Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2016/April

Creating a new page for a book
Hello, I want to create a new page for a new book I am making. The book is about C# (in Hebrew) and when I try to create a new page by entering the URL with the name of the page that I want to create I keep being redirected to another book about C language. How can I go around it and create a new page? Also, how can I edit chapters pages?
 * This project is for books written in English. You can't write a book in Hebrew here. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:02, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
 * This is the Hebrew Wikibooks BTW: he.wikibooks.org --Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 11:42, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

A Wikibook towards a Nobel prize in literature
Aggrandisement set aside, if many authors come towards a common goal, a grand topic of high impact could be selected and a Wikibook could be authored by all of us, interested authors. The aim of such a Wikibook is to be of so high quality that it should get nominated to the Nobel prize in literature, as the first ever Wikibook to have done so! I am sure there is great talent in here. Comments welcome Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 05:01, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikibooks is for educational textbooks which I don't believe would be in scope for the Nobel Prize for Literature. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 13:47, 2 February 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether the concept behind every Wikibook meets the Nobel Prize for Literature criteria... What I'm absolutely positive about though, is that this project has such potential, it could certainly reach international recognition as a both rich and reliable source - becoming a primary reference; such as its sister. It's been running for many years now, but yet there is so much to work on... Cheers  --Vito Francisco 02:01, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Fashion Illustration book?
Recently I uploaded a turn of the century guide to sketching onto Wikisource s:Index:The_practical_sketcher;_a_complete_and_practical_method_of_sketching,_for_women's,_misses',_junior's,_children's_and_infant's_garments.djvu.

Is anyone here interested in i) Producing a metricated version. The 4 inch square "foundations" used in the book could reasonably be re-scaled to a 10cm one. ii) Updating the sizing for a modern figures?

The new version could be hosted here on Wikibooks or at Wikiversity.

I'm also looking for someone that would be willing to convert the diagrams in the original book into something that's practical for modern clipart, like SVG, EPS or Illustrator. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 12:28, 8 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello! I could help you out with formatting and book structuring... Also, I could give the diagrams a try  --Vito Francisco 00:30, 10 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks. In essence all that really needs doing is importing the text from Wikisource, It's a complete course by itself, but probably needs to be converted to a metric version. If you want to 'claim' it as a potential project feel free.

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 13:07, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

IEG grant submission for Wikimedia-powered e-books - feedback welcome
Hi everyone! I have just submitted an Individual Engagement Grant request to research how it would work if one would like to create e-books with mixed content from various Wikimedia projects together. The reason for requesting this grant is that I'm working on a book on Dutch digital arts, for which I'd like to do such a thing, and I want to work on a more 'universal' solution from the start. You can find the grant submission here. Feedback, questions, use cases, and of course endorsements are more than welcome there. Thanks! Spinster (discuss • contribs) 09:45, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Looking for a guardian angel
I am a biology professor and teach a general science class for Elementary Education majors that is aimed at helping them understand science better and also teach it more effectively. Our current textbook is out of date, and I have decided that as a class we will write a new book called Science: An Elementary Teacher's Guide. This is my second class Wikibooks project--the first was when we wrote the Human Physiology textbook, which became a featured Wikibook (sorry--I have since neglected it). That was many years (and a few jobs) ago, and I have forgotten much of the wiki editing process. We had a hero who really helped in that project, White Knight. I would love some guardian angels to help on this project too--all of the students are completely new to the idea of editing a wiki, and I will get a new batch of students each semester. I began this new job in January (2016), and we are starting this with only a few weeks left in the semester. We will lay the groundwork now, but most of the content creation will happen beginning with a new class in August.

I look forward to rejoining the community, and I would love any guidance or comments as we begin our project! ~Kevin Flattail (discuss • contribs) 13:54, 20 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello  - I would love to help you out with anything you need. As a start, I've done some categorization. Cheers. --Vito Francisco 14:58, 20 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Awesome! Thanks for stepping up so quickly! I get the impression that my students are pretty intimidated by the thought of contributing to a book, but I think they will get excited when they start to see what they can produce together. Our first step is going to be a chapter about astronomy. I look forward to working with, and learning from you (and others) ~Kevin Flattail (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Server switch 2016
The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas. This will make sure Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the new data center on Tuesday, 19 April. On Thursday, 21 April, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.


 * You will not be able to edit for approximately 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped. No non-essential code deployments will take place.
 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped.
 * There will be a code freeze for the week of 18 April.

This test was originally planned to take place on March 22. April 19th and 21st are the new dates. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposing the replacement of Math extension by SimpleMathJax
Hi, I have had difficulties with the \mathop operand which is not working and I wonder why the Math extension is not yet replaced by the SimpleMathJax extension (which really simplifies our lives, suppressing texvc, png /images/maths directories etc). Some old browsers could not display the formula but how many are they today? The following code

should render (and is rendering with SimpleMathJax) as

$$\iiint\limits_{\Pi-\varpi} u(y){\partial a(y) \over \partial y_i}\,\mathrm{d} y_i$$

but is rendering with the current Math extension as:

$$\iiint\nolimits_{\Pi-\varpi} u(y){\partial a(y) \over \partial y_i}\,\mathrm{d} y_i$$

or (with the exact above code):

$$\mathop{\int\!\!\!\int\!\!\!\int}_{\Pi-\varpi} u(y){\partial a(y) \over \partial y_i}\,\mathrm{d} y_i$$

The mathop is supposed here to make the triple integral a math operator and to center the limit under the sign. And it doesn't work. For the first two formulas, I used respectively the \limits and \nolimits of the \iiint amsmath macro. The current non working mathop makes the last display similar to the default \nolimits. I think that any attribute of the math markup doesn't work with integrals using the Math extension (and are most of time inappropriate).

--Nbrouard (discuss • contribs) 09:17, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Policy-based Resilience Simulator with OMNeT++
I had published a guide to compile Policy-based Resilience Simulator with OMNeT++ (you can see it here: https://jessepf.wordpress.com/policy-based-resilience-simulator/ ). Initially published in 2013, it has moved homes several times, and has been verified by original authors of couple of its components. Actually now I am planning to delete it from the blog, and fact that I have been contacted by couple of people in past who had found the article useful, I'm willing to move it to Wikibooks, if someone can verify if it can be published here. It had some 2-3 visits everyday before I moved it to this blog, even more in it's first home.

I had posted it in #wikibook IRC channel and got a positive response from one user, who recommended me to bring it up for discussion here. The article is still valid, since ReaSE has not been updated since 2011 (and I vaguely remember author mentioning that it may not be).

Might need a bit of rewriting in terms of narration and wiki formatting, for which I'm ready to. Please do give me your suggestions, I will move ahead once I get a green signal from here! --Jessepfrancis (discuss • contribs) 13:46, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I have started "wikifying" it here--Jessepfrancis (discuss • contribs) 15:14, 28 April 2016 (UTC)