Re: NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies onWikibooks?

>From: "Monahon, Peter B." <[email protected]>
>Why not have "fiction" at wikibooks?
>Huh?

Because Wikibooks is for text books and instructional guides. Fiction does 
not fall under this category. Beyond that, there are several reasons for not 
including fiction:

1) Wikibooks has a strict "No Original Research" clause which would prevent 
authors from writing or creating new content like fiction works.
2) Pre-existing fiction works that are not subject to copyright (or are 
available under the GFDL) belong at Wikisource, not Wikibooks.

>At http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page search for "fiction" and see
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=fiction&go=Go showing
>458 results for "fiction" at Wikibooks.
>But, I find no "fiction" page at Wikibooks: "Warning: You are recreating
>a page that was previously deleted.".

We allow pages about fiction, but we do not allow fiction content itself.

>Can someone explain? You're joking, right?

We never joke.

>What could "wiki" and "books" mean, after all?

We do write books, not just all manner of books. We have precise definitions 
on what we do and do not include. You can find these guidelines at:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:WIW

So we are a "Wiki", and we do write "books", and therefore we are 
"Wikibooks". Notice that the word "book" does not imply "all types of 
books", textbooks can be referred to as simply "books" without any loss of 
generality.

>From Google define:wiki
>...

Yes, we all know what a wiki is. This much is not being disputed, is it?

>From Google define:book
>...
>Yet the front page says "wikibooks = TEXT books ONLY"?!? What could
>"text" or "textbook" mean, and why not have them in the name of the wiki
>after all if it's going to be limited to "textbooks"?

If you notice, the google definition restricts a "book" to a printed and 
bound medium. Wikibooks, under this definition, does not contain any "books" 
at all.

>Google define:text
>...
>     - textbook: a book prepared for use in schools or colleges; "his
>economics textbook is in its tenth edition"; "the professor wrote the
>text that he assigned students to buy"

This part of the definition is pretty consistent with Wikibooks.

>Google define:textbook
>...

This is also perfectly consistent with Wikibooks.

>Huh? Misnomer? Why not change the name of wikibooks to Wikiralph if the
>title is not going to describe and relate to the contents?

Because we are not for "ralph", we are for books. Nowhere is it stated that 
we may not use the word "books" to mean a subset of all possible books. 
Technically, a set of textbooks can be called "books" with no loss of 
generality.

>I call for
>moving the "textbook" contents of wikibooks to a new namespace or
>enhanced, smart categories under wikibooks, like wikibooks:textbooks as
>a subset to allow wikibooks to become the BOOK library it promises in
>it's title.

No. Also, we never promise to be a "library".

>Book category wise, http://www.lib.upm.edu.my/clas.html has a nice short
>listing - only 84 book categories! But, what was wrong with the 3 digits
>in the Dewey Decimal System? See http://www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/dewey.html ...
>and some endless challenges or discussions at links like
>http://www.gslis.utexas.edu/%7Elandc/fulltext/LandC_33_2_Wiegand.pdf -
>nothing perfect, buy why not try? Why not have such a bifurcated
>namespace scheme on wikibooks? We might as well get started now rather
>than wait for someone to create a separate Wikilibrary that includes
>periodicals, audio, video and so on!

Wikibooks is for textbooks. If people want to start another project for a 
generalized library of books, we welcome and support that effort.

>I'm sure there are many, many schemes for organizing books by content.

All our books are textbooks, and the only real organization that needs to be 
accounted for is separation by subject. In addition to categories, we also 
have an alphabetical listing, a dewey-decimal system, and a Library of 
Congress system. This is all on top of our bookshelves, which keep books 
neatly organized by subject.

>Are we idiots who've never been inside a real
>library?

No. Wikibooks is also not a "library".

>It seems to me that the challenge is to proceed with both
>energies - contributing books and organizing them at the same time.

We already do this.

>... After all, these are the 3 card catalogs in our old-fashioned
>libraries, right? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_catalog.

Oh right, i forgot that we already have a card catalog. We haven't been 
maintaining it like we should but we do have it.

--Andrew Whitworth

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