Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/A Supplement to the Texas US History Textbook

A Supplement to the Texas US History Textbook
Original research, profound NPOV issues, using WB as a webhost... "It is a pro-test in the fullest, truest sense of the word, a testimony that contests the version of history espoused by the Texas Board of Education..." This is a personal essay, and has no place here QU TalkQu 18:52, 9 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Delete. The underlying goals of the book were to provide textbook materials covering areas censored or distorted by the recently approved Texas history curriculum. I myself would be very POV in saying that the new curriculum provides more fodder for making fun of Americans.  For all the good intentions, the presentation as described above is flawed and no content of serious note has been added to the book.  This edit by the main logged-in editor to the book adds fuel to the fire for the lack of NPOV.  If content had been added to the book, it might have been worthwhile to refactor it.  However, as it is now, it would be a lot of effort to refactor it just to be left with an abandoned skeleton of a book.  – Adrignola talk 00:01, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Symbol delete vote.svg Delete Regardless of Texas textbook situation, it is not our place to create textbooks written from the opposing point of view. There is no real content in this book that I could find, better to start with a clean slate in developing NPOV history texts. Thenub314 (talk) 00:07, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The author has made it clear that the supplement will adhere to an NPOV (although that's a little difficult since declaring that the textbooks have POVs itself is a POV). There are OR problems, although I have warned the user about this, but I think the author might find a way or two to resolve this. Still, the whole book seems to be abandonned. I say wait a couple more months. If there is still no progress, then delete. Kayau (talk &#124; email &#124; contribs) 01:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * BTW, this is the perfect example of why I think NPOV should be (re)considered/redefined. Kayau (talk &#124; email &#124; contribs) 01:31, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * per Kayau. 71.198.176.22 (talk) 05:32, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't see an issue in keeping the work for now since the editor has expressed willingness to improve it POV issues is not alone a deciding factor for deletion, the ability to fix the contributions is, tag it as a NPOV violation and work to help fix it. --Panic (talk) 21:17, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I tagged it for deletion rather than NPOV as I believe it is fundamentally not possible to express a neutral point of view in a book that is written to "contest" the version of history published by a reputable source. QU TalkQu 21:30, 10 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Did you attempt to interact with the editor prior to the RfD tag? (I've checked and didn't find any previous action) A rename proposal would start to address the POV issue. I think that it should be kept or moved to Wikiversity. --Panic (talk) 23:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Transwiki to Wikiversity. A Wikiversity resource is not required to be NPOV; Wikiversity is subject to overall WMF neutrality policy, but neutrality can be achieved by overall balance, rather than by prohibiting original research and opinion. One of the features of a Wikiversity educational resource can be a collaborative attempt to write a neutral text that could satisfy Wikibooks policy, but there is far more freedom to explore initially. WV pages can be tagged NPOV. On the other hand, a "supplement" to a possibly biased collection would not necessarily be POV, properly done. It would be more complete, and could give what is reliably sourced but left out of the official, politically-approved text. Textbooks, as tertiary sources, are not necessarily "reliable," by the way, and the ability to sell textbooks that pander to a particular political POV turns the normal presumptions about "academic publishing" on its head. --Abd (talk) 22:06, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Symbol comment vote.svg|15px]] Comment : The author's intentions are discussed here and here. --hagindaz 14:09, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * for now, or find a better home for the project. Wikibook might not be the ideal place for this kind of project and I welcome other suggestions of places to move the project. For example, I recently learned of curriki.org which I'm currently looking into. The main thing the project needs is a reliable wiki format that lets anyone participate in creating this textbook. All I would ask is that we not delete the project until it finds a better place to move it and that some kind of link is provided at the current address to re-direct people. On the other hand maybe Wikibooks is the best place for this project in which case it should stay. It is important to me that my "artists statement" that describes the overall project remains long enough to get the project going. At a certain point, if the project develops enough momentum, it might not be necessary anymore. At the point that the project can speak for itself we can remove this statement. There is not much in the book at present, I've just posted a few suggested topic headings to get people started, but the book has recently received a bit of press and I'm hoping it will catch on as the school year progresses. My hope is that this project will develop into something similar to Ohio Social Studies 7th Grade World History Textbook.


 * It seems to me that there are two main concerns about whether Wikibooks is the best place for this kind of project: 1) can this project be written from a NPOV? and 2) will this project result in OR?


 * I don't think that NPOV means some purely objective view from nowhere, since no such view is possible. So what does it mean, and what should it mean for this project? Again I think one of the best examples here is the book "History Lessons" which collects high school textbooks from around the world and shows what other countries teach about American history. What stands out glaringly when reading this book is that some of these histories are responsible and others are not. The North Korean textbooks are maybe the best example of irresponsible history and I think that the new Texas standards reach an eerily similar level of irresponsibility (I think we can all agree that if were were to upload the future Texas textbooks to Wikibooks they would fail the NPOV test). So what makes a history responsible or irresponsible? What should count as a neutral point of view and what should count as a violation of neutrality?


 * All knowledge is situated knowledge, so pure objectivity is not an option. There is no view from no where but that doesn't mean that we can make history into anything we want it to be. There are human-independent historical facts. These facts have a life of their own and offer their own resistance to our ideals. Part of what makes a history responsible in my view is that there are elements of it that you don't like and wish were not so. These elements will stick in our craw, they will annoy and pester and pain us. The main problem with the Texas standards is that they smooth out history too much, it is much too pleasing to those on the right, there is nothing that makes them scratch their head or concede an ideal in the face of the actual course of history.


 * In addition to the memory in our minds, there is a kind of material memory that is mind-independent and embedded in the world itself. As a thought experiment lets imagine that we had some of those Men In Black forgetting devices. Let's imagine that we could make every single person on the planet forget that there was ever slavery in the United States (btw, the Texas Board of Education actually did try to get rid of the word 'slavery' from their textbook). If history was just purely subjective enterprise then this collective act of forgetting would actually change history and make slavery something that didn't actually happen. But the fact of slavery would have a force of its own apart from our awareness of it. Slavery is embedded in material history and is still creating effects today. The great great great grandchildren of rich slave owners have a very different socio-economic status than the great great great grandchildren of slaves do.


 * So I would define a responsible history and a NPOV as one that, from within one's given situation, seeks fidelity to the facts of history. This means allowing the facts to be themselves and trying to figure out how they work. What is their form? How does it function?


 * Another area that touches on NPOV is what counts as worthy of attention. The Texas textbooks have edited out a lot of important history, and this type of project requires editing it back in, including events that might normally not be taught in a high school history textbook. This is essential to the project, but it also touches on questions of neutrality. I do think that there are aspects of history that we can flush out that wouldn't normally be treated. Take for example the decision of the Kennedy administration to divide up Native American reservations into allotments. Instead of tribes owning the land collectively, they were now owned by individual families. Today this fateful decision is widely regarded as a mistake. Individuals sold off their land (many were conned into selling it), the identity of the tribe broke down, and widespread poverty resulted. I think that a single article that was edited by multiple people who had first hand knowledge of this topic would be much much stronger than one written by a few historians (in fact, how many history textbooks even treat the this topic in the first place?)


 * I think that a Wikibook will result in a much denser and more accurate picture of American history and will include many topics not usually considered, or place a different set of priorities on the themes presented. Imagine the range of issues people care about passionately on-line compared to the limited range of stories treated on cable news.


 * I'm hoping that what we create together won't just be a useful educational resource, but that it might also have elements of good literature. That it will capture the essence of certain events and personalities and social forces in their complexity. That it will allow history to be its own rorschach splot. The Texas standards have literally outlawed this kind of result. They want a picture of America that has only one conclusion, real Americans are conservative and conservative values are they only "real" American values. The best literature presents events and characters to us that act like rorschach splots to different readers. If we succeed our wikibook will be such that as some students engage US history they will come to conservative positions on their own, because they will draw those positions out of this rorschach splot. Others will come to progressive positions on their own.


 * I think our project will be a failure if we just create a mirror result of the Texas textbooks, one that forces a liberal reading. I think these types of culture wars are a trap. We can't ignore them, but to engage in them often means conceding the terms of debate to the other side. The best response is a kind of serious indifference which focuses on doing responsible history and brushes off the glen beck type figures.


 * I have total confidence that these project will be much closer to the impossible idea of a NPOV than the Texas textbooks themselves, the more serious issue for me personally is the question of OR. I want this project to have a forceful authorial voice, one that is exciting to read. Wikimedia has many benefits, but it also has a few drawbacks. One drawback that I see is that if often results in an uninspiring text, factually quite good, but nothing that makes you want to sing. I would like to contact particular historians to get articles started on topics that they are experts on. It could still be edited and improved by others, but allowing some responsible, fact based OR would, I think, result in a better textbook. For this reason, more than the NPOV, I'd be interested to see what other options are out there besides Wikibooks. Thanks for all of your help! Thomas Gokey


 * You write with an infectious passion about your chosen subject, and I cannot say I am unmoved. But, as impossible and nonexistant as NPOV must be, it is still absolutely necessary to strive for.  It is precisely this policy that keeps help keeps horrendously biased works on just about any subject at bay.  If a book existed on this wiki for some reason had all the appropriate omissions, word choices, etc to meet Texas's standards, it is our NPOV policy that ensures someone could add the important missing figures back in, call the US a democracy, etc.
 * Hopefully our texts on American history provide the unique, in depth text you describe. The difficulty with the current project is that is specifically designed to be a reaction to the Texas standards.  It stands up and says "Those standards are inadequate, this is what is needs to be filled in", and as much as I personally admire that, I don't think this is the right wiki for that project.  It is a very strong POV to simply state that the educational board in Texas is wrong.  Instead I hope we develop a far better history book, not as a reaction to choices made in Texas or anywhere else, but as a standalone work.
 * If you'd like to continue your project as it is, on a wikimedia wiki, I would suggest you take a look at Wikiversity. Which allows both for a POV and OR and gladly hosts textbooks that cannot be hosted here for NPOV and NOR reasons.
 * If you'd like to write passionately about history, but not necessarily has a reaction to the standards put forward in Texas, you might take a glance at how we could improve the US History text. Thenub314 (talk) 03:25, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * And, if the historians you mentioned are involved in a significant current event, you can try to interview them and write a Wikinews article. Kayau (talk &#124; email &#124; contribs) 10:36, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Symbol redirect vote.svg Transwiki to Wikiversity. I've been looking into Wikiversity and it does look like a better place for the project. I like the ability to use OR, although I still want the project to have a NPOV as I understand it and outlined it above. I'm pretty busy right now, but over the course of the next couple of weeks I can start to move the project over to Wikiversity. I would like to leave a re-direct link at the current location. I do have a few questions/concerns about Wikiversity. One of the things that I like about Wikibooks is that it has people like you to help monitor projects and help moderate disputes. My early impression of Wikiversity is that the projects are more isolated with less supervision from people like you. Is that correct? I would prefer to have a group of expert wikimedia users to give the project some guidance when it runs into problems (I've edited a bit on Wikipedia, but other than that this is my first major wikimedia project).
 * I do want to respond to the claim that this project forfeits a NPOV by having a project that is a "reaction" to the Texas textbooks. As I see it this project needs to avoid any reactionary motivation. I would prefer to say that it is a response rather than a reaction. A reaction lets itself be defined by what it is reacting too, it is a rear-guard tactic. This project aims at simply creating a more responsible textbook and as such it should not let it be defined by the shoddy Texas textbook. I'm hoping that the end result will be a far superior text that aims higher and is more of an avant-garde tactic. I'm bothered by any kind of neutrality that takes the form of "some people think the moon is made of cheese, while other people think it is made of rock." I don't think that one forfeits neutrality by saying that the people who think the moon is made of cheese are just plain wrong. There are elements of the new Texas standards that are demonstrably, transparently false. We don't forfeit neutrality by saying so. Thomas Gokey


 * Here are a couple of comments to answer your questions. First, it will almost no work on your part to move the book over to wikiversity, particularly if you've merged your accounts so that you have one user name and password for all the wikimedia projects.  This can be done by visiting the page Special:MergeAccount, more information can be found at Unified login help page.  To transfer data between the wiki's you can simply request the admins at wikiversity import the book from here.  Then the contents of the book, together with the whole edit history get copied over to wikiversity.  This can be done by leavnig a note at this page.  And we do usually leave a "soft redirect".  You can look at the example of Wikijunior:KinderCalculus for an example of what the soft redirect looks like.  In addition the request to import it to wikiversity is still at v:WV:Import so it might give a fairly explicit example of how everything ends up looking.  Over all I think wikiversity is a smaller project, perhaps because it split off from us at some point in the past so it is not "as old".  That being said many of the people there are just as knowledgeable, friendly, etc. as the people here.  In fact a few if us  edit at both wiki's.  They are large enough to have lots of experience with conflict.  There is less supervision, but projects here (after being categorized and put onto a subject page) also have a tendency to be isolated if you didn't turn up to the reading rooms to ask questions.  At wikiversity questions can be asked in the Colloquium.  I agree with your moon made out of cheese example.  I originally had a very long post discussing my thoughts about this, which I have decided, we can discuss it on my talk page if you like.  I will summarize it by saying that I may be incorrect in thinking this was a reaction to Texas but with what is written so far it is difficult to know.  Hope this helps. Thenub314 (talk) 23:27, 13 October 2010 (UTC)