Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2015/February

How do you find and use a template?
Hello, I would like to find out how to make a Wikipage look nice by using a template and how to add it into the edit box! Thank you Vikitheaustrian (discuss • contribs) 17:55, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Vikitheaustrian. I moved your request from the talk page into the main page.

Now, as for your question , it's easy.
 * 1) Open the Templates page(or search for Templates) and find the template that you want. I assume that you'll be looking at the Content section.
 * 2) On the template(main) page, in the Markup(or on the template section if you've clicked the template already) , there will be something looking like this with the right hand side(Display) or the template itself showing what it does. Copy that wikitext into the Editor box. It'll look something like this -   .
 * 3) Click the template itself on the other page and read any instructions that may apply to the template.

If you have any queries, do not hesitate to ask. Thanks, --Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:07, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Does it fit Wikibook?
Hi, I wish to create a manual of the climbing locations in Portugal and I'm not sure if it fits Wikibooks. It should be a description of the different climbing locations with diagrams explaining the climbing routes that are included in each location and how to get there. Initially I though on Wiki-voyage, but it seems as too specific for that project, and usually some of this information in more popular destinations around the world are found in a book format.

An example of a diagram that shows routes 22 through 35 with respective difficulty is shown below. Accompanying each diagram should be: the name of the route, the person that equipped it, length.



Each location should have a section with the history of it and relevant information. --Shil88 (discuss • contribs) 17:26, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes that seems to fit here. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:19, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Introducing myself
Hi, I'm Leaderboard and I currently edit on some computing books , such as http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Assemble_A_Desktop_PC and Basic Computing Using Windows


 * Hello Leaderboard, welcome to Wikibooks! Make sure to insert the pencil with cursive icon above the editing space after your comments, thanks! --atcovi (talk) 01:15, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

introducing my self
hallo I'm working on developing and creating pages on Wikipedia and wikibooks such as German [//en.wikibooks.org/wiki/German] hope to be your friend. Junge schuler062 (discuss • contribs) 09:36, 3 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Hey Junge schuler, welcome to Wikibooks and thanks for your recent edits! And I'd be more than happy to be your friend :) --atcovi (talk) 01:13, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Introducing myself
I am allixpeeke (discuss • contribs) 13:06, 28 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Welcome Allixpeeke, welcome to Wikibooks :) --atcovi (talk) 01:17, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Signature
Hi, I am new to Wikibooks and so far my four tildes have been working to show my user name and time stamp on anything I do however the last few times iv done 81.103.29.132 (discuss) 15:07, 18 February 2015 (UTC) < see exmaple, it is coming up with a code and not my username so now my colleagues and lecturer don't know who I am when I am adding things to our page, does anyone know what I could do to fix this? Thanks
 * Yes, you need to login to your account using the "Login" button at the top of the screen. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 15:26, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi,thanks for your reply. Yes I'm constantly logged in. JordanFerguson93 (discuss • contribs) 15:59, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it makes a difference but it seems to be working on my phone but not my laptop JordanFerguson93 (discuss • contribs) 16:00, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * You misunderstand me. If your signature is showing up as an IP address then you are NOT logged in. Therefore your statement that you are "constantly logged in" is incorrect. It isn't working on your laptop because you aren't logged in on your laptop. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 16:13, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi,thanks for your help that's it back to normal now, accidentally I was logged in on another tab and not the one I was using. JordanFerguson93 (discuss • contribs) 17:29, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Difficulty warning users using the warn tool
Have a look at this photograph:- —Preceding unsigned comment added by Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:05, 29 December 2014
 * 1) If I try to warn a user using the sidebar, it warns the user using a default template which is mostly not suitable for the current purpose.
 * 2) If I try to warn a user using the dropdown menu, it does not work properly. Clicking Submit has no effect , and there is no dropdown for Vandalism and Spam.
 * Any progress on this issue? I've waited quite some time and it still occurs.--Leaderboard 13:56, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Back when I did not have reviewer rights, I had Twinkle here. It didn't work at all, when I tried to rollback something it didn't work. I'd also like to know why Twinkle does not work properly on Wikibooks. --atcovi (talk) 14:01, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Meh, no idea why. The serious problem with Twinkle is that it does not work with Internet Explorer.

Still, any progress on this issue? Without this, I'll have to go all the way to the Templates page.--Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:40, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a Twinkle issue I believe, so I doubt anybody here can help. The side menu scripts are maintained locally but Twinkle is developed by its own team. Way back somebody may have localised it for Wikibooks but they aren't around maintaining it anymore. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 12:23, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Once my dialog tools are working here (yes, that's rather more than a couple of days away), it should be possible to construct this sort of thing directly on-wiki, so we can roll our own and won't have to depend for it on Twinkle. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:29, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #1—2015
Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on VisualEditor's appearance, the coming Citoid reference service, and support for languages with complex input requirements. Status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. You can help identify these requirements. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins.

Due to some breaking changes in MobileFrontend and VisualEditor, VisualEditor was not working correctly on the mobile site for a couple of days in early January. The teams apologize for the problem.

Recent improvements
The new design for VisualEditor aligns with MediaWiki's Front-End Standards as led by the Design team. Several new versions of the OOjs UI library have also been released, and these also affect the appearance of VisualEditor and other MediaWiki software extensions. Most changes were minor, like changing the text size and the amount of white space in some windows. Buttons are consistently color-coded to indicate whether the action: The TemplateData editor has been completely re-written to use a different design based on the same OOjs UI system as VisualEditor. (T67815, T73746.) This change fixed a couple of existing bugs and improved usability. (T73077, T73078.)
 * starts a new task, like opening the dialog: blue ,
 * takes a constructive action, like inserting a citation: green ,
 * might remove or lose your work, like removing a link:  red,  or
 * is neutral, like opening a link in a new browser window:  gray.

Search and replace in long documents is now faster. It does not highlight every occurrence if there are more than 100 on-screen at once.(T78234.)

Editors at the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedia requested the ability to use VisualEditor in the "Article Incubator" or drafts namespace. (T86688, T87027.) If your community would like VisualEditor enabled on another namespace on your wiki, then you can file a request in Phabricator. Please include a link to a community discussion about the requested change.

Looking ahead
The Editing team will soon add auto-fill features for citations. The Citoid service takes a URL or DOI for a reliable source, and returns a pre-filled, pre-formatted bibliographic citation. After creating it, you will be able to change or add information to the citation, in the same way that you edit any other pre-existing citation in VisualEditor. Support for ISBNs, PMIDs, and other identifiers is planned. Later, editors will be able to contribute to the Citoid service's definitions for each website, to improve precision and reduce the need for manual corrections.

We will need editors to help test the new design of the special character inserter, especially if you speak Welsh, Breton, or another language that uses diacritics or special characters extensively. The new version should be available for testing next week. Please contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF) if you would like to be notified when the new version is available. After the special character tool is completed, VisualEditor will be deployed to all users at Phase 5 Wikipedias. This will affect about 50 mid-size and smaller Wikipedias, including Afrikaans, Azerbaijani, Breton, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Mongolian, Tatar, and Welsh. The date for this change has not been determined.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Please help complete translations of the user guide for users who speak your language.
 * Join the weekly bug triage meetings beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC); information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins, and you can also contact James F. to learn more about this initiative.
 * Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Thursday, 19 February 2015 at 19:00 UTC.
 * Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready.  Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF) 18:30, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor News #10—2014
 Did you know? Basic table editing is now available in VisualEditor. You can add and remove rows and columns from tables at the click of a button.

The user guide has more information about how to use VisualEditor.

Since the last newsletter, the Editing Team has fixed many bugs and worked on table editing and performance. Their weekly status reports are posted on mediawiki.org. Upcoming plans are posted at the VisualEditor roadmap.

VisualEditor was deployed to several hundred remaining wikis as an opt-in beta feature at the end of November, except for most Wiktionaries (which depend heavily upon templates) and all Wikisources (which await integration with ProofreadPage).

Recent improvements
Basic support for editing tables is now available. You can add and delete tables, add and remove rows and columns, set or remove a caption for a table, and merge cells together. To change the contents of a cell, double-click inside it. More features will be added in the coming months. In addition, VisualEditor now ignores broken, invalid  and   elements, instead of trying to repair them.

You can now use find and replace in VisualEditor, reachable through the tool menu or by pressing +  or  +.

You can now create and edit simple  paragraphs for quoting and indenting content. This changes a "" into a "".

Some new keyboard sequences can be used to format content. At the start of the line, typing " " will make the line a bullet list; " " or " " will make it a numbered list; " " will make it a section heading; " " will make it a blockquote. If you didn't mean to use these tools, you can press undo to undo the formatting change.

There are also two other keyboard sequences: " " for opening the link tool, and " " for opening the template tool, to help experienced editors. The existing standard keyboard shortcuts, like +  to open the link editor, still work.

If you add a category that has been redirected, then VisualEditor now adds its target. Categories without description pages show up as red.

You can again create and edit galleries as wikitext code.

Looking ahead
The current VisualEditor design will be replaced with a new theme designed by the User Experience group. The new theme will be visible for desktop systems at mediawiki.org in late December and on other sites in early January. (You can see a developer preview of the old "Apex" theme and the new "MediaWiki" one which will replace it.)

The Editing team plans to add auto-fill features for citations in January.

Planned changes to the media search dialog will make choosing between possible images easier.

Let's work together

 * Share your ideas and ask questions at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.
 * Translations of the user guide for most languages are outdated. Only Ukrainian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Dutch translations are nearly current. Please help complete the current translations for users who speak your language.
 * Talk to the Editing team during the office hours via IRC. The next session is on Wednesday, 7 January 2015 at 22:00 UTC.
 * File requests for language-appropriate "" and "" icons for the character formatting menu in Phabricator.
 * The design research team wants to see how real editors work. Please sign up for their research program.
 * If you would like to help with translations of this newsletter, please subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Subscribe or unsubscribe at Meta. Thank you!

— Elitre (WMF) 18:59, 26 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's so sad to see this sort of thing being designed and implemented by folks who are intrinsically unable to have insight into wiki-ness; there's no possibility that anything good can come of an organizational structure where those who create the software are insulated from direct understanding, and those with direct understanding are insulated from the development process (no "feedback" system can come within orders of magnitude of compensating for that organizational structure). It can only progressively poison the wiki movement.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 20:36, 26 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I just want to say that I actually like VisualEditor. It makes editing Wikibooks far more enjoyable for me. Honestly, I don't quite get the widespread anger over it. If you don't like it, just turn it off! (I know of no plans to make VE mandatory; if you know differently, please let me know.) Elitre, keep up the good work! SupremeUmanu (discuss • contribs) 22:52, 3 January 2015 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor is confusing to me. It makes it complicated to insert templates. --atcovi (talk) 00:48, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Epub
Is there a reason that Wikibooks doesn't offer Epub downloads, when Wikisource and Wikivoyage do? Pigsonthewing (discuss • contribs) 14:22, 14 February 2015 (UTC)


 * As the first likely explanation that comes to mind, how about "nobody's made it happen"? One could imagine more technical explanations, but Occam's razor doesn't favor doing so.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:39, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * OK, how do we make it happen? Pigsonthewing (discuss • contribs) 21:24, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikisource is implemented via a Labs hosted tool - it isn't part of the MediaWiki software. The tool only supports Wikisource by default. The easiest route would be to request a Wikibooks version from the tool owner or get someone who can code to clone it (it's open source). It's maintained by Tpt. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 08:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Raising awarness about Reviewing Pages
Hey all!

I'm just going to post that some people could try helping us with Special:PendingChanges. "Special:PendingChanges" is a tool which shows list of edits needing reviews/checked. I've already gotten through a lot of pages. Some of these pages date back to 9 months ago. Please make sure you're not blindly accepting changes, since we need people who have the reviewer rights to review these pages, if you find something confusing you, please post it here for the community to answer you.

Thanks. --atcovi (talk) 23:13, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Special:UnreviewedPages refers to pages that have never been reviewed. Special:PendingChanges is for those previously reviewed but with an edit awaiting approval. It is the latter that needs the focus. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:06, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes^ I'm pretty bad at explaining things usually tho. Thanks btw. --atcovi (talk) 12:52, 12 February 2015 (UTC)
 * If you find a page that needs to be reviewed, do not hesitate to contact any reviewer or admin.(or simply reply here).--Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 06:47, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Helping with pending changes, or with unreviewed pages, is similar to the sort of thing suggested by en.wn's rotating sitemessage &mdash; except that it would have to be suggested only to reviewers, and afaik atm that can't be determined without javascript. (I've wondered if we could put together a nontrivial list of suggestions for things to do, for a rotating sitenotice here spiritually akin to en.wn's &mdash; but, when we had a sitenotice a few months back that suggested contributing to the Featured Book discussions, it apparently didn't generate any activity there and one user objected strenuously because for some reason they couldn't dismiss the sitenotice so it was there all the time on every page view.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:23, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I've always found that Maintenance is a useful location for seeing what needs doing but it's a pity that we can't have targeted site notices which would be seen only by certain users such as a note about outstanding pages to be reviewed for reviewers and the site notice about the Steward elections only visible to those who qualify to vote. Over the past 6 months it seems thsast more people are reviewing  pages which have pending edits needing reviewed which is good.  The number of those which have never been reviewed is too big to even contemplate doing anything about.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_the_Isle_of_Mann.svg|15px]]talk 16:15, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Added Archive page for class projects
Hi ,

I've cleaned up the main class project and moved them to an archive page. This helps keep it clean(over 44 projects before, dating to 2007). --Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata is coming
Hi everyone :)

I am Wikidata's product manager. I wanted to reach out to you about Wikidata support for Wikibooks. Wikidata stores structured data for Wikimedia projects (and others). For example, things like the date of birth of a famous author or the height of a mountain are stored by Wikidata. We are giving access to this data for all Wikimedia projects step by step. It is now Wikibooks' turn. As a first step you will be able to maintain your interwiki links on Wikidata. This means you will no longer have to store them in the article text of each language. Instead they are stored just once on Wikidata together with all the other projects. (You will still be able to store them in the article text if you really want to but then they overwrite the links coming from Wikidata. Sometimes that is useful.) This first step should happen on February 24th. In the next step you will get access to all the other data on Wikidata. There is no ETA on that yet.

I am looking forward to having you join the Wikidata family! If you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. There is a special page for you on Wikidata that will hopefully help you and is a good place to ask questions: d:Wikidata:Wikibooks.

Cheers Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 19:41, 6 February 2015 (UTC)


 * See also: Reading room/Proposals.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata support for interwiki links is here
Hey everyone :)

(Sorry for writing in English. It'd be great if someone could translate where appropriate.)

As previously announced we have enabled interwiki links via Wikidata for Wikibooks last night. This means from now on you no longer have to maintain the links in the wikitext but can maintain them together with the links for Wikipedia, Commons, Wikivoyage, Wikisource, Wikinews and Wikiquote on Wikidata. You will still be able to keep them locally though if you want to. Local interwiki links will overwrite the ones from Wikidata. If you don't want any interwiki links from Wikidata on a particular page you can use the magic word.

You do not yet have access to the other data on Wikidata like the date of birth of an author. That will come in a future deployment. I will let you know when I have a date for it.

If you have any questions d:Wikidata:Wikibooks is a good first step. That is also a good place for any issues or bugs you encounter.

I'm very happy to welcome you all to Wikidata! I hope it will become a great help for Wikibooks.

Cheers Lydia -- Lydia Pintscher (WMDE) 07:58, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Did we even allow these guys to remove our interwiki links?
I know they told us that they'll be doing it, but did we actually tell them ok? Aren't we suppose to be reverting edits that remove our interwiki then? --72.84.233.224 (discuss) 20:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * To add on to what I said here^ Pi zero has even notified some of these users who remove our interwiki links about the discussion that is currently going on in the Proposal. Users like Ruzwig just seem to ignore this notification. What are we suppose to do? --atcovi (talk) 20:32, 26 February 2015 (UTC)


 * I am sysop in russian Wikibooks. Why my last edits is wrong? Oleg3280 (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Because there has been no agreement by the Wikibooks Community on allowing people to remove interwiki links. --atcovi (talk) 20:54, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Introducing myself
Hello to everyone, I am posting this as I saw a message on profile page to introduce myself. I am medical graduate from India ,currently pursuing PG in Radiology and also preparing for some more exams. I like to untangle the anything that i feel is too complicated to my liking and i good at it (at least that is what my colleagues have told me). Ever I started my med school preps, their were just way too many things to cram in my brain (which shrinks a little every day) , so i started to make jingles out the first alphabets. I will most likely be contributing a lot of my mnemonics to this site and messing with others, and if i ever manage to write a book , it will happen here at Wikibooks.
 * Welcome Randjo! Thanks for joining! Make sure to also add the pencil and cursive icon above the editing space after a comment, thanks! --atcovi (talk) 01:16, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi there I was hoping someone could tell me how to create a new chapter in a discussion page? Thanks. --Scottxit (discuss • contribs) 19:34, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi Scottxit. A talk page is made up of sections, subsections, etc.  To create a new section on a talk page, there should be a tab up at the top called "add topic" (if you're using vector skin).  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:03, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Pi zero! --Scottxit (discuss • contribs) 22:16, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Wikijunior:Asia
Hello everyone! I have started a new Wikijunior on Asia, which is Wikijunior:Asia. So far I've been trying to improve on the appearance rather than the actual content atm. Once I get ready with the appearance (which I'll specify is images), I'll get ready with the appearance. So far I've gotten the images, a short summary, and about 1/5 of the countries of Asia listed at this time. If anyone is interested in this wikibooks, feel free to start contributing since we're going to need them! Thanks. --atcovi (talk) 18:37, 22 February 2015 (UTC)