Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2007/May

WikiCast
Hi , In relation to Wikicast - The free content brodcast,

I was wondering if anyone from WikiBooks would be intresting in contributing, or finding a way to use WikiBooks content on-air :-). ShakespeareFan00 13:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what kind of content we would contribute, although I don't rule out the idea that collaborations with other open-content organizations might prove beneficial. I wouldn't mind swapping some advertisements between our two sites, but i certainly can't speak for everybody. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought you abandoned using WB content due to licensing concerns? Kellen T 21:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Licensing issue was resolved. ShakespeareFan00 08:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Resetting headings...
How do I reset headings? That is: I start on ==Heading2== go to =Heading1= and then I want to start using ==Heading2== again, not under the just used =Heading1=, without having a new =Heading1=. I hope that makes sense. --Remi 04:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Heading1
 * I don't completely fallow what you are requesting but see if this in any way helps you (just add for sub Headings)... --Panic 04:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It doesnt work like that. The headings act like an outline, where smaller headings are always treated as children of larger headings. I personally avoid the use of level-1 headings entirely. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Level one headings are used for the title of the article, so they should be avoided entirely. Kellen T 17:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, I agree with this... but see what I'm being told over at GFDL talk. Let's you and him fight. &mdash;Chowbok 04:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You're talking about two entirely different things here. In a regular page you should avoid level 1 headings because they are used for chapter titles. In a print version, however, you use level 1 headings to head new chapters. If you use level 1 headings in the page, you have nothing to separate the pages in a print version. --Whiteknight (talk) 13:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Headings bug(?) in huwikbooks
Today in huwikibooks I've noticed that headings don't work very well. The "Contents" div can't make a difference between == ... == and === ... === headings. I would like to ask that are here similar problems in enwikibooks? Maybe developers've misdone something? See this page 4xampl, after "megjegyzések" title all titles there should be   third-order. Please answer on my hun talkpage, or leave a short message there if you answer here. 100×thx: Hun admin. Gubbubu 10:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Goodbook double rotation
I was just thinking that
 * 1) We should keep the number of featured books per slot pretty low.  6 is quite good.  Any more and the books get drowned among themselves
 * 2) But... we have a lot of books to feature
 * 3) Anything like 6, 12 or 24 slots might be bad, because it might cause books to only be featured in certain timezones.  We should probably stick to < 5 slots
 * 4) But... we have a lot of books to feature...

So, how about having sets of slots? It would be like a clock, we would have a double rotation, featuring a different set of books every day, and within each day, a different set of books every hour. If we do 6 books a slot, 5 slots a day, 30 days in a month, we could feature up to 900 books -- Kowey 18:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Mathematically, it is the most fair to have a number of slots that is a factor of 24, so that the slots rotate an even integer number of times per day. I just upgraded the rotation to have 4 slots from 3 previously. After 4, we can have 6, 12, or 24. If we get up to 24, some books will only show up at 3am, which is never good for advertisement. Multiple slots is a good idea, but we have to find a way to do it that is easily extensible, and we want to try and avoid deeply-nested template calls because then we will see a lag because of server performance. What might be the best idea is to have about 6 slots total, and then refactor those slots every month, although the exact mechanism for doing that would need to be decided. It looks to me like the featured books nominations page has slowed down significantly from what it was when we first started, so hopefully we don't have any more huge influxes of books to contend with and we can extend the system slowly. --Whiteknight (talk) 18:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * PS, another thing that we might consider is to display books on different pages, not just the main page. For instance we can have books rotating in and out on the main page, the community portal, the staff lounge, etc. The featured wikijunior books can be displayed at Wikijunior in addition to regular rotations elsewhere, for instance. We can post the templates on the bookshelves (many are already on the bookshelves). My point being that even if books arent regularly rotated on the main page, they will get plenty of exposure in other places too. --Whiteknight (talk) 18:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Ah yes, you're right that it should be a factor of 24. I guess I was just saying that it should be one of the smaller factors.  So 4 is probably good.  On the other hand, if we used, say, the number of hours passed since 1970 (i.e. unix time) instead of since midnight, perhaps then it would be advantageous to use something which is not a factor of 24, as this would cause the books to rotate: some days it would be 3am, then 4am, etc.  Well, I might be confusing myself with the math anyway, just a rough intuition :-)


 * Speaking of rotating books onto more than the front page (which I support), I wonder how obnoxious it would be of us to advertise a random featured book on the side bar?


 * And finally, a technical question, would embedded #switch calls (how I was thinking of implementing this) be harmful, performance-wise? -- Kowey 06:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[reset tabs] Anyway, I've gone ahead and added more slots, randomly putting in all currently featured books. To support a number of slots which is not a factor of 24, i'm using (dayOfMonth * 24) + currentHour mod N. One simple rotation -- Kowey 20:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Outreach project
One of the greatest things about Wikibooks is that our textbooks can contain the sorts of thing you "can't learn from a textbook". I think this could be especially true about "trades", as opposed to the more academic fields. So I'm interested in what people think about constructing invitation letters that Wikibookians could hand off to people they encounter in day-to-day living. There's a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything, including: trash collection, rebuilding a transmission, fixing a leaky roof, repairing guard rails, sexing chickens, dredging ports, etc.

On our part, we'd need to make some efforts at making the bookshelves user-friendly, and perhaps even have a separate "entry page" for these contributors (this might also help the Main Page debacle too). I'd also strongly argue that the "How-tos" category and bookshelf be abolished, and replaced with "Trades and Vocations", "Hobbies and Avocations", and "Life Skills and Self-Help". As a tradesman myself, I think I might speak for more than a few who would feel that classifying trades and vocations with "how-tos" (side by side with "Shaving" and "How to Tie a Tie") is rather insulting and dismissive of our fields of specialty.

User:Bastique (one of our faithful stewards) has been "talking us up" on both IRC and various lists and projects as well, and is particularly interested in "recruiting" retirees through a partnership with the AARP. Regardless of whether this is successful, it does make me think about perhaps getting in touch with labor unions and trade associations, government agencies such as agricultural extension services, museums and schools, and even web forums, mailing lists, religious institutions, or local clubs.

For AARP contributors in particular, we might even set up a new css "skin", based on monobook but with larger fonts for the edit window in particular (I personally wouldn't mind a larger font either... as much as I like the "unix-terminal" quality of the edit window, it's really not very user friendly for those with older eyes!), but also for image captions and even the main text of modules. Coming up with a more helpful "Help:" namespace would go very far too.

Within Wikimedia, 2 of our "sisters" are quite interested in us. Wikiversity's experimental style has in at least a couple cases led to the creation of very good book stubs, and their learning projects should ideally use our textbooks for reading material. Commons of course serves all projects, but the difference between the needs of Wikibooks projects and those of the Wikipedias has been a topic of many discussions lately.

As far as our relations with en.Wikiversity goes, I think we only need to ask for import to be enabled, so that we can copy over textbook-like learning projects and hope that the Wikibooks versions will continue to grow. For the commoners (commonists, commonsians, etc.), organizing "illustration projects" could both generate more interest and give image contributors a better idea of what kinds of images we need (Wikijunior, in particular, needs very different genres than does Wikipedia).

Last but not least, we need to attract Wikipedians. They know how to edit, and we might be able to identify those who are experts. Wikipedia is spotty and patchy, but there are subjects where it's very well developed because people with expertise have contributed. The problem is, no-one is an expert on everything, and the expert eventually runs out of new things to write and/or gets frustrated with the wikipedian problems of vandals, spammers, POV-pushers, and trolls.

On that, I think we've got a strong "selling point". Over the past 6 months or so, vandalism and spamming has been rather tightly controlled here thanks in large part to two of our most active administrators. We're not as strong on POV-pushing and trolling, but an influx of "angry Wikipedians" might tip the balance there. For the Wikipedians we also need to provide clear guidelines on "maintenance tasks" such as categorizing, RC patrolling, orphan pages, etc.-- SB_Johnny | talk 23:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * This is all a great idea, and a logical extension of our drive to make this place bigger and better. Before we can really start attracting new people to become contributors, we really need to ramp up our support infrastructure. We have done alot of good work, the staff lounge looks better, the main page is better, the featured books thing is working wonderfully. All of these aspects is going to help attract contributors. What we don't have here though is the support infrastructure to manage all those people.
 * The most important thing we can do right now is fix up the community portal, and (forgive me for even saying this) cleanup the help namespace. A massive community effort is needed to set these two things up for an influx of new (and possibly inexperienced) editors. I'll start to focus on that problem after my last final, tomorrow. --Whiteknight (talk) 00:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually I think we could easily write a New Contributor's Guide. The basics are very simple (two or three apostrophies here or there, brackets and slashes, tildes, etc.). I think we can do away with the "Template:New" stuff now that we have some good RC patrollers in the house. Categorizing and bookshelving can be done by more experienced Wikibookians (or the aforementioned frustrated Wikipedians looking for somewhere to be constructive without being yelled at al the time). We could also have a Staff Lounge/New Contributors page for people to just introduce themselves and say what their interests are, so that thouse more familiar with what (and who) is here can point them in the right direction. -- SB_Johnny | talk 23:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks could use a better logo
Wikibook's logo is probably my least favorite out of the main Wikimedia sites. I think someone should try to make a better one. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.67.27 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I believe that choosing a new logo is out of the hands of Wikibooks English because the Foundation want all Wikibooks logos to be the same across the different language versions. So they decided to choose one themselves, voted on it amongst themselves without direct consultation from the individual Wikibooks communities.  As a result their vote and discussion has now stagnated and we seem to be left with this logo.  I, and probably many others here, would like a new logo but we would like to make the decision ourselves and for it to be the choice of THIS community.  Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 20:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Spotting vandalism
Watching some interchanges on RC (specifically about Muggles but it applies to all). I've discovered that Meta have "patrolled" edits - unreviewed edits have "!" beside them on RC - those that are allowed can "review" those edits which removes the "!". May be worth discussion/investigation - cheers -- Herby talk thyme 15:54, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, there was some talk on IRC about that last night. Seems a good idea to me (and certainly does no harm).-- SB_Johnny | talk 16:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That would be pretty hot. I'd love to have a review team for my book so that when the final product gets going we can make sure we're delivering quality and don't have comments about Nazis [...comment censored by SB_J...] (a recent addition to some of our pages here). -within focus 16:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * No need to repeat that please... we have children and parents of children around here. The NAZI vandals are one of the reasons I'd like to see oversight used. Speaking of which, see topic below. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * BTW for those who did not know and might be interested that vandal hit almost all main wikis -- Herby talk thyme 17:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I also think that'd be a good idea. I'd also like to have seen a permanent block for that vandal (rather than 1 week).  We should not tolerate nazism, racism and any uses of such language should result in an immediate permanent block.  Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 17:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * IIRC one Wiki has but it is an IP - we do not know whether someone "owns" it. I assure you I shall be far harsher on wikis where I have the buttons if it were to re-occur (I did extend the original block here).  I have a deep objection to such things -- Herby  talk thyme 17:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, the recent vote on a blocking policy didn't go through, but maybe a more specific policy should be put in place to help "catch up" returning admins like Hagendaz, who aren't familiar with the de facto policies we've established over the past year or so. I invite everyone to please vote in support of Blatant Vandal Blocking Policy. I don't think there's anything objectionable about it, and since some of our "long lost admins" have been returning to the project lately, a policy specifying indefinite blocks might ease their worries about the use of indef blocks. -- SB_Johnny | talk 19:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Bugzilla request for "select all/unselect" option on restorepage dialog
I've been thinking about this for a while... in order to hide particularly offensive vandal edits from a page history, we are currently required to delete the page, and then manually select to restore all of the versions we want to keep, rather than being able to "select all" and then just "unselect" the revision we want to make disappear. It seems to me that we could really make good use of a select all/unselect feature for both very offensive edits and for edits that have offensive edit comments. I'm not sure if the oversight tool works that way (if it does, let's just get it and make it available to as many active admins as we can), but it seems to me that such a feature wouldn't be hard to provide, and since AFAIK we don't have any very young admins, having them viewable to us wouldn't be a big deal anyway. This could also help with our attribution issues, since as Panic has pointed out, any "bot or js created" attribution is going to end up counting vandals somehow.

Could we just vote on this request here, or should there be a separate page? -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'd vote for that - hard work to just select the ones you want back - look at WikiJunior main page! -- Herby talk thyme 17:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I added some javascript to add a Select All button to do just this to MediaWiki:Common.js, the reset button already clears them all. --dark lama  00:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I didn't notice any difference, but actually it's the opposite that I meant, I think. Basically make it so that all the boxes for restoring are pre-checked, so you can just "uncheck" the versions you want to get rid of. An even easier version (that would definitely need bugzilla) would just allow us to delete particular revisions when we're viewing the history of the page, since that would save us the trouble of having modules disappearing during the cleanup process. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:38, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Right now, it doesn't pre-check them all, it adds a button for selecting them all. --dark lama  13:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, working now... I had to clear my browser's cache :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 14:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I added a pre-check script to Common.js, hopefully it'll help. --Az1568(Talk) 14:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I combined it with the UndeleteAll function so it would run a little quicker. I got another idea, I might look into. --dark lama  15:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * /me bows and worships our local tech geniuses :). TimStarling (on #tech) apparently developed a script for allowing delete of particular versions (as opposed to deleting all then selectively restoring). Probably not something we could implement locally, but eventually that might be a better option :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Transwiki policy
We had discussed this some time ago, but I thought I'd bring it up again. Now that we have Special:Import enabled from WP, I think it would be a good policy to use that exclusively, at least as much as possible. I see three major advantages. The only problem is that there is a bug in Import, in that it falls apart if there are too many revisions of an article. The bug is apparently fixable, so hopefully we'll be able to fix that soon enough. For the time being, we could just categorize the talk page as "needing import after the bug is fixed", or perhaps request a bot action from Uncle G. -- SB_Johnny | talk 17:04, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * 1) Using import preserves all contributions fro wikipedia accounts, and so if/when we figure out some way to use bots or js code to make attribution, this will work much better than a link to the wikipedia history or a copy of the wp article's history.
 * 2) By attributing those edits here, "Wikipedian refugees" who want to work on the things they've contributed to there as parts of textbooks will at least have a "foothold" of edit counts, which for some may be more satisfying than starting from zero.
 * 3) Since Import is an administrator's tool, articles copied using Import are more likely to be included on an administrator's watchlist, so if some of the difficulties of Wikipedia end up following the contributors to Wikibooks, we'll be more aware of it.


 * A bigger problem with import is that you have to be an admin to do it. It is very tempting to just cut and paste when you're faced with having to wait for an admin to do the import for you.  And once that's done, there's still a lot of work to be done to incorporate the text into an existing chapter, and you have to be an admin to do that as well (delete, import, move, delete, undelete, re-edit).  Because of this, I think it's going to be very difficult to talk the non-admin community into going this route.  It's very much like building an invisible fence across a heavily-trafficked sidewalk and then yelling when people don't go around.  What would be really nice is to be able to subst: from Wikipedia (et al).  I know I'm asking for a lot here, but until this is made a lot easier, people are just going to ignore the fence.
 * Perhaps instead of expecting users to do this, we should develop a script that would import, edit the existing chapter (so it has the latest rev), delete the original article, move the imported article on top of it, delete it, and restore the just-edited version. Then the users could do a cut and paste and request that an admin run the script to merge the histories.  -- Jomegat 17:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, requests at WB:RFI are filled pretty quickly, but yes, one can also just copy-paste the article and work on it while waiting for the import to be performed. I've done those types of imports before, and they work fine (just takes a few more steps... you have to import, delete/move, undelete, and restore). We're not so understaffed as we were a year ago, so I don't see any major problems with backlogs. Eventually the "large history" bug will be fixed as well, so we'll be able to just go back and re-import those articles that have too many edits (e.g., I was looking at Sun for import, but it has almost 3,000 edits!) If we're going to come up with a way of determining attribution, it will be a lot easier if we can always just look in the same place (the history), rather than notes on talkpages, history pages on wikipedia itself, etc. -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Project Work
Good evening, i am actually an under graduate student of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi in Nigeria,. and i am working on a project. Actually i am finding it a bit difficult to get enough material to beef up my literature review section, so i want help. The topic is COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PREPAID AND POSTPAID BILLING SYSTEMS (A CASE STUDY OF ROWER HOLDING COMPANY OF NIGERIA) Please i need help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.207.13.130 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Some info for Meta maybe?
Came across this while looking around and wondered if anyone here would have the time/inclination to add some more detail about the project (bit think as it stands and I don't have the knowledge that some long term users have)? Cheers -- Herby talk thyme 12:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That's a good idea, and I'll take a look at it while i have some time this morning. --Whiteknight (talk) 12:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Longevity of Wikibooks?
Is it safe to use a wikibook as a resource for a course? Are there any policies or other means for a teacher to be assured that the material will one day not just disappear and they are left stranded


 * Your average book, so long as it isn't spam or in terrible condition, will not be deleted without plenty of advanced warning. Unlike traditional textbooks, wikibooks can be in a constant state of improvement, so it can be difficult to use a single stable version of a book for a course. However, the course instructor can make permanent links to particular revisions of a page, and those will remain constant (although permanent links could point to older and out-of-date revisions). If you are planning to use a book for a class, please let us know and we can help you keep the book stable. --Whiteknight (talk) 17:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This brings us back to the problem of stable editions. See Editorial_board_guidelines. RobinH 08:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Bookshelves
The bookshelves policy hasn't been updated in a while. I propose redirecting bookshelf requests to the Staff Lounge and changing "bookshelves should only contain wikibooks which are either complete or have active contributors" to "bookshelves should contain all books" to reflect practice.

Secondly, how about limiting bookshelf templates to good books or completed books? Bookshelf templates, such as Template:Mathematics bookshelf, largely duplicate the information found on the bookshelves themselves. Moreover, new books are often added only to the templates, reducing the value of the bookshelves themselves. Limiting templates to good books should resolve this. --hagindaz 19:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree the bookshelves are a mess and putting only good books on the bookshelf page would help tighten them up. And yes it doesn't seem like every book on the shelf is complete/has active contributors, I'll take a look later at the policy to see what else jumps out at me as obsolete. 76.200.210.142 20:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Another mention of common practice is that bookshelves should not contain red links, and neither should the associated bookshelf templates. The contents of the bookshelf templates should be left to the discretion of the community of authors on that bookshelf, although some general guidelines should be enforced: no red links, no "bad" books, and a certain size limit (to limit the amount of space wasted on pages such as All bookshelves, etc). --Whiteknight (talk) 19:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Question on Rewriting Content in Wikipedia versus Copy and Paste
I was adding to wikibooks chess and the last section was chess variants. A chess variant that I recently told someone about who liked the idea is Bughouse, so I went on to add it to the chess variants section. I then saw that there is a very good article on Bughouse in wikipedia that has photos, well organized and covered different topics such as notation. I think it would be foolish to have to redo all that stuff one at a time as different people visit the wikibooks chess variants section, and I think it has a place in the wikibooks for completeness sake, so what are people's thoughts on copying and pasting the wikipedia article into that seciton of wikibooks? Tprev 05:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Small sections might be included under "fair use" with acknowledement in the text. Large sections need to be treated differently. Wikipedia has open content so, provided the section is acknowledged as sourced from Wikipedia, including major author names in your author list, it should be OK to include it (as a "modified version" under GFDL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html ). RobinH 08:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You could transwiki the page into Wikibooks and then modify it to keep in the style of the book you are merging it into. You can request the page transwikied at WB:RFI.  Transwiking in this way keeps the edit history and thus contributors information --AdRiley 11:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Featured books
After a magnificent flurry of enthusiastic voting we have now got a good list of Featured_books. The group of about 10 users who voted initially have done their bit. Users who have not yet voted can take a look at Featured_books/Nominations and help the list to be cleared so that it will only host new nominations. RobinH 09:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

help with new book
As someone who has learned a second language (italian) later in life. I enjoy using it in order to keep my knowledge in trim. To this end, having found the interesting book on Fermat's last theorem on wikibooks.it, and not finding its equivalent in english I have produced an english translation in full. How do I go about adding it to the english section of wikibooks? Adriano 19:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You have a full english translation? that's awesome. What do you want your new book to be titled? If you need help with this, I am available to help you if you need any assistance. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Whiteknight, it's gratefully accepted. The title is "Fermat's Last Theorem" and it needs to go under the corresponding section to that of the original on Wikibooks.it. I have all the text as a word document with all the graphics except the pictures of the people concerned. These will need adding in and the various links establishing. This is where I come unstuck as I haven't the faintest idea how to do it. As you can see I'm a complete novice at Wikibooks.Adriano 22:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Game guides
Ooops - I used those words - but you could do with getting it sorted Counter-Strike: Source just started -- Herby talk thyme 10:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I posted a message to the author advising him to move it all to StrategyWiki. I've also added a speedy delete tag on the first page but let's give him some time before we delete it. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 17:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Favicons
When did we finally get a favicon? I like it! :-) --Iamunknown 06:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I was hoping that the logo issue was going to be resolved first before this was updated, but I'm glad that somebody got a bug under the skin of the Wikimedia developers to make this change. Whoever made the push for this change, thanks! --Rob Horning


 * What favicons?-- SB_Johnny | talk 18:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm with johnny, the favicon hasn't changed, from what I can see. --Whiteknight (talk) 19:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Definitately changed. It's changed since Sunday night (CEST) when I was last online.  You guys probably need to refresh your cache if you can't see the new icon.  I think FireFox sometimes has problems updating favicons - I presume you're using FF?  The new favicon looks ok to me but I use Opera web browser and there is a lot of white in the favicon image which doesn't look good against the blue background of Opera.  So who DID change the icon?  Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 22:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup, changed. Before it was the "W" from Wikipedia, and a general annoyance of mine for some time.  And this has even been discussed here on the Staff Lounge in the past.  While it is just the stack of Wikibooks, it is nice to have one more point of distinction between Wikibooks and Wikipedia.  --Rob Horning 18:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, can someone please clue me in here? I see no difference. -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Must be being cached somewhere along the way. Clear your browser's cache, then close it and start it up afresh. If it still shows the old "W" favicon, then it's a caching proxy server. It'll get there, eventually. Webaware talk 01:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Or he's using a web browser that simply doesn't support favicons. A favicon is a little picture thats associated with a page. In my browser of choice, its shown just before the website address in the address bar. --dark lama  01:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay, i see the new favicon when i cleared the cache in IE7, but i still don't see it in firefox.no worries, at least now i know what people are talking about. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Traditional Indonesian???
(this header was added by Slinkyfrog)


 * What about it? There is a book on Indonesian if you are interested -- Kowey 12:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Good books
I have been bold and turned this page from a proposal into a guideline. this page basically just reflects the way we currently operate the Featured books system, and doesnt really introduce anything new besides what the community is already doing.

I view this guideline as being no big deal, and it should be a small matter for us to modify or update this guideline as needed to reflect the status of the featured books initiative. The selection and advertisement of our better books should be an undemanding, positive, and enjoyable affair, without the need to specify the minutia, or the consequences, etc. --Whiteknight (talk) 14:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've tried to clean it up a little more, there were a few things that were bugging me, but nothing that I think changes the meaning of the text. --dark lama  15:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Changes and improvements are good. Like i said, this shouldnt be a big deal, and we shouldnt hesitate to update this guideline as needed. --Whiteknight (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikijunior Namespace
What would be involved with creating a Wikijunior namespace? -- xixtas  talk 06:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We'd need to establish community support for it, then make a request on bugzilla. -- SB_Johnny | talk 11:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * All things considered, Wikijunior really should have it's own namespace, it makes the most sense to me. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree, it's almost like its own project, and has its own spot on the navigation bar (like the cookbook, which does have its own space), so why not? Not like it would have too little of pages on it or something. Mattb112885 (talk) 15:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I support establishing Wikijunior as its own namespace. The only reason to suggest perhaps it shouldn't be put in one is that the contents of pages outside of the "main project namespace" don't get counted in the total page count of the project.  Of course, the Cookbook already has this problem, so it it not really something that is a serious problem except when projects are trying to compare sizes for ego purposes.  --Rob Horning 15:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree with Rob's logic both in terms of ego (irrelevant!) and the desirability of a Wikijunior: space (I recall a while ago I asked a contributor why they hadn't named a page in Wikijunior with a colon as I was convinced it was a namespace so it's good to see this suggestion) -- Herby talk thyme 16:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Wikijunior should have its own namespace. I think it would be a good idea to relax the scope of Wikijunior as well, to include both books intended to be read to children and school age children rather than limited to a specific target age group. --dark lama  17:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Good point - agree with that too. I guess "read to" is educational in this age context but worth acknowledging -- Herby  talk thyme 18:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Is this done on a per language basis? My guess is that changes we made here in this regard would not have an impact on other language Wikijuniors.


 * The reason that I brought it up is that I'd really like an easier way to monitor recent changes on Wikijunior and it seems to me like it would be easier if Wikijunior had its own namespace. I also do think that people are often confused about the naming of Wikijunior books. -- xixtas talk 20:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The Cookbook is an en.wikibooks only namespace. While there may be some desirability on other language Wikibooks projects to do this, it isn't going to be something necessarily required.  MediaWiki has a limit (I think... correct me if I'm wrong) of 99 "custom" namespaces, but I don't anticipate ever having that many.  At the current rate of about one new namespace per year, I don't see this being something that is going to be a significant issue in the future.  --Rob Horning 01:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

--- Straw Pole - There should be a formal namespace for created Wikijunior. - xixtas talk 04:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I will request a namespace be created for Wikijunior today or tomorrow sometime. -- xixtas  talk 17:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, i must have missed that staw poll, above. I am definately in support of this, when you make the request just tell me where to sign. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there even an objection of any kind for this proposal? If not, I'm going to make the request on Bugzilla in the next two days (unless somebody else beats me to it). Who ever makes the bugzilla request, make sure you point to this discussion to document that it does have the support of the Wikibooks community and include the bugzilla reference number here once it is made. --Rob Horning 23:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I made the Bugzilla Request if anyone can think of anything to add to what I have include please comment. I'm not sure whether voting makes a difference, but if it does, please consider casting a vote. -- xixtas  talk 04:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The developers do want to see that the action is not just spontaneous but is something that has widespread user support. --Rob Horning 04:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Support show of hands people... --Panic 07:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support Wikimedia seem to treat Wikijunior as a separat project anyway and it has a different set of rules in many cases also. Xania [[Image:Flag_of_Poland_2.svg|15px]]talk 21:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support. My full support. This is something that should have been done a long time ago, and despite the work that it will bring (page moves from "Wikibooks:Wikijunior:" to "Wikijunior:", it's a needed change that will benefit the project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support To make it official and obvious. --Rob Horning 16:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support Just like Rob said. Mattb112885 (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support For all the reasons I have stated above. -- xixtas  talk 17:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support -- Why not? Aside from moving the pages, we should also change the default search settings to include that namespace. -- SB_Johnny | talk 18:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support As I said above. --dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 19:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support - this is a good idea. It will help isolate vandalism to WJ much more easily, by allowing recent changes to be shown just for the WJ namespace - very important, IMHO. Webaware talk 22:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support a good idea. Brian 04:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support - of course - however far more importantly go and vote for it on bugzilla -- Herby  talk thyme 08:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support (late, sorry :- of course. --Iamunknown 17:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Support Wikijunior is a segment of Wikibooks. --Herraotic 21:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Support also late. Just looked at it again, been a while.  Lots of potential Harriska2 14:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about this with the devs... apparently the request was made to have special pages (wantedpages, orphans, etc.) for the WJ namespace, and one of the devs came by the IRC channel and said that was a definite no-can do. However, commons:User:Gmaxwell has some handy scripts for this, see User:Gmaxwell/report for an example (that one searched for all links on pages in A Wikimanual of Gardening to other pages in the same book). He said it's very easy to do (took him about one minute from my request to the page create), and said he'd be more than happy to do that for other wikibooks.

The Special pages on Wikibooks are only sporadically updated in any case, because there are some tech difficulties running them here. Gmaxwell's scripts will usually have a lag (2 days at the moment), but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I have also written a couple of scripts, one of which is used to isolate the cookbook wanted pages (by way of screen scraping). See User:Kellen/Scripts. The grep/sed filters could easily be updated for wikijunior. Kellen T 16:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The namespace has been created and subpages enabled. What's the next step? -- xixtas talk 03:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Moving all Wikijunior books to the new namespace. For example moving Wikijunior Alphabet to Wikijunior:Alphabet. I've also been deleting the redirects caused by moving them after making sure I fixed any links. I've also announced its creation on the bulletin board with how to locate the moved books, if people are having trouble locating them. I think all pages should be renamed using that minor change in its name, eg replacing the space with a colon, and the redirects deleted, as was done when the Transwiki namespace was created. A Wikijunior front page like the Cookbook has should also be created, if one doesn't already exist. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  12:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd recommend that you don't delete the redirects for the first page of each Wikijunior book (at least). There will be links from external sites to these pages, and the redirects will help people easily find the books at their new locations. Webaware talk 12:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Do not delete the redirects!!!!! Undelete any that have been done so far, leave as redirects, and fully protect them so we don't need to keep an eye on them. There is absolutely no reason to delete, and plenty of reasons not to. -- SB_Johnny | talk 12:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've only deleted redirects for 1 book so far, and I had already avoided deleting the first page, before seeing any objections. A quick Google search for the Alphabet book turned up no external links. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Good, you were probably lucky that time. See here and here for just a couple of examples of external links to Wikijunior pages. Webaware talk 00:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * How should templates be handled in the new namespace? If you put the template in Template:Wikijunior:foo and then call from within Wikijunior the result is not found.  is found. But should template for Wikijunior go in Wikijunior:Template:foo? or someplace else? -- xixtas  talk 16:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The best way to do it, probably is to put the template at "Template:Wikijunior/Foo", and call Wikijunior/Foo . You could also abbreviate such as: "Template:WJ/Foo". So long as your wikijunior books don't conflict with books in the main namespace, you could probably omit the "Wikijunior" prefix all together and simply make templates at "Template:Foo". That is, unless somebody makes an "Animal Alphabet" book for adults. --Whiteknight (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes
Infoboxes, and the entire infobox project, are a throwback item that is really not supported anymore. Furthermore, the use of the bi template on bookshelves destroys the formatting of that shelf, and causes items to be indented improperly. The Infoboxes a frequently out of date, listing as "active authors" people who haven't been active here in years or months, listing BOTM and COTM as current projects, and making references to other abandoned initiatives.

I don't discourage the use of proper metadata about a book, but the infoboxes are too old, out of date, and very confusing. Nobody maintains the templates, and I can't figure out how to fix them to avoid these formatting errors because the templates are nested and convoluted.

I am proposing that we remove infobox templates from the bookshelves, and try to re-evaluate the infobox project to determine if we want to update it, if we want to find an alternative means of metadata collection and display, or if we want to abandon the idea entirely. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually think the infoboxes are pretty awesome. It's a standard way to list book info. The system is not even a year old and it hasn't been updated because User:Hagindaz, its creator, seems to have disappeared. The bi template does screw up bookshelves and so I'm OK with that being removed (even though I think many of the bookshelves are in terrible shape and are basically useless). The book should keep an infobox up to date and so I don't see a problem with "old" information since it's often as old as the book's last major edits. The infobox template does try to accomplish a lot and so maybe that could be pruned a bit, but no way should the system be eliminated. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 01:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with withinfocus. I don't think we should start over, instead we should fix whatever's broken about infoboxes and do a better job of publicizing them. -- xixtas talk 01:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * At the very least i want to remove the bi template from the bookshelves until the formatting is fixed. Also, it's easier to say that we need to fix something then it is to actually go about doing the fixing. I mean, i'm not going to update and maintain them, and without trying to be an ass i have to wonder whether either of you are up for the task either. Besides updating the templates, for this project to work we would need to write up an infobox for many many books, and we would need to write up help pages to help other authors write them for their own books, and the list goes on. It's one thing to say it's a good idea, but it's another idea entirely to really make it work. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you give a specific example of where this messes up the bookshelves? -- xixtas talk 14:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Like here. You can't use them in lists for one. Bookshelves are so hideous anyway that I don't care that much, but that's a totally separate and huge project. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Then here's the plan:
 * Remove all instances of the bi template from bookshelves.
 * Remove reference to the bi template from the Infobox instructions so that people don't try to use it on bookshelves anymore, but they are free to use it inside their book as they see fit.
 * Modify the infobox template so that it's a little more manageable and doesn't try to pack so much information in. Details below.
 * Find all instances of infobox inclusion on book pages (should all be sub-pages of Infobox) and trim the tags that we have removed as well as apply any other style changes.
 * Delete categories and new pages that were created to maintain some of the new organization this system provides i.e. Dewey decimal pages. Details below.
 * Modify the instructions on the Infobox page to reflect the re-design of the system.


 * If a book doesn't want to use infobox then they don't have to. Good books should but that should be up to the authors, unless they've all left and one of us can step in to add the box. My suggestions for which fields to remove:
 * subject - unused
 * info links - advanced, not sure if it will be used all that much, hard to manage
 * last update - this happens all the time, too hard to continually update, update check can handle some of the underlying idea
 * chapters - hard to abstract and keep updated
 * activity level - not used really
 * BotM - obsolete
 * BotM month - obsolete
 * BotM year - obsolete
 * CotM - obsolete
 * alphabetical - simple, not that useful really
 * Dewey - too much of a problem to work with, I don't think people are really going to use it
 * Dewey specific - same problem
 * LoC class - same problem
 * LoC ID - same problem


 * Let's add:
 * some sort of featured book info or award link


 * -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, if we are dead set against removing infoboxes, then I guess i will help make them better. I agree with just about all the parameter removals you suggest, although the "prerequisites" thing would actually be useful for many of the books on the ENGR shelf that really do rely on each other. Also, so long as we are gung-ho about the featured books awards, we should likely add in a section for that. The Bi template does have some use, just not on bookshelves. We can delete it from the shelves (i will do that ASAP) but since it creates a link to the infobox, it can be used from inside a book. I'll see what i have time for today, but then i'm gone for the weekend. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I edited my above post to reflect all this. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think removing the "reading level" and "activity level" parameters make sense as well. Reading level is a prerequisite after all and "activity level" is hard to keep updated as well. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 15:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree about the activity level since that's not that useful really (and so I added it above). I disagree about the reading level, though. For instance, the Muggles' Guide lists that as "Young Adult and up" which I think is helpful to show. It sets up an audience. Many books are general to everyone, but our literary works are not. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 01:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Yep, remove them. Anything useful they provide is already found within the book, and everything else is unnecessary. And as Robert Horning mentions below, Wikidata will make the templates obsolete. All related pages are in Category:Infobox project. --hagindaz 22:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've gone ahead and removed some of them and some of them weren't even there to remove. I crossed out the ones I did from the above list that Withinfocus made and updated the list of parameters from the infobox usage page. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 18:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry to ignore this for so long, but have you gone to each book's infobox page and removed these parameters as well? Based on the below discussion, the current modifications might be all we want to do for a while. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:16, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

LOC/Dewey/Wikibooks catalog
I know this seems as though it is a dead project, but in fact I've been placing it as something "on hold" until the Wikidata extensions are added into the MediaWiki software. IMHO, this is the critical missing feature to really make the system work as the category system seems to break down when it is used for book classification. There is some progress with Wikidata (which would be a full relation database to be used _within_ a wiki context), but it has been unfortunately slow. The current work is mainly an effort to help improve Wiktionary but there are many other potential uses.

Cataloging content is a huge issue for Wikibooks, and nearly every system we come up with eventually breaks down. It certainly is something that needs to have some review done by people who really know the topic of Ontology. --Rob Horning 07:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Could you give an estimated timeframe for Wikidata? If it's too long I think we should just move on without it and deal with it when it is released to us. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 15:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Along with a potential timeframe do you have a description of what, precisely, wikidata will accomplish? What kinds of information will it allow us to associate with a book, and how easy will it be to assign that data? I guess I have trouble seeing how the information that we need can't be adequately stored with a creative use of categories. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Robert: would the Wikidata extension be able to create indices for particular books? Maybe tell us a bit more about what it does. Categories are a pain, but I'm starting to add some categories to the garden book to make use of DPLs, which would help make "index pages" of a sort (I hate indexing, so the book has no index, much less an up-to-date TOC... see Category:A Wikimanual of Gardening or Category:Cookbook for examples of heavily categorized books). -- SB_Johnny | talk 22:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't find any current progress concerning Wikidata on Meta Wikimedia. When I tried to look, I first found info saying the proposal is outdated and that the page is no longer maintained and from there links which show "current progress" dated for 2005. This seems to suggest that development of Wikidata has stopped and is no longer being developed. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark [[Image:Yin yang.svg|12px]] lama 19:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The Wikidata is being worked on, although admitttedly very slowly, and the test site has moved more than once, not to mention that the developers of Wikidata had a bit of a internal feud with the main group of MediaWiki developers and went independent (not to mention some fire and flamewars on the foundation level with some prominent resignations from some foundation positions). The current effort is now happening at Omega Wiki with a blog containing some of the latest news.  It does have the support of at least one WMF board member (Erik Moeller) and they do consider themselves to be a part of the Wikimedia community after a fashion.


 * My idea here would be to create a similar kind of database that would index each Wikibook (and Wikisource content too!) together with meta data such as topics, cataloging numbers (like LOC/Dewey numbers), and some general schema that would allow for content searches to suggest books that would be related to each other in some way. Ultimately, we might even be able to index individual modules, even if the main topics of the "Wikibooks" are quite a bit different in nature.  --Rob Horning 19:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess what I fail to see is how this differs in any practical way from the application of appropriate categories? For instance, it would be just as easy, if not easier, to tag the front page of a book with "Category:Dewey 300|321" or "Category:LOC NA|45.678" then it would be to learn some new interface and attempt to use that. It would be a trivial matter to write a template that even created these categories automatically, similar to an infobox but smaller and easier to use/maintain. Without a timetable, and with only a vague promise that "wikidata is being worked on", i wonder if the cost of this extension (time to wait, learning curve, implementation on all books) is smaller then the cost of the alternative (many of the LOC and Dewey categories already exist, create a template, tag books). Comparing relative cost, it seems wikidata would have to be sensational and infinitely useful to warrant waiting indefinitely for it. --Whiteknight (talk) 14:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The main issue with a template (or category system) is the sheer pile of work to get everything set up. And MediaWiki changes have certainly made some of these tasks easier than they have been in the past as well, so it may be something to look into in order to restart the effort.  Wikibooks talk:Card Catalog Office has a few ideas that were partially followed up on along thees lines.  The real issue is trying to find a consistent system for all Wikibooks that could be easily implemented.  As a means to simply count the number of Wikibooks (Special:Statistics does a lousy job on this point), I created Alphabetical classification which gives something of the scale of such a classification project.
 * The added advantage a genuine database gives is the ability to do more genuine searches on multiple criteria, and to have a central place to edit content about a specific book. Certainly you can have a "card catalog entry" on the main title page (or something similar) for each Wikibook, and this is already done to a small extent.
 * As far as an infobox that can be used in a practical example, I put one on Serial Programming. It was thinking through the issues involved with just adding this one example that I realized the true magnitude of the issue, and trying to see how far down each of the classification systems we want to push the categories.  When I see proposals like the one above strongly suggesting that pages like these simply need to be deleted altogether, it makes me realize the sheer futility of even trying to start such an involved effort when such an effort can be thrown away overnight with a 'bot.  --Rob Horning 22:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The request to delete the infobox was not an attempt to drive a nail through it's coffin, it was an attempt to find a standard that all books could follow. Infoboxes do exist and they have some merit, but they are not ubiquitous, and they arent maintained. I'm of the opinion that we ever need to have a project or we need to not have it. Either we need to make the infoboxes work on a global scale, or we need to remove them all together. It was a possible solution, but it didn't "work" (with "work" defined as being adopted by books, and helping to display proper information in those books). It is perfectly fine to learn a lesson and say "this didn't work, but we can take from it some idea of things that might work", without having to regard the deletion of the infobox as a failure. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Random page
Perhaps, someone, who has the ability, could be bold and put a link to Special:Random on the left side bar. Does anyone know the reason that was taken off in the first place? --Remi 04:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Jumping to random book pages was seen by the community as unusual. It doesn't make much sense to jump to a page about Muggles when you have no understanding of Harry Potter books. This is not an encyclopedic site and so individual pages rarely stand on their own. We unfortunately can't limit the randomization to just root pages. -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 05:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just got done writing a rather quick javascript to add a random book link to the navigation bar that retries a random book from Alphabetical classification, since people have been asking about this repeatedly lately. Right now it does it on every page load, but I'm going to try to get it to only do it when the link is clicked on instead. Perhaps this could be a useful addition to MediaWiki:Monobook.css? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  03:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I and community would enjoy that I think. However, we may want to make sure Alphabetical classification is accurate (enough). -<font color="#000000">within <font color="#7A7A7A">focus 12:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've made it delay retrieving the page until the link is clicked on now, so shouldn't be as much of a load on the servers. Also I've made it check for cases where the random book used is a dead link, since sometimes books are deleted without the page being updated. I may also check for cases of interwiki or external links, just in case too. By accurate enough, I assume you mean links to actual books and not subpages of books right? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've went ahead an added it. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for adding the Highlight extension to Wikibooks
In the Spanish Wikibooks there are voices claiming for the addition of the Highlight extension to the Wikibooks sites. I think it would be a nice addition to our Programming books in all languages. Before opening a request in bugzilla I would like to know the opinions of the English community. Does anybody know whether there is any technical problem preventing the installation of this extension? ManuelGR 13:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It looks nice to me, though I don't understand what makes it decide to highlight one thing or another. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * You nominate the programming language used in the source code snippet, and it parses it to determine how to highlight specific syntactical elements just like a good programmer's text editor does. Look at the usage examples on this page. Webaware talk 14:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's the page I saw... I just don't understand how it works :). -- SB_Johnny | talk 16:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It works like any other parsing engine, although many people don't have knowledge in that subject (i've been planning a book on that topic with Darklama for a little while now). Basically, as the Mediawiki is reading text out of the database, it can identify "tokens" that signify certain things. For instance a == is a token that means "the stuff after this token is all a heading", and the software acts accordingly. Instead of the usual mediawiki markup, this extension causes MediaWiki to look for additional tokens, that represent key words in the programming languages. The C programming language, for instance, only has about 2 dozen key words that would be highlighted in this manner. Some languages have more, but once you have software capable of doing it, it's trivial to extend it to recognize more keywords. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the Haskell wikibookians would be interested. GeSHi, the underlying software, does not yet support Haskell syntax, but their site says that adding language files is easy, so if this plugin were running, I'm sure we could find somebody in the community to make it work -- Kowey 20:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Yup I remember someone asking for this before, I for the C++ Programming book would like to have the feature, the Java book solved it with templates (I don't like that solution as it involves active maintenance) and the Ada book seem to also address the problem using normal links to keywords. --Panic 00:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

There is already a bug about this proposal: #7163. It seems the extension needs some improvements before being installed. ManuelGR 19:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * It has been resolved, so this should work:


 * Now we can start using it where it does matter. ManuelGR 18:14, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Great! Now how do I go about having a Haskell syntax filter installed? I have the code for the filter at http://codersbase.com/index.php/Geshi_haskell ... do i add a comment to the bug? Or is this something we can do for ourselves within the wikibooks community? -- Kowey 19:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably the bug should be open against Geshi itself, I doubt the MediaWiki developers would accept this plugin if it is not integrated in each version of Geshi. But you can try to open a new bug report to MediaWiki, but in any case we editors can't install anything on our own. ManuelGR 20:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I've filed a feature request with the Genshi folks and open a new bug report on Mediawiki to ask for an updated version (when available) -- Kowey 13:39, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Would the classes be turned on to use css? According to:

 By default, GeSHi doesn't use the classes, so it's easy just to whack out some highlighted code if you need without worrying about stylesheets. However, if you're a bit more organised about it, you should use the classes ;). To turn the use of classes on, you call the enable_classes method: $geshi->enable_classes;
 * I think the extension is using css classes, just look at the HTML source of the snippet above. ManuelGR 20:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

enwiki Administrator Password
An administrator from en.wikipedia had their password compromised. Apparently the password was simply "password", and another user took over the account to delete the main page.

Passwords really are here for security, so that other people cannot use your account. It makes good sense to create a password that cannot be guessed. Some good rules to creating a good password are:
 * 1) Do not use a word from the dictionary.
 * 2) Passwords should be at least 6-8 characters long
 * 3) passwords should contain at least 1 letter and 1 number
 * 4) Do not use your birthday, your address, or another text string that people could guess if they knew you

These are all just good suggestions, mediawiki doesnt enforce rules like these, but it's a good idea nonetheless. If we have a problem with a password being hacked, the time to solve the problem will involve stewards and developers, and will probably take a long time. if the problem can be solved at all. --Whiteknight (talk) 02:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Upload and licensing
Because I found on upload log that many people use only GFDL license for their work and free screenshot is used incorrectly, I decided to adopt new list of licenses on upload page from Commons. "free screenshot" template has been removed (users will have to enter it manually) and list of licenses have been restructured so that more people would multi-license their work.

Remember - GFDL is evil - at least for images. Read blog post by Notafish. If you want to continue licensing your images under GFDL license, please dual-license them. It's very easy with new license list - just the select first or second option.

On Template messages/Image namespace you will also find information template, also copied from Commons, which can be used for providing more unified description for images. --Derbeth talk 09:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't agree that GFDL is evil, and I certainly am not going to dual-license any of my images in the foreseeable future. We can discuss that issue in another place at another time, however. Other then that, i like the changes you've made, and I think this will help to remove some of our licensing problems (misuse of fair use and "free screenshots", etc). I also like the idea of the information template, although it seems like alot of work for when I just want to throw together a quick and dirty image. --Whiteknight (talk) 12:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


 * GFDL is perfectly fine when the images are used in a GFDL text (it's not like you have to print the whole license for each image). Technically, CC-licensed images can be used in a GFDL document, because the CC people decided that CC images in GFDL texts are aggregated works. The problem with the CC licenses is that they've watered it down so much that it might as well be PD... they're not truly viral like the GFDL is. CC 3.0 also has some very strange "moral terms" added as well, which could definitely cause problems.
 * Anyway, I used to be very much for the dual licensing, but what I've learned on commons has completely changed my mind. The GFDL keeps it free, and restricts it to use in GFDL documents, which is exactly how I like it. -- SB_Johnny | talk 13:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Featured book template
I didn't like the way the Template:Featured book template nags authors to create a goodbook template even when one has already been created. So I created an alternate version that only displays that message if the template for that book does not exist. I'm not all that great at creating templates though, so I'd like to vet it here before doing anything rash. Please take a look: Template:Featured Book 2. If it passes muster, perhaps we can replace the "regular" one with this (or something like it). --Jomegat 01:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Saw it, fixed it, and already changed the template. Great idea Jim, the template was annoying and really did need to be fixed to not "nag" so much. --Whiteknight (talk) 01:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Changing GFDL for inclusion
There was a suggestion/question brought up at Wikibooks talk:GNU Free Documentation License. The concern is that the license text uses level-2 headings (" == HEADING == ") when for some printable versions it might make more sense to use a different heading (or no heading at all, such as bold text). So long as the text of the license doesnt change, I can't see a problem with allowing authors to alter the formatting of the license to suit the individual needs of the book.

A suggestion that has been brought up is to make the headings part of an optional parameter, such as:

HEADING

The default action would be to make level-2 headings, but they could easily be changed to level-3 headings by the author by:

Or changed to bold instead:

What do people think of these changes? --Whiteknight (talk) 22:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I like that a lot, and I have wanted to include a few recipes from the Cookbook in some of the work I've done here but ran into the same problem. Would it be OK to do this to selected recipes? --Jomegat 22:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Drop a note about it on the Cookbook talk page. I reckon it sounds OK, but you'd need to add a comment, perhaps even one per heading, to let people know what's going on - many Cookbook contributors authors editors are novices on Wikibooks, and might otherwise undo such changes. Webaware talk 00:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold and just make these changes because I dont think it will be a big deal and it actually seems like it will help out some authors. --Whiteknight (talk) 00:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Bloody Templates
It seems that to have a nice looking book one needs to use lots of templates. I need a template in my B2 English Wikibook. This template should show a table with some vocabulary and mixed-up definitions. There should also be a button "show" so that the user can then view the same table but with the definitions in the correct order (i.e. the answers). My template is Template:English/B2/Jobs which has been altered (stolen) from another Wikibook. Why is it so bloody hard to make templates? I have consulted Meta for help but whoever wrote that page has possibly never met a normal person in their lives and is under the impression that most ordinary people would actually understand that page. A demonstration of my template in use is available at English/English_for_B2_Students/Unit_9 and you can see that it basically works but I need to trim the title part of the template but every time I try I end up fucking up the template (again). Any help please! Xania talk 23:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I understand your pain, Xania! it took a long time for me to be able to make templates do what I wanted them to do, and still I end up asking for help on occasion. I'll take a look at your template and see what I can do about it. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've taken a look at it and made some changes. Hope it works as you want now. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  23:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Xania, if you want to learn how to make templates, I'd suggest chatting with User:Sundance_Raphael (either on wiki or on IRC). She's very good at explaining how templates work, and is here almost every day (she's an admin on de.wb, but also does RC patrolling for us here, and speaks very good English). -- SB_Johnny | talk 01:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I just had a quick look at DL's changes and it looks great. I'll try to use that template as my foundation for future templates when I have some time to continue working on the book. Cheers! Xania talk 22:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Syntax highlight function
For contributors of programming books: there's a syntax highlight function available on all Wikimedia projects. Before using it, consider consulting with other contributors, as they may not want syntax highlight in their book. --Derbeth talk 17:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Another(?) Proposal for Music Notation
I viewed the previous discussion held here about including the WikiTeX extension in wikibooks and eventually found myself over at bugzilla. Bug 189 dealt with a music notation extension (though not WikiTeX). The extension has been created, I think, but, as I followed the syntax given on the page, the sandbox here did not create a music image. I guess that means it hasn't been installed or dealth with at wikimedia or wikibooks? I have no idea how all this works. I want to be able to create musical examples and score fragments here but have so far been flabbergasted by the difficulty of manipulating images on top of each other in order to make anything of value. If WikiTeX has security flaws but this extension mentioned in bugzilla Bug 189 doesn't have those issues, why does it not work in the sandbox at wikibooks? Thanks everyone!! --A.J. 01:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Plenty of extensions exist but are not installed at Wikibooks. Extensions are typically installed on a per-project basis, that is that the extensions that Wikibooks uses are different from those at wikipedia, etc. So the point is that the extension has not been installed here yet. As to the security of this particular extension, I have no idea. We can ask the developers about it, though. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * OK, thanks. I received an email last night in response to a bugzilla message I sent out re: the status of the lilypond extension in question. It said, "The status is basically that someone needs to get on IRC, bother Tim Starling about this, and hope he gets interested. He'd probably be the one to test and install any extensions for something like this."  So I suppose that means I need to get on IRC and bother someone named Tim Starling (who I hope won't be so touchy about the subject...)? Thanks for the help folks; it is much appreciated. --A.J. 18:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Tim is pretty good about helping out on things like this, but I would more strongly recommend that you try to show that there is some widespread "community concensus" here on Wikibooks where a number of participants would like to see a given extension added to our little project. I would add my voice of support for adding something like lilypond to Wikibooks, but from what I understand there are some security holes in the current extension that have the developers worried at the moment, even beyond the WikiTeX stuff.  I don't know the specifics, but this is something that has been discussed on the developer's mailing list in the not quite so distant past.  An individual user asking for some major extensions is likely to get some major resistance from the dev team, as they don't like messing with the projects unless there is a strongly compelling reason or a large number of cries from the user community asking for a change.  --Rob Horning 13:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The thing is that I don't think there is any sort of widespread community support for an extension like this... At bugzilla Bug 189 the discussion revolved around not a WikiTeX extension, which does apparently have security problems, but around a simple Lilypond extension. I know nothing of the details, except that something was actually developed in 2005 or 6 that worked (according to discussion at Bug 189). But it isn't installed here. And I think what they developed was a plug-in for local installs of MediaWiki (or maybe not - again, I don't know much about the technical aspects...). Anyway, I think I'm the only person doing anything of value on the Music Theory book. That can hardly be said to be widespread community support. I appreciate your support though. I didn't realize at first that by "widespread community support" was meant support outside of the book in question. --A.J. 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I wonder what the efficacy would be for creating our own "home brew" solution for this? Some templates and some javascript would be able to create a div with a repeating background image of a scale and over-lay small PNG images of notes on that scale. A template could do the job of lining up the images, a little javascript could identify the divs by CSS class and overlay the notes onto the scale. It would take a little work, to be sure, but it might be something we could try until a suitable solution is found. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This "solution" does already exist. I've added the Template:OvImage, Template:OvTop, and Template:OvBottom templates for this very purpose here at wikibooks. I took them from WikiMedia. They do indeed work as you suggested. The problem is that it is frightfully impractical for use in modules here. The amount of time it takes to do all that's necessary for even very simple musical examples is enough to make it more worthwhile to simply make the example in a music-engraving program, export the image, upload to wikimedia, and include them in a module. Both methods are cumbersome. Using divs is impractical and inflexible. Music engraving is highly detailed. Using an engraving program and uploading resulting images would definitely work and be easier than overlaying images. The problem I had with that solution is my aversion to cluttering wikimedia with music examples that would probably only ever be used one time in a specific module. And there's the fact that I don't know how to produce appropriate files for upload to wikimedia. Sorry to totally poo all over this idea. What are your thoughts, knowing all this? --A.J. 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Query-String
I'm looking for a way to use the URL query string (everything after the "?") to modify the text of a page. I have a span written as such:

&lt;span id="query_test"> &lt;/span>

I want to pass a query string to the page with a name/value pair such as "arg=something", and have the word "something" appear inside the span. I know there is a way to do this kind of stuff in javascript, but I can't figure it out for the life of me. Does anybody know how to do something like this? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Something like this might work:

--<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  00:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

What are "soft redirects" for?
I've seen a few soft redirects, but I don't see the reason for them unless it is a transwiki redirect. For example, should Cello Handbook:Buzzing use a "soft" or "hard" redirect? Thanks. Hoogli 23:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I have to be honest, I've never used a soft redirect. It's one of those things that's really up to the editor to use them or not. I can understand the reasoning: you want people to fix links to point to the correct places. Of course, we have enough problems fixing double-redirects that I can't justify trying to fix single-redirects. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Soft redirects are probably a good idea for the main page of a wikibook that has changed its name. Because that is presumably is what people link to the most, which can be annoying, because the hard redirect masks the new URL.  Thanks for pointing this out.  I'm going to use it on Programming:Haskell now. -- Kowey 05:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That said, perhaps an informal "policy" might be to use soft redirects for main pages, transwikis, and to use hard redirects for anything else. -- Kowey 05:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I will throw together a quick proposal at Redirects. Feel free to add to it or modify it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Use of CSS Classes
I went through today and made a large number of changes to several pages and templates concerning formatting. Many different boxes, tables, and templates have used a very similar style of formatting:

border: 1px solid #AAAAAA; background-color: #F9F9F9;

or a close variant thereof. There was a CSS class in the MediaWiki:common.css called ".PrettyTextBox" that had this same definition, so I used this class in all of these places instead. First off, I think that having a single unified class on things makes a good deal of sense because it gives some of our "official pages" (staff lounge, bulletin board, etc) a consistent look and feel. Also, as an added benefit, we can now easily manipulate all these things at once, either as a global change (in common.css) or in individual skins. I would like to recommend that people who are making new "official" pages or templates try to use this CSS class to help keep things consistent.

Also, I've created and implemented a new CSS class, ".InformationBox" for use in things like Template:Info and Template:Warning. The appearance of these templates is unchanged, but now we are able to customize them and skin them more easily. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

World book
Several members of the Wikibooks community received emails about a potential publicity opportunity for Wikibooks. I have posted it here to avoid cluttering up the lounge, we are interested in the community's opinion on this matter, as it is an interesting opportunity but not one which should be taken without the community's knowledge. Post comments below. Mattb112885 (talk) 23:55, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I strongly hope that this opportunity is not ignored here, but that we really take advantage of the ability to "advertise" some of the best of Wikibooks through efforts like this. Contrary to what is suggested on the Textbook-l mailing list, this is something that should have strong community involvement in terms of helping to identify content that can be cataloged with these other volunteer projects.  I don't mind members of the WMF board helping to coordinate activities as a form of leadership (to keep duplicated efforts at a minimum), but this appears to be a labor intensive activity that can be best performed by the existing Wikibooks community.


 * I'm especially dismayed at some attitudes prevalent that somehow the WMF "owns" content and copyright ownership over what appears here on Wikibooks and other Wikimedia websites. I thought that was the whole point of the GFDL... even though I completely appreciate the idea that the WMF is trying to come up with fundraising ideas that don't explicitly require a plea for direct donations.  One of those ideas is licensing "authorized versions" of WMF project content as one of those revenue generation ideas.


 * All this group is asking for is permission to deep link to Wikibooks projects (aka individual Wikibooks). I don't see that permission is necessary, but it is appreciated that they are seeking help from us as a community to help identify what may be worth looking at.  --Rob Horning 12:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Rob on this, I dont think that anything they are asking for requires even our permission. If anything, it's a nice formality that they are asking for permission to link to our books. Keep in mind, as a matter of reference, that some websites mirror the entire wikipedia database without requiring special permission from the WMF to do so. Compared to hosting mirrors of our actual content, it seems inconsequential that they would post a link to our material.
 * The more difficult matter, to me, is whether we should post a link to their project in return, and if so, where do we post it?
 * We can certainly tell the WMF and say "look at us, we are being promoted by another ebook site!", but I don't think we need to ask permission to have links posted to our books, or to post links to that site in return. If the "partnership" escalates beyond a simple link-swap, then yes we should get some extra input from the WMF. --Whiteknight (talk) 13:37, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

PD book of stock correspondence
I'd like to start a collection of stock letters and memos, both organizational and personal. To save people having to put a notice at the end of their letters, I'd like to make it public-domain rather than GFDL (with a superceding copyright notice above each module). My questions are:


 * 1) Does Wikibooks policy allow this, and if not can an exception be made?
 * 2) Potential contributors, would this affect your willingness or ability to contribute?
 * 3) Does anyone know of an existing source of PD stock letters, such as a pre-1923 book or a collection of those from the US government? (In the latter case, does it include any that would be of use to individuals or organizations other than governments?)

Seahen 00:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This sounds like an interesting project! Having a book marked as public domain hasn't happened before to my knowledge; the main example that comes to mind is MediaWiki.org's Public Domain Help Pages, where a special border indicates the different license. While the technical side of this is simple to replicate, I'm not sure about the long-term implications. Sample letters aren't of much use if they can't be re-used, but introducing an alternate copyright scheme for a single book may overcomplicate matters. GarrettTalk 04:27, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I would add here that pre-1923 "stock letters" would be rather dated in their language, but it would still be interesting. I would strongly encourage such historical papers to be kept on Wikisource, unless this is a part of a much larger collection of original content that is going to be the bulk of these letters.


 * Another source of material for letters of this nature might be the Open Office project, where several stock letters and "forms" have been developed for use within that GPL'd software project. In this case, however, you might run into some problems where many of the contributions would be in still other F/OSS licenses like the GPL and Creative Commons suite.  Still, it would be an amazing experience to try and develop a joint effort between the Wikibooks community and the Open Office community to develop a repository of this sort of content.  Potentially this could become something of a very high profile nature in terms of drawing attention to Wikibooks if this was done right.


 * The one aspect that must be maintained, and one that the WMF board (especially Jimbo) doesn't want to bend on is the ability to use all of the content generated on Wikibooks to be available under the terms of the GFDL. Some countries don't even allow you to place content in the public domain, so it gets a little tricky on that point, but in those countries you can have something that is effectively the same thing in a legal sense.  We can certainly mix public domain and GFDL'd content together, so long as you don't impose additional restrictions upon the GFDL.


 * I'm curious about what the community reaction is to a suggestion for a particular Wikibook under different licensing terms that aren't only under the terms of the GFDL, such as being proposed here. Especially terms that request (aka require within the scope of just that one Wikibook) that all contributions to that sub-project be under a different licensing scheme.  In this case, Public Domain --> GFDL, but the other way is not possible.  I'm also thinking about dual-licensed content such as a dual license Mozilla/GFDL book or CC/GFDL dual license?  Individual contributions sometimes are done this way (and mentioned on user pages), but does it seem like something that should be accepted within Wikibook due to some exceptional circumstances?  If it seems like an experiment along these lines is just not working out, we could still strip the "dual license" and go to a strict GFDL-only license environment, so Wikibooks isn't necessarily in legal jeopardy if something like this is done.


 * The real trick here is that this has to be done right at the beginning of the Wikibook, while you can get permission from all contributors before you start to lose track of everybody. Relicensing is a pain in the ***** after content is already written.  --Rob Horning 06:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I do not see problem with starting a book that was dual licensed with GFDL and CCPD. However I would recommend truly starting from scratch and not trying to use work that may or may not be under copyright dispute in some places in the world. I, like Rob, think this presents an interesting opportunity to work with the Open Office folks. -- xixtas talk 08:55, 27 May 2007 (UTC)