Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2018/September

Help needed
Hello! I am a newbie here.I want to know practically what and how and in what way editing Wikipedia pages is fine.I have read many links regarding Vandalism,Properly,False...,etc.etc..but,how does it practically works I am not getting. Also,I got a note from few of them that am making mistakes.I want to improve my mistakes.I do not want to mislead anyone here. I have made just few edits.I need help in practically editing articles.Need guidance.
 * I invite you to read Using Wikibooks. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 20:13, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Read-only mode for up to an hour on 12 September and 10 October
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The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its secondary data centre. This will make sure that 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 do a planned test. This test will show if they can reliably switch from one data centre 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 secondary data center on Wednesday, 12 September 2018. On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop when we switch. 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 up to an hour on Wednesday, 12 September and Wednesday, 10 October. The test will start at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT, 23:00 JST, and in New Zealand at 02:00 NZST on Thursday 13 September and Thursday 11 October).
 * 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:


 * Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped. 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.
 * There will be code freezes for the weeks of 10 September 2018 and 8 October 2018. Non-essential code deployments will not happen.

This project may be postponed if necessary. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. Any changes will be announced in the schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. / User:Johan(WMF) (talk) 13:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Print.css hides the TOC
Since [//en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Print.css&diff=prev&oldid=1975490 2010] we hide the table of contents into the print versions. However in the printed paper books, the tradition is to publish it, and I think it wouldn't hurt here.

For example we can compare the followings: JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 18:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * [[Media:Git-en.pdf]]: without TOC.
 * [[Media:Git-fr.pdf]]: with TOC.


 * I've never been much involved in print-version stuff, but wonder if anyone else who was involved at the time can shed light on why it was done. Darklama who made that edit appears to have had no wikimedia activity since 2014; but Adrignola, who was the other primarily involved in setting up the page, is still extant on the sisterhood as of this year. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:03, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't mind either, though I should note that the TOC for a print book can become very large and itself occupy many pages. Also the main purpose of a TOC isn't served; there is no page numbers for which a user can go to (and the titles itself aren't even clickable), so in the end it serves no purpose. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 20:11, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * This seems an awkward in-between sort of thing. Most books here have a table of contents built into the content, but most of those are on the book main page which afaik is not usually included in the print version. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:40, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

The GFDL license on Commons
This has been posted here because your wiki allows local file uploads. .

Commons will no longer allow uploads of photos, paintings, drawings, audio and video that use the GFDL license and no other license. This starts after 14 October. Textbooks, manuals and logos, diagrams and screenshots from GFDL software manuals that only use the GFDL license are still allowed. Files licensed with both GFDL and an accepted license like Creative Commons BY-SA are still allowed.

There is no time limit to move files from other projects to Commons. The licensing date is all that counts. It doesn't matter when the file was uploaded or created. Every wiki that allows local uploads should check if bots, scripts and templates that are used to move files to Commons need to be updated. Also update your local policy documentation if needed.

The decision to allow files that only have a GFDL license, or not allow them, is a decision all wikis can make for themselves. Your wiki can decide to continue allowing the files that Commons will no longer allow after 14 October. If your wiki decides to continue to allow files after 14 October that Commons will no longer allow those files should not be moved to Commons. — Alexis Jazz, distributed by Johan using MassMessage

18:11, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Clean up on Talk:Drugs:Fact_and_Fiction
I've proposed a clean up on Drugs:Fact and Fiction. It's been up since 9/10/2018. I already know because of how much I want to clear away, this would be a controversial action. Rather than just simply be bold and do it, I left a detailed message of what I want to remove and why. I'd plan to start cleaning if there were no objections as of today, however, since only myself and Leaderboard had commented, I thought it wise to hold off and see if we can get more comments on this topic. Feel free to comment over here. I've tried to avoid TL:DR by breaking my list into separate sections, rather than create one large list. Necromonger Wekeepwhatwekill 14:22, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Can I create a Wikipedia- style project page on Wikibooks?
Hi there. I'm currently supporting a large university cohort practice editing and then composing their own book on Wikibooks. I was wondering if there was a way to create Wikipedia style project pages on Wikibooks for them to use in their practice period before commencing on the book- or would the only way to organise this would be to create a Wikipedia Project Page referring to their book? Many thanks!


 * Hannah Evans (WMUK) (discuss • contribs) 10:31, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi, If I'm getting you correctly, practice editing sounds like the user's personal sandbox, which could be used instead. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 10:44, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. The course is now commencing, with the students creating their Wikibook throughout the next few months. They will be using a series of joint sandboxes spaces to practice editing. Thank you for the suggestion. Hannah Evans (WMUK) (discuss • contribs) 16:20, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Copyright rules about adding a book that will later be commercialized
Hello

Thank you for your work. My names is Tomas, a math instructor, and I just want to make sure I understand the copyright rules for wikibooks. My partners and I are writing an ODEs (ordinary diffential equations) math textbook aimed for commercial use.

However, I feel bad that there is no ODEs wikibook, so I started adding content to: Ordinary Differential Equations

Do you think it is possible to keep adding content and later on publish our textbook? The plan is to add a lot of the foundational material in the wikibook and the more exotic stuff in the textbook.

According to Requesting copyright permission

"The main legal issue that is important to explain to potential contributors: they would be agreeing that their material can be used freely by Wikibooks AND its downstream users, and that such use might include commercial use, for which the contributor is not entitled to royalties or compensation. "

we are allowed to use wikibook content for commercial use as long as we make a reference of the Wikibook authors.

Is that correct or did we miss something? Thank you and have a great day, Tomas — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkojar (talk • contribs) 01:54, 26 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Please let me know, if I should post this elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 02:00, 26 September 2018 (talk • contribs) Tkojar (UTC)
 * This is a perfectly good place to ask... --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:21, 26 September 2018 (UTC)


 * You are correct. There are many books that have been published this way. For example, "Lucid Dreaming Wikibooks Wikipedia published", which you can find on Amazon. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Can you give me examples of textbooks that started as wikibooks and got published by major companies such as Pearson or Springer? So I am guessing there are no or few wikibooks that got published by such companies, but maybe they accepted rewrites and enhanced versions.
 * I don't have any such examples, although they may exist. I think it is likely a question of degree - I see many books that incorporate material from Commons or Wikipedia (e.g., a diagram or paragraph of text) with a citation using "by Wikipedia authors" (which is not sufficient). You have to question whether a major company would publish a book where all the content was already freely available under a copyleft license. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)