Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 12

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This is an archive of past discussions. Please do not edit the contents of this page.
If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current discussion page


Contents

Removing Sysop Status

Has there ever been a discussion about the pile-up of inactive administrators here? Many are quite old and haven't edited in quite some time. Others still stay active but rarely actually use their sysop abilities. To me this gives a bad impression of the role of admins here. Should there be a process for removing sysop access? I find it dangerous that some users have sysop abilities when they don't use them for the reasons the rights were given to them and simply stay isolated within their own book project. -Matt 01:12, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Sysops that have been inactive for extremely long periods of time should probably not keep the status. Even if they do come back to the project after a while, they would be so far out of the loop, and so ignorant of recent policy changes and discussions that they would not even be able to be effective admins immediately. If you don't use it, you should lose it. However, I think that deactivated sysops should get preference if they decide to become active, and apply for sysop status again. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 02:33, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
We do need to be at least a bit careful with sysops that are active authors but have not been using their sysop rights outside their own projects. I suspect that some of them have very sensitive toes. As good an idea as it is to do a little sysop housecleaning, I don't know that a royal brouhaha would be worth the effort. --JMRyan 19:00, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Actually, there was a substantial discussion about removing inactive admins that ended up with the concensus of the group of active users and admins that were involved with Wikibooks at the time to simply keep the admins who havn't contributed for a substantial amount of time as inactive admins. This distinction is only to let people who are trying to contact an admin to get a better idea of who is still doing stuff and who may not necessarily reply to any request for some time. Other Wikimedia projects have other policies, which vary to a large degree over what would be cause for deadminship. I had the opinion that inactive admins perhaps should be desysoped without prejudice, with it mainly being a formality to request sysop status.

The ugly part of this whole issue is that we don't have anybody locally who can remove sysop status from any user, and instead we need to appeal to a steward. That does involve other politics as well, but most stewards are willing to do actions they may even be somewhat against as long as there has been widespread community concensus about the topic. The Wikibooks user community certainly has changed somewhat since this discussion last occured. --Rob Horning 21:06, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

That discussion didn't seem to involve many users. I would like to hear what the community thinks of inactive admins now. A lot of those listed as inactive admins most likely wouldn't be up to speed on policy if they just came back suddenly. In a way I think they've become "obsolete" and should have their status removed just like how an old component upgrades (which they're not doing) or gets dropped. Also, some admins listed as "active" don't seem to actually actively use administrative privileges. I see that as dangerous because they have powerful features and don't use them for the good of the community, even sometimes possibly using them inappropriately solely for their own benefit. -Matt 22:58, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
I think we could remove status from sysops inactive for a year - it's a practise used for stewards at Meta, so I think it would be fair to apply it here. When it comes to sysops that don't make use of admin tools, well, I think it would be hard to reach consensus here, although I also think that such users shouldn't have sysop priviledges if they don't help with cleaning up Wikibooks. --Derbeth talk 00:25, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. There's nothing wrong (and indeed everything to be said for) a "if you don't use it, lose it" approach. Having inactive sysop accounts creates a security risk (someone could guess their passwords and hijack the account), plus when people return after a long lay-off, they will take a bit of getting up to speed on current practices. Returners can always be re-appointed sysops afterwards. Derbeth correctly comments that it is a good practice adopted on Meta, so why not apply it here. As far as active users with sysop privileges who don't happen to use them, there isn't the same risk of the account coming into the wrong hands, and having the tools may encourage them to help clean-up tasks at a later date. From my experience elsewhere in wikiland, I have a viewpoint that there really should be no problems with any active, reliable editor who wants sysop privileges having them, Jguk 14:29, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I made a list of sysops who haven't made any edit for more than half a year: Andreas Ipp, Karen Johnson, Lord Emsworth, Maveric149, Reytan. I think it is fair to remove sysop rights from them. And another list of sysops who hardly ever used admin tools: Eclecticology [1] (zero times, and 21 edits totally!), User:Marshman [2], Perl (zero times), Traroth [3] (zero times, no reverts, 141 edits), Cyp [4] (zero times, no reverts, 108 edits). From this list I would like to see sysop status removed from Eclecticology, Traroth and Cyp. --Derbeth talk 22:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to see sysop status removed from every single one of those users. I've looked at their recent edits and I definitely don't think they're using the tools appropriately or at all even. One seems to be using it to further his/her own book project and nothing else, which I think is a perfect example of power in the wrong hands. -Matt 02:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

On Wikipedia I have a move button. I never use it. Most people probably never use it, how much stuff is there to move on Wikipedia anyway? Should we all have the move button taken away from us because we never use it? Gerard Foley 03:29, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you've weighted moves to sysop status properly. Sysop tools can be very dangerous; users can easily delete pages and wipe out all status of a module. With the smaller (compared to something like Wikipedia) amount of activity here, that could go unnoticed. It's too dangerous to leave this laying around in my opinion. -Matt 06:10, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I think clearing out some of the "dead wood" is a good idea. I support removing those sysops with no edits in the last 6 months. I'll have to think about some of the others, but Eclecticology, Perl, Traroth, and Cyp should have their status removed for lack of use. To satisfy the stewards, we'll need to formulate a policy for sysop removal, and find a location to have these discussions (which might be at RfA). 71.131.226.180 09:43, 13 February 2006 (UTC) -- This was me, I got logged out. Gentgeen 09:46, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear, not another new policy. I think we won't do such "cleanup" more frequently than twice a year, so I think we can make a short discussion every time without introducing new policy and discussing about it for one month. --Derbeth talk 09:49, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Somehow I doubt that de-sysoping admins who have been inactive for more than a year is going to be controvercial, but I may be mistaken. The one danger to this is that I don't want to see this time limit be shortened substantially without some very serious thought going into why it must be shortened. Another thing to note is that we are not going to block these accounts but rather remove just the sysop privileges.

Where the real danger comes from is if the main password database on the Wikimedia servers is compromised by a vandal, who then gains access to potentially several inactive admins' accounts, blocks the active admins, and then performs widespread damage on the project. This happened on Distributed Proofreading's website, which led to a strong recommendation of all users to change their passwords. The MediaWiki software seems to be slightly more secure, although I'm sure some attempts to hack into the password database have occured. MySQL (the db that is running the Wikimedia servers) uses a password encryption hash that is difficult to reverse and has been publicly scrutinized and widely implemented on many websites besides just Wikipedia and Wikibooks. This doesn't mean the passwords can't be compromised, just that it would be very difficult to do so and requires more than even developer access to the database. It would be easier to capture passwords through spyware instead.--Rob Horning 15:48, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Two points. (1) Are you saying we should wait for one year of inactivity rather than six months (as suggested by some above)? (2) An admin blocked by another admin still has admin powers, and can therefore unblock himself - only a steward or developer can remove sysop powers. A compromised sysop account would not be pleasant - but could be dealt with by getting a steward to block (which would happen on anyone's request if a sysop was unambiguously creating havoc) - and then there would be lots of tidying up of the damage done by the compromised sysop account. Maybe we'll have a brief discussion on 6 or 12 months, and about whether active sysop accounts where sysop powers are not being used and make it official policy. My take on this is 6 months, and I have no problem with an active account having sysop powers that are not, in practice, being used, Jguk 16:40, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I do advocate a full year of inactivity, at least for an initial policy. If there are further problems this time period can be shortened, but there are several admins who have not been on Wikibooks for well over a year (some for more than two years). As far as one admin blocking another admin, I've never tried this out to see what might happen. Can you even log on when you are blocked and access sysop functions? If so, you could in turn block somebody who blocked, you... not too pleasant of a problem if you are trying to fight a rougue admin who is clearly violating policies for whatever reason and is willing to crash and burn his account and can still cause havoc with his admin status even if he can't edit pages. I would hope that you could block another admin during a very heated edit war for a couple day "cooling off period" at the very least, with some strong explaination of the action on the user page and hopefully the Staff Lounge and mailing list (an avenue of reply if blocked). So far the admins here have been rather reasoned and "professional" about their status, but this may not always be the case in every situation. --Rob Horning 00:20, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I was in such situation, when someone blocked an IP which was afterwards assigned to me. I could not edit pages but I unblocked myself without any problems. There are not many admins inactive for a year (only three). Should I understand that you are against de-sysopping admins who were active recently, but haven't done any deletions or reverts (see my list)? --Derbeth talk 00:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm just suggesting that we start with a minimum standard that everybody can agree upon and then if there doesn't seem to be much of a resistance to tighten the standards later with a subsequent policy vote. That anybody can be removed from the list at all with even the most loose standards (like not a single edit for more than a year) indicates that some problems exist and this minimum standards can be effective. UncleG was particularly against even this minimum standard, and I see he hasn't joined into this current debate either. As far as being blocked, was this IP address blocking (which can be overridded by design through being a registered user) or was your user account blocked. This sounds like something for Bugzilla to deal with as a potential issue in the future.

BTW, I would like to point out that at least two people on the current inactive list, Maveric149 and User:Brion VIBBER are very active Wikimedians, but generally participate on other Wikimedia projects and not here. Eclecticology is very active on Wiktionary and Meta. I'm almost certain if these were de-sysoped that some very loud yelps would come from these individuals and would be heard all the way at the top of the Foundation board. It would be meaningless anyway to de-sysop Brion as he is a developer who has direct access to the server farm on an OS level with root access at that. Indeed he is the one you run to when all else fails. Something to consider at least with some of these individuals. In the past some people became admins on Wikibooks simply because we were short on even having anybody experienced capable of serving in this capacity, and some admins from other projects were brought in to help out from time to time. Being an admin on another project is no longer a major advantage to becoming an admin on Wikibooks anymore. There are also some people who collect adminships like souviners and try to become admins on all Wikimedia projects for some reason. --Rob Horning 02:11, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

I hope we can agree that we don't want to give out sysop powers to souvenir hunters! Also, I hope we can agree that where there is a specific reason why a non-active editor may need sysop status (possibly because they are a developer), we should respect this. Maybe after 6 months of complete inactivity we ask the individuals via email whether they have any reason for wishing to retain sysop status. If they don't reply within a month, say, or if they reply to say there is none, then desysop them. If there is a reason then leave them with sysop status until a year is up and if they haven't become active again by then, desysop them, unless there are special reasons (eg required for development, which even then could be confirmed every six months - after all, if we make a mistake here, it can be quickly rectified by a bureaucrat). Also, maybe declare "inactivity" to be fewer than 10 edits, Jguk 08:08, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Rob, I wasn't talking about Brion Vibber, I don't know why are you pointing him. I showed 8 people who in my opinion should be de-sysopped - and I'm talking only about these 8 people. I'm completely not interested who are Maveric149 and Eclecticology and you are unfair talking who they are, not what they have done here. Eclecticology has done completely nothing and I'm convinced he/she is not familiar with our policies. Maveric149 has been inactive for 10 months - I think that's enough. --Derbeth talk 10:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I mentioned Brion only because he is currently on the list of inactive admins, not because he was on your particular list. The others I mentioned only because they are well known and will likely protest a desysop move unless this policy is affirmed clearly by the Wikibooks community as a whole and enforced for all admins. We may be surprised, however, and have them not object to being desysoped as well, and it is possible to get their attention at the moment on other Wikimedia projects. Mav was very instrumental in building Wikibooks before I got here, and helped to build many of the structures on Wikibooks that make Wikibooks largely what it is today. He is now doing many other things for the Wikimedia Foundation, but Wikibooks does need to thank him for what he did accomplish. BTW, Wikiversity was also substantially his idea as well, to cite another significant contribution of his. Why he hasn't made a contribution to Wikibooks for more than 10 months is something I can only speculate about. --Rob Horning 20:15, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

After noticing an admin's inappropriate comments on a user's talk page, I wondered how admins regulate themselves. Is there any place where discussions happen to remove admins who are not just inactive, but violating other "expectations" of a sysop? I'd like for this discussion to actually turn into something, so do we contact someone on Meta regarding removing rights or what? Should we hold a tally for each person we wish to remove or not? -Matt 05:27, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Although I don't know of a single case where an adminship has ever been removed during the whole history of Wikibooks for any reason (even self-nominated), there is a process to nominate an admin for deadminship on the Wikibooks:Requests for adminship, where you can mention the user and state your case why you think they are abusing their role as an administrator. I don't know why the deadminship section was removed, and that is just an oversight from some cleanup. See this archived page from July 2004 that shows the deadminship section was always intended to be on this page. Nomination can happen from any user on Wikibooks (although a registered user is likly to be taken more seriously). Mind you, deadminship does not necessarily mean having the account blocked as well, just that you feel the user is abusing their position as an admin. Once community concensus about the issue has been reached and the conculsion is to remove the sysop privileges, it is a trivial act to get the attention of the Stewards, any of which can remove the status as a formal procedure. This can be done on Meta:Requests for permissions#Admins for Wikibooks. Note the Meta page is for notification of discussion resolution, not a place to carry on the debate, although you can certainly request assistance from the Stewards if you think things are getting very out of hand and you are being stoped and blocked from even being able to add a nomination (or having it reverted) to the request for deadminship section. I put up a request for deadminship earlier but it was removed due to the previous discussion, and I accepted that decision at the time. You are certainly welcome to add those names or other back for the same reason. --Rob Horning 23:30, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Section created. -Matt 01:08, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

can i oder for a book for free.

I want want to know is are the books for free and if so can i order for a free book?if not can it be down loaded for free.my adress is tedkroft@yahoo.com

Our books are online only (though a few random pdf versions have been constructed). We do not have a facility for ordering them. You can copy them, see Wikibooks:GNU Free Documentation License and Wikibooks:Copyrights. There is a description of how to produce print versions, see Wikibooks:Print versions. There has been talk about improving our capabilities in this area. See Wikibooks:Wikibook Press and Wikibooks:Staff lounge#The management of book publishing - a policy suggestion. Basically, obtaining one of our books as a print or digital copy is pretty much a do-it-yourself affair. There is no fee for such copying, but there are restrictions as stated in the licensing and copyright pages. --JMRyan 19:20, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Red links on Bookshelf pages

Is it safe to remove redlink titles from bookshelf pages? I wouldn't think that a bookshelf would be a place for proposed books. I checked through VfD's for one of them (Time Management) without finding it. Maybe some of these are speedy deletes. I was going to remove some, but then I wondered if there was reason I didn't know (that happens often) that I shouldn't. --JMRyan 21:30, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

If I find the red link and I know the book was deleted, I remove the link. Otherwise, I sometimes move the link to Wikibooks:Requested Wikibooks.
I know that at least one bookshelf had a "suggested books" suggestion, but other than that, bookshelves should not have red links. --Kernigh 21:54, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
I would say, however, it would be safe to remove those red links that appear on the Main page. I try to get them when I have dealt with a VfD or some other action that has removed the book from Wikibooks, but if anybody else wants to deal with that, you are welcome. You don't need (yet) any special admin privileges to do this although it can sometimes be a little tricky for a total newcommer to deal with. --Rob Horning 22:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with the Wikibooks Help pages

I started a VfD earlier regarding the deletion of the redundant help pages that are also found on Meta. The resulting VfD discussion has been rather divisive of the whole community, although it seems to break down on older vs. newer users. I'd like to try and reformulate the whole discussion into something a little bit more pro-active and talk about what we would like to see on Wikibook for the user help system, including the "Editing Help" link that appears on the editing page.

Help:Wikibooks has a good collection of useful links to Wikibooks specific content, and I was thinking that perhaps this ought to be the primary page for all other help content on Wikibooks, including links to content on Meta and other Wikimedia projects as well. Other Wikimedia sister projects have their own customized help pages, particularly Wikipedia.

Most of this content I would like to see kept in the Help namespace, as it is to be useful to new users. I would also like to see this to be original (to Wikibooks) content. My feelings about Help:Editing and other similar pages I hope are well known enough by now. This can be improved, and I would like to perhaps get a group together that could help with the development of this (very much needed) content. --Rob Horning 15:29, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Check the example of Wikisource:Help:Contents. Wikisource recently upgraded their project-specific help. There is a link from Wikisource:Help:Contents to MetaWikipedia:Help:Contents; the mirror help pages at Wikisource are mostly ignored and they seem to be forming a walled garden. There are also conflicts: Wikisource:Help:Introduction is an introduction specific to Wikisource, but it occupies the space where one would mirror MetaWikipedia:Help:Introduction. If you edit an English Wikisource page and click "Editing help", you arrive at Wikisource:Help:Editing Wikisource, not any Meta page, mirrored or not.
I think that some books would benefit from having their own editing guides. For example, Guide to X11 would give the wiki markup for Unix commands, while NetHack would give the wiki markup for keyboard presses and NetHack characters. I have started a version of this at Guide to Social Activity/Style. However, it is only a beginning which does not demonstrate much of what I wanted to do, and it is also unrealistic to expect that every Wikibook has its own style guide. --Kernigh 05:40, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

audio

Can anyone tell me how to link from a book to an audio file in ogg vorbis format? The file is here: File:Modern greek vocab 1.ogg. I'm not sure why the result of the upload process was to make something with image: on the front, or whether that's a problem. Should it be media:? Does it matter? Looking at examples on WP, people seem to be using certain templates that don't exist here on wikibooks. I would like it to show up the way you see sound links on WP, with a speaker icon, so that clicking on the link plays the sound in your browser. Also, I'd be interested in opinions on whether what I'm doing is even a good idea. This for the modern greek wikibook, and the recording is me saying some Greek words that are introduced in the first lesson. I'm not a native Greek speaker, but I think my pronunciation is at least understandable, and reasonably correct, although accented. My philosophy would be that the recording could be explicitly marked as being made by a non-native speaker, with an invitation for native speakers to replace it with something better. However, my wife is a language teacher, and is scandalized that I would do this, since I'm not a good enough speaker, and she feels it will mislead people. Any opinions?--Bcrowell 17:21, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

WB:TM is your friend - there's a template for audio recordings in Media section. You can also use a direct link to download file, using [[Media:]]
When it comes to sense of such recording - for me, it's better to have anything than nothing. I'm surprised that there are no files in commons:Category:Pronunciation, not even Greek alphabet. In my opinion your pronunciation examples can be useful. --Derbeth talk 17:28, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

searching for salads

However, when I put "salad" in the search bar and punch the "search" button, I only get one link (and it's a plant, not a salad), although it claims "Results 1-20 of 210".

Then I see that the "Search in namespaces:" at the bottom of that search results page doesn't have the Cookbook namespace enabled. If I enable *every* checkbox there, and punch the "search" button there, I get another search results page. This page still claims "Results 1-20 of 210", but now it gives me 5 links.

Yes, "5" is certainly *closer* to "20" than "1". Is it obsessive to want these little bugs fixed?

-- User:DavidCary --70.189.75.148 02:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Strange, when I only select Cookbook and Cookbook talk namespaces, I don't receive any results. Has anybody idea what's going on or should we report it to bugzilla? --Derbeth talk 08:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

To be honest, when I do a search for content on MediaWiki servers, I prefer to use google using the site: tag, such as this URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=salad+site%3Awikibooks.org

The MediaWiki search tool is rather limited, and it doesn't really get the attention from the developers that it deserves. Still, it works fairly well in a limited context. --Rob Horning 15:35, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of adding link to Google and maybe Yahoo to search page? Anyway, should we report this search problem to bugzilla or not? --Derbeth talk 16:03, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Do you know what the variable name is that is used for the search term? That would make it almost trivial to make one of these search strings for a link on the search pages, and that is something that the admins can do here without having to go running to the developers. --Rob Horning 04:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Ref Physics Electromagnetism:Electromagnetic induction

You say that.

'Remember: the magnetic field must increase or decrease in intensity perpendicular to the wire (so that the lines of flux "cut across" the conductor), or else no voltage will be induced:'

If this is the case how does a transformer work when all then lines of flux are in the Iron core and do not 'cut' the conductors?

Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_talk:Study_help_desk%3Dedit"

Requesting Content in a book

I am quite new to Wikibooks, and really think that it is an excellent initiative. I am busy writing a book, Western Music History, and would like to know if there is any way of requesting or 'advertising' for someone to submit pictures or other multimedia content, or am I to simply await another's own compulsion? Also, as I am progressing through the exercise of creating this wikibook, I am finding that it may eventually become suitable as a textbook for Wikiversity. Am I able to add this book to wikiversity as well as having it under the Arts:Music bookshelf? Ralfe Poisson 09:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC)Ralfe

You are doing just fine. I see that you have put the name of the Wikibook up on the New Wikibook list, and have also put it on the Art bookshelf. A few suggestions for further "advertising" on Wikimedia projects could include:
  • Sending an e-mail out on the Textbook-L mailing list
  • Adding links on related Wikipedia pages, connecting those pages to your new Wikibook. Just make sure it really is a related link, for example don't add a link on w:George W. Bush.
  • Don't forget other Wikimedia projects like Wikisource or Wiktionary. You may want to request help for adding links in their main project discussion areas.
  • I would strongly suggest that you post some message on the Wikipedia Music Wikiproject, where a fairly large number of people interested in music related discussions. There are several "sub-projects" related to that main Music project, so you may be able to focus your audience even further there.
Other than doing all of this, I would simply recommend that you work on developing the content of this Wikibook as best as you reasonably can. I know this seems like a lonely job, but the better Wikibooks eventually do start attracting their own audience and get additional assistance once you have been able to get over the initial "hump" of having just a Wikibook stub, people will start coming in to help you out. Ironicly, once you have quite a bit of useful content, it is easier to get more people to come and join in the effort to add even more. It is simply getting that initial bunch of coherant text together in the first place that can be difficult. Just don't assume that "if you write it, they will come" and leave just an outline for others to come and fill in the details. Still, welcome to Wikibooks, and I hope that your Wikibook will succeed. --Rob Horning 14:22, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Does this "book" belong?

I've been watching with interest the new books that pop up. However, Rosacea appears not to be a text so much as a Wikipedia article at best. But I'm new here; does this book really represent what Wikibooks is about? DSYoungEsq 17:48, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

While it does have some similarity to w:Rosacea, this is just fine for the beginnings of a well developed Wikibook, but only a beginning. I wouldn't nominate this for Book of the Month (even with some of the poor quality books that have won there, unfortunately), but this is certainly something that could become that valuable with time and effort.
Keep in mind that if there is something that is a copyright violation that we can't have that on Wikibooks. Copying content from Wikipedia is not necessarily a copyright violation (as it can be copied under the terms of the GFDL), but we generally discourage that practice unless you have added a substantial amount of new information here on Wikibooks. This attempt at writing a book about Rosacea does seem to try to make that extra push to go beyond the Wikipedia article, although I would admit it needs even more work. --Rob Horning 22:06, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
Rosacea appears to be too large for a Wikipedia article. Edit summaries acknowledge that much of the material is copy from http://rosaceagroup.org/wiki/. (A vandal blanked their main page; use http://www.rosaceagroup.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=7832 for now.) --Kernigh 04:50, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
I guess my question goes to the heart of the concept; I'm still trying to figure it out. I understand Wikibooks as a place for books that teach you about a subject, e.g.: mathematics, or C#, or Quenya. I see a book like this one, and I think that all it is is an expanded WikiPedia article; it isn't really a "subject" about which one "learns." But, then, I see more than one WikiBook about which that can be said. Do we care about this? If not, goodness knows there are a lot of things that I find interesting that I can write a "book" about.  :) DSYoungEsq 14:06, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the note about this material coming from the Rosacea Group. I had forgotten about that, and the fact that this Wikibook was put together by several of the contributors to that website you mentioned. GFDL license was explicitly mentioned somewhere for this content, but I would have to dig around to find the mention of that. --Rob Horning 18:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Renaming a page

Can anyone tell me how I can rename Modern_Greek/Reading to Modern_Greek/Lesson_1? Thanks! --Bcrowell 00:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

You can use this page to move the page to that location. All links to the old page will redirect to the new one automatically. -Matt 03:34, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the MediaWiki software doesn't automatically grant to privilege of moving pages to new users. There is a time and edit count limit before you have access to that feature, although it is something that is available to any registered user once you have been on here for some time. I am not sure what the specific limits are on that at the moment, however, and when you can use the move page. This was disabled from brand new accounts due to malicious vandalism in the past that really made a huge mess that was also hard to cleanup for admins. This affects all Wikimedia projects. --Rob Horning 13:44, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Comments from a newcomer

Having come anew to this site (I've just started a book on Taxation in the United Kingdom, I have a number of, what I trust will be taken as, constructive comments on the site:

  1. I can't immediately see what books are complete (or near-complete), and therefore particularly useful for readers.
  2. The Main Page isn't particularly helpful - it doesn't really say what Wikibooks is, doesn't tell you what books are complete - doesn't highlight the true textbooks (eg GCSE and A-Level guides). I'm sure it can be redesigned in a more user-friendly way.
  3. It's not easy to find out what wikibooks really is. The page that describes it does so in negative terms (Wikibooks:What Wikibooks is not rather than actually explaining what it is (WP makes this mistake for almost all its policies, which never say what you should do, but what you shouldn't).
  4. It's not obvious to me how you are meant to find a book. Would it be useful to divide books up into "complete" and "in development", and then subdivide them into, say - "For young children", "UK study guides for students" (GCSE and A-Level), "University subjects", "Professional", "Business", "Adult-Learning"?

In particular regarding the first point, f I were, say, to develop a new Main Page design to illustrate some of what I meant, would that be helpful? Jguk 14:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that main page is not very friendly for newcomers. I think that we should make a serious selection, leaving only best books available from the main page. It's not discrimination - all books, includings stus, will be still available in bookshelves. But lists like Template:Mathematics bookshelf should be reduced only to books which provide real help and are useful for readers (I would remove entries like Applied Math Basics and Real analysis). Because main page consists of list of such templates for all bookshelves, cleaning up these pages would also simplify main page.
I'm thinking of lanunching a special page to gather completed books from all bookshelves. By completed I mean either having development stage of 75% or 100%, or being significantly larger than other books. Such list will serve as a separate page (useful for Card Office Catalogue and links from navigation bar) and base for templates like Template:Mathematics bookshelf. --Derbeth talk 16:02, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
It's a major problem that potential readers have to sort through a massive list of books that aren't really books in hopes of finding books that really are books. One problem I'd foresee with using a cutoff at 75% development stage is that it would encourage even more inflation of the development stages, which are already extremely inflated. I don't know how helpful it would be to launch a separate page, either, since the typical potential reader will probably never see that page. The real problem is that the main page makes it extremely difficult to find useful content. I think we should encourage Jguk to create the mockup of a new main page.
One really simple change I'd suggest would be to move the New Wikibooks section down to the bottom of the main page. Every book on that list is guaranteed not to be useful to readers.
In general, a lot of this boils down to the problem of having to evaluate which books have reached the stage where they're complete and of good quality. I don't think Wikibooks has a viable mechanism for doing this, since it lacks a critical mass of people. Maybe it would make sense to have some kind of mechanism for linking to the very best wikibooks from someplace on Wikipedia, and asking WP's membership to see if there's a consensus, in a process similar to what happens when a WP article is nominated for FA status. --Bcrowell 16:46, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree 100% with Jguk. Couldn't have said it better myself.--Bcrowell 17:54, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Japanese/Reader/第三夜

Is this valid as a separate book, and if so can it go in the list of new books if it is moved out of the Japanese book? Gerard Foley 17:54, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

A point to look at with this is that the "Readers" are intended to be for beginning Japanese students. I love how the full vocabulary is listed and a cross translation between Japanese and English. Content of this nature would also be fairly easy to translate into 3rd languages simply by the nature of the format.
As far as being a seperate book on Wikibooks, I would like to discourage that idea, but mine is just one voice here so don't take my word as law on the subject. This is something that compliments the Japanese Wikibook, and is a part of the curriculum for learning the Japanese langauge. In that regard, it really needs to stay together and not get lost or misunderstood as something which needs to be put into Wikisource or removed from Wikibooks. It should also be discouraged to simply add raw Japanese texts to the "Reader" section simply to have them somewhere. All text for these readers should have some sort of instruction component to them that is meeting some sort of learning objective for people using the Japanese Wikibook as a textbook. --Rob Horning 19:18, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Invariant Sections allowed?

I've written a fairly large part of the "squid user's guide" book, available at sourceforge, and would like to release the book "into the wild". The current process of editing the book (docbook-sgml) is way too arduous for any users to actually contribute.

The document is already released under the gnu free documentation licence (see the copyright under the index page.) However, it has invariant sections that credit my previous and current employers, both of whom have given me full consent to make the document available under the GFDL - so long as the invariant sections are included.

Is there any way to release this onto wikibooks? Can I include the invariant sections in the copyright? Or is this against policy?

Thanks!

Oskarpearson 00:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

No, we don't allow any invariant sections. See Wikibooks:Copyright. --Derbeth talk 02:31, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I suggest that you look at → Wiki:WikiFarms ← to find a place where you can start a wiki for your book. Choose a wiki host, read their terms of use, and check that they allow you to control the copyright of your wiki. For example, http://pbwiki.com would probably meet that requirement. --Kernigh 03:41, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

footnotes

Is it possible to do footnotes in wikibooks? I couldn't find any templates, or anything in the help pages, that seemed relevant. If there isn't already a provision for it, should I just copy some of the footnoting templates from WP? (I'm not completely clear, however, on some of the technical issues, like how namespaces work for templates. Also, WP has a whole bunch of different footnoting systems, and I'm not sure what's the best one to emulate.)--Bcrowell 17:56, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

See Wikibooks:Template messages/General#Footnotes. --Derbeth talk 20:41, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
D'oh! Thanks!--Bcrowell 00:05, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Help wanted with oceanograpy book !

hey all ! I have started editing the book of Oceanograpy. You can read about my motivation and me at my userpage. I would like to change the name of the book the "Introduction to Oceanography" and also move it to active bookshelf. please join me, Oz.

Done. Good luck with it! Jguk 10:35, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Gardening books, how-tos, garden category

Hi! Having a bit of trouble finding my way around here... rather a different structure than the wikipedia. Are there project pages here? How do I go about creating a gardening category?

My main interest is writing "how-tos" about gardening techniques, such as growing particular plants, soil improvement, etc. I'm not sure if these should be all chapters in one book, or just a bunch of books within a category. I've recruited some people from web forums to help write these, so it would be nice to know what structure they should follow before starting.

I noticed on one of the archival pages that some folks don't want to be a "dumping ground" for the 'pedia's how-tos. Are wikibookians hostile to how-tos? Maybe rename them "practical guides," instead? Johnny 12:47, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikibooks! I'm glad to see that you are interested in helping us out. For now, you can add books of this nature to Wikibooks:How-tos bookshelf, and once there have been several that have been added we can discuss trying to create a seperate gardening bookshelf. If you want to create a seperate section just for gardening right now within the How-to bookshelf, feel free to add it right now. As can be seen from this main bookshelf page (not necessarily from the front page of Wikibooks) there are many How-to books already on Wikibooks.
From personal experience, it is generally better to start a books with a strong focus and theme rather than try to write a general purpose book that can include a huge number of items. For example, "How to Grow Roses" would be better than "How to Garden". Especially for the first book experience on Wikibooks, a narrow themed book seems to do better, and gives you a focus on where to proceed. Portions of it may end up in the more inclusive Wikibook in the future anyway.
As far as the "dumping ground" aspect from Wikipedia, there is a tendancy to take all content removed from Wikipedia by a VfD and dump it on Wikibooks if they can't find a place to put it. How-to guides in particular have had this occur, as this is something which seems to come up as a regular item on Wikipedia for some reason. As long as it fits within our guidelines (see WB:WIN for details) and as long as the material can be used under the GFDL license (no copyrighted material without permission for redistribution) you should be fine to add it here. In general, how-to books are welcome on Wikibooks and have been a part of this project for most of the history of Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 14:27, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Rob. Still figuring out how it works here, though. Are there project pages for discussing templates, etc.? Or should that just be done on the 'pedia project pages. I was just thinking it might be nice if "how to grow daylilies" had a similar layout to "how to grow foxgloves", etc.
Also, I'll ask here rather than look for somewhere else to ask: is there a shortcut tag to link a book from the 'pedia? (Similar to the w: shortcut here, I mean.) Johnny 18:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Not only is there a tag for Wikibooks (it is b:page_name for Wikibooks, and b:xx: like b:de:page_name for other Wikibooks langauges when linking on other projects), but most other Wikimedia projects also have specialized templates that also include the cool stacked books logo for Wikibooks to provide a link. See w:Template:Wikibooks for an example, and look at some of the articles that have included this template. This is a method, BTW, to add a highly visible link to some Wikibook that you are working on from Wikipedia that is also accepted on Wikipedia without looking like linkspam. --Rob Horning 19:05, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania proceedings, transwikiing, and related issues

See also: User talk:Kernigh#m:Transwiki:Wikimania05, User talk:Robert Horning#Wikimania redirects, MetaWikipedia:User talk:Eloquence#Wikimania on Wikibooks, Wikibooks:Votes for undeletion#Wikimania 2005 proceedings

The Wikimania 2005 proceedings were being collected here on Wikibooks. They were nominated for transwiki to Meta (though it is unclear that this is where such a collection belongs) by Kernigh; and recently Rob Horning in a flurry of activity moved over all of that content and deleted the original pages.

Whether or not this is the right way to dispense with that content, there are a few points here worth noting:

1) This was a large effort, yet the many people who cared weren't notified about it ahead of time. For a few reasons... transwikis out of Wikibooks are rarely applied to bodies of content this size, and mainly applied to interlanguage transwikis or transwikis of fledgling content. The procedure for suggesting modules for transwikiing is far less formal than that for deletion. In this case, almost no one on Wikibooks was made aware that this move was taking place; there was no note on this page or on VfD.

This was not some random book or project; it was very directly associated with the Wikimedia projects and with free knowledge. A dozen editors had worked on over a hundred pages associated with the proceedings project, over the course of months. None of these editors was contacted via talk page or email or mailing-list about the move-without-forwarding-address. It might help avoid future confusion to have some sort of sanity check re: notification when large-scale changes are made.

2) There are many hundreds of external links to the pages that have now been deleted, which links are completely broken; with no record that any page ever existed there, and no simple way to find the new location; not to mention no way to access the old page histories.

Can we please minimize this chaos?

  • Simply undeleting the pages would be simplest, until we can work out where such collections should go. I do not know if Meta is the right place any more than Wikibooks is... but they've already been moved there.
  • Second easiest: undeleting the pages in question, and replacing them with redirect links (so as to both avoid breaking old external links and to preserve the diffs between historical revisions of pages), would resolve the most immediate issues.
Cheers, Sj 07:58, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Note that the Wikimania content violated at least several Wikibooks policies, including the following:
  • Wikibooks is not a place to publish original works
  • Wikibooks is not a mirror or a repository for source texts
  • Wikibooks is not for developing new Wikimedia projects
  • Wikibooks is not a soapbox
  • Wikibooks is not a free wiki host or webspace provider
  • Wikibooks is not a general repository for nonfiction works
Unfortunately, you do not seem to be joking... the only points here which seem to apply are the second and the last. Both apply to some degree, although neither is violated in the canonical sense.
Violating even one of these is grounds not just for deletion but a speedy delete, although we do try to take some time to remove content that has been added in good faith.
I regret the use of the royal we here, and your framing of this discussion as between people in different universes. As of August 7, when the first Wikimania ended, this was not speedy deletion policy. Sj
With very, very few exceptions, none of the participants of the Wikimania content contributed to Wikibooks outside of the Wikimania content, and very few Wikibooks regulars participated in the development of Wikimania content. In this regard it really is two totally seperate universes of users that are involved... which is precisely why there is such friction going on between these two groups. --Rob Horning
Plenty of time was given to the content for the Wikimania proceedings, and dispite efforts to convince the contributors that the content didn't belong, it was expanded anyway.
What kinds of efforts were made to convince "the contributors" that the content didn't belong? Sj
The nail in the coffin, for me anyway, was that the content had no internal links from within Wikibooks, either from the main page, or from inside any of the current list of Wikibooks. There was absolutely no attempt whatever to integrate this content with the rest of the content on Wikibooks, and all participation on the Wikimania content was essentially acting as a seperate project, including the adding of non-english content that also would have normally been removed and added to the other language Wikibooks projects.
This was unfortunate, and a result of not refining the goal of the resulting wikibook (is it to be a straight publication of abstracts accepted to Wikimania, by alpha of the author? a review of that literature, with bonus multimedia content of people giving audio and video presentations?) It was difficult to figure out where to link to the proceedings from other bookshelves, as well. The "adding of non-english content" [eventually with translations] is something which certainly should be acceptable for any sort of compilations. Is there currently a policy against that? (link?) Sj
As compilations of this nature are inappropriate for Wikibooks in the first place, this point is moot. This is English Wikibooks, and there are other languages that are available for non-English content if you want to have it on Wikibooks, and it was from this perspective I made the preceeding comment. I have no problem with the use of foreign langauge material as instructional content for learning another language. That was not the point of the Wikimania content, however. --Rob Horning
I wanted to also send a clear message that we don't want to have the Wikimania 2006 content on here either, and I hope that message has been sent loud and clear. Wikimania is a cool concept, and I hope that the proceedings can be developed. Wikibooks is not the place to do it, however, and it should never have been here in the first place. The admins were earlier bullied into keeping this content here, and that was a wrong decision. --Rob Horning 18:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
If you have a policy point to make, please make it directly -- you have not spoken loudly or even softly in any public forum about the placement of Wikimania 2005 or 2006 content in the past months until after you moved quickly to delete vast amounts of content and edit history. I don't know what kind of bullying you are talking about when the content was first added, or how you think "the admins" on Wikibooks were as a whole subjected to it; please elaborate. If such a thing happened, it too seems not to have been discussed openly in any wikibooks forum. Sj
Since you have interrupted me several times... I complained about this on Foundation-L when this content was first added, and was bullied into leaving the content alone. Mainly on the condition that Wikibooks was just a temporary place to put this. I will openly admit, however, that my current actions were prompted by Kernigh who started the transwiki process... and I agreed with him completely. --Rob Horning

Can you just please undelete the pages and give us a deadline (for instance something around/before Wikimania 2006). We're going to finish and tidy it and afterwards some kind of redirects or warning signs could be put at the most important pages. Thank you for your effort to keep Wikibooks tidy but this was just a bit too rash and uncoordinated. There are editors who submitted content and now they have to sign in with a new account at meta and all relation between user and pages via edits is lost. Wikimania proceedings have always been a bit chaotic - this incident is a good kick behind to the editors to finally finish it but having to work without the old location and the version histories is a pain. We just need some additional time! -- JakobVoss 10:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

There are also discussions about this here.

I want to thank Jakob for at least bringing this up in the Staff Lounge instead of trying to fight this outside of the Wikibooks commmunity. The appropriate forum for trying to undelete content is here: Wikibooks:Votes for undeletion If you think that an admin has deleted something when it should have remained, this is the appropriate place to hold that discussion. Content has been undeleted in the past, and sometimes even policy changes have happened to accomodate the undeleted content. It should say something, however, that there is currently not a single Wikibook at the moment where the decision to remove has been questioned and is going through the undeletion process. Typically, the discussion there can last for months before resolution although this situation is a little more unique.
As far as giving you time... the content is all on Meta at the moment. We havn't actually removed any content at all... just changed where it is located at. And this wasn't a rash decision either. The notice that the content was going to be transwikied was up for more than a month, with some considerably older comments that the content didn't belong in the first place going back over six months. And the relationship between the users and the page edits is not lost, although it is harder to revert the content to an earlier version. As for having to create a new account on Meta... I agree, that is unfortunate. And that is something the Mediawiki developers are working on right now (and think they have a solution which might work to make this a thing of the past). --Rob Horning 18:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
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