[Textbook-l] Rewrite of Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks

Mon Jun 19 01:41:05 UTC 2006

Jon wrote:

>I don't think we want a Cookbook-specific guideline, especially
>as this relates to all maturing textbooks.
>

However, I don't mind the participants of the cookbook adding additional 
restrictions or standards to the cookbook as a whole for 
cookbook-specific guidelines.  And other books can do the same thing 
among their participants.  Why exactly should this be something bad?

> 
>Personally, I have already assented to deleting these on the
>request of main contributors to the textbook under the part of
>our deletion policy that says we can speedily delete:
> 
>"A page that has been nominated for deletion due to a general 
>reorganization of the Wikibook by the contributors."
> 
>although I confess I was unaware of the next sentence which
>says: "In this situation, please note the location of the relevant 
>discussion that occured regarding the page cleanup." (which
>is particularly difficult to achieve if a book has only one main
>contributor!)
>

This is not difficult to do, and if there is truly only one contributor, 
it isn't a problem.  But make sure there is only one contributor.  The 
deletion policy also allows you to nominate for deletion content to 
which you are the only editor/contributor, which should be a no-brainer 
about being reasonable about contributions.  A user that tried to do a 
massive overhaul of a Wikibook should still be watched carefully if they 
are working with an older Wikibook that might have inactive 
contributors.  In that case they should at least try to start a dialog 
on the main discussion page of the Wikibook, which should be fairly 
obvious to participants.  Generally this is the talk page of the table 
of contents, but it can be elsewhere.

>Although for maturing textbooks, we can in the vast majority
>of cases prettymuch go with what the main contributors say
>on this issue, I do think we also need to keep provisions allowing
>for community review. This must be by allowing individual
>modules to be nominated on VFD (with due weight being
>given to experts in the subject area) and by being able to
>review speedy deletions on VFU (whilst acknowledging that
>if material is reinstated, it probably ought to be moved out
>of that textbook into another).
> 
>I would still appreciate more comments on:
> 
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Inclusion_criteria/Proposal
> 
>Some bits have changed since originally proposed, and these
>amendments can be seen here:
> 
>http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks%3AInclusion_criteria%2FProposal&diff=492850&oldid=488465
> 
>I am looking to see it replace the current wording at WB:WIW
>in around a month, provided the text can be agreed. (It isn't
>really meant to be a fundamental change to what we do in
>practice, even though it is a fundamentally different way of
>expressing it.)
>
That, especially for Wikibooks, is an incredibly short period of time, 
particularly since you havn't mentioned this on the Staff Lounge either. 
 You are talking about a major overhaul of a fundimental policy for the 
entire project, and expecting that there will be little opposition to 
even the idea of doing the overhaul?  The "What is Wikibooks?" and its 
predecessor "What Wikibooks is not." came from painful discussions (in 
terms of arguments and verbal language) that have developed over the 
courses of years, not months or even days.  This is not something that 
should be done quickly, and is something that should be very widely 
advertised in terms of seeking input.  Something like a global 
announcement that is site-wide and displayed on every Wikibook page in 
terms of user input, lasting at least six weeks for the comment period 
alone.  I am saying this due to my own experience with Wikibooks users, 
and I would strongly object to a major overhaul of a policy page like 
this (even if it is warrented) if it was changed and I never knew about it.

It is a good first step, but substantially more user comments should be 
sought before it replaces a policy page like [[WB:WIW]].

>I would add that I would expect the inclusion criteria to be
>read permissively rather than restrictively. Like every policy,
>this is intended to be an aid to us developing Wikibooks
>productively going forward, not a tight straitjacket - so the
>phrase "worthy of study" is meant to mean that some people
>consider a subject to be "worthy of study", not that the
>whole world considers it to be so.
> 
>Kind regards
> 
>Jon
>
>  
>
I want to add here that I think this is a good approach to go.  Just 
that we may have to be going a little slower than you are used to with 
Wikipedia.

-- 
Robert Scott Horning