Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2023/May

Automatic citations based on ISBN are broken
Apologies if this message does not reach you in your favorite language. You can help translate it centrally at Meta. Thanks for your help.

We have recently become unable to access the WorldCat API which provided the ability to generate citations using ISBN numbers. The Wikimedia Foundation's Editing team is investigating several options to restore the functionality, but will need to disable ISBN citation generation for now.

This affects citations made with the VisualEditor Automatic tab, and the use of the citoid API in gadgets and user scripts, such as the autofill button on refToolbar. Please note that all the other automatic ways of generating citations, including via URL or DOI, are still available.

You can keep updated on the situation via Phabricator, or by reading the next issues of Tech News. If you know of any users or groups who rely heavily on this feature (for instance, someone who has an upcoming editathon), I'd appreciate it if you shared this update with them.

Elitre (WMF), on behalf of the Editing team.

MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 11 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This is very good to know—I was wondering why I was having trouble with ISBN citation generation! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 21:29, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

Page order
Hi, mediawiki noob here. I am having a problem with Mathematical Proof page. I want Mathematical Proof/Cover to be the first page but its automatically shown as the second in Mathematical Proof/Introduction to Set Theory's navbar. What can I do to solve this? DigitalDasein (discuss • contribs) 08:36, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Good question @DigitalDasein! I took a look at Template:Nav, and it seems like it might have something to do with Module:Printable version. Unfortunately, I don't have enough experience with that module or with Lua in general to diagnose further than that—@Leaderboard @MarcGarver @SHB2000, do any of you know enough to help out here? —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 15:58, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Definitely a quirk there. Adding to the cover page creates a forward and backward navigation to introduction to set theory... I will take a look. MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 16:44, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * While I do have some experience with templates, I'm not that familiar with Lua and modules – sorry about that :-(. --SHB2000 (discuss • contribs) 20:39, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Dichotomus key
I think this would be very helpful and I've sort of always wanted to do this so anyone helping me or editing it is thanked and also any advise as to where to start is greatly apprieciated. if you could also give me the characteristics of some phyla that are missing that would help a lot since their are a ton excitement from Ducklan (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 12 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi @Ducklan. Could you clarify what exactly you are trying to create? That will help other editors get a better idea of how to help and guide you. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 17:33, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * i'm trying to add on to the dichotomous key and complete it, maybe then it could be combined with wikispecies
 * also it looks kind of bad right now
 * Ducklan (discuss • contribs) 17:36, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
 * @Ducklan I see now—you're referring to the book Dichotomous Key. The book doesn't look like it's been worked on in a while, and there is not much on the discussion page. If you would like to work on it, you'll have to figure out what the book needs and take it on yourself. It may eventually become too bulky to fit on one page based on the massive number of known species; you might consider dividing things up across multiple pages. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 18:58, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Is this book/textbook eligable for wikibooks?
Hi everyone,

I have recently found a good published source on Bosnian history. I wanna know, can I publish it here or on wikisource? The book is called Arheološki leksikon Bosne i Hercegovine/Archeology dictionary of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is in bosnian and was published in 1988 in Sarajevo. It was published in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY). I can add the link too. The format of the book is pdf, probably scanned and the text isn't searchable.

Best regards, The Yennefer (discuss • contribs) 13:31, 16 May 2023 (UTC)


 * No. I have found the answer. The text is not eligable since it was published less then 70 years ago. The Yennefer (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Selection of the U4C Building Committee
 The next stage in the Universal Code of Conduct process is establishing a Building Committee to create the charter for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C). The Building Committee has been selected. Read about the members and the work ahead on Meta-wiki.

-- UCoC Project Team, 04:20, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Footnotes errors
Errors on Linear Algebra and more have appeared. I don't know much about wikis, but it seems mostly related to something like Template:harv → Module:Footnotes. Internet Archive seems to suggest they started appearing between 2023-03-26 and 2023-04-07. —Exylic (discuss • contribs) 03:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)


 * , this has been fixed (or I hope so) - please check. You may need to purge the cache. The reason was that we had to import a large number of templates to Wikipedia to allow some features to work here; unfortunately, this results in difficulties like you saw above (another issue is Wikipedia stuff on Wikibooks). Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 04:44, 21 May 2023 (UTC)