[Textbook-l] Wikiversity

Wed Jun 21 15:44:08 UTC 2006

Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 6/21/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>If the WMF board was more inclined to approve new projects (not any old
>>thing, but at least allow some new projects), I might be more encouraged
>>to move the How-to guides to a new project.
>>    
>>
>
>I think if we work together, we can pull it off. The open question for
>me is: is it necessary?  Do you think how-tos have a future on
>Wikibooks itself?
>
>Erik
>  
>
I am not really sure what the motivation is to remove how-to books from 
Wikibooks in the first place.  The only real suggestion I've seen is to 
transwiki the content to Wikia, which is one of the reasons why I made 
comments about that earlier.  I think perhaps in this case it might have 
been participants on the how-to wikia that wants to move the how-to 
activity from Wikibooks to their project, not any effort by Wikibooks 
contributors to remove this sort of content.  The same sort of issue 
came up with the Blender 3D Wikibook, where it was apparently forked to 
another wiki with the admins of that other website asking that the 
content be removed from Wikibooks, and the ensuing discussions about 
wheither the content should simply be forked or if it was reasonable for 
non-Wikimedia websites to demand that content be removed from Wikibooks 
due to duplication of effort issues alone.

I, for one, don't want to see how-to books removed from Wikibooks.  I 
think they definitely are instructional text that requires more than one 
page (much more than the 32K limit on Wikipedia) and can cover a topic 
with a NPOV and other general restrictions typical of all Wikimedia 
projects.  This fits with Wikibooks more than any other current 
Wikimedia project, and any attempt to break off just the how-to books 
would put in a bunch of grey areas as to what really belongs on 
Wikibooks.  Trying to come up with a definition that distinguishes 
between how-to books and general textbooks is going to be something that 
may require some divine intervention.  I am also not completely 
convinced that Wikibooks should be exclusively textbooks, as other 
educational and instructional material can be developed by creative 
individuals using MediaWiki software.  I have not seen a valid argument 
why Wikibooks should be exclusively textbooks-only, nor have any really 
good definitions as to what a textbook is or should be been agreed upon 
by most Wikibooks participants.

That textbooks should be a key component of Wikibooks, I would agree. 
 And featured textbooks of high quality should be on the front page of 
Wikibooks.  So where is the argument?

-- 
Robert Scott Horning