Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 13

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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

Transwiki processes in general

Transwikis by their current implementation remove granular histories. You can cut and paste the history page html, but you lose the diffs and actual knowledge of what content each author provided. How can we fix this? Sj

We can fix this by simply getting the page import/export feature working the way that the developers claim it should be working. Presumably you should be able to get the full XML of a page including its full edit history and complete set of page diffs on each edit. Just like a raw CVS dump can be done. Unfortunately, we need to put a bug into the ears of the developers to get this feature working correctly. See Special:Export for some example of how it might work, but the current export feature is just a joke. Also note the results of accessing Special:Import, which ideally would allow you to complete a transwiki including page history. --Rob Horning 17:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Conference proceedings and similar collections

There is a general question about where, if anywhere, one should work on producing an educational resource from the papers, talks, and tutorials given at a conference. Either they are source materials to be left at wikisource; or digests of source materials -- sourcebooks -- which can be edited and refined over time. In the latter case, do they belong on wikibooks?

The Wikimania proceedings are not a sourcebook, but the latter question about collections of sources has relevance to general Wikibooks policy. Sj 15:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
It's out of question that they don't belong on Wikibooks. Wikimania 2005 proceedings are a special case and they have never meant to stay on Wikibooks forever. -- JakobVoss 10:13, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Who decided this was a special case? It certainly didn't get widespread support from the general Wikibooks community, just from a few active contributors and "senior Wikimedia" individuals. I have repeated asked on Foundation-l about this topic, and the resounding concensus from that forum (including from at least 3 different Foundation board members) is that Wikibooks is not to be a development site for a brand new Wikimedia project. Wikijunior and Wikiversity are explicit exceptions and moves have occured to remove both of those sub-projects from Wikibooks as well. If you want to start something that doesn't fit on a Wikimedia project, you have three choices:
I believe Jakob was suggesting that this was a special case on face value, because it contains content developed by dozens of contributors to many wikimedia projects, for a purely wikimedia-focused goal, involving many editors who are obviously well-meaning. I still have no idea why you were so eager to get this done without activating a discussion; it was a fair bit of work, as you noted; and you recognized ahead of time that there would be an outcry. Sj
And what would have been the appropriate forum for discussion of this, where Wikimania participants would have been aware of what was going on? --Rob Horning
  • Create a new proposal on Meta
  • Create a new Wikicity
  • Buy your own computer and static IP address with internet connection and start your own server.
Wikibooks is not to be a place to start new projects of this nature, and everybody participating with the proceedings knew this. This is not a web hosting service here at Wikibooks, and that has been policy for several years now. The only difference between this content for Wikimania and other similar documents that have been removed from Wikibooks is merely the visibility of this content on other Wikimedia projects and the political pull of some of the participants. By your own admission, Jakob, Wikibooks was only a temporary place to host this content. What is temporary? A few months? A few years?
There are no 'similar documents' that have been removed from Wikibooks. (Truly not. Try coming up with one.) Your repetition of 'political pull' notwithstanding, the differences with this project have nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with community identity and spirit. You do not seem to feel any association with Wikimania, and have been treating anyone who was working on the proceedings here as though they were some sort of invading force. I regret this; and hope you will come to see things differently.
Given the very high visibility that Wikimania held and the fact that a Wikimania wiki was established anyway (see http://wikimania.wikimedia.org ) why could it not be started for the proceedings as well? I'm certain that as as new proposal this would have been fast-tracked through the new project proposal process and could have been started very quickly.... much easier and paltable for the Foundation board than apparently Wikiversity has been. If you think the new project proposal process is dying due to bureaucracy and needs to be circumvented, I would have to agree. Dispite Jimbo's personal assurances that no project is given special status due to its association with board members, the whole of this proceedings Wikibooks is proving that to the contrary. --Rob Horning 17:48, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
"Producing Wikimania Proceedings" is not a Project in that sense. It is a project on the scale of producing a single book; similarly easy to begin and difficult to complete. Please do not project your sense of the new project proposal process onto this discussion. I concur with the idea that we could start a separate wiki for academic content; this is probably a good idea. The question of the moment remains, why was this content removed with so little politeness or sense of perspective? Why did the work of dozens of people on hundreds of pages disappear overnight without any of them receiving a polite talk-page message? How can we improve on the process in the future? Do we need a process for searching google for inbound links when deleting pages, to avoid breaking popular outside-world links? Sj 00:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
The Wikimania Proceedings is a serial scholarly journal (serial, because it is an annual event). In some regards, this IMHO would have been a perfect addition to Wikiversity, especially if Wikiversity is given "permission" from the Wikimedia Foundation to allow some limited original research. These proceedings, together with other similar scholarly content, need to have a specialized team of people who are capable of doing that scholarly review of original submitted abstracts and published papers with a point of view. From this perspective, I consider this to be an attempt to start a new Wikimedia project, however. It is precisely this major restraint on Wikiversity at the moment that I think Wikiversity needs to move out into its own space. As far as trying to make Wikiversity a seperate project... I've done as much as I or any ordinary Wikimedia user can do to get it up and running. --Rob Horning 14:25, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

The *main* problem that you are entirely missing Robert, is that hundred of links have been broken. These proceedings were linked a lot by outside websites or blogs. Those following the links have absolutely no chance to find them back. All they get is an empty page. I think this is really something unfortunate. Since the beginning of the projects, we have tried very very very hard for this to never happen. When I joined wikipedia, the address was www.wikipedia.com for the english speaking wikipedia. When we turned www.wikipedia.org, links followed. When we later created the general portal page, the pages moved to en.wikipedia.org but redirection were always preserved so that our readers will never find a broken link, something very unpleasant on the net. In deleting even the redirections, you ruined many hours of activities, you ruined the chance to find an article which was linked only 6 months ago. On the net, this is a disastrous occurence imho.

Now, why not preserving the redirection ? What are the arguments for not keeping them and preserving flow of information ? Even if the proceedings are kept on meta (which I personnaly find a very stupid place to keep them), all the connexions to access them will be lost. For those who put a lot of time to organise wikimania and to have these proceedings, this is entirely heartbreaking. And I am not sure the benefits wikibooks gets in kicking out the proceedings outgrows the loss for our organisation. Anthere

I think Robert is hitting the main point spot on. The Wikimania 2005 proceedings are not within Wikibooks purview and do not belong here. Wikibooks at the moment needs some organisation so that it is clear what is on offer, how to contribute, what to contribute, etc. Re-introducing lots of text that is entirely inconsistent with the project's aims will not help in that task.
I'm also mindful that those who wish to find information about Wikimania 2005 should be able to find it. Is there any evidence that people are in reality clicking on those links, or, if not, is it possible to look for this evidence? For instance, to give one example of the items shown in a google search sj did, there was a mailing list post six months ago. Realistically, is anyone (1) going to read that now; (2) then choose to follow a link to Wikimania? In other words, is there a real problem or just a perceived one? Jguk 12:24, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

BTW, see also the VfD Discussion at Wikibooks:Votes for deletion#Wikimania 2005 proceedings --Rob Horning 14:12, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I want to add that I am not against a "general" redirection, just that adding such links would be a major pain in the a** and needed somebody with a lot of extra time... time I didn't have. If half of the effort to complain about this content and get senior Wikimedia people involved was spent instead to create those redirects in some reasonable fashion, it wouldn't be a problem. The main reason to delete all of the content is to keep vandals from making a mess of all of this content, and have somebody that actually cares to monitor and maintain the content. I still strongly object to people telling me what __**I**__ must do with my time as a volunteer. I am not an employee who can have his chain yanked whenever somebody "higher up" feels I'm being lazy. That is not a way to deal with volunteers in any organization. If there is a percieved need to recreate some links with a redirect to where the new content can be found at, OK, that seems like a reasonable request. Put it on a list of things to do by Wikibooks volunteers or people interested in helping out with Wikimania content. Just don't demand that one individual must do it or somehow lose karma, adminship, or money. --Rob Horning 14:20, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

The interesting thing is that you apparently spent hours over a couple of days deleting hundreds of pages; so I'm guessing you do in fact have some free time. :)
If you used an automated bot to do the deletions, making a redirect instead would have taken pretty much no additional time.
If you did them manually, a little cut-and-paste shouldn't have taken much longer -- and it would take less time still to ask someone who does operate a bot to run redirects over them instead. --Brion VIBBER 20:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
And automated 'bots are absolutely perfect as well? On your undeletion spree, you undeleted several "images" that only included very minor text in the comments, and didn't return the images themselves. You also undeleted several pages that were clearly marked "please delete me" and double redirects. Furthermore, where should the redirect point to? One page on Wikibooks or individually to the page where the content was moved to? I was hoping that the VfUD would take care of deciding this issue as well.

I hate 'bots for the most part, as I think they tend to really screw things up, especially when there is a lot of personal judgement that needs to take place. And the transwiki of this Wikimanian content was fraught with a bunch of little decisions and stuff hid away in various namespaces, some orphaned content, and pages that weren't even named Wikimania for any part of the title. By going through this process, I also discovered some content on Meta that perhaps should be merged into the Wikimania proceedings content as well that was never on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 11:56, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

The impression that I have so far is that most Wikibookians did not know about the large number of external links pointing to Wikimania05, while most Wikimania05 editors did not know about the transwiki notices that appeared on the Wikimania05 for about two months.

Some of you seem to be confused about what "speedy deletion" means. At this wiki, any exclusion listed on WB:WIW, such as the "personal essays" of Wikimania05 (WB:WIW#Wikibooks is not a soapbox), is eligible for "speedy deletion", which means that it can skip the Wikibooks:Votes for deletion process. At some other wikis, for example at Wikicities:Wikicities:Candidates for speedy deletion, a page does not enter "speedy deletion" status until after it is transwikied. --Kernigh 06:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Image licenses

I edited WB:ICT to discourage users from use of GFDL license for images. GFDL requires full text of the license to be always provided with the image, so if you want to use only one image from Wikibooks in your paper, you'll have to print the whole license (which is not short). Creative Commons licenses don't have such problems and I gave them reccomendation. I also created {{CC-self}} tag (CC-BY-SA-2.5 license) to be a friendly substitute for {{GFDL-self}}. Also, there finally is {{GPL}} template. --Derbeth talk 09:52, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 2.5 is the recommended license at Wikimedia Commons, so I see no problem with recommending it here also.
But the requirement to provide the text of the license is not the only difference between CC-BY-SA 2.5 and GFDL 1.2. Minor differences cause the two licenses to be incompatible, thus one cannot combine a CC-BY-SA work and a GFDL work into a derivative work (unless one work was multi-licensed). --Kernigh 05:40, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
The problem with the GPL license for images is that the definition of "source code" is not apparent, hence the need to rework to make the GFDL. Unfortunately, the GFDL and the GPL are mutually exclusive and can't be used with each other (unless you dual license the content right from the start... and even that causes problems).

I was not aware of the issues of combining CC-BY-SA with GFDL into a derivative work, as that is precisely what Wikipedia is doing... Wikipedia is GFDL and as you point out Commons has substantial quantities of CC-BY-SA images. I was under the assumption that you could use CC images within a GFDL work but not the other way around. The GFDL does need some serious rework from what I've seen. --Rob Horning 11:23, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, images are separate from text. You can use any license for images and GFDL license for text - combining CC images with GFDL text is ok (and, as for me, should be normal). I wrote a note discouraging use of GPL for your own work - this template should be used only for screenshots. I hope anyone is aware that screenshots of GPL software can be only licensed under GPL, not GFDL?
When it comes to GFDL, I don't like it. German Wikipedia is trying to move away from it (some kind of dual-licensing, I don't know), describing its clauses as "idiotic". I'm not so much radical, but in my opinion GFDL license applied for images is not a free license, as it forces unreasonable restrictions (printing the whole license with the image). --Derbeth talk 11:34, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Imaging and copyright laws

Hi all ! I started editing the book Oceanography - An Introduction. I base my book on lectures given in the university. The course was based on various books. I wanted to know about inserting pictures to the wikibook. First, if I redraw pictures with a vector graphics program based on the pictures of those bookes, do I violet the terms of use in the book ? Second, what about copying pictures from other websites ? thanks Fisheye 12:00, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I think redrawing is ok as long as these images are not something exclusive and uncommon. You have to decise whether an image is just a schema or original work (second one may cause problems). And copying from other webistes - don't do it unless their content is available at free licenses. I reccomend you using Commons, our media repository. The advantage is, you don't have tu upload any images from there here - they are treated as they were present here. --Derbeth talk 12:07, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks alot. for the quick answering. It is giving me alot of motivation to know I am not alone here :-). Anyway how do I know if a picture is original ? I guess they mostly use schemas in sceince book, no ? Fisheye 12:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
You must judge it by yourself. If something is simple and does not show anything new, I think you can safely redraw it. --Derbeth talk 12:26, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Please, if you upload a picture, include an attribution as to where you obtained the image, including if you took the image yourself. A good weblink to the source of the image is usually sufficient to verify the copyright status of an image and there are some people who are very good at tracking down the licenses. If you were the original photographer, you would clearly know if the work is truly original. As far as redrawing images as a scaleable vector graphic image (doing a free-hand sketch or something similar), I've seen various ideas suggested in multi-media ethics course and several legal theories about that topic. The real trick is to make sure that the content is somewhat different from the item you are trying to roughly copy, or is trivial by comparison. Doing an SVG of the French Flag, for instance, would be a trivial exercise and copyright would be hard to prove (except by the French government). Generally courts are more friendly to individuals who show creative expression, so if you do a starfish, for example, that is somewhat abstract even through you used the proportions and position of that starfish from an oceanography book as source material, you are fairly safe. --Rob Horning 11:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Anons can not create books

I think that non-loged in users should not be alowed to create pages in the main namespace except subpages of existing pages. The reason is that new users seem to get it wrong, and pages can get lost. Comments? Gerard Foley 16:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. RC constantly has anonymous (and new, but that's a different issue) editors dumping all their book pages on the root, and it would be great to block it. -Matt 17:16, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
As it is trivial to create a new user account, I don't see what the problem is. By stopping anon users from creating new Wikibooks pages, it provides a speed bump for new contributors to try and take notice about what they are doing and make sure that they intend to create the content and keep it maintained. It would also stop the creation of pages like red-linked content that was copied from Wikipedia without giving any thought about how the book should be organized.

Question: If we agree to do something like this, who do we turn the request in to? I know this is being done "on an experimental basis" with en.wikipedia at the moment, but is this something we need to get general support for and throw on Wikitech-l? --Rob Horning 17:24, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that fact of registering would change user's behaviour. I'm opposed to such plans, because I patrol recent changes mainly looking for anon changes. I don't have time to check all registered users changes and it's easier for me to spot an edit by an anon. --Derbeth talk 19:09, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
This would be for root-level page creation (assuming it can be specified). You can still see anonymous edits of sub-pages where a lot goes down anyway. I think this is useful because it makes people think before creating some random entry somewhere. With restrictions to sub-pages, the editor has to at least put it inside something already existing. -Matt 04:50, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't think that fact of registering would change user's behaviour.

Only one way to find out. The second point about the recent changes patrol; have you tried using Special:Contributions/newbies? Gerard Foley 22:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Wow, that's really cool. Thanks! --Derbeth talk 22:56, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I added link to it to Wikibooks:Wikibooks maintenance, creating "Patrolling" section. I hope every of administrators has read this page. I also encourage normal users to take a look at the page. --Derbeth talk 12:13, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Images on bookshelfs?

Nuvola apps package games.png
Computer and video games

ACTION-ADVENTURE - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas 25%.png - Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories Development stage: 00% (as of Feb 15, 2005) - PLATFORM - Mega Man' (classic series) - Mega Man X - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 25%.png - Sonic the Hedgehog 3 25%.png - Super Mario World Development stage: 50% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - Super Mario 64 25%.png - PUZZLE - Chip's Challenge 50%.png - RACING - Mario Kart DS - ROLE-PLAYING - ADOM Development stage: 00% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - MapleStory Development stage: 00% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - Chrono Trigger Development stage: 100% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - Final Fantasy Development stage: 100% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - Final Fantasy VI 100%.png - Final Fantasy VII Development stage: 75% (as of January 10, 2006) - Lineage 2 Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - NetHack Development stage: 50% (as of December 9, 2005) - SHOOTING (FIXED) - TI 83 Plus: Phoenix 25%.png - SHOOTING (FIRST-PERSON) - Halo - America's Army: Special Forces 100%.png - Medal of Honor: Frontline 100%.png - SIMULATION - SimEarth Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - STRATEGY - Civilization Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - Rise of Nations Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - SimCity Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005) - StarCraft 50%.png - Total Annihilation 00%.png - VS. FIGHTING - Fighting Game Moves - Jump Superstars 25%.png - SNK vs. Capcom - Match of the Millennium - Super Smash Bros. Melee Development stage: 25% (as of Dec 29, 2005)

(edit template)
All computer and video games books...


What do people think of the idea? Feel free to edit this page Don't use the edit template link! Gerard Foley 22:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

There's a problem, because such templates are used twice: in normal size in bookshelves and in smaller size on the main page. Font size can be easily changed but the image won't resize. Apart from this, I think that if we insert image to every bookshelf on the main page, it will start to look like a christmas tree - even now it's a bit messy with all the development stage icons around. If there were any icons of bookshelves, I would rather like to see all bookshelves on the main page look like top of French Wikipedia, without development stages. --Derbeth talk 22:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with christmas trees? lol Gerard Foley 22:50, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, a christmas tree might interfere with the next section. :-) --JMRyan 00:43, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Point taken! :D Gerard Foley 01:18, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I thank that adding such images is a good idea, and that we do not need to shrink such images for the Main Page. --Kernigh 21:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Change in the format for page deletions

User:Brion VIBBER has posted a note on Foundation-l that may be of interest to the admins here on Wikibooks:

I've changed how the Special:Undelete view works a little bit. The last deleted page text is no longer displayed above the revisions list; it tended to be rather annoying for big pages and could make things hard to deal with if the page had hostile CSS (eg obscuring the buttons).

The revisions also now display the wiki source code by default, making it easier to examine the code of a deleted page or copy-and-paste if necessary. Rendered preview from there is optional.

Please copy this notification to whereever your wiki's curious sysops may be hanging out.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Just an FYI... --Rob Horning 22:49, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Rob, but I wonder if WB:BB is not better place for such notices. --Derbeth talk 23:03, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads-up, I've now updated MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook/Page Deletion to cover this change... aren't wikis wonderful? :) As for WB:BB that seems a little under-trafficked compared to the Staff Lounge. GarrettTalk 04:45, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

A new system message, check it out! The design I used is a little crap, but you get the idea. Gerard Foley 00:41, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I liked it so much that I moved the example here to Wikibooks. Thanks. If Wikibooks users think it should be tweaked or fixed up a little bit more, add discussion below. --Rob Horning 14:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Talkpagetext contains a link to Reading room/Archive 13; thus it is broken when you edit a talk page outside of the "Talk:" namespace. For example, when editing "Category talk:XXX", the link to the article goes to "XXX" instead of "Category:XXX".
I know of no easy way to fix this. One solution might be to make the link go to [[{{Document {{NAMESPACE}}}}:{{PAGENAME}}]]. Then create a "Template:Document Category talk" containing "Category". We would also need "Template:Document Talk", "Template:Document User talk", "Template:Document Wikibooks talk", "Template:Document Image talk", "Template:Document MediaWiki talk", "Template:Document Template talk", "Template:Document Help talk", and "Template:Document Cookbook talk". We would need to protect these nine templates from edits. It is already reminding me of template nightmares surrounding the MediaWiki Handbook!
Maybe we should make it {{PAGENAME}} without the link. --Kernigh 21:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

This was pointed out to me on simple.wiktionary. I just deleted the end of the line. Gerard Foley 00:55, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

I have matched that, and deleted the end of the line at English Wikibooks MediaWiki:Talkpagetext also. --Kernigh 05:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Vote called at Wikibooks:Policy/Vote/Naming policy

There is an ongoing vote that folks should participate in. I have tried to make the brief summary below as neutral as I can. However, I am a partisan in the vote and cannot guaranteed I have succeeded. Here is the summary.

  • We have been evolving toward a naming policy where only the slash convention (“Book/Chapter/Page” or “Book/Page”) is accepted in the main (wiki) namespace. A proposed policy was written up and a vote was taken. The policy was not approved, but the policy was amended in light of the objections. A version still recognizing only the slash convention in the main namespace remained a proposed policy.
  • Offense was taken at cleanup notices for one or more books that did not follow the proposed policy. A long discussion broke out. The current policy statement now contains two competing proposals.
  • In an effort to start the decision making somewhere, the page Wikibooks:Policy/Vote/Naming policy was started. This is not a vote on the policy as a whole, but on whether to require the slash convention for new books. Existing book names can, with some minor restrictions, remain unchanged.

You are encouraged to vote at Wikibooks:Policy/Vote/Naming policy. Voting ends at March, 1st 00:01 GMT --JMRyan 22:22, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

updating development stage

Is it considered OK for people working on a book to change the development stage, or is that supposed to be done by a third party who's impartial? I think the Modern Greek book should be moved up from 25% to 50%, and I've done that on the bookshelf. Couldn't figure out how to do it for the main page, however.--Bcrowell 19:29, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

The box that appears on the Main Page is the template called Template:Languages bookshelf. This box also appears at the top of the Wikibooks:Languages bookshelf. The easiest way to change the status of Modern Greek is to use the edit template link in the lower-left corner of the box.
I have already changed the status of Modern Greek to 50%, to match the status that you put on the bookshelf. Book authors can change the development stage. I think that every user knowledgeable about the book should be able to edit, so I do not want a rule that requires third parties to adjust the development stage. --Kernigh 20:14, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
Thanks!--Bcrowell 20:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Attention: Speedy deletion of redirects

"A redirect where it is unlikely that anyone will inadventently search for a page under that name ... is a candidate for speedy deletion." -- Wikibooks:Deletion policy

I, Kernigh, recently reduced the number of pages in WB:SD to 83 from more than 200. Many of these pages which I speedily deleted were redirects left behind after a page move. Deletion of such redirects creates the danger of broken links. Some users seem to have the impression that preserving redirects is always important. I counter that our old URI at http://textbook.wikipedia.org/ is broken.

In particular, I am deleting redirects when the module name does not include the book name. Many of these redirects were chapter names, thus they were confusing and misleading, for example [[Index]] (to Wings 3D: User Manual/Index) and [[Good coding procedures and adherence to standards]] (to Web Development/Good coding procedures and adherence to standards).

However, some redirects are a result of name change in a book, for example, A-Level Computing*, Guide to UNIX, and the subpages of those two redirects, and the obsolete hierarchies of A Neutral Look at Operating Systems/Open Source OSs* and A Neutral Look at Operating Systems/Proprietary OSs*. There are also "shortcut" redirects like BSD, DBT*, and LD*. (The * indicates modules listed in WB:SD.)

I do not think that we can keep so many redirects in our current state. I think that we have two options concerning redirects cause by name change in a book:

  1. Delete such redirects - but we need to be careful whenever a user opposes a naming change to a book.
  2. Establish a registry for allowed redirects, but delete the others. For example, DBT, LD, and the subpages of A-Level Computing and A Level Mathematics might be listed as allowed redirects.

Should we delete these redirects, or do we allow some of them? --Kernigh 06:03, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd ask for caution. Unfortunately "what links here" only lists links in WB, not on the other WM areas. Deletion of redirects here might end up causing red links on the other sites. Johnny 12:39, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
That is psuedo red link. Interwiki links are always blue (at the moment) because it takes too much computing power to check the link within the MediaWiki software, and some interwiki links (like uncyclopedia:Main Page) don't even go to Wikimedia projects. Still, see my remark about broken links from external sites below: --Rob Horning 12:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

This is an issue where the culture and practice on Wikipedia is running into a brick wall here on Wikibooks. On Wikipedia, it doesn't really matter if a complete nonsense page name like Contents is redirected to somewhere else. Indeed, it is the nature of Wikipedia that encourages redirects and the more that an article has... either misspellings or related terms to a topic the better "connected" the article becomes.

On Wikibooks, however, the seeming range of possible links soars to unmanageable numbers and it is difficult to try and determine just how far to go and be reasonable. The other issue is that redirects really do need to be watched and maintained just like any other page on Wikibooks. That is fine if you are talking just 5 redirects to one article, but if you do a title change on Wikibooks with a 50 module book (not uncommon), that one rename (even if just to change naming conventions) is now 50 or even more redirects that have to be added to a watch list, or vectors that a vandal can deal with. Indeed this is a vandal vector that is being completely ignored at the moment, and something our current tools can't deal with. (See bugzilla:5040 for a suggested change that would help here.)

There is a point that redirects become simply absurd, and at that point it seems to be obvious that they should be a speedy delete candidate. At the same time, it is very hard to determine (just as the recent uproar over Wikimania content has shown) if a particular page or redirect actually has something linked to it from outside of Wikibooks. It is especially these pages that are linked which we need to be careful with, so people coming to Wikibooks will know where the content has been moved to, with the usual double redirect issues as well.

I'm not so sure what to do with pages like Periodic Table that point to modules within a Wikibooks as a redirect. This is really where the difference between Wikipedia and Wikibooks is huge. We may not have a single periodic table on this project, and some minor forking of content like this is reasonable under the circumstances where two different Wikibooks would have very different goals for what they want to emphasize on this same subject. Wikipedia deals with this through disambiguity pages, although this has been seldom done on Wikibooks. Generally the approach here has been to jump to Main Page and try to choose a Wikibook, or run through one of the bookshelves instead to find the content you are looking for. Randomly typing in a word to get to a page is not done too often, as you are unlikely to actually get an article hit on the term. Modules having the word within the text, but not the word itself as a module name. Yeah, this is a tough issue. I need to give some more thought on it as well. --Rob Horning 12:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Internal medicine

I'm sorry if i don't know well your procedures, I promise will learn them soon. The page Symptoms and Signs in Endocrinology has been copied from W:Ximelagatran an is absolutely off topic. bye The Doc 11:49, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Speedy delete? (I don't know how to mark for that...) Johnny 13:09, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
You can mark it with {{delete|state your reason here}} if you want to speedy delete something on Wikibooks. It will then get a quick review by one of the administrators and likely deleted if they agreee with your reasoning. Blatent forking of Wikipedia content is grounds for deletion, unless you are adding substantially new material or the Wikipedia page is going to be cut down to get below the 32K limit of articles. I'll look at this page, however. --Rob Horning 14:57, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
"Symptoms and Signs in Endocrinology" contained no useful content, so I deleted it. Next time, use the delete marking that Rob Horning gave above. --Kernigh 05:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Fair Use Policy request for comments

I started this page in response to a huge discussion on Foundation-L about copyrights and specifically fair use issues on various Wikimedia projects. In particular, this reply from an administrator at the Italian Wikipedia got my attention as something that perhaps we ought to consider here on Wikibooks as well. The actual Italian Wikipedia policy can be found here: w:it:Aiuto:Copyright immagini#.28d.29_Fair_use

Doing some digging around, here are some other "policies" that are related to this to consider perhaps where to take this policy, and some things to consider with regards to this policy:

We've had a bit of discussion about this on the VfD pages as well, and I think there is a basic misunderstanding of the role of fair use within this project. You can't simply copy a bunch of stuff from other web page elsewhere on the internet and claim to use them within a Wikibooks module under fair use considerations. This is an attempt to narrow the focus of what is acceptable, and to make the content of Wikibooks more universally available, especially to countries other than the USA.

This is just a call to review what I've put down here. Feel free to completely overhaul this page as you see fit, as nothing is sacred on this at the moment. I would like a serious discussion about this topic, however, and you are welcome to be critical on the Wikibooks talk:Fair Use Policy page. --Rob Horning 15:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Annotated texts

Hi! Would be good to get more feedback and ideas from a range of Wikibooks users to the ongoing discussion here. This concerns the grey area or fault line between Wikibooks and Wikisource. Hope to hear from you. Dovi 14:40, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Where to put my book?

Can anyone tell me where my book Coding Divert Sockets be shelved? I'm a new editor, heheh. --Nessup 14:09, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

I'd think the programming bookshelf makes the most sense. By the way- can you look up my talk page and explain what I divert socket is? I've done some networking work and a decent amount of unix programming, and I've never heard of them. I'm curious. --Gabe Sechan 17:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

main page is a big ontological pile up

hi. I posted at the main page discussion regarding this. I have been eyeing wikibooks for a while now, but i can never get past the main page. Frankly, i understand that essentially what has happened is an organic sort of start up. But it looks like disordered chaos. Rather than just make noise, I copied the main page to my user talk box, and there, proceeded to make a list of reasonable headings for new "book Shelves", Considering what your content actually is.

Obviously, I am talking about a very serious re-organization of the main page. I was able in my early game to cut and paste away most of the books in the environmental sciences area in only about a half hour or less. This won't take a lot of time, and could be mostly painless, especially if done elsewhere and then troubleshot and then "moved" in.

Prometheuspan 02:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

w:fr:Accueil

I like the french wikipedia main page. The little icons the compact layout etc. pp. It would mean reducing the front page books dramaticly. I think that would be good - but can only be sustained if the template are protected so new books can only be added by the administrators. But are we ready for such a step?

--Krischik T 07:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

We certainly need a major overhaul of the main page. I was going to propose one myself, but found things so cluttered already, that I couldn't really see how to structure a new main page without finding out what is really in Wikibooks. I have begun some re-ordering, and started a new list of all books on Wikibooks:List of all books. I'm going through all pages on here, tidying things up so that all book pages start with the name of the book, and marking the redirects for deletion. It's taking some time, but only then will I be sure of where to go.

Incidentally, it seems odd that if you type in http://www.wikibooks.org the first thing you see is link to the Old English wikibooks. We probably need to change that page à la what happened with http://www.wikipedia.org, Jguk 10:12, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

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