The Missing Manuals series, published by O’Reilly Media, has migrated its book about Wikipedia to Wikipedia. Starting today, the entire contents of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual (O’Reilly) by John Broughton is available for free online for editing and updating just like any other Wikipedia entry.
“What makes this project different than any of the other zillion books online today is the format we’ve chosen–a wiki,” explains Peter Meyers, Missing Manuals’ managing editor. “Book viewers will be able to do all the same things they do on any other wiki: view the document, edit it, add to it–in short, whatever they want. The book is going to reside in the site’s Help area, naturally, since the book is all about helping people edit and navigate their way around Wikipedia.”
“Once it’s live, our hope is that the Wikipedia community will flock to the book and ‘curate’ it by adding tips, tricks, and by updating the material to reflect changes to Wikipedia since we’ve published the original edition. Down the road, when it comes time for us to consider publishing a second edition of the print book, we’ll think about whether to incorporate some of the community’s changes into the new edition,” Meyers added.
The drive to post “Wikipedia: The Missing Manual” to Wikipedia was spearheaded by author John Broughton. Broughton, a registered editor at Wikipedia since 2005 with more than 20,000 edits under his belt, says he’s looking forward to seeing what changes and improvements his fellow Wikipedians will make to his book.
Originally posted on January 27, 2009 @ 11:20 am