Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2007/August

Creating a Wikibook
Hi,

This must be here somewhere but I can't find it: How do you create a Wikibook?

Ivan Tomek —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.162.174.14 (discuss • contribs) 2007-08-18T06:25:01


 * Help:Starting a new page or book. Have you had a good look around first? There might already be a book that you can use, or enlarge upon. Webaware talk 07:12, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

help shelving book
I'm trying to move my dendrochronology book to the botany shelf —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nelson.blaha (talk • contribs) 17:18, 19 Aug 2007  (UTC)


 * ✅. Users who are recently registered can't edit bookshelves, but after a few days you'll be able to. I added it to the Biology bookshelf. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 17:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Importance of Studying Astrophysics
Hi,

I am trying to find the importance of studying astrophysics, can anyone help me?

Thanks in advance

Fahiem 20th Aug 2007 Mdfahiem 08:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Is that the title of a book, or is it a question? Wikibooks has a book about Astrophysics, but nothing titled "Importance of Studying Astrophysics". As to the importance of it, Astrophysics is very important from a historical perspective, because the study of the motions of the planets and the stars was one of the primary driving forces behind the creation of Calculus and modern Physics. It was working in the field of astronomy and astrophysics that some of our greatest mathematical and scientific minds were their most prolific: Gauss, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Leibniz, Einstein, Plank, Hubble, et al.. It is the most important for people who deal with space, such as astrophysicists and astronautical engineers, however many other people can increase their understanding of the natural world from studying the field as well. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Suitable for en:Wikibooks?
Hello. I'm from catalan Wikisource and I am not used to Wikibooks contents. Could you please tell me (here or at s:ca:Usuari Discussió:Aleator) if Comparatiu Spanyol Catala could be included at Wikibooks (and Wikiversity?). Thanks. 83.37.82.98 00:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In general, I would say that no, this is not acceptable. Wikibooks is for instructional books and manuals, not just for word lists. I would venture to guess that Wiktionary is a better home for this, but I am not an expert on wiktionary policy so I can't be certain. This might make a suitable appendix if we had a book on learning Catalan and Spanish together (which we don't), but that would be a stretch. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:32, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. -83.37.82.98 00:47, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Quantifying pages
Is it possible to quantify the number of pages or words in a particular wikibook? I'm interested in tracking how a wikibook changes over time. Thanks--PaulWLepp 21:05, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The easiest way to keep track is to just make sure all the pages in the book are categorized. Category pages automatically include a page count. -- SB_Johnny | PA! 11:31, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiprefix?
I'm doing some work on a book on XQuery and want to link to a server to execute example code. I'd like to be able to use a prefix so that the server URL is defined in one place. Is that possible? ChrisWallace 06:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes and no. There is a way to add special link prefixes to the software, but you can't do it here. You need to go to Meta and ask the administrators there to add the appropriate prefix to the database. What website do you want to link to, out of curiosity? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:58, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the info - I'm linking to the server I'm using to host the example code for the XQuery book, based at my University - hopefully traffic wont be a problem. ChrisWallace 11:26, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello
I actually was brought here because someone else created an account claiming to be me. I didn't even know it existed. I contribute heavily on the English Wikipedia, mostly as a copy-editor and as part of the Good articles WikiProject. I'm sure there is a need for copy-editors, but is there project here similar to Good articles? Lara ♥Love 03:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * The closest thing we have to that is Featured Books, some of which you can see at any given time on the main page. Welcome to wikibooks! You situation is a prime example of why they should make cross-wiki logon a standard, they've been talking about it forever but it isn't ready yet I guess. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 14:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be great. And makes complete sense. Even if you don't use them all, you don't need someone claiming, or even appearing to be you on another wiki. However, because of this, I created accounts on the other wikis including Wikinews, which I've found is a lot of fun for me. :) Lara ♥Love 18:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah I tend to enjoy reading wikinews, even if I'm not much of a journalist I'll edit or source an article once in a while. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 19:11, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I've written three articles today, and expanded and sourced another--that was tagged to be deleted--to publication. Lara ♥Love 19:58, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Which articles were those? Mattb112885 (talk to me) 21:52, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Sound Synthesis Theory
I've started a book on digital sound synthesis, Sound Synthesis Theory. I encourage anyone who knows about the subject to contribute and/or check the current facts, as well as providing suggestions or improvements for diagrams. I hope the book will remain very diagram heavy in order to help visualise the concepts in the chapters, but also because I think way too many wikibooks are just mindless blocks of text that don't look particularily engaging or interesting.

My formatting is probably shit despite all this so go ahead and make / suggest changes where you think they are appropriate! Damien Karras 20:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I had planned on including a section about signal synthesis in a new book i'm planning about signal processing. Hopefully, I'll be able to use your book as a resource.
 * I'm definitely going to take a good look at this book, because it's an area where i'm not completely unfamiliar. I would definitely be interested to see what kinds of topics you are going to cover, and what theoretical basis you are going to provide. A book that i've worked on in the past (and hopefully will work on more in the near future), Signals and Systems really discusses a lot of related topics such as fourier analysis of electric signals.
 * I'd also be interested to see to what degree you discuss harmonics and partial inharmonics, and their use in creating natural sounds.
 * I'll definitely take a look at the book and help out with the formatting as I see a need. Let me know if you need any specific help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Great! The topics I plan to cover are all there in the contents, although obviously I haven't started pages on all of them yet. Obviously there are more synthesis techniques to consider but the ones provided are generally considered the most popular and widespread. I hope that "hybrid" synthesis techniques that are variations of the main topics are listed within the appropriate synthesis technique page, but I suppose more can be added at a later stage.


 * If you read the introduction it should outline how I feel the book should be written, which is a friendly, somewhat informal tone with essential mathematics. I was considering putting in a section on Fourier Analysis but a) I'm not very knowledgeable about it b) It applies more to signal processing than synthesis and c) There is a book such as Signals and Systems that will do a far better job! I'm trying to keep the mathematics basic and luckily most of it is very simple. I want non-mathematicians to grasp at least the basic concepts.


 * Harmonics and partials are discussed where appropriate and come up a lot but a detailed discussion of them should appear in Section 3 and 4 (not written at this time) which introduces the reader to analysis of sound in the time and frequency domains. The application of theory to create sounds can be found in Part C, but I still don't know how to arrange it since that particular section could get bloated very fast and overwhelm the main bulk of the content.


 * Any help you can provide is most welcome Damien Karras 12:28, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

A Level Mathematics - could someone review pls?
I am new to Wikibooks (and pretty new to Wiki in general). I was looking at the Basic Mechanics section out of interest (OK I'm sad), and found some things missing and some wrong, so I've added & changed stuff. I'd be grateful if someone could have a quick look and see if it looks OK or if I've lost the plot. Many thanks Benny 22:29, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Add book "SwisTrack" to the "Computer software bookshelf"
I'd like to add the book "SwisTrack" to the "Guides for minor (small user base) applications" on the "Computer software bookshelf" page. However, the page seems to be locked. How can I add that book? Thomas.lochmatter 13:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ The book is on the bookshelf. To edit a bookshelf, you need to have a minimum number of edits, like 20 or something. It's a security feature to prevent people from messing them up. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:43, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

request for information
Hi

Iam Kumar from Chennai - India. Iam working in a media advertising agency - Mindshare.

For one of our clients we are looking at advertising in Film Industry B2B (business to business) magazine catering to Indian film industry / read by Indian film industrials

I got you ID from the net - requesting if you could please help me out with some details on such magazines.

Best Regards

Kumar K


 * Hello Kumar, welcome to Wikibooks. Unfortunately, I dont think this is the right place for what you are trying to do. We do not have magazines here, and we don't have any connections in the magazine industry. If you are interested in textbooks we can help, otherwise you are out of luck. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

New Namespace: "Subject:"
I would like to propose the creation of a new namespace, a meta-organizational space that we can use to keep track of books according to various criteria. I am in the process of writing a complete proposal for the idea here on my user page. Many of the details of my idea are spelled out on that page, but let me reiterate a few of them here:


 * Beautify existing category organizational systems:By using dedicated organizational pages, along with the functionality of DPL, we can help to improve the appearance of the category pages, which is lacking.
 * Arrange books according to various metrics: Including target audience (children, toddlers, high-school students, college students, etc), book prerequisites ("book requires calculus", etc), course of study ("Books for a bachelors program in mathematics"), and all sorts of other ways to organize books.
 * DPL would update automatically, keeping these lists easy: So long as books are tagged by the appropriate categories, DPL would keep the book lists completely up-to-date so we wouldnt need to worry about maintaining these lists by hand (except for a few lists, which we likely would want to update by hand).
 * Easy cross-referencing of other categories: By using DPL we could include lists of books from various related categories, including books by LOC, DDC, and bookshelf.

Having an entire namespace available for organization will really give us the flexibility we need to categorize and cross-index all of our books in a scalable and dynamic way. Instead of being tied into one or two particular organization systems, we could organize books in any logical and intuitive ways that we would want to, without the fear of overlapping other pages in a different namespace. What do people think of this idea? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:08, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Support - My own ideas for the subject namespace, included revising the bookshelves concept to use categories by the same name, and making use of DPL to update the bookshelves automatically. Doing away with the current bookshelf system. The Subject namespace and category system would be tied together and provide an easy way for anyone to search what books are available on a given subject and related subjects. Of course I think its a great idea to introduce the Subject namespace. --dark lama  19:39, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Weak Support - So how does this differ from the "Category" namespace? Mind you, this question is going to be asked by the dev team when they see this request, even though categories have been transformed into something of a tool well beyond what has been suggested here.  I'm just saying that you need to have a strong response and some clean examples of how this is not just a reproduction of the category namespace, but something very different.
 * The meta-index concept (similar to the Portal namespace on Wikipedia, but giving it a unique Wikibooks flavor) does have some strong merit, and there are some additional content organization pages that would also get lost simply putting them into the "Wikibooks" namespace. See also my discussion I broke out about adding the "Card:" namespace below, that I would like to see added with this proposal.  --Rob Horning 20:27, 9 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Categories are limited to 200 pages being listed per page, while the Subject pages would not. There would be greater control over the appearance of the books on the page compared to Categories. Books appearing in a subject page, could be divided into several subtopics on the same page which is not possible with a category page. I think Subject pages could be a mix of acting as Wikipedia portal pages and as a means of organizing/card cataloging books. --dark lama  21:02, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Votes
I would like to put in a bugzilla request about this ASAP because it's something I would love to start working on. Let's do a vote here as a general show of support for the developers. Of course, if people don't like this idea, then they can disagree here too. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I think its a good idea and would like to see it get started. Could really help to improve the current organization structure and make it more maintainable and useful. --dark lama  22:48, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

This seems very worthwhile to me. I can only see it improving the organisation of Wikibooks and hopefully making it better for all. -- Herby talk thyme 12:59, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Even though the dev team must be scratching their head about the number of new namespaces we have created this year. Still, I think there are multiple uses of this sort of namespace, and a compelling rationale for not using the Wikibooks namespace for this sort of activity as well. --Rob Horning 14:40, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

--Panic 19:06, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

-- sorry guys, I know you mean well :). Before we make this a namespace, lets pretend it's a namespace for a few months and see if anyone actually does something with it. There's nothing to prevent people from making pages using Subject:x or even Subject/x. I agree that this has potential, but I'd like to see a bit of puttin first, because Wikibooks is currently littered with good ideas that weren't followed up. If it's built and maintained for a a couple months (and made easy for new users to understand), I will heartily support it. -- SB_Johnny | talk 01:41, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

A namespace with the sole purpose of indexing the books here at wikibooks can only be a good thing, the current system isnt practical with the number of books that we now have. Urbane  (Talk)   (Contributions)  22:28, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

- a dedicated namespace for organization could be a big help  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 21:53, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Was this ever done?  – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 21:53, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

ISBN links page
G'day, what would it take to make the Wikibooks ISBN special page as comprehensive as the Wikipedia one? Our one is very limited, having no libraries and just a handful of book stores. For example, compare ISBN 1-890132-10-1 (Wikibooks) with the w:Special:Booksources/ISBN 1-890132-10-1. Webaware talk 16:07, 10 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, i've done a little research on the subject, and it appears that Book sources is the page that we can edit to affect the booksources special page. I do not know why this page is located in the "Wikibooks:" namespace instead of the "MediaWiki:" namespace, since the text is transcluded into a special page. Because this page affects the look of a special page, I have protected it so it can only be edited by admins (although we can certainly change this if the community wants to). If anybody has an idea about what we want to put here, go for it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:32, 10 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Aha! OK, I'll take a look around based on that. thanks, Webaware talk 00:36, 11 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and copyedited from Wiktionary's to give us something useful to begin with. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  01:17, 11 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Beaut! Just what I was hoping for :-) thanks, Webaware talk 02:49, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

<-- tab reset

I'll be honest, I find this list of potential book sources to be simply overwhelming. At least as it stands right now. It seems as though this list has been put together to offend the least number of people. I also see this is one of the sources of the Errata wikibook users that is otherwise not really active with the general Wikibooks community. That book has been up for VfD before with mixed views.

As a place to start, I support the "copy" from Wiktionary, but I strongly suggest a simplification to keep from overwhelming anybody who actually uses this page. I know the main issue was to avoid having a suggestion that certain bookstores (read Amazon.com here) were using this page as a sort of advertisement in violation of Wikipedia policy. That is the motivation to the page in this current format. But it is not friendly to new Wikibooks users. --Rob Horning 18:26, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
 * A bit of Javascript to hide/expand (could be copied from WN, we use it on our main page) the countries might help make the page more useful and less overwhelming for a new user--Cspurrier 21:40, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Newarticletext
I've updated this page to make it more concise, more readable, and more informative. The old version of this page contained too much garbage. I think this new version is much nicer and is more likely to be read by new users. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I went back and gave importing it's own bullet. I'm just remembering back to when I copied and pasted stuff without even knowing that imports could be done. Hopefully new users will get stuff imported more consistently.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 21:48, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Why is the diff so horrible?
I often make edits where the "changes" are misaligned... Most of the times, some paragraphs are matched for only a few meager words, when the real match would have dozens of shared words, even whole sentences, and this unfortunate mis-match might cascade to following paragraphs, rendering the diff useless. The "Popups" diff is usually better, but it is limited in size, in more ways than one. How do you all solve this problem? -- Jokes Free4Me 16:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

PS I know there is a preference setting of "Use external diff by default", but how would that solve anything? What external diff would i use?


 * Sounds like a question for the developers, we don't deal with software issues. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:23, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

About modules on Wikibooks
I was wondering how this system of modules worked. I was under the impression that modules could be used in many different books as discussed here and implemented here. But if I wrote a module about carnivorous plants at Botany/Carnivorous plants and then wanted to use that module in a book about carnivors I'd have to link to the previously mentioned one. Since the modules include navigational templates for only one book I would start navigating a book about botany. Maybe I misunderstood the idea behind modules, but I was wondering if you have discussed this in details somewhere and if someone is trying to modify MediaWiki with this in mind? --Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 23:13, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
 * If you edit the module and add and tags around the navigation templates, they will be supressed in anywhere that module is included. I think that's how that works anyhow. HTH YMMV --Jomegat 00:19, 5 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Of course, you are right. What about the structure of the whole thing, I'd have to link to Botany/Carnivorous plants even though that module is just as much a part of a book about carnivores.  What about creating independent modules?  Then I could use that module in any number of books.  Would you just create an article called Carnivorous plants?  It seems to me that this would be against your naming conventions. :) --Friðrik Bragi Dýrfjörð 14:03, 5 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Unlike articles on Wikipedia which are independent of each other, modules in a book have a specific scope, audience and style thats dependent on the rest of the book. While two subjects may share some common information, I think maintaining its usability and consistency for more then one book's needs can be difficult to impossible to achieve realistically. Since the contents is licensed under the GFDL, you can always copy and fork the information to fit the needs of a specific book rather then trying to maintain the needs of more then one book. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:20, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

BOOKNAME and CHAPTERNAME
Rob Church has added a new ParserFunction, "titleparts" to the wiki. Using this new function, I created two new templates: and. These can be used logically in page navigation, etc. For instance, if we have a page at "My Book/My Chapter/My Page", the various magicwords that we have return:

Hopefully, these two new magicwords will be useful in book navigation, templates, etc. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:45, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * How deep can this go? The Muggles' Guide might be interested and we have pages deeper than three levels. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:07, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Deep enough: --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:30, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This is what happened when you tried it out? I don't see why "Prisoner of Azkaban" would be considered the BOOKNAME. I am guessing this won't work for a non-three-level system, or at least the magic words won't have logical names. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 18:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If you look at this page, you'll see I didn't use BOOKNAME, I use the new titleparts parser function. These aren't magic words that Whiteknight is talking about, just templates. If you look at the above from within the edit window, you'll see all I did was use titleparts to extract the 3rd level. This could be put into a template such as MGBOOK for your needs. Just as the templates BOOKNAME and CHAPTERNAME extract the first and second level respectively. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:13, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Should have actually looked at the table code. Perhaps some of this will be of use in the Guide, but I'm not sure how we'll use it yet. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 12:07, 8 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The template is always going to give the name of the book, the very first level. For instance if the page is named A/B/C/D/E/F, the  will return "A". The titleparts parserfunction can be used to extract any portion of the title, as needed. Some more advanced uses of it could certainly be of significant use to the Muggle's Guide. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:20, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Tiny Font-size When Some Articles Printed
I have noticed that some articles print out with tiny font size (about 8-point in Times Roman) but others print out with a more "normal" and readable size (circa 12-point). Is there any way to prevent this with Wiki markup instructions? I can of course instruct my personal printer to change the font size on the print-out, but this is a nuisance and some folks may not realize that they can do this.Klseifert 16:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

p.s. I apologize if this question really belongs on the "technical discussion" page--not sure where to put it.Klseifert 16:03, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't know that i've ever experienced this problem before, and I've printed out a large quantity of pages before. Which pages are being printed in small font? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:34, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Broken Discussion Page
The discussion page on the business and economics page is broken. M040 22:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What page? There is no page named "Business and Economics". And what do you mean by "broken"? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:26, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Advice wanted on cooperative book specification & writing
I am starting to write a foreign language course for which I hope to attract significant input from other people, and I would appreciate some advice about organising the cooperation process.

I have my own ideas about how to allocate the proposed vocabulary and grammar between the different lessons / modules, but I would also expect to negotiate this with other contributors in order to reach some level of agreement before the real book writing begins. I would expect the specification to evolve over time, and would like some convenient overview of how well the written material meets the agreed plan or specification. I would also like a convenient way of rearranging and presenting the material so that readers could have the option of more or less explanation and repetition depending on their ability.

If there are any books which have already tackled these or similar issues (using clever templates, for example), I would be interested to check them out. Thanks Peter R Runes 05:50, 19 August 2007 (UTC)


 * What foreign language are you writing a course about? Wikibooks already has a large number of books about foreign languages. For a mostly-complete list, check out the Languages bookshelf. If a book already exists on the topic you want to write about, I would encourage you to improve/rewrite the existing book, instead of starting a new one. However, if you want to do something completely different (have a different scope or target audience from the existing book, for example) then you will need to start your own.
 * As to collaboration, there are two good places where you could create a planning page for your new book: In your own personal namespace (such as User:Peter R Runes/Book Planning), or on the book's talkpage (such as "Talk:My Book"). I tend to plan new books in my own userspace first, and invite collaborators there to get more input on my ideas. However, there are many ways you could go about doing it.
 * Some books have multiple versions internally, such as Special Relativity, which has both a low-level and a high-level tract. In this way, readers can choose what kinds of treatment of the material they want to read. Not many other books have experimented with multiple content versions for different readers, but we do encourage that kind of experimentation. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You might want to have a look at the Miskito book and maybe get in touch with User:A R King. He might have some interesting ideas on how a language book may be built. I don't have any answers for the cooperation stuff, on the other hand. -- Kowey 14:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback guys. Maybe I'm imagining unnecessary complications, and I should really just get going with it and see what happens. Fancy templates might put off new authors, plus it will be easier for me to start with a simpler format. I am intending to call the book French_For_Football (meaning soccer, as this is the most popular form in France), and the scope and intended audience will both be very different from the existing French book. The guy who's writing the Miskito book has certainly done a good job in documenting the aims and production process for his book, though not with much success in attracting other contributors as far as I can tell. I have found a list of people who do French/English translations, so I plan to start contacting people when I've made a bit more progress with my outline. Peter R Runes 18:24, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Deleted pages needing restoration
I wanted to report that the WikiBook "Russian" Language has two pages missing, 1)Lesson 1, Part 2-False Friends, A note on handwriting; and 2)Lesson 1, Part 3-False friends 2, More cursive. There is a warning stating that part 2 was deleted on 15 April, 2007, by Darklama (vandalism). I have been unable to determine how to restore a deleted page. Please look into this. Thank you, George Krevy at 19:11, August 28, 2007


 * The 2nd part was just vandalism; there's nothing useful to restore. The 3rd part hasn't been written yet. If you can, feel free to start work on both pages. Hope that helps.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 19:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

What ever happened to this idea?
I stumbled across User: Sysopbot. Anyone know the history and care to give me a quick rundown?  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 02:50, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A little while ago there was a push for several large-impact bot actions such as image deletion and page categorization. Some users (and admins) decided to run bots under their own accounts, polluting RC and in some users' opinions abusing the tools (that includes my view). Therefore, a call was made to stop doing such things and several admins and users presented new accounts to gain sysop rights for such actions. I forget exactly what was approved, but we wanted to share a user account password amongst trusted members of the community to use the "sysop bot" for mass admin actions. I believe these procedures were considered too insecure by the community and the process failed.


 * On a related note, I like that you find all these projects we half-implemented! There's the arbitration committee, editorial board, sysop bots, etc. that should all be looked at again or cleaned up. Thanks for reminding us of this. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 13:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Doesn't a bot flag stop the changes from flooding RC? I think it sounds like it could have been useful (and still could be!), but only if done properly. I guess it wasn't done properly though - what were the problems? Or if anyone knows where the discussion is archived, I can just read it.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 20:27, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, a bot flag does avoid RC but previous users simply ran the bots under their accounts and so things showed up on RC. All the discussions are here. People became more wary as more bots popped up. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 13:29, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * At the time it was a complicated issue, and because of those complexities we've basically let the idea languish. People started using bots in a massive attempt to delete unlicensed images. We had a whole campaign about it, with a site notice message, and emails to contributors, and all that. When the time came, we set up some bots and started deleting unlicensed images. However, problems were created because people didn't like the way the bot was handling the task: The bot wasn't looking for replacements on commons, and the bot was either (a) deleting redlinks from the articles where the iamges had been (which removed all trace that an image was even supposed to be there) or (b) leaving the redlinks but not providing any description of what the image was supposed to be.
 * The benefits of a bot can become more obvious when you have a lot of admin tasks to do, such as the blocking of large ranges of open proxies, or deleting all the pages from a large book (after a VfD), etc. However, enough complications arose over the image deletion thing, and enough other concerns were voiced that the idea really got put on the back burner. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There were quite a few things going on back then that made having a "tools-enabled" bot unfeasable, though we seem to have come through the storm OK now. On the other hand, we only have 104 uncategorized images at the moment. Blocking open proxies might be a good idea though: v:User:Michael Billington seems to have some sort of script, and I'm sure he'd be willing to lend it to us. Sysopbot 15:09, 31 August 2007 (UTC) (a.k.a. SB_Johnny)


 * Open proxies - check out w:Wikipedia:Open proxy detection. There you have a list of active open proxies (probably best to ignore the TOR nodes unless they cause trouble).  Bot is also running on Commons and about to on Meta.  I'm using the info to block on here anything with dodgy edits -- Herby  talk thyme 15:36, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Where could I find the code of the random book feature?
Over at Wikiversity there has been a bit of talk about implementing a "Random topic" feature. I thought maybe the code to the Random book function might be useful. Where could I find the code of the random book feature? Thanks. --Remi 03:42, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Talk to User:Darklama because I think he implemented it. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 13:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use issue
I uploaded a file to wikibooks that I found on en:wikipedia en:Image:Frangelico.jpg where it had a non-free fair use licence. I read wikibooks policy and non-free fair use is permitted, however, two issues: Firstly, the template doesn't work in wikibooks. Second issue - the artwork on the bottle, which is copyright, may be reproduced in an article about a product but the uploader got it from a japanese site, he didn't make it himself. Seems to me, it is a violation of the site's copyright and therefore in't fair use. Wadda ya think? Mike Hayes 17:47, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

P.S. And why the ***! don't the four tildes work here? I'm logged in. http://[en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Mike_Hayes Mike Hayes


 * You forgot the < / nowiki > tag so it ignored your tildes. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 17:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The four tildes didnt work because there was an extra &lt;nowiki> tag floating around. I removed it, and now things should work like normal.
 * As to the image:
 * If we don't have that particular template, it's because nobody has ever bothered to create/import it. If you feel like it's worthwhile, you could create it yourself, or request it at WB:RFI.
 * "fair use" isn't a blanket excuse that people can use to violate copyright. For the image to be considered "fair use" it must be accompanied with the original source, and a rationale for why it must be used under that license (no free alternatives available, etc). If the image doesnt have either of these things, it should be deleted.
 * Apparently, this image is an orphan, and it is not linked to any pages. Orphaned fair use images are typically deleted.
 * I hope this helps. If you think the image should be deleted, tag it with . --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:33, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. New question; why is it showing as an orphan? It is showing in the wikipedia article on w:Frangelico. Mike Hayes 17:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure interwiki links aren't counted when the program's checking for orphans. But if it's a fair use image it should be restricted to its own project anyways, since if its fair use in one scenario it may not be in another. This is one reason they don't allow fair use on commons. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 18:25, 10 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've considered the matter of copyright infringement again and it seems to me that the website's copyright has not been violated for the following reason. The image is a two dimensional one of a copyright bottle, and its label, with no independant information of any kind.  You cannot copyright someone elses copyright object and it's labelling (unless it contains some other information that one can claim copyright to).  If the website can claim no copyright to this image, and it cannot under US law because it only contains information belonging to a third party, not the website, that website's copyright has not been violated (in the USA). Mike Hayes 03:52, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The image file on Wikipedia isn't the same one that's here on Wikibooks, so it would be orphaned if it weren't in use on a page here (images on Commons can appear on any project, but there are tools available there for tracking that).
 * As far as that site's copyright is concerned, I have no idea because it's in Japanese. The image, however, is probably licenced to them because they apparently sell the product (and they might have gotten it from their supplier, etc.). However, the reason it can't be released under a free licence is that it's really a derivative work of a copyrighted object, so you couldn't, for example, print that image on a T-Shirt and sell it unless you had permission to do so from the company (or is it a monastery?) that makes Frangelico.
 * But Mike Hayes: what's the question exactly? -- SB_Johnny | PA! 22:17, 11 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I've retagged the image with fair use; please see Category:License tags for available tags on Wikibooks. The image still requires a rationale explaining why this is Fair Use. Webaware talk 05:39, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

"How Experts Fail": list of wikibooks on other websites?
I've put my current book project, titled "How Experts Fail: The Patterns and Situations in Which Experts Are Less Intelligent Than Non-Experts," on a new website HowExpertsFail.com, using MediaWiki software (the same software as Wikipedia and Wikibooks). I'm hoping to publish the book someday so I didn't put it on Wikibooks.org. Is there a list of wikibooks that aren't on Wikibooks.org? The only other project I know of is We Are Smarter Than Me. I especially want people to contribute stories in which a non-expert was right when an expert was wrong.--Thomas David Kehoe 19:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If a book is here on Wikibooks.org, it can still be published. If we had more blockbuster books that were ready for that final stage of development we would be moving into that area more aggressively, I think. As to other websites with open-content books, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Wikibooks is pretty much one of the largest open-content book sites so far. However, if there are other sites with similar goals, I would love to hear about them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Need for Worksheets
Why can't we post worksheets easily? As an educator, I need worksheets to accompany information. Most textbooks have worksheets that accompany the information, and tests as well. As a music educator (choir), textbooks aren't very helpful when I'm trying to find something to relate to the songs we are singing. For example, I created a worksheet on Gospel music and wrote an excerpt that accompanied the worksheet. I'd like to post that for all educators to use. I'd also like to be able to find a worksheet quickly as opposed to reading the article first with the hopes of finding a worksheet.

I'm hoping we can work together to make this easy for everyone. It could be organized by subject, grade level, and topic. Teachers could easily upload and download worksheets for all to use! It would make the unit more complete! Also students could download the worksheets from home, do them, and email the completed work to the teacher. I might be getting ahead of myself with that idea but it is a possibility one day! We'd have to make sure we don't post the answers though...

Just a thought! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Griffcb (discuss • contribs)


 * Worksheets I think are more in Wikiversity's scope. Wikibooks and Wikiversity can be used together to provide for a more complete course curriculum. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:11, 18 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks really is just a textbook resource, even though there is some pretty obvious desire for other types of materials. Fortunately, there is another project, Wikiversity, which aims to be a more generalized instructional resource. Wikibooks contains textbooks, while Wikiversity contains other course materials such as syllabi, homework, tests, quizzes, and worksheets. The two projects can often be used together quite effectively to make a comprehensive course plan. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Quantifying pages
Is it possible to quantify the number of pages or words in a particular wikibook? I'm interested in tracking how a wikibook changes over time. Thanks --PaulWLepp 21:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I think this can be done easily with a parsing bot and probably someone already has something similar. Take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver and http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Toolserver/Projects hope it help. --Panic 22:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a javascript that can count a lot of statistics about a page (number of characters, number of words, number of links, categories, templates, etc). let me know what you need. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:26, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Username impersonators and usurpations
For those who don't know, a usurpation is when one person receives control of a username from another person. To usurp a username means for a bureaucrat to rename to current account to some non-name, and to create a new account with the desired account name. En.wikipedia has a very strict process for username usurpations, we currently don't have any.

I bring this up because today we received a complaint from a user on wikipedia. Another person created an account with the same name on wikibooks, as a bad-faith impersonator. After this user proved she was who she said she was, Herbythyme blocked the account, and I usurped it for the rightful owner.

What do people think about this? should we have some kind of rules or policy or whatever to govern this kind of thing, or should we not bother and leave it up to the best judgement of the bureaucrats? In the case of vandals it's more straightforward, but what about a case where a person simply wants to assume control over an already-existing username? On en.wp, you can only usurp an account if the account has zero edits, zero log entries, and is a certain period of time old (ie you can't take a newly-created account before the owner has time to edit). Are those guidelines that we should take for use here? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:36, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * That would be a good idea. I could create Requests for usurpation and the appropriate templates if you want. --SunStar Net 17:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * My opinion is that a policy should be initiated for each administrative action (whatever the "level") as a way to standardize it and provide security no only to the target(s) of the action but also for the implementor(s). This will reduce errors and avoid the use of "best judgment" by involving the community to define what is or is not acceptable. --Panic 17:34, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry Whiteknight I don't entirely understand your explanation. What exactly is a usurp?  Is it the same as renaming an account?? Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 21:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It's okay, I wasn't entirely clear. A usurpation is similar to a user renaming. It's when one person wants to take a username that is already registered by another person. For instance, if I decided that I wanted to be called "Xania", I could usurp your account: A bureaucrat could rename you to "Xania_OLD" or something like that, and then rename my account to "Xania". In effect, I would become "User:Xania", even if that account name was already registered by somebody else. Now, that exact situation would never happen because no bureaucrat would ever steal an active account name from one person and give it to another. On en.wp, the only accounts that can be usurped are those that were created but never used (no edits, etc). I'm willing to say that usurpations can be done on accounts that have never been used and that don't have a valid email address, and also vandalism/impersonator accounts that have only been used for bad-faith edits. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Let the bureaucrats deal with it. Mention that we can do it in the developing admin policy and that's it. This is not the first occurrence of this situation by the way. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 03:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * That's basically my opinion on the matter, although i still think it would be good to lay down a few guidelines, even informal ones, among the bureaucrats so that when this does happen it happens in a standardized kind of way. The issue comes up so infrequently that we might not even need this. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:36, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
 * My only real concern is renames with large amounts of edits which shouldn't really happen. For instance in your above example to Xania I would have reservations about renaming a large editor like that since it becomes somewhat deceptive. Your example wouldn't truly be a full usurp because all Xania's contributions would re-link to Xania_OLD and only new ones would work with your impersonation of Xania. This situation is why I think en.wikipedia only allows usurps for zero contributions, although I think we shouldn't mind here if it's only a handful. I know I've usurped vandal accounts when the original user comes over here to complain and wants their username (confirmed of course). -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 17:10, 24 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Something should be written up for the future; the above comments look like they're on-target.  – <font color="Indigo">Mike.lifeguard  | <font color="Indigo">talk 02:56, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * If there are good-faith edits the username should not be usurped. -- xixtas talk 13:06, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with that entirely. Frequently editors from other projects (notably wikipedia) will create an account here to protect against impersonators without ever intending to use those accounts. In such cases, accounts have few edits, often just one or two linking their talk and user pages to their wikipedia pages, etc. These kinds of accounts we do not want to be stealing. For vandals, it's a different story, as a vandal will likely be blocked infinitely anyway and will be unable to make use of the account. A vandal who has been blocked infinitely typically has their user pages deleted, and most traces of them are wiped away. In these cases, we certainly can usurp the account, especially if it's an impersonator account. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:47, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

This apparently won't be an issue for long... SUL is apparently up, but not yet running.-- SB_Johnny | PA! 07:45, 25 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Once the SUL does get going, it will be a painful transition and cause at least a few problems. I should note here that one of the reasons why my Meta account has a different name is in part because I screwed up the password for meta:User:Robert Horning and couldn't log back in.  I just created another account and kept plugging along, realizing that it didn't really matter in the long run.  It hasn't been that big of a deal either, other than the fact that with SUL I may have to merge this account (or would like to, at least).  --Rob Horning 16:48, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

GFDL vs. Creative Commons
I am working to convince friends of mine to place their books out as part of Wikibooks. Their content is currently licensed under Creative Commons. Wikibooks policy would need it to be shifted to GFDL. Is there some URL that would help me to understand the contrasts between these two licenses? How would it affect the book publishers? What's the advantage of the GFDL. Any responses would be appreciated. --Fredericknoronha 17:16, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * There are a few places you can go in terms of this debate. Perhaps the best conceise descriptions of some different free software/documentation licenses (with an admittedly pro-GFDL POV) can be found at:  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/


 * If you are willing to read something quite a bit more spirited and lengthy in terms of comparing the various free document licenses, you can also check out w:Wikipedia talk:Copyrights. Be warned, it is several megabytes of raw text to plow through here in over 10 different archives, but it includes some of the best experience on the part of people who actually use both the Creative Commons licenses and the GFDL on a day to day basis, and are intimately familiar with both licenses.  And many practical examples on how issues about these licenses apply in real content... mainly on Wikipedia however.


 * The largest problem about most of the Creative Commons licenses (besides trying to decide which CC license you are talking about) is that for the most part it is incompatible with the GFDL. In other words, something licensed under the GFDL generally can't be used under any Creative Commons license and vice versa.  Relicensing content... even when it is available under "free" licenses, can be a real pain in the behind.  Once some content is available under a particular license, you must stick with that license if anonymous contributors are also adding to that content.


 * From a personal perspective... and take this with a gain of salt noting you should form your own opinion on the topic.... I actually prefer the GFDL over the Creative Commons suite. I think the Creative Commons licenses are overly simplistic in terms of protecting against people who would publish CC content without attribution, and doesn't deal with the machine readable issues that the GFDL does try to cope with.  On the other hand, the license republication issue (aka you need to publish the complete GFDL any time you redistribute GFDL'd content) can be a major issue when reprinting small extracts or something which is only a page or two long.  For a 200 page book, adding an extra 3-4 pages for a license isn't as big of a deal.  This last issue is one of the reasons why Wikinews does not use the GFDL.  Both licenses have their place, and deciding which one is best depends largely on what you want to accomplish  and a big degree of what those involved with establishing the original bit of content are looking for.


 * One thing you can also do....and is reasonable to consider for an individual Wikibook, is to dual license the content. This means that when you add the content, it is licensed for use under both the GFDL and a specific Creative Commons license.  Make sure that when others are contributing to that Wikibook, they are completely aware that the content is dual licensed and that their contributions should be dual licensed as well.  For some further information about this, see also Dual-licensing --Rob Horning 00:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Bookshelf templates
I would like to propose what may seem like a radical change: deleting the bookshelf templates. These templates, all of which are visible on the Departments page, are generally useless and could be replaced with better alternatives. These templates are difficult to maintain, and there is very little rationale, if any, about which books should be listed in these templates. If it is the intention that the template should contain all the books from the bookshelf, then it seems a waste to me, because the books are already listed on the bookshelf pages themselves. If instead it is the intention that the templates should contain a representative sample of books from that shelf, or that they should contain a few of the "best and brightest" book from the shelf, then they have failed as well: Many templates contain links to poor books, stub books, and books that have been nominated for deletion. On a regular basis I patrol these templates looking for red links that need to be removed.

Maybe we don't need to delete them, but I think we should certainly reformat them. I would like to remove the book lists from these templates, and perhaps replace them with a collage of related images, or something similarly aesthetic. We could have short banner images that say "Art Bookshelf", and there would be pictures of art behind it, etc. If these templates were being well-maintained, it would be different, but since they are not, it's more trouble then they are worth. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I would support a deletion of the templates. Like you said, they don't really provide much and are often either poor representations of the bookshelf or largely out of date. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 19:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * So what is the alternative here? Keep in mind that once upon a time, this was a very well maintained section of Wikibooks, in part because all of these templates (well, most of them anyway) appeared on the Main Page.  This was the most visible face of Wikibooks, and demonstrated the best and most active Wikibooks.  This certainly is something that ought to be maintained if for nothing more than as historical pages of Wikibooks.... as they do show up when looking at pages in the history of the Main Page.  Wanton deletion of these templates I believe to be something simply not appropriate nor really needed.


 * I do strongly suggest that perhaps some very heavily improved standards be applied to what is listed here. Certainly current books which are featured books, as well as those who have somebody working on them actively (aka a very ambitious wikibook by a new user) deserve to be listed here.  The problem is trying to figure out when things should be culled from this list.  Perhaps this is something that we could redesign using the Dynamic Page List extension to list all of the book meeting the qualifications of being in a a given bookshelf category, are a featured book or are something under active development.  Adding a new category "active" would be something perhaps we could create that could also be (in this instance) something generated by a bot or added and removed by individual users.  I'm defining active as a book which has more than "X" edits in a 3 month period of time, where the threshold can also be adjusted as necessary.  I'm thinking something more than 10 edits but less than 100 as rough orders of magnitude to think about here.


 * The idea here is to maintain the bookshelf concept (out right elimination of these templates may kill the idea completely), still provide a place to list books on these subjects, and to promote some of the newer Wikibooks that are just starting out. I think putting a tag on a Wikibook that it is under active development (or even a markup tag that it is inactive!) would have value even beyond just this bookshelf template area.


 * We do lose the idea of listing pages by percent completion status, although this may be something we could look into in terms of a Wikibooks-specific modification of the DPL extension itself. One of my complaints about the category system is that we can't add these sort of percent markups next to books, note feature status, or do other sorts of distinguishing notes.  Perhaps we could come up with something else here instead to work on that aspect and shortcoming of the system.  --Rob Horning 23:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, what if we just delete the lists of books, but leave a large fancy link to the bookshelf? I mean, if we use DPL some of the bookshelves such as the programming languages bookshelf will absolutely overflow and become gigantic. Even if it used to be a fantastic thing, as wikibooks grows larger and more diverse, any attempt to maintain a manual list of links is destined to fail.
 * Now, the idea of DPL is a decent one, but it suffers from the fact that some of our bookshelves are giganticlly large already, and i expect the general quantities of books to continue to increase in a regular way. In short, if we dont deal with this issue now, then we will just have to deal with it later.
 * I agree that maybe deletion might not be the best idea, but maybe we could try just removing the book lists from the templates? Without the book lists there to clutter things up, we would be free to make some really cool-looking templates instead. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:26, 12 July 2007 (UTC)


 * The DPL does allow a "not" rule on determining status of a page in the listing. For most of the books you are complaining about here, they are most definitely in the inactive status here, and should properly be marked as such.  It would also be very useful to mark some of these books as inactive with a nice and friendly message "Please help Wikibooks by adopting this abandoned (or inactive) book and helping us to develop up to date content on this topic".  Frankly, I don't think these lists of books would be all that large if we stuck to that basic rule of:  Bookshelf name and (featured book or not inactive).


 * I hope I'm wrong here that the list of Wikibooks would be huge on these lists when applying this rule, but I got a feeling it wouldn't be all that many. If we do this, we should still maintain these as independent templates so they can be transcluded both on this list of all books (aka the "Departments") and on the top of each bookshelf.... although a simple copy and paste of the DPL code wouldn't be that complicated either.  --Rob Horning 00:15, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * As a follow up thought here, I should point out that one of the things these templates have performed in terms of listing books in a prominent place where you can look at all of the "active" Wikibooks at once, is they also suggested ideas on how to reorganize the bookshelves in the past and break up very large bookshelves into smaller but more numerous bookshelves. This is an aspect of organizing knowledge that simply must be dealt with in some manner, and a part of Wikibooks which has been very dynamic in the past.  I'm actually impressed at the general stability of the classification system of bookshelves in this aspect, as it has been remarkably steady for the past iteration and doesn't see any huge area of weakness in terms of huge groups of under recognized Wikibooks.  At least at the moment.  Of course the concept of a "departent" was something added to Wikibooks quite late in the game and was an afterthought, although the bookshelf idea goes back to 2003 by none other than Karl Wick himself.  --Rob Horning 00:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I just hope that "inactive" wouldn't be a death sentence to a book that could still potentially be useful. However, it could be the opposite, serving to let contributors know, this book hasn't been touched in a while (and by a while I mean half a year or more) so there's even less reason to fear reprisal if you go in and make changes. I DO agree though that the templates as they are are rather useless for several reasons:


 * 1) Out of date "completion criteria" which will possibly never be updated, and are probably too general to describe the state of a whole book anyways.
 * 2) No real criteria for determining what gets into a bookshelf template and what doesn't.
 * 3) As mentioned, they're no longer used except as part of a linking system to the bookshelves.


 * I like Rob's idea of saying "active OR featured" books, because at least then the featured ones wouldn't be completely buried, but authors who prefer working on an actively-developing project know where to go. I'd say that the templates should ideally end up significantly smaller than they are now, because there's just too many links to different things in a small space on the bookshelf page, it gets overwhelming. And I'd even not be against losing the completeness indicators, and instead just saying "this one is featured, anything not featured is probably not complete". They're always out of date anyways and unlike the activity factor it can't be automatically refreshed as needed. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 00:46, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I highly doubt that an "inactive wikibook" template would last too long on the "main page" of a wikibook that has somebody doing more than just a couple of minor edits to the contents. Particularly if in the template itself there was some encouragement to remove the thing and get working on developing the content.  So in this regard I think it would be an encouraging sign to look and see what kinds of books would pop up as active but not quite as polished as the featured candidates.  Inactive books (that are genuinely inactive) wouldn't have anybody left to really complain.  And it isn't too hard to at least find a few good examples of books that have fallen into the background of Wikibooks.  This isn't to say that these kind of inactive books shouldn't be cataloged and have other links, but they shouldn't be something so prominent as a list of books like this page (Wikibooks:Departments) is showing.  New users in particular should be encouraged to at least join into some wikibook that has some active users who are able to "take them under their wing" and help them with the general wiki editing process, and learn about concepts like NPOV and original research.  Featured books are likely to be on the watch list of several people that any edits on them would get at least some attention real quick if anything starts to change.  --Rob Horning 06:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Yesterday while people were busy discussing the idea of an inactive template, I boldly went ahead and created one under. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:53, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Prototype Template Replacement
I've created a prototype replacement template for the engineering bookshelf. The template is visible HERE. You can see the usage of the template on the Engineering bookshelf. This kind of template is easier to maintain (we dont need to worry about adding or removing links from it), it's more aesthetic, it would look better on the All bookshelves page, and the various department pages, etc. What do people think of this kind of idea? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:03, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm a little confused about your idea, I like the look of the template but how does it make it so that you don't need to add/remove links? Maybe I'm missing something obvious, is there an associated category or something? I DO agree that the bookshelf templates need a revamp though. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 23:05, 6 August 2007 (UTC)


 * This is an alternative to Template:Engineering bookshelf. In the older template, there is a long list of books, manually updated. The newer version of the template, Template:Engineering bookshelf new doesnt have these lists of books. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Ohh I was confused, I thought it was meant as a replacement for the bookshelf itself. I'd go for that sort of thing, less maintenance = less stuff becoming obsolete. Though it may be nice to have some way of highlighting the FBs within the bookshelves, maybe just with the little star next to their entries or something like that (or even a category to link to like Category:Engineering featured books as a subcategory to "featured books"). Maybe they don't need more highlighting since they have a prominent place on the main page anyway; what do you all think? Mattb112885 (talk to me) 00:51, 7 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A little star icon would be nice, but if you look at the engineering bookshelf as a model, the same featured book templates that show up on the main page are included on the bookshelf as well. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Dichotomous key
The book Dichotomous Key seems to be inactive. I think the book could be very useful if improved, so is there anybody here who would like to work on it? Eyu100 22:42, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have an interest in it too, but I am busy with some other things. I am also interested in the Field Guides, to which I have contributed.  There's a lot of work to be done there as well. --Jomegat 23:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been considering whether the Bloom Clock pages on Wikiversity might eventually be imported for use in the Dichotomous Key book, since there are primitive dichotomous keys being developed there using DPL (which we could use here as well). The only problem is that the time indices (i.e., what month something flowers in a particular region) are unmistakeably Original Research, and probably a bit too much OR for this project until it gets some academic reviews (which won't be happening for at least a couple years as data is collected). Using DPL in that way would certainly make it earier to build up the DK though. -- SB_Johnny | PA! 08:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I think alot of interest in that subject area has been redirected to Wikispecies. Although, there has been enough idle chat floating around about closing that project to instill a sense of caution among new contributors. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:19, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

So... Anyone interested that can work on it? Eyu100 03:42, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I made a template for navigation, but I am still trying to get it to work (Template:Dichkeynav). Eyu100 21:19, 3 August 2007 (UTC)
 * ... Eyu100 17:02, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Middle School Extension
Is it just me or is this a misunderstanding of Wikibooks? AuroraBooks, the person behind it, seems to be trying to create a new project similar to Wikijunior, but requiring there permission before new titles can be added, has created guideline and policy templates specific to it, and has even created a stub guideline pages What is MSE? with a status of having been accepted by the MSE community without any actual text to it. All pages have been created today, AFAICT. Seems bizarre to me. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I motion to move this discussion to Talk:Middle School Extension, but am curious myself as to what people think about it. Also, Darklama brings up a good point... I couldn't find a page on how to start subprojects in WB via either the wiki search or Google, so in the interests of being bold, I made a stub here... please redirect if I'm out of line. Mchua 20:42, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
 * A few points:
 * Wikibooks doesnt allow subprojects, that's why there are no guidelines on how to create them. The WB:WIW policy states "Wikibooks is not the place to develop new Wikimedia projects". Wikijunior is not a sub-project, it's more like a bookshelf devoted to children's books.
 * We should not move this discussion to Talk:Middle School Extension, it won't get any attention on that page.
 * This MSE thing really can't be what it says it is. It can't restrict people from creating new books or whatever. No person or group can really exercise such restrictions. Even on Wikijunior the "New Book of the Quarter" isn't a restrictive system, people are welcome to create new Wikijunior books at any time without permission. It also shouldn't have it's own policy pages, anything of that sort should be in a local page, such as Middle School Extensions/For Contributors or even Middle School Extensions/LMOS (LMOS = "Local Manual of Style"). I'm going to tag those "policy" pages for deletion now.

--Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * A few additional points:
 * Wikijunior was established and scoped on Meta and it was decided that it should be set up here. Since then, Wikibooks has decided it does not want to be a foundry for other independent projects, and Wikijunior has become more or less a Wikibooks bookshelf with a few idiosynchracies.
 * It is entirely innappropriate for a single individual to act as dictator of any space in Wikibooks, unilaterally deciding what people can and cannot contribute.
 * This is the most appropriate place for this discussion. Rather than on the talk page of a newly created module that most active editors do not have on their watchlists.
 * This represents my understanding of the situation. Question: If subprojects aren't allowed, why do we have a Project Chat page? I think that a Middle School Bookshelf isn't a bad idea but as one of our non-US editors will soon come along and remind us it's a pretty US-centric title. If we're going to launch such a project it needs to be scoped a lot better than this one is, IMO. -- xixtas  talk 22:11, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikijunior seems to me to serve the purpose of being a middle school bookshelf of sorts, with a non US-centric title. The scopes are basically identical from what I saw, except for the dictator bit. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  22:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * To Xixtas: The "Project Chat" was intended with a different sense of the word "project" from what we are talking about here. On the staff lounge we can chat about things that people work together on, while in this conversation we are talking about "projects" as things that differ in purpose and policy from the rest of wikibooks. For instance, In terms of the staff lounge, I would consider a book a "project", or a bookshelf, or a template, or whatever: things that people work together on. What this MSE thing is, is some kind of "subproject", people trying to do something different from the rest of the community on our servers. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:17, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Eh? Why is that comment to xania?  I haven't even said anything about this issue yet. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 16:37, 16 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh my mistake. It was late and I misread "Xixtas" for "Xania". --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:43, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification (still learning my way around). Marked the Help:Starting_a_new_subproject page for deletion, since a howto for something that doesn't exist is useless, and simply made Subprojects say "there are no such things." Mchua 08:50, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Book Donations Policy Proposal
In response to a couple comments i've received, both recently and in the past, on wiki and off, I've drafted a quick policy proposal for book donations. The proposal is here: Book donations. My purpose for this is both to explain the process, but also to explain the licensing. I want to make it obvious, painfully so in fact, that books must be released under the GFDL, that other people are going to edit books, and that a donated book really can't be given any special treatment. I tried to highlight Wikisource as a possible alternative in some cases. I also wanted to really highlight some points from the GFDL, so that nobody has any misconceptions. While I realize that some of the stern wording of this proposal will probably dampen some of our book donations, I also want to make sure that authors don't jump into it without proper consideration.

Anyway, it's just an early draft, I want to get a lot of people to look it over and see if we need to add anything, maybe remove anything, etc. In the future when we get a message like "hey I have a book I want to donate" we can point them to this page and hopefully answer a lot of questions quickly. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Why make it a policy? The text as it is seems to start by restricting donation to authors. One can be an author but have no rights to the work or the maybe the owner/donor is not the author, and what about works that have a "compatible" license... The text could be more generic (some parts do cover some of the points but the start of the text makes it very author oriented). --Panic 22:11, 17 August 2007 (UTC)


 * It really shouldn't be a policy, only a guideline. I'm thinking of this as being a type of resource similar to Guidelines for class projects. You're also correct that it should be more generalized, and focus on all copyrights holders instead of just authors. I would argue, perhaps, that authors are the group of people who are most likely to donate work, where a publisher or other copyright-holding entity would be more likely to restrict the work and make it for-profit. I'll see what I can do about it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Using Wikibooks
I've taken this great idea from User:Urbane and started running with it. My intention here is to create a comprehensive "users guide" to wikibooks, encompassing all facets of what we do here. In the short term, I would like this book to become a suitable replacement for the current help pages, so that we can tell new users to "read this book" instead of telling them that they should "read the help pages", which is a daunting task.

The book is separated into sections by job: Editing, Reading, Writing, and Administering. The idea here is that different people can quickly find the information that they want to find, based on what goal they have in mind. For instance, if the question is "How do i start a new book", you would read the section "The Wikibooks Writer".

In the short term, I do not intend this book to replace the help pages. I have not moved, nor merged any help pages into this book (mostly because most help pages are such low quality), and I have also not deleted nor redirected any help pages. Once this book, and hopefully others like it, become more useful, we can talk about replacing one with the other.

Also, I have created a new bookshelf for this and other types of wiki-related material: Help bookshelf. If people would like to write other books related to MediaWiki, or Wikibooks specifically, we can write them there.

It is my hope that all Wikibookians can contribute at least a little bit of information to this project, based on your individual specialties. If we have the expert vandal fighters, the expert authors, the expert copyeditors, etc all writing about their specialities, we will have a wonderful learning resource for future wikibookians. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:41, 30 August 2007 (UTC)