Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2011/July

Volunteers?
Hi guys, I just was wondering whether it would be ok if I posted a thread on Blender Artists asking for volunteers? Any thoughts?

--JamesNZ (discuss • contribs) 08:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you do not need to ask permission from Wikibooks to do that. I think you may, depending on where, want to ask their permission beforehand as some places may take it as spam or advertising which might not be appreciated. I think when people are massed invited, there is a tendency by the invited people to overlook project policies. I suggest you find some way to mention some of the more important points, like any text is CC-BY-SA and GFDL licensed, images can use any copyleft license and need to specify which, and the need to explain things rather than simply linking to where information is already available elsewhere on the web. --dark lama  12:04, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Darklama, I'll do that.--JamesNZ (discuss • contribs) 01:26, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Discontinue Reading room/Assistance?
I propose that Reading room/Assistance be discontinued. I think there is some overlap and confusion with Reading room/General, Reading room/Proposals and Reading room/Projects that could be reduced by its discontinuation. Additionally there appears to be few and infrequent discussions there of late, so its discontinuation might help to refocus the other discussions as well. --dark lama  16:46, 17 July 2011 (UTC)


 * My understanding was that the last change was to address the times of high activity that made some of the old monolithically pages difficult and some of the "new" additions to the nav. guides have been only a promotion of visibility of old existing pages.
 * My view is that the way people have been using Reading room/Proposals has been sometimes abusive of its function, this allied with the lack of the necessary participation and the seemingly disregard for any structured proceeding to validate or refute proposals makes this page Reading room/Proposals the one that is in need of a reformulation as to serve its initial purpose. I also have the idea that some of the past proposals noncontroversial (no expressed opposition) sometimes have lacked the necessary administrative action before being automatically archived.
 * Reading room/Assistance has been historically the optimum location to most of the "assistance" requests (if any change is done remember to merge the history page is active since July 2007), I don't have a specific preference to any of the old and recent reformat or even your proposal beyond the considerations I'm making here, but it seem the naming of the page is more indicative of its function for instance Reading room/Projects seems redundant and lacking in activity, post that fit there should also fit in a general request for assistance or be placed in Reading room/General discussion area. Another idea is the merge of the Reading room/Technical Assistance and Reading room/Assistance assistance pages the only distinction on most of those pages posts is the level of complexity of problems not exclusively of a technical nature and most would probably even benefit from being posted on the Reading room/General when not Wikimedia related, but overall it seems to be the discussion area that works best.
 * I have a particular dislike of the Featured books/Nominations page and the general concept behind it for many reasons but I understand some of the valid reasons to have it and that some Wikibookians like the activity, a good ideas could be a rename like New Projects and Featured books (the core benefits of joining both communities would lead to the extension of function, information, normalization and what people prefer).
 * In any case I'm against the disappearance of the general assistance discussion page. In fact keeping moving things around (or defining new nav. aides) only aggravates the problem of people not posting in the correct area, a more active hands on approach on correcting people out would probably result, over time, in a greater compliance than renames and reshuffles that ultimately can't make anyone entirely happy, resulting in everlasting pushes for similar alterations. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 17 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I think for general discussion areas, stability is worth a very great deal, and we would need a really compelling reason to change things. I don't see anything atm rising at all near the requisite level of compulsion.  (If, btw, we ever do change things around, I think it's important to use page moves to guarantee that anyone who has the current pages on their watchlist ends up with the corresponding new pages on their watchlist.)  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:37, 17 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I certainly won't be implementing any changes, after the nightmare following the renaming of Reading room/Feature requests to Reading room/Proposals. – Adrignola discuss 13:34, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I guess I should clarify. I am not proposing to merge anything. By discontinue I am suggesting that links to the Assistance page be removed from the navigation and reading room main page. People would be able to continue to search the archives using the search box located at the reading room's main page. Current discussions in the Assistance could either be archived in the Assistance Archive, or copied to another of the reading room discussions to be archived later. In either case, the Assistance page would be turned into a redirect with its history left as is. --dark lama  14:15, 18 July 2011 (UTC)