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

[Michael R. Irwin]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>We have to draw a line somewhere, and we can argue internally endlessly
>without getting much resolution.  So a useful technique is to try really
>hard to reference some external standards.
>
>  
>
>>1. What about guides to games that are not video or computer games?
>>These can include guides on how to play chess and go (which we already
>>have), bridge, whist, etc.. together with suitable strategies;
>>conceivably this may also include more modern games such as risk or
>>monopoly or cluedo. To my mind, guides on well-known intellectual games
>>such as these have educational value and are worth keeping, but your
>>comments would be welcome.
>>    
>>
>
>My question would be whether or not there exist classes at accredited
>institutions on the subject which use something similar _as a textbook_.
>  
>

In Oregon, USA a B.S. Degree in game development from a technical 
institute .... might be IIT but I am not certain ... is being advertised 
for a full four year degree available in three years of full time study 
on National Broadcast Television during primetime.

The creator of Total Annihlation has announced a new "game" which is a 
three sided war game which allows various combinations of teams, solo 
players, computer controlled forces to interact at various scales from 
ant to global overview with land, sea, space, and air assets that 
interact as an accurate simulation.   Big units can step on little 
units.  Nukes have cumulative accurate effects on all units within 
primary blast radius and perhaps downwind.  Artillery is accurately 
calculated ballistics.

I am kind of looking forward to setting up Wikiversity's War College.   
It will be useful outreach for our engineers as they work with the 
military students and history departments to discern tactics and 
strategy from history; update it for proper time frames, and then 
simulate scenarios or run war game tournament to see who makes accurate 
predications and statments vs. who is hot air or misinformation 
specialists.  Perhaps the Poly Sci or Wikinews folks might find some 
benefit in being able to verify or validate some of the Pentagon's vs. 
freedom fighters claims independently via forensic science (accurate 
physics vs. propaganda or cartoon physics).

Considering that the U.S. Army uses an internally modified and supported 
version of DOOM for situational awareness training  .... it is going to 
be hard to claim that guidelines regarding how to manage the economy and 
various scales of forces of the above while avoiding getting stepped on 
or nuked or bought out by bigger or smaller or other peoples or things 
are not educational at some level regarding some things.

Outpost from Sierra and Lunar Command from Mallard are both improved 
versions of NASA simulations studying how to establish, maintain, expand 
and operate space science stations and setttlements.


>Notice how this works: first, we can be quite broad in what constitutes
>a textbook, for example at my sister's cooking school, they use a
>cookbook for a textbook, no question.
>
>But in virtually every university, there are classes on Shakespeare
>which use Hamlet as material, but not as _textbook_ per se.
>
>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.
>  
>
Chess is common in computer science classes and projects.

Doom.  U.S. Army. See above.


>  
>
>>2. Your comments included a direct reference to wikibooks having
>>textbooks suitable for "elementary school, high school, or college
>>courses" (and I'm not sure what age groups you meant by "college" as it
>>seems to mean different things in the US from what it means in the UK).
>>I trust this list was not meant to be exhaustive and that you would
>>agree that textbooks related to professional learning (eg accountancy),
>>adult learning (eg cookery) and (if not covered by "college") university
>>learning are suitable for wikibooks.
>>    
>>
>
>Yes!  I think we should be quite broad about it.  The key point is that
>there have to be some kind of courses offered by some kind of serious
>institution of learning.
>  
>
There will obviously be courses in user interfaces, ergonomics, realtime 
processing, simulation modeling, etc.  in the curriculum cited above for 
a B.S. in Game Engineering or Design.

Perhaps it is time to modify the mission statement to match the site 
name or vice versa.

What exactly is the point in restricting Wikibooks to tomes on 
trigonometry when it is faster and easier for a kid to program a turtle 
to circumnavigate a triangle drawn onscreen and then divide the timed 
duration of the task by the programmed speed of the turtle to arrive at 
the circumfrance.  Further the same kid can throw away his calculus book 
by pouring water into a plastic form or 3d wire frame at a known rate 
and timing or programming each infinitesimal to have the same weight and 
couting the number of jelly beans that fit or the number of ants that 
wander through Wikipedia.

How much does Wikipedia weigh in neutrinos Alice?

I am kind of curious.  How much do you think the rascals learn by 
checking to see if the walkthroughs actually work?  It seems to me that 
the cheat codes that were available for Warcraft II might have had an 
adaptive quality related to the video drivers being used.   I never 
sorted it though, we could always get our CAD sytems back online by 
replacing the corrupted dll's with the backup files so I did not worry 
about it much.   The cheat codes allowed my office managers' kids to 
compete with me and my professionals effectively in after hour 
recreation.  They seemed to be learning how to count their gold and 
assets.  Kicked my ass a few times.

Regards,
lazyquasar