Discussion about proposal for multilingual Wikibooks

[Milos Rancic]

I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
need wider discussion for concluding them.

One of such requests is for multilingual Wikibooks [2]. Please,
discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to textbook-l
to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].

[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilingual

[Milos Rancic]

Post by Milos Rancic
I am cleaning Requests for new languages [1] at Meta. Some of the
requests are clearly out of the Language committee scope, and they
need wider discussion for concluding them.
One of such requests is for multilingual Wikibooks [2]. Please,
discuss here (at foundation-l; I am sending this message to textbook-l
to poke those who are not at foundation-l) or on wiki at the page [2].
[1] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
[2] - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikibooks_Multilingual

The request has been rejected as invalid. The explanation for
rejection is below:

According to the Language proposal policy, Language committee may
approve just a project which intends to be written in one language.
Thus, this proposal is invalid. If you want to create multilingual
Wikibooks, please create a page Multilingual Wikibooks and start
discussion about the idea at textbook-l. --Millosh 06:15, 3 March 2010
(UTC)

[Samuel Klein]

According to the Language proposal policy, Language committee may approve just a project which intends to be written in one language.

True, the language sub committee is asked to attend to details about
specific languages; we need a similar process for deciding when to
form a multilingual site.

People are still sharply divided about whether beta wikiversity and
oldwikisource are good ideas, based on which one they've had good
experiences with. We need a better view of how the new-language
process works for them and for incubator. My sense is that incubator
could satisfy a lot of what people want out of Project-specific
multilingual sites, with a few additional features.

SJ

[darklama]

This is response I tried to send to the foundation-l and than
foundation-l-owner without any success. Someone on foundation-l
suggested this discussion take place on textbook-l anyways. I have
no idea if Pharos is subscribed or reads the archives though.

-----

A multilingual Wikibooks would be valuable to the extent that it would
focus on smaller languages which don't have their own language project
yet.
This makes perhaps more sense with Wikibooks than other projects
because each "book" is relatively autonomous and of significant
educational value in its own right, and even if someone were to donate
a textbook in a rather obscure language I don't think that we should
turn such a gift away.
Thanks,
Pharos

Exactly, we shouldn't turn people and textbooks away. I think this
project can help with that.

People willing to translate textbooks have been turned away at times
too. I think this project can help with that as well.

Some instruction manuals and how-to guides include multiple translations
as a single work. We shouldn't turn away people willing to provide free
alternatives here either. These books are autonomous too.

I know some people are concerned that Multilingual Wikibooks' focus
overlaps too much with existing projects. I think this can be managed
by turning away:

* Source text previously published by an author. Thats Wikisource.
* Translations of source text. Thats Old Wikisource
* Original writing that is within the scope of an existing Wikibooks
project and it is not intended to become an autonomous work in two or
more languages. This applies to finished translations as well.
* Research not previously published. Thats Wikiversity.

Thanks,
darklama