User talk:Andreas Ipp/Why move books?

Too Slow Compared to What?
This sounds good, though the tone is a little bit pessimistic: I don't think that wikibooks is "evolving too slowly". Hop on over to sourceforge to see a "wasteland" of open source projects that have been started, but never went anywhere. Or look at how long it took before Mozilla was worth using. That's part of the nature of an open source project: you need a dedicated team, or one truly dedicated individual, to do a bulk amount of work before "the community" can really make any thoughtful contributions to that.

Exceptions appear to be the cookbook, in which wikibookians are eager to add on an additional recipe. There is little connection from one recipe to the next. This is the wikipedia model: starting with little stubs, more can be added on communally, resulting in something great.

Textbooks, just like computer programs, however, require more coordination. It is not helpful to expect wikibooks to perform like the wikipedia; the required development models are different. As I've learned from the Algorithms and Data Structures books: (1) writing a quality textbook, even a slim one, is very time consuming (you need to verify that what you are saying is true, and even formatting what to say, after you know what you want to say, can take a long time); (2) the model seems to be more about 2-4 people working on a book, and then everyone else primarily contributing not as authors, but as readers and field testers who find errors and ask for clarification.

However, I approve of the idea of moving content to "suggested" books, so as not to be a repository for table-of-contents-without-books. Just as in the open-source world, there are plenty of people eager to offer ideas, but reluctant to dedicate even five hours a week for a period of six months. --MShonle 02:33, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I didn't want to sound too pessimistic, but I think a healthy cleaning-up system might help to better focus work on good books. Keeping the bookshelves "tidy" (I'm not saying to throw away anything, just to put better or active work to more prominent position) is also not an easy work. The small images picturing the stages of a book are a very good beginning, but the problem is, they are not updated regularily.
 * I will suggest a template, ✔️ (that doesn't exist yet), which will picture one of the 4 development stage squares, plus a tiny date next to it when the book was last checked. Anyone can then update this information, and one can easily see which books have not been checked for a long time, check those books, and move them accordingly.
 * Also, there should be simple and easy standardized guidelines for setting "development stages". The 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% is a good start - one could e.g. count how many sections in the book are really filled (not only with stubs).
 * I will work this out later, but anybody is invited here to discuss this procedure. --Andreas Ipp 11:53, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * To follow the OSS metaphor, I guess I could see the cleaning-up as a way to set the scope of the project: Initially dozens of requests for features (i.e., books) might come in, and many of them should instead be saved "for version 2.0". We should be mindful that some books would move in periodic stages. For example, my school is on a quarter system, and the breaks between each quarter is when I have the most time to write new sections: I could still be actively thinking and planning a book I might not have edited for over two months. I'm sure other people's schedules would also be periodic.


 * Perhaps we can start with a template that says "this book has been flagged as a suggested book" and state that if the notice is up for more than a month then the book would get moved. (Q1: Is it just the book gets moved off of the bookshelf, and the module itself stays put?) (Q2: When the wikibooks site says "there are X many books being worked on" is that the number of books listed on the shelves, or is that counting all modules, in which case a 10 module book would be counted as 10 books?)


 * One other side note: since my books are still in the early stages it's actually somewhat nice there isn't high traffic and too many edits yet-- the result would be cluttered and incoherent. (At least with programs they cannot run when too many things are slapped on, but the only way to "run" a book is to read it cover to cover.) To address this problem in the future I actually created a third "advanced" book as a place to hold random content for the people who contributed something worth reading, but were mistaken in thinking that adding an article to a book is just like adding an article to the wikipedia. --MShonle 18:09, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I implemented new stage markers now. Please look at Development stages for details!
 * To answer your questions: I think the flag is a very good idea. I might implement it later. Also, the "three months" period can be discussed or extended. No hurry at all.
 * your Q1: Only the links (books) within All bookshelves move around. No book gets deleted or renamed or anything.
 * your Q2: Unfortunately, it lists all the modules, stub or not, so you never know how many quality books there are... --Andreas Ipp 16:16, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

page move
I moved this into the Wikibooks name space because this isn't content designed for users, but for editors and writers. I'll go through and fix any double redirects I just made. Gentgeen 19:31, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. I probably should also move the Book of the month + links to this namespace. --Andreas Ipp 21:32, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)