From: "Monahon, Peter B." Peter.Monahon@USPTO.GOV Why not have "fiction" at wikibooks? Huh?
Because Wikibooks is for text books and instructional guides. Fiction does not fall under this category. Beyond that, there are several reasons for not including fiction:
1) Wikibooks has a strict "No Original Research" clause which would prevent authors from writing or creating new content like fiction works. 2) Pre-existing fiction works that are not subject to copyright (or are available under the GFDL) belong at Wikisource, not Wikibooks.
At http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page search for "fiction" and see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=fiction&go=Go showing 458 results for "fiction" at Wikibooks. But, I find no "fiction" page at Wikibooks: "Warning: You are recreating a page that was previously deleted.".
We allow pages about fiction, but we do not allow fiction content itself.
Can someone explain? You're joking, right?
We never joke.
What could "wiki" and "books" mean, after all?
We do write books, not just all manner of books. We have precise definitions on what we do and do not include. You can find these guidelines at:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW
So we are a "Wiki", and we do write "books", and therefore we are "Wikibooks". Notice that the word "book" does not imply "all types of books", textbooks can be referred to as simply "books" without any loss of generality.
From Google define:wiki ...
Yes, we all know what a wiki is. This much is not being disputed, is it?
From Google define:book ... Yet the front page says "wikibooks = TEXT books ONLY"?!? What could "text" or "textbook" mean, and why not have them in the name of the wiki after all if it's going to be limited to "textbooks"?
If you notice, the google definition restricts a "book" to a printed and bound medium. Wikibooks, under this definition, does not contain any "books" at all.
Google define:text ... - textbook: a book prepared for use in schools or colleges; "his economics textbook is in its tenth edition"; "the professor wrote the text that he assigned students to buy"
This part of the definition is pretty consistent with Wikibooks.
Google define:textbook ...
This is also perfectly consistent with Wikibooks.
Huh? Misnomer? Why not change the name of wikibooks to Wikiralph if the title is not going to describe and relate to the contents?
Because we are not for "ralph", we are for books. Nowhere is it stated that we may not use the word "books" to mean a subset of all possible books. Technically, a set of textbooks can be called "books" with no loss of generality.
I call for moving the "textbook" contents of wikibooks to a new namespace or enhanced, smart categories under wikibooks, like wikibooks:textbooks as a subset to allow wikibooks to become the BOOK library it promises in it's title.
No. Also, we never promise to be a "library".
Book category wise, http://www.lib.upm.edu.my/clas.html has a nice short listing - only 84 book categories! But, what was wrong with the 3 digits in the Dewey Decimal System? See http://www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/dewey.html ... and some endless challenges or discussions at links like http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/%7Elandc/fulltext/LandC_33_2_Wiegand.pdf - nothing perfect, buy why not try? Why not have such a bifurcated namespace scheme on wikibooks? We might as well get started now rather than wait for someone to create a separate Wikilibrary that includes periodicals, audio, video and so on!
Wikibooks is for textbooks. If people want to start another project for a generalized library of books, we welcome and support that effort.
I'm sure there are many, many schemes for organizing books by content.
All our books are textbooks, and the only real organization that needs to be accounted for is separation by subject. In addition to categories, we also have an alphabetical listing, a dewey-decimal system, and a Library of Congress system. This is all on top of our bookshelves, which keep books neatly organized by subject.
Are we idiots who've never been inside a real library?
No. Wikibooks is also not a "library".
It seems to me that the challenge is to proceed with both energies - contributing books and organizing them at the same time.
We already do this.
... After all, these are the 3 card catalogs in our old-fashioned libraries, right? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog.
Oh right, i forgot that we already have a card catalog. We haven't been maintaining it like we should but we do have it.
--Andrew Whitworth
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