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

WJhonson at aol.com WJhonson at aol.com
Sat Feb 26 16:32:57 UTC 2011


In a message dated 2/26/2011 6:12:10 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
dgerard at gmail.com writes:


> So, for WIkibooks: what's the tuna? What's the compelling attraction
> that will keep people lured in?
> 

I will go one step further.
What is Wikibooks at all?
The scope, content, purpose were really poorly defined.

"Something to large for Wikipedia" doesn't really cut it in my mind.
When our Wikipedia article on Marilyn Monroe can be 25 screen pages long, 
than who needs a "book" and how much bigger would a "book" be anyway?

I'm not sure it makes sense on the Internet to call anything a book.

The other problem I have is who writes the book?  I surely don't want to 
write a book on Obama, but I can contribute a *chapter* perhaps.... of course 
I'd want to be the editor-in-chief of my own chapter but allow contributors.

But heck, if I'm going to go to that much trouble, why not just throw it up 
on my own web site ?

W



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