Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:
Do you mean to say that people are not allowed to write textbooks that advocate for a certain religion?
Not under the Wikimedia Foundation auspices, no. NPOV is an absolute non-negotiable requirement of everything that we do.
I know there was some discussion about NPOV and textbooks awhile back, but I really should make clear that I think that discussion wound up with a definitive answer: under the Wikimedia Foundation, everything we do is required to be NPOV.
I know that someone can't just go up to a history textbook and write a chapter about how Jesus saved us all, but aren't seperate religious textbooks allowed? I assume you'd allow comparitive religion textbooks.
Sure. Books _about_ religion are fine. Doesn't even have to be comparative. A fine book would be an NPOV look at the history of Islam, for example. But it can't be pro-Islam or anti-Islam. It has to be neutral in the NPOV sense.
This also brings up the issue of forking textbooks within Wikibooks. Is this allowed?
What do you mean exactly? I guess it's allowed for NPOV reasons, but not allowed for POV reasons, if you see what I mean.
The analogy I would use to illustrate this is how articles are sometimes split up on Wikipedia. People are tussling over what a particular article should say, and then they realize that, hey, the problem is that I'm trying to write about X and you're trying to write about Y, but we've unfortunately named the article XY.
If a group is writing a book about genetics to fit the requirements of a particular sort of course on genetics, and if some other people try to put in too much information about political controversies within evolution, then it would be perfectly fine for the groups to part company and realize that they are working on different things.
But it would NOT be o.k. to have 2 books written "from a perspective".
If people want to do that, I think it's great. Someone should write a GNU FDL book about evolution, specifically from a Christian point of view let's say. And other people could redistribute it or modify it or whatever.
But that's not the right book for us.
--Jimbo