Help:Introduction

This is a general introduction to Wikibooks. The links above point to introductory pages about particular aspects of Wikibooks; if you are new, we suggest that you read this page first.

[edit] About Wikibooks

Wikibooks is a free textbooks wiki.

Wikibooks is a platform for the collaborative development of free instructional textbooks. We are producing textbooks under the GNU Free Documentation License, so that others can copy, modify, and reuse our textbooks without paying royalties. We hope to be a free alternative to those expensive proprietary textbooks.

Yes, we mean textbooks as used by students (of all ages) in all levels of education. We hope to develop textbooks for use in all parts of the world. Some of our textbooks target various national curricula, standards, and exams. We have textbooks in many subjects. However, we do not develop essays or works of fiction at Wikibooks. Even though essays and fictional works can be textbooks, they are beyond what we do at this site.

Our web site is a wiki that facilitates collaboration. Anyone with a web browser, even if they are not logged into Wikibooks, can edit almost any textbook "module" page. Every day, volunteers are improving Wikibooks, making many changes, writing, updating, and correcting textbooks.

[edit] Wikibooks is multilingual

This site, http://en.wikibooks.org, is the English-language edition of Wikibooks. All of our textbooks are developed in English-language. (You may find many national variants of English here.) There are other editions of Wikibooks developing textbooks in other languages.

[edit] Examples

Textbooks on this site include:

• Textbooks for learning foreign languages such as Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Japanese
• History textbooks such as European History and US History
• Books for children such as Wikijunior Big Cats and Wikijunior Solar System

... and hundreds of others: far too many to list here.

[edit] Reading a Wikibook

You can search the entire site for an interesting Wikibook; browse the subject-oriented bookshelves; look through the list of books; or try the age-themed Wikijunior, Wikistudy, Wikiversity, and Wikiprofessional collections.

Note that some of our textbooks are more complete than others. Thus you will sometimes see stage markers on textbooks or chapters:

Wikibook Development Stages
Sparse text	Developing text	Maturing text	Developed text	Comprehensive text:

Use these markers to locate textbooks that contain more useful information.

Some textbooks at Wikibooks have PDF editions; those are easier to download or print, with the disadvantage that the wiki pages often contain updates added after the last PDF version.

[edit] Help Wikibooks! Become involved!

The easiest way to become involved with Wikibooks is to find an existing Wikibook in which you are interested, then edit it. You could add paragraphs, make corrections, or if you know the relevant syntax, you could use wiki markup to insert links, images, and tables. Please do not be afraid to contribute – other users who edit the page after you can correct mistakes. You can add or edit textbook "modules" whenever you want, whether or not you are logged in.

You might like to create your own username. You are welcome to edit anonymously without a username, but there are many benefits of creating one. In particular, the only correct way to rename pages is to use the "move" tab, and only logged-in users have access to this tab.

Wikibooks needs volunteer users like you to contribute. We call ourselves Wikibookians; our Community Portal contains links to more information about participation in Wikibooks.

[edit] Understanding key policies

The community (and sometimes the Wikimedia Foundation and User:Jimbo Wales) has established a large number of policies for this site. The policies are currently under revision.

Here are some of the key concepts:

1. Wikibooks:Copyrights: With a proprietary textbook, one must pay for each book purchased, and the high cost of purchasing new textbook editions is a significant burden on students and school systems. Wikibooks, however, uses a different model: all contributors to this site license their content under the GNU Free Documentation License, which ensures that our textbooks and derivative works will remain free to copy, modify, and reuse.
2. Neutral point of view: Though essays might be textbooks, we do not intend for wiki users to come to Wikibooks and advocate their own points of view. We intend our textbooks to be objective enough that editors do not disagree on their contents. (A Wikibook does not have to describe competing points of view equally; for example, a Wikibook about evolution might not mention intelligent design extensively.)
3. Deletion policy: All textbook modules on this site are at risk of deletion. The community often nominates modules or entire books for deletion, and some are deleted speedily while others are discussed on Wikibooks:Votes for deletion. Among the targets of deletion are junk content, content that is off-topic for Wikibooks, and pages moved to another wiki.

You may want to explore our policies and guidelines.