[Foundation-l] Friendliness (was: Missing Wikipedians: An Essay)

[elisabeth bauer]

2011/2/27  <WJhonson at aol.com>:

> The problem I see with free books is just that you really need something
> that says... this is WHY you, the contributor would put in this amount of
> effort here.
>
> With Wikipedia, I can contribute a word here, a sentence there, parse some
> grammar over there, fix a bad phrasing, add a source... all to seven
> articles and call it a day.
>
> A book takes an awful lot of effort.  And then I give it away free to the
> world.  Sorry I'm just not seeing that.

This explains perfectly well why wikibooks has not been working very
well from its beginning. However, it doesn't explain the decline of
admins in the last years someone mentioned earlier in this thread.

I was active a while in the german wikibooks, but eventually got
frustrated by the lack of interaction with others. You're working
alone on your book project, and all the satisfaction you get is from
the work you put in - no feedback, no discovering somebody has
improved your stuff while you were away, no discovery that someone has
ruined everything in your absence and now you have to fight for your
version... very peaceful and absolutely boring.

greetings,
elian