Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 14

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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

de:Hauptseite

If we are going to talk about attractive front pages for Wikibooks, I think the German Wikibooks is at least one to try and compare to. I like the clean boxes and even how they organized the "Welcome" message at the top. Pay attention to "Buch des Monats" (Books of the Month) and "Hilf mit!" (Collaboration of the Month). Neither are over powering on the front page. One feature we don't have that they do have is "Review des Monats" (Book review of the Month), where a nearly finished Wikibook is put up for editorial review and a request to give it a quick glance by Wikibooks contributors is made to the community.

One thing that both the French Wikipedia example and this German Wikibooks do well is to have a clean "table of contents" or content search area. One thing I would like to add (and is hinted to on the Main Page) is to have multiple methods of searching for content. Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress, Wikibooks Bookshelf, Alphabetical, Google, and other search methods for content ought to happen. Some more on that it a bit, but this is a good place to try and cut down on the content. One place I would like to see substantially enhanced with a search like this is to strongly emphasis what is the best of Wikibooks. Considerable criticism of Wikibooks by many bloggers and outsiders to our project has been leveled at the quality of the content we have here... considering we have been going now for a couple of years with (from an outsider's viewpoint) nothing to show for all this effort except for a poorly done reproduction of Wikipedia.

As the "flagship" Wikibooks project, I think it is critical to keep the "Wikibooks in other languages" section on the Main Page, even if it takes up a little more room. It needs to be updated (See Meta:List of Wikibooks for a more accurate and up to date list) but still should be here. --Rob Horning 14:42, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Prometheuspan 00:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC) "Considerable criticism of Wikibooks by many bloggers and outsiders to our project has been leveled at the quality of the content we have here... considering we have been going now for a couple of years with (from an outsider's viewpoint) nothing to show for all this effort except for a poorly done reproduction of Wikipedia."

Actually, as a think tank, this is unfair of them, because if you use systems theory and reduce this effort to years and then think of wikibooks as an entity going through its mirror of evolution, Wikibooks is still just a toddler. Skeptical review of the sort I imagine exists ought to wait till there are 20 years of development. Of course there is crap in wikibooks- frankly I have spotted some stuff i think is bizzare and slightly frightening. But there is also very good, very high quality, open source content here, and noise to content ratio is only going to improve as time goes on.

Skeptics of wikimedia fail to understand the exponential growth principle as it applies to information systems. An open edit system may mean that there are 100 articles generated by somebody who knows next to nothing on the subject for every article that is generated by that team of experts. The happy thing is, each of those pieces of junk is "do-over" bait for the interested, and the potential user base is literally in the millions. Somewhere in America, some geek somewhere DOES know the facts, and, given an opportunity, probably there are 10 of them who would be willing to share them. Our job is to create a strong enough knowledge base that experts start to take the resource seriously. From there, interest alone will drive a geometric expansion, which will eventually yield the largest and most complete database on any given subject ever created.

Back to the point at hand. I have generated a list of bookshelves, and i'd like your opinion on it. I will go look at the "Total list" and perhaps add it as the next item to my talk page. Thanks. Prometheuspan 00:06, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

"will eventually yield the largest and most complete database on any given subject ever created." Yes! The only problem with Wikibooks versus Wikipedia is that a Wikipedia article takes a few hours whereas a Wikibook takes a few months. Wikipedia started on its truly exponential phase after almost 2 years, Wikibooks will take 4 or 5 years. It is essential that worthwhile output from Wikibooks is put "up-front" on the main page so that new contributors can see what might be done and are drawn in. "Highlighted books" does this to some extent but readers must still explore the book development environment before finding something to read. RobinH 11:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

functional main page

What about heading the main page with a functional table of books that are ready to read? Readers can then go straight to the book they desire. ie:

Books that benefit from online random access
Cookbook - Chinese - French - German - Spanish
Classic Textbooks PDF (Edition) Edit Draft Version
Cell biology PDF(1.0) Edit
Physics (Free High School Science Text) PDF Edit
US History PDF(1.0) Edit
UK Constitution and Government PDF(1.0) Edit
Special Relativity PDF(1.0) Edit
Introduction to Paleoanthropology PDF(1.0) Edit
Consciousness studies PDF(1.0) Edit
Introduction to sociology Print version Edit
ADA Programming PDF Edit
How to build a computer PDF Edit
There are many other books under development, page down for more!
Books for children PDF (Edition) Edit Draft Version
Big Cats PDF(1.0) Edit
The Solar System PDF(1.0) Edit

There are 4 or 5 other books that could be added once Print versions/PDFs have been made. Perhaps authors can make the production of print versions a priority?

I am no artists. Small images could be added and the colour scheme improved.

Readers who are interested in less complete books, and contributors can then be given a more complex set of instructions further down the page. This would be a temporary fix with some other method being used once 30 or so substantial books have been completed.RobinH 11:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

three places

We currently discuss the main page at three places. So I have to add a shameless plug to to draw some attention to my proposal of improving the front page: Template_talk:Main_Page_introduction#Suggestion:_A_copy_from_w:fr:Mod.C3.A8le:Encyclop.C3.A9die.

--Krischik T 18:45, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

As far as your plug, I think it's a great layout. With a little section moving I think it would be a great addition to Wikibooks:All Books. -Matt 20:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Removal of All Wikibooks

I decided to be bold and do some more rearranging of the content on the Main Page. The big difference is that I created a new page called Wikibooks:All Books and moved the list of Wikibooks that was ever growing to that page instead. I also added a very prominent link to this new page, and moved it directly underneath the list of featured Wikibooks.

One of the things that I would like to see changed, however, is perhaps the placement of the books themselves. It is conflicting with the "Other langauges/FAQ/table-free version" floating bar and I'm not sure if this is the best place to put all of these books anyway. I just wanted all of the book related links grouped together at the moment.

BTW, this isn't by any means the "final" version of this, just a suggestion to help cut down on the huge overload from having every single Wikibook on the main page. Please discuss other options and ideas for this as well to help improve things here. --Rob Horning 16:38, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Two notes. First, on Karl's computer, the FAQ and Table-free bar does not extended into the Highlighted books box [1]. However, it does on mine (as it does on yours). I haven't checked it from my Linux computer; but the spatial conflict is there on my Windows XP computer with both Firefox and Internet Explorer. Second, the collected bookshelf templates you moved from the Main Page to Wikibooks:All Books does not contain all books. In theory, at least, a bookshelf template don't include the more stubby books from its bookshelf. (Or at least I've seen Derbeth remove books from a template for being too stubby.) --JMRyan 19:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for being bold, Rob, I think the main page is much more friendlier and clearer now. I don't think this is the end of necessary changes, but I think we are heading towards a good direction. --Derbeth talk 19:28, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
I notice that book category sections are now on the main page. Would it look better to have all the featured information above the category lists? Seems like it give special books more attention that way. -Matt 18:57, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikiresearch

I note that Agile Programming Language claims to be a Wikiresearch project (and also that wikiresearch is a red link). I thought we dealt in textbooks rather than research. Am I wrong, or should this book go to vfd (or be speedily deleted)? Jguk 07:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

No discussion is necessary, this is a perfect example of original research (being by definition candidate for speedy deletion). We are not a place to discuss and develop new programming language. I will write to the contributors to copy source of the book because we are deleting it. --Derbeth talk 11:34, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
This is an ideal opportunity to invite the development or project team to move their documents or discussion or whatever to Wikiversity's School of Computer Science! If it is a serious team that develops useful standards, introductory material, tutorials, etc. it could really help launch Wikiversity. Particularly if they start comparing and contrasting with other local materials for the eddification or input of other participants. If it is actually an original language development in progress and they succeed at the Wikiversity .... well every innovation and gold rush in human history requires a few visible successes to reach critical mass or a tipping point. If they are not the initial critical mass for us, then at least they will be ready and waiting to help absorb the public web traffic when some other participants at Wikiversity achieve fame, utility and slash/dotting. Thanks in advance for your valuable assistance in launching Wikiversity while avoiding the ire and bad press of spurned contributors at Wikibooks. 70.110.35.3 11:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

There is some discussion going on with the Wikiversity proposal to include original research under some limited conditions. As I suggested above with the Wikimania content, I think having a Wikiversity sponsored set of pages for some topics of this nature might be the one thing that can really set Wikiversity apart from Wikibooks, and realisticly require a completely seperate server with a seperate group of administrators and editors. I mention Wikimania specifically because it is common for a University group to sponsor and organize scholarly conference proceedings. I was actually involved at one point in developing a CD-ROM full of hyperlinked conference proceedings for CALICO about 10 years ago, and even presented a couple of papers there as well.

I realize that the real reason for the "no original research" is mainly to get rid of the UFO and alt.science groups (like free energy and perpetual motion machines) from contributing. A bureaucracy of some sort needs to happen if formal reasearch is to occur, mainly to weed out the really silly and far out proposals. When Wikipedia (and Wikibooks as well) was just starting out, the project participants simply weren't ready to deal with these issues and justifiably tried to stay away from the whole mess in the first place. There are enough legitimate scientists and scholars participating now that it may be time to get something like this going. It is however going to require some new policies that I think are better left alone within the context of Wikibooks, and we should simply stick to writing textbooks here. --Rob Horning 04:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Transwikiing a book from WP

The Wikipedia article TimeSplitters: Future Perfect strategy guide is being proposed for deletion, but I thought that the information should somehow be saved. Would it be appropriate for me to just dump the text here and not (necessarily) work on formatting it/etc.? Ardric47 04:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Either it's already been deleted or you've given the wrong URL. As to whether it belongs here, the questions to ask are (1) is it a textbook?; or (2) will it develop into a textbook? If the answer to at least one of those is yes, then it can be transwiki'ed here - however, it's best to let the editors of a transwiki'ed page know that it's come here if they may wish to work on it. As far as formatting, ideally you'd do it yourself, if you're unable to, don't worry, that can be done later, Jguk 08:42, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it has been deleted. I would have assumed that the person who deleted it would have noted the discussion in the talk page...I'm not sure if it would be worth it to go through deletion review. In any case, I wouldn't exactly call it a textbook, although I have noticed that Wikibooks has many video game strategy guides. Ardric47 09:26, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Apparently undeletion "[t]o permit a deleted article to be transwikified or properly moved to a sister wiki-site" is a common reason, so I'm going to try that now. Ardric47 09:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

As I'm not an administrator on Wikipedia, I can't help you out with trying to undelete content there, although you are always welcome to remove the deletion tags on Wikipedia content as long as you have a good reason. Wikipedia has a markup tag of {{Move to Wikibooks}} that you could have used to replace the speedy delete tag at any time with. It is unfortunate that the Wikipedia administrators were abusive to you in this way that it seems. Gaming strategy guides are welcome here on Wikibooks, and I hope that you have the opportunity to further the development of this content. BTW, there is a talk page about this content at w:Talk:TimeSplitters: Future Perfect strategy guide, and it appears as though the user listed above did try in good faith to move the content to Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 12:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks; I'm about to begin this daunting process (!). Ardric47 22:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
I've copied the main text. What's the preferred way to include the edit history? Ardric47 23:01, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Someone has a bot that does it automatically. I forgot who though :( --Dragontamer 23:22, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
Talk:Transwiki:Quicksort implementations seems to be the most recent example. Could that have been done manually? Ardric47 23:29, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
There is no 'bot that adds the edit history (or is required at least), although there are some 'bots that do this automatically in terms of transfering complicated amounts of text from one Wikimedia project to another and include the edit history. For a single article on Wikipedia this is completely unnecessary, but I would recommend that you add the edit history in some format on the talk page here on Wikibooks. This is usually done immediately after you have copied the content. Technically we ask people doing a transwiki to add it to the [[Transwiki:]] namespace (it makes it easier to make sure it gets to a logical place on Wikibooks), but if you are going to be adding substantial amounts of new content afterward you are certainly welcome to simply create the new Wikibook just like it was completely new content and go from there. There is no real standard way of adding the edit history, although most people do a simple cut and past from your web browser when you bring up the old history and simply put it into the talk page, with a note at the top where the content was transfered from (aka Edit history on en.wikipedia:) Note that Special:Import, if it ever gets working correctly, would allow importing a page with the complete edit history as well, but that is not working yet. I think the developers are waiting for the universal login working first. --Rob Horning 19:20, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
I did put it in the transwiki area, but shortly thereafter copied the main text. Was I supposed to leave the second part for someone else? Ardric47 23:44, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
The point of the Transwiki namespace is if you plan on moving content over to a project and then not do any further development or editing. It is also a transition warning to administrators and other participants on the project that some new content is being added, and that perhaps it needs to be reformatted or have other things occur with the content before it is added to the main project namespace. If you intend to be active within Wikibooks and understand existing policies here, there is no need to move it into the transwiki namespace. --Rob Horning 18:07, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Highly ambitious books

I noticed recently that there are red links on the Natural Sciences bookshelf:

  • M-theory
  • Quantum mechanics
  • Quantum chromodynamics
  • Quantum electrodynamics
  • Quantum field theory
  • String theories

Since these links are red, I suppose they belong in Wikibooks:Requested Wikibooks, but I'm going to claim that they don't belong there either.

I'm sorry if I come off as a naysayer, but we just can't write these books. We're struggling with introductory texts as it is. Leaving them on the bookshelf or the requested list implies that we might write them in the near future, and they might distract people who would otherwise work on more feasible projects. These books would need writers with an almost unrivaled understanding of physics. I'm going to be bold and delete these links entirely. Brian Brondel 03:19, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Please be extremely careful deleting Quantum mechanics .... in fact perhaps you should run some searches on modern physics or related keywords. There is a very comprehensive modern physics book with links to other volumes such as what you list above. It would be unfortunate if you deleted some University Physics Department's efforts to join or utilize Wikibooks as a collaboration zone for textbooks or class notes. Please keep in mind that a single student or instructor eventually talks to most of the people in his department or specialization over a period of a few years. Apparently related links:
There were another ten pages of links resulting from a search on quantum but you get the idea. About one link in five had significant text and equations that did not look trivial to code in html. Maybe when we get the en.wikiversity.org domain operational incomplete materials can start there and copies fork to the bookshelf when texts are ready for general public use. user:lazyquasar


By the way, there are also red links on the Mathematics bookshelf. These might be less impossible to write, but I wouldn't know. I'll leave those for someone else to work out. I think I've been enough of a wet blanket for today. Brian Brondel 05:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Red links are not allowed on the bookshelf templates and are only allowed in "suggested books" sub-chapters on the normal bookshelfes. It is better to move them to "suggested books" less some other inexperienced anonymous user adds them or something similar again. Please fell free to fix as soon as you see them. --Krischik T 14:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
There is nothing inherently difficult about writing an introductory quantum mechanics textbook for someone with a PhD in physics, in fact anyone who has studied physics at bachelor level in the last ten years must surely have passed a number of exams in the subject (I did and that was nearly thirty years ago). Surely it should still be on the requested books list. If I were a student and I wanted a book it would seem strange to me to have my request removed simply because there was no one currently willing and able to write it. I agree that it doesn't belong on the bookshelf but there is nothing in the requested books list that implies that the books will be written. --kwhitefoot 17:02, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
If you're talking about a book aimed for beginning undergrads or nonscience majors, I agree that's something we might be able to do. I consider writing any textbook to be a difficult task, whether it's about quantum chromodynamics or basketweaving. I've taken a quantum class and passed tests myself, but that doesn't at all mean that I can write a textbook on it. I think writing even a low-level quantum textbook will be a major challenge, even for a Physics PhD. I'll believe we can write a QCD textbook when I see it. --Brian Brondel 18:39, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I have no problem with deleting red links on bookshelves, they ought to be gone. But I disagree that those topics can't be done. Quantum mechanics is only a sophmore level class. I had to take it as a computer engineering major. In fact, anyone who passed the Physics C (with calculus) AP test generally took it their first or second semester of college. Its not simple material, but it hardly requires a phd to produce. --Gabe Sechan 17:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Most red links on bookshelves date back to when Wikibooks was still trying to come up with a basic structure about what kinds of books might be written here. It is still a good idea in terms of trying to come up with some potential areas of growth, but I think Template:New has plenty of nice book ideas now that the need to completely make up nothing but new book titles is more something in the past. Often now on the various bookshelves have red links in part because the Wikibooks in red are deleted content rather than a suggested title, and those should have the red link removed. The bookshelf is usually the very last thing to be deleted when removing a Wikibook (due to a VfD or whatever), and is (unfortunately) often neglected by admins. If you see this happening, help us out, please, and simply delete the book title! --Rob Horning 19:08, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Copied a wikipedia article to a book... anyone have a bot for adding "w:"?

The book is Vermicomposting, which will make a good foundation for a how-to book. I'd like to edit it for the formatting (making it more of a how-to than it already is), but it also has a million red links because it was well wikied on the 'pedia. Does anyone have a bot for adding "w: " to these links? It would take a lot of time to do it manually :). Johnny 15:45, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that you are going to need to do a considerable amount of editing for this content anyway if you are going to try and turn this into a book. Generally, most of the content here doesn't have nearly as many link as a typical Wikipedia article does, and a good number of what you have in this initial stub would be good to remove as well. Compare what you have there to How To Assemble A Desktop PC (a very good example of a polished Wikibook) and there are some major differences.
Formerly, we had a specific policy that prohibited exactly what you did here by copying a Wikipedia article. I fought to change that policy as I felt it was too exclusionary and arbitrary, but remember that if you want to work on content that is basicly an article worthy of inclusion with Wikipedia, you ought to keep it on Wikipedia and not here on Wikibooks. A good rule of thumb is that the content should exceed the 32K text limit that generally enforced on Wikipedia for a single article. Wikibooks is for situations where you need content on multiple pages that goes into much more depth than a typical Wikipedia article.
I guess what I'm saying here is that simply having a 'bot clean up the red links and point them at Wikipedia is not going to be sufficient and much more editing needs to happen, with almost a complete rewrite of the whole content as well. As a stub and a start to something much larger is fine, but what you have here would generally be considered a stub for Wikibooks, even if it wouldn't be for Wikipedia. --Rob Horning 17:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I've been wonjdering about how much "wiki-linking" needs to be done, actually. A lot of the links there aren't really necessary. So there are no 'bots?
Don't misunderstand my intentions... I'll be reformatting it, and am recruiting some folks with know-how(-to) from web forums. OTOH, it probably won't ever end up more than 10 or 20 pages with illustration. It might end up belonging to a larger book about composting in general, but the folks interested in writing and editing I've found so far are worm-bin fanatics. A lot of the gardening how-to stuff is going to be stubby (for example: How to Grow Daylilies is almost complete... there's just only so much to be said), and will probably end up needing to be reorganized into larger books. Small steps lead to great projects, of course :). Johnny 17:13, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

When I use KDE, the Konqueror browser lets me search and replace wiki text. I type Command-R, search for "[[" and "]]", and replace it with "[[w:" and "|]]". This changes [[link]] into [[w:link|]], but it also changes [[link|label]] into [[w:link|label|]], so I then have to search for "[[w:" or "|]]" and manually fix the labeled links. In effect, Command-R in Konqueror is almost like the bot that you want. If I am at some other browser, like Firefox, then I must wait until I find a computer with Konqueror again.

Actually, some users like to copy and abandon Wikipedia articles on this site. These are often the same users who forget to mention that Wikipedia is the source. Instead of fixing those pages, I try to have those pages deleted, because Wikibooks is not an encyclopedia. --Kernigh 05:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Watching all pages of a book

Old title: "Maybe a silly question..."

If I'm "watching" a book, am I also "watching" all the chapters of that book, or do I have to watch each chapter? This relates to my previous question, because the Vermicomposting book currently has all red links for its chapters, but I've been "advertising" it on web forums and expect content to be added. Johnny 19:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

You'd have to watch each page separately. I prefer using the Related Changes page. --Brian Brondel 21:10, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

WikiNovel?

I'm going completely out on a limb here, but I've been discussing an idea with a few friends and colleagues of a creative writing wiki. If this is already in place somewhere, could I please get a link? Otherwise, I know that the idea might be somewhat far-fetched, but I have reason to believe that this kind of an effort would bring forth a new level of collaborative thinking. My main question is simple, is there a place that I could attempt to put my thoughts out on this, and possibly get a start for it? Even if it is on one of the WikiMedia user pages that I have yet to create. Could this be done without violating some principal rules or 'laws-of-the-land'? Would I be somewhat brow-beaten, or would this be acceptable somewhere? I'm sorry if this comment (question, really) is ill-placed, but since I had the idea, WikiBooks was the closest place I could think to get some insight. Thanks much in advance for any assistance/guidance you can provide.

You might instead want to check out http://novelas.wikicities.com/ which is a part of the Wikicities family of projects. A proposal for making a fiction based Wikimedia project has been offered many times and simply needs somebody to sit down and make a formal proposal that incorporates all of the various ideas. As to if it will be accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation board, that remains to be seen. The Novelas Wikicity is a much better choice at the moment as it is current up and running.
Generally speaking, Wikibooks is only for non-fiction content. I hope this answers you questions, and I hope that you can get a collaborative fiction group working. There are some outstanding things that can be accomplished in this way, and writing fiction as a Wiki brings the whole concept of a detailed common fictional universe to an extreme that has not really been dealt with before. I hope you can get your project put together and going. --Rob Horning 04:21, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
What a coincidence, me too!
Yeah, I kind of had figured out that Wikibooks was not a place for fiction writing so I went looking for a free Wiki farm to host my stuff. I settled on EditThis.info Renmiri 05:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Policy/Vote/Deletion Policy

This is a general announcement that I am restarting the vote for Wikibooks:Deletion policy to become enforced policy on Wikibooks. Aya was bold in even suggesting that it was only a proposed policy in the first place, as it has been on Wikibooks now for over two years and added by one of the early founders of Wikibooks (Mav). A few changes have happened over the years, including some significant changes this past year.

If you have an opinion on this, please go to the vote page listed in the section heading. It is important that we do get community input on this, and try to come up with what the actual policy should be here for deleting content, as Special:Log/Delete is hardly dead by any means.

There is nothing special by my moving to make this a formal vote, but the previous voting page didn't really get any realistic input and needed to be advertised better. I'm hoping that there will be some significant community input on this policy by becoming an enforced policy. --Rob Horning 03:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Talkpagetext

Just a suggestion, but the current text/box is rather large. Over on the English Wikipedia there's a few smaller suggestions available that you may wish to consider. See w:MediaWiki talk:Talkpagetext. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:08, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I propose this design: --Kernigh 05:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

This is a talk page to discuss changes to the module.

  • Please sign your comments using four tildes ~~~~
  • Start new topics at the bottom of the page and give them == A Descriptive Header ==


Guess I'll propose my design from over on Wikipedia as well. =) This is quite small, not intrusive, and reminds the editor of one of the most commonly forgotten talk page requirements. As a colored bar, it'll also serve as a visual clue that you're on a talk page (and not an article page). If you see it and aren't expected to (or vice versa) you can also correct whatever mistake led you to the talk page instead of the article page. Anyways, my proposal: —Locke Cole • t • c 16:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
You're editing the talk page for Reading room/Archive 14. Please don't forget to sign your new comments using four tildes (~~~~).

I finished my book!

After 3+ months, Stuttering is finished. It's about 55,000 words. I'm sure there are many possible improvements but I'm going to leave it alone for awhile.Thomas David Kehoe 00:50, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow! You might want to watch your book in case someone vandalises it. If the book pages are on your Special:Watchlist, then you can use that. --Kernigh 05:13, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I'm watching all the pages. I did have one vandalism while I was writing it. Is there an easy way to backup all the source pages to my hard drive?--Thomas David Kehoe 15:56, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

You should be able to just revert vandalism... you might be able to save the pages too. Johnny 21:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The Book Of The Year (BOTY) Award & Book of the half-year Awards(1/2-year Book Award)

This is just a suggestion and is not been totally accepted by anyone. I have an idea that apart from Book Of The Month,we should create a Book Of The Year Award, because a year is always a blessed one, and we'll decide which was the best book created in that year. The Half-Year Award, I'm not so sure but I think it should be given to the best book created in the fisrt half (six months) of the special year). The nominations rules for the Awards should be as follows:-

BOTY = Book Of The Year ; 1/2-Year = Half-Year Award

  • BOTY: Every Book that has been a Book Of The Month in that specific year will receive a free nomination, although any exterior book can also be added (at least which is senseful). A Collaboration Of The Month book nominee which is been finished before the year also receives a free nomination.
  • 1/2-Year: All rules are followed here from BOTY except that the books must be before the half of that specific year and after of the starting of that specific year.

Please think and then discuss. — Mastermind 007 16:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Because this is March and not December, it seems premature to suggest this, but yeah, I think a Wikibook of the Year would be a good idea. There is a small but dedicated community that seems to hang out with the Book of the Month nominations. I don't think it is too late to hold a quick vote over the best of Wikibooks for 2005, however, and that might be something fun to do even now. If you can come up with something that would be a useful template that we could add to the Main Page, feel free to write up the content and I'll try to find a place to put it. With the reshuffling of the main page, I hope it doesn't get lost. An honest question would be to determine how long a Book of the Year would appear on the main page (all year long? one month?) and how long we ought to be doing the voting. Even now, the Wikijunior New Book of the Quarter seems to be up for far too long and IMHO is the absolute longest you want a voting page up. --Rob Horning 17:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I was trying to suggest it must not be done that quick either because 9 moths are left before the end of this blessed year so Rob Horning here are the answers to your questions:-
  • The voting should begin at the starting of December. All the books who have became a Book Of The Month in that specific yearwill receive a free nomination (automatic nomination) although the useres can add a good collaborative also.
  • If a book which has been nominated Collaboration Of The Month and has been finished completely in the same year, it also receives a free nomination.
  • The voting for the Book Of The Year should appear on the Main Page at the starting of December and when the Book is won the award, it must remain for the next month's January (it will be taken off from the Main Page at the 31st of January of the next year.
  • The Book Of The Month should be concluded in the case of Book Of The Year. It must remain and must be carried on.

Since, there are 9 months remaining, more rules, logo can be created and more collaboration debates of the Book Of The Year logo, template and rules can be discussed first not accepted. Have a nice time, Rob! -- Mastermind 007 08:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC) .

I'm planning for the Book Of The Year logo and the Award logo. Shall we carry out an election? I think preparing everything and planning now itself would be better to save time for something more creational later this year. -- Mastermind 007 09:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

interlangua links xx:wikibooks:foo

  • Hallo! Sorry for this: In the old source of Wikibooks:Administrators you could find the following interlanguage links:
  1. da:Wikibooks:Administratorer
  2. de:Wikibooks:Administratoren
  3. es:Wikibooks:Bibliotecarios
  4. fr:Wikilivres:Administrateur
  5. it:Wikibooks:Amministratori
  6. pl:Wikibooks:Administratorzy
  7. vi:Wikibooks:Người quản lý
Thank you for making these changes. It can be sometimes difficult to keep track of all of the changes in all of the rest of the Wikimedia projects. It is fairly recent to have a Wikilibros namespace, as (unfortunately) it takes some developer intervention to make those changes at the moment. Any help to keep these links coordinated would be appreciated, especially interlanguage links which do change from time to time. --Rob Horning 12:16, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
If you make a link like es:Project:Bibliotecarios then it will work. "Project" always redirects to the correct namespace. --Kernigh 03:08, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikijunior New Book of the Quarter Policy

This is a solicitation for comments about the current state of the Wikijunior:New Book of the Quarter process and if this should become policy. I would appreciate comments at:

Talk:Wikijunior#Non Cannoical Books for Wikijunior (to keep the discussion in one place).

For some background material, you can also check out: Talk:Wikijunior:New Title Suggestions

Thanks. --Rob Horning 00:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The need for use and content statistics - So many books and so little time.

I have been trawling through our books and gems keep on appearing. The latest is:

XML:_Managing_Data_Exchange

This book has no "development stage" tag on it. It is also hidden under "Domain specific languages". Yet it is probably more developed than almost any Wikibook, has probably several hundred pages and it has a host of contributors. I had no idea it was so complete and only clicked on it by mistake! My guess is that there is about 6 man-months of effort by experts in XML:_Managing_Data_Exchange ($30,000+ of value) and it is hidden.

One way out of this problem is to produce statistics that rank books by content in megabytes and by number of views. This would allow two pages of rankings to be produced that could be used by administrators to highlight valuable books. Unfortunately we do not have any up-to-date statistics on views and the content statistics are difficult to use.

Does anyone know how to produce these statistics? RobinH 13:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

For a source of this sort of statistical information, you can look at: http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/Wikibooks_EN.htm
This is a link that is buried in the Community Portal page, and something that is semi-regularly updated. As far as sorting the information from largest to smallest, that may take a little more work, but at least the raw stats are here you you to look at. I've used this page from time to time to find content that needs cleanup, or at least find stuff that doesn't look right. The last update for this page was in December. --Rob Horning 13:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. The list shows there are 4 or 5 large books outstanding that I had not located as candidates for PDFs. So there are at least 25-30 substantial books in Wikibooks! I am surprised because, at a cursory inspection a couple of months back, there seemed to be around 10.
The other essential statistic is "views per book". This statistic will allow the most popular books to be identified so they can be placed prominently on the front page to attract readers. A "views per page" statistic would expose navigation routes and help system design. RobinH 15:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I would agree that "views per book" would be an excellent statistic to generate. Unfortunately, the view counter was disabled by the developers due to raw server load and an attempt to try and streamline the Wikimedia servers. The raw growth in terms of page requests and the number of contributors is so large right now that there are some serious lags between a page request and content delivered. An increase in bandwidth as well as expanding the number of servers on the cluster are both happening, as is physically moving some of the data to other locations. The asian languages (Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc.) are now hosted on physical servers in Korea and there is talk about physically locating some of the other languages on a server farm in Europe. All of this takes money and time, and increased complexity as you expand these resources. If enough CPU bandwidth can be opened up, the page counters may be turned back on. It is a part of the MediaWiki software, and is used on other MediaWiki websites outside of Wikimedia projects. The only other alternative for activity is to determine edit frequency per Wikibook, which can only realistically be calculated with a full DB dump of Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 17:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Those stats.wikimedia.org tables are out of date: "Generated on Friday December 23, 2005." --Kernigh 23:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
They are updated roughly quarterly, so there is an update that is due. The Wikimedia user who has been doing these stats is still active, so I think this is a likely place to look at some interesting information about the growth and development of Wikimedia projects. --Rob Horning 05:31, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Structure by interest group

I believe it would be useful to have a structure for the main page by interest group, by which I mean:

  • Wikids (for example), for children under 8 (I don't think we have any books in the category yet though)
  • Wikijunior, for 8 to 12 year olds
  • Wikistudy I, for those progressing towards exams usually first sat at age 15 or 16
  • Wikistudy II, for those progressing towards exams usually first sat at age 17 or 18
  • Wikiversity, for undergraduates and graduates
  • Wikiprofessional, for books useful to those engaged in a profession (eg accountancy)
  • Wikilearn, for adult-learning books (eg computer programming books)
  • Wikileisure, for books on leisure pursuits (eg the cookbook, Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter)

I'd be interested in others' views, Jguk 14:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I was also thinking about a structure that helps people finding educational materials at their level (we probably have discussed it at IRC, haven't we?). But my opinion is that it should be parallel to existing book organisation, I think the best situation is when people can find a book in several different ways. An yes, I find your proposal reasonable. --Derbeth talk 19:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
It is interesting that Jguk chose a structure where Wikiversity is a method to organise books. Some users are trying to make a separate wiki (see MetaWikipedia:Wikiversity). A while back, I started a MetaWikipedia:No to Wikiversity essay explaining why I opposed the creation of such a wiki. Then, after the Wikimedia Board opposed the wiki ("no online courses"), some users, including myself, attempted a MetaWikipedia:Wikiversity/Modified project proposal.
Wikiversity tried to distinguish itself from Wikibooks by claiming that a "course" is different from a "book" - see Wikiversity:About. I disagree; a project like Engineering Acoustics or Cookbook or NetHack is both a course and a book. Wikiversity:School of Music and Wikiversity:School of Library and Information Science seem to belong on a bookshelf.
I considered creating a section of Wikiversity for Unix courses-books, but I am uncomfortable with how Wikiversity currently divides itself into schools and courses. --Kernigh 23:29, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree to a structure that reflects the level or focus of studies, so for example a college student can go in and see all college texts grouped together. I am not sure what folks have made Wikiversity out to be, but for me, we need a university book section here on the site, and that could be Wikiversity. Course-related materials could be submitted along with the book, such as laboratory manuals, teachers' manuals, presentations, notes, etc. But it makes a lot of sense for a person to know if they click on General Biology if it is going to be a college text, or for eighth-graders. --Karl Wick 21:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
PS I agree with the proposed divisions above. --Karl Wick 21:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I too support the proposed divisions (Wikids, Wikijunior, Wikistudy, ... Wikileisure) of Jguk. We still need to decide how to implement them, but students of various levels should be able to find their books! (Or contributors who want to help students of various levels should be able to find books to edit.) --Kernigh 03:22, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Identifying the Hot Picks

Please help identify the best work on WikiBooks so we can include it in the Main Page's Hot Picks section. This is the link to where you can suggest books.

Criteria: The most complete, most useful, best-looking books... overall, the books that show the best of WikiBooks right now. Thank you in advance! --Karl Wick 23:49, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

May I modify the request, and ask for books that people consider to be "complete" and "near-complete"? Jguk 06:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
That makes sense to me, although at this point we should consider relative completeness, especially for books that will be very long. --Karl Wick 21:42, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I have identified the following 36 books that are worth a look:

The Cookbook and the language books that have been identified elsewhere such as French, Chinese(Mandarin), Japanese, Spanish and German. (6)

These books are basically at the stage of an "edition":

Wikibooks:PDF Versions. (By an "edition" I mean that they have reached a development stage where they are substantial texts that are definitely rewarding for a reader.) (20)

These books are substantial and complete enough to be well worth a read:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory - a tiny academic niche that is well covered in this book, undergrads should be grateful

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_law

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Ancient_Civilizations

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algebra

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Engineering_Acoustics - this is excellent

(5)


These books are also substantial but have problems of major sections missing etc:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:C_plus_plus http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:Visual_Basic_Classic

(what is going on with HTML/XML/Perl/CSS/Web Design/Java/Javascript?)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Electronics - this is more advanced than the authors admit

(3)

Others

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Calculus - has excellent content but is so spread out into infinitessimal parts that new contributors will find it hard to discover whether their contribution has already been covered!

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Guide_to_UNIX - quite good but highly fragmented

(2)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Jokebook - Has a lot of jokes but all spread out and hard to access

It is interesting that fragmentation - using too many small sections - can ruin a book.

There are also a large number of handbooks and user guides. Latex, Postscript, game guides etc. etc... Many are complete in their limited sphere - what can we do with these? RobinH 10:55, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Why not stick with Book of the Month?

Why not simply stick with the Book of the Month winners as the criteria? This avoids controvercial decisions on the part of trying to add picks to the Hot Picks list, and provides a forum to legitimately add new Wikibooks to the list as well in a slow but controlled manner. My adding Cookbook near the end of the voting for the current month's Book of the Month was something unexpected, but demonstrates that a clear well written Wikibooks is likely to win the monthly competition. Indeed, there are some Books of the Month that are IMHO sub-par, but the hits are much better than the misses. If you have discovered a very good Wikibook that you think is one of the most outstanding here and deserves recognition, please add it to the Book of the Month nominations.

Far too often the Book of the Month is being used as an advertising forum instead, and where there are no high quality books that have been nominated, it is hard to turn down the sub-par books to win the monthly contest, sock puppets not withstanding. I've had to go digging through the Wikibooks archives specifically to find some books that would be worth nominating so there might be something worth having on the front page. --Rob Horning 15:59, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that is too restrictive. What would be useful would be to separate the complete and near-complete books out from the rest as it is those that are useful to readers. I doubt whether we really need to vote on these, their quality should be self-evident, Jguk 16:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
We would still need a pannel of trusted wikibook users to decide. And we can't grow the list indefinatly we need a limit like on "new books" - so eventualy whenever a new book comes along another has to go. There will be tears sen. With the BOTM there is only one new book a month but with "hot pick" there will be lots of new nominations coming pretty soon. --Krischik T 17:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I am in favor of being flexible and practical, and am afraid that using just BOTM will not be either of those things, although the BOTM list was the first and primary source for "Hot Pick" books. However there are great books that have not been featured yet, and I see no reson to wait months to see if they can be featured. --Karl Wick 21:01, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

A question about Wikibooks setup

Maybe you can help me with something that is making me crazy: How do I make / in titles work in a plain Wikimedia site as it does here ?

I don't know what I'm doing wrong but this Illustrated Guide to the world of Spira (FFX and FFX-2)/Culture work at Wikibooks but it doesn't work in my wiki: At Wikibooks when you add a slash to the title it shows the "parent" link on top of the page. I want the same thing for my fiction stories but I haven't figured out what I need to do to fix it. Renmiri 05:46, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a feature in WikiMedia which must be switched on by the administrators. i.E. it's off for Wikipedia. --Krischik T 17:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Which feature ? Is it one of the MediaWiki variables ? I am Admin at my Wiki, I just don't know how to do it. I've been googling and searching Mediawiki.org for days w/o finding it :( Renmiri 18:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Replied to User talk:Renmiri. --Kernigh 03:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Foundational Books

Here is something I have been thinking over: an effort to focus in on the most foundational books. That is, books on subjects that are most universally given as core subjects: the basic sciences, mathematics, language skills, the stuff that you should learn if you aren't gonna learn anything else. This is naturally a controversial subject, but hopefully not so much, and my hope is that we can identify a dozen or a couple dozen prioritized books which can be promoted with the goal to be completed first. My first shot at it, at least for the university level, is located here. Pls look it over and help me make it better. Thanks in advance, --Karl Wick 02:39, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Looks like you've done a lot of work. (I'm focused on Wikipedia at the moment, so I'm not offering to help at this stage.) --Singkong2005 03:56, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Where can I put a thesis?

I wrote an academic thesis in 1997 on "Water management in Indonesian cities". I'd like to put it on the web somewhere so it can be of use to others. I'm sure many others would like to do the same with their own theses. Is there a Wiki site where I can do this? Of course this would leave it open to editing by others, but that's okay - it would be possible to use a permanent link to the original version if necessary.

Wikisource appears not to be suitable unless it's "verifiably published"; Wikibooks is supposed to be NPOV and it would take a lot to establish, on a case-by-case basis, where a thesis was NPOV.

The only thing I can think of is to post it to a relevant Wikicity. Any other ideas? (A "Wikithesis" even?) --Singkong2005 04:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Some recent discussion has occured about perhaps using Wikiversity as a place for content of this nature. At the moment there is no reasonable place to put content like this, although you might want to look at the Academia Wikicity. Another place to put something like this is on Wikisource, but that may present some problems. I would suggest if you plan on putting something like this on Wikisource to first contact the Scriptorium (their equivalent of the Staff Lounge) for guidance on how to proceed. --Rob Horning 04:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Another place might be an introductory life sciences course tied into microbiology feedstock management etc. (Bioloogy) is current a bright spot at Wikiversity because we have a highly qualified and experienced university researcher user:JWSurf participating with improving the learning portal Microbiology needs help.[2]that this might attract. Likewise the engineering division needs some experienced interest to attract student and free projects to the Engineering College. I have not checked but I do think we even have Space Physics Engineering which means no lazy flight test engineers from Dryden or Air Force Flight Test Center are likely to divert effort from usenet sci.space.policy to see if a little local joy riding or pet peeve management will return bread from the NPOV or universal ether. I have some very limited experience with controlling pumpstations supplying feedstock to waste fermenting/consumption/conversion basins and tanks. If you provide a link to the paper or email me a copy of it with applicable information and permission to publish under the site FDL I will help you or put it on the site myself and build an intitial course development action plan and work breakdown structure and task list and then review paper for techniques or inspiration regarding the lunar base prototype golden path variations for fan in and fan out points. If you are discouraged locally please check back occasionally. A pen stroke or forks or divine interaction or neutrion cancer or something is surely impending? later lovers Lazyquasar 11:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC) michael_irwin@verizon.com

p.s. Forget majick words and codes. Kim Possibles delegates picked mango waste and shipped to University of Oregon for initial analsysis and feedback. Which means I hold the high ground on local ducks who have MIA from student body and hometown responsbilities too long. I delivered the wooden grenade to the Class Adivser, tennis coach (new program initated, awesome!), in middle of his remedial math hogs. RR owes me bigtime (RR` can block for him, incredibly embarrassing situation never ever revealed, referenced or heard about again anyway or anytime, good back plate armor materials & local new zealish gold reservationist) and this paper has serious possibilities to attract a PE I desperately need to make good big braggs at Space-Frontier.org regarding drinking our own sewage a few thousand times before inflicting it on the Lunar Tourist Customs/Border Town. Enough. Hope to see a link to the loaded paper on my yakk yakk page soon or well title email that can PASS the spam filters. Sincerely Lazyquasar 11:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)


Wikisource:What is Wikisource?: "Some basic criteria for texts excluded from Wikisource are: ... Original writings by a contributor to the project". The rule is there to prevent contributors from using Wikisource to write anything that they want. So, do not put your own thesis on Wikisource.

If you do not use http://acamedia.wikicities.com, then you might want to start a wiki only to hold your thesis. Try Wiki:WikiFarms. For example, you could probably use http://pbwiki.com or http://www.wikispaces.com. --Kernigh 19:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all. I've just created the Development and Sustainability Wikia and it occurred to me that my thesis would fit quite well in there. This doesn't solve the problem for everyone, but if anyone has a thesis on issues relating to sustainability or development, then they're certainly welcome to put it there.
The next issue is: how do I convert from a Word document to Wiki markup? If there's no easy solution, I can save it as HTML, which should work. There's over 300 footnotes in the whole thesis, so it's important that the translation handles footnotes.
I'll check Academia Wikicity as well - maybe link it from there. --Singkong2005 16:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The PDF Versions page

This page seems to have become a bit confusing. Originally it was intended as a quick access to the PDF version of a book with an auxillary link to the home page for the Wikibook where the book can be edited.

There is already a "Print Versions" page and there are already bookshelves that allow contributors to locate and edit a book.

The Wikibooks:PDF_Versions (see http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Wikibooks:PDF_Versions&oldid=396281 - now changed - see below) page now consists of a table where most of the links do not connect the reader to a PDF version. In fact the first column in the table connects the reader to the home page for the book, not the PDF.

I would suggest that we make the first column a link to the PDF, the second column a link to the home page for the book and the third column a link to previous editions (Just three columns).

Books with PDF Version (click on name) Edit the book Previous PDF Editions
Ada Programming Volume 1: Tutorial Edit Prev

There are however some major books that have a print version but no PDF. My suggestion is that the authors are encouraged to create a PDF (or someone does it for them). The trouble with HTML Print Versions is that they can take some time to be displayed, they provide a low quality print without pagination and often include navigation tables and other distractions. Perhaps we can encourage this process by explaining that "HTML" means a draft version in preparation for PDF. The page would appear as follows:

Items marked "HTML" are at an intermediate stage of preparation for conversion to PDF. See Category:Books with print version for a full list of WikiBooks with HTML versions ready for conversion to PDF.

Books with PDF Version (click on name) Edit the book Previous PDF Editions
Ada Programming Volume 1: Tutorial Edit Prev
Ada Programming Volume 2: Keywords (HTML, not PDF) Edit

Instructions on the creation of PDF Versions can be found at: Wikibooks:Print versions.

Another suggestion is that we change the name "Print version" to "Continuous HTML file".

RobinH 21:20, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

The problem I see is that we have not yet got the means to automate the generation of PDF print versions. So I expect them to be old by an average of one month. So the reader has to choose:

  1. the pre-rendered fast-loaded but old pdf print version
  2. the slow-loading but up-to-date html print version.

We should not take that decision away fromt the reader especialy since any book with a pdf print version will have a html version as well.

But not vice versa and the Ada example shows that nicely. I expect that User:ManuelGR will create pdf's for all three volumes next time he creates the pdf version - however I don't know when he will have time to do so.

--Krischik T 07:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

On the main page the reader has access to the bookshelves as a primary route into Wikibooks, the PDF versions are tucked away at the bottom. How is this taking "the decision away from the reader" as to whether the reader accesses a transiently fixed or continuously variable version of the text?
My original design hat Main Page navigation before Main Page content which placed printable version in the middle - but it was though that content is more important the navigation. --Krischik T 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
The Wikibooks:PDF_Versions page is simply a list of PDFs. There are separate lists with the "Print version" links and there are bookshelves. Surely a list of PDFs should have access to the PDFs as its most prominent feature.
Perhaps there is a policy issue here about whether there should be fixed editions at all. However, the page listing PDFs should just do what it says. I would like to propose that we restore the PDF Versions list to being a list of PDF versions.
Perhaps we could hold a debate on whether PDFs and fixed editions containing completed books are desirable at all. But until this debate is resolved I really think we should restore the list of PDF versions. RobinH 09:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I have just put into place a compromise version. RobinH 11:27, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Interesting - have the main link point to the pdf version seems consequent. --Krischik T 13:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
A "last updated" column should definitely be there. --Hagindaz 13:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Role of PDF files in Wikibooks

My kid reading a dead-tree version of a Wikibook
My kid reading a dead-tree version of a Wikibook

I'll be honest here, I started a PDF file here in part due to the Print edition of Wikinews. I figured that if somebody could put together a daily news digets in PDF format, I could do the same for a much more leisurely content like a Wikibook. In addition, I wanted to get some Wikibooks content into an actual bound book. This image at the right, BTW, is a real book, not just something Photoshopped. The web is a good way to help organize content and do collaborative writing and editing, but it really isn't a good place for doing in depth reading. There is IMHO something special about sitting down with a bottle of Coca-Cola in your back yard and simply reading a book without having to deal with all of the electronic BS that goes with being connected to the internet.

I'll be honest about another idea I've had kicking around. I'd like to try and get several Wikibooks up to a good quality to start a simple on-line printed book store of Wikibooks content. I kicked around some ideas a while back through private e-mails and other channels about trying to get this accomplished. Yes, we have Wikibooks:Wikibook Press, but I would like to see something substantial move forward. I have a small amount of money to get something like this going, but I need to find somebody who has experience with running an on-line e-Retail service and would like to get this going. Mainly this is a way to get a wider audience for the content on Wikibooks, and frankly I'd like to have some of the Wikibooks content in dead tree format for my own pleasure.

Not all Wikibooks have to be done this way, and many won't be. As is stated with WB:WIN, Wikibooks is not paper. But some of the content can be transfered to paper and it is one of several analogies that can be followed, and is a role that Wikibooks can play. For those Wikibooks authors who want to go this route, formal publication in a traditional sense may be possible.

My goal here is to mainly get something together that essentially sells books at a very modest markup to cover costs, and any excess profits would go to the Wikimedia Foundation directly. I wouldn't anticipate the money would bring in that much, but this is something that is eventually going to happen one way or the other. I would rather that the Wikibooks contributors themselves are the ones that are involved with any major leap of this nature and not some fly-by-night group that sees a bunch of PDF files and decides to make some money selling Wikibooks on their own. This does not have to be official and approved by the Foundation Board, and indeed it would be better for the Foundation if it wasn't. It would simply be a bunch of Wikibooks contributors who got together and were bold enough to make something happen. As all of the content is available under the GFDL, if you want to make your own publishing company you are certainly welcome to use all of this content and make a stab at it yourself. I just feel that if a bunch of us got together and worked together rather than against each other on this concept that we could make it something very worth while and be beneficial to the Wikibooks community as a whole.

PDF files are a critical part of this, because many printing houses can adopt the content of a PDF file and use it for publication directly. There are also many e-book readers that can import a PDF file, so having data in this format is going to make it easier for us to expand Wikibooks into a much wider audience than what we have so far as simply another website. It is also a demonstration of the level of quality that Wikibooks has reached, even more so that there are so many Wikibooks available in this format now. That editorial issues need to occur with this content is true, and perhaps this next step will help attract those who are inclined to help with that sort of editorial assistance. --Rob Horning 06:30, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks Theory

I think that the Wikibooks project still needs more theoretical guidelines to make it as successful as Wikipedia. Stating that Wikibooks aims for offering manuals and textbooks is not enough. Checking various books offered on topics that I also know quite well (languages, eonomics, music) I could hardly find any satisfying book, because there’s seem no real difference between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, many articles in Wikipedia are much more elaborate and much more helpful.

How could we change this? I suggest that Wikibooks includes two types of books: (1) “How-to-do” books and (2) textbooks that not only includes information (which could also be gathered from Wikipedia) and which actually be used in teaching.

Wikibooks of type (1) should comprehend

  • a step-by-step presention of the necessary information and activities in the necessary chronological order
  • suggested exercises
  • a forum where readers can find help (e.g. the discussion page)
  • bibliographical information on exercise books or further information

Wikibooks of type (2), this means that the textbook could, or should, include the following elements:

  • presentation of core knowledge/basic information (this could be done by giving the necessary information or by giving the relevant Wikipedia links)
  • a didactically sensible structure (modules should be ordered in a certain degree of progression)
  • recommendations for further reading
  • task type A: simple information questions (either with solutions in a separate chapter or for correction by a teacher)
  • task type B: discussion tasks (for plenary discussion in a class or on the discussion page or on a discussion forum)
  • suggestions for little research projects or call for participation in a research project

What do you think about this? -- Sinatra 13:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Comment from Kernigh: Each book is different. I will let each group of authors decide whether their book is type (1), type (2), both, neither, or otherwise.
Since you mentioned Wikipedia, I want to quote Wikipedia:Encyclopedia Gamia, a Wikipedia article about the Encyclopedia Gamia, a wiki at http://www.strategema.net/ about games. Much of the Wikipedia article is a comparison of the Encyclopedia Gamia to Wikipedia. Near the end is this boast: "Furthermore, it is important to note that Wikipedia's computer and video gaming content, both in number of articles and depth, eclipses all third party gaming wiki's."
This is despite the fact that Wikipedia limits itself to encyclopedia articles. You will find much information in Encyclopedia Gamia, in Gameinfo (http://gameinfo.wikicities.com), or here at Wikibooks:Computer and video games bookshelf that is not in Wikipedia. --Kernigh 02:29, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Is the problem content or structure?

When I first accessed Wikibooks, over a year ago, I found no books that could be read as books and turned away, disappointed. A few months ago I looked again and went, painstakingly, through the bookshelves and found about 13 substantial books. (About the same number as were discovered by a recent reviewer of Wikibooks). Recently, having become more skilled and having been introduced to some tools for investigating where books are located I found 36 substantial books! No, no-one has written 23 books in the last 3 months, it is just that the books themselves are so fragmented and difficult to access that it is not obvious whether a book contains anything of value.

Perhaps we should consider the structure of books as well as desirable content.

I agree with Rob Horning that Wikibooks should be about books. Many contributors are just visiting from Wikipedia and seem to be following the same approach of highly fragmented, hyperlinked text. Take Modern Physics as an example, the first page looks fine, click on "special relativity", another set of headings appears, click on a topic such as "time dilation" and we get a single page (about two thirds of an A4 printed page). Each individual physical page has its own link. This technique would require the reader to operate at least 200 online navigation links to read a 100 page book! The online book is basically unreadable and readers just give up.

There are some books, such as the cookbook and language tutors with audio files, that demand a hyperlinked presentation. However, most books benefit from being read as a single text. This is what differentiates "books" from "articles"; books are extended, connected texts not sets of unconnected articles. Sets of articles can be held in encyclopedias and readers return repeatedly to read them. Books are held in libraries and readers take them away.

So I would suggest that the minimum level of fragmentation of the hyperlinks in a Wikibook should be the chapter, not the page. Further, although contributors need access by chapter and section within a chapter I believe that readers want access at the level of the whole book. Would you take out books from the library or buy a book that consisted of 100 pamphlets? Basically the reader wants a stable PDF or other continuous file to read. They can scan this to see if the book is of interest, download it for rapid access and print it, or sets of pages from it, if desired. RobinH 08:17, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

One thing I will note about smaller modules in a larger Wikibooks is that they give both bite sized chunks for editing and proofing, as well as something that isn't so intimidating for a first time contributor. Making a "printed version" of a large Wikibook is essential in this aspect, as it gives the opportunity to allow a very different group, the readers and reviewers, to get the content in a format that is easier for them. By allowing transclusion of smaller chunks, it also gives the editor a chance to rearrange the content for presentation without having to deal with all of the linking issues.
I had many of the same concerns about the chapter and page issues of Wikibooks, as can be see from this archived discussion that was on the Staff Lounge last June. Garrett's advise is the typical standard that does exist here on Wikibooks, although I would have to agree that a chapter by chapter approach seems to me as something more reasonable.
The other issue that affects having many smaller modules is simply the editing interface with the MediaWiki software... or in reality the issues relating to editing through a web page. HTTP (not HTML) doesn't seem to handle large chunks of text very well, and the typical web browser starts to go nuts when the text is over 32K. That is the unofficial limit on Wikipedia for the length (in text) of the article. I consider that limit to be unfortunate that it is often enforced, because I think some longer Encyclopedia articles can indeed be written. Wikibooks is a good place to do that for the truly committed, but a longer treatment of a Wikipedia article so far hasn't been done too much. This is a reality that we have to live with here, unfortunately. It does tend to make content fragmented, and there is a tendancy to really break things up.
The worst offender here on Wikibooks is Puzzles:Riddles, where the solution is given on a seperate page, and often is just a single word. That seems to work for that Wikibook. I'm not suggesting the Riddles book change much or is written incorrectly, but it does show the minimal degree that some content can end up looking like.
This is just more food for thought. --Rob Horning 19:38, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Is the 32K still really accurate? Mozilla in the past has opened 80 MB web pages for me, and displayed it fine (after an admittedly very long delay of parsing and downloading an 80 MB HTML file). It seems to be almost a legacy idea these days. I do absolutely garuntee that the HTTP portocol has no issue with going over 32K- what do you think you use to download images and movies on the web? HTTP. If there is an issue, its with old versions of IE.
I'd also say that puzzles is perhaps the one exception I'd make to a chapter like rule- you don't want to put the puzzle and answer on the same page, its too easy to read it accidently. And you don't want to put all the answers on 1 page, its too easy to read more than you want to check. Puzzle magazines solve this by randomizing order (puzzle 1 answer on page 86, puzzle 2 on 89, puzzle 3 back on 86, etc). Hypertext allows 1 answer/page, a more elegant solution. --Gabe Sechan 23:12, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
It isn't HTTP in itself (yes, that can in theory handle quite a bit of raw data), but the way it is implemented both by servers and web browsers... and unfortunately we have to take a lowest common denominator here, in other words, the browsers with the least features and the oldest browsers... at least browsers up to five years old or perhaps a little bit older. And it isn't just the transfer and download of the files as a reader, it is the issue of being able to edit the content. The Windows API library (aka Internet Explorer) had a problem with the traditional text edit windows that didn't let you edit more than 32K of raw ASCII text, due to using legacy 16-bit code for the edit windows (even in Windows '95). This had to do with string allocation length and the transmission of over 32K of text in a submit request to a server. Yeah, this is a legacy issue, but HTTP 1.0 (and HTML 1.0) didn't anticipate this sort of activity for web browsers. Even now with MediaWiki software you get a warning message for pages over 32K of length, which has been interpreted on Wikipedia as a cut-off length for a page. --Rob Horning 14:38, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
I use several browsers (including Explorer 5.0) to access Wikibooks and use Windows 98 as well as XP. I have not found any problem editing pages over 32k. Incidently, I am having trouble hanging on to Explorer 5.0 on our backwards compatibility machine - I am always being prompted to update. RobinH 12:14, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
I did mention Windows '95, didn't I? Believe it or not, there are still many people using that operating system, and yes, connecting to the internet. I can't imagine people still using Windows 3.1, but you may yet be surprised. That is the problem with trying to find a lowest common denominator for something like this, you have to think very old systems that normally belong in a museum. Even suggesting that you might be willing to drop 1% of all internet users is still going to be a huge number to consider, and should not necessarily be ignored for a whimsical reason. In some ways it is too bad that we can't get some statistical information about the types and names of browsers (& OS platforms) that are accessing Wikibooks, which gives a much more reliable number to compare to. --Rob Horning 02:57, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
In 2003 I conducted a survey of 1000 PC users in the UK and we found that 7 had Windows 95 (0.7%). We presented 5 of these with free copies of 98 (cheap ex OEM versions) but we can't do that here. My guess is that about 0.4% in the UK are still Windows 95 users. RobinH 12:15, 18 March 2006 (UTC)