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The goal of this page is to feature those books which are considered among the best of what Wikibooks has to offer in an effort to raise standards in content development. Criteria for judging books, and rules about voting can be found at Wikibooks:Good books.

Contents 1 Nominations for Removal 1.1 Rhetoric and Composition (removal) 1.2 French (removal) 2 Nominations 2.1 Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter 2.2 Cookbook:Cuisine of the United Kingdom 2.3 Numbers from 1 to 20 2.4 General Chemistry 2.5 Fundamentals of Transportation

Add a nomination Archives: Older discussions for featured book nominations may be found at the Archives of this page.

[edit] Nominations for Removal

[edit] Rhetoric and Composition (removal)

This book has a cleanup template on the Planning/Prewriting page, and does not appear to have the depth or quality necessary to be a featured book. Geoff Plourde (talk) 00:59, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

SupportIt contains very less info in some chapters.

Support ToC has redlinks, and chapter TOCs has redlinks as well. --Sigma 7 (talk) 02:09, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] French (removal)

I'm nominating this book for removal from Featured books, as I don't feel that it has sufficient depth or quality as one of the best books. While an individual chapter may have been acceptable in the past (Wikibooks:Featured_books/Nominations/Archives/Archive_1#French), I feel that it is missing content that would allow learning the language. As examples of issues with the book:

• French/Lessons/Travel didn't contain vocabulary when it was featured. (It does now, but I feel that it's a minimal.)
• French/Lessons/Money refers to imparfait before it is introcuded in the lesson [[French/Lessons]Youth]]. This may be acceptable, but it may cause the reader to believe something is missing within the book.
• There are many instances within the lessons where content is either a stub or outline. I listed one of them, but there they are more frequent in the later lessons.

While I am working to improve the quality of the book, it seems that it would be a lot more work before it can be finished. The main thing that's missing would be the vocab tables. --Sigma 7 (talk) 17:14, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Its grim and we should put it out of its misery... or the very least scrub the shiny star off it. Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:53, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Nominations

[edit] Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter

I think it's finally time to make this a featured book. The content collection is now huge and is one of the largest books in the project. There is still work to be done and Chazz is working almost every day on improving content, but I would say this book is nearly complete. I worked on a PDF of the book a couple months ago and it was over 2000 pages long, so I feel that some help on print version organization is the next step and then this thing can be published and sent out to various places. Let's get more exposure to this book with a feature and have it placed among other books that are the caliber I feel it demonstrates. -withinfocus 14:06, 7 August 2008 (UTC) lmao

Support This is a great book, gigantic, and a model for what other projects can achieve. This book is definitely one of the best that we have, and it should be featured as such. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:33, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Support, obviously. This is complete enough to teach from, follows good organizational practices, and is consistently of high quality.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 19:40, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Support. Sorry it has taken me so long to vote on this one. Yes definitely, I have thought this book has been good enough to be featured for some time now. --AdRiley (talk) 22:11, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Support Can't stand Harry Potter but this is one extensive book. Very good work! --ЗAНИA ^talk 23:00, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Support, this is an excellent example of what this project can accomplish. 76.192.5.51 (talk) 14:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Support. The content largely meets the guidelines for a "good book". It broadens the mission of Wikibooks which I think is a good thing. RobinH (talk) 08:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Support, Looks Great! Empire3131 (talk) 04:19, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Done I can't believe we left it open for so long. This book is now featured. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:05, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cookbook:Cuisine of the United Kingdom

I came across this and I thought it covered a good range but needed a lot of tidying up. I've now done the majority of what I think was needed - added a nice photo to most of the recipes, added summary boxes, etc - so now I think it's good enough to nominate for featuredness. Improvements could still be made of course. --Mcld (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Support Quite a lot there and written with gusto in places. RobinH (talk) 09:12, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Support Looks GREAT, Makes me hungry. Empire3131 (talk) 04:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Support Well done, I also just added a couple of the recipe summaries and images ~ TheSun (talk) 02:52, 6 January 2009 (UTC) ~

Support It is a good cookbook and very nicely presented although most of the dishes covered are very stereotypically English and not what most English people eat. There need to be more curry and spicy dishes for this to be a true cookbook of the United Kingdom.--ЗAНИA ^talk 18:30, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Done Geoff Plourde (talk) 03:58, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Numbers from 1 to 20

Short Counting book to teach the first 20 numbers to little kids. Useing pictures of household objects/ things Kids would know to teach the numbers. Empire3131 (talk) 22:31, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose This is a good start, but I think the layout needs work. It takes more than 30 minutes to create a feature-quality book. The book would be a lot better if the pictures weren't laid out in a linear string, wrapping when there are too many. Also, I believe it would be better to show four different dogs, and five different cows. It also needs to be moved to Wikijunior. --Jomegat (talk) 22:59, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

It's in the list of WJ books. Empire3131 (talk) 00:19, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, so it is, here: Wikitoddler for anyone else who wants to look. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 00:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Added to Wikijunior and Wikitoddler Categories. Pages 1-6 have different things on them. Empire3131 (talk) 00:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

One especially overt problem with this book is that for several of the numbers, there are the right number of pictures, but multiple objects per picture. 3 shows five cherries; 17 shows thirty four fish; 18 shows thirty six sailboats. 20 might technically show just twenty objects, but only because the four bars in each picture are attached to each other; it could also be taken as showing eighty bars.

It does seem strange that there is no structure given to the presentations of higher numbers. I myself would instinctively illustrate sixteen objects in a 4x4 grid, if I were only illustrating sixteen, and if I were illustrating a whole series of different numbers of objects I'd probably think about it and choose some sort of uniform convention for all of them, like five per row, or something. Seems like a subject for deep thought. Pi zero (talk) 16:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Comment I don't think we should hold the length of time it took to create against it. Yes it should be in Wikijunior, but that's simple to achieve. Agree with Jomegat regarding the different pictures as I think a small child would have trouble in remembering where they were in counting a line of CDs and would possibly lose interest. Not voting, too new here (although my first edit was more than a year ago) - give me a couple of months and I'll be more decisive. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 23:26, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
• Comment is there a way to withdraw my nomination? Empire3131 (talk) 23:31, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

• Looking through the page history it looks like you just remove this whole section and use an edit summary something like "withdrawing nomination for....". Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 00:22, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Archiving is surely the destiny of all talk threads. Looking through the page history, I'm not sure what you're seeing. If I'd nominated something and wanted to withdraw the nomination, I'd probably just put tags at the top and bottom of the thread, maybe in italics, with some pithy wording like "This nomination has been withdrawn by the nominator. — <my signature>". If that turned out not to be the ideal way to go about it, it would probably at least cause the right thing to happen. Pi zero (talk) 01:39, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Here, for example. There doesn't seem to be a process of marking sections as complete, just an archiving away when someone gets round to it. Your way would work just as well though and would be clearer I guess. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 01:46, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Ah! Now I see. Every section ends with a comment that starts with either {{done}} or {{not done}}, documenting how it was resolved. So the nominator would withdraw the nomination by simply adding a comment at the end of the section like "{{not done}} I withdraw the nomination. — <my signature>". Pi zero (talk) 14:01, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not done I want to withdraw the nomination Empire3131 (talk) 21:40, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

• Hi everybody! I'm also new at en.wikibooks, but I've done a book similar to this one with my friends at pt.wikibooks, called "Pequenos números" (something like "Little numbers"). Maybe we can make the two books get even better at once! After lots of suggestions our book became a "featured book" there... I believe the same can happens with "Numbers from 1 to 20"... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Heldergeovane (talk • contribs) .

• Oppose I don't see this becoming a featured book anytime soon, it doesn't have enough content. What Heldergeovane said, would definitely improve the book, and it wouldn't be that hard to do. The Portuguese version has a picture of a traditional paper used in many European primary level schools, sentences using the number and nice little "next buttons". ~ TheSun (talk) 02:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC) ~

• Support, ONLY IF it is used as an April Fool's Day joke. ViperSnake151 (talk) 20:37, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. The images leave a lot to be desired. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 04:34, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

[edit] General Chemistry

A thorough but gradual introduction to chemistry. It spans many topics and has pictures, diagrams, and examples. Very useful book, for such a daunting topic. NipplesMeCool (talk) 19:28, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Neutral A random sampling of pages shows that some pages are pretty stubby, although in their defense they are marked with so it's not a surprise. There are some instances where formatting seems a little bit off to me, especially some of the mathematical equations. I also saw a few scattered redlinks for "Answers To..." pages. This book is definitely in decent condition, I'm just not ready yet to mark it "featured". Maybe somebody else can convince me. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Ok, the only red link I could find was in Gas Laws, and I just fixed it. In defense of the "stubby" pages, I think they are few and far between. And can you be more specific about the formatting that "seems a little off"? I would fix it if I knew there were any problems. NipplesMeCool (talk) 00:09, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, it's good to take me to task! I've fixed a few things already, but here are some more details:

1. See General Chemistry/Stoichiometry for an example. Some of the tables don't have borders and look weird and smashed together. Also, there is an almost random decision whether equations are centered or not. I personally prefer equations not be centered (and that they make good use of a labeling system like {{eqn}}) but that's just a personal preference. Either way, they should be consistent.
2. Some chapters (especially the group of chapters on Quantum Mechanics) seem to all be relatively short. Also, a lot of such pages, even pages marked consist of short blocks of text with no images and nothing to break up the monotony of the blocks.
3. Pages like General Chemistry/Balancing Equations are very bland and poorly formatted. The examples could be set apart from the text using something like {{TextBox}}, or they could use a table to keep the discussions together on the left and the equations together on right.
4. Pages really need to be broken up so they don't look like huge "blocks of text". Consider templates like {{SideBox}} or {{Wikipedia}} to give people additional information that's tangential to the main text. Consider things like {{info}} or {{warning}} to make important points pop out at the user, and draw attention to various caveats.

Here's what I'll do: I'll pick page and see what improvements I can make to it today only. I'll work on General Chemistry/Gases, make a few changes, and see how much I can improve it in one day. From that, we can find an expediant way to update the rest of the book to be featured quality. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:04, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Whiteknight. I'll get started on the pages you mentioned. I see what you mean about the formatting and blandness, but these are superficial issues, so I'm hoping you'll change your vote once they are corrected. NipplesMeCool (talk) 17:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

No problem, I do want to help. Take a look now at General Chemistry/Gases. It's not perfect, but shows some really easy fixes to make the book look better. Add in some images (easy to find at Commons) of related topics and people. Add {{Wikipedia}} links here and there. I've also used a few of the other templates I mentioned and stole borrowed some related text from Wikipedia. Makes a huge difference! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Neutral The book needs some copy editing. Some of the prepositions seem awkward (lots of "composed from" when "composed of" would be a more natural choice). I do not dispute the technical merits of the book - I just think it needs a little wordsmithing. This book could also benefit from some navigational aids (i.e., "next" and "previous" links). I think it could be featured very soon though. --Jomegat (talk) 04:19, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, Jomegat. You should know that most of the typos and nonsense are concentrated in the first few pages because they focus on easy topics that attract a lot of random contributions from less knowledgeable writers. Nevertheless, I have gotten through the first four units: I just finished proofreading, adding navigational aids, and reformatting, up to "Aqueous Solutions". I may have missed some things, but the quality should be much improved. I'll keep working to improve the remaining pages, but my vacation is almost over (what kind of nut spends his vacation frivolously editing a Wikibook? :-) so eventually others will have to help out. NipplesMeCool (talk) 04:29, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

What kind of nut writes Wikibooks during vacation? heh heh - pretty much all of us do, I guess! I'll take another look at the Chem book. Thanks for nominating it (and for working on it). --Jomegat (talk) 02:40, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Comment Update: I know it's been a while, but I finally finished: I have gone through every page and copy edited, added navigational aids, inserted pictures and textbox templates, and even rewritten some sections. The equations now use consistent style (centered, one-line for a single equation; left-right table for multiple equations). I have tried to lengthen some of the shorter pages and break up some the the "blocks of text". Also, for what it's worth, I've revamped the periodic table and given it a printer-friendly. There is also a printable version of the book. -- Mr. NMC (talk) 04:18, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Support - Well done NMC. General Chemistry has my vote. --Jomegat (talk) 04:32, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you very much Jomegat, but I'm going to be honest and point out that there's still much room for improvement. If I were totally impartial, my vote would be "neutral". I nominated this book because I had invested time and effort into it, but I have since lost interest. Now that I no long feel personally involved, I can say that this book is OK but not great. Realistically, this book could never be used in a classroom, and I think it would probably be confusing from time to time. You and Whiteknight were both very helpful, thanks. However, this book is not very helpful. Sorry. I posted a more specific critique on the talk page.-- NipplesMeCool (talk) 01:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Fundamentals of Transportation

Fundamentals of Transportation is a wikibook used for an Introduction to Transportation Engineering course. It covers the basic content for a junior-level engineering course, including equations, diagrams, and examples, and should be considered for featured book status. dml (talk) 18:25, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Support I looked over the first couple of chapters, and I liked very much what I saw. If more of our books were like this, Wikibooks would be a force to contend with. (Figure 1 is missing, but that should be easy to fix, and I don't see it as standing in the way of this being a featured book.) --Jomegat (talk) 01:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Added a figure on Page 1. dml (talk) 14:31, 22 August 2009 (UTC)