Before I begin, I have CC'ed this message to the Wikipedia mailing
list, as there is some relevance there. For Wikipedia list members,
the original discussion refers to a proposal to modify deletion
policy to allow a limited form of Wikipedia article forking in order
to create a more in-depth guide to a topic in Wikibooks (which is
currently against policy, see [[WB:WIN]]). It has evolved somewhat
into a debate on what Wikibookians think of Wikibooks vs. what others
(eg. Wikipedians) think of Wikibooks.
I guess that I'm trying to modify the deletion
policy somewhat
to allow *some* forking of Wikipedia content, provided that the
content on Wikibooks really is an expansion of the Wikipedia
article and not just some POV fight or fork of Wikipedia
content. The nature of Wikibooks certainly allows almost any
article on Wikipedia to be turned into a book, provided there
are interested parties willing to write the content. Forbidding
any fork would, in effect, kill almost any Wikibook stub right now.
We do not allow any content that isn't considered to be
instructional material. The spirit of WB:WIN is that if you want
to expand a WP article, then do it on WP. Personally, I am
opposed to any Wikipedia forking in general because of the fact
that I consider encyclopedia articles are not by itself
instructional material. Based on your post, [[The Biography of
Nikola Tesla]] would have been deleted whether we have the
changed policy or not, due to it originating from an edit war.
I have to say that, to some real extent, the "books" part of
Wikibooks is really a misnomer: it's not clearly intuitive that
we are writing textbooks of instructional material on this wiki.
From following discussion on Foundation-l, it seems as though a
number of people at Wikipedia and Meta have a very different
opinion of what Wikibooks is all about, and it seems as though
Wikibooks has in effect been turned into a general repository of
non-fiction book-length topics. In particular, discussions around
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects seem to
indicate a more general attitude toward Wikibooks.
The original concept for Wikibooks, according to its founder,
[[User:Karl Wick]] I believe, is a wiki for building textbooks.
However, Wikipedians for some odd reason decided to offload their
unwanted goods to Wikibooks: for examples, the VFD precedent there
regarding recipes has largely been the driving force behind
[[Cookbook]], even though a cooking textbook should focus little on
recipes and more on general cooking techniques. Many of the books
here have since defied their original intent: for example, [[Computer
and video games bookshelf]] (originally [[Game Guides and Strategy]])
- a textbook on beating a computer game sounds ludicrous to me.
Wikibooks also suffers from the fact that there are few active admins
and few active users of action (and thus suffering from repeated
vandal attacks). Prior to myself becoming an admin, there were over
200 pages on speedy deletion, some of them being marked for months
(although half of these were due to technical constraints). There
are possibly another 200 pages that could be easily moved out of en:
and onto their respective Wikibooks if only Special:Import was
complete (or someone did hard transwiking). Because of this, few
Wikibookians are willing to put down concrete policies that are
followed and enforced (consider that key pages such as [[WB:HNS]],
[[WB:FP]] and even [[WB:WIN]] were in constant flux). Furthermore,
Wikibookians tend to be within their own group of books, and rarely
venture into collaborating in other books (this is perhaps due to a
lack of a consistent Manual of Style). This makes it difficult to
judge the purpose of Wikibooks. Only recently have users decided to
put their foot down in respect to what Wikibooks is about, and what
it is about is instructional material. It could very well be the
case that longtime existing books such as [[Jokebook]] could be put
up in VFD for not being instructional material.
One of the problems that Wikibooks is suffering from
right now is
that Wikiversity is not really a successful project in itself.
Yes, there is content there, but even project like Virtual
University (
http://www.vu.org/) show more of a real academic
environment. Another one is Diversity University (http://
www.du.org/). Even if Wikiversity were brought up to these
somewhat modest standards, the auxuallary role of Wikibooks would
be considerably more apparant. Instead, Wikibooks is percieved as
an auxuallary role to Wikipedia and the other "sister projects" of
the Wikimedia Foundation, which has in effect a broading of scope
effect to Wikibooks.
Last I checked, Wikiversity is more popular on de: than on en: to the
point of making a separate wiki for it (
de.wikiversity.org). The
English version suffers from repeated content (the school for CS has
a page on data structures when we already have [[Data Structures]],
for example), and has been a frequent target for vandals, making it
seem like (to me) an anachronism.
Part of the blame perhaps lies with the structure of Wikibooks:
Wikiversity, as it was originally designed, is supposed to be broader
in scope with the rest of Wikibooks, yet the wiki is -books and not -
versity, implying that the books is bigger than the university, or
that the university is a book... Now it's no more than a book that
has special sidebar privileges.
On Wikibooks itself I've been involved with a
minor edit war where
some people have tried to come into one of the Wikibooks I've
created and try to turn it into a subject-based Wikipedia, and I've
resisted the effort, particuarly on the talk pages. Somehow the
idea that content on Wikibooks should be a book rather than a bunch
of web pages loosely connected does not always get across.
Point them to [[WB:WIN]]. A good many users are Wikipedians that
think of Wikibooks as more in-depth. Wikibooks tries to teach as
well, and that's something that isn't put across clearly in many
books. Considering that it takes longer to write a book than a
single encyclopedia article, I wouldn't consider it a surprise.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wikibooks
is drifting from
its original and noble foundations, and I really don't see
significant effort to try and go back to those roots. Nor do I see
any desire by the newer Wikibookians to try and follow that ideal,
at least to the letter as supplimental materials to Wikiversity or
to support specific academic standards requirements. Let me put it
more directly and specifc then: How many Wikibooks that can be
used as a textbook for any major college or university, or follows
state or national academic requirements to be used as the basis for
curriculm development as a textbook? The FHSST books are based on
this type of standard, but that does come from outside Wikibooks to
at least get it started. Books like "How to Build a Pykrete Bong"
are more typical to Wikibooks, unfortunately.
You do have a point here. In this sense, Wikibooks as a project has
been a failure.
I truly believe the original purpose has been lost, in part due to
[[WB:FP]] forcing Wikibookians to perhaps making a one-size-fits-all
book. A good many books today are "one-page books" (eg. How to do
xxx), and may need to be merged together.
Furthermore, many of the books, such as our COTM, literally take
"instructional material" to its limit. Is a travel guide considered
instructional material? Only a trip to VFD can we find out - there
has been no precedent in many cases where we could establish what we
consider instructional material. The only major VFD debate going on
with ramifications on how instruction material is defined is whether
collaborative fiction for the purposes of education is allowed
([[Ardvark the Aardvark]]).
To date, the only real hardened concrete policies that we have is
[[WB:AT]], as it deals with Wikisource (which seems to have its
policies better enforced).
I fail to see what the origin of motivation for
creating a Wikibook
has to do with if it gets deleted or not. It should IMHO (and
apparently this opinion is not shared) stand on its own merits
independently of other content on other Wikimedia projects. I have
posted requests for deletion for content that seems to be a pure
fork of Wikipedia content (and nothing added) to Wikibooks, and
there are several Wikibook modules that really do need to be
deleted on this basis.
Agreed. Be bold and put it on VFD. In some cases put it on speedy.
There really isn't an effort on Wikipedia to allow
book-length
material either, which is one reason why the Nikola Tesla
information was put here on Wikibooks. While part of an edit war,
it seems as though contributors at Wikipedia are being told to go
away, and that some admins at Wikibooks are saying the same thing.
This is not a good thing to do in either case, and weakens both
communities as a result. If, as you seem to suggest, that
Wikibooks should be for pure textbook content, perhaps Wikibooks
itself needs to fork and a separation between academic books and
other non-fiction materials needs to take place.
Book-length material is inappropriate in Wikipedia because it goes
too in-depth. It may or not be appropriate material in Wikibooks
depending on whether the material is instructional in nature. For
noninstructional material that could be book length (ie. a
macropedia), we are truly stuck. IMO, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia,
and its comprehensiveness should be able to take any reasonable topic
and bring it to an arbitrary and acceptable level of depth.
Wikibooks is an instructional resource - the same level of depth can
only be reached only through tutoring its readers, and thus the two
necessitate different approaches. A good example on what Wikipedia
and Wikibooks should be in comparison to each other is how an article
on arithmetic is clearly different from a book on arithmetic: the
Wikipedia article should not teach you how to do arithmetic beyond
"doing it", while the Wikibooks module should concern itself with
strategies (eg. use manipulatives such as beans or candy) for doing
it and less to do with the history of arithmetic, which is adequately
covered by Wikipedia.