I remember a discussion recently regarding the difficulty in cataloging
Wikibooks. That the Dewey Decimal System is copyrighted and we cannot
therefore use it.
I'd like to make an attempt at bringing in volunteers with a skill in
organizing and cataloging to contribute to the discussions and help put
some organization into Wikibooks, more people with a focus on the
community rather than individual projects.
I've been looking for a way to get people encouraged to help out
Wikibooks and this seems like a pretty good in. What I'd need from you
is a page to orient people into this process, as well as Wikibooks as a
whole.
Ideas?
-Cary
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.
Stanley:
It is unlikely that you will be paid by Wikimedia, as 99.99999999% of the
people who edit the pages of the project do so as volunteers. As for whether
you should volunteer your time, that is up to you to decide, but if you
decide to do so we would be more than happy to have you join us!
Regards.
Matt
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: "Stanley \"Toshmann\" Ozoemena" <stanleyozoemena(a)yahoo.com>
> To: Wikimedia textbook discussion <textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2007 04:31:38 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Cataloging
> Please, forgive me for the diversion, but...
> I have to know;
> Should I volunteer my time, effort, et cetera... Would I ever get paid
> by Wikimedia for all my work?
> I love Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, et al... But I gotta have an
> answer to this question before I take the plunge!
>
>
Ivan Lanin wrote:
> Dear list members,
>
> My name is Ivan Lanin, and I'm a bureaucrat from Indonesian Wikipedia.
> We're currently cleaning up our encyclopedia articles. Some of the
> articles regarding cities or areas in Indonesia that we have contains
> too much details (such as lists of good restaurants, addresses of
> public government office, etc.) to be contained in an encylopedia
> article. At least that what most of us think.
>
> There have been a discussion in local "village pump"
> [[w:id:Wikipedia:Warung Kopi]] discussing this matter. Initially the
> suggestion was to set up Indonesian Wikitravel and move the content
> there, under the false assumption that Wikitravel is one of the
> Foundation projects. That idea was withdrawn when people found out
> that Wikitravel is not part of WMF's projects.
>
> Instead, we were discussion of creating a "travel" book inside
> Indonesian Wikibooks. We haven't seen any other wikibooks using this,
> neither we see any other wikibooks holds information about travel. We
> understand that Wikibooks are for "free textbooks contents", but we
> think if we format the content just like a book, we could make it a
> "traveler's book".
>
> May I ask what the list members think about this? Do any of you have
> the same experience as we have. Please share.
>
> Thank you
>
I would note that this issue has come up on English Wikibooks as well,
where some travel related books have been up for discussion on the VfD
pages. The best example of this is a Wikibook about London which can be
found here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/London
The VfD decision was to keep this book on English Wikibooks. And the
discussion has come up from time to time on the Staff Lounge as well,
with the general prevailing concensus is to keep these kind of books on
Wikibooks, even though we don't openly seek or advertise development of
content like this, at least by having a seperate bookshelf of content
like this. London is currently on the "Miscellenaous" bookshelf (a
cataloging term for finding content on en.wikibooks):
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Miscellaneous_bookshelf
The "Travel Guide" category clearly is something that has been thought
up here as something that would be legitimate for additional Wikibooks.
Certainly the Wikitravel website has pulled most of those who might want
to write content like this, even though it is not a Wikimedia website.
I think this is why it may be harder to find travel guide information on
Wikibooks or why more projects like this havn't been started before.
I hope that helps.
Robert Horning