User talk:Ellisun

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Welcome to Wikibooks, Ellisun!

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  Getting help   Made a mistake?   Goodies, tips and tricks Thanks, --ЗAНИA talk 12:27, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
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Introducting my interest in an Osmo Documentation project
my Osmo Documentation project history:

I am an advanced GNU Public License (GPL) software user, but am not a programmer, so I can not vouch for the Osmo code. On the other hand, this licensure means that others can do that code investigation. I merely started this user documentation to help it happen, and would love if others put significant design and editing attention on it. The collaborative documentation provides me a place to share thoughts about why and how other users might better appreciate the value of a simple self contained digital personal information management tool (a PIM tool).

In roughly 2011 I found the Osmo PIM computer program after an extensive search for software with a large number of my own quality criteria. After using the software, I began indexing all of the existing online use-descriptions but did not share my notes. In March 2013 I contacted the Osmo developers and friends mailing list, asking about existing documentation projects, and suggesting a Wikibooks book. A developer responded with enthusiasm, saying no such project existed. The developer agreed Wikibooks was a good place to start, and added that when the documentation is finished, it could be packaged with the software. The first page of the Wikibooks Osmo documentation project was posted on March 29th, 2013. I seeded the book main page with my edited content dump from the software's main web page, but did not yet add my other 2011 notes. I seeded the book discussion page with my edits of style and structure suggestions from Wikibooks guides and examples, and on March 30th (today) introduced myself and the Osmo Documentation project to the Wikibooks community.

--Ellisun (discuss • contribs) 21:32, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Adding a new category: guides and manuals
There is a large demand for accessible How-To books. By creating a category of "how to" books seperate from more traditional scholarly textbooks, suddenly a very popular collection of books is easer to find. See this new category. In the first day, I selectively reviewed roughly 100 articles with titles suggesting they were some type of "how to" and decided 66 of them were actually providing instruction. They got the new category. Some of the others were primarily links to external resources, unfinished, or more properly considered textbooks (good for them!). I realized the need for this new category when looking for a good category for a software documentation. I spent a couple hours researching all possible titles for this category and could not find anything similar in Wikibooks. I wonder if the heavy technical expertise among typical wiki editors is part of the reason for the situation where guides and textbooks are all considered textbooks. Examples of other terms I considered included all the alternate terms now in the Guides and manuals category description. I hope Wikibook editors will thoughtfully consider this approach now, even if somewhat similar approaches may have been rejected in the past. (Category Manual was deleted in the past). --Ellisun (discuss • contribs) 07:24, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry but I've reverted all of your additions of "Category:Guides and manuals" to books for two reasons:


 * 1) Main pages of books do not use categories; they use Subjects instead. Adding categories this way breaks the categorisation system. If you want to do this you need to get a new Subject created first, not add  to every page first.
 * 2) Sub pages of books are not included in categories except for the category for their own book. The categorisation model used in Wikibooks is totally different to Wikipedia.


 * In addition, every book here could be called a "guide" or a "manual" given that Wikibooks entire scope is textbooks, as such I think the category is superfluous. Proposals to add this kind of "cross book" categorisation has been before by the community (for example here), so please open a discussion at the Reading Room before performing any more large scale changes like this - thanks. QU TalkQu 07:27, 3 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the explanation of your reversion of the category. It gives me a sense of how to proceed. Yes, you raise two different issues, a methods problem (category versus subject tags) and what I believe is an interpretation and value problem (definitions and values of textbooks versus how-to's).


 * For now I have changed the first sentence of the notice "Adding a new category: guides and manuals" to "There is a large demand for accessible How-To books." I have also quoted that post on the category discussion page with this addition: "In the future I may say more about my arguement that mixing textbooks and How-To guides lowers the perceived quality of both. That arguement would need to be placed in a place for broad discussion." I'd love it if you could add a quote of your comments from here. I understand you might wait until I might take the conversation to a better place, as you suggest. Either way, I hope you got a chance to reread my description of differences between textbooks and "guides and manuals" on that category page. I understand that a similar issue has been brought before the community before. I would need to research and decide if I might contribute to that old conversation in a way that is time effective. --Ellisun (discuss • contribs) 17:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I should have separated my comments. I am broadly unconcerned about having a new subject for guides and manuals - that's a content decision. My "issue" was the use of Categories rather than Subjects to enable the change as this breaks the technical mechanism used to organise books. If you explore the Subjects system and templates you'll see how it ensures books are catalogued and presented to readers - categories do something very different. I am 100% okay with you creating a new Subject and adding books to that new Subject (by extending on each book root page to include the new subject name) although you might want to discuss it first at the Reading Room - thanks QU TalkQu 17:26, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I see what you mean about the technical mechanism for organizing books. I originally researched as well as I could, and did decide to use a new subject instead of category. I reverted my attempts when I tried to use a new subject, because the system didn't work as I hoped. Now I'd like to try what you are suggesting. I should probably first research how-to create that new subject, then propose a Reading Room discussion about whether-to do that.
 * Can you direct me to specific help pages for what you are describing: "creating a new Subject and adding books to that new Subject (by extending on each book root page to include the new subject name"?
 * For example, is it true every book can only have one main Subject at this time (capitalized Subject)? I had difficulty reading all the different uses of words related to category and subject in the help pages.
 * Thanks again for discussing these technical and content-decision issues. --Ellisun (discuss • contribs) 18:53, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Books can have more than one subject. What I meant by extending was that if you wish to add a book to more than one Subject then you append the new Subject to the same transclusion of the template. For example, a book currently in Subject "Computer science" would have this on its root page . If you wanted to also add it to "Computer programming" you would change this to  . QU TalkQu 15:58, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

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 * Hello QU, Please review (your?) decision to make limitations on my editing priveleges after this tagging mistake I made a year ago (if you did that). It has been disheartening to see my edits wait so long for inclusion. Please let me know if there is something specific I should do for this. I am not sure if this is the correct place to write this, but my help search hasn't helped me so far. --Ellisun (discuss • contribs) 22:04, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * QuiteUnusual with reply with a definite answer but I don't see any limits of blocks on your editing privileges. Also the pages you have edited don't have any protection of any sort.  There were some edits from September which hadn't been checked but that doesn't stop your edits being visible - only on Wikijunior books is it necessary for somebody to check edits before they are visible to users.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Estonia.svg|15px]]talk 23:06, 20 March 2014 (UTC)