kelvSYC wrote:
I need to solicit major feedback from veteran
Wikibookians and the
public in general about this, as I am about to propose a major policy
overhaul. As you know, Wikibooks policy is rarely strictly enforced,
with [[User:Aya]] pointing out that many of our existing policies are
vaguely defined and self-contradictory, and that [[User:Rob Horning]]
showing that sometimes good material may be left without a home (see
debate on [[Biography of Nikola Tesla]]).
As such, I propose to the world at large a change in how we define
what Wikibooks actually is besides from [[WB:WIN]]:
The two basic parts of Wikibooks as we know it is the form of a book
and the concept of what constitutes instructional material. These
should be canonized into [[Wikibooks:Books]] and
[[Wikibooks:Instructional material]] (hereby referred to as
[[WB:IM]]). However, new Wikibookians (or Wikipedia ex-patriates)
may want to create (or may have created) books that are not that
instructional (but remain nonfiction). If we were to make such a
radical overhaul, we might as well broaden the scope of Wikibooks and
add [[Wikibooks:Reference material]] (hereby referred to as
[[WB:RM]]). Hopefully the three will be more of a solid guideline as
to what constitutes a book.
As for organizing books, we need [[Wikibooks:Bookshelf]] for the
basic concept of a bookshelf, as well as "the first Wikibooks
WikiProject", [[Wikibooks:WikiProject Librarian]], for users that
wish to organize, categorize, and otherwise "stock bookshelves" as
new books are made.
There are a few absolutely hard "facts" about Wikibooks that IMHO needs
to be enforced, or the nature of Wikibooks is going to substantially
change from what it currently is:
1) All material on Wikibooks should be non-fiction in nature.
2) Original research is not appropriate to be placed on Wikibooks. A
very clear definition of original research needs to be made, but it
should include things like laboratory notes, engineering tests, and
interesting but new concepts like Neo (
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Neo
which is currently up on a VfD discussion)
3) Material that is encyclopedic in nature ought to be placed on
Wikipedia. If it is organization of Wikipedia material (Unicyclopedia
pushes this line very hard) it should instead be a Wikipedia
Wikiproject, again not something that should be here. Small articles
about a particular subject are encouraged to be developed on Wikipedia
first.
4) Material that clearly belongs on a Wikimedia sister projects, such as
original text source, image collections, dictionary/glossary
collections, or original news reporting should be started or moved to
those respective projects (Wikisource, Wikicommons, Wiktionary,
Wikinews, and any other future projects that the Wikimedia Foundations
comes up with).
5) (This is a new change) Forking of Wikipedia content can and should
happen on Wikibooks, but the article on Wikipedia should be rather
mature in nature and generally should be rather long as well (with a
rule of thumb being that it is hitting the 32K article limit on
Wikipedia, and no realistic way to break into multiple articles for
Wikipedia.) Keep in mind that the content should be an independent
book, and that major rewriting of the material might be in order. The
Wikipedia fork is only an initial stub that substantially large
quantities of new information can be added to. (More exactly policies
should be added to this point.)
6) Wikibooks should be organized into "book-like" formats. It should
include chapters, appendicies, bibliographies, and other features
commonly found in books. Random articles that, while related to the
subject of the Wikibook, should be added to Wikipedia instead unless it
can be worked into the content of the Wikibook. Each Wikibook is not a
subject-based "mini Wikipedia", although there is a tendancy for this to
happen on Wikibooks.
7) Wikibooks should be placed on a bookshelf for organizational
purposes. It may be moved to a more "appropriate place", but shelving a
book is a good way to start a Wikibook stub. Wikibooks material that is
not on a bookshelf (or without links anywhere in Wikibooks) may be
subject to deletion. Good-faith efforts of new users should be guided,
and perhaps a diligant Wikibookian who wants to help out can "place" a
"loose" wikibook on a bookshelf it is not on one in the first place.
Generally this matieral is either going to be new user experiments or a
violation of Wikibooks policies for other reasons, including link
spamming and blatant vandalism or even offensive material with strong
POV issues.
8) A wikibook stub can be started, and it doesn't necessarily have to be
completed by the person who started it. A good point of debate,
however, should be when a Wikibook stub is left alone for a long time
(several months or years) and no new material is added, should it be
deleted simply because it is a stub? Certainly it could be removed from
bookshelves and "archived" in a collection of stubs to be used/ignored
by future Wikibookians. A formal "what constitutes a Wikibook stub"
policy should also be created.
9) New Wikimedia project concepts are also inappropriate to be placed in
Wikibooks. (Wikijunior is a major exception here, but that is a
seperate issue.) If you need some server space to try out the concept,
it can be done on a *very* limited basis on Meta, or if you think you
have a larger community for the concept try it out on Wikicities first.
The Wikimedia Foundation is particularly hostile to new major projects
ideas, but Wikibooks is not the appropriate place to fight against that
hostility.
Up to this point I havn't even covered the instructional "textbook"
material vs. "non-textbook". It is on this more fine point of what
constitutes instructional material that is for me a major sticking point
on Wikibooks, and needs to be reexamined. It is also an issue with the
other Wikimedia projects, and when material shows up on the sister
projects that is book length in nature, the natural tendancy is to
transwiki the material over to Wikibooks, regardless if it fits
Wikibooks policies. Perhaps the "textbook" nature needs to be adapted
or changed? Does a whole new Wikimedia project need to be developed
that makes clear distinctions between these two categories of
non-fiction books?
--
Robert Scott Horning