Wikibooks talk:Title pages

Rewrite
I have completely rewritten this policy because I think it was outdated and unpractical. The main difference is that I suggest not to name pages like: Book (cover) and Book/TOC but: Book/Cover and Book (TOC). Why? It's because of our current naming policy. Every backlink from book chapter is pointing to Book. If this would be cover page, reader would have to click one more time to see the TOC (which was his or her intention when clicking this backlink). One more unneccesary click, one more page load (and we should remember that cover pages contain large images and are not small most of times).

I put pressure on categories and interwikis issues which were not covered in the old version. I think it's logical to put those things on cover page, not TOC.

Another thing is that old version was enfocing every book to have cover page. I don't think it is neccessary, there are lots of books that are very small and does often not contain table of contents and separate chapters. I think that it should be if choice of book authors whether to create a cover page, but pattern of such page should be enforced, so that interwikis were not put on TOC etc.

Last this is this policy name - I suggest changing it from Title pages to Cover pages, as it would be more appropriate in current shape of the policy. --Derbeth talk 09:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Good work. Unfortunately the examples are not as exemplary as we might like. Is there any chance of you "mocking up" a book called "Title Example" so that the structure is clear? RobinH 10:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like the idea of this as a policy, but keeping it as a good idea - maybe somewhere in the help namespace, would be useful, Jguk 12:20, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Kellen T 16:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I also agree. No sense trying to make this into an official policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:45, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Broadening the scope
Should the scope of this guideline be made a bit broader to encompass the general structure of book pages (even be integrated into Manual of Style)?

I think other topics that could be made official (some of these would be mere suggestions) are navigation, contents or page lists, linking to bookshelves, print and PDF versions, etc.

It might end up at someplace like Book structure or even go in the Manual of Style. --Swift 02:18, 18 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The idea to merge this into the Manual of style is, i think, a good one. There is no particular need to create a policy or a guideline for this material, when it can be better suited in the manual instead. If we move this one to rejected, then I will personally handle the merger, if needed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, sounds good. Won't the added content to the MoS need some discussion, though? Actually, the whole thing could use a rewrite! Oh, dear... --Swift 19:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * MoS is just a guideline, and I think that if we get consensus here, that should be enough to add material to that guideline, so long as we don't remove or change any existing material from there. There are lots of things on wikibooks that need to be rewritten, the MoS is a good example, and I see that you have already started on WB:PAG as well. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Good enough for me. --Swift 00:20, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments/votes on guideline
Oppose. I saw Whiteknight's link to this at the Staff Lounge, so I gather we're voting on this...? Personally I don't like cover pages - they seem like a waste of time, when I really want to see the content. Someone else has expressed the same view at Help:How To Build An Excellent Wikibook Teaching Any Language. So my preferred policy would be "Don't use title pages" (though I won't jump up and down about it). Your work is appreciated, though, Whiteknight - good to discuss and resolve these things. --Singkong2005 15:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, according to the schedule given, this policy/guideline is up for discussion this week, ending on Sunday. In the previous section, it was suggested that it actually belongs well as part of the Manual of Style and Whiteknight offered to merge it. The Manual will be reviewed at some point in the future.
 * As for the splash intro (such as in William Shakespeare's Works), I agree with you that they are disruptive. Cover pages (such as in Circuit Theory, an all-round well set up book) are, however, good for inclusion in the print version. I didn't understand the proposal as advocating the former, but certainly the latter. (given that Whiteknight is the most prominent contributor to Circuit Theory, I think we can count on him to include the good parts of this proposal in merging with the Manual of style ) --Swift 17:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Your comments about Circuit Theory warm my heart, thanks Swift! I personally think that title pages are absolutely useless outside of a print version. However, if books are going to be printed, it certainly makes good sense to include a cover for the book (or else let people use whatever cover they want). I also agree that splash images are a big waste. They are a drain on server resources, and actually make it more difficult to navigate around a book. If we merge this into the MoS, then it becomes less like a guideline, and more like a "suggestion", and people can ignore it if they can think of a better way to do things. I think everybody would be happy to have that kind of freedom. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Bookshelves point to Cover???
This guide says that the bookshelf listings should point to the cover of the book, but every bookshelf listing I've seen points to the table of contents or the main page. I edited this article to reflect this but the change was reverted as "arbitrary." Unixxx 07:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, it should not be this way. The cover page main purpose is to be seen before the table of contents, as an introduction. And there are examples of correctly linked books: . --Derbeth talk 22:23, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The purpose of accepting this guideline is to say "this is the way things should be done", which is not necessarily the way things currently are done. Also, saying that something should be done, does not necessarily mean that it will be done correctly. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:51, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

"Rejected" guideline
Should this page be descripted as a "rejected guideline"? In fact it is not, because it has been accepted and merged into an official guideline. I suggest removing this page if it is no longer needed. --Derbeth talk 07:48, 25 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I marked it that way because the text of this guideline is no longer needed, and future changes to the guideline should be made at the manual of style, not here. In essence, this form of the guideline was rejected. If you feel that this page is redundant, you can definately delete it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 11:29, 25 September 2006 (UTC)