Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2015/May

Missing Book
I spent several hours, yesterday, creating and saving a book only to come back, today, and find it missing. How can I retrieve it?BuckyBlanPen (discuss • contribs) 16:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi, BuckyBlanPen. There isn't anything listed under contributions (nor under deleted contributions) for your registered account.  Were you logged into that account?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * There's nothing in the deletion log for anything that could be what you are talking about. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 12:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Funds Dissemination Committee elections 2015
''This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.''

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2015 elections for the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and FDC Ombudsperson. Questions and discussion with the candidates for the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) and FDC Ombudsperson will continue during the voting. Nominations for the Board of Trustees will be accepted until 23:59 UTC May 5.

The Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) makes recommendations about how to allocate Wikimedia movement funds to eligible entities. There are five positions on the committee being filled.

The FDC Ombudsperson receives complaints and feedback about the FDC process, investigates complaints at the request of the Board of Trustees, and summarizes the investigations and feedback for the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. One position is being filled.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 3 to 23:59 UTC May 10. Click here to vote. Questions and discussion with the candidates will continue during that time. '''Click here to ask the FDC candidates a question. Click here to ask the FDC Ombudsperson candidates a question.''' More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2015 FDC election page, the 2015 FDC Ombudsperson election page, and the 2015 Board election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee, -Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent) Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

''Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 03:45, 4 May 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help

I'm back...
Technically, I haven't really been inactive, but I'm back from my semi-retirement from the WB community, i.e. I'll contribute in discussions and recent changes reviewing again. Any updates I should know? Any new members I should meet, new policies I should know, etc.? (I do know about Atcovi's adminship since I got a notification when Pi zero linked to my userpage. Nifty new feature!) Kayau (talk · contribs) 06:54, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * It's a neat feature, isn't it? Just about the only time I can remember in my years here that an upgrade to the wiki software appeared unambiguously beneficial.  There's a template ping for invoking it, like this:
 * (As for recent developments, there's been trouble on the wikimedia-sisterhood-wide front, with the Foundation pursuing a lot of obviously or subtly centralizing measures that I see as the biggest current threat to the long-term future of the sisterhood; but that's a whole other can of worms.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:17, 3 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Would you mind linking to that? :) Kayau (talk · contribs) 09:50, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Well, for the single most obvious and prominent development, you might start with Meta:Letter to Wikimedia Foundation: Superprotect and Media Viewer. My observation about the overall situation is based on the trend of a number of recent developments/initiatives; off the top of my head, there's Scribunto, Wikidata, VisualEditor, MediaViewer, Flow.  There was, btw, an appalling statement by Jan-Bart (chair of the Foundation board of trustees), in the context of the superprotect business, that any members of the wikimedia community who don't approve of the Foundation's decisions should leave; that you can find in the archives of Lila Tretikov's user talk page at meta, Meta:User talk:LilaTretikov (WMF)/Archive 3.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:04, 4 May 2015 (UTC)
 * This does appear to be serious. The WMF seems to be acting like a government. The superprotect right has been demonstrated to be detrimental to wiki autonomy. I wonder how the WMF will react. Kayau (talk · contribs) 07:54, 6 May 2015 (UTC)
 * The interesting thing is that the WMF isn't really reacting. This all happened months ago, and the Foundation mostly ignored it, and nothing has really come of it since. Most people have either forgotten or never heard about it. There was an RfC on Meta where there was a lot of outrage and heated arguments, and some rather worrying comments from Foundation board member Ad Huikeshoven in which he called the RfC "annoying" and referred to the project websites as "internet real estate owned by the Wikimedia Foundation". However, the whole thing died out a while ago, with no conclusion reached and no action taken by anyone. I think this is because not enough people have heard about the issue or the RfC. I said as much on the RfC talk page, but nothing came of that either. Liam987  talk 20:10, 8 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think I agree that the whole thing died out. The WMF is doing some things that supposedly address the problem, and many in the community perceive them as same-old-same-old not addressing the problem.  The letter has (I recall being remarked) more signatories than have ever voted for a candidate in a board of trustees election, and it's still going after an unprecedented time.  People were quite vocal on Lila's talk page for a while, but that died down a lot after people got the impression nobody was really listening to what they said there; it doesn't follow that the sentiments went away, nor that things aren't happening on both sides.  A proposal has recently been made from someone on the community to get the board to vote on a resolution about global permissions.  The Foundation on one hand banned some users with no appeal possible and no explanation of why, and on the other hand Erik Möller has stepped down as deputy director.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:07, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't think I agree that the whole thing died out. The WMF is doing some things that supposedly address the problem, and many in the community perceive them as same-old-same-old not addressing the problem.  The letter has (I recall being remarked) more signatories than have ever voted for a candidate in a board of trustees election, and it's still going after an unprecedented time.  People were quite vocal on Lila's talk page for a while, but that died down a lot after people got the impression nobody was really listening to what they said there; it doesn't follow that the sentiments went away, nor that things aren't happening on both sides.  A proposal has recently been made from someone on the community to get the board to vote on a resolution about global permissions.  The Foundation on one hand banned some users with no appeal possible and no explanation of why, and on the other hand Erik Möller has stepped down as deputy director.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:07, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Language books
Hi! I have mostly been contributing (in the past as my alter ego Iarlagab) to the Dutch language book. At the time I concentrated mostly on properly explaining grammar and syntax, which is useful but it is also not enough to actually learn a language. That also takes vocabulary building and training in listening and speaking. A book, even an e-book, is not really ever enough: you need to be with mother tongue speakers to learn how to speak. But certainly book can be helpful in the process and e-books have advantages over hard copy books in that you can add things like sound files or you can make little exercises with a collapsed wikitable that contains the solution to make the reading a bit more interactive. Now that the Dutch wiktionary has generated thousands of sound files all uploaded to commons, I decided to come back here to try and make the book Dutch more interactive and have developed a number of tricks to do so.

However, I feel that many of the issues I am dealing with are of a general nature and are relevant to all language books. I may well be reinventing wheels here. Are there authors of other language wikibooks interested in any exchange of experience on this point? Do we have some sort of user group for that?

Jcwf (discuss • contribs) 17:41, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees elections 2015
''This is a message from the 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee. Translations are available.''

Voting has begun for eligible voters in the 2015 elections for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Questions and discussion with the candidates for the Board will continue during the voting.

The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees is the ultimate governing authority of the Wikimedia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation manages many diverse projects such as Wikipedia and Commons.

The voting phase lasts from 00:00 UTC May 17 to 23:59 UTC May 31. Click here to vote. More information on the candidates and the elections can be found on the 2015 Board election page on Meta-Wiki.

On behalf of the Elections Committee, -Gregory Varnum (User:Varnent) Volunteer Coordinator, 2015 Wikimedia Foundation Elections Committee

''Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 17:20, 17 May 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help