Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2012/May

Opinion regarding House Made of Dawn
If some Wikibookian has read the work (especially if you are a reviewer), can you see if the large deletion on that page conforms to what you know on the subject. Thanks... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 01:20, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

1.20wmf2 deployed
Hi all, we've deployed MediaWiki 1.20/wmf2 to this wiki a few minutes ago. -- RobLa-WMF (discuss • contribs) 19:30, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Request for review
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I would like anyone who's interested to look at the Wikibook I'm working on, Wikijunior:Countries A-Z, and give me some feedback on ways to improve it. Thanks,  Liam987  10:38, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I suggest eventually add some fun facts and trivia about each country that children might find interesting, like what is the capital of each country, what is the native languages of each country, what animals are native to each country, what common things are produced and exported in each country that children might use everyday or know about, etc. Reading room/Projects is meant for seeking help and receiving community feedback for things like this. --dark lama  13:52, 26 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your advice, and I will repost this at Reading room/Projects.  Liam987  15:10, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I would still really appreciate any more advice...  Liam987  07:26, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * There are already long-standing under-development wikijunior books for countries by continent &mdash; Wikijunior:Africa, and so on (with some anomalies in their categorization, which I hope to untangle, now that I've noticed them, in my copious free time). Is this new book redundant to those?  Different?  If it is different, how?  (Other than being all it one big list rather than sorted by continent?)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:46, 16 May 2012 (UTC)


 * This book defers quite a great deal from those continent-specific ones. Where as those books are essentially articles on each country (Wikijunior:Africa, for example), Countries A-Z is mainly intended to give a "glimpse" of each country. The main feature of each page is the image, which encompasses most of the page and should provide a typical image of the country. (But not stereotypical - I don't intend to put the Eiffel Tower on the France page). The other main feature of the page is the names of the country written in all its native languages, with the name of the language appearing if you hover over the name. Take a look at a few of the pages (Australia, Denmark, China).


 * The other unique feature about this book is that nothing is located on each page except for a template Template:Wikijunior:Countries A-Z/Page layout with parameters, to allow easy reformatting and creation of the pages, and to make it easy to edit the information on the pages. I have tried to make it very easy to create more pages, with lots of preloaded pages. To see what I mean go to the current last page (currently Ethiopia) and click on the red link in the upper right hand corner (Fiji). The Page Layout template with all parameters with notes already there.  Liam987  14:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Import of Malaria book
The author of Malaria Parasite Metabolic Pathways has contacted me at a meeting this week (we both work in Malaria research). Basically, he will not be able to maintain the site in the long run, and is looking for a "good home". While the site appears slightly 1990-ish, it is a manually curated resource by a professor in the field, and of significant scientific relevance. I think much of it can be salvaged and converted to Wikitext and SVGs where necessary (I have already a prototype converted working). The author would file an OTRS ticket, and all the content (after checking image origins!) would become freely licensed. Normally, I would just go ahead and import, but the format is not exactly textbook-for-learning, so I thought I'd ask here if this is OK. I'll go ahead if I don't hear counter-arguments within the next few days. --Magnus Manske (discuss • contribs) 15:12, 18 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I see no reason to delay if you intend to develop it into a textbook anyone can learn and teach from. I think what the format is on some other website or might appear to be initially doesn't matter. --dark lama  15:35, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

University of Minnesota has online catalog of open-source books
Take a look This could be a big deal. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:34, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, another attempt to put us out of business ;-) Making existing textbooks open source would be the Holy Grail. Writing a comprehensive textbook is a huge effort which is why there are so few that have been completed here. On some more advanced subjects we are unlikely to ever have any so these changes in the wider market are certainly to be welcomed. QU TalkQu 10:12, 11 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Licenses Unless I'm reading this wrong, some of the licenses would allow them to be ported here. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:57, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Help: "Download as PDF" doesn't work (since yesterday?)
Help! Yesterday I noticed that "Download as PDF" doesn't work any longer (after rendering the pdf and clicking on "Download the file", I get a "File not found" page). Apparently, Wikipedia isn't affected by the problem; thus, something on wikibooks appears to go wrong. Help! --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 07:43, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It doesn't work for me either, with the same error, so probably a bug. Wikipedia is on a different version of the Mediawiki software (one version behind) Wikibooks... I will raise a bugzilla report. QU TalkQu 08:08, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Raised here QU TalkQu 08:16, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 08:24, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Cause is a bug in the Mediawiki release we are on. We've been reverted to the old version for now and the function should be working again QU TalkQu 19:29, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

How to use UserTalk
I just added my first page, and got a polite note from ManuelGR about some editing that was done on it.

I'd like to reply to that note, but I don't see any "Reply" button.

Nor does the Wikibooks help page say anything about how to use UserTalk.

Help!

(I much prefer good old-fashioned email!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stephen leake (discuss • contribs) 07:24, 4 May 2012
 * You just edit your talk page in the same way that you would edit any other page. If you wish you can add to the other person's user talk page so they know that you have replied to them on your talk page. QU TalkQu 07:57, 4 May 2012 (UTC)


 * You may have missed the section on discussion pages, which applies equally to user and book discussions: WB:DISCUSS. – Adrignola discuss 13:47, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Introducing myself, folks!
Hi folks! I am a recent addition to the Wikibooks editing team. I am a chemist by profession, and can be of assistance in editing especially chemistry-related articles. I hope you experienced folks will help me familiarize with my new responsibilities. Thank you all. Ardy (discuss • contribs) 16:00, 29 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Ardy! Have fun with wikibooks. :) --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 16:12, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Twinkle
I'm a bit confused. Normally I know how to use stuff, I just wanted to test the 'unlink' Twinkle gadget (because I want to reinvent the wheel by including it in my scripts). I'm talking of following Gadget
 * Unlink pages using Twinkle: This allows all users to unlink pages from the main namespace (all others are unaffected) using Twinkle. This gadget does not work in Internet Explorer. (Configuration goes in your user JavaScript.)

It is shown both in Opera and in Firefox (oh and even in IE). My Opera Dragonfly developer application gives following error:


 * Uncaught exception: ReferenceError: Undefined variable: twinkleunlink
 * Error thrown at line 1, column 0 in javascript:twinkleunlink.callback:
 * twinkleunlink.callback

Is that a problem on my side or is it 'globally' not working? mabdul 20:27, 22 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Many of the gadgets are no longer maintained and are liable to break if they haven't already with new versions of the software. Perhaps someone with JavaScript knowledge could troubleshoot this for you. – Adrignola discuss 22:03, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Then all gadgets should be retested and then at least marked as 'malfunctioned' or even better remove it from the list. The Unlink feature isn't really important for me, since I'm going to rewrite this feature in my own script. <small style="font: 12px Courier New;display:inline;border:#009 1px dashed;padding:1px 6px 2px 7px;white-space:nowrap"><font color="#000">mabdul 06:38, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Gadgets are more likely to be fixed by reporting problems here as you did than by not doing anything. Wikipedia is able to be proactive against planned changes while Wikibooks is often forced to be reactive by fixing things after changes have already rolled out. Wikibooks also doesn't have the influence or community that Wikipedia has to get things done. In any case, please check if the Gadget is working now as I made some changes to Twinkle Unlink. --<span style="font: bold 10pt 'courier new', comic, sans, ms;"><font color="midnightblue">dark lama  14:58, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Great. This works again. I will check this weekend all gadgets if they are still working (or not) since all major MW20 changes should be resolved. <small style="font: 12px Courier New;display:inline;border:#009 1px dashed;padding:1px 6px 2px 7px;white-space:nowrap"><font color="#000">mabdul 22:28, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

[unindent]

Nope, doesn't work, Opera gives me following error message after I wanted to click on 'unlink' (the action button not the tab/link near the move link):

@Darklama can you fix it? <small style="font: 12px Courier New;display:inline;border:#009 1px dashed;padding:1px 6px 2px 7px;white-space:nowrap"><font color="#000">mabdul 20:12, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Saylor Wikibooks Project
Some of you might be familiar with the website Saylor.org, which offers free, self-paced, college courses online. Much like the Wikimedia community, we are committed to providing free and accessible education for everyone with an internet connection. To create our courses, we combine custom-created educational materials with materials that are already available on the internet. Although we work to host as many resources as we can, we must sometimes link to freely available, although unreliable, copyrighted material until we can locate resources that we can host, meaning that those sections of our courses are not really sustainable. To solve this problem we’re asking for the help of the Wikibooks community. We’ve uploaded the course outlines for five of our least hosted courses: C++ Programming, Comparative Politics, English Composition, Cell Biology, and Ancient Civilizations of the World. Please contribute and help us create open textbooks that are openly available to the public online and through our courses! --Azin (discuss • contribs) 14:42, 29 May 2012 (UTC)