Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2006/October

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.

I was just wondering if this should be done, or if it's really not worth the trouble.

For those who are unfamiliar with the admin's tools, a module that is merged into another module can have its history merged after the fact by deleting the destination module, moving the module that was merged in to the article's space, and then restoring all the deleted edits. It's kind of a pain in the neck to do it (I've only done it to correct a few copy-paste pagemoves and a couple merges with long edit histories), but perhaps it's worth the time? And would this technically be required by the GFDL?

The major crisis of consciousness I had about this was the mass-merger of a large number of templates used in one book into just 1 template. The merged pages had histories, and it might have been good to merge them all, but deleting-merging-undeleting 30 times would have been an arduous project (not to mention having a lot of windows for human error to climb through), so I just ended up speedying them as requested. It's been gnawing at me for a couple days now, and I'm wondering if I should really just go back and do the merges the long way. Is this just silly? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Your efforts to work inside the GFDL is commendable! After glancing over the section on combining documents I'd say that, as you described it, what you did was a breach of the license (I'll be glad if someone explained that I'm wrong). But — and there is always a but — if you rewrote the template from scratch, then, I reckon, you'd be fine. It's my understanding that GPL software is frequently rewritten to be published under the BSD license in order to solve licensing issues.

And what you did was definately rewriting, not modifying; right? :-) --Swift 20:18, 23 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Actually, I didn't do the combining (or rewriting, etc.), I just cleaned out Category:Candidates for speedy deletion... the actual content work was done by another editor :-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[]

BTW, I asked for some opinions on this at wikipedia, and the feeling there was that this is important for GFDL reasons. There's no policy, but there is a technical manual on the subject: w:Wikipedia:How_to_fix_cut_and_paste_moves. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:00, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Hello, I'm mostly contributing on Wikispecies. I'd like to start a source-book here that provides the original description to species, made by the original author who described the species first (and gave it the name). Just the physical description, so there's no copyright on the work (as with the names itself). It is quite important to have such a reference, as these original citings are published in magazines all over the world, sometimes these descriptions have been placed on the net.

The problem is that these texts are multilingual. The oldest texts are mostly latin, but the more recent citings (last 200 years) are in English, Spanish, Japanese, or whatever. The reason I like to start this book here is that the accepted scientific language moves more and more towards English. (It is a still matter of much debate, but I'll better leave this out) Ideally, every original citing will get a translation into English.

Is there an objection that I contribute in this multilingual fashion? --Kempm 07:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[]

I think it would be a very interesting project, especially considering all the changes to taxonomy over the past 2 decades. Will this also include basionyms and other names between the original names and the current one? Are some of these going to be pre-linnean, or are they all binomial nomenclature?

For help with the translation, you might want to ask around at wikiversity or the biology-related projects at wikipedia. I'm afraid my latin is a bit rusty, otherwise I'd lend you a hand with this. If you're unable to translate whole entries, a quick synopsis would be helpful as well... or even a modified version of the taxoboxes used on wikipedia. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 08:01, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[]

In principal only the binomial (Latin) system, which is being used today. I didn't want to include much more information besides the original description, and it's possible translations. Wikispecies is to answer questions like basionym, homonym, or whether a taxon is paraphyletic. I think Wikispecies are the ones to answer questions like that. I do want to provide links to wikispecies though, and as all other projects, links to the wikipedias.

Thx for your answer, I'll best get started to make a few drafts. --Kempm 17:23, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Perhaps someone would like to help me design a template navbox for the project Nomenclatural citations that I started. I'm very text-orientated myself, but I think the content of the project can use something colorful. The template should bring a little colour to the page, but emphasize the data. Also it must be pretty easy to implement. The data it should contain:

• Standard link to Main project page, and link to an overview page
• Taxon name, and place in taxonomic hierarchy (perhaps this data needs to be split)
• Author names, that link to one overview page and a year (perhaps these two need to be split also)
• A place where to give the source, which should link to one source page
• Possibly a link to an Internet page
• Wikipedia link

An example of a constructed page that contains this data is Nomenclatural_citations/Grateloupia/huertana (top 5 lines). I hope some web wizard can help me on this. --Kempm 17:33, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

I hastely put a suggestion up at Template:Nomenclatural citations infobox and have transcluded it on Talk:Nomenclatural citations/Grateloupia/huertana. --Swift 22:49, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Thank you very much Swift. I am going to add your template. --Kempm 06:25, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Is there a way to get browser hits and number of visitors counts statistics on wikibooks? thanks/KristianMolhave 19:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Unfortunately, no. The idea has been brought up several times, but the general concensus is that it would consume too many server resources to maintain such a count. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[]

One thing that has been suggested, however, is to use on a particular Wikibooks page that you are interested in, to use some sort of external page hit counter. While I wouldn't recommend that this be done for all pages or for even a specific Wikibooks page for an extended period of time, it can try to help you get a general idea of what sort of traffic this website pulls in.

At the moment, the best we have beyond turning the MediaWiki page counter back on is to use the Alexa page hit service. BTW, Wikibooks seems to have stagnated over the summer according to this ranking system. I could give my opinion (very POV) of why this is happening, but it is an interesting set of statistics to look at. If these results are correct, Wikibooks has a general reach of 0.04% of all internet users access Wikibooks at some point, or about 15 million page view per day, putting Wikibooks in the top 4000 of all websites. Not too shabby, is it? --Rob Horning 19:57, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

If you have the time, I would be very interested in hearing your opinion on the subject, Rob. (BTW, the actual reason is that the growth of all Wikimedia projects either slows or stagnates over the summer, because kids are out of school and have nothing to research or study. Wikibooks, being a textbook site, would of course be hit the hardest. You'll see that the same thing happened last summer. How does this compare with your opinion?) --hagindaz 03:46, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I've seen some disturbing comments over the past few days about deleting "inactive" books (i.e., books that aren't currently being worked on). I feel strongly that this comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what wikibooks is and is not. I'd like to propose the following policy for "inactive books":

Wikibooks is:

• A place to write, develop, and host open-content books.

Wikibooks are not:

• Web forums, home pages or blogs that should be deleted if they're not being continually improved.
  • We're not exactly short on server space, so they're not doing any harm.
  • We're not "doing the contributors a favor by hosting their pages here", wikibooks are written for the readers, not for the contributors (though of course it's fun for the contributors, too).

Stubs should be deleted:

• When they have no content, and have been hanging around for several months without any content
  • (If a stub is bothering you, just add {{qr-em}} to the module, which will bring it to the attention of admins, but not make "offensive additions" to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion.)

Stubs shouldn't be deleted:

• When they were just made yesterday
• When they have content, but aren't "finished" (what's the big hurry?).

Redirects should be deleted:

• When they were minor pages or stubs (i.e., the page was moved very early in the book's development)
• When the original page was created using a bad title (i.e., "Chapter" instead of "Book/Chapter", or "Bokk" instead of "Book"
  • If a redirect page is sitting where another page should be, just start writing the page there
  • If a redirect page is sitting where another book needs to be moved to, just change the redirect to the page that's to be moved there, and ask an admin to move the page for you.

Anyway, I'd like to get some feedback on this. Category:Candidates for speedy deletion was empty a couple weeks ago, but is now chock-full of deletion requests that I personally find inappropriate. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Wouldn't it be better to simply modify Wikibooks:Deletion policy than to come up with yet another policy document?

Also, I did a random check on the speedy deletion candidates and couldn't find much objectionable (unused redirects, page renames and the huge number of original content that nominated yesterday). --Swift 22:26, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

There might be links on other sites to the old pagenames. I get the feeling the "water conservation" series in particular was written with something in mind (non-profit orgs, etc.), so the redirects might be serving a purpose (and are certainly doing no harm). The shakespeare book was September's CotM, and the source material was under discussion here (I personally think it should be deleted, but I don't think we ever heard back about why it was posted here... was there any annotation done on it?), so probably should have gone through VfD. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

and are certainly doing no harm. Granted. I just don't like the idea of having messy redirects mucking up the otherwise serene, clean structure that is Wikibooks.

The Shakespear original texts were also mentioned at Talk:William Shakespeare's Works/Contents#Adding Original Texts but no-one replied.

was there any annotation done on it?. No.

probably should have gone through VfD. They qualified for speedy deletion as they clearly violated WB:WIW as original texts. They have now been deleted.

What do you think about taking this to Wikibooks:Deletion policy? It might be more constructive to suggest modifications to existing official policy. --Swift 03:26, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I disagree with some of this. A book is a big commitment, and a book can have more variables associated with it then a wikipedia artical does, for instance. A wikipedia artical needs to be informational and expository. A book, however, requires a unifying theme to tie all the subjects together, it requires a target audience, an organizational structure, and a clear voice. A stub-book, or a book which is hopelessly incomplete, which doesnt have any contributors, and is unlikely to attract contributors in the future is as good as no book at all. Wikibooks may be able to host content, but we should not be required to host useless, meaningless, or unusable content. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:41, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Well yes, most of the stub books are trash, but not all of them are. The challenge is organizing them in such a way as to make them easy to absorb for the next writer who comes along months, years, or perhaps decades later. I don't think it's a question of being "forced" to host something, since for all practical purposes our closets have infinite room for more filing cabinets. Best option might be to simply ask for volunteers to "adopt" the major categories and try to come up with a standard stub-sorting system, as well as templates for use in alerting the authors of new projects about the existence of compatible stubs.

BTW, Wikibooks doesn't have a particularly clean structure at the moment, though it's been getting better thanks to Jguk's "category spree", which I've been following up on in the how-tos category. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Maybe this question has been asked before, but I can't find a reference to it.

Would it be possible to facilitate the creation of a book index (similar to the index with key words found in paper books, refering to page numbers) with some kind of template that would create the links automatically?

I suggest something like:

{{bookindex 
 | book=TITLE OF BOOK
 | keywords=key1,key2,key3,etc...
 }}

I would like this to produce a page like this:

TITLE OF BOOK

• key1: linkToKey1a, linkToKey1b
• key2: linkToKey2a
• key3: etc...

I guess this is technically possible.

I know that you can always use Google to search the books, but then you would search ALL the books, not just the one you're interested in.

Jbib 14:50, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Sounds like a good idea, but I have no idea ho you'd do it. If you personally want to search a book and all it's chapters, try using Special:Prefixindex. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:52, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks, Johnny, but that page only lists the chapters in a book, there's no search option. Jbib 18:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

You wouldn't be able to search any index created on Wikibooks, for that you'd need a modification of or an extension to the Mediawiki software.

As for your "keys", would this be something like categories? --Swift 22:29, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Where can I request such an extension? Jbib 08:20, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I expect you'd have to convince someone to write it or do so yourself. --Swift 08:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

No. For instance, in a book about Windows, I would like to find all the pages that talk about the clipboard. Jbib 08:20, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Category:Windows/clipboard? --Swift 08:48, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Might be nice to have automated searches within a category, actually, but it would be a pretty major software fix I think. Derbeth or Whiteknight might be able to create a bot for it though (or maybe you could?) Bugzilla's got a serious backlog these days. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:13, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I noticed that the Wikibooks portal (the one at http://www.wikibooks.org) still redirects to a page on the English Wikibooks called Wikibooks portal. All the other Wikimedia projects have seperate portals that are not part of any language, so shouldn't this be the same for wikibooks. Minun ^Spiderman 15:52, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Interesting... you might want to bring that up on Foundation-l. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:53, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Agreed. Please see mediazilla:7396. --hagindaz 17:16, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks, I have also posted on the Foundation-l mailing list. The only problem is I can't find the link, does anyone know how to find a post on the mailing list Minun ^Spiderman 12:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

here ya go :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:26, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I recieved a mail back saying:

The message's content type was not explicitly allowed

But I don't really see what was wrong with my mail. Thanks for the link anyway, happy editing Minun ^Spiderman 12:28, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Did you sign up on the mailing list first? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:31, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Im sure I signed up. It also happened AGAIN when I replied to a message that came in my mail Minun ^Spiderman 12:34, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I've tried it again, and I think its working Minun ^Spiderman 12:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wait, I said that too soon. I'll have to give up until I find out whats wrong Minun ^Spiderman 12:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

There are several things I would like to point out here. First of all, what is now the English Wikibooks was originally the "parent" wiki for all of the other Wikibooks projects. Indeed, until about six months ago, there was still some considerable non-English content on this wiki (marked for deletion, but still there) from before the various language editions were created and the content moved off of this website in a fashion similar to what is happening right now with Wikiversity.

In addition, English Wikibooks has the administrators and other volunteers that are capable of being able to support the maintainance of this page. Is there any specific complaint about how Anglo-centric the portal page is right now? Or that updates to the page are not being handled in a timely and contientious fashion? Or that languages are being over or under represnted (including English)?

I have been involved somewhat in maintaining the portal page, and certainly any reasonable suggestions on its improvement are welcome. Because of its prominance and importance for all of the various language editions of Wikibooks, it should be some very well protected page editable only by administrators. What I don't understand here is why this page absolutely must be moved from here to some other project like Meta or a "beta" Wikibooks project other than to satisfy some weird sense of political correctness and anti-anglophilism. --Rob Horning 20:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

If I may ask, how does the portal page get updated now? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Any user from any project updates m:Www.wikibooks.org template/temp, which is then checked by a meta sysop and copied over to the live version. --hagindaz 01:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

...some weird sense of political correctness and anti-anglophilism. ← yeah, that probably captures it. So currently wikibooks.org just redirects to en.wikibooks.org? If so, then yes, bettter to keep it here where it can be watched over than on a meta with few pages and therefore few eyes on the balls. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:35, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

But it doesnt redirect anymore. As of today, wikibooks has it's own portal page that isn't on en.wikibooks anymore. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:21, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Good points, but check your premises. :) The live version is protected, and there are as many active admins on meta as on Wikibooks to update it, so that won't be an issue. --hagindaz 01:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

An HTML version has these advantages, Rob: our most viewed page will no longer be converted from wikicode, saving processing power and loading time, English transliterations for languages in foreign scripts appear on mouseover (and project codes don't), language metadata is used for browsers, and the search box can now work with all languages, rather than only English.

You will of course be able to update the page, Rob, along with those who aren't admins on en, who will no longer have to describe an error or update on the talk page (which means no more spelling and link mistakes!). English won't be needing many updating, and the other projects will be able to update the page themselves now, which means less work for you! The updates will be checked by meta sysops, who will be watching the page, before appearing on the live version. In short, you will have the same abilities you already have, along with other users. --hagindaz 01:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

If you insist on having direct control over the live version, I suppose we can ask to host the page locally. It didn't occur to me that you would feel this strongly about such a minor point, especially since you haven't been active enough to update the portal over the past month, but whatever you decide is fine by me. --hagindaz 02:23, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm not insisting on any sort of control... indeed all I'm saying is that the admins here on en.wikibooks have done a pretty good job of keeping the portal page under control for the past couple of years. And this is available to any trusted user who achieves admin status. That said, I really don't care either way and if somebody else wants to pick up the ball and try something different, that is fine with me. I am, however, suggesting that this can and should be done by "community concensus" and not just based on a whim because nobody is going to be fighting the change.

Far too much stuff like this happens, particularly when it relates to major and long-term issues when no community concensus is even attempted. I am just urging caution and suggesting that there may not be the urgency to make changes just because you can make changes. That and just because other projects are doing something some way doesn't mean that all of them have to be done that way. --Rob Horning 23:14, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[]

To inform, Wikibooks:Administrators is now an enforced policy. The current version has been accepted for some time and with no dissenters has moved to enforced. -withinfocus 07:47, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I am very happy about this. Thank you for being bold about it. Not having an administrator policy being enforced has been an annoyance to me for some time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:37, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I have noticed two broken templates on the main page

• Wikibooks:Book of the month/October 2006
• Wikibooks:Collaboration of the Month/October 2006

Is there anything we should do about them Minun ^Spiderman 12:49, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Fixed. --Derbeth ^talk 14:35, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The following is part of a conversation that I have been having with User:Omegatron over the de-sysop nominations that have been called on WB:RFA, due to inactivity. Omegatron believes that users should not be de-sysopped for any reason besides malicious behavior. I am of the opinion that adminship is not a lifetime membership, and that if you dont need it, then you shouldnt have it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

---

Being a regular user on wikibooks brings with it no obligations whatsoever, but admins do have the additional tools for the express purpose of fullfilling other obligations. If a user does not want these additional responsibilities, they shouldn't become an admin in the first place. -- Whiteknight

I wholeheartedly disagree. Would you mind copying and continuing (this part of) this discussion on a public talk page on Wikibooks so others can be included and I can see what others have to say? I'm sure there's an ongoing discussion on pages related to Wikibooks:Requests for adminship. Feel free to copy anything I said in this email thread. --Omegatron

Again, such a definition would result in hundreds of admins. --Whiteknight

Good. That's what's supposed to happen. There is apparently a significant difference in what is meant by "adminship" on wikibooks as compared to en.wikipedia or Commons, but the significance and authority of the original concept was explained by Jimbo:

"I just wanted to say that becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*. I think perhaps I'll go through semi-willy-nilly and make a bunch of people who have been around for awhile sysops. I want to dispel the aura of "authority" around the position. It's merely a technical matter that the powers given to sysops are not given out to everyone. I don't like that there's the apparent feeling here that being granted sysop status is a really special thing."

--Omegatron

I am trying to make adminship less special by saying that it isn;t a lifetime membership, and that it isn't a membership at all. "admins" aren't part of some special club, they are no different from normal users whatsoever, and should not be treated differently, except that they have additional tools that they are expected to employ for the good of the community. In this respect, adminship isn't a privledge, or a badge of honor: it is a commitment to work towards the betterment of the project. If you are not using those tools, why would you keep them, and for that matter, why would you want them? Where is the benefit in your ability to come back to wikibooks after a year of absence or more, and being able to block users and delete pages here?

I would also agree with your statement that wikibooks does treat the matter differently from wikipedia: the wikibooks culture has been growing away from that of wikipedia, and our differences are a point of pride for some of our members here. Not that we dislike wikipedia, but we are a distinct entity with our own methods of operation, and we are happy to be seen as such. Adminship is simply a tool, like a hammer. And I am of the opinion that you dont need to be carrying a hammer around with you long after you have lost all your nails. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:10, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

We have discussed this matter three times I believe in past discussions here as well as other places. The policy was enforced with community approval and I don't think it's appropriate to have another huge discussion with the same people saying the same things again and again. This has all been said before and there is nothing new here. Yes, our policies are different from other wiki sites. I don't see a problem with that. -withinfocus 22:32, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Where are the other discussions? — Omegatron 23:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wikibooks talk:Administrators was one, but it appears to be incomplete. I will look for others. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2006/June#Administrator_Inactivity_Decision Is another.

[1] is the third.

The new policy of the week this week, and the policy for which I am going to be devoting some solid energy is Wikibooks:Image use policy. I personally propose we reject this policy as it is currently written, and merge the help-ish parts into the Help book, and merge the legal parts into Wikibooks:Copyright.

If the community agrees with these recommendations (or, if the community decided on a different course of action entirely), I would like to act on this policy by the end of the week. If the community cannot agree on this issue, it will remain proposed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:21, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[]

I think this is a good idea... there have been huge blow-ups about images on wikipedia over the last few months and I'd rather not see that here. Two good changes would be to completely disallow fair use images (which would never hold up to a challenge if a book were pinted), and strongly suggest against using the GFDL (due to the wordiness of the license: CC and PD are much better if any book is going to be printed without the license section being longer than the book!).

It might also be nice to have all new books licenced under creative commons rather than GFDL, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[]

There has been some disagreement between User:Derbeth and myself about some books which are currently labled as being cross-licensed between the GFDL and another license. There is even one book that I can think of that is currently listed as being entirely available in PD. The problem is mandating a change in license is that it probably has to go through the WMF if we are going to be making a large legal change like that. I think that it can be up to the discretion of individual contributors whether to release their images under the CC, GFDL, or any other license. Since the text of most books are already released under the GFDL, most printed versions will already have the text of that license appended to the end anyway.

I am also against fair-use images, and there is a policy proposal about them floating around somewhere that I would like to work on later.

If we keep this proposal, I would like it to be expanded to include such matters (fair use, copyright preferences, etc). If we reject it, I would like the important points to be merged elsewhere (as per my note above). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:35, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Wait, Whiteknight, can you explain why do you want to reject this policy? What is wrong with it?

Saying that "GFDL images are most often placed in our GFDL texts so the text of GFDL license is already out of there" is not a good point of view. Wikimedia projects want free images, which means that every single image could be used alone, without text it is embedded in. It is not unlikely that someone may want to use a schema from a book from Wikibooks in his article in a newspaper or something (a non-free article or CC-licensed article). And what's then? Because of such opportunity, I think that there is a good reason for discouraging (not disallowing) users from licensing their images under GFDL license.

And when it comes to license of text at Wikibooks - well, I think that we are making an off-topic here and this is a topic for a separate discussion. --Derbeth ^talk 08:10, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[]

All we could do is discourage GFDL for images, certainly not ban it. Commons does the same thing.

BTW, personally I would be happy to see all images going on commons, rather than in the local space, since they're quite good at watching for copyvios there, and by putting all images at commons, we're making them more easily available for other projects such as wikibooks in other languages, etc. This would of course make the fair use issue a moot point. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:14, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[]

That is probably a good idea. Uploading all images to commons, (and then looking for images at commons when you need one) will be better for everybody. We can write text about that into this proposal. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 11:32, 25 September 2006 (UTC)[]

I don't really see why GFDL should be avoided. This is clear in the case of standalone image, but for a book, the GFDL will be printed anyway (I'm mainly thinking about real printed books here). And in case of reuse of a single image of a book, can't it be covered by citation rights (IIRC, there is something about this in the GFDL apparently not)?

How would you manage different licences in a printed book? Should each picture be labeled with its corresponding licence, or is it possible to put all this information in a table at the end of the book?

In my opinion, the best route (but maybe not always achievable), is multi-licensing with GFDL and creative commons (or a single public domain like licence),as it would make picture suitable both for a GFDL book and a standalone use. That is what commons try to promote http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:BD-propagande_colour_en.jpg CyrilB 19:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[]

How would you manage different licences in a printed book?

That's a good question, and one that really needs to be ironed out. I think that, unfortunately, th license of each image needs to be accounted for, although I dont know whether we need to physically include the complete text of every license used, or simply post links to the online locations of the text of those licenses. If the text of the book is under the GFDL, and I would consider the text to be the primary component of a book, then the GFDL license text definately should be included. Every book then can have a "list of images" supplied in the back that would include the image, the name of the person who created/uploaded that image, and a link to the license that the image is under. It's a lot of work, perhaps, but it makes the most legal sense (to me anyway). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)[]

As I understand, the text of a wikibook is covered by the GFDL, which has to be included verbatim in the book (but we don't need to put as many copies of the licence as GFDL items in the book, that is, the same copy will also cover all pictures under GFDL in the book). Therefore, as far as we're talking about wikibooks, I think the most sensible licence for pictures is GFDL. Creative commons licences shouldn't be not too difficult to manage, as they require minimal labelling (although I'm not sure what exactly has to be mentionned, nor if it possible to put it at the end of the book, in the illustration table). I don't know what can be the requirements of the other licenses suitable for commons.

I agree the policy should be "any image suitable to commons", but I would also request people to use GFDL, to reduce the licence overhead... Fair use should be discouraged, especially for wikibooks as most of the time they are low-res pictures, unsuitable for any other use that computer display CyrilB 19:26, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Wait. We make our work "free" so that not only us, but anyone else could use it also in modified work. With GFDL, if someone wants to take only single image from a book, he is obliged to provide the whole text of GFDL license. This is not only a problem whether image licensing makes problems with printing our books. We have to remember about people who want to use images without taking any text from us. And I don't know where do you see any "licence overhead" in Creative Commons licenses - one sentence with URL to the license text is sufficient for them. --Derbeth ^talk 19:45, 28 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. What I say is that GFDL is perfectly suited to images for wikibooks, as the text of the licence has to be included anyway. For other uses, creative commons are a lot better. So I think (well, this is not exactly my idea, it is what commons try to promote), the best solution is to put the images under both licences. This way, the images can be included in any wikibook without any more text, and a standalone use of the images is still possible, as the users can choose which licence they want to use.

I wasn't clear either when I mentionned the "overhead" of other licences: I agree the creative commons are rather non-intrusive, as they require a minimal ammount of text, but commons accept other licences, some of them which can require a lot more text (I don't have an example at the moment) CyrilB 14:25, 30 September 2006 (UTC)[]

When the wikibooks are located on the server, finding the license under which an image is released is as easy as clicking on the image. However, for a print version of a book, different action needs to be taken, because you can't "click" on a printed image. What I dont know is whether an image needs to be accompanied by the full-text of the GFDL, or whether it can only be accompanied by a link to the license. Is the second one permissable? A printed book can include a table of the images used in the book. The table would include the necessary legal information about the images, including the license, original authors, etc. The text of the GFDL is already included with the printed book, so an additional copy would not need to be included for the images. However, using this scheme, we would likely have to include the CC text at the end as well, to accomodate the images that are released under those licenses as well. If an image is being used outside of a book, that is if it is printed by itself, or moved to a new medium, there is no good way to do that without also including the text of the relevant license. Whether the GFDL or the CC licenses (or any others) are used is irrelevant, because the image file would need to be accompanied by a text file with the license and author information. As to Derbeth's earlier question, I am not against this policy. I am against fair-use images, but that is a different matter entirely. I want to have a standardized image policy, and I would like to see it specifically geared towards the creation of printable wikibooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Perhaps propose changing the core definition from:

• "...could be used by an accredited institution

to:

• "Instructional materials that can be used for the benefit of the human condition." (see below for update)

Vague, slippery definition, but it seems to better describe what our books are about, and would easily include chess and cooking, while excluding the Doom guide and it's ilk. Think Jimbo might go for it? I shares the rule/not-rule quality of NPOV... --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Even 'benefit' is a slippery slope. Some people live on healthy carrots and orange juice, while others stick with Winky's. But on the other hand, I can't give a better 'definition' --Kempm 12:26, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Slippery is good :). I've been thinking for a while about how that bar was set, and it seems to me not an issue of it being set too high, but more of a category mistake. NPOV, for example, doesn't tie itself to any "real thing" outside of the wikiculture itself, except for the philosophical concepts of "neutrality" and "view" (more or less hermeneutics, as in "put your brain in hermeneutral and just contribute"). "Benefit" (amelioration) and "human condition" are similarly slippery philosophical concepts. All 4 of these concepts also appeal to the intuitive sense as well ("I know it when I see it"). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Couldn't agree with you more! I've been trying to formulate something along those lines and how it would fit into current policy. I think WB:WIW and Wikibooks:Textbooks are far to literal by-case approaches and would do better with a conceptual purpose for the project. The vaguness will serve us well while we further mold the concept of a wikibook.

Think Jimbo might go for it? Let's rather concentrate on finding the solution which the established community of those involved consider best and have faith that the WMF will understand our arguments and trust our judgement (might not happen, but I don't like settling for an "electable" solution. Let's be bold!).

(Agreed, but it's actually a very real issue here because it was Jimbo himself who came up with the "accredited institution" thing.)--SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Only comments are that I'd prefer "educational" rather than "instructional" and I wonder if it might be better to word "benefit of the human condition" a bit more colloquially. --Swift 18:08, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Yes! -- "educational" is much better than "instructional". So now it's:

• "Educational materials that can be used for the benefit of the human condition."

Now we're cookin with gas :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:20, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

where do i sign for this :) Pluke 21:22, 3 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree with the change from "instructional" to "educational". After all, you can instruct a person to build a "pykrete bong", for instance, but such instructions are not "educational". --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:28, 4 October 2006 (UTC)[]

As far as getting Jimbo's seal of approval, I wouldn't worry too hard about it. Jimbo hardly comes here and spends too much time on Wikibooks, although he does stop by every now and again just to check up and make sure we aren't being too fanatical. His main criticism is that the admins on Wikibooks in the past have been too permissive of allowing too much material on Wikibooks that he personally would want to get rid of, particularly things that are of questionable legality (like the Pykrete Bong, Naturalism (or Nudism), or perhaps hacking passwords, etc.)

I still think Wikibooks should be about books, not about necessarily just textbooks. The issue of having practically any factual and verifiable non-fiction resource that can be found in a bookstore is a reasonable issue that should still be debated here on Wikibooks without undue "pressure from above". It was very clear for at least the first two years of Wikibooks that considerable experimentation was not only allowed but encouraged, and I fear that that level of experimentation has been nearly killed completely.

The problem is how to address concerns that Wikibooks is a safe harbor of would-be terrorist exchanging bomb recipes and maps of nuclear facilities. This is clearly something we want to avoid, but at the same time want to allow and even encourage people to develop useful content.

The other critical aspect is how to avoid having Wikibooks become a vanity press. There are some books here on Wikibooks that certainly are borderline or simply even are clear examples of using Wikibooks as a vanity press. While these books never make it to the Book of the Month level of notoriety, this is still something that somehow we should try to avoid, somehow. Narrowing the focus of Wikibooks to educational materials is one way to do that, but let's try to remember what the goal is here.

Other general policies like maintaining a Neutral Point of View, and the prohibition of original research also go a long way to keep material off of Wikibooks that would otherwise run Wikibooks into some serious trouble. I also believe this is one reason why we don't have more problems than we already have.

This whole debate over wording really goes right to the core of what is Wikibooks, and what it can be in the future. Clearly there are differing opinions on the matter, but I also believe we can reach a fundimental common ground on this concept and not appeal to higher authority, like Jimbo. --Rob Horning 18:18, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[]

"I wouldn't worry too hard about it. Jimbo hardly comes here and spends too much time on Wikibooks..." ← That's really not the point (though I do have foggy notions of (possibly (but not probably) clever) analogies involving teenagers, beer, and the garage out back that mom never spends much time in) :-). I'm not suggesting that we appeal to higher authority, just pointing out that there's been a lot of cases of ther past 6 months or so that this "higher authority" has in fact been pointed to, and it's been a source of considerable wikistress all around. If the point were to make such an appeal, textbook-l would be the proper forum (and while I don't think that would be such a bad idea, I think it's more fruitful for us to debate it amongst ourselves, and either bring it up next time a bomb is dropped, or just bring it up to the foundation pre-emptively and say: "you know, that description you offered really just isn't working for us, what do you think of using this one instead?"

Seems a better idea than trying to hide our collective beer breath :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:25, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I have been rather vocal in my disapproval of some of the actions that Jimbo has taken here on Wikibooks, or at least the way it has been done. And further been even more vocal about people who invoke his name on policy grounds that he didn't even make up, such as doing a speedy delete of a Wikibooks solely on the grounds that it is "not a textbook". Read the deletion logs to see how often that actually has been used in the recent (< 6 months) past. This is one area, however, that I don't want to get into a wheel war over and in some ways that is why I've avoided Wikibooks over the past several months. I don't want to get tempted into a wheel war either.

I've done both the textbook-l and foundation-l tactics myself, in an attempt to try and resolve this seemingly irresolvable situation. Clearly there are books that do need to be removed, and the VfD pages seem to be as constructive as ever. Indeed, as opposed to the policy discussion pages on Wikipedia, the VfD pages on Wikibooks have in the past tended to be as much of a policy decision area as anything else, and preceedence there does seem to have long-term consequences in terms of what is kept and what is deleted. Much of what is currently written in the policy pages is pretty much codification of what has been decided by concensus, largely through VfD discussions. Of course there are exceptions, but that is where the low-key decisions (like moving Wikiversity) have had their start. --Rob Horning 23:29, 7 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I know that you disagree with some of my opinions, but the problems that you are discussing are the primary reason why I have been so gung-ho in attempting to solidify our policy documents. The fact that VfD is used more as a forum to create policy, and less as a means to implement policy is disappointing. If we had a solid set of rules that say "X belongs and Y doesnt", then VfD could be used as a place where we measure various pages against that standard, and vote according to our interpretations.

This raises the most important questions yet: What precisely is the relationship between wikibooks and the WMF (specifically Jimbo)? Does the WMF have final authority to make policy decisions on this project, or do they not. If Jimbo says "X does not belong", is that a hard-and-fast rule, or is his voice just one of many in the consensus-building process? There are people who invoke Jimbo's statements as rationale for making certain decisions (I am guilty of that myself), and I think it's mostly out of fear, and ignorance of the minute details of our relationship with Jimbo and the WMF.

Another point raised is the use/abuse of the rational "not a textbook" in making deletion decisions. Without a firm definition of what precisely a textbook is, the interpretations as to what a textbook is not are broad and varied. I see this as less of a reason to step back from the situation, and more of a reason to dive head-first into the relevant discussion on the topic. On Textbook-L, Jimbo blatantly refused to provide any input on this subject, which is all the more reason for us to get our collective asses in gear to solve the problem ourselves. Rob, as a person who has been here a while, who is well-known around this project, and as a person who does command a certain amount of respect from people here (whether you like the idea of it or not), I would think that you should be helping to lead the way in discussions like this. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:38, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Returning to the matter at hand. Could we also have a little more discussion on the latter part: "the benefit of the human condition". I think we all agree on what this should mean — that Wikibooks should somehow contribute to readers' lives or character — but I fear that this may either seem too vague and open or, conversely, have too specific a meaning for it.

I've been going back and forth on this, but finally think that the proposal, if elaborated on in slightly (and only slightly) more detail following it, may just be all we need. If this is to be our new banner (underneith which we will battle it out, just what a Wikibook is) I reckon some more responces (whether positive, negative or uncertain) on the matter might be useful.

Lastly; this would go on Wikibooks:About and Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks, right? --Swift 06:30, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm going to start getting bold on this on Thursday (October 19th) if no-one objects. --Swift 05:11, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[]

It's fine by me. Pencil it in (or make an unstable branch, or something), and see what people have to say about it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I've been doing a lot of cleanup in the categories, trying to get them to make sense. Through trial and error, I came up with what's on Wikibooks:Categories. It might not be completely clear, so please help clarify it, and hopefully approve it so that a "cleanup crew" can be organised.

An earlier categorisation technique (Jguk's, who seems to be MIA) used some creative yet odd category schemes (using the form "BOOK/TOPIC textbook pages"), But it seems much easier to just have each book with it's own category, and then placing the book category into the upper categories (so books are now subcategories). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:49, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I guess I completely forgot to make a PotW for this week. Thanks for picking up where I left off! I agree that we should have at least some bare guidelines concerning about how categories should be implemented. I know some users think that all pages should be categorized, and other users oppose blindly categorizing all pages. This should be interesting. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I have moved the text of the page Wikibooks:Be nice to the new Wikibooks:Be civil, as per the prevaling opinion on that page. I have moved to have this proposal enforced as an official guideline. If there are no dissenting opinions, I will do this relatively soon (by the end of the week). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[]

There have been no dissenting opinions so far, since the name was changed (and no dissenting opinions about anything besides the name prior to that). I have moved this policy to enforced. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:02, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

My pick for policy of the week this week, is acutally a combination of two policies that I think are on the same subject:

• Wikibooks:No offensive usernames
• Wikibooks:Profanity

I propose that we merge the text of the former into the later. I would like to make our new and improved profanity proposal into an enforced policy by the end of the week.

Keep in mind that profanity is already not well tolerated by our community. Users with offensive usernames are blocked (although typically such users are vandals). Pages with offensive page names are deleted. Edits with profanity are reverted. In essence, I would like to make our policy documents mirror the way business is already being done here. In essence, this creates an official justification for cleaning and reverting vandalism. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:01, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm noticing that several of these policies are quite short in content. I wouldn't mind a larger policy to include profanity, usernames, and the "niceness" of users with each other. I think we could have this all under one "User and User Interactions Policy" that could cover all the personal components of the individual authors at Wikibooks. -withinfocus 05:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I second this. Maybe we should adopt a "keep it simple" policy? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:00, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Adding an additional policy that mandates "keeping it simple" seems to defeat the purpose? But I do agree that every little snippet of proposal text doesnt need to become a standalone policy. I think that there is a little bit of a difference between the topic of user-interactions and profanity, and I think there is some value in keeping the topics separate. I think we can have a single, succinct policy on profanity, and a single succinct policy on user-interactiolns. If we try to merge everything into a large composite policy, i think we will lose specificity. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Update: I am putting forth two motions now: A move to reject the Wikibooks:No offensive usernames policy, and a move to enforce the Wikibooks:Profanity policy. The text of the former policy is in bad shape, and most of the important points are already included in the later. If there are no dissenting opinions on these matters, I would like to make these changes soon. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I like it. -withinfocus 06:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I remember some new users asking whether there is a possibility to search not in the whole Wikibooks, but only in a single books. Unfortunately, MediaWiki doesn't provide such opportunity. But there is a solution - using external search. For example, Nature book uses an idea borrowed from German Wikibooks - Google Search of a domain. It works very well especially with books using slash convention, but even for old naming conventions search works quite good.

External link to Google search is some kind of solution here, but adding it to every book is impossible - and this does not allow to search from subpages. The solution is to use JavaScript and add this link to the toolbox in the left. We have been testing it on Polish Wikibooks since a week and everything seems to work fine. Our JavaScript code added to MediaWiki:monobook.js allows performing book-wide search from every subpage of a book and works in Opera/Mozilla/Internet Explorer. Those who do not fear foreign languages may test it by visiting pl:Programowanie:C or any of its subpages and selcting "Szukaj w podręczniku" link (just below search box). You can give "scanf" as search expression.

What do you think of introducing such feature here? --Derbeth ^talk 22:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I like it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:10, 8 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I have just added JavaScript code introducing this feature to MediaWiki:Monobook.js. Clear your cache and try it. --Derbeth ^talk 19:36, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Ok, it seems that I could remove the image from everywhere. But there is still the file, Twang.jpg - admins you can delete this?

Already deleted the image. Thanks for fixing some of the vandalism, and thanks for the warning. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:52, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I will note that there are a few vectors for vandals to mangle the front page (I won't list them here, but experienced users with Mediawiki interfaces know what I mean) that havn't been protected yet. There are legitimate reasons for doing this where hard-core vandals unfortunately take advantgage of the situation. Simple editing of the main page is protected, but we have made heavy usage of templates and other things like images of featured projects and Wikibooks. Many of the templates have been protected, and when I (or others) have changed the protection status, vandalism has gone down slightly.

Still know that in most cases any vandalism of this nature can be reverted almost as easily as it was put up in the first place, and sometimes even faster. I want to especially thank those who are on the anti-vandalism patrol here on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 16:19, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I'm having problems with whitespaces when using {{Hortibox}} and related templates. I think it's leaving space for fields that have not been filled in. It's not too bad where it has an image included, but I tried to use it today for a plant for which I don't yet have an image (A Wikimanual of Gardening/Nipponanthemum nipponicum), and the whitespace is huge.

I tried looking at w:Template:Taxobox for examples (they had a whitespace problem with that a year or so ago), but that template is way over my head. Anyone have an idea of how to fix this? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:02, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The template doesnt show alot of whitespace in my browser (IE6). I went into it and removed some whitespace that I saw, but I dont know if that helps or not. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:32, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Might just be Safari (a.k.k. my stupid browser) then :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:38, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Actually, no. It seems that when fields are left empty their respective conditional lines produced empty lines in wiki markup. In pairs they produce a <p><br /></p> in HTML markup. I reformatted the conditionals so that there are no line breaks created in the wiki markup when the conditionals come up empty. --Swift 19:17, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Yay! Thank you thank you thank you! :) --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:43, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[]

(Pilfered from w:User:Sebmol, sebmol is also an admin on wikiversity):

20 New Rules

so we can all work together

• 1. Wikibooks is a project for everyone with good faith, patience, a willingness to learn, and a desire to share.
• 2. Everyone can edit, but everyone can also change every edit.
• 3. Rules are to help, not to obstruct.
• 4. A good stub is better than no article.
• 5. Improving is better than deletion, but deletion is better than keeping bad material.
• 6. Wikibooks is neither a playground nor a discussion forum.
• 7. With appropriate care, every book can someday be the book of the month.
• 8. Relevance isn't derived from your location.
• 9. Technology is the means, not the end.
• 10. Quality comes from experience and constant improvement.
• 11. Relevance is what the reader is searching for to expand his own knowledge.
• 12. Learning from others is the key to success.
• 13. Common sense is something everybody needs but few choose to use.
• 14. A textbook describes subjects objectively without a moral point of view.
• 15. Quality doesn't happen by adding a warning box.
• 16. If you have a very strong position on something, you will find it difficult to write about it in a neutral manner.
• 17. Obstructionists and agitators will be shown the door.
• 18. Admins serve the readers and editors.
• 19. Nobody who does good work is replaceable.
• 20. There are indeed more important things in life than producing books.

Needs to be unpediafied, but seems to be a good start for the rule or rules :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:37, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Unpediafied now :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:43, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Looks like this would serve as a good essay, but i dont think that in this form it can be a policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:31, 11 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I agree with Whiteknight that this would, indeed, make a good essay, but I don't think the format fits the task of an official policy or guideline. It is too absolute, is completely uncategorized and lacks any elaboration (and I don't like some of the rules ;-)).

I agree that we could use some slimming down on policies and guidelines, but I'd recommend building on what we've already got consensus for. --Swift 05:15, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

As the final part of a reorganiziation of Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines, advertised here previously, the policy and guideline categories have been reorganized. See Category:Wikibooks policies and guidelines for current categories and templates used.

I'd like to take this opportunity to advertise the new Category:Wikibooks proposed policies and guidelines which now provides easy access to learn all about the current "Proposal of the week" and discuss future ones.

While at it, I'd also like to request that an admin make a minor edit on

• Wikibooks:Naming policy (why is this protected, by the way?)
• Wikibooks:Designated agent
• Wikibooks:GNU Free Documentation License
• Wikibooks:Copyrights

and possibly replacing the now deprecated {{enforced}} with {{policy}}. It seems Category:Wikibooks policies wasn't getting populated (possibly due to the template redirect). --Swift 05:36, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I just noticed that SB Johnny proposed Wikibooks:Categories as the policy of the week, but I only added the last one proposed (Whiteknight's). I didn't remedy this since I think we should only have one item on schedule (sorry Johnny :-(). I guess this shows that it might be a good idea to have some place for discussing this... --Swift 06:40, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Those pages now have the correct template inclusion. All except NP need to stay protected, but NP is now unprotected. Also, I personally would like to bring back some of the old style elements of {{enforced}} including the red color. I find the new template to be pretty bland. Ideas? -withinfocus 16:52, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The policy of the week thing is just an informal thing that i've been trying to do, as a way to get people more involved in policy discussions. We can do Wikibooks:Categories next week (which starts soon...). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks a lot for the fix, Withinfoucs!

As for the colours, I removed the red because I felt the old one looked a bit too much like a chemical warning label. I think we do need to make {{rejected}} and {{obsolete}} stand out, but would take a more bland approach to the official {{policy}} and {{guideline}} notices. I gave all of these a 4em right and left margin to seperate them a bit more from the following text. I was planning on doing some designing later, but if you'd like to take the lead on that, go ahead. --Swift 17:28, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

A rational argument, so I'm fine with it staying as-is or whenever you feel like working on it. -withinfocus 20:55, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Most several of this user's contributions are copy-pastes from wikipedia with no links to the original articles or contribution histories (he did a bunch using a couple IP addresses too). Please vote on Wikibooks:Request for enabling special:import... I'd like to get that enabled so I can work on getting policy on wikipedia for only allowing transwikiing here through the import tool.

Came across these (and many more like them) while going through the uncategorised pages, which has finally been updated. Many of them appear to have been brought over to turn red links blue, and were not marked on wikipedia as needing to be moved here. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:00, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

"Original research" was cited here and in a few other places recently, but when I went looking for the policy, I found that it wasn't actually there (just a short clause in WB:WIW). Because of the nature of the vast majority of projects here on wikibooks, I think it might be a good idea to discuss what exactly we mean by original research, and in particular what's allowed and what's not, because if we mean by that the same thing that the wikipedians mean (w:WP:NOR), most of our books would have to be deleted.

I started the page Wikibooks:Original research, which outlines some of the problems. I'd be interested in seeing this developed a bit, because this issue really dwarfs both NPOV and "textbook" as far as the potential to cause problems is concerned. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 20:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

By the way, the wikipedia "nutshell version" is: "Articles may not contain any unpublished arguments, ideas, data, or theories; or any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published arguments, ideas, data, or theories that serves to advance a position." That would cover just about everything from the computer programming manuals to the cookbook to the movie making manual to the garden book (which I work on). See the problem? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 20:50, 12 October 2006 (UTC)[]

You are absolutely right. This is definately a crack we need to fix. I'm not sure that we need an entire new policy for it, though. Could we try to elaborate on the WB:WIW original works section?

I'm partly suggesting this because of my view that we are well served by not spreading policies and guidelines too much. What "original research" means is part of the core definition of which content belongs on Wikibooks and I believe we should concentrate that information on WB:WIW. --Swift 03:47, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I think we need something that fits in somewhere between guideline and essay... "clarifications"? You weren't here during the "great upheaval" which followed the "swooping in/dropping of the bomb"... I was (when I first arrived, and kinda stayed away for a while because of the bitter tone here), and while I agree that a lean policy structure is certainly elegant, it's also good to discuss things before they become a problem (or become a problem again).

Both "textbook" and this guideline/clarification/statement could be things we can just point to later, saying "well, we have discussed this sort of thing in the past, the general consensus was...". --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:57, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Oh, I totally agree we need this clarified. I'm just proposing that it might be better to do so by modifying WB:WIW.

I suppose if all we need is a page with clarifications, the "Wikibooks" namespace would suffice and we don't really need a policy/guideline. An essay, in my oppinion is a good place for things like this. We don't really have a solid tradition for essays but I think they would server well for the purpose of clarifying and summarising the arguments for our policies, guidelines and accepted standard procedures. --Swift 16:56, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I still don't like the word "essay" though... an essay is usually a statement of a POV (I wrote one on wikipedia... try pulling out WP:PANDA next time you get the chance) :). I think it would be nice to have a word for policyish things that are positive (what we aspire to be or what we encourage), rather than prohibitive (this, that, and the other thing are not allowed). Personally I think these are more important than the prohibitive policies right now... we've got plenty of those. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:13, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Well, yes ... and no. Essays are indeed statements of POV, but those in the project namespace are open to anyone to edit. As such they can be said to be the community's POV and reflect community consensus in some way. Essays in the user namespace, however, are indeed generally reserved for users' private oppinions. For the purpose of non-normative clarifying statements elaborating on the argument of a policy or guideline, I imagine an essay would fit quite well. If it sets norms for behaviour, it should, however, probably be put in policy or guideline.

"policyish things that are positive". Hmmm ... Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but as I understand the concept, rules (such as our dear policies) can be either positive or negative — they can either say what is allowed or what is forbidden. Either way they have to set the boundary between what is allowed and not, so it really comes down to the same thing.

It appears to me that Wikibooks:Original research is mainly listing exceptions to the Original Research concept as defined on Wikipedia. I think we might better seek to completely redefine the WP concept to fit our project, shifting the boundary between what a Wikibook is, by changing existing (obviously improper) policy.

If you strongly feel the need to create some sort of clarifying-type-document to bridge the gap between an essay and policies/guidelines, I'm open to that. --Swift 01:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[]

"It appears to me that Wikibooks:Original research is mainly listing exceptions" ... it's currently an outline, just trying to define the scope of this. Actually, "Original Research" might not ever be the right term to use because of its obvious connotations to any wikipedian who might pass by. Perhaps with a different name it could be better for use in debates ("that's not Original Research, it's '....', which is perfectly acceptable on Wikibooks."

As far as calling them something besides essays, it actually doesn't seem like we need to define something "in between" (see Category:Wikibooks_essays). "Guideline" would actually be a good word, but it's already defined as "something that's policy in all but name". I'm starting to like "Community Statement" better than any of the other options. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:20, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[]

---

As far as the "history" of the original research policies here on Wikibooks are concerned, this is something that has been carried over from Wikipedia, and there generally hasn't been any explicit major effort beyond what is listed in WB:WIW#Wikibooks is not a place to publish original works to define this concept.

There have been some interesting discussions on WB:VfD that have dealt with original research issues for several projects and Wikibooks. Perhaps the most heartbreaking (for me) was a chemical laboratory who was using Wikibooks as a sort of "open source" lab notebook for some really groundbreaking chemical research, and was eventually deleted because of original research issues that were brought up.

Keep in mind that the "Real Reason^tm" for having the orgininal research prohibition was mainly a polite way to tell paranormal phenomena and psuedo-science people (aka researchers) from publishing pet theories on Wikibooks (and other Wikimedia projects), in an attempt to give those ideas legitimacy and acceptance. This policy has indeed been invoked in a great many cases for this purpose, unfortunately.

I will also point out that Jimbo and most of the current Wikimedia Board of Trustees consider this basic philosophy of no original research to be an immutable and non-negotiable policy in general. The fine details can be debated by the community, but removing this policy would be considered unacceptable.

For myself when trying to decide if a given Wikibook (or sub-module) is acceptable, generally the less worthy modules will have numerous original research problems as a sign that there are other problems that may simply warrant the content to be removed. Copyright violations are also usually close at hand, and often found together with original research violations as well. Of course a copyvio is usually a justification for a speedy deletion.

BTW, I do like how WB:WIW deals with the topic by combining it with the larger issue of publishing original works of any kind. There have been some authors who have added entire books from projects they worked on outside of Wikibooks, including previously (dead-tree) published content. In some cases I've warned that by adding the content to Wikibooks, that they are explicitly granting GFDL rights to the content and that it is going to be heavily edited by other users by making it available in this format. Most of the authors I've e-mailed or dealt with were generally postive about the concept and decided that Wikibooks was the forum they were seeking, although in a few cases I've convinced them that perhaps they should seek some other on-line forum to collaboratively build upon the contents of their book, primarily because of original research prohibitions.

This is an issue to think about, and thank you Johnny for raising this issue. --Rob Horning 21:34, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Well, i guess the suggestion could be boiled down to allowing "tried and true" to be a kind of source material, verifiable by the doing. The other part is that we might do comparative analysis and deduction in some cases (i.e.: because of this verifiable thing and that verifiable thing, this other thing holds too). Though for that case we would want to watch for pseudoscientific fallacies (every morning I drink coffee just before sunrise, therefore my drinking of coffee is what causes the sun to rise). That's sort of the point for using things like the {{fact}}, and requiring some justification when a statement seems a bit outlandish... and especially if something seems outright dangerous. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:00, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I'll make a request page and instructions on how to use it later this afternoon. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[]

OK, here it is: Wikibooks:Requests for Import. SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:27, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Is there a way to see how many people have read a book, or which chapters are most popular?--Thomas David Kehoe 21:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Unfortunately, no. This is a feature that has been frequently requested, but the developers don't want to do it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Hello. A user recently uploaded two works to the English Wikisource, Counterterrorism Joint Command Infrastructure and Tactical Combat. These were determined to be outside Wikisource's scope, since they don't meet our publication criterion. The author, Chris Mar, has expressed interest in moving them to Wikibooks if they are within the scope of this project. Note that there were copyright concerns, but since the user claims to be the copyright holder in question I'm sure we can resolve them if Wikibooks is interested in the works. You can review the discussion in question at "Author:Chris Mar" (Wikisource:Possible copyright violations). —Pathoschild 01:51, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

There are a few conditions that must be met:

1. The text of the book must be completely released under the GFDL.
2. The text cannot contain non-neutral points of view, or original research.
3. The original author must be willing to have his books edited by anybody, for any reason, at any time

If these conditions are met, then the books can be uploaded here at wikibooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Just a quick comment on "original research": SB Johnny and I were discussing this at Wikibooks talk:Original research and agree that there are some Wikibooks that would be interesting to have, but are excluded by the Wikipedia version of the concept. This is certainly an area where we need to have some dialogue. --Swift 22:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Excuse me, "The text cannot contain non-neutral points of view" ? Why not?

Perhaps I've spent too much time over on Wikipedia, but over there, the NPOV FAQ says "NPOV policy often means presenting multiple points of view." --DavidCary 08:57, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Well, perhaps the language I used was inappropriate. What I should have said was "The text cannot violate the NPOV policy". Thanks for pointing out the mistake. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:25, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The old one is rarely used, and is a bit out of date. I.m working on a new one here is anyone has some ideas. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I like the change, although the links that you have provided illustrate some glaring problems:

1. We don't have a Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects page. Considering the number of such projects that we attract, i think we should probably draft one.
2. We don't have a local copy of Wikibooks:Be bold. The link you provide redirects to wikipedia. I think it might be worthwhile for us to draft our own version of that guideline, because it is such a fundamental part of what we do here.

I'll get started on drafting the first one nowish. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I didn't realise we had no be bold... that was on the old template :)

The guidelines for class projects is something I'm hoping to get our current batch of instructors to help with, and possibly ask the wikiversity crowd to pitch in too. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I just wrote up a quick draft. I'm not married to anything that I wrote, so feel free to edit it at will. I'll look around and see if I can get some input from class instructors. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:06, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Looks good so far. My idea was to also try to get some templates together before next semester begins for signup sheets, LMOS, etc. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The only thing that stands out for me is:

• You can sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~.

Talk pages are called discussion pages here so shouldn't it instead be:

• You can sign your name on dicussion and vote pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~.

--darklama 16:04, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Yeah, that might be confusing. They're generally referred to as talks, because they're in the talk subnamespace. We could probably write a whole book on wiki lingo and user interfaces :). How's about:

• • You can sign your name on dicussion and vote pages (usually refered to as "talk pages") using four tildes, like this: ~~~~.

--SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:32, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Looks good to me just remove the extra "*" at the begining. --darklama 16:41, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The final phase of voting for the new wikibooks logo has begun at meta:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/logo

Voting ends Oct 31st. By that time, wikibooks should have a new logo image. All wikibookians should go to meta and vote. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

A short while ago, as I was reorganizing the WB:PAG categories and templates I simply made them all gray and bland. Well, I've finally gotten around to retouching them (well, copies of them) and have placed them at User:Swift/PAG for the world to see. Comments appreciated on the talk page, please. --Swift 04:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The new ones were a little bland, but part of that was my fault (i'm no artist, certainly). These new ideas have color, but not the over-powering color that some of the previous incarnations had. I like your proposed changes, and I can't see any reason why you shouldn't go ahead and make those changes. I would probably like to change around some of the text on the templates themselves to be more descriptive, but I can save that for another time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:20, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I put up a suggestion for this week's Proposal of the Week on the proposal category discussion page. In short, I suggest that we finish off Whiteknight's pair in the next few days, give SB Johnny's Wikibooks:Categories this week and do some house-cleaning by rejecting a couple of proposals. --Swift 06:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Comments moved to Category talk:Wikibooks proposed policies and guidelines#Proposal for the 42nd week of 2006

Hi - bit new just to tag it but Ecommerce looks like a copy violation given the text at the bottom of the page? Looks a little like an ad too. Hope this is the correct way/place for this? Thanks and regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:41, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Yup, not only a copyvio, but actually says on the page that it's copyrighted by that company, and provides a link to the company if "we want them to remove it" (spam trolling?). Bye-bye page :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:44, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks for the speedy response and action Johnny. I'll know for another time and keep my eyes open - regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:55, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The thanks go to you... any help with RC patrolling is always appreciated! --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Had some experience in another life <g> and it is much quieter here so I'll do what I can but I'm hoping to actually contribute too. That said I do know the "grunt" work is necessary. I "tidied" a couple of "orphaned" pages by moving them - I guess if it was wrong someone would let me know. The need to prefix with Cookbook: (in this case) confused me to start and I guess it applied to the article creators. Best --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:33, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

By the way, next time if you see a page like this, you can list it on the votes for deletion page. Of course, the same people who watch that page watch this one as well, so I guess it doesnt really matter, but still... --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:21, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Is there a speedy template anywhere (sorry - bit new). This one needs it - Humping. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Use {{Delete|REASON}}. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:52, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

And I just found it then refreshed the page <g> - so where are the templates kept or is it a secret! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:58, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Alot of the templates are located at Wikibooks:Template messages. This is just a list of some of the more common templates, although certainly not all of them! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Great - that will be useful thanks. Sorry to bug people while finding my way around --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:23, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I have started authoring a proposal for a set of guidelines for class and group projects. Wikibooks is host to a number of such projects now, and will likely host many more in the future. I would like to create a set of guidelines for these projects, as well as some concise suggestions for the groups, and explanations about how things work here at wikibooks.

At the moment, this is just an early drafy, and I am in no hurry to try and make this official. However, I do feel strongly that we should have something in place to cater to the group projects that wikibooks attracts.

If anybody has any comments/suggestions about this draft, please let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[]

This is an outstanding idea here, and I want to thank you for going through the effort to try and write this guideline. I've added a few ideas directly on some talk pages in the past that go over some of these points, but since it appears as though Wikibooks is being used more often for situations like this it would be nice to have a general guideline covering these points. I have seen some very nice Wikibooks come out of class projects that have been done this way, but there sometimes get some hurt feelings when they start to go against project policies, especially when people from outside of the class start participating. --Rob Horning 07:35, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wikibooks:Profanity, from last week, is still contested, and a decision has not been reached. A general concensus has been reached, however, that Wikibooks:No offensive usernames should be rejected, once the profanity proposal has finally been accepted.

The proposal that I am nominating this week (43rd week of 2006) is Wikibooks:Semi-protection policy. I move to reject this proposal because the text of it is already included in Wikibooks:Protected page (which is already official). This proposal is nearly a year old, and it's about time we did something about it.

On a personal note, I won't be around again until monday night, and I normally propose the new PotW on sunday night. That's why I am doing it now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[]

can someone help me? i uploaded my book (called macroeconomics made simple)to wikibooks, but i cant find it listed in the directory. after i upload the book, how do i get it listed? what are the steps i need to take? please help.

Replied on User talk:Dismalscience32. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I marked a number of pages as copyvios yesterday as the graphic they contained actually has a copyright mark in them. However when an admin gets around to looking maybe they could look at the other pages in the series. These may well be scanned pages just lacking the copyright mark - Physics with transforms:Math Chart side 1, Physics with transforms:Physics with Transforms side 2 & Physics with transforms:Table of Contents. Equally there is what appears to be a vanity page about the apparent author - Physics with transforms:About the Author. Kinda ps but the copyvio seems to have been brought to his attention in 2004, may explain the pages without the copyright notices but the marked ones still have it. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:05, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks for the heads up. If you run across images without a copyright template, just add {{no license}} to the image page. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Done - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Is having an "about the author" section really considered a vanity page? I have an "about the author" template that I include at the end of some chapters of Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book. I only do this if I think that including the author's credentials is relevant to the book. For instance, I included my template in the "Vocational/Radio Electronics" chapter because as the template states, I have an MSEE degree and have worked in the field for 20 years - in other words, it lends a little credence to the work. I asked one of my contributors to do the same for the Recreation/Archery chapter, as he is a professional archer, and not just some Joe with a bow. The Bookkeeping chapter was contributed by a CPA. I think all of these are relevant. I did not include the template on any of the chapters I wrote if I have no particular expertise in the area (such as some of the medical chapters). So... is this vanity? Jim Thomas 19:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Nope. A lot of books have those... it can get complicated over time if there end up being more contributors coming along over time though. As long as the "about the author" page isn't used to "defend the book" from later contributors (and that doesn't seem to be what you're doing there), I think it's actually a good thing.

Having a 20 page autobiography would of course be pushing it :-).--SB_Johnny | ^talk 21:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

It was far more a question than a judgment - it was the copyvios that were the real issue. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Never mind the licensing - Image:Strech.jpg needs deleting please. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:24, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

dealt with by SuiSui - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Various IPs keep blanking sections of Wikibooks:Book of the month/December 2005 voting with no rason given - now reverted three times by me. Anyone keep an eye - if it is important - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:43, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Be very careful about doing this sort of behavior.... it might just get you nominated for becoming an administrator on Wikibooks :))!

Seriously, thanks for pointing this out, but it is also reasonable to keep such comments on Wikibooks:Vandalism in progress. I and other admins have that page on our watchlist and deal with anything posted there as a priority item. I sometimes try to avoid reading the Staff Lounge mainly to avoid getting embroiled in yet another argument, so it might not get the same sort of attention if you post on this page. As en.wikibooks is growing, it seems we are also becoming a target for more and more vandalism... especially as Wikipedia seems to be thwarting their efforts and they think they have an easier time to do mischief here.

BTW, I added protection to that page to keep people from editing it. As it is an archived vote, there is no point to anybody even making a change to that page, although a reasonable request to an administrator for cleanup of some sort would be in order if you want to get at it (i.e. request the protection be removed informally).--Rob Horning 19:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Good job both of you! sometimes all that is needed to make wikibooks a better place is a little bit of initiative in these matters. I would certainly expect this from Rob (but it's always appreciated!), but Herby is being a very big help too. Thanks! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanks for the info - I would have used VIP page (I did earlier in the day) but I wasn't really certain if it was as it seemed so pointless even by vandal standards! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:01, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Came across this review of Wikibooks that ran in a newspaper recently:

http://www.newzgeek.com/090106_wikibooks.html

Awesome article, thanks for the link! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:50, 26 October 2006 (UTC)[]

We already have this article in Wikibooks:Wikibooks in the media, but thanks anyway. --Derbeth ^talk 17:11, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[]

How can I make a redirect from wikibooks to wikipedia?? 82.210.118.209 20:00, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

You can't. If you want to link to wikipedia, you just use [[w:LINK|]].--SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Hello,
I've just arrived from Wikipedia and am beginning to contribute to Wikibooks, but I feel it difficult to do so since:

• each and every book uses a different structure and
• no pages (to my knowledge) describe the organisation and style guidelines

I understand that it is important for each book to be specific in his coverage of the subjects it explores, but strongly feel that, as Wikipedia ensures that all articles look the same way and are structured in a similar manner, all Wikibooks should carry a common structure, specifying which information must appear on the front page and how to present it, how to group modules with categories, which template to use for navigation between the modules, whether or not to maintain a specific module with a list of authors, etc. Otherwise, we are facing either major differences between the books which could confuse both the users and the contributors (who, seeing that all books are part of the same website and handled by the same wiki engine, believe that their interface, structure and design should be similar), or, isolated, laborious and potentially contradictory harmonisation efforts done without any official policy stating the definite choices made that are to be applied.
I would suggest as a solution to:

• make some definite choices (probably with a democratic vote)
• write explicit policies and guideline describing them
• ensure they have a sufficient visibility so that new contributors may follow them and
• if necessary, adapt old Wikibooks to the conventions

(What would also be possible is to start a model book whose layout and structure should be used everywhere.)
Another thing disturbing me is the absence of general books linking to other books. For example, if I don't know anything about engineering, I'd expect Engineering to be a Wikibook describing engineering and linking to the other books for in-depht coverage of specific topics. Bookshelves are nice, but their labelling is not self-exlpicit if you don't know the subject.
I'd love to know what you think about it. If I missed important and helpful material giving some answers to those auestions, please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
A3 nm 20:18, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Fair suggestions, all. Currently, all the wikibooks policies and guidelines are located at WB:PAG. There have been numerous proposed additions, but as a community we've had a tough time making many decisions as pertains to our policy cannon. The wikipedia project, in essence, is about the creation of a single book: an encyclopedia. If you look at any other encyclopedia, you will see that all the articals are typeset identically. However, the wikibooks project is about the creation of many books. Each new book may have little or nothing to do with other books, so it usually doesnt make sense to make "meta books" that will encompass individual books in a discipline. New books are frequently created at the whim of an author, not necessarily to fill a specific need. For this reason, subjects like Engineering have a surprisingly small number of books written on only a few choice topics: far too discordant to group all these subjects into a single book.

Also, it's been an unwritten rule that authors are given wide latitude when creating a new book. An author can determine the look of the book's TOC, coverpage, navigation templates, etc... The only assumption is that within a single book, all the pages look uniform. For instance, all the pages in Circuit Theory should look alike, and all the pages in Waves should look alike, but the two books are visually distinct from one another.

This is not to say, however, that we don't have any standard navigation templates, but they are only employed at the discretion of an author. The Help book makes a number of suggestions about how books generally should look, but there are few hard and fast rules about it.

One thing to remember is that making a book is a large task: much bigger then making a single wikipedia artical. Installing cumbersome standardized navigation on every page in a book can be a gigantic task, and one that many authors aren't willing to do. I would rather have authors here contributing good content at the expense of bad navigation, then have most authors turned away at the door because they aren't willing to install all the boiler-plate code on every page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:25, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Additionally, there is the Wikibooks:Manual of Style and a number of templates which look the same across books. --Swift 21:37, 23 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I strongly disagree that there is a need for harmonization to the degree that is being suggested here. Wikibooks topics cover such a broad range of ideas and concepts that following one specific set of guidelines and straight jacketing all of the content to fit one pattern is not appropriate. This is not Wikipedia or an encyclopedia, where there needs to be harmonization simply because it is supposed to be one "book". Wikibooks books is about multiple books and different styles. In addition, there needs to be room for experimentation going beyond what has been tried before.

In many regards, each Wikibooks can be compared to an independent Wikimedia project, which is one of the reasons why early on it was strongly suggested (even still is sometimes in limited situations) to start new Wikimedia projects on Wikibooks. This is also why Wikibooks has largely served as a successful incubator of very new project ideas, which Wikipedia has long since abandoned any hope of duplicating. That this is currently discouraged on Wikibooks for non-book ideas doesn't mean that additional experimentation can't take place here. Still, Wikiversity and Wikijunior, as well as perhaps even Cookbook are very good examples of successful sections of Wikibooks that have expanded and become much more like even a full Wikimedia sister project. Wikiversity is now even in beta development as a full sister project at the moment. I'm sure it will be argued at some future time why other ideas like this can't be developed on Wikibooks.

Now all this said, once you have created a book you ought to strive for some consistancy within the Wikibook. For larger Wikibooks, it might even be useful to have a mini "Manual of style" that pertains just to that book in terms of coordinating how the book will be put together. I've even written this in the past for some larger projects. There has also been a general movement to "standardize" Wikibooks, such as with Wikibooks:Naming policy and some other similar policies that have been established in the past year or so. The point of debate here is to see just how far this can go, and if more standard features should be developed or not. There are also enough content pages with Wikibooks at the moment that content intertia alone is going to keep massive and radical style changes from happening across all of Wikibooks without some very widespread concensus on what approach should be used. --Rob Horning 09:23, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Hello, and thanks for your answers.

It is true that the specificity of the topics covered in each Wikibook ask for specific design choices, and I do not question that. However, when it appears that templates offer two or more ways to do exactly the same thing, wouldn't it be better to choose one ? For example, there are at least 6 templates used for navigation between modules, each doing more or less the same thing (apart from the design)...

I understand that the Wikibooks projects is about books that have usually nothing to do with each other, but, since they are all hosted on the same website, I thought that the ultimate aim was to obtain a collection of textbooks with the same structure, in some way like the "Que sais-je ?" collection (cf wikipedia:University_Presses_of_France, last paragraph). It appears from your answers that the Wikibook project is more about hosting independent books and incubating new projects; this is not what I expected when I came there, but, well... If the books are all independent projects, it seems that nothing stops me from creating a "meta-book" linking to the others...

One last idea: why not establish a policy stating that each Wikibbok must descibe its aims and design choices in a specific place? If all books do not follow the same conventions, we could at least ensure that, considering Foo, the module Foo/bar (with "bar" being a standard name defined in the policy) contains all the info I need to understand the book (with at least a few compulsory fields defined in the policy, for example: "Short description", "Navigation choices", "Naming conventions", "Prerequisites"). The idea being: if all Wikibooks make different choices, they should all expose their choices in the same way.

Thanks again for your answers.

a3_nm 11:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

Again, even requiring that each book should have some amount of explanatory material is placing a requirement on all authors to create boiler-plate code before they can even begin adding content. I do agree, in theory, that books should have such content, but i can't in good conscience agree that people must write such material. Now, as a compromise, we could say that a book would only qualify for "Book of the month", or be listed on the "Featured books list" if they meet certain minimum requirements of meta-data and navigational aides.

Also, I want to say that as a wikibookian and author, you have the freedom to create books as you see fit: even books that are about other books (or "metabook", as i suppose the term has now been coined). We highly prize and encourage a sense of "author's freedom", or even an amount of poetic license (so long as the license extends only to the form of the book, and not it's content). As an example, I created a book Electric Circuits, which essentially acts as a redirect for other books on the same narrow topic. You are welcome to do the same thing, if you want. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[]

I think that no matter what you name the subpage with that meta-information, what matters more is that it be found in a simple manner, i.e. where they are linked from (since this is how most users would find it). Yes, here standards can help, but I doubt they will need much enforcing. If we write them up in Wikibooks:Manual of Style or a similar document, they will gain popularity, but authors are free to implement them or not as they deem best. I think I saw some page on how to set up a good front-page, but can't find it any more. --Swift 07:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[]

descibe its aims and design choices in a specific place Isn't that what the "talk" page associated with the root page of the book is for? --DavidCary 05:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[]

I think A3 nm is referring to the scope declaration of that book — not the discussion of what the scope should be. --Swift 06:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[]

Returning to the original question, I'd like to suggest a shortcut for the larger books and their local structures and styles: simply have each such book have a page at [[<bookname>/LMOS]], for "Local Manual Of Style". This would allow any new contributor to any book an easy way to find this information (it can be made as a hard or soft redirect to books that already have "policies", templates, etc.). I started a stub for this on my favorite pet project, see: A Wikimanual of Gardening/LMOS. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[]

But this will only be an "easy way" if new contributors already know the "/LMOS" convention. Wouldn't it be more robust to encourage wikibooks to have an easy to find link to the book-project or -style page? We already have these template boxes for PDF and print versions. We could have something similar for the "meta-page"? --Swift 17:10, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I've tried to implement books before with chapters "/For Contributors", but I found that those pages were most often used as sign-in sheets, and less like stylesheets. It's not a bad idea, however. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Sign-ins are good too, but not the same thing. They could be made "findable" by having a list somewhere (a click or two away from the welcome template) of books with LMOS pages.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

OK, I'm at Wikibooks:Hierarchy naming scheme, and I hit "show changes", and I see a (harmless) change I'm sure I didn't make. I'm so weirded out I hit the "cancel" button, hit "refresh", and hit the edit button and "show changes" again. I know I haven't made any changes this time, yet it's still telling me I changed [[Bookname/Subpagename|Bookname/Subpagename]] . Sometimes I see something similar when someone else edits a page at the same time I do and hits the "save" button before I do -- but according to the history, no one has edited that page in 2 months.

Could someone else try to verify? (don't actually make any changes, hit "show changes", and don't save). Tell me -- is the cache messed up on my Firefox, or is there something weird happening in the Wikibooks servers? --DavidCary 01:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I get the same behavior. Very strange. I also notice that no wiki link is created to [[Bookname/Subpagename]]. I'll try the same link here: Bookname/Subpagename. Looks like it works here. --Brian Brondel 19:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Let me say first that I am quite new to WIKI.

I am an economist and have surveyed the offerings on economics at the introductory level. There seem to be a number of uncoordinated projects, mostly fragmentary. Even the ones that are relatively complete seem sketchy -- as if people had uploaded their Power Point bullets. Nothing wrong with that as a starting point but of limited use, I think.

I am the author of Essential Principles of Economics, which has run on my personal server (beginning from a fairly rudimentary version) since 1995. EPE has been used for my classes and for other college introductory level economics courses and sometimes for AP high school courses. It has been praised a good deal for clear writing, recommended by the Journal of Economic Education and still gets about 10000 page hits a day. (Qualification: the average page has between 100 and 500 words and there are about 1800 pages!) I think I can say, therefore, that I am not new to the idea of an online textbook. The version currently online needs updating, and I have done some of that, but am interested in making the project self-sustaining and would love to enlist others in a consortium to update and perhaps extend it. I'm not far from retirement and my recent experience has brought home to me the fact that, retired or not, I'm not very likely to live forever. Having stumbled into the WIKI textbooks project I am wondering if this might be the long-term home for EPE.

Here are some complications.

First, one of my motives for wanting to find a home for EPE is that I don't want to spend a lot of time on the update; but submitting to WIKI looks like a lotta work.

Second, some of the pages are made interactive with javascript, and there are javascriped review quizzes with many chapters. Is that doable on WIKI?

Third, the outline and approaches are pretty unfashionable. For example, the Samuelson-Keyenes-Kahn (45 degree line) income expenditure model is extensively covered, and the current fashion, which seems to be reflected in the projects I surveyed in WIKIbooks, is to skip over that. There could be some problem of catfighting among economists as to what ought to be included and how.

Finally -- I don't think this will be a problem, but -- there is nothing in the book that is copyrighted by anyone else, and it has carried a notice of my copyright from the beginning. If I understand correctly, my permission will be sufficient to release it for GNU licence. In about 1999, though, I did submit it for registration of copyright and was refused, on the grounds (as best I understand!) that it was not original work but a revision. (Don't writers always revise early drafts?)

If I were actually retired I would dive right in, but am not yet -- and so I would welcome any thoughts on these ideas.

By the way, EPE is at http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/ecotoc.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rogerashton (talk • contribs) .

First off, it's always good for me to see other wikibooks contributors from the philadelphia area. Let me see if I can cover some of your comments/concerns here:

• I have never thought that submitting to wiki is much work, myself, although I'm certain different people would have different viewpoints. Editing wiki code is much easier then writing an equivalent amount of HTML code, but is probably more work then using a WYSIWYG editor like Microsoft Frontpage. There have been attempts at making a visual editor for wiki syntax, but I am not sure that any of those software packages have been released yet (or even if they are still under construction or not). Converting existing code from HTML is doable, but can be a pain in the rear unless you have some way to automate the markup conversion. I don't think, however, that there is any easier way for a large, extended collaborative group to contribute to a single project however, and trying to get extensive collaboration using a visual editor would not be an easy thing.
• At the moment, there is no centralized way to embed javascript into a wiki page. This is mostly for security reasons. You could host such quizzes on an external server, or you could prepare the quiz pages as standalone files, and offer them for download here.
• Wikibooks is not paper, and as such it doesnt suffer from the technical limitations that traditional printed paper books suffer from. You can include any topics that you want, and cover them to any extent that you want to cover them. If different people want to include/omit different subects, or include subjects in a different order, each person could make a separate table of contents, or even prepare separate printable versions of the book.
• If you are the original author of the material, and that claim is undisputed, then you can release your work under the GFDL. Keep in mind that once other people start editing, you will lose unilateral control over the material.

I hope this answered some of your questions. Wikibooks has seen some very big success with collaborative book-writing projects in the past, and it sounds like your project would be a good fit here. I hope to hear from you about this again. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[]

So there is no possibility to, so to say, webwhack a substantial part of a site directly into wikibooks. That's the sort of thing I was hoping for. I have had some experience in putting content into sites for educational services such as E-College and WEBCT, which use similar online cut-and-paste interfaces -- although they theoretically require no coding at all -- and I do regard it as time consuming. Consider that we are talking about a quarter of a million words here. I think this difficulty may underlie the sketchiness of the projects I have looked at.

Even just to cut and paste one file requires, let's say, 3 minutes. Then for 1800 files you have two weeks of very full work days. That's not allowing very much at all for uploading picture files and such, in addition to text material, and so 3 minutes per text file isn't much.

I am aware of the "wikibooks isn't paper" point -- there are three different "guides" to EPE on my website -- and that does speak to the possibility that economists might disagree on what needs to be covered. Indeed my unfinished update was partly based on the possibility of more than one contents outline.

Finally -- as I said, one of my concerns is to allow for the time when my server will no longer be supported by my erstwhile employer, so leaving the javascripted files on my server doesn't quite work -- but there are relatively few files of that kind, probably as few as fifty.

Anyway -- I can't see this as something I will find time for until I am actually retired, and there is something of a catch-22 in that. But thanks for the response, whiteknight, and I remain interested in any ideas anyone may have.

Rogerashton 20:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)Rogerashton[]

For the copying onto wikibooks of large numbers of files, someone at wikisource might have a bot that does it... ask on their version of the staff lounge.

For template scripts that are used in quizzes, ask at Wikiversity:Colloquium. They have had great success with creating tools for this using wiki scripting. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:40, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Thanx Both Rogerashton 17:44, 24 October 2006 (UTC) Rogerashton[]

---

This whole issue here raises an interesting point. I was thinking about the Javascript Quizes and such, and it seems as though the Javascript has been turned off for Wikimedia projects (stripped out even). I havn't even attempted it lately, so I'm not even sure if this is still Wikimedia (not Wikibooks) policy or not. Perhaps somebody more knowledgable of the technical side of MediaWiki software can answer this, but is it even possible to "turn on" the ability to use Javascript examples within the text of a Wikibooks page?

I know there were some concerns about some computer virii and other security holes that could sneak in via Javascript, especially when that same Javascript can be edited by "anybody", yet viewed by everybody. While Javascript is nowhere near as nasty as Java in terms of security holes, there still are problems. The templated scripts and Pearl hacks are usually quite a bit safer at least because they require an administrator to step in and add them if they are viewable by everybody. And there (generally) aren't the problems of accessing web browser memory or writing to the user's computer. --Rob Horning 20:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wikibooks has hundreds of recipes but almost all of them use US measurements. Please remember that only Liberia, Myanmar and the USA still use imperial measurement systems. Almost everyone in the world uses metric measurements (i.e. g and kg for weight, ml and l for volume, celcius for temperature). Do we have a template that can be placed on pages to highlight that imperial measurements are used - this will make it easier for me to find them as I intend to change them all so they use both formats. Any help much appreciated. Xania 20:19, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The cookbook is a very large project with well-defined internal policies. You should probably ask around at Talk:Cookbook rather than here. OTOH, I think keeping both systems on the pages iw a very good idea... as you might know, this has caused rather nasty editing disputes on wikipedia :-(. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:18, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I wish there was some kind of way to make a template that would do the conversions for you. Also, perhaps we could ask for some kind of new feature where if we take units of "cups", it could be automatically converted to metric based on user preferences. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:35, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Wikipedia has been begging for this feature for years. My impression is that it ain't gonna happen :-/. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I get that impression too. It's not like the internet should be used to break down communication barriers between people from around the world or anything.... oh, wait... --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:13, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Do you mean like this: 1.5 cups (354 mL)? Brian Brondel 02:44, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

That's actually really handy, but a better solution would probably be something like:

{{volume|cups=1.5}} or {{volume|ml=2.76}}

I suppose I could get off my lazy ass and write an extension like that but I doubt I will --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

It is so: 1.5 cups (354 mL) or 0.012 cups (2.76 mL). Brian Brondel 03:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Metric should go first then, and if it was made in Imperial, second. 6.4 billion Metric users out number the .3 billion Americans There are .3 billion Americans vs. 6.4 billion Metric Users (talk) 16:41, 19 December 2009 (UTC)MetricCook[]

Why would the volume| version be better? (Just seems like more keystrokes to me...BTW, for those reading without opening the edit window, there's a bunch of templates being used here). Do we have any set up to go the other way around too? There's hundreds of Indian recipes on wikipedia just waiting to be skimmed off, but they're all metric, and I don't have any metric measuring spoons :-(. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 21:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Anyone know why the US still uses imperial measurements? Given the poor education and knowledge of mathematics in the USA a metric system would be much easier for people to deal with. And what the hell is a cup please? How can you measure something in cups when every cup in my kitchen is a different size? Xania 22:11, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Every drinking cup in my kitchen is also a different size, but I don't use any of them to measure "1 cup" in a recipe. Instead, I use my w:measuring cup. Most measuring cups around here are marked in ounces (8 ounces in a cup) as well as in mL (nearly 240 mL in a cup in the US, but I hear it varies from one country to the next). Oh, and I never measure anything with my metal teaspoons or w:tablespoons that I put on the table, either -- I use the special set of plastic "measuring spoons". Most of the drinking cups in my kitchen are closer to "2 cups" in volume, also known as 1 pint -- crazy, huh? --DavidCary 02:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Just bear in mind I'm new! Some pages marked for speedy delete has been so marked for two weeks? I know everyone is busy but collecting the dust together if the broom doesn't come along is less interesting. runs and hides in corner for a while feeling embarrased --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Some of the speedy deletes are problematic for various reasons (see, e.g., the section after this one). We'll get to them :-). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:02, 28 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I think the word "speedy" is problematic, and many of the pages listed as such simply should not be be deleted without some delay or discretion. Basically, I would say that a "speedy delete" candidate is a page that could be deleted without requireing community concensus, not necessarily a page that should be deleted without delay. In general, it is a better idea to just let the speedy deletes wait, instead of being hasty. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:51, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Hi, i'm currently exites by meta:WikiAbstracts. Do you believe this could be part of wikibooks?-- wikipedia:User:ExplicitImplicity- 83.181.91.51 22:55, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I read the wikibooks of Mandarin Learning needs help. I am a Chinese language teacher, over 15 years teaching experience in Taiwan, China and the USA, just got married and move to Oregon, USA. Please contact me and let me know how I can help. My email address is cathytkerns@yahoo.com. Have a nice day.

Catherine Kerns

So I am considering creating a general use manual for some older computer systems. What I want to do is reference the actual wikipedia article and add on additional that is not encyclopedia specific, like commands and reminders. So basically the top half of the book section is direct and realtime link to generic system info on wikipedia, but the bottom half is new content provided by Wikibooks. I understand I could probably copy the text out of the wikipedia article every so often, but then it would be out of sync. any thoughts? --Ht1848 March 8, 2006

The simplest thing to do is to write the "new content" here, and link to the Wikipedia articles in a "== For further reading ==" section. Could you start doing that?

I think the "transclusion" system almost does what you want ... but I've only got it to include one short page on another (longer) page when both are on wikibooks. Does "transclusion" work cross-wiki?

--DavidCary 04:04, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[]

Just reverted vandalism to School of Mathematics:Course guide. As it has been moved to Wikiversity would this and any similar pages be worth protecting at some level? One less place for vandals to play? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[]

The wikiversity administrators have requested that we do not protect these pages, because sometimes they need to fix the redirects (they use a bot for this, and it is not an admin bot). Once Wikiversity clears the "Beta" stage (late February, I think), we'll probably just delete most of them. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 15:09, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[]

No problem & thanks for the info --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:20, 30 October 2006 (UTC)[]

I find these books very hard to read for more than page or two because I keep having to go back to find the next page. there are no next and previous links. Is there any chance these could be added automatically?

Some books do have these links, and you could help add them to additional books, if you would like. There really isn't an automatic way to add these links, the software doesn't allow for it. All the links that do exist must be added manually. What book are you reading? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)[]