[Foundation-l] Project Wikineur

[Daniel Mayer]

> > 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. 

While I created the Wikibooks name based on a combination of WikiWiki and
textbooks, that project has never been only about textbooks. It is a place to
build just about any non-fiction reference book with, and this is critical, a
finite end size (if you want to explore a subject area in more detail than
that, start other books). The 'finite' part excludes potentially huge or even
practically infinitely-sized things such as a general quote book, dictionary,
or encyclopedia. 

The very different formats for these other projects is also a reason for the
separation; Modules in a wikibook need to be in in a hierarchy and should
ideally be read in a particular sequence, while articles in Wikipedia and
Wikiquote and entries at Wiktionary are anything but hierarchical and can be
read in any order.  

True, the emphasis is on instructional-oriented material, but that is an
*emphasis* to encourage the most-potentially positive aspect of the project. It
is ''not'' an exclusionary principle. 

ambi wrote:
> 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.

I agree with this statement 100% and can't think of a thing to add.

-- mav


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Yahoo! Mail - 250MB free storage. Do more. Manage less. 
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250