[Textbook-l] Textbook style

[Robert Scott Horning]

Magnus Manske wrote:

>While aimlessly browsing through wikibooks, I suddenly realized that
>our textbooks don't look like - well, textbooks.
>
>Suppose I want to learn from a wikibooks textbook. I open a chapter
>(sorry, a "module";-) and it looks like wikipedia. That is not bad in
>itself, however, IMHO it has some drawbacks. First, I'm distracted by
>the sidebar. If I want to learn about a topic, I don't want to go to
>the "staff lounge" or the "community portal". And when I scroll down,
>the sidebar is replaced by - a really blank space. That's all fine on
>wikipedia, where you come to be part of the experience, or to look up
>some topic, then leave. Learning from a textbook is another process
>altogether.
>
>  
>
This is something I've fought against in many instances, and it should 
be pointed out that the MediaWiki software that we have tends to 
encourage this kind of behavior if only because it has been tweaked and 
specialized explictly for the creation of encyclopedic entries.

Furthermore, a very large portion of the users that come to Wikibooks 
have mainly experience with Wikipedia (although there are some "home 
grown" Wikibooks users that hardly touch Wikipedia).  Into that 
viewpoint, it is hardly surprising that many of the modules (not all of 
them) tend to have a look and feel very similar to Wikipedia articles, 
and are often even written in a fashion similar to a major "A-grade" 
Wikipedia article.  Indeed, the Wikijunior pages (to give a specific 
example) almost all have a strong feel of being individual articles very 
loosly tied together by topic.

Keep in mind, please, that Wikibooks is still trying to define some of 
these concepts that you are complaining about here.  While in a few 
cases we actually have sufficient content together to actually have 
something strongly resembling a textbook, clearly we need to move on and 
try to go beyond the basic concepts found on Wikipedia for article 
navigation.

Another huge issue is that on Wikibooks each seperate book almost takes 
on a sense of being its own seperate Wikimedia project, if sufficient 
numbers of people are involved.  This said, the more mature Wikibooks 
tend to have a unique style almost unto themselves.  This also includes 
often navigation sidebars and more.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning