Erik Moeller wrote:
On 6/21/06, Robert Scott Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
If the WMF board was more inclined to approve new projects (not any old thing, but at least allow some new projects), I might be more encouraged to move the How-to guides to a new project.
I think if we work together, we can pull it off. The open question for me is: is it necessary? Do you think how-tos have a future on Wikibooks itself?
Erik
I am not really sure what the motivation is to remove how-to books from Wikibooks in the first place. The only real suggestion I've seen is to transwiki the content to Wikia, which is one of the reasons why I made comments about that earlier. I think perhaps in this case it might have been participants on the how-to wikia that wants to move the how-to activity from Wikibooks to their project, not any effort by Wikibooks contributors to remove this sort of content. The same sort of issue came up with the Blender 3D Wikibook, where it was apparently forked to another wiki with the admins of that other website asking that the content be removed from Wikibooks, and the ensuing discussions about wheither the content should simply be forked or if it was reasonable for non-Wikimedia websites to demand that content be removed from Wikibooks due to duplication of effort issues alone.
I, for one, don't want to see how-to books removed from Wikibooks. I think they definitely are instructional text that requires more than one page (much more than the 32K limit on Wikipedia) and can cover a topic with a NPOV and other general restrictions typical of all Wikimedia projects. This fits with Wikibooks more than any other current Wikimedia project, and any attempt to break off just the how-to books would put in a bunch of grey areas as to what really belongs on Wikibooks. Trying to come up with a definition that distinguishes between how-to books and general textbooks is going to be something that may require some divine intervention. I am also not completely convinced that Wikibooks should be exclusively textbooks, as other educational and instructional material can be developed by creative individuals using MediaWiki software. I have not seen a valid argument why Wikibooks should be exclusively textbooks-only, nor have any really good definitions as to what a textbook is or should be been agreed upon by most Wikibooks participants.
That textbooks should be a key component of Wikibooks, I would agree. And featured textbooks of high quality should be on the front page of Wikibooks. So where is the argument?