Some time ago I was trying to find a place for moving essays from Serbian Wikipedia. I realized that WM+Wikia don't have related project. And I think that Wikibooks/Wikiverstiy are the right places for such works. Imagine an essay about Dostoevsky's poetry: - It may be a work of some student of literature or even a work of some professor of literature. So, in the academic sense it may be completely relevant work. Also, it is *very useful* to anyone who is learning about Dostoevsky; so it is strictly related to gaining our goals. - An essay may be very good verified. However, such essay as a whole *is* OR. - Almost all kinds of content analysis of fiction works are fiction works, too. If you want to say what do you think about the content of, for example, The Brothers Karamazov, you have to deal with your position (which means emotions) related to characters, Dostoevsky's ideas and so on. This means that such essay is POV, too. Yes, any kind of book related to natural and mathematical sciences may be NPOV. Books in a number of fields of social sciences (like history, psychology or linguistics) may also be NPOV. OR is questionable: I tested performances of web servers Apache and Roxen. You may test it, too and if we are using the same methods (which I described in the paper), you will get similar results. However, I did OR and strictly speaking, it doesn't pass NOR. But, not-strictly-factographic analysis of art work is art again and inherently it is both OR and POV. In this sense, the question is -- are Wikibooks limited only on books about natural sciences and only on books which deal with factography? Is our goal is to make books only for some academic fields or to all (reasonable, of course; I am not speaking about books for studying astrology)? * * * The question related to the fiction is not so important. It deals with popularity of Wikibooks and not with basic principles. On 3/10/07, Garrett <masterthiefster(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Jimmy Wales wrote: That was an honest typo. Wikibooks was originallly at http://textbooks.wikipedia.com/ (a no longer valid URL, BTW) and it was called the "Wikipedia Textbook Project", at least based on some very dated pages I've seen. Still, I would have to agree with Garrett that many of the policies on Wikibooks were inherited from Wikipedia... some so much that the name "Wikipedia" remained for as long as two years on some of the pages. I don't know of any that remain like that, but it was an issue in the past. And Wikibooks has things from Wikipedia like the VfD pages that Wikipedia no longer does. In addition, we are debating things like fair use policies due in part because of inherited philosophies on that topic as well. But at the same time, Wikibooks certainly has chartered an independent course from Wikipedia on many policies. --Robert Horning

On 3/12/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: But, where to put something like "Impressionist analysis of Orwell's 1984."? This is useful for learning about a book, but this is inherently POV. So, where to put such papers?

On 3/12/07, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz <derbeth(a)wp.pl> wrote: I completely understand why NPOV is nearly perfect for any kind of something which we call "objective knowledge". And there is no question about NPOV inside of factographic descriptions of anything. However, POV analysis of art are very usable for art studies. Actually, there is no such thing like NPOV art critics. (But it is possible to have NPOV book about art critics.) My point is that I think that we need, for example, "Dadaist critics of South Park" -- for educational purpose because: - Dadaism is not live cultural movement and it is not so obvious that there will be some dadaist who would do so. However, it is possible to imagine dadaist critics of South Park. - If Wikibooks and Wikiversity want to have complete courses for some art field, there is a lot of needs for improvisation. If there is no some art critique which we need because of educational purposes, we should make it. In other words, if we want to have a *real* free source for complete education, we need a lot of things which are not NPOV nor NOR. So, there are a couple of solutions: - Wikibooks and/or Wikiversity allow POV and OR for art analysis. This is the best solution because we will have one community. Also, realization of the goal "free education" will stay inside of the projects which aim to work on this goal. - Wikimedia makes another project for such purpose (something like "wikiartstudies"). This is something like a "middle solution" because we will have de jure one community, but de facto two. Realization of the goal "free education" will be outside of Wikibooks and Wikiversity, but inside of Wikimedia. - The worst solution is to try to find a solution out of Wikimedia (i.e. Wikia or anything else) because we will have both de jure and de facto different communities. Realization of the goal will be outside of both -- projects and Wikimedia.

Every field, not just art, contains people who criticise and interpret the works of others. In economics, for instance, where people make financial decisions based on interpretation of data and also intent. Engineering, also teaches students to use arbitrary, personally selected metrics for optimizing designs. My point is that art is not a special case of this, and allowing OR and POV for teaching art for these reasons would require an abandonment of the policies completely. In many instances, OR and POV might be nice. They should not, however, be permitted on Wikibooks. Again, my point above that art is not special, and no one particular discipline requires it's own special wiki. You can suggest this on meta, i doubt the proposal will get far. So then a solution needs to be found in wikimedia. I think you don't understand the difference between explaining of an opinion (especially a common opinion), and the statement of that opinion as if it were fact. NPOV requires only that opinions not be treated as facts, and we can discuss art criticisms from an purely NPOV, academic background. --Andrew Whitworth (Whiteknight) _________________________________________________________________ The average US Credit Score is 675. The cost to see yours: $0 by Experian. http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=660600&bcd=EMAILFOOT…

I am exceptionally proud of you, Mr. Wales. Thank you very very much for all that it is that you have done for the advancement of the frontiers of knowledge for mankind. THE GLOBAL BRAIN MUST EVOLVE!!! Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: Milos Rancic wrote: NPOV is a global policy across all projects and is older than the foundation or wikibooks. It is non-negotiable from the start. Fiction is absolutely not appropriate for Wikibooks. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l --------------------------------- Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.

Because Wikibooks is for text books and instructional guides. Fiction does not fall under this category. Beyond that, there are several reasons for not including fiction: 1) Wikibooks has a strict "No Original Research" clause which would prevent authors from writing or creating new content like fiction works. 2) Pre-existing fiction works that are not subject to copyright (or are available under the GFDL) belong at Wikisource, not Wikibooks. We allow pages about fiction, but we do not allow fiction content itself. We never joke. We do write books, not just all manner of books. We have precise definitions on what we do and do not include. You can find these guidelines at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW So we are a "Wiki", and we do write "books", and therefore we are "Wikibooks". Notice that the word "book" does not imply "all types of books", textbooks can be referred to as simply "books" without any loss of generality. Yes, we all know what a wiki is. This much is not being disputed, is it? If you notice, the google definition restricts a "book" to a printed and bound medium. Wikibooks, under this definition, does not contain any "books" at all. This part of the definition is pretty consistent with Wikibooks. This is also perfectly consistent with Wikibooks. Because we are not for "ralph", we are for books. Nowhere is it stated that we may not use the word "books" to mean a subset of all possible books. Technically, a set of textbooks can be called "books" with no loss of generality. No. Also, we never promise to be a "library". Wikibooks is for textbooks. If people want to start another project for a generalized library of books, we welcome and support that effort. All our books are textbooks, and the only real organization that needs to be accounted for is separation by subject. In addition to categories, we also have an alphabetical listing, a dewey-decimal system, and a Library of Congress system. This is all on top of our bookshelves, which keep books neatly organized by subject. No. Wikibooks is also not a "library". We already do this. Oh right, i forgot that we already have a card catalog. We haven't been maintaining it like we should but we do have it. --Andrew Whitworth _________________________________________________________________ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm

Monahon, Peter B. wrote: I will note that this is an ongoing issue that we are trying to deal with. One of the problems we are facing with the English-language edition of Wikibooks is that we are getting crushed under the weight of the sheer volume of content that is currently found on Wikibooks, and trying to come up with an ontologically sound schema for organizing the content. I would love to use the Dewey Decimal system, but unfortunately it has been copyrighted and requires a fairly expensive licensing fee to get access to the classification guidelines that would help us in terms of getting a more specific classification codes. There have been abortive attempts at starting a classification of the content at least down to the major 1's level (nothing after the decimal point) of categorization within the Dewey Decimal System, but it has proven to be an absolutely huge task. While the Library of Congress schema is not nearly as restricted from an intellectual property standpoint, it is still a near nightmare to get the necessary resources put together to perform a proper classification of the content. One system that has seemed to work out for us in the past, and I think it should be pushed harder at the moment, is the "bookshelf" system of organizing Wikibooks content: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:All_Books There is a link to this page right on the "main" page of Wikibooks, but it isn't quite so obvious as perhaps it should be. Originally the "main" page of Wikibooks consisted of all of this content, when we didn't have nearly so many books of fair quality to link to. Most of the books listed on this page are of pretty good quality, but they are not the "best of the best" of Wikibooks, which would instead be found here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Featured_books These are books that are roughly equivalent of the "article of the day" feature on Wikipedia, and are complete enough to be usable by somebody not familiar with the topic. This is a relatively new feature to Wikibooks as well, as we are still in the process of identifying some of the more outstanding books that might have been missed, although it is a good collection. It is from this list that the rotating "featured books" are drawn from. I spent a couple of years as a volunteer with the Open Directory Project (I am no longer involved), and I learned quite a bit working there of the complexities of having to classify human knowledge, and to keep up with changing technologies and "user communities". That project attempted to classify and categorize every web page on the internet, and the volunteers there have done a pretty good job, all things considered. Good enough that Google uses the categories in that project as one of the major criteria for ranking web pages, particularly if your keywords match one of the category names. It isn't the only criteria, but it does have an impact. Wikibooks doesn't have nearly this level of complexity, but it seems as though trying to come up with a process and page organization schema, and getting the software to work properly to help organize all of the different varieties of Wikibooks has been an ongoing challenge. The MediaWiki software (the name of the software running these websites.... and yes, the name stinks and even those who are major authors of the software hate the name) does leave some challenges to organizing multi-page documents such as are developed on Wikibooks. The category system was designed more for dealing with individual encyclopedia articles, as is the case on Wikipedia. It was apparently this category system, which is also used to a certain extent on Wikibooks, that you stumbled across. Every method of classifying human knowledge seems to have its own strengths and weaknesses. My #1 complaint about Melvil Dewey and his classification system is that it shows a very 1 dimensional way of thinking about human knowledge, and the major 100's level categories break down when there are topics that belong in multiple major categories, in terms of grouping content "near" related thoughts and ideas. Just check out where the Computer Science books are in the Dewey System, to give an extreme example of where they are located compared to digital logic books covering electrical engineering, even though they cover very similar ideas. The Wikipedia category system takes on a slightly different approach, and does allow "multiple parents" for a given category, but other kinds of content are subsequently lost. Ideally, what I would like to do is to organize Wikibooks in some way that could show you a book about a topic that you are interested in, and show other books in decreasing relevance further down the list based on some sort of cataloging code. That is one of the whole points of classification systems anyway.... to help organize content and allow you to see "nearby" content which is closely related, just as you often find in a library. Of course since Wikibooks is new and original content, it has not been through the roller mills of librarians trying to figure out where a specific book belongs in the classification scheme. This is not an easy task, and those who are good at doing this have decades of experience at classifying books and understand the classification codes cold. BTW, I do share your viewpoint that "Wikibooks is for books" and not just textbooks. Still, the sheer volume of the types of content that people do try to add to Wikibooks would simply amaze you, and often the more outlandish ideas for content tend to have a very short development period and then languish unedutied for years afterward, never in quite a completed state of development. The books that best fit our current policies are those books that do seem to have a solid development community of several interested author/editors and have shown consistent growth and development over the years. Those who are on the "cleanup crew" that tries to police the content have over the years developed a general feel for what sorts of pages are likely to "make it" and become something very outstanding, and what sorts of ideas tend to die a slow death. BTW, most of the "policing" is to keep people from "vandalizing" pages by individuals writing complete nonsense and even grossly offensive content which is so obvious that it should not be on our project that it doesn't even have to "go to committee. -- Robert Horning It has been an ongoing process of trying to find what works and what doesn't work, and to gently tell those who would use Wikibooks as a sort of vanity press to move along and try somewhere else. Sometimes we aren't quite so gentle either, and that does cause some problems, although that also is something that tends to create problems.

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(a)lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policiesonWikibooks? Importance: High 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. 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 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. 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? 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 _________________________________________________________________ PC Magazines 2007 editors choice for best Web mailaward-winning Windows Live Hotmail. http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/?locale=en-us&ocid=TXT_TAGHM_mig… n_HM_mini_pcmag_0507

Peter, I was given this page as one to look at and discuss naming, branding, etc: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_brand_survey Maybe you can give them your quarter's worth using your expertise and motivation. -Kathy -----Original Message----- From: Monahon, Peter B. [mailto:Peter.Monahon@USPTO.GOV] Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2007 5:29 AM To: Wikimedia textbook discussion Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies onWikibooks? Thanks for your considered reply, Andrew. We disagree, and that's not a bad thing. Perhaps this dialog will help us polish our beliefs, perhaps we will even persuade ourselves to new beliefs. Although I'm only one person, that's neither important nor unimportant. It's the ideas themselves that I share that are worthy or unworthy, on their own merits, regardless of how many people sign my email. I'm still not sure what Wikibooks is. Although you can try to educate me, why not enhance the Wikibooks front page for everyone, and then just share a link here? Are you saying Wikibooks is for cooperative authorship of NEW technical, non-fiction, and how-to manuals? Let me study the NOR No Original Research policy on that one! Or, is Wikibooks only OLD stuff that's not copyrighted anymore ... and, what, we're just editing and rewriting OLD stuff? Are you saying that because fiction is too hard to cooperatively co-author, the Wikibook site has evolved away from fiction? Because it's too hard? Geesh - I'd love a Wikimusic, er, excuse me, a Wikicomposer site. Teams make music all the time. True, one author makes a vanity press, but two authors together make a Wikipress. HEY, a new Wiki name! Get in cahoots with some on-demand publishers and let author teams have at it, and let visitors order their own hard copy! I digress ... but do I, really? I didn't write to Amazon, but I also didn't buy from them (I used http://www.abebooks.com/). As I mentioned, the Amazon name at first seem to mean nothing, but ACQUIRED distinctiveness as a book store, and it was only later that I realized that the word Amazon was not descriptive of their bookstore-ness, but was a hint or simile describing their desire to be as large a thoroughfare as the Amazon River is, "the largest river in the world by volume" according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River. In other words, Amazon wants to be "the largest internet seller in the world by volume", or something like that. By the way, Amazon is so taken by the Wikipedia/MediaWiki whirlwind that they have started their own at http://amapedia.amazon.com/. Check it out. You make my own point in why you didn't share links to Wikibooks: "they are not particularly well-maintained nor aesthetically pleasing"! Hey, Andrew, I'm not faulting anybody. I'm just saying. Why are we writing here when we could find and fix 'em, instead? Nike's slogan (battle cry) may be "Just do it!" but "Just do it" is not their name, and neither their slogan nor their name is a generic description of their product. Wikibooks IS intended to be a generic identifier of the product, and as such I found it inaccurate and misleading (a waste of the builder's and visitor's time), hence the suggestion to switch to a non-descriptive name like "Wikiralph", hahaha. I was joking, but consider the source. See my email address to help explain why I'm focusing on marks in trade. "Nike" is a GREAT mark in that it does not define ONE product. If they had called themselves "Sneakers", they'd eventually have a challenge selling non-sneakers. By calling themselves Nike after the Greek goddess of victory, they can sell anything to anyone who wants to feel victorious. Very savvy. "WIKI"-anything is descriptive; a "Wikibooks" that excludes SOME books is by definition misdescriptive. I'm just trying to find out what Wikibooks IS, if it's not where to find "quick, community built books" of any type, totally in the control of the individual teams of contributors. It absolutely IS our job to provide Wikibooks visitors with information, especially about what Wikibooks is NOT, and share where others go to find non-Wikibooks offerings. Like Santa Clause in the "Miracle on 34th Street" movie, if you ask Macy's for something they don't have, and you know it's at Gimbals, then send them to Gimbals. Instead of frustrating visitors, you're inviting them to come back, time after time, because THIS is where they found help! In that vein, I suggest, on the front page, Wikibooks is NOT: - A cooperative of fiction authors - see http://www.yada,yada,yada.com/ for that. - On-demand publishing - see http://www.blah-blah-blah.com/ for that. ... and so on. Actually, why not make a Wikibooks page saying what Wikibooks is NOT? I'm familiar with http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Help:Replies_to_common_objections but it's buried, not well formatted, and seems structured as a random sheave of notes. Let's create: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_is_not ... linked form the Wikibooks front page. Then, let us all share our own links in various categories that direct Wikibooks visitors to reasonable alternatives for what they are looking for, because NPOV Neutral Point Of View and NOR No Original Research and other "limits" cause Wikibooks to refrain from such offering. But, "thanks for visiting, return often, and share what you learn when it's appropriate to do so here." What say? - Peter Blaise PS - I'm reading and will respond to others very, very thoughtful replies later. I must get some other tasks completed first. Thank you all very much. GREAT discussion! Wikibooks? in aesthetically is links. certainly. project completely. A the complaints, contain doesn't original grow on you send change If you say instead?" _______________________________________________ Textbook-l mailing list Textbook-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_brand_survey I think I see the problem. Here's a copy of the structure of that survey: ===== Contents: - 1 Current projects - 2 Perception of names -- 2.1 Do all these project names communicate their intended use? If not, which ones could be improved? -- 2.2 Do you feel that the current number of unique names is too large, not large enough, or "just right"? - 3 Logos -- 3.1 Do all current project logos communicate their intended use? If not, which ones could be improved? -- 3.2 Should we strive for more consistency in the design of the logos (e.g. Wikimedia colors), or more diversity? - 4 Licensing -- 4.1 Should the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters license the project brands to makers of games, gadgets, toys, etc.? -- 4.2 Should the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia chapters license the project brands to ad-supported mirrors, mobile phone portals, etc.? - 5 Brand protection -- 5.1 Should the Wikimedia Foundation attempt to give all its official names an equal level of protection? -- 5.2 Should the Wikimedia Foundation attempt to protect unofficial local name variants such as "Vikipedio" and "Wikiştiri"? - 6 Brand strategy -- 6.1 Should new projects generally be started under a unique name that is not associated with any existing names? -- 6.2 Would you support or oppose rebranding the projects as "Wikipedia Sources", "Wikipedia Quotes", "Wikipedia Textbooks", and so on? -- 6.3 Would you support or oppose rebranding the projects as "Wikimedia Sources", "Wikimedia Quotes", "Wikimedia Textbooks", and so on? -- 6.4 Would you support or oppose rebranding the "Wikimedia Foundation" to "Wikipedia Foundation" in order to reduce Wikimedia/Wikipedia confusion? -- 6.5 Would you support or oppose rebranding the "Wikimedia Foundation" to an entirely different name in order to reduce Wikimedia/Wikipedia confusion? -- 6.6 Any other bright renaming ideas? -- 6.7 Are there other specific changes you would suggest to the current branding? - 7 Analyse the benefits and costs of doing nothing option - 8 In which wikis are you active? - 9 What does a Wiki-X name mean to you? ===== =8^o Simple, no? It spun my head off. For a laugh, I cranked it through Microsoft Word 2003's grammar checker (ignoring the misspellings!): Readability Statistics: Words 21,572 Characters 109,768 Paragraphs 468 Sentences 1,198 Sentences per Paragraph 20.3 Words per Sentence 14.9 Characters per Word 4.9 Passive Sentences 9% Flesch Reading Ease 48.8 Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 10.0 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Readability_Test for reading/grade level number explanation. ... when I have the editing time, I try to rewrite with a 4th grade reading level as my target so that I and my readers have a chance of getting my point in one reading. We contributors to the above web page require an audience who consistently comprehends at the 10th grade level in order to understand our points in one reading. Anyone else would require repeated re-reading to understand our points - and who would do that? I think I see the problem. Pogo: "We have met the enemy and he is us." (from a cartoon by Walt Kelly) - Peter Blaise

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

The point of the textbook is that it is instructional. So long as the book is adequately instructional (and so long as it doesnt violate any other policies), the format and presentation of the material seems mostly irrelevant to me. Allowing a young children's book to be written as an allegory or as a fable or other quasi-fictional device is far different from opening up wikibooks as a general-purpose fiction repository. --Andrew Whitworth _________________________________________________________________ Picture this – share your photos and you could win big! http://www.GETREALPhotoContest.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us