Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2019/May

Creating Book Pages
I am a new user and I am still not familiar with how to correctly create pages in a book. I received this as a comment: Pages should be created as a subpage - e.g,. "Book Name" and "Book Name/Chapter Name" and NOT as "Chapter Name".

It seems that the pages are fixed. Can I create /Chapter Name/ instead? Is this equivalent to Book Name/Chapter Name? --Rjbfigueroa (discuss • contribs)


 * No. If you create a page "Chapter Name", it ends up as a new book named "Chapter Name". If you create a page as "/Chapter Name/" it still ends up as a new book named "Chapter Name", but I suspect that the page you're actually working on will end up being named "" as a subpage of the book "Chapter Name", If you create it as "Book Name/Chapter Name" then it is a page in the book "Book Name". Basically, the slash is used as a way to show what this page belongs to. Chazz (talk) 22:52, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Template / style help
Asked this over in admin and got no response...

The Muggles' Guide book chapter pages make use of a template Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Book/Page which is intended to show the page / chapter before and after the current chapter as links, which it does quite handily... but in the process, it overlays this forward / back text on top of the breadcrumbs, making it difficult to get back up one level to the book, or two or three levels to the project page. The issue is with all the book chapter pages, has to do with a template used on all of them. Example: Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Deathly Hallows/Chapter 5. The template is used like this: The text that the template puts up overlays the breadcrumb link that allows the user to step up a level to the book overview page.

The book template, as used in Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter/Books/Order of the Phoenix, seems to also have a problem - possibly an unclosed style tag - because while it exhibits the same overlaying of the breadcrumbs, the text that is affected, and that vanishes if the breadcrumbs happen to win the race, is the entire list of chapters. And that list is also coming up in a smaller than usual font...

I've looked at the templates for these myself, but they in turn seem to depend on other templates, and I'm not prepared to go down that rabbit hole at the moment... are there any brave scriptmongers willing to take a look at this? Chazz (talk) 22:57, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Talk pages consultation: Phase 2
The Wikimedia Foundation is currently conducting a global consultation about communication. The goal is to bring Wikimedians and wiki-minded people together to improve tools for communication.

Phase 1 of the consultation is over – thank you to everyone who participated! – and we've published the Phase 1 report. The report summarizes what people have said and what we've learned, proposes a direction for the project, and asks specific questions to explore in Phase 2.

Very briefly, the proposed direction is that wikitext talk pages should be improved, and not replaced. We propose building a new design on top of talk pages that changes the page's default appearance, and offers key tools like replying, indenting and signing posts. To keep consistency with existing tools, the new design will be a default experience that existing users can opt out of. We also propose building features that experienced contributors want, including the ability to watchlist a single discussion, and the ability to move, archive and search for threads. Building these features may require some loss of flexibility, or small-to-medium changes in wikitext conventions. The goal is to only make changes that directly enable functionality that users really want.

You can see more information and discussion about the proposed direction in the Phase 1 report, including the results of new user tests and some of the quotations from Phase 1 discussions that led to this proposal.

Now it's time to start Phase 2!

We have six questions to discuss in Phase 2, asking for reactions to the proposed direction, and pros and cons for specific changes that we could make.

You can help by hosting a discussion at your wiki. Here's what to do:
 * 1) First, sign up your group here.
 * 2) Next, create a page (or a section on a Village pump, or an e-mail thread – whatever is natural for your group) to collect information from other people in your group.
 * 3) Then start the conversation with the six questions listed in the Questions for Phase 2 section of the report.
 * 4) When the conversation is concluded, the host should write a summary of the discussion on the Phase 2 community discussion summaries page, and report what you learned from your group.  Please include links if the discussion is available to the public.

You can read more about the overall process on MediaWiki.org. If you have questions or ideas, you can leave feedback about the consultation process in the language you prefer.

Thank you! We're looking forward to talking with you. DannyH (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 17:46, 17 May 2019 (UTC)


 * It looks as if there's no actual overall discussion of substance of Phase 2 (only overall discussion of process). --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:19, 18 May 2019 (UTC)


 * : I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Where are you seeing discussion of process, rather than substance? -- DannyH (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 21:43, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Page information in mobile view
Hi, is there any direct way to reach page information when viewing a page in mobile view? Of course desktop view can activated; then the "Page information" link in the left margin is available. There should be a more direct path. Thanks, PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 16:27, 11 May 2019 (UTC)
 * You could activate "Page information" in desktop view and then switch back to mobile. I don't think there is a more direct way, however. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 08:40, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks Leaderboard, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 18:05, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Creating a book as a compilation of truncated Wikipedia pages
Hi, I am hoping to create some re-compile (and cut down) the content from existing Wikipedia pages to create an open educational resource (OER) for a course I teach. I've created two example pages: User:Cameronpiercy/Social_Loafing and User:Cameronpiercy/Nonverbal. I am a novice Wikipedia editor and have never used Wikibooks. The first question I have is (1) is it okay to create a Wikibook in this manner? The second question is (2) all of the links broke when I copied the page, is there an easy way to restore existing links to Wikipedia pages? As I read here Using_Wikibooks/Wikipedian_Primer I'm thinking Wikibooks may not be the best venue for this type of "mashup." Any advice? Cameronpiercy (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
 * This is not Wikipedia, and one of the differences is that we do not have lots of wikilinks that link to other books or to Wikipedia. You are strongly advised not to "repair" the links to Wikipedia but instead remove them. If you are copying material from Wikipedia you must observe the license requirements. That means you must link (in the edit summary) back to the permanent URL from where you copied it or, preferably, request the material is imported to Wikibooks at WB:RFI which enables the edit history to be maintained. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 15:28, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

How to import an existing book?
I want to import this book: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/criminalinvestigation/ ...in order to rewrite it to conform to US law. The existing book can be downloaded in a number of formats: EPUB Digital PDF Print PDF MOBI XHTML Pressbooks XML WordPress XML OpenDocument

What is the best/easiest way to import the book? I tried to paste in the XHTML, but this gave me an error message for entering too many links at once.Verklempt (discuss • contribs) 21:35, 25 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I see that book is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. I've heard some perplexing things about importing CC 4.0 material to projects that (like this one) are under CC 3.0.  Anyone know more?  QuiteUnusual? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:06, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't think we can accept 4.0 into 3.0, the licenses are incompatible with each other, according to WMF legal too. I think the only way is to ask for dual licensing which means releasing text under CC 3.0 and 4.0 concurrently.--Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 04:03, 26 May 2019 (UTC)
 * That checks with what I'd heard (alas): that individual projects within the sisterhood have considered going to 4.0, which they could because 4.0 subsumes 3.0, but then their 4.0 materials couldn't be imported to projects that were still using 3.0. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:18, 26 May 2019 (UTC)