John,
I think that the slowdown has a couple of reasons: the newness has worn off so the initial burst is over and the true longterm growth has not started yet. Also, I was making a lot of contributions but am not currently due to limited access to the Internet living in the Third World at the moment. And, the more complicated nature of textbooks requires a higher level of commitment than the regular Wikipedia, where any person can work on any module without concern for any other. Here, there is a higher level of organization to make a book.
What will help: time will only help us, as even small contributions snowball over time into something impressive. Organized or institutional backing, like the grant the WikiMedia Foundation recently recieved from the Beck Foundation (do I remember that right?) to develop some booklets for kids, or better than money, the dedication of a group of educators working together with the tools available on the site. That�s where I think that you folks in Utah can help, showing that things can be done even if it is with one book. Things get very exciting very quickly when people start to work collaboratively on wikis over the web, especially when you know what kind of a difference the work will make.
As for the delay in getting the emails sent out, I think it was an oversight by our very overworked volunteer Brion, who seems to have the responsability of watching spam along with so many other things.
Please let me know if there is anything else that you think I can do for you at any time.
Karl
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