[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I'd expected more imagination from you, Dennis. Anything can exist outside of a capitalistic framework. Certainly textbook publishing could. It already does. See http://www.wikibooks.org/ for just one example.

I should have had the imagination to substitute a different term for "capitalistic", as it's a loaded word that muddies the waters.

Say rather, the creation of textbooks requires time and effort by trained experts in the topics the texts cover. It's possible they do other things to make their living, and are willing to contribute their time and services on a pro bono basis. It's also possible they may need to be paid for their labor. And the books must be edited and proofread, and put through a production process, whether electronic or hardcopy versions are the end result. If hardcopy is the desired output, the books must be printed and bound, warehoused and distributed. There will be monetary costs, and the money has to come from somewhere, regardless of the economic system under which they are produced.

I'm aware of wikibooks, and it's a product of folks who make their living in others ways donating time and effort. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that model can fully meet the demands for educational texts.

I think the science-related pages suffer much less from problems in this area than some of the more sensitive contemporary topics. Most pages on Wikipedia tend to be pretty self-policing, and checking the Talk tab and revision history gives you a good idea of problems that may exist with the content there, which is more than you can say for most other sources (including print sources).

Agreed on the scientific and technical pages. There at least there are checkable facts though the conclusions drawn from them may be in dispute.

More subjective topics are another matter entirely.

Interestingly, what Wikipedia and its related projects are doing is a form of peer-review.

The problem for Wikipedia is how you determine who is a "peer", when anyone can make an edit.

If some enterprising organization were to make an easy-to-use way for faculty members to select chapters of existing books plus journal articles and save the results so that students could be assigned a POD or ebook version of the compilation, for a price competitive with existing textbooks, I think it would change the market entirely (and for the better).

I concur, and I don't see technical obstacles to doing it. I do see a lot of obstruction and foot dragging from people with a stake in the way things are done now.
______
Dennis