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

>From: "Monahon, Peter B." <[email protected]>
>Thank you, Andrew,
>
>... for the quick and apparently knowledgeable and well-connected reply.
>For your information and feedback, I'm not sure how on my own I'd find
>the links you share, and you made many "we have that" comments where you
>offered no links.

I didn't provide links to the pages I mentioned, because while they do in 
fact exist, they are not particularly well-maintained nor aesthetically 
pleasing. The most important method of organization, and the one that is 
best maintained, is the bookshelf system, to which there are ample links.

>Oh, and by the way, I totally disagree with your conclusions.  Names
>matter.  While I appreciate that "books" includes "textbooks", I see it
>as "all girl-scouts are girls, but not all girls are girl-scouts".  I
>see you all opening up a "girl" site, and then saying it's only for
>"girl-scouts"!  You don't set that?

The fact that you are confused about our name is misfortunately, certainly. 
However, your confusion is simply not enough impetus for our entire project 
and it's community of volunteer authors and editors to change completely. A 
little confusion is a small price to pay for the name recognition that the 
"Wikibooks" brand has aquired over the years. Despite your complaints, 
wikibooks is not named "Wikilibrary", and it does, in fact, only contain 
"books".

>And, I'd go to Wikisources because ... I'm looking for "sources"?  "The
>free documentations library" means nothing to me.

And Nike's "Just Do It" slogan doesn't mean anything to me, but that doesnt 
make it a less effective advertising tool. Wikisource contains original 
source documents, so the name seems pretty appropriate to me.

>When Amazon started, I thought, "what a stoopid name for a book store".
>Now, I see they really want to be an "Amazon river on the Internet,
>through which everything flows", not just books, but movies, cameras,
>personal gear, toys, appliances, and so on.  "Books" was just a start,
>and now I see "Amazon" as a very savvy name indeed.

Trust me, if you hang around long enough, the name "Wikibooks" will grow on 
you too. But let me ask you this: When Amazon first started up, did you send 
them an email saying that their name was stupid and that they should change 
it?

>Perhaps a compiled list page of what's NOT
>on the site so (a) there IS a response to searches within the site and
>(b) it clearly tells visitors why not, and where to go?

It's not really our job to point visitors to other people's websites. If you 
do a search on google, and it doesnt return any results, it doesnt say 
"Sorry we couldn't help you, how about you try your search on MSN instead?"

--Andrew Whitworth

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