Wikibooks:Incubator

This page contains a draft proposal for a Wikibooks policy or guideline. Discuss changes to this draft at the discussion page. Through consensus, this draft could become an official Wikibooks policy or guideline.

The Wikibooks Incubator is a proposed process for handling projects at Wikibooks.

A project naturally begins its life as a minor project, potentially growing to become a major project. Projects that do not meet a minimal standard of being book-like may be excluded from Wikibooks.

At Wikibooks, each book is effectively incubated as a minor project with its own scope, audience, writing style, standards, community of contributors, and space to grow. Wikibooks includes some rules that apply to all books, but in general contributors are left to make decisions about books on their own.

Minor projects may also cover one or a few related topical areas, are book-like or are useful to coordinate efforts between related books, and should fit within Wikibooks' typical standards. Minor projects are sometimes given leeway to see how they might develop.

Minor projects useful for coordinating efforts between related books can be hosted in the Wikibooks namespace as a WikiProject or use a subject page's discussion page. Creating other minor projects is as simple as starting a new book in the main namespace, picking a name for it, and following Wikibooks' naming policy for any pages belonging to it.

Major projects cover one to many large topical areas and may fit a bit outside of Wikibooks' typical standards. Major projects are book-like or have many book-like works.

Existing major projects have:

• a self-titled namespace.
• a link on the sidebar.
• a prominent mention on the Main Page.

• Wikiversity (past; now an independent Wikimedia project) - began life as a WikiProject of sorts to organize university level works.
• Wikijunior (current) - began life in the main namespace, most books contained Wikijunior in the title.
• Wikimedia Cookbook (current) - began life in the main namespace, following a now defunct naming convention.

The major projects process is the discussion of a nomination to select a possible new major project for Wikibooks, the outcome of which will be determined by consensus. To be considered eligible for promotion, a minor project in this area must already form a vital community, having at least 5 active contributors and 100 well-developed pages. To become a new major project, no less than 30 people and 70% of the people that participate in the discussion must support the decision.