Getcher Books in Wiki Format

Looking for something to read online? You might want to try Wikibooks, a Wiki structure that's been built to hold books. It's over two years old, so there's a lot to see here. It's at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

If you use Wikipedia this front page will look kinda familiar. You can browse books by category, alphabetically, or by Dewey Decimal (Dewey Decimal?). The front page also has information about new books, books of the month, and Wikijunior books (books for younger readers.) There's an icon system that shows you how far through the five-stage development process a particular Wikibook has gone (sparse text, developing text, maturing text, developed text, and comprehensive text.)

As you might expect the books here are pretty tech heavy, but there's other sections as well. I went to the Miscellaneous section and looked at the book on raising chickens, which is marked as Developed Text (I wish those icons were a shade bigger.)

The book was divided up into a simple outline, with sections including Building a Pen, Local Regulations, Watering, Feeding, and so on. Each of the sections had its own icon for completeness but they weren't very useful. Local Regulations, for example, was marked as complete when actually it was empty.

Some of the other material gave me pause. The book recommended giving chickens orange peels to play with when they're bored. There was also an incomplete list of things that chickens wouldn't eat. It rather reminded me of the Monty Python sketch how to feed a goldfish. AND THE OCCASIONAL PHEASANT. Note I don't know if chickens like to play with orange peels or not, but I would have liked a little sourcing.

Moving away from the chickens I tried a different book. I wandered through some that were less books and more tutorials, and one which was simply a public domain book poured into Wikibooks (maybe they'll annotate it later) and ended up at "Teaching Assistant in France Survival Guide".

This was an extensive overview of the process of being a teaching assistant in France, divvied up into sections. There were many pictures and external links throughout the information. Maybe it's because it's such a time-sensitive topic that wouldn't age well in a book, but I thought this was an excellent example of the possibilities of Wikibooks.

Wikibooks makes an excellent structure available and the icons are useful when they're accurate. Is there some way to make available discussion groups for the books before they begin production? It might be useful to be able to gauge interest and ability to participate before beginning writing.

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