Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2009/July

need to delete file i uploaded in 2006 on wiki books
hello admins, i would like to delete a file i uploaded in 06. i dont remember the account details i signed up with when i uploaded it. my email is in the pdf: (removed). how can i get this file deleted please?
 * Can you let us know what file it is? &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 00:09, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The file i need deleted is here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/2/2c/Document15.pdf
 * Are you able to provide a version without your email in it? If so, we can delete that version and replace it with the one that doesn't have your email in it. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 00:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * not really i could give you another copy, but its my doc so why cant it be deleted?
 * Well, you released it into the public domain - that means anyone may use it for any purpose, so we are not obligated to delete it. That said, I'd be happy to replace it with a version that doesn't include your email. If you can't provide that, someone else may be able to, but that may take some time (I'm not even sure what program to use to edit PDFs). &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 00:19, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * how do i send you a new copy?
 * You can register an account at Commons and upload it there immediately (less hassle than doing so here). Just let us know when you're done and this version can be deleted. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 00:48, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

i will be reporting this problem to the copyrite infringement terms of service, i do own the copyrites to this material. and i will notify to them that you were uncoperative.
 * After an explicit release to the public domain? I wish you luck; you'll need it. Now, if you want to be reasonable, I'm still willing to help you with this. When I figure out how to edit the file, I'll replace it, but please don't expect this to happen right this exact instant. Anyone else who can do this is of course welcome to help. &mdash; Mike.lifeguard &#124; talk 01:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Went to do it but it looks like it is already done. Thenub314 (talk) 08:47, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I deleted the older version of the file, which people could still view and included the email address. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

What about a bicycle blog?
Could the reading room format be used to run a bike blog, and should we?
 * No and no. That isn't the purpose of the reading room.  Why not start a blog at Wordpress or Blogspot instead? --Jomegat (talk) 17:14, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

FlaggedRevs Should Be Removed or Changed
Some people are aware but we've recently had another problem over the FlaggedRevs extension manifest itself at WB:RFP. The problem this time is that an author who donated a book to our site was unable to view his own edits because of the extension, was not autopromoted to +Editor because of the overly-complicated autopromotion requirements and essentially told by people (myself included, unfortunately) that there was no need to manually promote him because he would be autopromoted eventualy if he just continued editing.

I've been in regular off-wiki contact with the editors of the FEIA book, a book which is a multi-semester class project and has literally thousands of pages. We run into lots of problems where students cannot easily view the changes that they make, cannot easily review the changes of others (which is a requirement for their grading system) and therefore cannot easily use Wikibooks for their projects. FlaggedRevs was originally added here because we thought it would help provide the stability that class projects need. Instead, it is doing exactly the opposite by actually making it harder for groups like this to use the site.

I have received a number of personal emails from various people who try to edit here, become confused and discouraged because of FlaggedRevs, and choose to leave the site to find someplace that's easier to get started on. I am currently attempting to get in contact with some of these people to get permission to post their sentiments here as evidence.

I do think that there is some configuration of FlaggedRevs that might be beneficial to this site, but I also know that our current configuration does far more harm then it does good. Since it's going to take a long time for us to decide on a new configuration, and since the current configuration would be doing damage to the site throughout that discussion period, I suggest that we disable the FlaggedRevs extension sooner rather then later. This way we can get down to serious discussions about the extension while not suffering the problems that it currently has. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes it will probably be awhile before any agreement can be reached on what other other changes, if any, to make. I think disabling the FlaggedRevs extension is too rash of a decision. Instead I think we should ask the developer of the FlaggedRevs extension what settings we need to change if we want to have anonymous users see the stable version by default, but also allow anonymous users to switch to and see the latest draft version easily. Of course the problem could be anonymous users may already be able to view the latest draft version, but how to do so isn't intuitive or easily apparent. --dark lama  14:16, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Setting $wgFlaggedRevTabs to true in LocalSettings.php would provide "stable" and "current" revision tabs to make it easier to view the latest version. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I tried looking at projects which had that set to true. I didn't notice any tabs. I would of suggested that myself if it worked as it suggests. --dark lama  18:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Just yesterday and the day before I went through Special:OldReviewedPages and cleared out many pages from FEIA that were as much as 90 days overdue, along with others. Flagged revisions would likely be more effective if pages did not sit for so long before review.  The concerns mentioned above are why my personal preference is to only make a stable version of pages that are clearly not in flux, so that anonymous users can make improvements and see them immediately.


 * I'd say one area of change would be to make it so that someone with the "editor" permission can choose to create new pages that are not automatically sighted. A new page is likely going to see many changes in a short period of time and those changes inevitably don't get seen quickly.  Nearly all of the FEIA pages I saw that were long overdue had not been reviewed at all since the pages were first created by Whiteknight as stubs. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:49, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I think new pages are not automatically sighted now, but if so yes that should be changed too. The problem might be that people are sighting newly created pages thinking its necessary to have them show up and then moving on, causing an old revision to be stuck as the stable version because there is no book contributors to review pages. If people hadn't sighted the pages the latest would of been shown. From what I could see, that is exactly what happened with the page in question that lead to a request on RFP. --dark lama  15:06, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Is it possible to de-sight an old revision of a page that was sighted by another editor, thus reducing the page to a state of having "no reviewed revisions"? (I know it's possible to de-sight one's own review, because I did that once.)  --Pi zero (talk) 15:19, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * No idea. I didn't even know people could undo there own reviews. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * You're right. On the page I wrote about below, Horticulture/Galanthus nivalis, I set all the settings to "Poor or unrated" and the submit button became ungreyed, and I was able to remove sighting on the page.  -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I was able to undo your automatic sighting for that page, so apparently the answer is Yes old reviews, even automated ones can be undone. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:29, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A page I recently created after receiving editor permissions at Horticulture/Galanthus nivalis was automatically sighted according to its page history, so it seems like new pages by editors are automatically sighted even now. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:22, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok then that should be disabled IMO. Pages shouldn't automatically be sighted, and people shouldn't go around sighting pages for books they aren't committed to contributing to. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  15:26, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd strongly support disabling this &mdash; automatically sighting new pages turns out to be exactly the opposite of what we want (well, except at Wikijunior). --Pi zero (talk) 04:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible &mdash; and, separate question, would it be desirable &mdash; to set things up so that sighting a page (or at least, sighting a page not previously sighted) would automatically add that page to the sighter's watchlist? (I've been doing this myself by hand.)  --Pi zero (talk) 15:48, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that could be useful, but I don't think its possible right now. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  18:35, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see the extension as having served any purpose other than creating make-work, so I'd be happy to see it disabled. -- SB_Johnny  talk 15:02, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The main benefit I see is for Wikijunior because vandalism is more dangerous in Wikijunior. (For that reason Wikijunior probably shouldn't be part of Wikibooks.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 16:40, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No need to be drastic. Simply set $wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces only to the integer corresponding to the Wikijunior namespace in LocalSettings.php. Possibly the Cookbook namespace as well. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * The two potential advantages of sighting, re vandalism, seem to me to be that
 * it prevents vandalism from sitting visible on the primary versions of pages during the time until someone comes along to check them, and
 * when someone does come along to check, it makes it easy to tell what has and hasn't already been checked.
 * These help things work smoothly if the book has sighters who keep an eye on it and review new edits "promptly" (where "prompt" varies with the pace of activity on the book). They could work pretty smoothly for most books if editors weren't scarce as hen's teeth (hence the recent reduction of the threshold for autopromotion).  On the low-activity end, when a book falls into a state of hibernation with no active authors, these advantages of sighting should enable a single editor with very low time commitment to keep that book from gradually decaying over time.


 * That said, a book with a high rate of editing can completely swamp the sighters even if there are several sighters available to it. A possible fix for that (as seems to be emerging elswhere in this thread) might be to arrange that there are no reviewed revisions of very-high-edit-rate pages.  --Pi zero (talk) 19:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I hated flagged revisions. I question their usefulness:  there's nothing they have to offer exception confusion and annoyance. -- <font color="#000090">Mr. NMC (<font color="#000090">talk ) 20:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally I didn't have any problems with FlaggedRevs pre effectively gaining the right via the Admin promotion (although I still haven't been +Editor auto-promoted, but that's another story). Also, since I sighted all the remaining WJ pages, I've found it very useful as it allows me to both check all edits since the sighting easily, rollback vandalism and I believe it has reduced vandalism as the vandals can't so easily see their bad edits. It's been discussed before but I think the major problem is the large number of inactive books which are incomplete and not fit to be sighted. FlaggedRevs would be good if everything was substantially complete and we were using it to monitor and improve the content. Right now it is only useful for the handful of active books and the featured books. Having said that, I think it should stay as it has a useful long term future. IMO. <font color="#E66C2C">Unusual? Quite <font color="#306754">TalkQu 21:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with QU here. I pitched the advantages of flagged revs to my reader community (which is not part of the WB community for the most part).  Many of them had been reluctant to promote/adopt my book because of the possibility of bringing up a vandalized page in a church environment.  I could see that educators would have the same issue.  Perhaps sighting should be something that is turned on for only some books?  Maybe featured books & Wikijunior? I dunno! I just hate to throw it away so quickly. OTOH, I had been faithfully reviewing old flagged revs up to the point when there were something like 500 pages of the "Foundations" book. Sorry, but I just don't have time to review something that huge, especially when I do not judge myself qualified to make decisions about the material.  Maybe it would be better if the flagged revs were reduced to being an indicator that the page had not been vandalized. I don't think we need three categories of flagging with five levels each.  One binary category should be sufficient (not vandalism vs unchecked).  We prolly also ought to lower the threshhold for handing out +editor privs.  "Just wait" is not really an acceptable answer. --Jomegat (talk) 22:24, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Actually, that sounds good. Just two possible reviews: Checked or Unchecked.  It's the 3 categories with varying degrees that bothers me. -- <font color="#000090">Mr. NMC (<font color="#000090">talk ) 22:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)


 * You'll be relieved to know that Special:OldReviewedPages now only contains pages that require a reviewer rather than an editor to sight them since they have featured status. If you can take care of those, it will be completely empty! -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:52, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * In practice, I have almost always treated the whole review mechanism as a pass/fail decision; except for when I was deprecating a revision (de-sighting it), I don't think I've touched the three review levels since the first week after I was autopromoted to editor. Either I click the submit button to sight, or I don't.  The fact that there are actually nine different ways that I could give a page a passing review doesn't prevent me from treating it as a simple pass/fail, so the other eight kinds of pass aren't doing any harm &mdash; and they might yet turn out to be useful to someone in the future, after we've got the overly-difficult autopromotion threshold fixed and there are enough editors to go around.  --Pi zero (talk) 00:22, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately busy at the moment, but after reviewing this, I think a simple one-level system would be best - used to indicate that a revision isn't vandalism, and nothing else. Fine-grained judgments of quality should be done through other methods. Currently, the harm is much greater than any benefit we've reaped, or could realistically reap in the near- to mid-term future. Maybe in some years when we have manpower to do this we can have a more substantial review process using flaggedrevs. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 01:59, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm very glad that so many people have responded, and so quickly. However, the discussion that we've generated here is exacly what I am trying to avoid: We can talk and argue endlessly about what we want to change, and the entire time the discussion is ongoing we're stuck with the extension the way it is. It's a classic case of painting the bikeshed, we can just argue and argue and argue without ever getting the problem fixed. Disabling the extension serves two purposes: So yes, I think we have learned a lot of good lessons about what we like and what we don't like and what we want to change. Everybody has ideas (as evidenced by the discussion above), and that's a good thing to get the conversation going in earnest. While we are busy solidifying all our ideas into a comprehensive plan, I say we just shut it off and take the time to get it right. Start from a clean slate. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) We stop causing damage immediately, so more harm isn't being done while we discuss the issue (and we should definitely take time to discuss it properly without rushing to implement a hair-brained solution to our original hair-brained configuration).
 * 2) If we don't have the extension active, we will be motivated to find a way to make it active again. Whereas if we have the extension active, we may be less motivated to change it because we already have it.
 * If we can come to a quick consensus about what settings we do want, I think that'd be best. My impression is we're making good headway. If that's wrong, then we should disable things until we can come to a solid conclusion, then implement that. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 02:29, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Seems to me we've got the makings here of practical measures to redress the immediate problems, stemming from old sighted revisions of pages that either shouldn't have any sighted revisions at all, or shouldn't have any sighted revisions with the current shortage of sighters. Shutting it off would only prevent us from getting it right:  we just made a set of changes, they've just (we're told) taken effect a few days ago, and not waiting to observe at least the short-term consequences of the changes would be... counterproductive.  (A month and a half ought to give us a solid baseline from which to at least guess at longer-term consequences, and gauge the size of possible further changes; less time than that might or might not reveal something actionable.)  Pi zero (talk) 04:18, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Well then to make this more formal: I oppose disabling FlaggedRevs. I support disabling automatic sighting. As Pi zero said, we just got done making some configuration changes and its premature to jump to conclusions about how its not working out. I also agree that disabling the extension would prevent us from being able to get it right. OTOH disabling automatic sighing would at least make it less intrusive because the latest revision will be shown unless someone goes out of there way to review revisions. With this done we could then go back and deprecate reviews for the books being used for class projects for instance so it no longer a problem for them. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  12:21, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with Whiteknight. I support disabling FlaggedRevs until it is fixed. While it discourages vandals, it also discourages casual editors.  Since there are not really enough people around reviewing edits, it is a nice idea, but I don't think we have the man power to pull it off as effectively.  Thenub314 (talk) 10:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

''I've moved a specific proposal for  from the end of this section to a separate section at the bottom of the page, where it's more likely to be noticed. --Pi zero (talk) 12:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)''

GLAM -Challenge
On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the
 * Wikimedia Foundation
 * Australian War Memorial
 * ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation
 * Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre

In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnangarra (talk) 12:14, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Should Wikibooks also switch to CC-by-SA
"Should Wikibooks switch from GFDL to CC-by-SA?" is being discussed at Wikibooks talk:Copyrights. Is there a better place to post a note about something that could potentially effect all Wikibooks users? --DavidCary (talk) 20:16, 27 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I was under the impression that Wikibooks would be moving to CC-by-SA, as would all Wikimedia projects. -- Adrignola talk contribs 20:27, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We are. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 21:26, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We are moving, or we already moved? IOW, is it just a matter of changing the mediawiki pages, or are we waiting for another shoe or two to drop? -- SB_Johnny  talk 00:39, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The Licensing Update Committee, or whatever they are calling themselves now, is suppose to do it. They are suppose to be done by no latter then August 1st. Most of the English projects seem to be done now except for Wikibooks and Wikiversity, so I think its just a matter of time. I think its fair to say we are already moved, just the committee hasn't done there part to reflect it here yet. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  00:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

The website appears to be updated, from the text at the bottom of the pages, to the text when creating a new page, to the text when editing an existing page. Shall we create a page to complement GNU Free Documentation License? --Adrignola talk contribs 22:02, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've made the page mentioned above. I'd like guidance on updating Copyrights from the wikilawyers among us. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:58, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Favicon?
Is it just my browser or has the favicon disappeared? Thenub314 (talk) 13:56, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It is there! Helder14:52, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

TeX problems.
I recently found a snipit of TeX code that wikibooks cannot process and I am wondering if anyone has a clever work around. The offending code is
 * $$\begin{array}{rl}

\text{next year's production of steel} &=\text{next year's use of steel by steel}  \\ &\quad+\text{next year's use of steel by auto} \end{array}$$

But this version without using any quotes inside a TeX block doesn't have have any problems.
 * $$\begin{array}{rl}

\text{next years production of steel} &=\text{next years use of steel by steel}  \\ &\quad+\text{next years use of steel by auto} \end{array}$$

I generally encounter lots of these lexing errors, (or the even more annoying failed conversion to png) but I am never to what extent these are bugs or limitations of the TeX implementation here. Should I be actively reporting these somewhere? If anyone has ideas about how to allow a single right quote in TeX that would be helpful to know. Thenub314 (talk) 07:55, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Any limitation is with the math tag. The math tag only attempts to implement a subset of TeX or LaTeX. If you think there are bugs that should be fixed, you could try reporting them to bugzilla, but they may be ignored or marked as WONTFIX. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  11:36, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

For anyone following this thread, here is a work around.
 * $$\begin{array}{rl}

\text{next year}\textrm{'}\text{s production of steel} &=\text{next year}\textrm{'}\text{s use of steel by steel}  \\ &\quad+\text{next year}\textrm{'}\text{s use of steel by auto} \end{array}$$


 * $$\begin{array}{rl}

\textrm{next\ year's\ production\ of\ steel} &=\textrm{next\ year's\ use\ of\ steel\ by\ steel}  \\ &\quad+\textrm{next\ year's\ use\ of\ steel\ by\ auto} \end{array}$$

depending on your tastes. It is perhaps notable that if you escape a space in \text{...} you'll also get errors.Thenub314 (talk) 09:24, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is reported as 19547 &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 11:05, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Template:Dropimage has changed
Suddenly the subject template has changed. The control link show/hide now is located far to the right of the screen and not even in these drop-boxes at all.

Much formatting is already in place and many instances of this template are involved, particularly for the set Editing_Wikitext. In fact that book is the main user. I would suggest that the work was better as it was before, and that some consideration of the writers who use it may have been a good idea.

Would an admin please consider the matter and in particular the possibility of reverting the changes to the template? Thanks, Armchair (talk) 20:40, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It was an admin who made the most recent change to the template. Technically, the template is not protected in any way, so anyone can edit the change back to how it was previously.  However, I do not see any change to the appearance with Firefox 3.0.11. Please provide your browser and version so this can be troubleshooted. Internet Explorer 8 has been released and provides better compatibility with standards-compliant code if you happen to be using 6 or 7 of that browser. -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:09, 5 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi, The implication of your opening response suggests that you feel that an admin is always right over the intentions of others.  I note that the template has now been rewritten in collapsible table form.   I am using Opera, and was also using Opera when I wrote the subject template and the bulk of the Editing_Wikitext pages that it was made for.   I also note that some 100 or so pages link to the book so I assume that users feel that it has some value.  In my browser all of the show/ hide links now are displayed at the far right of the page instead of within the drop box as was intended.   I note also that all of the instances of the template that were intended to be centered on the laboriously formatted pages of that book are now located at the hard left.


 * Admins should not feel that they have indescriminate authority to change work, especially when a great deal of effort has gone into the implementation.  This is particularly true of templates.   Frankly,  if this is how such matters are being handled it might be better for me to make my efforts elsewhere, and leave the admins to write the work.


 * I don't know of any admin who feels that way. You asked for an admin to change it back, when admin privileges are not required to do so. The CSS of the template was using left-align already for the table, the fact that Opera centered the table despite that was a bug. What version of Opera are you using? With Opera 9 under WINE I didn't see any issue with the collapse button being completely to the right of the page. I'm about to give Opera 9 another try using the native Linux version. I can fix the template so the table is centered instead by default, if that was the actual intent. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:41, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This situation would actually be a user situation rather than an admin situation, so I made a mistake in even distinguishing the group membership of the last person to make the change. Rather than simply roll back the change I was hoping to find the source of the problem. -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * In Firefox 2.0.0.20 the template dropimage fails to obey the option to center.  A simplified version of a collapsible table, for example the one in Editing_Wikitext/Tables has the same problem, but strangely that simple one can be fixed by adding a style for margin set to auto.   The template does not respond to this treatment and it is difficult at present to see why not.   Both Internet Explorer and Opera now seem to obey the centering attribute, and I note that the links have  found their way back into their boxes in all cases. Armchair (talk) 17:32, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The table has  by default which is why its aligning to the left and not centering. Any browser that is centering is ignoring that.   works in most web browsers when there is also a defined width. Some web browsers are known to have weird rendering problems when attempting to align tables, so wrapping the table inside a div block will usually ensure more consistent rendering across web browsers. The table could also be replaced with a div block. That would probably confuse people who are reading the Editing Wikitext book, but it would fix a common mistake in web design, that is using tables for layout rather then for tabular data. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  17:04, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

DB9,DB25 connector.
Dear sir;

I need informations about DB9 & DB25 connector,colors code,configuration & full details.

Thanks you.

WISSAM HAKIM. E/I & comminucation supervisor. C.A.T company.KSA.


 * This is the Technical Assistance (for Wikibooks) not general subjects :)
 * Anyway, you can check for that info on Wikipedia D-subminiature or here The Hardware Book or even here AllPinouts but it all depends on what you intend to connect to... --Panic (talk) 05:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Ello
I have been busy on Wikipedia and Wikiversity and I am wondering what is the best way to coordinate inter-Project activities wif ur crew? I am ascertaining whether there is an established protocol. I await ur advice :-D B9 hummingbird hovering (talk) 09:12, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'd say Reading room/Projects would be a good place to discuss such things. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Why is it so effing hard to get to the books with PDF version? On the wikibooks main page there should be a link to the books with PDF version

Request for Guitar (wikibook) review
Hello. I was hoping if anyone here could review my changes to the wikibook: Guitar. I've added chord diagrams to replace the guitar chords that used the template. The main additions are in the chord reference section and I've created a new page called "Technical Exercises". There's a formatting problem in the Chord Reference section - the section heading of Open Seventh Chords seems to be in a different font. I would be grateful for any feedback. Hopefully the new chord diagrams are an improvement but if you feel they are not, please feel free to revert to a previous version.

Thanks --Sluffs (talk) 13:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm Confused
It's hard to know where to start, even with all the "Help" materials. Maybe too many "help" materials on Wikibooks. Where can I go for info on how to start a Wikibook? Writing one, that is? Does it have to already be finished, or can I work on it online? Sorry, dumb questions, I'm sure, but believe me, I've really been studying Wikibooks hard. Everything seems to link somewhere else, and eventually back again, but, still, no straightforward, clear-cut simple-minded answers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Huntgoddess (talk • contribs) 13:03, 29 July 2009.
 * Have you looked at Using Wikibooks yet? In my opinion, it's the best organized intro to this project we have, and I really wish it were a bit more prominent.  To answer your other question, no, the book does not have to be complete before putting it here. WB is for developing textbooks.  In fact, if a text is uploaded in nearly complete form, it always raises my suspicions that it was cut-n-pasted from a copyrighted source.  I always Google unique-looking phrases when I see that happen, and nine times out of ten find a copyrighted source of the material with all rights reserved (which we cannot allow here).  Good luck in your new project, and thanks for asking questions instead of just leaving.  If you need any other assistance, please ask again. --Jomegat (talk) 13:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

INTRODUCTION TO BUINESS
As am a new comer to these show,am kindly asking for advices. -1 since have choosen the book introduction to business,have also seen the topices below now how can i starts to read?


 * Usually you just follow the links from the table of contents page. The book Introduction to Business is a new book almost nothing has been written besides a table of contents.  You may want to look through the Subject:Business page and see if you can find another more developed book.  Thenub314 (talk) 15:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Is Wikibooks growing?
I can't say it is, and the worse is actually the case. I have been contributing to Wikibooks for a few years, and what I see is people seem to be losing interest in the project. If I remember correct, more people used to contribute to math-related articles, and there are more people who would have participated in organization-related discussions like switching from bookshelves to subject pages. Simply put, I'm seeing fewer and fewer people around in the project; this cannot be good. Just so there is no misunderstanding, I'm not suggesting contents in Wikibooks are useless or that there are no serious editors contributing to the project. (For example, I consider myself a serious editor, and I believe I made some nontrivial positive contribution.) And I genuinely believe in the premise of Wikibooks, the creation of free books (in particular free in the sense of "free beer". As a graduate student who has to teach, I know how outrageous the prices of some textbooks used in my class. There are clear and significant demands for cheap books. Why is Wikipedia so popular, and why can't its success be translated to the cases of textbooks?

Obviously, some kind of restructuring is in order. The strongest argument that can be made against the switching to subject pages would be that not that it destroys the status quo, but that its extent is not radical enough. I don't see how the switch would significantly change the dynamics. I have some radical ideas for restructuring. For example, I've come to think "books" may not be good ways to organize materials. The biggest problem is a duplication. Duplication of materials directly translate to duplications of editors' time, which are very scarce. Another problem would be that this resulted in many books left unfinished. Not only this makes us look bad (We want to look good and cool, don't we?), but often many new editors try to reorganize materials into new forms (which often end up incomplete too) instead of adding new materials to existing ones. One obvious solution I'm thinking of lately is to reduce scales. It's time to conclude that books are too large for wiki editors, who like to make small edits now and then. Maybe Wikibooks should consist of chapters or sections instead of books. This could work greatly for math books. There would be no books on linear algebra, or analysis. There would simply a page on eigenvalues or compact operators. Of course, this could move us closer to the structure of Wikipedia, but it doesn't have to be. The tones of pages are obviously different, for example; e.g., each theorems or lemmas are followed by proofs, the style that is not common in Wikipedia. Anyway, this is just one idea that I though I might share. -- Taku (talk) 23:31, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You have some good points. Have you seen the things people are doing at http://www.wikiversity.org/ ? The biggest problem is ... Duplication of materials ... There would simply a page on eigenvalues or compact operators. That's a good idea. We are already starting to do something similar in Engineering and Computer programming. There are a bunch of loose pages at Engineering Tables and Category:Computer Programming Templates. People can assemble two (or more) books that "transclude" those pages without duplication. For example, there are several Wikibooks that transclude the Fourier transform table. If anyone sees an error in that table, that person can update it once and then all those books will immediately display the improved version. Should we make a similar collection of loose pages on eigenvalues, etc.? --DavidCary (talk) 20:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Taku, the interest in contributing to books is enormous -- a lot of people I know who edit wikipedia a bit would /rather/ edit a wikibook but don't see something that matches what they have in mind. If we could get closer to good "book style" as a target, we would start to find not only novice WB editors who are inspired by the idea, but experienced authors who have already published their own gfdl or cc-by/cc-sa works using WB as their platform.  I think it's important to focus on those essential groups.
 * Some tasks that should be made easier (with good bot operators, toold, &c) :
 * Importing freely licensed books available elsewhere online. Templates for importing different kinds of pages, decent doc-to-wiki and html-to-wiki converters, a simple guide to figuring out the canonical name for a page/chapter/book.  [to your point about how many books should be sharing pieces, what's the right naming convention for pieces of material explaining vectors/the Krebs cycle/fugue form?  if it starts with the name of a book, that can be confusing.  if it does not, quickly mapping a 150-pg book onto a set of Wikibooks pages becomes more tricky.]
 * Creating sets of problems. From static problems with solutions, to dynamic problems (with variables in the statement and solution).
 * Creating pages for authors or publishers. CK-12, Benjamin Crowell, and w:de:Wikipedia:WikiPress should have pages here, each has produced almost as many freely-licensed books as WB itself, and everything from their back-office processes to their list of works and versions over time (when not stored on WB) deserve mention and discussion.  If we're not discussing this level of detail about the book-production process, it will be harder to attract a large body of authors.  Sj (talk) 17:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with a lot of what you say but disagree with a few points as well. I don't know if Wikibooks is or is not growing, I have seen lots of interesting developments in my time here and don't think we are in any kind of imminent danger of collapsing into nothingness. However, avoiding complete collapse or even maintaining the status quo is hardly good enough, we need to do more to grow the project.
 * I agree that many books are too ambitious, but it's worse then that: most books have a problem with scope in some form or another. Some books are too large and sprawling, some books are too small and narrow. There are problems associated with each. I would be very interested to hear ideas about solving this particular problem, but I worry that most potential solutions are going to be unworkable for a variety of reasons.
 * The idea of writing things on smaller scales and encouraging section reuse is an interesting one. However, I would caution you that pursuing this too radically will create new problems. A good book needs to have flow, a good narrative, and a good understanding of the target audience. By reusing sections or chapters, we can end up with problems where books become very disjointed. Adding new information to a particular section means we have to go back to all the books where that section is used and verify that we have all the prerequisite information and that readers will be able to follow along. That can put even more of our editors time in jeopardy.
 * We do need to make some significant changes around here if we want to grow and succeed in the long run. The recent licensing change will do a lot (more then people expect) towards making Wikibooks more interoperable with other open content websites, which in turn will promote the flow of information into Wikibooks. Here are some things that I think we need in the long run to make things better:
 * More advertising. We need to get in touch with people outside Wikibooks and even outside Wikimedia and let them know that we are serious about what we are doing, looking to expand, and are supportive and helpful towards interested new users. I've been doing some blogging about Wikibooks in the past, I would like to suggest that other people do the same. In fact if anybody wants to write up an opinion peice or some kind of project advertisement or anything, I would be happy to post it (or a link to it) on my blog.
 * Improved usability. This is a big one but is necessary to reduce the technical hurdles that new users face. Improved documentation helps, but there are some technical tools we need added too. A WYSIWYG editor would be amazingly helpful, and I've been testing out some options elsewhere that would be very usable here. So many people don't edit or don't stay because wiki markup is more difficult and more ugly then people are prepared for. We also need better tools for organizing and developing books. I've worked on some javascript tools myself but they are more of a curiosity then a "ready for prime time" kind of tool. We could also use things like quick "how to" screencasts. If everybody who read this explained in a 30 second video how to perform common tasks and uploaded that to commons or youtube, that would be an amazing help and would work wonders for attracting and maintaining new authors. There are lots more ideas in this department, I won't ramble anymore but if people want more ideas just ask.
 * We need to attract authors from other places to work here. There are plenty of people in the world who write books on their own personal websites. We can host those books here and attract their authors to come join Wikibooks. We can attract teachers and professors and researchers to write things here on Wikibooks that they wouldn't have been able to write (or write profitably) elsewhere.
 * These are just a few ideas for things that we need in Wikibooks over the long term, and I'm sure other people have other ideas. I would love to hear them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:15, 11 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I haven't performed a statistical analysis but it very visible that there is an incontestable decline in contributing users and the capacity to retain said contributors (this point is the most problematic due to the nature of Wikibooks). I make this assessment in regards to the time I've been participating here.
 * I don't see the scope of the books or their size (big or small) as a problem or of high importance to the general user and not to experienced contributors, since we now have a cleared the way of having books on the same scope and have a somehow established protection to stubs (so other people can pick them up). I still see very few people taking up the merge jobs that are pending (Category:Merge templates), so the issue is participation in itself not a lack of things to do.
 * I'm still waiting that the agreed trail period we voted for (6 moths +-) for the FlaggedRevs is considered elapsed and we can finally invalidate it's final adoption, this to me is one of the major reasons for the huge decline we have seen in participation. For the vast numbers of pages I'm monitoring I see and miss the now almost absent anonymous collaborator. --Panic (talk) 21:25, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course, perceptions could differ depending on to which area you contribute. As it may be clear by now, my edits nowadays are mostly limited to math-related books. What has been disturbing to me (and so ultimately led me to start this thread) is that, aside from minor fixes and edits related to organization, I'm not seeing any activity of "actually writing books" (well, except mine). Maybe this is temporary. But since I'm a long-time editor and remember distinctly that more editors used to contribute to math books, this has been very worrying to me. Anyway, again, maybe things are different in other areas.


 * There are a handful of other editors helping with math books. I felt I did some actual writing at Real analysis; User:Warshall has been working pretty consistently on calculus; User:Adam majewski and User:Danwillis have been making regular edits to Fractals. On the other hand I understand perfectly what you mean, and because of this problem I wanted to recognize peoples efforts.  My first edit was to point out something that I felt bordered on a factual mistake at Real analysis and my comment went unnoticed for two years until I decided to make some changes.  Then, when going through the book I found many other people had made comments that were just as neglected about more blatant factual errors in the book, which had gone equally unnoticed.  My conclusion was the book was abandoned, then looking around, it wasn't clear to me that there was a math book that wasn't abandoned.  Now I see a couple, but over all we seem  to have thousands of books, dozens of books being worked on, and a handful of books that have enough content to be comparable to a printed book. (related comments to follow below). Thenub314 (talk) 09:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Here are some responses from me to the above. Yes, I'm in a complete agree with Whiteknight on that the scope (and, especially, the title) of a book is extremely crucial for its long-term success. I have seen many unfinished books often exhibiting serious shortcomings in defining their scopes. But what is the solution? Nuoedia would have worked nicely if people can work diligently. It didn't. The lesson from Wikipedia is that people are lazy, don't read instructions, they don't make well-thought edits that fits overall structures, etc. In theory, books should have good outlines and clear statement of its scopes. But, apparently, this is too much to ask for. Many books experience some major structural reorganizations because editors simply don't know or can't agree how to organize materials. (Algebra and Japanese books are examples I know.) Of course, we have many good quality books. (Personally, I think my Functional Analysis has been developing quite nicely, but then it has been written almot entirely by me; It's not an example of wiki-at-work.) In short, writing books is surprisingly? very hard, and telling people do better jobs isn't a solution. (This is the basis of my problem with subject pages. In theory, they work nice. But, in practice, they probably don't work. It's too complex. People are not as smart as you would like to assume.)


 * Let me start by saying functional analysis has been coming along well. My desire to create a wiki-at-work experience is why I was interested in reviving the mathematics project (I hope this catches on and other subjects follow suite).  The fact here is that the conversations in the reading room have a lot of focus about how things should be organized but rarely discuss the actual writing of texts.  If we could get the people interested in the same subject talking to each other, then collaboration may follow.  (Personally, it would be nice to talk about my grandiose pipe dreams for mathematics, imagine getting one nice undergraduate text book together and getting the MAA to give it a book review it in the Monthly!  Even if the review were scathing, it would really get the word out that we are looking to write actual mathematics text books for use in actual classes, to a large group of people interested in mathematics. It makes me smile just to think about.)  Even if this is a lofty goal, anything that gets more then one person working on a book at a time is a good thing.  I would not be surprised to find out that we lose a lot of good editors because they feel they are working in a vacuum. No one anywhere notices or cares about the work they put into some book so why continue with it.  Thenub314 (talk) 09:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I know about Wikiversity. In a sense, I guess, my above post proposes a merger with Wikibooks, but I don't think that solves the problem. Wikiversity looks too chaotic to me, and its focus on "learning" doesn't mix with the notion of textbooks. Textbooks are not just for learning; they (especially math texts) develop theorys from ground-up. A good textbook has a structure that, when reading from the beginning to the end, helps you to truly grasp ideas; it shows how one idea leads and connects to another. (This, I believe, is the same as what Whiteknight called narrative.) This is something that wikibooks can offer; that wikipedia can't. Wikipedia articles simply collect facts, often without narrative, without motivation. For Wikipedia this is inevitable since articles have to present all examples, all possible applications, all possible definitions, etc. (A good example is function (mathematics). A good textbook would never try to present such breath.) So, I know that why we wanted book formats in the first place. But, again like nupedia, apparently, simplicity is more important. A book with good narrative is too ambitious; it's only possible if it can attract a very committed editor with a good vision. When he left, someone might or might not pick up. But since he has different "vision", he inevitably has to restructure the book entirely. In other words, in this scenario, we're really not taking advantage of "wiki". Good books could be written without wiki, but that would completely miss the point of this project. -- Taku (talk) 01:49, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * "Why is Wikipedia so popular, and why can't its success be translated to the cases of textbooks?"
 * This question is easy to answer. Wikipedia has a more broader scope and is of greater usefulness to the general Internet user, it also serves as a promoter of concepts, ideas and a mean to archive uniformity of understanding, we can even say it enables/promotes restricted topic debates and consensual agreement on them. The possibility to search and index an encyclopedia provides added value. The same is not equally transposed to books, a wikibook will have to compete not only with other online repositories, but also with printed books, it is also important to remember that electronic books haven't as yet reached a critical mass.
 * Taking those point in consideration Wikibooks will always have a problem not only of perceived usability but of real visibility and usefulness (a good comparison to usefulness is to consider the Wikisource project that only offers finished products). All we have going for us is that we attempt to provide free books by empowering people to edit them but the real added value goes for the final user if and only the Wikibook can mature to a almost complete state. Ultimately I don't take the objective of creating books as the core objective of the project, the most important thing we produce is free content (that uses a lot more of creative effort than a encyclopedic article)...
 * As for the proposal to merge Wikiversity to Wikibooks, I take it as a step back or in the wrong direction. Wikiversity has a very distinct goal "learning" (I would even go so far as to say exploration and investigation). It provides as platform for working in the evolution of ideas and knowledge that wouldn't be possible or wanted on Wikibooks since we reduced our effort to the "teaching" and that requires us to restrict the subjects to finished or well understood techniques and concepts that aren't moving targets and prone to have their credibility contested. --Panic (talk) 03:26, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikibooks expansion
Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikiversity have the potential to expand tremendously. All would fill niches that are currently vacant.

Wikibooks: real-time, publicly versioned updates and improvements to free textbooks.
 * Demand
 * CK-12 has a MediaWiki backend for storing its 20+ books. It uses doc and pdf formats to send them to publishers for print on demand, but intends for future revisions of their books after the initial publication date to take place on a wiki.  If there is an active community here that has looked at and writted guidelines for including their style of "books composed of independent modules", all of this work can take place here at WB rather than spread across two wikis.
 * The Light and Matter book series are all cc-sa and waiting to be remixed into other book formats or for different audiences. They are better in cleanliness and uniform coverage than the equivalent subject-matter books here on WB.  If WB can render them beautifully and effectively convert them from numbered pageflow to a wiki solution, then this could be the place for corrections and future revisions to be made, feeding into the author's own publishing process.  Until he is willing to include a link to the Wikibooks page for his works on his 'downloads' page, we're missing an essential piece of the global-realtime-book-editing puzzle.
 * Partnerships
 * with Wikisource. WS should have copies of all primary source materials used in Wikibooks.  An advantage of WB should be rapid translation of finished works, down to and including commentary on primary sources.  In Classics (where primary sources span Arabic, Latin, Greek, French and English) this is an essential feature to writing effective texts which most authors do not have the in-house capacity to master.
 * with Wikiversity. WV should provide a main-namespace entry for every significant freely licensed learning material available.  These number over a million (the GLOBE exchange indexes ~1.4M at the moment); yet the databases currently used to hold them are used only to support non-interactive search engines,  They are not directly commentable, editable, or immediately usable in wikibooks (though most of them are licensed in a compatible way).  If Wikiversity supported this sort of granular learning material, WB could transclude them directly into books [perhaps that's where problems and sample tests would go].
 * At any rate, defragmenting the community of people who care about textbooks, schools, and learning a subject thoroughly will help. Sj (talk) 17:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
 * At any rate, defragmenting the community of people who care about textbooks, schools, and learning a subject thoroughly will help. Sj (talk) 17:53, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL.
There seems to exist a lack of direction to the Wikimedia determination for the use of Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 as the sites license. For what I have understood of the issue we need to start dropping GFDL references since the content can only be relicensed by Wikimedia any time before August 1, 2009 and that no new GFDL content is can be imported into the project since the relicense also states that the only GFDL works that can be relicensed have been on the project until November 1. It is now July 13 2009 and the lack of a clear and visible statement is worrying. The last action (and recent one at that) I've seen it to make all recent contribution to the project dual license (Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL) this doesn't cover our necessities nor addresses the problem of some works being included on the project violating the November 1, 2008 limitation. I'm I wrong on worrying about this facts ?!? --Panic (talk) 03:44, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Any lack of direction is on the part of the Wikimedia Foundation. The decision to dual license was the board's decision. I will note though that the November cutoff in the GFDL refers specifically to works not originating on a wiki. So I think if there is a problem it is for any preexisting GFDL-only works that might have been included in books since the November cutoff. You may not be wrong to worry, but I don't think there is anything that Wikibooks as a project can do about it. I think you would have to direct your worries to the foundation. I think the only thing Wikibooks can do is to delete such works as copyright violations as they are encountered. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  12:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The decision to dual license is not a real problem (it can be confusing to the normal user), it just doesn't address all the issues. The November cutoff is for all GFDL works, the origin isn't an issue (but only MMC/Wiki's can relicense them). The situation now is that any GFDL content is out of our reach and there will be very difficulty to police imports made of GFDL content after November 1, 2008. Shouldn't we make this facts more visible to our userbase (at least a visible note not to import any GFDL material) ?
 * Since several Wikibookians user have functions in other Wikimedia projects, isn't there any talk or conclusion about this subjects anywhere elsewhere ? For instance what steps did the Wikisource project (the closest one to us) go about it... --Panic (talk) 19:16, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been to Wikibsource and it seems they have done more or less what we did here... In any case by reexamining the GFDL relicensing bit, since it is so badly written, it would be very easy to fight any unlikely claim of violation. Any person can claim to have been running a MMC (as defined).  --Panic (talk) 20:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Rules of WikiBooks
Can anyone tell me the NPOV, verifiability, no original research, and notability rules of this Wiki? Kayau (talk) 14:16, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The following pages will be helpful: Help:Wikibooks for Wikimedians and What is Wikibooks?. I should say that verifiability and notability are not used at Wikibooks, from what I have seen.  Books are not nominated for deletion simply because they do not have references or citations. NPOV and OR do apply here, however.  Citations can help to head off any VFDs should someone believe your work is original research.  Notability is not really a factor here. If you want to write a textbook to teach a particular subject, you are free to do so. Wikibooks is definitely not Wikipedia. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:55, 19 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I would comment that verifiability is an explicit part of the policy on Original research, though as Adrignola points out that it is rare for a book to be voted on for deletion for this reason. But I think it could in principle happen, and wouldn't be surprised to find out that some books here are not really verifiable.  If there are books like this, I think they should be nominated for deletion.  Thenub314 (talk) 17:00, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Lesson 25
Where on Wikibooks does this thing come from? Kayau (talk) 14:20, 19 July 2009 (UTC) Somebody moved it already. Thanks. Kayau (talk) 14:48, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Odd linebreaking with TexBox template.
I have noticed the following odd behavior of the TextBox template. When a text starts on the same line as the title, then it respects the first hard coded line break in the text a, but not otherwise. It also seem to indent, but perhaps this is a feature? See the examples below to see what I mean.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 (discuss • contribs) 11:26, 2009 July 10

That is a feature of the software. As you probably already know when a line starts with ":" it is indented. ";" and ":" are actually part of the same feature. ";" is used to provide a glossary/dictionary term ( <dt> ), and ":" to provide its definition ( <dd> ). The term and definition can be placed on separate lines or placed on the same line, but either way a line break is added. The single line form just like the separate line form relies on the presents of ":" to know where the term ends and the definition begins. That is why there is a line break. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  12:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Page skipped over on uncategorized pages?
This is perhaps at best a curiosity, but I thought it was strange so I would mention it here. I came across the page Native-PAGE, which is not categorized. As far as I can tell it doesn't appear on the uncategorized pages list. I have sort of been working alphabetically, and I suspect other have as well and we have past N. This page has been around for a long time, so I don't think it is a caching problem. If there is something odd going on with the software here (and not just me being confused about something), then we should neither delete it nor categorize it until we understand why it is different. Thenub314 (talk) 18:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * That page is categorized alphabetically. The alphabetical category is what is known as a hidden category. Hidden categories aren't displayed on a page unless you set your preferences to show them. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  18:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You must have missed my comment in the reading room before, Thenub. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Sadly no, I noticed your comment. To my own embarrassment when I went to edit the page to categorize it, I somehow simply didn't see the alphabetical tag.  No idea how I missed it though... Thenub314 (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Nonsense images
I've noticed a couple on odd images here: Should they be deleted? Kayau (talk) 04:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Well for the first image, it is rather similar to images found at Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Const/ik, and that page claims the next page is called "Action", so it is probably the first image was created for this action page, which is yet to be written. The image could be helpful to who ever writes that module, provided they are aware it exists.


 * The second image was probably intended for the page Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Advanced Tutorials/Advanced Animation/Guided tour/Const/fl which was started by the same author but never progressed to the point that he included the image. So overall I would say it probably isn't a good idea to delete the images. But then again they were created 4 years ago and still are not linked by anything. Thenub314 (talk) 08:03, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Page should be wikified?
This page looks rather funny: History of Literature/Australian Poetry at the Turn of the 20th Century. Wikify it? Kayau (talk) 04:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This page seems a doesn't seem so strange. It is not unusual for a page to have no links to other pages, or is there some other aspect of its strangeness I am missing.  What would wikifying it entail? Thenub314 (talk) 07:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm sure it looks as funny to you as Wikipedia articles do to me, with every other word (even apparently simple ones) linked to another page. Books are more often altered the other way. As detailed in Help:Wikibooks for Wikimedians: "Textbooks are self-contained, meaning that the chapters link to each other internally, but not to other wikibooks."  I have seen "see also" links, however.  See Dewikify for the full story.    Ideally, a textbook will explain the terminology it uses in the text, without forcing readers to exit the book and consult other resources. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It isn't the links; it's the 'long introduction'. If this were a Wikipedia article, I would cut it up in sections. Kayau (talk) 07:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Annotated Texts
I recently was looking at the policies about annotated texts. The policies clearly seem to indicate that a necessary ingredient to being an annotated text is that the source text is included. This only seems to be true for around a half dozen of the books in Subject:Annotated texts. Probably in most cases copyright issues would keep us from reproducing the text, regardless of manpower. Perhaps most of these books are simply miscategorized, but I thought this might shed some light on the question as to whether pages that are errata's of published text books fall under our scope. I tend to feel they do not, as they are not "textbooks, annotated texts, instructional guides, [or] manuals". Other books such as Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter is an excellent in depth guide, and I do feel belongs here, but it is not an annotated text as advertised. Thenub314 (talk) 09:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think another category under Subject:Literature at the same level as Subject:Annotated texts may be called for. The former should be about literature in general, while the latter implies annotations to a source. Books on books without the source&mdash;what shall they be called?  As for erratas&mdash;my statement in the VfD discussion page at this time coincides with my opinion that they are outside Wikibooks' scope. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Books on books (or texts about texts) are called Secondary source. They usually contain only excerpts of the original text in contrast to annotated texts. --Martin Kraus (talk) 15:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think the intent was that the entire original work must be completely included in order to be considered annotated, but rather that excerpts and whatever else that might be relevant to the analysis of the work must be included or referenced in some way. Annotated Texts on Wikibooks aren't even limited to literature, they can be about movies, songs, etc. I think including the entire work completely was intended more as an ideal for works old enough to be out of copyright or where fair use might apply. I think erratas alone are outside Wikibooks scope, but I think annotated texts can include erratas as part of aiding students in a literary class. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  16:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I like the term Secondary sources, I would be content with terms such as Literature study guides, or perhaps Critical analysis. I am not sure the original intent, but I think in this case I agree with the wording we have. I suggest reserve the subject "Annotated texts" for books that contain the original books or media to which they pertain, and create a new subject for books which do not or can not contain the original source material.  I agree with <span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  that erratas as part of a larger study guide or annotated texts make sense here, but I think free standing lists of errors do not. Thenub314 (talk) 12:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikibooks in general
Are the books on this site able to be purchased or are they strictly online? I have seen a few I would love to be able to buy but i don't think its possible. Is it?

thanks :D


 * Reuse is possible under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0. If you just want them for your own use, you're free to print them out. They don't cost anything.  Feel free to make a donation, however. -- Adrignola talk contribs


 * If the question is whether you can buy printed versions of the books online: yes, you can create a "collection" of chapters and order a printed version of your collection from PediaPress, see Using_Wikibooks/Printing_A_Wikibook. --Martin Kraus (talk) 08:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * 'You can save your collection, you can download it in PDF or ODT format...' Does that mean that the PDFs are free, and the printing costs money? Kayau (talk) 02:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The PDF is "free" (i.e. it is under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0). Thus, you are also allowed to print it. If you order a printed copy from PediaPress, that will cost money. --Martin Kraus (talk) 07:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Another nonsense image
Delete it? Kayau (talk) 10:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes! Thenub314 (talk) 10:59, 31 July 2009 (UTC)


 * [[Image:Yes_check.svg|15px| ]] Done Image was unused as well. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for Page Protection
Is there a page for Requests for Page Protection? Arlen22 (talk) 15:45, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WB:AA is for all manner of administrative requests. &mdash; <b style="color:#309;">Mike.lifeguard</b> &#124; talk 15:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Visitor count
I think both readers and authors would be interested in some statistics regarding specific books. Such statistics could include:


 * Visitor count
 * Development activity
 * Trends
 * etc.

Perhaps this could be setup in collaboration with google analytics?

hpon (talk) 05:39, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Some metrics seem to be available here http://wikistics.falsikon.de/latest/wikibooks/en/ . Hope that helps. PS: I block google analytics by default... --Panic (talk) 06:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * More book-specific statistics are available here: go to Community Portal, click on Project statistics and then on Statistics per Wikibook and then on English (large file!). (In the past the site was offline for a while, bu it seems to be uptodate again.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 08:04, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I think the Wikimedia Foundation considers the use of Google Analysis to violate there privacy policy. In the past there has been some efforts to work within the privacy policy by allowing people to opt-in. People weren't satisfied with the opt-in approach though and I think considered the stats too inaccurate. There are some statistics available though which I guess avoid privacy problems to the satisfaction of the Wikimedia Foundation. Panic2k4 and Martin Kraus have listed the main sources for statistics. Sometimes people also point to Alexa for statistics. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  11:51, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Geothermal Heating Book
Back in November or so, I finished a course on installing Geothermal Heat pumps, and was wondering if there was enough interest to get a book going on the subject here in Wikibooks. Geothermal heating is one of the few mature Green Technologies that has a significant ROI. These systems often pay for themselves within the first 5 to 10 years, and the equipment is guaranteed to last for up to 50 years before needing replacement if it is installed correctly. As a member of IGSHPA I may be able to get some support from the Industry Organization, and if the quality of the book is high enough it might be made available for local courses in order to increase the number of qualified installers and contractors out there. There are two major things holding this technology back, the small number of qualified installers, and the initial cost of the installation. This book might help with the first.--Graeme E. Smith (talk) 19:38, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

I have started the book at Geothermal Heating and Cooling to see where I intend to take it, look on the talk page for a discussion of possible chapters.--Graeme E. Smith (talk) 08:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Would Wikibooks want a compendium of churn rates?
I am trying to get wider dissemination of what I believe is a very useful resource to people who care about churn rates. When I linked to the blog from the Wikipedia article "Churn rate", the link was removed on grounds of conflict of interest and non-notability and non-expertise -- even though the blog post is cited in a published article in a respected journal. So, let me get to the point. If Wikibooks were to want this content of mine, I'll hand it over, if you think this step would then enable a link from the Wikipedia article on churn rate, which gets about 9,000 page views per month. The point is to get this resource in the hands of people who want it, while it would still be properly attributed to me. More discussion here. I'm looking forward to the response(s) here. -- Thekohser (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Some considerations. Wikibooks does have a policy on original or primary research. I notice you've been trying to find a good fit for the content, including looking at Wikisource.  You may also wish to look at Wikiversity as well, which is the best home for primary research, though you cite sources in your blog and that may make it such that it is not primary research. If it's within Wikibooks' scope, you'd also have to consider where the content would go. Would it become part of an existing book or would it be developed into part of a larger book? From your blog title, maybe you'd be interested in creating a book on market research as a whole. Finally, your edits will be part of the page history and you can put yourself on an author page, but you'll have to accept that anyone could edit the information provided, unlike on your blog. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)