WikiNotesBrainstorm
(copy) from yosofun's original proposal at village pump
New idea to complement the idea of Wikiversity/books... WikiNotes – where anyone can post notes filling in the details between the lines of science books (and, in time, other books).
Description by example: most physics major textbooks (take Griffiths or Shankar or Sakurai) have lines of confusing text (that are often obscure in its long-paragraph form – better if rehashed as notes) and equations that seem to come out of nowhere (many steps in-between are omitted – better if all steps were shown).
WikiNotes would be a collection of open-source notes that fill in the confusing parts of textbooks. There should be no copy-right problems with the original textbooks, as WikiNotes would clarify the text, but not plagiarize it.
WikiNotes would be a valuable resource for students attempting to learn on their own. The barrier of not understanding a textbook shall be broken! It would also be a good resource for other students in prep for their courses.
I have been considering setting up a site like this for a long time now. With the advent of Media Wiki, something like this might actually work out (easily, too). Such a site would require ample publicity for enough people to contribute notes – thus, it'll be best to be called WikiNotes.
I can contribute a number of booknotes for WikiNotes once someone sets up the basic MediaWiki for it – or, if I gain permission to do so.
new comments
I am prepared to fill in the blanks in between the lines to a few physics books I have read. Now, all we need is a site (and more contributors!). (Yosofun 06:41, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC))