[Textbook-l] Wikibooks - removal of games walkthrough books

[Kernigh]

Jimmy Wales <jwales at ...> writes:  
> But in virtually every university, there are classes on Shakespeare  
> which use Hamlet as material, but not as _textbook_ per se.  
  
I do not understand. High school and university students in parts of  
the United States do read printed copies of Hamlet. Those are  
textbooks, no?  I think that Hamlet is an obvious example of a  
textbook.  
  
> ...  The key point is that  
> there have to be some kind of courses offered by some kind of serious  
> institution of learning.  
  
Some courses assign essays praising the fall of communism. Some  
courses assign the Communist Manifesto. Wikibooks do not want essays  
(Wikibooks is not a blog), and they do not want source texts. This  
"key point" will not help anyone remove "game walkthrough books".  
  
> I am unaware of any course at any accredited institution which teaches  
> risk or monopoly or clue.  Chess and go, probably, but I actually don't  
> know.  Doom?  No.  
   
[[b:Doom]] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Doom is a project that I  
worked on recently. I had discovered that some IP users had copied  
some Wikipedia articles into the Doom book. These new Doom submodules  
had the usual metaphorical ocean of red links, the various broken  
template calls, the use of nonexistant images and categories... and  
there was credit to Wikipedia in the edit history, but not in the book  
itself. 
 
I spent some time searching Wikipedia and eventually found that these  
two Wikipedia articles were copied:   
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gameplay_of_Doom  
  (deleted from Wikipedia because of the transwiki to Wikibooks)         
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_enemies_in_Doom         
  (kept at Wikipedia, but forked to Wikibooks)         
  
They now form 5 modules in the Wikibook of Doom.         
  
Thus I had explored the Wikibook of Doom and the Wikipedia  
articles of Doom. By then I knew that Wikipedia had much more  
information about Doom than what I would suspect:  
* http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Doom/         
  The Wikibook of Doom contains 10 subpages.         
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Doom         
  Wikipedia contains *51 articles* about Doom, plus 9 subcategories.  
   
On average, the Wikipedia articles seem to be longer than the Doom  
submodules.  The Wikipedia articles also contain more images. Thus,  
Wikipedia has at least 6 times, probably at least 12 times, as much  
information about Doom as the Wikibook of Doom does. Also, the larger  
half (5 modules) of the Wikibook is information moved or copied from  
Wikipedia. Several other computer and video game Wikibooks, though not  
all of them, are like this. Why?  
  
These gaming wikis all have MediaWiki server software and use the GNU FDL:  
* Gameinfo           - http://gameinfo.wikia.com  
* Encyclopedia Gamia - http://egamia.com  
* Strategy Wiki      - http://strategywiki.net  
    
However none of these are sister projects of Wikipedia. Thus English  
Wikipedia designates *English Wikibooks* as the preferred place for  
game guides.  
  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CVG wrote:  
> Articles on computer and video games should give an encyclopedia  
> overview of what the game is about, not a detailed description  
> of how to play it. Such topics should be moved to Wikibooks  
> computer and video games bookshelf.  
  
(None of this explains why Wikipedia has so many computer and video  
game guide authors.)  
  
So, what I think that we need is a mechanism to move computer and video  
game guides from Wikibooks to any of these gaming wikis. Currently, I  
cannot move a guide; I must fork it.  
  
I suggest that it is time to move some or all of them to other wikis,  
for no reason (related to institutions of learning or otherwise)  
except that we have too many of them, and that gaming wikis are  
better locations for them.  
  
-- [[Wikibooks:en:User:Kernigh]]  
   http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Kernigh  
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kernigh  
   http://gameinfo.wikia.com/wiki/User:Kernigh