Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Help:Editing

Help:Editing and most of the Help: namespace

 * Notice: There are no vfd tags on any of these pages because the pages state, "Do not edit this page." --Kernigh 23:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Due in part because of the above VfD, and because I thought this issue had already been resolved earlier but I guess it is coming back up again, I am requesting a VfD for help content that is already duplicated on Meta anyway and has all of these silly warnings that you should not edit the content here on Wikibooks. This is also IMHO a violation of Forking policy, at least in spirit in regards to the fact that this content is already available on a Wikimedia project. If there can be some specific technical reason for hosting this content on Wikibooks, I would like to see that spelled out very clearly. Simply trying to maintain this content on Wikibooks is going to be close to a full-time effort and I see no reason why it should be done, not to mention having to patrol these pages for vandalism and other efforts that are better done on Meta as well. I had earlier changed the "Editing help" (see MediaWiki:Edithelppage) tag to open the content directly on Meta, but that link was reverted back to Help:Editing by User:Uncle G without comment. I don't want to get into an edit war with Uncle G, so I am willing to carry on the fight here in this forum as a VfD instead. --Rob Horning 15:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Keep The Help: modules are in poor condition, as I noted at Talk:Wikimedia Administrator's Handbook. Further, it is Meta policy, not Wikibooks policy, to copy the pages from Meta to Wikibooks. I have also seen these pages copied to Wikiquote, for example Wikiquote:Help:Editing. Also, Help:Image fails because it uses an untagged m:Image:Canterbury Tales.png, not a free image from Commons. If a Wikimedia wiki wanted to oppose Meta's policy of copying help from Meta, than Engish Wikibooks is a good place to start such opposition. I strongly recommend against copying the MediaWiki Handbook to the Help: namespace of a non-Wikimedia wiki. For example, Wikicities:c:NetHack:Help:Contents links to help pages at other wikis, including Wikimedia Meta.  Despite this, I vote to Keep our Help pages, instead of using the Wikihack approach. I can link to our Help pages without using interwiki links, and I can include project-specific information at the bottom of each page. Now I will go to m:Help:Image and replace the nonfree image with a free one. --Kernigh 23:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Why does Meta policy dictate what we do here on Wikibooks? And more to the point, what technical reason is there for having the content duplicated on Wikibooks?  Is there a concern that Meta is going to go down and not Wikibooks, so we won't be able to access the help content?  Since the two projects are physically hosted on the very same servers, I don't see what additional advantage of doing that would be.  In that regard, I would strongly recommend the copying of the MediaWiki Handbook to the Help: namespace of your project if you were running an independent server that was not one of the Wikimedia sister projects, simply because you don't know how dependable the Wikimedia Foundation is going to be.  If the Wikimedia Foundation closes up shop, Wikibooks is already going to be history so that is never going to be an issue or a concern.  Wikicities is another issue still, and I would recommend only one set of help pages at Wikicities, but that is an issue for the people at Wikicities.  We don't need to burden the database for Wikibooks any more than we already do with current Wikibook development.  Already Uncle G has a 'bot that is doing the duplication of Meta content.  It also blatantly invites vandalism for the help pages here on Wikibooks (I'm not watching them, are you?), and there are so many new pages all of the time on Meta that trying to keep track of all the changes is going to be a nightmare by itself.  BTW, the whole issue of the Canterbury Tales image is a non-issue if it stays at Meta, because we don't have to transwiki the image to Wikibooks and deal with the copyright issue.  That is for the admins on Meta to deal with.  We only have to deal with that image if it is moved to Wikibooks, which I'm opposed to in the first place.  As it is, Uncle G's 'bot is also overwriting the Wikibooks specific talk pages including discussions about why the pages should not be hosted on Wikibooks that happened in the past. --Rob Horning 03:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I have cancelled my "keep" vote while I go to Meta and examine the origin of this policy to copy the help pages. --Kernigh 23:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The origin of this policy stretches back several years. See for examples this edit from 2003, where help text was copied from Wikipedia, and this edit from 2005, where the very editor who is complaining about copying things from Meta copied text from Meta.  The only thing that has changed is that instead of editors copying the help piecemeal from other projects resulting in a patchy and confused help system someone, me, has actually sat down and copied the entire help in one go. Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Most of your arguments are spurious. That argument about vandalism is entirely spurious.  All non-protected pages "invite vandalism".  By that spurious argument we should delete all pages on the wiki.  The argument about new pages on Meta is spurious.  New pages are not added to the help all that often.  The argument about keeping track of all of the changes is spurious.  That's implicit in the transwikification.  The argument about burdening the database is spurious.  Note that it is more of a burden upon the servers to use soft interwiki redirects, not less, because it involves multiple page fetches before a reader actually reaches the actual help text.  The argument that maintaining this content will be "full time effort" is spurious and self-contradictory, given that you are complaining that it's being done (semi-)automatically rather than manually as before.  Your argument about "discussions about why the pages should not be hosted on Wikibooks" is spurious.  The argument was in fact that since no-one at the time was regularly copying the help text from Meta, the page should be a soft redirect.  Clearly, that argument has no foundation any longer. Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * How vandalism is a big deal here is that the active development of these pages is not happening on Wikibooks but rather Meta, so the people doing the development of the Help pages won't necessarily catch vandalism. These are also pages that by definition are going to be viewed primarily to people new to this project, so the importance of keeping them free from vandalism of all sorts is more important than typical pages.  Also, established users are less likely to be monitoring these pages simply due to the way they have been copied over.  As popular pages, vandals are also going to be seeking these very tempting pages just because of the nature of the content and all of the above reasons.  This is not going to be the same as a typical page on Wikibook as you seem to suggest.  --Rob Horning 17:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete -- There is no good reason to fork Meta content at 'books. Soft redirects to the pages at Meta is a better solution. Gentgeen 02:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This isn't a forked book. This is infrastructure for editors.  It's no more a fork than General disclaimer is. These are not modules in the article namespace.  These are help pages in the Help: namespace.  Ironically, one of the pages that you are wanting to delete is the Help:Namespace page explaining the differences between the two namespaces, for any editors who don't understand them. &#9786; Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * We are not forking the content, we are mirroring the content. But we are doing it poorly. Several the help pages are missing, Help:Introduction (which I copied) is not linked in, Help:Template misses the templates, though Help:Editing and Help:Namespace are both in good condition. Redirecting to Meta is not a complete solution, as some parts of this book are broken at Meta (several remain outside the "Help:" namespace). --Kernigh 21:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Where on Meta is the book broken where it is not broken here? If the pages remain outside of the "Help:" namespace, as a registered user it is trivial to move them or fix the broken links, but that should be done on Meta anyway.  The Help namespace here on Wikibooks should be for help pages that are specific to this project, of which there are a few.  These Wikibooks-unique pages are not reflected in the list of help pages on Help:Editing either as they don't appear anywhere on Meta nor should they.  Not even Wikipedia does as complete of a mirror from Meta as we seem to do here on Wikibooks.  --Rob Horning 09:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This isn't a fork creating a module in the main namespace. This is infrastructure in the Help: namespace.  And this is a simple continuation and completion of a process that has been ongoing for three years, now &mdash; one that Rob himself has even participated in. Keep. 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't hide from the fact that I participated in moving some of the pages over here. I believe now that was a mistake and I feel they should go.  I also fail to see exactly why content has to be mirrored here on Wikibooks, or even where the policy is written down or even generally acknowledged except by the note on the help page itself.  That "policy" certainly didn't have any widespread support or approval.  That was simply one user's assertion that has subsequently been accepted as fact without question by other users.  I am now challenging that assertion, even if it goes against current practice.  BTW, I could simply delete these pages, but I am choosing not to do that and instead trying to get community input on removing them... unlike what was done apparently to force a mirror of these pages onto here.  If you (or anybody) can, please give a specific technical reason why this content must be mirrored as a part of the infrastructure now that inter-project links are available.  Prior to the MediaWiki changes that allowed interwiki link, it made a bunch more sense to mirror the content.  That is no longer the case.  --Rob Horning 09:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment The idea of maintaining a "MediaWiki handbook" at meta.wikimedia and copying it into the "Help:" namespace of each MediaWiki originated in March 2004. At 22 March 2004, MediaWiki developer Erik Moeller reported to wikitech-l of the addition of the "Help:" namespace to MediaWiki. Quote: "As some of you may know, there is currently a user guide under development on Meta. This user guide really belongs in its own namespace, which allows us to easily export it and bundle it together with MediaWiki. It will also be quite neat to have links like Help:Editing, Help:Redirects, Help:Preferences etc." In a later email in the same thread, Daniel Mayer mentioned that "I started the handbook on Meta". This implies that the handbook started existence before the "Help:" namespace. This thus explains why some the handbook pages are not yet in the "Help:" namespace, and why some of them are missing features like the h:h header and h:f footer. Quoting Daniel Mayer's same email: "Would it be possible to have development on the handbook occur on Meta MediaWiki pages (at least for English) and have those versions exported (via an interwiki msg or something like it) to the various wikis' corresponding help:namespace pages? ... That would mean that the English help:namespace pages would be protected with an interwiki msg (or something similar) on them pointing to the Meta versions of those pages." The idea was to supply Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other MediaWikis (internal and external to Wikimedia) with help pages, protect the pages, and set up some mechanism for importing the pages. Our current mechanism, though, uses no protection and relies on normal users to import the pages. It also has several flaws such as missing templates. Thus I have depended on the MediaWiki Handbook to learn how to use MediaWiki. (Some users apparently read the English Wikipedia's project pages instead, but I did not start with Wikipedia and am much less familiar with that wiki.) However, I normally read the handbook at Meta, not at English Wikibooks. It is apparent to me that there is no consensus among users at English Wikibooks whether to import help pages from Meta. However, it also is apparent to me that our "Help:" namespace has no purpose otherwise. --Kernigh 04:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * It is indeed possible that our Help link could become nothing more than a link back to meta, but it does not have to be so. For example any out-of-box wikicity has nothing more than a link back to Central on Help:Contents, but the communities quickly develop new exclusive pages to cover use and presentation of their content. We already have Help:Development stages for example. That is the sort of thing we will keep and maintain. GarrettTalk 06:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete mirrored pages. Leave the rest. It's not like anyone will notice... GarrettTalk 06:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * delete mirrored pages. Make them soft redirects to the original version on Meta. All the warnings against editing those pages would be unnecessary if we were sent to the original version on Meta. For people (such as myself) familiar with other wiki, this also helps distinguish new stuff specific to Wikibooks, so they come up to speed faster. --DavidCary 18:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * comment I am confused by the statement that I can link to our Help pages without using interwiki links, and I can include project-specific information at the bottom of each page. While today you could write Wikibooks-specific information on, say, Help:Moving a page, wouldn't that information soon be lost the next time that page is mirrored from Meta? After the mirrored pages are deleted, won't we still be able to link to "our" Help pages (such as Help:Development stages) using local links (rather than interwiki links)? For example, WB:NP currently links to the (mirrored) page Help:Moving a page. Say we replace that mirrored page by a soft redirect to the original version. WB:NP can then be left unchanged, continuing to use a local link (rather than interwiki link), right? (I agree with Horning that a MediaWiki on a different server should mirror the handbook, to keep it accessible whenever that server is accessible). --DavidCary 18:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to add that the "Editing Help" link in the edit window could either point straight to Meta (this was done earlier and the VfD is partly about that reversion back to Wikibooks), or we could make a Wikibooks specific help page that would cover unique aspects of Wikibooks and a link to Meta for more detailed editing help. Nowhere in this am I advocating to delete any content that is unique to Wikibooks, and can be linked using local links.  One source of confusion is that there are some templates built into the MediaWiki manual on Meta that can be "customized" for a local project, including project specific pages like the stages descriptions.  The problem I see with this is that you have to be fairly savvy with trying to edit templates before you can even begin to make changes on them... or even try to find what template needs to be changed in the first place.  And you have to make sure that the template is not overwritten on a mirror move of content.  --Rob Horning 12:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep! - delete it only if you write something as good, as informative, and as educative as that. --George D. Bozovic talk 10:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete I originally voted "Keep", but I see several problems in maintaining this mirror (look at Help:Template for example). There is also lack of consensus concerning the purpose of the "Help:" namespace. I also find the system of copied-pages-and-templates to be too complex; I still do not know the function of MetaWikipedia:Template:H:1 (which currently is a red link at Wikibooks, see [Help:Namespace). --Kernigh 21:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
 * comment quite shocked to see help was up for deletion. If people have a problem with the help pages then surely the best solution is to go over to meta and edit them there. Forking the help pages will cause all sort of problems when there is a software update. Editing on meta will help the whole wiki community. (meta:User:Salix alba) --82.138.219.137 18:13, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
 * That is preciesely what we want to do... encourage people to edit these pages on Meta and not Wikibooks... where the content will be quickly reverted and overwritten. This is not a VfD to remove the content on Meta at all.  This is to remove the forked content here on Wikibooks alone.  --Rob Horning 13:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep out of principle, or even better, move from Meta. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the pages stay here or redir to Meta.  However, I think we need to look at the issue from a broader perspective.  Something to consider is that these help pages from Meta are only directly usable on English projects.  Even Simple English Wikibooks (very small at the moment, but not at all the same as Wikijunior, and not deserving of deletion, despite Angela's nomination to the contrary) will have to have its own (simplified) version (at least eventually, though for now all editors are fluent English speakers).  The direct usefulness of the Meta help pages is limited to English projects, and therefore the differences being argued about here ultimately only affect a small percentage of Wikibooks and its sister projects (despite the fact that English is the largest of them), because obviously French Wikibooks (for example) cannot mirror the Meta help pages.  Theoretically then, even though this is mentioned as Meta policy, somehow that policy only applies to English projects.  This is extremely inconsistent.  If every other language must make their own help pages, this is an extremely English-speaker-centric policy (as if English were a more important language than the others), so I think that even seeing it from a respect-for-multiculturalism point of view, English Wikibooks should have its own help pages, whether or not they are on Meta as well.  If Meta wants to be a repository of help pages, let them have help pages in every language, or at least every language with x number of articles/entries/books/etc.  When we get right down to it (though this is not really an argument appropriate to this forum), the fact that Meta is pretty much exclusively in English (with the exception of the Main Page, which in every language I checked (4-5) has very few links to non-English Meta pages) is rather English-centric (though it seems they're working on it), but that's another story.  --66.181.63.9 06:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC) (my sign-in expired without me noticing; my apologies) Cromwellt|talk
 * Having given this some thought, I would like to do more of a massive reorganization of the help pages where here on Wikibooks we have the Help:Editing page be more of an introduction to page editing, with a prominent link to the content on Meta, and many cross references within subsequent help pages to Meta as well. The deletion request is to remove those pages that are duplicated on Meta, giving Wikibooks the room to develop its own content, and to get rid of the silly notice on the top of each page here on Wikibooks that says you can't edit the content here.  We should be able to independently edit the help pages on Wikibooks without regard to Meta or what is happening there. As far as moving the content from Meta, I think that would take an act of God (and not just the full support of Jimbo) before that would happen.  The users are far too entrenched on Meta who are developing this content, and far too many links on too many other Wikimedia projects to it.  I would agree that this is in essence a separate Wikibook and as such perhaps should be here instead of on Meta, but that is the historical status quo and I'm not prepared to upset that apple cart.  I won't touch the multi-lingual aspects of Meta, but Wikibooks seems to be doing just fine for many multi-lingual components as well.  Just look at both Wikiversity and Wikijunior for the number of languages that those have been "ported" over into.  --Rob Horning 19:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The whole of the "Help" namespace needs to be rewritten so that it only contains information useful to Wikibooks, and is useful to Wikibooks. I have removed some of the more obviously irrelevant pages. The rest needs to be rewritten. I am asking Uncle G to no longer use his bot to update this section from meta, Jguk 03:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)