I can understand the confusion. After some research, I found wikiversity (also some issues with the name) is a good home for the k-12 curriculum that I am trying to develop. It has different rules than wikibooks that are open to different materials.
Hope that helps, Kathy
-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Whitworth [mailto:wknight8111@hotmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 3:46 PM To: textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policiesonWikibooks? Importance: High
From: "Monahon, Peter B." Peter.Monahon@USPTO.GOV Thank you, Andrew,
... for the quick and apparently knowledgeable and well-connected reply. For your information and feedback, I'm not sure how on my own I'd find the links you share, and you made many "we have that" comments where you offered no links.
I didn't provide links to the pages I mentioned, because while they do in fact exist, they are not particularly well-maintained nor aesthetically pleasing. The most important method of organization, and the one that is best maintained, is the bookshelf system, to which there are ample links.
Oh, and by the way, I totally disagree with your conclusions. Names matter. While I appreciate that "books" includes "textbooks", I see it as "all girl-scouts are girls, but not all girls are girl-scouts". I see you all opening up a "girl" site, and then saying it's only for "girl-scouts"! You don't set that?
The fact that you are confused about our name is misfortunately, certainly. However, your confusion is simply not enough impetus for our entire project and it's community of volunteer authors and editors to change completely. A little confusion is a small price to pay for the name recognition that the "Wikibooks" brand has aquired over the years. Despite your complaints, wikibooks is not named "Wikilibrary", and it does, in fact, only contain "books".
And, I'd go to Wikisources because ... I'm looking for "sources"? "The free documentations library" means nothing to me.
And Nike's "Just Do It" slogan doesn't mean anything to me, but that doesnt make it a less effective advertising tool. Wikisource contains original source documents, so the name seems pretty appropriate to me.
When Amazon started, I thought, "what a stoopid name for a book store". Now, I see they really want to be an "Amazon river on the Internet, through which everything flows", not just books, but movies, cameras, personal gear, toys, appliances, and so on. "Books" was just a start, and now I see "Amazon" as a very savvy name indeed.
Trust me, if you hang around long enough, the name "Wikibooks" will grow on you too. But let me ask you this: When Amazon first started up, did you send them an email saying that their name was stupid and that they should change it?
Perhaps a compiled list page of what's NOT on the site so (a) there IS a response to searches within the site and (b) it clearly tells visitors why not, and where to go?
It's not really our job to point visitors to other people's websites. If you do a search on google, and it doesnt return any results, it doesnt say "Sorry we couldn't help you, how about you try your search on MSN instead?"
--Andrew Whitworth
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