I am wandering is it a local policy on en: (and some other Wikibooks)
or, like on Wikipedia, it is a global policy?
Yes, this is reasonable if we are talking only about manuals and
school books. However, I would like to see, for example, a book about
web servers comparison and I don't think that it is reasonable to stop
people writing such kinds of books. Also, I'd like to see essays and
even fiction books on Wikibooks, too. Of course, with defining what
kind of books would be able not to be NPOV and NOR (for example, I
don't think that a book about history may be POV) and with marking
such books as OR and POV.
If it is locally related to en:, projects in other languages may not
follow such rules. However, it would be better to have a global policy
with definitions what may and what may not be OR and/or POV.
I think that it is better to have strong Wikibookian communities with
a lot of fiction on Wikibooks then much smaller communities without
fiction on Wikibooks.
I know that it sounds hereticly :) However, I would like to see a good
skilled (amateur) astronomer who prefer to write SF on Wikibooks. He
may start to write a book about astronomy through some time.
Bonjour,
Des critiques sont régulièrement faites aux Wikipédiens et à Wikimédia
France à propos du traitement inégal entre Wikipédia et les autres projets
francophones, à savoir Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquote,
Wikisource et Wikiversity. J'aimerais éclaircir un peu les choses.
1. Wikipédia est célèbre, les autres projets pas.
C'est un constat, pas un point de vue. Wikipédia est le 10e site le plus
visité en France. Wikipédia est cité dans la presse écrite, des émissions
lui sont consacrées à la radio et on en parle à la télévision. Pourquoi ?
Parce que le projet intéresse, soulève des questions. Et surtout, parce que
le sujet est polémique et qu'il fait vendre. Une candidate socialiste
invente un mot qui se retrouve dans l'encyclopédie ? Un /College/ américain
interdit à ses étudiants la citation de Wikipédia comme source ? Un hoax à
propos de la mort d'un acteur américain has-been circule grâce à Wikipédia ?
C'est de l'événementiel. Ça intéresse la ménagère de moins de 50 ans. Ça
fait vendre. Ça intéresse les journalistes.
2. Wikipédia aussi a du mal à communiquer sur les sujets qui l'intéressent.
Lorsque l'on souhaite communiquer à propos de Wikipédia sur la difficulté de
trouver des images libres, sur la loi DADVSI, sur Gallica qui est peu
coopérative, sur un projet de loi sur la délinquance qui interdit à un
reporter non professionnel de filmer des violences policières, vous croyez
qu'on arrive à se faire entendre ? Ce qui intéresse les journalistes, c'est
le comité éditorial (qui n'existe pas), le comité d'arbitrage (qui n'est pas
le comité éditorial, non) et les administrateurs (qui ne sont pas non plus
le comité éditorial, non...). Ils veulent savoir si (non, pardon, il veulent
savoir « que ») « Wikipédia va manger Google » et que « le cofondateur de
Wikipédia lance une encyclopédie validée et sécurisée. » Le jour où on a une
affaire Seigenthaler sur Wikibooks, je vous assure que la presse parlera du
projet...
3. Wikimédia France promeut tous les projets.
Wikimédia France a pour mission de faire connaître et de soutenir les
projets de diffusion libre de la connaissance, notamment les projets
hébergés par la Wikimedia Foundation. Et c'est ce qu'elle fait du mieux
qu'elle peut. La liste des présentations faites par les membres de
l'association témoigne d'un engagement qui ne concerne pas uniquement
Wikipédia : < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations/fr> L'association
profite des interviews pour tenter de parler des autres projets, mais (cf
1.) ça n'intéresse pas les journalistes. J'aimerais toutefois que les
efforts faits par les membres pour promouvoir tous les projets soient
reconnus.
4. Une association est le reflet de ses membres.
Et la majorité des membres de Wikimédia France sont des Wikipédiens. Si vous
estimez que les efforts qui sont faits pour promouvoir les autres projets ne
sont pas encore suffisants, je vous invite vraiment à adhérer à
l'association pour dynamiser la promotion du projet qui vous tient à cœur.
Nous serons ravis de vous y aider. Par contre, refuser de s'impliquer et
critiquer a posteriori, je suis pas d'accord. Quand on décide de ne pas
participer à quelque chose, on assume son choix et on ne vient pas se
plaindre ensuite que c'est mal fait.
5. « Engagez-vous ! »
Si vous avez des idées, des suggestions, des projets pour faire connaître et
soutenir les projets francophones, contactez l'association Wikimédia France
(par exemple sur sa liste de discussion <
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediafr-l>) qui sera ravie
de vous apporter son aide.
--
Guillaume Paumier
[[m:User:guillom]]
http://www.wikimedia.org
Well, I'm sure it is a minor glitch with the dev team, but it looks like
Wikibooks disappeared from the Wikimedia projects list briefly today.
I'm sure there is an interesting story behind this, as not all Wikimedia
projects are affected.
-- Robert Horning
With all of the complaints about how Wikibooks is going to heck in a
handbasket, I would like to point out some rather positive "press" about
Wikibooks that comes from outside of our little community:
http://smarandayal.com/2007/03/10/gods-of-kobol-bless-wikibooks/
Here is somebody just trying to learn a little more about a topic, and
he is using Wikibooks to try and pick up that knowledge.
Congratulations to the [[Economics]] Wikibook on ths point, you got a
genuine fan here!
--~~~~
I thought I'd send a message to this list for those who might be interested
but do not monitor the Wikijunior front page or the Wikijunior talk page on
Meta.
Wikijunior has made a pretty good start on +/-14 non-fiction titles for
children, and that's something that I think we at Wikijunior should be proud
of. During the creation of those titles their have been lessons learned and
ideas expressed.
Wikijunior has some new guidelines proposed including one that redefines
what kind of books can be produced under the Wikijunior umbrella. This
proposed guideline can be found at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Wikijunior:What_is_Wikijunior . This
proposed guideline along with the style guide at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Style_Guide and the new title policy
at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:New_Title_Policy . There is also
a request for a Wikijunior namespace to be created within Wikibooks. The
request is here: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9283 .
These changes represent a change of direction for Wikijunior and I hope all
those who are interested will comment and participate. I think that a change
of direction is wanted and needed by those working on the project and
developing the content. I hope that these changes will lead to renewed
interest and participation in the the idea of Wikijunior.
Hopefully these changes will lead to renewed interest from people outside
the Wikijunior Community and even greater participation from content
developers than Wikijunior already enjoys.
Thanks,
Randy Wilson (Wikibooks editor xixtas)
We have three ongoing class projects which most of you probably
already know about: Social and Cultural Foundations of American
Education, The Computer Revolution, and Ethnomedicine. I have posted
notes on the individual contributor's pages repeatedly particularly
about image use, but I get nothing even such as a reply. How can we
get in contact with these contributors? Or, how can we get in contact
with their group leader, professor, or whomever is in charge? They
need to know about copyrights relating to images. I ended up removing
all the untagged images I found in Ethnomedicine, left (hopefully)
kind notes on the uploaders pages referring them to Commons (where I
found related free images in all but one case), and have gotten no
reply. I'm flustered right now and cannot really think straight. Any
ideas about where to go from here?
-Iamunknown
I'm forwarding an e-mail I got through the Wikibooks e-mail service. As
I very rarely get spam this way (I think this is the first genuine one),
I think it does deserve some note and I'm letting others on this mailing
list to make sure you don't make the mistake of actually trying to make
the massive links to this guy's website. I don't think that is a
serious problem with regular Wikibookians, but a mass reply to this guy
to let him know he has stepped over the line may be appropriate.
I also mention this to Wikibooks admins that there may be some attempts
at link spamming by this indivdual and others, depending on how far this
individual has gone through the Wikibooks user list.
--Robert Horning
We have just launched http://planet.wikimedia.org/ , which is an
aggregator for all on-topic wiki-related weblog (blog) posts by
participants in Wikimedia projects. The planet can be found at:
http://planet.wikimedia.org/
To get added, please follow the instructions at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia
This is a kind of beta test, and right now, the planet is in the
English language; however, I have prepared a process for requesting
new languages to be set up here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planet_Wikimedia/New_language
So please add your support if you wish to aggregate blog posts in
another language.
Again, this is for on-topic posts, not for diary entries. All feeds
must either point to a blog which is almost exclusively about wikis,
or filtered (WordPress, Blogger and other common blog engines all
support filtered feeds by categorizing your posts, e.g., adding the
"wiki" category to all posts which you want to be included in the
planet). If this makes you feel uncomfortable, you can (in addition or
in substitution) add your blog to http://wikiblogplanet.com/ , which
does not filter posts for on-topicness. WikiBlogPlanet is run
independently by Nick Jenkins.
I hope that this new tool will allow us to share useful and
interesting information, as well as opinions, more effectively across
project boundaries.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik
DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic
Wikimania, Wikimedia's annual global conference for the community, has
today released its call for participation.
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Particpation
We will shortly be accepting submissions for presentations, panels,
discussions, posters, and more. I would like to encourage all
community members to make a submission. Wikimania is the wiki
conference aimed at the Wikimedia community, so it's essential that
you are represented here. If there is something interesting about your
wiki that you want to share with 400 Wikimedians in Taipei this
summer, please respond to this call for participation.
We are also looking for volunteers to review the submissions made and
help us to choose what will be presented at Wikimania. Depending on
what you would like to review, please contact one of the following
people to let them know you would like to help.
Wikimedia Communities presentations: Angela Beesley:
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Angela
Free Content presentations: Phoebe Ayers:
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Brassratgirl
Technical infrastructure presentations: James Forrester:
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester
Posters and Panels (all themes): Jakob Voss:
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:JakobVoss
Artistic artifacts, Workshops, and Birds-of-a-Feather (all themes):
TzuChiang Liou:
http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TzuChiang_Liou
Angela Beesley