Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2010/May

Adventist Adventurer Awards
Hello: I'm new to wikibooks and lost.... I just start a new book for Adventurer Program which is for children 4-9 years old. This is a family oriented program provide it for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I may need a lot of help so, you will see me around here a lot. Thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Adalvis (discuss • contribs)
 * You may be interested in Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book as well. Jomegat is a large contributor to that book. -- Adrignola talk contribs 19:33, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not that large (but I am trying to keep my weight down) ;-) --Jomegat (talk) 15:27, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Links to external sites - a guideline suggestion
As a new wikibookian, I surveyed the general recommendations for editors before trying my hand at contributing to the book I'm currently studying with (namely, Haskell). While doing so I saw the recommendation that, since books should be as useful in printed form as they are online, links to external sites should be used with discretion. While that guideline surely makes a lot of sense, external links are often used exactly in the same way as references to printed material are in conventional books - and for printed books no one questions the value of having such references as long as title, author and other relevant data are clearly stated so that readers can actually find said material. So, instead of just clamping down on external links, wouldn't it be better to have a guideline encouraging editors to make better use of the for reference on these default Haskell functions.


 * ). Making the new ones backwards compatible should solve this. --Swift (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Template:Mbox does have backwards compatibility added to it. Both the older "msg" paramater and the newer "text" parameter both work.  User warnings on talk pages using "serious" or "warning" work just fine alongside the "delete" option (see Template:Tmbox/core).  I am sorry the box on Japanese was not corrected. I went through and corrected every template using Mbox; calling Mbox directly it blended in with the other pages that showed up solely because they had a template using Mbox which I had already gone through to ensure that nothing was broken. With the above backwards compatibility added, the only cases I can think of where something would have been broken would be where a custom image was specified; and as I mentioned I went through all the templates using Mbox to correct for the difference in the syntax for specifying that image.  I tried hard to make sure things went smooothly to allow for ambox, tmbox, imbox, cmbox, ombox, or fmbox to be called based on a multipurpose-template-using-Mbox's namespace location.  Again, I am sorry the direct call to Mbox on Japanese was missed, but I feel it's the exception. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:22, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Silly question about +editor
When I get editor status (within a few more days, I believe) will my previous edits get automatically sighted or someone (me or another editor) would have to sight them before they get through FlaggedRevs? --Duplode (talk) 22:05, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * They won't be automatically sighted. You (or someone) has to go back through them and sight them. QU TalkQu 22:44, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

What's wrong with Template:Zhongwen?
I've checked every single character, yet it is not working. What did I do wrong? How can I correct it? Thanks, Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:04, 18 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Removing  seems to have eliminated the immediate problem.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks and the British Museum?
Hi all, As some of you may be aware, next month I'll be going "in-house" at the British Museum in London as their volunteer "Wikipedian in residence" (more info here). Simply put, the idea is for me to spend a month there trying to work out ways that the two communities can build a productive and mutually beneficial/trusting relationship. Although I know the title is "wikipedian" I wanted to make sure that Wikibookians knew I didn't want to limit the scope of the activities to just that project. In fact, I think Wikibooks is possibly the single most important project for long-term GLAM-Wikimedia relations. To that end, I wanted to ask if anyone here had any current projects that they think my internal access to the British Museum might be of help with - please contact me (en.wp is easiest). Equally, if anyone wanted to investigate creating a British Museum-specific wikibook (e.g. a guided tour for kids in the WikiJuniour collections?) I'm sure we can get something going there too. Let me know if you've got any ideas! All the best, Witty lama (talk) 23:27, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've read about this British Museum thingy on the Wikipedia signpost. I know nothing about the British Museum, but in my opinion it might be rather difficult to make a Wikijunior book about the British Museum, since Wikibooks is mostly about textbooks, not guidebooks. So very few editors will be able to help out. By the way, Wikijunior is somewhat inactive nowadays. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:01, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (Re WJ: Progress on Wikijunior these days is mostly at a slow pace, though if that's what you meant I don't see why you'd bother to remark on it.  The word "inactive" comes across to me as considerably stronger than "abandoned" and in the vicinity of "deprecated".  --Pi zero (talk) 14:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC))
 * Activity has been slow in many places, I don't think wikijunior is unique in this respect. I think the british museum collaboration could very useful for the Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations book.  Or maybe even some of the non wikijunior books.  I think perhaps Witty lama's idea could be used to create a book on "History as seen through the British Museum".  It is possible to imagine such a book would teach some real history and not be just a guide.
 * If some editor is interested in some topic that the british museum might have some specialized knowledge about... (e.g. "Cookie Recipies from Ancient Greece", I managed to find one as a kid for a school project, and they were delicious. Who know you could use cloves in cookies?) I strongly encourage that editor to get in touch Witty lama, and find out what resources this partnership brings. It might just lead to a nice chat with some expert about some module, but already that is quite useful. Sadly I am not sure how to make use of it in my work. Thenub314 (talk) 15:23, 10 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I'd only characterize the activity on Wikijunior as reflective of activity as a whole on Wikibooks; when things slow on the site as a whole, things slow on Wikijunior, and vice versa. File:English Wikibooks Edits.png shows the trend.  The peak was in July 2006; we've never broken even 90% of that since and from mid-2009 on it's been below 50% of that peak.  The history has been dramatically volatile, with huge swings in participation, the most recent being a 90% to 50% of peak in the aforementioned mid-2009. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:32, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think we've become a little too focused on the WikiJunior thing. That was just an example and I'm quite happy to pursue other options if anyone has any suggestions. It's just something that sprang to mind. So, don't hesitate to get in touch if you think of a potential project and I'll see what I can do :-) Witty lama (talk) 21:49, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Book review?
As I haven't seen any such process on WB before, I would like to propose a process (possibly a new reading room) similar to a Wikiepdia peer review (not to be confused with a Wikinews one) so that people can put their books to that page and let the community comment on it. Then, if the comments are positive, or if there are only a few things left to be desired and someone (usu. a regular of that book) does it, then put it up to the featured book nominations page. It doesn't have to be compulsory, though. Currently the only place to do this is on this page, though it would probably be a little annoying to clog this place up with books that need comments on no particular aspect, just general comments. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:13, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Reading room/Projects would probably be the best place for that. Reading room describes it as a place to discuss book and book-related projects. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I always thought projects reading room only covers new books and books needing help. But since it's covered, I'll withdraw the proposal. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 12:24, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Trans-wiki collaboration
I started a discussion at en.wikpedia about how cross-pollination between projects could be beneficial to Wikibooks and the other Wikimedia projects, and it seems to be gaining momentum. The basic idea is that if we often need volunteers for maintenance and improvement of our book collection and there are many talented editors next door we should have better mechanisms for inviting them to contribute. Please share your thoughts on the ideas being discussed - in both threads if possible. --Duplode (talk) 15:54, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Interesting. We have had WikiProjects here for getting like-minded people together on a topic.  It shouldn't be surprising that I haven't seen any activity on them for as long as I can remember and would personally consider them all defunct at this point.  Chess and WikiProject Chess and w:Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess may have collaborated in the past or at least would be a good example of a potential partnership.  Those concerned about flooding the project with Wikipedians will have to get past that as it's mostly individuals working on their particular books of choice right now; any coordinated effort will look like a "flood".  I don't buy the cross-wiki watchlists excuse and feel it's just a case of being spoiled with everything happening at Wikipedia.  I have long been used to having to visit Meta, Commons, and Wikiversity to check my watchlists.  I'm glad you've proposed this, regardless of the outcome.  It's always seemed to me that Wikipedia and Wikibooks are closest to each other content-wise.  I think editors at Wikipedia would also find the more relaxed atmosphere of Wikibooks and the ability to write rather than debate over a couple sentences refreshing. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As Wikipedian, I think this is great; however, the name is horrible. As Confucius said, if the name is not correct, the words will not ring true. Trans-wiki is a carbon copy of transwiki, which is a completely different thing. If I were you I would change the name to inter-wiki collaboration, as that would make much more sense. Grammatically, too. Besides, I'm already a Wikipedian and I'm a current member of WikiProject Hong Kong, WikiProject Hong Kong Transport and WikiProject Wikipedia Awards. The last two won't help on Wikipedia in any way, but if I could help with Hong Kong on both places it would be great. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:00, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PS I'm on an enforced Wikibreak on Wikipedia, so I can't comment there except as an anon, and who will believe me that I'm a Wikipedia with an OK amount of experience when I'm editing as an IP. :)Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't worry, it is not an official name or anything like that, just the first thing I could think of when I noticed my post lacked a subject :-) In any case I like "trans" because it gives the idea of users transcending the implementation barriers to build collaborative knowledge (wow, that sounds so profound :-) ) --Duplode (talk) 13:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Not profound, jusr confusing to non-native speakers. Like me. :P Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 14:39, 13 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Is this similar to what you mean Featured_books/Nominations where I suggested "Many Mathematics books can be confusing at times, therefore I suggest linking to the appropriate Wikipedia article as I have done on this chapter Reduced Echelon Form. I believe linking to Wikipedia will make it more easier to understand the book, as some may give up if they do not understand some chapters."? --33rogers (talk) 14:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The key idea is to have, in our case, wikipedians becoming wikibookians as well and contributing to books in their area of interest. With this kind of collaboration, this sort of cross-linking you suggest could certainly be part of the process, although it seems to me that (in ideal circumstances) the more natural way of cross-linking would be in the opposite direction (Wikipedia >> Wikibooks), since in theory Wikibooks would be (among other things) a place for exploring subjects in more depth than what is possible in Wikipedia. By the way, since you mentioned Linear Algebra, Thenub314 has just started an interesting discussion at WikiProject Mathematics involving collaboration in this very same subject.--Duplode (talk) 19:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposing new template
How's that? It might be redundant to an existing template and in such a case I won't mind if an admin deletes it right away. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:35, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I renamed and reworded the template, took out the category that was being included correctly, and used the same image as the featured book candidate template. It's now at Template:Featured book removal. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:41, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

A practical question on dealing with merge suggestions
Suppose that, on browsing Category:Books to be merged, I find some tagged book for which I believe the proposed merge is flat out inadequate - say, due to the involved pages dealing with clearly distinct subjects. There are no comments about the merge on the talk page or edit summaries and the book was not edited since ages ago. In such situations, should I just remove the merge template as I see fit (providing an explanation on the edit summary) or doing it unilaterally would be improper? --Duplode (talk) 07:08, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The simpler solution would be to make your comment objecting to it, wait 7 days for opposition and if none materializes remove the tags. This will avoid rehashing the issue and provide a basis to start the process over in a more productive way even in stalled projects, with luck it may also attract interested people to the projects.
 * It may also depend on the level of activity of the works and the user performing the tags, in the cases activity has ceases for a while (~6 months) a simple removal would be within a BeBold edit, IMHO. --Panic (talk) 07:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

MICROECONOMICS THEORY
I WOULD LIKE ASSISTANCE IN FINDING USEFUL TEXT ON MICROECONOMICS THEORY SPECIFICALLY ON THE SUBJECT OF THE FIRM.......IN ADDITION ANY IDEAS OF POWERFUL OPENING CHESS MOVES WILL BE MOST HELPFUL.THANKS FUTUREGENIOUS 21\5\2010

(moved from WB:RR/G Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 09:31, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Try Microeconomics and Chess for starters or search for others. --Swift (talk) 11:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm just curious
There is a message on top of simple books that the books will be merged here. What is the naming convention for those books and is there an extra namespace for them? Also, when will they be merged (if they haven't? But if it is the website won't even be there any more...) Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 15:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The proposal for that merger died in the womb at Simple English merger, making me look the fool for having made a fuss over getting the site made available again (but remaining locked). -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wait... I thought the content had already been deleted. *looking, looking* Oh, the site is back up! Hmmm ... I wonder if we can just manually import these...
 * Congratulations, English Wikibooks. You have a new Biology book, courtesy of Simple Wikibooks and thanks to Adrignola for bringing the content back.
 * ( That is to say; I suggest we just manually import these. Yes, it's a pain in the neck but we'll have to browse through the pages anyway and clean up and there is valuable content there. ) --Swift (talk) 22:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This Wikijunior:Biology book is nice. Perhaps we should revive the project!  Correct me if I am wrong, but my idea is that once the books are here they will no longer be considered simple english.  Instead they will developed as usual wikibooks. And the placement (such as the current book went into wikijunior) will be made on a book by book basis depending on content. (Since from my vague understanding of the project it was only supposed to be the english that was simple, not necessarily the content.) I would have helped out the first time but I never was away the project existed, I was probably job hunting. Thenub314 (talk) 07:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow, it's a great idea to import Biology here, Swift. It's probably the first time that a Wikibooks has ever started a book that is finished from the, well, start! :D I wonder if importing the rest of the books to Wikijunior would make sense. Some of them are really good, although kids may not understand them... The language is simple, but the content doesn't have to be. Perhaps we could open something similar to Wikijunior, say, WikiSimple? Then we can house all the simple english books here. Also, as this project has higher traffic, those books have a higher chance of getting developed... Also, could Abacus be imported to Wikijunior too? I think it is appropriate for children, though it's not quite complete yet. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 12:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Moved to Reading room/General. by Kayau

DDC/LOC Classifications
It was mentioned in an IRC chat a while ago and I thought I'd put it out there: are the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems necessary? Are they a relic of the time when bookshelves were all there was and a dynamic listing of books by subject had not yet been accomplished through the subject pages? It would seem as though that is the case, with the DDC root page created in December 2004 and the LOC created in February 2006, predating the creation of Subject:Books by subject in September 2007. Do readers actually use these systems for finding books? Dewey Decimal is a system to arrange "books on library shelves in a specific and repeatable order that makes it easy to find any book and return it to its proper place", and is used in most public libraries, with the LOC system in use at research and academic libraries (in the US). They don't seem like they have a practical purpose in an electronic medium.

DDC 300 - Social Sciences/Education and LOC H - Social Sciences would seem to be covered by Subject:Social sciences and its sub-subjects, for instance. DDC has a mere ten categories to house all the books; LOC has four categories for history but lumps philosophy, psychology, and religion together. So they would also seem to be inferior with regards to collecting together books on similar subjects in a manner useful to readers. Given that most people don't have the numbers/letters of each committed to memory, they also add overhead and difficulty in filing new books. Do we have a good reason for retaining them? -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I know which LOC numbers are relevant to my work, but no others. I think they should go, but I don't actually have any idea how people look up books here.  To be fair, when I use these types of numbers in a library, I first look up the book/subject find the section, look around that section.
 * I feel the subject pages allow me to do this just fine. I say DDC and LOC can go, as someone said wikibooks should "keep it simple", and this is one case where I agree. Thenub314 (talk) 19:35, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Thenub. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 12:22, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Proposing guideline for speedy keep
User:Kayau/Speedy keep. Thoughts? Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:28, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, "speedy keep" does not seem to me to be an actual process as "speedy delete" is, but just a common sense based decision (or, in other words, the "speedy" is no more than an intensity adverb). In general I wouldn't feel very comfortable with any policy which needed to refer explicitly to "snowballing" (because the key point of snowballing is that it is not a policy). --Duplode (talk) 14:04, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess that's right... I'll remove that criterion. BTW I wasn't expecting this to be a policy, only a guideline. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 14:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't see any need for this. It is all covered already by our pre-existing WB:DP. &mdash; mikelifeguard@enwikibooks:&#126;$ 14:25, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Although I agree with the objections in general, this does remind me of something I've seen happen a time or two: a book gets nominated for deletion shortly after it was created (typically the nominator didn't notice it was neonatal), we all agree that it's too soon, the first-time author is never heard from again, and we're left suspecting that the author was scared off (a.k.a. discouraged) by the RFD tag.  Is there some existing clause somewhere &mdash; or could/should we add one somewhere &mdash; that would allow the RFD tag to be removed rapidly without discussion from a book like that, hopefully so fast that the author never even sees it?  --Pi zero (talk) 14:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This paragraph of WB:DP would apply: "You should be especially sensitive to discussions about brand-new works, particularly by new contributors to Wikibooks. Unless there are obvious problems that are unlikely to be rectified, your time would be better spent mentoring new contributors and trying to help clean up new works, even if the work is currently a blatant violation of current procedures. Remember you were once a new contributor too." -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:47, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Although that does apply, to my understanding it only discourages nominating the new book in the first place.  If that's the closest we have, then the answer to the first half of my question is no:  once the new book has been nominated for whatever reason, its RFD tag cannot be speedily removed under existing guidelines.  Leaving the second half of my question:  should there be some provision for speedily removing an RFD tag on a new book, presumably with some limitations or other (such as, for example, limitation to nominations for no-meaningful-content and OR)?  --Pi zero (talk) 15:55, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * We already change, remove, close (all tags) even RfDs without any special consideration except the presumption of consensus under a bebold action. In recent times this has never caused a problem and putting all exception into a policy or guideline would complicate it to the extreme. --Panic (talk) 21:21, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't like it really. The two examples given ("When the article is fixed so that the arguments given at any time are invalid." and "When the original argument is considered completely wrong.") are still matters for consensus that should be allowed to be followed through in the discussion. Also, we simply don't have this problem at WB - it isn't like WP where things are posted at AfD for all sorts of "political" reasons. Basically, I see no reason for a guideline or policy to be formalised. QU TalkQu 22:48, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Warning message template bug
Some message templates look like they have developed a fault. This may be related to replacement of the "stop/hand" icon with the information icon.

e.g. see User_talk:221.134.144.14 which displays the following message:

This message box is using an invalid "type=serious" parameter and needs fixing.

Recent Runes (talk) 10:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I think it's just outdated, as back then there was a type=serious parameter which doesn't exist now. See the hist of Template:Mbox. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:41, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * More specifically it looks as if the Mbox templates from wikipedia and here were merged just over a week ago. I am not sure why, though. Thenub314 (talk) 10:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I had not properly substituted that warning at the time; had I done so, later changes would not have affected its display. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:32, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

List of prerequisites - how to implement?
Hello!

I have a question about templates / categories / backlinks.

Namely, for the Haskell wikibook, I would like to add a list of "prerequisites" to each chapter, something like this: "To understand this chapter, you need to know: Basic Haskell, Lazy evaluation". This short message should be created by a template, for example

So, the template arguments should be turned into links to a page that lists all topics in the Haskell wikibook that may appear as prerequisites.

Dually, each chapter covers one or more topics: "This chapter explains: Lazy evaluation". By doing so, the chapter is automatically included on the list of pages also covering this topic.

How can I do this? Each prerequisite could be a category, but I want to list both the topics and the pages that cover them on a single page. Are there any other mechanisms for collecting backlinks?

-- apfe&lambda;mus 08:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Check out . It only allows for a single link, but if you want to create a template that allows for more, I suggest you don't pass them as separate arguments, but rather all together like so:


 * for simplicity.
 * The way I understand you and as far as I know, categories are the only way for you to collect those pages. In fact, they sound precisely like what you're looking for. --Swift (talk) 15:30, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your help, the template is indeed what I'm looking for; Category:Calculus/Prerequisite is a compelling example. In my case, the prerequisites won't be whole books, just subsets of the Haskell wikibook, of course.
 * What I also want to do, however, is to present multiple of these categories on one and the same page with custom formatting, like this:

Topic "Lazy Evaluation" is prerequisite to       * Haskell/Infinite Lists Topic "Basic Haskell" is prerequisite to       * Haskell/More about lists * Haskell/Understanding Monads
 * Is there a way to transclude multiple category pages and apply custom formatting to the page listings? I.e. I don't want the default alphabetical listing of the pages in a category, and I want to show multiple categories on a single page. Of course, I could list the corresponding pages by hand, but this would kinda defeat the purpose.
 * -- apfe&lambda;mus 16:39, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

PDF version on Commons... HELP!
I've been working on the Bourne Shell Scripting book recently and today I uploaded a PDF version to commons (File:WikiBooks en Bourne Shell Scripting 20100509.pdf). Put the same categories on there as on the main page of the book (UNIX and Scripting languages). And placed the book in the PDF Wikibooks category on Commons.

In addition I put the PDF version template in the table of contents on the book's main page (locally on wikibooks, obviously). Then I put the name of the PDF file from Commons in the template as a link. Plus some file size info.

But the only result is that I get the "vaporware" text in the template on the book page. Can somebody please take a look and tell me where I went off the track?

Thanks! -- BenTels (talk) 14:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * From the information in the PDF version template, it looks like you can specify the file name and the file you made seems to be where it should be File:WikiBooks en Bourne Shell Scripting 20100509.pdf. Perhaps the PDF version template is not working as expected! All the other books I have seen with PDF versions actually use the same file name and book name, so you could try uploading with file name "Bourne Shell Scripting.pdf". There is a category PDF Wikibooks on Commons to group the books together. Recent Runes (talk) 15:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Additionally, using [[Media:Bourne Shell Scripting.pdf|Bourne Shell Scripting.pdf]] would allow you to update the PDF without having to reenter all the license information; you can just click the link to "upload a new version of this file". I'd suggest uploading to that name and labeling the old file with  at Commons. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:33, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Alright, I'll recreate the file on Commons with a new name. But I agree with the Lecturer in Recent Runes (-)): this feels very much like a bug in the templating system. Or at least between the templating system and the cross-domain linking setup. The template, simply put, should support linking to Commons resources just like the rest of MediaWiki does.


 * Anyway, thanks gentlemen. -- BenTels (talk) 17:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Also you could include the text of the license as an appendix, although I am not sure if this is absolutely required. see Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License. Recent Runes (talk) 17:20, 9 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't see why -- it's a PDF version of the book, not the other way around. Plus it's both on WikiMedia systems.


 * Either way, the template is still not working, even when falling back to the default of having the file have the same name as the page. I've solved it for now by essentially inlining the template and hardcoding the link. Not nice, but at least it works. -- BenTels (talk) 17:56, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

After more digging into the issue above, I think I've found the problem: the template includes an ifexist that looks for the existence of a File:XXX.pdf resource. This doesn't work across sites. To check for resources on commons, it is necessary to use the Media namespace as in Media:XXX.pdf.

I've created a copy of on Template:PDF version Temp. As far as I can tell, this works well for both local and remote resources (see my user page, User:BenTels). If there are no objections, I would like to propose making the change in the original template.

Best regards, -- BenTels (talk) 15:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Your changes have been implemented, with a tweak so that the "info" link goes to the PDF's information page and not to the actual PDF like the "PDF version" link. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I see that you've also adapted the Bourne Shell Scripting page to use the template again; nice. Now that the changes have been made I've nominated the Temp-template for speedy deletion. -- BenTels (talk) 17:21, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

ifexist
I propose to create a bugzilla ticket to synchronise the "ifexist" order with the sister projects, because it creates some bugs on the imported templates which uses it. Example: JackPotte (talk) 18:05, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) w:User:JackPotte/test
 * 2) wikt:User:JackPotte/test
 * 3) User:JackPotte/test
 * fr:User:JackPotte/test
 * ifexist is doing exactly what it is supposed to do in each of those cases. Have you read the documentation? &mdash; mikelifeguard@enwikibooks:&#126;$ 18:08, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes sorry, I've confounded with "ifeq", we can close the case. JackPotte (talk) 18:18, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Enclosing Programming Code in Box
Earlier Python code used to be boxed but now it isn't see for example how the Code looks here: How_to_Think_Like_a_Computer_Scientist:_Learning_with_Python_2nd_Edition/Solutions

Now if you add the following in your user space User:33rogers/monobook.css like how I have done, the page mentioned above (after deleting cookies etc.) looks much better.

Therefore I suggest the following changes be made global in Wikibooks:

From http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi#Method_1.2C_CSS_file

Method 1, CSS file
 * This method requires r52346 or higher of this extension.

Add to MediaWiki:Geshi.css, MediaWiki:Monobook.css or MediaWiki:Common.css: div.mw-geshi { padding: 1em; margin: 1em 0; border: 1px dashed #2f6fab; }

This will give all GeSHi output (except for enclose="none") a dashed border almost identical to &lt;pre&gt; in monobook/main.css

--33rogers (talk) 09:56, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I think it looks a lot cleaner without the border. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:04, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But you did not even test to see how it looks User:Adrignola/monobook.css? Put body.mediawiki div.mw-geshi {padding: 1em; margin:1em 0; border: 1px dashed #2f6fab;} in User:Adrignola/monobook.css please. Then clear cookies, login, then see How_to_Think_Like_a_Computer_Scientist:_Learning_with_Python_2nd_Edition/Solutions again. --33rogers (talk) 12:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * First, a warning that my knowledge about this mediawiki codes is absolute nil. In other words, I haven't the faintest idea what this is supposed to mean. :) I did add that code to my monobook.css, click ctrl+refresh, then went to that page again. I know nothing about thinking like a computer scientist, but I don't understand why there is a reason to care about there being a border or not. It looks, well, just like computer jargon either way. :) Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:01, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Did you see any changes to the page I mentioned? Did you clear your cache etc. ? --33rogers (talk) 14:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, of course I did, I saw that border that pops up (in the past at least) when one starts a line with a space. I don't understand why that is important, however. Either way it's very posh computer jargon whose purpose I am completely ignorant about. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * To quote Jomegat Having the code flow straight into the text is confusing, especially if the text is quoting part of the code (which is a nice thing to do). --33rogers (talk) 14:44, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I added the code to my monobook and it did indeed produce the result I already expected, adding the same border a pre block would have. My own personal subjective opinion still stays the same.  Surely I could override any change to the common CSS with my own to remove the border if this change were made.  We'll have to see what other people's opinions are. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:13, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Moved to General Discussion to see what other people's opinions are. --33rogers (talk) 14:33, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For no other reason than my personal feelings about aesthetics, I prefer no boxes. Thenub314 (talk) 15:33, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Let me explain why I feel that program code should be put in a box.
 * In 2009, before one update to the MediaWiki software, all the program code used to be enclosed in a box.
 * This update introduced, "regression bug".
 * It was not the intent of the update to remove boxes around the program code.
 * Program code is separate from the explanation in a book; therefore, if it is enclosed in a box, users would be able to easily see the difference between text - (contents of the book) and code - (examples). --33rogers (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

With Borders: File:Scrn_with_borders.jpg

Without Borders: File:Scrn_without_border.jpg

--33rogers (talk) 16:53, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I do prefer the code to be placed in a box or otherwise separated from the text. In a textbook setting, it's very nice to be able to separate the code from the text and make it stand out.  Different textbooks do that in different ways, but they all do seem to do it.  Having the code flow straight into the text is confusing, especially if the text is quoting part of the code (which is a nice thing to do).  I just did a quick thumb through of several programming textbooks in my office - some set the code off with horizontal lines, others in shaded boxes, and others still try to stuff the code into the margines (yuck!)  The point is - they set it off with more than just a font change.  I think boxes are fine for this. --Jomegat (talk) 19:54, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

}}
 * Interesting to read this... the Haskell book I'm working on is in a curious situation because it has conflicting styles for code blocks. As you can see in this module, some parts use non-highlighted plain text boxes while others use
 * I am no expert on these types of templates, but I believe you can do cool things like make a box off to the right that the text "flows around", etc. I have not edited many of the programming texts here, but would changing the setting cause a box inside a box when people had already done things like this?  Will there be work correcting the way pages are currently displaying their source? Thenub314 (talk) 09:58, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * To play devil's advocate, one might say that if you're doing a special case like that you could use the enclose="none" such as in the templates in Category:Code templates. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:42, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Excellent point. I suppose I am advocating a path of least resistance type of philosophy, we can add boxes where we like them now.  Is it really necessary to change some default setting which may affect books in a negative ways. My example would be a pages that have lots of single line source tags.  For example, LaTeX/Document_Structure would not look as nice.  Even worse the book consistently uses boxes for for terminal output.  For readers it is clear that information in boxes means terminal output, colored type writer face font means LaTeX code.  If we make this change, everything would be in boxes.  Maybe that is ok, maybe it is not.  I don't mean to pass judgment, just pointing out that we may be undoing lots of work (and creating some new work) for editors that we don't realize.  Back when we first started using this extension, it would clearly be a case of 6 of one, half dozen of the other.  But now people have been making their books appear as they like them under the current standard.  I don't see anything as broken, so I am not sure why we would take a risk (perhaps a very small one) of creating lots of work for some one. Thenub314 (talk) 14:03, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Is it really necessary to change some default setting which may affect books in a negative ways.
 * Before June 2009, it was the default on Wikibooks, to surround program code in Box.
 * Bug 19416 - Apply consistent borders to GeSHi-generated code blocks Its almost 1 year and no one seems to bother to fix it, so that's why I brought it up now.  --33rogers (talk) 17:00, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe Thenub has a point here. For a not exactly adequate example, consider this page, which I started last night without thinking of this issue. Clearly it would be unacceptable to use boxes on the highlighted bits on the table. Of course that's not a good example (because all it would take to disable the boxes would be adding enclose="none" to a single template), but there may be books using inline tags that would demand some effort to have the boxes disabled. I am tempted to support the change, but I don't like the thought of unwittingly breaking formatting of several books (on the other hand, if the bug Rogers mentioned gets fixed someday we will have to deal with such problems anyway, so...) --Duplode (talk) 21:28, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S.: Oops, I just remembered that tags are never truly inline (they induce a linebreak). That weakens my argument a bit. --Duplode (talk) 21:31, 14 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The formatting of several books, I had say alot - as there are many computer programming books on WikiBooks, was broken due to an Update in the MediaWiki software system. I do not believe a lot has changed to the book content within the last 11 months.
 * Furthermore, most programming books uses some kind of Boxes to separate the code from flowing straight into the text to remove confusion.
 * For example, even the official website of Python uses boxes; source: http://docs.python.org/tutorial/interpreter.html
 * Another language's official website (Perl) also uses boxes; source: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlrequick.html
 * --33rogers (talk) 06:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, now I finally got your point. The "eleven months" argument is probably strong enough to justify the change (I was worried mainly with backwards compatibility; that using boxes is standard practice in computing books is indeed a fact). --Duplode (talk) 19:31, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I've implemented the change in MediaWiki:Geshi.css due to evidence and opinions presented above. To reiterate, enclose="none" can be used to override this in templates and per-user CSS can override it as well. -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:39, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. --33rogers (talk) 17:11, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I just tried changing back a page of Latex (see LaTeX/Absolute Beginners). I noticed that enclose="none" is not quite the same as what was produced previuosly.  (No longer line breaks, etc.) Is this a Bug? At the very least it is not clear (to me) a per user CSS will not mess up formatting (since I am not very good with CSS). Probably a CSS change could also add the line breaks? Though some places in this page do have line breaks... or will after I reformat the page.  Would such a CSS change then add too much space? Thenub314 (talk) 07:44, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I have run in to a more serious bug while adding enclose="none" tags where I thought was appropriate. In LaTeX/Title Creation for some reason only the first line of the source code is highlighted.  I suspect it has something to do with the fact the tag resides in a table. Thenub314 (talk) 21:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Don't panic. I handled this in the technical assistance reading room. -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:31, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

ePub format printable books?
Today I tried to add an ePub version of Bourne Shell Scripting, with a template and so on (analogy to PDF version). This attempt hit the wall when I realized that you cannot upload epub files to Commons. This is a shame since ePub seems to be the most popular format for e-readers. Is there any chance that it will be possible to add ePub versions in the future? -- BenTels (talk) 16:54, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

I've posed a policy question on this subject on commons:Commons talk:Project_scope. -- BenTels (talk) 12:03, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * You should probably try to make a policy change on commons. As an alternative you can request to upload the content here but I should point you some facts and why I wouldn't support the request (I wouldn't oppose it also).
 * Most people aren't aware of the format (ePub, I wasn't and the rational is similar). I support open formats and specifications, but for them to be of any usefulness people must not fragment the "market", there are already other supported free and open formats (PDF), that have a higher level of implementation, supporting only one format has also maintainability advantages. --Panic (talk) 21:25, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that Commons is the place to put ePubs, especially since that's also where the PDFs are supposed to go. And indeed, I've posted a question in commons about changing the policy (see link above). Since you agree that is the correct place I would appreciate your support for my request on commons to allow ePub uploads.
 * Thanks in advance, BenTels (talk) 23:27, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * As I said above I don't object nor do I see it as beneficial to support more formats. Being free and open-source conversion tools should exist. Consider the work and resources required to host duplicated content, on the other hand the need to host PDFs is also diminished today. The primary reason I see to keep the PDFs is not primarely for distribution but to preserve static snapshots of "near completion" wikibooks, for example to have a single version of the work used in a class. --Panic (talk) 00:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah. I see what you mean. Unfortunately, I don't agree: I do consider PDF to be a useful distribution format. And that's also why I would like to make ePub available; not all e-Readers support PDF. Of course not all of them support ePub, but between the two it seems to be a covering set right now. -- BenTels (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I, for one, am not against allowing ePub books to be uploaded here, in the case they are not accepted at commons. Though, I am taking you at your word that this is a popular format for e-readers. Thenub314 (talk) 11:55, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I saw your support on commons. Thanks! -- BenTels (talk) 20:00, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

ePub discussion temporarily closed: From Commons, it turns out that there are technical reasons that ePub is not allowed for upload right now. So I fear there cannot be an ePub option in the foreseeable future. -- BenTels (talk) 17:26, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Adding "For Further Reading" bibliographies
This is related to the discussion regarding whether and how to use external links in Wikibooks. I would like to see "For Further Reading" bibliographies, including both primary and secondary sources, added to the end of each Wikibook. Authors of traditional textbooks almost always include such information and I find it extremely valuable, particularly when doing independent study without the guidance of a professor. While a student might be able to find additional information by using an Internet search engine or looking through an on-line book selling site, it would be helpful to have some guidance regarding what materials are reliable and useful, according to the judgment of the Wiki community. Is bibliographic information available somewhere else on WikiMedia and I am missing it? Any reason not to include it in the Wikibooks? ederieuxEderieux (talk) 22:34, 20 May 2010 (UTC)5/20/2010
 * A list of books for further reading would be a fine addition. I am sure some books here already have this in some form. I think the best materials to include in the "For Further Reading" sections would be more advanced textbooks assuming such exist.  I am not sure what you mean by asking if bibliographic information is available on wikimedia.  There is not any central repository of possible references, but I am not sure if this is what you were asking. Thenub314 (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no rule against adding such bibliographies. Books may or may not add them. (Wikijunior Small Numbers probably won't include them, for instance.) It's up to book contributors to decide. Remember that this is not Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikisource, or anything like that. The policies and guidelines are much looser here. At least in my opinion. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:39, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * It should be up to the book community to decide what to add/keep. As a user and contributor I don't particular like to have lists added at the end of every page of a book in a separated section. I rather prefer the direct insertion of relevant links in the text itself (easier to maintain and promotes relevance), this is a bit different from an wikipedian article. Another optimization would be moving the list of references to Wikipedia, failing to have very specific need, then reference other Wikibooks (specific to that topic) or a Wikipedia article. It all depends of what and why the reference is being added. This of course doesn't remove the ability of adding such references to a distinct section of the book, provide the info to the book editors and even rewrite the needed information so the reference is no longer needed... --Panic (talk) 02:21, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I would like to make very explicit that your welcome add to any book/module you desire. You may find opinions differ, and for this reason such a bibliography could not be added to every book.  But you can add such references to any book you like, and other contributors will modify your edits etc.  If you get to mathematics books and are looking for specific suggestions of possible bibliographic entries, you may ask me personally.  I am sure other people could help with other subjects, but my personal knowledge mostly stops there. Thenub314 (talk) 08:46, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Understanding FlaggedRevs...
I'm just looking for confirmation that I understood FlaggedRevs properly. The key point about the stable version system is that it is optional and only activated when some editor explicitly reviews it for the first time. For that reason, the only pages we should worry about their most recent edit not being shown to anonymous users are the ones listed in Special:OldReviewedPages, which does not include any unreviewed pages. Correct? --Duplode (talk) 23:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * True. We're always trying to keep that list down.  Special:UnreviewedPages shows unreviewed pages. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:41, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks Information
In Wikibooks such as General Chemistry, is it allowed, or even preferred that exercises are available? It would feel much more like a textbook and would prove more useful than just a load of information. Also, when creating a Wikibook, can we treat it like a course (e.g. can I make an AP Physics book, which if one reads it and does the practice problems, one will be fit to take the AP exam)?--Charcoal (talk) 04:37, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just imagine what a textbook is look like. The policies are pretty loose. Treating it too much like a course would belong to Wikiversity. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Exercises would certainly be welcome, and we do have quite a few books aimed at specific exams. As for the point Kayau raised, the main difference between a "textbook wiki" and a "course wiki" (and thus between Wikibooks and Wikiversity) is the extent of real-time interaction of the readers/students, with both other readers/students and authors/educators. I am quite certain that both of your ideas do not cross the line of project scope.
 * P.S.: Nice to see people interested in General Chemistry. That book definitely needs more love and attention (and hard work in reorganization, which is why I haven't found courage to touch it yet...). --Duplode (talk) 18:26, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok. Thanks for clarifying, both of you. I'll get to work :) --Charcoal (talk) 00:03, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Module splitting template
Partly motivated by Kayau's post above :-)

I thought of this as a way to be nice to readers who are studying a book which is being restructured. If you like it I can provide proper documentation before it gets moved to the main Template namespace. --Duplode (talk) 23:25, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Documentation is always nice to have, at least if you'd like it to be used. I've never really liked the term "module" and prefer the term "page" myself.  I always think of some assembly kit when I hear "module".  I am aware of how the interface text was changed to say "module", yet physical books have pages, not modules, and "pages" might be more intuitive.  -- Adrignola talk contribs 00:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Documentation added (see Template:Modulesplit), and text switched to "pages" as well. (I am more inclined to use "modules" because "pages" makes me think of paper-book pages. Still, it is rather weird having to cope with "We will learn how to import a module in a source file on the module about modules." :-) )--Duplode (talk) 01:23, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I have always hated module as well. To me it reminds me of badly taught courses.  (aka "In Linear Algebra I am covering a module on determinants.")  But rather than fix this template maybe we could start a new discussion and fix the problem? (consensus willing.) Thenub314 (talk) 18:53, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Since no one objected I "boldly" moved it to the main Template: namespace. By the way, the discussion on modules vs. pages vs. ?? could be interesting... --Duplode (talk) 23:16, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Featured Book removals
I would like to suggest that nominators of Featured Book Removal (delisting) must notify Original Contributors in their talk pages, that the book is being considered as such.

I would make it easier if WikiBooks has a generic template for this purpose (to be placed in User Talk space).

When you place a notice on their talk pages, they will be emailed (I think it is default in preferences).

This will have a 2 fold effect:

1. Users who may have abandoned contributing to WikiBooks may return, which will increase the number of overall contributors on WikiBooks.

2. There will be proper notification in place, in case they would like to fix the issues brought in Featured Book Delisting nomination.

--33rogers (talk) 22:32, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose - you see 33rogers Wikibooks is not Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a very large community and has lots of action every day. That's why we need lots of templates there. However, in Wikibooks, the community is very small - just look at Special:ActiveUsers - and there is no point in having a template for such a trivial thing. A friendly message would be appropriate. Besides, in Wikipedia, even a CSD doesn't necessarily require a message on the talk page. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 00:05, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You misunderstood my point.
 * The template is to make it faster (more efficient) to post on the talk page.
 * By posting on their talk page, many users who are NOT active, will become active members again.
 * --33rogers (talk) 05:58, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Only if they set their prefs so that every post on their talks are emailed to them. Besides, inactive users might not care a monkey about Wikibooks anymore, so they might delete the email from wikibooks on sight. And finally, they may forget their passwords, or have scrambled them so they can't log in anymore. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 06:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But the same "what if" scenarios apply to an RfD, and yet we still care about reaching the main contributors anyway... a de-featuring is something far less drastic than deletion of course, and making such warnings formal policy (and thus making "you didn't warn the contributors!" a reason for invalidating de-featuring requests) would be going too far. Nevertheless, the motivation for the suggestion has a lot of merit, and it can be a nice/useful thing to do at times. --Duplode (talk) 19:44, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Nobody is going to make this a formal policy, so really it is down to custom and practice. If you want to create a template, and use it, go ahead. You don't need agreement here or from anyone. Other people may use it, or may not. But like I say, nobody is going to make it an "official" requirement because if you check you'll see that notification on a talk page is only a suggestion in all cases (queries, deletion, etc.). QU TalkQu 20:08, 16 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I switch to part support. I say I support the template, seeing that somebody just stumbled across the discussion without anyone bothering to tell him on his talk. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:18, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Why should I bother to tell him on his talk if he absolutely hadn't made an edit in five years? I've posted the notice on de-featuring to the books' main pages I've nominated. Since we're talking about preferences, you can also get emailed for changes to pages on your watchlist, and I assume anyone caring about a particular book they've been working on would watch the main page of it.  I don't nominate something on a whim and if analysis shows that a book is incomplete/lacking and the people who started the book have abandoned it for years, I for one am not holding my breath that they'll come back and fix the issues that prompted the nomination in the first place.  And if a book is being actively worked upon, I wouldn't nominate it for de-featuring (the idea being that it will be soon improved).  I'll pass on the red tape, thanks. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:45, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Simple Wikibooks merger
There is a message on top of simple books that the books will be merged here. What is the naming convention for those books and is there an extra namespace for them? Also, when will they be merged (if they haven't? But if it is the website won't even be there any more...) Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 15:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The proposal for that merger died in the womb at Simple English merger, making me look the fool for having made a fuss over getting the site made available again (but remaining locked). -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:25, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wait... I thought the content had already been deleted. *looking, looking* Oh, the site is back up! Hmmm ... I wonder if we can just manually import these...
 * Congratulations, English Wikibooks. You have a new Biology book, courtesy of Simple Wikibooks and thanks to Adrignola for bringing the content back.
 * ( That is to say; I suggest we just manually import these. Yes, it's a pain in the neck but we'll have to browse through the pages anyway and clean up and there is valuable content there. ) --Swift (talk) 22:15, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * This Wikijunior:Biology book is nice. Perhaps we should revive the project!  Correct me if I am wrong, but my idea is that once the books are here they will no longer be considered simple english.  Instead they will developed as usual wikibooks. And the placement (such as the current book went into wikijunior) will be made on a book by book basis depending on content. (Since from my vague understanding of the project it was only supposed to be the english that was simple, not necessarily the content.) I would have helped out the first time but I never was away the project existed, I was probably job hunting. Thenub314 (talk) 07:14, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow, it's a great idea to import Biology here, Swift. It's probably the first time that a Wikibooks has ever started a book that is finished from the, well, start! :D I wonder if importing the rest of the books to Wikijunior would make sense. Some of them are really good, although kids may not understand them... The language is simple, but the content doesn't have to be. Perhaps we could open something similar to Wikijunior, say, WikiSimple? Then we can house all the simple english books here. Also, as this project has higher traffic, those books have a higher chance of getting developed... Also, could Simple:Abacus be imported to Wikijunior too? I think it is appropriate for children, though it's not quite complete yet. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 12:49, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(Copied from WB:HELP as this is starting to become a general issue) Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:56, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * WikiSimple would be seen as an end-run around the community's decision to close Simple English Wikibooks. I had proposed the possibility of a <tt>Simple:</tt> namespace, but that got a lot of flack (not from anyone here, though) cite.  Wikijunior/main space stand the best chance of not attracting interference from those outside the Wikibooks community. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:11, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I have made a quick attempt at importing the Animal Kingdoms book, which is now at Wikijunior:Animal Kingdom. It occurs to me that we many want to make sure to review the books brought into the wikijunior namespace, since we had previously managed to review all of the modules in wikijunior namespace. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 (discuss • contribs)
 * I reviewed all the pages you brought in, in addition to doing minor cleanup. -- Adrignola talk contribs 15:35, 22 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Symbol comment vote.svg Comment Most of the issues surrounding the merger have been discussed in some detail at Wikibooks talk:Simple English merger. We didn't quite reach a consensus on everything but it's a good place to read up on different viewpoints.
 * I think there is room for the various views of where to take the Simple English Wikibooks content. I personally believe it's largely (but not necessarily entirely) belongs in Wikijunior and therefore should be put into that namespace. Others argued that the content was too complicated for Wikijunior and should be continued in the main namespace. In that case, it can be renamed as something like "Simple English " or the intended audience otherwise made clear.
 * Finally, I encourage those interested to head over to Simple English merger, browse around for content the like and (request) import content they would like to create a nice home for here at English Wikibooks. --Swift (talk) 17:41, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * As I'm sure that Wikijunior readers won't be seen dead doing quadric equations :D, perhaps the target audience for that would become non-native speakers of English. (Gee, I fit in both categories.) Then we can just add a level at Reading Levels, and call it, say, non-native. Or we could merge beginner with non-native. Either way it will require some modifications to RL. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 01:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Reading room navigation
Is there any particular reason for us to use in some reading rooms and  in others? --Duplode (talk) 17:32, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The former is used on pages that begin with "Wikibooks:Reading room" and includes a link to the combined archives for the reading rooms. The latter is used on the others and does not linked to the combined reading room archives because those other pages have their own archives.  I'm thinking it wouldn't be hard to use a parser function with the base page name to show or not show the archive link. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:15, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. Now they use Template:Discussion Rooms with the archive link appearing only for pages beginning with Wikibooks:Reading room. -- Adrignola talk contribs 18:43, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Source code error using text as the language
Hi,

Previously when using the source tags, the result was free from the preformatting tags broken blue border; now it appears for that setting. See the examples on the page Preformatted Text.

Would it be possible for an admin to relay the matter to a responsible person for its correction at source; (no pun intended).?

Thanks in advance for any assistance to the matter, Armchair; 14:06 GMT
 * You can add <tt>enclose="none"</tt> within the source tags to remove the pre formatting. This is occurring due to a recent change; see the discussion in the reading room. I made the corrections to the page you linked to. -- Adrignola talk contribs 21:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Note:I have closed the italics. It's messing up the discussion index and all that. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 04:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Source code error if source tag in table?
Have I done something wrong at LaTeX/Title_Creation. For some reason when I added the <tt>enclose="none"</tt> feature to the new tag somehow only the first line of the source code gets colored. Thenub314 (talk) 21:53, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I moved the source tag so it is by itself on a line and the rest of the code got highlighted. Don't know why it worked, but it did. -- Adrignola talk contribs 22:30, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Main Page
I am looking for feedback and opinions as to whether Main Page/Draft would be a suitable replacement for the current main page. It retains roughly the same layout, but uses Robox for appearance. The preset theme options for that template were chosen to approximate the same colors that are present on the current main page. The exception is the welcome box, which uses a custom theme I created to match the Wikibooks logo. The other boxes are open to suggestions as to what theme they should use. Additionally, the icons in the upper-right are also optional.

A change has been made to the way the subjects are shown, with the top-level subjects listed dynamically. An new addition, the display of a featured recipe, has been added. This randomly displays subpages of Main Page/Recipe. Five have been done so far for the purposes of this request for comments.

The underlying code of the display of the featured books has been changed. Before, new goodbook templates had to be added in a balanced fashion to one of eighteen sections, and those sections were getting filled up to as much as six books each. When they get too large it would require modifying the code at Main Page featured books, which is not easy for everyone to do. Apparently books were also listed twice, which is something that wasn't obvious to me when I added two newly-featured books. And each section had a specific set of 5-6 books that would always show up together. This new version at Main Page/Featured has a fully randomized selection of five books for the box, so the same set of books will not show up twice. Additionally, adding a new featured book is as simple as adding it to a list and updating the total number. And the code is far easier should a layout change need to be made to shorten the right-hand column.

Overall I don't think it's too drastically different, but I want to put it out there before doing all the featured recipes and especially before actually making changes to the main page. So, thoughts? -- Adrignola talk contribs 23:24, 20 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Could the blue of the welcome box's heading cause some problems for the color blind and the elderly? The blue of the heading and the blue of the link seem to clash. I figured at some point if we were going to redesign the main page might as well simplify the layout a bit and take advantage of Using Wikibooks. [ Main Page/test] is something I did awhile back with simple in mind. The featured list could be reduced to one row with a randomly selected book, recipe, and children's book respectively using the same basic trick you are using. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  23:54, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I like this. I also like dl's suggestions, and do note that there are a few bugs to work out.  The image of the recipe is covering the text in my browser (firefox) with its current settings anyhow (not full screen, but prolly 900 pixels wide). I don't think the headings would present a problem to the color-blind, as they mostly have trouble distinguishing between red and green, not between shades of blue.  I have no idea how it might affect the elderly though.  I don't object to this or some other color scheme.  --Jomegat (talk) 00:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I won't be offended if anyone wants to tweak things. Go ahead and tinker.  As for Jomegat's problem, when I squeeze it together the text gets pushed around the image into a thinner column, but the image never actually covers the text.  The image is just floating to the right so I don't know what could cause that. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe it depends on the recipe being featured. The one I noticed the problme on was the Cookbook:1-2-3-4 Cake recipe.  It's not doing it now, but it's showing a different recipe than before (which is cool). --Jomegat (talk) 02:41, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree with Darklama that the headings of the boxes should have a stronger contrast. I just saw the same featured book (Lucid Dreaming) twice on the draft of the main page. I think this is worse than having the sets of featured books. (I never noticed that there are sets; but everyone immediately notices when a book appears twice.) For the recipe Bánh mì the image covers some of the text with Firefox on MacOS X. I would argue that the cookbook is not important enough to justify this box. Instead this box could be used for links to other languages, wikijunior, the reading room, the help portal, the community portal, etc. --Martin Kraus (talk) 06:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Everything above is linked from the sidebar as well, with the cookbook, Wikijunior, other languages, and the help page all linked from the welcome box. As the cookbook has 3,600 pages to Wikijunior's 1,000 (citation), I'd say the cookbook is arguably more significant in terms of content.  Additionally, Wikijunior books that are featured are already represented in the featured books box.  The cookbook has featured recipes that make it easy to populate the box with content seen by the community to be of quality. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * In general I like it, I agree that you could use more contrast in the heading of the welcome box. I have not noticed any problems with recipe images.  I like the recipe box but I don't want to get into a discussion about which sub-project is more important.  I can confirm that the random selection occasionally chooses the same book twice as seen here Image:Repeated featured books.png. Thenub314 (talk) 08:58, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * As PS I also seem to get the same random list of featured books every time. Thenub314 (talk) 09:17, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The help portal and community portal need to be refreshed in my opinion; I leave it up to the community to decide (if possible) what should go in that box. I tweaked the size of the icon in that cookbook box to make it smaller; the text shouldn't sneak in behind the image any longer.  I also adjusted the color of the welcome box heading.  As for the duplicate randoms, well, I tried using different seeds and salts in Rand.  You roll a pair of dice often enough and you'll get doubles.  To get them to change, you may have to purge the page (tab addition available in the gadgets page of your preferences).  My code was based on a portion of a larger template used for selecting five-six items from a list; I'll pull the whole thing over as I think it checks for duplicates (hopefully). -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * What is wrong with the current help and community portals? Ideally any random generator should just take the complete list, shuffle it randomly, and pick the first X from the list in order to avoid duplication. I think that is or was what the current main page does or tried to do. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:08, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * As User:Swift/Help pages shows, there are a lot of help pages, not all of them linked from the portal, and I am concerned about many being out of date. For instance Template:H:new is used by several, as marking a feature new since MediaWiki version 1.5.  We're on 1.16 now so the fact that that is still there gives me pause over the currency of the help pages as a whole. -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:33, 22 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Currently it has an algorithm to choose a random number between 0 and 18 and selects one of the 18 sets of 5-6 featured books. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:30, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The 18 sets are probably an attempt to emulate the 5-6 featured books shuffled in every possible combination. An extension could probably reduce the need to emulate the behavior and reduce human error. Short of that we could hide a lot of the details inside a template that simply takes each good book template as individual template parameters/arguments. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:38, 21 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The code at Main Page/Featured pulls from the list at Main Page/Featured/List, which should be easy enough to update and reduce error. I just altered the code at Main Page/Featured (using Rand) to only vary the seeds and not the primes as well.  That should prevent duplicates by varying only one variable going into Rand.  I haven't been able to get any duplicates so far. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:55, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Following Darklama's suggestions, the featured content from the main space, the Cookbook, and Wikijunior have been put into one row at the bottom of Main Page/Draft. Currently the only featured book you'll see is Chess as sample content, as the layout will require a minor tweak to Template:Goodbook if/when it goes live (code is commented out but present already in that template). There are five featured recipes in rotation at this time there and I'd add more if this layout is adopted. All the Wikijunior featured books are represented. The layout has been simplified as well and Darklama was helpful in steering me in the direction he had in mind with earlier comments. This should address all the concerns above. Some formatting may be warranted to the current draft, however, and I welcome comments and/or tweaks so that this can be decided upon one way or another and not left in the air. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:43, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * My thoughts in random order because I am short on time... On the first line I think Categories should be part of the "Contents", and it would be nice to let people know that the book the book being displayed is a featured book, a featured Wikijunior book, and a featured recipe form the cookbook. Sometimes the alignment of the pictures/text feels a little sloppy, since the pictures are of different sizes.  Just gives a very jagged feel. And while I don't mind simplicity, our logo next to welcome to Wikibooks would be nice. Over all I liked the previous version better, this is just a bit too minimalistic for me.Thenub314 (talk) 15:58, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Thenub's concerns about the picture alignment have been addressed and the "more x" has been changed to "more featured x" and placed above the featured items. Any remaining objections? -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:08, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It look great, reduces a lot of the clutter and puts more focus on the books, even if I never get into Wikibooks by the main page it is the first face of the project. One thing that annoys me on the main page is the is the duplication of several lines regarding "In other languages:" on the top and bottom of the page but it could probably be my skin preference being the Classic with the Quickbar Floating right...  --Panic (talk) 12:27, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I like the new Main Page/Draft. Just a suggestion: maybe make an Icon (new Box to the right of More featured recipes) for Community Portal so new users will know where to go if they have questions. --33rogers (talk) 13:23, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm new to this discussion, but I think there is one major disadvantage about this main page: the short description is gone. Even with those new links it would be helpful to let readers know what on earth wikibooks is on the main page. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:32, 6 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The navigation at the top does have a link titled "Questions" and points to the Reading room. Potentially a link to the portal could be added with a different link title to the top bar, but it seems as though much of what's covered on the community portal can be discovered through the other links in the bar.  A fourth box would make the layout too wide for lower resolutions and if that box had all the links on the community portal within it, I think that would be overwhelming for those new to the project. -- Adrignola talk contribs 13:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Go ahead with the change. I like the Clean new Interface. It gives more weight to a Featured book like it is supposed to do.
 * @Kayau: it says on the Draft Welcome to Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit. --33rogers (talk) 13:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I like it. I say go for it. Thenub314 (talk) 16:01, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

--Pi zero (talk) 17:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

After a week with no further comments and no objections that have not been taken care of, and three weeks since initial proposal, the main page has been revised with the new layout. -- Adrignola talk contribs 16:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Is there a need for having "In other languages" section on the left hand side? If it were to be removed the Main Page will look more compact and clean. --33rogers (talk) 17:02, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's a good idea. All wmf projects have this on every page, unless there is no corresponding language. Why exclude the main page? Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:41, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * So that we don't have a big scroll down on Main Page :) --33rogers (talk) 06:23, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Uh, are you guys aware that the main page looks totally ridiculous on screens that are less wide than most? The left box is squashed to the side at the moment. --Yair rand (talk) 00:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You're going to have to be more specific on the resolution. I personally am not going to design it for anything below 1024x768 maximized. -- Adrignola talk contribs 03:15, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * What about creating a page that stores the old version, and putting up a link to it on the current version? Maybe they can even add a feature in their monobook so that the old main page appears by default. It's a whimsical idea, but... Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 13:17, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Q&A pages and the role of namespaces
This topic is a fork of the discussions at the RfD of Talk:The_World_of_Peer-to-Peer_(P2P)/Q&A. I will start by presenting my current opinion on the issues, also building on the pertinent comments by Pi zero, Swift, Panic and others in the RfD.

The first issue to be addressed is whether general-purpose helpdesks are a good idea for Wikibooks. My answer for that would be no - even if there is no need to take draconian measures against books with general Q&A sections I believe the practice should not be encouraged. Problems with such kinds of helpdesks include, in order of relevance:
 * Distracting readers and editors from the main goal of the project (writing internally-coherent textbooks). If people see Wikibooks as a place to get answers for random questions it becomes all too easy for them, for instance, to feel like adding extra information or modules to cover an specific question without caring about the overall structure of the book.
 * Dedicating efforts to tasks that would be better performed in a sister project with more adequate infrastructure (Wikipedia reference desk, Wikiversity...)
 * The tendency of many books to be abandoned, leaving their Q&A pages unwatched and therefore pointless (note that I'm not stating that every book/Q&A page has such a fate, but just pointing out a common situation).

Even if an "anything goes" Q&A page is not really a good idea, though, a more restricted type of Q&A can indeed prove useful to book writers. It seems safe to say that a "suggestion box" page is not objectionable. A Q&A page could be made to work pretty much like a suggestion box, only that the suggestions are not made explicitly but implied in the readers' questions. All that it takes for making such a Q&A is restricting the scope of the page, by telling readers something like "If, during your study, you have doubts that the book couldn't answer please post your question at the Q&A page". By such a token, questions like "Who was the creator of Python?" (a real example from the Python Q&A) would not be acceptable, while "I analysed that example on module xxx a thousand times but I still can't understand how do you..." would certainly be appropriate. Naturally, the difference is way too subtle to become something that could be enforced by policy, so the best we would be able to do in that respect is to provide some lightweight guidelines to contributors and then, if necessary, discuss specific situations case-by-case and with no hurry.

The first obvious objection to the sort of Q&A pages described above was raised by Sigma 7 in the original Python Q&A RfD - namely, that we already have the Talk: pages of each module that purpose. There are quite a few reasons why contributors would favour a centralized Q&A page, or at least having them within a separate hierarchy of pages:


 * Centralizing questions, so that it becomes easier for the main contributors to monitor and to other readers to provide feedback.
 * Encouraging readers to ask. I think most people, and newbies in particular, would instinctively believe the likelihood of getting an answer after adding a question to the talk page of a deeply-nested module to be quite low.
 * Providing a place for questions that span through several modules, or refer to some omission in the book.
 * Separating reader doubts about content from editorial discussions about the book (which is the natural role of Talk: pages).

All these reasons make it worthy to give freedom to book writers on how to organize their Q&A/reader feedback pages, which is pretty much the point Swift is insisting on all along.

Finally, there is the more practical issue of whether suggestion boxes, Q&As and such resources belong to Talk: or to the main namespace. Panic believes such pages are more like Talk: pages, as they are meant to be a space for discussing the book. From a book structure point of view that position certainly makes sense, and matches quite well the considerations about not distracting readers from the main goal of Wikibooks. On the other hand, Pi zero and Swift raised the objection that Q&A pages would need their own discussion pages, which also makes sense.

The fact that seemingly conflicting objections are valid indicates that there should be a better third way. Quoting Panic, "The way we still use talkpages as if we are in Wikipedia is a software limitation and often a habit". One way of describing this "software limitation" would be as the absence of an alternative namespace, which is neither part of the main namespace nor just a discussion page. From that point comes the following wild suggestion: maybe we could have a new custom namespace called "Questions" (or some better name) for acceptable Q&A-like pages. That would make us able to: Maybe that would be a over-complicated solution for a problem which, frankly, isn't even that big, or there would be technical difficulties. Still, I believe such possibilities are at least worthy considering - lest we accommodate ourselves and act as if we were in a mere extension of Wikipedia... --Duplode (talk) 23:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Clearly separate Q&As from the main course of the book;
 * Provide clear recommendations (not black-or-white policy, though) on usage of the new namespace;
 * Create, if need be, independent hierarchies of sub pages for Q&As with minimal hassle;
 * Having talk pages for Q&As;


 * My opinion on the subject is based on active observation and participation on some Q&A pages. This can sometimes prove erroneous like on the C Programming Q&A page that I thought was being well maintained but the person working to provide help there, on the recent RfD stated that he felt that the page wasn't of value. This puts the discussion of the value of having Q&A pages in a 2 distinct POVs.
 * Some fell that a Q&A pages shouldn't exist at all (globally on the project), disregarding the pros and cons argumentation, I don't think that banning the pages in a policy would gather consensus and therefore it seems a futile discussion, on the other hand a guideline establishing some requirements and obligations for maintain such pages would clarify and reduce the need for wasting time discussing the deletion of such pages in RfDs. Just to be clear. Polices are enforcible and guidelines can have justified exceptions. My position on the subject is simpler, and avoid the need for writing rules down. I will not object the deletion of such pages if they aren't wanted/defended and have posts replied to by the active book community (people working consistently on that project) nor will I bring up for RfD those pages as I see them even if out of the talk namespace as simple talk pages, unless I'm working on that project I consider it outside of my right to reformat.
 * As for the purpose of Q&A pages I think Duplode above covers most of the rationals but I certain there are other advantages on having that centralization. The validity of that structure is similar to the reason why we have several Reading room subsections...
 * The other divergent position and one that I have discussed many time before, relates to my quotation above is that the Wikimedia software has greater limitations in handling our type of project. The subject that if we keep them where do we put them. This in part relates to a political/legal position, on regarding all pages as interchanging modules, to what I don't agree in general terms (but see as a valid POV laking a clear statement from the governing body), the closest Wikimedia project to us is Wikisource not Wikipedia, talk pages shouldn't be spread across individual book pages but centralized for easy participation. Creating a new namespace in this situation would aggregate this type of talk page together but would remove the connection they should maintain to each book, so I wouldn't see it as an improvement. The same goes to supporting having them on the book's namespace, it will not only dilute the usefulness of the talk namespace but also the book's namespace, polluting the categorization of the pages. Q&A pages should never be considered part of a book. --Panic (talk) 23:59, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * (the next post is a reply to Thenub314 here from the previous discussion on the Wikibooks:Requests for deletion thread so things are kept together)
 * Having the talk page annexed to the Q&A doesn't seem beneficial at all, the main purpose is to discuss the book not the Q&A section, people should move any discussions outside of the book scope into the user space, it is even evident by the level of activity of most Q&A pages that the necessity isn't pressing (most posts that need the talk pages are in general of topic and should be in the main book's talk (if no other are indicated). Swift comments could well be made to me directly. I don't know but I presume that he knows I am mostly working there alone and that I was the creator of the project and that page. In any case a specific direction is given on that page (regrading the posts) and in the main talk page of that book asking people to use another forum.
 * I also disagree with you on the second point, but it may depend on the quality on the content provided, but in general I don't think FAQ's should be what we aim for in a wikibook (they can be a good starting point)... --Panic (talk) 11:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I particularly don't like having my comments deleted! Especially when I return to modify them and find they are gone. (I even get mildly cross at having my spelling corrected outside of an actual book module.)  I was about to say that I felt I should quickly make a comment to add some context to what Panic had said.  Let me add some slightly different context to what Panic is replying to: My comments at the RfD are about a specific module, and not so appropriate for this discussion.  At least I am very clear about the fact those comments are not the ones I find relevant to this conversation.
 * That being said, let me make a general comment, because just leaving a complaint may get it deleted. Be warned I haven't read the thread fully or taken time to digest it.  About Q&A pages: I think it should be left up to the book contributors to decide if they are appropriate or not.  As far as general help pages go, I do feel the reference desk is out of place at wikipedia, but now more or less belongs there.  See my recent comments at wikipedia for a more accurate description.  The only very mild reservation about Q&A pages is having the editorial staff to support them.  The same comment goes for discussion pages in general, even if all the comments are concentrated on the main page it would not help.  Zero people watching the pages of a book at the time a comment is made means no one will answer, and many books are not tended too.  This doesn't mean I think we should get rid of discussion pages or Q&A pages, it is a wiki, and this is part of life on a wiki.  It is just something to think about when adding them to a book.  I certainly don't mind some unofficial guidance for editors to remind them that someone may not always be around to support such a page.  Any official policy would go much to far. Basically I feel that similar structures (Q&A's, FAQ's etc.) exist in "dead tree books", and I don't see why they couldn't be part of this project.  I don't think that any book that were strictly a FAQ would be useful as a textbook, but a good text book could include such a page as an appendix.
 * Depending on the implementation of a Q&A page, I would or wouldn't consider it part of the text. If it is linked to from one of the main space pages of the book I think that there is a very serious possibility that readers will treat it as a part of the book.  It is my experience that when I give informal Q&A sessions for the courses I teach most students don't turn up with questions, but rather hope to listen to the questions other people have and the answers I give.  My evaluations reflect that this is seen as part of the course and not as something informal to help them out, regardless of how I advertise it.  I see little harm putting it in the main space, and it benefits the page by giving the page its own place for discussion.
 * I think that creating a separate namespace for Q&A pages is not worth the effort. Centralized discussions have their ups and downs. An example of one problem is point of entry.  When I was adding some images to Calculus/Volume book, I remember discovering it has a ridiculously high rank on google.  It was probably number 5 on a search for "Volume" (thankfully this is no longer true).  Presumably the first entry point of some person may not be the main page of the book where one could see an explanation of where to leave comments. So what to do?  Well one could certainly redirect all discussion pages to a central Q&A page, then when ever someone left a comment it would end up in one centralized place.  Unfortunately, if the last comment at Talk:Calculus/Volume I wouldn't know what to do with it.  It correctly pointed out an error in one equation, but wasn't overly clear about which equation it was referring too.  I myself am not entirely sure if I would categorize that comment as editorial or as content related.  If this comment were left in a centralized page it would not be so useful because I wouldn't be able to tell which equations the user was talking about. A second idea would be to add another tab to every page for Q&A... not a good idea.  Or we could include a description on every talk page about how to leave a good comment, and the right place to leave it.  But I suspect we will find ourselves in an RTFM situation. I do see some benefit between separating discussions like "this is how we should plan to organize the book" and "there is mistake in this content" but I am not sure Q&A pages would do this so well.


 * Sorry about the comment removal but since it concerned the objected copy, consisted on a phrase and was unsigned I thought that complying to the first objection and fixing it would satisfy you. I wouldn't remove a signed post and a post that didn't addressed a simple misunderstanding, feel free to revert the change I made. I also point that you failed to sign the above post. --Panic (talk) 14:50, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * The problem with the signature was a typo. I had accidentally left the wrong number of ~ 's, which is why only the date appeared (I think that is 5 tilde's but I could be wrong). But I'll call your attention to  in case you the hadn't encountered it. Thenub314 (talk) 16:37, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * PS. Apology accepted. No hard feelings. Thenub314 (talk)


 * This has to be one of the longest posts I've seen in a long time! Despite that, it's a fairly concise, balanced view of the arguments surrounding these pages. I'm not sure if it's useful or just instruction creep, but if anyone wants to mold it into a page in project space and link to it from the WB:MOS that should be fine. I don't agree with adding a new namespace, though. --Swift (talk) 20:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Textbooks can take on a FAQs form or have a FAQs Appendix. I think clarity on the intent is a good idea. I think whether or not people want to answer questions should be up to them. Wikipedia uses the talk pages of articles for maintenance and organizational purposes as well as for discussions. I think Wikibooks would do well to follow by example by using the talk namespace of books for maintenance and organizational purposes. I think pages of a book should consist of only what the target audience is expected to learn or know. A person interested in only reading a book probably doesn't care about any reorganization efforts, but probably does care about how this might effect the current stability and reliability of what they are reading. If a Q&A page is intended to be used as some form of writer/reader interaction than I think it should be in the talk namespace. If a Q&A is intended to be useful part of the book's content than of course it should be in the content namespace. I don't understand why there is such a big deal over this. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  13:12, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I am against any custom namespace created for the sole purpose of asking questions. They will simply produce tons of extra pages that we don't really need. As for whether to put Q&As into talk pages or modules, I would prefer the former but I think it is up to the book contributors to decide. RfDing Q&As would also be made easier without a custom namespace. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 14:08, 21 May 2010 (UTC)


 * My view is this: that w:Wikipedia:Reference desk is the proper place for asking questions not related to a particular chapter of the book. For one, you have volunteers willing to answer questions at w:Wikipedia:Reference desk. If the question is regarding some sections of the book, it would be more appropriate for the reader to bring that up in the talk space, of the chapter (modules as they are called). This will allow for improvement, in the modules, by the original contributors. Now take for example, at Python Programming/Q&A, undeleted by Swift, is it appropriate for questions like such?
 * Therefore Q&A pages should be deleted. And creation of FAQ pages should be only be created when there is an answer for a particular question. Otherwise pages like Python Programming/Q&A are created in process. --33rogers (talk) 04:58, 24 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Phew, all this fuss over such a trivial matter. :) What about that. For those books with Q&As, we turn them into FAQs and any new questions should be posted on the talk page. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:08, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * A specific remedy like this can't possibly to appropriate to the circumstances of every book that has a Q&A. General discussion can work out general principles, and perhaps some techniques that might work in various situations; but deciding exactly what should be done in each particular book needs to be worked out with careful consideration of each individual book.  The implementation phase of such a program should not be expected to go quickly, as any such thing done quickly will mess up individual books.  If a general discussion produces anything, the most useful form for such a product would be a guideline, which individual books would then act on in their own time.  --Pi zero (talk) 14:39, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions for Na'vi
[moving from featured book nominations]

the WP article on Na'vi has been moved here as a book. I've done some work to make it self contained, and it is stable for the moment. Would any of you who are interested mind looking it over, with an eye to what work it would need to be featured? Currently we're missing some grammatical data, simply because no-one but the author of the language knows what it is. I anticipate that the missing info will be forthcoming over the next couple months, and when it is, I'd like to be able to nominate for featured status.

thanks, —Kwami (talk) 11:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have read over some of the books pages randomly. My only comment is that it is occasionally still very much like reading a (extremely well written) wikipedia article. To me it seems to be more recording the facts about the language, then trying to teach the reader to learn it.  No simple examples, no translate this simple sentence.  It does explain itself fairly well, describing what different concepts are before illustrating them in this language.  I have very little experience with language texts, so I am not sure I can offer much in the way of constructive criticism.  It seems well structured, well referenced, fairly complete.  I can't think of any criteria for a featured book that it is lacking.  But I personally might have trouble learning from it. Thenub314 (talk) 15:50, 3 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the feedback. I don't want to make up examples, because I'm afraid I'll get s.t. wrong. We don't know enough about it yet to be sure about very much, so it's mostly an analysis of the texts we do have from the author. I've also spent about as much time as I can afford creating the glossary, so I doubt I'll be rewriting the text. —Kwami (talk) 22:35, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Quantum physics
The answer and solution to the question about finding the frequency of an electron with a velocity of 30000m/s is wrong.

The solution states that the frequency of the de Broglie wave for the electron is given by the kinetic energy of the elecron divided by the Planck constant. This is wrong! It is the total energy of the electron (given by E=mc2) divided by the h. Also, v=freq x wavelength refers to the phase velocity of the wave.

this is given by (mc2/h)(h/mv), where v is the group velocity of the electron = 30000m/s. So, phase velocity - 3 x 10(12) m/s.

using f= phase velocity/wavelength = 3 x 10(12)/2.4 x 10(-8) = 1.25 x 10(20) Hz.

This agrees with f=E/h = mc2/h = 1.25 x 10(20)Hz

Peter Mussard

petermussard@aol.com
 * Please feel free to correct it yourself. You can do so by clicking the 'edit this page' tab on top. Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 10:51, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Search engine by book
What would you think about putting the template engine on the sources main pages? (like for Cookbook:Table of Contents) JackPotte (talk) 19:51, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The Cookbook already has a search box on its main page via Template:Cookbook Search and individual books can already use Template:Book Search. Also, there is the "search this book" toolbox link at the left as well.  Template:Engine's functionality already seems to be covered by other templates.  -- Adrignola talk contribs 21:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I suggest to add a in Book Search before removing the engine. JackPotte (talk) 08:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Do I take it that you're asking for Template:Engine to be deleted? -- Adrignola talk contribs 14:30, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes please, it's 100% redundant. JackPotte (talk) 21:37, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Source code error if source code looks like wiki markup?
Please see Linear Algebra/Input-Output Analysis M File. I added the <tt>enclose="none"</tt> feature since the source code is by itself on this page. Again only the first line of the source code gets colored. But even worse the # signs get converted to numbers. Any ideas? Thenub314 (talk) 14:33, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Looks like <tt>enclose="none"</tt> does induce some breakage. Documentation suggests it removes all kinds of containers (both <tt>  </tt> and <tt>   </tt>) from the source block, and that instinctively sounds like a bad idea to me. I will try hacking a bit my CSS files to see if I can find is a better solution at CSS level (I will ask for help if I fail to do so). --Duplode (talk) 17:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)


 * I see Adrignola provided a fix by adding a leading space to each line inside the source block. While that solves the immediate issue (Thenub's broken page) that is not a really good general solution, for it is not only rather annoying to type but also taints the code with the extra blanks (making seamless copy-paste impossible for whitespace-sensitive languages). I will make a couple more tests and then file a report at Bugzilla. --Duplode (talk) 22:33, 26 May 2010 (UTC)


 * P.S.: Bug filed at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=23674 --Duplode (talk) 23:31, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Compton, California
I need some help on this. --Dedicatelove4ya (talk) 12:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)


 * What sort of help are you looking for? Unfortunately I know nothing about the town, or the violence that occurred there but maybe I can be of some more general assistance.  Tell me a bit about the book you hope to write, what sort of textbook would you like it to be?  Thenub314 (talk) 16:44, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Lohse, Martin
Kayau ( talk &#124; email &#124; contribs ) 11:38, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The author has a conflict of interest, which can lead to:
 * OR.
 * Non-NPOV.
 * The title is strange.
 * Other than correcting point of view or original research (or nominating the book for deletion), I know of no policies or guidelines dealing with conflicts of interest or biographies of living persons here. They hadn't been an issue before this point, but they do both apply here. This may not be the proper forum to post this in, unless you're calling for a joint cleanup.  -- Adrignola talk contribs 12:07, 27 May 2010 (UTC)


 * If I'm understanding this situation correctly, then &mdash;IMO&mdash; it's a violation of WB:HOST. --Pi zero (talk)
 * I've brought the question to the community at large through an RFD. --Pi zero (talk) 22:45, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

CategoryTree was disabled
As you can see at 23682 and w:Wikipedia:VPT, this extension was disabled. So, for example, some sections of Card Catalog Office stoped working properly. Helder22:47, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to note, it's been reenabled again. -- Adrignola talk contribs 01:35, 28 May 2010 (UTC)