Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policiesonWikibooks?

I read the link thoroughly. I can see a gap in your definition: A reading textbook used in the elementary school level. All texts at very early grades are fiction to motivate and relate to very young readers. Plus early grades are still learning sounds so you have to make up stories that contain only sounds that have been learned. So the definition is most definitely not complete. You would not find an early reader on the fiction bookshelf at a store. They are purchased as a textbook. Not to be a welt on your tush but I am not convinced of the definition of what a wikibook is. -Kathy -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Whitworth [mailto:wknight8111@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 2:58 PM To: textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policiesonWikibooks? The wikibooks front page already does tell what wikibooks is all about. Here is the first sentence from the main page: "Welcome to Wikibooks, a Wikimedia project that was started on July 10, 2003 with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit." The term "textbooks" is used unambiguously in the very first sentence on the very first page. I really don't feel like any additional information beyond that needs to be crammed onto the main page, because we have enough information crammed on there already. Also, in that very first sentence, the word "Wikibooks" links to a help page that talks all about our project (including the types of books that we do and do not include). Yes, that is what wikibooks is for, and no it is not a violation of the NOR policy. Wikipedia is similarly for the authoring of NEW encyclopedia-style articles, and that doesnt violate the policy either. No, that is what Wikisource is for. Wikibooks never included fiction. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of writing fiction, or the perceived value of it. Books on wikibooks should be "instructional", such as a textbook or a manual. Fiction, while it may have educational value, is not by itself instructional, and is therefore not included. For more information about what we do and do not included (including a discussion on fiction and the like), see: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW The most important organization method that we have right now are the bookshelves. As Robert pointed out in his reply earlier, there have been attempts by people to institute other organizational methods. If you are interested in making these organizational tools better, you are welcome to try (this is a wiki after all). This assumes that Wikibooks is interested in producing or distributing things in the future that are not textbooks, which we do not. Nike's name is generic because they want to sell lots of stuff: more stuff = more money. However, wikibooks is a non-profit and our value as a resource will be based on our focus and on our strength. If we included a whole bunch of stuff, some textbooks, some fiction, whatever, we would lose our strength as a textbook producer, and textbook consumers would be less-less likely to take us seriously. As a wikimedian, i'm sure you are aware that instead of diluting one project with unrelated materials, the WMF has historically chosen to create new projects. Instead of creating a "textbook" namespace in wikipedia, for instance, the new project wikibooks was formed. Instead of polluting Wikibooks with fiction and nonsense, you should petition to create a new Wikifiction, or whatever. I would probably vote against such a proposal, but I won't discuss that issue here. Wikinews is not a general purpose news repository, they have policies and guidelines that discuss what kinds of news are fit to print. Wikipedia likewise has guidelines (verifiability, notability, etc) that limit what kinds of materials they host. I could list every WMF project, and every single one of them has limits as to what they will allow. But of all the projects, you seem to think that wikibooks should be some kind of free-for-all, some kind of general-purpose repository, or perhaps even a garbage dump. Also, the fact that Wikibooks is for "textbooks" is written both on the front page, and has been mentioned by myself several times. I'm sorry if you still have confusion on the matter, but i can't really keep repeating myself. There are lots of places on the internet that contain stuff that wikibooks doesnt contain. Should we post links to everything? Wikipedia doesn't give you links to other websites if you search for something that wikipedia doesnt include, and Wikibooks does not either. We are not some kind of web directory, nor a general-purpose search engine, nor a web-hub to direct traffic around the internet. We have textbooks, and if you don't want textbooks, then our site cannot and generally will not help you. We already had it, we deleted it because it was redundant. Again, see: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW This page discusses what wikibooks is, and if you can't find something on that list, it likely means that wikibooks is not for that. --Andrew Whitworth _________________________________________________________________ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm _______________________________________________ Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l