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Welcome to the Projects reading room. On this page, Wikibookians can talk about subjects related to books, book projects, and other tasks here on Wikibooks that require discussion and organization.

To facilitate ease of browsing and replying, please:

  1. Place your question at the bottom of the list;
  2. Title the question (by placing the title between equals signs thus: == title ==);
  3. Sign your name and date (by adding four tildes thus: ~~~~).


Newest Books:

[edit] Project to make Portfolio Managment System in Core Java

Please help me regarding the same Mail me if any on girish_dhobe@yahoomail.com,girishdhobe1@gmail.com

[edit] Submit a book and an article

Dear Wikipedia,

How can I submit a book and an article. I surfed your site but had a hard time locating the pages where I can submit articles and books.

Thanks for your help, Miriam

Wikipedia articles belong at Wikipedia. If you'd like to start a book, there's no need for approval or anything - just get started! You'll want to make sure it's within our project scope and follows the naming policy. For help starting your first book, you might want to see Using Wikibooks. Finally, please sign your posts to discussion pages with four tildes (~~~~) to make things easy to follow. Good luck!  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 00:09, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] logic in understanding computer programming

hi guys what do you know about implications of studying logic in understanding basic computer programming? any idea plz.. thanks a lot —The preceding unsigned comment was added by PHaNtOmLaD (talk • contribs) 2008-04-16T15:20:10.

[edit] Reviving a Dead Book

I'm reviving FHSST Biology, and I just wanted to let everyone know. I'd be very grateful for help. General Biology has some good parts, but it is aimed at an older audience (as I can see from the notes). I'm hoping some of you guys will add to the book.

Sincerely,

Wesley Gray (talk) 03:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

We usually call it "adopting" as opposed to "reviving". However you refer to it, choosing to fix up an old and abandoned book is always appreciated! The "FHSST" stood for "Free High School Science Texts", and I think (but can't remember the details) that these books were affiliated with some kind of external organization. If you would like to rename this book to something else, like "Introduction to Biology", or "High School Biology", or "Biology for Beginners", or whatever, feel free to do it. If you want to keep the name as it is, that's fine too. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Updating Policy, Guidelines, Help Pages, etc

I've created a new template, {{Update}} that we can use to tag pages which are out of date or are not accurate anymore. This can, like all other message templates, be used on books. However, It can (and should) also be used to mark metapages like those found in the Wikibooks: and Help: namespaces, templates (templates which need an aesthetic overhaul, or out of date template documentation), or Category: pages. Hell, we could even throw it on old images that were drawn in mspaint and need to be redone using a better editor. If we have a good comprehensive list of pages that are known to need updating, we can make a concerted effort to fix them.

If you see pages that are not accurate anymore or that need to be updated, please tag them with {{Update}}. This will put pages into Category:Pages needing update, and we can go through that list like any other normal maintenance task. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for this - I've been trying to get some idea of where work on policy/guideline/useful pages is needed; this will make things easier.  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 21:55, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

can i post a write up?

[edit] Templates to expand images and formatting

I've created two templates (both of which probably need to be improved) to makr books that are light on formatting or images: {{Formatting}}, and {{Images}}. This way we can be more precise about certain requests then saying {{Cleanup}} or {{Expand}}. Also, I've written up a short "cheatsheet" for all these templates in one easy place: User:Whiteknight/Template Cheatsheet. For people who are confused about the templates or can't remember them all, I've found this to be a helpful resource to me. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:46, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Engineering bookshelf deprecation

I've taken the liberty tonight of deprecating the engineering bookshelf. It now redirects to Subject:Engineering. I'm going to fix up some of the double-redirects next. It's been a long term goal, not only of mine but of several other wikibookians, to deprecate all of the bookshelves and use the dynamically-updated subject pages instead. The engineering bookshelf is a personal pet project of mine, and so has progressed further then any of the others so far. Thus, I think it makes a good pilot for this initiative. Over the summer, as I have time and motivation, I would like to start increasing the quality of the remaining subject pages and deprecating additional bookshelves. I think it's going to be a much better solution for us in the long run, and I hope people agree. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Categories Overlapping

There's a little bit of a problem with the category system that we've been using, and for the most part we've been ignoring it. The problem is that both subject categories and books share a "namespace" when it comes to categorization. A book "X", and all it's subpages, will be in Category:X. This can overlap if X is a common name for the subject.

For instance, we have a book Calculus, but we also have a few books by other names that are about calculus-related topics. If we put all the subpages of Calculus and the books that are related into the same category, it's not useful as a navigational or organizational tool anymore.

What I would like to do is change major-subject categories to have some kind of prefix, like "Category:Subject-X". Book subpages could still be in "Category:X", like usual. This won't really take much effort to implement, we would change the behavior of {{Subject}}, and then update all the dynamic lists in the Subject namespace. This way we won't have to worry about category name collisions anymore, and all the details will be hidden in templates that people are already mostly using. If nobody has strong opinions about this, I want to try to make this change next week. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Why wouldn't we have all modules of the book go in Category:Calculus (book) instead? This is a standard method which is used everywhere I've seen this overlap occur.  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
That's a good possibility too. I suggest doing it "Category:Foo (Subject)" or something similar instead for 3 reasons:
  1. We can hide all the details inside {{Subject}}, and no authors will really need to deal with it.
  2. If we wanted to make it standard, we would have to add "(book)" to the categories in every single book (and there are at least 1100 of them, depending on how you count). If we don't keep it standard for all, then we're left with another hack-job and there's no sense making any changes at all.
  3. We would have to update all documentation to tell authors to use "Category:BOOKNAME (book)", and then ensure that this was happening when we patrol.
I'm fine with either way, we can employ bots to do it on the book-end like you suggest. I would prefer a method that doesn't put any work or strain on our authors, since the barrier to entry around here is already high enough without having to worry about your book's category. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
How about renaming books to be more descriptive instead? Calculus isn't a descriptive name, it doesn't say who the audience is for, is it an introduction to Calculus, an advanced calculus book, how much coverage does it include, etc.? Using a descriptive book name would remove overlap between subject categories names and book categories as well. Its not like you'd goto a bookstore and find a textbook named just "Calculus" --darklama 18:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This really isn't an appealing solution to me. It requires that we rename books, as many as several hundred that are currently using common names. It also means that we will have to require new authors to avoid common names for their books, when it has been our de facto policy not to place any requirements on a book's title. We would have to police new books to ensure they weren't named after an existing or potential topic. A solution that requires us to do a large amount of work and requires new authors to jump through more hoops before they can start a new book is decidedly not a good solution. Changing the names of the subject categories, on the other hand, requires us to modify {{Subject}} and modify (probably by bot) several dozen Subject: pages. This is easier to execute immediately, requires far less maintenance, and won't cause additional hassle for new book authors. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:07, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
And on another note, I have two books named "Calculus" (one has a subtitle), a book called "Fortran", a book called "Algebra", etc. Ordinary books do use common names. Also, it's easier for a user to search for "Calculus" then "Introduction to calculus". --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:10, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I think its easier to search for books by subject than it is by title. I don't think Category:Subject-X and Category:BOOKNAME (book) are good conventions to use. Another solution might be to enable case-sensitivity of the first letter as is done on Wiktionary, so that Category:calculus would be different from Category:Calculus, than we could require all subject categories be completely lowercase. --darklama 21:31, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Now that IS a good alternative solution. It has the benefit that we can do most of the modifications in the {{Subject}} template (use the #lc: magic word so we don't even need to fix any pages), and we guarantee that no collisions will ever happen because Book titles must have a capital first-letter. It also had the added benefit of fixing the non-standard way we've been capitalizing subject names so far: Some are "Title Caps" and some are "First caps". Using #lc: for all of them would completely remove these issues. I'm in favor of this proposal. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:47, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Good thing I read this just after I cleaned up Category:Social Sciences and Category:Social sciences! Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk | email | contribs ) 14:52, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Another possible solution: Check out what I've done with Category:History. Each book gets its own category- for example, History of Spain is in Category:History of Spain. This category is then put in Category:European History, along with other national histories. The book European History is in this category as well as pages, while the other books get their own subcategories. So, all the pages in, say Intermediate Algebra would go into Category:Intermediate Algebra, while all the pages in Algebra go into Category:Algebra, of which Category:Intermediate Algebra would be a sub-category. Νεοπτόλεμος ( talk | email | contribs ) 15:02, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see the use here, it's like including one book as a subcategory of another book. Plus, if you try to set up a subject page to list just the main pages of a book, you're going to include all the subpages as well. This organization would suggest that a book like Abstract Algebra was a subset of the Algebra book when the exact opposite relationship is true.
Also, consider if we have two books, X and Y, with Category:Y being a subcategory of Category:X. If we delete book X for whatever reason, the category system for Book Y gets all messed up. This creates a level of interdependence between books when we've traditionally tried to make books monolithic and independent. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:14, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Allowing lowercase titles is probably the worst option, IMO. $wgCapitalLinks=false; would break many links, and is generally not useful here. I don't see what's wrong with having Category:Name (book) where there is a conflict against a category used for the subjects (and only where such conflict exists - there's no need to avoid a conflict where one doesn't exist).  – Mike.lifeguard | talk 16:28, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
You're right, I was under the impression that Category:Calculus and Category:calculus would be different pages, but they apparently arent. With this realization, a capitalization-based scheme is obviously not acceptable.
As for making "Category:BOOKNAME (book)", it requires us to change the de facto way that our books have been categorized since the very beginning of Wikibooks, and the possibility is there that we will have to recategorize 1000 books (plus all subpages) or more. Plus, we will have to write documentation to require new book authors to use this new scheme, and we will have to include a check for proper categorization when new books are created. In short, it puts the burden on the book authors, a group of people who's life we should be striving to make easier, not harder. Any system that decreases the usability of this site for the common author really isn't an acceptable one. Now, if we could find a way to abstract out the details into a template like {{BookCat}} or something, then it wouldn't be as big a deal. Still, we would have to go through every single page on wikibooks and include this template to make it work ubiquitously. Plus, there are lots of books that use header templates to include categories automatically, and those will need to be edited manually. I think it's just a lot of work. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:43, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
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