Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2012/January

Templates and Tables part 2
Also, I'm tearing my hair out with passing tables to templates, as mentioned above. I've adjusted the template to use divs here, but it seems to have broken the passing of parameters in a slightly different way, see above and below. Any ideas how I can fix this? {FIXED by adding an extra line break, would still like to know how to avoid having to use | though...}

Pluke (discuss • contribs) 17:27, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * You must make use of !, !-, and !! in certain cases, if you examine their documentation. Alternatives are using divs as you stated above, or you can use an HTML table rather than a wiki table. – Adrignola discuss 15:12, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * SOLVED! I created two templates, one for opening the divs, the second for closing. I then sandwich the table code between them without having to deal with the silly !, !-, and !! tags.  See code example below: Pluke (discuss • contribs) 17:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Statistics
Hi!

I have been looking for statistics on user activity on Polish Wikibooks. Particularly I would like to know how many users use a particular page daily. Do you know any tool, page or anything else (except of raw data) that can provide this data? --Rafal.belka (discuss • contribs) 21:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Would this page be helpful for you? Polish Wikibooks Stats Per Wikibook--Thereen (discuss • contribs) 23:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No: there is no information about a number of normal users' views of single book. Do you know any page which contains this particular measure? --Rafal.belka (discuss • contribs) 13:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Category:Copyright violations and Category:Queried pages
I was under the impression that after 7 days any pages in these categories are automatically moved to Candidates for Speedy Deletion? Or am I just imagining that? There were pages and books in those categories for several weeks but hadn't been moved to Speedy Deletion? --ЗAНИA talk 22:58, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Hasn't worked for months or even years... sometimes the pages turn up after a few weeks, sometimes never. Guess I could have looked at why! The code is in the templates, for example, this one is from the template  . The seven days is from the last edit rather than from when the template was added... QU TalkQu 23:18, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Seven days from when the template is added would likely require passing a date as a parameter like is done with some other templates. --dark lama  23:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * On Wikinews, an abandoned article is supposed to be automatically put up for speedy deletion two days after tagging. The technical solution is that {{abandoned}} takes an optional date parameter (supposed to gracefully degrade if no date specified), and there's a variant template meant to be always subst'd to fill in the date when used, {{subst:aband}}.


 * I might add, this arrangement doesn't work as well as one could wish; even fairly experienced Wikinewsies tend to overlook/forget {{subst:aband}}, and so use {{abandoned}} instead. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 06:49, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I think the same thing use to happen here, with nld and no license. I think it only decreased due to most of uploads going to Commons now. --dark lama  22:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * A technique I adopted for the allbooks machinery, and liked enough that I'm now trying it out for some routine tasks on Wikinews, is self-diagnosing templates. The template checks for problems (here, a date parameter is expected, and if it's missing that's a problem); and when it detects a problem, it displays a diagnostic message explaining the problem and suggesting/facilitating remedial action, and adds itself to a maintenance-request category.  --Pi zero 02:53, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Contributions analysis tools
I'm thinking of having students work on a Wikibook project in a different way than I have before, encouraging the students to be free-ranging over everything in the book rather than assigning a each student (or group) to a particular module. However, that will make grading much trickier since I won't be able to grade a student by the end-product of a particular module.

I'm hoping that there are contributions-analysis programs which will make this easier by expanding on the User:Constributions for any user, whether by giving some statistics (amount added, amount deleted, ...) or by expanding an edit from just a line item to showing the diff of each edit in the contributions without my clicking through.

Does anyone know of such tools?

TDang (discuss • contribs) 20:45, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 * There used to be some tools on the Toolserver that did something similar. This one provides all the diffs for a named user to an article but despite having an option to select Wikibooks seems to default back to Wikipedia. This one I think provided something similar but is disabled. You might want to try requesting what you want on the Toolserver wiki? QU TalkQu 08:56, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * History Comb folds consequential edits by the same user and displays the size difference. Might not be exactly what you had in mind though. --dark lama  14:00, 9 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks QU and darklama. Those all seem close, but not actually working. Drat! The History Comb is not what I was thinking of, but I expect it could be quite useful also. However, just trying the URL-bar "demo" it doesn't seem to work. I'll think about whether this is something I can code (it seems like it should be simple enough in principle, but I've never coded for wiki tools). I guess I can as at the Toolserver wiki, but I wouldn't expect folks to leap on this. I suppose it might be worth a try.
 * If anyone else has other suggestions, I'd still be grateful for more! TDang (discuss • contribs) 16:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

best license(s) for smooth wikimedia inclusion
I'm creating a lot of lecture notes and stuff for the courses I'm teaching, and I'd be happy to see anyone take those notes and cannibalize them into a Wikimedia project. I'm wondering what licenses I should use to make any such cannibalization work best.

As I understand it, though I don't understand why really, I should dual-license the stuff under both CC-BY-SA 3.0 and the GFDL? I can do that, but here's my questions: Thoughts? Thanks! TDang (discuss • contribs) 23:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
 * While I would kinda like attribution, the "how" of attributing when bringing stuff from outside a Wikimedia project seems like it might be daunting.
 * So, would it be easier and/or acceptable to license under CC-SA and GFDL?


 * Strictly speaking you only need the CC-BY-SA 3.0 (you could dual license since the GFDL is not compatible with the CC-BY-SA), the only reason to use the GFDL would be to take advantage on what makes it incompatible for instance the obligation to reproduce invariant sections (like a cover or a dedicatory).
 * The issue with getting a proper author attribution on Wikimedia projects is indeed problematic (by the culture and general lack of information), in most project this is not so important, for instance in Wikipedia only the aggregation should be copyrightable and most contributors do not really care much about authorship but some would make a point in being acknowledged by their work.
 * On Wikibooks the best option is to declare your own rights (and responsibilities) over the work, this is not common but examples abound, the CC-BY-SA clearly states that "You must, ..., keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing", take note the most persons will have a very hard time discriminating between editors and authors, but in your case I think you are mostly interested in preserving your rights for uses elsewhere. Take note that before using the content from Wikibooks (as source material) you will need the authorization of all listed authors for relicensing the content under an incompatible license. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 04:52, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Navigation for deep level pages
Hi, I am building navigation for the following page: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level_Computing/AQA/Computer_Components,_The_Stored_Program_Concept_and_the_Internet/Hardware_Devices/Output_devices

I'd like to have a template at the top of the page allowing the user to go to the next page, the parent page, and the previous page. However, when I'm building the links I currently have to fully type them out. I know there are shortcuts that I could use such as:

But I haven't found anything able to output the following:

A-level_Computing/AQA/Computer_Components,_The_Stored_Program_Concept_and_the_Internet/Hardware_Devices

To allow me to create links to pages on the same level. Is there any way to perform 'directory' functions such as ../ and ../../ etc? Pluke (discuss • contribs) 20:58, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * You can use to refer to the parent page. You can use ../Another Page/ to link to pages on the same level. You can use ../ to link to the parent page. --dark  lama  21:20, 14 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I was being a little dense with that one. Pluke (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * One final question, how can you return the name of the parent page? I can get the name of the current page through , but would like to know the name of the page above that one? Pluke (discuss • contribs) 22:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * might do it. --dark lama  23:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Perfect, thanks! Pluke (discuss • contribs) 23:35, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Announcing Wikipedia 1.19 beta
Wikimedia Foundation is getting ready to push out 1.19 to all the WMF-hosted wikis. As we finish wrapping up our code review, you can test the new version right now on beta.wmflabs.org. For more information, please read the release notes or the start of the final announcement.

The following are the areas that you will probably be most interested in:
 * Faster loading of javascript files makes dependency tracking more important.
 * New common*.css files usable by skins instead of having to copy piles of generic styles from MonoBook or Vector's css.
 * The default user signature now contains a talk link in addition to the user link.
 * Searching blocked usernames in block log is now clearer.
 * Better timezone recognition in user preferences.
 * Improved diff readability for colorblind people.
 * The interwiki links table can now be accessed also when the interwiki cache is used (used in the API and the Interwiki extension).
 * More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists).
 * Language converter improved, e.g. it now works depending on the page content language.
 * Time and number-formatting magic words also now depend on the page content language.
 * Bidirectional support further improved after 1.18.

Report any problems on the labs beta wiki and we'll work to address them before they software is released to the production wikis.

Note that this cluster does have SUL but it is not integrated with SUL in production, so you'll need to create another account. You should avoid using the same password as you use here. — Global message delivery 00:05, 15 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Ah good, another opportunity for everything to go wrong! QU TalkQu 15:30, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What the hell is More gender support (for instance in logs and user lists) - is the new version going to greet us as males and females?--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 15:38, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that it is listed under "Internationalisation" so I suppose it could help people some foreign languages to use the correct forms when addressing each other. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The example is rather uninformative isn't it? Maybe the new version is going to include a filter option to show or hide logs and users based on gender, or maybe interface messages used in logs and the user lists will be able to take advantage of . --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark  lama  19:58, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikibooks blackout?
I assume that as there's been no discussion here that Wikibooks English will not be affected by the blackout of English Wikipedia tomorrow? Is this correct?--ЗAНИA talk 11:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * No discussion held and it is a project by project decision, therefore, there will be no en WB blackout <font color="#E66C2C">QU <font color="#306754">TalkQu 11:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd hope not. While I voted in favor of the blackout at Wikipedia, it was contingent on providing people access to the information on SOPA and related articles.  I got QU to import those article here, and am now going to try to make a booklet I can share with my family and friends. Intellectual Property and the Internet --Quintucket (discuss • contribs) 15:54, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear there's no WB blackout. Americans should use other methods to raise awareness rather than blackout Wikimedia projects which are funded by the whole world.  If I had ever bothered to give my pennies to Jimbo Wales I'd be demanding some of it back and insisting that he relocates his offices and servers to a country which has laws which are fairer to the individual rather than the corporations.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 21:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I agree with a Wikipedia blackout, first it will show how important the project is to peoples lives and due to that importance help promote the issue about this draconian and corporate driven changes to copyright and intellectual property laws, even internationally, like for instance how the US pressures other nations in adopting similar policies.
 * Now a blackout on Wikibooks would have no real impact I would only support it if all Wikimedia projects participated. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 21:46, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes a Wikipedia blackout will have a big impact compared to WB. I remember here in Italy when IT Wikipedia had a blackout a month or so for press censorship reasons.  All net users noticed during the course of the day because of how frequently WP is used.  Then again, Italians are used to blackouts and strikes more than others.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Italy.svg|15px]]talk 22:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Starting New book
Hi! I want to start a new book on calculus without rigorous proofs. It would include content only needed for physics and chemistry majors, because they need only to apply it. For proofs and details, they can read main calculus book. Further helps on extending the list are welcomed.

--Prashant Sinha 08:17, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd say you're going to have great difficulty defining the scope. For example, some very heavy calculus is needed for general relativity and quantum mechanics.  Will these be covered or not?--Collingwood (discuss • contribs) 17:07, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

2nd line in this ambox template keeps disappearing
The second line at the Transwiki template keeps disappearing. It's visible for a split second upon page load, then disappears. Is this normal or expected behavior? Banaticus (discuss • contribs) 00:22, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The template uses a collapsible box. Being visible for a split second isn't expected behavior. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  00:32, 11 January 2012 (UTC)