Comments on: Can the Wikipedia approach work for books?

By: Juan Lopez-Valcarcel

Juan Lopez-Valcarcel — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 04:28:08 +0000

Robert,

I agree with your view on most likely success for technical publications.

A key issue is how to balance subjective views as to what should be the “right interpretation” of literature, art or history.
The wikibooks model arguably shows more potential for maths, language and other less controversial or less opinionated subjects, e.g. technical.

In any case, an excellent initiative indeed that will hopefully one day lower the costs of textbooks.

Juan

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 12:58:25 +0000

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, Robert. Other good stuff is ahead. Stay tuned. David

By: Robert Nagle

Robert Nagle — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:33:08 +0000

this format works particularly well in technical publications where users can describe use cases, bugs, problems and/or solutions not anticipated by the original documentation. This btw, is a reason why thoutreader’s commenting feature seems particularly elegant.

By: bowerbird

bowerbird — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:07:29 +0000

well, at some point in time –
and it ain’t too far down the line
– wikipedia will be fact-checking
the paper encyclopedias and
– because of their inertia –
will make them look outdated…

as for books, it will always be
the case that a single individual
can summon the unique viewpoint
a book is so good at expressing…

so that m.o. won’t ever go away.

at the same time, however,
the collaborative power that
a wiki can muster will _also_
come to be appreciated as a
force that can birth a book
and hone it to a perfection…

and even the book that was
written by an individual will
– if it is any good — gather
around it a collective entity
that seeks to express itself,
and in doing so will expand the
book in a way that the author
could not, and a wiki is simply
the best tool to bind that entity
and allow it to exercise its voice.

people who looked at the flight
by the wright brothers couldn’t
imagine, at the time, that it
would lead to an airline industry.
but it did, and rather inevitably…

-bowerbird

By: Branko Collin

Branko Collin — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:02:06 +0000

In the early days of Wikipedia, the question “why does this work?” was often answered by pointing to the non-elitist information that Wikipedians could provide. Somebody could truthfully and correctly add to the article about their provincial home-town, a feat that “regular” encyclopedias would find hard to repeat. Not because the professionals could not do it, but because the gains of having a large and deep article on some small town do not out-weigh the costs of producing it.

And I believe that this is an area where Wikibooks could be useful.