Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe, it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we are talking about.
(Cross posting to textbook-l as this is a perennial issue that still needs to be resolved)
I don't see that the name "Wikibooks" is necessarily as problematic as you are suggesting here, Eric. Nor do I see that "textbook development" is necessarily the only focus of Wikibooks, even though I would admit that it is a major component of the Wikibooks and should be emphasized.
It would be interesting to see what the sense of the WMF board is on this issue in terms of how focused Wikibooks ought to be on textbooks and what kind of definition of textbooks could be used to distinguish what should or should not be found on Wikibooks. A massive campaign to remove whole categories of content from Wikibooks has been underway for some time, but the actual working definition of what really should belong on that project has never been made clear by those who would have the authority to define this sort of scope of the project.
An effort by the community is currently under way on Wikibooks to help define this scope as best as can be done at the moment without WMF board assistance:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstable
I would hope that WMF board members would be aware of this current version of this fundamental policy, as it appears very likely that this will become official and enforced policy on en.wikibooks in the very near future. I have raised some objections to this policy as it has been written, but this is as much of a compromise as we ordinary folks trying to figure out the mayhem of our little project can muster at the moment, and represents nearly a full year of effort by very active community members to help come up with this definition.
I would hope that non-textbook books could also eventually have a role on Wikibooks, but mine is a small voice that is mostly ignored on this subject.
Robert Horning wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/8/07, Johannes Rohr jorohr@gmail.com wrote:
Besides everything else which has been said already, I do not find these names particularly appealing. "Wikibooks" is short and catchy, "Wikipedia Textbooks" is long and clumsy and has a taste of ugly marketspeak.
Wikibooks is actually one of our most problematic names, as the focus is very much on textbook development. Short and catchy as it ma ybe, it is misleading. Fundamentally, I can see problems with the project's conception around a very specific type of knowledge representation (be it generally a book or specifically a textbook), but if that is how we define it, then we should at least be clear what _kind_ of books we are talking about.
(Cross posting to textbook-l as this is a perennial issue that still needs to be resolved)
I don't see that the name "Wikibooks" is necessarily as problematic as you are suggesting here, Eric. Nor do I see that "textbook development" is necessarily the only focus of Wikibooks, even though I would admit that it is a major component of the Wikibooks and should be emphasized.
It would be interesting to see what the sense of the WMF board is on this issue in terms of how focused Wikibooks ought to be on textbooks and what kind of definition of textbooks could be used to distinguish what should or should not be found on Wikibooks. A massive campaign to remove whole categories of content from Wikibooks has been underway for some time, but the actual working definition of what really should belong on that project has never been made clear by those who would have the authority to define this sort of scope of the project.
An effort by the community is currently under way on Wikibooks to help define this scope as best as can be done at the moment without WMF board assistance:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstable
I would hope that WMF board members would be aware of this current version of this fundamental policy,
ok
as it appears very likely that this
will become official and enforced policy on en.wikibooks in the very near future. I have raised some objections to this policy as it has been written, but this is as much of a compromise as we ordinary folks trying to figure out the mayhem of our little project can muster at the moment, and represents nearly a full year of effort by very active community members to help come up with this definition.
I would hope that non-textbook books could also eventually have a role on Wikibooks, but mine is a small voice that is mostly ignored on this subject.
I would be curious to hear more about what you disagree with in that definition.
I, for one, think it is great to work on better defining the mission of Wikibooks. I have one question though, do you know if the definition worked upon is generally shared with other wikibooks people ? Are they other wikibooks that have worked on such a definition, and where the outcome differs widely from yours ?
ant
I, for one, think it is great to work on better defining the mission of Wikibooks. I have one question though, do you know if the definition worked upon is generally shared with other wikibooks people ? Are they other wikibooks that have worked on such a definition, and where the outcome differs widely from yours ?
ant
I wouldn't say at this point that there is alot of disagreement on the basic definition of what wikibooks is, and what a "textbook" is. The policy proposal for the new WB:WIW was recently rejected: it had a numeric majority in favor, but there were some objections raised that could not have been ignored.
Wikibooks in some small part is still suffering from historical ambiguities, questions that nobody ever bothered to answer. For example, We still have some videogame strategy guides on our site, and there are a few people who still fight any attempt to remove those guides.
At one time Jimbo had provided a definition for "textbook", although his definition was so restrictive that it would have caused the deletion of many perfectly acceptable books.
I dont know if the solution is to have the WMF board mandate a definition to us (something that board members have strongly resisted in the past), but at this point I think we could certainly use a little input. I've been very vocal on foundation-l recently about how much potential I think wikibooks has, and I know Rob Horning has a long history of doing the same. Unfortunately, I think we really need to iron out a few policy details before we can really take that next step to becoming a great project and a great textbook resource.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________ Now you can see troubleĀ before he arrives http://newlivehotmail.com/?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_viral_protection_0507
Does anyone have any pull with Jimbo Wales to get him to participate in this discussion? I saw one of his posts where he said, under no uncertain terms, that there would be no original research. Is that the definition you were referring to?
-Kathy
-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Whitworth [mailto:wknight8111@hotmail.com] Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 5:51 AM To: textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] [Foundation-l] Rethinking brands
I, for one, think it is great to work on better defining the mission of Wikibooks. I have one question though, do you know if the definition worked upon is generally shared with other wikibooks people ? Are they other wikibooks that have worked on such a definition, and where the outcome differs widely from yours ?
ant
I wouldn't say at this point that there is alot of disagreement on the basic definition of what wikibooks is, and what a "textbook" is. The policy proposal for the new WB:WIW was recently rejected: it had a numeric majority in favor, but there were some objections raised that could not have been ignored.
Wikibooks in some small part is still suffering from historical ambiguities, questions that nobody ever bothered to answer. For example, We still have some videogame strategy guides on our site, and there are a few people who still fight any attempt to remove those guides.
At one time Jimbo had provided a definition for "textbook", although his definition was so restrictive that it would have caused the deletion of many perfectly acceptable books.
I dont know if the solution is to have the WMF board mandate a definition to us (something that board members have strongly resisted in the past), but at this point I think we could certainly use a little input. I've been very vocal on foundation-l recently about how much potential I think wikibooks has, and I know Rob Horning has a long history of doing the same. Unfortunately, I think we really need to iron out a few policy details before we can really take that next step to becoming a great project and a great textbook resource.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________ Now you can see troublebefore he arrives http://newlivehotmail.com/?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_migration_HM_viral_protection_0507
Florence Devouard wrote:
I, for one, think it is great to work on better defining the mission of Wikibooks. I have one question though, do you know if the definition worked upon is generally shared with other wikibooks people ? Are they other wikibooks that have worked on such a definition, and where the outcome differs widely from yours ?
ant
At last count 18 people supported it and 7 people objected to it. As others have already said, some disagree on limiting English Wikibooks to just textbooks, how much emphases on textbooks be be given, whether or not it should be a policy or guideline and some have concerns on the clarity of the proposal.
There is quite a difference from English Wikibooks' current version and the German version. Google's German to English translation of the German Wikibooks version: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikibooks.org%2Fwiki...
There have been previous proposals on English Wikibooks to redefine the current policy as well, before they were merged together: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab... http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab... http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab...
that AFAIK, were abandoned before ever getting to the point of seeking input from the community to accept or reject them.
--darklama
darklama wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
I, for one, think it is great to work on better defining the mission of Wikibooks. I have one question though, do you know if the definition worked upon is generally shared with other wikibooks people ? Are they other wikibooks that have worked on such a definition, and where the outcome differs widely from yours ?
ant
At last count 18 people supported it and 7 people objected to it. As others have already said, some disagree on limiting English Wikibooks to just textbooks, how much emphases on textbooks be be given, whether or not it should be a policy or guideline and some have concerns on the clarity of the proposal.
There is quite a difference from English Wikibooks' current version and the German version. Google's German to English translation of the German Wikibooks version: http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikibooks.org%2Fwiki...
There have been previous proposals on English Wikibooks to redefine the current policy as well, before they were merged together: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab... http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab... http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks/Unstab...
that AFAIK, were abandoned before ever getting to the point of seeking input from the community to accept or reject them.
--darklama
The way I see it, Wikibooks goes beyond textbooks. But that is my perception.
Anyway, it is annoying if all languages do not have the same definition of the project :-(
textbook-l@lists.wikimedia.org