Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/9/07, Robert Horning robert_horning@netzero.net wrote:
Other than the fact that projects like Wikibooks have already established a brand identity of its own. Not only among Wikibooks users, but also within the general academic community (for good or ill). I'm not suggesting here that the brand isn't weaker than Wikipedia
About 1/200th as weak if Google Scholar results are any indication. I don't mean to denigrate the fantastic efforts of the Wikibooks community by any means. I love the project and try to promote it at every opportunity. But, compared to the Wikipedia juggernaut, it _is_ virtually unknown. I think there is a wonderful opportunity for Wikibooks to benefit from the awareness about WP -- and those who are already aware of the name will easily readjust to "Wikipedia Textbooks" (or "Wikipedia" + anything else), as virtually everyone who has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia. Those who are surprised that the projects are related: well, they'd have learned something important.
I think you are mistaken at the extent that Wikibooks is recognized independently of Wikipedia. While certainly Wikipedia does get much more press and comment, there have been independent journal articles and blog (outside of the "wikiblogosphere") commentaries about Wikibooks. Reviews of individual Wikibooks have also been mentioned, particular on those topics which have been rather well developed. I'm also curious about what metric you are using to suggest that "everyone who has heard of Wikibooks knows Wikipedia". I know for a fact that there are many individuals who contribute to Wikibooks that have never made an edit on Wikipedia, and often it is their very first time at using a Wiki of any kind. My metric is the interaction I've had with users by being a local administrator on en.wikibooks and participating on the other language editions of Wikibooks. French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Polish and German editions of Wikibooks also all have very active communities and even interact with each other on a fairly substantial level as well, as well as participants on the other 40 or so other active Wikibook projects.
As I've tried to mention on previous posts, Wikibooks is by far and away the largest independent e-book website on the internet, at least if you compare sites with Alexa. It is has more hits than Project Gutenberg, or even most comercial e-book websites. The only numbers I can't compare to are websites like Microsoft and Adobe, where breaking out the stats for just e-books pages is just a shot in the dark. And frankly Wikibooks has stumbled upon this status in a very haphazard fashion with nearly nobody on the board level even noticing.
You can compare site rankings about e-books here:
http://www.alexa.com/browse?&CategoryID=104589
I would call that a brand worth trying to keep. While this may also be an indictment on e-book in general (or the lack of popularity of e-book in any format), Wikibooks is clearly at the top of the game in this category. This isn't to say that there aren't problems on Wikibooks that need to be fixed, but you can't find any website that offers free e-books (as in beer or copyleft) that even comes close to what Wikibooks does right now. The only real "competition" is Wikisource and the Gutenberg Project, which Wikibooks tries to maintain cordial relationships with members of both of those communities as well.
Sure, compared to Wikipedia it is small fry, but compared to most other websites it has a demographic and draw that most for profit coporations would kill for. It certainly has more visitors and a bigger audience than most Linux distros, if you want to make a comparison to other sorts of collaborative projects.
In general terms for user innovation and involvement on the projects, I would rank them as such:
Wikipedia > Commons > Wiktionary > Wikinews > Wikiversity > Wikibooks > Wikisource > Wikiquote >>> Wikispecies (substantially down the list). You could argue about the placement of the various sister projects projects in terms of user involvement, and I would consider most of the sister projects except for Wiktionary and Wikipedia to be roughly identical in terms of user involvement and activity with some differences mainly due to the nature of each project. Page counts would give some slightly different rankings as would other metrics, but I would question page ranks as a conclusive comparison between the various projects.