Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2009/January

Chemical Principles, the open-content edition
Hi, My name is Chuck Wight. I'm a chemistry professor at the University of Utah. I've had this account for a while, but I'm really just getting started on a General Chemistry textbook. I would like to use the text not only to teach chemistry in my classes, but also to have students contribute to the work as part of the assignments for the class. Typically, a project like this takes a huge amount of time to write 1000 pages or so of highly technical material, so my idea is to start with an out-of-print copy of an existing textbook and get permission to use it as the starting point for an open-content book that anyone can add to, update and edit. To my surprise, I found one written by Dickerson, Gray and Haight on the web site of the Caltech library at http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechBOOK:1979.001 The usage policy for the text at the Caltech site is astonishingly simple: "You are granted permission for individual, educational, research and non-commercial reproduction, distribution, display and performance of this work in any format." I wrote to the library and got further permission "to use the book as the starter material for an open source textbook". I selected wikibooks because it is the largest and best-known of the open-content books sites, and I think that the book will get lots of exposure here. So now I'm off to the races and I am trying to copy the text into the wikibooks pages as faithfully as I can, so that people can read, learn, and write in the project, but also so that the original authors of the text are acknowledged in an appropriate way. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Happy New Year! Wight (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately to be able to use it as a bases for a book here, you'll also need permission to use it for commercial and non-educational purposes as well. Wikibooks' uses the GFDL license and could in the future be moving towards a CC-BY-SA license. So you'll need to spell out that you need permission to use any copyleft license that allows people to use, modify and redistribute the work for any purpose whether for free or for profit, that they will get credit for their work, and that other people will need to be able to be credited for their changes to the work. If they cannot agree to those terms than it simply won't be able to be used here. If you can get them to agree to those terms, you can create an Authors page, a Forward page or such that mentions that the work is based on and is used with permission by . You can ask how they wish to be credited while you at it. --dark lama  17:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Forgotten my Password
Hi, I have forgotten my password after changing it recently. My login Username is 'Armchair'. Could an admin email a reminder to me? Use my usual confirmed email address. Thanks, Armchair, 1702 GMT, 6 Jan 2009.


 * If you go to the login page, there's a button to request a new password to be emailed to you Unusual? Quite TalkQu 17:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the input Unusual? Quite, its fixed now.  Armchair (talk) 15:34, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Random Book button
What happened to the random book option in the navigation panel? Unusual? Quite TalkQu 09:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ummm... nothing? I just clicked it. --Jomegat (talk) 13:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I just updated (after these comments, not before) that script - please give it a few clicks & let me know if there are bugs. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 15:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether this is a bug, but I get links (e.g.SA_NC_Saaste_Tech:Activities_Identifying_Materials), which are not books but modules. --Martin Kraus (talk) 17:07, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That would be because that page happens to have been alphabetized and only books are suppose to be alphabetized. --dark lama  17:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, maybe it's just me, but I don't have the link anymore. All I see under navigation is@


 * Main Page
 * Help
 * Cookbook
 * Wikijunior
 * Browse
 * Featured Books
 * Recent changes
 * Donations


 * I'm using IE 6 at work at the moment, will try Firefox at home - maybe it's something daft being caused by the lack of Javascript support at work (which, for example, stops Twinkle working and makes other things in the format go wrong). Unusual? Quite TalkQu 17:12, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeap that would do it. The random book link is created using javascript and picking a random book is done using javascript. --dark lama  17:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay, thanks - will just have to do my random reading from home in future. Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 17:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new
My name is Michael. I had sarted a personal mathmatics website focusing on statistics, number theory and the like, but now that I've discovered wikibooks, I'm just going to transfer everything over here. So "Hi there and hello to everyone in internet land!"
 * Hello Michael! Have fun! (and consider to use --~ to sign your messages. :-) --Martin Kraus (talk) 17:25, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Can I edit someone elses wikibook?
Hi I am new to wikibooks. I am a high school math teacher who would like to use wikis as an educational tool. Ultimately I would like students to create and contribute to wikis to facilitate math understandings.

Today I was reading a wikibook on mathematics. There was a definition of Groups that I thought needed revising. Is there a way I can edit someone elses wikibook?


 * Hello and welcome! Please consider signing your messages with --~ . Yes, you can edit almost all pages (only very few pages of this project are protected, which are usually not part of any wikibook). See Using_Wikibooks/How_To_Edit_A_Wikibook for an introduction to editing wikibooks. However, your changes will only be visible to logged-in users. They will become visible to everyone else once they are reviewed by an "editor". (If you make many changes you will be promoted to that status automatically.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:33, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Can I translate from Wikibooks to Wikiknigi?
Wikiknigi is the Bulgarian version of Wikibooks. I read the GNU FDL very carefully and I am sure that I can do it but I feel slightly unsure of my self IavorTodoroff (talk) 20:52, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can certainly translate from English to Bulgarian Wikibooks. I'm not sure what the best practice is for attribution when translating... I'll try to find someone else who's done this to give some advice. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 20:20, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No experience of this, but couldn't you just do a transwiki move to the Bulgarian WB? Not only would that take the revision history across, it would give IavorTodoroff the English text to work from to translate. Just a thought. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 20:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like an excellent idea. --Swift (talk) 02:19, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * ...Unless they don't want English text being added/imported there. I'm not saying this will be a problem, just that this sort of thing seems to have caused situations in the past about where the "right" place is to host content while its still undergoing translation. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  02:40, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * In cases where English text is problematic, the page can simply be blanked. The main thing is to have the edit history. --Swift (talk) 03:18, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Blanking the page doesn't help if IavorTodoroff is needing help to translate the page from English to Bulgarian. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  03:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The transwiki wasn't suggested to help translate the page. --Swift (talk) 04:16, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

User contributions
So I recently noticed, that sometimes there started to appear [rollback] and [vandalism] in the list of contributions after some of those. I started to wonder, what it means. If anybody could tell me here, I would be really thankful. Does this has something to do with flaggedrevs or twinkle gadget? Probably not with twinkle, as disabling it didn't changed anything. If this should go to WB:SLN then sorry. Thank you for reading. Soeb talkundefinedcontribs 17:07, 18 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Bit late, but yes that's Twinkle that does that. If it didn't disappear when you changed your preferences, then you probably needed to reload the cache too. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 14:38, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I have a question relating to the contributions sections. Sometimes the edits are highlighted in a light pink, but I do not see a certain pattern. What does the pinkish highlight mean? ~ TheSun (talk) 03:01, 6 January 2009 (UTC) ~
 * Those are edits which haven't been flagged yet. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 03:02, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Possible new wikibook - seeking advice on whether Wikibooks is the right place
In 2000, I completed a PhD in Economics on the Origins of Stakeholder Theory. I get requests from time to time about the content although I have now left academia. I would like to make the content available to people who have the time and inclination to find out more. Should I use Wikibooks? The thesis shows step by step how the idea of Stakeholders developed, so it seems to conform to the requirement of being fact based, rather than a particular position. I'm considering making it available via Wikibooks so that it can also be printed on demand if people want. My questions: (1) Is Wikibooks an appropriate place to publish this work (2) How easy would it be to convert a 60,000 word Word document into a Wiki publication? thanks GilesS (talk) 05:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)GilesS


 * Welcome, GilesS,
 * Since Stakeholder theory isn't your original research, I'd say that as long as your thesis is a discussion of existing ideas, it should be fine here.
 * The difficulty of converting your thesis depends on the level of markup, how many pages you want to place it on and the sort of interlinking that it would employ. See mw:Help:Contents for some syntax help. --Swift (talk) 05:29, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, please note there are some tools which are intended to help you convert microsoft word documents to wiki code (link to list of these tools). It won't help in spitting the book into pages or anything but it should help you with the formatting (although I haven't tried the tool myself so I don't know). Anonymous101 (talk) 16:19, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

First time user needs to know amount of energy used by an Airbus jet to leave the ground. Can you tell me how to go about reaching that goal? Don't know protocol. Can anyone out there help me? Geohenson@comcast.net

Upload Images
Hello, I have looked everywhere for this, but I cannot find it. When I go under the "Edit this Page" tab, I am told there should be a link that say "Upload Images" or "Upload Files" in my toolbox on the left hand side of the screen. Unfortunately it is not there! I am working on placing a chemistry book in Wikibooks and thus there are many figures that need to be included. Please help me with this!! Elo 1219 (talk) 17:24, 6 January 2009 (UTC)elo_1219


 * What's not there? The toolbox or the link? What do you see under the search box/in the toolbox? As a slightly less convenient way to find the page next time, you can check Special:SpecialPages (which, incidentally, should also be in the toolbox) where there is a link to Special:Upload. --Swift (talk) 18:30, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

I have the actual toolbox and the only links available are Search this Book, What links Here, Related Changes, and Special Pages. I tried clicking on the special pages and going to upload file, but then I get a Permission Error, Permission error "The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Autoconfirmed users, Administrator, Uploaders." I kept searching and the only thing I have found is to upload an image through wikimedia commons and then using the file in my text. Elo 1219 (talk) 19:23, 6 January 2009 (UTC)elo_1219


 * Oh, I noticed that you only registered yesterday. The software doesn't grant you upload rights until after a four days. Sorry this caused you problems. --Swift (talk) 20:31, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This feature will self-enable after a short time period (Swift says four days). New users are not allowed to upload as a vandalism prevention mechanism.  If I were able, I would make you an uploader, but that is a privilege beyond my current level (admin).  You can either ask a Bureaucrat, hope one notices your dilemma, or wait it out.  --Jomegat (talk) 20:36, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's not something we can dole out. If the image meets Commons' licensing policy, you can upload it there without waiting. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 20:47, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's worth pointing out that any files uploaded to the Commons are directly usable here. It's very much as if they are here (same syntax and everything).  Images we upload here are generally those that fall under "fair use" (Commons doesn't accept those, but we do if a reasonable rationale can be provided) or those that are not going to be useful at the Commons (such as book covers). --Jomegat (talk) 21:05, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you all for letting me know!! As long as I know that I will be able to upload soon, I will be fine. I will be working with Wikibook for the next couple of months for this chemistry project. Thanks again for your help! Elo 1219 (talk) 21:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)elo_1219

Automatic numbering...
Hi, I am working on the real analysis book and I have run into some small (and some large) formatting questions. Let me begin with a hopefully simple one. I added some exercises here, if I used the # then they endup numbered 1 2 1. Is there any easy way to make that last 1 a 3? Thenub314 (talk) 12:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, Thenub314: There is a selection of list formats described on the WikiBooks page Indents and Lists that might be useful. Regards,  Armchair (talk) 15:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

How do I put my book on the bookshelf?
Hello,

I am writing a textbook of problem and solutions for Analysis qualifying exam problems at the University of Maryland. How do I make my book show up on the shelf?

Thank you. Ylai (talk) 16:37, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I was sort of hoping that someone else who is better versed in categorising books would step in here. As I understand, the bookshelves have been deprecated ... just not well enough for that to be cleared up. The shelves have been replaced by subjects. I don't know much about these, but your book has found it's way onto Subject:Major Subjects if that is any consolation. Maybe others can shed some light on this? --Swift (talk) 12:25, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Bookshelves are being deprecated by subject pages. To have books show up on specific subject pages, you should only need to categorize books by related subjects. This means that usually you shouldn't need to do anything outside of books to have books show up in the right places. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Sangi
Hi, I'm wikim3. I recently created an article titled Sangi, but was told that it might be a "possible copyright violation" from the site http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Sangi. However, as I am the creator of the original article on the conlang.wikia site, I'm not sure how I'd go about saying that I have given myself permission to transfer the material to this new article. I was wondering if anyone could help with this?

--wikim3 (talk) 13:30, 24 Jan 2009


 * That page uses the GFDL from what I can tell, so permission has already been granted. Acknowledging the contributors of that article also seems impossible due to all contributors having edited anonymously. I think in this case adding "This book uses material from http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Sangi which is released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts." to some page in Sangi might be enough to avoid copyright problems. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  16:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've added that in at the bottom of the article and I hope you're right.

--wikim3 (talk) 17:17, 24 Jan 2009

Edit count
My edit count seems to be quite different then what my contributions page would suggest. I only care because this seems to have some impact on whether or not I get "editor" status under this Flagged Revisons setup. I probably haven't made enough contributions yet anyways, but I thought I would let someone know that the edit count seems off, as maybe it means there is a problem elsewhere. Thanks. Thenub314 (talk) 14:44, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, do you mean the edit count from the "my preferences" page, or the one you get when you click "edit count" at the bottom of the "my contributions" page? The "edit count" link has been giving me strange numbers for a while. It looks like it hasn't captured any numbers from January. A similar edit counter here is also giving odd results. It says you only have 2 edits for example. Might be some larger underying problem. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 14:51, 7 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The replication lag between en.wikibooks and the toolserver is currently 9.1 days - so your edit count there will be 9.1 days out of date. This shouldn't affect anything like editor promotion I believe as this is driven from the Wikimedia servers themselves and does not rely on data being replicated out to the toolservers. Someone else correct me if I'm wrong please! <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 17:24, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick responses. I have made all but two of my edits in the past few days, so that makes sense.  (Those two edits were several years ago, I got a bit distracted in the mean time.) Thenub314 (talk) 08:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems that the S3 Toolserver won't be updated for at least a month following some maintenance that went bad. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 17:40, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Retiring Project Ideas
I posted a comment on Wikibooks talk:Project Ideas which I thought I'd bring to the attention to the wider community in case people might be interested. --Swift (talk) 08:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The suggestion on the talk page from Pi zero sounds sensible to me. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 17:58, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Editing Grant
A while back I applied for a grant with the Perl Foundation, a non-profit group that shepards the development of the Perl programming language. We have a (very nice) book here about Perl Programming that covers the language through version 5. Development effort is currently underway to completely redesign and reimplement the Perl language for version 6. Part of that work has been the creation of a new virtual machine that I've been writing about in the book Parrot Virtual Machine.

Well, I received word this morning that my grant application was approved to create a new Perl 6 Programming book to teach the new language. There is plenty of existing (although messy and convoluted) documentation about the language, a number of developing implementations, an expanding test suite to follow and an existing published book about the topic ISBN 059600737X, so I won't be inventing anything or performing any original research.

This raises an issue that we haven't really dealt with before (or at least hasn't been made public before) that I'll essentially be getting paid to write stuff here. I'd like to hear what other people think about this, and consider any steps that I might need to take to avoid potential conflicts of interest because of this. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see the problem. As far as I understand it, only the licensing is important. For example, there are lots of photos on WikiMedia Commons that were taken by employees of the US government as part of their job or by professional photographers who were paid by the US government. As long as the license allows an inclusion of some content, it is irrelevant whether someone got paid for creating that content. I don't think there is any issue. --Martin Kraus (talk) 17:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Kudos WK! Though this hasn't happened in WB before, getting paid to work on Open Source has a long history.  My suggestion would be for you to not use your 'cratly  powers (or admin powers) to do anything controversial on the Perl book (not that I think you would).  Enlist the aid of other admins and continue to seek consensus if anything with a hint of controversy comes up, and I think everything will work out pretty OK.  --Jomegat (talk) 17:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Jomegat. I was kicking around the idea of using my other account to do the editing since that account doesn't have any magic powers. That would help differentiate when I am here as a regular volunteer and when I am here under the direction of the almighty dollar. Of course, that doesn't make a lot of sense if I'm not doing anything controversial (and I like to think I can avoid controversy while editing). I'm really hoping I can attract some new readers and contributors here through this project too, so it could be beneficial all around. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of using a role account - beyond that I don't see any issues. If we're wrong on that, we'll solve the issues when we come to them <tt>:)</tt> &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 17:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Congratulations on the grant, Whiteknight! Like those commenting above, I see no problem with you getting paid for your work. Your interest will still be to create as useful a resource as possible. That's what ultimately matters. --Swift (talk) 17:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As long as anyone who wants to contribute can ,and so long as the Perl Foundation doesn't want to dictate anything about the development of the book, I don't see any potential problems with conflict of interest. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  18:14, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of the Perl Foundation's work is released under the Artistic2.0 license, so it doesn't make sense for them to get too involved with this project. They also have a second book in development now (which I'm also working on) that's under the Artistic2.0 and is in their code repository, so if they are going to exercise any editorial control that's where they'll do it. The benefit of having a book on Wikibooks in the first place (at least, according to my persuasive argument) was to get documentation outside their normal sphere of influence and try to attract readers that they wouldn't normally reach. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:27, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Similar as previous post : numbering question
I have a similar problem as the user in previous question. But the solution he used to fix the problem won't fit my problem. Actually I would like to number questions in an exercise. Something like : [Q.1.1] Some text for the question Any wiki element like a beautiful picture... ... or some text [Q.1.2] Text for this new question So my hope was to find some sort of counter I could reuse all along the page and increment on my own, just when I need to. Of course I could number the questions by hand but this would be just a waste of time when modifying the text. Adding a question before the first one would force me to manually change the numbers of all following questions. Is there any such mechanism ?

Trolli101 (talk) 15:14, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * You can also do:
 * Image questions
 * What does this image mean to you: [[File:Example.jpg]] use 10 words or less
 * Next image question
 * --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:37, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I was also hoping for something like this eventially. So I could include text like "by lemma 1.2.3" in chapter-section-number... I gather this is possible in HTML using CSS2.1 style sheets, but I have no idea what that means for wiki markup. Really a template to do linking would be great as well, but at this point is probably just a pipe dream.Thenub314 (talk) 16:08, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually the solution with the numbered list is just what I'm trying to avoid. The reason is that when you want to put a whole paragraph of text between two questions it would be great not to be forced to include it in a list... The other problem I see is that I'm also forced to begin by the numbering and I can't have the whole hierarchy in the numbering. For instance, I can't write "Question 3.1.4.1" and then "Question 3.1.4.2" Trolli101 (talk) 07:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It looks like you may be forced to look into CSS generated counters. --Swift (talk) 09:12, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you mean something like this than? :

Image Questions What does this image mean to you? Pick a door:

You may need to refresh your browser's cache to notice anything special about this. I added an autocount class, which would probably be hidden away in a template so you would not have to notice. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * It's way better, I'm going to examine both solutions carefully. I think this will do the trick. Thanks ! Trolli101 (talk) 14:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Weird category/subject behavior
Hi, I'm a newbie getting acquainted with Wikibooks by helping out with the categorization of math books. I started by making Subject:Geometry, and I thought it would be straightforward to fill it. Unfortunately, some weird behavior seems to be happening. The pages are refusing to be re-categorized and categories are appearing without wiki markup. The behavior doesn't seem to be related to purging the cache or to categories hidden in templates. Here are two examples.

If you examine Category:Geometry, you'll find several subpages of the book Geometry listed there. I've tried to remove those listings, so that the subpages are categorized only under Category:Geometry (book). However, some pages don't want to go quietly! If you look at the bottom of Geometry/Chapter_5, you'll see that its only category is Category:Geometry (book); inexplicably, the subpage is still listed in Category:Geometry.

You'll see something even stranger if you look at Geometry/Chapter_6. It's listed in Category:Geometry and indeed, that category is found at the bottom of that subpage. However, if you look at its wiki markup, nothing seems to add that category.

This behavior could be explained if the database were slow to update categories and templates; there's a common template Template:GeometryTOC. However, it's been over four hours and purging the cache does nothing. Does anyone have a suggestions for what this might be? Perhaps something associated with flagged revisions? Proteins (talk) 03:42, 10 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, they all look alright to me (that is, I can't see the problems you are describing). Maybe it was a caching problem? Try checking now. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 20:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello there! I guess you figured out most of the stuff already. Just to summarize:
 * You often have to edit a page (like Subject:Geometry or Subject:Mathematics) and save it without any changes to purge the caches. (These edits won't appear in the revision history.)
 * Many templates for navigation automatically add the page to the book category of the corresponding book; thus, these pages are added without any obvious Wiki markup for it.
 * In the case of the page Geometry/Coordinate Systems the categories were transcluded from Astronomy/Coordinate Systems. You can avoid this by using ... in the transcluded page (i.e. Astronomy/Coordinate Systems in this case).
 * I had a hard time understanding why Geometry for elementary school/Print version appeared in Category:Geometry. I'm not sure what caused the problem, it might actually have been related to flagged revisions.
 * You might consider adding Category:Mathematics to the Geometry books again, because otherwise they won't appear as featured books on the page Subject:Mathematics. (You can remove them from the main list using notcategory=Geometry in the dynamicpagelist.)
 * BTW, I'm still hoping that the sorting of items in dynamicpagelists can be solved. :-)
 * --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * On the Gadgets tab of my preferences there is a tool to add a purge tab to the top of the page. You can also purge the server cache by manually adding  to the end of the page's URL.  &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 18:05, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The Top 100 Wikibooks
Hello, the list of the most popular wikibooks pages of 2008 made me think about a proposal for a new page for wikibooks: the top 100 wikibooks of each year. The rules are simple: wikibooks (and only books, not pages in other namespaces) are ranked according to their most popular page on the mentioned list. We might also add a template to the top 10. Updating this page each year probably doesn't require too much effort. Such a page would serve several purposes: it would give feedback (and motivation) to authors, it would advertise this statistics page and - most importantly - it would guide readers to popular books. Comments? --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I set up a first version here. --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * These are certainly interesting statistics. Just the other day was I wondering if we could get such access data to identify which parts of our wikibooks were the most used. On the other hand, wouldn't this be better placed somewhere like the toolserver where it could be automatically generated? That said; I won't stop anyone adding information to their user sub-pages. Nor the project name-space, but I'd mention that these might be a bit of a pain to maintain.
 * I'm also glad to see the book that I'm working on made it to 31st place . At the same time, the book is undergoing reconstruction and the next page is way down on the popularity scale. Maybe a "top Wikibooks" ranking should add a little more nuance. It could, for example, take the mean of the access hits of a book's top ten pages (or all pages if the book has less). "My" book would plummet, but it would more accurately represent the actual usage, as opposed to interest. --Swift (talk) 15:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * An automatic generation would certainly be nice, I won't stop anyone to do it! :) As I said, manually updating such a page once a year wouldn't be too much work. I think any kind of ranking has it's pros and cons. I guess the fairest measure would be the sum (not mean!) of access hits of all pages of a book, but then a manual generation would require too much work. --Martin Kraus (talk) 15:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Regarding updating the page: I don't think anyone other than you would remember. Most things here are individual projects (which is fine) and die when their founder doesn't pay attention. Were you to prepare this every year, I'd definately have a look.
 * Well, if no one remembers it than it's probably not worth doing it. But I guess if it is listed on the Main Page, someone will have to either remove the outdated link or update the list. --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I suggested the mean to reduce the effect of an outlier main page. A useless book on a popular topic could otherwise top a truly useful book. --Swift (talk) 16:01, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I would think that by using the mean you don't avoid the effect of an outlier main page if a book consists only of a single main page. :) --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:33, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * True, but I'm not sure many one-page books get much traffic. Another approach would be to count only sub-page traffic. That is, after all, where the contents usually lie. --Swift (talk) 18:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * About 10 are among the Top 100 (the book Paint.NET has more than 1 page but only the main page has the Category:Paint.NET; Language Learning Difficulty for English Speakers is not really a book, maybe it should be moved to the Wikibooks namespace.)--Martin Kraus (talk) 09:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I improved and corrected my version of this list and included the number of pages based on the number of pages in the category of the same name. Quite interesting, I wasn't aware of most of the big books.
 * I would like to set a link from Community Portal (under Misc.) to that page. Should I move the page to the Wikibooks: namespace first or should I just link the page where it is now? --Martin Kraus (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * However you feel best. I don't think we have any policies or guidelines on this. --Swift (talk) 00:07, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, for now I just leave it where it is. If someone wants to move it: feel free. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:15, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Every book has a story — a suggestion for a community podcast
This is just a wild and rough idea that I would like to write down before I forget it. Whiteknight and Mike.lifeguard recently wrote about the need to advertise the wikibooks project (see ). I'm sceptical about advertising the wikibooks project in general, but I think it makes sense to advertise individual books. I think one interesting way to advertise books is to tell the stories behind them. Many authors are working on specific books and I guess there are a lots of interesting stories about their motivation, how they came to working on a particular book, what they hope for the book, about the good and not so good experiences with it, etc. Most of these stories are never told (or they are buried in the discussion pages), thus, I think this would also be of interest to many other authors here at wikibooks regardless whether one is interested in the specific book. While a blog with these stories will probably not reach a large audience, an additional podcast recorded by the specific authors (or someone else) and published in the iTunes store would probably reach much more people and it would add a personal touch. Comments? --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:47, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Submitting an eBook
How do I submit my ebook on wikibooks?

My novel is called Yellow on the Outside, Shame on the Inside: Asian Culture Revealed.

Description: Why do Asians really get straight A's? Why do Asians really become doctors and lawyers? Why do Asians really play the piano? Many people believe that the reason has to do with the pressure to perform and the pressure to conform, however, it goes much deeper than that—much, much deeper! This didactic novel reveals the truths about Asian culture, which will shock you to the marrow of your bones—and open a hidden world of long-guarded secrets.

Cover:

My email is ronpauler@gmail.com My name is Anson Chi.

Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.170.2.147 (discuss • contribs)


 * I'm sorry, Wikibooks is not for novels. Instead, Wikibooks is for textbooks. Perhaps there is a Wikia wiki which could host your book. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 17:25, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Changing the monobook background
The monobook background doesn't look very good with the new logo. I'd like to set MediaWiki:Monobook.css to override it, using File:Wiki-bg.png, which is in the same style as Commons' background for monobook. I've had this in my own skin for ~24h now, and I rather like it. I suggest people give it a try (instructions) and let me know what you think. To address some objections I forsee:


 * Yes, I can wash it out more, if people think it's still too bold.
 * Yes, I will make a gadget to set the background back to the original monobook background, so people can opt-out.

I think this will look nice, and is something we've been discussing for some time. Skinning in MediaWiki sucks - there's only a few, and Monobook and Modern are the only two used widely AFAIK. We should try to make Wikibooks look slick - this is one step in that direction. Another was moving the search box up a bit (I did that a few days ago for obvious usability reasons). I welcome further suggestions for enhancing Wikibooks' look and feel.

&mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 20:15, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * On my screen there's just a flash of blue rounded triangles at the top and a small cream section between the sidebar and the main window, so it in my opinion doesn't look good. However, changing the blue background of the main window to a (very) washed out version might look good. Microchip08 (talk) 21:50, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what it's supposed to look like. Try looking at a short page, like Special:Search to see more of the image. Compare it to the monobook background which is just a banner across the top.
 * I'm not sure what you mean by changing the background of the main window... that's what I'm suggesting here, unless by "background of the main window" you mean "background of the content area" &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 21:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Content window, yes, that's what I mean. :) It just looks a bit unprofessional. I'm not really sure how to describe it... I've added a screenshot above of Mike.lifeguard's proposal. Microchip08 (talk) 22:02, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think a Wikibooks specific look would help and don't think the proposal would hurt the interface at all. The new logo, however, doesn't work terribly well as a background image. The design already uses the wash-out feature on the page borders and the rest is near white to begin with. On most pages, this will only appear as little shapes at the top of the page.
 * I don't, however, have any alternative suggestions and thus wouldn't oppose the move.
 * PS. The search-form position is much better now and many thanks for getting the logo change done (finally!) ... to everyone who had a hand in that. --Swift (talk) 03:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what "wash-out feature" you're referring to -- the default monobook background image is just a grey banner along the top edge. The point is that it hints at the full image (the logo) instead of showing it full-on (that's also why it's not 100% saturated & could be even less saturated if people would prefer that). &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 03:11, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I was referring to the design of the new logo. --Swift (talk) 03:33, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Another idea: How about adding something to allow something like:

...at the top of every page? <font color="#778899" face="high tower text">Microchip08 <font color="#B0C4DE" size="2">@simple 12:05, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Freeware and shareware
Please see:
 * wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Software/Free Software
 * wikipedia:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Comparison of wiki farms (3rd nomination)

Additional input is requested. --Timeshifter (talk) 08:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Any freeware or shareware info on Wikibooks?
I looked at Computing department and it seems to continue the systemic bias I see on Wikipedia of not covering freeware or shareware very well.

Are there any books here on freeware image editing, free web page editing, choosing a free web host? --Timeshifter (talk) 09:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks is a community and project separate from Wikipedia, and is very young; I'm not sure the assumptions about systematic bias you're making hold water here. We have holes in coverage everywhere - that is the major systematic bias. Incidentally, you might want to check Subject:Computing instead of the department page, which may yield better results in your search. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 09:43, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Is free hosting covered?
I was looking a bit at Computing department. Does it cover free hosting of any kind? --Timeshifter (talk) 09:28, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I found Wiki Science and Starting and Running a Wiki Website immediately. There might be other textbooks about wikis (for example, there are some help textbooks). &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 09:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I see Starting and Running a Wiki Website/Hosted Wikis. It is similar to Comparison of wiki farms. They are both very useful pages for anyone wanting to use MediaWiki freeware right away without having to set up a server oneself.


 * I am a webmaster, and edit HTML. Newbies would much prefer MediaWiki versus HTML if they only knew of the many free wiki farms, especially the newer wiki software that is WYSIWYG. But for some reason many spam fighters at Wikipedia seem to want to do their best to limit their options by deleting most of the entries on the wiki farm list there. And they also delete the links for the wiki farms that remain. So readers can't get to the wiki farms.


 * Starting and Running a Wiki Website/Hosted Wikis does not seem to have this problem. It is a fairly long list, and the links to the wiki farms remain. This actually makes it useful. "Useful" is not a word that is appreciated all the time at Wikipedia, but I would think the many how-to books at WikiBooks show a different purpose here. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:53, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You might also be interested in Managing a private wiki, which is in the very early stages of development. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 09:56, 18 January 2009 (UTC)`

Logo
Is that honestly the logo that people have spent 2 years deciding over? Sure it's pretty but as a logo it's pretty shit. --ЗAНИA talk 18:37, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the process suffered from the fact that it started with a list of things that were wrong with the then-current logo, and then people brainstormed on what might replace it. The idea that the logo should be replaced built up momentum, and there wasn't compensating momentum given to the status quo.  The new logo that was finally chosen didn't have momentum of its own, as I recall it was a late addition; it just borrowed the momentum of the process.


 * The next time we set out to revise our logo, we should start with a really good candidate to replace the current logo, discuss how to improve that candidate and what practical problems might arise from it, and then when we've got it as good as it's gonna get, vote yea or nay on whether to do the replacement &mdash; so that if the candidate doesn't get consensus, the logo won't change.


 * I don't see a really good candidate at the moment. Although I'm not happy with the new logo (I remarked on this in an earlier thread; I like the new slogan, and the old logo isn't compatible with it), I am pointedly not about to propose an undirected search for a new logo, lest we end up with something inferior to the current one.  Pi zero (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Transclusion of content between books
Should transclusions be allowed between books ? Ada Programming/Statements Ada Programming/Variables are examples of the problem. Transclusions between Wikibooks aren't helpful, they break several subsystem, including book renames, even deletion, categories and ultimately make edits problematic (edits can break one of the books sharing the same content by using transclusion), content should be copied and attributions give to the original book, if the size of the used content is relevant, Wikibooks should be self containing. --Panic (talk) 00:12, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The people on the original wiki usually frown on "copy and paste" -- Wiki:CopyAndPasteProgramming.
 * I personally think transclusion is pretty helpful. Does Wikibooks really need 20 copies of the ASCII chart?
 * These problems you mention -- do they still occur if I "refactor" the common content in the "template:" namespace, and then transclude that content into each book?
 * Didn't we already talk about this at Wikibooks talk:Naming policy/Archive 1 ?
 * --DavidCary (talk) 06:14, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * We haven't, but you did :). (I've read them now,txs) In any case using the template namespace for content doesn't seem to be a solution. It would solve some of the above mentioned problems, like Wikibooks renames, deletions and probably alterations, since people would get "informed" that the content was outside of the book, and presumably understand that changes would have a higher impact, it would also reduce the problem with the use of categories. On the other hand it would be gaming the system and doesn't address the problem of ownership (rights) or attribution. Is there any guideline or policy were we could start and reach a decission on this issue ? Should it be included in some way on the style proposal ? --Panic (talk) 07:04, 19 December 2008 (UTC)


 * So, how do you solve the problem with attribution if you transclude content (whether from other books or from templates)? You have to transclude the authors list in order to include future authors, right? Is that possible? If there is no answer to this question, it is simply not allowed to transclude content due to the GFDL. Isn't it that simple? --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:42, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Martin Kraus. At first sight I would propose that constant references such as the ASCII table should be copied into each book with acknowledgements. Disk space is cheap nowadays. Similarly, content that will only be changed by the authors of the primary book should be held within the book with acknowledgements. Again, at first sight, content that might be changed by authors of other books, and where the reader should always see this changed and timely content, should be dealt with using references and links in the same way as a non-wikimedia book might be referenced. RobinH (talk) 10:27, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * References and links are not helpful when the books are printed. I know that a lot of the people who read my book print out chapters for use in places where they have no Internet access.  That book does transclude material from other books.  What I really wish for is the ability to import modules from one book to another inside Wikibooks including edit history.  We could kinda sorta do this in a very ugly way right now if we imported the book into another wikimedia project and then imported it back to here.  But that can only be done by a person having import rights on two projects.  --Jomegat (talk) 15:23, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

This has been talked about in the reading room before as well with no real conclusion from what I recall. I don't think books should be sharing content. Books are suppose to be more focused, explain more and be written to reflect their target audience which can be hard enough to do already without adding more complications like having to consider other books which might not even have the same goals, writing style, or target audience. Take the pages your referring to for instance. Things use to be a lot worst than they probably are now, more books use to share the content, and as a result included examples that weren't even in the programming language being discussed! Which could be confusing for people new to programming when used in a book that was suppose to focus on only one programming language. I think having examples in multiple programming languages makes more sense in a more general book, such as Computer Programming. In fact I think that shared content is also used in that book as well. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:40, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that we don't need a policy on this. We should let the authors free to share content if they want to. I don't know why transclusion is a problem with book renames, deletion, etc. more than it is for linking. When one of these operations is made on a page, one must check the "What links here" page for the old name so all the links and transclusion are fixed. Regarding author acknowledgment, it is copying the action that can break acknowledgment, transclusion always preserves the original authors in the transcluded page history. Having said that, I don't mind if it is decided that content sharing should not be done, but please, don't just delete the transclusion, copy the contents instead. --ManuelGR (talk) 11:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry for my ignorance, how do you transclude the page history of one page in another? --194.196.95.89 (talk) 13:42, 20 December 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as I know you cannot do that. What I meant is that for getting the full list of authors you can check all the pages in the book, including the transcluded pages. This could be done automatically. Copying and giving credit in the comment is not subject to author list automatization. Adding to that, the user may forget to comment the copy. -- ManuelGR (talk) 12:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the "me too" comment, but I could hardly agree more with ManuelGR. I don't think we need an official policy or guideline for this. Sharing content by transclusion can be both useful as well as harmful. We should trust Wikibookians to be able to judge which is the case with the books they contribute to. Those interested in helping users learn about this could describe the pros and contras on Help:Templates or some other fitting help page. --Swift (talk) 11:08, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a policy is required but a guideline should be welcomed so to establish the best practice. Trasclusion between works aren't helpful, they create to much problems. Martin Kraus is mixing the problems transcclusions of Wikibooks aren't the same as using templates, templates by default shouldn't have content, and if they have some close relation to a work they should be kept on that work namespace, in general they aren't problematic in any way, well, I've been having some trouble with the use of categories in templates... The Wiki copy-paste mentality, to address DavidCary comment, isn't cleanly transposed to every wiki project, here on wikibooks we have special requirements, the most important is the license we use, while copy paste works on Wikipedia, here we must give attributions to other works even if they are present on the site, doing other wise would be plagiarism and a violation of other people's rights. That is similar to the requirement of giving attribution to Wikipedia material (or use it's edit history). To reply to ManuelGR, I will explain some of the problem, the problem with deletion is that if you remove a book that has been trascluding other books pages you can be creating orphan pages, since no one guarantees that the other book is still linking them, and those pages aren't deleted because they don't share the same scope. As for renames, they can break trasnclusion without any warning, you rename a book and each trasclusion ceases to function without any warning, both require previous knowledge of what was in place to be corrected, so in the name of easy reuse (not considering the GFDL issue), we create a maintainability problem. This also has an impact on the use of categories and other navigational aids it can break or make it's use problematic. About the edit history, the information it holds is highly volatile, as it can be lost or corrupted on edits, and it is to complex (due to all the different types of edits) to hold any significant data, if authors wish to be recognized they should do it within a high visibility page, but that is another discussion in it itself. I would like for Swift to point out other benefits of trasclusions that aren't restricted to saving work for the editor that uses it, claiming it prevents waste of project resources is not a valid argument here... --Panic (talk) 20:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
 * reset


 * Summary:


 * chapter renames: Not a problem when the transcluded content text is in the "template:" namespace. Not a problem when the text is copy-and-pasted.
 * chapter deletes: Problem: if *every* book that uses a template is deleted, then it leaves an orphan template. Not a problem when the text is copy-and-pasted.
 * book renames and book deletes -- same as above.
 * categories: Not a problem when the transcluded content text is in the "template:" namespace. Not a problem when the text is copy-and-pasted.
 * content edits that only make sense for one book: Problem: breaks transcluded content text in the other book. Not a problem when the text is copy-and-pasted.
 * the problem of ownership (rights): The ownership and copyright status of a piece of text is the same whether or not that text is transcluded or copy-and-pasted or merely linked to.
 * the problem of attribution: Not a problem when the transcluded content text is in the "template:" namespace. That template (like every editable page on Wikibooks) has a "history" that lists everyone that has ever edited that template. Problem: Copy-and-paste can break the attribution.
 * Getting the full list of authors for a printed document: Not a problem when the transcluded content text is in the "template:" namespace. A 'bot can check the history of each chapter in the Wikibook *and* each template they transclude. Problem: With copy-and-paste, some authors are not mentioned in that history.
 * Authors who "wish to be recognized" putting their name on a "a high visibility page": editing that page is exactly the same, no matter which way their content is used elsewhere in the books.
 * Disk space: Yawn. No one cares about that.
 * If some tiny typo is noticed in the ASCII chart: Not a problem with transcluded content text -- fix it once. Problem: With copy-and-paste, someone must re-fix that typo in every copy of that chart -- and even if I've fixed 10 copies, how do I know that typo isn't lurking in a 11th copy?


 * If I've counted correctly, "transclusion" has 2 problems, while "copy and paste" has 3 problems. Am I missing some other problem with transclusion or copy-and-paste?
 * Since "copy and paste" apparently has just as many problems as "transclusion", I agree with ManuelGR: I think that we don't need a policy on this. I think our writers will realize that some information should be copied into and heavily customized for the intended audience of each book. I think our writers will realize that other information -- such as the ASCII chart -- is better to store it once, referenced or transcluded by several books. And if I had to choose only one of the two, the above list makes "transclusion" seem slightly better than "copy and paste". --DavidCary (talk) 07:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Someone who wishes to properly attribute people would have to be aware that any pages that have been included indirectly might need to be looked at as well. However I think the point is: Don't overuse either approach and learn which is better to use in what situations. Templates tend to be best for sharing common visual information that is general rather than specialized, since changes are unlikely to ever be needed except to fix errors or improve the visual appeal. Like a ASCII chart. Copy+pasting tends to be best for uncommon non-visual information that is not general in nature, since changes are likely to be necessary to adapt the information to a specific book. Like the benefits and drawbacks of using ASCII in the context of computer science, computer engineering, software development, language accessibility, internationalization support, web development, etc. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

new statistics
The Wikibooks statistics have been updated. I found the statistics per wikibook (6 MB!) particularly interesting to find dead pages. (I guess there are other tools for that purpose, too. I'm just not using them.) Could anyone explain to me why certain categories are not included in wikibook category overviews, e.g. Category:Languages? Also, there are a couple of circular categories, which we should fix. --Martin Kraus (talk) 15:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I am new to wikibooks
Hello I am Honorina,

I am new to wikibooks and I need help on how to align my paragraphs.Can anybody tell me how.It's in the about the authors and I had hard time fixing it.

thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hmaristela (talk • contribs) 10:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Honorina and welcome to Wikibooks!
 * It seems that you've been replied to on your talk page. I'll take a look as well.
 * Oh, and four tildes (" ~ ") automatically adds a signature. It is common practice to add one to discussion page comments. Happy editing! --Swift (talk) 04:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to stop bot archival of WB:AA
I strongly object that the Administrative Assistance page is being automatically archived. The problem is that the bot as is, isn't capable of detecting open and closed issues, it only detects that posts have not been replied to in 30 days. This is a special problem in those sorts of pages that require action (but may not get it), this is valid to the requests to undelete, VfD and other discussions, that would require a more complex automation of the archival process (a better bot). Any objections, thoughts? --Panic (talk) 20:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I see no point in discontinuing the practice of automatically archiving AA discussions. If nobody has responded in the last 30 days that is unlikely to change. There is no need for such requests to stick around. Inaction is as valid a response to a request as any other action. Some requests do not require any action be taken and some requests may require that the requester do other things before any action will be taken. You have been told what needs to be done before any further action will be taken. Once you have done what is needed to the satisfaction of admins, you can make a new request, there is no need to keep the old request open. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  20:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Anything which hasn't been responded to in 30 days (actually it's 28) is stale and no longer needed. This is obviously a non-issue, and deflects attention from the real issues. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 21:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * "If nobody has responded in the last 30 days that is unlikely to change." - Not so, the number of active admins is very small if we consider the holders of the flag, and adminship isn't static, admins came and go, what is real is that no one is forced to act (due to us all being volunteers) but ignoring open issues isn't the same as addressing them, that ultimately leads to archival of unsolved issues. (I'm not talking on a specific issue here, I see this as a general problem).
 * A request for administrative assistance (action) is just that, inaction should not be an acceptable outcome (leading to the closing of request), as in a VfD or an undelete or even an unblock request. More having a bot do the archiving removes any responsibility from the active admins to address the issues.  --Panic (talk) 21:08, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Even though you may feel that inaction is not an acceptable outcome, that isn't going to change by discontinuing the automatic archiving. People would continue to archive inactive requests whether or not the request was addressed to the sanctification of the requester, as was done before Wikibooks had a bot to do the archiving automatically. Like Mike.lifeguard said this isn't an issue and deflects attention from the real issues. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  02:36, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * This has never been a problem with this in the past (save that one instance that sparked the latest block on User:Panic2k4). I'd be happy to consider changing the format on WB:AA it if enough Wikibookians see a reason to do so. --Swift (talk) 02:11, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think there has been a situation that admins have stated to be unwilling to resolve an issue before (this by it self is a strange situation in general). But going trough the logs I find many issues without a proper stated outcome or closed (most acting admins do tag a closed issue as DONE), but several issues aren't clearly tagged as addressed or closed, examples are "Vandalism in Articles of Confederation", "Haggar vandal attack" (an action is stated as initiated but no conclusion is given), "jet propulsion book" and there are several anonymous requests that mostly can be discarded as not fit for a reply but for instance "About the Spanish Learning pdf file." would merit a reply or being forwarded to the proper book project/maintainer, I had this check on my todo list I've looked only in the Reading room/Administrative Assistance/Archives/2007/November archive, not major issues by themselves but as a practice I don't see this as situation that the bot is promoting admins to address issues from normal users. (we have also to consider the low number of active admins on the project as part of the equation) --Panic (talk) 03:17, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * As I said; this has never been a problem. --Swift (talk) 04:26, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Before electricity switching a light bulb wasn't a problem also, if you are stating that no one pointed out this as a problem, you are right and I wouldn't classify it as a problem, just as a bad practice. In any new proposition there is always a first time. Since we did recently hand a problem around this issue (the bot), removing the bot would make someone being personal accountable for the close action (as I said above it is done in VfD and other similar decisions that require administrative intervention) this will also prevent baldy closed issues like the ones I list above. This is the reason I advanced this proposal, this is no attempt to murk the waters in any way. I have stated my problem with the bot before any secondary issues arose, see your talk page for instance... --Panic (talk) 04:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Smashwords
I would like to give my Wikibooks to Smashwords and let them offer them free to any interested readers.

I do not want to do this if it will interfear with any Wikibooks policies.

How do I request approval to do this, or to offer my Wikibooks to other "free-to-anyone" sites?

Thank you. David Hockey (talk) 16:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Please have a look at Copyrights. Just follow the GNU Free Documentation License and this should be fine. --Swift (talk) 12:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Dropimage template has changed!
Dropimage has changed; it started recently, at about the time that the template suddenly aquired the show/hide link labels. These labels are longer than the earlier link label and as a result some existing work now overlaps. In addition, the alignment to center no longer works for all of the instances in WikiBooks of that template. I no longer seem to be able to edit it!

Can an admin please correct the matter?

P.S. The Editing Wikitext task is up for grabs!!!

Armchair, 1600 GMT 24 Dec 2008.

Hello:  I have found a coding error in the dropimage template which accounts for the 'failure to center' and I have corrected it and saved it. However, when I examine the template code I notice that it does not reflect the recent change. Is it something to do with flagged revisions?  It affects quite a number of pages, so approval of the revision would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any reviewer assistance, Repairman (talk) 17:02, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

By the way, does anybody know how to change the wording of the navframe link; for example so that it just has the arrow without any wording like show/hide? Thanks again, Repairman (talk) 17:04, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd suspect this could simply be due to the fact that changes in templates take a while to propagate through the server cache. Wait a while or enable server cache purge tab in the Gagets part of the preferences. --Swift (talk) 20:33, 5 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi again, back in my usual username again; thanks for that input.  It turned out that the table line also objected to having a margin property; I'm still not sure why; anyway all back to near normal again.   The caching undoubtedly contributed to the confusion though.   I had to put in an extra 3em of right padding to keep the new link text from mixing with long headings.Armchair (talk) 18:59, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, Just that one issue left about whether or not the show/hide label on the dropimage template, (navhead), link can be changed by a user; are there any little-known options in the navhead code for that? Perhaps an admin familiar with Javascript could advise, Thanks to all, Armchair (talk) 18:25, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No users cannot easily change the link. If you are wanting this to be a customizable javascript setting that could be easily done. Little known features? I guess that would depend on what people know or don't know, and what you call a feature.
 * Wikipedia's collapsible boxes uses a setting to define how many boxes must be on a page before they default to the collapse state instead of the expand state. Wikibooks instead allows collapsible boxes to default to either the collapsed or expanded state independently of each other. You can make a collapsible box default to the expand state by using class="collapsible selected".
 * If you set an id for a collapsible box it won't get replaced like it would with Wikipedia's implementation.
 * You can click anywhere within the title/header area, not just the show/hide link to expand or collapse boxes. When you roll your mouse over the title/header area by default the background color changes and a tooltip may also appear. Both are intended to make this feature more obvious.
 * You can also use class="collapsible" for the frame and class="title" for the title/header of collapsible div boxes instead of the NavFrame and NavHead classes. This is intended to make remembering what classes to use for any kind of collapsible boxes easier.
 * --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  19:18, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Darklama, thanks for the input. No, if there is not already an option to change the link text, don't bother to make a change for my benefit; - I will work around it in future. My earlier request for a table class that gets round the Wikitable colors though, might have more generality. Thanks, Armchair (talk) 15:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Print to book contents page
Hello. I've been authoring Anatomy and Physiology of Animals and was very excited to see the print to book feature when I returned to it late last year. I have been experimenting with it and had two queries:
 * 1) How can I generate a Table of Contents in the print book? One that automatically includes all the pages I have added into the collection, as well as the sections of those pages?
 * The printed books from pediapress have an automatically generated TOC. Check out the sample book at pediapress.com . Currently the downloadable PDFs do not have this feature - but there is already a ticket for that: #277 -- Volker.haas (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * 1) Can I add a custom cover to the printed book loaded to PediaPress?
 * This is currently not possible. It's on our agenda, but the implementation might a little while. -- Volker.haas (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is the right place to be asking these questions, but would greatly appreciate any help or direction.
 * If you'd be interested in checking out, how the "final" PDF that will be printed as a pediapress book looks like, I'd be happy to send you the rendered PDF. To facilitate that it would be great if you, or anyone else, could build a collection of the desired content. -- Volker.haas (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Happy new year to the Wikibooks community --RuthLawson (talk) 23:30, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know that you can do either of those (though there should be an automatically-generated TOC, IIRC). Maybe someone else knows something I don't, but if not I'll submit requests for those features.
 * Ok thanks. Perhaps these are feature requests. I've just found another - I need to be able to edit a saved collection. I've decided to delete some pages and add others, and now I want to update the saved collection with those edits.. but it seems I can't, as the "save collection" button is made inactive now... --RuthLawson (talk) 02:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Editing a saved collection should be possible: you can manually edit the collection page and then save it. Alternatively you can load the collection, manipulate it on the collection special page and save it again. -- Volker.haas (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Renaming "Collections" to "Books"
I've just received word from the people at PediaPress that they would like to rename "Collections" to "books", to be more accurate about what their software produces (ebooks and print books). They have been in conversations with people from the WMF, and are trying to make the interface a little more standardized and informative. This change in terminology obviously conflicts with what we currently call "books" here. I think there is a way we could override the default system settings and call them something different, if we wanted to. My question is: What do people think of this change, and what do people think about our ever-growing terminology problems in general? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think we should use the term "books" only for wikibooks and real books here. For collections one might consider alternatives such as "custom books", "folders", or "books for print". Actually, I don't like the latter because I doubt that collections will ever replace the current printing mechanism (for my test case the quality hasn't been improved in the last two months, i.e., images and tables are still not well printed). --Martin Kraus (talk) 19:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Conceivably, a drawback of "folders" might be cognitive dissonance for users acclimated to GUIs that use a folder icon for directories. As an additional posssibility to add to the list, "virtual books".  Pi zero (talk) 20:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I do think that "collection" is the best label for what it produces, if the project is to be extended to every type o Wiki content as it states... --Panic (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * How about "Printable Collections"? --Jomegat (talk) 20:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I did understand that it also produces e-book formats (no obligation to be put on print). If I misunderstood your proposal does seems cover it... --Panic (talk) 20:18, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I do agree with User:Martin Kraus there is a need to make obvious that a Collection as in (http://pediapress.com/collection/) "Create collections from almost any wiki" aren't exclusively books (they can be) but in reality they will mostly be aggregations or what is defined in our GFDL license as a collection.  --Panic (talk) 20:13, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I like Jomegat's "Printable Collections". It suits best the features of the extensions (you can collect pages and print them). --Ramac (talk) 18:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I've changed that section of the sidebar to say "create a collection" - but do we want it to say something else? I think this is probably OK, but I'm open to suggestions (shorter only - this is about as long as we can have) &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 01:32, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think "create a collection" is the best choice: it avoids misunderstandings about starting a wikibook (which have happened), it clearly refers to the name of the related extension, it's not such a bad name for what it does, and it doesn't introduce yet another name for the same feature. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * On a related note, "PDF version" link is part of the collections stuff, right? Maybe it should be moved up there. --Swift (talk) 10:01, 23 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the "PDF version" link is implemented using the collections stuff, but that implementation shouldn't determine how it is presented to users. Since the "PDF version" link doesn't expose any of the collections stuff to the user, I would say it should not be moved. --Martin Kraus (talk) 10:40, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, we had already discussed where to place that link. Next to the printable version & permalink links makes sense, I think. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 16:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetical order method for DynamicPageList
I have proposed a patch in order to have alphabetical order in DPL lists. The bug is 14971. However, it seems that there are some problems about sorting a text field. I hope someone can help. --Ramac (talk) 19:18, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Ramac! :) Some time ago there was a posting by User:Webaware about some JavaScript code to sort these lists but that doesn't seem to work currently. I've no idea what the problem is. If we had some JavaScript to do the sorting of DPLs on the client side that would be sufficient, right? And it cannot be difficult since sortable wikitables already do such a sorting. --Martin Kraus (talk) 19:46, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikibooks and Podcasts
I had written about podcasts for wikibooks before, but I just realized that the first such podcast was published some time ago: The Technology for Language Learning podcast for the Autonomous Technology-Assisted Language Learning wikibook. Unfortunately, that podcast never got beyond the first episode. :-)

On the other hand, I started a weekly podcast with PDF excerpts from the wikibook Spanish by Choice about a month ago. This podcast is doing quite well; in fact, it is still listed under "New and Notable" in the categories "Education" and "Language Courses" of the iTunes podcast directory. Currently, there are about 60 downloads per PDF. It will be interesting to see how much traffic such a podcast can generate for the wikibook itself. --Martin Kraus (talk) 22:35, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I haven't looked at the podcast, but it seems like a great idea. Well done! All the best to you and the project. --Swift (talk) 00:39, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Beginning Mathematics
I am  Just  beginning  to  learn  Mathematics  as  a  self hobby.

I want  to  know  what's  generally  considered  as  a  good  book,Good  point,good  method  ?

Best Regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by Monliza.generation (discuss • contribs) 07:48, 26 January 2009


 * You'll probably want to have a look at what we have on the Mathematics bookshelf and Subject:Mathematics. Hope that helps.
 * PS. We have a number of "reading rooms" for discussions and requests. This one may have been better fitted in the assistance reading room. You can see an find an overview of these at Reading room. --Swift (talk) 01:43, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Symbolism of the new logo?
I'm guessing it isn't meant to suggest that wikibooks is a collection of loose pages rather than a collection of coherent books (although that's all I see in it).

So, what is it meant to suggest? Pi zero (talk) 00:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess something like the books Wikibooks has are open to anyone to use which can open people's world to endless possibilities? --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  01:45, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Those are supposed to be open books, or leaves of open books, or something? I don't see how that works.  A few hours ago someone looked over my shoulder while I was on wikibooks and asked me what's that thing with the wavy lines.


 * I'm not claiming to have a better idea for a logo... yet... not given the new slogan, which I do like. With the old slogan, which I don't like nearly as much, the old stack of books with the symbol on the cover replaced by a puzzle piece would have been good, IMO, but the new slogan doesn't work with a logo whose books are closed.  Seems to me that an ideal logo to go with the new slogan should have at least one open book, perhaps more than one, and should have a globe.  Of course it should be visually simple, easily recognized, easily identified for what it is, stylistically akin to the other wikimedia project logos, and readily scalable to a good-looking favicon.  If I stumble across a logo like that, I'll try to remember to mention it here.  Pi zero (talk) 21:12, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with all your criteria for a logo, except for "stylistically akin to the other wikimedia project logos" -- perhaps you will change your mind about that after looking at the Test on logos that Julian put together?
 * Perhaps over at Wikibooks/Logo would be a better place to propose new logos than here in the reading room. You can see a variety of proposed logos in the archives of Wikibooks/Logo.
 * I'm also mystified -- what did the artist *intend* to suggest? I see a couple of subtle things in it, but perhaps I'm reading things into this Rorschach inkblot test that were not intended.
 * I'm also mystified -- who are the artists who drew it? I see that Bastique, Darklama, and Whiteknight all had a hand in tweaking it. However, Darklama and Whiteknight both say they are basing their logo on a "slight variation" of some earlier logo -- was that by some other artist? --DavidCary (talk) 16:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I quite see your point &mdash; stylistically related logos sounds like a great idea, but that test sure does take the luster off it. Pi zero (talk) 00:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

We're not choosing a new logo, don't even bother proposing it. Please peruse the archives for what the artist was intending to suggest, the old versions, etc etc. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 16:04, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I actually have been perusing those archives for several days now, and so far I don't think the information I'm asking about is in them. (By all means feel free to prove me wrong.)  I suspect it may have fallen through a crack between Archive_8 and Archive_9.


 * To be clear, are you simply expressing unwillingness to contemplate getting into yet another thoroughly miserable and inherently flawed process over at meta, such as the one we just spent two years trapped in, or is there also another inherent impediment? Pi zero (talk) 17:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the only things that could impend pursuing it are:
 * People are tired after 2 years, so not enough people willing to pursue a change now,
 * People may oppose any suggestion that a change is needed simply because they want this to be over with, or
 * More people are satisfied with the new logo than there are people who are not happy with it
 * I never cared for any of the proposals including ones I made or had a hand in modifying, because none looked as professional or as well done as other project logos. So for myself I wouldn't object to any attempts to pursue this, even though such a pursuit might not get anywhere. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  01:24, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Problems with images in PDF export
Hello Ruth, and everyone. I am working with Ruth on this attempt to generate a PediaPress and PDF book from the Anatomy and Physiology of Animals wikibook. Ruth is the primary author and editor, User:Sunshineconnelly is the designer we use, and we all work for the Otago Polytechnic.

We are having a small issue with the generation of a PDF, in that some of the jpgs are being resized to a very small size that is not usable. If you view the chapter on The Cell you will not the usual photo image at the top, and then the BW line drawings further down the page. For example:

The actual size of this image is 650×340px which prints to A4 at a good size. But when we generate a PDF of that page The Cell we have an image that is too small in print.

Is there any possibility that you can adjust the settings of the PDF generator so that these images render at a larger size?.. I'd suggest 4 - 500px, if not simply the original. --leighblackall (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Original sizes would be a bad idea, since some are huge, but certainly they should be rendering larger than this. I'm not sure of any workaround at present, but I'll think on it. You can always post to the mwlib mailing list - they can probably help you better than we can. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 22:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Currently it is not possible to increase the size of individual images. I opened a ticket #402 where everybody is free to contribute their ideas. Volker.haas (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * How were the large images in the sample book on pediapress.com produced? Or isn't it possible to create this sample book using the currently installed extension? --Martin Kraus (talk) 12:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There are two different versions of PDFs. The open source version (mwlib.rl, using the reportlab toolkit) which generates the PDFs you can see at wikibooks for example. The printed books you can order at pediapress are generated using latex (xelatex). The layout of both versions will always be slightly different - for example because of the different page formats. Regarding the "small" images in the mwlib.rl PDFs: As said above, we'll try to find ways to allow the users to fine tune the PDF output - feel free to contribute to #402 - Volker.haas (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Now I also understand why icon-sized images appear way too large. Some user control over image sizes would be nice. Maybe there should be a user-defined "paperwidth in pixels" for the whole PDF in order to control the scaling of images. (I.e. if the user specifies a paperwidth of 1000 pixels and the actual width is 5.5 inches, then a 500 pixels-wide image will be scaled to a width of 2.75 inches.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 13:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * What you describe is in principle pretty much exactly what we are doing (except that we don't let the user specify the "virtual printwidth"). But sometimes the guess produces undesirable output... (if we continue this discussion, I guess I need a wider monitor ;) ) -- Volker.haas (talk) 13:59, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your help. I look forward to when images in PDFs are larger than what we are currently getting.. although it is odd that our photographic images are coming through at a good size, but our BW illustrations are scaling down too small. I'll check the PediaPress version again when I'm back at work - perhaps as you suggest, there is a difference between the two. Regards --leighblackall (talk) 09:53, 24 January 2009 (UTC)