Magnus wrote:
Because it's something different. Like wikibook is
something different than wikipedia, annotating
public domain texts and summarizing copyrighted
ones is something different than writing a completely
new book on, say, biochemistry, or Spanish.
But Wikipedia is more than just an encyclopedia; it also has supporting
almanac-like information and articles in it along with supporting
gazetteer-like information and articles in it. Wiktionary is also not just a
dictionary; it is also a thesaurus and a translating dictionary. Sometimes a
few to several different things are similar and complimentary enough to each
other that it makes sense to put them together. This tends to make one
larger, more active project vs several smaller weaker projects.
And it makes a great deal of sense to include the works of Shakespeare, for
example, in Wikibooks so that it can be used along side a literature textbook
(which will have lessons and questions specifically about particular plays).
Advantages:
* Easier for the "end consumer"
No it isn't. Having things separate will make it more difficult for
instructors to write questions based on the source text and to annotate that
text to suit the needs of the literature textbook. And the student will have
to go to two different places for his/her textbooks and his/her sourcebooks.
* Easier to look at RecentChanges
Huh? How is having source text going to mess that up?
* Easier to fine-tune the software to each project
Just enable a special namespace called "source" in Wikibooks. Done. Then
instead of two different installations to maintain, you only have one.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)