User talk:Edelstam

Welcome to Wikibooks, Edelstam!

Lanaguage book structure
Hi Edelstam,

I noticed your new book at Mapudungun and the force with which you you started it. I contribute largely to a language book, myself; the wikibook on Japanese which User:Retropunk and I are currently stitching together from layers upon layers of past contributions.

I noticed that your book followed a structure very common to language books: The current main page page is a cover image with a link to the page contents which sit on a sub-page. Some Wikibookians have been discussing the usefulness of that approach over at Wikibooks talk:Manual of Style (search for "splash page"). Currently, the consensus is that placing the contents on the main page is better for prospective readers. Please feel free to join the discussion.

Another interest of mine is improving documentation &mdash; in particular for new users. Could you tell me whether there is a page here at Wikiboks that recommends this structure, or if you just got the idea from other language wikibooks.

I also noticed that you added the Mapudungun to the languages bookshelf. The bookshelves are being deprecated in favour of Subject pages. There isn't much information on how Wikibookians can help with the move over, but that's another thing I'm working on.

Thanks, --Swift (talk) 03:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment copied from User talk:Swift. Thanks for your reply. I watch pages pages where I leave comments and would prefer if the discussion were kept on the same talk page to make discussion easier to follow.
 * Hi swift, thank you for your comments on my talk page. Im a beginner on wikibooks and I chose to use a splash screen because I looked at the spanish wikibook and took the structure from that book. I agree however that a splashscreen is not the best way to go and have been thinking of changing it, I just havn't had the energy to find out how to change the structure to something else, for example the structure you have in your japanese wikibook. Maybe you can help me change the structure or show me where to read about a way to do so.


 * When it comes to the categorising of subjects, again I only looked at the spanish wikibook. Whichever system for categorizing as the wikibook community finds best ill use. Thank you again for taking an interest in my wikibook Edelstam (talk) 13:45, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Hey Edelstam,
 * You can do much of it yourself. Up top, where the "edit", "history", etc. tabs are, there is another one called "move". The only problem is that once a page is moved from "Old" to "New", the "Old" page becomes a redirect to the "New" page. As normal users can't delete pages, you wouldn't be able to replace the redirect on Mapudungun with the current contents page.
 * No worries, though. An admin, such as myself, can delete it for you. Rather than do the page moves for you, I suggest you do the following to get used to it:
 * Copy Mapudungun to Mapudungun/Cover (or something similar &mdash; it's up to book contributors)
 * Place on Mapudungun to get it deleted.
 * Move Mapudungun/Contents to Mapudungun once it has been deleted.
 * I'll be watching your contributions and will help out if anything goes awry. There is no real need to delete the redirect from the contents page. You can request it if you like. --Swift (talk) 15:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I think everything has gone as planned so far. Im not sure what you mean with the last sentence, "there is no real need to delete the redirect from the contents page." Edelstam (talk) 15:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, it seems you just copied the contents between pages. Up top, in the row of links, next to the Wikibooks logo, there should be the following links: module, talk, edit, history, move and watch (or something like that; admins have different tabs and I've changed others in my settings).
 * If you select move, you can move the page. See more at mw:Help:Moving a page.
 * You can try again by placing another delete tag on the main page and then moving the contents page there. Alternatively, you can just place the speedy-delete tag on the Mapudungun/Contents and start working on the new page at Mapudungun. --Swift (talk) 16:17, 5 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks again Edelstam (talk) 20:39, 5 February 2009 (UTC)