Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2007/March

Habermas Commentary
Beginning with the link to "Habermas Commentary" on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory, I have taken a few fledgling steps toward creating a wikibook. If someone has time to comment, repair, or otherwise render constructive advice or assistance, I would appreciate it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Raywood (talk • contribs) 04:29, 1 Mar 2007 (UTC)


 * The text looks fascinating. One suggestion: please read our Naming policy. I noticed that the subpages you created are not in a "subpage" system. That's no big problem; just click "move" at the top of each subpage (being the "contents," each "volume," "section," etc. page) and move it into a name that is more appropriate. If you have questions, feel free to come back. BTW, I really appreciate your notice Note: do not post excerpts directly from Habermas's writings. They will continue to be protected by copyright for some years to come. Instead, just refer to specific pages and indicate the text on which you are offering commentary. I have dealt with many copyright issues on Wikibooks, so I heartily approve! :) Finally, nice to see a new contributor! --Iamunknown 16:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words, and also for your patience. Sorry for the first of my many anticipated errors (saving faux pas and gaffes, which begin with F and G, for later). I see the notice on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary telling me that I use deprecated naming policy, but I don't know what that means. (There's no reference to "deprecate" on the Naming policy page. But I assume it just means unapproved.)  But I did find a link to the Harry Potter thing, whose deep hierarchical structure appears most suited for this project. I'm not sure how to delete pages. I've got duds at:
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Contents
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Vol._2:_Lifeworld_and_System
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/V._The_Paradigm_Shift_in_Mead_and_Durkheim
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/3._Rational_Structure_of_the_Linguistification_of_the_Sacred
 * http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistification_of_the_Sacred

And now I see I've created new pages without putting "Habermas Commentary" in the file name. I don't know how to fix that. Also, my new page titles are terrible. "2/5/3." Whatever! But I've got to knock off for the night. Thanks again.
 * --raywood

No problemo. :) I didn't realize Wikibooks:Naming policy didn't have a mention of now-obsolete naming conventions. See Naming conventions for examples of obsolete conventions. (It doesn't mention there that they are obsolete, but mentions at the top the whole page is obsolete ... and those conventions are obsolete nonetheless.)

For your "dud" pages (also called "orphan" pages), if you do not need them anymore, just tag them with Also, if you create a page (often called a "module") and you want to rename it, just click "move" at the top of the webpage and type the new name you want to use.

So for TCA2/5 and TCA2/5/3, go those modules, at the top of the webpage click the tab that says "move," and change the name for the "To new title:" box from TCA/2/5 to Habermas Commentary/TCA/2/5 and change TCA/2/5/3 to Habermas Commentary/TCA/2/5/3

Finally, you can sign your posts with four tildes ~. Where you would normal type "-- raywood", just type "--~"

Hope this helps! Come back if you have any more questions. --Iamunknown 06:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * All very helpful. Thanks!  Now a new question.  How can I change the title of a page?  For example, I might want the title of http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary/Books/TCA1 to be "Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1"  -- Raywood


 * To change the title of the page, you click the "move" tab at the top of teh page, and type in the new page title in the box. For instance, in your example above, you would type "Theory of Communicative Action/Vol 1", and then click the button to move. If you have trouble with this, please let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Two questions:


 * (1) I want my pages to have short relatively URLs. Example:  http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary/Books/TCA2.  This is what the wiki automatically presents as the title for the page, on the first line of the visible page.  It's a beautiful URL, but it's a lousy title.  What I would actually like readers to see, on the first line of the visible page, would include the full name of the book under discussion.  That is, instead of TCA, the visible title should say, "The Theory of Communicative Action, volume 1:  Reason and the Rationalization of Society."  My question is, how can I change the visible title to this longer version, without simultaneously making the URL much longer?


 * (2) A reader tells me that the tables I have posted on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary/Books/TCA1, or possibly TCA2, are not displaying properly. I can't figure out why not.  I did have a problem seeing those tables initially, but now I'm not -- so I can't proofread them.  Could someone talk a look and tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks! Raywood


 * Regarding point (2), the first table on TCA1 had an errant extra cell in the first data row; removed. Webaware talk 23:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding "Featured Book" or restarting Book of the Month
I know there was some opposition to the book of the month feature, but it seems like the rationale for removing it from the front page was mainly to encourage building some more infrastructure to Wikibooks instead of concentrating on just content development. I believe that we need to focus back onto that content development instead. The real question here, then, is what should we do to "feature" a particularly good Wikibook, and how can those be identified?

I will accept that the collaboration of the month tended to be "Book of the Month II", and that may be quite a bit more legitmately left alone.

I also understand that, realistically, there are only a few Wikibooks that are really of outstanding quality and really deserve some sort of feature status on the main page.

Here are some proposals to featuring good books:


 * Simply restarting and resuming the "Book of the Month" such as we had going most of last year. One positive aspect of this is that it did help in identifying some relatively obscure Wikibooks that otherwise would have gone unnoticed.  It was also very "democratic" in the sense that it was chosen by regular Wikibookians and not some exclusive committee.


 * Putting on a rotating "Book of the day" that would repeat itself every week. This would eliminate the need to constantly struggle to get the main page fixed on the first day of the month (a serious problem with the BotM feature), but still allow a significant feature and have the content of the main page to be fresh when new users come and visit Wikibooks.  The rotating templates could be updated or changed depending on new Wikibooks that have reached a certain level of quality, and it could be expanded potentially to a new book for every day in the month, if there are that many Wikibooks to display.

I would like to see some additional suggestions here, but focusing in on one book would be a good thing, from my perspective. --Rob Horning 20:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The new proposed layout of the main page at Main Page/test has something similar, where good books will be featured using rotating templates. I've proposed the use of a new goodbook template to display books in this format. People can use this template to highlight books right on the relevant bookshelf (as I have already done on the engineering bookshelf with two books). Once the templates are filled out, it would be a trivial task for a wikibookian (or even a bot) to find them and add them to the rotation for the main page.
 * The best method that I think we have for keeping track of good books is the Featured books page, although that page could also stand to be cleaned up (perhaps with a set of rotating templates of it's own?). Unlike BOTM, books can be added to the featured books page at any time, not just at the beginning of a month.
 * I've created a general set of guidelines at Good books that we can use to help with the selection and judging process. At the moment that page is formatted like a "wikiproject", but it would be a simple enough matter to make it a proposal for a new guideline instead, if that's what the community wanted (otherwise people can just join the wikiproject!). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * One thing that might be useful here to also help out is to restart our book quality classification system. Wikipedia is using the "FA,A,B,C,Start,Stub" system with some very high standards to be considered either "A-class" or "FA-class" (with FA class meaning it has appeared on the front page of Wikipedia).  Some of the early FA articles have even been downgraded afterward to drive the point home.


 * Here on Wikibooks we have been using the per cent (%) complete icons that were used along a similar line of thought, but it has been some time since these have been seriously reviewed, particularly since the massive list of Wikibooks was taken off of the front page. Perhaps adding a template to the "main page" of each Wikibook and have that template automatically add these books to various categories?  --Rob Horning 22:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * User:Darklama has developed a series of templates that change over time. the system isn't perfect because of cache performance, but if we were talking about changes over months it would be less of a problem. We could have a template that would mark a book as being a "good book" (similar to the old botm template), and have the status expire after 12 months so that old books would have to maintain the same standards as new books. FA, A, B and C designations might not work great here, because it is difficult to give a book a single measure of it's quality. We could, however, comeup with a label system similar to the Jung topology test: FROP would be featured, good prose, good formatting, and a PDF version. This is a very slipshod example, of course, but the effect is well-illustrated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As an addendum, a series of small icons, similar (if not the same) as those used in the infobox template could be used as a quick and graphical way to express the merits of a particular book. The same stage graphics that we have been using could easily be incorporated into such a scheme. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think BOTM was abandoned because there wasn't enough community involvement, not because there were "more important things to do". I'd like to see it revived, but I'm not sure how we can get more people involved. Maybe that's what we should be thinking about? -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree. BOTM was good when it was created, but wikibooks is large enough now to be beyond such a slow and rigid system. Books that are quality should not have to wait for the next month to be recognized as such, and books which are genuinely good should not be put head-to-head in a vote, but instead all accepted at once. If there are no good books to promote, we shouldnt be promoting any. Likewise, if there are 10 good books worth of recognition, we should list them all. I envision a system similar to RFA, where quality books can be nominated, voted on by the community, and then promoted without any arbitrary timeframes, and without saying "Well, X was promoted, so Y cannot be". If we put the effort into revamping Featured books and stabilizing Good books that we would waste on reviving BOTM (or creating a close analog), we would all be much better off. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


 * What we are trying to avoid doing on the "Main Page", however, is to avoid getting it cluttered up again. This has been a recurring issue where as the project grows we end up having a very real manifestation of "instruction creep" that is obviously displayed on this page.  If we do have a featured book, only one should be displayed at a time, even if we do put it into some sort of rotation system as I mentioned above.  Still, I like your system you are proposing where a book would go before a featured book review (or a positive version of the VfD page) where interested Wikibookians could give a positive or negative review on that book.  It still has the potential of sock puppetry becoming an issue, but I think that can be kept under control for the most part.  There certainly are a small handful of books I would consider to be worthy of this sort of attention right now, and it will act as a platform to raise standards, where books which havn't been improved for some time could be "re-examined" to see if they fit the new higher standards.  --Rob Horning 00:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * (reset) I dont think sockpuppetry would be that big an issue here as it was on occasion with BOTM. People had to get high numbers of votes on BOTM, or risk losing the title for an entire month or more. Here, there would be no restrictions on time, so there would be less urgency for a particular book community to "push through" a particular book. It would serve as an excellent counterpoint to VfD discussions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Climatology online text
Is there wikipedia online text covering the science of climatology as well or instead of the politics of global warming? 69.145.72.216 19:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Back / Next
Is there a specific method to adding Back/Next links for pages. I've seen it a couple different ways; Some pages have them at the top, some on the bottom, both for others, and some are completely different. Are they even required - I searched the guides but can't seem to find anything on the subject... --Jimmyatic 21:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is no specific method of doing this, as you have already seen each book tends to do it a little differently. There are a list of usable templates at Template_messages/Navigation, or you can feel free to create your own templates for each book. If you are unsure about how to make your own template, or if you dont want to spend the effort, you can certainly use one of the generic ones. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Assume good faith
I did not realize until recently that this was only a proposal, and not an actual guideline. I can see no reason why the current text of this proposal should not be made into an official guideline. We already follow this rule, so it should not be that big of a leap. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Seems like a good candidate for tightening up the prose to me. It seems too long and mentions a lot of things that are only peripherally related to assuming good faith. I would start by scratching all of the bullet points. -- xixtas talk 00:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And here I was thinking that formalizing this would not be that big of a deal! If people really want to make improvements to it, i won't say no. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

WB:RFA Nominations
I have nominated 4 new users for adminship, User:Iamunknown, User:Xixtas, User:Jomegat, and User:Webaware. I dont feel that we've had any nominations in a long time, and we need to ensure a constant inflow of new admins to fill the ranks as old admins get fed up and leave this place. I encourage these 4 nominees to either accept or decline their nominations (hopefully accept), and then I encourage all wikibookians to cast votes in these discussions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Unnecessary input
In the book category of "Religion and Their Sources" ch.6 stuff is written that denotes someone's opinion "My dissaticfaction..." and I believe it shouldn't be there. No matter how anyone feels in their convictions or "dissatisfactions" about certian things the articles written in Wikibooks are there to inform the reader of what life is. Anyone can write the same things about other things on this web site. I have a "dissatisfaction" with a lot of Rock and Roll celebreties that are ruining the minds of our youth but that doesn't change the course of history and I can't stop the World Wide Web from printing stuff about them on their sites.


 * Be Bold. If you see something you don't like, change it! If you need help knowing how to edit articles let me know. Regards, Mattb112885 03:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Linking contents listing to recipe
How do I link the contents to the new section & recipe I just entered? Vis; Cookbook, contents; Figgie obbin. (new section) cakes (new recipe) Figgie obbin recipe. I think I'm missing something obvious --Archolman 03:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * G'day, I've moved the page into the Cookbook: namespace, under the name of the recipe, so you will now find it as Cookbook:Figgie 'obbin. I also tagged it as a recipe with recipe, and put it into a couple of recipe categories so that people will find it. If you go back to it now and click on the "edit this page" link, you'll see how I've done all that.
 * Incidentally, you'll often get the attention of another Cookbook editor by asking on the Cookbook talk page; just click on "Cookbook" in the navigation links on the left, and go to "discussion" at the top of the Cookbook front page. cheers, Webaware talk 12:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Featured books/Nominations
I'm seeking community acceptance of the policies that I created on this page. I think I captured the essence of what was said previously about trying to get a series of featured books that could be voted upon by the rank and file of Wikibookians, but get rid of some of the problems that the "Book of the Month" feature created.

I am not saying that these procedures are graven in stone at the moment, and since this is a whole new concept perhaps other ways of dealing with this can be created. Still, I think this is the next step for putting some sort of featured content back onto the main page, and help to keep this from becoming some cabalistic editorial board.

In the next couple of days, I would like to put some of the first of these books onto the main page, unless there is a serious objection. I will be seeding this list with mainly books that have achieved the "Book of the Month" status previou. sly unless there are already several ready to go on this nomination page. Books that have already been added to other "featured books" lists would also be eligible for rapid acceptance to those books which have ths featured book status.

For now, all I'm suggesting here is that a Wikibook is either "Featured" or "Not Featured", although we can come up with more "grades" to classify Wikibooks in the future including some of the current systems. --Rob Horning 22:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * BTW, I've also created Template:Featured Books that would be used to help with the rotation of Wikibooks. At the moment, I'm using the current day of the month to determine which book will be featured, and an addtional template, Template:FEATURENUM which is being used to count (manually) the number of featured books and can be treated like a variable.  I would appreciate helping with some of the other formatting of this template to match a little closer what the theme is on the Main Page, but it is a start.


 * I chose this method so we could grow the number of featured books and not have to worry about running out of days of the week, or having to have a specific number of books. Ideally, I would like to see perhaps a Julian Date to be used, but that is going to require a Bugzilla request as that number is not currently calculated by MediaWiki.  I don't think anybody has even thought of the idea in the past to use templates in this way.  --Rob Horning 23:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The nominations page and the template are nice, and I think they will work well. A good starting point for us will be to do quick reviews of the books already listed at Featured books. There is no sense in nominating books that are already on the list, but at the same time we can prune books off that don't meet the criteria any longer. I agree with the binary designation, I dont think there are many good ways to "grade" books beyond that.
 * As an aside, the Editorial board that I proposed wouldn't really have dealt with this kind of issue, instead focusing on publishing and distributing books (so the term "publishing board" might have been a better name). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW, I really like the idea of a group of Wikibooks users that are perhaps a little more proficient at doing content editing as opposed to content writing. That is two very different skills, and a good book editor is something that can make or break a book perhaps even more than the author in the first place... and the editor is usually unmentioned as well in most cases.  I was more trying to discourage something like an editorial board found in a newspaper office that has control over content regarding what can or can't be seen.  That idea, the strong central control board, doesn't belong on a Wiki such as this which openly encourages people to join in and contribute, where the distinctions between one user and another ought to be minimal.  --Rob Horning 01:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, thank you for the clarification. I had tried to make the Good books a "wikiproject" in an attempt to drive up interest. Needless to say, that didn't work. If people would vote without making any other committments, as a wikiproject would have required, that i think will get the most people involved. Of course, we run the risk that this is something that maybe this is something nobody cares about. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Your site
Love your site! It's very resourceful. Thank you for making it available. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.130.203.190 (talk • contribs) 13:49, 8 Mar 2007 (UTC)


 * Glad you like it, feel free to edit it as you see fit! Mattb112885 (talk) 14:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Advantages and Disadvantages of Wikibooks vs. Publishing
I'm writing another book. This time it's on the Internet instead of a paperback. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wireless_Mesh_Networks

I've debated the merits of writing a book collaboratively online versus writing it for a publisher with a co-author for a while. However, there are a couple of factors that convinced me to try writing a wikibook: 1) Time to market - by the time a technical book from a publisher hits the shelf, it's almost obsolete. With a wikibook, people can start reading material as soon as it hits the Internet.

2) There are no easy way to correct books in print, or update them.

With a wikibook, it can be fixed quickly and acurately.

3) With a really popular technical book, you might only sell about 10,000 - 50,000 copies. The money is not all that big.  The royalties are only a couple of bucks out of the big $50 shelf price.  While the royalties are a little incentive, I believe that getting something out in circulation is much more important.  Dissemination of knowledge is more important that cash sometimes.

4) With a publisher, your copyrights are signed away. You don't have the right over your own material once it's published.  You can't take your own work and modify it to fit into another book.  With wikibooks, your rights are preserved with copyleft schemes such as GNU Free Documentation Licence and Creative Commons.  There is also something to be said about the Public Domain.  But the best part, you have the right to stand on someone else's shoulders - to build on someone else's work.

5) A published book is on paper. If you are teaching a class, all students will all have an identical copy.  Actually not.  I've sat through many classes where half of the class had a used older edition and handouts had to made for the corrections.  Also, the bookstore ran out of the books, so if you did not buy early, it was not available and had to be special ordered from the bookstore.

With a wikibook, if it's needed on paper for teaching a class or something, it can be published by www.lulu.com, kinkos, staples or a dozen other places. Maybe wikibooks can offer such a service to print books to help defray the cost of running the online library.

The only misgiving I have is that wikibooks may not be an accepted way of publishing anything for the sake of a resume. Essentially, a URL may not be as good of a calling card in some people's mind as an ISBN number. Once the work is published in a hard medium - paper, CD... it gets an ISBN anyway. Maybe that's one of the incentives.

Am I missing something?  kgrr talk15:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you hit it square on here. And as you mentioned, writing content here on Wikibooks does not stop you from republishing this content elsewhere.  And if you only stick to contributions you make, or with agreement of others that work with you, you can even republish this under licenses other than the GFDL, including things as nearly opposite like the Microsoft EULA.  As you mention here, this is a freedom that normally doesn't exist in the traditional book publishing world.


 * On the flip side, I would warn people that try to publish here first that a traditional publisher may treat some of what we do here with either bewilderment due to its novelty, or even out right hostility. Certainly this is something that directly threatens many publishing business models, and there are economic reasons to try and oppose content creation such as does occur on Wikimedia projects.  While we strive to remove this stigma, some publishers may look upon Wikibooks as a sort of vanity publisher, with the view that such authors are tainted and not worth serious consideration.  This may or may not be an issue for some people trying to get involved here.


 * As far as the physical publication of Wikibooks content, this is something that requires some fairly substantial up front capital in order to make Wikibooks to be comparable or cheaper than traditional books. This is something I have spent quite a bit of time and effort in trying to work on, and it hasn't been easy.  Nothing personal against Lulu, Kinkos, or other publishers, but for low volume print runs their prices are too high and discourage people from taking risks.  If you want to have a personal copy of a Wikibook that you have labored over and spending $40-$50 USD for a single copy, they aren't a bad place to start.  But when competing against major publishers who through high volume sales can reduce a price of their books of similar quality and content to about $5-$10 USD per book (and make a profit!), it is very difficult for us to compete.


 * We are currently in a chicken or egg situation where neither the egg has been laid nor the chicken is around. Somehow we need to be able to take some of the already outstanding content and turn this into something that can be handed to actual readers.  The efforts to create PDF files for several Wikibooks are certainly one very significant step in this direction, but the next step, of distributing the content outside of the circle of internet websites, is going to be a little bit harder.  About the only benchmark we have to compare what the potential market for Wikibooks might be is to use the Alexa web page ratings (or something similar that counts the number of visitors to Wikibooks).  The Alexa rating has stagnated with Wikibooks ranking somewhere in the range of being in the top 3000-4000 websites in the world (with usual disclaimers about Alexa ratings).  This is not the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects combined, but just Wikibooks including all other language editions of Wikibooks.


 * BTW, in regards to the ISBN numbers..... hold on. This is something that will happen shortly for Wikibooks in a big way, but it is going to be something that may take some patience.  If there is an educational philanthropy organization that may be wanting to help out with getting published books derived from Wikibooks, it would be useful to note that here on the Staff Lounge.  Supposedly we did have such a grant for the Wikijunior books, but I have not recieved any accounting of where the money actually went, other than into the huge abyss of the Wikimedia server farm.  I'm not saying that the Wikimedia Foundation is corrupt, nor that the need for maintaining the servers is cheap (it isn't!), but some things were promised back elsewhen that have unfortunately hurt the physical publishing effort.  --Rob Horning 16:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks Rob. Remember eggs existed before chickens!  (Dinosaurs had eggs)  In the same way, you have to have content to publish before you can publish.  I will work on some useful content.  Perhaps someday it will be easy to order books in print from Wikibooks. kgrr  talk21:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Image_needed image
Does anyone know of an image on the commons that would say something like "Image Needed"? In several chapters of Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book - such as Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Poultry, I have a section where I used a Breed_id template which is something like a Wikipedia taxobox, but more tailored to my needs.

I have not been able to find appropriately licensed images of some of the chicken breeds that are called for. Instead of having an image, the best I could do (short of buying a Wyandotte chicken and photographing it myself) is provide links to web sites that do have the images. However, this is far from satisfying.

What would be better than just having links to unusable images is to have an image that petitions the reader - something to the effect of "We need an image of this - if you have one, please upload it." That would be useful on Wikipedia as well - such as in a taxobox with no image. As a bonus, a "what links here" page for that image could be placed somewhere prominent so that people who just want to be helpful (perhaps by buying and photographing chickens) would have a place to check for requests. -- Jim Thomas 03:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I found one on the commons similar to what I was asking for:


 * I might start using it - but I still think it'd be better to make the plea more explicit, and I don't really want a picture of a ladybug in the background. I think whoever made this was facing a situation very similar to mine.  I do think that having a generic image like this would be useful - especially with a "what links here" page. -- Jim Thomas 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I would change the wording to emphasise the need for freely licensed images.Otherwise people will just go to google images and replace it with whatever copyvio they find. pfctdayelise 00:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good point. I have not yet attempted to wordsmith the message, but I agree that licensing should be a part of it.  I'm still astounded by the amount of copyvio text I get "contributed" to my projects - in spite of the bold text above every "Save page" button.  Should this "image needed" idea go on meta.wikimedia.org where it would have a more global impact? -- Jim Thomas 00:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I added a caption to the image above... would that help? -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Persian Language Learning Template
I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to help create the Lessons navigation template for the Persian Language Wikibook please. I can't get the two rows to sit directy above one another, one aligns left and the other right. Can anyone tell me what is going wrong? It's at Template:Persian. Thanks :-D Poppy 22:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Try now. Webaware talk 22:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It's like magic. :-D Poppy 23:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

A Puzzle for the Mathamatically Inclined
I have an interesting challenge for those Wikibookians who want to try and come up with an interesting algorithm that can be used for the rotation of featured Wikibooks:

Right now, I'm using the formula of

JULIANDATE mod FEATURENUM

to determine what Wikibook will appear as the current featured book of the day.

Here is the dilemma. When the value in FEATURENUM is modified (due to adding new books into the rotation), the resulting calculation will reshuffle all of the existing rotation in a seemingly random fashion. BTW, this is nearly the same algorithm that is currently employed for most implementations of psuedo random number generators, so there is more than coincidence here that it would seem random when changed.

What would be nice to have is some way to keep the existing featured wikibook when the number of featured books changes, and merely tack on the new featured books onto the end of the rotation. It should also be something that would be of very low maintainence in terms of day to day operations of Wikibooks. The idea here is that if the number of featured Wikibooks changes frequently (more than a couple of times per week, for instance), it is likely that some supposedly "featured Wikibooks" will never make it onto the list just because of holes in the mathamatical sequence that is finally generated by the above algorithm.

The above formula is more than likely going to be sufficient for a limited number of featured books, but I can envision a time in the future where that may not be the case. I would at least like to have somebody else think about some alternative approach to accomplish this same goal. --Rob Horning 17:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This would not work if we had to change it manually, but if we can have it done automatically, do we need to have it last for a day? If not we could just do it per hour or something so that the randomness doesn't have as much of an effect, i.e.

(24*juliandate) mod featurenum


 * This is, of course, beating around the bush. Mattb112885 (talk) 18:08, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Since the method of calclation of the JULIANDATE template I created (much simplier than the Wikipedia version) uses the UNIX timestamp for calculations, giving us the Year 2038 problem (we can only hope Wikibooks last that long!), changing this to hours is trivial in this situation. Still, as you said, this only pushes back the timeframe that this would become an issue, not a real solution to the problem.  --Rob Horning 20:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think what he was suggesting is that if we have a lot of books that qualify, rotating every hour would mean that books would have a fair chance of being on there more often, since a random rotation might make 1 out of 100 books only appear every 700 days :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 21:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I do get the argument about the hourly rotation, as with 100 featured Wikibooks it is unlikely that they would be reshuffled every 100 hours (about 4-5 days) due to new Wikibooks being added, but it may still be an issue eventually. I would have to do a solid mathamatical analysis, but it wouldn't be that even in this case the featured book would appear only once every 700 hours, but rather that some would keep reappearing repeatedly and others wouldn't even be seen at all, just due to their position in the list and the fact that the offset keeps changing.  What positions keep repeating and what parts remain hidden is determinstic in nature, but a complex enough problem that it isn't worth worrying about for an individual book.


 * Pushing this from a daily book problem to an hourly problem is just a "hack", and not a proper solution this this issue, or only a short-term fix at best.


 * One possible "solution" would be to reset the start date of the "Julian Date" algorithm to when the sequence began, but this is a bit more "manual editing" that would require an additional "variable" that would have to be updated when new featured books are added. This wouldn't be hard to explain in a protocol document, but it is also one more thing to mess up.  --Rob Horning 14:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

short_stage template
The short_stage template was changed today to use svg instead of png graphics. Unfortunately, this broke my book in a very unpleasant way. I was not using the short_stage template EXACTLY as it was supposed to be used. I had created a Now_work.png graphic, which is a 9x9 transparent box. I have been using that as an argument to short_stage to indicate that no work has been done writing answers for the honors in my Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book, though the honor requirements are all in place. I use 00% to indicate that less than 25% of the answers have been written, but more than 0%.

On my index pages, (such as Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature) I use the No_work graphic to line all the honors up - they all have a short_stage macro to the left. I made an ill-fated attempt to create a 9x9 transparent svg, but it ended up being more like 256x256. Didn't notice that until I uploaded the graphic. Now my index pages are completely hosed. Is there anyone out there who can make a transparent 9x9 box as an svg? -- Jim Thomas 02:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Try this one. Let me know if I need to modify it at all. Webaware talk 02:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I've uploaded a 9x9 transparent SVG to commons, over the top of your Image:No work.svg. Webaware talk 02:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * And over mine. :) --Iamunknown 02:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks. While I was waiting, I made a stoopid version of stage_short called stage_short_png.  I went through a couple of my index pages and replaced all the stage_short templates with the new one (I've reverted again now).  Now that it's fixed, maybe someone can delete stage_short_png?  And maybe I should adjust the patience threshold. -- Jim Thomas 02:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Just tag it with delete and pass in a reason. Sorry, Iamunknown, the tortoise beats the hare again ;-) Webaware talk 02:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Bird_id Template troubles
Hi everyone,

I have written a template Template:Bird id that I'm having a bit of trouble with. There is a named parameter called "description", and no matter what I do, the template insists on putting the description text in bold.

Here's an example:

Another thing I would like to do to this template is conditionally add an icon for an audio file (assuming I can find bird call audio on the commons). I'd also like to change the layout depending on how many of the four image arguments are included. I have room for image_male, image_female, image_juvenile, and range_map. If all four are specified, I'd like a 2x2 grid of the images. If any two are specified, I'd like them to show up side-by-side. If one or three... I'm undecided and solicit input. Perhaps have the description and an image side-by-side, or perhaps scale the width of the images and have them three-across.

I know that's asking a lot, but I'm trying to put together a mini-field guide, and if we can get this tweaked nicely, I could see building on it for other field guidish modules as well. Thanks for any help you can render! -- Jim Thomas 01:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You had the description text as a cell heading by starting the line with a bang (!). Now fixed. Webaware talk 01:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! -- Jim Thomas 01:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Nice template! Some "identification quiz" templates are in use on Wikiversity: Plant_identification/Symplocarpus_foetidus... I can help you make some for animal identification if you're interested. -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'll see what I can do to add to this template to make the changes you talked about. What image do you want to use as an audiofile icon? I'll pick one at random now, and we can work on a better one later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks to everyone who has worked on this. Your efforts are greatly appreciated! WK, the icon you choose is more than sufficient.  I'm going to leave it as is.  -- Jim Thomas 01:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

wikia.com - wat is the difference between this and wikipedia !
wikia.com << wat is the difference between this and wikipedia !


 * Wikia is a commercial wiki project and so features advertising. There are also more specialised categories which makes Wikia suitable for some topics which are currently not allowed on Wikipedia or Wikibooks, etc. (like game guides and fiction). Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 19:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikia was started by Jimbo Wales, just as Wikipedia was, and there are many people who have been active contributors to Wikimedia projects (like Wikibooks and Wikipedia) who are also very active contributors on Wikia, so I can understand a source of your confusion here. Wikia is also noted for being much more open about creating new Wiki projects, as all you really need to have is just a very good idea and they will likely let you start the project.  Things like fiction and original academc research are examples of projects that have been very difficult to start as a Wikimedia project which Wikia didn't even hesitate to get started.


 * Since they are not Wikimedia sister projects, there really isn't any special distinction they have over any other Wiki or even conventional website as far as Wikibooks is concerned. We do mention a few Wikia sites explicitly on Wikibooks mainly to suggest alternatives when there are regular sorts of contributors who do show up on Wikibooks asking about specific kinds of content.


 * A small portion of what Wikia earns does go back to the Wikimedia Foundation to help support financially this website, and Wikia in the past has also offered technical and server bandwidth to help support the Foundation as well. So there are some additional ties to Wikipedia, but they are more indirect and certainly something that any other group could also do to help this and other Wikimedia projects.  --Rob Horning 20:07, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's like asking what is the difference between Google and Yahoo? different websites with different goals, even if they are both based on "wiki" technology. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

PDF Versions?
These textbooks are great, but suppose I wanted to print out a text book. It'd be nice if we had some type of functionality built into Wikibooks such that when you click "Get PDF Version", it would output the entire Wikibook into PDF form, complete with copyright pages, TOC, index and cover pages. This could be done using standard algorithms that just parsed the mark-up. Cool, eh?! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.229.113.106 (talk • contribs).
 * This is something that perhaps ought to be put on a FAQ page instead. Yes, creating a PDF file directly from Wikisyntax would be a fun and interesting project.  Unfortunately, like so many other things, what we do here is done with volunteer labor.  And to do a whole Wikibook you would have to do markup for more than just one "module", but to do so for a whole range of modules, and there are other considerations as a PDF file is more or less a way to make a "printed" version as well.  There are also legal requirements, such as including the GFDL that would have to be done as well, not to mention a way to scan all of the modules that are included and to try and list all of the authors who have contributed to that content.


 * Some of these issues havn't been completely decided yet either. Who is an author of a Wikibook?  Certainly somebody who has been very active in content development and has dozens or hundreds of edits would count, but what about people who are good copy editors and have helped clean up grammar and spelling?  How about blatant vandals who deliberately try to mangle and deface the pages?  How do you identify which type of contributor has made an edit?  It may seem obvious to you who are human and can tell the differences, but how do you automate that sort of decision making?  It isn't as easy as you may think, and would be a very complicated computer algorithm, especially when dealing with all of the subtle exceptions.


 * The other aspect is merely the technical side of even converting HTML to a PDF format. You can do that simply enough, but the resulting document will frankly be something absolutely awful to look at and to read if you use the typical converter programs that are available at the moment.  I've done some conversions myself from the Wikibook pages by using Open Office, but when I have imported the web pages, there is still considerable room for reformating that is necessary.  And sometimes there are some elements that are specific to the on-line nature of this project that simply don't translate to a printed document easily, if at all.  If you edit the imported HTML by hand, you can make these decisions easily enough, but trying to automate that decision making is not trivial.


 * Writing a very good Wikisyntax to PDF converter is certainly something that in the long term would be an excellent project to work on. It is also something that will take years and years of effort by very highly trained individuals who have the technical expertise necessary to get this task done and must be done by volunteer contributors.  Do you have the skills and the time/money necessary to help out here?  --Rob Horning 16:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well... I agree it is a project that takes time! I'm working on a wiki to pdf converter based on latex to get a good presentation, but it is far from finished ( http://wikipdf.sourceforge.net/ ). In the meantime, you can use Magnus' online tool (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php ) to do the conversion (you can contribute to wikipdf too if you know python). CyrilB 21:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It still looks like a poorly formated webpage that has been transformed in an automated process... at least most versions that I've seen of stuff like this. I am not commenting on this particular software here, but these are two very different formats, and they don't translate too easily from one to the other.  I look at this similar to something like an automated machine language translation software:  It works reasonably well to give a native speaker of the target language something to work with and clean up without having to know the original laguage of the content..  I certainly wouldn't want to rely upon the machine translation to give you the finished product.

With this regard, having a LaTEX converter would be a good first step to helping clean up the various pages when they are imported into PDF files, but I'm pointing out that at best it is going to some stuff that simply must be edited by hand. --Rob Horning 06:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Can I get unique articles of Computer Networking
Hi there,

I want to contact with the computer networking writers.

I am looking for help that how can I contact them directly?

Any help will be highly appreciated. Regards Bushra


 * ''— Answered at the Study help desk — Iamunknown 17:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for a games policy
See Game Books. This issue keeps resurfacing every few months, and we never seem to get anywhere on it. Included is a policy about Video Games and RPGs, which are banned on at least some of the other-language Wikibooks projects and have in practice been more or less banned here as well. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Why is a whole new guideline being proposed instead of working with Game textbook guidelines? It is an approach to take, and perhaps from a certain perspective it may be useful to try to address the issue from a totally new direction, since the current approach has failed miserably.


 * I have specific objections to some aspects of this proposal, but I'll take that up on the appropriate talk page. If this proposal is accepted, I would like to push the original game textbook guidelines as a failed or rejected policy instead, and left as a historical footnote.  --Rob Horning 20:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Honestly, I didn't even know about that policy. It's apples and oranges though... that policy seems to be more about quality standards, and the trend of late has been to be rather tolerant of stubs. the sentence "A useful question to ask is "Will my textbook be useful to non-gamers as well as gamers?". If you can say yes, then that is indicative that the textbook may be able to stay." captures a lot, however... I think books about the history, culture, and (perhaps) economics of gaming would be a wonderful addition. -- SB_Johnny | talk 20:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think alot of people make the assumption that any book about videogames is against policy. This is not the case, we can have plenty of books about videogames (history of, how to make, critical understanding of themes, etc), just not how to play videogames. Similarly, we could have a book about the history and effects of pornography, but not a simple pornographic book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yet banning all video game books is precisely what is being proposed here, and what is being said on the Administrator's Noticeboard as well as what has been said on numerous VfD discussions (that it is already policy that there are no video game books allowed). --Rob Horning 08:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I did not realize that change was being made. Under the current text of WB:AT, books about videogames are allowed in some circumstances:
 * it may be possible to annotate a motion picture, a video game, or a musical song/album. Such cases might be permitted under this policy if they are shown to be academic and well-written.
 * Anything being proposed against the fact has a very hard uphill battle ahead of it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Template on discussion page
On Wikipedia there is often a template on the discussion pages saying "# Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (Poppy 17:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)). # Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.". There is an example of it here: []. I was wondering if there is a similar template available for Wikibooks as I saw quite a few comments on the book I was editing with no signature. Poppy 17:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

A (northern) springtime update on Wikimedia projects
As the weather turns to the warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, I wanted to remind everyone of all the wiki-projects out there having to do with plants.

On Wikiversity, there are some budding projects, including the Bloom Clock and Plant Identification. The Bloom Clock is a "research project anyone can contribute to", where contributors can record any flowers they see blooming on any particular day and in any particular region, with the eventual goal of creating a database of bloom times that will be informative both about the plants themselves and the regions they grow in. The Plant Identification project is aimed at creating learning materials for students of horticulture, botany, and agriculture by creating quizzes that make use of the vast resource of photographs on Wikimedia Commons.

On Wikimedia Commons, there are always plants needing identification and new images needed. Check in at Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life to see what's going on there.

On Wikibooks, A Wikimanual of Gardening has been growing by leaps and bounds, thanks in no small part to the Import tool, used to copy articles from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of pages (many needing help).

Last but not least, the Plants Wikiproject on Wikipedia is always active, with plenty of friendly and knowledgeable participants who are happy to help you identify photographs or answer questions.

So, while you might not be able to bring Wikimedia to the woodland, meadow, or garden, there are plenty of ways you can use Wikimedia to learn and teach others about the flowering plants which are so welcome a sight after a long cold winter.-- SB_Johnny | talk 18:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

History of Wikibooks
This is a general call for assistance on this project. I've been doing some general research into the very early history of this project... particularly trying to find out what motivated the creation of this project in the first place (would you believe a VfD?)

If there are any amature (or even professional!) historians who want to help me with trying to dig up the original documents and discussions which formed what is today Wikibooks, I would be very grateful for that assistance. Or help in the collaboration of actually writing this book. I don't believe it will be too large (we aren't even four years old yet), but it is something that I think has some general significance to many of the discussions that we have been having here lately.

Thanks in advance for those who might want to help participate with this project. --Rob Horning 09:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Cookbook/copyright & links issue
A new user has contributed quite a large number of recipes yesterday. They all have links on to a website and are direct copies of the material on the website. If you look at my talk page (& the user's one) you will see that they appear to be connected with the website and assure me that they have permission to publish the material. I have directed them to Commons licensing to see how Wikimedia need the permission confirmed (OTRS presumably).

However the user has also been warned for placing links to the site on many Wikipedia pages (& was blocked for doing so, unblocked on the understanding that they stopped which they did). Therefore I see another issue of attempting to promote the website via Wikibooks and so, whether the content is licensed or not, the links and promotion of the website are unacceptable to me. I have said that I will seek a broader view (& not delete any pages that are currently copyvios and mostly marked) until this is resolved. Thanks -- Herby talk thyme 10:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I added some comments of my own onto this user's web page that I hope explains the copyright situation in friendly terms, and reinforces your comments here as well, Herby. Ideally, this website should explicitly mention that the text (and possibly the video files too!) are available for redistribution under the terms of the GFDL.  I don't know if they are prepared to go that far, as the website doesn't appear to take licensing too seriously.  The terms of use are for the most part "non-commercial use only".  Since Commons discourages (doesn't completely block) video files from being uploaded, having an external source for videos like this may be complimentary to Wikibooks, but asking them to change to the GFDL may be a bit much to ask.  --Rob Horning 11:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think that Robert highlights the only viable path for these recipe pages: either the company in question explicitly permits redistribution of their content under GFDL, or it's all in violation of their copyright. Let's see how the company now responds to your detailed message on Reever2's talk page.
 * On the separate but related subject of external links in these recipe pages, I think that if the copyright issue is resolved, the links should stay. External links should be allowed only if they are directly related to the the book/article/page/recipe and provide additional benefit to the reader, and in this instance, they do so by providing a video of the meal being prepared. Webaware talk 05:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think as Robert said, there terms of use would have to change to GFDL. Alternatively the the terms of use could allow duel licensing in which GFDL is an acceptable alternative. From what I understand Wikimedia Foundation's position is that "non-commercial use only" is unacceptable. I believe the website to have an even more restrictive policy then that. In addition to obtaining a copy for "non-commercial use only", copying is restricted for "personal use only" and given only for the purpose of obtaining a local copy rather than for redistribution. Which are incompatible with the GFDL. I would say go ahead and delete. If the website later changes their policy to allow their content to be redistributed under the GFDL, than the contents can be readded/undeleted. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 12:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The licensing issue I agree with all said and it can be sorted. However for those it doubt on the intentions regarding the website I think folk should at least look here and at the contribution log etc, something like 100 links to the website in two days and no edits since they agreed not to place links -- Herby  talk thyme 12:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, this is flat out copyvio since you can't duplicate or redistribute "any material on the VideoJug Site except as is strictly necessary for Your own personal non-commercial home use unless otherwise agreed in writing with VideoJug." We can't fairly demand that others comply to our copyrights if we don't comply with theirs. These are all speedy deletes unless VideoJug releases under a free licence. -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This user claims to be an employee of VideoJug, and it appears that all contributions from people external to that company must transfer copyright ownership to VideoJug before it can be seen on that website. I personally think they would be better off relicensing under the GFDL, but that is not my call to make here.  I'll have to see if this individual is going to come back and give us the permission that is needed, as I indicated on his user page.  We can decide (or the main contributors to the Cookbook can decide) if the external links are something that is reasonable.  There is some added value to having links to a video on how to make the recipes, so I think there may be some merit to keeping the links... if we can get copyright permission in the first place. --Rob Horning 18:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure how most cases to verify this are handled. The most straight forward method of verification that I can think of, is simply a matter of the website indicating that the contents can be used under the terms of the GFDL. Isn't this something that the Wikimedia Foundation usually takes care of verifying? I think it would be risky for us to assume to be able to verify it independently. I would have to agree with SB_Johnny, that its an out right copyright violation and so must be speedily deleted. When and if, later it is verified than it can be readded or undeleted, but until then deleting it is required by policy. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 21:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have responsibility over the content of projects.... or so I'm told repeatedly, even though there are some very contradictory issues here. As the copyvio template is quite clear about, any formal permission to use the content must be on the talk page of each module that may have some question as to its copyright status.  And no, we don't need to work through or with the Wikimedia Foundation on this issue.  Certainly if there are any formally signed "copyright permission" letters that have been signed, that they could send them to the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel, but since Brad just resigned I don't know who that might be.  I suppose sending such letters to the WMF office or to Anthere directly would work.... but they would only be agents acting on behalf of the Wikibooks community here.  We could in theory even set up somebody else to receive these letters or establish other policies here.... although the WMF certainly would be easier to work with in this situation.


 * As far as verification of copyright... that is completely up to us as a community to decide how that is done and to do the actual verification of copyright status. While a copyvio is a speedy delete, we do have as written policy (again, see the copyvio template) that we will give the person who adds the content at least a week to try and demonstrate that they do have a license to use the content.  That week certainly hasn't passed yet for these recipes.  This particular individual who is adding this content seems very sincere to me and this is unusual enough that I would like to give him a chance to show he really does have permission to add this stuff.  I don't think he has encountered people like us here on Wikibooks (and Wikipedia) that are as paranoid about copyright on a project that allows anybody to edit, and you have to admit that wiki cultures and communities do have their own unique philosophies on stuff like this if you havn't dealt with this kind of situation before.  --Rob Horning 15:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * reset

The person that does the contribution is responsible by the content he adds, if any challenge is given to that contributions by the community the contributor must provide or extend the info as info on the original works is by default required by the GFDL. I personally have done so in 2 distinct times because of the C++ Programming book, one involved a Java book, I moved the GFDL content to Wikibooks at the time to close the subject and another a challenge that even included a VfD, all challenges were drooped, this types of challenges is a way of the community to protect itself but it can still be based on a user intending to cause trouble or as expression of bad intention as such some care must be given on initiating such actions, even if the community can take preventive action, ultimately the original authors of the works are the only ones that can request a pull down on copyright violation charges and the contributor can probably have legal problems based on his actions. --Panic 15:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Cookbook/copyright & links issue continued
(Tabs reset) I don't think anyone has deleted yet, have they? In any case, whether or not it's a Foundation issue or a WB issue isn't really the issue, unless we want to make a major change and accept things that aren't free. Our mission is to produce free textbooks, whether on Engineering, Physics, the Culinary Arts, or even Horticulture. While we obviously can't rely completely on PD/GFDL/CC sources (for example, I'd guess that a lot of the out-of-copyright cookbooks use an awful lot of lard, and some of the older garden books I've seen often mention Nicotine sulfate, Arsenic, and Cyanide as being wonderful pest controls), wholesale copying from websites that have clear copyright restrictions on how things are used is not at all a good idea. Speedy removal of such material is also quite important, since anyone who comes along later to improve copyvio material are essentially just wasting their efforts, since "derivative works" of copyrighted materials are still copyvios.

We want good, free content. There's plenty of good content around that's not free of course, but we are here to provide good, free content. No matter how good it is, if it's not free, then it's not good for us. -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Worst still is if someone were to duplicate the copyvio content somewhere else under the belief its GFDL material. The website clearly states its copyright, so this isn't a question of whether or not its copyvio or not, so it should be deleted. My suggestions/comments are for what might be able to be done to allow it to be here in the future. I have no problems with people working to try to verify that it can be here, but since the webpage states its copyright, until its verified by whatever means, it needs to be deleted, to prevent copyright problems. Discussion on how to verify it and getting it verified should be done after the current problem of being a copyvio is taken care of --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 16:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It has never been project policy to immediately delete content like this. We are supposed to mark it as a copyvio, and work with those who added the content to see if they really do have permission.  I've done that and it is something currently being resolved. I actually think in this case (unlike most copyvios) that we may actually have the ability for a very large contribution to Wikibooks.  Potentially we could even have a bunch of videos and other multimedia content added here as well.  Please don't flame this individual or push him out, and certainly don't ruin this excellent opportunity to significantly expand and improve Wikibooks.  This sort of flaming is very counter-productive to actually helping create content.  --Rob Horning 16:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Who's flaming? (And who is being flamed?) And since when do we not delete copyvios? -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I never said we do not delete copyvios. We just don't delete them immediately on sight.  It is right there on the template, and that has been the defacto policy for Wikibooks since the template was created.  And I will immediately undelete any such content which has not had a reasonable chance for the contributor to defend why they added it to Wikibooks.  If the contributor doesn't respond (a very typical situation) and some time has passed, it will then be deleted.  I just got through deleting a couple of images and other content from the copyvio cat earlier this week.  There are legitimate reasons to delete copyvios.  I just don't think this one needs to happen immediately.  It will not damage the project if we let a copyvio (clearly makred as such) stick around for a month or two.  The template suggests a minimum of one week.  Is that a problem for you?  --Rob Horning 06:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Robert, calm down. As far as I know, the pages haven't been deleted, but rather we've been discussing whether they should be "speedied". Speedy isn't very speedy around here anyway, and we've been using some other tags (qr-em for example) precisely in order to have some step between speedy delete and VfD. Blatant spam and nonsense creates are speedied on sight, but everyone (including Herby, Darklama, and myself) makes an effort to talk to the contributors before removing content (I even make it a point to notify the "fiction" contributors, so they can save the file locally or find another place for it).


 * Are all the pages marked with copyvio? If that's the case, then no problem... I doubt anyone will try to work further on the content until those issues are settled in any case.


 * We do need to be able to talk to a contributor who might not understand the licensing issues, and even stop them in their tracks if they don't respond (I don't know of that ever having been needed here on Wikibooks, but on Commons we do block people for repeatedly uploading proprietary/unsourced/etc. images without responding to queries (BTW, Herby and I are both Commons administrators, so we deal with this issue a lot more than most admins here), and in fact we even have terrible problems with sockpuppets doing this (particularly with porn)). It's not flaming, it's just an administrator's responsibility to clean up messes that are made, and prevent further messes.-- SB_Johnny | talk 15:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess I'm not understanding why this part of the thread even came up, and why you said "Speedy removal of such material is also quite important, since anyone who comes along later to improve copyvio material are essentially just wasting their efforts, since 'derivative works' of copyrighted materials are still copyvios. " That this was clearly marked as copyvios is true, and even the context as to why we were deciding to keep this content was also quite clear at the beginning of this discussion.  This is not some sort of pornography, and indeed it would be unbelievable that the content we are talking about here would ever be deleted except for the fact that we can clearly identify the original source of this material.  This is not vandalism nor tasteless content being added to Wikibooks.  And the contributor is very clear that he thinks he has copyright permission to add this content, even if we are questioning it.  It is within that framework that I was talking about how we could verify that he is in fact authorized to add this content to Wikibooks.  I am not trying to "make a major change and accept things that aren't free", but try to get what is here that we know about and make that free.  It is these points I'm responding to, together with the comment that it is "Worst still is if someone were to duplicate the copyvio content somewhere else under the belief its GFDL material. The website clearly states its copyright, so this isn't a question of whether or not its copyvio or not, so it should be deleted."  Since this is clearly marked as a copyvio, who is realistically going to modify this and use this elsewhere?  The copyvio template sticks out like such a sore thumb that anybody copying content marked as such ought to be chastized, as the template clearly warns anybody that the GFDL is null and void for that content until the copyright status can be resolved...including by deletion as one form of resolution.  And while "We do need to be able to talk to a contributor who might not understand the licensing issues, and even stop them in their tracks if they don't respond", this particular individual has responded frequently to the requests of two totally different users, myself and Herby.  What we are trying to cover is where to go from here when they think they have copyright permission, which is a totally different situation.  That this is a weekend and he is a full-time employee working a normal 9-5 job monday through friday and hasn't responded since he went home for the weekend shouldn't be a reason to complain that he hasn't responded yet.  He is actually being very timely on his responses, to be honest.  --Rob Horning 15:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well yeah, sure! But this conversation isn't on his/her talk page (where some are talking specifics and working to see what can be done), this is on the Staff lounge (where we've drifted into a more general conversation). Conversation is good. Accusing people of flaming (when they're not) is bad. What you seemed to by saying above (or below, or somewhere) is that we shouldn't insist on the material being free, and perhaps even consider it free regardless of what the site owners say because their contributors might have really intended to make it free, but didn't understand that website owner's copyright. That's just unacceptable to me. -- SB_Johnny | talk 15:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Where did I insist "that we shouldn't insist on the material being free, and perhaps even consider it free regardless of what the site owners" said? I said nothing of that nature at all.  I just said we didn't need to delete it immediately.  The DMCA, which is the U.S. law (and directly affect Wikibooks because the server is in the USA) that governs this sort of stuff, only requires a removal of the content within 90 days after we have been formally notified by a take-down notice.  In this case, a notice of that nature wasn't even given at all, but instead we have gone well above and beyond what is required in normal copyright law for websites and have taken active steps to determine copyright status of this content.  We need to insist on the content remaining free, but we also need to assume good faith on new contributors.  Last time I checked, one week was substantially less than 90 days.  I don't know of any copyvio markup that has ever lasted more than 90 days in the copyright infringement cat.  There is no need to hurry on these matters and get them resolved in just a couple of days. --Rob Horning 19:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think the dispute here is if it is free content. I just have my reservations that this particular individual {User:Reever2) has the authority to relicense this content under the terms of the GFDL.  And I've tried to make it very clear that we need to have this formal permission.  He is just confused about the whole license thing, as the VideoJug website (and other similar websites, I might add) insist on a full copyright transfer to them when you submit stuff to them.  This is such a common practice in the entertainment industry that this whole idea of keeping copyright but only granting a license is very strange when coming from that sort of content culture.  For example, if you submit a story idea to a popular TV show you like.... the idea becomes property of the producers of that show, or they won't even look at it.


 * I am just suggesting a bit of patience here in allowing all of this to soak into the mind of this particular contributor, so he can genuinely understand what it is that we are doing here. And I'm trying to assume good faith in this particular individual, and I'm not trying to change any sort of project policy here at all.  We can't have copyright violations, but we can seek to get copyright permission (in the form of a license under the terms of the GFDL), and that has been project policy from day one here on Wikibooks.


 * Please, let's not flame this issue to be anything more than it is.... somebody trying to add content here that doesn't understand the issues of licensing and the GFDL. --Rob Horning 16:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree, If no authorization is claimed and seems that the user has indeed violated the copyright of the work a copyvio tag should be placed on it and an attempt made to contact the website after some time or if no authorization is recognized the book (not only the page) should be reverted to a date previous to the insertion of the material or placed all for VfD. But we have to go by the process... --Panic 16:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I have clarified my status with an e-mail from my Videojug account to Robert Horning stating that i do work for the Videojug website. Thanks for your responses and I have been reading the discussion on the staff pages since Friday. You are correct- I do work a Monday to Friday job and this is the first time I have had to respond to this particular message and thread. For arguments sake, I am happy for the pages to be deleted until our organisation have made a decision on the 'copyright material', which unfortunately due to a hectic schedule (launch in the US), this is to be put on hold for a couple of days. Once a decision has been made at the Videojug office, I will notify you or another Wikibook contributor to ensure that it can be re-added to the your pages under GFDL copyright. I didn't fully understand the copyright law on Wikibooks, and therefore have caused an untimely argument between the administrators and i'm sorry for that. In view of some of the comments "The user added 100 external links to the website, and then didn't add any more"- basically as I was adding my website's content on Wikipedia I had to provide a referenced source for the material, and therefore when I was told off for spamming, I couldn't add the material without the referenced source i.e. had no content really to provide so didn't add further. So just to clarify, I am happy for the content to be removed from the Wikibooks website until further notification from my company- however the information provided from a Wikipedia administrator I am still a little annoyed over as he has wasted about 2-3 hours of my time by stating that I could add material to the Wikibook's website. Thanks for your responses and I hope that I can be of assistance to your website in the near future

Moving on policies
I am bringing up a comment here from User:Withinfocus that was made on Wikibooks talk:Administrators. I would add that I can understand the frustration here about trying to get policies written and changed here. On What is Wikibooks/Unstable, there has been an attempt to try and get a vote going for approval twice, but both times seemed to have failed due to some ongoing discussion about some of the fine points of policy and continuing changes.

In addition, the voting on these policies tends to be rather diffuse and sometimes hard to even find out if there is a vote going on at all. I'm not claiming to have any special magic here, but I would like to point out a page that I worked on (User:Garrett started it) that may help out: Policies and guidelines/Vote

The point here is if we are moving to try and formally ratify some of these policies, that perhaps the voting on them ought to be separated from the discussion about the policy, and that once the decision is made to attempt ratification of the policy, it ought to be "frozen" until it is accepted or rejected.

This also gives the additional ability for users to monitor if new policies are in the works, and if there is any current voting taking place on policies. This isn't really a new thing, as several policies have already been adopted using this system. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used since the deletion policy was passed. I hope this is only because others may not even be aware of its existance. It also provides a central clearing house for what policies are being actively developed.

Certainly we need to get moving on several of these policies, and there is mostly concensus in many of these cases to ratify what is curently written proposed policy. When this voting page was used, we were able to move quickly on several policies that had some long-term consequences to Wikibooks, and do so with few disgruntled feelings either. This is the page where the Deletion policy was decided, and it should be noted that substantial community participation did occur here. I hope that something like this may unblock the current logjam that we have to getting any policy passed. --Rob Horning 19:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a fantastic help Robert! I am constantly aware of many different proposed policies but usually have no idea how to find them or where to vote. It would be easier if policies were just written and people votes in support or against. If they have any changes to suggest to the policy then they should vote 'against' and write their own version of the policy. Xania talk 21:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, ok now I'm confused. According to that link there are no current votes on policy. This may explain why people aren't voting on proposed changes to policy - because we have no idea where to look and some policies have a template linking to 'an unstable branch' whatever that means. It's no wonder that people aren't voting as it's impossible to find current votes and the votes are full of lengthy comments rather than simple 'support' or 'oppose' votes. Xania talk 21:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree, I think that most people check the staff lounge or the bulletin board nowadays (even with all the redesign), but there is no standard way to place an announcement, any proposal should be stated clearly and publicly. Another problem is on rehashing discussions, for instance discussion is initiated on a policy and posted on the staff lounge, after discussion on the policy tries the policy suffers huge changes or is proposed to be made a guideline or vice-versa or just is polled again and in some cases no announcement is even placed, another problem is people sometime can't or are unable to access Wikibooks a good way to be informed of this types of events would be the mailing list.  --Panic 23:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Why not a simple update to Policies and guidelines and turn it into a guideline policy (making sure no overlap exists with WB:DM), and start using all the already existing infrastructure Policies and guidelines/Proposed reform to state new proposals and status changes and Policies and guidelines/Vote etc... --Panic 23:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I decided to follown the link and read about 'What is Wikibooks "unstable"' yet discovered that the talk page was much much bigger than the actual proposal being discussed. I had no idea what the hell made the proposal any different from the current policy - surely that should be emphasised.  Why can't people just vote on the policy and be done with?  There appear to presently be only about 7 or 8 people actually involved in policy discussions (well done for having such patience guys) and it's crucial that more Wikibookians can find out what's happening. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 12:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I noticed the same problem, Xania. A few weeks ago I started working on a list of policies and their various states in table form in my sandbox. My thought is that we should create a page Policy votes and put everything that is currently marked as proposed up there and see what happens. There would probably be consensus to adopt one or two, consensus to reject 3 or 4 and the rest would have some kind of dispute to be ironed out. But that would at least get the process rolling and provide an effective overview of the state of these proposals. As a matter of fact, I'll probably just Be bold and do it this weekend. -- xixtas talk 13:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I changed your proposed page into a redirect link to the above voting page. I'll also have to create a shortcut of WB:PV that may make it easier to do this as well.  I did some further cleanup of the policy voting page to list a couple of policies I know that are under development, and I think perhaps this page ought to be put into the sidebar as well.  It is certainly general enough that it also has an impact upon people who are participating on this project.


 * As far as what the difference on WB:WIW between the current and unstable versions, the wording of the two versions is incredibly different and does represent the largest change to this policy that I have ever seen ether here on Wikibooks or for that matter on any Wikimedia project that I have ever seen for a similar kind of policy. On a substantive level, however, there really isn't that much change, which was one of the points of the rewrite.  Much of the discussion is about what was left out of the newer policy compared to the older policy that was substantive and may still be needed (my arguments were primarily along this line of thought), and how to clean up wording to emphasize some aspects of Wikibooks (such as an increased focus on textbook development) and reduce the emphasis on "What Wikibooks is Not".  Since this is the "foundation" policy that was established at the very beginning of Wikibooks and is essentially the most influential policy document for this whole project, it is a very big deal that this is both being worked on and that many of those who have worked on it seem to feel that it is nearly done with the current round of revisions.  It is a compromise of wording from many people, and not everybody (including myself) is completely happy with the way it has turned out, but as a fundimental charter to Wikibooks I think it will be an outstanding policy.  By all means if anybody else is reading this wants to get involved with helping to draft this policy, I hope they come to Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks/Unstable and join in the discussion.  --Rob Horning 14:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia licensing policy resolution
Many people will remember my last post on the subject of copyrights in reference to an essay posted by Kat. At the time we generally adopted a "wait and see" stance, to see what the wikimedia foundation's official stance on the issue would be.

Well, the wikimedia foundation has finally posted an official resolution on the matter: HERE it is.

Under the terms of this resolution, all uploaded material must be under a free license except for a small number of exceptions. Our project gets to author an "exemption doctrine policy" (EDP) for material that is allowed to be uploaded here that is not under a free license (fair use). Here are some of the limitations:
 * 1) "EDPs must be minimal". Important historical items, logos, and information about contempory copyrighted material. This means that screenshots of copyrighted software is allowed.
 * 2) Media uploaded under the terms of the EDP must be deleted if a free alternative is provided, or if there is a reasonable expectation that a free alternative could be provided.
 * 3) Media uploaded under the EDP must be deleted if the rationale of the exception is not properly expressed. A simple tag on an image of "this is fair use" might very well not be appropriate rationale.

Also, since we do not currently have an official EDP (the fair use policy has never been made "official", despite wide-spread ad-hoc adoption) we are subject to section 6 of the resolution, which I will post in it's entirety here:


 * 6. For the projects which currently do not have an EDP in place, the following action shall be taken:
 * As of March 23, 2007, any newly uploaded files under an unacceptable license shall be deleted.
 * The Foundation resolves to assist all project communities who wish to develop an EDP with their process of developing it.
 * By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted.

By this, basically, any new media that is uploaded here that is not under a free license must be deleted until we officially adopt our Fair use policy. This means that any image uploaded under a fair use tag needs to be removed. Also, any existing files that we have here must be covered by our EDP, or they must be deleted also. Even after we adopt the fair use policy, we need to insist that all future fair-use media must have an appropriate "exemption rationale" or they must be deleted.

Everybody should read this resolution, and I think we need to get to work ASAP on our fair use policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You have so throughally misinterpreted what has been said here by the Wikimedia Foundation that I don't know where to begin. We do not need to immediately delete fair use images off of this project, or to really change anything we have been doing on this project for the past year or more.  Yes, we need to be careful about what gets uploaded, and we do need to watch and make sure that all images are tagged for copyright license status clearly.  And the WMF board has also said that if we do come up with a formal policy (like WB:FUP) that they have the "right" to come in and modify this policy.


 * But do not use this as a call to arms for deletionists to come in here and start culling even more content here on Wikibooks. This is not the intention of this policy.  Trust me that the last word on this policy has not been said, and that when the full implications of this policy are realized (including your suggestion that it implies removal of all current fair use content) that it will be tweaked even more.


 * That we should move on trying to decide what would go into a fair use policy is true, and we should use this as an opportunity to review fair use on this project. But we don't need to start making huge changes and waves here that is substantially different than what we have been doing in the past.


 * We can allow fair use on this project, and keep in mind that the reason I started the current fair use policy was to limit fair use on this project, not to expand permitted content. All the WMF is trying to say here is that we need to take this issue seriously, and that for those projects who havn't even given this topic this level of consideration (en.wikibooks was not the target of this policy discussion... but even held out as a good example of a project that was trying to resolve this issue) that perhaps it was time that something of this nature become a part of the conversation of that project.


 * I have no idea why there is this very arbitrary deadline that was given, but it seems as though this was something in particular that was not thought through. Let us try to decide as a project what direction we would like to go, and to fit within the guidelines of what is considered an acceptable content license policy for the foundation.  I think the current WB:FUP is certainly within those guidelines, although I would have to say that what the WMF is asking here goes beyond even the scope of this policy and addresses all licenses.  There are content licenses that are not fair use which we need to look at as well. --Rob Horning 13:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Navigation controls
Hi I am new to Wikibooks, and am learning the tricks and ways in navigating through. I have been reading the help and other introductory materials; curiously I haven't yet found out an answer to some basic questions I had in mind.


 * Q: Is there an efficient way to navigate through the chapters of a book? It seems a little bit round about if I go back to the contents and then find and click the next logical chapter.


 * Q: Is there some way to have some sort of a bookmarking system, so that I can easily resume reading from the last section I was reading on a book?

Thanks in advance. --Hirak 99 07:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I would like to welcome you to Wikibooks, and thank you for coming here. I hope that you can not only enjoy the content which we have written, but that you would be willing to help us out with some of these issues you have raised here as well.


 * As for navigation through chapters of a book, there have been some efforts along those lines for some of our Wikibooks to provide navigation links between each chapter. Unfortunately, that needs to be added manually and is not a universal practice here on Wikibooks.  This is one area that your assistance in helping to grow Wikibooks would be very much appreciated.  If you would like some further help on how to add some navigation templates to your favorite Wikibooks, I and many others would be very happy to give you some specific details on how to accomplish this task.


 * In terms of bookmarking a page, I would suggest at this time to use your web browser to mark where you are at in terms of reading a Wikibook. Still, this is an interesting idea that perhaps could be developed even more and added to the MediaWiki software that is running our website here.  I don't think any real consideration has gone into what a bookmarking system might be like.


 * One alternative you may consider is to click on the "watch" button at the top each page. While this isn't the intended use for this tool, you can build up a list of your "favorite" pages of Wikibooks and have them available to go back to if you want to remember where you were at.  And you can delete pages from this "watchlist" just as easily as you can add them.  Doing this doesn't affect any other user.


 * Good luck, and if you have any other positive suggestions for Wikibooks, we would be glad to listen to them. --Rob Horning 14:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Data collections
The question has come up on two current Wikipedia AfD discussions, of the proper place for collections of standard data. In one case, the matter under discussion is a summary of part of the LC classification [Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Library_of_Congress_Classification:Class_B]. In the other, it is a portion of an astronomical ephemerides. Wikisource is apparently not the place, they are clearly oriented around text. Is Wikibooks suitable. (note that in either case these are not research-level or professional-level data -- a professional would use a much more detailed source. Rather, they are convenient summary tables, to use in connection with more general work. It has also been suggested that we need a new Wiki Project for such information. DGGB 01:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It has been the general historical position around here that lists of data are not acceptable for wikibooks. Typically a wikibook should have some sort of instruction or narrative. Tables of astronomical data from wikipedia were moved here in the past, and they were all deleted. Some tables have been integrated into related books, however. Tables of Unicode characters, for instance, were integrated into related programming books as appendices. Such an occurance is typically more the exception then the rule, however. Unfortunately, this data probably just needs to be deleted. I would be willing (or any number of other wikibookians, i'm sure) to address this issue directly on wikipedia, as the question of what precisely belongs here is often called into question. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Robot help needed
I have a huge task ahead of me that would best be performed by a robot. I was working on the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Birds chapter in the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book, when I realized that I had made a pretty good start on a field guide for birds. I decided that it might be better just to move my work out from under the AYHAB pages and into a field guide in its own right. But when I tried, I found that Field Guide/Birds already exists. Luckily, all the work I did pretty much applies to eastern North America, and that chapter in the Field Guide was a red link - so I ended up moving the field-guidy part of my book to Field Guide/Birds - Eastern US and Canada.

However, each bird detailed there is on its own page, still under the AYHAB hierarchy. It needs to be moved under the Field Guide/Birds Hierarchy instead. I do think that each bird should be under "Field Guide/Birds/Bird Name" rather than "Field Guide/Bird Name" though, because some species of animal and plant share a binomial name. Therefore, I don't find it difficult to believe that they could also share a common name as well. I suppose one could argue we should deal with those rare instances as they occur and disambiguate parenthetically.

Does anyone have a robot they could arm to move these pages for me?

I will probably do something similar to the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Edible Wild Plants chapter too, so please stay tuned, and I'm sure there are a few other similar chapters in there too. -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 02:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Do you know perl? I've got a bot that could do something like this, so long as we specified a complete list of page source and destination locations. Also, my bot has a strong regular expression engine, so I should be able to convert over any links and templates. Let me know what kinds of things you want, such as inter-page navigation links or navigation templates, page categorization, etc, and I will start writing up a script to do it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I am not comfortable enough with Perl to risk it (it's a write-only language, no?)


 * Basically, all the pages with a prefix of "Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Birds/" (including that trailing slash) need to have their prefix changed to "Field Guide/Birds/." They should also be added to Category:Field Guide, and Category:Birds.  I guess.  All of these pages are transcluded in Field Guide/Birds - Eastern US and Canada, so I don't see a need for navigational aids.  Many of them will eventually be transcluded in Field Guide/Birds - Western US and Canada as well, and perhaps in others.  That complicates navigational aids, so I say leave 'em off. -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 03:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend actualy just splitting into "Field Guide to Birds/Bird Name" rather than going the sub-subpage route... it's an awful lot easier to interlink chapters that way (two birds won't share the same binomial). I ran into the same thing in the garden book (a genus of moths having the same name as a genus of plants), but there I'm just going to do a parenthetical title ("Pieris (insects)"). There's a guy on meta who has a bot designed for this, but you'd need to come up with a list for the bot to work on in any case (and by the time you made the list, you could have been 1/2 way through the pagemoves). -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Where is the old Help Cheat on wiki syntax?
I used to rely on a page for wiki syntax that seems to be gone now. It was a single page that had tables where one side showed the sytax and the other side showed what it looked like. Is it still around? Harriska2 14:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps your referring to the table at Help:Editing? --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 14:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

embed java applets?
Is it possible to embed java applets in wikibooks? Thanks in advance.--PegasusRoe 14:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Working on a New Book Wireless_Mesh_Networks need a review
As a first time Wikibook author, I have worked on the outline of a new book I would like to write here. Could one of you guys take a look and offer some comments? I would like to apply the same structure to two more IT books, but need a good review before I spread the mistakes.  kgrr talk13:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I had a look yesterday, but to be honest I have no idea what it's about. Maybe an introduction chapter to start? -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I know a bit about such networks, so i can give you a quick review. I'll also post links from that page to the Communication Systems book, and a link back to your book too. This is definately a good start to a book, at least a good outline for one. From what I can see you've put alot of good thought into this before you started writing, and that's one of the biggest keys to success in any book.
 * Your style and structure both appear to be good, and if you want to apply this to other books you certainly have my blessing. I dont know if i will be able to contribute to this book much, but I can certainly help serve as an editor and a proof-reader. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


 * SB Johhny, Whiteknight - The point was asking for a review of two things - not so much the contents of the outline, but more the structure and to a certain extent style. What I'm looking for in the review is feedback about specific pros and cons of the outline and style I'm using.


 * For example, I start with a template that gives the reader the ability to navigate from any page to any other page to browse the book. Is this good, or is it wasteful of wikibooks resources since each book will have its own navigation template?


 * Then on the cover page, there is a picture with its credit below. Of course it's licensing is correct - public domain, cc, or gnu, etc.  The purpose of it is to provide an appealing cover picture like you have in real books.  But is it a waste of space?


 * The table of contents follows a pattern:


 * 1. Acknowledgements Image:00%.png
 * 2. Introduction Image:00%.png
 * 3. chapter Image:00%.png
 * 1. section
 * 2. section
 * 4. chapter Image:00%.png
 * 1. section
 * 2. section
 * 3. section




 * 30. Conclusion Image:00%.png
 * 31. References Image:00%.png
 * 32. Index Image:00%.png
 * 33. Glossary Image:00%
 * 34. Appendix A - appendix Image:00%.png
 * 35. Appendix B - appendix Image:00%.png
 * 36. Appendix C - appendix Image:00%.png
 * 37. Appendix D - appendix Image:00%.png


 * External links and resources


 * Indirectly I was fishing for some constructive criticism that would help me answer a few questions 1) I believe there is benefit in not numbering the chapter and section file names so that one can insert a chapter between two existing chapters or sections. Is there a reason why some people prefer to do it in a rigid matter by including numbers in the chapter and section names? 2) I believe there is a need for all the references in the book to be together in a reference chapter so that they can be referred to within the whole book rather than in one chapter or section at a time, but wikibooks seem to force you into the footnote style with the available tools.  Are there tools to collect references into one chapter?  3) I believe an Index is a good thing so that a user can find a section from a list of topics.  Are there tools that can help build an index?  It's nice to hyperlink the online version, but how do we reference from a key term to a module number inside the book? 4) I believe a glossary is great for people to understand unfamiliar terms.  If the book is printed out, hyperlinks can't be counted on.  But nevertheless, there should be a table of acronyms and common terms to define them in the context of this book.  5) Is there a page that has all the copyright/copyleft that creates a chapter within a book so that when it's printed out, it's part of the book? 6) Is there a way to letter chapters instead of numbering them with the # sign.  My appendix names include the alphabet letter, which keeps me from re-ordering them later.


 * Whiteknight, I shamelessly applied the same structure to the book CCNA_Certification. I've provided an outline that covers most of what's needed to cover for the two exams.  But it's open so that if I've left out a topic, it can be inserted.  Also, IMHO, it looks much more appealing as a book and will hopefully attract some help to fill-in the topics.  My next plans are to provide links to Wikipedia for each chapter.  And in Wikipedia, I will put references back to his book.  Hopefully, with a little guidance, the book will come to being by osmosis and bring some technical Wikipedians into Wikibooks.  By the way, since Wikipedia is open source, I should be able to heist entire more or less stable articles of information and de-wikify them and include transitions to help create the book.  Please let me know if I've destroyed CCNA_Certification.  It looks like the project was abandoned and the structure was such that another person could not easily come in and move things around if they needed. kgrr  talk15:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Featured books project pages
User:Robert Horning has created a new nominations page for good books, and I've updated the text of Featured books and Good books to point to it. I have changed Good books from being a wikiproject to being a proposed guideline.

Now, if you find a good book that you think warrants some kind of recognition, you can nominate it at WB:FBN. It will run similarly to a VfD discussion, only more positive. Everybody should take a look at these pages and see what's going on. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Book about using Wikibooks
I'd like to propose a book about using Wikibooks. This book would progress along the same lines that Wikibookians progress:
 * The Wikibook Reader
 * What Wikibooks is for
 * What you can do with a Wikibook
 * Solicit reader feedback on the this book's talk page.
 * The Wikibook Editor
 * How to contribute
 * Be bold
 * Copyright Policies
 * The Advantages of Registering
 * Markup help
 * Communicating with other Wikibookians
 * The Wikibook Writer
 * What is Wikibooks, What it is not
 * The Sandbox
 * Starting a new book
 * Naming conventions
 * Moving Pages
 * Uploading Images
 * The Wikibook RC Patroller
 * What is an RC Patroller?
 * Reverting non-productive edits
 * How to report vandalism
 * How to fight vandalism (be gentle, assume good intentions unless it's pretty obvious)
 * The Wikibook Administrator
 * Becoming and Admin
 * Importing
 * Deleting
 * Blocking Users

This could continue, but I think I've sufficiently fleshed out the general idea, and I'm beginning to get out of the area with which I am fairly familiar. This would be a book that would be read linearly - the longer a person hangs out here, the more of this book he (or she) would need and (presumably) read. It always takes you to the next step, and it's all organized in one convenient place instead of scattered about in various help pages, policy pages, etc. Thoughts? -- Jim Thomas 01:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There was some significant amount of discussion in the past that the entire help namespace should be converted into a book. One of the best reasons that was presented for this was that a "help book" would have the added benefit of leading by example. Ie, the help book itself would be a good template for future books to follow. What you are proposing is a very similar idea (if not identical) to the idea of a help book, and if you started it, i would certainly have alot to contribute. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, I started one. You can find it at Using Wikibooks.  I axed the RC Patroller chapter from the get-go, though if someone else thinks it merits its own chapter, I obviously can't stop you from adding it.  Perhaps that belongs in The Wikibook Editor chapter. -- Jim Thomas 02:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I actually like the idea, however, of writing what amounts to be an entire bookshelf of Wikibooks about editing and working with Wikibooks content. I did get into a major argument with some individuals who felt that any content related to editing or moderating (aka admin stuff) ought to fall completely within the "Help" namespace.  I disagree here.  I think there is clear room for such books, which is one of the reasons I started MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook.  I even got into a minor edit war here where another user moved this admin handbook to the Help space, and I moved it back to the main namespace.
 * Another book is Help:MediaWiki Developer's Handbook, which was I should note another book that was in the main book namespace and then moved, without discussion, into the Help namespace. This is clearly a stand-alone book and does not really need to fit with something in a completely different namespace.  In both of these cases, they also don't have to apply strictly to Wikibooks users.
 * As far as what to put into the Wikibooks Help namespace: I would like to see things like "how to create a Wikibook" or "Common mistakes of a new Wikibookian".  There is plenty of content that could be added that would be of a general nature that wouldn't necessarily be a book.  I don't think these pages ought to be so restricted or even so formal.
 * Also, it is a pet peeve of mine to take several books and combine them into one mega book (like the Programming Wikibook) when the only real unifying theme is just that they are all related topics. One of the problems I have with the Meta help pages is that they are so dogmatic and structured that the creativity for going beyond those basic structures is nearly lost.  It was also very, very difficult to localize to a specific project, particularly when it was mirrored.  This was just a few of the reasons I created the VfD to remove that content when it was mirrored here.  I'm not saying that there isn't useful stuff on the Meta help pages, but we can do something very different here.  Because "Help" is indeed a seperate namespace, I don't think the normal restrictions of being a textbook would necessarily need to apply here.  --Rob Horning 02:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The help namespace, in my opinion, should likely only be used to point people in the direction of more appropriate discussions on the topics. For instance, the help namespace could contain some general rules and basic distillations of policy documents (don't vandalize, etc), while pointing interested readers to the full-text of those documents. Meta already contains a large number of help documents explaining mediawiki including development and administration. However, what meta does not have, is a book on either of those subjects. Help books serve a number of valuable purposes:
 * Can serve as an example of what a good book should be, not just a description of such.
 * Can provide a narrative, and a concerted effort to teach the subject, not just present the material in a list or an article.
 * Enable help materials to be found through a normal wiki search, without having to update your preferences to include the help namespace (which many users in need of help won't know how to do anyway).
 * I think that the following things need to happen:
 * The new Using Wikibooks book needs to remain in the main namespace, and be placed on a normal bookshelf (likely the computer software bookshelf).
 * The MediaWiki Developer's Handbook needs to be moved out of the help namespace, and placed on a normal bookshelf.
 * The MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook needs to be put on the same bookshelf as the above two, and not moved to the help namespace.
 * All three books listed above should be collaborative, that is that they should contain appropriate cross-links where needed.
 * The current help pages should be mined for information to be used in these three books, and links should be made from the help pages to these books, where needed.
 * If nobody else does it today, i'm going to move the developers handbook out of the help namespace sometime later, and we can get to work on this project full-steam. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Someone should finish merging MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook with A Wikimedia Administrator's Handbook. Most of it has been done already. I've been meaning to get onto it but I probably won't have the time this week. GarrettTalk 19:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Resolving disputes
The dispute resolution / resolving disputes policy has been discussed in the past and progress has recently stagnated. Please voice your opinions regarding any changes to the policy on its talk page or be bold and make changes to the text directly. This policy is the first step in developing several other policies including the Editorial board, WB:RFC, and Arbitration Committee and needs to be approved before other progress can occur. There's no point in discussing matters like arbitration if the community doesn't include them in the dispute resolution process. If you disagree or support something, make it known on the resolving disputes page so we can set up a chain of positive updates to our policy system. Thanks. -within focus 12:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Arbitration was removed from resolving disputes, because everything else was a far as people could agree on. I think the resolving disputes proposal should be market as rejected. The decision making policy is the first step in making decisions and how to resolve disputes. There is also a Unstable branch of the Decision making policy which has stagnated too. I believe that would be the better place to reflect the need to be civil and suggestions of mediation when a decision making process has stagnated. I think the editorial board is no longer trying to be a way to resolve disputes and is instead trying to focus efforts to deal with ways to prepare textbooks for publishing in print and related issues. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 14:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I definitely disagree. A policy such as Revolving disputes cannot be rejected as I see it; it's an essential process here. This matter has to be solved and this page definitely covers a different process than Decision making. Decision making is quite general and covers how to achieve objectives here. Resolving disputes is a process for handling disagreements. This page still needs development and once that happens we'll mark it as enforced. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 19:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Translating books into bangla language
Hi,

I'm a user of Wikipedia and trying to contribute with the project. The Wikibooks project has attracted my attention and I would love to translate a few of the books into Bangla language, so that the people of Bangla language can be benefited.

Would you please inform me more about this?? I would appreciate your any comment.

Thank you,

Sheikh Tuhin sheikhtuhin@yahoo.com


 * There is a wikibooks project for bangla: http://bn.wikibooks.org. If you want to write books in bangla, you can write them and host them on that project. If you would like to translate books from our project onto that project, you can certainly do that too without requiring any extra permission! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks
If I wanted to upload screenshots of the Wikibooks website for use in the Using Wikibooks book, would i be allowed to do this? Is the website interface copyrighted in any way that would prohibit use of screenshots being used in this way? And if not, what copyright tag would be affixed to such screenshots? Thanks. Urbane User  (Talk)   (Contributions)  13:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it depends what browser you are using. The folks at the Commons Village Pump would probably be able to explain it all a lot better than I can. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Auto category
Just thought I might mention the Book category template. It is used for saying that a module of a book (say Foo/SomeModule) belongs in a category. is equivalent to, which avoids every module getting indexed under the same letter 'F'. The main usage is to categorise all the modules of a given book. Just say and your module Foo/Module will be placed in category Foo under 'M' for Module. -- Kowey 14:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a hot template. Is it new, or is it old? I've certainly never heard of it (but I haven't heard of everything, I'm sure). Either way, it's good to have a template for this, so that our categories can be sorted properly. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * It's pretty new. I made it for Haskell and thought it might be useful for the community.  Another template which might be interesting is the , more of a meta-template which you can use to make templates like  -- Kowey 09:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Whoops! I've renamed it from Book category to Auto category to communicate its generality. Could somebody please bot-replace all Book category and Module category by Auto category? -- Kowey 14:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Anyone took action on this ? --Panic 23:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding WikiCharts to en.wikibooks
A very interesting tool has been added to the Wikimedia tool server which attempts to calculate page access (not page editing) statistics. It involves partially modifying the System messages for this project, particularly for the javascript that is used to generate each of these pages.

It does this at a small cost of aditional HTML code that is appended onto each page as it is generated, which makes a quick http request to the tool server for counting stats. This is certainly more efficient than the typical 3rd party image links usually used for stat counting, and it is done entirely within Wikimedia projects in this case.

My question here is if this is something we would like to add to Wikibooks or not. The stats certainly are something interesting, and it would be able to help us to determine if some of our content reorganization efforts are actually having any impact with those who come and stop by to read some Wikibooks content. Until this tool has been available, we havn't been able to obtain these stats as the MediaWiki stat counter has been turned off. --Rob Horning 14:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Does it monitor every page access or we can select what pages we wish to generate a "readers" chart ? --Panic 18:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If we can use this for the new Top Active instead of using third-party tools I would be for it. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 19:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * What this does is create a log entry for each time the page is accessed. Keep in mind that the Top Active pages were what pages have been edited the most.... which is a completely different topic.  I think there is a role for both pieces of information.  This does monitor every page that is accessed, and perhaps as importantly, it is automated so there is no need for any particular user to have to manually edit or scan the stats.  The only draw back right now is that the code base for analyzing the stats is still considered experimental.  For more details, go to the WikiCharts page that even has an active demo for en.wikiversity and wn.wikipedia.  --Rob Horning 22:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Top Active does not have to represent most edits necessarily. It can simply show the most accessed. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 00:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. It would remove a lot of supposition by providing measurement. Webaware talk 22:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Something worth imitating?
Commons now has the following appearing on their uploads page:

It's all about freedom

All users of files found on Wikimedia Commons must be given the Four Freedoms:


 * 1) The freedom to use and perform the work.
 * 2) The freedom to study the work and apply the information.
 * 3) The freedom to redistribute copies.
 * 4) The freedom to distribute derivative works.

(From the Definition of Free Cultural Works, inspired by the Free Software Definition.)

Traditional copyright law does not grant these freedoms, and unless noted otherwise, everything you find on the web (including book covers, screenshots, logos, promotional photos, and so on) is copyrighted and not permitted here. Please only upload files that are in the public domain (author died more than 70 years ago), or those which are explicitly covered by a license which grants the Four Freedoms. See the list of acceptable licenses.

For works which are your own, please use one of the recommended licensing options below ("Own work").

Maybe something like that yould be good for the text appearing on the edit pages here as well? -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It is interesting that the text on the bottom of the edit page (it can be modified using this page) has been modified substantially by each one of the Wikimedia projects. In fact, Wikibooks has been rather tame and timid in what has been put in here, with only three edits at all from the default, and the default text is nearly identical.


 * This is something that certainly can be modified, and there is nothing "sacred" here to keep anybody from editing this content just like any other page on this Wiki. The only difference is that it will appear on the bottom of every page when it is edited.


 * I would suggest that any changes try to stay relatively short and get to the point that Wikibooks expects all contributions to be under the GFDL, and that they can also be revised by other Wikibookians. Still, the idea to express some general principles about free/open content development is something that certainly new users ought to be made aware of.  --Rob Horning 15:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We've updated a few of the mediawiki pages lately, but not so much on that one. I like something along those lines as it goves a more positive explanation of what the contributions mean, the current text seems a bit surly. I do think we could almost just copy that wholesale for our upload dialogue, though actually I'd like to include something there about uploading to commons as a normally better alternative (since presumably some books might get translated to other language wikis someday). -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Some projects I think include text above every edit box as well. I think these principals would be better to be placed above then below. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 17:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * That would be fine too.-- SB_Johnny | talk

Special Statistics...
Special:Statistics says there is only 25,000 page views, but according to the other data this is not possible. Is this a bug? --Remi 22:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup... I forget why, but I'm pretty sure whatever the problem is isn't going to be fixed (the page view tracking was turned off for some reason). -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep in mind that the MediaWiki software has a feature to count page views and do other sorts of statistical analysis. On some MediaWiki implementations this "feature" is still turned on, but for Wikimedia projects it was determined that this page count chewed up so much CPU bandwidth (and just as importantly, required a hard drive write request to update the counter) that this feature was turned off.  For almost all Wikimedia projects this number is zero, but Wikibooks was one of those projects that is old enough that it was turned on for some of the early history of this project.  The 25,000 page views reflects this statistical counting from about the first six months of people using Wikibooks.
 * It is highly unlikely this feature will be turned back on again, even though all that needs to be done is for a Wikimedia developer to edit one line in the configuration file for this project. The arguments for keeping this feature off are just as valid as what they were when the decision was made to turn off this feature.  If there is sufficient demand we could make a bugzilla request to turn the page counts back on, but I'm against the idea and I think there would be some considerable opposition among the developers as well.  --Rob Horning 16:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see the reporting of that number and all that are based on it turned off too then. It's disheartening to read that there are "0.03 views per edit." -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 18:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Integrating Imported Material into an existing chapter
I have just imported the Wikipedia Barter article into transwiki space, and now I need to cut it way down and add major portions of it to an existing chapter. Is there a way to do that? How do I merge the histories? The only thing I can think of is to chop it down to what I want and transclude it in the existing chapter, but that is such an inelegant way to proceed that I can almost not bear to do it. Is there a better way? -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 01:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There is a better way to do it, although i admit that I can't quite remember how to go about doing it. If i remember correctly, it involves deleting the page, and then undeleting it, or something. Ask SBJohnny. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * For admins, I would recommend reading MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook/Page Deletion. The only real problem I see about merging page histories is that it messes up the history of the combined pages, where it is difficult (I would say virtually impossible) to sort out what page edit was from what earlier page.  This is a shortcoming of the MediaWiki software, but at least you can give credit to all of the authors who might have been involved with the content in this manner, and see exactly what they did add to the edit history.


 * For non-admins, I would recommend that you combine the text and reorganize the content to what you think the final version of the merged pages should look like, and then make a request on Administrators' noticeboard to perform the actual page merger. Indicate what pages should be merged together together with what version should be left after all of the pages are merged together.  --Rob Horning 00:33, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * On a similar note, is it possible to use transclusion and/or substitution from another Wiki? For example the CCNA Certification book can "inherit" a lot of text from Wikipedia.  It would be very useful to have a living book that is updated by Wikipedia. Kgrr 15:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)


 * unfortunately, it just isnt possible to transclude from one project to the other. Wouldn't it be great if you could? Besides importation, there really isnt any other good way to do this kind of stuff. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Algebra and merger
I know that Whiteknight is more directly involved with the reorganization of this Wikibook, but I would like to point out that we shouldn't lose the history of this book if possible. I mean, this was a Collaboration of the Month project (featured on main page), and there certainly were many contributors to this project whose contributions should not be left unnoticed.

What I'm asking here is that whoever is going to take on this task of deleting these pages, that I'm recommending that we do a full page merger to preserve the edit history of these pages, through the process of deleting both pages and merging them together through page moves.... to where ever the pages have been copied to ultimately. I know this is a tedious process, and sometimes the pages don't always fit together in a smooth fashion. But this is a better way to deal with full book mergers than simply ignoring the previous contributions. I mention this here because I don't think I have the time available to completely make this merger myself, and I don't want to have this half-way done either. I'm certainly willing to help out and do this for some of the pages, but I'd like to get some coordination and assistance from some other admins in this process as well. If we can map out what pages need to be merged and where, that would also be very useful. I would encourage the coordination to occur on Talk:Intermediate Algebra. --Rob Horning 10:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)


 * So far in this project, what I have done is moved pages with good content to more appropriate places, and deleted unnecessary pages that contained little or no content. The problem with the Algebra book that I wanted to correct, was that it was a mishmash of unrelated and unorganized topics that loosely related to algebra. In general, considering the poor state of Algebra currently, I dont think much merger needs to happen. So many pages from Intermediate Algebra could simply be moved to the "Algebra/" namespace because there are no conflicting pages in the destination book to require a merger. By my count there are only 11 pages in the Algebra book, compared to at least 16 subjects listed on the TOC without an associated page. Even with a worst-case scenario, we are only merging page histories on 11 pages, and there is a possibility that many of these pages originated as forks and dont need to be merged like this.
 * I may have some time this afternoon to work on this project, god knows I've let it sit unfinished for long enough. After about 2pm EST I should be getting to work on it. Anybody who wants to join in the fun is more then welcome. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I'm not going to do any work on this today. There appears to be some confusion over what precisely is going to happen. I had proposed that the Intermediate Algebra book be merged into the Algebra book. Apparently, one of the active editors of the Intermediate Algebra book has proposed precisely the opposite thing, and has nominated the Algebra book for deletion. We need to resolve this disagreement before we can start doing any work. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. This is a complex enough task, and I feel hesitant to delete a "book of the month" winner, even if that quality has been passed up by another book on the same topic.  Thanks.  When the decision is resolved on the merger, or if the merger is called off, let me know.  --Rob Horning 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's my opinion that the content and structure of the Intermediate Algebra book should likely be kept, but the whole book should be moved to the Algebra namespace. A simple name like "algebra" will be much easier for people to find in a search, and it reduces the inclination for people to draw arbitrary distinctions between algebra material that is "intermediate", "basic", or "advanced". If the authors of the book do decide to delineate material in this manner, they can do it internally to the book, and not create 3 or more books on the same subject. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

about Wikibooks navigation header and float bars
I have lost the post/thread about this subject. Does anyone know or can give me some input why the float bar states some projects that even if active should be stated on the header bar as they are not useful for "most" or all users, there is also a duplication of the Donations link and the header bar gives only information on the privacy policy and misses the opportunity to link to a pages that provides a general information of site policies and guidelines. (I remember that someone on the post stated that it would take some time for the update) Txs. --Panic 02:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well i'm not entirely sure what you are talking about here. What skin are you using? different skins have links in different places, and i'm not entirely sure what links you are talking about. I only see one "Donations" link on my page, no duplicates. Also, the privacy policy is a pretty important thing, and we shouldnt remove any links to it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have included an image (see above). The skin used is Classic. I tested all default skins, the Simple skin doesn't even have the Donations link, Cologne Blue has more or less the same problems as indicated on the Classic, the Chick, MonoBook and Nostalgia seem ok (no duplication). --Panic 17:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)