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

>I'm still not sure what Wikibooks is.  Although you can try to educate
>me, why not enhance the Wikibooks front page for everyone, and then just
>share a link here?

The wikibooks front page already does tell what wikibooks is all about. Here 
is the first sentence from the main page:

"Welcome to Wikibooks, a Wikimedia project that was started on July 10, 2003 
with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks that 
anyone can edit."

The term "textbooks" is used unambiguously in the very first sentence on the 
very first page. I really don't feel like any additional information beyond 
that needs to be crammed onto the main page, because we have enough 
information crammed on there already. Also, in that very first sentence, the 
word "Wikibooks" links to a help page that talks all about our project 
(including the types of books that we do and do not include).

>Are you saying Wikibooks is for cooperative
>authorship of NEW technical, non-fiction, and how-to manuals?  Let me
>study the NOR No Original Research policy on that one!

Yes, that is what wikibooks is for, and no it is not a violation of the NOR 
policy. Wikipedia is similarly for the authoring of NEW encyclopedia-style 
articles, and that doesnt violate the policy either.

>Or, is Wikibooks
>only OLD stuff that's not copyrighted anymore ...

No, that is what Wikisource is for.

>Are you saying that because fiction is
>too hard to cooperatively co-author, the Wikibook site has evolved away
>from fiction?

Wikibooks never included fiction. It has nothing to do with the difficulty 
of writing fiction, or the perceived value of it. Books on wikibooks should 
be "instructional", such as a textbook or a manual. Fiction, while it may 
have educational value, is not by itself instructional, and is therefore not 
included. For more information about what we do and do not included 
(including a discussion on fiction and the like), see:

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

>You make my own point in why you didn't share links to Wikibooks: "they
>are not particularly well-maintained nor aesthetically pleasing"!  Hey,
>Andrew, I'm not faulting anybody.  I'm just saying.  Why are we writing
>here when we could find and fix 'em, instead?

The most important organization method that we have right now are the 
bookshelves. As Robert pointed out in his reply earlier, there have been 
attempts by people to institute other organizational methods. If you are 
interested in making these organizational tools better, you are welcome to 
try (this is a wiki after all).

>"Nike" is a GREAT mark in
>that it does not define ONE product.  If they had called themselves
>"Sneakers", they'd eventually have a challenge selling non-sneakers.  By
>calling themselves Nike after the Greek goddess of victory, they can
>sell anything to anyone who wants to feel victorious.  Very savvy.

This assumes that Wikibooks is interested in producing or distributing 
things in the future that are not textbooks, which we do not. Nike's name is 
generic because they want to sell lots of stuff: more stuff = more money. 
However, wikibooks is a non-profit and our value as a resource will be based 
on our focus and on our strength. If we included a whole bunch of stuff, 
some textbooks, some fiction, whatever, we would lose our strength as a 
textbook producer, and textbook consumers would be less-less likely to take 
us seriously. As a wikimedian, i'm sure you are aware that instead of 
diluting one project with unrelated materials, the WMF has historically 
chosen to create new projects. Instead of creating a "textbook" namespace in 
wikipedia, for instance, the new project wikibooks was formed. Instead of 
polluting Wikibooks with fiction and nonsense, you should petition to create 
a new Wikifiction, or whatever. I would probably vote against such a 
proposal, but I won't discuss that issue here.

>"WIKI"-anything is descriptive; a "Wikibooks" that excludes SOME books
>is by definition misdescriptive.  I'm just trying to find out what
>Wikibooks IS, if it's not where to find "quick, community built books"
>of any type, totally in the control of the individual teams of
>contributors.

Wikinews is not a general purpose news repository, they have policies and 
guidelines that discuss what kinds of news are fit to print. Wikipedia 
likewise has guidelines (verifiability, notability, etc) that limit what 
kinds of materials they host. I could list every WMF project, and every 
single one of them has limits as to what they will allow. But of all the 
projects, you seem to think that wikibooks should be some kind of 
free-for-all, some kind of general-purpose repository, or perhaps even a 
garbage dump.

Also, the fact that Wikibooks is for "textbooks" is written both on the 
front page, and has been mentioned by myself several times. I'm sorry if you 
still have confusion on the matter, but i can't really keep repeating 
myself.

>It absolutely IS our job to provide Wikibooks visitors with information,
>especially about what Wikibooks is NOT, and share where others go to
>find non-Wikibooks offerings.

There are lots of places on the internet that contain stuff that wikibooks 
doesnt contain. Should we post links to everything? Wikipedia doesn't give 
you links to other websites if you search for something that wikipedia 
doesnt include, and Wikibooks does not either. We are not some kind of web 
directory, nor a general-purpose search engine, nor a web-hub to direct 
traffic around the internet. We have textbooks, and if you don't want 
textbooks, then our site cannot and generally will not help you.

>Let's  create:
>
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_is_not

We already had it, we deleted it because it was redundant. Again, see:

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

This page discusses what wikibooks is, and if you can't find something on 
that list, it likely means that wikibooks is not for that.

--Andrew Whitworth

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