Talk:Wikibooks portal

First comment
After looking at the main page with w3m, a text browser I decided to add some alt text to the images. I think there should also be an alt text for Image:Go_To_A_Random_Page and Go_To_List_of_All_Textbooks, but there's a problem: it might confuse people who click on them even more. I think clicking on the pictures should give what one expects. Now you are being brought to the page about the image, which isn't very intuitive. The only way I see to change this is to use HTML... Is that ok?

I also moved links to external projects to the bottom of "miscellaneous". Probably these should have their own heading... Guaka


 * But in Wikimedia it is standard practice to have clicking on the image give info on that image. People use this to check copyright info, find out who made an image etc. I'm not familer with text only browsers, does clicking on the alt text go to the image description page? If so why no say so in the alt text. Theresa knott 11:49, 12 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * The problem with these 2 pictures is that they make people think that if you click on them you will not be brought to copyright info and stuff like that, but that other stuff will happen. And since they're on the main page I think it might be good to make the behaviour more newby friendly. And actually, I think even long time pedians will be fooled by the appearances. People who do want to see the Image: page will probably know how to do that :) Guaka 13:41, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * But that is exactly what does happen! The image description page for these two pictures is a redirect which sends them to special:Random page and list of all books Theresa knott 11:43, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The welcome messages need to contain a link to the relevent language "main page" as well as "welcome newcomers". Also as the main page is now only a navigation page to guide newcommers to we don't need all the other nav links on the top, bottom, and side. These just get in the way. Is it possible to do that. Also we need to go to the relevent wikimedia sites and change all links to wikibooks to the appropriate language wikibook main page. Theresa knott 15:43, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Order of Languages
Recently, Karl Wick tried to place English to the top, and I undo them. Pardon me if I were rude. But I think Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Româna˘ is broken, because I cannot see them correctly. (Am I wrong?) Moreover, frankly speaking, I think placing English (and German, Chines, French and Spanish) to the top is not the way we should go. It is ad hoc, and there will always be trouble. For example, I could think that Korean is more important than others, and another man may insist Chinese is the most important language, ... (Meaningless flames follow.) Current ordering is somewhat alphabetical(Wikipedia uses same ordering.), and I like it. Even though I think there can be more resonable rule of ordering, the policy based on importance of language cannot be accepted. --envia


 * Alphabetical ordering by language code makes the most sense to me. --mav 09:30, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * The idea is not relative importance of languages, but volume of material in each language on the site. This is frustrating as it makes me feel like my good work is going down the ###. --Karl Wick


 * Well, I understand. But, how about using "New books", "Featured books", or "Active books"? --envia


 * Alphabetical order seems good. As for Karl Wick, there is no way to automatically detect if a page is a certain language. (all the english pages are not marked with a language subsection, there are no pages such as EN: Genealogy, it's just Genealogy) So, the only way is by qualitive interpretation, which will eventually lead to... *gulp* edit wars. (i havent even seen an edit war and I dont wanna see one) Unless you can quantify the size of a language, we should be going alphabetically. KirbyMeister 00:03, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Maybe http://wikibooks.org/ should have the languages ordered by number of articles as http://wikipedia.org/ does and that's what I think it's the best idea. --80.58.1.42 09:58, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Full names or language codes?
Personally, I think full language names look ugly and will still look ugly when somebody finishes adding them in. Could we switch back to language codes? r3m0t 17:20, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)
 * Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think that by writing the names in full it's easy for a visitor to find their own language. user:theresa knott


 * Could the language names at least be capitalized normally? Having them all uppercase also unnecessarily takes up space. Btw, I've heard mentions that having different domains for different languages was decided against. Could anyone tell me why? Because speakers of other languages might not know enough English to understand the interface (for example, the navigation bar). – Minh Nguy?n 21:59, 21 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Unlikely. The same system is employed at Wikipedia, so why reinvent the wheel? -Taoster


 * As I understand it, Wikipedia does use separate domains for each language. That way, the navigation bar, etc. are accessible to everyone, including non–English speakers. – Minh Nguy?n 00:21, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Right, so the whatever system is currently in use at Wikipedia should be imported for use here. -Taoster


 * Ditto. It's better that the page should be comprehensible to the masses than understandable only to a select group. -Taoster


 * I think that the languages software is part of the newer Wiki bundle thingy that is used on Wikipedia, but that there was not enough time for the overworked developers to do a new install of the software each time there are minor updates to each of the subsites, like here at Wikibooks. So, I think that eventually when the folks get time they will install it here. Lets hope. --Karl Wick
 * Agree let's hope so. In the meantime let's not worry too much about the format of the main page. It's only a temporary solution after all. User:Theresa Knott


 * On Wikitravel, they have several languages within only one domain. It seems a good solution. If it works there, it should also work here. No need to change the software. Yann 15:14, 22 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Are the ????????????? languages correctly rendered?
For some reason this page sometimes indicates non-latin character languages as little boxes (see ) and at other times (like now) as a row of ????. Is the latter showing something correct to those whose machines can translate? I initially thought it was the result of vandalism, but now I'm not so sure - Marsh 17:18, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I was wondering the same thing. So I dug through the history and copy-pasted the original text back. I think it was just an innocent encodings mistake at http://wikibooks.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikibooks&diff=13946&oldid=13945  -- Kowey 12:47, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm still seeing some spurious question marks at the top of the page. Is this because my browser doesn't have a foreign language extension of some kind, or is there a mistake there. It looks like there's some '?' characters outside of the TABLE tags, which get rendered at the top of the TABLE. -- [no user name] 18:56, 19 Feb 2004

Colored boxes and decoration
There is some potential here even tho how it stands right now does not look very good to me .. it goes real wide on my Mac running OS 8.6 .. Some way to use color to make the page prettier and spice it up a bit .. lets keep going to see what it can do .. --Karl Wick

I agree ^^. Making the borders - perhaps slightly thinner and darker borders?

How to add a new language?
How do I add a new language to http://wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks (the main portal)? I would like to add Portuguese. Thanks.


 * If you want, just type out the main text here and I'll put it with the others for you. r3m0t (cont) (talk) 12:53, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Could we add Welsh ("Cymraeg") - with this welcome text (Croeso i lyfrau-Wici! Rydym yn datblygu llyfrau sydd yn rhad ac am ddim.) Thanks!

Change in Format?
Alright well I already accidentally bothered the people at wikipedia about this. But i was wondering if perhaps instead of having this educational resource based on the text book format we could create a new format which would allow for easier learning and writing.

Anyways my idea is instead of having many different "wikibooks" for many different subjects. You could have one. This way you can work ontop of the "shoulders" of other peoples works. In order for such a thing to be practical it would have be in a heirarchial tree of sorts. so for example:

MATH Addition <-^--->Roman Numbers <---> Arabic numbers Subtraction<--^> multiplication<--> shapes ^-division^                 ^ ^-(skip a few)^ Calculus <^      ^--> trigonometry (skip quite a few more)          Einstein Theory of Relativity <--^^

This isn't really how any howto has ever been built as far as i know. Nor have any textbooks have been writen in percisly this matter though have come close. But then again no one before had hyperlinks. The nice thing about this form of learning is that it works like the human mind, a relational database.

If this will be the structure, then people wouldn't feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they would have to do to start a "wikibook" because the sections will be so much smaller and less needfull of administration. People that want to help will be able to as they could fill in holes in the "wiki learning web". They could easily add things they know because of the "modularity".

If people do decide to use wikibooks as an educational resource then they would be able to choose the extent to which they wish to teach a topic. Such a format would allow for ultimate customization of the layout of the textbook as you can pluck chunks out of the web and make it into a textbook.

summary

To summarize you just need a layout like wikipedia's simply with dynamic "articles" that have "parent" links to the things you should know before trying to read the current topic. With "related" links that tell of related material you might find interesting and with "children" links that say where you can go from what you already know.

--Azgorodin 13:22, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Interesting concept, but I dont see how every subject can fit into that hierarchy, or any hierarchy, for that matter. Plus, wikibooks doesnt control the books that are created, or where people would choose to enter them into the table. I think that if background information is required, each individual wikibook can make the effort to point to the necessary information sources (hopefully other wiki-information sources). Let each book say what the background information is, in the method that they choose is best. --Whiteknight 02:34, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Name change
I think that the name "Wikibooks", even though it was suggested by me, was a bit odd for this page. So I added "portal" to it. If anybody is really mad about that, then go ahead and change it back. --mav 09:50, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)

What happened to the pretty WikiBooks logo? It lost its pretty colors.. :(


 * I don't know, but it looks rather dull now. r3m0t (cont) (talk) 08:52, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think y'all should know that I created a very useful MediaWiki: page, Template:Toplink. You place at the end of a section on any page and it provides a sweet top link like the one at the bottom of this page. r3m0t (cont) (talk) 08:52, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Emphasize Lessons instead of full-course text books ?
As shown in the article "Collective action" in wikipedia, contribution of teaching text would be easier to get on Lesson-size text (i.e. material for a 2-hour lesson), instead of a course-size text (i.e. material for a 30-hour module). It looks to me that the current focus of wikibooks is too much on books, not on lesson. Should we call it "wikiLessons" instead ? 62.4.190.23 16:53, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Hello. Actually, most people have been doing this already by making each chapter or section of the books around 2-3 hours of reading and practice time. I'm sure you would find that you could learn quite some amount on physics or get a good grasp of polish in a few hours.

Browsing interface
Wouldn't it be kind of normal to have a the Browing interface done in the diffent, languages????!!!! For exemple if I am on Wikilivres (the french version of wikibooks), shouldn't the "navigation", "search" and "toolbox" browsing frame also be in french, like it is for wikipedia? Suppose I am browsing books in spanish, if I click on the "wikiversity" link in the navigation box shouldn't I be lead to the spanish wikiversidad page???

I beleive there are two possible solutions, either, like it is the case for wikipedia, wikilivre is divided into differnent language sections. Or, what might be preferable, simply let the user choose the language of the browsing interface, and make the links correspond to the language. --YapaTi 17:26, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Links at bottom of page
What are those links at the bottom of the page? Are they vandalism or similar projects, or what? - SamE 04:18, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

These Chinese adult links should be deleted ASAP!

Insert non-formatted text here == Arabic Farsti Hebrew etc ==

Hoi, I have started a language class for Farsi and, to learn a language, there are two parts; the instructions in English/whatever and the material that SHOULD go right to left. This is the reason why I need both articles in the fa: and the standard wikibooks.

Ideas on learning languages
Hoi, In the Farsi language course we have soundfiles for the individual words and sentences. These have been loaded on Commons. At the same time, we want to have all the words defined in Wiktionary. By combining these things, it will be easier learn the pronunciation and it will enrich wiktionary at the same time.

With the plans for "Ultimate Wiktionary" we have the idea of "concepts". Concepts are translations and synonyms. When a language course has been translated in Wiktionary, the idea is that you can use language material created for one language for the new language as well. The language of the User Interface would serve as the "known language". (This is known with release 1.4 of the Mediawiki software)

For things like "language immersion" we could have photo's/pictures like "Boy behind the tree", "Boy in front of the tree"; these foto's could be used as "Jongen achter de boom", "Jongen voor de boom". By translating the text and record the text it would be usable to learn yet another language.

To learn the characters and sounds of a language, you would have some startup lessons, introducing the alfabet and some easy words.

For grammar etc you can have lessons seperate from the language immersion stuff. This stuff would also be good to learn standard phrases for holydays; stuff like "Dos cervesas por favor" GerardM 20:06, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Import HOWTOs and docs from The Linux Documentation Project?
I first posted this on Scriptorium, and ThomasV said this place was more appropriate:

The Linux Documentation Project is a very nice thing, but I notice a lot of the HOWTOs and documentation is pretty out of date. This could be a result of the single-author policy on all the documents, no changes and updates go into the documents if not the author is around or have the interest in updating the docs.

I don't want to fork TLDP, but wouldn't it be worthwhile to import the HOWTO collection and some of the documentation into Wikibooks? I'm sure this would boost the update process, and the authors could also import the updates done here into their documents at tldp.

Or would this be a disfavour to TLDP? -- sunny256 2005-03-12 13:56Z (Posted here 2005-03-13 06:04Z)

I agree that it would be interesting to at least try using wiki for Linux HOWTOs. Perhaps we could try the SentenceToPageToSectionToWiki process for a few HOWTOs at one of the Linux wiki such as . --DavidCary 21:26, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)
 * http://wiki.LinuxQuestions.org/
 * WikiBooks:FLOSS Concept Booklet
 * WikiBooks:Linux-Compendium
 * This is something I have thought about too, it would be really nice to some of the LDP Howtos in Wikibooks. I am willing to help. wp:User:Kompere.

Language names on the portal list (suggestion)
Compare this portal list to the one at wikisource:. They are very similar, but there the list is by the two-letter language codes, here by the name of the language in that language.

Suggestion: Change the Wikibooks list to both, i.e. the two-letter language code, followed by the language. This would allow people to identify the languages with more ease, plus give the list a clear, objective order (Latin alphabetical). Dovi 20:49, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

CANT
The new listing for Cantonese points to a Wikibooks that doesn't exist. There isn't even a Wikipedia with this code. Please clarify, otherwise the listing should be deleted.Dovi 12:15, 26 May 2005 (UTC)

Ido Wikibooks
Hi, could we get a Wikibooks set up for the language Ido? io. Here is what it will say:

Bonveno a Wikilibri. Hike ni developas ed adkargas libre uzata texti, studial programi, ed altra libri.

(somebody else might come along and revise it but it should do for now)

Thank you.

Page protected
At my request, this page is now protected until further notice, due to repeated vandalism and linkspamming. If you wish to submit changes to this page, or challenge this decision, you should make a request in Staff lounge.

Having put a bit more thought into it, a better solution might be to use the same trick as the Main page, and make the page protected, but make templated sections of it to be editable. This will prevent many automated linkspamming scripts from modifying the page. - Aya T C 19:26, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

This page needs attention
The link to the anglo-saxon wikibooks site (first link) appears to go straight to the English site.

On a separate note, this page is seriously lacking in user friendliness - having a list of languages in alphabetical order is all very well, but means that anyone who doesn't speak any of the languages they see on the first page of text is confronted by a page of unfathomable text. We need prominent links to major languages near the top; languages like Anglo Saxon which noone, anywhere, speaks as a first language should have much less prominence. 81.179.101.45 12:21, 21 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, the "ANG|Englisc" link at http://wikibooks.org/ Wikibooks portal should point to http://ang.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page . --DavidCary 18:03, 22 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Link changed. If you can find the link to the Anglo-Saxon Welcome page, that would be appreciated as well, or make a redirect on the ANG side of things.  I've place a link to the ANG wiki for the welcome page, but it doesn't exist (yet) on that wiki.  --Rob Horning 14:08, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Hu
This text:


 * Üdvözlet a Wikikönyvben. Ingyenes, nyílt tartalmú könyveket, kézikönyveket és más szövegeket fejlesztünk és terjesztünk.

contains mistakes.

I think Üdvözlet a Wikikönyvben. should been corrected to Üdvözlünk a Wikikönyvekben! or - more good(?) - Üdvözlünk a Wikikönyveken!(?) or >>> Üdvözlünk a Wikikönyvek lapjain!.

The link Ingyenes shouldn't link to anything. The nyílt tartalmú link should link to Wikikönyvek:Nyílt tartalom.

So:
 * Üdvözlünk a Wikikönyvek lapjain! Ingyenes, nyílt tartalmú, szabadon szerkeszthető könyveket, kézikönyveket és más szövegeket fejlesztünk és terjesztünk.

If you are an admin, please correct it. Gubbubu 07:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC) Gubbubu 07:38, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Ido wikibooks
We still need an Ido wikibooks. io:user:mithridates

Oh, and it should say:

''Bonveno a Wikibooks. Hike ni facas libri, lerno-libri e texti, gratuita ed editebla da irgu.''

Missing languages from list
Many of the wikibooks sites are missing from this portal list. See inactivewikipedias for a large list (but ignore the dk.wikibooks.org error). --Zigger 03:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

multiple text problem in phrase-showcasing
I think multiple transliteration systems should be an option. Today, having more than one transliteration system used in your wikibook (For example: transliterating phrases) requires the page to display all the transliterations systems. Instead, the user should be able to choose at the top of the page which transliteration system to show. The ones that the user did not select, should not display. The user could also choose to show many transliteration systems.

So for a phrase for example in Arabic:

I'll call this a texta. a place where multiple instances (i.e. different versions) of the same text exist together. And for every wikibook, they could be organized, and then any page that wants to show it would just have a link to the texta. by the way, I just came up with that word "texta". 1:شكرا 2: شُكْرًا (fully vowellized) 3: shokran   (latin transliteration) 4: shuk-ran  (syllable form) 5: [Some IPA rendering] 6: shukraN          (practical phonemic translteration decided on)

And there are probably far more transliteration systems. And so every form, should be stored, and then the user can choose in the preferences for that wikibook what they want to see, (the option could be at the side).

I believe this would be much easier than having two separate pages, just so that those wanting to use transliteration and those who don't can still use the same book.

So the author would write the con-current text for a phrase once and everyone can use which ever writing systems they want and can add their own if they contribute to the wikibook.

This would only effect wikibooks showing translations, and using more than one writing system for a foreign language. The authors of the Chinese wikibook require something like this so that they can show phrases in the traditional writing system and the other style, while still letting the user choose whether to view one, or both, or just pinyin (a transliteration system).

--TwoThirty 06:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

E-Prime
Could E-Prime be added to the list of languages? (I am not intending this as a joke). Or would be best to post books in E-Prime under English? - MatthewKarlsen


 * If you want to request a new language edition of Wikibooks, please make the request on the Wikimedia Meta Wiki. Many languages have already been created that are not specifically mentioned on this list, but are not listed due to the lack of any substantial content.  Make sure you check on Special:SiteMatrix to see if the language is listed (from the ISO standard international language codes).  If you are active in a language not listed here, please let us know, and we will try to get it added.  I'm also monitoring List of Wikibooks, which lists most of the currently "active" Wikibooks, based on a quick survey of Wikibooks projects I did a couple of months ago.  Active meant it actually had some real content on the front page and more than one registered user.  I know that is a very low bar to set, but it at least is something to compare against.  --Rob Horning 01:29, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Dutch
In the Dutch description, open content leerboeken should be replaced by either opencontentleerboeken or open-contentleerboeken.


 * Done, Jguk 12:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

In the Dutch description, opencontentleerboeken is really ugly. It should be open-content leerboeken, as it is not one word.
 * That was me... Effeietsanders 16:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

It is one word. Writing it with spaces in it is a case of English disease. A hyphen between open and content would be acceptable, though. Or else it could be phrased differently, like vrije leerboeken or something of the like. David 21:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Macedonian wikibooks
The Macedonian language (mk.wikibooks.org) is missing in the list. --misos


 * I apologize for this oversight. It will be added. --Rob Horning 17:47, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Japanese
Hi. Can someone fix japanese line "出典: フリー教科書『ウィキブックス" to "フリー教科書" please? now it is completely weird.--Suisui 16:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hungarian
The hungarian line should be fixed, too :-)) It should be "Szabad elektronikus könyvtár", "500+ lap". Thanks. 86.101.106.79 08:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

hebrew wikibooks
Please change the open-cotent textbooks in the hebrew headline to ספרי לימוד ומדריכים חופשיים, and the "700+ modules" to "700+ עמודים". thank you. Ek7 21:24, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Please make sure that I got it working correctly and didn't mess it up. Working with mixed directional alphabet systems (hebrew and latin simultaneously) can really be tricky.  --Rob Horning 13:02, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * It's fine, thanks. Ek7 19:09, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Macedonian Wikibooks
We really ought to be listing Macedonian as one of the highlighted Wikibooks. I'm not sure how best to do it. Should we drop one off so that there are 12 languages highlighted. Highlighting 13 isn't so easy aesthetically, Jguk 19:08, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Armenian Wikibooks Missing
I have found two errors regarding the Armenian Wikibooks. For one, a link to it does not show up on this portal. Two, on the English homepage there is a link reading "Հայերեն (Armenian)" but this is a link to http://ar.wikibooks.org, which is the Arabic Wikibooks. "ar" doesn't belong to Armenia - it's "hy" for Hayastan (meaning Armenia) or Hayeren (meaning Armenian). Just thought I'd point that little problem out. Thanks --- Rappo 19:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Oops. Sorry about that.  My mistake.  I guess I was getting a little too punchy with copying over the names of several new Wikibooks language projects to the main page on en.wikibooks.  I do realize that Armenians don't speak Arabic (which is also listed).
 * As far as not appearing on the portal, I would suggest that you try to get a few more modules going for the Armenian Wikibooks. Right now, the rough limit I've been using for adding new languages is that it must have over 100 Wikibook modules before it is listed on the main portal.  An active Wikibook user would easily be able to get content to this threshold, and is generally considered to be a sign that a project is definitely active or has signficant development from multiple users.  If you insist, I still can add this language here, however.  There is no hard policy for adding languages here.  --Rob Horning 20:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't really know enough Armenian to contribute to the Armenian Wikibooks... so I guess that's somebody else's job. I didn't know about the guideline - makes sense, though.  I just saw "All languages" and thought it was missing.  I undesrtand now - thanks!  Rappo 20:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Dutch Wikibooks-portaal
Can someone add the Dutch Wikibooks-portaal to the interwiki's? Evil berry


 * Done. --Rob Horning 20:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Dutch Wikibooks passed the 1000 books today. Can someone change that here? Thanks. Effeietsanders 18:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Congrats dutch wikibooks! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! :) Could you maybe switch also Magyar and Nederlands? :P We're 50 modules ahead right now :P Effeietsanders 10:58, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Ah, and i just note that "artikels" should be replaced by "modules". Effeietsanders 11:13, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done again. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 11:46, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Hebrew language
hebrew language has 1000 modules.

Change the page
Hello, I'm Italian. why the index page was rimaned at 1200+ in the part dedicated at the Italian? now Italian's wikibooks is at 1624 page therefore 1600+

Excuse me if i don't speak a good english...


 * I've updated the page. The raw data come from this site. Jguk 10:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Finnish wikibooks reached 1000 pages
So, finnish Wikibooks has reached this amount of pages, so it should be placed right in the list. --62.236.100.238 17:34, 23 July 2007 (UTC)