Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2021/August

Wikibooks Policies and Guidelines
G'day Guys

For the last three years I have spent much of my spare time working on a Wikibook: https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_wireless_telegraphy_and_broadcasting_in_Australia The book now comprises thousands of subpages, with tens of thousands of transcribed articles and is a very comprehensive "one stop shop" for everything related to the topic. Until recently I was left largely in peace to develop the book, but now it is receiving unwanted scrutiny by other editors.

I really just want to get on with developing the book content, without having to spend a lot of time researching Wikibook policies and attempting to defend my style. But the changes being made by others are starting to get in the way of my content development, and while they seem to sit within Wikibook policies, they don't sit well with me.

Particular issues I am facing are as follows:

(1) INTERWIKI LINKS: I have developed over 500 individual potted biographies of persons with connection to the topic. A small percentage are sufficiently notable to have their own Wikipedia articles, but where I insert interWiki links, they are either declined by the editor or subsequently deleted. While I understand that Wikibooks has a policy/guideline that Wikibooks should essentially stand alone, I see no value in creating my own biography of the person, when a perfectly good biography already exists. Equally there is no value in importing the Wikipedia biography, because subsequent updates to the Wikipedia article (always a work in progress) will not be reflected in the Wikibook. Far, far better to simply allow an interWiki link to the Wikipedia article. In desperation I tried the Wikipedia template eg  (an ugly, ugly template), but even this has been bot-replaced by   which doesn't render at all. In general I don't understand this mindless guideline that a Wikibook should stand alone without links to other media, like a century old textbook. The vast majority of ebooks today are heavily populated with internal and external links and their richness is enhanced thereby.

(2) SAVING TEMPLATE TEXT IN COMMENTS: My memory is not what it used to be and I find it very useful to have comments at the start of each section such as  so that I can quickly cut & paste   for the next article transcription. A seasoned editor has been working through the Wikibook and progressively deleting all these aide-memoires. Yes, it will save a few megabyte of data to be downloaded, but I doubt this is an issue for any prospective reader of the Wikibook. If  could be added to the line of helps at the base of every editing page:   then I would have no need for the commented code at all, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. I have used the blockquote syntax several thousand times in the Wikibook, very important for me to have that code very handy for cut and paste.

(3) ABBREVIATING FULL URLs: My Wikibook style since inception has been to include the the full URL for each Wikibook section and page link, including the "b:" prefix so that it can be simply cut and pasted anywhere, including as references to Wikipedia articles. In the last few months, other editors have been extensively editing these URLs: Howden, Walter Francis Maxwell "Max" (only useful within the Wikibook) instead of History_of_wireless_telegraphy_and_broadcasting_in_Australia/Topical/Biographies/Walter_Francis_Maxwell_Howden (universally applicable) Certainly I accept that trimming the URLs saves a few megabytes, but for me the convenience and universality far outweighs the data savings.

Is there a compromise whereby I can continue developing an important reference book, or should I transfer the work to a Wikifarm and continue development there? Samuel.dellit (discuss • contribs) 23:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I would have to think about this more before I can give a direct recommendation for a solution. However I can think of a mitigation. I too have worked on a large book (Though not quite as large or developed as yours!), and while my style appears to fall more in line with the Wikibooks standard, I can certainly understand your frustration. Internal consistency is extremely important when editing such books, and I think that if you make it clear what the structure of the book is, it will be easier to allow other editors to work on it more harmoniously. As an example, try editing any page on the Wikibook Roman Culture, and a notice will be appended to the edit page letting editors know the local standards. This is also used by featured book Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter to enforce British spellings, as well as by Introduction to Latina and Latino Literature to enforce their category system. Help:Editnotices explains this feature more. I recommend encouraging editors to read History of wireless telegraphy and broadcasting in Australia/Editing first, and then making that page more accessible to first time editors. This makes it clear that the formatting in that book is different from the rest of Wikibooks, and if you explain your rationale as you've done here, I don't think there would be too much objection to this. --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 01:27, 6 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Just to note, I'm the "seasoned editor" named in point (2). And to clarify any doubts, I've been removing  from some subpages of the book as it is getting way to big. (See w:Wikipedia:Article_size) Some pages are super long and removing the html tags that were commented out can and will significantly reduce the page size. As a work-around, I've added   to MediaWiki:Edittools to aid  and not disrupt their contribution. As for point (3), it is important to understand that some readers might be using legacy browsers or are on mobile when reading the content. As such, having a page at a staggering 1,000,000 bytes will cause a lot of problems. A suggestion will be to split the pages into more subpages. Having a large page can also cause rendering issues such as those stated at w:Wikipedia:Template limits. --Minorax (discuss • contribs) 04:03, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Using Template:Graph:Chart
Is it possible to use w:Template:Graph:Chart on Wikibooks? --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 02:47, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (Aug 2 - Sept 1, 2021)
The call for candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee is now open. The full announcement is below. Xeno (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 14:31, 2 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Read in other languages

Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 1, 2021.

The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.

We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:


 * Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
 * Are ready to find compromises.
 * Focus on inclusion and diversity.
 * Have knowledge of community consultations.
 * Have intercultural communication experience.
 * Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
 * Have experience negotiating with different parties.

The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030@undefinedwikimedia.org with questions.

Request for comment notification
Here is a link to a RFC on Meta concerning all Wikimedia projects. Lionel Scheepmans (discuss • contribs) 23:13, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Problem adding citation template on la.wikibooks
I have been adding the citation template to la.wikibooks, which required:
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1/Date_validation
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers
 * la:Module:Citation/CS1/COinS

I have simply copy pasted these across from en.Wikipedia, but have hit the following error seen on this page: Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers at line 1594: bad argument #1 to 'ipairs' (table expected, got nil). Can anyone help me find what I have done wrong, or where else to go to get help? --JimKillock (discuss • contribs) 09:31, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Re-direction of edit notifications
Hello. I created two wiki-books, catalogues actually, which require a lot of updating. Because of age I have passed responsibility for one of these catalogues to a colleague.

Wikibooks sends me email notifications whenever someone makes an edit to these catalogues. How do I have these notifications (for the one catalogue) re-directed to my replacement? Thank you.

Rick Stambaugh --https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User:Rickstambaugh 17:05, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I think they would need to watch all of the relevant pages, and check their user email preferences in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-echo ? Maybe someone has a better way to help tho, for instance a bot that can let all the pages under a particular page be placed on a watchlist en masse? --JimKillock (discuss • contribs) 19:22, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you Jim. En masse would be better since there are thousands of pages. Rick Rickstambaugh (discuss • contribs) 20:12, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Do we Translate Books?
Hi, I'm new here! I'm currently reading the Using Wikibooks book, and I was wondering if English books on Wikibooks are being translated to other languages. I'm fluent in Spanish and Catalan as well as English and thought I could help out if so. Thanks for your time! Qucchia (discuss • contribs) 13:58, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm sure you could do this, that is very much the point of open content - it allows this to take place without permission. Nevertheless you may find content would diverge over time, either as the original got further updated, or the translation did? --JimKillock (discuss • contribs) 19:24, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Is it worth making a Team Fortress 2 strategy guide?
Hello! I'm new to Wikibooks, but after seeing that video game strategy guides are allowed, I would be happy to make one. I was thinking about making one for Team Fortress 2. However, I read from the help section that a book shouldn't be redundant, and this makes me wonder if I should make one now. This is because of the Official Team Fortress 2 Wiki existing. It has a strategy section for each class, each mode and even each map, not to mention all the articles about hats, lore and more. On the other hand, it is a wiki and not a book, so perhaps it would be useful to put all the strategies in book form? Additionally, if I read its Terms of Use correctly (its possible that I didn't, English isn't my first language), the pages in there aren't Creative Commons or anything like that, so having similar info be actually free could be useful too. Should I make the guide or maybe do something else?--Maksutheam (discuss • contribs) 15:56, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Hello, sorry for the delay! I think that would be wonderful if that's something you would like to do! I believe the redundancy thing applies mostly to Wikibooks internally, since most of the books on wikibooks cover subjects which are also covered by other books. --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 16:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)