Wikibooks talk:Card Catalog Office/Archive 1

This page is the first Arcive page of the Card Catalog Affice discussion page.

It covers the first discussion on the Card Catalog Office project in 2005 and early 2006.

What I think
I think the front page needs to get rid of half its clutter so that the wikibooks can be more represented like they were a year ago. - Cyberman

Introduction to this Wikimedia Project
Like many of the other sister Wikimedia projects, there are special areas of the project that are designated for doing more focused or specialized projects that can help the community in general. On Wikipedia these are called Wikiprojects.

I'm proposing a similar kind of effort here on Wikibooks called the Card Catalog Office.

I've been looking at the Dewey Decimal page that is right off the main page, and it is in serious need of reform (if not simply chaning the name of the page from "Test"). It was a good idea, but needs some serious cleanup.

In addition, sometimes people are a bit confused with where to put something (like the discussion above about the Disasters book). This Wikiproject could help with new Wikibookians who are a little unsure on where to put things, or if bookshelves are being rearranged (like the last reorganization attempt of the IT bookshelf) things could be a little better organized. Ontological discussions (the study of how to organize things) could also take place, and alternative search systems could be implemented for trying to locate a Wikibook. That would be the primary focus of this Wikiproject.

I'd also like some input as to if we should merge into this organization of Wikibooks information that is also found on Wikisource. There already is a tendancy to have content be placed on Wikibooks that really belongs over at Wikisource, so I'm proposing that we keep links to the content so it doesn't get duplicated (often duplicated again). Keep in mind this is just links to Wikisource material, not the material itself. Wikisource material should not appear on the main "Bookshelves" that appear on the front page, but rather in the classification systems that we come up with in this new Card Catalog Office.

Goals to work toward:


 * 1) New Wikibookian book placement service (and general new user help on writing a new Wikibook).
 * 2) Dewey Decimal Classification catalog
 * 3) Library of Congress organization
 * 4) Alphabetacal search of Wikibooks (not just book modules... the current system really stinks)
 * 5) Greater use of categories

If the Wikidata proposal actually gets off the ground, this would be a good candidate for inclusion into that project in terms of a way to organize everything here. Some changes to the MediaWiki software have also made pulling off a project like this somewhat easier to accomplish.

Any other thoughts on this organization? --Rob Horning 12:29, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Sounding good so far, I'll add thoughts as they come to me. As already brought to Aya's attention (User talk:Aya) the current bookshelf-related pages are a mess of redundant and duplicate information. The first priority of this project should be to organise those--after all how can you sort things out if the rules by which you organise them are so disjointed? GarrettTalk 13:01, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * One possibility is to use categories for each page in a book. Like for example my article at the Academic Publishing Wiki has a category collecting all the connected and/or affiliated pages pages together. This way you can find pages regardless of how the author has (or hasn't) organised their wikibook, and you can find related linked-to pages. BUT the books and recent changes would have to be religiously monitored to make sure any and all new pages get put in the category. Also this helps save complexity. For example the San Andreas wikibook currently has about four different categories it's in and more were added as those ports were made--but with this system only the category would be updated, thus in turn re-tagging the pages within it. GarrettTalk 13:18, 1 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Also a method of listing about related books would be nice. Yes you can find them with the categories, but for the unknowing or lazy reader it's nice to have it "in your face". Like how at Amazon or Gamespot you see a very closely related product. Ideally similar to the "(wikihere) has more on" template as seen to the right. The template's attributes (multiple, preferably) would allow you to enter related books. Ideally there would be a reciprocal way to get the link also on that linked-to page... what I'm really thinking of here is something just like what BoardGameGeek has. See this page; scroll way, way down and you'll find a Relationships section. Users can add associations, and those are then listed on the other pages automatically. In this example, manually forming an association between a themed version of Monopoly with the core edition then auto-associates that variant with other variants that have previously been manually associated. I don't know how this could be converted to a wiki structure, but it could be nice. I'm not necessarily talking about the voting, just the fact that it lists related things. GarrettTalk 13:28, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Also something needs to be done about the progress icon upkeep. I just updated the San Andreas icon in three different places and I bet there's two more I missed. Ideally we need some sort of parsing system, maybe even with per-project templates that the editors can edit to make site-wide changes to that percentage. GarrettTalk 13:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Also I'm thinking more about the idea of book "logos" to make things part of a series, with tiny versions shown on the bookshelf pages so you can recognise a familiar series logo. For example... File:Booklogoexample.png ...like that. You have an icon thing for the core series (in this case, how-tos), and one for the book (in this case, the nonexistent telephony). So when browsing on shelves you'd see these familiar icons jump out at you. Of course it would have a text description beside it, but it would still label it for quick notice. What I'm getting at is that this you have this on dead-tree books; you have the publisher's distinctive logo (or sometimes the author's monogram) on the spine so you can recognise things. GarrettTalk 13:56, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Ideas on catalog templates
I've been thinking about a different way to try and "catalog" the content on here. One approach that I've considered is to try and put right into each Wikibook a simple template that has the cataloging information. Based on the content of the template, it would put the Wikibook into the appropriate category(ies) that help to define the Wikibook. This template can be extended, but would serve to put some initial catalog numbers into each Wikibook.

For instaces a template something like this:

The problem I see is how to get the template to interpret this information to put it into categories that are incomplete. Particularly the Dewey Decimal catalog number. This "catalog entry" could also be some cool little graphic (based on the content) that would be a little bit "in your face" regarding other related Wikibooks. A similar sort of template could be inserted into each "page" of a wikibook... helping with "branding", navigation, and creation of an overall category for a single Wikibook.

What I'm envisioning is a web equivalent of browsing bookshelves in a library, where sometimes a somewhat related book will be nearby on a list even if the card catalog number is not exactly the same. I don't know of any current search tool on the internet that allows something like this to take place, but is something that I frequently do when I am trying to research a topic in a (dead tree) library. It isn't perfect, but something that the card catalog numbers do a very good job of... at least as long as nearby books are loosly of related topics. Jumping from 100's levels in the Dewey Decimal system (for instance) will be a lager switch on topics, but that can't be totally helped. That is perhaps why more than one system should be employed. Sometimes I'll read about a topic that is totally unrelated to what I was originally searching for, but jumped out at me for some reason, and I've even used it on term papers about the original topic.

I also noticed the Browse page, which has not been kept current. It does, however, suggest totally different organizational methods than the current realm of bookshelves that are quite active at the moment. Should this page be killed or reoganized? Its link to the current Wikibooks catagory structure is apparent, and perhaps that should be a jumping off point as well. Certainly this page needs to be reorganized.

I'm at a loss in regards on where to being right now. The bookshelves seem to have "sorted themselves out" for the moment, and seem to be in fairly good shape in terms of future expansion of Wikibooks. The question I have is more what to do next, and how to get this whole thing organized. I think if we all work together on the same part of this puzzle together rather than going willy-nilly all over with our own ideas, we can make quite a bit of progress and put together what has been a neglected corner of Wikibooks. I can come up with other cool organizational ideas, but mainly I'd like to see the current set of organization ideas cleaned up or discarded... as the rest of the interested Wikibookians that want to be involved here decide. --Rob Horning 22:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)



^^ this code generates this >>

I've created Template:Catalog based on the above with some minor tweaking. First of all, the IDs here are completely bogus, mainly because I can't remember the dewey system as well as I used to. Note that the numbers are redlinks; when you create the book you would click each of those and put the cat ID of the nearest category within them--for example 123.456 GTA would go within 123.456, and that within 123.400, and that within 123.000, and so on, depending on how deep and intricate we want the cat usage to be.

I've coded the template to be as brief and foolproof for the user as can be.

Anyway, see what you think, and change what you hate. GarrettTalk 11:18, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

UPDATE: see the category bar at the bottom of this page? If I was to click on the Congress one and save it this page would then appear in there... as I said, foolproof is the goal. :)

Note that the way I've set the category names up means that this page will be invisibly listed in the 123.456 category as "123.456 GTA Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas". Now the user does not see this special name but it means that the pages will be arranged in shelf order rather than alphabetical order. Or at least I hope it does, I will have to check that I interpreted the WP implementation of this workaround correctly. --damn, seems to only work among the same letters in a cat. Well, that's the best I can do then. GarrettTalk 11:47, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

The idea I had with the nearby attribute is that you list books that are very strongly related. Like for another example the C++ book would give nearbys for C and C#--but not for Java, you could find that through the cat links. The idea is that it would only be for direct siblings (C and C#), rather than cousins (Java, Perl, etc.). GarrettTalk 12:06, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

My thoughts
I thought I'd start a new section for clarity.

First of all - wow! Some great ideas here. Much better than I've come up with on this subject. The example template makes it very clear how effective this could be.

One thing I've found useful is to define editorial control to avoid 'edit war paranoia' and the endless discussions that result from it, so if this is a Wikiproject, we should nominate a single user to be the Wikiproject Manager. This would mean, they get editorial control on the project page to which this talk page is attached. Their job is to maintain the project page, summarizing content from the talk page, and amalgamating it into the project page. Anyone may edit the project page (this seems preferable to having the manager have to parse all the comments), but should edit wars occur, the project manager gets to make the judgement call, since they are ultimately responsible for maintaining its clarity. This is in effect what I tried to do with my 'Critique of Wikibooks' in order to keep it digestable for those who haven't been following all the discussion.

Since Rob started this project, he would seem the obvious choice for this role. I might recommend starting to write up some of the previous talk in a more imperative, less discussional fashion, before the amount of talk becomes too overwhelming. Try writing it like a policy or procedure. e.g.


 * Goals


 * To make it easy for new Wikibooks users to find the content they are looking for.
 * To minimize duplicate Wikibooks with virtually identical scopes.


 * Procedures

etc.
 * All Wikibooks should include the 'catalog' template on their main page.
 * Template parameters should consist of... blah blah blah
 * To find out correct dewey codes use the list at site http://whatever...


 * Examples



This project also touches upon our current lack of a 'category use' policy. Should categories be reserved for tagging books only (the existing Wikibooks:Browse page seems to hint that this was the original intention), or should they also be allowed for categorizing pages within a single book (e.g. the myriad cookbook categories)? If both are acceptable, is there an easy way to distinguish between the two? If we plan to have one category per Dewey code, what page or category is designated to form an index of those categories?

So, perhaps, put up a v1.0 of this new project on the project page, then we can take it from there. Doesn't have to be extensive, perhaps just a summary of our best ideas so far. For unresolved issues, I don't see a problem with leaving explicitly unanswered questions on the project page itself. These will no doubt decide the direction of the subsequent discussions on this talk page. The end result, hopefully, will be a really great, well thought-out policy doc, and will serve to clarify the whole issue for all Wikibooks users.

Once this policy seems clear enough, we can then start to implement it, and start adding these templates and categories to existing books. - Aya T C 00:46, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Good idea
It's a good idea, but the card catalog office is a big project. Anyways, it should have the following responsibilities:


 * Bookshelf maintenance - the CCO is responsible to maintaining bookshelves "nice and tidy", meaning that books that get deleted are removed from bookshelves, new books are put into bookshelves, etc. They should also be responsible for maintaining Bookshelf requests for adding and removing bookshelves from the canonical list.  Promotion and demotion of featured books on bookshelves should also go through the CCO.
 * Classification - same thing, but with the Dewey Decimal and LOC index (henceforth put into Dewey Decimal index and Library of Congress index, or WB:DDI and WB:LOCI).

I would also like to nominate User:Aya and User:Robert Horning as head librarians in the CCO.

As for category policy, we do have an informal one: each book Book should have Category:Book:  for categories within their book, as per WB:NC, for categorizing modules within a book (eg. Category:Wikibooks Pokédex:Normal Pokémon). All other categories are between books: ie. they tag books rather than individual modules. I'd like to see it fine-tuned before it is canonized though.

Speaking of which, we also must develop a policy on title pages, so that these books can be categorized. I'll get the ball rolling: For a book book, the page book is considered to be the title page of the book, and should contain a short table of contents. If a book is on vfd, speedy, transwiki, forking policy violation, etc., only the title page will have the tag. Note that this may buck existing conventions: many consider Programming:C a separate book from Programming:Ada, but under WB:NC the two are sections under Programming. KelvSYC 01:23, 3 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Just a minor historical point. The  books are separate books, they just don't follow WB:NC. In the olden days, the psuedo-namespace   was an early means of indicating that the books inside were members of the 'programming bookshelf'. This use of pseudo-namespaces is now deprecated, so the books ought to be titled e.g. ,   or   instead of  . We just need someone to go through and do all the renaming. - Aya T C 18:43, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Placing some initial content on "front page" of CCO
I've put some stuff up on the main project page to look at. The list of books is (if you are paying attention) from the list of Books of the Month. I figured we can use them as guinea pigs to see what we think of how everything is going to be organized like, and gives us some real Wikibooks to work with that will be more like how a mature system should be working like. We do need to have an organized system for trying to classify books, and I am trying to come up with a way that we can keep things "bite sized" on the organization and allow us to also serve newer Wikibookians who may want to have us help them out. This is also a way we can keep this project sustained into the future even after the initial "ouch" of getting stuff put together.

Tell me what you like/don't like/need to add to this page (or even update it yourself if you feel motivated). Quite a bit more content needs to be added, but this is a rough idea of more what I wanted people to be looking at, and also to be friendly to new users. Polcies adopted here will go through the formal guidelines and policies vetting like any other Wikibook policy. --Rob Horning 18:43, 5 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, so far it looks like the sort of thing that ought to be on Community Portal (which is in need of a serious overhaul). I was expecting something more like "instructions on how to classify books". - Aya T C 20:41, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Catalog structure
My thoughts:
 * Our catalogs should be moved to something like Books by Library of Congress Classification and subpages like Books by Library of Congress Classification/GV 1469 (MegaMan Battle Network and any other Mega Man books we have are at GV 1469.35.M43, so it would be in that page). We can also do interlinking such as having Books by Library of Congress Classification/Q go to Science bookshelf.
 * Any cataloging policy remains questionable unless we have a good policy on book title pages. I'm about to draft a guideline at Title pages.  Tell me your thoughts.

KelvSYC 04:34, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

main page
I have just finished taking the main page as a cut and paste to my user talk box, where i generated a list of what i think ought to be the new "bookshelves." The list probably is missing a few things, but the point is, at least there is some differentiation between the smaller pieces of larger umbrellas. I have also left a note in the staff room, as per somebodies instructions at the main page discussion area.

Prometheuspan 02:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I've been seriously distracted from this for far too long. If you are wanting to get into classifying the content on Wikibooks, I'm going to try and kick this whole think up a major notch and start the book classification process as a serious endeavor. --Rob Horning 17:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

-- Prometheuspan 00:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC) excellent, I'm still trying to decide where and how and if i fit in. Please keep me apraised of any process, and let me know if there is anything i can do to help, or, a partial taxonomy i can come critique. -

Blockland mapping`
I think Blockland mapping may be intended as the stand-alone ToC page of a book that was never written, or may belong to a book that no longer exists. I'm starting a Blockland book for it and moving it to Blockland/Mapping; hopefully, someone will pick up the torch and write new modules. (I've never played Blockland.) Seahen 23:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that this was just supposed to be an example of a relatively new Wikibook that needed classification. We really need to get this sub-project (the CCO) up and running soon, and make this something that really matters.  I'm trying to still build the infrastructure (tables & guidelines) to get this working properly.  It is just going to be a matter of time.  --Rob Horning 03:33, 26 February 2006 (UTC)