Hello,
There is a request for a multilingual Wikibooks at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilin...
. I would like some input from the community about how to process it,
and whether or not it is a good idea.
I personally think this matter should be decided with Wikibooks and Foundation community consensus, because it is not a language subdomain as the language subcommittee normally processes (it would be a language-agnostic wiki for coordination and translation), it would overlap with existing Wikibooks subdomains and the Incubator, and it would be a major change in how the Wikibooks project is organized.
There are five multilingual projects to date, only two of which are for projects divided by language: the multilingual Wikisource and Beta Wikiversity. The other multilingual projects are Meta-Wiki, Wikispecies, and Commons.
(This message, and any other by any language subcommittee member, is an entirely unofficial personal comment.)
On Jan 9, 2008 10:11 PM, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) pathoschild@gmail.com wrote:
Hello,
There is a request for a multilingual Wikibooks at < http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilin...
. I would like some input from the community about how to process it,
and whether or not it is a good idea.
I personally think this matter should be decided with Wikibooks and Foundation community consensus, because it is not a language subdomain as the language subcommittee normally processes (it would be a language-agnostic wiki for coordination and translation), it would overlap with existing Wikibooks subdomains and the Incubator, and it would be a major change in how the Wikibooks project is organized.
There are five multilingual projects to date, only two of which are for projects divided by language: the multilingual Wikisource and Beta Wikiversity. The other multilingual projects are Meta-Wiki, Wikispecies, and Commons.
I just wanted to give this idea a quick bump. It's an issue that some of the wikibookians are actually quite excited about. The multi-lingual wikibooks project (analgous to the beta.wikiversity project) would serve a number of roles:
1) Coordinate multi-lingual wikibooks projects. Improve lines of communication, and help to standardize exactly what "wikibooks" is supposed to be (there are some differences among different language projects that actually raise some difficulties). Inconsistencies in things such as donation and licensing policies has raised troubles in the past. Things such as the current logo discussion could benefit from more multi-lingual cooperation. IW links are also sparse on wikibooks. 2) Create a central place where people could work on book translations 3) A place where donated books could be stored while being translated from DOC/PDF/HTML/whatever into wikitext En.wikibooks receives regular book donations in these file formats, and significant transformation effort is typically necessary to covert them to wikitext. 4) A place where language books (like "how to speak spanish", for a german-speaking audience) could be coordinated. Language speakers could submit lessons and proof existing lessons in such books. 5) Serve as an incubator of sorts for book projects for which there is currently no associated wikibooks language project. A lot of languages really can't support an entire wikibooks project, but could still benefit from book organization tools and templates that really aren't offered at the incubator.
If the languages subcommittee can't process this request, I would like it if some other foundation participants and board members could look it over.
--Andrew Whitworth
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org