Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2011/October

SMF Team Manual
User:Adrignola asked me to post my intentions here, regarding the material I've been working on in my userspace. Basically, I am trying to get a feel for the book->PDF feature here. I want to figure out if it is a useful tool for team manuals like the one I've been working on. I am the same AngelinaBelle as the one working on this material at http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/

Is this an acceptable use of my userspace at wikibooks? --AngelinaBelle (discuss • contribs) 14:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * It is a bit outside the scope of our project, since it seems you don't intend to develop any content here. We are just... convenient.  That being said, it is no big deal.  And hopefully you'll hang around for a bit and put your newly gained knowledge you gained to good use.  Also, if your intention is just to learn about a specific feature Wikiversity might be a more directly related project. Thenub314 (talk) 16:21, 18 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I find I cannot save any collection, and if I create a collection by hand, I cannot "create PDF" from it. --AngelinaBelle (discuss • contribs) 16:30, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Lessons notes to wikibooks
Hello. I'm a physics student at university and last time in class I though that it could be a good idea to improve wikibooks at the same time that I'm studing about a particular matter. I would not copy any text material that the teacher gives, but I could adapt what he explains in class and do resumes from the textbooks I use. My plan is to know well the current material which wikipedia and wikibooks have on my subjects and improve them or start new ¿articles?/books if they no exit yet. Do you think it is a correct use of what the teacher teach me? or maybe it is an abuse? I appreciate your thoughts. Lluvia (discuss • contribs) 15:11, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Capturing knowledge in your own words is always welcome. Please feel free to improve any of the material you find here or add your own works. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Accelerating Wikibooks
Hello!

I'll be speaking at the WCI 2011 in Mumbai later this November and am working on a presentation that covers an overview and a few proposals for changes at Wikibooks in order to bring about the acceleration.

Please take a look at my discussion page and help me build up a Talk that is relevant and filled with personal takeaways. The proposal is present here at User:Thewinster/Accelerating_Wikibooks. Do check it out and start discussing.

One thing you could do is go to the page and update the page with a list of users who might be able to provide relevant information or opinions. Secondly, you could discuss the proposal on that page, under a new section.

Summary of the proposal --Thewinster (discuss • contribs) 06:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Create Roadmaps for a book
 * Define Learning Outcomes
 * Annotate and Discuss new content available from around the web.
 * Minor tweaks and fixes which concentrate on crowdsourcing.
 * Identifying Small Contribution that advance a book and designing good UIs and triggers according to B.J. Fogg's Behavior Change Model, 8 Step Design Process. The paper can be found here at Persuasive Design : Eight Step Process by B. J. Fogg


 * Thought this was spam at first as it had also been copied to many users' talk pages. I hope during your talk that you're not going to use techno-garbage words like roadmap, defining learning outcomes and triggers.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 09:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I've received the same post on my talk. Have replied to the user on his talk page. My view is that some of the advanced ideas are not viable and others are already covered by common practices. The adoption of the SUbject namespace and the work done in Categories have accentuated the need to have a book scope defined, this was mostly evident just after whiteknight push for determining per-requesites (that seems not to have gathered traction).
 * In any case the user is not advancing a proposal but a call for comments for some ideas he wishes to present at the conference. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 21:08, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

MediaWiki 1.18 deployment
MediaWiki is scheduled to be upgraded on this wiki Monday, September 26, 23:00-03:00 UTC. As you may know, MediaWiki is the wiki software developed by the Wikimedia community, and 1.18 is the upcoming version of the software that has been in development since December. More details about this upgrade can be found on the MediaWiki 1.18 announcement on blog.wikimedia.org. We don't anticipate any problems, but if you do encounter any, please see the blog post for more information on how to report problems. Since this wiki will be one of the first to get the software, we're particularly interested in your experience with it. Thanks! -- mw:User:RobLa-WMF (local user page) 00:08, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Because of an issue in FlaggedRevs, we decided to delay this deployment until the bug was fixed. Aaron is in the process of pushing 1.18 to this wiki now.  Please report any problems you discover via the channels mentioned in the blog post above.  Thanks! -- RobLa-WMF (discuss • contribs) 23:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Invariant sections in wikibooks
Can i define invariant sections in GFDL licensed wikibooks?

--Chomwitt (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The Wikimedia Foundation terms of use state that you may not have any "invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts". – Adrignola discuss 20:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Terms of Use update
''I apologize that you are receiving this message in English. Please help translate it.'' Hello, The Wikimedia Foundation is discussing changes to its Terms of Use. The discussion can be found at Talk:Terms of use. Everyone is invited to join in. Because the new version of Terms of use is not in final form, we are not able to present official translations of it. Volunteers are welcome to translate it, as German volunteers have done at m:Terms of use/de, but we ask that you note at the top that the translation is unofficial and may become outdated as the English version is changed. The translation request can be found at Translation requests/WMF/Terms of Use 2 -- Maggie Dennis, Community Liaison 00:41, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * No worries. Our English isn't too bad here at English Wikibooks.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 00:10, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Collection creator not working?
Hi, just realized that I cannot use collections currently (neither on Firefox nor on Safari): all the buttons in the Collection creator are greyed out and I've no idea how to activate them? Help, please! --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 08:49, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see it too. This looks to be a result of the upgrade to 1.18.  I'll see about reporting it.  It is not broken at en.wikipedia but they have not moved on to 1.18 yet. See bug 31360. – Adrignola discuss 22:47, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Page Review Statistics
The page Special:ValidationStatistics, which I frequently use to view the current list of pages with edits awaiting review, doesn't seem to be working. Page just loads with the first 2 lines of text but no statistics follow. Anyone else had this problem? Gonna try clearing browser history and all the usual shit but thought I'd post here just in case anyone else has had the same problem. --ЗAНИA talk 22:13, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I see it too. This looks to be a result of the upgrade to 1.18.  I'll see about reporting it.  While w:Special:ValidationStatistics works fine, that wiki is shown to still be on 1.17.  See bug 31359. – Adrignola discuss 22:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Also, Special:BrokenRedirects has a bug at bug 31249. – Adrignola discuss 22:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess they decided not to fix all the bugs in FlaggedRevs before upgrading after all. --dark lama  22:50, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Appears to be OK again now. Was that upgrade notice there before or has it just been added?  I tend to ignore such notices nowadays because they're either for elections (which I've already voted in) or begging notices for the foundation.  Thanks for the responses.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 23:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the site notice was just added. --dark lama  23:27, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes it's new. There was early warning per a note in the reading room. QU TalkQu 11:50, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

My preferences
When editing 'My preferences' on hitting the 'Save' button I'm getting connection reset error message from the web browser (Firefox 7.0.1). Issue happens over HTTP and HTTPS. q# (discuss • contribs) 11:43, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Bug
Before I submit a bug report could someone confirm that
 * A-level Philosophy/AQA/Why should I be moral? links to A-level Philosophy/AQA/Why should I be moral?/Morality as a social contract
 * and [[A-level Philosophy/AQA/Why should I be moral?/Morality as a social contract claims to have no links if you look at "What links here."

Probably I am missing something obvious. Thenub314 (talk) 17:35, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Confirmed. Just to be clear, I note that it now lists this (and only this location) as a linked page to that location. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:41, 20 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Same problem for the other pages linked to as well. Even though they don't exist, what links here should still list "Why should I be moral?" --dark lama  19:19, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Curious. I woke up this morning to a bizarre en.wn config error that had, apparently, materialized overnight. (A user "right" we don't want over there had been inexplicably assigned to admins).  Something seems to have stirred things up.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:17, 20 October 2011 (UTC)


 * A null edit to the parent page caused it to show up in the list of pages linking to the child page. – Adrignola discuss 14:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I knew a null edit would likely fix it. I thought it might be important for the developers to see it broken though, if Thenub314 planned to go ahead with filing a bug report. --dark lama  15:40, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Qr-em template
The query template is not parsing correctly. I took a look, but could not spot the problem. Anyone else out there want to take a look? --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 13:14, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I've looked at pages you've recently added it to and it seems fine to me. In what way is the query template not parsing correctly? --dark lama  13:37, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's what I see:


 * --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 14:26, 24 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the problem should be fixed now. I traced it back to another template and a change in how the REVISION magic words work when previewing a page. --dark lama  15:47, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. It looks fixed now. --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Strange Texvc Behavior
Just to make sure there is no problem with my browser, system, etc. Can anyone verify if

display's as a string of nonsense? Thenub314 (talk) 20:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure if it's nonsense or something that means something but I see a 38 character phrase starting with 'uniq' and with 'math' in the middle. After going to EDIT I can see that this clearly isn't what was intended. Strange.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 20:07, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * I found some information on this at QINU fix. – Adrignola discuss 14:32, 28 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That is exceedingly helpful! Thank you. Thenub314 (talk) 18:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)