Yes, there is. Firstly, it's on a rather specific theme - and a very wide range of businesses. Just like an encyclopedia is a set of books, any information could be packaged as such. But this is not meant as course material for a school or university. It is meant as a set of work manuals. As such, each manual must cover information in a consistent way. The same set of headings, the same way of detailing information. More importantly, every input that is required for a business is the product of another business. So too with every output. These inputs and outputs can be tracked to create a webwork showing the interaction of different businesses (slightly different from just a set of textbooks). This also allows for the tracking of required infrastructure and support. So, if I want to start a grain mill, then there have to be farms nearby. There also needs to be transport, harvesting, maintenance for the mill. If there is no electricity, then that changes the type of mill I can operate. And so on. It provides insight into limiting factors preventing targetted industries from getting off the ground (inputs unavailable) while providing the necessary info on how to get input industries up and running. Just as helpful is that the outputs must have a market. No good producing plastic bottles if no-one wants to use them. This is very helpful for people looking for gaps in the market but who aren't sure if it is worthwhile or what supply and demand is required. Products have direct and indirect markets. For example: rubber washers are used to make wheels in crafted wire cars; old wooden palattes (from the logistics industry) are broken down to make prefabricated walls for houses. Each topic can give novel ideas for inputs and outputs that may extend products into new industries. Each topic covers the necessary inputs, outputs - and how to get from the one to the other. In the long term it will become possible to develop a simple checklist to ascertain what gaps exist for what opportunities (similar to the way biologists have a species identification system: does it have this type of leaf, go to pg 73, does it have these nodules? .... until you get to a specific set of possibilities). This project is distinct. Otherwise one could argue that wikibooks is just another permutation of wikipedia. Regards, Gavin _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Rebecca (misfitgirl(a)gmail.com) [050201 10:34]: Unless it's Wikipedia, which is fair cos it's by far the hugest wiki book!

> Wikibooks was set up to be the home of textbooks. Not books, but > Textbooks. Hence why wikpedia, wiktionary and wikiquote are not on > wikibooks (other than historical accident). I really dont think it is > fair to the wikibooks community, that we tell every new wikiproject to > go set up on wikibooks. Its in risk of becoming the wikimedia dumping > ground.

We can always take Wikimedia in new directions, and I laud such proposals, but I strongly despise these subject-specific works. They have limited potential in terms of both readers and participation, are much less likely to be successful, and would really be much better suited to, say, setting up a MediaWiki installation on a business website. Just because it is a wiki doesn't mean that it has to be under the Wikimedia banner.

One way of dealing with this is by having it as a "Wikicities" project. If it pans out, it can always return into the wikimedia fold :) .