User:Whiteknight/WIW

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Due to a severe shortage of time, I am no longer able to be an active member of the Wikibooks project. Please see my page for more details about my absense. I will continue to monitor my talk page for correspondence and will try to reply quickly when possible.

Wikibooks v. Wikipedia

It is my opinion that wikibooks has strong potential to be a powerful tool. In fact, I would even say that given the same amount of notoriety, wikibooks would better serve the world than wikipedia could. A wikipedia article can list any number of facts and figures, but only a book, written with the target audience in mind, can really be used to teach a subject to people who don't already know it. Wikipedia might be a great resource for collecting all the worlds information, but wikibooks will be the best resource for disseminating that information to the people who need it most.

Drama and Nonsense

Wikibooks is a place where people go for whatever reason. Some people treat it more like a job, some people treat it more like a hobby, and some people treat it like it's a socializing venue. Regardless of our individual motives for coming here, the ultimate aim of wikibooks is to volunteer our collective time and expertise to author textbooks. I don't think anybody comes here to deal with warring, bickering, in-fighting, or legal/political bullshit. Such bullshit is unnecessary and completely unwelcome.

What Wikibooks Needs

There are several things that wikibooks needs. I am going to list them here, in no particular order.

• Wikibooks needs to attract more new contributors, and keep old contributors active and motivated.
• Wikibooks needs to prepare an infrastructure for a large community. We cannot view ourselves as a small project forever, and we need to prepare for an influx of helpers.
• Wikibooks has some good books, and needs to advertise and distribute them.
• Wikibooks has many many decent books. We need to improve them and make them good.
• Wikibooks needs to appreciate it's passionate members more. Not everybody has the drive to improve this place, and the people who do have that drive should be valued.

Videogame Manuals

My current stance on the subject of videogame guides can be summarized in the following points:

1. Videogame guides are not textbooks and they do not belong here on Wikibooks for any reason.
2. Videogame guides that are old and have been here for some time should be given the opportunity to be transwikied to a more appropriate location.
3. New videogame manuals should be deleted on sight, and the authors should be informed of the fact that videogame guides are not textbooks.
4. Books about videogames, including critical reviews or discussions about how to write or program videogames are acceptable here, as they are textbooks.

Inclusionism vs Deletionism

Wikipedia is breaking into partisian politics, with the "inclusionists" fighting the "deletionists" on every issue. It is sadder still that these political differentiations are being felt here on wikibooks as well. I am inclined to say that most things on wikibooks can stay on wikibooks, assuming it can be made part of an acceptable book in the future. Too often, however, material sits around forever and never becomes anything more then a stub artical.