User talk:Jacques Bergeron

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[edit] Microsoft Certified Developer Books

I know these books are gigantic, and I also know that they contain a lot of content. What I do not know, is how "complete" they are. I assume you are pretty familiar with the subject material. What would you say is the status of:

It's okay if you don't know either. What I'm trying to figure out is if these books are "good" in the sense that they could be featured, or if we should try and recruit more people to work on them, or if we need to stage a cleanup effort, or whatever. Let me know what your best-guess opinion is on these books. I definitely appreciate it! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:40, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Also, as a side note, would you say that these books are well-organized, and easy to find? I do a lot of organization work, and can definitely help if it's a problem. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:41, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I assume that you have put a 'watch' on my talk page so I will answer here. First thanks for the interest and second please note that my english is really bad, so be patient :-). I'm better in french but I think it's more simple and efficient to share technology knowledge in a common language. I work in IT and I can be considered a specialist in Microsoft's development technologies. In my opinion, none of the book mentioned should be "featured". Having study guides for the most popular MS certification exams is a huge endeavor. What you have here are merely first level table of contents based on the list of objectives for each exam. Since those lists are public and available in HTML on MS sites (I don't think there is a copyright issue for the TOC) what was done so far is to take those HTML pages and transform them (maybe using XSLT) into master pages for wikibooks.
What I have done so far is to experiment a bit with the format of exam 70-536 after Mike's remarks to the fact that having pages with only external links is not a good idea. By the way I agree with him since a study guide guide would be better in a somewhat continuous format. I have decided to try to put the external links in the form of MSDN references along side the paragraph headers. I think it makes sence this way and would get rid of the rest of the "links only" pages. My next objective is to find your "standard" way of having "hidden" sections that could be expanded on demand. Those would serve for code samples or examples that could be inserted in the main text. If you would have a pointer for me that would save search time.
I arrived at wikibooks via a google link entering 70-536 as a search keyword. I assume that I am not the first, not the last, that will follow that link :-)
The reason I am working on this is that I have been searching for a way to structure the knowledge acquired from studying the exam for future reference. I did not know the wikibook concept but it is well suited for my problem. Instead of making notes for future reference, why not SHARE these notes with others! In that sence anybody's help would be more then welcome!
I think the first mid-term objective would be to stabilize a format for the guides and try to finish all the "MSDN" link for one exam (the first one is the 70-536 for developpers). Once all the links are complete you get a structured list of objectives with a pointer to the official documentation for each of them. This in itself would already be of significant value.
Sorry for beeing quite verbose and keep up the good work! --Jacques 22:06, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. You can reply here or on my talk page in the future, different people do it different ways. I have a watch on your page, so I see it when you make a reply. I'm not very familiar with these guides myself, so I dont know if they are good or bad. Thank you for explaining to me a little bit about them. "Hidden Sections" can be done with {{Dynamic navigation}}. You can see an example of this at WB:FB, at the bottom. Clicking the down-arrow will expand the box to show the contents. Maybe what we should do is make a note at the top that says "these pages are being organized, and external links are being used for organization". That way, people won't worry about the links-only pages. I'll be in touch with you about this, let me know if you need anything. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:32, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip regarding "Hidden sections". Tried it with Create Event Log and it does what I wanted. I will test that (along with external link on main page) on some sections in the next few days to have a more complete example of what the structure would look like. Don't hesitate if you have any feedback. --Jacques 00:01, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I took some time to analyse in more details the 4 books that you mentioned.

  • Microsoft Project Crash Course is very partial and I am not sure that the author will continue work on this project.
  • Microsoft Certified IT Professional has only one exam started and only basic links in that exam.
  • Microsoft Certified Professional Developer and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist should merged be in a kind of "Microsoft Certification Exams" subject or bookshelf (I'm not sure I get all the nuances yet). A "Guide to MS Certifications" book should lead that subject to track the ever changing structure of Microsoft certifications and there should be specific study guides for each of the exams where one or more contributors are interested in puttimg some time (not only links). The merged result could be featured based on the sum of work that has already been put in those modules (not worse then many other featured books). Regards --Jacques 05:13, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up. I never have enough time to do anything, but i still do my best to read messages that people write for me. Your assessment is basically what I assumed it would be. I thought that the books were incomplete, but I didn't know enough about the subject matter to know how much was missing, exactly.
Your point about combining Microsoft Certified Professional Developer and Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist is worth considering. There are two good options available: We could create a single book for both at Microsoft Certifications or something similar. Also, we could create a page at Subject:Microsoft Certifications that would be like a "bookshelf" for all similar books. The second solution would be easier, but I don't know if it would be as good. I could probably create a test page for you, as a demonstration. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:55, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Being admin on a project like this one is a major commitment and I fully respect and appreciate what you are doing. Your second option looks fine for me. Microsoft Certified Professional Developer could be a book on that subject (instead of Study Guides) as would be a renamed ".NET Application development foundation (70-536)" book for example. The idea is that the 70-536 exam should not be "under" the MCPD certification because it is part of more then one certification. A book on a single exam is a challenging project in itself (as you noted on the reading room page). Fine if you can create the subject page for me, if you dont have time I can have a look at it thow. Regards --Jacques 04:43, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This discussion will continue at User talk:Whiteknight. Note that is is a non-urgent matter.

[edit] Deletions

Thanks for marking all these pages for deletion. Keep up the good work! – Mike.lifeguard | talk 23:13, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist/Exam 70-536/Value types

Where did the content from this page go? If I delete it outright, we lose the page history. Instead, I'm going to merge the history with wherever the content went to; this is done in accord with the GFDL. Once this is done, the page won't exist, but the page history will be located with the appropriate page. Thanks!  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 15:53, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Content went there. I learn new things all the time. Did not know that the history could be moved. That's a great news because I was feeling bad about loosing the history while merging the pages. Thanks. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 16:09, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Microsoft Certifications talk

Bonjour! I have not had much time lately to think about contributing to Wikibooks. I have not taken the Application Development Microsoft Certification, but I am planning to prepare for it, and take it in the near future. That's where my interest in this Wikibook comes from. Once I start preparing for the exam, hopefully I'll find some time to contribute here and there. Hondomon

Hi, first thanks for correcting my spelling errors, I'm working on my english but still have a long way to go. I adjusted the paragraph names as you suggested. Just come and take a look once in a while, you may have other good ideas (or correct other spellin errors :-)) Regards -- Jacques (talk) (email) 05:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Working Hard!

I've been watching your edits, and you are working really hard on your book! You're working so hard that you're making me tired! Keep up the good work, what you're doing is very impressive. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:05, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Well thanks for the encouragements, It's really appreciated. Two things kind of bother me though:
My written english still does not "flow" correctly. If you hear of someone that would have time to check the pages and point me my worst mistakes that would be good both for the book and for me.
Eventually the main page will need a little design and that's really not my thing. So once again if you hear of somebody...
Nothing urgent for sure since we are pretty far from a "featured" status here. Regards, -- Jacques (talk) (email) 03:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Short Questions

Hello Jacques, I hope I can answer your questions for you.

  1. I have manually set the discussion not to auto-archive, because I dont want it to disappear. The conversation is on-going, so I don't want the bot to take it away!
  2. Adding the {{Wikibooks}} template at Wikipedia is a good thing, because it is good advertising. However, sometimes Wikipedians remove the templates.
  3. I looked at the feedback template, and it's good! There is no policy against feedback, and in fact we encourage it because it is a way for us to make our books better.
  4. The {{Wikibooks}} template doesnt work here because it isnt really needed. We can just use a regular link, and don't need a special template.

Hope this helps! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:31, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers -- Jacques (talk) (email) 23:43, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

for all the cleanup and organization you're doing!  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:13, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Double-thanks! You're doing fantastic organizational work, and it's very appreciated! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Triple-thanks! For time put into the cleanup work... --Panic (talk) 23:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks all, it's very appreciated. You're taking so much time to show me how to use the thing that I though that some general clean-up work would be appropriate. I'll return to my .NET things for the next few days though. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 23:32, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Categorizing uncategorized pages

Categorizing pages is one of those jobs that is worth doing, but that few people are interested in. I say it is worthwhile if you want to do it. One person who did a lot of page categorizing was User:Jguk, who was able to categorize several thousand pages (i dont know if he used a bot). There are a number of automated scripts and "bots" available, if you want to make your work easier, you may be interested in looking up w:WP:AWB, which is a program for making automated edits. I know User:Mike.lifeguard uses AWB for making edits. I have my own bot that I wrote in Perl, but it requires a little bit of programming to make it work. I know that there is also a bot library written in Python, if you are interested in that.

For page categorization, I think AWB may be your best bet. Check it out, and let us know if you have any questions about it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:26, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Exchange with Mike

Hi Mike, I asked WKnight if there are tools available that could help an eventual cleanup of the uncategorized pages (since I did the categories). In his answer he pointed me to AWB saying that you were a regular user of that tool. Before I take a detailed look at the tool I have a couple of questions for you if you have a minute:

Are you effectively using that tool?
Does it work?
Do we need special permission to use it at wikibooks (there is at wikipedia)?
Do you think it could help in the uncategorized pages cleanup?


Reagrds, -- Jacques (talk) (email) 14:07, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how useful it would be for categorizing uncategorized pages - pywikipediabot would be more useful (I also have that). That process obviously can't be fully-auto, since the program can't decide how to categorize pages, but it is fairly straightforward. I'm fairly busy over the holidays, but come January, I can invest some time into categorization if you like. If you want to do it, go for it. No programming required, but it's bit more involved to get up and running. If you do it yourself, just remember that unless you have a bot account, you can't go full-speed (you're of course welcome to ask for a bot flag on a secondary account).  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 16:30, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the answers. The idea is to try to do it myself to save you time. Tool looks good from the documentation. I'll try to install it and start one page at a time. If it works I will come back for further advice (bot account, etc.). -- Jacques (talk) (email) 18:49, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your comment

What was the original comment anyway? I'll respond better with the comment, a linked source, and plenty of time to figure it through. Thanks, Laleena (talk) 23:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] .NET Development Foundation/Tnavbar-mini-nodiv

That should be in the template namespace. I tried to move it, but there is another template at {{Tnavbar-mini-nodiv}}, so I wasn't sure what else it could be named.  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:02, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Please make sure that all templates you create are moved to (or created in) the Template: namespace. Thanks!  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:03, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I'll move it, just give me a few minutes please. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 21:04, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
I have sent the page for speedy deletion, so no need to move it. -- Jacques (talk) (email) 22:27, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Happy New Year

Happy new year to you too! I'm glad that you are enjoying your time here, and I'm also glad that you are doing so much great work here. The .NET Development Foundation book is looking very good so far, you've been a very good influence on it. As always, if you need any help or if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:45, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] TODO template

Hi Jacques, happy new year! I'd just like to mention that I think the Todo template looks good, I would recommend though two things:

  1. I'm not sure if you put the template into the main space as a test but for non-book-specific templates it's better to put them in the template: namespace (e.g. call it template:TODO rather than TODO)
  2. There already is a template called "TODO" so you may want to call it something else. The TODO template looks like this:
TODO

TODO
stuff

Naming it something else will help prevent the mess we created with "NOTE" vs. note:

note:

^ 

NOTE:

NOTE:
stuff

It also puts pages into a category, so you may want to have your template put pages into the same category as this one does. Regards, Mattb112885 (talk to me) 17:42, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment Matt, it is just experiments for now. I was trying to work with the wikipedia version of the todo template which does certain things that the wikibooks todo does not. I should delete those pages in a couple of days. BTW I am already using the wikibooks todo template extensively in .NET Development Foundation. Regards -- Jacques (talk) (email) 18:53, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rollbacker & Patroller

You've been nominated; please accept.  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 15:30, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Your book

Sorry I did not get enuf time to review ur book but I did have a glance at those pages and found them to be quite good. However, having been a part of Wikibooks and other Wikiprojects for a considerable period of time, I feel that the general structure of the book could be changed. It requires around three or four clicks to actually reach the content pages. You could alter the hierarchy such that the content is easily accessible. Besides, the external links to MSDN forums could be provided in the References section. Te in-text citations should not actually contain external links. These links should form a part of the references section. Thank you! I'll give more suggestions after a detailed analysis. -Ravichandar84 (talk) 07:21, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

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