Wikibooks talk:Policies and guidelines/Vote/Archive 1

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This is a historical archive of old threads of September to November 2005 from Wikibooks talk:Policy/Vote.

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Contents 1 Prohibitions For Immediate Exclusion (Speedy Delete) 2 Qualification on Courses 3 Original Research is Excluded 4 Implications to existing books 4.1 Existing Books that would be removed 4.2 Existing Books that possibly would be removed 4.3 Existing Books that are boundary cases 5 "eternal stub" semi-books should be merged 6 A directly enumerated WikiBooks policy 6.1 Prohibited Content 6.2 Exclusions 6.3 Inclusions 6.4 Standards of Quality 6.5 Replies, Discussion, Changes Done to Wording 7 Not found in libraries 8 Fictional works should be excluded 9 Sexual content 10 Illicit drugs 11 Gambling 12 promotes illegal activity 13 reverse engineering 14 Travel guides 15 A personal statement 16 adult, or mature content 17 Entertainment guides 18 kelvSYC's thoughts 19 Wikipedia Is/Is not 20 Self-harm 21 The list 22 What are we using this page for?

Prohibitions For Immediate Exclusion (Speedy Delete)

We should also include all of the Wikicities' prohibited content.

That policy includes Hacking/cracking content. To interpret this I would say that it's ok for a book to be about computer security and how to secure your code against exploits, but it's not ok to list flaws specific to any system nor is it ok to include scripts or other instructions to hack in to a system.

We would need to translate some of the policies stated also because WikiBooks automatically excludes more (example: all sales are out, so the specific sale exclusions enumerated would be redundant). These are from the Google AdSense restrictions, actually. But since our wikis are hosted in California, we must be very strict about following the law.

Qualification on Courses

How-to topics related to internationally-recognized clubs or sports organizations should also qualify as a "course." Thus, Chess and Poker books would be allowed since such organizations and sponsored competitions exist. Of course, such books should only be included provided that they are instructional and can provide at least two related resources. As a standard, the library of congress must already have two books from different authors/publishers on the subject if it is to qualify as a course (or course sub-topic) in this clause. Where the resources are published books, reputable websites, news articles or other external validation. One implication of such a rule is that more than one person should be able to know how to write the book: if the material is insular enough it's in only one person's head it needs to find another home on the web.

Excluded would be hobbies that count only as entertainment. So, playing video games or watching television aren't real hobbies, while stamp collecting, ham radio, bird watching, model rocketry and sewing are.

A further qualification is that we should also include companion resources, i.e. those that are helpful to courses but might not ever be assigned as the primary text. For example, a Conceptual Guide to Physics might not be used by any courses (because, say, it doesn't use any math) but would still be valuable for people still struggling with the concepts (in addition to the math). In fact, just providing simpler explanations might be the valuable role wikibooks will play in the long run. (So, even if people keep on buying regular textbooks, at least they'll still turn to Wikibooks for another explanation of difficult topics.)

Original Research is Excluded

Any work that constitutes original research should be excluded. One criteria to use for this is if two different source materials can be identified (either published papers in journals or conferences, books, or content on reputable web-sites). This is not the same as requiring references, however. For example, an introduction to orthodox economics will have content that is so well-known and agreed upon (the laws of supply and demand don't change) that it would be trivial to find two references. Also note that content could be very original in other senses: An introduction to programming could use as examples programs that are entirely original. Just so long as the book is based on previously-researched software engineering techniques, it's ok. (Perhaps the original Extreme Programming book would not have been welcome under a rule like this, until the first peer-reviewed publication of XP was released.) What needs to be avoided are personal anecdotes or stated opinions.

Well, does that mean that we have to downgrade our Ada 2005 tutorial - which just won Book of the Month - to an Ada 95 tutorial because Ada 2005 is so new that there is no other Ada 2005 tutorial available and the Ada 2005 ISO Standart is only a draft. Or would an draft ISO Standart be enough "prior art". Personaly I would find it sad if Wikibooks excluded itself from beein the first in any particular arena. In fact: Beeing the first would show how usefull Wikibooks kann be because we can react faster to new ideas (or ISO Standarts) then other media. --Krischik 07:37, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we need to make the scope of this proposed rule a little bigger. Your Ada book is not original because there are tens of thousands of programming language books. If the book were about Ada 95 and how to talk to dead relatives, then it should be excluded because no reputable source has that (in any programming language!). But if it follows the form of existing books, then it's ok that there's only a draft standard (because, as you say, beating the press to the punch is useful). The purpose is to exclude people inventing new ideas and creating books on them. Supposing someone reputable made a new idea and wrote about it, we should allow it. But the idea really is to exclude the crackpots, so there's probably a better way of doing so. MShonle 15:02, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

On further reflection I guess it's the same quagmire Wikipedia deals with in determining "notability." Pehaps the VFD process will still be needed, though it would be nice to go directly to a policy to exclude bad books. MShonle 17:49, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Strictly speaking this would exclude some potential "how-to" and craft books. I know the one I started, 'Down'n'Dirty Blacksmithing' would not qualify 'depending on your definition of orignial research'. Most "how to" is based on the personal experience(s) of the author(s): that's the point and the difference between that and "end user documentation". People are looking for techniques and procedures from someone who has done it before. And the interesting possiblity with a Wiki "How To" is that you get collaboration. Which means you will have multiple ways to "defur the feline" ... which is a good thing as far as most people into arts and crafts are concerned.

The blacksmithing book is not based directly on published research. Yes, there is a reference to a "dirt" forge on line, vaguely. And there are references to using a vacuum cleaner for bellows. And I can point you to a website that has odd ways of creating an equivalent of an anvil. Has anyone put all those bits together before I did it? Probably not in quite that way. Does my doing it and at the request of others putting it into writing qualify as writing from orginal research? Could be.

Yet to date the only comments have been encouraging. The only complaint is an e-mail that I haven't done more with it for awhile. The main reason I haven't done more with it is that I keep hearing that I shouldn't have "posted it until it was finished", that I "link to places outside of Wikibooks", and that I was cautioned that it was borderline "original research". erraunt 20:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Blacksmithing has been practiced for centuries, if not millennia, so a book on it would not be original research. Probably many other people are out there using the same techniques that you advocate. If you do have something original and all your own, then we would require that you've actually done it and can repeat it (otherwise, we'd be making claims that aren't verifiable, or at least have not been verified once). Including pictures could be helpful in showing that "it can be done." But it's strange to me that people would tell you that you should delay posting it... many books have been started as very small stubs that have grown and grown (usually grown by a small group of people). Perhaps the issue is that it's not in a state where others could contribute meaningfully to it yet? But collecting together scattered information is one of our primary objectives. At least, provided that the information is more than just information: That it has real exposition, that it can be read from start to finish, and someone could reasonably learn from it. --MShonle 22:44, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I hear what you're saying, but still pose it as this cuts a couple of ways. While I agree with you that what I advocate in my book is more "evolution than revolution" some could still challenge it as "original" and make a case. They probably won't because it's "cool". But there is the "other hand" (and if you're working on policy you have to think about all hands and sometimes feet) and that is that if what I started is "evolution" not "revolution" (i.e. orignial research) then perhaps their "original research" is "evolution" too.

As for the state of the book itself ...

I think it is at a place where others could contribute, but I don't know that there are that many who feel comfortable enough to do so. I know it needs photographs and drawings which I haven't provided 1) because life has been going on, and 2) since there seem to be changes in the wind, I want to be sure that the effort will not be thrown out after I go to it. It is really hard to have an idea if what you're doing is "in or out".

Which brings me to the comment I've seen in the Staff Lounge where some advocate "you should only put a book up once it's finished". That has always struck me as counter to what Wiki sites are about. After you hear that a few times, after you realize you've spent *another* 45 minutes trying to grok the policy stuff to figure if what you post is going to have better than a 50/50 shot of surviving the year, after you've spent another hour trying to figure if the cool forking idea you have is or is not valid and not having a clue if it is or not, and debating with yourself if it's worth just doing and risking the wrist slap ...

Yes, that sounds pretty crazed. And it's what I go through every so often ... and I realize often enough that just trying to figure out if it's OK to do takes *longer* than just doing it too often. And that's both my beef, and why I don't change stuff more. Too much policy, too hard to find, too open to interpretation and too arbitrarily enforced. I'm neither an arnarchist or a totalitarian ... but this middle ground is looking pretty weird. erraunt 14:45, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

The "No original content" rule cripples anyone doing a book on something new. It's appropriate for wikipedia, but the goal here is reference texts: do we really want to limit ourselves to producing obsolete ones? I think what this rule is really trying to achieve is that people (a) don't produce reference books on off the wall theories such as orgone energy & (b) ensure the facts in their books are supported. I think this is what we should be targetting with the policy, not original works per se. Irrevenant 09:41, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Implications to existing books

The K-12 + Universities + an organization's "Courses" rule should leave a very wide window for WikiBook writing. I think I'd be happier if the only gray area we had to contend with was if Monopoly is really a sport (sponsored competitions do exist) than the alternative of contending with books on cheating or blowing up people.

I find I'm more in the "non-fiction" camp. I see value for Wikibooks as a source for educational materials. I do not think what form those take should be so strictly defined as that limits creativity. (Will discuss this at length but this is not the place.) "Instruction" for someone like myself who has been an *educator* for some years and worked hard to communicate the difference between that and "instructor" is a rather limiting word. By the Wikitionary definition it's about teaching a skill or facts and knowledge. If we use a narrow construction of "textbook" and "instruction" many books have to go away from here. If we continue to narrowly construct our definitions there is less and less that would qualify, and frankly what remained would be very drab.

Try writing something that is just facts, neutral point of view, *and* engaging. erraunt 21:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Note that the above idea of following "courses" has been abandoned (by myself, the one who first proposed it). The concrete policy suggestions are a better item to talk about (the directly enumerated section, on this talk page) as it has been debugged from these initial first stabs at making policy. --MShonle 22:31, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Any books that do get moved should find a place on wikicities (if WC will not take them, then they certainly have no business here either). We should leave notices on each of the pages redirecting them to their new locations. I think the game walkthroughs and the jokebook would be required to be removed under this policy. But a loss for us is a win for wikicities: because we won't be giving them the bad stuff, we'll be giving them the good stuff.

I would appreciate it if anyone could let me know what other books could be affected by these policy changes, in which case I might need to think about expanding the policy even more. MShonle 04:39, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

For starters, I would very much love to keep Super NES Programming. There's also Blender 3D, Raising Chickens, Knowing Knoppix, Beekeeping, many more. There could be enough material to teach a course on any of these, but the target audiance is simply so narrow that it's never been done. IMO, there is even room for Cellular Phone Programming. —Snargle 18:30, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

That's a good point, instructional resources for hobbies should be included too. There are courses at 4H clubs that would cover some of these books. As for the IT books, there certainly are courses that teach SNES programming in the industry (at least, there was) and 3D modeling and Linux admin are also courses. We need to think of a good definition of hobby, however, so as to include international clubs and organizations, but to exclude some other hobbies. Also, I do believe some universities teach cell phone programming. MShonle 18:48, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Amen to that. My local library has 3D Studio Max books, Gimp books, Photoshop books.... so why not Blender books? --Spiderworm 18:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Spiderworm here.. there is no way the Blender 3D book should be excluded. It was book of the month in July. Doesn't that tell you something about its importance? --Desoto

All of you should be assured that I don't think there's a single person here who wanted to see the Blender book go. Not a single person. Part of the reason there's a list of books below is to show what we mean by these policy proposals. As you've seen, a proposal is hard to word properly without excluding obviously good books (and at the same time without including obviously bad books). So, please, no cause for alarm here. (BTW, Desoto, are you a WP user? There's no account here with that name, and your message was listed as an anon IP.) MShonle 19:16, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Mshonle, I have an issue with a certain proposed guideline. It would knock out Super NES Programming, and maybe Blender 3D and Knowing Knoppix: As a standard, the library of congress must already have two books.. There haven't been any books on snes programming because the information has been restricted by nintendo, and the only info has been in the form of docs produced by hobbyists. Blender and Knoppix books just might not be profitable. Also, obscure languages might be excluded. Wikipedia, wikinews, wikiquote, and wikispecies can have original content based on existing data, why not wikibooks?

If the issue is thet obscure books would become abandoned in early stages, then why not give VFD(or whatever) the power to delete those? —Snargle 01:05, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps the two book requirement is too restrictive. But note that Nintendo itself would sell SNES development kits, and not just hobbyists. But there are plenty of books on programming embedded devices, on using operating systems and on using 3D modeling programs. It's not that there should be that particular book in existence, but that it's a sophisticated enough genre that legitimate books like it exist. The issue isn't obscurity: it's about keeping crackpot books out, but to do so fairly we need a solid rule, and not just arbitrary decisions. Part of the reason I provided the list of books below is just to show concretely what I'd like the new policy to imply. For example, the how to tie a tie module is great, but it's not long enough to be a book. However, it would be a fine chapter in a western etiquette book. I think ideally, we should not have a miscellaneous section either. MShonle 01:53, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I struck out that section... it was a bad idea. It looks like we might be getting closer, though. MShonle 05:00, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Also, something ought to be done to prevent dumping. --Snargle 18:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Dumping in the sense of getting material that WP or Meta doesn't want? MShonle 18:48, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. Not really relevent here, though

Something else—I started a DIY wikibook today and added some small/orphaned/transwikied modules to it(including the pykrete bong. Not really illegal IMO). I'm not sure whether it would violate the Must be taught as a serious class rule. Would it compare to an electronics class or a shop class? Would Western Etiquette violate that rule as well? —Snargle 21:44, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I think any books that bring together too-small-to-be-books chapters should have focus and a specific topic. The problem that I see is that some projects, such as the Van Dwelling book, are very interesting but fail to have the course-like nature. Thus, I'm making an additional section on quirky books that stretch the boundaries of "course" but still are instructional because they do have validation and are applications of general scientific principles.

Some of the topics you have in the DIY book might be better categorized separately as Sustainable Living (canning, bio-diesel, making soap), Home Electronics Projects (building a projector, building an antenna) and Do It Yourself Renaissance (sword making). (Even if making a bong is legal, wikibooks shouldn't be the place for that.) So, given that I think these books would be appropriate, although quirky, we should think of a good reason to keep them. MShonle 23:51, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Existing Books that would be removed

For advocating illegal activities or other dark gray areas:

• Manual of Crime
• How To Build A Pykrete Bong
• How to Cause Havoc
• Acetone peroxide synthesis, Chemical synthesis/Thermite and others in Chemical synthesis
  • No, but they must not advocate. AlbertCahalan 02:51, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Acquiring Roms
• A guide to cheating during tests and examinations

For failing to be sufficiently instructional resources:

• Law Of Time
• Getting a girl (for guys)
  • No, unless you intend to ban all unfinished books. AlbertCahalan 02:51, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
• Getting a boy
• Jackie Chan
• United Arab Emirates
• Conworld
• Whole Earth Catalog (also need to verify copyrights permission)
• Business ideas (not a book)
• Errata (a repository, not a book; possible WC?)
• Neopets (an almost infomercial for neopets.com)

A loss for us, but a big win for Wikicities:

• Freeware (a resource for finding freeware)
• 366 Photographs on the Beach (to be moved to Wikicities, if possible)
• In Memoriam: September 11, 2001 (to be moved to In Memoriam: September 11, 2001)
• Jokebook (to be moved to Wikicities, if possible)
• All video game walkthroughs (to be moved to Wikicities)
• Total Annihilation (another game guide)

Existing Books that possibly would be removed

For being original research or lacking external validation:

• Developing A Universal Religion
• Aeon Shift Kit
• Qrai
• Triangular Earth Calendar (original research deleted from Wikipedia, also available elsewhere on the web)

For either not being sufficiently developed, or not large enough to exist as a book:

• Keeping a Journal
• Scouting:BSA Merit Badges and BSA Merit Badges
• UFO s in US and Roswell (although books on UFOs should be allowed, as there are serious studies in the cultural and astrobiological areas)
• Auctions

Existing Books that are boundary cases

Quirky books that stretch the boundaries of "course" but might be worthwhile anyway:

• Van Dwelling (displays a love of knowledge and instruction)
• ... other odd project how-tos

Content that perhaps could be merged into a single book on Western Etiquette:

• Dealing with calling tech support
• How To Tie A Tie
• Letter writing

Could exist with heavy revising:

• A guide to cheating during tests and examinations could still exist if it were revised to be NPOV with regards to the very legitimate and important POV that cheating is unethical (in fact, the minority view that cheating is OK might not be important enough to warrant that a work be neutral to its point of view). For example, the book could suggest that teachers print up different copies of the examination and distribute them so that a group of students next to each other would all have different tests. However, it would need to cite some primary or secondary sources to avoid being anecdotal.

"eternal stub" semi-books should be merged

External stubs shouldn't even be given their own books I think, they should be given a Wikibooks Imports/Whatever is being added. That way the information isn't taking up random spots, but instead all put in one spot from which they can be moved to books that are appropriate and supported by a contributor. This would also require that within the editing part of Wikibooks a notice be placed telling people where they should place imports instead of adding things willy-nilly. Of coure, that may simply be me. 65.94.52.193 22:46, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

A directly enumerated WikiBooks policy

Everyone, please read and consider the following. The list of our sister projects needs to be spelled out (it already is elsewhere, so I just call it [The List...] here), but everything I've written below is directly based on the books to be excluded list and our conversations.

Note that the above is proposed. Pick apart any weaknesses you can see, as this must be as strong and fair of a policy possible.

Feel free to list books that you care about and I'd be happy to describe how I would see that book fitting in or not fitting into the above policy. (For example, I would count Bee Keeping as a hobby or vocation guide, because people keep bees as a hobby or as part of their job.)

--Thank you, MShonle 05:20, 8 September 2005 (UTC).

Replies, Discussion, Changes Done to Wording

• I think this is possibly the clearest and least confusing statement of Wikibooks direction/policy I've read. Subject to further discussion I think we should adopt this as our proposal, after which we need to have a sitewide ad for a vote. Being a contributor mainly to foreign language instruction books I'm also glad we have the "fiction in examples" clause in this policy, which has been a point of concern for me. Serge 05:29, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

• update: changed qualifications to allow annotated texts more clearly; changed celebrity FAQs to celebrity FAQs and guides; change qualification to make study guides more explicitly allowed; changed "Immediate Exclusions" to "Prohibited Content" and "Other Exclusions" to "Exclusions". MShonle 14:09, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

• I have a few issues with a few points here.
  • [My replies are embedded in []'s like this. --MShonle 20:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]
• 1) Hacking/cracking. I recently read a brilliant book on reverse engineering. But in order to teach the subject, one has to go through and show by example. Saying "disassemble the program and figure out what it does" doesn't cut it. It would sadden me if such a book would not exist on wikibooks
  • [I believe the above policy would allow reverse engineering. It just can't become a resource to enable someone to break into a computer (this is hacking the sense of cracking; not "hacking" as in making cool Lisp programs). For example, a computer security audit book can (and probably should) detail buffer overflows, but the examples would have to use fake machine-code values and fake assembly instructions, so that someone couldn't just read it an have everything they'd need. For example, it would need to be "here's how it can be done in theory" and not "here's the hexvalues and portnumber and a small perl program that will let you take over this website". --MShonle 20:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]
    • Ok, so if I was to write an example program for such a book that has no real world use, it would be ok to reverse that as an example? I can live with that.--Gabe Sechan 21:01, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
      • That would be perfectly fine. We just don't want a wolf in sheep's clothings, dressed as an instructional guide but is really just a resource for script-crackers to go to. Cutting out that information would mean there'd be no way for that content to sneak in (at least not until we revert it ;-). --MShonle 22:54, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
        • This is a touchy subject for me personally. I'm writing Programming:Serial Data Communications, which goes into some very specific issues that can be, from a certain viewpoint, to "venture into the territory of how to perform a specific crack". I've already written specific code examples on how to directly access I/O ports on a Pentium CPU, and what kinds of things can potentially screw up the OS of a computer, or even how to permanently damage the computer through a piece of software. A general policy like this strongly discourages hard technical discussions, even though this Wikibook is not directly about how to exploit other computer systems, if you understand the subject matter in this Wikibook you are certainly going to be capable of using that knowledge to intercept data communications (explicitly talked about in this section). There are very legitimate and legal reasons to use this knowledge, but it can be considered a cracking tool as well. Should this banned? I think not, but the policy is vague enough to force me into rewriting or removing this section. I think deliberate discussion of performing illegal acts should be banned in general, but an explict policy against hacking is going to drive technical books about computers away from Wikibooks. A How-to hack the Federal Reserve computers or the Pentagon should be banned together with a Wikibook about how to kill the President of the USA. In both cases they are deliberately written to break the law and do harm. Hacking books can be used as an example of encouraging illegal acts, but should not be the focus of the policy. A How to smuggle Cocaine into the USA would be illegal. How to grow Marijuana is marginal but as pointed out below would be considered legal in some areas and under some restrictions even in the USA. If that Marijuana Wikibook goes into how you can evade DEA enforcement, the Wikibook has gone too far. Discussion on how to get DEA permits, on the other hand, would be not only acceptable but encouraged. I just hope you don't have to be a licensed "hacker" in order to program computers in the future. --Rob Horning 04:00, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
• 2)Drugs. I've said before- Wikibooks is an international site. Drugs are illegal only in some countries. Why should someone in a drug legal country (say, the Netherlands) be prohibited from using the site because its about something thats illegal in America?
  • [Our site is run from California, and we should stay clear on the side of the law. It is somewhat of a lowest-common denominator issue. People from the Netherlands are still free to use the site, just not free to discuss the finer points of bong-creation, which is probably not appropriate for a textbook project, and I'm sure there are numerous resources on the Internet elsewhere. --MShonle 20:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]
    • Talking about it isn't illegal, thanks to the first ammendment. Prohibiting people from using the site to make buys/sells would make sense, but disallowing any content at all due to the laws in one country does not seem like a good idea to me. If talking about it was illegal and would get the servers shut down you'd have a point for practical reasons, but that isn't the case. --Gabe Sechan 21:01, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
      • Can you think of a better wording? The policy proposal we're talking about here is fine with books about, for example, the physiological effects of drugs, about drug enforcement policy, and books that talk about the drug war and its critics. Some people want to draw the line for what is a wikibook at "if it's a true fact, it's acceptable." But I'd rather draw the line in a more academic context (although the proposal allows for much more than just what would be labeled academic). Where to draw this line is part of this whole discussion. I think getting into drug culture, even if it's creative instructions for making bongs, would lead us too far astray from purely educational content. We can accept many non-purely-academic materials (like a book on the board game Monopoly), but if we go too far it can be hard holding back the line and then we might see more books like the Manual of Crime. There certainly are places on the web where talking about making bongs is appropriate. My own opinion is that wikibooks doesn't need to be that place. --MShonle 22:54, 9 September 2005 (UTC)
        • [Also, issues of what we feel is appropriate instructional resources or "what is a wikibook" issues aside, the advantage of including this clause is that it could mean any wikibook would be more closely aligned with wikicities policy. It's not a 100% fit, but there would be advantages in a closer alignment of WB and WC policy. I myself would want to see a more compelling reason to accept paraphernalia content other than just "if it's a true fact, it should be allowed" because we are already invalidating that argument by the very exclusion of the Manual of Crime, which spawned this discussion (which probably should have happened a year ago with the Getting a Girl issue, but we instead decided to put it on the backburner). --MShonle 22:54, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]
• 3)Casino books. So sue me, I like a good game of poker. So a book on how to play poker, which would have to go into betting strategies, would be disallowed? It seems very arbitrary. Even more so than the drug one- playing poker with friends isn't illegal anywhere.
  • [Books on playing poker are allowed. There just can't be a "book" that lets you actually play poker with others. Not that a wiki would be a good way to play poker, but a wiki could be used to place bets, say, on horses or sports games. This policy would just be saying that would be an inappropriate use of this wiki. Betting strategies et cetera is great content, and should be allowed, provided there are some appropriate sources or resources, like math, probability, psychology, or game theory used, instead of just relying on anecdotal experience.

--MShonle 20:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]

• • • Ok, that sounds good to me. Playing isn't a book at any rate.--Gabe Sechan 21:01, September 9, 2005 (UTC)
• 4)Fan guides- whats the scope that is and isn't allowed here? Are all autobiographies disallowed, or is this more a POV and depth issue? I can agree with the latter, but not the former.

--Gabe Sechan 20:38, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

• • [I think there would be some major NPOV issues with autobiographies, and they shouldn't be allowed. But biographies on notable individuals I think should be allowed. I would appreciate if you can help suggest a better wording. The current wording is: "Biographies on notable individuals may be allowed, but they must provide references to all sources used and have no anecdotes based on personal or indirect contact with the individual. The individual must be notable enough so that WikiBooks would not be in danger of libel or tort action." The part about tort action basically says that you can't make a book about the head of your company that would go into details that would be considered slander or libel. We can say many things about Napoleon or Newton, for example, without fear of tort. But saying things about your landlord, no matter how true they are, is too risky for a book (not that your landlord is likely to be notable). Issues of slander or libel are less of a problem the more notable someone is, and that is one of the costs of celebrity. A biography of Bill Gates, completely with his arrest mugshot, would be allowed. A biography of someone less notable with a mugshot might be considered slanderous. --MShonle 20:40, 9 September 2005 (UTC)]
    • Bleh, how did that auto sneak in there? Asleep at the keyboard, I'm not *quite* that arrogant :) I have no problems with that as its written, I missed the bio part the first time through. --Gabe Sechan 21:01, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

• Added "property destruction" to list of illegal activities, as per Kellen's message. MShonle 17:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Not found in libraries

Is it just me, or is this a really arbitrary or hard to enforce way of defining things? First off- what type of library? My college library had all types of books on dead languages and obscure computer programs. For that matter, it had a subscription to playboy, courtesy of alumni Hugh Heffner. For that matter, my local library does indeed have video game guides. They're fairly popular.

If we want to exclude some content, we need to decide what it is we want excluded and makeconcrete rules, not such a vague guideline as "in a library". Then vote on the concrete rules. As is, I don't think I could vote for the rule, its just too poorly defined.--Gabe Sechan 21:01, September 9, 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Libraries is a terrible rule that is ambiguous and is not a helpful guide. MShonle 21:27, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Fictional works should be excluded

What's the meaning of this voting item? I think we all agree that fiction should be excluded, since that is the practice we are already doing (andd there is a wikicity for doing so). So, does this voting item mean that "all non-fiction is ok"? I don't think we should vote for that, given that the Manual of Crime itself would count as non-fiction, but its exclusion from our site is one of the primar reasons for even talking about policy. MShonle 07:20, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is a multi-part vote, just like how the mammoth WP votes are handled; rather than trying to write a single policy document which would never get complete ageement, instead you're voting on bite-sized portions of such a document.

Users will be able to vote either for or against each option, but all are completely voluntary; if you don't care about either outcome of a particular section there's no need to vote on it. Therefore by voting for this no fiction rule you're not forced to allow things you don't want, because you can also vote on a rule that clarifies, for example, illegal content.

The vote selection I drafted is looking pretty horrendous though, and I don't really have the time at the moment to fix it just yet. But the discussion on this page is going nicely, and the things being puzzled out here can then be be written up properly on the voting page itself. Garrett^Talk 08:25, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should make agreement and consensus be the goal, though we might not achieve it. It seems of my proposed, enumerated policy the most disagreeable items are whether to include the Google AdSense prohibitions or not. (I should also enumerate the Sister Project exclusions, just for consistency sake, and doing so may shake something else up.) Before voting begins I would like to see some Pro and Con pages for each item. Something that distills the essence of these conversations. We should also try to run ideas by The Big Guys first, and pehaps any lawyers: no sense in voting for something that the WikiMedia project or their lawyers would say aren't allowed anyway. --MShonle 22:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Sexual content

I note that there is coursework on human sexuality (some at the graduate level) and that sexuality-related topics are among the most frequently viewed on en.wikipedia. While we do not wish to draw the sort of fictionalized fantasy material that characterizes most pornography, we may wish to be sure that we do not exclude any serious attempts at writing books about sex.

UninvitedCompany 23:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you suggest a better wording, to fit exactly what you mean? I agree that a book on reproduction or about culture would be appropriate, but I feel it'd have to be the kind of book that uses verifiable primary and secondary sources. MShonle 07:09, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Illicit drugs

I think it's important to specificy the jurisdiction. Beer and winemaking are legal in most western countries. The making of distilled spirits is legal, though heavily regulated and taxed, in most western countries; in New Zeland it is legal for private individuals. Zymurgy is a fascinating topic that is a target of serious scholarly inquiry.

UninvitedCompany 23:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I agree, do you think it should be "Illicit drugs" qualified to the United States? (Since that's where our servers are we should respect that, and also it provides the lowest common denominator.) Because wine/beer are legal in the states the study of their making would make a fine how-to book. (And knowing friends who make their own beer, I do know how scientific and exacting they get about it.) MShonle 07:16, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This rule is pointlessly narrow, bordering on puritanical. I suggest striking it completely. Kellen ^T 07:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure that applying labels like that is productive. While you might think the scope is too narrow, you should consider the benefits. For example, instead of being BongCentralStation we won't attract contributions on drugs, which could quickly escalate to things that we'd have to delete. Believing that anyone should be able to say anything on the web is very different than believing anyone should be able to say anything anywhere on the web. Wikibooks cannot and should not be all things to everyone (particularly given that there is plenty of that content already on the web, yet hardly any free textbooks to speak of still). I would need to see a useful argument on why we should include illicit content. I'm open that such an argument might exist, but no one has presented it yet. MShonle 16:58, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think we should include information about "illicit content" because that information is not unlawful. Obviously if the information itself is (for whatever reason) unlawful, then delete it. I agree that there are certain benefits to narrowly interpreting the mandate (from wikimedia) for wikibooks, but I find that the implication that just because some act is illegal means that it shouldn't be written about on wikibooks to be distasteful. For instance, I think a technical discussion on growing marijuana/hemp in the Gardening book would be entirely valid. I realize that this information is available elsewhere, but I don't agree that we should disallow it from being on wikibooks simply because of its legal status in the US (which, as an aside, I believe to be immoral). Kellen ^T 19:36, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you suggest a better wording? We can talk about drugs, for sure, provided we use primary and secondary and other verifiable sources. But talking about drugs and crime is not the same thing at all as giving instructions to take/make drugs or carry out crimes. Primarily I think the rule is to eliminate people from selling drugs, paraphernalia, et cetera or providing guides to getting/making them. It should be absolutely clear that Wikibooks will not be a site to enable people to actually get drugs (by, for example, listing areas to go to in big cities, as if it were a stoner's craigslist).

Material intended to sell drugs, paraphenalia, etc, on wikibooks is prohibited because that content would not form a reasonable textbook. I do think that an accurate guide to making drugs is a valid topic, even if distasteful to some people. Kellen ^T 20:50, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

However, I completely disagree with your reasoning that, just because something is legal, that justifies it becoming a book. It's perfectly legal for me to make a photo journal of my trip to Virginia, but that doesn't mean I need to force Wikibooks to house it. MShonle 20:29, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The reasoning is not that the material should be included because it is legal, but that it should not be prohibited because it is legal (with other obvious qualifications due to the purpose of wikibooks). Kellen ^T 20:50, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Looking over the proposed policy again- why is this a separate section? If we have another rule against illegal activity (for some vague definition of illegal, but thats better argued elsewhere), why do we need another rule specificly against drugs? Its redundant. Move to strike and roll it into the illegal clause. Although I'm still against blindly following US law to begin with. I understand (and agree with) not wanting it to be a site for buying/selling drugs because ti could get the servers shut down, but otherwise I stand by the 1st ammendment and think if its educational it ought to be allowed. --Gabe Sechan 20:47, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Gambling

While my hated of institutionalized gambling knows few bounds, I am unsure that we would want to avoid writing books about it. UninvitedCompany 23:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Could you suggest a better wording? The idea was to avoid activities like actually placing bets and gambling. For example, playing poker instead of talking about poker. As someone else noted, wiki-based gambling wouldn't even be a "book" anyway. --MShonle 07:18, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The attempt is kind of pointless then; I would suggest striking that rule. Kellen ^T 07:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

promotes illegal activity

"Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others, including (but not limited to) content condoning harassment, intimidation, espionage, terrorism"

These are already prohibited by way of NPOV ("promotes"). Kellen ^T 08:25, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

The "or infringes" part does not get the "promotes". Thus, the two are not equal. --MShonle 16:36, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Then it should read "Any other content that infringes on the legal rights of others." But this is already invalid content for wikibooks. I see that your point is to prevent MoC-style material by way of banning things which "condone" or "promote" "infringe[ment] on the legal rights of others" (such as murder, rape, and possibly property destruction), but this is not the wording for it. Also, as noted above, legality of an act is much different than the legality of information about that act. Kellen ^T 16:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I find this to be much, much more useful than judging the content of a wikibook. Kellen ^T 17:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

reverse engineering

Curious, Mshonle, what would you think of including all the necessary instructions to reverse engineer the CVS one-time-use video camera (see Albert's note here) in the Reverse Engineering wikibook? Kellen ^T 19:55, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

We should have a book about reverse engineering, but that doesn't mean we need specific examples that violate the DMCA or similar IP laws. I'd be much more interested in teaching people the principles behind computer hardware and bus interfaces than I would be in telling people how to rip-off CVS. Sure, Albert's posting is nice, and I agree wholeheartedly that it counts as free speech. But that itself is not reason enough to make it a wikibook. (I believe a better venue for such speech would be to disseminate it via peer-to-peer networks.)

The DMCA might apply if the video in question were copyright by CVS or puredigital, but this is not the case. The user has not performed any action that would cause copyright to transfer. The user has full right to their own video on their own camera. (the camera is purchased, not rented, and there is no contract) AlbertCahalan 02:09, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Other laws could be violated, though. I'm not sure what applies, but our own personal opinions on the laws shouldn't affect the decision. Only the actual legallity and the actual circumstances we find ourselves in should count. MShonle 02:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

But Wikibooks is a real site, with real people investing countless hours and energy and machine resources to it. We have a goal of teaching those who cannot afford textbooks, to level the global playing field. We cannot just let it all be sued away from us just because some people have decided to turn Wikibooks into a platform for their political protests.

Political protests are a fine thing and part of what makes our country strong. But keep it to the peer-to-peer networks, the streets, and Washington itself. Don't drag down our site just because you want to prove a point. --MShonle 20:42, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I completely disagree. Its the big sites that have to take the lead. Noone cares if myrandomcomputerpage.com goes down. If Wiki goes down, its news, and it will get people involved. Claiming Wiki shouldn't use the 1st ammendment is like claiming that only the guilty ever insist upon a warrant. Its rediculous to begin with, and an idea that can start a dangerous errosion of our rights. Sure, you may not care about this particular subject, but just wait. Eventually it will be one you do care about.--Gabe Sechan 21:00, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

This is exactly what I meant about Wikibooks becoming a platform for political protest. I don't think it's right to all of the contributors and to the real people who are putting their money on the line to try as we can to get WB shut down. Yes, it is big news if a wiki got shut down. But what about the smaller news? What about that homeschooler who was just learning long division, and would then need to buy the book? What about the college student just figuring out his lambda calculus homework? What about the professor who was saving his students money by using a wikibook? What about the missionary in the third-world country who has a great idea to contribute based on her experience? Yes, I do care about these issues you talk about (you need only read my blog to find out). But I also care about these "small" issues too. And the end of the day, could you still say to yourself "it's been nice that they've let me make such great use of this site; I've been a good steward to it"? --MShonle 21:17, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I could. The spirit of wikibooks is that of a free exchange of educational information in book format. I'd feel I was a much better steward of that spirit if I was permissive on the rules of what type of content is allowed than if I was restrictive. Meaning no offence to you, but its justifications like that which are the root of the problem. You let small evils go by to do a good. Eventually those evils grow. By the time you fight, its too late. I'd rather we take a stand now than later. The first ammendment exists, use it.

Remember this is (will eventually be) a vote. There is room for both arguments, as I'm sure you'll admit. In the end it is the users and contributors of wikibooks that will decide which side of the argument is stronger. If the majority of contributors decide that they want to support the free speech side, it should become the path we take. I have no idea what way the vote will go, but I suspect I'm not the only one who will vote the way I will. And of course, I want to make the wording of the rules as careful as possible in case I lose, so only what people really want to outlaw is outlawed.--Gabe Sechan 22:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Please note that my position is not the "anti-free speech" side. If the view opposing mine was cast as the free-speech side we would surely see everyone vote for that. But I don't want to construct strawmen here. I also don't want to see labels like "conservative" or "censorship" or "puritan" getting thrown around.

I just want to make it clear that it's a perfectly valid stance to step back and say "yes, I think there is a place for this content on the web, but I don't think having it housed at wikibooks is in the spirit of the project or appropriate." I think the spirit of our project is to make instructional resources to help educate. That includes making choices like excluding bad explanations of (say) multiplying fractions. How permissive should we be? It's hard to draw the line. The way I see it, it's already been handed down from above (in a decision I agree with) that books like the Manual of Crime should not be allowed.

Given the benefits of allowing people to fork our content and house them someplace that is funded via AdSense we should think long and hard about drawing the line there. I don't think AdSense hates free speech. I think they just needed to make some practical, legal and moral decisions. But I disagree with the line of arguments that put Wikibooks as the keystone to the internet, and if somehow we exclude information suddenly it's excluded everywhere. I also don't think the AdSense prohibitions are "letting little evils go." There is a far stronger argument that favors fictional writing, such as Nicholson Baker's "Checkpoint," a scathing criticism of war, yet we seem not to label "disallowing fiction" as an "evil." There are other reasons to prohibit material, one of which is the signalling argument I've presented before. --MShonle 23:03, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

And I disagree with the signaling issue, especially on content such as this and drugs. This is a place for us to give our opinions on the matter. My opinion is that the legal aspect of it is utterly bogus, as this is protected speach. From there, its a question of if its educational material. This is. Granted, it needs to be written correctly to fit an educational track. Since it is educational, I see no reason why it should be denied. And I see no other reason on this issue. And the default policy should be if there is no reason to deny, it should be allowed. What side the majority of contibutors will take is yet to be seen.--Gabe Sechan 23:23, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I think a good place to voice the anti-drug war line of thought would be, for example, in an economics book that also talks about the other poor effects of prohibitions. In fact, perhaps there should be a humanities book dedicated to showing the flaws of the drug war (on such issues I myself sound like a libertarian). There are several academic papers and studies that bolster this case. (Perhaps as I've worded this book it would have a non-neutral POV, I'll assume for a moment that what I've said could be massaged into something more compliant.) But these fine books we're talking about aren't the same as, say, a book on hazing rituals for frat boys. Sure, keg stands and other party activites should be talked about freely, but that doesn't mean suddenly a textbook project should be forced into being the forum for it. I think a reasonable person would conceed that Wikibooks cannot and should not be all things to everyone. I also think a reasonable person should consider the benefits of using the AdSense rules, which would allow any wikibook to be transfered to and from a wikicity without legal troubles. --MShonle 23:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

One thing to consider is how old a hack is. If I was writing a computer security book, I'd need to talk about actual weaknesses to describe my points. I think this policy needs a bit of revision. I'd agree with no 0 day hacks (we aren't a security site, this is the wrong place for it) and no code to produce the hack. But once a security breach has been discussed on BugTraq or similar lists/sites, it ought to be fair game for a wikibook. --Gabe Sechan 21:00, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

We can talk about actual weaknesses a lot (mostly aren't they stack overflows?), but I'd rather demonstrate it with fake machine code. Any scripts for any system that would still be running just shouldn't be allowed. Indeed, such hacking information is free speech, but so is fiction, yet we agree to not have fiction on this site. Increasing the tort liabilities of our site is not a stable long term solution, nor do I think it would attract the book-writing crowd (and, equally, it could scare off the more academic types, the exact experts we need the most). --MShonle21:25, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

No, most weaknesses are *NOT* stack overflows. THey're a small portion of all weaknesses. Most weaknesses are in the design phase. For example, a weakness in Telnet and FTP is that passwords are transmitted as plaintext. That is a design flaw.

Faked weaknesses do not have the same weight as real ones. I can talk about the problems of weak cryptography til I'm blue in the face, and it will have very little effect. I can show how WAP can easily be broken on a wireless network, and that *will* have effect. This is a well known, well published vulnerability. I'm not releasing any new facts.

And no, it won't scare off the academics. There's a big debate in the security community- full disclosure vs no disclosure. In full disclosure, you tell a company about a bug, wait a reasonable amount of time for them to fix it (which may increase due to communication between the two parties), then release the info. In no disclosure you never release. The reason full disclosure is popular is that many bugs NEVER GET FIXED until they are disclosed. If they aren't fixed, your ignorance just hurts you, because eventually a black hat will get it. Guess which side industry and academia tend to be on? Industry wants no disclosure, academia wants full disclosure (by and large, exceptions exist).

Being able to write about security issues, without being able to give real world examples, is like having to write about chemistry without giving chemical formulas, or physics without equations. Its just not workable. I know I had said otherwise earlier, but more thinking on it reveals how ridiculously the above policy is worded. Under that wording, I couldn't talk about 30 year old mistakes like telnet's plain text passwords.

Put a time limit on it is my suggestion. We don't want 0 day exploits (new exploits), but we don't want to cut them off entirely either. My suggestion would be X weeks after publication in a major security forum such as BugTraq. Personally I'd go for an X of 0, but a small value there wouldn't be too bad. Then we're not spreading information on a new attack, but discussing one that has been reported elsewhere, and has likely already been fixed. Serious hackers get their information by subscribing directly to security lists anyway, watching here would be pointless. Too low a frequency, and too delayed from the initial disclosure even with an X of 0.--Gabe Sechan 22:34, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Could you suggest a better wording? Specifically, one that does not allow simple perl scripts where you "just point it to a machine and click". I think your points about telnet would be excellent in a book (please star writing it!). I would just rather it stop at saying "and anyone could pick that up, using port listeners" instead of going into the detail of "you can use this port listener, downloadable from here, and here's how you would look for the password and find it." The first part should be sufficient to convince any administrator (the good guys we are trying to help-- I don't think anyone here is advocating we need to help the black hats) that they need to use SSH instead. The second part (where specific, but accidental, and not theoretical, detail is given) is borderline reckless, though I realize the reality is that such information will always be available someplace else.

I'm not advocating chemistry without formulas. I'm advocating chemistry as real chemistry, not explosive making dressed up as a book. I'm sure there's a certain level of chemistry where you'll be able to make explosives, but we have no obligation to spell that out in easy steps for just anyone to do. Leaving some dots left unconnected can be a wise stance to take.

As for security lists, it doesn't quite seem "bookish" enough to make a module that duplicates that. It should be a book that talks about fundamentals, not rehashes mailing lists. Once stack over flow, bad file systems, dangerous PATHs, flaws on versions of unix that allow setuid programs to generate core files with root ownership, and other flaws are taught I don't think we then need to go into half a dozen examples of ways to break into systems that just echo these same points again and again. Each new, brilliant point should be covered. But variations that are only more modern do not. --MShonle 23:19, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. I don't want to have a security list book. I'm saying that once something has been announced publicly on a major list (perhaps with some time delay) it ought to be fair game. We shouldn't be in the buisness of announcing newly found defects (we aren't equipped for it), but once its announced it should be publishable.--Gabe Sechan 21:36, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

I started the Reverse Engineering Wikibook, and my original intention was not to make it a book about security, "hacking," "cracking," or other illegal nonsense. There are some aspects of computer programming that can only really be taught by examining the subject matter from the opposite perspective of a software creator. Yes, a good book about reverse engineering will include at least a few footnotes pertaining to security, because the average person utilizing reverse engineering techniques is a software developer (or outside security consultant) trying to find dangerous bugs before they get exploited by the ne're-do-wells. I do propose at least some treatment of "black hat" reverse engineering, but only in the context of pointing out (and presumably fixing) common security mistakes. For a more in-depth coverage of "bad" material, we should start another wikibook on "hacking" that we can subsequently vote to ban. --Whiteknight

As an addendum, I was very careful to include a large disclaimer at the front of the wikibook, to stress the fact that the contents of the book should be legal. Anything therefore that is illegal, should definately be removed, purely in the interests of keeping the book "on topic." Also, on the Introduction page, there is a section on legal issues, that we can expand upon to mention all the specifics of what is, and what isnt legal. As for the notion of protecting illegal hacking issues under a free speach clause, I point out again that the topic of the book is "legal reverse engineering techniques" and all things that dont fit under that catagory should be moved to a new wikibook (which i would certainly vote to delete anyway). Whiteknight

---

Sounds good, Whiteknight. To continue your thought... It is my firm opinion that anything worth knowing does not have to be taught in base, "lets-hurt-others" ways. I think one standard that could be useful is "yes, after someone reads this book, they'll be able to do some blackhat activities, but they will need to connect the dots for themselves and they'd have to really understand it first." This is opposed to "someone can read this book and perform blackhat activities without even understanding it." I think imposing a limitation would also greatly improve the writing and the direction of the book!

It seems to be a very American idea that "any constraints are bad" and that the less constrained you are, the more creative you can be. In contrast, the European idea is more like "constraints make creativity." I've only now realized that part of the reason my message hasn't been getting through 100% is that some, particularly the Americans, quickly see a constraint as being bad, instead of being a force of good that would: (1) cause the writers to think of deeper principles and explainations; (2) provide a narrower scope, so that the many contributors are that much closer to going to the same goal.

I myself am an American, but have come to see the European view as more useful for many applications. That doesn't mean we should constrain ourselves without cause; but when there are other reasons to add constraints it can be very helpful.

To those who still believe the, for lack of a better description, "freedom of speech" line, I wish they would consider that:

• This is a site setting up it's own editorial guides, not a government shutting down other sites or authors
• We are already constrained with the NPOV and no-fiction requirements, which is much more burdensome with regards to expressiveness
• If you believe that some things can only be taught by violating the proposed rules I believe what the case is a failure of imagination. A failure to see how the same knowledge can be communicated responsibly, didactically and in accordence to the policy is likely to just be because you haven't bothered to think of it in any other way.

I don't mean to sound harsh to those who hold this view; I think your hearts are in the right place. But I do want to make it clear it seems we've been talking about different things the whole time. I suppose I've internalized the European view so much that I didn't even realize we weren't all on the same page.

As a challenge, I ask for any of your who still disagree with me to present to me even one single idea that is worth teaching to others, but would be excluded by the proposed policy. I reason that such examples would be hard to find, because the policy restrains how you say something, not what you actually say. --MShonle 00:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

You asked for it, I will give it. See Serial_Programming:RS-232_Connections#Protocol_Analyser as an example of something that would have to be modified by the anti-hacking policy but is clearly worth teaching to other people and of incredible usage for a software developer trying to make an application and making the software more reliable. Not only that, I refuse to add a disclaimer to this Wikibook, even though in this case it is designing something that can be used to intercept communications... potentially without the knowledge of the person being monitored. This is not explicitly to do hacking, but an example of how in depth knowledge of a subject can be abused if but for a personal sense of ethics on the use of that knowledge. You can use this device, for example, to obtain passwords for computer systems. Instead of an anti-hacker policy that is poorly written, I think a general policy should be used to discourage discussions of deliberate and intentionally breaking laws. That would get rid of some of the Paladin Press type books that the FBI goes after, but keep legitimate subject like this Serial Programming book that is clearly designed as a textbook to help people in a technical subject. That is the point, isn't it... to not explicitly help people break the law? --Rob Horning 04:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

No matter what we do we could in theory be helping law-breakers if they're intelligent and resourceful enough. Another example would be a module on designing CD copy-protection. In order to best explain how to prevent particular circumventation methods it would be useful to include examples of some of the most obvious weaknesses or lackings of past versions of SafeDisc or similar. The things learned from that book could no doubt be used in reverse to design NoCD cracks of your own but that's not our fault, what you do with what you learn here is your business. I think this is just like the Manual of Crime, it depends on the tone and feel of the book; "How to prevent CD copying" is OK while "How To Make A NoCD Crack" is most certainly not. As long as the semi-legal content is clearly being used in order to best teach legal applications there should be no problem. How we word the policy to make all this clear, however, is another matter. Garrett^Talk 11:24, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Travel guides

Just reading through the list for more things to whine about, and I saw this. I'm curious what the justification behind exclusion is. Is it just POV? If so, would one written in NPOV be allowed? If not, why not? Not something I'm heavily concerned about, but it seemed an odd exclusion, I can't think of any reason other than POV. --Gabe Sechan 22:45, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

There's a sister project, http://wikitravel.org, that is supposed to address this. As best as we can we should coordinate with our sister projects, because we know that forking of contributors energies harms the project. (But external site forks, which are always verbatim copies of our stuff anyway, are good, because it generates more buzz for us, links to us, and they are sometimes up when our severs are down.) --MShonle 23:22, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense then. I didn't know of that particular sister site. I may have to check it out, I just relocated and it may show me a few things.--Gabe Sechan 22:41, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikitravel is not a sister project, as it is not under the umbrella of the Wikimedia Foundation. It also uses a license that is incompatable with the GFDL. Gentgeen 09:39, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

A personal statement

Friends: I have written a personal statement discussing the problems of Wikibooks, why I think my solutions can help, and why I've taken the stance that I have.

Please read the essay (it's under 2000 words) and comment here or on its discussion page. Thank you for your consideration.

adult, or mature content

This is no good. Some of us are mature and/or adult. This rule prohibits all books that even mention the mere existance of, well... [The rule does no such thing. Please note that this list has nothing to do with the discussion on the table. --MShonle 03:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)]

Revised: [Some interpretations of the now-ambiguous rule could lead someone, even possibly the community, to consider these list items as counting as "adult" (however, other interpretations would not count these as adult). Hopefully a better wording than "adult" will be made soon, making this list obsolete. --MShonle 22:41, 29 September 2005 (UTC)]

[MShonle seems to be confused about human nature: these things will be considered adult and mature topics by many people, no matter what MShonle's intent may have been. AlbertCahalan 15:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)]

Not clear what you mean here. Yes, they will be considered adult by many. So does that mean we exclude the topics? If so US History get's really interesting without the Civil War ("Total War" as a section heading) and discussing the Second World War without "total war" and "genocide" could be ... interesting. erraunt 20:41, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Albert was mostly trying to prove a point that he disagreed with the AdSense wording of "adult" because he felt it was ambiguous. I think I should probably ask Wikicities how they interpret it, because they obviously don't take it to the absurd levels Albert has shown us. --MShonle 22:35, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I basically agree with Albert. The terms "adult" and "mature" content are so ambiguous as to be meaningless. I say specify: "Wikibooks does not allow (a) pornography, (b) books advocating illegal acts". That should cover basically everything you would want to block. Irrevenant 09:49, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

• divorce
• satanism
• homosexuality
• alcohol
• racism
• rape
• suicide
• feminine hygeine
• birth control
• genocide
• total warfare
• BDSM
• abuse
• paganism
• virginity
• human sacrifice
• weapons
• non-X religeons (for all X)
• evolution
• sexual organs
  • [Again, note that this list is not what the rule has intended to exclude. --MShonle 03:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)]
    • Claiming such a thing, even with good intentions, does not make it so. AlbertCahalan 15:54, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

AlbertCahalan 03:24, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I would probably call a book on BDSM to be pornographic, which Wikibooks is not. That all depends on how it's written, of course. There could be a scholarly book, or there could be an exhibitionist who didn't want to get a blog (because, you know, being the exhibititionist they wanted the larger audience of wikibooks which will one day be just as popular as WP is now). The first version could be allowed, while the second should be deleted outright. But I fear you have a very different notion of what "adult" means if you suddenly think relgion and science are "adult." There are plenty of PG rated documentaries on abuse, racism, evolution, divorse, et cetera. It's good that you point out the ambiguity, so could you suggest a better wording? --MShonle 03:56, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

A book on BDSM is just a book on a particular aspect of mental health, isn't it? Scholarly or not, it would be prohibited. Never mind a whole book on it though; the rule would block mention of this topic. Plenty of people think that a "PG" rating is for mature audiences only. (I know someone who wasn't allowed to see that stuff at all, even as a teenager.) Plenty of people also feel that way about anything that conflicts with a literal interpretation of the New Testament, the Koran, the Pope's teaching... I think you mean to use "adult, or mature content" as a eupemism for obscenety, indecency, or (redundantly) pornography. If you mean one of these things, then just say it instead of using confusing terms. I think it is sensible to just remove this wording. It's useless and harmful. AlbertCahalan 04:53, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Just one note: This is wording from AdSense, not something I just imagined from thin air. So, we should be trying to pick apart what Google was getting at (and, by extension, Wikicities). It certainly is not about what you seem to think it's about. MShonle 05:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Wikicities has those requirements because they want to use the google ads, and it doesn't matter what Google was getting at as this could become policy here with its own interpretations. The wording is (as Albert demonstrates) easily confusable/extendable to things which should not be restricted on wikibooks. Kellen ^T 16:46, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, it's my hopes that Albert is just pointing out how it can be ambiguous. We should knock the ambiguity out. Even those who do not like some policy proposals should have an interest in at least being sure they are worded properly. What I dislike is the FUD that is getting spread around, by simply taking the most ridiculous interpretation possible and acting like that's what's on the table. I agree that the wordings aren't perfect; so let's work together to come up with better wordings. --MShonle 16:59, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Ridiculous? Maybe in your circle of friends it is. I know somebody who wasn't allowed to play the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game because some of the cards had unchristian concepts. We should just eliminate this worthless wording, not patch it. There is nothing worth saving. AlbertCahalan 22:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

But we're not interpretting the rule by the way your friend's mother lives her life. Wikicities already interprets this rule, so enough with the FUD examples. MShonle 22:55, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I personally find a number of the things on that list to be offensive. (probably a very different set than you would) If "adult, or mature" qualifies something as prohibited content, then it would appear that we are free to go on pre-approved deletion sprees. Why would you want this wording anyway? Either you intend to ban something or you don't. Either way, this wording is no good. AlbertCahalan 23:19, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I find the Google ad requirements to be quite offensive in other ways too. They would prohibit books on gun-related topics. AlbertCahalan 22:33, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't like the immediate exclusion on "adult material". Who is to say what is and isnt fit for adult consumption? Wikipedia has articals on violence and sexuality, can wikibooks not have the same (presumably with the same level of respect and decency that WP has had on these topics)? There is a difference between a "mature topic" and gratuitously graphic content. No automatic deletions, we need to consider each offense individually. --Whiteknight 01:37, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think it would be better if we could decide on appropriate wording to give us the same decency as found on WP. Our site has fewer people, so sometimes there is less of a strong signal to drown out the noise. For example, a few people around here think that a how-to module on rape is still a good idea. I think such a belief is grossly misguided, completely inconsistent with the spirit of the project, irresponsible to those who financially support this site, and should be grounds for immediate deletion. Of course we should be able to write books about mature content (that was never put into question and Albert's list is more or less a non sequitur). But I don't want to give the green light for pornography or a book equivalent of "faces of death." Also, please name some worthy topics that a Junior in High School would not be able to handle. I can't think of a single one. --MShonle 03:12, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Any guide on "How to do X" where X is generally illegal should be banned. Barring that test, i can't think of many subjects that should be outright excluded, assuming they are well written --Whiteknight 19:54, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

It's important that we can mention X though, and that "How to do X" is allowed if it would be legal in some countries or generally legal under the right circumstances. (self defense, military service, interrogation, law enforcement...) The one big exception is stuff that is actually illegal to describe in the USA, which is very rare. ("how to bypass DVD encryption", possibly "how to kill the president"...) AlbertCahalan 21:31, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

But a book about "How to do X", where X is illegal in the states (for regular citizens), is in pretty sketchy territory and should be avoided. We can still talk about Xish things, however. For example, I think a Karate book would be appropriate. But my challenge is: Name a worthy X that you think a book about "How to do X" should be allowed, but couldn't under the Textbook Camp constraints. For example, The Manual of Crime is very far from a book on Criminology, yet the same topics can be covered. In fact, a book on Criminology would be interesting, would cover more subjects, would be externally verifiable, and could be responsibley written. Perhaps the fighting information would be in a Karate book, and not a Criminology book. But I'm not convinced by these pleas that the Textbook Camp stiffles writing, if anything it encourages better writing, better direction, and communicates knowledge more effectively. --MShonle 01:23, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I refuse to participate in distracting this discussion with the merits of a particular X. I can think of a number of examples though; just look at the differences between US law and any given non-US law. If a regular German citizen or a US FBI agent or an Egyptian soldier can do X, a "How to do X" book on the subject should be allowed. AlbertCahalan 01:37, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not trying to divert the subject to the merits of X. I'm just wondering if there is some large area I'm completely missing... just to be completely open minded and be sure I'm considering all sides and all concerns. I would appreciate any one coming forward with concerns about material being excluded by the Textbook Camp. Game guides are one, but is there a more "obvious" group of important books being left out? Perhaps once again I should review all shelved books to be sure. --MShonle 02:26, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Entertainment guides

"Any entertainment guides or hobby guides that are based on created works of fiction " And why not, precisely? I've seen strategy guides for videogames sold at bookstores and offered at libraries. Also, does this include reading aides? What about a "Ways to read Othello" guide, or a "Common interpretations of Paradise Lost" book? I cant understand a ban on items that are "based on created works of fiction" because that cuts out alot of valuable material. Granted, Final Fantasy might not be taught in a classroom setting per se, but Shakespeare certainly is. --Whiteknight 01:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I think this does need some rewording. The idea specifically is to exclude guides to television shows and video games, but include guides to Othello and Paradise Lost. The list of "books that would be excluded" is closer to what I mean than than what the wording is/can be interpretted as. For example, I didn't put up the Harry Potter Guide as a work that would be excluded because I think it's reasonable someone would study it. (I also think game guides make more sense on Wikicities, for reasons I've listed elsewhere). Can you think of a better wording? Each time I want to make the policy lean closer to "instructional guides" than to "what someone thinks we should host for them." --MShonle 02:59, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

I guess i understand the point, no sense trying to duplicate a video-game-specific website. We could reword it to say something along the lines of "only discussions on works of art and literature" although a solid case could possibly be made to classify certain peices of recent culture (movies, TV shows, videogames) as "art". And then if we allow all "how to" guides, we will get some gems (like "how to fix cars"), and then we will get some content that shouldnt necessarily be here (like "how to beat megaman"). The only recourse, perhaps, is to leave the guideline ambiguous, and make a decision on a case-by-case basis. --Whiteknight 02:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

kelvSYC's thoughts

I'm in opposition to most of the changes - why should we bend over to Google's policies? If it is just so that content can be moved to Wikicities, then these changes are simply unreasonable, however sound they are. Wikibooks is not Wikicities - otherwise Wikibooks as a project would cease to have meaning. Wikibooks is not a place to offload unwanted stuff by other wikis, whether it be Wikipedia, Wiktionary, or Wikicities. It should not be a jump-off point for people who want to start their own wiki (Wikiversity, Wikijunior), and it should not be a supplement to someone's for-profit group (Wikicities).

I'm particularly opposed to the prohibition of certain types of books - this new policy, if wrongly interpreted, would not allow us to write a book on Poker strategy, especially on how to tell if opponents are bluffing when they bet. It would not allow us to write about erotic art because someone would believe it's pornography. It would not allow us to write a book on video games as people will say that the fact that it is based on a fictional work means it wouldn't belong on Wikibooks, even if the book is about how to play (and win) at a video game. I will, however, support those changes that mirror the original spirit of Wikibooks in the sense that we shouldn't have a jokebook as it doesn't teach anything.

We don't need a new policy - let's work on enforcing existing policies first. KelvSYC 16:07, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi KelvSYC! I don't think that any books about playing poker would be excluded with these rules. (They certainly were worded to avoid gambling itself, but not talking about gambling. E.g. you cannot place bets on the wiki, but you can talk about bet placing strategies. Since betting is not "a book" anyway, this is probably too confusingly worded.) So, we should be careful about the wording and the interpretation. I think a book about erotic art could be acceptable as well. It just depends on how people write it. If they push the limits and it really is pornography, then it should be deleted. If they are respectfully done then there shouldn't be a problem.

As for the game guides, that might merit a separate vote. When thinking about the mission of Wikibooks, I just don't see how game guides fit in. The problem, to me, is that if we allow game guides then we'd have to allow the joke book and practically books on anything. I don't think Grand Theft Auto is instructional or educational, for example. Also, the game guides are really popular, so I think that would give wikicities a good boost (it's the same people as behind wikibooks, so our site would benefit).

But I think new policy is in order, because it's not clear at all where we currently stand. Some people think that Wikibooks should have a narrow scope limited mostly to instructional resources and how-tos (the Textbook camp). Another group thinks Wikibooks should have as broad scope possible, to include all books (the Nonfiction camp). Still others think Wikibooks should be a free wiki hosting service to anyone (the Zero standards camp). By stating our goals more clearly processes like the VFD will be much more streamlined.

Personally, I think the goal of making free, open instructional-resources and how-tos is a wonderful goal. I'm in the Textbook camp. I also feel that's the intended mission of Wikibooks. I think that the best way to meet that goal is to limit our scope to exactly that. If we try to be everything to everyone we could end up being nothing to everyone. I still feel that those who want zero standards should start their own wiki and stop trying to bend Wikibooks into that. They could call it WikiAgitators, since they strongly support the "agitator" and activist mentality in everything that they do. But it just wouldn't be right for us to have taken money from people who thought they were benefiting an instructional resource project for that money to be spent housing the kind of books we've already deleted.

The agitator philosophy is quite popular around here, because it's similar to the free-form wiki spirit, but I just wish those in that camp would realize we're talking about the scope of just one site, and that we're not judging or condemning other sites by limiting our scope. I'm also a bit curious that, if they believe so strongly in having zero standards, why they aren't starting their own wikis. Certainly they should conceed that someone would reasonably want to set up a narrowly-scoped textbook site and that there would be value in doing so. I'm trying to convince them that that's what was intended when WikiBooks was started in the first place. --MShonle 19:01, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, we can't tolerate the "zero standards" thing now, do we? Otherwise it would be a "vandal's wiki". That's beside the point. If you recall arguments that I've made in the past, we should allow for, say, RPGs, which instructs players on how to complete a game, thus it, by the definition above, can constitute a textbook. I'm in the middle of the "textbook" and "nonfiction" as defined by yourself, in the sense that I am all for instructional material - that is, tools to help us teach and learn better (not necessarily strictly educational - ie. not necessarily compliant to any published educational syllabus).

On the topic of scope, I also want to refer to an old revision of my talk page where I proposed a broadening of scope (at the time, the official scope was "textbook", although it was de facto nonfiction) over the "whether biographies are instructional material" debate, and it seemed to have good support (albeit blindly) from a selection of the more active "higher-ranked" users. (This occured at the same time as User:Aya self-nominated for bureaucratship, and that user is firmly of the "nonfiction" viewpoint) The prevalent view at the time was that Wikibooks was organically growing in scope to accomodate a more general "instructional resource" - so, for instance, a book is judged by how instructional it is, similar to how Wikipedia articles are judged by how encyclopedic it is. KelvSYC 22:17, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

As a side-note I think that the Nikola Tesla biography should have been allowed. But I think we need to think deeply about what high-level knowledge can't be described in the Textbook Camp that could be in the Nonfiction Camp? (I claim that the enumerated policy is the position of the Textbook Camp, though I implore people to pick through the wording and suggest alternative wordings that are less ambiguous/more precise.) I've been making this list myself, to see if anything really vital is getting left out. I can think of the Game Guides and, say, An Episode Guide to Growing Pains getting left out. But both of those can be Wikicities... does it really make sense to have game guides both here and on WC? It just seems rather confusing to me that people want to over-generalize WikiBooks so much given that WC (with its "city" idea) seems much more natural at being an anything to anyone place. But I'm willing to consider the possibility that the Textbook statement leaves out vital knowledge... I just want to see some examples, because I believe most knowledge can be taught even in the Textbook constraints. --MShonle 01:37, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

In the interests perhaps of aiding our sister wikis (and presumably therefore helping the entire wiki movement), we should consider limiting certain subjects to one wiki, and certain subjects to another wiki. At the same time, we need to ask whether WikiCities provides the book-building framework and environment that WikiBooks does? Can something like a structured game guide really grow and mature in the anything-goes atmosphere like WikiCities? For that matter, Can something like a biography be written up in the instructional atmosphere of Wikibooks, when it might benefit more from the reference atmosphere of wikipedia? It's a question of atmosphere, and we need to ensure that the right materials get supported in the right places to encourage proper growth and development. --Whiteknight 02:21, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with wikicities as a venue for game guides, I'm using it already. At a time when a game guide shift looked imminent I decided to start my new Grand Theft Auto III guide over there instead. The development environment feels no different except that a handful of MediaWiki 1.5 features aren't up and running yet. Wikicities allows anything, but each wikicity does not. In the case of Gameinfo, it's a fine environment. Indeed its game data pages provide a somewhat superior entry into the guides as here on WB it's up to each individual author to provide a "what's this game about?" sort of section. I think it's counterproductive to have two "rightful" homes for one material type. We already enforce that non-annotated texts go to Wikisource, encyclopedias go to Wikisource or Wikipedia, and community projects go to Wikicities. However in the case of game guides they could go in either place. I'm not sure this is a good idea. Wikibooks' traffic is no doubt greater than Gameinfo's is, and whether the decision to shift is made now when we have 50 guides, or later when we have 200 guides and people start clamouring for a GameFAQs-esque interface for them, I think it is a change that WILL be made. Garrett^Talk 04:00, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Isn't gameinfo newer than some of our older game guides (Chip's Challenge, for example)? If so, that means that gameinfo shouldn't have existed as a Wikicities wiki due to overlapping scope, if my information about Wikicities is correct... KelvSYC 16:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but its reach goes far beyond game guides and also includes game data. Ultimately it was up to Angela & co to give it the go-ahead, and I'm sure they were well aware of Wikibooks' game content when they did so. Garrett^Talk 05:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

The other thing is that with the way this is going, Wikibooks is no more than a mere Wikicities wannabe: why don't we just move the entire wiki to something like textbooks.wikicities.org while we are at it? If this policy goes, I can't see why Wikibooks should keep its distinct identity... KelvSYC 14:54, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

The AdSense prohibitions at most would only affect a handful of books and "books." Largely the site would be the same... I guess I don't see your connection to WC here. --MShonle 22:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

A Wikicities wannabe, hmmm? That gives me a good idea for an April Fools' Monobook.css... meheheheheh... anyway, a good 60%+ of our policy was and is forked from old WP policies--does this mean that we are textbooks.wikipedia.org? Well actually I think we were at some point, but that doesn't mean we are just a fattened encyclopedia. But now that we've sorted out AdSense's ambiguities the only things that will really be affected are the game guides. And would a Wikibooks without game guides feel all that different? Garrett^Talk 13:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

IMO, yes, due to the broadened scope of Wikibooks over the years, and the various facilities that have been proposed to deal with it (eg. WB:CCO). If we broadened our scope, I can't see how it can possibly be narrowed without a major uprising of some sort... KelvSYC 16:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider game guides moving over to WC to be the equivalent of an uprising. Remember: Any transition will be dealt with appropriately. It wouldn't be just suddenly the books are deleted. I imagine it could be a transition phase that would last months. (Either to do the moving itself, or to leave up copies and pointers and advance notice.) As far as AdSense is concerned it would exclude a handful of books. On the face of it, WikiBooks would look no different. As for the game guides: I consider that a major win for Wikicities, a project I very much want to see succeed. --MShonle 02:24, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. Right now Wikicities is viewed by a significant number of Wikipedians (and no doubt many wiki-outsiders) as basically a dumping-ground for any cruft they don't want. The more legitimate content Wikicities can offer the more popular it will become, and thus in turn the prospected Wikimedia projects using Wikicities as their test-beds will be able to get off the ground. Also the fact that each wikicity is individually customisable without affecting other projects is a definite plus. For example my recent experiment with guide-specific stylesheets would be technologically impossible on Wikibooks without either a MediaWiki customisation to allow uploading to the server's /skins/ folder or else enabling offsite image insertion and thus opening up a can of worms for anon-accessible image spamming. Such a silly little feature would be both difficult and dangerous to implement here for use in what would end up as only a very small percentage of our content. Wikibooks can't accommodate any sort of gamer-friendly interface, and so will probably never truly make gamers feel at home. Having now worked on game guides both on Wikibooks and Gameinfo, I'd have to say I prefer Gameinfo, even with ad sidebars and MediaWiki 1.4 limitations taken into account. Garrett^Talk 05:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow, that looks pretty neat. I've been wanting to play with CSS tricks for some the material here. Mostly it means using templates, but templates have limited use because you can't even use a template as an argument to a template! But again, that looks really nice. --MShonle 05:37, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Not just game guides, but a lot more material. What about Cookbook? It's not a textbook if we are simply talking about academia - even if it does claim to teach you how to cook using pratical recipe examples. So you want to move everything in Cookbook to cookbook.wikicities.org? Anyway, an informal look at RC shows that about 40-50% of active contributions would be, under the proposed cirtieria, not suitable for Wikibooks. That's quite a significant bunch. KelvSYC 16:30, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia Is/Is not

I found this was telling, and far more important than a wikicities requirements list:

Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive. Anyone reading Wikipedia can edit an article and the changes are displayed instantaneously without any checking to ensure appropriateness, so Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images are appropriate for children or adhere to specific social norms. While obviously inappropriate content (such as inappropriate links to shock sites) is usually removed immediately, except from an article directly concerning the content (such as the article about pornography), some articles may include objectionable text, images, or links, provided they do not violate any of our existing policies (especially Neutral point of view), nor the law of the state of Florida in the United States, where the servers are hosted.

It seems that several proposed rules (such as no adult content) go against the wikipedia precedent. Of the two, being an official WikiMedia sister project, I think our policies should mirror wikipedia, not wikicities. Being the first and foremost wikimedia project, I think it should be taken as having the Board's approval.

The quote was taken from wikipedia:WP:NOT. Note that this is official policy, and is still being updated and referenced to this day. --Gabe Sechan 23:58, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

In particular, these are the rules I think it conflicts with:

• Hacking/cracking content with specific cracking details/exploits or scripts. Any computer security auditing instructional resource must not venture into the territory of how to perform a specific crack. However, it can discuss principles behind cracking techniques and how to guard against them
• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
• Pornography, adult, or mature content
• Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others, including (but not limited to) content condoning harassment, intimidation, property destruction, espionage, terrorism

Note that it would still need to be a book in educational form to be accepted.--Gabe Sechan 00:02, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

There's no reason why we can't be more restrictive than WikiPedia. And I mean that sentence in the most literal sense: We can allow only what WikiPedia would allow, and additionally disallow extra materials. For example, the requirement that a book actually be broad enough in scope to (one day) become a full book would serve our purposes quite well (this is the Standards of Quality clauses). People don't mind if they see lots of short (<32k) WikiPedia articles. But for WikiBooks if that's the length of most of our completed books (for example, lots of "books" of the scope found in How to catch a pickerel) then people would scoff at the notion that we even claim to be writing books. It makes a lot more sense for us to have scope requirements more restrictive than WikiPedia.

What would the consequence of scope requirements be? Well, there'd be a lot less "eternal stub" books that won't go anywhere. The really strong material would then get merged in as chapters or sections of existing or developing books. Thus, it's mostly an organizational change than it is a content change: At some level the same information could be found, so it's more about encouraging expressions of information that lend themselves well to the notion of online textbooks, rather than an actual restriction on information.

Anyway, regarding some of your specific points, the exclusion of "Any other content that promotes illegal activity or infringes on the legal rights of others, including (but not limited to) content condoning harassment, intimidation, property destruction, espionage, terrorism" is actually a re-emphasized version of our NPOV requirement! There's no conflict at all; in fact, a proper reading of the NPOV requirements would imply such an exclusion. It just makes sense sometimes to spell it out, particularly given that we've had problems with materials like that before being put on WikiBooks. A programmer will look at redundant rules and have a primal urge to delete them. A pragmatist could see the reasons why some redundancy in the wording of our policy would help make it less ambiguous. --MShonle 02:24, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not talking about the rules of whats a book vs what isn't. I have no problems with that, and it makes sense that the difference between articles and books causes us to have some differences from wikipedia. I'm saying that the WIkipedia Is/Is Not list seems to give a very clear depiction of what the vision is for Wikimedia projects, and that cutting out material because it may be "objectionable" is definitely counter to that picture. --Gabe Sechan 16:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

(edit conflict, what I've said is probably redundant) The wikicities base was only a suggestion. But it really depends on how you see the project; do you see it, as the founders apparently did, as a place to write GFDL textbooks for schools/universities? Or do you see it as a site where any legitimate book with an instructive purpose, even on subjects not taught in such settings, should be allowed? I think different opinions on what we are and aren't is the basis of a lot of the problem here. Garrett^Talk 02:53, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd put myself firmly in the second camp. I see no reason why an instructive book should be disallowed because it isn't a textbook. There's a lot of things not taught in college that are useful to know. I also think it would hurt wikibooks to do so, those books bring in traffic, and every additional reader is a possible contributor. --Gabe Sechan 16:33, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll second the opinion of this user. KelvSYC 17:12, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Self-harm

Upon first inspection, there doesn't seem to be any rules pertaining to self-inflicted harm. The illegality clause obviously rules out a book like: 450 Ways to Commit Suicide, but if I'm not mistaken it's isn't illegal to be anorexic. However I highly doubt that a book entitled How to Hide Anorexia from Friends and Family is the kind of thing that we would want on wikibooks. We just need some sort of policy restricting books on self-inflicted harm as well as a clearly defined set of standards dictating what exactly this means. For example I wouldn't want a how to guide on cutting yourself to be allowed but I would be okay with a BDSM manual. --Genericdave 09:27, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

The list

I'm not a regular here (but one of my books was moved to Wikibooks, so I'm not a complete outsider either). Anyway, this list is bad. The most important points are:

• Hacking/cracking content with specific cracking details/exploits or scripts. Any computer security auditing instructional resource must not venture into the territory of how to perform a specific crack. However, it can discuss principles behind cracking techniques and how to guard against them
  • This makes it de facto impossible to make a decent textbooks on computer security, network administration or cryptography. Check any good textbook for those subjects - they discuss the attacks, often in a very fine detail.
• Pornography, adult, or mature content
  • I'm fine about banning outright porn, but a lot of material is not very suitable for children, especially in medicine.

Some minor points:

• Illicit drugs and drug paraphernalia
  • Synthesis of chemical drugs is described in normal chemistry textbooks. The other candidate - cultivation of marijuana is rarely described in real textbooks, but it's legal in some countries. Almost any drug is legal "in some country".
• Gambling or casino-related content; except for resources that describe the sports abstractly without any participation in actual games or betting
  • It's just a sport. I don't see why should we ban bridge while allowing chess.

Now about the other points:

• Any work that would be considered original research or otherwise unverifiable
  • We better find a good definition of the banned original research, because some research is involved in writing about any book.
• Any entertainment guides or hobby guides that are based on created works of fiction
  • You mean, like, computer game howtos ? I don't see why we should ban those while allowing traditional games.
• References that are only records of facts, dates, persons, charts, etc that lack instructional value
  • I've seen a lot of arguments what's the right place for stuff like the system-independent libc reference manual. Most people think the right place is here (I think it's Wikipedia, but anyway). So is this kind of content appropriate for wikibooks or not ?
• Any topic that is taught as a serious course, from kindergarten up to and including the university level, is included, provided that the writing itself is written from a neutral point of view (NPOV) and does not violate the immediate exclusions set forth. Cookbooks qualify because there are legitimate cooking courses.
  • There are legitimate cooking courses, but should it really be the main criterion ? Few people attend those, most will use the cookbook in private. Are there legitimate chess courses ? Or civilization 3 courses ? I think a better criterion is needed.

Taw 00:37, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Generally I agree with you

• hacking - I agree, we shouldn't prohibit writing about it in detail
• mature content - but f.e. medicine falls under exclusions ("serious course"), so we can keep this prohibition
• original content - ok, there can be some doubt here. I think the main factor for decision will be if we can verify information provided by the book
• serious courses - I like this approach, what are you suggesting instead?

--Derbeth ^talk 00:56, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

What are we using this page for?

I'm getting confused here. I thought this page was all about how policies should be changed, yet nothing seems to be happening with "closed votes" and no progress on anything.

What appears to be a significant policy change has happened on Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks, but completely without community concensus or support. Mind you, with Jimbo being benevolant dictator and ruler of all Wikimedia projects he is somewhat entitled to doing things like that, but additional text was added beyond what Jimbo wrote, and that does deserve to have some further discussion before being substantially changed.

More importantly, we need to BE BOLD here and make this page useful to actually modify policies. Right now, all that happens is to argue endlessly about what the policies might be, but nothing gets changed unless somebody arbitrarily is bold and makes the changes to official policy. I'm openly admitting that I've made changes to official policy without formal community concensus, simply because I felt it was something that needed to be done.

The danger of having an admin or other project leader make arbitrary changes to policy is that you can put in patent nonsense into the policies, and this is also something ripe for a huge edit war of historic proportions if it isn't dealt with properly. These policies are also the fundimental basis for justification to delete content here, or to generally govern activity of what goes on with this project. As such, we need to decide how changes to these pages will happen.

I could argue about several forms of governance on Wikibooks, but the typical model used on most Wikimedia projects is participatory democracy to conduct legislative changes. That is precisely what IMHO this page represents, and is the forum to make policy changes. This is an underutilized page and I have yet to see a single policy change happen with this forum, yet policies are being modified and changed... even enforced policies. The way those policies are being changed is not the way it should happen.

I guess I'm also trying to say that Wikibooks has "grown up" enough that we need to get a more formalized process of updating policies. Argue with me on this point if you don't agree, but there have been several new admins added to Wikibooks, not all of whom have the same philosophy.

Here is my proposal:

1. Get rid of everything on this page that currently is for some arbitrarily future vote that will never happen. Basically I'm suggesting we blank this page and move on.
2. Turn this page into something like the VfD discussions, but with an eye for policy changes. If the vote is to take place in the future, it needs to remain on the talk pages, not on the main vote page. You can form a "comittee" to try and hammer out the specific language of a policy change, but once you have come up with the language and idea for a policy change, don't just change the policy... have a vote on that policy change here.
3. Consolidate all other policy votes from everywhere else on Wikibooks that are of a general nature. I'm not talking about policies for an individual Wikibook or to discuss how to approach a single topic, but if it affects multiple Wikibooks or is a part of a general discussion, that vote should take place here, not on some other policy discussion page that may get lost in the shuffle.
4. Be specific about the changes to policy you are proposing to make. This means you need to state what the policy is currently and what you want to change that policy to become. A good example of this is with the current vote on Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks#Wikibooks is not a dictionary which has both an existing policy and a proposed new policy that will be the modified text.
5. Keep the time to vote for a specific policy change time-limited in some form. I've strongly suggested that Wikibooks tends to take a little bit more time to accomplish things than Wikipedia, so I'm suggesting this time period to vote should be about a month or until concensus has been reached. A well-worded proposal that follows existing practices is likly to be unanimously accepted anyway, but it still needs community approval...especially on enforced policies.
6. Get rid of proposed policies. Either get formal approval to enforce or get rid of it. The place to approve the text of the proposal is here. If the proposal still needs work, fine, keep it as a proposed policy. The problem is that we are now using these proposed polcies to enforce actions on Wikibooks. Most of the proposed policies are fairly well written anyway, and if we need to make a change to those policies, this is an appropriate forum to make those changes.
7. We should allow and even encourage multiple proposals to change a policy, even the same text. At that point we can try to select the version of the text that as an individual contributor we like the best.
8. If possible, when proposing a policy change, we should also try to identify which Wikibooks would be most affected by the new policy.

Policy changes are just to arbitrary right now, and I think it is time to seriously "clean house" here. --Rob Horning 17:08, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

It does seem like I arrived just in time to witness a massive change in the Wikibook structure. And from what I've seen, it really is needed. Not much here seems very organized, and that should be remedied. We need to have one location to discuss proposed policies, with an attached voting page when it is ready to be voted upon. I agree that this page should probably come close to being being totally blanked and started over. I do not think we should only allow changes through proposals though. Small changes that reflect community consensus do not need to be proposed. Someone can be bold and just add it. If enough people watch the policy pages, people can catch bad things being added. But I think the first major discussion need to take place about the issue over What is Wikibooks. --LV ^{(Dark Mark)} 17:34, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

This obscure page (Wikibooks talk:Policy/Vote) seems to be an artifact from earlier times, and is not in the location that I expect. Try Wikibooks:Staff lounge or Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks. --Kernigh 22:59, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

But what about #A directly enumerated WikiBooks policy? It is nearly finished and after some tweaks it could help deciding whether a text is suitable for Wikibooks. --Derbeth ^talk 23:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Read the rest of the comments on this page. There's major objections to just about every rule on it, many of which have a solid basis (although I'm admittedly biased, as I made many of them). I wouldn't consider it anywhere near nearly finished- its basicly at a standstill between camps who haven't changed their mind, but got tired of arguing as they knew neither had a consensus. --Gabe Sechan 23:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I have completely missed "A directly enumerated WikiBooks policy" because it was not posted at Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks. Thus I have not yet participated in the discussion about it. As for game manuals (a subset of entertainment guides), I have created Wikibooks:Game manual guidelines and Wikibooks talk:Game manual guidelines to discuss that. --Kernigh 00:20, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

This page is not an artifact from an earlier time, but an attempt by Aya to try and get some movement on what is going on here on Wikibooks in terms of policies. I'm just trying to formalize this process and provide a central place for policy vote decisions to be made, as opposed to votes on half a dozen other pages that I don't have time to look at all of the time myself. I also think these votes are inappropriate for places like Staff Lounge, which should be more for new users Q/A and general announcements to the Wikibooks community. We need someplace to do these kind of votes, so why not here? I don't want a major policy change to happen and I'm not aware of it even occuring until I see the rule invoked on the VfD page. --Rob Horning 15:47, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I thought this talk page was a subpage of Wikibooks talk:Policy. Actually, there is a Wikibooks:Policy/Vote page. I must have read too many Wikipedia talk pages...

Then, yes, I would support using Wikibooks:Policy/Vote as the location for all policy changes that cause voting. --Kernigh 04:15, 18 November 2005 (UTC)