[Textbook-l] Wikiversity and Wikibooks: can we answer the perennial question?

[Cormac Lawler]

On 11/14/07, Peter van Londen <londenp at gmail.com> wrote:

> So in short: I would welcome to start with Wikiversity within the Wikibooks
> project, having a separate entree (a redirect from nl.wikiversity.org) but
> not splitting up the community. At least not until we are bigger and until
> the idea behind Wikiversity stands.


Thanks very much Peter. :-) However, I'd like to counter the argument
that creating a Wikiversity will automatically involve splitting the
existing Wikibooks community - because it is entirely possible (and
I've seen this myself) that creating a new project with a
substantially different goal will attract a *new community* of people.
People are inspired differently by the name Wikiversity than with
Wikibooks (and vice versa) - some people might not be motivated to
contribute in one, but they will be in the other. And of course, some
people will move between both projects, cross-pollinating initiatives,
and looking for ways to collaborate and share (which should always be
the goal, in my opinion). So the argument that a split will
*necessarily* be dividing both projects too thinly does not hold true
for me (even though it might do in certain ways and circumstances).

I think the key to this is, as you say yourself, definition of the
project(s). Wikiversity is understood differently by many of its
contributors - and I really don't know what many people 'around the
edges' understand of it. :-) (And that example you bring up -
Filmmaking - is not, for me, the be-all-and-end-all of Wikiversity
learning resources - but rather reflects *one* example of creating
educational resources.) So, this is what I'm trying to raise here -
how are we to define each project in relation (or contrast) to each
other? (Restating a previous question: what can Wikiversity do that
Wikibooks never can?) And should we be thinking of "not splitting
projects", "splitting and collaborating", or "merging into a larger
goal"?

Cormac