Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz wrote:
Another story: http://www.westword.com/Issues/2006-07-27/news/message.html
I am curious why did these people decide not to continue to use Wikibooks for developing their textbooks but created new wiki page instead. Was the reason our license, technical limits of the MediaWiki software or something else?
I would guess chaos and non academic bias. In the early days of Wikipedia there were quite a few academics who disliked jostling elbows with commoners presumably less informed in various fields of endeaver.
Interesting. In the article they express interest in a $300 ebook reader that can store 100K pages. I wonder what is wrong with a 400 dollar Dell computer that could be used to support entrepreneurial business activities using free software when its student owner was not busy studying. To be fair they stated they are also interested in MIT's $100 portable computer initiative.
Also interesting. I wonder what they need $400K seed money for to get started. It is hard to imagine a U.S. college with no IT deparment and internet accessible server resources. Maybe they need the services of professional copyeditors and secretaries to coordinate finalization of the etexts.
Further item of interest. A student written XML book in a U.S. college class is cited as the inspiration for the project. Perhaps the only problem with wikibooks is its lack of publicity and lack of active participation from active groups of students. Too bad it has taken a couple of years to activate/initiate the Wikiversity project.
regards, lazyquasar