Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2017/October

Does this course belong here or in wikiversity?
Hi all, I wanted to start a permaculture course, that is a book summing the design knowledge of permaculture. I just don't know if it's best suited in wikibooks or wikiversity. It's a didactic material, it's in modules, I mean looks like it could go in both, could you please help me out in it? Seems to me like the two projects overlap quite a bit.

Thanks and have a nice day! Beleriandcrises (discuss • contribs) 08:42, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


 * A key difference is that Wikibooks does not allow primary research. It does sound as if you're describing a textbook, which ought to fit well here, textbooks being our particular focus; that's on the face of it, of course, since I do not specifically know the subject matter.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:44, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Hello, thanks for your answer. There are books on this topic and that's the format I was thinking of, so I will probably start setting it up here and then see how it evolves. If then it will be more fitting to wikiversity (because of original research, or for the usage of slides and media content beside images) I'll just move it, hoping that wouldn't cause any problem. Also thanks for your welcome in my talk page :) -- Beleriandcrises (discuss • contribs) 11:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Authorship policy on Wikibooks
Authorships policy is one of the biggest problems in all Wikibooks projects. In Persian Wikibooks a survey is conducted for that but it's stale with no result. As the newbie said in "Wikibooks's author" section my question is that "what is the policy on Wikibooks about writing a Wikibooks's author name?"I think a policy or guideline is needed. --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 12:00, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks are collaborative. Anyone can edit.  If people want to sign their name on a list of authors, they're welcome to do so I suppose, but not doing so doesn't make a contributor any less an author from an intellectual property perspective.  I don't approve of presenting a book as the work of one person, as that only serves to make others feel unwelcome to contribute.  (I also have doubts about the whole "we don't have a policy, so we need one" trope.  Both halves are problematic:  the collaborative nature of the project is inherent, with its implications, and I'd have to reread all our key pages to satisfy myself as to just what we do and don't have in an explicit form; and if it doesn't appear explicitly, well, not everything has to be written out explicitly &mdash; Wikipedia has, amongst other problems, become an awful tangle of red tape, and we should aspire to avoid that fate.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:08, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There are votes in favor and against naming authors of Wikibooks. Wikibooks is different from Wikipedia in nature while both are collaborative. We can name the users who have more share in creating each Wikibook. --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Interestingly Ownership is yet a draft! --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 10:56, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * A lot of proposed policies and guidelines on en.wb have never been adopted. One of the things that has manifestly gone awry on en.wp is runaway bureaucratic red tape; perhaps that's why other sisters I've worked on have favored minimizing formal rules?  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:51, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Broadly custom and practice rules here. We are bound by the overarching policies and rules of the Wikimedia Foundation not least because it owns the servers hosting the content. For example, its mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally." That is one of the reasons we don't publish original fiction, or allow people to impose non-free licenses on their work, etc. Even if we wrote policies that did allow it, the WMF would likely override it should someone draw it to their attention. Similarly, in the values statement the WMF writes "except when required by applicable law, we do not remove information from the Wikimedia projects to satisfy private or government interests. We will never facilitate, enable or condone censorship of the Wikimedia projects." This would prevent us having a policy allowing ownership because it is effectively allowing a form of censorship by the owner of the book. Anyway, it is sufficient for me that we have a set of values to guide us and we make sensible collaborative decisions when issues arise rather than trying to write complex policies that allow people to try and lawyer-waffle around them. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 19:02, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Is it forbidden by WM to put my pen name at the end of Wikibooks written by me? --Doostdar (discuss • contribs) 08:27, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No, but equally signing your name in the content of a book is highly discouraged as it can dissuade other editors from contributing, gives the impression that you are claiming ownership and is subject to error when other people edit the book. For example, if I change a section of text that you have previously signed I would remove your signature as you are no longer the sole author. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:48, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
 * If someone did intend to host their own personally authored &mdash; non-collaborative &mdash; material on Wikibooks, that would be disallowed on grounds that Wikibooks is not a web host. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:41, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikibooks's author
Hello Everyone, I am newbie on wikibooks. So please don't mind. I want to know that what is the policy have on wikibooks about writing a wikibooks's author name. You can see both page European History and High School Mathematics Extensions. They both have author name. Is it right or not. Are there any policy on that. Thanks-Jayprakash12345 (discuss • contribs) 17:30, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Several of them have it. I personally think it's a bad idea. If you want, you can create a page like Book title/Contributors and move the content there. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:20, 9 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The issue is not settled. On one side, there are wikibookians who think that authorship is against a true spirit of cooperation. On the other side, we think that authorship gives a strong motivation to complete a wikibook and hence could help to make of Wikibooks a great pedagogical library. The issue is not only to sign a wikibook. Everyone agrees that an open list of names of contributors is authorized. But we disagree about the author's right to refuse unwanted modifications. I think that an author can claim such a right. But this issue is not a real problem. Noone never tried to modify my wikibooks against my will.
 * Welcome to Wikibooks. Remember it' a kind of anarchy. I hope you will enjoy it --TD (discuss • contribs) 16:58, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * TD (sorry to be blunt), your outspoken views on authorship &mdash; contradicting project policy &mdash; are admittedly authoritarian in character, but that does not make the project an anarchy. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:31, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Again you a mixing things. So far no one expressed any concerns about authorship in regards to cooperation. More it would be extremely futile to refute authorship and damaging to the project to object to rightful claims of it. Again no one has raised so far any issue on those points.
 * The communal objection is for auhorship granting any special administrative regards to the users on wikibooks. Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Authors are not simple contributors, there are legal and moral considerations involved on the distinction. Authors should not use a page named contributors if they not make there the distinction clear. Most of the negative regard people have to this is due to lack of knowledge and civility that is prone to create a mess of the process. That is why I think those pages should be administratively edit protected. Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I get the distinct impression this claim is BS. Please substantiate. 17:37, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * See author as I get the impression you lack the understanding what an author is and what differentiates it from other content contributor (there are contributors that even don't add content, so think also about that). In any case the most pressing distinction is about the legal rights that are attributed to author's (or those that pay for their creative work). This has implications on re-use of content, re-licensing etc and to the individual author, for instance, in capability to claim work done, to be proud to be associated with it, to sign it and demonstrate effort made understanding on a given subject. Panic (discuss • contribs) 09:18, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's rich. Yes, I know what an "author" is but in a collaborative environment, there is no distinction between an "author" and "another contributor". Who is the author of Abraham Lincoln? And again, I think these legal distinctions are sheer hokum. There are legal implications for moral rights in the EU--is that what you're talking about? If so, it's irrelevant as this is an American site. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Well I have no intention in having a fight over this so what I said stands. Consider that in my view your "understanding" of what an author is is incorrect, I'll go a bit more into the below as we are on the public forum, but this is it for now, as we don't have the common ground to continue.
 * As I stated somewhere on this discussion encyclopedic content is not copyrightable so there is no legal author (one that has rights and obligations) and I at least give accolades for those that really do the research and expansion work of content, and this recognition I have for work done is in levels of degree in regard to those efforts, even if ultimately it is all about the team, as in sports not all the players are equal in importance but ultimately its the group effort that wins. This of course can be translated to our projects Wikibooks is not a collection of articles (even if legally it may be considered a collection/aggregate), efforts here are more sub divided and require more and prolonged dedication, so individual action is not only legally more relevant (I have discussed the issue ad infinitum, form legal protection of the work to re-licensing there are a myriad of important benefits in claiming authorship) but morally, civil and ethical. Here on this project the sub-communities that do the different projects most of those do not even have an interest about Wikibooks or Wikimedia at all and see this as a public resource, a tool for public work.
 * To state that «there is no distinction between an "author" and "another contributor"» is a disservice to all those involved in the creative work, the harder part of the work we all benefit from. Of course we should recognize even the water boy (the bot that runs at nigh) and treat it as any one else on the team but ultimately everyone knows that his contribution is limited by function as many others. On wikibook there are water boys that do more work that many authors and should and are recognized for that in many ways. No dedicated people would have any objection in having other be recognized by their own work here. Panic (discuss • contribs) 11:29, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You said there's a legal distinction but cited no laws. That makes me think you are making up stuff. Of course, in a given page or book it's very possible that one person will do most of the writing and another will do virtually nothing original writing-wise but maybe some small formatting. You can call these "authors" and "collaborators" if you want but this is just an arbitrary distinction that you are making. Everyone who contributes to Wikibooks gets credited because page histories are preserved--I don't know what more anyone else needs. Why there has to be some prestige or an ability to veto certain edits is beyond me. I've definitely written things at Wikipedia that got deleted or revised and I wished they weren't but that's the price I pay to work on a collaborative research project. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:02, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Well as I said I'm done arguing with you as we don't share a common ground/definition of things we are speaking about, so there is really no point to it beyond preventing confusion on the public forum. Go read about what an author is and a bit about copyright laws to get the legal definition if you still don't understand the differences and implications in comparison with other types of editing. I cringe to think about what type of content contributions you have made to Wikimedia projects as you seem not to be able to understand the different licenses we use and their implications. That or you are just pulling my leg. Morally, ethical and by civility the distinction to me is self evident I can't even empathize with you when you bunch all work as having the same intrinsic characteristics and even the same merit. On my side I do not donate my work to Wikimedia, I license it to the public. I own, protect, am responsible and sign my work.
 * I gave examples that should show anyone in good faith that all edits aren't the same, even if I do agree that for the good of the projects and to promote participation we should only make it evident on the necessary legal side of things, without making any grand fanfare about the issue. This is important because many Wikimedia users are similar to yourself in their understanding of deeper requirements and implications. Not even considering problems with age etc...
 * Formatting, spelling and atheistical issues are made by "editors" there are many niches for them (Author editing, Copy editing and more) not to mention changes done by publishers etc none of this work is copyrightable and they certainly aren't authors.
 * Regarding the edit histories I could enter in more details but to any proficient Wikimedia contributor and for those that spend some time on wikimedia projects the reliability and certainty of the logging is problematic, even more when it does indeed bunch all sorts of edits together and people point to them as a roster of participation. It is what we have but its utility is more for administrative actions than anything else, it serves Wikipedia well but not WIkibooks and a few other Wikimedia projects.
 * Again Wikibooks is not Wikipedia, and status of authors and other contributors by the work done is also very distinct. Wikipedia doesn't have authors and most users are at the same level, its for the community to attribute quality and status and base the attribution of rights on the project based on those, I'm not a Wikipedian so I can't comment much on the fairness there, after a few revertions some years ago I only edit talk pages to point or ask stuff (so I can empathize with you there). On Wikibooks things are more insular, each project does indeed have a sub-community that is similar to how Wikipedia operates but in a very smaller scale and in general are abstracted from the rest of the project, any status if any is normally project specific and has very limited distinctions, authorship does not have any specific meaning in this context beyond the authors being the more active contributors and those that stay more consistently with projects (but should, even if not on the level proposed by User:Thierry Dugnolle). Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * The burden isn't on me to substantiate your claims that there is some legal distinction between an "author" and a "collaborator". How many kilobytes of a difference does the law say that someone needs to make to graduate to "author"? Laws in which jurisdictions? Again, you're not saying anything meaningful or substantial here. If you personally think there is a distinction, that's fine for you to propose as an idea. To claim that the law says something about this, offer nothing to back up this claim, and then demand that I just do the research is laughable and frankly asinine. The point that I have made and that you seem to miss is that while there certainly are individual edits which are very substantial and others which are more-or-less trivial, there are a lot of edits in between and that's why some distinction between the "primary author" and "secondary collaborators" is useless and will inevitably break down. The longer Wikibooks exist, the less and less that anything you personally have added will continue to be here, so 200 years from now calling you the "author" of the textbook on algebra is just ludicrous since what you did contribute will no longer be in the book itself. I honestly have no clue what the point is of a post that says, "As I said before, I'm done. Also, you do my research because I refuse to cite anything I say. Also, there are problems with edit histories but I will refuse to say what those are as well." What could possibly be the purpose of a post like this? —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:25, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I did not make any claim, I stated facts that you refused to accept as valid, some should be self evident even so I did go to the trouble of providing examples and link to pages that you could ascertain the validity of what I stated. Even our own license states that the right of attribution is reserved for those that did meaningful contributions, on wikibooks those would be project authors. In any case open any text book you have at home and you will see that the editor and even the publisher aren't included as authors, even a signed article on a newspaper will have only the reporter listed not the people that did the copy edit or the graphic montage.
 * Any legal consideration has only meaning on the location of the servers that host the projects, my understanding is that under US law (even with some specificity to the state) authorship is determined case by case but there are general rules (even by international protocol).  Panic (discuss • contribs) 18:06, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * "there are legal... considerations involved on the distinction" What legal considerations? Based on what law? In what jurisdiction? How are they relevant to anything here? If you're not answering these questions, then why are you even writing anything? And yes, a textbook from Houghton-Miflin will not list the editors as authors because they aren't written as wikis. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:12, 12 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I have responded above to all those questions (rights, licensing, San Francisco, California, USA), when you wrote «How many kilobytes of a difference does the law say that someone needs to make to graduate to "author"» it at least showed that you understood part of the difference and by participating here you should at least understand the license we work under. The wiki is only a tool it does not change the fabric of reality, it promotes more participation and immediate publication nothing else. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 03:20, 13 August 2017 (UTC)
 * No, you haven't. What laws? Name some court decision that relates to the collaborative nature of wikis and legal authorship. You release your work here under a CC license that says that anyone can reuse it in any way as long as he gives you credit--that doesn't have to be as a sole credited author. The standard way of crediting someone is with the footers that display in the print editions of these pages. If some books happen to have subpages of contributors, that's fine but anyone can delete or strip away or write over any of those pages at any time. Additionally, anyone can just undo and rewrite anything you write here making you no longer an "author" of any work. You would still be listed in the page history but in no meaningful (legal, moral) sense would you be the "author". —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:18, 13 August 2017 (UTC)


 * There was a few years ago a movement (I was told by a older wikibookian than I, so it may be eons ago) a movement to remove the authorship claims form the works but it failed to get communal consensus. Today several works even require a page to state the authors and their copyrights, for example any work that uses content from Wikipedia without a history importation, needs to attribute it.
 * Just check if your contributions are in fact copyrightable (in size and content in regards to the aggregate of the specific work you want to tag), take other authors' pages as example on how to do it and make clear that you are not a simple contributor, you are claiming rights and responsibility over your work (note also that by norm only the top authors may be named on a final publication in print if the list is too extensive). Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:34, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

You'd never guess this topic can be contentious, would you? (lol) Some books have a page for authors, some don't.  Since it's really easy to contribute to a book without adding one's name to that list, I've always felt uncomfortable about it; you certainly can't get complete information from it about who has contributed, and it gives me one more thing to worry about if I'm considering editing, whereas imho there should be no discouragements from contribution; but then again, maybe some people get more of a sense of community from putting their name on such a list. So, feel free to include, or not include, such a page. :-) -Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 18:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * When I wrote that Wikibooks is an anarchy, I thought it was a congratulation. I didn't want to be offensive. All I meant is that there are no chief. Everyone is free to speak her or his mind. Why are my views authoritarian in character ?--TD (discuss • contribs) 18:59, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I probably did take the term "anarchy" more negatively that necessary. Your concept of "owned" books has always seemed basically authoritarian to me, I'm afraid.  However, perhaps we can agree that, with one thing and another, this discussion has gone rather off track; Jayprakash12345 just asked about whether to include an authors page, I think, and really the answer is "whichever you feel more comfortable doing".  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:24, 10 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you for such an answer. It helps me to love life. (I'm drunk, hence I shouldn't publish, but I did) --TD (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

An author is someone who has contributed major sections to a book. Most books that have one author are usually maintained by that one author. However, if the new content is truthful, or it helps make the guide better, than it should be accepted no matter what. Only if the book is a subject not many people know does the author get to basically make the decisions of what to write. |Wikibooks=PokestarFan*Talk*Contributions|#default= PokestarFan*Talk*Contributions  }} 22:19, 10 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Not exactly that, authorship is ultimately a legal definition and the legal attributes of the creator(s) of a work. On Wikibooks even the most exclusive content is cared over by the community. I expect it to be very hard to find any significant content that hasn't been edited by more than 2-3 people at least.
 * Wikibooks is more than a guide or a collection of guides, the objective is to create educational textbooks it has distinct authorship requirements from most other project with the exception of Wikisournce. For example in WIkipedia it makes really no sense talking about authors as the content there is mostly not copyrightable (legal protection or rights).
 * Regarding control sadly you are incorrect, while most of the general Wikibooks community validates book specific sub-communities and lets them have most of the control over their creation, there are no rules of guidelines to prevent a cabal or a click of other wikibookians to form, even without intentional malice (the result will always be negative if outside communities interact too much in sub-community concerns) to derail any creative direction of that sub-community, even able to destroy productive sub-communities in the process. Panic (discuss • contribs) 09:18, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * PS: Note that while I defend authorship in general I have a strong dislike for the present copyright laws and how they are enforced. Panic (discuss • contribs) 09:22, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry for picking at this perhaps-healing scab, but the statement "in WIkipedia it makes really no sense talking about authors as the content there is mostly not copyrightable" is false. Wikipedia content is not only copyrightable, it is copyrighted. The facts presented in Wikipedia articles cannot be copyrighted, but the exact manner of their presentation is copyrighted under the Berne Convention (according to w:WP:COPY). Furthermore, the content at both Wikipedia and here at Wikibooks is licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL, which control matters of redistribution, modification, and attribution. We can have policies and guidelines here about "authorship" and the like, but they can't supersede the licenses we use. - dcljr (discuss • contribs) 22:02, 3 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I would say that the page history already lists the authors.--Jusjih (discuss • contribs) 21:10, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

File Types for Inclusion in Pages
Hi, Can somebody help with this please? Can Excel spreadsheets be included in our pages? Can other Office items? Thanks, Armchair (discuss • contribs) 16:18, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
 * No, but it could be converted: commons:Commons:Convert_tables_and_charts_to_wiki_code_or_image_files. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 17:50, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks,Armchair (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Advice on a new category about cultivation
I was thinking of creating some pages about plants cultivation, not in general but specifically for each plant. This project could become big, if there is a good response from people, so I would like to start it in a proper and scalable way from now.

Should I just create the pages at top level and then add them to the category, For example: Cultivation of Urtica dioica and add the plant cultivation category?

Or should I do as the cookbook does, so Cultivation:Urtica dioica, and then also add the category of course? Could you point me out using wikibooks best practices for doing so? Maybe something like the wikiprojects on wikipedia?

Thanks :) -- Beleriandcrises (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 8 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Here we create coherent books, rather than individual pages. What you're describing sounds like a book with modules for individual plants.  There would probably be some elements of the book that would be independent of any one plant, too; and/or, cross-reference to related books.  We have a book Horticulture, which belongs to Subject:Agriculture and husbandry. You may find useful material in our (featured!) book Using Wikibooks, which includes how to create new books.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:53, 8 October 2017 (UTC)