Birgitte Arco wrote:
The way I see it Wikibooks has formed a community
consensus about the format of the content (i.e.
Wikibooks presents information in a instructional
format). However I do not think the community has has
ever decided on the type of content itself. Right now
the content can be described as an indiscriminate
collection of information (within the aforementioned
format). My suggestion would be to try and come to a
consensus about the inclusion guidelines. It seems to
me, that Wikibooks has many exclusion guidelines on
content and only inclusion guidelines on format. If
the community could reach consensus on the content to
include, then you could require each module to have
some sort of "mission statement" (i.e. Cookbook
provides instruction on the preparation of food for
human consumption). Then you can weed out the mission
statements that fall outside the scope of the agreed
upon inclution guidelines, and enforce that the
material adhere to the mission statements that are
acceptable.
I realize this is much easier said then done. The
English Wikisource is currently working through some
of the same issues with what we want to include, and
it is diffuclt to codify these things. However I
think most people in the community will agree they do
not want Wikibooks to be an indiscriminate collection
of information. If they do want to be that, tell them
Wikisource has some source code we will be sending
their way ;)
Birgitte SB
To put it into a nutshell, I was advocating that Wikibooks should be for
book-length non-fiction content that doesn't
A) duplicate efforts on other Wikimedia projects. i.e. don't start up a
new fork of Wiktionary or Wikipedia in English on Wikibooks.
B) maintains standards common to other Wikimedia projects including NPOV
and original research exclusion policies
This is pretty straight forward and understandable. It even makes
sense, and most of the "What is Wikibooks" page goes into this in fine
detail where apparently some individuals over the past few years havn't
understood this principle and need it explained in further detail.
There is no reason to have original source texts on Wikibooks if it is
already being dealt with on Wikisource, for example.
Wikibooks is about books, and for the most part it fills that mission
fairly well. The issue here is that books can go into details about
doing things like building bombs and nuclear reactors just as easily as
it can go into details about gardening or a physics demonstration
experiment. And the "textbooks only" clause is interpreted very loosly
to the point it really is just about books alone, with only a general
project goal to help develop actual textbooks that can be used in real
classrooms eventually.
When a book is interpreted as being more than simply something that you
would find on a library bookshelf, you get into things like scholarly
research journals, errata databases, internet services directories,
phone books, language resource directories, a blog user forum, a
language translation service, and a philosophical debating forum. All
of these have been on Wikibooks recently, with strong protest by the
users who added this content to keep it on Wikibooks when efforts
occured to remove this material. I havn't touched the phone books, but
there are a couple.
It doesn't help when you have users on other Wikimedia projects openly
proclaiming that Wikibooks is the place to try these kind of
experiments. I tried to stem the tidal wave of projects coming from
Meta where it was common practice to tell people to start new
experimental Wikimedia projects on Wikibooks first. It still happens,
but to a much smaller degree than what happened before. Apparently
Wikipedia is the current source of some of these users, and perhaps I
need to get more involved in the forums on Wikipedia to help teach
Wikipedians about Wikibooks' policies. I find it very painful to tell a
very eager contributor who has tried very hard and put in sometimes as
much as several hundred hours worth of work on dozens of pages that the
content is going to be deleted. And that has happened as well.
As far as inclusion guidelines are concerned, Wikibooks is about
textbooks. If it is a textbook, it is welcome. If it is not, you are
on shaky ground, and the less like a textbook it is, the more likly it
will be deleted.
The problem I brought up, however, with the original thread is that you
have content which is written like a textbook, using standard features
for "books" in terms of format, but the content is objectional because
of the content. Where do you draw the line here and say that some kinds
of content simply should not be here nor on any other Wikimedia project?
The Manual of Crime was a perfect example, because it was a full
multi-chapter book, and some effort did go into trying to rework the
content to a NPOV standard.
Here is one very well written comment that supported deletion of this
book: " I don't know if anyone supporting this 'manual' has considered
this, but the very fact that something is called a 'manual of crime'
precludes the work's authenticity. I mean, really, are there any /actual
mobsters/ writing into the 'Racketeering' section? Sensible burglars,
robbers, and other criminals don't waste time writing about ways and
means. Essentially, there is little to suggest that most of this
"manual" isn't just a formatted sounding board, not for actual
criminals, but voyeuristic /crime enthusiasts./"
Most of the rest of the deletion votes were because it was illegal
activity that was being promoted through the publication of the book,
even though none of the pages explicitly advocated committing any
crimes. All I'm trying to do is codify this attitude and try to make
sure that there is a formal policy in place to see that books of this
nature don't get put back on Wikibooks, and there is a rationale behind
the policy rather than simply because an admin doesn't like the content
and wants to censor it.
--
Robert Scott Horning