User talk:Wikitopian

Just a word to say that I don't think the Wikitopia book is within Wikibooks' purview. I've opened a discussion on WB:VFD and you may want to contribute there, Jguk 07:26, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Role of Wikibooks
First of all, I'm going to give you a general welcome message:

Come introduce yourself at the new users page. If you have any questions, you can ask there or contact me personally.

These are all pages you should look at, and in particular look at What is Wikibooks for a general view of what sorts of content is acceptable on Wikibooks.

You might also want to check out Proposals for new projects for a place to suggest new project ideas like the one you seem to have proposed for Wikitopia. I know it sounds harsh, but Wikibooks is about writing content that would seem more like a book with scholarly research (aka looking things up in a book and synthesizing the material from several sources) and the development of textbooks directly intended for classroom usage.

If you were writing something about Wikitopia, which exists elsewhere, this would be a good place to write about that project. It isn't a place to start a general participatory project with an ideological tilt to it. From some considerable experience, both I and others have seen books that seem like yours to get an initial burst of development and then languish on Wikibooks for months or even years without any additional contributions. Or worse yet, it becomes a BBS of a sort with participants doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with Wikibooks.

If there is an ideological tilt to Wikibooks, it is that we want to help provide an alternative to bookstores (especially college bookstores with their textbooks) where an ordinary student can obtain a high quality textbook for a realitively low cost. Most textbook authors on that level don't really make much money anyway off of a particular book, so this is to help provide a way to simply get the material available to more people.

I want you to know that I really do value new contributors to Wikibooks, and I enjoy seeing truly innovative ways that people like to express themselves. IMHO marking up the page for immediate deletion was completely wrong by the above user, but he does have reasons for the opinions he is trying to express here. --Rob Horning 17:49, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

After realizing that the scope of wikibooks is much more specific than I had originally gathered, it appears that my wikibook will probably need to find a new wikihome. I respect the mission of wikibooks and don't feel slighted in the least. I appreciate your polite presentation and will have this wiki relocated in the next day or two when I find a more appropriate location for it.