Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2021/March

Wikifunctions logo contest
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Update about user:Pi zero
Obituary: Wikinews mourns loss of volunteer John Shutt Pi zero died yesterday, his mother and his sister confirmed. His account has been globally locked, and stweards have said to remove local privs, if need be. acagastya 💭 04:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update. This is (from my memory) without precedent on Wikibooks; however, I've filed a request on Meta to remove admin rights, because bureaucrats cannot remove admin rights here. with respect to interface admin. I do not see a need to remove reviewer from him out of respect for his work (the problem with keeping admin is that it can cause confusion). Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 09:32, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * For the benefit of other readers confused on what happened: he suffered a (sudden) heart attack. From acagastya on IRC: "His mother, on the phone call said he had a heart attack and head trouble breathing, was rushed to a hospital, went into coma, and later died." Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 09:42, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I had requested his account to be globally locked -- a standard procedure for deceased Wikimedians. If you would to keep his privs, that is all right. acagastya 💭  09:48, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am shocked and saddened., if you are in touch with his family, and if you think it appropriate, please do pass on my condolences. We've worked together here for many, many years and I will miss his contributions and conversation. I'm sure the whole Wikibooks community feels the same. In terms of rights, I agree the +sysop should be removed due to the confusion it could cause, the other rights can remain I think. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:12, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Sure,, will do that. acagastya 💭 10:14, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm similarly shocked and saddened by this news. During the two years I've contributed here hes been a constant support here, always helping me with whatever I've needed. His contributions to this project are immeasurable. My deepest condolences to his family and friends. I shall miss his conversations with me, its not going to be the same without him. He had such an intelligent outlook, it always stimulated me. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 10:30, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I was equally shocked with this news, although we don't have much interactions, but every one are pleasant. I am very saddened to hear this and thanks Pi zero for your very invaluable work here and elsewhere on Wikimedia. Rest in Peace. Camouflaged Mirage (discuss • contribs) 11:33, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

I would like to add that this obviously deeply affects Wikinews. They have created an article at Wikinews mourns loss of volunteer John Shutt. Well I knew he was smart, but I had no idea about his achievements really. So I thought I would share this with everyone. I'm a bit shocked about how young he was. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 13:10, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This is terrible news. I've known Pi Zero ever since 2015 when I was still relatively new here. Horrible news... he was a very intelligent and kind person - my condolences. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 04:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Truly unfortunate. He was a talented and hardworking individual. --Mbrickn (discuss • contribs) 13:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I think it's only a mild exaggeration to say that he was single-handedly keeping Wikibooks and Wikinews moving forward. Even when he and I disagreed, it was always respectfully and he had a vision of what should happen next. In addition to the fact that this is a personal loss for his loved ones and those of us who had a relationship with him, it's a blow to the viability of the Wikimedia Foundation's two most-struggling projects. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:46, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I was changing user rights for a WMF staff at MediaWiki.org today (in the west coast) and then looking at the user rights log I was quite shocked to learn about Pi zero’s passing. This is a huge loss for both wikibooks and at wikinews. He was a major presence to both projects, and has put in so much time and work improving the quality of content. My condolences to his family, colleagues and friends — he is deeply missed. Tropicalkitty (discuss • contribs) 02:00, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

1= in Template:Shelf:Page
How do I get to the actual page for Shelf:Python programming language (where I can edit it), and what is  anyway? AnotherEditor144 t - c 16:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Well that is the actual page you edit. But the only thing you can only edit is the page description. All the rest (i.e. the list of books) is automatically generated by the Wikibooks Stacks mechanism from the parsing of categories. That code you mentioned passes the value  to parameter 1 of Template:Shelf:Page, but I don't really know why this is necessary. -- Jules  (Mrjulesd) 19:56, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Futrue of FlaggedRevs (Pending Changes) extension
Hello, I’m posting this here because this wiki has FlaggedRevs (Pending Changes) enabled.

This extension is one of the oldest extensions we have in production and currently does not have a maintainer. FlaggedRevs has been the cause of several incidents and visible regressions, especially because software decays and our technology constantly changes.

Another problem with this extension is its scope. While most of its functionalities are not enabled at Wikimedia, or are enabled on a very small set of wikis only (e.g. "multiple dimensions" was enabled only on Hebrew Wikisource, and they agreed to disable it). This has made maintaining the extension a tall order (more of a nightmare). In other words, this extension does too many things, and none well.

To move forward, barely used functionalities of this extension will be removed. Such as: support for multiple dimensions (like “style” and “tone”), multiple tiers (“quality” and “pristine”), several one of its special pages (ProblemChanges, ReviewedPages, ReviewedVersions, QualityOversight), and more. This will make it less of a burden to start maintaining and improving the main functionalities. The user interface will have only one mode in the future (currently it has four).

You can check this Phabricator ticket for more information about functionalities being removed: T277883

These removals would simplify its logic drastically, and enable us to rework its old interface, fix several deprecated dependencies that this extension is the last to block their removal of (like the "action=ajax" API), and reduce the number of issues/incidents/regressions that can be caused by this extension.

Most users of wikis that have this extension enabled (including English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia) won't see any difference. Wikis will still be able to use multiple "levels" (but not multiple "tiers") and will still be able to enable pending changes for whole namespaces, or on a group of pages only (otherwise known as “protect mode”). Those features will not be removed.

To follow the discussion around this, take a look at T185664.

Thank you for understanding and sorry for any inconvenience. Ladsgroup (talk) 17:17, 23 March 2021 (UTC)


 * there was recently a discussion at Reading room/General about whether Deutsch Wikibooks could install Extension:FlaggedRevs. Now it seems to us that this is no longer taking place. A question, is this correct? Would wikis currently without FlaggedRevs be unable to have the extension deployed if requested? -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 17:41, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * @Mrjulesd Currently, we can't deploy flagged revs to new wikis given its issues and lack of maintainer. But once we reduce the extension to an acceptable level and finds a maintainer, we can certainly deploy it on more wikis (basically that's we are aiming for not the opposite). Would that answer your question? Ladsgroup (discuss • contribs) 17:50, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * thanks yes that does. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 18:06, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * This is a good opportunity to determine whether we even need FlaggedRevs in the mainspace - I had argued that it isn't necessary but didn't get much feedback on my proposal: see Reading_room/Proposals. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 17:42, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Template:Infobox_scientist
In this template:-

In Infobox which is called.

This puts a DIV inside a span which is badly formed.

What should be done is to setup the relevant style on the caption span directly, with a possible   I can't change this as the Templates concerned are currently protected.

Can someone with interface administrator rights, look into this? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 08:42, 27 March 2021 (UTC)


 * What exactly should be done? And I don't think interface-admin is required to change a template (we do not use templateeditor), but if needed I can temporarily reduce the protection, but then you would have to be careful not to mess things up. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 09:14, 27 March 2021 (UTC)


 * The change needed would be to change the infobox sicentist code to something like:-

Which doesn't lead to mal-formed HTML. Alternatively the caption code in infobox needs changing to a DIV. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 09:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 01:16, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Call for review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement
Hello,

Just a short message to call people interested to review, comment and discuss my PhD thesis on Wikimedia movement. All the best, Lionel Scheepmans (discuss • contribs) 19:34, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Template:ORP
This should be displaying an example of the template in use.

It isn't. And having spent a long time gong through the templates to determine why, I still can't figure where it's being told not to display.

My conclusion is that there is either a comment, or NOINCLUDE that is'nt properly balanced up, but the convoluted nature of some of the templates is making it hard to determine WHERE something is unterminated.

I've had enough, so I am asking someone else if they can run the relwvant templates through some kind of manual sanity check, before I loose mine. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 09:54, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm tempted to just revert every single change I've made to all the related templates, even though I am reasonably confident my "repairs" did not break the logic. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 09:56, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Refbegin and refend
When used as indicated in the documentation, these attempt to wrap an OL or UL list using a DL refbegin .. refend. All the definition list here seems to be used for is to set-up text indentation. Why cannot this be done on the list items for references directly? ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 15:36, 30 March 2021 (UTC)


 * No idea. I agree that the dl is probably unneeded. The coding is clunky, but unproblematic. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 23:15, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Closing a table inside a parser function (such as if)....
In some template code I recently encountered the following situation.

As you can see the brackets are not matched. Mediawiki it seem matches up the brackets to the nearest pair (which is reasonable), meaning that in this instance the use of |}, for a table end was potentially generating | and a loose } instead of the desired table closure.

I created !end to work around this problem, but would appreciate suggestions on a more elegant approach. (!start) would be the equivalent template for opening a table.

This is not something that the linter currently traps for, but an error like this eventually manifests as 'unpaired' tag situation, or fostered content.

ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 13:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but in which template did you find this? -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 20:07, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
 * https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Template:NavForD2LangTut&oldid=3822839
 * The repair was - https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Template:NavForD2LangTut&oldid=3822842


 * If there is a "better" solution for this, please feel free to implement it. ShakespeareFan00 (discuss • contribs) 21:44, 31 March 2021 (UTC)


 * OK thanks for the explanation. While you are welcome to comment here on technical aspects of interest, please try to make it clear whether you need assistance or not. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:19, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

General Questions about Wikibooks
Hello everyone,

I have a few questions and I didn't know where to put them, so I chose "general". I'm a volunteer in german wikibooks project. I edited a lot on the german wikijunior how things work and some other bits and pieces, though my main interest at the moment is wikibooks in general (the housekeeping, if you'd like). I went on wikibreak for ~the last two years, but I'm trying to slowly intensifying my work again.

Recently there is a new book-project (actually bookS :-)) ongoing (a lot of law researchers started to write open books on german wikibooks, it's awesome!), but to support the group I'd like some more insight in wikimedia/-books-processes, that are currently not implemented in wb:de or are not visible and/or understandable to me, because I'm not an admin.

Especially at the moment the group asked for the "review"-feature and we are missing experienced admins.

So I have the following questions at the moment:


 * 1) are you in general or someone specific able and willing to support me, when I have questions about wikimedia-processes and the like?
 * 2) there's a site-note on top of your pages concerning the video game strategy thing. If I recall correctly, when I see a site-note on wb:de there is no "button" dismiss; how does this work?
 * 3) could someone tell me anything about the reviewing process in wb:en (that's going beyond Help:Tracking_changes, I'm especially wondering about the "levels", how do they work)? How long are you using it? What steps would be necessary to implement it? Is there any feedback from academic editors? How big is the administrative workload?
 * 4) would it be somehow possible to get first hand insight (maybe precisely timed and/or personally guided or something)? I didn't want to ask for permissions right away, because it would be pretty awkward in respect of me not editing activly in wb:en.
 * 5) there are some in the de-community that say: hey, let's just try, what could possibly go wrong? Would that concern anyone of you? (it concerns me, because a) we lack experienced admins and b) everyone is quick to try, but lazy with cleanup, if it doesn't work. Sadly I'm not immune to this as well. Or, in the worst case, cleanup is only possible for admins.) From your point of view, how much could actually go wrong if anything? Let's say in a few month everybody doesn't use the feature any more... How much cleanup would be needed? How much overhead is to be expected?

Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks a lot --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 01:26, 21 March 2021 (UTC)




 * 1) Yeah if I'm around ask here or on my talk.
 * 2) Well the page that needs to be edited is MediaWiki:Sitenotice (you have to have admin access to edit). I think the hide function is a built-in part of that page.
 * 3) Well the levels work much as explained there; you can simply alter the level during the review process. It works on any site with mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs. Configuration is complex, but you need to do it through Phabricator. The workload is not too bad, because unreviewed pages are normally displayed without problem. I'm not aware of any feedback from academic editors.
 * 4) Well for permissions, you need to ask at WB:RFP. Some of them have automatic requirements, such as reviewer. If you don't fulfill them, you may still be granted them, but its at the discretion of an admin or bureaucrat.
 * 5) Well not too much would probably go wrong if you implemented pending change review. If pages aren't reviewed, most of them are unaffected (the exception is the Wikijunior pages, that default to the "stable version", but this can be configured). However it is complex to set up, particular in creating the 'reviewer' user group; but not something I'm experienced with. If you look at FlaggedRevs Extension it explains to some degree how it was done.
 * -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:51, 21 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks a lot. Though during discussion we found out, that the extension is not installed anymore by wikimedia, see Flagged_Revisions and Requests for comment/Flagged revisions deployment. So we need to think about another way and my other questions are no longer valid. Best regards --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 20:18, 21 March 2021 (UTC)


 * fine, although you may be able to get it installed if you tried, although it will be quite technical. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 22:15, 21 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Maybe we'll try. Though I strongly oppose it and don't see who could take care of this undertaking in wb:de. I don't know yet, where the discussions might lead. If you're interested, I'd keep you posted?
 * I am advocating editions (short: on request of the author(s), blocking a fixed, proof read version (→ 1. Edition) by an administrator, so further editing needs to take place on an "unstable version", which, in time, could be promoted to the next edition). Though there are a lot of problems to take into account, before using such a practice.
 * Btw: thanks for the welcome-Message! Regards --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 20:05, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * well you could keep us informed, although I don't speak Deutsch so I'm of limited use. If you don't like the sound of it, I don't think it's too necessary; English Wikipedia have very few pages protected in this way. Another way is to semi-protect pages, which should keep most vandalism at bay. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 21:27, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
 * What do you mean by "the sound of it"? Well no problem with "Deutsch" ;-), for the most parts (except for some "sounds of it" ;-)) I don't have trouble understanding english and I hope my english isn't too bad. And I'm really really grateful for your offer to help.
 * Well it's not about vandalism. The problem is, capable authors will finish their books more or less by themselfs. It's not meant that way, but it's the experience in wb:de over the years. When those authors finished their book and leave, which happens from time to time, it's really hard to judge if an edit is valid or not. Sure, the obvious vandalism is easy to fix (and it's not that big of a deal), but take medicine for example, an error here can be pretty significant, but a "normal admin" is not trained in medicine, so an edit, that seems valid, doesn't need to be, and hence could not be checked accordingly.
 * To make things worse we have first hand experience with a user, that said he knows, edited really much, and it took us some time to realize, he actually doesn't know anything. There is a ton of collateral damage. And although blocked he even comes back from time to time with a new user-name. It takes around a week to recognize him by his editing-behaviour. Most of his edits are hard-core-physics like quantum-physics or theory of special relativity. This is really hard to review. When there is a fixed Edition he could edit an unstable Version all he likes, if anytime a pro comes along, he or she can judge, what is done, but we still have a valid page to show the average visitor.
 * My experience with the reviewing in wp:de is pretty bad, because my edits got rejected more than once for citing primary sources or using personal experience as a source. I wasn't aware, that it's possible in a way you do it, which seems pretty reasonable, if I do understand it correctly.
 * Hmm... That got pretty long... Sorry for that, I've no intention to spam. Regards --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 22:52, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

"the sound of it" is an English phrase meaning "judging from what you have heard or read about something". It seems to me, from what you've said, that pending changes protection may be a perfect antidote to your problems. And you could install it on your project and try it out. And there is not much of an overhead, as long as you don't default page view to the stable version. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 00:45, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Ah! Now I understand. I know the phrase, but didn't recognize, what you were referring to. Yes, but are we able to install it ourselfs? I thought the Wikimedia-Techteam needs to deploy this? Referring to T66726: "it means that there is no new FR installations any more and question is now what to do with existing ones." --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 01:08, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * FlaggedRevs appears to be in maintenance mode indeed, and from the looks of it, I don't think de.wikibooks will be to install it themselves. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 07:57, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of T66726. I've been looking through phabricator, and it looks like they're no longer deploying. I came across T205145 from 2018 "Deploy FlaggedRevs on bn.wikibooks"; the status is "Open, Stalled, Needs Triage". I also came across Requests for comment/Flagged revisions deployment. Well it doesn't look very likely it would be accepted, although it could still be requested I suppose. I don't think it would be possible to install without system admin access. -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 10:06, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Introducing German Wikimedia Open Science Project - OpenRewi
Hi folks,

My German Wikibooks friend @HirnSpuk has already talked about work related to our project. Therefore I like to introduce myself and the project properly. Also because we like to start writing books at the English Wikibooks community.

I am a legal scholar based in northern Germany. My research interests are (critical) legal theory, human rights and data protection. Currently I am writing my PhD about the human right to data protection from a post-individual perspective.

In the past months (2020/21) I have been an Open Science Fellow of the Wikimedia Foundation Germany. My project is called "OpenRewi" (Rewi="Rechtswissenschaft"=legal science). Our goal is to write Open Educational Ressources on various legal topics. Currently we have projects on human rights, criminal law, intellectual property law, law on migration and asylum as well as empirical legal studies. Our projects consist of teams with "editors" and "authors". Although we use traditional terminology, we try to work in a different way. The teams are supposed to work in an agile way without hierarchies. Editors moderate the process of planning and writing. Contents and concepts of our book are planned by the whole project team.

We write our texts currently at the German Wikibooks version in booksprints. Each booksprint consists of several weeks of writing as well as an open peer review process. We try to use the material in our university seminars as much as possible in order to get the feedback from students. After our prototype books reached a satisfactory quality we will publish them as an Open Access Version (CC-BY-SA) with one of the traditional publishers. As we are starting an international team in public international law that will work in English, we are eager to get in contact with the English Wikibooks community. :)

We would like to ask for your opinion on the project structure we imagined to be reiterated in the english Wikibooks community. Currently in the German Wikibooks we got our user page as a project where we collect how-to-guides and best-practices regarding our quality standards for our books. Of course each author/editor has her own user page, which they use to write actual content within the books. Our books as well as templates (in German "Vorlage") are all preceded by OpenRewi. Do you think this organizational structure would also work in the English version?

If you agree on that, we would start translating our German project page for the English version and try to rebuilt the templates in the English Wikibooks version. You can of course always reach me for questions. We are all pretty excited about this!

Cheers Max --Maximilian.Petras (discuss • contribs) 08:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * Hi, @User:Maximilian.Petras don't forget to ask about your Linking-wishes, visual editor and the way you are numbering headings. I looked into the help pages here quickly and didn't find anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there. I'm on mobile right now, so a little bit short on ressource and time :-), so sorry for leaving in depth Description up to you. Regards --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 10:25, 25 March 2021 (UTC)


 * @all much better editing non-mobile :-). To clarify: The OpenRewi-project relys on e few things, that might be contradictory to how things might be done around here. First: They want to rely heavily on the visual editor and mobil use. I don't know about wb:en, but in wb:de we see both as some kind of "yeah, they're there, but not really useful". With that, there come some implications e. g. that we "softened" our rules concerning templates. The preceding "OpenRewi" with templates helps a great deal using and navigating the templates in visual editing. Second they want to number headings, which in wb:de is normally discouraged, because it has potential for making problems in the long run. Third they want to use not interwiki-links but normal links frequently, to prepare for using the stuff outside the wikimedia-world. All of this might touch some of your guidelines and policies, though I wasn't able to find something. But I didn't review them in depth.


 * Did I miss anything, @Max? He will probably be able to elaborate further if necessary. Regards --HirnSpuk (discuss • contribs) 12:06, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you, @User:HirnSpuk for raising the issue of visual editing. The reason why we want to rely heavily on both visual editing and mobile use is that we are convinced that it reduces barriers. For the public international law project, this may be even more important, given that some of our authors and (hopefully) a large part of our readers will be based in the Global South. Sué González Hauck (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Hi! I am also part of the "OpenRewi" community and am currently participating in a book project co-edited by @Maximilian.Petras on fundamental rights in German constitutional law. I have a PhD in public international law from St. Gallen University in Switzerland and am part of the editing team of Voelkerrechtsblog.org, the leading academic blog on public international law in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Together with three colleagues, who are all doing doctoral and post-doctoral research in public international law, we want to write an open access textbook on public international law with a gender-balanced and geographically representative team of authors.
 * Cheers, Sué -- Sué González Hauck (discuss • contribs) 14:19, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Welcome to English Wikibooks!

Well looking through your proposal, and it looks fine to me. We always welcome high-quality translations, and this is no exception. I will make the following points:


 * 1) Our naming policy for books is at Naming policy. Now if you want to include OpenRewi in your book titles there is nothing prohibiting that. So your organizational style seems to me to be acceptable.
 * 2) Again your templates seem fine. I think it would be fine to use OpenRewi in their titles.
 * 3) Visual editing is accepted here, and is the default for editors. If your templates help with mobile viewing, this is a bonus.
 * 4) Our advice on styling is at Help:Local manuals of style and Manual of Style. Now neither of these are policies, they just provide general guidance on good practice. If you wish to number headings, or use interwiki-links, both would be allowed.
 * 5) If you are writing books on international law, these would normally be placed on Shelf:International law. To do so please read CCO Resources.
 * 6) Your user page may be best placed within our WikiProject pages.
 * 7) Any further questions please ask. We have a general help page at Help:Contents which might be helpful.

Good luck with your books! -- Jules (Mrjulesd) 00:09, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the warm welcome! All this sounds just excellent. I guess we will start with a Project-Page an go on from there. Really great, that you got this project feature. --Maximilian.Petras (discuss • contribs) 07:50, 27 March 2021 (UTC)