instance, when I am sending an email to a
professor or to one of my students, I use my school address.
Blogging is another big deal. On wikibooks, we once voted (and this
may be an issue we could reopen, if there were enough support) to not
allow our users to blog on Wikibooks. Wikiversity allows it's users to
blog directly on-wiki in their user pages. These blogs, of course,
have to be on topic. I wanted to have a blog about Wikibooks, so I had
to go to an external site and start one up myself. This extra effort,
plus the need to create a new account at a blogging site will be a
turn off to many people. If we put a blog in front of people though,
and say "this is open for wikibookians to use with no hassle" I think
more people will use it. This also allows people to keep their blogs
tied in to their regular wikibooks accounts.
Having an embedded IRC client available will also, hopefully, increase
participating in the chat rooms. Only a few people do participate in
the chat room, but it's a resource that I think we should use more
often. On the occasions when multiple admins are in the chatroom,
dealing with problems or vandalism becomes trivial because of the
instantaneous communication. Many people do not have IRC clients, and
would probably be intimidated by them anyway. By having an embedded
IRC client available, we could help increase participation in this.
These are just a few of the points that seem to have attracted the
most interest, this is certainly not an exhaustive list. The key point
is that this kind of tool would make it easier for people to
communicate with each other, and it would make it easier for new users
to get involved with the community.
Our community
has voted once
before to not allow blogging on-wiki,
How about just aggregating posts from various blogs.
Again, people would have to create their own blogs on an external
site, which may not be an attractive option for many people.
Aggregating from existing blogs may be nice, but I want to make the
whole process of blogging more easy, and more accessible.
*Ability to
host personal information, including images, which are not
freely-licensed
What would this be for?
This is actually an issue that was more of a problem on Wikiversity,
and it's not something that we've really had to deal with, yet.
Consider the case of an image of yourself: Several users, myself
included, post images of themselves on their user page. The problem
with the current set-up is that to post a picture of myself, I must
release it under a free license. This means that other people can use
my picture in ways that I might not necessarily approve of beforehand.
Of course, this opens the issue of whether we want to post pictures of
ourselves online anyway, but I'm side-stepping that question.
We at Wikibooks have voted before to not allow people to post things
like resumes on-wiki. This follows pretty directly from the 'not a
personal webhost' clause. However, I think that we can do things to
promote our active contributors, such as hosting resumes. This is a
topic that we could talk a long time about, so i'll just drop it for
now.
*Embedded IRC
client with access to #Wikibooks, #cvn-wb-en, and #en.wikibooks
*Applets and other tools specific to wikibooks (similar to the
toolserver, but primarily for wikibooks)
Can this not be done on the same server with the same hostname, but
off-wiki (e.g.
wikibooks.org/tools/)?
I'm sure lots of things "can" be done that will probably never be
accomplished. We would need to get these kinds of programs installed
by the devs, and that would likely require all sorts of testing for
performance and security, etc. Also, that would put additional (albeit
small) strain on the servers, and that's something that nobody would
want. Having a separate website that we (wikibookians) develop and
maintain would keep this strain off our developers, off our hardware,
etc. If we are going to do any of this stuff, I want to do it without
creating any stress on other people.
I hope this answered some questions, sorry for the verbosity.
--Andrew Whitworth