Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2013/March

Main page proposal
Here are the suggestions based on Reading_room/General:

The old navigation thing, sisters, donation message, etc., will all be kept. Feel free to edit the table. Kayau (talk · contribs) 09:05, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * A couple of small thoughts. No point holding back on small things, while waiting for larger inspiration.
 * It's confusing to use "featured" in two different senses. A Featured Book is amongst the best we have to offer.  A "Featured Module", as you term it above, is something entirely different.
 * Wikijunior calls such things "article(s) of the month", though apparently that's just an internal name: the "article of the month" name doesn't show up when the template is transcluded, although the template it self is named Wikijunior Article of the Month (and is rarely updated, so should probably be on some sort of automatic rotation).
 * Wikipedia calls them DYKs (Did You Know, "from Wikipedia's newest content").
 * I'm not overly fond of WJ's or WP's name for them; we should find something of our own. And we should come up with a low-maintenance way of automatically selecting such things.  Frankly, it's a mistake to create something intended to promote participation that requires additional participation to make it work.
 * I mislike the idea of spotlighting specific contribut ion ors. It feels to me like the wrong sort of emphasis to give.  Perhaps part of what bothers me (but only part) is that small projects tend to have a few people who do a lot more than anyone else (perhaps large projects do too), and they set an example others can't be expected to live up to.
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 02:19, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I think readers and contributors should be able to participate in selecting what is shown through the use of a low maintenance automated system, perhaps like a book review/rating system. The system should rely on an extension which also should be responsible for presenting a slideshow on a page when a parser function or tag is placed in the text of a page.
 * I think showing that Wikibooks is a vibrant community should be done through the emphasis of books rather than individual changes or pages. Any edit to any page in a book should update the last time that book was edited and if it is in the last 10 most recent updated books include the book in a slideshow of updated books.
 * Maybe the problem of setting an example others cannot be expected to live up to can be addressed by also showing books with a threshold that filters out very active books, such as books with over 100 edits or 1MB of changes in one week. --dark lama  18:25, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
 * How about 'Module Showcase'? It's not really DYK or article of the month because the modules themselves need to be of high quality.
 * DL, I think your ideas are great, but it seems as though they are getting a tad difficult to achieve. I think a new main page design that shows we're a vibrant community is what we need quite badly (the Chinese Wikibooks just did that!) and we could leave these till later. Kayau (talk · contribs) 15:32, 3 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe we have different ideas what showing we're a vibrant community means, I do not see anything on the Mandarin Wikibooks main page which suggests to me a vibrant community exists there, or perhaps you mean a different project? I think putting effort into extensions like AllBooks or Randomrootpage is better for Wikibooks because getting people to use them is easier to achieve even though more effort may be needed to create extensions, while anyone can easily setup a new community process getting people to participate in community processes is more difficult to achieve. --dark lama  15:36, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Heh. Hadn't noticed that extension has the same name I used for the template-based system I designed and implemented a while back to track books in subsections of subjects.  Though I do note that if one wants to know how many books we have, my allbooks facility can actually answer that:
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:41, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah. My oversight: that number actually includes the 11 subcategories, as well as the books.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:48, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Come to think, I suppose I could modify my code so that an allbooks category would not belong to its parent subject's allbooks category. That way, the number of pages in each allbooks category would be exactly the number of books in the corresponding subject.  It might be messy to make the changes, but in principle it should be possible.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:59, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * @DL: It's the tip of the day. It updates every day - correction: it's supposed to update every day - so it can give the impression that the project is indeed 'alive'. I'm not sure how putting effort into NUMBEROFBOOKS and Special:Random would help, TBH... aren't they doing exactly what they're supposed to do (displaying the number of books and taking the user to a random page)? *confused* Kayau (talk · contribs) 10:23, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the idea is that project growth is limited more by difficulty of contribution than by any shortfall of apparent project dynamism. We have a similar situation at Wikinews, only (as usual) more so:  There are some folks who talk about how we need a new look for the main page, or whatever, but the fundamental damper on project growth is that Wikinews contribution is difficult, a problem that (because the tasks involved are fundamental to our mission) is best addressed by software tools to assist contributors to learn and apply the needed skills (which, of course, the foundation will never do anything to help us with because we aren't Wikipedia, so we have to try to write the software ourselves).  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:43, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the idea is that project growth is limited more by difficulty of contribution than by any shortfall of apparent project dynamism. We have a similar situation at Wikinews, only (as usual) more so:  There are some folks who talk about how we need a new look for the main page, or whatever, but the fundamental damper on project growth is that Wikinews contribution is difficult, a problem that (because the tasks involved are fundamental to our mission) is best addressed by software tools to assist contributors to learn and apply the needed skills (which, of course, the foundation will never do anything to help us with because we aren't Wikipedia, so we have to try to write the software ourselves).  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:43, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I think growth is limited by time, priorities, learning curve, motivation, and awareness. People can only use what they are aware of exists. If the learning curve is high, more time is often required to learn it too, and that may translate into less motivation to learn it and less of a priority to use it. If one thing takes less time than another to use, the one that takes less time to use may receive a higher priority and may have higher motivation for people to use. I think most people within Wikimedia prioritize Wikipedia over other projects so they get the most software support and the other projects suffer for it. I think there is only so much ducktape people can do to fix the limitations of the software, and often at the cost of slowing growth. Wikipedia also suffers slowing growth too because of competition from software platforms that have a lower learning curve to use and allow more to be done in less time. --dark lama  16:09, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Of course, not everything is due to easy of use. Wikipedia is also struggling with a serious hostile-atmosphere problem caused by accumulated toxins from years of AGF.  Many Wikipedians don't understand the other sisters, believe them to be unnecessary, and act to undermine them &mdash; and the other sisters have a greater need for specialized automation than Wikipedia does, at least more than Wikipedia has needed in the past, so that starving the other sisters for support has an especially big negative impact on them.  The other sisters are where the big growth potential is, but they're correspondingly harder to perfect.  Ease of use comes back into it, because the reason starving the other sisters has such a big impact on the other sisters is because what they're doing is more specialized and therefore less easy.  Wikipedia is behind the curve in demand for specialized tasks, but catching up as it matures.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Aha. There's an option on the PAGESINCATEGORY magic word to count only ordinary pages.
 * :-) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:22, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
 * :-) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:22, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

I think the tip of the day is no different from the three featured projects already present because the main page is meant to update with every page load with different featured projects to give the impression Wikibooks is indeed 'alive'. Your suggestion suffers from the same problems as the featured projects in its a catch22 problem which requires that there be existing interest in participation in order to encourage participation in participating in a participation driven effort. I agree with Pi zero that further attempts to create a need for participation to encourage participation when there is no interest in participation to be found already in what we have is a mistake and further suggest it simply will not work.

Participation either requires time and effort people may not have or asks people to prioritize community involvement over the books. I think we should change the way we do things to make better use of the time participations have by adopting to their needs rather than ask people to make books less of a priority in favor of greater participation community processes or to devote more time to Wikibooks. I think asking people to do either is unrealistic.

I think the way to go is through the use of extensions, like a RecentBooks extension to supplement RecentChanges, while also allowing a list of top 10 recent books to be embedded on pages. I used AllBooks and Randomrootpage as examples because AllBooks supplements NUMBEROFPAGES and Special:Allpages, and Randomrootpage supplements Special:Random, and both are examples of extensions which add features for books based on a system that was designed for individual pages. I think both extensions do what they are designed to do and address specific problems in a realistic way.

I think the problem of time and priorities can be best addressed through an extension, the example of a RecentBooks extension would require no additional time on the part of people whose priority are the books while providing a way to give the impression Wikibooks is indeed 'alive' to new people who see the main page. --dark lama  14:08, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm all for whatever main page changes the community agrees to but I don't think that's the cause of the problem of fewer people contributing to the project. As I've said previously the main problems (for all wiki projects) are the complexity of editing and the attitudes of the community.  Creating new pages, using wiki markup language, adding references and images are all unnecessarily difficult and the powers that be seem to have no intention of making it any simpler.  A complete re-write is necessary.  Attitudes is not a problem nowadays on Wikibooks but I remember a time when the community was very divided, unfriendly and would argue about every little thing - however, this clearly is a massive problem at our big sister Wikipedia.  A main page revamp may look more attractive but won't solve these problems.  I also have concerns that such a revamp may be too demanding for those visiting the site from mobile phones, netbooks and Kindles.  However, if someone wants to redesign the main page then fair enough but take these issues into account.--ЗAНИA [[Image:Flag_of_Estonia.svg|15px]]talk 20:26, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Wikibooks and Wikinews have become friendly communities, lately. It seems to be a matter of the local cultures having successfully evolved away from the Wikipedian tradition of social behavior &mdash; while Wikipedia has evolved deeper into the rut they'd gotten themsevles into.  I wish I knew a simple recipe for this sort of peaceful community; I suspect there are some simple principles, which probably date back at least to Aesop.  Likely Wikipedia got off-track by assuming (as each new generation tends to) that they were going to prove themselves superior to previous generations by creating a new world based on better principles than previous generations had used &mdash; founding it on a principle of Assuming Good Faith, and thereby distracted themselves from the old, tried principles that enable communities to function harmoniously.  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 00:30, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

While WB may not have the largest community, by creating such discussion processes as featured module nominations and such, we are making our community look active... We do have regular contributors here, after all, and if the new users look at the discussions and say, 'hey, this is one active site!', they'll jump the bandwagon, the way people like to jump the WP bandwagon. Economies of scale! I suggest we focus on the Main Page on this one. If we want other ways to get people participating, it can be done elsewhere. Kayau (talk · contribs) 14:23, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to think that there is not enough readership of books at Wikibooks, and that is as much of a problem as not enough editors. Maybe including links to many books on the main page, instead of just three, could help attract more readership? Liam987  18:25, 16 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I think even regular contributors rarely participate in the featured books discussion process. Featured books use to be two projects that called for participation only once a month and participation in that declined too. I am inclined to think interest in reading books available at Wikibooks has declined and people find contributing too difficult to do compared to alternatives. I think listing more books on the main page could help, but only if such a list is frequently updated to reflect the activity level of Wikibooks and is easy to maintain, which I think is best achieved through an extension which automates the process. --dark lama  18:49, 16 March 2013 (UTC)
 * If we *have* to update the Main Page, we'll surely be able to do discuss and make decisions in time. w:WP:MOTD does go through a lot of 'emergencies', but we always sort things out at the end because we're pressured to do so. I wouldn't oppose such extensions at all, though I think those will take time, and, IMHO, time better spent with better e-reader support and such... Kayau (talk · contribs) 14:31, 17 March 2013 (UTC)