Daniel Mayer wrote:
Magnus wrote:
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.
Tables and lists (in a limited way) are part of any encyclopedia. We
just have more of them in wikipedia because of basically unlimited
space. And we have article lists ("Rare diseases" etc.), but this is
just framework for the actual articles.
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).
But it would also make sense to have a biochemistry course along side
the biochemistry article. Do we write that course in the wikipedia? No
we don't. Because it's something different.
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.
You misunderstood me (or I you;-)
The source and the annotations should be in a single project, of course.
All I said that this is different from /writing a new book from scratch/.
* Easier to
look at RecentChanges
Huh? How is having source text going to mess that up?
Not at all, but the annotations will.
* 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.
We'd have only two different LocalSettings files instead of one, so no
big work here. But, we probably don't want to enable all options for
annotation when writing a new book, and probably some other options from
there in the source project.
Don't get me wrong, if that was already decided a long time ago (can't
remember...) then never mind. I won't go berserk if I'd find that
biochemistry book next to some annotated Shakespeare text. It just seems
to be something different by concept to me.
Magnus