Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2013/October

Notifications
(This message is in English, please translate as needed)

Greetings!

Notifications will inform users about new activity that affects them on this wiki in a unified way: for example, this new tool will let you know when you have new talk page messages, edit reverts, mentions or links -- and is designed to augment (rather than replace) the watchlist. The Wikimedia Foundation's editor engagement team developed this tool (code-named 'Echo') earlier this year, to help users contribute more productively to MediaWiki projects.

We're now getting ready to bring Notifications to almost all other Wikimedia sites, and are aiming for a 22 October deployment, as outlined in this release plan. It is important that notifications is translated for all of the languages we serve.

There are three major points of translation needed to be either done or checked:
 * Echo on translatewiki for user interface - you must have an account on translatewiki to translate
 * Thanks on translatewiki for user interface - you must have an account on translatewiki to translate
 * Notifications help on mediawiki.org. This page can be hosted after translation on mediawiki.org or we can localize it to this Wikipedia.  You do not have to have an account to translate on mediawiki, but single-user login will create it for you there if you follow the link.
 * Checklist

Please let us know if you have any questions, suggestions or comments about this new tool. For more information, visit this project hub and this help page. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 18:26, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * (via the Global message delivery system) (wrong page? You can fix it.)

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Seasteading
I came across this website and I thought, why never break it down in terms of accounting jargon? That could be perfect or interesting for any ToonTown Gog-like id, ego, or superego, much less any gear-of-war. Any questions or comments on that idea? (Feel free to browse Omniglot for any sociological ideas, if needed (but NOT the haram D.S.M., all because of how confusing the terms are anyway). --Lo Ximiendo (discuss • contribs) 23:28, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Speak up about the trademark registration of the Community logo.
Hi all,

Please join the consultation about the Community logo that represents Meta-Wiki: m:Community Logo/Request for consultation.

This community consultation was commenced on September 24. The following day, two individuals filed a legal opposition against the registration of the Community logo.

The question is whether the Wikimedia Foundation should seek a collective membership mark with respect to this logo or abandon its registration and protection of the trademark.

We want to make sure that everyone get a chance to speak up so that we can get clear direction from the community. We would therefore really appreciate the community's help in translating this announcement from English so that everyone is able to understand it.

Thanks, Geoff & Yana 19:59, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Copyright
I'm just exploring WikiBooks, most of my experience is on en.wiki, and I was struck by this statement on your Welcome page: "' Contributors maintain the property rights to their contributions, while the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and the GNU Free Documentation License makes sure that the submitted version and its derivative works will always remain freely distributable and reproducible.'" I have never heard about "property rights" on en.wiki and so I was wondering how this works. If I edit a wikibook and someone comes along and edits that same chapter, how can I have any rights over the new version? I guess I mean, what is "property" on a site where everyone can edit and modify content? Thanks for any information you can provide. Nwjerseyliz (discuss • contribs) 19:07, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * You have copyright over your contributions, not over the total published work. If your contributions are removed, then you have no copyright because none of your work is in the current version. Of course you retain your copyright in your contributions that remain visible in the history. As you have irrevocably licensed your contributions under the CC-BY-SA license, anyone is free to reuse or modify your work. But you still have the copyright. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * To be more precise he has right over copyrightable contributions (not all contributions) and depending on the level of copyrighted contributions he also retains copyright over the full work (even if debatable it seems reasonable that a book should be seen single work, while an encyclopaedia is an aggregate of articles we should note that encyclopaedic articles normally can only be copyrightable in the aggregate that is the encyclopaedia itself. In my opinion INAL does not apply to all articles on Wikipedia since some are beyond simple encyclopaedic content). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 02:25, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Is software documentation within the scope?
I wonder if primary software documentation is within the scope of Wikibooks?

For instance, I’m working on a manual for my (yet to be released) Head-r program, and I’d be glad to put it somewhere the community could improve it without having me to propagate the patches I’d receive to my Git repositories. (Or set up my own Wiki, for that matter. Or sort through the “documentation-only” bug reports, etc.)

TIA.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 16:53, 9 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes it is. There are several examples already. Since you are documenting something that does not yet "exist", you may move it out of your userspace after you release the software. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 02:17, 10 October 2013 (UTC)


 * As Head-r has now seen its first release, do I simply rename the page to Head-r, or are there any conventions to consider? — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 07:25, 11 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes do a page move and then tag the original location (now turned into a redirect into a speedy deletion). The book name should be in accordance to the naming conventions (even avoiding having the exact name of the software, see Using Wikibooks/How To Structure A Wikibook or Using Wikibooks/How To Edit A Wikibook). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 19:47, 11 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I do not seem to understand how could I avoid using the name of the software in the title of the book that I’d expect to cover only that software for quite some time? Though a more descriptive name to consider could perhaps be Listing Web resources with Head-r — and indeed, it’s perfectly possible that the manual I write could be made into a subpage of a more general book.


 * I’ve scanned through Naming policy but it seems to cover only subpage naming. (Also, there’s that LaTeX book, which covers just what its title says, but I have to admit that such a title is instantly recognizable to a sizable community.)


 * — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 10:56, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The normal practice today is that the exact same name should be avoided, use something like "Head-r User Manual" or variations, the idea is not to block the namespace (like the LaTeX book does) and permit more metadata to be transmitted to the reader regarding the book's subject. If there is only a single book a redirect can be used to point to that from the keyword. Imagine the issues it causes to anyone attempting to start another LaTeX oriented project or if the LaTeX book decides to be fragmented into specific subjects, it is just good practice to be more informative and better differentiate projects... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 15:09, 12 October 2013 (UTC)


 * ACK, thanks for the clarification. I have ended up with Indexing Web with Head-r, also redirecting there from Head-r.  Perhaps there could be a better title, but at the least, this one seems to be in line with Web indexing.  — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 15:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

how best to have a quiz after each section
If you've used quizzes you'll notice that when you submit a quiz it submits for ALL quizzes on that page. Not ideal. Does it make sense to create whole sub pages off a section with links to that page? dgd (discuss • contribs) 19:08, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

convert one wikijunior book from Lang A to Lang B
I was looking at the wikijunior FR book on fruit. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior:Food_Alphabet/B

I'd like to convert the whole book with the photos into another language.

How do I take the content efficiently (I don't want to download one page at a time or copy and paste one page at a time) from one wikijunior book, translate it and put it into another language?

Again, grabbing all of the photos and the general layout of the book is my primary goal as of right now. thanks dgd (discuss • contribs) 14:44, 22 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Given that the photos (such as, for instance, File:Watermelons.jpg) come from Wikicommons, I’d assume that it’d not be necessary to copy them to any another Wikibooks language section. Simply referencing them should work instantly.  — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 08:21, 24 October 2013 (UTC)


 * You are on the English Wikibooks - we don't host content in other languages. If you want, for example, to create a French version of the book then you need to create it on the French Wikibooks - . The photographs are all stored on Wikimedia Commons and therefore accessible on any project - there is no need to copy them, the existing links work for every book everywhere. In terms of copying the content to another project, the French Wikibooks in my example, this can be done by exporting the content from here (Special:Export) then requesting an import at the destination project. However, the ability to import these exported files is often limited to Stewards so you may need to make a request at SRM to get it done. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 13:28, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Rejecting pending changes
Hello Wikibookians,

Exactly what happens when you reject pending changes? Are the changes preserved in history, or are they wiped out as in a rollback? Do you get the chance to add a custom edit summary? I couldn't find answers to those questions in the help pages, and I don't want to risk a "live" test. My concern is on whether it is sensible to reject good-faith but misguided edits - I would rather not have them erased from history in such cases.

Cheers, Duplode (discuss • contribs) 17:40, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * They are retained in the edit history like any other change. The main difference between a Rollback and a Reject is Rollback reverses all edits by the same editor whereas Reject reverses all edits back to the last Checked revision. This can be helpful when, for example, you have multiple IP editors who have vandalised a page - a Rollback only reverses the last, the Reject removes all of them. Yes you can customise the edit summary - you are prompted to enter one. I use Reject for good faith misguided edits all the time. This in a way is the whole point of the system - you are quality reviewing the edit and rejecting it as the change lowered the quality of the page. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 20:01, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent; that quells my worries. Thanks! Duplode (discuss • contribs) 23:26, 24 October 2013 (UTC)
 * NB: As implied in QuiteUnusual's answer, a rollback does preserve history. I don't know what led me to believe otherwise... Duplode (discuss • contribs) 13:35, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

parsing math formula unknown error
Hi,

I have made some changes to this page. SOm e mathe formula look good on preview but after saveing produce uknown error. Where is the problem ? TIA --Adam majewski (discuss • contribs) 13:50, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm having trouble pinning this down; it seems to behave in an almost random way, which suggests to me it's being caused by something I'm not looking at (thus creating the illusion of randomness). For example, when I look through the article history to try to find when the error first occurred, I get inconsistent results:  I thought I had it isolated at a certain edit on a certain day, but, having passed it, when I reversed direction to move backward in time I got a different answer, and when I tried again I got still a different answer.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 13 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Interesting, I saw several parse errors, started editing a section (without changing anything), looked at the preview (which didn't show any parse errors), saved as a minor change (which doesn't appear in the history because I didn't actually change anything), and now all the parse errors on that page are gone (for me). WTF? Maybe someone is messing with the parser; thus, it depends on when the code is parsed? --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 07:57, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I have also seen this behaviour --Adam majewski (discuss • contribs) 07:52, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Statistics Done Wrong -- import?
I recently came across a book, in the vein of How to Lie with Statistics, on common errors in statistics found in scientific works, called Statistics Done Wrong. It was written by one Alex Reinhart. It is published under CC-BY-3.0-Unported, which is compatible with the Wikibooks license. I was going to just go ahead and add it, but I was concerned by this statement in WB:NOR: "Wikibooks is for collaboratively developing new open-context non-fiction texts. Wikisource is for hosting static texts that have been previously published and are now either in the public domain or have been released under a compatible license.". I'd love any comments people might have about whether this work would be appropriate to add to WikiBooks. If I don't hear any comments in a week or so, I'll be bold and just add it, and see if that generates comments. 63.251.123.2 (discuss) 22:36, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Source texts go on Wikisource, not here. If you think it would be developed into a textbook (i.e., would not be static) then it can be used to start a book here. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 23:02, 30 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Since a) this is (very close to) a textbook and b) it is not static (at least not according to the author who claims to intend to expand it in the future), this should go to wikibooks IMHO. --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 16:09, 31 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you both for the replies! It does seem like it is appropriate to add it here, due to its textbook-nature and planned expansions. I think I'll send an email to the original author, to check their opinions on the import, next. 63.251.123.2 (discuss) 17:43, 31 October 2013 (UTC)