Ray Saintonge wrote:
Robert Scott Horning wrote
I got into an editorial dispute with another admin on Wikibooks, where I was having the help pages simply redirect to Meta (including the MediaWiki:Edithelppage location) to point users directly to the original source rather than trying to duplicate the content on Wikibook. These changes were reverted back, so I started a VfD on Wikibooks over this whole thing to get community input on the concept. So far, it is accepted as gospel fact that this content must be duplicated, but I am challenging that assertion and trying to find out why it is done in this manner.
I've just read through the Wikibooks VfD discussion on this, and find it unfortunate that this was the avenue chosen for this discussion. I don't think that it's a deletion issue at. Some of the pages are probably very useful; if one of them fills a policy hole I don't mond it's staying there for the time being. It's really a question of project members' rights to edit the pages. A see also link to the corresponding page in Meta should be adequate for having access to the information there.
The reason I chose a VfD was because it was a reversal of a previous position on Wikibooks (I'm still trying to find the discussion that now appears to be wiped from the current forums) that all of the Help pages were to be hosted on Meta directly and not even dealt with on Wikibooks. There have also been several Wikibook proposals to write about how to edit Wikimedia projects, and most recently I started a Wikibook about how to admin Wikimedia projects. That one got a VfD within less than a day of creation, and a violation of Wikibooks policies at least for how quickly the VfD was applied. The main philosophy that has been used in the past to get rid of such Wikibooks is that it is a duplication of effort detracting from the effort to create the MediaWiki handbook, and that the effort to create such how-to books should be done on Meta instead. I'm starting to strongly question that line of reasoning, and I feel that it is a loss to the community as a whole that this is a forbidden subject on Wikibooks... especially when I can't find any formal policy anywhere on either Meta or Wikibooks that addresses the topic... even as a proposed policy. I've even had a hard time trying to find this idea suggested on a talk page somewhere.
The point of deletion is to reverse this "spamming" of Wikibooks with duplicate content from Meta and revert to the previous state of having the help pages being hosted on Meta directly. I don't consider this to be vandalism in the traditional sense, but it does cause headaches for admins when it would be better spent trying to deal with other issues on the smaller projects.