Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2006/August

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Over the past few days I've added some books I found and removed others. Since I am not familiar with all subjects, books that appear nearly complete to me might actually be missing a lot of content, so I would appreciate it if others would look through the list and double-check that it's accurate. I've also simplified the listing criteria and been bold and added a link to the page to the sidebar, so browsers won't have to look through lots of stubs to find a good book to read. Between the featured books and the good books list lower on the page, Wikibooks seems to have acquired a very impressive collection! And in only three years! Thanks in advance, hagindaz 02:01, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I looked over the list. I am a little disheartened to see that only one of the books to which I am the main contributor made it to the list. Although, I realize that alot of my books are in pretty early states of development. I didn't see many books that definately dont belong on the list, although there were a few books with a few more red links then I would have liked. Overall, I think it is a good idea to pick out some of our "best and brightest" books, and put them smack-dab on the main page. Good job with that. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 02:20, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I think it would be fine if you added some of the books on which you are working to the featured listing. Kellen ^T 17:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Discussion moved to Wikibooks talk:Publication of the Month --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm trying to figure out what exactly is the status of the wikiversity project? I've spent some time over at meta sifting through old discussions, and i can't seem to find anything indicating what the state of that project is now. Is wikiversity moving off wikibooks? is it moving soon?

The problem I am having now is that wikibooks content and wikiversity content is intermingling at an alarming rate. Wikiversity courses are being listed as "New Books", and some are even finding their way onto bookshelves. Books are being listed as wikiversity courses. On top of that, wikiversity courses are utilizing some prime namespace that could be better utilized for the wikibooks mission. Now, i'm not in favor necessarily of deletion (because I know it's survived a VfD already, albeit nearly a year ago), but I want to know if wikiversity is going to split off soon, because i don't think it will be possible to break it off if it stays too much longer.

If wikiversity doesnt go anywhere, we will need to merge all it's content into the wikibooks fold, which will not be an easy or quick task, by any stretch. If it does have a solid timeline for leaving, perhaps we need to draw a line in the sand to keep material neatly separated. Wikiversity courses and pages should need to be clearly labled as such, to avoid being confused with books. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 02:01, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[]

It has been a long, infuriatingly slow process to start up Wikiversity. Right now I'm serving on the "sub-committee" that is supposedly doing the final prep work to get Wikiversity started on an independent wiki domain, but what is needed now is formal approval from the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. We have done just about everything that was asked by the board and have tried to address their concerns, rewritten policy documents, and held multiple public comment sessions about the concept. In the meantime, it appears as though even the rules to start it up have been changed and additional layers of needless bureaucracy have been added.

In short, I am not holding my breath too much to get this going. I'm not even really sure how to submit an item to the Foundation board anymore for inclusion on the next board meeting agenda (the pages on Meta for that are incredibly out of date and don't appear to be looked at anyway). I suppose I could be a jackass with Jimbo and Anthere and demand directly that it should be dealt with, but that seems to be the only way to get any action happening right now. This issue has been raised multiple times on Foundation-l, with Jimbo playing ignorant and claiming that it hasn't been formally submitted to the board.

I suppose if some Wikibookian was to get hyper-involved with the developer team, this would be a trivial task to accomplish. As de.wikiversity is already up and going, with regular backups and data dumps already part of the Wikimedia project families, I have absolutely no idea why en.wikiversity is so difficult to add to that list. And as demonstrated with the incubator project, if the developers have a pet project they want to see going, it is started up without even seeming approval or community discussion to get it started.

As far as having Wikiversity content cluttering up Wikibooks, you are correct that this is an issue. And this is precisely why the original VfD for Wikiversity was put up. In many ways, I am treating this as a test of the WMF to see if they actually will respond to ordinary user requests or if they have become so insulated from ordinary contributors that it doesn't matter any more. If there is an objection to Wikiversity by board members, I don't know what those objections might be or even reasonable approaches to deal with them right now. All that it really is going to take to get it started is somebody with substantial pull (I'm not that person) to simply say "get it going now!" --Rob Horning 12:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Fair enough. I was never in favor of the wikiversity proposal in the first place, and i certainly am unhappy that the project has been banished, essentially, to become a permanent fixture here on en.wikibooks. However, if the WMF is holding up the works, then I can't get too angry about it: it will go when the WMF gets up and does something about it. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 15:00, 18 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Hmm, well, for a start, just to assure Whiteknight that Wikiversity is about to be set up as an independent project - I am as good as certain about that.

Robert, I have some problems with what you're saying here. First of all, as you know, de.wikiversity.org was never approved by the Foundation - it was simply set up on the basis of an informal request to Brion. Setting up a wiki is never a problem - the problem has always been whether the board (or now also the Special projects committee) approve of the project as a Wikimedia project, and whether it also has approval and support from the community.

I don't think this has simply been about inactivity on behalf of the WMF - it's more complex that that - although you're right in saying it is a test of the WMF. In fact, it's been a test for everyone involved - ie yourself, myself, and many others. Particularly on the subcommittee, we've been trying to identify what will work for Wikiversity and act as a stepping stone to the board in this respect. I'm not sure why you see the WMF being "insulated from ordinary contributors" - setting up Wikiversity is more than saying "this is an interesting idea - let's set it up"; it's more like "is it within our mission, and will it work (and how)?". Sure, the process has been slow and frustrating (and you know I agree with you on this), but, to be honest, I find myself at as partial fault as I do anyone else. Also, what do you mean about Jimbo playing ignorant - I don't think we ever formally submitted the proposal since the board's last recommendation last November - or can you refresh my memory here?

Whiteknight, I'm curious, what do you mean by never being in favour of the proposal in the first place - you mean the one at m:Wikiversity? What do you think of the current one? Also, in no way has the project been permanently banished to Wikibooks for good - I don't know why it was put here in the first place, but the whole point of the current process is to find it a definite home. And to finally address your initial question - you're right in that there will be some ambiguity between Wikibooks and Wikiversity content, and I imagine this will continue - my view on this is that the projects should share as much as possible, but format the content to their own projects' missions, ie textbooks and learning resources. As I've said before, Wikiversity participants will hopefully use their learning to write textbooks at Wikibooks and, conversely, Wikibooks can send people over to Wikiversity to learn how to write (for example). Content will have to be moved from wikibooks to wikiversity - however, the initial restructuring should be done carefully - in no way would I like to see Wikibooks damaged by the forking of Wikiversity material. I'll work as much as I can to make the transition as smooth as possible. Cormaggio 12:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I completely disagree that this has been difficult. It is hardly difficult at all to create a new sub-domain for an already existing internet domain and setup a new mediawiki port for that sub-domain. Indeed Brion has done that several times since the Wikiversity vote. This is invented bureaucratic red tape, pure and simple. And the whole issue of the "special projects" committee wasn't even set up until well after the vote and even a full rewrite and review of the Wikiversity charter. In fact, it was precisely when I was trying to re-submit the revised Wikiversity proposal to the board that the whole special project committee was started. I'm not saying that the work of the sub-committee hasn't been appreciated, but I think it wasn't strictly necessary and could have been done by Wikiversity participants on a beta version of Wikiversity on its own domain. BTW, regarding de.wikiversity: the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees has never said that it was improper for Brion to act in the manner that he did, nor were any attempts done to "freeze" that wiki pending board approval of the Wikiversity concept (IMHO a good way to stop that from becoming a precedent). In fact, Brion has started several other wikis, notably the incubator wiki, without having to go through the community. Indeed Brion acted as if there had never been any community generated proposals for an incubator wiki. So why is Wikiversity any different? The only reason I can see is because a board member didn't initiate the idea nor did a developer. --Rob Horning 18:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Very briefly (as this discussion could go on for a while), on the Special projects committee, its setting up was coincidental with the development of Wikiversity, and was set up to make the process clearer and easier to set up projects like Wikiversity, not add more red tape. In setting up Wikiversity, we may have set a precedent of good practice, or possibly not - which we will need to evaluate (and which I am currently doing). But I simply can't accept that this process is just about 'turning on' a wiki - it's about developing a rationale for the Wikiversity project. You may argue that this was done some time ago - I would agree with this to a point - but then why do we still get comments like these? And, while I agree that Brion's setting up of the incubator wiki (for example) was not-well enough explained (and hence, bad organisational practice), this is exactly why the Wikiversity process has been so difficult (or, at least, lengthy), despite how annoyed you may be about it. I'd really like to discuss this further with you, but am aware it could go on and on - should we move to our talk pages, or a new page on Meta perhaps, or take it to email? Cormaggio 10:27, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

To answer your previous question (albeit a little late, on my part), I was never in favor of the creation of the new wikiversity project at all, under any proposal. A few hundred people voted (i can't remember where), and I voted against it's creation. I would venture to say that nearly one third of all the voters agreed with me.

I won't go into all my reasons for that here, however, because that isnt the topic at hand. If we don't make a stark differentiation between content that is "wikibooks" content, and content that is "Wikiversity" content, then when wikiversity finally does go to it's own home, we are going to end up with heaps and heaps of duplicate information on both servers. Bot only does it not benefit anybody to have essentially two wikibooks, but it will also be a detriment in that our already limited userbase is going to get cut in half. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:57, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't know why the articles about unicode (such as Windows Programming/Unicode/Character reference/0000-0FFF) was classified under Windows Programming section. Unicode is indepedent to a certain Operating System so these namings were obviously wrong. Please consider move them elsewhere (without using any operating system as article name) --✉Hello World! 11:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

There aren't no articles on wikibooks, we like to call them book pages as such they can exist in any number of works no matter what title they are under, if you wish to write a book about Unicode you can "copy" them and give credit to the original work,( or similar, you can try to make use of the content on the original location without replicating it). You should check the "dumb" fork policy but if it's not 75% or the original work no one should bother you.
If you are refering to it as article it could have been a stub (no content enought to call it a book or pages in a book), if so and no one was working on it recently it could be moved to a book, preserving any talk pages, other works can use it from there if needed. I also will be using some content about Unicode for the C++ book one of this days...
--Panic 12:12, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Please help me do so. However I don't think this article (I still called it article because it was copied here without asking my opinion) is not any appendices of another book, and should be moved back to wikipedia. --✉Hello World! 13:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

Harrg, remove content from wikibooks, count me out m8t...
You can copy the content to wikipedia if you like giving credit to it, if you are you the original author, if so, you should go about the normal process to get your stuff removed if you made it a contribution to wikipedia, wikibooks can use it and should refer to it in the book (check the start of the C++ book, there are some strange and twilight zone issues with multiple licenses but I think that is not your case). If that is the only cause of your protest (that content is replicated here from wikipedia), it can be replicated (but shouldn´t be a carbon copy, wikibooks is not a backup for wikipedia articles) if this is the case the only action you can take is to check if the book were it's inserted gives the proper credits to wikipedia if not, mark it as a violation and if you have the time write to the proper wikibooks snail mail address or try to check the copyright violations page...--Panic 13:44, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

The fact was that, I am the author who first created them on Chinese and English Wikipedia (and someone copied them onto Japanese and Korean Wikipedia). At one time many articles about Unicode were transwikied to Wikisource. And on May 26 it was then copied here (not transwikied, so the move is without mentioning my contribution). --✉Hello World! 14:00, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't know the procedure of how to move back my articles to English Wikipedia so I seek help here.--✉Hello World! 14:03, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

See Copyright violations, that should do it (but if you think that you incurred in any losses you will have to process the 1st violator of your copyright, and request all others to pull down the content, this may depend on what you really want or the law under you do it), this Internet think made IP and copyrights a thing of the past, only big corporation can still do something when stuff gets freed...--Panic 18:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

If the content was released under the GFDL (as apparently it was put on en.wikipedia and elsewhere), the person who did that should have at least mentioned the top 5 principle authors including yourself. The meta:transwiki guidelines strongly suggest that you actually copy the entire history. Perfered in this situation is to use the import/export page options, but that is not currently working for the MediaWiki version that Wikibooks is using. BTW, this is a simple thing to correct if you really are concerned about the credit. I hope you don't consider this to be a copyright issue, as it can be corrected easily.

I have never heard a specific percentage that is required in order to consider that it is unique and not violating the proposed forking policy. The main criteria is that content within a wikibook must be seperately maintained, so if you are going to fork content from other Wikimedia projects, please make sure that there is some value added to bring it within a particular book. For example, General Chemistry/Periodic Table does a pretty good job of dealing with a simplified version of a periodic table that is intended just for this one Wikibook. The more elaborate version is on Wikipedia, obviously, but that full version doesn't need to be copied here. I fail to see why this content on Wikibooks needs to be removed if done for a similar reason.

One other aspect to keep in mind is that when trying to compile a "full" version of a Wikibook (usually through transclusion), it helps if that content is hosted locally on this project in some form. For this reason alone, Wikibooks should have a softer stance on forking until the MediaWiki software allows trans-project transclusions. I don't see that happening any time soon. --Rob Horning 19:24, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't really care about the copyright issue, but I do care why unicode is classified under windows programming. Periodic table, for example, is undoubtedly a subset of chemistry.--✉Hello World! 04:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[]

You are misunderstanding Wikibooks then. This is an independent book called "Windows Programming" that is using the Unicode content as a part of its appendix. This is not a "classification" of the content by any means, and you shouldn't have to expect to look in that book if it was the only potential source of this content. --Rob Horning 05:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[]

To be fair, as the current primary contributor to that text, I don't understand why that unicode material was moved to the Windows Programming in the first place. Granted, windows does make strong use of Unicode, but it is hardly platform dependant. If you want to have unicode material in other books, feel free to move it or copy it to a better location. I'll even lend a hand in the move, if you find a better location. Maybe you can start a new book on digital text formats? --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 21:25, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm suggesting it doesn't need to be moved, as Wikibooks is not a collection of independent articles. Content like this can and indeed should belong with individual books if there is a purpose for having it that is related to the content of that book. That is the defense I'm providing for where it is. Suggesting that the content should be moved to a "better place" is suggesting that the content shouldn't be in that book in the first place.

As far as why content like this is being moved around and simply added to the most convieniet book that is handy, I think that is a problem of the Wikibooks cleanup crew in general. We didn't always have a strong naming policy and sometimes content like this, which really isn't book-like when independent, was not really associated strongly with any regular book content. When the naming policy became "enforced policy", some content like this was moved to an individual Wikibook where it appeared as though some links may have been pointing to it, or in some cases it was moved to any book that seemed to be the most appropriate for that content considering all other Wikibooks. That was not the case with this Unicode content, however. One user, User:Pcu123456789, decided on his own by being bold copied this content from Wikisource, as noted by this page history link. As an author/contributor, this certainly was a legitimate thing to add to this book, although that is something best decided by the contributors to that Wikibook. The existance/non-existance of another Wikibook that might be a "better fit" is irrelevant in this case. --Rob Horning 10:45, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I think the Unicode section in his Windows_Programming book should be moved out and form an indepedent book. Should we? --✉Hello World! 12:50, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[]

No, and i'll tell you why: The Windows Programming book does need information about unicode. Programming in modern windows variants does require some knowledge of unicode, and there are plenty of places in windows that either require the explicit use of unicode, or an implicit conversion to unicode. As such, the Windows Programming book should have a section about unicode, and this section (while it needs some work to fit into the book correctly) is appropriate for that purpose. Now, this is not to say that unicode shouldn't be discussed in other books as well, but I don't think that there is quite enough material about unicode to form it's own book. If another book needs to discuss unicode, a link to relevant wikipedia articles, and perhaps a short blurb here about the specific use is all that is required. What you are saying is akin to suggesting that we remove all references to ASCII text from the various programming books, and create an "ASCII" book. I think it is much wiser to simply include links and information about unicode in every book that requires such a discussion. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 14:33, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't think anyone was suggesting that all information on Unicode be removed from Windows Programming. How about keeping the parts about how Windows implements Unicode and move the Character References to a Unicode book. The Windows Programming book could reference the Unicode one. This way there is less redundancy and efforts are concentrated. --Swift 00:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I did think about that, but even that idea has a problem. The unicode material is a list of entries, and is not, therefore a textbook. You can't make a "textbook" out of a bunch of tables and a colorful navigational template. If you separate out this material into it's own book, i predict that book will end up on WB:VFD within a few months. Now, if you want to include this information in multiple books, you could perhaps create a "shared-appendix" that could be transcluded into multiple books. You would, in that instance, have to not only create a shared appendix, but also transclude the information into all the other pages where it might be useful. If you want to move this information out of the Windows Programming book, you are free to attempt it, I won't stop you. Just keep in mind that this material, on it's own, would probably be deleted. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 00:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I wasn't suggesting a book full of mere tables (your suggestion on digital text formats sounds good). Until someone writes those pages, the shared appendix idea seems fine. --Swift 01:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Are there any examples of shared appendices ? --✉Hello World! 08:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Hi, I am user meta:user:Walter. I respectfully request this community to consider my following request; I write a newsletter about what is going on in the Wikimedia projects in all languages. It is my hope that every community, like this one, has some people who read Wikizine. Then I can maybe receive some news from those readers about your project and in the other direction the can inform there community in your own language about the Wikimedia news possibly. I would like to ask this community to include on this page on the top and/or a relevant page a small banner for Wikizine.

If a banner is placed here on the correct page the change that someone here will think about Wikizine and report some local news will increase highly I suspect. Or that people will take a look and read the Wikimedia news. And maybe even share it locally. Here are the banners; meta:Wikizine/banners

If there are questions please ask it here. I will be watching this page for at least two weeks from now on frequently. Greetings, --Walter 14:13, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[]

That's not a bad idea. I would like first to ask what other projects/languages do have such a banner installed. I don't think we will set up en.wikibooks to be the guinnea pig here, but if there are other good examples, that will certainly be comforting. Such a banner could easily go here in the staff lounge, or they could go in the Wikibooks:Community Portal as well. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 17:10, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[]

The EN wikipedia has a text link on w:en:Wikipedia:Community Portal and w:en:Wikipedia:News. After first doing a posting to the projects mailing lists, including Wikibooks ([1]) I have started with the process to visited slowly all wikis to ask there cooperation directly. I have started only last week so it is to early to know the real responds yet. On the smaller projects things go much slower. These have added it already; q:ja:Wikiquote:井戸端, q:pt:Wikiquote:Esplanada, q:nl:Wikiquote:De kantine, w:nl:Wikipedia:De kroeg&w:nl:Portaal:Gebruikersportaal. Several others look good but are waiting for possible more responds for there community.

But what others do has actually nothing to do with this wiki. It is your choise --Walter 23:28, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm certainly not saying that we are dependant upon the actions of the other wikis. However, I won't opt to make wikibooks a guinnea pig for new experiments. If en.wikipedia includes such a link already, however, I feel more assured about the action. I've been to the wikizine link, and it looks alright. I'm going to ask for other users' input here, and hopefully we can put a link up sometime soon. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 15:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I would like to ask for some feedback on this issue from other users. en.wikipedia already includes a link to this "wikizine" at their community portal, and i suggest that we do the same. The site looks legitimate, and could potentially be both a good source of information, but also a good advertising venue for us. I think that we should, perhaps, include a link both at the community portal, but also here in the staff lounge (if we can fit a new link or template box at the top of this crowded page). Any comments/suggestions? --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 15:27, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[]

I created a page for it at Wikibooks:Wikizine. This page was a copy+paste job from a similar page on en.wikipedia. We can post links from staff lounge and community portal to this page, and this page will take people to the site. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:13, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You know how you can write links for subpages like this? [[/My subpage/]]. That extra slash on the end makes it so that you only see the basename, that is My subpage instead of /My subpage. I wish we could have something similar for categories. For instance, if I put a category [[Category:Bar]] on [[Foo/My subpage]], that page gets indexed under F, along with 50 other pages under [[Foo]]. I wish I could have a way of getting it automatically indexed under M without having to write something like [[Category:Bar|M]] -- Kowey 15:52, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There was a discussion somewhere ( i can't remember where) that a bug request was put in to allow a new magic word, such as __SEPARATEPAGESECTION__, or something equally verbose to be put in a category, to specify that the subpages should be automatically separated out into the subpagenames. I don't know what the status of that is. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 17:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Actually, i just found the discussion, it's no more then a few headings above this one. The bug has been requested on bugzilla by User:Kellen, and you are welcome to go show some support, and possibly even vote for it (or however things get done at bugzilla).

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6387

--Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 17:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Done. Many thanks. Hope something like this goes through. It's a minor detail, but somewhat irritating if you think categories are useful -- Kowey 05:18, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Does Wikibooks follow the Wikipedia policy of using common names? It's not made clear in Wikibooks:Naming policy. I'm assuming that we're not restricted to common names, having noticed the Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter.

The reason I'm asking is that I've been making some contributions to English as an Additional Language, which is a reasonable name, but not necessarily the most common name, and before suggesting new pages, categories etc, I thought it might be good to clarify that we've made a good choice for the name. It's a tricky one, as there are so many names and different arguments... so I wanted to clarify the policy first. --Singkong2005 11:43, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think there is a general preference towards using common names, but it certainly isnt a matter of policy (although perhaps it should be). These are books, not encyclopedia articals, so the requirement to use common names isn't that big a deal, so long as the title of the book adequately describes the books contents. The original author of a book (for better or worse) is granted a large amount of lattitude in naming and organizing the book as they see fit. So long as your title describes the contents of your book, and it's properly placed on a bookshelf, there shouldnt be a problem.

However, I will say that if your title of the book isn't the most common, you may consider hijacking some redirect pages, so that users can find your book even when they search for something else. Some other common names for your book might be English as a Second Language, ESL, or English as a Foreign Language. You are welcome to use all these pages as a redirect to your book, if you would like. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:12, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There's no policy on the issue. One book which this should be discussed for is History of the United States, which to the best of my knowledge is a less common name for textbooks than United States History or even the less correct American History. I don't think Wikipedia's history page naming policy should apply in this case. This should be discussed on Wikibooks talk:Naming policy and later added into the policy. --hagindaz 22:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I would add here that in the publishing industry for the 20th Century, most of the book titles tend to be very simple "generic" titles, which seems to be more or less the standard that you should use here for Wikibooks. These are not encyclopedia entries that have massive cross-links all over the project, but these are book titles that are also being used for book development. Certainly a different standard should apply to a book title than for an encyclopedia entry, which has two very different goals.

In the 18th Century and earlier, very very wordy book titles were very common, sometimes being as much as a whole paragraph. Yes, there were exceptions, but you tend to see more "catchy" phrases for book titles recently.

Certainly don't apply Wikipedia rules here for this concept. The naming policy is not so much a book naming policy as a sub-module naming policy, where we do need to impose some sort of order to this project just to keep from tripping over each other's book modules. Even then, the naming of sub-modules is fairly free-form except that they do need to keep the name of the book in part of the title. --Rob Horning 06:56, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Minor bug: There's no link to the Staff lounge or Community portal on the left (or top), for people using the Cologne Blue skin. --Singkong2005 12:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't really know how the skins are supposed to work. I do know that for people using the monobook skin, the sidebar links are editable using the protected MediaWiki:Sidebar page. I dont know if the Cologne Blue skin uses this functionality or not. Either way, I think the best place to discuss a bug like this would be at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org . --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:06, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I just wanted to let all the users here know that there is an ongoing vote for me to become a bureaucrat at Requests for Adminship. Bureaucrats have significant responsibility, and it would be a good idea for all community members to at least be aware of the vote in progress, if not to participate in it.

In addition to that, there are outstanding votes for some other users to become administrators, and ongoing votes for the "CheckUser" privledges as well. All of these issues are very important to wikibooks, so i suggest that all users come in and join the discussion. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:31, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I found material from a now closed computer graphics course online that may be helpful for creating a wikiversity course. 14 Labs dealing with the gimp, opengl, and mainly blender. unfortunatly the blender tutorials use a very old version of blender and the gimp since the course was closed in 2004. The gimp doesn't seem to have changed much, blender has though.

Well if someone wants to use it and ask for permission the link is CPSC 324 Computer Graphics --V2os 22:07, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have just been perusing Wikibooks:Policies_and_guidelines and would like to propose that:

• Wikibooks:Editing disputes policy - proposal for dealing with edit disputes

be moved to "rejected" status.

• Wikibooks:Game textbook guidelines
• Wikibooks:How-to textbook guidelines

be moved to the "guidelines" section of Wikibooks:Policies_and_guidelines RobinH 09:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You mean "be", not "is/are" right? (Not nitpicking here... I'm really unclear on what you're proposing).

The How-to guidelines need work: I'll try to work on them a bit today. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

OK RobinH 13:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm reasonably sure that's what he means. I would agree with all these motions. The editing disputes policy never had much support, and we don't really need it now. The Game textbook and the How-to guidelines should definitely be moved to become guidelines, because they are both useful, but dont require the weight of official policy. Also, I would like to remind everybody to take a look at the General voting rules policy, which is currently under discussion. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:00, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm not going to have as much time today as I thought, but I'll keep thinking about it (doing some rather rote farm work today, so my thinking it pretty freed up). I put up an outline of the changes I'd like to make in my userspace (here), in case anyone wants to chip in. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:53, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Got some work done on it, including thoughts on the categorization of how-tos (again, here). Any thoughts? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:55, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have alot of time on my hands in the next couple weeks, and I would like to start looking for some educational organizations, and other websites with free ebooks that we could start a friendship with. If we can find some websites that would be willing to advertise us, that would be good. If we could find people with ebooks that they would be willing to donate, that would be even better. If anybody knows of any such organizations, you could list them here, and I will try my hand at some correspondence. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:17, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There are hundreds of good quality lecture notes and textbooks made public by university professors on their respective webpages, which are not always linked to from a central location and are often difficult to discover through Google searches. I'm hopeful that Wikibooks will eventually become that central hub/repository, especiialy if it reaches Wikipedia levels of prominence. The few class projects we've had here (Managing Groups and Teams, Human Physiology, XML, Rhetoric and Composition, and maybe a few others) have all been big successes, and the recent voluntary content migrations (Basic Physics of Nuclear Medicine, Relationships/Basic Book Design, and the ICD4T books to be added) seem to indicate that we're headed in that direction.

However, at this point Wikibooks is not very well known among academic groups, and with more project awareness I'm confident that we would have a substantial increase in class projects and content donations. Can someone compose a well-written email template explaining how Wikibooks works, our goals, and the GFDL, and addressing common concerns (such as commercial use) that can be sent out to professors who have written these publicly available (usually copyrighted) textbooks and lecture notes? I suspect that most would decline to move their work here or license it under the GFDL, but they would at least be aware of our existence and some of that sctattered content would be merged here. This mathematics list could be one place to start.

I want to emphasize that the creation of unique work is our primary focus, rather than consolidation of content. With that in mind we should recognize that the secondary goal would be an important service to the reader side of Wikibooks and the 'Net. --hagindaz 23:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Hi, recently I created some pages in Chemical synthesis. Soon after, User:Jguk added all the new pags to Category:Chemistry. I　commented on his user page, User talk:Jguk#Adding categories, that I had reservations about the usefulness of this practice.

Nearly two days (and 500 edits on Jguk's behalf) later, there was still no answer, so I posted another message, User talk:Jguk#Please stop adding categories, on the user page.

I'm fairly new on this project. Is this common behaviour here? If not, can someone give him a nudge?

Also: can someone answer my question regarding whether there has been any discussion regarding category guidelines? --Swift 23:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It is considered good practice for every page to be properly categorized. Every page should belong to at least one category, as a matter of organization. Now, If you do not want your book's pages to be in Category:Chemistry, then I recommend that you create a new category, such as Category:Chemical Synthesis, or something similar, for use in the book. User:Jguk can be a juggernaught when it comes to adding categories to pages, so for future reference, be prepared to add your own category if you don't want him to do it for you. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 00:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

"It is considered good practice". Am I correct to assume that this has been discussed somewhere, or is it more of a silent agreement?

Thanks, I just didn't want to clash with Jguk. He seems a bit ... ehemm ... enthusiastic. --Swift 01:16, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm not sure that it has been discussed anywhere, no. But it is good practice as it provides a semi-automated navigational method that can be distinct from hand-maintained list pages. You can start at Category:Main page and work down from there. Also, if similar books cover similar territories, the categories make it easier to find related pages. Kellen ^T 11:22, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks. I'm actually fairly well aware of the rationale, function and benefits of categories. What I was asking about was whether there had been a discussion on how categorization should be conducted. There are several ways, and (I believe) the project as a whole would benefit greatly if it were done in a coordinated manner. A guideline touching on this could, for example, mention whether a page should be in a category if it is also in its subcategory; and if a page should be in a category if its parent page/the book it is in is as well.

These may have obvious answers to some, but I was tought that even in such cases it is a good idea to discuss the matter in a group to get critisisms, other ideas, other questions and differing viewpoints on the solutions. --Swift 10:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

He does bring up a good point, however, that nowhere do we really discuss the use of categorizations, or the rationale for categorizing every single page. This is worth some mention, i think, either in the help pages or as an official guideline. I don't think we need to make this a policy, however. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree. I don't think a policy would be far too constricting for (what I believe are) very different needs for categorization (depending on the book, its scope, the field, other pages/books in that category, etc.). I would however like to see a discussion on this and a possible guideline come out of it.

I'm off for almost a weeks trip tomorrow without my computer so I won't get around to doing anything soon. If someone goes and starts this discussion, I'd appreciate it if they'd drop a note on my talk page. Otherwise, I'll look into it on my own when I get back. Have a good weekend, everyone! --Swift 10:53, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have been highly critical of User:Jguk and his catigorization of all of Wikibooks. I'm not going to openly revert and stop him from doing this, but I don't think it is strictly necessary and I have politely let him know my attitude about this. It has not been policy in the past to do these categorizations throughout Wikibooks, nor do I think it is good practice. At the same time, it is also something easily reverted by somebody who goes through (an ordinary editor can do this) and remove all of the category additions. I don't think somebody should be blocked or have administrative action taken against them for doing either one. If anybody gets blocked for removing these categories, please let me know, and I will scream bloody heck if it happens. Be civil and it is something that also should be decided on a book by book basis of the participants involved, and avoid edit wars about this topic. --Rob Horning 21:20, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

How exactly can we use resources that are free (as in beer) but not open-source?

Is it acceptable to link from the modules, and even treat them as part of the curriculum? This would consist of linking from a Wikibooks page, not replicating or infringeing copyright in any way.

I think this is a good idea, at least on a temporary basis, in books that haven't yet developed to a point where they're better than the external material. However, I want to check if it conflicts with Wikibooks policies,or the feelings of other editors. --Singkong2005 04:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

To be completely honest, I have no idea what the term "free as in beer" means. That's besides the point, however, i think i see what you are asking. Material can be put on this server if it is devoid of valid copyright, if it is released into the public domain, if it is released under the GDFL, or in a few other specific circumstances. However, I don't think that there is any restriction to linking to outside sources that are under a different licensing scheme then we use. It might be worthwhile to note, however, that your links to those external resources do not constitute an endorsement. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 12:16, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

See w:Gratis versus Libre if you're interested. --hagindaz 22:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Treating other resources as part of the curriculum is encouraged in Wikiversity, a separate project designed for the creation of curricula (Wikibooks is only for the creation of books).

In Wikibooks, other sites should only be used to supplement a book and should go in an "external links" section or page. A reader should be able to print out a book and learn from it without any other help. A Wikipedia article could have been considered complete with only a link to Encarta's site, but that's not the point of the project. --hagindaz 22:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks for the very helpful replies. btw, "free as in beer" just means no cost, as opposed to "free as in speech" - as explained in the link posted by Hagindaz. Wikimedia projects are free in both senses. --Singkong2005 04:52, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have been teaching a multi-disciplinary course on decision theory and game theory through applications in all of the social sciences (including biology and philosophy when they consider social behavior). Starting last year, I started constructing a book for the course in a wiki version called twiki. The book has several features that no existing text teaching game theory has: it involves applications in all of the social sciences plus biology and philosophy, offering a common paradigm for them all; it trys to teach through specific applications to the abstract rather than the other way around; much of this material is appropriate for freshmen and sophomore science or humanities majors that want a wide view of the social sciences, as long as they've had one calc course; it is also appropriate for more advanced students throughout the social sciences; and to have sufficient material that would satisfy all of these groups, it's likely to be too damn big for print. You can see it at http://apps.nitle.org/wiki/bin/view/Gametheory/WebHome.

Clearly, I have added material to the wiki, but also all of my students. (A wiki is great for a group project, because saving revisions shows what each individual's contribution was. Really cuts down on group members choosing to be free riders.) While the structure of the existing wiki is close to what it should be, the wiki still needs much more content (maybe a third of the intended topics for the book have reasonable modules--somewhere around 500 now). I have intended to continue this wiki when teaching the course again this fall, and in the 2007-2008 academic year I intend to visit elsewhere and have faculty and grad students at a major research univerisity contribute to it as well.

You have an easier-to-use version with Wikiwyg, you have a more knowledgeable technical staff, and my wiki project seems to have all the same goals as your Wikibooks. I believe that it would be better for all involved if the material in the latest revisions of the modules in twiki were transferred to the Wikibooks area.

I have two main questions:

1. Does this material appear appropriate for Wikibooks?

2. If so, could someone help to translate and transfer this material from twiki to Wikibooks?

Gametheoryman 22:39, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[]

From an initial glance, I don't see a problem with this being added as a Wikibook, and certainly is very similar to major significant Wikibooks that are advertised on the main page. As a textbook on game theory, it is a very useful set of content. I would love to see this added to Wikibooks.

Perhaps the most important issue you need to deal with is if the participants of that Wiki don't mind having the content relicensed to the GFDL. I don't see that as a huge issue, but you apparently allowed each contributor to retain copyright on the content they added. If this is something that has been discussed with your students and there doesn't appear to be any resistance to the idea, or if they granted to you as the professor a "blank check" regarding the ability to relicense the content, there wouldn't be a problem.

Unfortunately, as it stands, unless you have the full support from your students to move this content here it would have to be considered a copyright violation and would have to be deleted from Wikibooks if it were added without this permission being granted. In theory, even one of your former students who made even a minor contribution could sue the Wikimedia Foundation on copyright infringement and force us to remove this book if this permission isn't given. It is precisely for this reason that we insist that all contributions to Wikibooks be made available under the GFDL, as that provides a common agreement for how this information can be copied in the future. It protects not only us as editors, but it also protects anybody else who would be using this information in the future, like a textbook publisher.

As far as the technical issues of moving the content from the Twiki to Wikibooks, I don't see it being that difficult. It is tedious, but there are some scripts that have been written that would automate the process somewhat, or some custom programming could be done to help make the task easier. Even being done by hand wouldn't take that long to complete, and I think there could be some volunteers that could be found to help with that task. The significant issue is the text content itself, and that is valuable enough to justify taking the time to do things right. --Rob Horning 13:35, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[]

No students were ever expecting copyright, only acknowledgement with any significant contribution. This I intend to continue for any contributors. Except for the most established faculty, credit for good work is worth a good deal in terms of better schools, better recommendations, better evaluations--all of which mean better future salary. I intend to exploit this motive here, and I expect that you too should exploit this further with all of your books aimed at a university audience.

What's the next step? -- Gametheoryman 14:39, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree in theory with what you have said here, I just want this to be made clear, however. Assuming copyright has been granted has landed a large number of educators in very hot water, and we need to also make extra sure that nothing has been plagurized either. I can't emphasis that enough. This website requires that all contributions be released under the GFDL, and anything not available with that can't be added. If even just one of your students out of principle decides to be a pain in the behind, it could make this a little difficult. Fair-use laws don't apply here, as this is a full electronic copy of the original content.

BTW, for myself, I always made sure that I copyrighted all of my homework assignments (particularly for computer science assignments). It made some of my professors a little upset, as they assumed copyright on all homework turned into them under some archiac academic common law practice. I've also seen professors claim credit for work their students have written and in turn published that content in professional journals with only minor cleanup and reformatting. I'm not claiming that you are doing so here, but I want to make it very clear that copyright must be granted explicitly according to current copyright laws in most western European countries and North America. Besides risking this project, it also means that a textbook using "tainted" copyright content has a dubious future that may be challenged in the future.

That said, I think publishing this book on this website can only do good for both this project and your textbook. I hope that we can work out a way to make it happen. I also hope you understand the caution that I am expressing here, which is based on experience with content of this nature. --Rob Horning 06:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

This reminds me of another current project here. the Human Physiology book is currently being written as a collaborative effort of a class of undergraduate nursing students. The project is being overseen by the teacher of the class. Looking through this book, I think this would definately be a good fit for wikibooks. I would love to help with this project, and I can begin creating pages and transferring content over as early as monday (I have no work on monday, and am going to be spending upwards of 8-10 hours straight in a computer lab). As for "what's the next step", I think that we can pick out a name for your book. I think tha that there may already be a book about game theory, so we could either merge your content into that existing book (which i think is in very bad shape), or we could introduce your book under a different name, and then merge the other book into yours at a later point. Also, your book already has a good organizational structure, so we can duplicate that here, or we can come up with something different. Once we get alot of the material transferred over, we can work on reformatting the text to use our formatting, and we can create all sorts of navigational aides and templates for use with the book. Perhaps the most time-consuming parts are going to be translating the mathematical formulae to use our LaTeX format, and uploading images to our server for use in the book. I have been interested in making some contributions on this topic in the future, so I am very excited and willing to help you with the transition. Let me know what you need and when you would like to start. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[]

PS, the link to the other game theory book that i mentioned is: Game Theory. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:50, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Wow, interesting book! I'm afraid I can't add much on the subject, but I'll be hapy to read and copyedit for grammar and spelling! --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:03, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I created the main page at: Self Interest and Social Behavior, following the original title of this book. I can begin moving over content ASAP, assuming the offer to donate the material still stands. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:45, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I sent an email to the primary author (as listed on that site) requesting confirmation. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:48, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Haha, I should have mentioned, I sent him an email as well! I hope he doesnt think it is spam or harassment or anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Okay. I have been communicating with the author via email, and I just received final permission to start transferring over the written content to our server. I will not be uploading the images, because he still needs to determine the copyright status on them. I am going to transfer over the first chapter tonight as a test of concept, and--if it looks good--I will begin transfering over the rest of it immediately thereafter. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:33, 7 August 2006 (UTC)[]

What's the progress report on this? I'm looking foreward to reading through it (and correcting spelling and grammar... should be both informative and theraputic). SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have moved the text of the previous discussion to a new page at Wikibooks:Publication of the Month. After I created the page, i realized it would probably be better of as "Publication of the Quarter" or something like that, so we can move the page to a better name if need be. We can start working out a general policy for this stuff over there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:46, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I've been in talks with the ICD4T people (from a previous discussion) concerning a donation of several of their books (they mentioned having at least 20) to wikibooks. Their books are currently released under a Creative Commons license, and they are working on transfering the material to the GFDL so it can be released here. Should the donation happen, they have requested the creation of two additional bookshelves specifically to hold the material. Considering that the addition of 20 complete books or more to our library is a big deal, I think it is probably worth our time to create these new bookshelves.

I would like to ask people here two things: (1) What you think about creating new bookshelves to hold a donation of new books, and (2) if you would be willing and available to transfer material. Moving 20 books is going to be a reasonably large project, and volunteers would be appreciated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I would be glad to help with the move. Howver, I strongly oppose the creation of bookshelves to hold these books. Has the organization considered categories, which would be a much more suitable choice? 20 books is not enough for one bookshelf, much less two (completion status is irrelevant on bookshelves, though not on bookshelf templates or hot picks). Bookshelfs are designed for subjects, not for content providers (which categories are suited for). In addition to serving readers, Wikibooks' main focus is the creation of unique content. Imported work should not be given greater importance than our books of the same quality. Since the books are complete (or as complete as a page can get on a wiki), they will all be listed on bookshelf templates and our listing of complete/nearly complete books, which in my opinion is the only page readers should bother looking in and would bring the attention to these books that the ICD4T is probably looking for. --hagindaz 23:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That does make a good point. I will ask them if it would be acceptable to simply have a sub-heading on one of the existing bookshelves, if we provide additional categories, and spotlight the project in some way. I dont know what alternatives this organization has considered: their experiance with wikibooks is highly limited. It would be a very difficult task to try and explain the entire organizational structure of wikibooks to them via email. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

The same goes for subheadings. Again, that is not the way bookshelves work. Both our bookshelf system and headings within a bokkshelf are often reorganized as Wikibooks expands, and saying "you can't touch this section" goes against wiki principles. We should not be locked into a certain system by an outside group. If their goal is the spread of knowledge, I doubt they will care. If it's just free advertising they're after, then maybe we shouldn't be dealing with them. On that subject, the transwikied books should only mention ICD4T in the authors/sources section. --hagindaz 15:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That wasn't what i was talking about, specifically. The books that are being donated (i received a partial list today via email) don't necessarily fit into any existing bookshelves, or even any existing sub-headings on any existing bookshelves. Nobody wants to create a new section that is "off limits", the donors are fully aware of the GFDL, and the fact that their works are going to be edited willy-nilly by anonymous people. Some of the topics that these books cover are: e-commerce, e-governance, information economy, e-learning, "Information and Communication Technologies for Poverty Alleviation", etc. At the very least, I think that given this list, it would be prudent of us to create a new "Information Technology" bookshelf, or a special "Information Technology" sub-heading because these books cannot be reasonably shelved anywhere else. These books don't all have to go in the same locations (we could link them together via categories), but few of them fit neatly into our pre-existing classifications. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

PS. A listing of these books can be found at:

http://www.apdip.net/elibrary

They are listed under the sections called "ICT4D e-Primers" and "FOSS e-Primers". This should give you a better idea of what these books are about, and how many books we are going to receive. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:41, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

---

About the creation of a book shelve...

If the creation of a stand alone index for the donated collection is the only problem that prevents us from getting some more content, I'm for it, this will also provide an easy entry to anyone needing to know what books were donated and by whom, will provide an overview of all the collection for future merges and with time it will lose it usefulnesses and disappear/morph/be deleted, so I don't see a problem in creating this index...

in the "willing and available to transfer material"...

If an index exist wkibooks editors can have an idea of what books they are most interested in helping if it's just a problem of moving the work location, it can be used as a place to coordinate the move and vote on "names" and "structural" problems with the new works...

Do remember that after a work is under GFDL, we are free to restructure/merge and distribute it's content (under GFDL restrictions), so any step needed to have any book under this license should be welcomed by the community... --Panic 17:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Why do we have bookshelves? Categories are much easier to construct, as well as being easy to navigate through, if built correctly. Couldn't categories also serve as an easier way to catalog (as opposed to Dewey, etc. (Dewey didn't have a GUI, ha-ha))? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That is a good point. The category system is quite expansive, and it can take some time to find books that you are looking for: you would have to start at the top of the hierarchy, and slowly click your way down to the suitable sub-category. Bookshelves are easier, because they place all books that exist in a given field on a single page for easy browsing. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

For myself, I think that categories are more a waste of time here on Wikibooks and don't offer anything additional beyond what Bookshelves and other classification systems also bring to the table, and indeed offer some problems beyond just the standard classification systems as well.

Keep in mind that the categorization system in MediaWiki is designed specifically to deal with categories of encyclopedia articles, and it also seems to work exceptionally well with classification of multi-media content (like is found on Commons). Trying to translate that to book development, however, is something that is a bit harder to accomplish.

We do use categories effectively here for things like page maintainence and cleanup, as well as for organization of contents within a book such as is currently done with the Cookbook. I completely support those activities and think there is even more room to develop category systems like this.

Otherwise, all I consider any effort to create categories for books to simply be a way to keep people busy, and as Jimbo has suggested, if they are busy doing stuff that doesn't do harm, they perhaps aren't busy trying to vandalize. While I think there are better ways to spend time than developing book categories, that is a personal opinion and it doesn't do Wikibooks harm trying to develop categories. That is why I don't openly revert changes that are adding categories even if I don't support having them in the first place. --Rob Horning 14:53, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree. I've proposed changing the system to one where bookshelves act more like Wikipedia portals. The key feature is that with infoboxes (or DPLs now), sorting a book into as many categories as you want would have been automatic, and would have greatly improved readers' ability to find the book they want (for example: "Category:All completed computing books with a high school reading level"). I also think that the alphatetical, Dewey, and LOC classifications would also work better as categories. Please see Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Archive 17#Replacing Shelves with Portals and Categories for more. --hagindaz 15:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

But couldn't the css be slightly modified to make categories work better? What if we stopped using the word "category", and replaced it with "catalog"? Again, Dewey didn't have a GUI, so he had to come up with a numerical metalanguage to talk about the content of books. If the category (catalog) of all categories (catalogs) were presented as a catalog, it seems to me that it would be a much easier way to go about looking for the information you're after. At least in theory, this could be worked into the search function on wikibooks, which at the moment isn't a particularly useful tool. For example, I just searched for "cooking cucumber", which defaulted to a search results page [2] that didn't produce the most obvious result: Cookbook:Cucumber. Is there any chance that we could base the search function on categories to yield more accurate hits?

And I strongly disagree that categorization is a waste of time. It's a lot easier to add a category tag to an article than it is to add the name of an article to a bookshelf.

As far as book completeness icons (commenting on the old discussion linked by Hagindaz), it strikes me that it wouldn't take too much tweaking of the software to simply make those appear on the category (or (again) catalog) lists. Software is pretty easy to modify for little things like that, and as much as I enjoyed playing with my dad's rolodex when I was little guy, I'm not going to transcribe all the numbers in my cellphone onto 3x5 cards just so my daughter can see how things used to be.

(Warning: dreamy thoughts follow): I think a good end result to be aiming towards would be something like this: rather than the search window on the left of the screen, have a link to the main catalog (using a picture of a good-old-fashioned-wooden-drawered-catalog as an icon). Have the main catalog page a pretty place (with more gratuitous yet historically signifigant photos of libraries and catalogs), and make the page "interactive", in the sense that it "interrogates" the reader on what they're looking for, and sends them in the right direction. Use nice icons in the directional pointers too, to make readers feel welcome, and portray a sense that we bother with details.

The beauty of this is that books, chapters, and even stubs (which I think might be better named "outlines", "scrapbooks", or "worksheets" in the WB context) can be categorised in multiple categories. Thus "cooking trout" might give a result leading to recipes for trout, gutting a trout you just caught, a chapter or page in the book on Daniel Boone about the trout he ate and how he cooked them (assuming, of course, that there is a book about Daniel Boone, and that he liked trout), and a chapter on trout in the book on fish farming (again, assuming there is such a book, etc.).

The Dewey system and all other "bookshelf" systems (including the system I use to organize my own books on my own bookshelves) are essentially information technologies. I would like to suggest that we wikibookians have a much more formidable and effective technology at our disposal! --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:29, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Just an offhand philosophical note: I studied Dewey at the New School (which he co-founded). He believed in "amelioration", not "idealism": meaning that history moves foreward towards the better and better, but can never be expected to achieve the best. If he were alive today, I'm quite certain that he would have preferred Amazon's search engine to his own decimal system. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:33, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

One thing that I would like to see with any classification system is the ability to look at "near by" books that are somewhat close topically, with books that are further away being more dissimilar.... just like an actual bookshelf in a dead-tree publication library. I find Google searches and other similar kind of search tools really don't do this very effectively and instead drown in meaningless details. The question I raise is how to do this effectively in an on-line environment?

I would like to point out that Dewey and LOC classification systems are very linear in nature, and assume that all knowledge can be classified along one axis (hence, the classification number). I would argue that knowledge can be classified along multiple axes, where topical "closeness" would be a matter of how close it would be in an n-space of multiple topical axes. The problem is then how to classify content along multiple axes. Establishing classification guidelines for a single axis is complicated enough. --Rob Horning 19:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Yes, it's complicated, but not arduous in a wiki environment. "Nearby books" pretty much sums up what I was alluding to above: not just the "exact thing your looking for" (i.e, a recipe for trout), but things that have to do with cooking trout (like "a guide to trout fishing", "Daniel Boone" (I'm not sure of that reference is clear... he was a Colonial Era pioneer in what is now the United States), and "Aquaculture".

Now, it is in fact a bit complicated, because these disparate books/chapters need to be somehow interconnected, and for one person to make those interconnections would be a rather daunting task. However, this is wiki! It's not as if someone has to "get on a mission" and connect all the dots (well, Jguk or I might do it, but we wouldn't be obligated to do so), it will just come together over time as readers and editors make the connections one at a time. It's really not an issue of "establishing guidelines for multiple axes", but rather giving a gentle nudge towards a thoughtful use of the catagory system, and letting things grow edit by edit.

Wikipedia insists that all pages be categorised. There's not so much volume of new materials here that we couldn't rather easily achieve 100% categorisation with minimal effort. And if the categories can be worked over to make them truly useful, more editors would become interested in increasing their utility. Again, I just think it's a powerful (and perfectly appropriate) technology, and we should use it for a good cause. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 21:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Based on what i've seen of it, the "Wikibooks Standard Book Number" scheme that was discussed earlier seems to have the ability to show the "closeness" between books. Values on the left-hand-side of the number are rough-grained (sorting between bookshelves and language codes), while numbers towards the right-hand side show the relationship within the larger categories. Perhaps this is something we could discuss here? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

(resetting indentation): Where was the WSBN discussion? SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I attempted to add a link to a registration page to meet the requirement that we have ten registered language users to establish the final permanent namespace en.wikiversity.org for the English language users. The page claims it is protected. Thanks. 70.110.37.107 07:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

According to Alexa, the average user browses only 2-3 pages before leaving Wikibooks, so we should do our best to make the best impression possible. I tried replacing the "hot picks" section on {{Main Page content}} with our 32 completed non-BotM books, but it made the template too disproportional. I would therefore like to add a 100% width table a la the PDF box listing these books on the main page. The "hot picks" can be used for our "good Wikibooks." Not long ago we had all our books on the main page, so I think the screen space will be put to good use. Comments? --hagindaz 04:21, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That's a good idea. We definately should put our best foot forward on the main page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:30, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I want to call the attention of all wikibookians, especially active admins to the discussion about the new voting policy. Wikibooks currently does not have a concrete voting policy in effect, so the adaptation of this policy will potentially create immediate differences in the way business is conducted here. Due to large amounts of discussion, changes, and dissention, there are several versions of this policy being considered:

• Version 1 Written by User:Whiteknight
• Version 2 Written by User:Jguk
• Version 3 User:RobinH's revision of Jguk's version
• Version 4 Written by User:Kellen
• Version 5 Whiteknight's Revision of Kellen's Version.

Also, there are additional issues being discussed, such as the inclusion of a "minimum contributions" clause, that will limit users with less then 20 votes from editing. Also, there is a proposed clause that would allow this 20 vote minimum to be raised in response to abuse.

I will be sending a version of this message to all currently active admins as well, because certain versions of this policy may impose additional responsibilities on admins (such as mediation/arbitration, etc.) We are currently restricting primary discussion to Wikibooks talk:General voting rules/Proposal, although we can spread out to other pages should the need arise. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

We seem to have reached a preliminary consensus on making the "version 5" the official working version of this proposal. We have moved the text of this policy to Wikibooks:General voting rules, and can continue the discussion there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I threw a vote on the page so that we can get it enforced, so vote (about voting) at Wikibooks talk:General voting rules. -withinfocus 15:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I was woundering if the English Wikibooks had something like Wikibooks:Wiki Standaard Boeknummer (Wikibooks:Wiki Standard Book Number) on the Dutch Wikibooks. It is used on nl.wikibooks.org as an alternative version of ISBN for wikibooks. A WSBN contains the following information: language, main discipline, study, (specialized study), book number (5 numbers). For example: nl-01-08-00-00001 stands for Dutch, Natural science, Computer science, -, first book. nl-02-07-01-00002 stands for Dutch, Social science, History, Antiquity, second book. Evil berry 10:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

No, we currently don't have anything like that. We did, previously, have a short discussion on the possibility of creating a new categorization scheme for our books, because the Dewey-Decimal system is non-standard (though widely accepted, in most parts), the Library of Congress system is based on the US, and ISBN numbers arent global. It is a good idea to have a standardized method for numbering and identifying our books here, and is something that we as a community should work on. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 17:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Actually, if you could provide us with a basic translation of your system, perhaps we can vote to adopt it here. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 17:27, 3 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You can find a translation here. Evil berry 18:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a pretty cool idea. Getting it on Infobox would probably be the best way to distribute it. I hope we can also move "here" to somewhere more appropriate as well. -Matt 00:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't see the complaint against Dewey Decimal or LOC classification. Any classification that we would come up with would be non-standard, not widely accepted, and not global in any sense. Why should we expect that we can make a something better?

And why should we reject LOC just because it comes from the US? The LOC system enjoys use throughout the English-speaking world, such as at the Australian National University and at Cambridge University libraries.

Anyway, it isn't clear to me that we need a classification system at all. We have a search tool. Can anyone here say that they browse the categorization pages when they want a book? Personally, I always prefer to do a search. --129.79.157.64 05:09, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You can do a search then. The categorization scheme isn't harmful and is helpful to some users. Kellen ^T 13:33, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Dewey Decimal System was created in America, and certain sections, (specifically the christianity) sections are very over-reaching, while many other religions get relegated to a catch-all "other religions and beliefs" section. In many other countries, especially where christianity isn't the main religion, the dewey decimal system is altered to accomodate the "big" religion of the area. This is, a small complaint, but one that is worth considering. The LOC system is highly useful, but it is only really accepted for use in some parts of the english-speaking world. Last I checked there are more languages then just english with a wikibooks project, so it doesnt make sense to use a system that specifically caters to english.

We can always try to find a better, more over-arching system then Dewey or LOC, and if we fail, then we can always resort back to them if needed. I dont see a reason why we wouldnt want to try, however. --Whiteknight(talk) (projects) 14:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Doesn't this just duplicate the existing bookshelf system? "Language, main discipline, study, (specialized study), book number" is really just Language subproject ==> department ==> bookshelf ==> bookshelf section ==> position on the list. The bookshelf system is also more meaningul to readers than a number. We already have five classification systems in use, and while I'm not against using more systems if they improve Wikibooks for readers, I don't see a reason for going with this particular one. --hagindaz 22:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There is another system which is widely used in Europe: w:Universal Decimal Classification, the problem with both Dewey and UDC is that they are copyrighted and you need a license, which costs money. As Wikipedia is so succesfull in setting new standards, and sisterprojects as well, why is it not possible to set a new standard for non-copyrighted free usable international classification? It would be nice if we set-up a discussion page at meta so we can work internationally on this. On nl.Wikibooks we have worked allready to expand here and have looked at other standardsystems to develop that. But we would like to set a standard at least for wikibooks all over the world (and who knows in what this could develop). Any positive or negative comments on that? Londenp 19:40, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

We don't use Dewey and LOC classification just to give a book a number, but rather to allow readers to browse and search for content on a book listing using a system they are familiar with. Most users haven't memorized the existing standard numbering systems, so I doubt nl-02-07-01-00002 will mean more to them than PK 570. I just don't see the point in giving a book a number for the sake of giving a book a number. Changing the unordered lists on bookshelves to ordered lists will have the same effect. Am I missing some big advantage book numbers have? --hagindaz 22:28, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

They are shorter and can be used to find a book when you don't know the title. For example: if you would search for "WSBN nl-02-07-01-00002" on Google you will only get two hits: Wikibooks:Wiki Standaard Boeknummer and Koningen aan de Nijl. When doing a search on Google for "Koningen aan de Nijl" you will get 79 hits. So that's the advantage. Evil berry 18:19, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

For wikibooks in the state that it is in now, I don't think that WSBN numbers are a valuable thing. As hagindaz pointed out, we already have 5 classification systems being used currently, and we don't need to institute a sixth unless it brings something new to the table.

However, If the "Wikipress" or the "Publication of the Month" initiatives take off, It would be a good idea to create an identification scheme that will include the project of origin (en.wikibooks vs nl.wikiversity, for example), the specific revision that the publication is based on, the URL of the book's main page, etc. I don't think, however, that such information could ever be adequately expressed in a single "number". Plus, we may not always have bookshelves: They may very well evolve into other entities, or be replaced entirely. I dont think we should make an entire numbering scheme that is based off an arbitrary construction on our particular project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:08, 27 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Jimbo announced at Wikimania over the weekend (August 4th-8th) that Wikiversity has been formally approved by the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees as the next Wikimedia sister project. I'm sure more details can be found elsewhere, but here is Angela's blog, and I've seen other announcements that were in conventional press publications elsewhere.

It has been a very long, long road for the participants of that project, and it should be noted that it is still going to be on a beta-trial basis like Wikinews was for the first few months, but Wikiversity is now going to be a completely independent project from Wikibooks.

A big thank you should go to all of the people who helped in putting together the various proposals and trying to come up with the concept that has been involved with Wikiversity. In a way, this is resolving the Wikibooks:Votes for deletion/Wikiversity that was started almost exactly one year ago to the day. Wikiversity has been a part of Wikibooks for so long that it is going to be interesting to see what will happen with the Wikiversity participants actually having their own space to develop and grow on their own.

Just guessing, but I think this link will soon be valid:

Wikiversity:Main_Page

as will:

http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Main_Page

The technical side of things here might get a little interesting, but it will be exciting. --Rob Horning 19:13, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That's good to know. It'a about time that something happened with this project. Unfortunately, I forsee wikibooks having to host a large number of redirects to moved wikiversity material, in the future. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:22, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I put a note up on the Wikiversity page about the creation of this project. Here is the text of my note:

This weekend (August 4th-8th) Jimbo Wales announced that the wikiversity project has been officially approved by the board, and the project is going to be moved to it's own server within the month. Initially, there will be 3 languages, and the project will be in a "beta" version for a 6 month trial period. Discussion about how/when/where to move material can happen in a local discussion page, or at Wikibooks:Staff lounge. Material not in the "Wikiversity:" namespace should not be deleted off this server unless it has undergone an official transwiki.

Basically, I dont want people to delete bona fide wikibooks material to the new server and delete it here if we are using it. If material is forked between wikiversity and wikibooks, we will need to decide if it belongs on one or the other site, or if it can be altered to remain on both. Basically, I dont think that we here at wikibooks need to do alot of work to make this move happen, I just dont want to lose alot of content because of it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:53, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Congratulations to the Wikiversitians! Or is that Wikiversityites?

On a practical note, we now need to decide:

1. What content will move to Wikiversity and be deleted from Wikibooks
2. What content will be forked on Wikiversity but remain on Wikibooks because it is a textbook or annotated text
3. What content will not move to Wikiversity

To aid this, I suggest going through all modules beginning with "Wikiversity:" and categorising the pages as such:

1. Category:Wikiversity page
2. Category:Wikiversity fork
3. Category:Wikiversity textbook

Once this exercise is complete, the categories can be reviewed and transfers/deletions made. Relevant images and templates will also have to be added to these categories.

We'll probably need a central place to allow discussions and monitor process. Maybe a dedicated page, Wikibooks:Wikiversity initialisation perhaps, would be best suited to this, Jguk 07:46, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Should pages that are added to the three categories listed above (Category:Wikiversity page, Category:Wikiversity fork, Category:Wikiversity textbook) be removed from Category:Wikiversity? This would be a "book keeping trick" that would make it easier to know which articles have already been recategorized. It might also be useful to have a template that could be used to mark pages that have been recategorized and that would direct editors to the central discussion page (Wikibooks:Wikiversity initialisation) in case there are questions about the recategorization of particular pages. --JWSurf 15:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I was looking over some of our help pages, and I noticed that the Help:Administrators page contains text that is inaccurate:

Administrators are Wikibookians who have "sysop rights". Current Wikibooks policy is to grant this access liberally to anyone who has been an active Wikibooks contributor for a while and is generally a known and trusted member of the community. "This should be no big deal," as Jimbo has said.

Current wikibooks practice is not necessarily to grant sysop privledge "liberally", and not to any person who is "generally known". People who are nominated at WB:RFA are frequently required to have a firm knowledge of current wikibooks policy and practice, be active on pages like WB:VFD and staff lounge, and work towards the common good. I propose we change the text of this page to mirror the reality of the situation, to something that is less misleading:

Administrators are Wikibookians who have "sysop rights". Current Wikibooks practice is to grant this access to wikibookians who are well known, trusted, and demonstratably knowledgable in matters of common wikibooks policy and practice.

The only reason I bring this up is because many recent requests for adminship have centered around the nominee's activity and knowledgability in matters of policy, and their work on more then just a few small insular policies. It is also commonly frowned upon for a user to seek admin rights only for the goal of helping their own "pet projects" more efficiently. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

What you say would better reflect current practice. It's a shame we don't follow what is currently said - but as we don't, we shouldn't say it, Jguk 07:47, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

What is currently said does sound like a more liberal and open system - is there any reason we shouldn't change the practice, and keep the words the same? Or perhaps some kind of compromise?

I don't see why using sysop rights to help "pet projects" is a negative thing - as long as they're actually helping something, and using their powers for good :).--Singkong2005 13:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Why did the community turn away from the liberal practice? Were there specific instances where administrators greatly misused their rights on account of ignorance of WB practices? If not, then I'd suggest returning to the old practice. --Swift 16:48, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

In reality, the "practice" hasn't changed, in that nominations for RFA are still posted on WB:RFA, and orginary users are allowed to vote and discuss the issue either way. However, if you look through the old RFA discussions, you will see that many users cast votes based on certain metrics. Some users will only vote "support" if the nominated user has a significant edit count, is active, consistant, and has demonstrated a knowledge of policy. At the moment, these metrics are not specified as being required, but most users cast votes as if they are actual requirements. It is also not possible to tell voting users "your vote isn't valid, because you are measuring the candidates against an invalid metric". I think that we should change the policy to reflect the fact that prospective admins are subjected to a certain amount of scrutiny, and are held up to a certain standard whether it's specified or not. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:34, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'd prefer not to see the policy changed - surely we shouldn't change a good policy to reflect not-so-good practice. Rather we should seek another solution... Perhaps the introduction to RfA discussions should point out what the policy is. I suppose this means that the person requesting or nominating for adminship makes a direct reference to the liberal policy. Whether or not people choose to follow the liberal approach in their voting is up to them.

If it continues to operate this way, and if we don't change the policy through the appropriate voting procedure, then it should be mentioned on Wikibooks:Requests for adminship that this is what happens, but that it's a result of the way people choose to vote in RfAs and not as a result of policy. --Singkong2005 06:14, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I actually like the current phrasing for the most part. A minor change I'd like to suggest is changing:

Administrators are Wikibookians who have "sysop rights"."

to:

Administrators are Wikibookians who have "sysop tools"."

It's really less about being an "honored wikibookian" than it is being "a trustworthy person who wants to help out". For those of you who are also wikipedians, you might be aware of the rather nasty tensions that have been building up about adminship and community, and I'd hate to see us repeat the mistake here. If you're not familiar with this, see this debate on wikipedia and you'll see what I mean. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Hopefully we don't have the same problems as wikipedia has in this matter. We've already included wording on Help:Administrators that an administrator can be "desysopped" if they are inactive for 2 months or so (i cant remember the exact timelimit). Also, admins can be called in for a removal vote on a per-nomination basis.

I am a firm believer that admins and b-crats are "just normal users" who are trusted enough to have some restrictions removed. However, because admins are central points of policy (admins must act to delete pages, regardless of deletion policy, for instance) it is expected that an admin is well familiarized with the policies that they are going to be expected to enforce. An admin who isn't watching VfD discussions, and who isn't working to fight and block vandals is, in my opinion, not an "active" admin, and doesn't deserve priveledges. As such, we should mention on Help:Administrators that admins are expected to understand policy because they are the key enforcers of policy. Also, users shouldnt be elected to be admins unless they have shown a demonstratable need for the lifted restrictions. Personally, I would like to draft an Wikibooks:Administrators policy policy to address all the issues concerning admins and bcrats, and make their election, actions, and removal explicit parts of our policy. I have little faith however, that such a policy would be accepted by the community, and currently the actions of admins are guided by some meager lines in the Help:Administrators help pages. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

PS. to address User:Singkong2005's concerns directly, I just want to point out that this isn't an official policy concerning admins, it is simply a help page that describes the admin process and lays out some general guidelines concerning administrators. It is, and i repeat this, only a help page. I would like to change the text there to reflect the fact that administrators are not elected lightly nor liberally. The numbers of administrators are small, and the community expects them to actually use their tools for the good of the community. Those aren't unrealistic, or even problematic expectations.

Also, as a side note, the current text says that sysops are granted rights as per policy, when there is no such policy on the books. Either we need to create a policy, or we need to change this text. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Fair enough - sorry for not catching that earlier. I still prefer the liberal approach, but if it's not actual policy, then I've got no basis to push for a reference to it being included in the help page. --Singkong2005 14:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Looking over recent changes, it seems there are still a lot of these books being worked on. Was a policy ever decided? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

The only policy that governs this is the proposed policy of Wikibooks:Game textbook guidelines. So I guess the answer is, no, there isn't a policy that has ever been decided. It is generally presumed that video game walkthroughs are now against Wikibooks policy, but beyond that it is still widely up in the air. BTW, this policy pre-dated the discussion by Jimbo, and was something that the Wikibooks community was moving toward, so it isn't that big of a surprise. All that made me upset was removing content based on this proposed policy and absolutely no discussion prior to the content removal. Those discussions are now happening on the VfD page, although people are still invoking the name of Jimbo from time to time with these discussions. --Rob Horning 21:27, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Robert, do you think Jimbo would be willing to render an opinion on this? As much as I appreciate the passion of the contributors to those books, I really don't see them coming anywhere close to being "textbooks". SB_Johnny | ^talk 21:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have to admit that my first reaction here is God, I hope Jimbo leaves us alone! I don't mind Jimbo coming here and voicing his opinion on the subject, but we are also sufficiently intelligent and understanding general attitudes of the WMF that I think we can come up with policies and not have Jimbo come here for micromanagement of policies. Jimbo has rendered an opinion on the subject, and he can speak for himself on the matter. My objection is mainly that the opinion is ambiguous enough that anything and everything can be deleted using the textbook-only philosophy that is behind the idea. --Rob Horning 16:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

IIRC, the problem was that enforced policies weren't being enforced. To some extent that's still happening, with data collections (which m:Wikidata was proposed for since no projects exist for this kind of information) being kept and other pages being kept simply because users like them despite their violations of these "enforced" policies.

"Those discussions are now happening on the VfD page, although people are still invoking the name of Jimbo from time to time with these discussions." - I don't see anything on the VFD page for either comment. Are you referring to anything in particular? Thanks in advance, hagindaz 22:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think a big part of it, was that jimbo came flying in here from outer-space one day, and declared that videogame manuals were bad. Now, i'm inclined to listen when Jimbo speaks, but the "No Videogame manuals" thing was never really made into a community-enforced policy, because it only exists as a declaration of Jimbo. When the statement was made, alot of freaking out happened, and some books did get moved. Unfortunately, even if we say that "videogame manuals can now stay on wikibooks forever!", alot of damage has already been done, and we won't be in any better a situation. We would do good to actually have an official discussion, and create an official policy about this matter with full community participation. Maybe then we can settle all this once and for all. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Jimbo's name is still invoked from time to time, but it is becoming less frequent. My main objection is when content is deleted because it is "not a textbook" (see Special:Log/Delete and dig through the archives for details) you need to do more than simply justify its removal on those grounds. I've complained enough about that subject and I do believe that some content has been deleted that perhaps shouldn't have been removed. That said, we really do need to come up with a formal policy on this topic and make it unambiguous enough that admins can actually know if a page ought to be removed or not and not tie up the VfD pages with rehashing the same arguments over and over again. --Rob Horning 16:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Good call rob. There is a page that perhaps we need to focus some attention on now:Wikibooks:Textbooks. We should come up with a draft of specifically what a textbook is (or at least a variety of examples of what textbooks have been). Such a page probably should become a "policy" and not a "guideline", because the definition that we provide is going to have a profound affect on the very direction and future of the project. If our mission statement says "Wikibooks is for the creation of open-content textbooks", then such a definition on our part is integral. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'd like to suggest a naming policy or guideline for languages:

This policy is based on maximising the learner's exposure to the language while still allowing easy navigation and searching for all users.

• Page names should be in English as this makes it easier for people browsing the category.
  • On the main page of the language, e.g. Indonesian, a piped link may be used to display the Indonesian name, with the English translation given after. (The
  • On the linked page, below the English, the translation should be given (as a level 1 heading? level 2? using <big><big>?)
• Page names should describe the contents, rather than just "Chapter 1," or "Lesson 2," etc. (as currently used by Spanish and Indonesian, for example). Numbering the pages makes it hard to insert new lessons in between. Using descriptive names would make browsing categories easier; it would also allow easier comparison of lessons in different languages (if an editor is looking for ideas on structure, for example).

Just wanted to put that out there... I'm not too dogmatic about these points, but would like to see a guideline in place. --Singkong2005 06:09, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

In general, page names should be descriptive, and should not be simply "Lesson 1", or "Chapter 5", unless the content of that page is so unrelated under any heading that a single descriptive name cannot be given. The use of english-titles, or even translations is often decided on a per-book basis, so i don't think we need to make it standard for all books. Authors are given a certain amount of latitude to create books in the manner that they see fit, and I personally don't want to encroach on an authors right to design his book, by enacting a policy that makes everybody do things in a certain way. However, I also don't want to encroach on your right, as a wikibookian, to go into these books, and make any changes that you see fit. be bold, and make the changes yourself, if you think they are warranted. If nobody objects, the changes stay. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

One main problem in reading and using Wikibooks is that its hard to get to the next page of a topic. To improve on the usage of the site and ease at learning from the project, I think that within one project all the pages should be tied together. A command at the bottom of the page to "next page" or even a box listing all other sections in the book would be a great addition to the current project and help to navigate between various topics.

-Madge

I have created {{chapter navigation}} specifically for this purpose. It should be added to the bottom of each chapter in a book. A lot of similar templates have been created, but most are only for use on the top of each page, where they do no good, since clicking the back button takes the same amount of time as scrolling up or pressing the home button.

This should eventually be built into the software, but until then templates will have to suffice. m:Wikibooks extension has been proposed as a solution. --hagindaz 19:55, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

If this is used, it's important that any time order of the pages are changed, or a new page is added in between, the templates of relevant pages (either side of a change) are updated. It would be nice if it were automated, but I can't see how that would work, unless pages could be assigned some kind of paramter according to where they appear on the content page. So if we use this template, perhaps we could develop some automated tool or bot to check that following these template links leads us through every chapter of a book. --Singkong2005 03:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I am currently working on a bot that is capable of following links and navigation templates (or, more specifically, I'm working on a reusable library that can do these things, and a series of front-ends designed for specific uses). It's going to take alot of time to get my bot ready, but potentially it could perform a task like this. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[]

If you care about this, you might want to vote for the Book construct feature. Updating navigation links is a pain. I use {{auto navigation}} to minimise this pain (auto navigation avoids you having to type in the book name because it assumes that the book is in ".."), but what would really be simpler is some kind of wikimedia-supported page-order construct. -- Kowey 20:03, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Ran across some difficulty categorising in the how-to area because of various capitalisation usages in the category names. Specifically, I made the category Animal care, which now has a subcategory for Animal Care (which is both a book title and a category containing the book's chapters).

I'd like to propose that categories used for subject areas use capital letters only for the first word, while categories used to tie in the pages of a particular book be all or mostly capitals (with the time-honored exception of prepositions and articles).

Further, I've noted that many pages and books use redundant categories, such as "booktitle category", "subcategory", and "supercategory". In order to keep the main categories streamlined, I'd like to propose that

• Booktitle categories should go only into subcategories, not supercategories (i.e., if it's in Category A, and Category A is a subcategory of Category B, don't put it in Category B).
• Book pages should only go into the booktitle category, unless they are cross-categorised (i.e., Animal Care/Dogs would be categorised both in "Animal Care" (the book category), and "Dog care" (note lower case)).
• Either categories should always be two or more words following these capitalisation rules, or new books should not be titled with the name of a pre-existing category (i.e., not allowing a new book titled "Animals", because there is already Category:Animals).
• Use [[Category:BOOKNAME|*]] for bookname categories, so that book names will appear before page-collection categories. Thus, for example, Animal Care (the category for the book) will appear at the beginning, while "Dog care" will appear under "C" (which might contain both pages from several books addressing the issue, as well as the separate books relating to dog care ("Collie Care", "Chow-Chow Breeding", etc.).

I might think of more. SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:34, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[]

This raises a good point that there aren't alot of standardization rules concerning the use of categories. Perhaps what we need is to draft an official guideline (i don't think it should be a policy) as to the use of categories. There are alot of inconsistancies in the category scheme that probably should be addressed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I've been patching together a proposal at Wikibooks:Categories, if you care to lend a hand :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:27, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Just as schools sometimes have separate staff rooms, does Wikibooks have a policy of encouraging subject-specific questions to be posted in specific places rather than here? If not, I think it's worth considering.

Would this be best done by creating a new page, or using the relevant bookshelf talk page? (e.g. Wikibooks talk:Languages bookshelf for languages). I'm inclined to favor the bookshelf talk page.

If that's agreed on, then a small box could be placed on all the talk pages, and category pages, saying: For discussion relevant to all (Language) books, go to the bookshelf talk page. A box with links could also be placed at the top of this page.

I think this would help discussion to occur in the most appropriate places, and thus improve collaboration. Any objections or comments? --Singkong2005 03:22, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

---

I for instance don't like that idea, this area is for general discussion or to solve major disputes if this is fragmented useful information will only be harder to find and create a barrier to get more participation from users.
Can you give me an example of a problem that can't be solved on the local project and needs a different forum ?
Most problems that can't be addressed locally probably should get posted here, using bookshelf order or even book relations to create other forums will not address any problem we are having in wikibooks, heck, I'm having problem now just checking the few pages I'm working/interested or debating stuff on. --Panic 04:13, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It would be useful for any issue that affects multiple languages - e.g. anything you currently see on Wikibooks talk:Languages bookshelf. That page is already operating the way I suggested, in a de facto way, but it could be done better if we made it official.

Another example: noone has commented on my Languages page naming policy, above - if there were a place that lots of languages people were watching, then this might be different.

I think this would actually make it easier to keep tabs on discussions in areas we're interested in, as they wouldn't be jumbled together here. It would also involve people who don't want to follow Wikibooks-wide discussions, but would happily put this languages discussion page on their watchlist. --Singkong2005 04:36, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Another issue: People might feel shy about posting a languages-specific question on the staff lounge, as it feels like the wrong place - I know that was my initial reaction with certain questions I had.

Here's a basic box we could use, if we have agreement - we could call it {{talklanguages}}:

Likewise for Physics, etc, as applicable. (I don't think we could make a general one, as the page names don't indicate which bookshelf to link to.)

I also added a link to the Help page (which I think should be less controversial).

A box with links could also be placed at the top of the Staff lounge. --Singkong2005 05:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

BTW, I don't mind posting a message on Staff Lounge in order to attract attention to a major topic, but suggest follow up comments to another page. This has been done frequently in the past, and that can be done even for topical issues like something that would affect only language books.

As far as using the bookshelf talk pages as topical discussion areas, this is something that was done historically on Wikibooks but has faded away due to the huge expansion in the number of bookshelves and their eventual removal as prominent features on the front page. In many respects, the bookshelves, as originally conceived, were supposed to be portal pages to related Wikibooks and something akin to the Wikiprojects on Wikipedia. I'm not exactly sure how to get this working the way it was (see Wikibooks talk:Information technology bookshelf for an example of extensive discussions in the past) but I havn't seen any real attempts to do topical discussions lately except for policy discussions. There have also been some semi-abortive attempts to set up explicit Wikiprojects here, but those aren't very well organized either. --Rob Horning 07:40, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't think therre are enough people involved to justify more than one room (I assume we're talking about something similar to the multiple topic areas at the Village Pump?) It's hard enough to hold attention on just this one page.

I hadn't realized that bookshelves were supposed to be used as projects. That's a good idea,

(Pardon me breaking your answer mid-sentence, but I want to focus on the first part of your comment.) I'm a bit confused - you don't want more than one discussion room, but you think that bookshelves as projects are a good idea - in my mind that's contradictory as the two ideas are inseparable, and you're endorsing one and opposing the other. Perhaps you could explain what you mean?

My response to your first point is ::::* It's already split up in practice, just not clearly delineated and signposted; and

• More people might get involved in a discussion room which is clearly signposted and which covers an area specific to a person's interest. (I for one will be removing the staff lounge from my watchlist soon so I don't keep getting distracted from work... but I would like to be able to watch a Languages discussion room.)

See my slightly modified proposal at the end - I would appreciate your response, and hope we can resolve this. --Singkong2005 06:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

but it does point to a problem I've been having with WB all along, namely that everything is "different" from WP, in a way that makes it seem like a moral tenet ("Thou shalt not emulate Wikipedia"). IMO we could and should take more from the structure that's developed over there, and perhaps even default to WP rules when we can't get clear consensus on rules here (for instance, as there has long been a debate here over voting rules (which rather limits any other decisions we might want to make), we could for the time being just default to w:WP:CONSENSUS). SB_Johnny | ^talk 08:26, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I disagree with that pretty strongly, for a number of reasons. This may not be the place to get into details about my opinions, but as far as i'm concerned, we can learn lessons from wikipedia if we want to, but ultimately wikibooks is different fromw wikipedia in nearly every way. As to the other matter, "subject-specific questions" don't really have a home on wikibooks yet. The staff lounge is perhaps an unfortunate catch-all, but with the limited readership we have here, I would rather post all messages here with the hopes that more readers will see them and respond. The bookshelves could entertain questions that are specfic to their subject matter, but there aren't enough people monitoring the bookshelf talk pages. There have been times that i've responded to messages left on bookshelf talk pages (bookshelfs that i am not active on), and i've had to redirect the questions here so that better eyes could read them.

In summary, Wikibooks is not wikipedia, the staff lounge is the best place to ask questions, and nobody really reads the bookshelf talk pages. Now, most of these points are contingent on the fact that wikibooks has a very limited group of active editors. If the wikibooks population (or at least the wikibooks sense of community) increases, some of these things will need to change. Perhaps we could consider actions like over at wikipedia to increase our sense of community, and therefore get more people active in more things. That would be good. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I guess my point is that the way WB works is a bit "wikipedian-unfriendly", in that a potential contributor coming over from WP isn't going to find what they're expecting to find, and there really is a bit of an "anti-wikipedia" feeling expressed here and there. I'll try to write something up (Wikibooks:Wikibooks for wikipedians?) to remedy that a bit (it could be included in the perhaps it could be linked in the ((welcome)) tag).

As a solution, I suggest having a big, clearly visible box on the top (and perhaps also on the bottom) on the staff lounge page directing editors to current proposals. Looks to me like most rules and guidelines need to get a square-one treatment (for example, Wikibooks:Naming policy is tagged as enforced, but the debate over adoption never came anywhere near consensus). SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There is definately a concerted effort to differentiate ourselves from wikipedia. We are a separate project and (for better or for worse) we do things a little differently here and there. Some people might harbor negative feelings towards wikipedia, but it's not institutionalized. Our policy cannon is still a little bit behind, but we are working on it. I don't think that we can make any big changes until we get our voting policy formalized (the fact that this was never done was a big oversight, but it can't be helped now). Because we have never had a voting policy on record, some other policies may have gotten enforced through "unofficial" means. Fortunately for us, nobody is really complaining about the naming policy, and nearly all new books are using the "forward slash" policy. A page "Wikibooks for wikipedians" would probably do alot to help explain what we are all about, and possibly even drum up some support for our little project, so If you want to draft a page like that, that would be a good idea. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Well, got a start on the wikibooks for wikipedians page. Problem arises again in that there aren't guidelines and policies to link to where a wikipedian would want them linked. We'll get there.

As far as tha slash convention is concerned, I (me, SB_Johnny) strongly object: both on principle (because there was no consensus), and in particular (because I don't like it). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Regarding the issues of where to post questions & discussion... I like the idea mentioned by Rob Horning, of posting here and directing responses elsewhere. So here's an alternative proposal to what I originally suggested:

• I do something with the bookshelf header & the box template (which I experimented with above) to suggest that for general languages-related questions, people post at the Staff lounge and the Languages bookshelf talk page, and direct responses from the Staff lounge to the bookshelf talk page.
• I'll put a note in Help:Languages to that effect as well.

How does that sound?

Re the small number of people responding - I think that having clearly marked subject-area-specific areas for those who are interested in those subject areas will make it easier for people to keep track of these topics, but without having to follow a lot of stuff which is not of interest. So hopefully that will lead to more involvement, in the long run. I confess I'm speculating, but whatever is the case, we should make things more clearly marked, so people know where to ask questions. --Singkong2005 17:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There is nothing stopping people from asking questions on the specific bookshelves, and in fact that is probably the prefered method of asking subject-specific questions. Staff lounge, ultimately, should be a place for discussing topics that can't be discussed on other pages. I would say that you shouldnt encourage people to cross-post questions both on staff lounge and on subject-specific pages. There is no need to fragment a discussion like that. If you want the general community involved, ask at the staff lounge. If you dont, ask somewhere else. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Too many indents, so I'm going back to the left side of the page...

Hmm, no consensus here, but the status quo (no guidelines as to where to post) isn't good, so it would be good to resolve this:

• Panic objects strongly;
• SB Johnny doesn't think there's enough people to split up the discussion room.
• Whiteknight, you seem to be agreeing with my original suggestion (though you haven't commented specifically on the idea of putting the boxes);
• Rob Horning said "I don't mind posting a message on Staff Lounge in order to attract attention to a major topic, but suggest follow up comments to another page" which I adapted as a policy of cross-posting, but Whiteknight said not to encourage cross-posting.

A solution might be that major issues relevant to a particular bookshelf are mentioned briefly here (in line with Rob Horning's suggestion). Generally, however, bookshelf-specific discussions are kept on that bookshelf's talk page, while cross-bookshelf issues are discussed here. This doesn't accomodate SB Johnny's & Panic's concerns, which directly contradict Whiteknight's and my ideas... - I don't quite understand Panic's concerns (see my response above) and I'm also replying to SB Johnny explaining why I disagree; but I also don't want to dismiss these concerns.

I feel quite strongly about this but I'm not quite sure how to resolve it. I'd appreciate further responses by Panic and SB Johnny to the above suggestion. --Singkong2005 05:38, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Well, I'm not sure what you mean by directing comments from/towards different conversations. You mean you want the whole conversation transliterated onto both pages? If so, that seems a bit cumbersome.

I do agree (very strongly and occaisionally needing to brush foam away from my mouth) that it's hard to get a conversation/debate started here, but I don't think there can really be a technical fix for that... it's the nature of the community, not the structure.

(Warning: waxing metaphorical) Let me point out that I don't think there's anything wrong with the members of the wikibookian community... it's just the way we are here due to the nature of our project. When I lived in the city, I was part of the town watch, said hi to 20 or 30 neighbors every day when passing them on the street. and enjoyed the hustle and bustle. I live on a farm now in the middle of nowhere, and while I only see maybe 1 or 2 of my neighbors each day, I know them a lot better, and we help each other out from time to time without having any organised "project" to tackle this or that issue.

So maybe a more appropriate tool we could use would be some sort of "help desk" page, where some of the more active editors could list themselves and their interests (there's something similar at WP... I'll try to find a link to it), and if someone (like you) needs people to bounce ideas off of, they can either ask on that page, or ask the volunteers on their talks.

Off to find that link... sound good so far? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Ah, here it is: w:Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce. Not that this is necessarily a cleanup issue, but I like the structure of the project. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't think I have been particularly clear about my opinions, as evidenced by User:Singkong2005's statement above. I am against the segmentation of the staff lounge into sub-rooms. I am neither for nor against boxes (at the top of staff lounge, or whereever) that can redirect subject specific questions to the relevant bookshelf talk pages. I don't think that there is enough traffic on the bookshelf pages to get questions answered in a timely manner, but that's no matter. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:09, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

What do you think of the "taskforce" idea? (I'll volunteer if at least one other person does). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "taskforce". I must have missed that part of the discussion (and now i can't find it). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:36, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It's that wp link just above (w:Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce), which seems a good structure for organising a "helping out" gang. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:49, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

SB Johnny (1): "You mean you want the whole conversation transliterated onto both pages?" Ye gods, no - that would be awful. My suggestion was that if a major discussion topic is starting on a bookshelf talk page, it could be mentioned here, but the discussion would take place entirely on the bookshelf talk page. (I'd earlier suggested that all bookshelf-specific questions be posted in both places, but the discussion takes place on the relevant bookshelf talk page... but that would be excessive). Re technical fixes and the nature of the community... I've come to believe that technical fixes can help a lot (after all, where would we be without wiki software?) but yes, ultimately people have to be involved. As I mention below, I think signposting will help; and it least it won't hurt even if I'm wrong.

SB Johnny (2): I think the task force idea as you described it could be very helpful... I like the idea of a place that people can add their name (perhaps grouped by subject area) and/or say something like "For issues of language learning, esp XYZ, feel free to ask me." Then even if it's a quiet discussion room, people can use it to find help. (I wouldn't be watching the page, but I'd be happy to be contacted.)

Whiteknight: agree that making subrooms is a bad idea - I raised it as a (less preferred option) but I should have been clearer in scrapping that and suggesting the bookshelf talk pages be used for this purpose. Lack of traffic could be an issue, but with good signposting (appropriate boxes here and on each book's main talk page) traffic might increase.

Sounds like we're closer to agreement now (I think). --Singkong2005 23:56, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

(resetting indentation)) I'll try to build up a skeleton for it tomorrow morning and see how it feels. Please provide some input! :) --SB_Johnny | ^talk 00:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Draft a box, or some kind of template that we could use to transfer subject-specific questions to more appropriate places. you could use somethign like:

Language questions, go to: languages bookshelf talk page. Science questions go to the Science bookshelf talk page...

You would probably have to make it less verbose then that, and maybe make the font a little smaller. We have alot of bookshelves, and listing all of them could take up a not-insignificant amount of space in a template. We could post such a template here and at the community portal and the help desk. If the template looks good, we can call a vote whether to include it or not. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I just wanted to draw everybodies attention to a news artical I found today on wikipedia:

• wikipedia:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-08-07/Wikimania tech
• meta:Single login specifications

According to this artical, they are working on a "single user" account system that will handle users from all wikimedia projects. Of primary note is that people who have multiple accounts, one on each wikimedia project (such as accounts on wikibooks and wikipedia, or on multiple languages, etc) will have their accounts merged. In essence, there would be a single login portal for all wikimedia projects. Also, all separately-named accounts with the same confirmation email addresses would be linked together (if i understand it correctly).

If there is a conflict between two separate users with the same username on separate projects (a User:jim on both wikibooks and wikipedia, for instance, that belong to different people), the user with the highest edit counts will get to keep the username.

It would behouve people then to check some other projects, and ensure that your username is either a) unique, or b) that other people with your username are less active then you. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:24, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

PS. Here is a quote from the artical that should answer some questions as to the process of unification:

During the transition, user accounts from all wikis will be added to a temporary database. In cases where only one account exists for a given username, that account would be named the global account, "winning" the right to use that username throughout Wikimedia projects. Where a conflict exists (either multiple users with the same username, or one user with accounts on multiple projects), the account with the most edits would in most cases be named the global account. Next, all accounts with the same confirmed e-mail address would be matched up. All accounts with no edits would be re-assigned to the global account. For accounts still unmatched, upon login, passwords would be stored and matched.

So according to this text, it would be a good idea for everybody to go around to all their username and pseudonyms scattered across wikimedia, and ensure that every account has an identical password and confirmation email. This will help you during unification. If anybody is having a conflict, and would like to change their usernames before the unification, I will be able to help you. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:28, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm going to have a bit of a problem with my user accounts, as I have stuff under different user names and some other interesting problems. Active users like myself who are on multiple Wikimedia projects are likly to be the ones that give the most headaches. My account on Meta is the one that is going to give me the largest fit right now, as I would like to keep the user history I have there. Perhaps I can get a Meta admin to help me out before the big day comes. --Rob Horning 22:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It's my understanding that usernames with identical contact email addresses, and identical passwords are all going to be lumped together. In essence, if you have multiple usernames, you will gain "global access" to use all your usernames on all projects (unless there is a conflict, in which case you might lose one of them or another). For instance, I am "User:Whiteknight" here on wikibooks, but I am "User:Wknight8111" on wikipedia. I assume I am going to receive global rights to both usernames on all projects. I went around to all my user accounts, and made sure all the passwords and email addresses were identical. I also took the liberty of creating new "placeholder" accounts on projects where I am not active, so that another user can't create an account with the same name as me on another project. I think of this as being a helpful thing, because anybody who creates an account "User:Whiteknight" in the next few weeks is just going to lose it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:30, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I wanted to make a few points. First off, Users should join the mailing list for wikibooks (I don't have the link to it right now, but i'll get it in a minute). Also, there is a wikibooks chatroom at irc://irc.freenode.net/wikibooks that (i think) we could use for excellent real-time chats. I've just joined the mailing list myself, and I am trying to be more active on irc as well. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Does anyone know of an irc client for mac OSX? (I haven't used irc since the mid 90s, when I used to log on from a shell). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:08, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Nevermind, finally found one that seems to work. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

The mailinglist can be signed up to from: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l . --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I am working on a draft of an official policy concerning admins, bcrats, and checkusers. I personally feel that wikibooks needs such a policy, but i want to entertain some discussion and see what the community thinks on the matter. The draft of my new proposal is located at:

Wikibooks:Administrators/Proposal

I dont want to start active discussion on this really until we finalize the voting policy. but I do want users to come take a look at it, and see if there are any glaring problems with this draft. I have intentionally kept parts of this draft vague and open to interpretation, because I dont want to put too many rigid restrictions and guidelines on admins. I do make special note that admins can be removed if they are inactive, or if they violate policy. Alot of the points here were lifted from Help:Administrators, but it is my opinion that we need an official policy on this matter, and not just a limp help file. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:05, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

For those that are interested, Brion just started up the English Wikiversity wiki:

http://en.wikiversity.org/

For those that want to help participate, feel free to go ahead and register an account, dig in, and help give this project the boost that it needs.

Unfortunately, my suggestion to fork Wikibooks didn't happen, so instead we have to do a more traditional Transwiki of the contents from here to en.wikiversity.

Thanks again to everybody who has made this come about an get started. --Rob Horning 15:42, 15 August 2006 (UTC)[]

BTW, Congratulations to you Rob!. Organizing the initial project proposal vote was certainly a major key effort to eventual success.Lazyquasar 08:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

OK, I checked out Transwiki. It seems to state explicitly that it is not for use between different wikis to choose the copy and paste. Is this out of date? If so is there a step by step procedure somewhere that shows how to maintain the history log? We have a lot of data to move from the "prototype" wikibooks Wikiversity to the actual [[3]]. It would be nice to do it correctly. Do I have to request Wikibooks adminship to do this or can a regular user do it? Lazyquasar 08:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

That is definitely not current anymore. We can directly import pages from meta and wikibooks through Special:Import (sysop status required), which preserves the change history. sebmol ^? 12:05, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Special:Import has never worked for me, and indeed all I get is that the feature has been disabled by the developers. I wish there were some other way to transfer content from one Wikimedia project to another that would preserve the histories through other than copy and paste, or using a 'bot that does the copy and paste. The message I get from MediaWiki is: No transwiki import sources have been defined and direct history uploads are disabled. That doesn't sound too encouraging. Special:Export does work.... sort of. Even then, it doesn't include the full history or do a page dump of everything it should, but instead is a stragely formatted version of the webpage and nothing else. Essentially of little value especially since it can't be used with the import. --Rob Horning 13:47, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You're correct, it has to be enabled specifically. On Wikiversity, both meta and wikibooks have been enabled as import sources. And it works like a charm. All you have to tell is the name of the page you want to import, in which local namespace it should be placed and if version history should be copied. Check my contributions and follow the links to Wikiversity on some of the pages I've imported. The version history is intact. sebmol ^? 16:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have created a template for pages that have been moved to Wikiversity. As mentioned elsewhere, these will all be pages about organizing Wikiversity, not actual textbooks. If there is a need to have them categorized automatically, please change the template to suit your needs. sebmol ^? 12:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Seems to be coming up a lot these days... anyone want to help? See Wikibooks:Textbooks --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:40, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It is about time we got this definition nailed down firmly. I'll come help out later, cause i'm pressed for time right now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:02, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Yup, should get done with high priority... the wikiversity folks are a bit worried about our VfD system here. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

The current text of the general voting rules policy is up for vote. This is the same version of the text that we have been discussing for several weeks now. A consensus vote to approve this policy will cause it to be marked {{enforced}}, and for the rules and regulations to go into effect immediatly thereafter.

Some key points about this policy that are worth understanding:

• All important decisions (WB:RFA, WB:VFD, policy changes, and others) must be decided by community consensus. Majority vote is not acceptable for making decisions.
• All users must have a minimum of 20 bona fide, productive contributions to be eligible to vote in important discussions (listed above). Users with fewer then 20 contributions may have their votes removed without warning.
• BOTM, COTM, and "Wikijunior book of the Quarter" will continue unaltered. These situations will still be allowed to use their pre-defined voting methods.

If this policy reaches consensus, these rules go into effect immediatly, and will be used to decide all currently open WB:VFD and WB:RFA votes. Since this proposal will have such a big impact on wikibooks, it is highly recommended that all users come in and discuss the issue on the talk page, and vote in the poll. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

In response to some comments and criticisms about this policy, I have made the following changes:

1. Added a section about being bold.
2. Removed all mention of the word "vote" except where we are describing that wikibooks does not operate by majority vote
3. Removed all minimum contribution requirements. Any user can discuss on any topic.
4. Noted that comments should be judged on their quality, not numerical quantity. Sockpuppetry therefore is useless.

I hope that these changes are acceptable to most wikibookians. We can discuss these changes on the policy talk page, and hopefully the community will agree on it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Is there a template here for tagging something unsourced? If not, anyone object if I transwiki/fork w:Template:Fact? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:27, 16 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I would like to suggest we adopt a blocking policy/guideline. In addition to helping prevent admin abuse, it also help give admins a clue of is and is not acceptable. I have copied Wikinews's blocking policy (my personal favorite) to Wikibooks:Blocking Policy. --Cspurrier 21:02, 17 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Certain Wikipedia articles link to Wikibooks using templates listed on w:en:Wikipedia:Wikibooks#Wikibooks. I've created a new template to merge all of the ones currently in use.

Please have a look at w:en:template:wikibooks-poc and the (rather quiet) discussion over at w:en:template talk:wikibooks#Reoganizing_the_Wikibooks_templates. --Swift 02:02, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I like it. I know that i've had problems trying to pick which template to use between all the different options they have over there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:19, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Ack! Don't delete the old template... it's used by a lot of books, notably the cookbook, which is coloned. See discussion on naming policy for more on that. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:39, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There is a "cookbook" template on wikipedia, that is used to link directly to the cookbook modules. We can change the "wikibooks" template however, and not affect the cookbook too much (hopefully). Also, the cookbook has it's own namespace, so the naming rules for it are going to be a little different from the naming rules for regular modules. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:28, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

OK, the Cookbook should probably get its own template then. --Swift 23:16, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Actually, the Cookbook could also be transcluded using {{wkikbooks-poc|Cookbook:Pasta}}. --Swift 23:29, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Jean-Pierre Petit is a 69 year old french scientist well known in France not only for his work but also for a large set of didactical comics (see his bibliography on the french WP: everything but the "Livres" section are comics) that used to be sold in book stores until recently. These comics cover many (mostly scientific) topics and usually get to concepts studied in colleges and universities. See The silence barrier for example.

Some years ago, when his contract with his publisher ended, he chose to offer these books for free download on the internet and gathered a (still growing) team who does a great job at translating these comics in as many languages as they can. As of today, on his website Knowledge without borders, 22 comics are offered for free download in 22 languages (select a flag) totalizing 118 books. BTW, for whomever is interested, these comics are also available in "textless" version for everyone volunteering to translate them

A couple of days ago, he discovered Wikipedia and liked it (who doesn't ? ;-). He then wrote a message (here is a backup) on the Help Desk, proposing to give away all those comics so that they can be placed on Wikipedia, offering « scientific knowledge to as many people as possible ». Great !

Problems :

• Some of these books were sold in book stores, and only the french version afaik. Some were not published because they were written after his contract ended. Therefore, I don't know if these comics should go to wikisource or wikibooks (that's why I'm writing this message on both projects, btw)
• 118 books in 22 languages make a lot of tedious operations : registering on the appropriate wiki project, uploading, making cross-links to translated books, etc. It's even possible that there be no wikisource/wikibooks project for some of the 22 languages
• JP Petit is not familiar at all with Wikipedia : the culture, the syntax, the licenses, how it works, what goes where, and so on.

My opinion is that he has many other things to do than to learn all these concepts and he would appreciate a strong coaching. Even better : if someone very familiar with Wikipedia could do the job on his behalf (uploading every file to the right place, adding the appropriate license, descriptions, crosslinks, ...), I'm sure it would spare him a lot of discouraging troubles. If you wonder, no, I can not be this hero (I don't know wikisource/wikibooks and I miss the time) but, if necessary, I could play as a mediator since I'm french and I have a fair grasp of wikipedia culture.

I hope his offer will interest you. Regards. — Xavier, 04:05, 19 August 2006 (UTC) (PS: JP Petit doesn't know me, I'm writing this on my own just because I support his idea of "Knowledge without borders")[]

Nice books! Probably wikisource... though someone should explain the GFDL to him, as he might not like the idea of someone else selling them. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:27, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'd be interested in translating some of those comics, but I can't find those textless versions. --84.239.157.217 20:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[]

http://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/without_text/ ? --Swift 21:54, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Indeed. I've just sent him a (lengthy) mail about licence issues. This may be a concern since JP Petit has not clearly stated that he allows his books to be freely modified/translated/sold. I made him aware that someone is volunteering for Finnish/Swedish translations (great!). 84.239.157.217, you can also contact him directly via e-mail to offer your help. — Xavier, 22:38, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I wrote that message at commons too.

Hi. Before i submit it at meta. Commons is a repository of files, but for users better will be project such as Wikialbum, when picters will be bigger and description will be larger (in their language only). So look for example at Częstochowa - a lot of pictures, good work with sections but photos are very small and describtion is week. When I want to look for Jasna Góra monastery, I look for category :Category:Jasna Góra. So, without description. I can make new page in main for Jasna Góra only, but it will be something like Częstochowa.

But look here: User:Przykuta/Album:Jasna Góra. Black background, large description, only in pl (good for pl users), big photos, only good quality... (not all at that example are Quality Images, but I think exactly about QI. We can use these images (QI) to make Wikialbum - as a new page space in commons or as a new Wikimedia Foundation project). Indywidual preferences - background (white, black or other), text - normal or italic...

That project demand cooperation between commons and wikiboks, I think.

With regards Przykuta 12:01, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think I prefer the commons format. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:06, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[]

See also the discussion which Przykuta started on commons:Village pump#August 20. --Swift 17:07, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There was a wave of vandalism this morning, that consisted of several sockpuppets. The first one, User:Jimbo WaIes recreated many of the vandalism templates and categories that were previously deleted. The others, User:Software Piracy and User:Cornlevel moved pages in a WoW style attack, many of the pages were "PENIS PENIS", etc. I reverted the moves (most of them, at least), but I found a few instances where repeated moves overwrote redirects with redirects, and then the page history needed to be undeleted. If anybody finds a page that seems to have been hit with vandalism, and can't be reverted, let me or another admin know about it.

Also, I edited the text of many of these templates with the following note:

This category or template has been deleted as per community consensus. It has been protected from recreation. For any questions, please go to The staff lounge, or as User:Whiteknight

and then I protected all these pages from editing and moving, so that they can't be recreated. It seems to me that the vandals are simply trying to glorify themselves by creating these templates, and putting them on non-vandal user pages. If anybody has any questions/comments about this, let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:40, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Just to clarify so that others wont be as confused as I was: the vandal has the username User:Jimbo WaIes, not User:Jimbo Wales. Brilliant, though! --Swift 18:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Does this have anything to do with the history cutoff on Wikibooks talk:General voting rules? The history doesn't show any edits prior to this morning, UTC.--Swift 18:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It does, unfortunately. that page got moved multiple times. I reverted the moves, but it seems that I reverted one too many times, and deleted the page to revert it with a redirect. I was able to salvage the original text from before the vandalism, but the history seems to be gone now. Luckily, it is only a talk page, but it shows how terrible the vandalism was today.--Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:07, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[]

We are going to try and bring this one back to a decision, because it seems that all major concerns have been addressed from the last straw poll. Here are some of the major changes that have been made (and are probably going to cause more problems this time around):

1. All mention of the word "vote" has been removed, and further emphasis was put on the ideas of "discussion" "compromise", and "consensus".
2. The minimum contribution requirement was removed, all users may now participate in any discussion
3. Comments are to be judged based on their quality, not on the numerical quantity.
4. The "decision making process" steps are going to be replaced with a nice flow-chart (but haven't been changed yet)
5. We are going to implement this as a "guideline", not a "policy". Text has been added that we should follow the "spirit of the policy", not the "letter of the policy".

It is my hope that the community can agree on this, and that we can finally get some kind of official decision-making apparatus in place. The current discussion is happening at Wikibooks talk:General voting rules. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I started a wee book a few months ago. I can navigate to it with Categories, but it doesn't come up when I put words from the title into the search box. What's going on? Curyous1

Wikibooks titles are case-sensitive. what is the title of your book? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I've been updating Wikipedia Fortran and, as part of that, clicking on links to see what is actually linked to. Clicking on Wikibooks Fortran, found the Fortran book with text such as the following:

"Functions are more simple than subroutines. A function can only handle one variable, and can be invoked from within a write statement, inside an if declairation if (function) then, etc. A subroutine handles many variables and can only be used as a stand-alone command."

An amazing collection of errors for so few words! My time is going into Wikipedia, I'm not taking on a Wikibooks project.

My assertion is that the current Wikibooks Fortran text is so bad that it can not do any good and possibly does damage - should anyone associate the quality of that text with the quality of Fortran in general. I'd like the book removed from public access; either set so that only its editors have access or entirely deleted. How can that be done?

Thanks Rwwww —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.254.246 (discuss • contribs) 04:23, 22 August 2006

Perhaps others can provide them, but I don't know if we have any policies on quality. If you find erraneous information, I'd suggest you either fix or delete the passage. You don't need to take on a Wikibooks project, just fix what you see. --Swift 07:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

You can always just remove the link from wikipedia...--SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'll put a cleanup notice on the book, and perhaps a warning that there are some errors in the text. It really isn't our policy to hide projects that need help from the public: It's the public that is going to make that book great eventually! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

While I might agree that if such a book became a "Book of the Month" candidate or actually recieved such a distinction that it would be inappropriate (think featured article on Wikipedia), Wikibooks is really a place for editing and developing content. I would argue that if something is so poorly written that it wants to make you discharge bodily functions, there is a high likelyhood that somebody will come along and try to fix it and make a huge improvement, or even significantly edit it to the point that it is unrecognizable from the previous content. I've seen that happen both here on Wikibooks as well as on Wikipedia. If you want to mark this as a work in progress and put cleanup notices on every page to show its "in progress" nature, that seem appropriate. -Rob Horning 14:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I am trying to start a local chapter of the counter-vandalism unit, or WBCVU. Joining is easy, all you need to do is sign up! The WBCVU members monitor for and repair vandalism. You don't need to be an admin, all you need is a desire to help out the project. If you are interested in joining the group, come to the new page, and sign up. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[]

What is the point?

Since the day I started contributing to wikibooks I've been fighting vandalism, that group doesn't provide more power to its members nor does it impose any duties, so what's the point, labeling people and separating them into small groups only brings trouble...--Panic 16:06, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I understand what you are saying, but the point isnt to get better at fighting the vandalism, necessarily, but instead to build a sense of community. Wikipedia has such a unit, and even though we aren't wikipedia, we can still learn some lessons from them. Wikibooks has pretty poor community at the moment. That doesnt mean that the individual people are bad at what they do, it just means that we aren't as sociable as we could be. At the moment, wikibooks is a large, faceless community, and by making things more personal, we can get more users more involved. We aren't separating people into groups so much as we are allowing people to step up their level of involvement.

Ideally, we could have all sorts of such groups, that people can get involved in. Wikipedia has many such groups: people handing out barnstars, people sending out "happy birthday" messages to users, people fixing articals as groups. I would like to have all these things here at wikibooks, but we have to start somewhere.

If you don't want to join, that's no big deal. Some people will, some people won't: we all get to decide our own level of involvement. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:43, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think it's a great idea, mainly for the organising factor. By setting up a group around a project, we better coordinate, learn from each other and build up a knowledge-bank which is useful for fighting vandals. This weekend we had a visit from Tojo who Whiteknight fended off pretty much on his lonesome. Having a way to contact those who are experienced at waging wiki wars instead of everyone jsut doing their own buisiness would be a great asset. --Swift 17:21, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Could an admin please delete Three Men in a Boat. I created it accidentaly, thinking I was in WikiSource. Thanks, Reuvenk 04:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Done. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Folloing Rob Horning's suggestion, I'm bringing up an issue related to a suggestion I made on Mediawiki talk:Sidebar. I proposed that the Cookbook be put in the navigation box. After all, the Cookbook has it's own namespace which definately sets it apart from Wikibooks' more "common" books. The Cookbook even has it's own template on Wikipedia.

What are peoples' feelings about this in particular, and the question in this section's header in general? It might also be a good idea to split the navigation box up into specific books (Cookbook, Wikijunior, ..., Wikiprofessional) and general helpful links (Main Page, Help, Books *). --Swift 17:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Alot of people concentrate their efforts in the cookbook, and I would venture to say that a sizable portion of the entire wikibooks community focuses their attention there. So I say that we should make a link to the cookbook a prominent part of our site. Yes, put it in the sidebox. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:02, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think that the Cookbook is a worthy addition, and that it is something that very nearly is a seperate project along the scale of Wikiversity and Wikijunior. With it having its own namespace and some significant independent policies and style that pertains just to this one book, it might be worth having here. I'd still like to see what some other users think of this idea first, however. If it is added, I would like to put it between "Help" and "Wikijunior". --Rob Horning 10:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Sounds good to me. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:20, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I definitely disagree. There are many popular books here and Cookbook is only one of them. I find it unusual that it even got its own namespace when other categories of books could also use one yet no one seems to want that. The links aleady on the sidebar are pushing it in my opinion. A page of "Popular Books" should be created and then links will go from there, but I certainly don't want to see the Cookbook have its own main link. This is an unfair advantage that several other larger books won't even have. -withinfocus 18:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

"Advantage"... huh? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:32, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Being listed on the main page gives you far more exposure and accessibility. To be listed on every page is even more powerful. Not every big book can be listed on the sidebar, and those unlisted books are being treated unfairly. Some of the already-listed items aren't very popular to begin and I don't recall it being much of a consensus to have them listed there either. I think a site like Wikipedia is proper in what it's listing and we've listed way too specific and overhyped sections of the site. -withinfocus 21:18, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

While we are on the subject, I definately think that "wikistudy" and "wikiprofessional" shouldn't be on the sidebar (they aren't nearly important enough to be in the sidebar, but they could be on the main page). Also, I think we are getting close to a time when we should remove the "wikiversity" link as well: Put a redirect link on the main page if we need too, but wikiversity isnt a part of this project anymore (except in a temporary storage capacity). Adding the cookbook makes sense to me, because it does draw a significantly higher proportion of the wikibooks community then any other books here. It was given it's own namespace as a result of it's enormous popularity, and I think we are right to nurture projects that are drawing positive attention to our site. In the sidebar, and in other high-profile places, we want to put our best foot (or feet) forward, so that people can see what we can do here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:16, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree that those sections should be removed, but perhaps this is a time to suggest that other namespaces be created by the developers. We're moving out of it now due to NP, but I thought it was a great idea to have namespaces by bookshelf or another high-level category like Programming. I personally think Cookbook is old and that's why it got the namespace, not by popularity. Having favoritism for certain books isn't fair to me, and I think we should just link something like Book / Collaboration of the Month or "Good Books" or whatever the page is. I really just don't think the Cookbook is that important. -withinfocus 01:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think we should be careful with populating WB with namespaces. What I see as their main advantage is that one can limit searches to them. Apart from that, categories do a good job at grouping. Is there anything else that speaks for namespacing books?

The [BC]OTM link is an idea worth considering. --Swift 07:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Where can we see Book usage? Had a look at Specialpages, but saw nothing. I'd be reluctant to give specific books such promenance on the sidebar, though. I see the cookbook as a special case due to its special nature. I'm not locked on that though.

SB Johnny seems to be taking on the Wikiversity cleanup. Perhaps he can redirect when he starts, and delete when he has finished moving? --Swift 07:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Yes, another RFC :-). Could those interested have a look at w:en:Template:Cookbook and give their thoughts?

When looking through the Cookbook recipes I found no subpages, so I didn't equip the template with that functionality. Does anyone know if there are any recipes with subpages? --Swift 18:00, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I like it. If we had a better image for our cookbook, it owuld be better.--Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:03, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Yes, it would be nice to be able to distinguish the Cookbook a bit, but I'm not artistic or imaginative enough for taking on that task ... --Swift 21:27, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm reasonably good with my copy of photoshop, but only at touching up images, not at creating them. Not everybody can be an artist! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There are a couple of subpages in the cookbook in general (you can check by looking at the index), but no recipe or ingredient should be using them. Kellen ^T 10:06, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I have created a number of templates that will be useful in designating "guidelines" as opposed to "policies". Among these are:

• {{guideline}}
• {{proposed guideline}}
• {{rejected guideline}}

I have put the {{guideline}} template on the few pages that already were in Category:Wikibooks guidelines.

Now, there are a number of proposed policies and drafts of this or that lying around that the wikibooks community (as far as i can tell) already accept as common sense. I would like to move some of these from {{proposed}} to {{guideline}}, if for no other reason the to close the books on issues that never quite became policy, but that are useful nonetheless. Among these pages are:

1. Wikibooks:Talk page
2. Wikibooks:Title pages
3. Wikibooks:Annotated texts
4. Wikibooks:Image use policy
5. Wikibooks:Assume good faith
6. Wikibooks:No offensive usernames
7. Wikibooks:Editing disputes policy
8. Wikibooks:Forking policy
9. Wikibooks:Semi-protection policy
10. Wikibooks:Profanity

there is a proposal on the table for many of these drafts to be removed in favor of Wikibooks:Be nice, a vague, over-arching proposal which says in a few lines of text which the others say in a few pages. I would like to change Wikibooks:Be nice to an accepted guideline as well, although not in lieu of these other guidelines.

Also, I have made Wikibooks:General voting rules into an official guideline, and have moved the text of that guideline to Wikibooks:Decision making.

If nobody objects to any of these changes, I'm going to start making them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:08, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Are you anxious to get these done? I haven't been here too long and wouldn't mind going through each one. I don't mind it if you go right ahead, but what do you guys say about doing one a week, one after the other? We'll be done by then end of the year and each one will have gotten a brainstorming ... but then again, perhaps they already have had all the attention they need.

One thing I'd like to do is implement the ideas I mentioned on Wikibooks talk:General voting rules on WB:PAG (essentially explicitly stating that policy must be followed, but a guideline should be followed). See Wikibooks talk:Policies and guidelines if you are interested. --Swift 03:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm way ahead of you Swift, I've changed the text of the {{enforced}} template to say "must" instead of "should". I've also created the {{guideline}} template that says "should". What might be a good idea, however, would be to place a prominent link to that RFC on the WB:PAG page.

Also, I'm not in any hurry to make any changes, necessarily, but I feel like many of these proposals have been sitting in limbo for far too long, and it is about high-time we made a decision on them, yes or no. Your idea of spending a week on each individual proposal is a good idea in my book, and it will ensure that people who want to get involved can, that changes aren't made too radically or too quickly, and that each proposal will get a fair share of attention. Starting on monday then, howabout we focus our attention on Wikibooks:Be nice. There is an outstanding call that many of our other policies (no profanity, no offensive usernames, no personal attacks, etc) should be merged into the Be nice policy. We can look at that proposal first, and then decide at a later time if the text of other proposals is redundant or not. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

No-one will accuse you of being slow on your feet :-). As for the RFC and WB:PAG, I'd like to see a must/should defining clause on the page, but I'm not sure about referencing the RFC since it is external to this project. Not that the IETF isn't to be trusted, though ;-). I was going to formulate this, but got sidetracked by reading old discussions on the talk page... (come on: stay on track).

Good. Then on Monday it's Be nice week! --Swift 08:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm going to start locking down the pages that have been imported to wikiversity. I'm in touch with the admins ("Custodians") over there, and will be working closely with them during this process.

Rather than deleting right away, I'm going to just protect them for now... I figure we should wait until they are out of the trial period (6 months) before going ahead with the deletions. This will be a slow process, because we're creating stable redirect pages on wikiversity for linking from the pages here. Should be done in a couple weeks. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:09, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Admins: please use template {{Wv-archive}} if you lock pages. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 20:31, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There is about a week left in the month of august, and the BOTM and COTM votes for september have drawn a pitifully small number of votes. The COTM page has attracted only 5 unique voters (I voted twice), and the BOTM page has only attracted a single vote, towards a single nominee. I will look through the list of Wikibooks:Featured books myself tonight, and see if there are any other good choices for either of these categories. Alot of our BOTM and COTM choices recently have been "computer related", so perhaps we could make a conscious community effort to pick a more "soft" subject. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I would dare say that perhaps this next month we shouldn't have a BOTM? I havn't spent much time lately trying to review Wikibooks that perhaps deserve the honor, and my problem I have with the current BOTM is that none of the books I find to be worthy of the distinction. There must be something here on Wikibooks that has made signficant progress and worth note on the front page. Perhaps even a previous BOTM book that has shown considerable progress from when it was last recognized? There certainly has not been a multiple winner yet. --Rob Horning 15:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree with you that if there are no worthy candidates, that perhaps we should put off BOTM for a month, or even insert an artificial "Focus of the Month" instead. For instance, I think that wikibooks really needs a stronger sense of community, like what wikipedia has with all the wikiprojects, and the CVU, and Esperanza. Perhaps we should try and create a certain amount of community infrastructure, and use the month of september to promote it?

We could replace both the COTM and BOTM (neither has many votes) sections on the main page with advertisements for other initiatives like those mentioned above. Also, it was mentioned somewhere else that perhaps we could start spending a week each on some of the old policy proposals that have never been decided one way or the other: discuss each for a week, come to a quick decision whether to "make it policy/guideline", "reject it", or "save for later". In this way we could tie up alot of loose ends of that sort, and get more people interested in wikibooks administration (in the sense of "helping to run the community", not RFA). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

The PDF Version template has an error - on the Special Relativity book it brings up Wikijunior Solar System. RobinH 08:54, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

It wasn't the template, but the link it referred to. The file does, for some reason, link to a book on the Solar System, while File:Special relativity.pdf links to the right docuement. Special Relativity seems to have started out at Special Relativity ... which may be the cause of the confusion. --Swift 10:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Can some admin move Wikibooks talk:General voting rules to Wikibooks talk:Decision making. It seems that Wikibooks:Decision making was moved to WB:PAG which is probably why Wikibooks:General voting rules's talk page didn't get copied over. --Swift 11:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Yeah, by "it seems it was moved", you really mean "Whiteknight messed up, and moved shit to all the wrong places". I'm sorry for that. I've turned Wikibooks talk:Decision making into a redirect for Wikibooks talk:General voting rules. This is just a temporary solution to the problem (and not even a good one, really), but I will have time to fix it later and correct all the ensuing double-redirects that would be created from the page move. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

We should probably have archival templates to put on debates once they've concluded. Wikipedia has a number of those at w:en:Category:Archival templates, but I'm not sure which ones we'd need. Instead of being bold and creating a few which will get duplicates that will only confuse matters for users, I deceided to turn to the Lounge for discussion. --Swift 12:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't think it is necessary to maintain these discussions verbatim on the talk pages, or even in archive pages. I think that such discussions, especially if they are significantly old can simply be deleted, because their text will be preserved in the page history. Also, discussions that are significantly old and obsolete (discussions where a decision was made that was later superceeded) don't even help to explain the process that went into the current state of policy. Also, It is important to note that many important parts of a discussion happen on the Mailing Lists, or on IRC, and cannot be documented here anyway (unless we copy text from these external resources onto our servers, which seems a dreadful waste of time to me).

Discussions that should be kept can be moved to a specific archive page, and we can use a general "This page represents an archive for page {{{1}}} for the time period {{{2}}} till {{{3}}} Please do not edit it." This way the talk pages we are using don't fill with clutter and become unweildy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I would just like to post a quick message before I go away for the weekend about the current elections for checkuser rights at WB:RFA. There are a number of people under consideration for these rights currently, and we need at least two candidates to receive 25 votes or more before anybody can get them. Here are some points to consider:

• Checkuser rights enables an admin to see the IP address of a registered user. Ostensibly this is so that vandals who are using sockpuppetry can be detected and blocked much more quickly and more efficiently.
• There are some privacy concerns in having a user being able to see an IP address, and therefore a candidate needs at least 25 votes to receive the permissions.
• Current wikimedia policy is that a project may not have only one checkuser, but needs to have 2 or more.
• User:Derbeth currently has enough votes (26, at last count), but we need a second person.
• User:Uncle G has many votes, but has lost some support recently due to his inactivity. I (User:Whiteknight) currently have about 17 or 18 votes, and User:Robert Horning was recently nominated but has only a few votes.

I would like all wikibookians to at least be aware of this, and people who are in support of it should come down and cast votes as they see fit. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I'll throw in some votes. I'm not active here so I don't know how much weight they would carry but I'll put them in anyway. Gerard Foley 21:44, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

At this point I think it is just numerical, so every vote has equal weight. The 25 vote limit is completely absurd outside some of the bigger projects. en.wikipedia can probably pull together 25 votes before anyboyd announces that there is even a nomination, but en.wikibooks needs to scrape for every precious vote that we can get. One day our project will be bigger (hopefully) so we dont have these problems. Thanks for the votes! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

User:Walter, a steward, has just granted User:Derbeth and I (User:Whiteknight) checkuser rights. Thanks to everybody who has voted. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There's been several offensive page moves today. --86.134.56.248 14:08, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[]

There has been a large amount of vandalism this morning. The following users were all involved (that I can see):

• User:Sunlight2
• User:Hoggle
• User:Baron Cornett
• User:Bricks and Flings

Also, all these accounts originated from the same IP address that left this warning message: 86.134.56.248

I have blocked that IP address, and all these accounts, and I have reverted most of the page moves. I am going to go through and start deleting the obscene redirects. Anybody who is interested in helping can feel free. If i have missed anything, please send me a message and I will fix it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:02, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[]