Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2014/March

Call for comments on draft trademark policy
Hi all,

The Wikimedia legal team invites you to participate in the development of the new Wikimedia trademark policy.

The current trademark policy was introduced in 2009 to protect the Wikimedia marks. We are now updating this policy to better balance permissive use of the marks with the legal requirements for preserving them for the community. The new draft trademark policy is ready for your review here, and we encourage you to discuss it here.

We would appreciate if someone would translate this message into your language so more members of your community can contribute to the conversation.

Thanks,

Yana & Geoff

Amendment to the Terms of Use
Hello all,

Please join a discussion about a proposed amendment to the Wikimedia Terms of Use regarding undisclosed paid editing and we encourage you to voice your thoughts there. Please translate this statement if you can, and we welcome you to translate the proposed amendment and introduction. Please see the discussion on Meta Wiki for more information. Thank you! Slaporte (WMF) 22:00, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Noted. I've already voiced by opposition of that page.  Paid contributions should be completely banned in my opinion.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Estonia.svg|15px]]talk 21:31, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposed optional changes to Terms of Use amendment
Hello all, in response to some community comments in the discussion on the amendment to the Terms of Use on undisclosed paid editing, we have prepared two optional changes. Please read about these optional changes on Meta wiki and share your comments. If you can (and this is a non english project), please translate this announcement. Thanks! Slaporte (WMF) 21:56, 13 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Very sloppy work by Meta as usual. Every time they post a message here they ask us to translate it.  What language do they think we speak here?--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Estonia.svg|15px]]talk 02:25, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

Teach me how to write equations
I have recently started contributing to a text here and would like to add some mathematical equations. I am not sure exactly how to do that though. Should I do the equations in microsoft word's equation software and then save it as a jpg, then upload it. Or is there a better way? https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Biology_Laboratory_Techniques/Cell_Fractionation#Purpose Tmbirkhead (discuss • contribs) 08:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)
 * See wikipedia :Help:Displaying a formula. --Adam majewski (discuss • contribs) 18:49, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism Warnings
I've noticed that when I warn people using the Warn link on the left tools panel it gets all messed up (User talk:122.56.104.82‎). Is this a bug? Any way of easily fixing this?--ЗAНИA talk 02:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Inline citations
I am a new Wikibooks user, and have referenced an academic, but I am not sure how to do an in-text citation. Would anybody be able to help me out? ButtonsElizabeth (discuss • contribs) 10:49, 21 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The inline citations are typically made with a combination of the  pseudo-HTML element, one of the “Cite” templates, and the Reflist template in one of the trailing sections on the page.


 * For instance, the Clock and Data Recovery/Structures and types of CDRs/Applications of the 2nd order type 2 architecture page uses the first two (although, as for Cite web, – not entirely correctly) as follows:




 * Check the existing pages (as could be found with the Special:WhatLinksHere tool; as in: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Cite journal) for more examples.


 * Also, please sign your posts with  on talk pages only.


 * — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 11:11, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Potential book on crowdsourcing
Hi, in a day job I am working on a project funded by Wikimedia UK and the educational charity Jisc to make staff in academia more aware of Wikimedia projects and productive ways to work with them. One of the outputs of this project is a Jisc infoKit titled the wiki way of working". It is not a guide to wiki editing. Instead it is aimed at management, trying to persuade them that what they might interpret as down-sides of the wiki approach (e.g. being open to edit by anyone) are in fact its key advantages in producing quality work. It tries to get them thinking seriously about free and open content, and empowering volunteer contributors. It starts from very abstract considerations and builds to case studies of working with free-content projects.

I'd like to publish the booklet in a Wikimedia wiki. The content is freely licensed (CC-BY-SA) and, having looked at the existing excellent Wikibooks content, I don't think I'll have any difficulties with the markup. I understand I would have to make clear that the booklet is not dual-licensed. My question is about scope: this is a work of original research but which has already been reviewed and published by a body independent of Wikimedia. Just to be sure, are there any conflicts with the scope of Wikibooks? Thanks in advance, MartinPoulter (discuss • contribs) 17:29, 24 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I, for one, wouldn't think there'd be an original research problem with this, given previous vetting. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:37, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Depending on whether the book is expected to attract new editors or not, it may also make sense to consider placing it on Wikisource. — Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 05:24, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * But it sounds like something that might want updating, with additional/more-current case studies at least, which isn't Wikisource as I understand the sister. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:03, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the replies. Although it's been already published, it's meant to be an evolving document that draws in more case studies, for example from citizen science projects, exactly as User:Pi zero suggests. Hopefully this is at least a small way to raise awareness of Wikibooks in academia. If I advocate "working the wiki way", I'd better take my own advice. Cheers, MartinPoulter (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Username does not work @ hu.wikibooks
I registered long time ago in en.wikibooks with the username Harp, I have could not log in with this name at hu.wikibooks, so I needed to register with other name. I was not allowed to register with Harp there. The new registration (User:Horvatha) works in both language version with one registration. Why does not work the Harp for both? It would be nice if I would use the Harp name, because I use it at en.wikipedia, hu.wikipedia and de.wikipedia as well. -- Harp (discuss • contribs) 08:04, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * This is really a question for the Stewards, but as you asked here (and I'm a Steward) we can deal with it here. In the past usernames were unique to each project. Later a "single unified login" was introduced that created a central account that automatically registered you at new wikis that you visited for the first time. This doesn't work for you because you have never merged your existing accounts to create the "single unified login." The first step is to visit Special:Mergeaccount. This will create the single unified login and should allow you to access hu.wikibooks. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 08:26, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Fortunately I can use my old username on hu.wikibooks.org as well. -- Harp (discuss • contribs) 12:30, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

A category for reference (“man”) pages?
I’m planning to author some reference pages (also known as man pages, as typically found on Unix-like systems), and given that those often follow certain specific layout, I wonder if it makes a sense to create a dedicated (non-subject) category for them?

My intent is to document the toolkit I currently use for my ISbot activities. I’m going to start with the reference pages (named as subpages to a new book) for the tools and libraries I use, hopefully to be followed by some “proper” narrative sections. (I’d like to split a proper reference page from my Indexing Web with Head-r at some point just as well.)

Anything else to consider?

TIA.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 07:36, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Changes to the default site typography coming soon
This week, the typography on Wikimedia sites will be updated for all readers and editors who use the default "Vector" skin. This change will involve new serif fonts for some headings, small tweaks to body content fonts, text size, text color, and spacing between elements. The schedule is:


 * April 1st: non-Wikipedia projects will see this change live
 * April 3rd: Wikipedias will see this change live

This change is very similar to the "Typography Update" Beta Feature that has been available on Wikimedia projects since November 2013. After several rounds of testing and with feedback from the community, this Beta Feature will be disabled and successful aspects enabled in the default site appearance. Users who are logged in may still choose to use another skin, or alter their personal CSS, if they prefer a different appearance. Local common CSS styles will also apply as normal, for issues with local styles and scripts that impact all users.

For more information:
 * Summary of changes and FAQ
 * Discussion page for feedback or questions
 * Post on blog.wikimedia.org

-- Steven Walling (Product Manager) on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation's User Experience Design team

—Preceding unsigned comment added by MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 23:04, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Hello! & Is Darwinbots trivial?
Hello! I am XndrK, here from Wikipedia, and I am genuinely interested in helping. (Wikipedia seems to have enough, frankly, though I do some copy editing there.)

Would an introduction to Darwinbots be too trivial, or is it actually something to be discussed? --XndrK (discuss • contribs) 21:39, 6 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi. Don't really know much about that subject and the Wikipedia article has been deleted.  However, the description in the deletion reasons sounds interesting.  Feel free to start creating a book if you feel that it would be of interest to others!--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Estonia.svg|15px]]talk 00:37, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If there isn't enough material for a book, a natural next question would be whether one could broaden the topic and arrive at a suitable book topic that would include it. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:08, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Snakes of Europe, 'new book under development'
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Snakes_of_Europe

Import of a public domain text, from archive.org, rebuild formatting of 'academic stuff'; ie.see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Snakes_of_Europe/Habits, this should be fully legible, but it is not now formatted for printing.

Import all species info from Wikipedia, with photos and ID tips. ie. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Snakes_of_Europe/Species/Typhlops_vermicularis

Here we have a new 'field guide', info book, or academic refence text. Then we can work on updating the academic work of Boulenger

Please add Snakes of Europe *note I dont use the prefix The, to differentiate from the original work* to your catalog and index pages
Herper.gr (discuss • contribs) 12:10, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Good title for a book on a Perl (CPAN) package?
I’m working towards a possible release of my command-line MediaWiki tools, and given that there are also other such tools which I may also decide to document at some later point, I’ve decided to broaden the topic a bit, and tentatively entitled it Command-line MediaWiki tools.

Now, however, these tools rely on the yet to be released MediaWiki::API2 CPAN package, which I wish to document on Wikibooks just as well. The difference is that, however, I have no plans on documenting any other similar packages for Perl (especially given that they seem to already have a decent documentation on their own), and thus would prefer a wikibook dedicated to this particular package only. (At the least until someone else chooses to cover the others.)

The question is: what’d be a good title for such a book? Apparently, MediaWiki::API2 Perl module is not considered a valid title by the software, MediaWiki-API2 CPAN distribution looks a bit cryptic, and something like Interfacing MediaWiki with MediaWiki::API2 from Perl is probably way too verbose.

Any suggestions?

TIA.

— Ivan Shmakov (d ▞ c) 10:33, 30 March 2014 (UTC)