Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2021/February

A question about Shelf:Electronic games
In the description of the shelf it’s written: "Books on this shelf deal with electronic games: games that employ electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play. Video games are the most common form of electronic game today, and for this reason the terms are often mistakenly used synonymously. Books include information on the cultural significance of specific electronic games, and application of electronic games as learning and education tools. Games in a series should be part of the same book. Wikibooks is not for walkthroughs and strategy guides&mdash;use StrategyWiki instead." And in What_is_Wikibooks%23Wikibooks_is_not_for_video_game_strategy_guides, it’s written: "Wikibooks is not for video game strategy guides and walk-throughs. Walk-throughs and strategy guides for video games are not acceptable instructional materials for, and do not belong on Wikibooks. However, other books about video games, such as scholarly analysis of video games or guides on the design of video games, are allowed here.  One place for writing strategy guides is StrategyWiki." My question is: if I want to write a book about villagers in Minecraft or a Minecraft mod, am I allowed to? And if I want to write a book about the history of a Minecraft server (like it’s players, it’s bases, etc), am I allowed to? It’s written that games in the same series must be in the same book, but this also suggests that you can’t have more than one book about one game but some games have more thank enough information for several books and maybe even deserve their own shelf (in the future when there are several books of course). Thanks in advance, -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 08:11, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm leaning towards the side where this is not allowed on our project, unfortunately. Our policy states, in relation to video games that are allowed: "other books about video games, such as scholarly analysis of video games or guides on the design of video games". I don't believe writing a history page on a Minecraft server, for example Hypixel or McCentral, corresponds to WB policy (scholarly: "involving or relating to serious academic study") - there is no real scholarly study of Minecraft servers, is there? As for writing about Minecraft mods, this might fall under "video game strategy guides".


 * Though, other opinions are welcome... but this is my personal take. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 16:47, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks for the reply! While I agree that there is no real scholarly analysis of a Minecraft server, in my opinion it has cultural significance (assuming it’s a server with many players that has existed for years of course). And about the mods it’s a bit ambiguous in my opinion - there’s a mod called computercraft which adds programmable computers. Is a book about programming in this mod allowed? Also is a book about command blocks in Minecraft allowed because it would be a serious book. There are many books about state goes for board games, and I get that board games are considered intellectual and video games not but they also have a large cultural significance. -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 14:09, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I very strongly believe that the history a specific Minecraft server is out of scope. Many similar things have been deleted before usually under the "not a webhost" criteria actually. That's because they are of no more significance than, say, your personal achievements in Pokemon Go or your holidays after the last 10 years. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 14:59, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
 * In my opinion video games have a huge cultural significance and are underrepresented in Wikibooks. While the history of a Minecraft server might be a bit out of scope (I still think it would be nice especially since there are entire YouTube channels dedicated to preserving the history of a Minecraft server, mostly anarchy servers), I think Wikibooks should start allowing strategy guides for video games especially since strategy guides for board games are allowed. That kind of content would grow quickly an I think it’s a wasted potential of Wikibooks. Also Wikimedia foundation seeks to be a collection of all human knowledge, and it won’t be complete without this. -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 11:55, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * As it seems to fit under "learning objectives", might I suggest you look into Wikiversity? There also is a minecraft page on Wikiversity where you may add histories of Minecraft servers under it. I believe here your contributions will be more accepted within WV rather than WB, judging from this discussion and WB:What is Wikibooks?. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 18:35, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you very much for the reply! I looked in to Wikiversity a bit, and while in What Wikiversity is not it’s not anything that forbids that sort of content, in What is Wikiversity it’s written: "However, if it's suitable for a textbook, it's best to add it at Wikibooks". It’s a bit confusing for me because my logic tells that Wikiversity is for academic resources and Wikibooks is for other books. It’s kinda weird that Wikibooks has stricter rules. -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Btw, to everyone out there, if you would like to reply I would greatly appreciate if you typed that way it will notify me. Thanks in advance, -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 19:50, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Some snippets of history might help put the policies into perspective. I wasn't here yet when either of these things happened.
 * Because Wikibooks came down against original research &mdash;so I was told, years ago&mdash; those Wikibookians who wanted to do those sorts of things went off and founded Wikiversity. This seems an overly simplistic creation story for Wikiversity; I suspect it may be approximately true as far as it goes, but once they actually went off to create another wikimedian sister, the new sister broke new ground in the on-going process of self-invention.  I've never properly understood Wikiversity, tbh; I "get" Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Wikinews, on a sort of spectrum, but then Wikiversity doesn't fit into that scheme at all.  Their project documentation has never helped me much, either, though I feel some glimmer of understanding from this item at What Wikiversity is not: "[Wikiversity is not a] static project: Every day brings new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing things.  Wikiversity will continue to change and develop to meet the needs of the Wikiversity community."  Although there are some Wikibookians here also involved at Wikiversity (I'm not one of them), the Wikibooks institutional notion of Wikiversity is still "the place where they'll take original research that doesn't belong here", and I've the impression we've sometimes annoyed the good folks at Wikiversity by sending some of our rejected materials thataway from here that don't belong there either.
 * Jimmy Wales came to Wikibooks (so I was told) a few years into the Wikibooks project and pronounced from on high that, henceforth, Wikibooks would not accept anything that could be put on StrategyWiki. The account I read indicated some resentment of this, and noted that Jimmy had more sway here in the early days.  I've looked about in our archives on this one, and it looks like it may be a bit more complicated than that.  Like, there was a suggestion that the Foundation had a part in it because some of the materials hosted here in the early days were perceived &mdash;or perhaps I mean claimed&mdash; to maybe threaten our non-profit status.  Here is a discussion that went on in 2007 (which to me is still ancient history), on what at the time was called the Staff Lounge though later became the reading room:
 * Reading room/Archives/2007/June

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:22, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It might be worth adding that Jimbo Wales himself seemed to have initiated the policy with this edit here: Special:Diff/434945 "Wikibooks is not a repository for video game manuals" which became "Wikibooks is not for video game strategy guides". And with Special:Diff/468012, talking about "game walkthroughs and manuals", he claimed "The issue here is not about me not liking them, the issue is that the Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization which was approved as such by application to the US Government based on a particular charter of operations, and we have NO CHOICE but to follow that charter. If we expanded the mission of Wikibooks to include things which are outside the scope of our charter, we would lose our tax exempt status and place the entire project in peril, including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and everything else."
 * But I can't understand how It is inconsistent with the charter, and this hasn't been brought up as far as I'm aware. We have extensive guides to board games at Shelf:Recreational activities. This includes Chess, Chess Strategy, and Chess Opening Theory, all books with considerable amounts of strategy for a recreational game. So how come does making a game electronic suddenly make it incompatible with the charter? If I was to write the book Computer chess strategy would that not be allowed? As Mr. Spock would say "Highly illogical, captain". -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:16, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the distinction is that chess isn't owned by a particular company. This however would seem to raise concerns over wiibook Monopoly. --00:32, 4 January 2021 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pi zero (talk • contribs)
 * Well I think that's unlikely as the distinction from the onset was for video games. No mentions of other types of games were made in either of his edits, or later on. I would note that he mentions that "They belong at Wikia, or a generic wiki host"; Wikia, now known as Fandom, is a commercial wiki platform that Wales founded and was deeply involved with; unfortunately this suggests a rather obvious possible conflict of interest, although perhaps it is merely coincidental. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 01:24, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yeah, the person who first recounted those events to me rather implied Jimmy's motives were suspect. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 03:04, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Well whatever the motives, looking through the diffs it did cause a certain amount of consternation at the time; I feel this was mainly due to the somewheat artificial distinction between video games and other types of games. If there had been a blanket prohibition of books concerning games this would have been a lot more understandable, but this was never the case, so the policy felt illogical. So we've inherited a somewhat confused policy in regard to video game books generally being discouraged. Personally I think its a great shame, as it may have helped Wikibooks maintain a more active and vibrant community. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 10:30, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * That's been remarked on, over the years, that people could get very interested in these subjects, which is also presumably why they are also likely targets for a site with a profit motive. Taking the matter from a crowdsourcing perspective, we don't want a book that's substantially a pile of proprietary information &mdash; and a commercially marketed electronic game is usually going to be just that, a vast complex of tactical details all specifically programmed in by the proprietor. Thus, a walkthrough for such a game is going to simply describe details the proprietor programmed in one by one.  That's kind of like a page-by-page paraphrase of an entire copyrighted book.  And, even if the game is open-source, the content of a walkthrough is arguably just a different form of the source code. So there really are some difficulties here that, in practice, are much more likely to pertain to electronic games than to other types of games.  Which is not to say that "no electronic-game walkthroughs or strategy guides" is necessarily the best way to describe what the policy ought to be saying.  And we would like to work out a type of book that meets our objectives, doesn't lend itself to turning into a paraphrase of source-code, but does harness some of that fan enthusiasm.  We do, after all, have featured book Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:02, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that its something that might need caution. But you can go on StrategyWiki and create a walkthrough for any video game you like, without obvious problems; so perhaps potential pitfalls of copyright are not as onerous as you might think. Whether propritary systems should be described is an interesting question, although they do exist on Wikibooks, such as C Sharp Programming; C# is mostly a proprietary language (the license is fairly liberal, but it belongs to Microsoft). -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:57, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the replies, I really didn’t expect such a long discussion. While I agree that walkthrough of a video game would require many screenshots and would be problematic because of copyright, I really don’t see why making a strategy guide for Starcraft (just an example) is different from making a strategy guide for monopoly. Also, because wikimedia wants to be a complete collection of all human knowledge, it doesn’t make sense for me that they direct you to a project that is not run by wikimedia (strategywiki). Also, going back to the history of a Minecraft server (I think I used Minecraft to much in this discussion, kinda makes it look like that’s the only game I know), I think that would fit in scholarly analysis since it’s about the culture of that sever. Also, it would involve going through documentations videos of youtubers, and putting all the information together in one book. Returning to strategy guides, it disappointed me quite a bit when I saw that they are not allowed, because I planned to create a book about the different creatures in ARK (those creatures in real life, if it’s a page about a T-Rex, so a chapter about T-Rexes in general, information about this creature in the game, and useful information about fighting and/or taming this creature and also how it can be used). I hope this makes it clear why I started this discussion in first place. Now that I know that video game strategies where not only allowed in the past, but where also written before they got deleted I really don’t know what should be done with those ideas. -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 13:27, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Also just curious, does Archive bot archive the discussions 60 days after the post was initially written or 60 days after the last reply was written? Thanks in advance, -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 13:30, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * After the most recent reply, I believe. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:32, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Excuse me, I didn’t quite get what you were trying to say. -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 15:26, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * It's my impression that the archive bot judges the date of a section by the latest date anywhere in the section. The bot doesn't look at the revision history of the page; it's possible, last I knew, to "spike" a thread so it won't be archived for a long, long time by putting a future date in it. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:47, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I see, thank you very much! -ElfSnail123 (discuss • contribs) 16:03, 5 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry for getting in here late. I just noticed this post and wanted to leave some of my thoughts on this topic, in case they are useful to others.
 * Increasingly games are used in school environments as a teaching tool. I’m not sure if this justifies their inclusion here or not.
 * As for copyright and images, GameFAQs made it big off of user submitted .txt files back in the day. Of course modern standards are higher, but there are a surprising number of developers willing to share gameplay screenshots to Wikimedia Commons, OTRS ticket and all. There is also a genre of guides which omit spoilers, which may be more likely to omit information that may be problematic.
 * Furthermore there are a number of free and open source games where (Given a compatible license), this issue of copyright becomes a moot point. The authors of books like 0 A.D. shouldn’t have to preface their book with a disclaimer about the issue if they want to contribute original content for the betterment of Wikibooks as a project.
 * Finally, I believe such guides could be a draw to Wikibooks, just like how school libraries add comics and graphic novels to their collections in hopes that otherwise reluctant readers will migrate to other topics in their collections.
 * In short, I believe such guides should be allowed on a trial basis. If it doesn’t work out, Wikibooks can always go back to the way things were.
 * As a somewhat related sidenote - There is technically a distinction between a strategy guide and a walkthrough, though they are often used interchangeably, and indeed are often combined into the same document. A walkthrough is fairly often a straightforward guide through a game from start to finish. Strategy guides are a different, because some games have many different approaches to play. That is to say you could have a strategy guide for Chess, but not a walkthrough. I would assume that a Strategy Guide has more educational value than a plain walkthrough.
 * --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs)
 * , pinging all users who participated in this discussion (hope I didn’t miss anybody). I stumbled across a proposal for a new project called Wikigames (the page in meta is called Wikigames (2), it tells that this message has too many links so I had to remove it.) that will include strategy guides as well. I was going to add my username to the list of people interested, but then I decided to check if this info could fit into wikibooks. I agree that walkthroughs would be a bit problematic but I think that strategy guides are fine especially because there are strategy guides for board games so why shouldn’t there be strategy guides for video games? In my opinion video game strategy guides should be allowed in wikibooks or at least in another wikimedia project (maybe wikigames). -Gifnk dlm 2020 (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * You mean this proposal Wikigames (2), correct? --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 16:44, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Exactly -Gifnk dlm 2020 (discuss • contribs) 17:35, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Looking at that Meta proposal, I see a compelling reason to allow some of those strategy game books here. I think we open a new discussion on Proposals for that though. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 18:24, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , do you plan to submit this proposal or should I do this? Also, in your opinion, which game strtegy guides should fit here and which in wikigames? -Gifnk dlm 2020 (discuss • contribs) 13:03, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think it's best if you start the proposal, then it would be easy for us to find out what exactly you have in mind. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 14:26, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
 * , I know that a lot of time has passed, but I opened a new discussion on proposals for this. Thank you very much! -Gifnk dlm 2020 (discuss • contribs) 08:52, 6 February 2021 (UTC)


 * To add to this, would a Guide on setting up a Minecraft server (server administration) be considered valid material for WikiBooks? It's not an actual gameplay guide but is related to it. [Please ping in replies] BEANS X2 (discuss • contribs) 13:52, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
 * That looks fine to me, as it's the discussion of a piece of software. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 20:15, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 is back!
You are humbly invited to participate in the Wiki Loves Folklore 2021 an international photography contest organized on Wikimedia Commons to document folklore and intangible cultural heritage from different regions, including, folk creative activities and many more. It is held every year from the 1st till the 28th of February.

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MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 13:25, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Importing Template ColorBox to Wikibooks
I found out that during my edit for Wikijunior:Asia, I found out that this template : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Colorbox (to be used for catergorised each country to their specific regions) is not available for Wikibooks. Could admins import this template here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Encik Tekateki (talk • contribs) 04:22, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * To me, it looks as if the en.wp version is somewhat neater than the Commons version (which was forked from en.wp in 2011); shall we go with the en.wp version, or do you have some reason to prefer the one from Commons? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:41, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It is ok too, as long as Wikibooks have this templates . Cant wait for it to be implemented in Wikibooks. Thanks Pi Zero
 * Eagerly awaited by Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 15:59, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ Template:Color_box Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 16:45, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, thank you for import but I highly believed that the Colorbox are strongly dependent on other libraries too. I tested in my sandbox , there are no colour coming out. Also when importing documentations, this hold true as well. Perhaps, we might need to import all of relevant libraries too/see documentations. Sorry for inconveniences caused . Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 04:59, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Can confirm that Colorbox failed to render color for me as well. I had thought I was just misusing it. --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've imported a bunch of en.wiki templates but am stuck with script errors that I'm not sure how to resolve. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:48, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

You need to import w:Module:Color contrast (including subpages, in particular w:Module:Color contrast/colors). I think that this is key to getting this to work. I can't see this done at Special:Log/import yet. Also w:Template:Legend/styles.css would be nice. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 19:25, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I had already imported that module? Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 20:42, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * - does it work now? Make sure to purge your cache! Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 20:45, 16 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , it is working now . Thanks again ! Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 00:05, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

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CSS tab-size
In the sandbox I've added style parameters -moz-tab-size and tab-size to the style section at the top of the markup with intention to control the width of tabs. No effect is evident. Can anyone explain or tell how the style should be corrected? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 03:31, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'll make the following points:
 * The CSS tab-size property only works if you include tab characters. But looking at your sandbox it seems to mainly consists of space characters. It will therefore have no effect.
 * The best thing to do might be to use a pre tag (or div tag) in combination with margin-left (or padding-left). I would avoid span tags as they should only be used for inline elements. Consider the code below:

 Example text
 * See the wikitext for what I've done. Is this the sort of effect you're after? -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 12:50, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Blanks where tabs should have been was a blunder after a confusing series of tests.
 * I haven't used -moz-tab-size and tab-size properties until now. tab-size alone has no effect in Firefox. Appears that -moz-tab-size is for Firefox and tab-size is for other browsers. The MediaWiki markup will be done by software and a recent revision needs more work. I'm making progress; slowly. Thanks for the help, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 19 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've made some small revisions in the MediaWiki module and it produced the current sandbox. tab-size properties now give the intended result. &#60;pre> is invoked by the blank at the left margin. &#60;span> is used to specify font attributes and character vertical offset. The remaining concern: is the present use of span inappropriate? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 21:51, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

 Example text with pre style="padding-left: 10em;" Example text with 2 tabs, with pre  Example text with 2 tabs, and pre style="-moz-tab-size: 16; tab-size: 16;" -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 11:50, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Well strictly speaking you're meant to use the div tag for "block elements", which is anything from a paragraph and greater. For elements less than a pragraph you're meant to use span. Whether it matters too much is an interesting question, and not one I'm sure about.
 * With pre you can avoid margins by using padding instead, like this example:
 * Yes I've just tested tab-size, you definitely need -moz-tab-size for it to work on my Firefox browser.
 * With a few small changes in my MediaWiki module, the outer &#60;span ...> is changed to &#60;div ...>. An odd result is that font-family: 'Times New Roman' in &#60;div ...> is not respected; the content is rendered san-serif. See the current sandbox. Times-New-Roman in the global span was respected. I don't recognize this as a feature of CSS or a feature of MediaWiki or an obscure interaction between the two. Definitely a means to specify a serif typeface is required. Keeping the global enclosure as a span rather than div is a means.
 * Regarding the distinction of div and span: In a sense, a span encloses sequence of content; whereas a div is a span bounded in some way. A paragraph, for example, is a sequence of content which might be separated from surrounding content by empty lines. In this sense, a div is a specific case of a span.
 * Considering the above two factors, I'm tempted to keep the global span; not make it a div.
 * Thanks for following my tedious ramblings, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:59, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah I tell you the why you've got problems: invisible pre tags! When the text has spaces in front of it, invisible pre tags (not in the wikicode but in the HTML code of the page) are inserted. Its an annoying feature of the software, and it means your div tags wont work, as the pre styling takes over. For some reason span works, which I don't really understand why.
 * A workaround to doing it is to use TemplateStyles. I have created a style similar to yours at Template:TemplateStyles/Example/styles.css. If you insert the wikicode  it will alter the style to how you like it. Note that you can't include "-moz-tab-size" for some reason, so you have to use space characters instead of tabs.
 * Another way of doing so is to edit the pre tag in Template:TemplateStyles/Oberon/styles.css and alter that instead, and then include that on your page with .  -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 02:07, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've created a sandbox at User:Mrjulesd/sandbox/2 of what I think you're probably trying to achieve, based on the current contents of your sandbox. It uses the code  to provide styling. Please let me know if this is satisfactory. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 14:22, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually I've just realized that you can do the same as above with
 * -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A global pre tag is an interesting alternative to span or div with a blank beginning each line. I'll evaluate the pre alternative more after the four remaining sources are in the book. My current MediaWiki module also handles a flowed page; it isn't restricted to pre format. The tab-size attributes are a valuable improvement. The span tag with tab-size attributes produces correct results. Thanks for the help, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:16, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * A global pre tag is an interesting alternative to span or div with a blank beginning each line. I'll evaluate the pre alternative more after the four remaining sources are in the book. My current MediaWiki module also handles a flowed page; it isn't restricted to pre format. The tab-size attributes are a valuable improvement. The span tag with tab-size attributes produces correct results. Thanks for the help, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 17:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Help Wanted for new project (Annotated Text): "Critique of the 1776 Commission Report"
I'm looking for help on this new book: Critique of the 1776 Commission Report

Specifically, I would like help to implement a process for an innovative book design. I already have the design in mind. I just need to implement it in a way that works in the Wikibooks project and community. So far I have not found any resources on Wikibooks that covers the process of implementing an innovative design. Also -- if you can point me to examples of Wikibooks with innovative design, that would be helpful. I can't see a way to search for that property.


 * By process I mean -- after the initial book design is completed, how is it maintained? How is it modified?  How is it defended from malicious edits?  How do contributors cope with competing designs, if they arise? (For example, if two or more designs aimed to 'dominate' the landing page of the book.)  How do collaborators cope with wiki pages that are outside and orthogonal to the design(s) for the book?

Second, I would like help implementing an Annotated Text. So far I have not found any good examples in Wikibooks. There is the United States Government/The Annotated Constitution of the United States but as far as I can tell there are no annotations any where. Also I can not see any specific design to facilitate annotations, nor is there any instructions or style guide for anyone who might add or edit annotations.

Third, I am very concerned about potential for vandalism, both intentional harm and also just accidents by new people. I could put in all the work to implement an innovative design (creating several templates, several levels of transclusion, etc.) only to have the work 'fall apart' through accidents or malicious acts.

I realize that most Wikibooks have a single contributor and thus such problems don't normally arise. But this book is on a controversial subject, and if someday it becomes widely known and publicized, it could quickly become a target of malicious vandalism similar to what Wikipedia experiences on it's most contested pages. I would like to deal with this risk in the design stage, if possible, rather than solely relying on reactive measures (undo).

Fourth, I will not be the sole author on this. The only way this book will be successfully completed is if several or many historians, students, educators contribute actively -- and nearly all will be new to Wikibooks and most will be new to Wikimedia. I am focusing all my effort to set it up, to design it, and to provide instructions and guidance. My belief is that I need to implement the book design in such a way as to be "idiot-proof". Is that true?

Finally, I am looking for constructive comments and help (specific pointers to information and/or your labor). I'm not looking for "you can't do that" or "not a good idea" or "read the manual".

Thanks. --Russell Cameron Thomas (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 20 January 2021 (UTC)


 * Would creating a static PDF of a reviewed version of your work meet your needs? That way you would get the best of both worlds, and not need administrative action. For example, I can link to a really old static version of the WikiBook US History like so. --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 00:38, 13 February 2021 (UTC)