[Foundation-l] Incubator Wiki for New Wikimedia Projects

Tue Nov 15 12:18:08 UTC 2005

On 11/15/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >>Wikibooks is about
> >>non-fiction books, and that takes many very unique forms.
> >And Wikijunior is certainly a non-fiction book.
> Wikipedia is also a non-fiction book, however.

I brought that up earlier, and I'm really not sure what to make of it,
because Wikipedia certainly shouldn't be made a part of Wikibooks.  I
can think of two possible reasons:

1) Wikibooks is for textbooks, and this should be narrowly construed
to mean classical textbooks, not to include any learning resources
such as encyclopedias.

2) Wikipedia is too big for Wikibooks (combined perhaps with the fact
that Mediawiki is not sophisticated enough to handle both of them
under a single project).

I actually favor the latter argument, though Jimbo has just recently
suggested that the former is (also?) true.  Also, the latter argument
would lead to Wikibooks being used as an incubator wiki, as big
projects would eventually outgrow Wikibooks.  (Maybe Mediawiki can be
developed in a way to better integrate all the projects, but that's
somewhat of a separate issue).

Anthony