All, I'm pleased to announce that four Wikipedians -- myself (user:phoebe), Charles Matthews (user:Charles Matthews), Ben Yates (user:Tlogmer) and SJ Klein (user:sj) -- are writing a book about using and understanding Wikipedia, tentatively titled "How Wikipedia Works". It will be published by [[No Starch Press]] in early 2008.
This guide will be focused on helping readers understand Wikipedia and helping new editors contribute. We hope to include enough detail to make it a useful reference for current contributors as well. (Note that this is a different project from the O'Reilly book that was discussed earlier on the lists).
We welcome community feedback and ideas, and hope to make this a truly community-based work. There is a project page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Phoebe/book We'll add detail there over the coming weeks, and have asked for feedback in some specific areas. Please do contribute and send us your thoughts and ideas.
Some details:
* The book will be licensed under the GFDL and an online version will be available. (No Starch has been a great partner in this and has been very supportive of open licensing). Where the book reprints on-wiki documentation, the authors of that documentation will be credited. * We're primarily focusing on the English Wikipedia, but there will be brief sections about the sister projects and Wikipedias in other languages, so we definitely welcome feedback and ideas from those communities as well. * A portion of the authors' proceeds will be donated to the Wikimedia Foundation.
If you have any questions, concerns or ideas, please let me or one of the other authors know. I'll be updating the project page with progress information as we get closer to publication.
best, Phoebe Ayers phoebe.ayers@gmail.com