User talk:Stephanieeast

Hello and Welcome
Hi Stephanie,

Thanks for your work on the Spider honor (and the other things you've been doing on this project as well). It is greatly appreciated. I hope you don't mind that I added the spider web picture directly to requirement 5. I'm guessing that a few people like to print these out and use them to teach an honor - maybe without looking it over very closely first. Sometimes we're called upon suddenly to teach an honor with little to no time to prepare. Therefore, it's better if it can stand alone.

Thanks again. keep up the good work!

Jim Thomas 02:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Images
Hi Stephanie,

You can talk to me by adding comments to my talk page or to yours - I'll see them either way. You can also email me: jthomas at bittware dot com

About adding pictures - The pictures on the cirrusimages site are copyrighted, so we cannot include them in the wikibook. The byteland site is a little better, since the images are licensed under the Creative Commons. That means that we have permission to use them for non-commercial purposes. Unfortunately, the license we have to use in wikibooks requires that we only use works that are free to use for any purpose, including non-commercial. :-( I guess the reason for that is because the Gnu Free Documentation License (GFDL) that we use allows anyone to grab a copy of our work, print it out, and sell the copies - all without our permission, and with us not seeing a red cent from it. They are, however, constrained to include a copy of the license which allows anyone else the same liberty.  I'm OK with that, so it's not a big deal to me.

In a nutshell - we can't use images from either of these sites. But all hope is not lost. You can use those sites to gather information, such as which species of spiders to look for. Then you can look for their images either in wikipedia or in the wikimedia commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org). Wikipedia, wikibooks, and wikimedia commons are all run by the same organization. Because of that, we (and wikipedia) are set up to make direct use of any images available on wikimedia commons, which is where they prefer for you to upload any images. If you find an image in the commons, all you need is its name. Then add markup like this:



You can also add arguments to the image "tag" to control the placement and size of the image and add a caption. It's easiest to edit a page and look at the markup to see how that's done. Another option - which I recommend for a large collection of spider images - is to use a gallery. Look at the Flowers honor for an example of how that's done.

Sometimes you might find an image in wikipedia that is not in the wikimedia commons. If I really want to use it, I download a copy and upload it to the commons. I don't think that's the correct thing to do though, because you lose the file's history when you do it. But sometimes I do it anyway.

Other sources of images we can use include any pictures you take yourself, or anything in the public domain. For example, I have discovered a couple of websites that host military training manuals. Since those were original productuctions of the U.S. Government, they are in the public domain - which means we can do whatever we want with them, including uploading them to the commons and including them in our wikibooks.

BTW, when you think the Spiders answers are complete you should change the "stage" in the index page to 100% and add a link in the "completed honors" section on the front page. I do this when there's enough information there for someone to earn the honor. For instance, if you don't want to add spider-killing instructions you don't have to (not that I'm against it) because there are two other options available for meeting the requirement. I do try to put information for every option there eventually, but if there's enough there that someone can earn the honor, I say "good enough" and add it to the "done" list.

The other thing I do when I decide one is done enough, is announce it on the forum on pathfindersonline.org. Feel free to do that, or if you'd rather, I will be happy to do it. That's my way of drawing attention to the project and hopefully attracting contributors. Though sometimes I do feel like a broken record.

Jim Thomas 04:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

You seem to have missed the "official Welcome"!
Hello and welcome to Wikibooks!

Here are some tips to help you get started:
 * You should sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes, like this: &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126;.
 * Remember to conduct any editing experiments in the sandbox.
 * If you're a Wikipedian, see Wikibooks for Wikipedians for a primer on how things work here (it's a little different).
 * If you want to base your work here on materials from Wikipedia, please use WB:RFI to bring the material over in compliance with the GFDL.
 * If you're an instructor and plan on using wikibooks for a class project, see Guidelines for class projects
 * Please say hello at the Staff Lounge with any questions or ideas.
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
 * Please take a look at Naming policy before starting a new book.
 * Remember to maintain a Neutral point of view.
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and have fun!

You will find more resources in Community Portal. If you want to ask a question, visit the Study help desk, the Staff lounge, IRC channel or ask me personally on my talk page.

Good luck! -- Herby talk thyme 12:13, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Requirements Outlined
Thank you for outlining the requirements. That was a huge job! I have been following your work, and you have both done a superb job.

When you guys started going gangbusters on the requirements, all the links turned blue, so it was harder to tell which ones had answers and which ones didn't. That's what prompted me to re-fiddle the indices. I moved the "stage" icons in front of the honor name and supressed the date. This should make it easier to tell which ones have had answers added to them. To preserve the spacing, I had to add a No_work icon. I hope you don't mind that I'm calling "no answers" "no work." It is work! But the next stage was 00%, so I had to come up with something different.

I was also going in behind you on a few and adding the Category entry, but one of the admins noticed I was doing this and clued me in on a tool they have that'll do this much more easily. So I held off on that. Now that you're finished, I'll pull the trigger on the Category thing.

BTW, what do you think of the answers I added for First Aid, Advanced? Not very detailed, but it seems almost pointless to add any more to it than that. If you think it's OK like that, I may replicate it in Community Water Safety - Advanced.

I also thought about doing this to the Radio honors, but haven't yet, thinking I might attempt to write a "How to Get a Ham License" module. But that's a MAJOR undertaking. I guess we could punt (as above) but if we don't maybe some ambitious engineer will jump in and do it.

Thanks for your work. It's very, very nice to have collaborators. Jim Thomas 02:47, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Admin Privs
Hi Stephanie,

There are a couple of guys on Wikibooks who regularly patrol the site for vandalism. They have helped our book on numerous occasions. Right now they are looking to have their rights escalated so that they may have "Checkuser" privileges. This will equip them with more powerful tools for fighting vandalism.

In order for that to happen though, they have to get 25 votes of support, and that is /very/ difficult to achieve. Their usernames are Herbythyme and SBJohnny. I would appreciate it if you would go to these URLs, click the edit link, and add this:

Support: ~

The tildes leave your username and the date. You /do/ have to be registered and logged in for the vote to count.

Here's where you can vote for them:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:RFA#Herbythyme_.28talk_.7C_email_.7C_contribs_.7C_logs.29 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/WB:RFA#SBJohnny_.28talk_.7C_email_.7C_contribs_.7C_logs.29

Thanks in advance.

Jim Thomas 15:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi Stepahnie,
 * Today my user page was struck by a particularly nasty vandal, and the change was reverted by SBJohnny in under one minute. The best way I can think of to thank him is by urging my friends to vote for his request for Check user rights on the Request for Admin page.  I know you already voted for Herby, and I thank you for that as well.  I think SBJ deserves the same.  Thanks in advance! Jim Thomas 16:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Mammals honor
Hi Stephanie,

What exactly is the problem with Mammals? I'm not positive I know what you were talking about. I found a few problems you might have been worried about...

The Pinnipeds quit showing up as a header item because there was an extra space after the three = signs. An invisible problem with very visible results.

The range maps that aren't showing up are not present in the wikimedia commons. That's the repository of "media" type data. Wikipedia and Wikibooks both can draw images from there, but they can also both draw images from their own private little worlds. If a Wikipedia image is hosted at wikipedia instead of at the commons, it'll show up as a red link in Wikibooks. To be able to use it, you have to copy it from Wikipedia to Wikibooks. I did that to the Humpack range map. Here's how:


 * Click on the image in Wikipedia to go to its page
 * Click on the image again in its own page to be sure you've grabbed the full-resolution version.  If it was bigger than 800px wide, it'll only show up as 800px on that first page, but they really only want you to load ful-res images.  They can be scaled down by whoever needs them elsewhere.
 * Go to this page and enter the name of the picture. This will capture the metadata of the image.  I do this in another browser tab.
 * Go to the commons upload page and upload the image. Paste the metadata you got from the commons helper (previous step) into the information section.  You may also wish to add it to a category a la


 * Hit the upload button.
 * Yay!


 * Sorry, I left out a step. You have to download the full-res image to your computer and then upload it to the commons.  They don't have any facility for transferring it from the wikipedia server directly to the commons server (but it would sure be nice if they did!).  Does that help? Jim Thomas 01:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Outdoor Education
hi stephanie, you may be interested in contributing to this new book: Outdoor Education. sincerely, Jtneill (talk) 01:51, 21 March 2008 (UTC)