Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2006/December

Is there a local wiki viewer?
Is there a program that I can run on my computer and that displays wiki source (input) as it shows up on wikibooks (or wikipedia)? Your help is greatly appreciated. In case this question has already been answered (I have searched without success) then my apologies and please point me to the answer.--Koantum 04:00, 15 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you looking for something that renders the finished product, or are you looking for something that only downloads the wiki source text? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:55, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Either case, you can use eclipse editor and use plog4u plugin for wikipedia. With this you can do both edit the source in Raw format and preview your work inside the editor. Download the eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org and visit http://www.plog4u.org to download the plugin to render wiki source. -- Murali Narayanan Kb3lja 13:02, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

VfDs - a third way?
As some may know I've taken some interest in this process recently. By and large the views of the community are clear. However I see one at the moment which - to me - does not have that clarity. The page was listed for VfD and then when the process was effectively complete and an editor arrived who wished to address the problem. That editor acknowledges that the task will not be easy. By way of a test I have suspended that vote for one month. I do realise that we could close it as keep and then re-list but this way seems to leave some pressure on the editor and us to review the matter in a timely way. As with everything here this is not a concrete action so if anyone wishes to revert it the link you need is (assuming no other edits since). However if you do revert it please come up with a way of dealing with what I am sure is a rare event in a fair and positive way. I was going to put the Future in this category too but having read the recent comments I ain't that brave! Over to you folk, thanks -- Herby talk thyme 08:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It's generally my position that it is better to improve an existing article then to delete it outright, although I also acknowledge that some books simply will not be improved ever. However, if there is an editor who is active, and who claims to want to help, i say we should certainly let them try. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Whiteknight's position above. I do think it is a difficult task to deceide whether a book is likely to be improved. I'm unsure if a month-long waiting period would be constructive but don't think it would be too bad to close the debate with a note that the consensus is that the book needs to be improved if it should be allowed to stay. If we implement the sub-page method, past VfDs will be easy to find. The page won't be listed anywhere (though the sub-page could be categorized) and would only be renominated someone noticed it again (if no-one does, it hardly is harming anyone, right?). --Swift 16:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess I would see it as a very rare event (in this case the VfD was actually closed when an editor arrived and wanted to improve it). I looked at User talk:Sean Heron where you had posted and the editor responded with the fact it was going to take time.  Delete didn't seem right and keep - I would argue - was against what had been the closure, I thought compromise might be useful.  Personally I still think it should be deleted and that, given a continuing lack of editing, it will be - but I'm trying to be less of a deletionist than I am! -- Herby  talk thyme 17:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that it is (and should be) a rare case that deletion debates get put on hold like that. I fear that instituting such a way to facilitate it will do little but encourage it. I think we can easily solve these situations on a per instance basis. --Swift 21:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Newbies and page naming
No idea what to do about this but I guess there must have been around 6 folk in the past three or four days who I've seen not following naming policy on a new book (or existing one) by not having subpages correctly named (they leave them as additional book names). I have always placed the welcome template plus a bit more info on naming so far but it seems pretty consistent (mis)behavior. Any thoughts? -- Herby talk thyme 12:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Often this happens because people use redlinks to make a new page... the TOC of a new book often lists the planned chapters just using chapter rather than /chapter/ or ../chapter/ . It's one of the major differences between wikimarkup here and wikimarkup on Wikipedia. -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:34, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * How's this look: qr-chapter? -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Kinda "bites" newbie a bit but a great start from my point of view. Tone it a bit to point to help on naming policy? -- Herby  talk thyme 12:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * How about seeing if one of the bots can have a feature added to take care of this? Renaming pages that are not following proper naming convention and fixes page links to follow the proper naming convention. Maybe even inform the major contributors or mention it on the book's main talk page when its done. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 12:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * So a template for the book talk pages - good idea. There will always be people that don't read but at least we would have places to point them and something for their user page (Johnny's comment below) -- Herby  talk thyme 13:10, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Exactly SB_Johnny. I've created many pages in the wrong place and it's usually because I created them from red links.  Not sure what can be done about it though. Xania 12:44, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW - how about an equivalent user page one. "great to have you here - we do have a naming policy - blah".  Not a new welcome but one to go after the welcome one?  -- Herby  talk thyme 12:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, on both counts... we should probably have a short, to-the-point help page about naming and linking to book chapters to link from (a friendlier version of) that template. A friendly template for the userpage would help too: it really is a bit confusing when you're accustomed to linking on Wikipedia. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know about short and to-the-point help page, but I was discussing including such a help inside an existing help page with Herby, once some duplications involving it are taken care of. Basically there's already some help pages for book and page creation in which I think this would fit nicely into. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 13:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess I'm just thinking that the current help pages aren't always helpful, because they give you too much all at once. Having a short, concise discussion of how (and why) chapters are named and linked might work better, with a "see also" bullet list at the bottom. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Local_manuals_of_style has at least some info about chapter structure and naming.-- SB_Johnny | talk 14:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * BTW, as long as we're making templates: something like Qr-twwp might be handy for Wikipedia dumps. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:11, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know how difficult this would be, but when you go to a page that doesn't exist (red link or in search box) and it asks you if you want to create the page, why not simply add a notice that says, "Please be sure to follow the proper naming convention" and give a link to the policy as well as a simple example of a properly named page within a book. Just an idea. -- Pete 15:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Great Idea!!! ... now it's just a matter of finding the mediawiki page :/. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:46, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Erm, and having a help page to link to would be nice as well... the mediawiki page is MediaWiki:Noarticletext, if anyone wants to play with it (admins only, I'm afraid... anyone else can make a sandbox for it). -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Here too: MediaWiki:Newarticletext -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * In response to above, I have never been under the impression that our Help pages have ever been the least bit helpful. Unfortunately, fixing them to be more helpful is too large a task for any one user to undertake all at once. On top of that, some of the help pages now have all that fancy formatting, which looks good, but makes it difficult to edit/reformat/refactor the help pages to improve them. Maybe that should be our site-wide wikiproject (in lieu of the BOTM and COTM things). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:49, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * SBJohnny, is this a different page? Or does it take you to one of the others? I don't want to hit the "create this page" link unnecessarily, for obvious reasons. -- Pete 21:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Whiteknight. You're right.  The help pages have never been much help.  Most newbies wouldn't even be able to find them and when they do they're just too long and detailled.  A big bold message on the edit page (above the weird insert character section) would be more useful... Xania 21:40, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, it's always more difficult to find a solution to the problem then to simply complain about the problem, and it's more difficult still to actually implement a good solution. At the moment, I am little more then a complainer. However, i do think we need to "fix" the help pages, and I do think that we should follow some of these guidelines:
 * The pages should be short and direct
 * Complicated or esoteric points should be moved to specialized pages (or deleted all together)
 * Pages should be simple, and easy to expand/edit
 * the information that people need, especially new wikibookians, should be easily and quickly accessible.
 * Those are just my ideas, I have no idea how to go in an implement them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I would add to those guidelines that the contents of the help pages should follow common Wikibooks practises, such as following naming conventions, use little word linking, use table of contents instead of "see also" sections, etc. So that new wikibookians can become familar with these things through good examples. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 23:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * You mean that a help page should read like a wikibooks chapter? If so, I disagree... the vast majority of new contributors are going to be coming from wikipedia or other wikis, and they should look like a "help page", not a book. Maybe "Help:" needs a WB:LMOS, eh? -- SB_Johnny | talk 00:26, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes I mean a help page should read like a wikibooks chapter. Why shouldn't the help be arranged to read like a "help book"? A LMOS for "Help:" would be helpful. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 00:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

reset tabs (newbies, page naming, and help pages)
I guess that's sorta the thing... people shouldn't have to read a whole book before they start contributing (and even if they should, they most likely won't). Personally I almost never read instruction manuals front to back :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I tend to be very like Johnny in that respect. First stab at a user naming info template (& it the first one I've done so be nice to me but improve it too!) Template:Naming info.  -- Herby  talk thyme 12:58, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh, I mentioned on IRC but forgot to mention here... User:SBJohnny/Sandbox4 is a start on making it simple. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * RC patrollers see everything! It looked (& looks) good to me - but I was taking yours as a great improvement on the help page? -- Herby  talk thyme 13:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I think the idea of a "help book" is a good idea. We can get around Johnny's objection by breaking the help pages into neat little chapters, and people can pick and choose what chapters to read or not read. We can have a central TOC for the help book, and arrange the topics by order of importance, with the chapters that are most important to a newbie at the top, and the more esoteric help topics at the bottom. It would work like a set of individual "help pages", but with the added organizational structure that is expected in a book. Also, I do think that we should format the help pages to look like how a good book should look: leading by example is a very good practice. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:10, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added some contents of welcome to MediaWiki:Newarticletext to provide a greater level of help as was suggested above. --dark lama  15:49, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Worthwhile edit - thanks -- Herby talk thyme 18:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Out of interest just spotted a "new book" coming (on RC) which has nice redlinks that will lead to incorrectly named pages. Used a modified version of my template above - it will be interesting to see what happens -- Herby  talk thyme 15:41, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Beyond me!
I have no idea whether this is worth bothering anyone with but (if you can be bothered!) take a look at the history here User:Immortalgeek. Virtually no contributions and a variety of IPs putting very similar comments on it. Not harmful, not seen it on any other page, not even sure if it is worth reverting -- Herby talk thyme 19:35, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * And another edit just now - weird -- Herby talk thyme 21:48, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * How bizare! Xania 21:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not that weird, plenty of people spend lots of time making edits to their user pages. I know i've spent way too much time on mine. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:36, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

But the edits are all very similar and usually contain unusual spelling mistakes. There is a history of a few reverts on there which suggest some kind of pattern also seen on Wikipedia. Xania 22:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I've noticed a pattern surrounding this: "this is a cool site" gibberish/vandalsim being added to talk pages. Another one just came up within the past hour or so, and I think we have a group of silly people on our hands. Blocking seems (to me) an extreme response, but I don't know what else to do. -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:39, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * So long as this silliness is restricted to their own talk pages (or the talk pages of people who don't mind), I dont think we need to make any kind of response, extreme or otherwise. Talk pages, for better or for worse, are open to this kind of stuff and we shouldnt try and regulate them too much. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Bear in mind that these are IPs editing registered users pages (tho I certainly do not think it is blockable, way too many IPs for a start) -- Herby talk thyme 08:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Still going on - odd idea - would it be worth semi pretecting the user page and see what happens then? -- Herby talk thyme 18:08, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Update: some of these are hitting content pages as well as talks, often blanking as well as saying "nice site". The wikipedians have some of those IPs blocked as open proxies or "zombies"... similar strange edits going on there. I recommend any blocks done on these vandals be noted with "nice site vandal" or something similar, so someone (probably me) can list them on w:WP:OP and/or meta:WP:OP. It's a shared problem, and the wikipedia project in particular has a "staff" that runs proxy checkers. We should also keep up on blocking the confirmed proxies there as well. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:29, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned flags
I came across the Portuguese Wikibook, clicked on the flags, and noticed they were (mostly) unsynched with the high-quality .svg copies at Wikimedia Commons. I changed the file names, cleaned up a little bit, and am reporting these orphaned, obsolete flags. They are Image:Brazil flag medium.png, Image:Portugal flag medium.png, Image:Angola flag medium.png, Image:Mozambique flag medium.png, Image:Guinea bissau flag medium.png, Image:East timor flag medium.png, Image:Cape verde flag medium.png, and Image:SãoTomé and P flag medium.png. I tentatively suggest that they are deleted as obsolete and (now) orphaned. Perhaps with a kind note to their uploader. Sorry for the mass of blue. Cheers, Iamunknown 04:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Additional note: they are many more flags listed here. They would have to be replaced with their counterparts at Commons, but they may be candidates for deletion. --Iamunknown 04:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Question: I keep finding more untagged images (which I know will be deleted) but which are specifically orphaned and obsolete. Where should I list them? I don't want to flood the main page with links! I only have two more now, Image:Charles Darwin.png and Image:Darwin ape.png, which used to be on this page, and will be stopping for the night. But where should others be put in the future? Cheers, Iamunknown 04:43, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Question answered on IRC: tag with them . --Iamunknown 23:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Software documentation
I'd like the community's oppinion on whether software documentation is within the scope of the Wikibooks project.

I found a few documentation wikibooks around but not wanting to fall for the is-ought fallacy and since I found the line drawn at game guides might just separate it from the "educational material" fundamental rule, I thought I'd request comments.

The software in question is called uim (Universal Input Method) and is used to input characters not available directly throught the keyboard mapping (e.g. a latin keyboard can then be used to input \u3072\u3089\u304c\u306a\u3001\u30ab\u30bf\u30ab\u30ca\u3068\u6f22\u5b57). The documentation will introduce the concepts of Input Methods, how uim implements these, which tools are a part of it and how to use and customize it.

I see this as a good addition to Wikibooks as think it could well benefit the human condition. My caution is largely due to my desire not to get this into trouble some months down the road. --Swift 02:58, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * For myself, I would think that software documentation is completely within the perview of Wikibooks. The issues related to the computer video game books, however, would suggest that there is certainly an element within the Wikibooks community that would feel different from myself, especially as I was a very outspoken supporter of keeping the video game guides on Wikibooks.  I do think, however, that you can make a case that computer software documentation is much more likely to be used in a textbook situation than perhaps a guide to playing the World of Warcraft, but I think it is mainly a matter of perspetive and the sort of computer software you are describing.


 * You are very justified with your fears that such content might be deleted some time down the road, and it is reasonable to ask the Wikibooks community this question in general, as the issue from my perspetive has not been completely resolved. The whole wording of the anti-video games policy is so vague that from a certain point of view you could say that a book about Microsoft Word should be deleted as it describes a walk-through of some computer software.  --Rob Horning 05:38, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree wholeheartedly that software guides should be included. They are instructional resources, they teach valuable subjects (well, for some software). However, due to the original research clause, it's probably against policy to write a users manual for a peice of software that doesnt currently have documentation. Also, wikibooks shouldnt be a webhost for software projects that want to write documentation for new software. However, for popular software packages, additional wiki documentation could be a wonderful thing. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:26, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Regarding the original research clause, it has been discussed here in the Staff Lounge an also on Wikibooks talk:Original research that the phrase original research is not necessarily fitting for Wikibooks as it is for Wikipedia. SBJohnny listed a number of things which would (and therefore currently do) fall under original research. These include projects which are well accepted projects. I proposed that we limit the clause to scientific research. I never followed up on that and since Original research hasn't seen much action lately, I'll take that suggestion to WB:WIW.
 * "wikibooks shouldnt be a webhost". Though I understand the argument that people shouldn't use Wikibooks just to save themselves space, I think we should judge the worth of a book on its potential, not the authors' alternative hosting facilities. I'd liken software projects to class projects both of which would be developing the document outside Wikibooks if they could not use the venue and are creating quite specific projects to which perhaps no-one outside that group might be qualified to contribute. I hope that software developers will be as warmly welcomed to Wikibooks as classes have been.
 * "However, for popular software packages". A few questions: Why is popular important? If an obscure book is educational, that should be grounds for keeping it with the project (we have a book on stamp collecting, for god's sake! ). How would you propose to measure the popularity (as a percentage of: the human population, those who have access to it, those who use that type of software, those who run the platform for which it is available, etc. or some combination of these)? What happens if the popularity wanes?
 * Furthermore; the software I proposing the documentation of enables east asians to write Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters using a western keyboard. The people living in these countries (and this doesn't take into account expatriates) represent over 23% of the world population. Given the fast rise of China, the low price of *nix software and China's look to Linux as their OS of choice (mainly, I understand, for transparency reasons), a user handbook could become enormously popular. If we wait till the software is popular, there will be far less need for it and few would read it.
 * I don't mean the last paragraph to be an argument for acceptance, but an example of how difficult it would be to estimate the prospective popularity of new software.
 * Thank you both for your comments on this issue. I think it is a very important task to get these issues sorted out. --Swift 06:46, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

VfD page
Ok sorry about it but don't hire a cleaner if you don't want the rubbish dealt with! The category revealed a number of pages still tagged that weren't current. Basically bad closings and an odd one that never made it to the listing. I've done some but have stopped or the page will be overwhelmed. So
 * 1) Try and get these cleared as quick as we can so that we can focus on current stuff
 * 2) Please someone clear the games ones up.  As I said on the RfA page - close them one way or another - it isn't my subject.  This will allow us to focus on actual current ones.

Thanks -- Herby talk thyme 19:57, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * OK the category now only contains current listings (other than query listed below). So anyone placing a VfD and not listing it or closing a VfD without finishing properly (removed VfD tag and place survived tag) will have me after them! -- Herby  talk thyme 15:03, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Unsolved archive
OK I reckon this is a wind up to test cleaners - I just can't see the punch line! It was marked for VfD in 2004 - the archives don't go back that far. Do I list it or just removed the tag -- Herby talk thyme 14:57, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd say list. --Swift 18:20, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Look at this!
Take a look at Help:Purge. ???????????! \u2014The preceding unsigned comment was added by Qwerty (talk \u2022 contribs) 04:05, 3 Dec 2006  (UTC)


 * Does depend on what you are trying to do when you say "Purge"? If you explain I'm sure one of us will answer.  By the way the post on the help page should have been in the discussion tab (or here) so I've taken it off -- Herby  talk thyme 10:37, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Apologies I see that it was not you who placed the query - I've put a message on the editor's talk page - thanks for letting us know -- Herby talk thyme 10:41, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Is this okay?
Is it okay if I start my Wikijunior book, Fun With Nature? I have it as a suggestion on Wikijunior but I know it won't be nominated for awhile. Tannersf 12:55, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * While I do think it is a good idea it looks as though you maybe taking on rather a lot of new projects. You have started some very big books however most of them seem to have mostly headings and sub headings.  Would it not be better to work on these before tackling new ones? -- Herby  talk thyme 13:01, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with what you say. I will just continue working on those projects. Tannersf 13:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been in this same boat, where I've started a large number of books, but I simply don't have the time/energy to work on all of them. To that extent, some of my books have become really good, but others have stagnated. A suggestion which I have, and that I definately think you would benefit from, is that you should create outlines for books that you want to create in the future on your user page. Once you have outlines written out, post messages here and on talk pages to invite other editors to read over your outlines and make suggestions. Once you have your outlines created, and you have attracted some interest from other contributors, you can introduce your new books, one at a time, at regular intervals (I know I was trying to create 1 new book every month, for a while, but I havent created a new one recently). This way, When you have time to create a new book, you can simply introduce one of your outlines, and when you dont have time, your other ideas don't become stubs and get deleted. Read my Guide for writing new books, for some suggestions about the process. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Intermediate Mathematics - Wikijunior
I would like to suggest a vote if immediate action can be made to form a mathematics book on Wikijunior. This is an effort to lay foundations for other books to be made, to focus on the deprived area of textbooks and to compile a book which is generic in its syllabus. This book will be made on Wikijunior, aimed at 11 - 14 with older and younger editions to be made after this is completed, though I will also need for Wikijunior to extend their age range. I will be gratetful if voting can commence here now as well as at the following link new title suggestions. --Herraotic 19:05, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You could create the book and list in the non-canonical books list, especially if you plan on writing a substantial amount of content yourself. The subject seems extremely broad to me. There is a book that is currently second in the voting for next quarter (beginning in January) called "Fifth Grade Math" you might consider supporting that book. --xixtas 23:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * When I have the time I will produce the book on Wikibooks mostly with the aid of my notes. --Herraotic 00:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I notice that user 82.10.207.212 has requested a speedy delete for this book - Wikijunior_Mathematics - whoever this user is says that the book should not be there because it's not passed the 'candidate process'... does this seem fair? this book was created by a new user and this just scares people away. I created my book Wikijunior_Europe only a few days and I didn't pass the candidate process vote either.  Is this actual Wikibook policy or are there special rules for Wikijunior? Xania 00:25, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The speedy delete tag was not appropriate for any number of reasons in my view. Personally, I'm against deleting books simply because they didn't follow the new title policy. I only speak for myself, though. --xixtas 04:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I dont think there are specific rules for wikijunior, but the candidate voting was created to ensure that all new wikijunior books would get good attention from the community. If you create a new book, and if you are going to actively contribute to it, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 05:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Help page project
This has come up in several topics on this page... since we seem to have given up on the policy of the week for a while, maybe we could collaborate instead on help pages, welcoming new users, etc. A lot of this of course relies on policies, but we can double up on that when the need arises.

One way we could try to organise it is to build a wikiproject on this, nominate candidates for collaboration there, and then announce them here (whichever one has the most votes). Wikiproject on Help Pages seems as good a name as any, WB:HP for a shortcut.

I think this would be helpful, because most of the folks posting on the SL these days are interested in getting new contributors to the project, and having the help section well organised could go a long way towards that. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:24, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Go take a look at this please - there is an idea that Herby & I have tried to cook up to help get folks involved. See you there --The staff at Wikibooks 10:28, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ummm ... I don't mean to bite, but could you please clarify the purpose of this? And who is ? Herby? We already have a list of wikibookians (can't remember where), general staff discussion takes place here and specific discussions (such as wikiproject) should rather take place on specific pages (in the project namespace). --Swift 18:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * "since we seem to have given up on the policy of the week for a while".  Yes, this is largely my fault as I haven't resumed this work since my brief time off WB. I think the help pages are in dire need for work, but still feel I'd like to concentrate my efforts on policy for now. --Swift 18:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess all I can say is go take a look at the Wikiproject on Help Pages. We need to involve more people.  We may have a list of wikibookians but the one I'm working on is current/active ones who may wish to know more.  We need to talk to people and we need "staff" however you define that.  The project is Johnny's so at least I can't be blamed for that!  BTW  don't consider I'm bitten but back into the "doghouse" for now! -- Herby  talk thyme 18:45, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Winter break is coming up for me within the next few weeks, and I am going to have plenty of time to really get my hands dirty around here. This help project seems like a good idea, but We can't afford to become myopic, we have alot to do around here (help pages, policy, cleanup, etc). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:38, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Bulletin board
I would like to make this page more active, posting messages and news to the bulletin board. Also, I would like to encourage all wikibookians, big and small, to watch that page for changes. If you have a peice of news (new book, new policy, new admins, big changes, etc), post a quick message on the bulletin board. Hopefully, this will be a method that all wikibookians can stay involved in the project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I am so in agreement with this. Two points
 * Can/should someone amend the welcome template to suggest strongly that new editors put the Bulletin Board on the watchlist (& maybe a comment about the watchlist)
 * How about "Tip of the month"? Maybe derived from discussion here - so newbies and naming policy might be an idea?
 * -- Herby talk thyme 18:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * A tip system would be nice, but I think we should have more tips then just one per month. We would probably do better with a tip of the day, or something like that. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I just appended a link to the bulletin board to the bottom of the welcome template. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * OK with a more frequent tip - would be nice if someone could design something eye catching? -- Herby talk thyme 20:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Couple more suggestions
 * How about putting the bulletin board on the sidebar in the "Community" section. Might help to raise its profile?
 * Maybe start a Bulletin board/Tips & tricks page so that we can contribute any ideas we have to this?
 * -- Herby talk thyme 13:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Changing the Sidebar
I would like to propose a few changes to the sidebar: What do people think about these changes? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Remove Wikistudy and Wikiprofessional, because neither of these are particularly popular, and don't necessarily warrant links on the sidebar.
 * 2) Change "Books by subject" to "All Bookshelves", or simply "Bookshelves".
 * 3) Change "Books near completion" to "Featured Books"
 * 4) Add a link to the bulletin board to the "Community" section.
 * 5) Remove the link "Catalogue" from the "Tools" section. The card catelog office simply isn't maintained, and it is linked to from the community portal.
 * Fully agree with this suggestion -- Herby talk thyme 13:45, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe in addition to the above changes that:
 * Remove the "books alphabetically" link, also not maintained.
 * Community should be combined with the Navigation sidebar.
 * Tools should be combined with the Toolbox sidebar.


 * This means that combined with the above changes we could have something like:


 * Navigation
 * main page
 * help
 * bulletin board
 * staff lounge
 * community portal
 * wikijunior
 * bookshelves
 * featured books
 * donations


 * Toolbox
 * recent changes
 * what links here
 * related changes
 * module cleanup
 * user contributions
 * email this user
 * printable version
 * upload file
 * special pages


 * What do people think of these additional changes? --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 14:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds fine to me. Have to admit that I didn't know half of the things like Wikijunior were even on the sidebar. Xania 22:02, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Happy with it but wouldn't mind the word community in the bar (if we are trying to build it?) -- Herby talk thyme 13:20, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * what do you mean? Like "Community Navigation" instead of Navigation? --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 21:30, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * One of the problems with WB and attracting people here is that it's hard to define exactly what should be in this project. Cookbook recipes are a fine examples of things which are popular and part of this project so maybe we should link to the Cookbook from the sidebar?  It's just a thought but what do y'all think?  It's certainly busier than 'Wikistudy' or 'Wikiprofessional'. Xania 21:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Refactoring
I feel that my previous question (up the page), "Obsolete naming schemes," is totally unnecessary now, as it was answered extemporaneously and sets no major or minor precedent. Is it therefore appropriate to refactor it out? I hardly doubt that it would matter...but I checked, and the proposed talk page guideline was rejected with the note on the talk page that "we all have the gist of this one. It doesnt need to be an actual policy." Anyways, since it was a question totally unrelated to any now- or previously-existing article, policy, image, etc., I was intending to refactor it out. Comments? Cheers, Iamunknown 08:22, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Linux_Guide/PlayStation_3
Anyone know why this page has a funny image in the centre/top? I can't see the image in the source... Xania 19:45, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I dont see an image there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah it's gone. I notice the reference list on that page is from a template  and so I imagine that whatever was changed in the template has since been changed back.  I think there was a vandal at work earlier but Derbeth or someone has reverted all the changes now.  Thanks. Xania 22:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Collaboration_of_the_Month/January_2006_voting
Has someone pulled up an old archive for this or what? Almost all of the votes are from December 2005 apart from a few new comments from this month. Is there are vote for collaboration of the month for December 2006? Xania 12:02, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorted the Jan one and protected the page for 2006. AFAIK BOTM & COTM are suspended for other community activities -- Herby  talk thyme 12:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, I deleted the voting for january (the current voting), because both the BOTM and COTM are going to be suspended for 1 month. We will start a new round of voting in January, and likely have BOTM and COTM winners again in Februrary. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

That was one heck of an editing session
*Passes out from exhaustion after re-organizing the east coast swing book*

Has anyone here done some book editing "marathons"? Worked on writing or formatting a book for a super-prolonged period of time? Spent an hour changing links? Wrote three chapters at once?

Wow. That was one heavy editing...thing. *has wikixhaustion*

--Monk talk 00:07, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Been there. Over the summer I had days as a researcher where there was literally nothing to do, but I had to be on campus for 8 hours anyway. It didnt happen often, but I spent a few 6 hours days on Wiki. It's fun, but you can't do that kind of stuff all the time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:10, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Redesigning top of Main Page?
Hi all,

I propose we redesign the top of the main page. You can see my proposed changes at Template_talk:Main_Page_introduction. What do you think? Cheers, Unforgettableid 01:11, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Hey Unforgettableid. I took a look at this design, and I have to admit that I dont particularly like it. I most don't like that you pointed all those links to wikipedia, when some of them should have pointed to local pages (About, for instance). The design isn't bad, but it also isnt much different from the current version. Also, I think I like the current wording better. Sorry! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Whitenight. We don't want the first links on our site to be to another orginization, who's content we have no control over. If we Wikibooks users don't like our About page, we can simply change it. If we don't like the Wikipedia article about Wikibooks, we'd have to work with the Wikipedia community to make changes, and there's no guarantee that it would end up exactly correct. Additionally, our "about" page can be directed to new users, encouraging them to participate, while Wikipedia's article on us would contain lots of information, but wouldn't take an opinion on whether someone should be involved or not as that would violate their NPOV policy. I also like the wording the way it is better than the proposed verbage. Nice try, keep thinking of ways to help improve Wikibooks. Gentgeen 01:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

How to view/understand Edits (NOT in history)
Hi, I recently made a change to "How to start a Wiki." It was under the Pick a License section (Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki): the issue is that for a newbie (the intended audience), a guide telling him/her to simply pick a license is not really helpful. Where do you find said licenses, what are their main differences, when, at what step do you pick such a license, are these included in wiki software? A small clarification/guidance would be very helpful.

The changes I had made are no longer visible, but why is this not in the page history? Is there a better area to address this then in that very section?

69.159.234.158 15:26, 8 December 2006 (UTC), James


 * Is this your edit? --Swift 19:33, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I tried to clarify that section. Better? Alas, the web site that had my favorite comparison is now offline. :-( --DavidCary 22:23, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think it is fine. Nice work. --Swift 23:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks, that was helpful. On a sidenote, how is it that the removal of the text (line 160) that was last modified on that page at 22:27, 7 December 2006, does not appear in the history when looking at the following edit at 08:31, 8 December 2006? Am I missing something?


 * 69.159.234.158 21:19, 11 December 2006 (UTC), James

Orphaned fair use images
I have come across a couple of orphaned fair use images. Wikibooks, as far as I know, does not have a template like. Is there a need for one? Or should I just report orphaned fair use images to an admin and let he or she delete them? I rather like the latter option, because it seems to be instruction creep to create new templates immediately when small problems arise. Cheers, Iamunknown 17:45, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Question answered on IRC: tag them for speedy deletion. --Iamunknown 23:43, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

general category tipes and guidelines
Are there any general category tips and guidelines? If not, would Category talk:Main page or Wikibooks_talk:Naming_conventions (or somewhere else) be the best place to list tips? --DavidCary 22:23, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Category:Main page links to w:Wikibooks:Categorization but there is also a Help:Category but it is an out of date previously updated from . I'd say the latter were the place to list category guidelines. --Swift 22:58, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposition of a book illustration group.
I would like to propose an idea for book illustrators could have their own group. I don't think Wikibooks currently has a group system to help share information. Please tell me what you think about this and any thoughts of how to implement this. --Herraotic 20:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * You could set something up at Illustrators and try to recruit. I'm not sure there are enough illustrators for such a group. Might Wikimedia Commons be what you are looking for? --Swift 22:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, you probably want to find groups on commons... they need a lot of help categorizing and such. -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Can I Do This?
I was wondering if a book on income tax would be acceptable material on here. Tannersf 03:38, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'd definately think so as it would potentially be very educational and interesting. --Swift 04:29, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I would note that this is something that other than for the most general information would have to be kept updated on an annual basis and need huge maintainance in order to stay relevant. On the other hand, this is something that is almost ideal as an electronic reference as dead-tree versions of this sort of content is bound to go out of date much faster, and as a wiki can even be updated for changes to the tax code that happened this week.  So yes, I would strongly recommend that if you (or others) want to get a book like this going on Wikibooks, please do so.  --Rob Horning 05:23, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Scrapbooks
I've been thinking for a while about what to do with "abandoned" stubs, book fragments, transwikis, and so on, and I'm wondering if we could maybe start organizing these into "scrapbooks".

I'm thinking the scrapbooks could be organized to follow the top categories first, then subcategories when they get too big. Once the scrapbooks are together, we could have some sort of templates to use to alert new book authors to the existence of these scrapbooks, so they can sift through them and potentially save a lot of work for themselves, as well as cleaning out the scrapbooks.

Any thoughts? -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * In principle - very good idea. I am a deletionist (slightly) but at least that way they would be collected together.  Drawing new authors attention to this is great (see Wikiproject on Help Pages) for more on that. That said I think a discussion is required about categories.  I pointed an editor here Category talk:Main page yesterday and think we should all have a look at how cats are being used (I won't mention alpha cat'ing honest). -- Herby  talk thyme 17:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with this point completely. I had suggested something like this a long time ago, but that suggestion was lost in the midst of a bigger conversation. Books that are stubs, but which do have some valuable content should definately be saved rather then deleted. At least, we should save the content, and not the lousy stub-book structure. Each bookshelf could get a scrapbook, and we could simply dump content into the scrap book that isn't a book, but which really doesnt need to be deleted. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's the goal... organise the "abandoned" stuff into a useful form. I'll try to make some headway on that in the how-tos category, which definitely needs it. Someone else will have to do the programming stuff though :).
 * But should it be in an actual book, or more like a category? -- SB_Johnny | talk 21:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * On a little more thought, I think this might be a good use of the colon convention, because it can make a pseudonamespace that will be easily identifiable yet not make the top link go back to the main scrapbook page. E.g.: Scrapbook:Foo/Bar rather than Scrapbook/Foo/Bar. That way Scrapbook:Foo would be the bookname, rather than "Foo" being rendered as a scrapbook chapter. Any objections? -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:46, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * How about using categorizes instead? Something like Category:Scrapbook and a template to go with it. --<font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 23:47, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I like that idea a lot, Darklama. I get the sense that we don't need more pages to maintain right now. If we have categories, then we can't have page histories, but then all the scrapbooks will be easily accessible, and easy to add and remove. --Iamunknown 23:51, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Scrapbooks continued
Well, the category should be wherever the content belongs, e.g. a programming scrapbook would go in the programming category. Categorizing them in a special cat would more or less just end up hiding them in an even less-travelled corner. Template's definitely a good idea though.

Iamunknown: hrm? -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:46, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Iamunknow: hrm? what? I'm confused. :S And I tend to disagree with my previous statement that we only have cats. I just fear that the list will not be judiciously maintained enough. If we had a couple of dedicated librarians like was going to happen at WB:CCO, I would be less reluctant to have lists. It makes sense tho. Maybe if we use a template, there can be conspicuous text imploring the user who decides to become an active contributor to please remove the title from the scrapbook list. Or maybe we can ask them to not remove the scrapbook, but instead to let someone else do it, or to request at a certain page that the scrapbook be removed. I don't know. Again, my only reluctance is that these lists would become outdated and useless. --Iamunknown 17:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

BOTM and COTM, January
I wasn't here at the beginning of the month, and it seems that somebody has already updated the BOTM and COTM listings for December. I'm not going to change that now, even though we had agreed here that we would suspend both these projects for the month of december. I have therefore erased the content of the BOTM and COTM voting pages for january, and posted a message that we would not be having BOTM or COTM winners for that month. In the time between now and January, I want to suggest we discuss a few things:


 * 1) I would like to replace the BOTM and COTM projects entirely with a continuous method for listing books that are (a) "good books" (previously BOTM candidates), and (b) "books needing collaboration" (previously COTM candidates). These books could then be listed en masse on the main page (which is better then only having two books on the main page, i think).
 * 2) Cleanup the help pages to make them more "helpful".
 * 3) Fix any loose ends we have with policy
 * 4) Work to increase wikibooks membership/contributors.

I think these are much better uses of our time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:51, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure if completely removing the BOTM and COTM is a good idea. As for me, when more books are marked on the main page as "good" or "needing collaboration", they do not seem as special as when only one book is given a certain title. We should make a clear distinction between "normal" books and "special" books, so that the "special" books gather more attention. Similarly, people get more attracted to presidential ellections rather than parliamentary ones, because there is one, discrete candidate. --Derbeth talk 14:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's true, but from the pool of "good books", we could easily select a particular book to spotlight. This would be similar to the way that en.wikipedia handles it's "Today's Featured Article" on the main page: A list of "Good articles" are compiled, and from that list, a random entry is selected to be displayed on the main page. Depending on the popularity of the project, we could rotate out books monthly, weekly, or even daily, so that a number of books received a large spotlight on the main page.
 * Basically I am trying to make two points:
 * BOTM and COTM winners are typically decided with very few votes, and they also draw very little special attention to themselves. We need to make it easier for books to get recognized, and we need to get more support for projects like this.
 * The time that is spent prepating the BOTM and COTM templates and voting and lists, etc, along with the space that they take up on the main page could be better put to use for other projects, at least for 1 month. We can start BOTM and COTM back up in February, if we decide to.
 * I'm just trying to find ways to get more people involved here at wikibooks. The current BOTM and COTM projects aren't doing a good job of that, and so I am looking for alternatives. If we can't find good alternatives, we can bring BOTM and COTM back. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Book Creation Program
I have started laying the groundwork for a new program, an "Automatic Book Creator". This program will be used to create new books according to established norms and style guidelines. My plan for this program is to include the aility to create a new book from an outline. This would mean that the program will: My idea is that this program could help to standardize the book creation process, and reinforce some of the known "best practices" when creating new books. I'm going to start working on this today, does anybody have any suggestions? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:16, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Create a table of contents for the new book
 * 2) Create a TOC template for the book, to be optionally included on every page.
 * 3) Create a navigation template for the book, to be optionally included on the top and bottom of every page, with optional "next", and "previous" links.
 * 4) Create a printable version of the book, transcluding all the pages from the TOC
 * 5) Create all subpages for the book (no red links), with each page containing the navigation and TOC templates, if desired. Also, subheadings in the page could be specified from the outline.
 * 6) Create all necessary categories for the book, including a category for related images, stub pages, etc. Also, creating a stub template for the book.
 * 7) Place the new book on an approprate bookshelf, add it to the alphabetical list of books, and add it to the new book template on the main page.


 * Sounds great! --xixtas 20:23, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * How far has this progressed, Whiteknight? --Herraotic 23:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * We're abut to start a new book at Wikijunior and this would sure come in handy. Anything to report Whiteknight? --xixtas 13:40, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the long delay, I dont tend to check the messages at the top of the staff lounge with any regularity. I had a basic prototype version of this program done, but it doesnt work as well as I would like it to, and I have more features to add to it. I had basically given up on working on it recently in favor of other projects. Since there is still some interest in it, however, I will pick it up again once I get back home (after christmas). The way it is now (in case anybody wants to start writing up outlines of it in anticipation is as follows:

text of main page TOC =Page 1= text on page 1 =Page 2= text on page 2 {Template 1} text of template 1 ...


 * All the first level-headings are converted into pages, and the text directly under the first level headings will be moved onto that page. Templates are defined using a single set of curly brackets (to avoid confusion with templates included in the page text). There are also a few special characters that are denoted with a forward slash and capital letters. For instance, to create a basic book, we would write:

== Table of contents == \TOC = Page 1 = This is page 1 = Page 2 = This is page 2 {MyBookPage}


 * I am working on a way to create categories as well, but that's going to take some time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:01, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Books on Chemical Engineering
As a newcomer I briefly looked at the set of books in the Engineering group. Although there is a section called Chemical Engineering, it looks like there are actually no books or even segments contributed under this heading. Did I just not find them, or are there really no entries in this part of the library? Many of the subjects taught in Chemical Engineering programs at the University are treated in the section called Mechanical Engineering, and this is consistent taxonomy. However, as a Chemical Engineer, I would like to see some content in the Chemical Engineering area.

One unique feature of the Chemical Engineering approach to study of the engineering sciences is the organization of principles into "Unit Operations". This structure is a hallmark of Chemical Engineering and the focal point of the Chemical Engineering curriculum in most colleges. I was really surprised to find that clicking on that keyword in the Chemical Engineering section outline produced the blank page response.

For some time I have had thoughts about writing a book and did actually prepare outlines and some selected partial texts in the past. However, nothing was ever completed or advanced beyond the scrap notes in my files. With this new-found system of Wikibooks the opportunity to create a book seems more realizable. I have an idea to create a book in the Wikibooks library appropriate to the Chemical Engineering profession.

The book I have in mind would treat the history of Chemical Engineering and its impact on commerce, not the technological and engineering principles. I think this could be made very readable and could provide insight to the place of Chemical Engineering in the evolution of modern industry and consumer product developments. Some books have been published on this topic, but I think the subject has not been presented comprehensively.

If there are others that would like to join in this effort I would like to see your comments and ideas for the book. Joconco22 17:24, 5 December 2006 (UTC)joconco22


 * The sad fact is that there aren't many engineers on wikibooks. Before I joined, the Electrical Engineering section was almost completely empty, except for a few stubs and outlines. I don't want to sound arrogant, but if I hadn't written alot of material on the subject myself, the EE section would still likely be very empty. None of the other engineering disciplines have any good material yet. The ME department has some material, but it's deceptive, because there are many books, but they are all poor. The CE department is in a similar boat (CE = Civil). If you have the time/drive/energy to write a book on ChemEng, that would be a fantastic help for our project. I would be more then happy to help you in this project, but I don't know much about ChemEng, so I can't really add any substantive content. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:07, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Time question regarding each textbook
Dear Wiki... Gods:

I was looking over the United Nations WikiTextBook on this website and realized that there is a UN Today section. I find it a bit unfeasible to have a current events section, as textbooks are not supposed to cover current events. However, if WikiTextBooks is based on "yearly" editions, I would be more than willing to add to that particular section. Please let me know what is allowed and what isn't.


 * Current events and news typically belong on Wikinews, not wikibooks. However, the classical definition of "textbook" doesnt exactly apply to wiki software. Keep in mind that wiki isn't paper, and our "textbooks" are not limited by the constraints of classical textbooks. In otherwords, our content can change on a daily basis, if needed, to state at the forefront of any particular field. To answer your question more directly, wikibooks do not have "editions" like regular textbooks, they are constantly evolving. To that end, you can make any changes you want, at any time, without having to worry about meeting an arbitrary publication deadline. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

FHSST using obsolete naming convention
Yet another post. I tend to post several messages in a short amount of time. Make sure to read the ones prior to this as well! Anyways...I just noticed that practially all of the FHSST Physics books and some of the FHSST Biology book use the obsolete colon naming convention. There are sooo many pages in the FHSST Physics book. They need to be changed. Does anyone have AWB? Make sure they're done properly (obviously). Some of the pages aren't really properly named...e.g. FHSST Physics Newtonian Gravitation:Newtonian Gravitation should be FHSST Physics/Newtonian Gravitation and FHSST Physics Newtonian Gravitation:Normal Forces should be FHSST Physics/Newtonian Gravitation/Normal Forces. Nearly all of them are like that. *sigh* Thanks for checking this out. Cheers, Iamunknown 08:56, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks
I just wanted to say thanks (on behalf of all of us I'm sure) to Darklama and Johnny for their work in blocking open proxies. The reduction in vandalism I'm seeing is remarkable - it will hopefully give us all more time to focus on constructive issues -- Herby talk thyme 13:01, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yer most welcome... there's a lot more left to block though, I think (unless darklama did a lot more... I've been too sick to even play on the computer last few days). The lists are at
 * m:WM:OP/B
 * w:WP:OP
 * m:Meta:WikiProject_on_open_proxies
 * m:Meta:WikiProject_on_open_proxies/Tor
 * wikt:Wiktionary:WikiProject_on_open_proxies


 * We might want to start a project here as well, since the meta one isn't well updated (and worse, the blacklist page is actually locked, so you can't check things off). -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:10, 6 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think DL has done a fairly substantial job - I looked yesterday but couldn't find any obvious ones tho I will look again -- Herby talk thyme 13:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Admin, Bcrat votes
Three users are up for voting on requests for adminship. has been nominated for adminship. is a long-time admin, and has been nominated for bureaucratship. Both users are hardworking, active members of the wikibooks community, and I would like to urge all readers who have not yet voted to check out these users, and cast a vote for them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:16, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Important technical enhancements: WikiTeX and syntax highlighting
Would it not be nice to get our Wiki to highlight the different elements of computer program code? (See an example on another site running on MediaWiki with the highlighting extension). A request for extension of our wiki's software has already been lodged, but our technicians are renowned for procrastinating even the simplest of tasks. All we can do is register in Wikimedia's bug-reporting service and vote for the aforementioned request for improvement. Ramir 07:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
 * There is another great extension that has not yet been installed on Wikimedia's websites: WikiTeX. Again, please voice your opinion about the proposed enhancement. (Information on WikiTeX:, en:Wikipedia:WikiTeX, meta:WikiTeX). Ramir 07:22, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Great idea! But is it really acceptable and productive to put votes on bugzilla? Shouldn't it be for discussing the issue and solutions? I suppose we could also put up a page here, get editors' signatures and post the link to bugzilla to show Wikibookian support without flooding the bugzilla. --Swift 07:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Updating Deletion policy
The deletion policy included a line that the concensus process was not "sorted out", and was a bit vague about how decisions on VfD are made. I think that this matter has already been sorted out by Decision making. Even though the later is a guideline, not a policy (something that I would like to change, if i had my druthers), It still does answer the question of how, generally, a decision should be made on VfD. I have therefore deleted the offending sentences on WB:DP, and posted a link instead to WB:DM. If anybody feels this was inappropriate, please let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:05, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

As another point worth making, the current text of WB:DP states that the only acceptable votes on a VfD are keep or delete votes. In practice, there are plenty of other options that are invoked regularly, such as "strong" keep or delete votes (whether we differentiate between them and their weaker siblings is a matter for some debate under WB:DM), "transwiki" votes, "merge votes", and neutral "comments". I propose we update the text of WB:DP to mirror the way VfDs actually happen, and explicitly mention these other options. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, the wording on the policy is "should consist of", which, according to Policies and guidelines is a recommendation, not a requirement. This is, however, contained in a policy, which is supposed to list requirements. This is partly the reason for my recent suggestions.
 * I don't mind changing the wording to something more open, but think the recommendation should be to keep it standard; newcomers will learn the nuances very quickly. --Swift 16:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Advice for conducting (an) elementary science textbook(s).
I need some of advice to help develop a science textbook; it may be an easy question to some so please comment. It is whether to make a book with all of the elementary science aimed at ages 8 - 11 or to separate them as in beginner chemistry and so on? --Herraotic 20:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's a difficult question. I am inclined to say that you could combine all the various subjects into a single book if you could construct a central narrative to make them all cohesive. Remember, a book is not a collection of unrelated or loosely-related articles. On the other hand, school students of that age typically do have all those subjects (biology, physics, chemistry, etc) thrown together into a vague amalgamation called "science class". Also, if you look at the tables set up on Wikistudy (not that the tables there are an authority), there is a section only for "General Science", which sounds like an excellent place to shelve your new book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Steward elections
There are just eight days left for voting in the Steward elections. (Voting closes on the 15th of December) There are fifteen great candidates running (including myself :)) from a number of projects. In order to vote you must have a valid account on Meta with a link to at least one account on a project where the user has participated at least three month. If you are interested in reading more or to vote visit Stewards/elections_2006-2. --Cspurrier 00:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging policy and guideline sections ... and the concepts as well.
For maximum exposure, I'd like to alert the community of a couple of suggestions I've made on Wikibooks talk:Policies and guidelines.

Merging Policies and guidelines sections is a minor content reorganization suggestion. Merging policies and guidelines into one category, however, is a more radical suggestion and shouldn't be done without careful consideration and debate over pros and contras. Basically this latter suggestion is about getting rid of the policy versus guideline distinction since we have the requirement versus recommendation distinction which could (and, I believe, does) exist on the same official policy or guideline page.

Please have a look, request for clarification if I've been unclear and comment if you have any comments on the matter. --Swift 02:44, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Are you proposing a new category (that will merge the other two) or the removal of the existing two and substitute them by the new one ? I prefer having the existing ones as a quick method to get the intended content (policies OR guidelines) if you are proposing creating a new one then I'll support the change if you are proposing the removal of the existing please extend a bit more on the benefits of it. --Panic 04:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism & protection
Sort of thinking out loud. In the past few days there has been some outbreaks of vandalism from named users (the IP vandalism is much lower due to blocks on open proxies I guess). After the past two, as the only admin on, I've semi protected some templates/help page type stuff. I really don't feel strongly about this but was it worth it and should we do more or indeed less? thanks -- Herby talk thyme 18:17, 9 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Protected page states that one of the intentions for temporary protection is to combat "a recent target of persistent vandalism". I think it is a worthy goal to keep the number of protected pages down to a minimum so temporary protections are definately the way to go.
 * One thing to have in mind, though, is that if the vandal is out to disrupt regardless of the content, then protecting one page will just mean another will get hit. --Swift 06:35, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * that said, I can't see any downside to semi-protecting pages against page moves. Especially high-profile pages that have no reason to be moved (Policy pages, guideline pages, bookshelves, etc). We don't need to protect these pages from being edited, but there is absolutely no reason why such pages should be able to be moved by users who aren't qualified to move them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for comment
''Please see Project Ideas and comment on User:WietsE's idea about a wikibook on creative activism. Thank you. Iamunknown 06:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)''

Wikibooks v. wikiversity and textbooks v. educational materials
How is the statement on the main page any different than wikiversity's main page? Isn't "textbooks" an obvious subset of "free learning materials," or am I missing something? I wasn't around for the Wikiversity split, but it is frustrating thinking about it. I'm sure we lost many good editors. Why did we split? And why are we limited to textbooks? For one thing, we aren't really...it is kind of a stretch to call the Cookbook or the World Stamp Catalogue a textbook. But this is where the ambiguity of the word "textbook" comes in, because those books could certainly be used in a classroom at any level, and in that context would qualify as a textbook! So therefore the word by its standard denotation is inherently subjective. Hmm...maybe a new scope that eliminates the ambiguity, like "free-content educational, reference, and how-to materials." That just kind of accepts the ambiguity, and subjectivity for that matter, with open arms. At least then we wouldn't have to split at the seams to wikiversity, strategywiki, et al. Cheers, Iamunknown 08:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I understand your frustration about the abiguous overlap with Wikiversity. I arrived after the split as well and have never really understood it. Perhaps a more knowledgeble editor can enlighten us (at WB:VFD I mentioned that it would be very interesting to have something like a project history page &mdash; an essay, perhaps). I bet this is going to be brought up regularly so a reference page would come in handy.
 * As for the textbooks. I've on several occations argued that we should not use "textbook" as a definition of what belongs here. Rather just use "wikibook" and define that at WB:WIW.
 * I don't mind using "textbook" on the main page for brevity in the initial introduction, but perhaps something like "free content educational material" ... but then it's pretty much identical to Wikiversity's. *sigh* Since a merger of the two is probably out of the question, I guess this overlap is just something we'll have to live with. --Swift 11:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm an administrator on both projects, so I'll try to take a stab at this. Wikiversity's mission is to develop classroom materials, and to be a classroom for learning. There are tutors and tutorials, research projects (Original research), and even NPOV is somewhat flexible. Many of the "courses" involve simply collecting materials for use under a syllabus, and in many cases wikibooks textbooks are among those collected materials (as are wikisource documents, wikipedia articles, and so on). Above all else it's an experiment in how to use wikis as an alternative form of education. WV is still a very young project, and the foundation has given it unusual latitude in creating itself. We're still working on the what it is and what it isn't.
 * We (the wikiversity administrators) do keep an eye out for material that is moving towards textbooks, and part of the plan is to have import from wikiversity enabled on wikibooks for cases where the wikiversity material is an improvement on the wb textbook materials. However, if you click v:Special:Random a few times, you'll see that most of it is not textbook material, but rather organizational material... in fact the entire project is in some sense an experimant in organisation... look at the namespaces and you'll see it.
 * As for why the split was made: my understanding is that it was in part that wikiversity was initially proposed around the same time as wikibooks, and was hosted here for a while because they didn't have anywhere else to go. It was also in part because the wikiversitans ended up at loggerheads with the wikibookians on too many occaisions (such as on VFD). There was some resistance against their being here in the first place, then later resistance against the split.
 * I see the projects as complimentary, though at this point wikibooks has more to offer wikiversity than the other way around. As they evolve, the relationship will evolve, and we'll see where it goes. No hurry. -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:14, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think that the ultimate goal of wikibooks is to produce textbooks that can be used in real classes, in the place of dead-tree textbooks. The benefits to this would include additional noteriety and publicity for our project, and also the alleviation of expensive textbook bills for students (especially university students). Another important point is that places where there are no textbooks (think poor, third world, etc) can dowload and print copies of our books for a fraction of the cost of importing a real published textbook.
 * That said (and hopefully no new information was to be found in that last paragraph), Once we have textbooks, we still need to use those texts in the setting of a classroom environment. A textbook without necessarily supporting instruction is worthless. Imagine also a poor place with no access to traditional textbooks, and no access to trained teachers? It's not hard to imagine such a place. People who are untrained or poorly trained can still be "teachers" if they have access to a good textbook, a good syllabus, and other good learning resources. If wikibooks provides the textbooks, and wikiveristy supplies the class, then suddenly people who were never able to learn before suddenly have access to a classroom environment. Sounds a little grandiose I suppose, but it's still a noble goal. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Easier Navigation of Books
I notice that when I look through books, if I want to go on to the next chapter, I have to scroll to the top of the page. This does not seem efficient. --Remi0o 08:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It is up to the specific book authors to agree on a navigation aid that they think is best. If easy access to the top of the page is all you need, then this is probably the task of your user agent (e.g. browser). Try hitting the "Home" button on your keyboard (if you have it, I can't remember what it is on the English variants ... my keyboard speaks German). On my browser, Opera, this takes me to the top of the page. Mozilla Firefox does the same, but I'm not running Windows, so I can't say about MSIE ... but then again, you really shouldn't be running that!  --Swift 11:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There are templates available to add navigational links to the bottom of a page. You are free to add such links yourself, where you think they are needed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

A little confused
Rob's comments here Votes for deletion made me stop and reflect. When I read Isle of Arran:Contents I understood it to mean that the book being transwiki'd away from Wikibooks. However I now realise thinking thro Rob's comments that this is not the case. Equally yesterday I was looking at Department of Buddhist Studies/Philosophy of Mahayana Buddhist Schools. To me both this notice and the one on Arran may indicate to the reader that these are not really Wikibooks or of value to us (& by implication them). If simplistically it had that effect on me it may well do on others. Surely (within guidelines) books that are transiki'd can exist on Wikibooks as well (we do after all have a tag that says "more info on WP" or similar). I was working on Fencing here - there is more on WP - I know as I have contributed to that too but I do not see that it means that WB page is not worthwhile.

It's the tags I think I am really getting at - do they send the wrong signal to people? Should they be reviewed/removed? -- Herby talk thyme 12:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, they're two separate issues. Transwikiing to another project is not, in and of itself, a reason to delete material on wikibooks (likewise most articles imported from wikipedia don't need to be deleted there just because they were copied to wikibooks). However, the Isle of Arran book probably does need to be reworked a bit to become more of a "textbook about the island", just as many of the wp articles we copy need to be altered to remove how-to sections, etc.
 * The use of the "moved to wikiversity" template was originally designed to steer wikiversitans to the wikiversity project. Wikiversity had been hosted on wikibooks for 2+ years, and a lot of the scattered diaspora needed to be informed. It was also a way for us to keep track of what had and had not been already imported to wikiversity. We were originally thinking that the content on wikibooks would just end up being deleted, but it was decided to just leave them here. If the wikiversity pages can be incorporated into textbooks, then they should be. If they're useless for wikibooks, they should just be deleted (as long as they've been safely imported first). -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I just think leaving the tag (either TW or Wikiversity) devalues the page anyway -- Herby talk thyme 13:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Lemme talk to the wikiversitans about the wv tags... I agree, it might be time to take them off, but we should move the pages out of the wv namespace first to avoid confusion. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * ''Comment started here, moved to vfd. --Iamunknown 17:52, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Rob's comments on this issue brought up a good point, and one that is sufficiently different from the VfD discussion to warrant a place here. Historically, it has been de facto policy here at wikibooks that we don't transwiki material outside of WMF projects, and we also didn't transwiki material to/from non-GFDL wikis. The purposes of these restrictions were as follows:
 * To ensure that the WMF projects continued to increase it's content, and not simply export content to other communities
 * To ensure that there was sufficient material licensed under the GFDL to facilitate our own projects
 * To keep with the intentions of the original authors of the content, who released their works under a particular license, to a particular project.
 * Recently the videogame guides have been moving to Strategy Wiki, which is not a WMF project, and seems to violate these principles. However, I would disagree with that, in general, because the videogame manuals have been moving themselves out of their own accord (in response to threats, of course, but not in response to policy). The Isle of Arran book is a perfect example, where people are taking a book that has been submitted to wikibooks under the GFDL, and trying to transwiki it to travelwiki that isn't GFDL (I dont think so anyway). I'm pretty sure such a move, without express consent of the authors, is a violation of copyright anyway. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources, etc.
I'm hoping to enlist some help in cleaning up policies and templates involved in citing sources. This has come to my attention in part because a lot of the wp articles I've transwikied have sources cited using some templates they have (see w:Category:Citation_templates), and a lot of them end up not working here because (a) we don't have most of them, and (b) when they're imported, they often don't seem to work correctly.

I'd also like to get a bit more done on WB:OR, as well get some sort of general policy started (WB:CITE, similar to how w:WP:CITE is configured).

Any takers? -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem I see is that textbooks typically cite sources differently from encyclopedia articles. In a given textbook, the individual "facts" don't generally need to be referenced, so long as a "list of resources" is published at the end of the book. I own many textbooks, and I've never seen one that goes to such lengths to cite sources in the body of the text like wikipedia does (or other encyclopedias, for that matter). I think it might almost be best for each individual book to have it's own citation templates, pointing to a separate page with the sources listed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:38, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Desparate Teacher
I want to create a Wiki Boook with my high school English class titles Novels to Film. It's a great subject, but I can't figure out step one of actually getting the book to exist with proper safety for school students. If you are doing this sort of thing with your class would you please teach me or refer me to a directory...Peace, Tamara Tamara@artlover.com


 * "With proper safety"... what do you mean by that exactly? -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Have a look at the guidelines for Class Projects: Guidelines_for_class_projects - WietsE 22:33, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Open initiative.
I have recently been pondering on the idea if people could persuade copyright authors into 'freeing' their text. For instance The Math Page has valuable material that could be used but the author has not released his text to the public domain or under a copyleft licence yet he gives it for free over the Internet. If someone could persuade him to copyleft his information it would be very helpful to the Wikibook community. His email address is [mailto:themathpage@nyc.rr.com themathpage@nyc.rr.com] --Herraotic 20:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I had recently sent an email to The Mathworks requesting permission to use screenshots of MATLAB-generated charts and graphs in some of our books. We've also had projects in the past where people have donated entire books to our project. These things do happen. However, generally it is the purpose of wikibooks to generate new content then simply to combine old content onto a new server. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Help!
Can someone help me by making a print and PDF version for SA NCS:Business Studies? Thanks. Tannersf 20:15, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposals of the Week: Be bold, Original research
The ideas of "being bold", and "No original research" are fundamental to wikibooks, but neither of these ideas are discussed specifically in policy. WB:WIW does mention that wikibooks is not a place for original research, but doesnt explain the term to any degree of satisfaction. As WB:WIW is supposed to be more of an overview of policy, and cannot go into sufficient detail, We need to formalize an original research policy to hammer out the details. For this week, I would like to increase both of these proposals, and: Comments, questins, and suggestions are all appreciated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Move Be bold to Guideline
 * Move Original research to policy
 * I'd like to say that we should approach the prospect of allowing some forms of original research with great caution. I agree that the kinds of writing this proposed policy was designed to permit are clearly a good thing, but I also worry about what else we might be letting in the door. NOR is one of most fundamental policies of Wikimedia projects, and is the key distinction of Wikimedia from other, similar projects -- we do not act in our capacity as experts, but merely as scholars who report on the state of a field of inquiry, without bias or personal agenda. I do support the spirit of WB:OR, but we should go forward with this very carefully. --Brian Brondel 03:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * So long as we keep the "allowed exceptions" vaguely defined, we can always excercise some judgement in what counts, and what does not. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:34, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Nor is one of the most fundamental policies of WIkimedia projects even at Wikinews? :) --Iamunknown 18:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I see you're right. I mistakenly remembered NOR as one of the five pillars. I think my earlier comments still apply, but I do feel much better about this proposal now. --Brian Brondel 04:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * While I did point out an exception to NOR, I still feel uncomfortable about OR being permitted here at Wikibooks. I personally think it should outrightly be forbidden. What exactly "it" is that is being forbidden, however, needs definition; it should include at least "laboratory notes, engineering tests, and interesting but new concepts like Neo" (User:Robert Horning/New Policies). I know that Rob's page is very debatable, but I consider his definition of original research at least a good starting point. As the policy stands I disagree. I'll discuss more later this week. --Iamunknown 06:06, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Additionally, NOR is part of the first pillar of the Five Pillars &mdash; at Wikipedia. --Iamunknown 05:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I think the allowed OR schemas in the policy are actually fairly narrow (as they should be). OR is permitted on two of our sister projects, namely wikinews and wikiversity, and that freedom has been a great benefit.
 * The wikipedia issue is completely different from ours: their MoS forbids not only Original Research but also Primary Sources of any kind. It would be absolutely insane to require all books to follow that sort of thing: books like encyclopedias (including wikipedia) have very srtict guidelines about inclusion that simply aren't appropriate for textbooks and references of other kinds.
 * Fortunately, we have only occaisionally had to deal with "OR witch-hunting" on wikibooks. It's occasionally used as a deletion reason on VfDs, but almost always these deletion proposals are offered by wikipedians, rather than experienced wikibookians. The policy as written now is more a statement of our handling of the issue as an established fact, rather than a proposal for change. The goal is simply to codify the rules as we already apply them. If it were much narrower, a lot of books would need to go (Including the Cookbook, the Wikimanual of Gardening, the Muggle's Guide, and the Movie Making Manual... all of these books include original research and interpretations of primary sources). If it were much broader, we might also have problems with things like unverifiable OR, which is somewhere we shouldn't be going. If you feel there are gaping loopholes through which trash might come in, I'd have no problems with closing them, but not if it makes the policy into a long list of what's not permitted... the more specific a policy gets, the more loopholes there are. -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * One point that is worth making here is that Original Research is already forbidden by policy, namely WB:WIW. This new proposal would probably be better instituted as a set of guidelines for enforcing that policy. Even with the staunch definition "Original Research is not allowed", there is still alot of grey area as to what qualifies as OR, and what doesnt. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Original research
I think it would be far easier to agree on what is allowed here then trying to define what original research is and making a bunch of confusing exceptions to the rules. A clear definition of what is allowed I think is far more productive and useful to the community then trying to figure out ways to patch up holes with inconsistent policies and guidelines. Lets try to learn from the mistakes of Wikipedia with all its policies. Clearity benifits everyone. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Attitude about Original Research
I will say that my experience with Wikiversity has significantly tempered my attitude towards original research. Keep in mind that the primary justification for having the original original research prohibitions on Wikipedia is really a more pragmatic justification: They wanted to say (politely) to UFO and para-normal authors that their content is not really welcome on Wikipedia. Original research is also something that is usually not found in an encyclopedic setting.

We have had some issues in the past that have resulted in VfDs, including most notably the Wikimania proceedings that were for a time hosted here on Wikibooks. I argued quite strongly (with surpringly some wheel warring between myself, Brion Vibber, Anthere, and Kernigh) that the contents needed to be removed from Wikibooks precisely because of original research restrictions. And if Wikimania articles didn't qualify as original research, I don't know what does. The major headaches grew from the fact that many of the contributors were using references to Wikibooks to support other academic articles, precisely because it was original research.

How much original ideas like those found in some Wikibooks qualify as original research certainly something that can be debated. I also believe strongly that there is an appropriate place that some very legitimate original research can take place with Wikimedia projects, with a strong suggestion that Wikiversity be the place that "pure original research" ought to be located at. That some strong guidelines and "community approval" needs to take place to make sure the quacks don't run the asylum should also be a part of any such effort. --Rob Horning 17:55, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Reproducing UK legislation
I intend to return shortly to work on the Taxation in the United Kingdom book. With that in mind, may I ask whether it will be ok to reproduce UK legislation. I know there have been issues regarding Crown Copyright generally. However, insofar as Crown Copyright pertains to UK legislation, there is a general waiver (reproduced here), which is subject only to a few caveats (see paragraph 12). As long as I comply with those caveats, which do not appear to me to contradict the GFDL (we cite the sources anyway), I personally see no difficulty. But I'd welcome the others' views. Jguk 12:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * 12 (d): "the Material should not be used in a derogatory or misleading manner, nor should it be used for the purposes of advertising or promoting a particular product or service or for promoting particular personal interests or views;" -- that might be a problem for the GFDL (it's esentially like a non-com CC licence). -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * What bit of the GFDL causes the problem? And why is it different (if it is) for fair use images? Jguk 17:01, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think the potential compatibility problem with GFDL is that copyrighted content licensed for use under the GFDL (aka Wikibooks) is thus licensed to allow any derivative downstream works. Therefore, someone with a vested interest might consider using the UK legislation reproduced here in "a derogator or misleading manner...[or for] advertising...promoting a particular product or service or...personal interests or views." Or, it could be construed that, if this text were published, that the UK legislation used therein would be promoting our particular product, namely Wikibook: Taxation in the United Kingdom. I'm not sure the validity of these arguments, but they're potential issues I thought up on the spot. Cheers, Iamunknown 16:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * First off, I would like to say "welcome back!" It will be good to have you around here again Jguk. Second, I think the reproduction of the material should be okay, so long as you properly cite your sources, and perhaps provide a link to that website above in your book. If your worries are about the reproduction of source materials, perhaps you could ask the people at wikisource what their opinions are on the matter (they should have more experiance with this kind of stuff, I would think). Worst comes to worst, You could simply post links to the legislation text, and write the annotations here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Sidebox
I've updated the sidebox as per some comments that were made previously. I have removed links that weren't needed, and added a link to the bulletin board. User:Darklama has suggested merging the "Tools" box with the "Toolbox" box, but I dont know if there is a way to do that without manually adding the links with Javascript. What do people think of the new change? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:28, 12 December 2006 (UTC)]


 * I think that recent changes and donations, and featured books and bookshelves, should switch places, like so:
 * Main Page
 * Help
 * Donations
 * Wikijunior
 * Featured Books
 * Bookshelves
 * Recent changes
 * I think that recent changes is important, and I often am on RC patrol, but I don't think it is as important to the visitor. Also, its always nice to have donations go first. :) And finally, my reason for switching the book links is that featured books are exactly that, featured, which I would assume means that we want visitors to look at them first, because they're well-done and look good. A comparison might be a local library, where they have "featured books" at the front on a display table, for everyone to ooh and ahh at, and then have lots of bookshelves a little ways further.
 * Cheers, Iamunknown 15:57, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Darklama and I have been making changes in the ordering of the links, and I think there is still alot of compromise yet to be made. Let's see what other people think about it before we make more changes. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd love to see the Cookbook linked to from the sidebar. Cookbook is one of the biggest projects in wikibooks and it's a good showcase for new visitors. Xania 21:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Short policy summaries
On my user page I have written up 4 short summary essays that attempt to distill wikibooks policy down to the bare essentials. These essays can be found at User:Whiteknight/Philosophy. It is my hope that people will be able to read these, and similar documents, in lieu of having to read pages and pages of formal policy. I think having short summaries like this will encourage people to be more familiar with policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know how I like this idea. It seems like POV could easily slip in even under the utmost good faith. It would be nice if we could tighten the prose and consolidate the clauses of our policy pages. Furthermore, I am beginning to consider the need for a Wikibooks history page. As I am uncovering interesting tidbits, I find I can more readily participate in discussion, especially since I know precedents and processes better. I intend to write a draft over the holidays as I learn more. Also, consider seeing my related suggestion on the protection policy talk page. Cheers, Iamunknown 18:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Pops in, comments, User:Herbythyme/poss el policy, ducks and runs (will look at the rest when I have time) -- Herby talk thyme 18:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Logo
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks/logo Can someone make this more easily accessible? Perhaps on the front page?--Remi0o 20:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good idea. I'll see what I can do. --Dragontamer 02:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Lol; that was a lot harder than I thought. I'll leave my tiny notice on the front page... hopefully someone with better web-editing skills will be able to do the notice some justice. Sorry, but... its hard to do something without messing up the whole dynamic of the front page. --Dragontamer 03:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Math: would be great....
Hi,

I'm studyng math analysis II in italy. What would be great is to have a book with all kind of exercise, we could find in an Analysis's test (or whatever subjectT).

Find a good book with exercise is very hard and they cost a lot.

Ika


 * Question: What is the syllabus? Is it an analysis course as in a generalisation of Calculus? Or real analysis or complex analysis? More info would be appreciated. Cheers, Iamunknown 20:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

ika
 * graphing fuction in in 2 or more variables, max min point, differentation, Integral in more variables, SEries in more varibles ecc.

Can any one please give me a copy of a Treasury Manual used in Commercial Banks. This document shall detail the process flows of transactions that take place in a bank's dealing room.


 * Sounds like alot of the material that is covered in the second half of the Calculus book. I dont know how many examples Calculus has, but I do know that examples can be long and hard to write up. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Recent MUMFUM vandalism
There have been more incidences of this type of vandalism in the past few days. It seems to be a distributed attack so there's no use blocking IP addresses. We can, of course, combat the problems when they happen but as most of these attacks consist of moving help pages, templates and other wiki pages would it be a good idea to protect all of these kinds of pages from moves by all users except sysop? I know that protection should only be used as a last resort but when do people really need to move such pages anyway? Does anyone have any ideas? Xania 12:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * In principle I am against protection (including my own pages). I fully agree with the frustration tho.  The one that was just moved I protected against moving (I'm guessing you saw that one). One issue is the lack from time to time of RC patrollers. I'd welcome input on ways to deal with it.  The pattern (about 4/5 hours before this time) has changed some maybe some of the checkuser based action has had an effect? -- Herby  talk thyme 12:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * PS googling Mumfum is interesting tho I'm not sure that is how we want WB to come up! -- Herby talk thyme 12:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I sent an email about this problem to the checkuser-l mailing list, in hopes that those other users will be able to give us some suggestions on dealing with this problem. In response to Xania, I do agree that high-profile pages (policy, guidelines, bookshelves, high-traffic pages) should be semi-protected against page moves. These pages have no reason to be moved, they should not be moved (barring agreement from the community at large), and if they are going to be moved, non-sysop users probably shouldn't be doing it. However, these pages should not be protected against editing, because this is a wiki after all, and people should be free to change the content of pages without requiring special permissions. If a vandal sees that he can continue to do the same thing over and over again (page move vandalism against the same high-profile pages, for instance), they are going to keep coming back to our project. I think we need to take a harder stance on these guys, semi-protect the pages that they are targeting, block the usernames and IP addresses of any new user who writes the word "Mumfum", or creates a page with "Mumfum" in the title. They are playing a game with us, and by not taking our response to the next level, we are essentially playing the game with them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. Protect important pages from moves but don't prevent editing as this is wiki.  I will block any mumfum vandalism on sight before they start moving pages (unless someone disagrees with this).  Xania 19:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Bit "me too" but me too <g> -- Herby talk thyme 19:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I don't see how you guys can stand cleaning up after this stuff. If someone wants to move a template, they can request an admin do it. It's a non-trivial thing to do and should involve discussion anway, IMO. --22:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Looking for contributors to the Holocaust wikibook
Hiya, I have created a wikibook on the events of the Holocaust. So far ideas have been that: ''The book will look at the situation in which the Holocaust was able to take place. It will look into those involved and where and when important events took place, to try and establish a clear picture of the extend of what has happened. What happened after the war and what ongoing impact will the events of the Holocaust have now?'' I have set up a basic structure and now looking for people to start discussing, writing and shaping the book. If you're interested, you can contact me: User_talk:WietsE or leave a message on the books talk page: Talk:The_Holocaust/Content. O yeah, and have a look at the book itself: The_Holocaust. Cheers, WietsE 19:09, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism In Progress
I can't find the page to report vandalism in progress... Perhaps someone can point me to it, or even make it easier to find on the site?

Here is some vandalism; I fixed it: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=The_Holocaust/Victims&oldid=684369 http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Feminism/History&diff=prev&oldid=684372

Here is his or her page: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/208.123.149.134 --Remi0o 21:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * blocked for 2 hours - thanks -- Herby talk thyme 21:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * For future reference, the page to report vandalism is located at Vandalism in progress. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks newsletter
User:Herbythyme and I, along with a few other editors here and there have kicked up the idea to have a wikibooks newletter. The idea behind the newsletter is to get into contact with some of the active contributors to wikibooks who aren't quite part of the community yet. We would like to send out news and information to various contributors, at least once (if not on a regular basis). These newsletters could be "delivered" via bot to the user talk pages. To do this, we will need a few things: I would like to send out the first newsletter by the new year, at the latest. Help is greatly appreciated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) Important information to include in the first newsletter. If there is only one newsletter, we need to say everything important in one shot. If we send them out on a regular basis (monthly?), we would need new content on a regular basis.
 * 2) A list of recipients. I am creating Active wikibookians as a place to list users who should get the newsletter. People can feel free to add themselves, and add the names of any users who are active on the project. Keep in mind, most people who contribute to wikibooks don't check staff lounge or the bulletin board, and won't see this message here. If you know of another user who is active, please list their names. If a person wants to opt out of this newsletter, they can remove their name from the list.


 * Three questions and a suggestion:
 * Will we name it?
 * Is there a centralised page for suggestions, help, collaboration, etc.?
 * Will we archive it like w:Wikipedia:Signpost?
 * News tidbit: we are getting a new logo soon.
 * Iamunknown 02:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Good questions (and comment!).
 * User:Herbythyme has suggested the name "Wikibooks Gazette", but I would be perfectly content just calling it "newsletter". Depends how fancy we would like to get, but I would prefer not to get too pretentious.
 * There isn't a centralized page yet, but there very well could be. All I have envisioned is a short(ish) message, delivered to the usertalk pages of active wikibookians. This can be used to highlight certain news items (probably from posts here on staff lounge, or news items on the bulletin board), and to remind wikibookians to become more active in the community. However much discussion we need to make this happen probably needs a place to live, but again, we don't need to go crazy about it.
 * I don't think that we should archive it. The bulletin board and the staff lounge are both already archived, and the newsletter will likely be a distilled version of those pages. No sense archiving everything twice.
 * The logo thing can go in the first newsletter!
 * I'm going to start the page Newsletter with a draft text of the first newsletter. We can begin discussions on the talk page of that. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:32, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I take that back, Newsletter already exists, and represents an earlier effort to distribute news to wikibookians. We'll keep that page is (for historical reasons), and instead create the page Wikibooks gazette. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * This is just nit-picky suggestions, but would be opposed to moving to Wikibooks Gazette? That seems to me like a more proper title. --Iamunknown 02:57, 14 December 2006 (UTC) I renamed it. Revert if you like. --Iamunknown 05:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I still strongly am in favour of an archival schema. Trying to understand what has happened here at Wikibooks is awful. It would be very useful for future editors to be able to search through the archived gazeteers. If they are simply deleted, then they it would become very tedious to manually investigate the history. A suggestion would be: &#91;[Wikibooks:Wikibooks Gazette/Archive/YYYY/MM/DD/]]. That way, you could look at it by day, month, and year. I know we won't have tons of gazeteers, but it could still be very useful. --Iamunknown 05:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to oppose an archival schema, it sounds like more busy work to me (and I hate busywork), but If you want to do it you are more then welcome to. I would recommend against a heavily nested archive (/YYYY/MM/DD/) because they won't be distributed on a daily basis In fact, I would vote against having set delivery times (every week, every other week, every month, etc), and would instead suggest that this newsletter should only go out when there is enough news to report. We don't want to spam people's user talk pages with this. I would recommend yearly archives, with 1 archive page per year, all the gazettes from that year would be separated by headings telling on what date the newsletter was distributed. That would make it easiest, in my opinion. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
 * What do you think of a flattened naming scheme? It could be &#91;[Wikibooks:Wikibooks Gazette/Archive/YYYY-MM-DD/]] which would be included in a YYYY section of &#91;[Wikibooks:Wikibooks Gazette/Archive/]]. I agree that a heavily nested scheme is inappropriate given the amount of content. It was the first thing that came to mind. --Iamunknown 20:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Gazette continued
I'd say just archive to something like Gazette/Number 1 (December, 2006). This avoids the nesting problems, and has an informative title. ../Archive could just be the listing page for all the archival editions. -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:26, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Works for me, simple, effective -- Herby talk thyme 11:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The exact method that we use to archive these pages is irrelevant in the short term. I would like to send out this newsletter by tomorrow evening (barring serious objections), or sometime early this week. We can all ship out the text to all sorts of different archives after it is actually sent. Barring discussions that arent immediately relevant, is there anything else that needs to be decided/changed/formalized before this happens or not? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:53, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I sent the first newsletter out tonight. I did a quick count, and I think about 60 people got the newsletter. I recommend we move this discussion to either Wikibooks talk:Wikibooks gazette, or else we start a new page entirely at Wikiproject newsletter. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:21, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion backlog
The staff lounge has a backlog of unresolved issues. Because questions and issues are asked and discussed here, the issues seem to regularly get lost up the page. Thus I propose that the staff lounge remain as a general place to ask questions and a new page be created to be the center for discussion. It would have links to subpages where they are housed. A notice could be placed here when a new topic was brought up. Comments? --Iamunknown 02:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I know what you are talking about, discussions frequently do get lost as new issues are brought up. However, this is not a new problem, and I would argue that wikibooks has been working just fine without fixing it. Also, I think that breaking things up into multiple subpages defeats the purpose of having a centralized discussion area. If people have to go searching for the correct place to ask a question, I think they are less likely to ask it in the first place. As a final point, I would say that keeping all those pages organized would be additional busywork, and i can't see introducing any new busywork for our already overworked staff members.
 * As we all know, wikibooks is a concensus-based community, where decisions are made through community concensus. To that end, it typically is much harder to change the status quo then it is to keep things going the way they are. Discussions here that stagnate, or which are simply forgotten or ignored can be considered to have failed to change the status quo, which is in itself an implicit decision on the matter. I would like to try and warn against ensuring that every single issue is explicitly "Closed" with some sort of a decision: sometime just letting a conversation die out is the answer. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that it is difficult to change to status quo. But I'm in disbelief that you recognise this and simultaneously insist upon changing it with weekly policy updates. You are explicitly creating a deadline. It is also outlandish to expect a proposed policy to be approved with significant improvements and appropriate consensus within a week. On Wikipedia, guidelines don't get approved within months, unless by divine &mdash; or administrative &mdash; intervention. --Iamunknown 05:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Your criticism is acknowledged, but I think you are misinterpreting the "Proposal of the Week" thing. I guess it was heavily explained before you became active here, and I take for granted that everybody knows what I am talking about. The PotW (as I will informally call it) is not an attempt to force a decision on a policy proposal in the span of one week. That's absurd, in most cases. PotW was originally created to spotlight old policy proposals that have stagnated for some time, and needed to be reevaluated. Some of these old proposals were either (a) already being followed even though they werent official, or (b) already basically decided upon, but nobody had ever finalized the discussion. To that end, we were looking at these proposals, and if they could be quickly enacted without changing the wikibooks status quo, we did so, but if they couldn't (which is the case far more often), at least the proposal got some much needed publicity, and the discussions were allowed to continue beyond the designated week. In many of these cases, (such as the Be bold, and Original research policies that i've mentioned above), the text of the proposal already reflects the status quo, and it should be an easy transition to enact a policy that fits the way we do business around here already, as opposed to making a new policy that changes the way we do business (a change to the status quo, which would be by definition a harder thing to do). I hope that clears things up. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * One thing that I could suggest (so as not to blow off the problem entirely) is that discussions could be moved to their own subpages off the staff lounge, such as "Staff lounge/DISCUSSION TOPIC". I don't propose all discussions get separated out this way, just discussions that are becoming very long, or which are old but unresolved. (when such a discussion is over, the discussion could then be properly archived, and the page deleted so it could be recycled for future discussions with the same name). Sound like a compromise? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Excellent idea tho I do think selective archiving as practised by Darklama and others works quite well. Some topics (for better or worse) fade -- Herby  talk thyme 14:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion which was moved here from Template talk:Main Page introduction
Hi all,

Template:Main Page introduction currently looks like this:

I propose we change it to look as follows:

What do you think? Cheers, Unforgettableid 01:12, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, but I think that you forgot about readers, for whom this whole business was made for. Your proposal concentrates only on editors. For casual visitors another things are important, like how many texts do we have. --Derbeth talk 09:55, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Derbeth but I like the new description ('the free library you can add to'). The current description sounds so dull. Xania 14:47, 8 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, so let's edit the template and make it look like this?


 * Cheers, Unforgettableid 23:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks great. Not sure how many users watch this page though so I guess not many users have seen this discussion. Xania 23:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * So let's ask on the Staff lounge if it's ok? Unforgettableid 00:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Good idea. Xania 00:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * All, what do you think? I think the new version sounds better. Try reading it out loud. It just reads more smoothly. See also arguments against my full redesign above, but I feel I have addressed those by repointing the links in my proposed version. Cheers, Unforgettableid 00:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have to admit, I just like the old version better. The original introduction, "Welcome to Wikibooks, a collection of free content textbooks that you can edit" is just superior, in my mind, to any of the proposed rewrites. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * How about instead this? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 01:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I still take issue with it, wikibooks doesn't let you "publish" books. It's also more verbose, and less straightforward then the original. I don't see why there is such a rush to change it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:39, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I encourage this discussion as well as others to help the main page seem more approachable whether it is the content or table structure. My combination of what I thought was best from the previous tables is the following:

--Herraotic 00:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Auto-archive
A suggestion: Perhaps we should have the Staff lounge autoarchived by Werdnabot or such? At 184 kilobytes, the page is long, slow to load, and a bit unwieldy to browse through. Cheers, Unforgettableid 00:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that something's got to be done. I don't like the idea of creating sub-pages like seems to have happened over at vfd. An auto archive might be an idea. At the moment I rarely visit this section because the page is just so big and it's impossible to find anything. I'd favour an auto-archive option unless someone here has a better option? Xania 00:30, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * discussions are already archived when they are about 1 month old (give or take). If we shuffle things out of here too much faster then that, we risk losing discussions before they are over. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I take that back, I would be fine with archiving after 2 weeks. Either way, this page is going to have a substantial amount of material on it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:05, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * While I have no problem with 2 weeks as a guide, doing it selectively on "closed" topics as Darklama just did seems quite appropriate here -- Herby talk thyme 11:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree, 2 weeks is probably enough. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:49, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Disagree, with non human intervention, archiving could reduce the display time of a debate to 14 days, this is to low, a default archiving of 30 days with human intervention on closed and non important posts should suffice. --Panic 21:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

reset

I have archived this page before by hand and was informed that a bot would also do it, at the time I have noticed that it wasn't archiving messages with more than 30 days, reducing discussion time will probably cause more troubles that it solves, some questions get a response in a few days and should not be archived in less 16 days, people could miss important discussions.

I hadn't noticed that the time frame for auto-archiving was being discussed here, and ask that it given more visibility. This is a High impact decision a change to the general state of things, that has a general community impact or calls for the establishment of a sequence or set of task with undefined time duration. Even if we all agree a subsequent measurement of consensus with a straw poll (if needed) and more importantly at least there is need to publicize what is being proposed , there should also be a place to keep the reason given and the result of the vote to serve as a bases for future discussions for the same problem (or similar problems) that is, for historic reasons. --Panic 21:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I would hardly call this a "high impact" decision, it deals with the content of only a single module, and the method and rate in which the text of the page is archived doesnt affect the community at large. The fact that the text is archived, and not deleted outright shows that no major changes are happening, and people who wish to continue a particular discussion can find it in the archives. I have a semi-automated bot that can archive the page, but it requires me to actually look at the timestamps, and read the text of the thread, to determine whether to archive or not. I dont think any hard and fast rules should really be applied here, somethings can get archived in only a few days, and other things should not be archived for a long time. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Getting better all the time - Alexa ranking
See: Alexa rank for Wikibooks and select 3 yr view.

Wikibooks is still in a growth phase and doing well. We all deserve a pat on the back! RobinH 11:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Awesome link Robin! It really does demonstrate that we are still moving in the upward direction. I doubt we will ever have numbers like wikipedia, but still, we aren't doing that bad! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Sand Dune Croboys
This one concerns me - also the "editor". At the least I think it is a hoax - I have placed a note on the editor's page to that effect). Partly heads up as I will be off line shortly, partly for comments - cheers -- Herby  talk thyme 19:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * + this one Aye Laddy. - hoax, vandalism, offensive user name. Whatever - I have blocked for a day - got a feeling for any of those reasons it should be longer & I won't be offended (<g>) if the ban is extended -- Herby  talk thyme 19:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Ho hum - why didn't I log out - User:Kiggar edited the 2nd page - two hour block to allow someone else (I hope) to review it. I say sorry if I'm wrong honest!  Checkuser I guess too - thanks -- Herby  talk thyme 19:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Pretty sure these are deletable rubbish but would prefer a 2nd opinion - equally on the time of block for both users - thanks -- Herby talk thyme 19:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is deletable rubbish. On wikipedia we might argue whether it's "notable", but on wikibooks we can without doubt say it's "not a textbook". Feel free to speedy them, I'm off to the farmer's market. -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

If and when anyone else makes it in! I've deleted the pages (I agree with Johnny) I guess I would appreciate views on the blocks. The first indef for user name (I have now done that)? But what about the associated names (& checkuser still needed on them). Anyone who wants more info let me know. To anyone passing please look at the checkuser request at WB:RFA as this should be considered by anyone in the "community -- Herby talk thyme 11:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * reset

COTM: rethought, reconfigured, and resurrected
The collaboration of the month is a very good idea, but has never lived up to its ideals. If I understand correctly, the original idea was to have a "good book needing work" be a "community project". That's never worked, of course, because wikibooks just isn't that kind of community: our community (for the most part) is a group of people who love writing about what we (individually) are passionate about, as opposed to a community that wants to build a website called "English Wikibooks". We're a bunch of considerate, polite, respectful people who take care not to go messing around in books we're not familiar with. We hang out together and respect and encourage one another's work, but our "community" is one of people working side-by-side, rather than a community oriented towards achieving a particular goal.

I'd like to suggest that we reincarnate the COTM as a project that reaches out to our sister projects. Rather than just having the COTM a "token honorary position" here on wikibooks, we could instead make it a project for our community leaders and ambassadors to take on, and try to get interest from our sister projects. From Wikipedia we might be able to find some knowledgeable (or at least enthusiastic) contributors by posting on the village pump and relevant wikiprojects. From Wikiversity we could get people interested in teaching or learning the materials addressed by the book (and perhaps a project there to discuss the book). From Commons we could find illustrators, and perhaps inspire some photographers.

I, and perhaps some others (where's Gentgeen these days, anyway?) are "known elements" on these other projects, and could smooth the way towards making this a "monthly cross-project tradition". But to make this work we'd need to make a little change: we need to get rid of the "minimum wikibooks edits" requred on those votes, so we could allow established users on other projects to help us choose. We have a very bad reputation (which IMO is well deserved) for being an "overly closed" (if not xenophobic) community, and if this is going to work, we're going to need to be open to voices from other projects. -- SB_Johnny | talk 00:14, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've made my arguments against the COTM, and I think that even if we open it up in the way that you are talking about, they will be doomed to fail. Unfortunately for us, regardless of what decisions we make on this matter, we are going to be doomed to learn some lessons the hard way. I don't think that allowing Wikipedians to vote, and sending out "ambassadors" to wikipedia and wikiversity are going to revitalize this initiative. We can certainly try though. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * To revisit this issue, and prevent it from being driven out of sight and mind entirely, If we want to rework the COTM project to be something better, I'll agree to it contingent to a few conditions:
 * that we plan how specifically to increase it's popularity (and therefore try to correct the problems we've had in the past)
 * That we set a moritorium on it, in case the new provisions do not correct the problems.
 * The problem that COTM has had is that it simply doesnt attract contributors. If we can't fix this problem, we should abandon it and find something else that does work. A better use of our time all together would be to work to formalize a "wikipress" initiative, where we take the books that are attracting contributors, and set them up to be published. I think authors will work harder to write good books if we provide more incentives to good books. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The dismiss button
In case anyone's wondering, the "dismiss" button hides the sitenotice for one month. If you want to "undismiss", go into your cookies, and dismiss the cookie (en.wikibooks.org, name= dismiss sitenotice). -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:12, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah but what/why anyway? -- Herby talk thyme 11:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm? I don't know why the button was added... for one thing it puts the notice off-center :-(. There's supposedly a way to re-set it if the notice is changed so everyone will see it again, but having trouble finding that control. -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:55, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh OK. To disable dismissals, add one to the number on MediaWiki:Sitenotice id and save. This changes the cookie and undismisses for all users. For details on both the dismiss button and the fundraising sitenotice, see Fundraising sitenotice 2006 Q4. -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

IRC conference this evening
From Textbook-l:


 * ''I would like to invite you to join a chat about the relationship between the Wikimedia community and the Open Access movement in scientific publishing. This will explore issues of licensing, content sharing, technology, and hopefully result in mutual commitments to collaborate.


 * ''In a nutshell: December 17, 2006; irc.freenode.net; 21:00 UTC; #openaccess


 * ''Please see:
 * ''http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Open_Access_chat


 * ''for more (including a link to a web interface for accessing the IRC channel). I would appreciate it if you would add yourself to the "I want to attend!" list on the page, so we have an idea how many people are coming.


 * ''Peace & Love,
 * ''Erik


 * DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

-- SB_Johnny | talk 09:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Boldness
Boldness according to Wikibooks policy should not be reckless. Take a look at a few actions of User:TeamZissou. I issued a bold challenge to have a discussion about the user's bold delete of the prophecy table appendix on the main page of Christianity on the user's first day on Wikibooks. My entry was deleted from TeamZ's talk page a day later and at the same time TeamZ tried to delete my user page. My user page also inflamed TeamZ because it was actually my sandbox for formatting the prophecy table, unique in that it was chronologically arranged from birth to death of Jesus. By definition, an appendix would not claim to be mainstream Christianity or consider whatever the offense to one reader might be. Parts of the table have stood the test of wikitime (18 months) unbowed, not to say it can not be questioned in a lively fashion. I have made 90% of the entries on the main page because of general lack of interest or timidity. Christianity is worthy of a book, but I never claimed to be perfect, of course, there is a little bias in this army of one. I was proposing a vote on each prophecy on the discussion page if necessary. So, there may be only 55 prophecies, one website has 21 in the Book of Zechariah alone. &#45; Athrash | T <font color="00AAAA">a <font color="00BBBB">l <font color="00DDDD">k 21:36, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Boldness certainly isnt the same thing as recklessness. Decision making does state that compromise must be worked toward in a situation where there are differing opinions. If this user is ignoring your comments, and changing edits without allowing discussion (or even deleting relevant disucssion), that's not acceptable. Also, blanking or causing disruptive edits on another person's user pages is generally not accepted. I'll send this user a message, and try to work towards a conclusion. Please try to refrain from further arguments until we make some headway in this. Thank you. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:45, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Cookbook
I've added the Cookbook to the sidebar. This was done without consultation so if someone has a problem with this change then please revert it. I was just trying to be bold but I understand if someone has an issue with this. Xania 01:21, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I have no problem with it for now. I would like to put a marker down that if we get to a situation where we have a number of really large books all vying for a place on the sidebar, that I would argue that the new link should be replaced by a link to a page detailing all large books. Jguk 15:09, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of having the Cookbook on the sidebar, although I have a idea. If we had the situation where a lot of books want to be put on the sidebar, we could create another box for them. We could also adopt a voting system to vote for what books go in the box. Just a suggestion. Tannersf 17:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I like having the cookbook there, because the cookbook is so large and it attracts so many contributors. I don't think, however, that any other books should be listed in the side bar by name. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Indexing spider activity on Wikibooks
I put in a link to a counter page on an independent ISP. The link was in an inoccuous piece of text in the main page of the conscious studies text book and displayed as a full stop. This link was hit 27 times in four days (7 times a day). This probably represents background indexing activity on the site. RobinH 15:42, 18 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Good to know, it can be so hard to get a good read of spiders and bots that come here. 27 times in 4 days (less then 8 times per day) really isn't that much, I wonder if there is more we could do to increase our presence on search sites? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:03, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Creating new CSS class for text boxes
I'm in the process of appending the CSS identifier  into a number of text templates, such as &#123;{TextBox}}, &#123;{SideBox}}, and &#123;{LeftBox}}. In this way, people can use custom CSS from their personal monobook.css or common.css pages to manipulate these templates. I am going to add some defaults concerning this class (black text, light grey background, light grey border, etc) to the global monobook.css, but not to any of the other skins, because i'm not familiar with any of those skins. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

United Nations "donation" to Wikibooks
I'm surprised that this didn't merit any attention on the Staff Lounge, nor have I seen any discussion about this on Textbook-l either, but this is something newsworthy of at least some minor discussion here on Wikibooks.

See http://www.apdip.net/news/wikibooks for some further details.

I know there is some effort to try and do some other clean-up type efforts here on Wikibooks, but this is not a trivial effort and the advertising about Wikibooks alone from an external website is significant enough that perhaps some additional attention should be made to this effort.

More to the point, what do we accomplish with this content now, and do we give it any prominance on the front page? Make this whole "project" of converting the PDF files something of a collaboration of the month project?

Certainly these books deserve to be noticed and placed in the "completed books" rotation that appears on the main page. It is also a legitimate debate to determin if these belong here on Wikibooks or if they ought to be placed in Wikisource. From my understanding, the reason why they are here is because further updating and editing is encouraged, although I would be curious who would be working on it at the moment. Certainly a VfD would bring upon us the strong antagonistic attention of the WMF board of trustees, but I digress at this point. --Rob Horning 03:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It did warrant posts on both the textbook-l and foundation-l mailing lists, although the initial posts garnered no replies. You are right on a number of points, a partnership with the UN certainly should be utilized to bring some additional interest/prestige to our humble little project, but so far nobody has dont anything about it. As much as I would love for this to be a stepping stone for us, I guess nobody here really knows how to capitalize on it.
 * What gets done with this content now is anybody's guess. I doubt pretty highly that anybody around here is an expert in any of these fields to the point that they could improve these books (other then basic changes in wording, aesthetics, etc). It always feels to me like there are so many loose ends to tie up around here before we go out to invite the public eye to scrutinize us. Of course, with thinking like that we will never put out a public invitation, because we will always have loose ends to tie down. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I noticed that you put some effort into the organizational (and wikification, apparently) aspects of some of these book. Thanks for that effort.  I just felt that it needs wider recognition.  As for Textbook-l, it seems to be a pretty good conduit of information between the board of trustees and very active (or older aka on this project longer) Wikibooks users, but it doesn't really get out nearly as far to the rank and file Wikibooks users as is necessary for a general announcement.
 * I'm curious, however. Did these individuals contact Brad and the WMF first before they did their announcement, or was this simply something that merely "happened"?  The lack of attention by "ordinary" Wikibooks users seems rather surprising on the whole here.  --Rob Horning 16:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Announcements of the donation on the WP Village Pump and the WV Colloquium might garner interest (or might not). "Ordinary Wikibookians" tend to be involved writing in their fields of interest, so it's not surprising (to me at least) that there's been little activity on this... you two (Robert Horning and Whiteknight) are our resident specialists in transcribing these sorts of things. I wonder though if we couldn't find or make a "pdf transcribing bot" to lighten the load? -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I wish we could get more people subscribed and active on the textbook-l, but I dont think it's going to happen. The IRC chatroom has recently experianced a bit of a revitalization, and combined with the new newsletter initiative we have been working on, I think we are keeping more people in the loop about these sorts of things.
 * As to your other question, the UN people left a message here on wikibooks (I can't remember where it was added, i think it was on the staff lounge) about wanting to donate the books. I responded to the message, uploaded the first few books, welcomed and "trained" the first few UN workers, and they took it from there. I don't think the WMF was aware of the project at all, until Eric Moeller found the UN announcement webpage, and posted a question about it on the textbook-l. I sent him some more information about the project, and he then posted a mention of it on foundation-l (a post that was largely ignored).
 * What our project needs is more publicity, but it seems people only care about promoting wikipedia, and not any of the other projects. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I understand your sentiments about the mailing list, Whiteknight, and I have tried reading through the archives in preparation to jump right in to the lists. I am put off by the heated debates I have read through and the (encouraged) lack of anonymity (and whether or not I should worry). I want to join, but I have these and other trivial qualms. --Iamunknown 08:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikiprojects
I would like to start creating a more formal set of "Wikiprojects" around here. These wikiprojects would be meta-pages to coordinate groups of people to perform particular tasks. We already have a few wikiprojects (the image tagging project, for instance), but we could use more, and we could use more structure and definition to the whole "wikiproject" idea. I would like to propose a few things: People do tend to be involved with their own books, and I think part of the reason for that is that books are the only well-defined projects that are worth working on around here. If we establish other projects, and get people collaborating, people will feel more involved around here. Also, we could delegate out some common bookkeeping and cleanup tasks to the various wikiprojects, which would help to take some strain off the admins/staff. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) We either expand WikiProject to be more informative, or create a new (better named) Wikiprojects.
 * 2) Make the above page (whichever is decided upon) become a central hub for all wikiprojects, with links to the projects, short descriptions of existing projects, and discussion/voting to create new projects.
 * 3) Add a link to the wikiprojects hub page to the sidebar (we can do this latter, when this picks up some steam).
 * 4) Create a "Wikiproject membership" or "wikiproject community", something like esperanza is at wikipedia (we could give it our own fancy name). that would oversee welcoming new users, and writing/distributing the new wikibooks newsletter.
 * 5) Create wikiprojects for each bookshelf. Link prominently to the wikiproject from the bookshelf (and vice-versa).


 * How do you think a graphics lab Wikiproject should be co-ordinated, as it may bridge relationships between Wikibooks and the Commons thought it could also be an unnecessary complication. The Wikiproject could help with the creation of images for books, I have recently been asking help from the user, Commons:User:LadyofHats who has been very co-operative. --Herraotic 00:39, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that editors working within specific bookshelves should work together to collaborate and should agree upon a consistent style of formatting. Because it would be inappropriate to use the bookshelf talk page for that, I understand and fully agree that a separate page for centralised coordination and discussion should be created for each bookshelf. I disagree, however, that these should be called "wikiprojects." As has been fleshed out so much lately (and with varying degrees of success), semantics is the issue. Certainly they are projects associated with bookshelves, but what on Earth is a wikiproject? "Well," any metapedian or wikipedian would say, "they are over there [at Wikipedia]! We should just emulate everything they do and we'll be fine." I disagree. I think that we can come up with a more novel, descriptive, and less semantically unclear and muddled name.


 * I also question the need for an Esperanza-esque project. Have you been at Wikipedia lately? Have you seen all of the havoc surrounding Esperanza? I consider it a terrible idea. It distracts editors from doing what their name says they do &mdash; editing. It also attracts people who are not there to edit, but to socialise. I think if a few editors want to write the newsletter/gazette, then they should just collaborate on the talk page and do it; don't create any hierarchical "wikiproject" that separates the process from the product.


 * And that is my main issue with hierarchy and wikiprojects being introduced on Wikibooks; that the process is separated from the product. That is, the process and stylisation of creating textbooks is moved from the relevant talk pages to a foreign page; a Wikibooks:WikiProject X page. Why? What is the need? Do you think that anonymous contributors are going to be able to find this or wade through the loose and redundant prose, style guidelines, and then say, "Why, I'm going to do all that!" I don't think so. I think the average anonymous contributor, which we rely so much upon to keep contributing and to hopefully end up joining the project, will want to contribute, not pay heed to hierarchy and foreign-named wikiprojects that are at least two degrees away from the actual content and product. --Iamunknown 09:11, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

name change
I created much of a textbook under my current username - exmoron - but am now finding that people don't like the name. I'm wondering if an admin can help me change those edits to a new username. Any help in this regard would be greatly appreciated. --Exmoron 18:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Your username is now something else, all mention of the username "exmoron" in the page histories has been replaced. Use your new username to login to wikibooks from now on. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:41, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you!

What is Wikibooks/Unstable and Decision making/Unstable
Both of these proposals are mature, and I would like to move to make them official. The first, a rewrite of WB:WIW is both more clear and more succinct then the previous version. The second, a rewrite of Decision making has added sections derived from WB:OWN, which is information that is sorely needed. Also, I have moved to make the decision-making proposal into a &#123;{policy}}, instead of a guideline as it is currently. All comments are appreciated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:35, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There has been a lot of comment on WB:WIW recently, all of which has been constructive. I'm also eager to see a new improved version of WB:WIW. Do, however, allow the current discussions to run their proper course. To my mind, there are a number of amendments to be made before it is ready. I'd hope that would happen within a month, but doubt whether it will be much sooner, Jguk 21:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not trying to speed up the process, necessarily. The discussions that had been occuring had reached stagnation, and this is meerly an advertisement to the community that they should come join in. I would be happy if a new version were implemented in January.--Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Both of these proposals are mature, and I would like to move to make them official. It appears that you are indeed trying to speed up the process. --Iamunknown 09:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Should Wikibooks main page look similar to Wikijunior.
Do you think Wikibooks main page would be easier to navigate if it were similar to Wikijunior or do you think Wikijunior's interface inhibits the main page from containing a lot of information? --Herraotic 22:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I guess I cannot totally visualise it. Would you consider making a dummy main page in your userspace? That would help. :) Thanks, Iamunknown 08:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks Logo
Now that the discussion on Meta has gone through the roller mill and a semi-decision has been made on a new logo for Wikibooks, the question I now pose to the Wikibooks community is this:

Do we even want to accept the thing?

We do have the option of simply saying "NO" as a community, even if that would seem a little spiteful. Certainly it is very surprising that over 100 people voted for approval of this logo, yet we are told that we can't get people with checkuser privileges because we don't have enough participants. (the current two we have was with a bit of "ballot stuffing" and letting the vote run much longer than normal for other votes for admins and such)

Even after all of that effort, apparently the color selection (which was done to provide a unifying theme with the Wikimedia Foundation) is apparently "outlawed" for some bizzare reason. There was a major discussion about that, but you know, the whole discussion regarding the Incubator logo is irrelevant in this case. We are pretty much free to do whatever we want here even to keep the current WMF-related color scheme if we wish. If the WMF doesn't want the trademark to the logo I'll set up an independent foundation to trademark it instead... or simply leave it open source. The legal arguments are actually quite weak here to change it.

I will note that The Finnish Wikibooks has already adopted the new logo, so in a sense we as en.wikibooks are going to be left behind if we don't lead on this issue. Since they use the WMF-related color scheme, I would also argue that we might as well use this as preceedent. Of course this is going to have to be done by "community concensus" of some sort.

If there is a final "vote" for approval, it needs to be done here on Wikibooks, with perhaps some announcement on the banner that is currently being used for fundraising. Certainly the selection of the color scheme ought to be done by Wikibookians rather than a bunch of people on meta that have nothing to do with Wikibooks. Of course that is just my $0.02. I could have the logo changed today if necessary, but I'm willing to stop and see what other people think first before anything is done.

And if this seems to be a bit contrarian to some of those who set up the logo policies as listed on Meta, yeah, I'm in a bit of a grumpy mood over this. Certainly the vote on Meta can't be considered "binding" or even gaining a concensus among Wikibooks regulars. --Rob Horning 21:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've not been aware of all these discussions. I've had a look at what the Finns have done. It does seem more modern than the logo we use here. It's probably better than what we've got now, but I couldn't say I was over the moon about it. Jguk 21:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The logo vote page... Go make your own iteration, vote, talk about it, or publicize it. Personally, I feel that the current logo detracts from Wikibooks presentation by a large factor. --Remi0o 23:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I'd seen it on Meta and assumed we would get it anyway.  That we have some choice is good news (although I'd not a fan of the current one really).  I'd floated the thought that it could be used on the next Wikibooks Gazette Wikibooks talk:Wikibooks Gazette - maybe it could be used with a view to seeking a vote? -- Herby  talk thyme 08:08, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm conflicted over this new logo. On one hand, the logo we have currently (while familiar) is low quality and dated. On the other hand, the new logo was essentially designed and voted upon without properly informing or incorporating actual wikibookians (with a few exceptions). I would have never found out about the new logos at all, if i wasnt subscribed to Wikizine, and I dont think many other people here would have ever heard of it if the occasional wikibookian didnt leave a note about it here in the staff lounge. I was under the impression, however, that we didnt have any kind of control over the logo here. How can we make the change ourselves? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:45, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * We are in complete control, as in those who are regular contributors to Wikibooks and we can set up any (reasonable) policy or vote to try and come up with an approval of this. One thing to keep in mind is that some stake holders do include Wikibooks users on projects other than en.wikibooks, and some of them (not enough IMHO) did participate in the discussions/votes on Meta as well.  The real trick is to come up with a "Wikibooks meta" area that can coordinate all of the Wikibooks languages, but at the same time make it so those who only have a casual interest in Wikibooks aren't necessarily going to influence too strongly the decision here.
 * Simply put, we need to come to a concensus if this is how we want to go or not. And it is important to recognize that this decision, at least for en.wikibooks, has not been resolved yet.  I would also argue that if en.wikibooks does not accept this logo, that it will have some long-range implications that may create a minor firestorm on the WMF level, but we shouldn't use that necessarily as a threat.  This is something that I think the board of trustees simply aren't even aware of might even be an issue.  --Rob Horning 02:17, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ugh. I saw that page a while ago and was rather surprised I had heard nothing previously about it. I, at a visceral level, want to resist because I was not informed. I do agree, however, that the current image is rather outdated. I personally dislike the new logo, though; I think choosing between the two is as choosing between two evils, as the saying goes. --Iamunknown 08:50, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm new and saw the new logo. Love it!  The current logo might make some think this is only for science texts (looks like an atom).  Harriska2 19:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I personally don't "love" the new logo, but I feel it is better than our current one. I do sympathize with Whiteknight in that the logo wasn't very well published around Wikibooks. There seems to be a kind of "meta--Wikibooks" divide going on. --Dragontamer 21:06, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The 'new' logo was decided without the consent of ordinary Wikibooks users. Therefore I can't support it.  It's not bad but it needs to be discussed and voted on by users here and not on Wikimedia.  Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 01:11, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't care for the new logo. We can and should do better. Just because it's better than the old one doesn't mean that it's good. --xixtas 02:08, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks inhibitor.
Over the two months that I have observed Wikibooks I have constantly seen problems that have inhibited its potential growth. The most evident is the lack of appeal of the books. Attention can be aroused if the content is relevant to the audience which most modules here aren’t. This is why I am proposing an effort to cover a generic curriculum of textbooks that can be easily manipulated for individual syllabuses.

I will now state the books for Wikibooks to finish in the coming year at a high quality. These are as follows:
 * Write an introduction of the alphabet (use natural examples to prepare an understanding of science).
 * Write a book explaining the atlas of the world.
 * Write an introduction of numbers.
 * Write a guide of handwriting for children, using the technique of Victorian Modern Cursive.
 * Write a book of basic arithmetic, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division mentally and using the written method, decimals, fractions, graphs and also a chapter dedicated to memorising the multiplication series to the number twelve and an independent question book.
 * Write books about grammar, punctuation and writing styles. A series of four containing many questions.
 * Write a beginner book about the sciences, biology, chemistry and physics.
 * Write a book about how to touch type.
 * Write a book teaching the basics of instrumental music, piano, violin, viola, cello, etc and of music sheet structure.
 * Write a book about sports, the rules and equipment, football (soccer), rugby, American football, cricket, baseball, etc.
 * Write a book about intermediate mathematics, algebra, indices, etc.
 * Write an intermediate book about describe, argue, explain techniques, media layout and how to compare stories, articles and poems.
 * Write intermediate books about biology, chemistry and physics.
 * Write a book about how computers work without requiring advanced electronics and computer skills.
 * Write a book about how to program using an interpreted programming language.
 * Write an advanced mathematics book. Refer to A-Level mathematics for information.
 * Write a further advanced mathematics book. Refer to early university material and A-Level further mathematics.
 * Write advanced science books.
 * Write an advanced English book.

I appreciate constructive criticism. --Herraotic 23:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks has only volunteer contributors, who, naturally enough, write on subjects they enjoy writing about. These don't necessarily correspond to the books on your list. It would be great to have many of the subjects you outline above covered in proper detail here. My question though is, who is going to write them? Maybe we should advertise for new contributors somewhere. But where? Jguk 08:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Creative use of the Import tool and templates like w:Template:Howtobook might help some of these along... certainly the sports books, atlas, and science books. -- SB_Johnny | talk 02:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I will say that there is a pressing need for a substantially complete book that actually meets with some sort of formal curriculum standard. There have been some abortive attempts at doing this in the past.
 * On the whole, I think most of these book suggestions are very good. I would also like to point out that several of them have been already written on Wikibooks, but trying to find them can be a bit of a struggle.  That certainly needs to be something "cleaned up" here on Wikibooks in the near future.
 * Any help that you can provide in writing books of this nature is certainly appreciated. Unfortunately, most Wikibooks tend to be something that one person writes because they have some sort of personal motivation to get it put together and finished.  Sometimes once something has been substantially written there is a tendancy for somebody to flesh out a minor detail here or there, but that takes time.  Frankly, I don't see Wikibooks becoming significant (as a publisher of e-books) for a couple more years simply because of the substantial effort it takes merely to get a single book put together.  --Rob Horning 17:16, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, it's going to be a couple years. But better later than never... deadlines aren't necessary IMO. Making wikibooks "searchable" is a different story: using categories to create a base structure and maybe some redirect/disambiguation pages would help too. Annotating the bookshelves and putting them in larger fonts would also be a huge plus. -- SB_Johnny | talk 02:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm a graduate student in engineering, so i have plenty of mathematical and scientific background in many of the subjects you listed above. The question then is why don't I work on those books that you've outline above? It's a question of motivation really, and unfortunately, I am unmotivated to work on books like that (or, more precisely, I am more motivated to work on other types of books). Many people have commented in the past that wikibooks is suffering because it lacks a solid base of "fundamental" books. Unfortunately, recognizing the problem and actually solving the problem are two completely different things. Complicating matters most is the fact that books on these subjects really need to be written to fit a specific curriculum, they can't just be freeform. Selecting one curriculum to follow is too narrow, and writing a different book for each different curriculum is too large a task. I am going to be mostly inactive until after the holidays. However, I would like to talk to you more about getting this kind of project started. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I am trying to write some books and am starting them myself. I can see how it would take at least 1-2 years to write curriculum/texts.  Even the big publishing houses take a long time. Here is an article by a textbook editor that brings to light some of the issues: Harriska2 19:10, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with your assessment, and I agree with the sentiments of everyone above: it is true that recognizing the problem and solving are in different ballparks. One piece of metadata I consider vital which you missed on some of the texts, however, is scope. For whom are we writing these textbooks? I know that priorities are not shared with all, but I consider this to be essential to developing a quality textbook, and I consider scope to be an imperative concern if we here at Wikibooks are going to be producing textbooks as opposed to wikibooks. For example, if an editor's intent is to write a math or science textbook, I would approve of and encourage the title not to be X, where X is the name of a field of study like Calculus or Psychology, but instead to name it Calculus for High-school students or Introduction to Psychology for Undergraduates. I understand that this encourages forking of textbooks, but I think that this is necessary to provide a clear scope, a writing style, a corpus of assumed knowledge, and a less-than-accurate assessment of the drive of the student.


 * What I also notice is that some of the textbook modules do not appear as textbooks in development. If at Wikibooks we are attempting to create textbooks that can then later be used, I think that we should abandon front pages &mdash; though covers are absolutely necessary for the print and publishable version of the textbooks &mdash; for a consolidated table of contents, to-do list, and general development platform; and also that we should write textbooks more as textbooks than as reference texts. I do not think that we should get rid of reference texts; it can be very useful to create a centralised reference module for, say, integration tables, as has been done at Engineering Tables, or of false friends/false cognates as has been done at False Friends of the Slavist. These are very useful and could be immensely helpful when included with print or publishable version of the textbooks. But they are not textbooks themselves; they are reference texts which would be suitable as appendices in textbooks. Similarly, I feel that some wikibooks, including many on the languages bookshelf, are reference texts, not textbooks, though they are masquerading as textbooks. Specifically, what use as textbook material are tables of IPA pronounciations, declensions, verb conjugations, and lists upon lists of vocabulary? I argue that they are of no use as textbooks, though they are as reference texts. And they are necessary to include with textbooks, and should be developed and stay on Wikibooks. A textbook would present material in an accessible manner without inundating the individual with information to the point of incomprehensibility.


 * In summary, I think that on en.wikibooks.org, we should develop textbooks with a clearly definable scope and audience; I think that we should focus on developing textbooks to be beautifully presented not in their modules, but instead in their printable or publishable versions; I think that we should clearly distinguish between reference texts and textbooks and focus on the latter; and I think we should create textbooks that are accessible to their intended audience. Cheers, Iamunknown 00:14, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm a bit more optimistic... a lot of our books have a lot of potential, but we need more illustration, examples, excersizes, etc. Honestly I think part of the problem is that we don't print them out often enough, to see how they look on paper (and perhaps even compare them to printed textbooks). Commons went over the million file mark a few weeks ago, but that's not nearly enough, and often they're not the ones we want. A botany textbook might have 2-3 images per page, and 400 pages... that's a thousand just for one book! A complete annotation of Leonardo DaVinci would have how many images? Density is definitely a problem, I agree. -- SB_Johnny | talk 02:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Iamunknown, I agree that we should define who the textbooks are for - hadn't thought of that. I wonder, however, if some teachers might use texts straight off their laptops/computers to avoid issues with printing. Harriska2 16:06, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * In theory, each textbook should define its audience and scope somewhere. Even more so if we're going to make wikibooks searchable! -- SB_Johnny | talk 02:40, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

creation of a new book question
I'm a graduate student studying for my comprehensive exams, and I'd like to use a wiki to go through problems and solutions with a couple other people in the program. I think creating wikibooks for the subjects of the exam would be a good way to do this. My questions are:


 * Is this an appropriate project for wikibooks (working out problems from old comps and discussing the answes - this could be expanded into an appropriate book, I'm sure)?
 * Would this be better for Wikiversity? It feels like the material would form a series of stand-alone modules or chapters, so I think either format would work.

Smmurphy 15:42, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Should I title the books, "Graduate X" or add the information to the "Intermediate X" or even "X" book?


 * It sounds more like a textbook than a Wikiversity project, but it's hard to say. For some subjects it might even be good to use both Wikibooks and Wikiversity, depending on how the subject relates to its source materials, etc.
 * As for the title, a specific title that describes the subject is best, "Intermediate" is better than "Graduate", "Aspect of Topic" even better. What is the topic, by the way? -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll probably go with "Advanced Macroeconomic Theory" and "Advanced Microeconomic Theory" then. With macro, especially, there are so many different approaches that it is a bit awkward to write something and call it a book (which seems definitive), but it won't be hard to make it clear what (and whose) approach I am using, and to leave things open for someone else to add material from a different approach at a later date.  Do these titles sound right?  As for using both, it just sounds inelegant, as collaboration becomes difficult if everyone has to check two pages for updates. Smmurphy 17:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm typically against the use of qualifiers in book titles. Keep in mind that whatever title you give to your book is the precise string that people are going to need to type into the search box in order to go to your book (without having to look through search results). A book called "Macroeconomic Theory" would do better then "Advanced Macroeconomic Theory". If you want to create one book for both disciplines, you could have, simply, "Economic Theory", or "Economic Analysis". shorter is always better, i think, and you should look for the shortest title that explains your book and isn't already takne. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:31, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Macroeconomics and microeconomics would be the lest ornate titles, but I'd like to make sure that an undergraduate not look at the material and feel overwhelmed while attracting someone interested in it at a higher level. For instance, micro is listed as "high school reading level."  Also, both of those projects haven't been edited recently, and I'm nervous jumping into an established book like that, adding a bunch of higher level (and confusing to me at least) material.  Would it be better to start a new book, which could be merged with earlier or other projects if they ever intend on becoming "The Great Tome of (Micro/Macro)Economics."  I'll go with "Microeconomic Theory" and "Macroeconomic Theory."  Does this logic make sense? Smmurphy 19:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll probably go with "Advanced Macroeconomic Theory" and "Advanced Microeconomic Theory" then. I am not against the use of qualifiers in titles. I would, however, encourage you to consider, if appropriate, Johnny's suggestion of "Aspect of Topic". If it is inappropriate, and a qualifier more specific than Advanced is also inappropriate, then I would encourage to you stay with Advanced. --Iamunknown 00:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Ready to Publish -- Chess
The Print version of chess is clearly nearly ready to publish. I say nearly ready because it doesn't have a cover yet, but that could be rectified pretty easily :-p. (also, a couple of minor issues. See below)

This book has taken a step that few other books have taken. It has a ready-to-print PDF avaliable. Compare this to other complete books like Ada. Ada is a very mature and complete book, but without a good PDF (indeed, its PDF looks like it is straight out of a firefox print operation), it is not ready to publish. Also compare it to Lucid Dreaming. Lucid Dreaming is a clearly mature book, with a reasonable PDF file, but the lack of pictures makes it uninviting to readers. Aka, Lucid Dreaming is a work in progress.

To point out why the Chess PDF is ready, it has consistant formatting. Chapters have a distinct nameplate, a complete table-of-contents with page numbers is at the beginning, etc. etc. There are enough images to get every point across. Of course, there are some flaws in the formatting. Take page 76. Full Justified text isn't a good thing here. Nonetheless, this book is a step above the rest. It needs to be recognized, and other books need to strive to be more like it. --Dragontamer 21:24, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree, the PDF looks really good. I like the way information on book, its authors and copyrights was presented. I only think that in books which are using images on different licenses (CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, GPL) you should not only give authors but also which licenses apply to which images.


 * Can you tell us how to create such professional PDF? Perhaps you could submit some hints to Help:Print versions? --Derbeth talk 22:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think an excellent way to create a publishable document would to be to use Adobe InDesign or a free and similar program (if one exists). When I used it in my multimedia class, it was absolutely amazing. --Iamunknown 23:49, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Scribus is striving to be the open source version of InDesign. But it holds no candle to InDesign yet, and is Linux-Only (I think). I personally don't know InDesign very well, but I _do_ know that O'Reilly uses DocBook + custom stylesheet for publishing their books. LaTeX is also popular here and there, and GNU uses texinfo to typeset theirs. So GUI is not the only way here, but probably is the one with the lowest learning curve. --Dragontamer 01:30, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Look at Scribus. It has native version on Unix, Windows, and Ubunto/Debian linux builds. What I like about it is that it has scripting in Python. That'd be great for me, since that is the one language I can use. Scribus actually looks pretty good. Maybe we at Wikibooks should try it out for our next typesetting task. --Iamunknown 04:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've always liked how LaTeX automatically handles the tedious tasks of typesetting, along with its long track record of consistancy, reliability, and... erm... difficulty :-p (it is with the write->compile->debug cycle). But now that I know Scribus is also on Windows makes me want to check it out once again. --Dragontamer 17:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I was just reading about LaTeX yesterday. I think it's kinda stupid that there are no decent two-pane editors for it like with HTML editors, but nevertheless, it looks really cool. -- Everlong 12:51, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * To be fair, LaTeX is a turing complete programming language, while HTML only describes stuff like bold, italics, etc. etc. LaTeX may need to run 2, 3, or even 4 times before indicies and references are generated correctly, and each run may takes too long for a real-time editor, especially for the large books. So making a two-pane editor with LaTeX seems difficult to say the least. Its default layout is nice, but it doesn't fit a book IMO. Though, you should look at Lyx, a WYSIWYG editor using LaTeX. I'm not sure how it works with LaTeX, but I've seen it reccomended lots of times. --Dragontamer 18:02, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I know "how" to make a good book; but I lack the skills to do it (never done it before in my life). I don't have any real advanced desktop-publishing program except Scribus, and don't have many fonts to play with. I might be able to pull up a couple of books in LaTeX... but ehh been too lazy to try :-p. But I'll contribute what I know to that page. Didn't even know it existed. --Dragontamer 00:38, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I probably should have included what I was going for here :-p I think that there should be 4 levels of featured books. Well-Developed, Completed, Well-Typeset, and Completed Typesetting. Lucid Dreaming and Chess would go into well-typeset, and books with a front and back cover, index and whatever other arbitrary rules we place down would be "Completed Typesetting" :-p Chess is good, but those issues I raised before along with a couple of others (no index... backgrounds of images aren't 100% white, chapter-header kinda runs into the text, a rule or italics would help here, an couple of orphans and windows around (like top of page 15), and whitespace river on page 76). --Dragontamer 01:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * A table that would help clarify:
 * Well Developed -- A book that may not be complete, but is ready to read. Readers will still learn a lot from such books.
 * Completed -- A book that is self-standing and is a complete tutorial on its subject. It starts at a logical beginning, ends at a logical conclusion, and covers everything necessary inbetween. These books may have rudimentary pdfs ready to use.
 * Well-Typeset -- A draft of the book's pdf. It is ready to read and can be printed. The print version may not be perfect, but is is pretty good.
 * Completed Typesetting -- Book is done typesetting and is ready to be printed (or is already being printed)
 * And BTW: Wikijunior Big Cats print version would fall in "completed typesetting" catagory. I knew at least one existed here! --Dragontamer 01:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I like where you are going with this. You seem to be moving towards (tell me off if I'm wrong) open-source textbook publishing, not just creation. Of course, our textbooks never have to be "complete". Either the web edition will be more updated because editors will find errata to fix or will add better captions or what-not, or editors could start an nth-edition. But I like your table. :) --Iamunknown 04:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Exactly. It is kind of that "next big step" here in Wikibooks. And that should start with recognition of the next step, typesetting. Obviously, it is recognized already as the next step (else, Chess wouldn't be in its nice condition) but to formally recognize typesetting as another level of quality should encourage more books to have good typesetting. --Dragontamer 17:42, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we should strongly consider the forming of a typesetting project for talented individuals to collaborate and receive tasks to compile textbooks. --Herraotic 17:41, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't. Or more specifically, while I would not agree to creating a centralised page at Wikibooks:WikiProject Typesetting or something of that sort, I do think that talented users should and would, regardless of a hierarchical project page, collaborate and receive tasks to compile textbooks. I think it would be appropriate to create a Wikibooks: page detailing the ultimate goal of a Wikibooks textbook; to be published with professional-quality, aesthetically-pleasing typesetting. From that central hub, which would act only as a description page, as it would not need to be a policy or guideline &mdash; there is nothing to enforce, it is only descriptive &mdash; those talented individuals who were willing to take tasks could post their names therein. Then, naturally, or so I think, contributors would ask them for help, and they would collaborate. --Iamunknown 01:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Recognition is the first step, and we should start with that. We can iron out those issues as they arise. The main thing I'm worried about is that I may not be able to contact Hagindaz; therefore, to fix those errors in the Chess book, I'm going to have to start from "scratch" (at least he has a good design going on here I could copy). There should be some sort of public repository of the book sources/files where we can collaborate should a member suddenly goes missing. --Dragontamer 03:59, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * There should be some sort of public repository of the book sources/files That is an excellent idea, Dragontamer. I think if we could get a list of all the pdf files of Wikibooks textbooks (search: 1 2), then we systematically go through them to ask the uploaders (if they are still contactable) to get their files and then upload them either under the Image: namespace or on a separate server.
 * Also, I think that you will have to start from scratch. See my comments below.
 * I also agree that we just need to get this off the ground first. No worries about projects. --Iamunknown 04:40, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately Hagindaz, who created Chess book PDF version, is not active since some time. I wrote a message to him asking to explain us how had he prepared the PDF, but unfortunately he may not answer soon. --Derbeth talk 17:58, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Did you try emailing him? --Dragontamer 21:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Nope. --Derbeth talk 23:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Grrr... no send address :-( No way to contact him ehh? --Dragontamer 03:59, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Nay. I did a Google search of his user name. His contributions stopped in around August–October on all wikis and forums. At de:User talk:Dirk Huenniger (a user talk page), however, he noted Hi! I use OpenOffice to create PDFs. I use a .ott template I created and just copy/paste the content from the print version of the book, then I click on File => Create PDF to generate the PDF file. I can send you the template I use and the English OpenDocument Text (.odt) if you like. Cheers (en:User:Hagindaz) --Hagindaz 19:18, 16. Sep 2006 (CEST). May be of help...maybe not. I tried importing it with OpenOffice 2.0 and it failed.miserably. --Iamunknown 04:40, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I've uploaded my templates to [[Image:PDF template.ott.pdf]] and [[Image:PDF template 2.ott.pdf]] and the Chess file to [[Image:Chess printable version.odt.pdf]] (remove the pdf extension). See this list for some more books that might be ready. --hagindaz 04:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Where would this go?
Would a book on the beatles go on here? If no, where would it go? Tannersf 03:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * If you intend to write a more detailed biography than is at wikipedia (also look at the eponymous category), then you could start it under whatever title you wish. There is only one other biography on Wikibooks that I know of, the Nikola Tesla. I think that whether or not biographies are appropriate material to include on wikibooks is gray area which has not yet been fleshed out. You're welcome to create it. You would want to consider between contributing to the wikipedia articles more or creating a new wikibook. I would encourage and support a wikibook. It'd be really great! :) --Iamunknown 04:39, 23 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I for one welcome strongly with open arms any attempt to write a legitimate biography here on Wikibooks. It is a very legitimate book, and it can be strongly argued that such a book would be used as a "textbook" in an academic setting as well.  It also fits strongly with the idea that Wikibooks can pretty much expand almost any topic on Wikipedia into a full-length textbook.
 * All this said, I would also suggest that any biographical information that you want to add that is just adding a little point or two ought to be done on Wikipedia first, although there is an excellent article on Wikipedia under the name Beatles. Certainly there are some resources that you could use for such a book in that article.  It is even reasonable to use that Wikipedia article as the "foundation" for a Wikibook (since the content is available under the GFDL), but it is very important that you should substantially expand any such effort and not make the content merely a fork of the Wikipedia article.
 * Other general standards of WB:WIW also apply here, including NPOV standards and original research exclusions, but I don't think this is going to be that big of a deal with a book about the Beatles. In other words, yes, please write such a book if you feel inclined but try to keep some high standards when you write something like that.  Also keep in mind that a Wikibook is not intended to be a Wikiproject of random articles of related subjects, but something that has some sort of unifying theme behind it.  --Rob Horning 12:42, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Would it help unify the book if I created a book on Pink Floyd or the Rolling Stone? They would all be in the same format, and that could spark more and more people writing comprehensive biographies of bands. Is that a good idea? Tannersf 12:55, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * First off, I would encourage you to be bold. If you think that it is a good idea, then please, by all means, do it. I would also, however, encourage you to consider the that biographies sold in bookstores are generally published as individual books. Furthermore, consider that if a Wikibooks biography is small enough that it could be reasonably merged with a separate Wikibooks biography, that it might be inappropriate for Wikibooks, and may be more appropriate for Wikipedia.
 * While I am not suggesting that my ideas are by any means "hard and fast rules" which everyone will agree with, I encourage you to consider them. Cheers, Iamunknown 06:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Updating to a new CAPTCHA
Seems the current CAPTCHA is a simple arithmetic test displayed in source as plaintext and easily identifiable. We should at the very least introduce some sort of image in it's place. I assume that there are plenty of MediaWiki extensions with various Turing tests. Comments or insights?

Also; does anyone know whom to contatct about actually getting this implemented on the server? --Swift 08:04, 24 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It used to be a distorted image CAPTCHA, but last i heard the image server was running slow, and they changed it to the current arithmetic CAPTCHA. You would have to talk to the developers if you want to see it changed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:36, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

about german book
hello, The german pdf link is not working .... please reupload... Thanks in advanced PS: Its downloading with firefox and opera but is 0 MB and not 2.790MB as it should be.


 * Yup. I'm getting this as well (by the way, for convenience: German). No idea what the matter is. --Swift 06:31, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Interesting. I don't have a copy, but this is an older copy of the file. If no one objects, I'll do an ol switch-a-roo on that. --Dragontamer 10:14, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

???
What does (+number) on the watchlist and recent changes mean? Tannersf 12:20, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Number of characters added or removed on last edit -- Herby talk thyme 12:21, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Tannersf 12:39, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Request
Why can't you edit the list of completed books? If you can't edit it, I would request that SA NC Doing Investigations be taken off the list because it has no PDF or print version.Tannersf 11:36, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured it out.


 * PDF/Print Version is not a requirement IIRC for a completed book. --Dragontamer 15:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned redirects?
Is there a page where you can see orphaned redirects? I'm sure there's quite a few of them that result from WB:NC pagemoves, and I'm wondering if there's some way we can tell where they are so that we can get rid of them. Do they take up a lot of space? Probably not but every little bit helps, right? Mattb112885 02:26, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Check out Special:BrokenRedirects. The December-1st cache is all taken care of. I wish it would reset, but I don't know how to speed up the process. Happy holidays! Iamunknown 06:43, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Anyone know anything about this - been broken for a while & I dread to think how many we will have to deal with when it comes back -- Herby talk thyme 10:11, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The cache updates of the special pages is a bit of a mystery, I'm afraid, and nobody seems to know when they will update, or why they update so slowly. sorry. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:38, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I might of solved the mystery. According to Updating the cache a single individual is responsible for updating the cache and its done through the toolserver. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 16:49, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks - useful, might explain the fact the the admin activity links hasn't worked for a while too (or am I way off line)? -- Herby talk thyme 16:59, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yup, it's a toolserver problem (for all the caches). Word around the fire is "any day now", but they've been saying that for weeks. Most of the toolserver seems to be running now though, so hopefully that will happen soon enough. -- SB_Johnny | talk 00:20, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Ho hum
Path of the Guardians - opinions sought. A page with the title and the author has now been created 2 or 3 times and been deleted by me. This looks like a work of fiction but "speedy" or VfD? TIA -- Herby talk thyme 19:16, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm fairly new here and still grasping the policies but if it's clearly stated as against Wikibooks policies and guidelines I suggest it be tagged as "speedy", be assured that it seems to me not a valid text as well as the person not attaining a membership adding to the person's mischievous intentions. --Herraotic 21:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
 * So you've deleted it several times, and the author has recreated it several times? In these cases, especially if the author is unresponsive to your questions on the matter, you should delete the page, and then protect it from recreation (create the page with the contents "this page is protected from recreation", or whatever, and then protect it).--Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:09, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Done thanks -- Herby talk thyme 08:47, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I removed the protection for the talk page. This is unreasonable unless somebody is seriously vandalizing the page, as the talk page gives the opportunity to try and explain why the content is being created or to carry on other discussions.  As an administrator, I have often used the talk pages to try and explain why I put in the protection, and these should generally be available even to anon users to want to complain about why admins are going over the top by destroying their stuff.
 * I don't mind the protection on the main page, and that seems to be very reasonable at least for the reasons you gave. Please just remember that we are all new users once ourselves, and to Assume Good Faith with most people.  We need to try and grow this project, and smashing down on obvious new user experiments doesn't help Wikibooks at all.  While it is now an established tradition that fiction is not permitted on Wikibooks, it may not appear so obvious to somebody new to here, nor was it obvious when Wikibooks started.  --Rob Horning 14:56, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Temporary administrator access
Hello. I have used temporary administrator access on the English Wikibooks (as a steward) to update the fundraising notice promptly when necessary. If local administrators would like to do this, please lurk in the #wikimedia channel on the freenode network and watch <tt>!admin@enbooks</tt> (see IRC stalkwords). Thanks. —Pathoschild 01:33, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that... I'd been updating taking cues from other projects, but forgot to "enlist" someone while I was on vacation. If you're looking for administrators here on the IRC channels, we're generally at #wikibooks, not #wikibooks-en. -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Language help wanted
I'm planning a book about Classical Chinese language. But I am not a native speaker of English, could someone here please help me verify my grammar and expressions? Classical Chinese 13:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * No problem! Write what you can, and I'll keep an eye on your book for you to help fix the language and grammar problems. Let me know when you start your book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks language portal
The talented vector artist, LadyofHats, has made an image of the text "WikibookS", located at my talk page. Could this be placed at the language portal by an administrator? --Herraotic 14:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, the language portal is not controlled by this project anymore, and all changes to the portal should be made at Meta. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Biblical offerings
Not sure what the policy is Isaiah & Jeremiah so far (appear to be complete texts)? End of day for me so I'll leave it to you folk -- Herby talk thyme 19:28, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Deleted. These are available at Wikisource and have no business here. Random anonymous user dump. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 19:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Urantia United
I'm a novice at this. Could someone please guide me by making the required corrections on my first page so I can follow that example in my future postings. Many thanks. Kkawohl 04:28, 31 December 2006 (UTC)kkawohl