Dear Wikibooks Community,
We potentially have some very talented and professional experts who might be interested in donating their time to develop the book started at World History Project, which I have renamed the COSTP World History Project and am moving to a new space on Wikibooks so it can be dedicated to the California standards only, and the person who has been making modifications to the original World History Project can continue to do so without my interference.
I propose that we allow these experts the option of having sysop status and to be able to protect the pages that they work on while the book is in development. They were bothered by the change in standards from the CA standards to the AP standards, a change implemented by a member of the community. These guys were so ticked off that at the moment they are not willing to continue (that is, start) but I think that if we offer them the concession of riskless non-editable pages that they might be willing to still consider the project.
This would be a special situation and concession for these guys to encourage them to be the guinea pigs for other professionals who will later be willing to donate their time to develop professional-level textbooks. Maybe the next people will be willing to do the development in the full open wiki, but I see this as a baby step in that direction, and better to have them working with this special concession than run off the first organized, professional volunteers.
Thank you, Karl
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good. http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com
I support this. I think that they should be encouraged not to protect the pages unless absolutely necessary. One possibility: suppose you let them know that you'll be willing to "mentor" and defend the work (as you have already done), with my full support.
I haven't looked into this, so I'm not commenting on the situation as it exists. But speaking generally, I would say that when we are working on a standards-based work, the standard must not be changed mid-stream and the standard takes on a role as a non-negotiable organizing principle similar to "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia".
In order to finish something like a book of "World History" you need a shared understanding of what it will be. And to complete something that will be of practical use, we need to work to standards.
--Jimbo
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org