Wikibooks talk:Card Catalog Office/Archive 2

This page is a copy of the categorization discussion that gave way to the book list subproject of the CCO.

Categories
I was planning to do some categorizing of uncategorized pages starting in a couple of weeks. I did some research and was very surprised to find that there where heated discussions on that subject!!?? For example: the proposed guideline does not seem to have been adopted, past categorizations operations gave way to heated remarks, etc. So if there are still some major problems with this concept please stop me before I start. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 15:51, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * User:Robert Horning, if he is around, can probably explain the opposition to this better then I could. I think a big part of the discussion was that categorization should not be compulsary: That is, we should not force pages to be categorized, but at the same time if people want to do it there is nothing to stop them. The problem, I think, was that we don't want to make it seem that pages must be categorized, especially if we don't have a standard system for doing it. However, over time, we have developed better methods and standards of categorizing pages, books, and other categories. I think (and I'm sure there are going to be complaints with this) that it should be perfectly fine to categorize pages if you want to do it.
 * Also, you will learn here, that there are no issues where 100% of people agree. Every issue is a debate, and sometimes you just need to do what you want to, in order to keep yourself happy and interested. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:12, 23 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I certainly have been leading the opposition to the mandatory use of categories in Wikibooks. Wikibooks is not Wikipedia, and the same "rules" simply don't apply here.  Also, I think that the kinds of categories that are created just to put a page into a category aren't always well thought out or really useful.  In addition, from years of experience as an administrator on Wikibooks, I just don't think the supposed benefit of being able to watch for new pages on the Special:Uncategorizedpages is as big of a benefit here as it has been suggested on Wikipedia.  There are many other administrative tools that can be used to perform the very same task if you really get down to it, and adding categories in this regard is just a waste of time that can be better spent doing something else.  That is of course my opinion, and if you want to waste your time doing something you think may be productive, I'm not going to stop you from it.  But I'm also not going to support you either, and feel like removing categories in books that I'm working on is also just as valid of an action.


 * Categories are a useful tool that can be used to index content, and nothing more. I certainly am strongly against any sort of general Wikibooks policy that requires the use of categories in the way that you format the Wikibook.  BTW, this isn't to say that I'm against general categorization of whole Wikibooks, which in this case is much more related to how you can perceive an article on Wikipedia... but typically an individual Wikibook consists of multiple pages, so it largely breaks down the perception of what is accomplished on Wikipedia.  This, IMHO, would be like somebody trying to categorize every independently editable section of every Wikipedia article.  I suppose that might have some usefulness, but would be very clumsy to accomplish.  Of course, this is just my viewpoint on the issue.  --Rob Horning (talk) 03:38, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

First thanks both of you (Andrew and Robert) for giving attention to my post. I'm new to wikibooks so I may be missing important things here. Could you please confirm / infirm the following:
 * Contrary to a Wikipedia article, a book on Wikibooks has typically many pages.
 * So here the concept of uncategorized pages covers both uncategorized books and uncategorized subpages making it a different concept then on Wikipedia.
 * An argument can be made about the usefullness of categorizing subpages
 * Categories form the basic indexing mechanism for books. The new "subject" scheme that is gradually replacing bookshelves relies on categories
 * It is reasonable to think that every book should be attainable thru the subject / category indexing scheme
 * The exact structure of the category acyclic graph and the connection points between a particular book and that graph are clearly open to discussion

If the previous paragraph makes any sense then can you tell me how I can get a list of uncategorized books so I can do the important stuff and leave the rest for somebody that has time to spare. Note that the list of uncategorized pages having more then 5000 entries you cannot get the list of uncategorized books from it. Regards -- Jacques (talk) (email) 06:07, 25 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is more like a single book (an encyclopedia) with many pages (articles), while Wikibooks has many books which is why subpages are used here and not as much on Wikipedia.
 * Yes uncategorized pages and many other listings cover both books and subpages, unlike Wikipedia which consists of only a single book.
 * Categories form the basic indexing mechanism for both books and subpages. The new "subject" scheme is intended for books only and should gradually replace bookshelves and departments, and yes it relies on categories.
 * I think its reasonable to think every book should be attainable through subjects and categories.
 * The exact structure of the category scheme as well as its usefulness are debatable. However I think the community's continued use of the category system shows that its desirable, both past and current common practices show that there is a general consensus as how categorization should be done, and any discontinuation or change of the category system while debatable is unlikely to happen without discussion and agreement.
 * Before you can get a list of uncategorized books you would first need to be able to come up with an accurate list of all books, which Wikibooks doesn't have. I think this is one reason why its good practice to categorize subpages as well into there own book category. --dark lama  16:36, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In case the above isn't clear, this is what I see happening most often, and it makes sense to me: all subpages of a book are categorized into a category which is usually the same as the title of the book (since there will never be 2 books with the same title, their categories will also not overlap). The "front page" (the top of the hierarchy) gets categorized into those which describe the content of the book. The "book category" keeps all pages together - the the binding on a book; the "subject categories" allow users to find the book according to its content. The "subject categories" should correspond to those which will make it appear in the appropriate Subject: pages (if there isn't one which is appropriate, then it should be created, though there shouldn't be too make "missing" ones now - we have a good set, I think). Hope that helps. – Mike.lifeguard  &#124; talk 22:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

As suspected I was missing something important. For a newcomer the lack of an exhaustive "book list" is kind of weird for a booksite. I understand that it is not necessarely trivial to build though (thanks in part to a chat with darklama). I will leave the discussion like this for a couple of days in case somebody as another important missing piece to add. Thanks again for your insights. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 03:39, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * One of the problems that we are fighting here is the MediaWiki software itself. Clearly it has been tweaked to work with encyclopedia articles almost to a fault, although there are some extensions which have been added for purposes other than building encyclopedias.  One of the policies that is very unique to Wikibooks and is not found on Wikipedia in any form is the Wikibooks Naming Policy, which was drafted for the explicit purpose of trying to make some sense to how Wikibooks pages were organized.  I think it is reasonable to presume at this point that nearly all of Wikibooks has been moved into this naming system in one form or another, and one of the purposes of this was to help identify a collection of all books, not simply all pages.  When Wikibooks was first started (and no naming policy at all), some books had a very free-flow on how separate pages were named, and wandered aimlessly from one page name to another and no real structure at all.  In the long run, this has proven to be a disaster in terms of project management, and one of the reasons why a formal naming policy was even established in the first place.


 * Several attempts have been made to try and come up with an exhaustive book list in several different forms, and this meta issue of trying to organize Wikibooks content between the front page, the actual Wikibooks themselves, and helping a reader access information that is on this website has been a tough challenge. A concept called Bookshelves was established early in the history of Wikibooks to help organize this content, and some newer schema have also been developed over the years to help organize this content.  Finding Wikibooks content has always been a very tough problem, particularly when it was in what would be called an incomplete or stubby version that did, however, have some real potential for further expansion.  We have even had several variations of how to address the "best of Wikibooks", but at the moment the Featured books process seems to be working rather well.  This doesn't address, however, how to find content that isn't quite one of the "best of.." books.


 * Categories clearly can be useful in helping to find these books, and removing the sense of pure anarchy that has been the case here on Wikibooks for a considerable amount of the content currently here. Just don't get caught up with the idea that the categories are the end goal here, but instead try to focus on the idea that the goal is to help a reader or new user to Wikibooks to be able to identify some content they are looking for that is already written here, or to confirm that an idea for a new Wikibook is a genuinely new idea that hasn't been tried before.  If this is accomplished, I am 100% supportive of any ideas you may come up with to help this general goal, and I see very little in the way of opposition from anybody to help with this huge task.  --Rob Horning (talk) 14:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * In my opinion the "search and browse" template on the main page is too cluttered... we DO have some space we're not using underneath it so if needed we can make the font bigger or something (at least the font of the template's title should be bigger to bring some attention to it). I'm also not sure if it's necessary to have all of the bookshelves listed on the template, maybe it would be better to just list the departments? If we do that we can bring more emphasis to the other forms of organization. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 16:35, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree with Rob here wholeheartedly (at least his last comment). The categories themselves are not the ends, but are instead a useful means of organization. Categories do not always make sense, are not always easy to navigate, etc. This is especially true if the categories themselves are not properly categorized. Since there are so many categories, it is not reasonable to expect that they are going to be properly organized in relation to one another. However, using DPL and the Subject pages, we can create very nice lists of books based on various category intersections. Take a look at Subject:Engineering for an example of this: Lists are automatically generated of sub-topics, engineering books, featured engineering books, engineering books with print/pdf versions, etc. In this case, we've taken a large number of categories, and combined them into a single page that really contains some useful information. If all books are categorized based on subject, features (print version, pdf version, etc), reading level, status (featured, good, needs cleanup, etc) then we can use DPL and the subject pages to display those category intersections in a very intuitive way. For instance, if you want to contribute to computer programming books, you would go to Subject:Programming, scroll down to the section "Books that need cleanup work" (this section doesnt yet exist, it's hypothetical), and you could find a list of all programming books that need help. There is a lot of potential to this system that we haven't used yet, mostly because we can't agree amongst ourselves how exactly to do it, and because we refuse to mandate that it must be done to begin with. This is why, I think, that people like Jacques should be encouraged if they are interested in categorizing pages, because the work that they do will be helpful eventually, if we can get the correct DPL lists set up. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree with User:Whiteknight here on the fact that we should let resources do something if it might be usefull at some point. The problem is that this is not the main subject here so we shall eventually discuss that elsewhere. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 03:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

OK let’s try to close this discussion with a newbie synthesis.
 * The primary organization unit in Wikibooks is a book. Books are composed of pages.
 * MediaWiki was developed primarily for Wikipedia. It implements the concept of a page but does not directly support the concept of a “book”. Wikipedia can be viewed as a single book with many pages.
 * Categorization can be done at 3 levels:
 * Categorizing books (by topic, by status, etc.)
 * Categorizing pages inside a book (ex. type of recipes in the Cookbook)
 * Associating pages with their books (conceptually a page could be in more than one book thru transclusion)


 * A number of organization schemes for books have been tried since the start of the project. The actual naming policy (book name/page name) makes it trivial to associate a page with its main book. Some older books do not follow this naming policy (ex. The Cookbook).
 * While most books are clearly known and searchable thru subjects and bookshelves there is no exhaustive list of all books at the moment.

My main personal conclusion here is that we should not talk about categorizing pages anymore but instead of either categorizing books or of associating pages to books (assuming that categorizing pages inside a book is the job of that book's team, not a global maintenance task).

Starting with that distinction we could eventually set clear objectives like:
 * All books should be attainable thru the subject / category scheme
 * All books not following the present naming convention should have an alternative way of associating their pages (ex. Namespace for the Cookbook, book categories in the main namespace)
 * All pages should be either a book or associated with a book (thru naming, categorization or other mean).
 * Etc.

The next step for me will be to try to build an exhaustive list of all books and submit it to the community along with its maintenance procedure. If anybody wants to help or give some insight they are more than welcome to do so. I will move this discussion to the Card Catalog Office (CCO) talk page because an eventual book list would go there in the current organization of the site. Watch that page for other interesting category talks :-) And finally thanks again for every contributions in this discussion. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 03:56, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Card Catalog Subjects
It seems that perhaps 'Strawberry' and some of the other subjects listed in on the page are not sufficiently notable enough to warrant front-page notice. Some of the books in Civil Engineering should probably cross-list to Structural Engineering as well. 128.42.157.132 (talk) 20:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Creating archive pages
I have just created a first archive page as a subpage of this one to keep access to the initial discussions on the CCO while making place for the new discussions on categorizing and book lists. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 14:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Also created an archive for the general reading room categorization discussion that gave way to the book list subproject. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 14:22, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Objective
The objective here is to create a book list of all wikibooks books along with an update procedure. Any wikibookian is welcome to join in the effort. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 14:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The main problem with creating a book list is maintenance. The list will have to be recreated regularly without any manual intervention. To solve that problem a set of rules for building the list will have to be identified. Those rules will have to have certain characteristics:
 * Applying the whole set will have to generate a complete list
 * The rules must be implementable with an automated tool
 * The set of rules must consider any change to wikibooks that is compatible with policies and guidelines so that the list remains valid when regenerated over time.

So this subproject will consist in defining the correct set of rule and implementing it with an automated tool(s). This will probably be an iterative process because implenting a set of rule will probably generate exceptions that will imply modifications to the rules.

The next section will gradually evolve into the targeted set of rules.

Book list generation rules
This set of rules serves for the generation of a complete book list for wikibooks.


 * Books are found in the main, wikijunior and cookbook namespaces (the list should be parametrized for future evolution). For the rest of the rules definition the list of namespaces where we can find books will be called the book namespaces.


 * The Cookbook is a book encompassing the whole cookbook namespace.


 * All pages in the book namespaces either represent books or pages except for the following:
 * A redirect page. A redirect page is identified by the presence of a line starting with #REDIRECT page name.
 * A transwiki page
 * -- put other exceptions here --


 * The root page of a set of pages (more then one page) following the naming policy represent a book.


 * Non root pages of a set of pages following the naming policy represent pages for which the root page is the corresponding main book.


 * -- other rules to be included here --


 * This list looks good to me. It will give us more impetus to fix the (few) remaining books that don't follow the naming policy! Mattb112885 (talk to me) 06:07, 30 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Not so sure about the Transwiki exception, because transwikied pages have there own namespace, so any transwikied pages not in that namespace should be either considered to be part of a book having been renamed appropriately, or used to begin a new book. Other excepts include old books using the old naming conventions that have not been renamed to use the new naming convention, and books created by inexperienced Wikibookians who do not understand how books are organized. You could just include a list of books which use the new naming convention and mark any "books" with no subpages as "unknown" to deal with later. --dark lama  16:49, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

First results
Here are the first analysis results. They are unconfirmed and should not be used. This is just to show that we were able to download and use the daily dump of the database content.

There seems to be about 3300 pages that must be analyzed.

There seems to be about 1600 books with more than one page and probably a few hundreds from the single pages.

Next results in a couple of days... You can ask here or on my talk page if you have any question. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 16:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * These are actually pretty fantastic results. I would love to see more. I assume the "single pages to be analyzed" is going to give us an estimate for the number of books that we have here. It would be fantastic to hear that we have over 3,000 books here (although i'm sure many of them are not books). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There are 2 main questions here:
 * How many of the 1620 groups of pages will confirm as being books (I assume most)
 * How many of the 3329 non redirect single pages won't finish has first level subpages or something else.


 * The message behind this is that there is more work than anticipated before having a strong list. 5000 cases must be checked, lots of them manually, so a systematic approach will have to be taken. I have some ideas but will let them percolate. As usual any idea is welcomed. Regards. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 18:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Why no books about the Arts?
Why is there nothing here relating to the arts? Fine arts especially.

Furthermore, there are no books being written that focus on creative disciplines, and yes, there are such things. I swear to it.

The capacity to learn is Dependant on ones ability to be creative. Being taught is not learning. Unless one can form relationships between ideas, as they have been represented, the ideas haven't been learned at all. They've simply been photocopied by the brain.

The greatest minds in the world, dared to be the most creative. I think that by leaving out the arts, and creative disiplines we are doing a disservice to the source of many forms of intelligence and even those of intellect.

Ideas? Responses? Am I not looking in the right place?

Rigel


 * Hi Rigel, Thanks for your interest in Wikibooks and sorry for the late response. You can post your questions to the Reading room but I will try to answer here. I just checked the Featured Books (books voted as best) list and effectively no books on Fine arts. Take a look at the Fine arts section and its subsections and you will see that there is a big opportunity for contribution. Some books are started but lot of work to do.
 * All work on Wikibooks is volunteer and people write books on their area of expertise so if you already know some specific Fine arts subject, you are more then welcome to give a hand. Just pick a book or create one and be bold. What I can guarantee is that there is no negative thinking about Fine arts or any other subject that lends itself to the textbook formula. Regards, -- Jacques (talk) (email) 16:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Love to Browse
This comment isn't separate from the above comment....it's actually meant to augment it: I just don't like the current "Browse" set-up......it's too darned busy!! I wish we had fewer categories or something. I wish the "tree" only had a few large limbs and then smaller "branches" that broke off from them. Honestly, I don't know how to fix it.....or even if it's broken.....it's just broken for me.Buddpaul (talk) 16:30, 20 April 2009 (UTC)