I thought a very interesting and well-written (and sourced) blog entry
by Ben Crowell, a pioneer in e-book publishing, would be interesting
reading to the people on Foundation-l:
http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/infrastructure.html
It was also based in part on an interesting exchange I had with him on
slashdot before he wrote this entry:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170873&cid=14234478
I think that much of what Mr. Crowell has to say about Wikibooks and
Wikipedia is a very valid critism, especially from somebody who is
outside of Wikimedia projects trying to locate some gems of quality that
may be useful. It is also from somebody who has done more than just a
casual glance at what we are doing here, and comes from somebody who has
done what Wikibooks is claiming as an ultimate goal (but didn't use
Wikibooks to accomplish the task).
--
Robert Scott Horning