[Textbook-l] Game Guides

Thu Jun 8 17:34:30 UTC 2006

Lord Voldemort wrote:

>Okay, Jimbo.  In an effort to discuss the game guides issue, I would
>appreciate a couple of questions being answered.  I will try to
>address various points people have brought up on the subject of game
>guides as well as Wikibooks (WB) as a whole.  I will try to ask them
>in a broad sense, including questions that may seem obvious to some.
>Bear with me.
>
>1. What was the original purpose of Wikibooks?
>
>2. Is the current purpose the same?
>
>3. Who has control over the overall content of Wikibooks? The
>Wikimedia Foundation, the WMF Board, the community of Wikibookians?
>
>4a. Some time ago now, you declared that game guides did not fit with
>the intent of WB.  Were you speaking on behalf of the Wikimedia
>Foundation?  Were you speaking just as Jimbo?
>
>4b. Who decided all of a sudden to rid Wikibooks of game guides?  Was
>there recent discussion on Meta?  Between the Board?  If so, is there
>a record of this discussion?
>
>5. Why specifically do game guides not fit in Wikibooks?  Are there
>possible tax-exemption implications with having these here?  If so,
>where is the information regarding this?
>
>6. If the community of Wikibookians disagrees with the decision, and
>consensus is formed against it, can the community disregard the
>pronouncement?
>
>7. If the community rejects the pronouncement and decides they want
>game guides included, what steps would need to be taken to ensure
>there place at WB?  Would the WMF bylaws need to be changed? If so,
>how would they go about doing that?
>
>8. Can video games be an acceptable textbook subject?  If so, what are
>the requirements?  Is a simple walkthrough constitute a textbook?
>
>9. If video game guides are to be gotten rid of, what about board game guides?
>
>10. There is talk of a "Accredited Institution" metric.  If one small
>institution somewhere develops a class on a topic, does that warrant
>that topic's textbook on WB?  What about  if three institutions have
>the class?  Should links to some number of courses be provided to show
>the suitability for WB? If so, how many?
>
>11. Do classes that you do not earn credit for (either
>extra-curricular or within school, but not for credit) count as
>classes under the Accredited Institution metric?  For example, clubs
>used to educate someone on a topic not otherwise found in class.
>
>12. If the removal of video game guides also results in the leaving of
>many prolific and trusted WB editors, does the WMF consider this okay?
>
>13. Any other comments on these issues?
>
>I guess this is a start.  Forgive me if my biases show through. I
>tried to ask questions brought up on both sides of the issue.  If I
>have forgotten any glaring questions, please forgive me.  I understand
>some of these are not easy to answer, but I, and others, would
>appreciate whatever answers you can provide. Thanks.
>--LV
>  
>
I would like to add that Wikibooks was started because of the Organic 
Chemistry article on Wikipedia was growing incredibly huge, and was 
becoming more of a book than an encyclopedia article.  With some 
internal discussion going on with Wikipedia about what to do and Karl 
Wick trying to spearhead the move to create a seperate website for this 
sort of effort, http://textbooks.wikipedia.org was started.  It was from 
this initial effort that subsequent content was added to Wikibooks.

Unlike the perception that seems to be presented at the moment, 
Wikibooks was never intended to be strictly for publishable textbooks. 
 Indeed to prevent this, the clause "Wikibooks is not paper" was added 
into "What Wikibooks is not" (now What is Wikibooks?) to note that some 
creativity could be done to try and explore some new and experimental 
ways of writing content.  That spark of creativity seems to be missing 
in a huge degree right now from Wikibooks.

Indeed, even the idea of making Wikibooks strictly non-fiction content 
is something relatively new, although I think this is a reasonable 
focus.  The problem that Wikibooks is facing now is the incredibly 
limiting restriction of making Wikibooks only for textbooks, with no 
real clear definition as to what a textbook really is.  Saying that you 
must cite a course of study in an accredited educational institution and 
that the textbook fits in with a proscribed syllabus is going way too 
far in my opinion.  How could anything possibly be written at all with 
that sort of very strict interpretation?  Yet that is precisely the 
standard that is being used.

If we (and especially Jimbo) is suggesting that this is the standard 
that needs to be applied, perhaps we simply need to nuke the whole 
website, such as was done with French Wikiquote.  Kill everything and 
perhaps bring back the one agreed upon textbook that started it all: 
 Organic Chemistry.  And then make very strict policies that state the 
much more strict interpretation that Wikibooks is only for textbooks 
alone that meet my above definition, or something similar.

One thing I find especially disturbing in all of this is the complete 
lack of discussion of the other language Wikibooks projects.  Mind you, 
in almost all of the discussions that have taken place on en.wikibooks 
we have never said that such policies were manditory for the other 
language projects.  And the other languages have been largely 
independent, with the German Wikibooks being perhaps the most developed 
besides en.wikibooks.  Or as I've pointed out in several places, over 
half of all Wikibooks content is written in languages other than 
English.  If you are setting up a general policy that excludes a whole 
class of content, this should be a general policy for more than just 
this one project, en.wikibooks.  This is especially if the policy is to 
be coming from the Wikimedia Foundation Board as an official policy.

As far as the tax exempt status issue is concerned, I fail to see that 
as an argument at all.  See my response on: 
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_talk%3AWhat_is_Wikibooks#Referencing_tax-exempt_status 

As long as we keep content available under the GFDL and maintain NPOV 
enforcement of Wikibooks content, I fail to see how anything else can 
possibly threaten the tax-exempt status of Wikibooks or any Wikimedia 
project for that matter.  The content alone is not going to cause any 
problems of any kind regardless of what is written.  Calling in the U.S. 
Federal Government on this issue is an attempt to distract from the 
issue, which is a policy dispute between one rather prominent individual 
(namely Jimbo) and admins on Wikibooks.  The real issue is to determine 
what the scope of Wikibooks should be, and more importantly, its 
relationship to the other Wikimedia sister projects.

And that gets to the heart of the matter and what is causing the 
contention here, together with some of the comments from Jimbo.  What is 
the relationship between Wikia and Wikimedia?  Almost all of the 
arguments that have been used lately to remove content, including the 
Jokebook but also the video game guides and the how-to books, as well as 
the biographies, is because there are existing Wikia projects that cover 
the scope of this kind of content.  However, one of the reasons why 
Wikipedia is moving content to Wikibooks in large quantities (including 
the Cookbook) is because there is no other Wikimedia project that can 
really handle this sort of content.  Indeed, this was the very argument 
that was also given as to why Wikibooks was chosen to host the Wikimania 
proceedings.

So are the various Wikia projects considered sister projects to 
Wikimedia projects?  Local links (not external references) exist going 
both ways, including to the Uncyclopedia.  My understanding was that 
they were very distinct groups (Wikia and Wikimedia) and the policies 
and even existance of a Wikia project has no bearing on Wikimedia 
projects.  Apparently this line is being blurred considerably now with 
the new textbook only philosophy for Wikibooks, and it does have an 
impact on future content being developed on Wikibooks.  Moving the 
How-to books to the How-to Wikia seems like an attempt (to me) of 
capturing Wikibooks content without having to do any work, especially 
given that the how-to books on Wikibooks predate the How-to Wikia.  Six 
months ago the idea would have been considered ludicrious to even 
suggest removing the how-to books.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning