Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 15

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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

Wikibooks:Protected page

... says nothing about the rules for semi protection. --Krischik T 11:48, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps because it was written before semi-protection was available. This is a relatively new thing for Wikimedia projects and has only been available for the last couple of updates of the MediaWiki software. I'm not exactly sure what sorts of things would have to be protected from unregistered users only, although it might be nice to put that sort of protection on voting pages, for instance. I recently re-applied move protection to this page (the Staff Lounge) due to the fact that it is very visible and because it has been moved by vandals in the past. No need to go into specifics, but it can be a pain to revert move changes. The developers have made it easier, however. --Rob Horning 05:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Etiquette

I've posted a comment on Wikibooks_talk:Etiquette, to try to "resurrect" this guideline. I think the policies and guidelines on Wikibooks need work in general, so I'm starting here. I'd appreciate your thoughts and comments. Cormaggio 10:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to go further than etiquette. Wikipedia has numerous instances of bullying such as personal attacks, edit wars etc. This is not happening yet at Wikibooks, we are all friends here so far and behaviour seems to be almost exemplary. I would like to propose that every bookshelf has an administrator who is an Editorial Executive. The role of the executive would be to:
  • Nip Wikipedia bad behaviour in the bud; to spot edit wars and personal attacks at the outset.
  • Provide help on the correct structuring of a Wikibook.
RobinH 16:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, well I tried to resurrect this proposal for the very reason that I observed behaviour that was far from exemplary, believe me. I probably didn't give the greatest response myself, but that's neither here nor there as regards the proposal itself. A collaborative social space needs to set its codes/rules/values, whatever you want to call them - otherwise it is vulnerable to being manipulated by bullies. I'm not sure an editorial executive is the best way, but, as we develop, we do need processes that go beyond simple admin duties. Cormaggio 12:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
How do we go from here to a policy proposal? I would propose that:
  • Any edit war is immediately taken "offline" and moved onto a separate page for discussion. The text should be reverted to the state it was in before the start of the edit war until resolution has been achieved.
  • Personal comments ranging from "idiot", "fool", "ignorant" upwards are outright banned. Perhaps a one week suspension for the offender. We discuss the content of books at Wikibooks. It is essential to stop personal comments instantly - zero tolerance.
  • On each bookshelf there is an Editorial Executive who is an administrator who oversees the above.
  • There is an Editorial Board of 5 Users who can be asked to intervene after a 2 week delay if the actions of the Editorial Executive are called into question.
Civilisation thrives under the rule of enlightened and liberal law. RobinH 20:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I fear this is all too complicated. Also the two problems with Wikibooks:Etiquette are that it stresses some negative behaviours, particularly at the top (eg no personal attacks, rather than the positive - be nice and understanding), and that it is too long. At present, administrators are free to use their discretion in disputes in which they themselves are not personally involved, subject to re-affirmation of their approach by other administrators. Or, to put it another way, we have no firm policy. Where is the problem that needs resolution here. I appreciate that you'll be reluctant to cast a stone, but without concrete examples of where there is a problem at present, it is difficult to know how to resolve the issue, Jguk 06:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks is a pleasant and creative environment but I have peered into Wikipedia and feel strongly that we should prevent the sort of behaviour that occurs over there from happening here. Just look at the requests for arbitration page, its the Wild West out there! I believe that two simple policies will stop this sort of thing from happening here:
  • If edit wars are immediately taken off-line onto a special administration page until resolved the heat of the situation would be dissipated immediately. No one would win by edit warring, the only way forward would be discussion and compromise. See Editing policy and add a comment.
  • If there is an Executive Editor on each bookshelf who can keep the peace, stamp on personal attacks and arbitrate at an early stage then the situation will never arise where two contributors go to war or seriously offend each other. There will always be a third party to break any deadlock. See No personal attacks policy and cast a vote.
I know that this all seems overblown given that we are fairly civilised at Wikibooks but if we put these two simple ideas into effect we will always be civilised. RobinH 08:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
I have transferred this to "Three important policies - act now". RobinH 10:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleaning up Category:Stubs

I'm about to go through most of the category and organise it into subcategories, but there isn't any policy or guideline for creating subcategories. So, I've started a discussion on the issue, and would appreciate feedback soon so I can get started on the cleanup. Xerol Oplan 00:24, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Cataloging Wikibooks

I've been going through fits and starts over just how to approach this topic of cataloging Wikibooks. I started Wikibooks:Card Catalog Office as a place to try and get some discussion about the topic, and to try and get some effort organized, but what I've done so far just doesn't seem to "feel" right and I'm not happy with the direction the various approaches to cataloging Wikibooks have gone.

Indeed, the best system that seems to be working out right now is the Bookshelf system, that seemed to get at least an initial boost because of its impact on the main page of Wikibooks. It is one way to try and organize the content, but it shouldn't necessarily be the only way.

This is an ontological discussion, as the number of Wikibooks is now bursting apart any initial attempt at trying to classify the content. My concern is that there is a huge amount of content on Wikibooks, and no real way to keep it all organized, with the current classification systems breaking down. If you look at the number of modules lately, the number is actually going down, not up. Some of this is due to an agressive deletion campaign that is going on to clean up some deadwood, but I'm also going to suggest that simply finding if some content exists takes a dedicated Wikibookian who really understands the structure of what is here.

Mind you, I'm not talking here about "featured content", which has been the topic of discussions as of late, but I'm talking even obscure modules. Some content is neglected or even duplicated due to the fact that nobody knows that it even exists.

Some approaches might include:

Organization by Category
Using a standard template to automatically add Wikibooks to a series of categories, depending on how the book is classified.
Manually Classification
Simply taking every Wikibook and adding it to a page, with manual organization. Note that this is the way that the All Wikibooks page is working at the moment and seems to work out just fine.
Automated Scripting (external)
Erik Zachte created a seperate script found here that classifies Wikibooks by size and following naming conventions of some sort. This was prior to WB:NP, but does surprisingly a pretty good job. The drawback is that you either have to have access to the raw database or wait for Erik to get around to updating these pages when he feels like it.
Automated Scripting (internal)
This could be done in theory, and if somebody who has a passion for Wikibooks also wants to get involved with the main Wikimedia development team, I supposed it could be done. The problem for both forms of scripting is that it is very hard for mere mortals to be able to make changes if it doesn't quite fit the needs of Wikibooks users.

Here are some goals that I also have in mind, before we consider where to go here as well.

  • All new Wikibooks should be linked somehow into the classification system.
  • Several different approaches to cataloging the books should occur. No one single cataloging system is really adequate, and besides, with hyperlinking you can have multiple cataloging approaches (portions of all approaches listed above can be done). Cataloging approaches should include alphabetical, by topic, and by classification code (aka Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress Catalog, perhaps other systems as well).
  • A classification system should have ideally the ability to have related books "close to" each other, in a format similar to a public library. At least as easy to use as glancing down a (real physical) bookshelf for similar books to that topic. Multiple web pages breaks this analogy pretty hard. BTW, this was the original idea of a bookshelf here on Wikibooks.
  • It should be expandable so content even outside of Wikibooks could be integrated into this cataloging system. My thought here is to add hyperlinks to other Wikimedia projects, primarily Wikisource, but it could also include Project Gutenberg or other free e-text repositories that would be of value to Wikibooks readers. Categories are hard to work into something like this.

I've been working specifically on the Library of Congress Classification system, and my approach was to do deep categories. I was thinking along the lines of ODP(Open Directory Project) here, but MediaWiki software doesn't seem to work very well for this type of classification method. The problem here is that deep categories seldom have more than a few Wikibooks in them, and seems to fracture the whole organization.

The approach followed by the folks who helped put together the Dewey Decimal set of pages seems to work a little better. It seriously needs to be cleaned up, but it is an approach to grouping books. An approach that could be done here is to simply list all of the Wikibooks on one single page. At some point in the future it would have to be broken up anyway (if it gets over 1 MB or raw text, for example).

I was also thinking something like this:

instead of having the full Dewey Decimal page with all of the sub-classification heading listed. Any other thoughts? --Rob Horning 06:30, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Alphabetical Listings on Wikibooks

Related to the above notion, I compiled a complete (more or less) list of all Wikibooks that is in the main project space. I am basing this list off of the statistical analysis that Erik Zachte did on Wikibooks last Decembers. Newer Wikibooks aren't in this list yet, but it is at least a place to start.

I'm going to ask that if you have a pet project and want it classified through the various Wikibook classification schemes, to please check through this list and see if it is listed here. I've uncovered a few orphaned Wikibooks by going through this process, and I had to fix some links as well. Erik's method culled out all of the Wikibooks that didn't have consistant naming systems (there are a few missing because of that) and any very short Wikibooks. By his admission that was content < 10K in length. Because of those restrictions, I think this is a very good representation of all of the content currently on Wikibooks at the moment, arranged by book title.

The next step I'll be doing after I do some rough verification of some of the content here is to proceed with the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress classification systems from this list of Wikibooks, slowly crawling from the "A"'s to the "Z"'s. I'll also try to put those books that aren't on bookshelfs where they perhaps ought to go as well.

I know I'm going to miss stuff in all of this, so any general assistance in this matter would be significantly appreciated. The goal here is to make Wikibooks much more usable simply by being able to find what you are looking for, and realizing that Wikibooks is going to double in size over the next year, provided the current trends toward new users and content continues. --Rob Horning 18:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

While I'm all for organising books in as many ways as possible, I see a potential problem with having lots of different shelving systems - in order to "keep up", new books would need to be shelved in several places, something which might be a little overwhelming to new users. Although there's a possible workaround to this: a subsection of the Card Catalog Office where new books can be placed pending shelving, and then a more experienced user could place it in the appropriate places.
I also feel that categories are being underused for organisation. A category listing has several advantages over some of the bookshelves right now: Automatically alphabetised, automatic "backlinks" (category links at the bottom), they can be added at the book level, rather than requiring that a link be added on a seperate page, and they can also easily be added to multiple categories.
That isn't to say using categories would be less work; the initial workload would be slightly larger due to the need to add categories to the front page of every book, but maintenance workload would be significantly less, and it would be a lot easier for new books to be added to the proper place(s) from the start. Just looking at Special:Lonelypages, the lack of shelving on creation is a bit of a problem; in just going through the "A" and "B" modules there, I found at least 10 books that were unshelved (and marked them with {{cleanup-link}}).
In any case, I do agree that there is significant room for improvement in organisation of books, and will try to help out whereever I can (it is, however, 5:30am right now, and I would like to get some sleep, so I won't exactly jump in right _now_). Xerol Oplan 10:28, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I see some problems with categories from several vantage points. One huge one is that content can't be added through transclusion to another page if it is merely listed within the category. Another is that you have no control over the formatting of the information inside of the catagory, as that is controlled entirely through the MediaWiki software instead. That could be modified in the future, but it is a significant limitation. I'm not saying that the developers need to make it a priority to allow customization, just that a tool like categories can't be a tool for all purposes in all places.
For strictly alphabetizing books that are within Wikibooks, I would agree that categories can be useful, and it is something is currently underutilized. A major motive I've had with trying to put together this list is that there is no current difinitive list of all Wikibooks anywhere. The MediaWiki software simply doesn't accomodate our needs as well as for what it was designed to do: writing an encyclopedia. Furthermore, naming conventions have been haphazard at best, so even trying to design an algorithm to extract the titles of all of the Wikibooks is still going to miss some. With WB:NP, I think this situation is going to improve significantly.
I'd also like to point out that a key component of this is also cataloging content on other Wikimedia projects as well, or at least debate that point. Wikisource in particular needs this sort of cataloging as much as we do here, and it would be nice to have a "one stop shopping" area that could help in identifying useful source material for other Wikimedia projects. BTW, I've mentioned this at the Scriptorium and the Wikisource people seem as receptive to the idea as could be reasonable.
Ideally, the ultimate solution would be to have the Wikidata proposed project set up a database for all Wikibooks allowing you to catalog each Wikibook with multiple cataloging systems and allowing you to use search terms to find the books through various means. There has been some amazing progress with that project, but it isn't quite ready for open participation yet, or at least integration into Wikimedia projects. --Rob Horning 13:38, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the alphabetical listing is much needed (if only to see exactly what we have!). The next stage is going through this list to identify more good books so we can give them more publicity. We shouldn't be afraid of relegating publicity for weaker books until they have improved.

I really think the Card Catalog Office denominations by LOC and Dewey are a waste of time (sorry, Rob, I know you've put a lot of work into them). To use them a reader (assuming they are not a librarian by profession) first has to look up what number covers the subject they are interested in, and then has to check what's listed under that subject. They are therefore less useful than the bookshelves - particularly as we are not trying to cover everything covered by Dewey and because we only have a small number of books. In this case they are poor mimics of the bookshelf system.

The category system also duplicates the bookshelves. But, offers a different way of finding information that may appeal to some. I therefore see no real problem with maintaining it. I do, however, think we can get away from putting all pages in the same book into one category - under the naming convention, the list of all pages in a book can easily be found by using the "Prefix Index" from the Special Pages, Jguk 16:41, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The next stage that I was going to do after I simply collected a list of all of the Wikibooks that are here (that is harder to do that I first realized!) is to go thorugh this alphabetical list and try to see if all of the book on the various bookshelves are listed in the alphabetical list (I still havn't done that) and to make sure all of the various wikibooks are listed on the various bookshelves. Adding them to a category at the same time would be trivial in comparion, so this is something perhaps worthwhile to set up a reasonable category structure. Wikibooks is seriously lacking in this regard as no serious thought has gone into the category structure on Wikibooks.
I was also thinking of perhaps setting up a special template for the name of each Wikibook that would be able to do something like load up the list of all pages for that book (aka Prefix index) list BOM winners, stages, or other information that would be useful for somebody trying to find some quick information about the book.
As far as the LOC and Dewey tables are concerned, it is very difficult to topically arrange content, as human knowledge can be expressed in multiple dimensions. Most of these cataloging schemes (including our Bookshelves) are largely expressed as a linear display of information, and it is very hard to say that one classification system is better than another. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Keep in mind that what I'm trying to accomplish here is to use the various classification systems to suggest that here is a Wikibook that you like, and to demonstrate a related book here are some others you can look at as well. Books that are physical closer on the classification pages are more related than books that are listed further away. This is precisely how libraries organize their book inventories, for the same reason. The Library of Congress has over a century of experience in doing this, and it would be a shame not to at least try and see what their motivations are for their classification system, especially if we are going to repeat those same mistakes with our own bookshelf model. Other major libraries have followed the lead of the Library of Congress, and are actively involved with discussions of classification systems.
The ultimate goal is to have somebody come to Wikibooks, have a topic in mind that they want to learn more about, and have a place to find where that content might be located at. On Wikipedia you can use the "search" tool and get the content rather effectively. Here on Wikibooks, it is a bit tougher to do that as the content here isn't quite organized as cleanly as it is on Wikipedia. I've already noticed a couple of real good-faith efforts to create content here on Wikibooks that largely duplicates content that already exists, including people doing a transwiki of content from other Wikimedia projects. Most of this is marked up for mergers into other Wikibooks, but we don't catch all of that often before substantial amounts of material are added. --Rob Horning 17:16, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

www.wikibooks.org

I have changed this portal, which users see when they look for www.wikibooks.org based on www.wikisource.org (though other Wikimedia projects such as www.wikipedia.org also have a similar format). I don't claim that the new version (now improved by others since it went live) is the last word (I'm sure it isn't), but it is much better than old version. Further suggestions are welcome either here (or if you are a sysop just make general improvements on Wikibooks portal itself - just bear in mind that this is the first thing people who go to www.wikibooks.org see), Jguk 20:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Nobody else has had any comments on this? Well, I like it. Good work. --JMRyan 19:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Depreciation of the "Programming:" psuedo namespace

A large number of Wikibooks have been named using the "Programming" psuedo namespace in their titles. I don't know where the notion to start this practice originally came from, but as has been pointed out these are often distinctively different books in many cases. Some arguements about this very topic have come up where some people suggest these are all in fact a part of a huge book called "Programming".

What I'm suggesting here is that we have a discussion if it is wise to discontinue the use of this naming convention altogether, and possibly rename most of the Wikibooks that start with this prefix. Very, very few naming conflicts exist with the book names not having the prefix, and otherwise it is just an advertisement of what bookshelf it is located on. Other books have a similar issue, but it is the computer programming books that seemed to have adopted this standard most often.

Is there anybody here that is active that even supports keeping the Programming psuedo namespace? It doesn't really fit with WB:NP, but that is mostly because the policy doesn't even cover this topic. --Rob Horning 17:28, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I vaguely seem to remember our having this conversation before and the decision being to dump the Programming psuedo namespace (but I don't have a reference for you). Indeed, a number of old Programming:Xyz books have been renamed. For example, Ada Programming used to be Programming:Ada. As for where it came from, I suspect it is an old practice that became depricated. However, I don't know if deprication really counts if someone as active as Rob can't remember it. :-) And besides, it may very well be my memory, not Rob's, that is faulty. I also suspect that these the Programing Xyz books were always conceived as separate books rather than belonging to one big Programming book. It seems to be an example of what was once considered the bookshelf naming policy, see this old version of WB:NP where Programming:Xyz books are cited as an example of that policy. At any rate, I suggest going to the individual Programming:Xyz books one by one and try to get a consensus for a name change, perhaps with the aid of tsca.bot. If noone responds after a respectful wait, than declare yourself a consensus and hire tsca.bot without further ado. --JMRyan 20:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I have the same memories- that the programming pseudo-namespace was an old deprecated convention, and that new books should not be using it. --Gabe Sechan 20:34, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

B:CVG

I dislike typing the full names of bookshelves, especially Wikibooks:Computer and video games bookshelf which is five words. So, I decided to create a shorcut B:CVG. The idea is to introduce a system like Wikibooks:Shortcuts for bookshelves.

Any comments? Should bookshelves have shortcuts? Is "B:" okay, or should I have used "WB:" like for other shortcuts? --Kernigh 23:54, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

"B:" looks fine, and using "WB:" could collide with other Wikibooks shortcuts. It's a good idea, and I'm surprised it hasn't been done yet. Xerol Oplan 00:17, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Do we have a "registry" of available shortcuts? I know I could do a special:prefixindex on it, but this would be a good page to put together that lists where everything goes. --Rob Horning 15:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki process is ridiculous

The transwiki process is way, way too complicated. Transwikiing an article from wikipedia to wikibooks, for example, involves creating a new article on wikibooks, copying the text of the old article into the new article, copying the history page of the old article into the discussion page of the new article, leaving tags on both articles and on the new discussion page saying what you've done, putting info into the summaries of the new article and talk page saying what you've done, adding a line on the wikibooks transwiki log, including links, explaining what you've done, and adding a line to the wikipedia transwiki log, including links, explaining what you've done.

This is, no doubt, why virtually no one ever does this. Go through the transwiki log, either on wikipedia or on wikibooks, and you'll see that almost every one of these in the last year and a half has been done by Uncle G's 'bot.

Uncle G and his bot haven't been around for weeks, leaving me trying to figure out how to get 90 articles transwikied to wikibooks. I have no intention of spending 10 hours going through this whole laborious process by hand, and am about to rebel against the whole process and just ignore the logs on both sides completely. So, now no one can say I didn't notify anyone of this. I'd have mentioned this on the transwiki talk pages, but no one reads those.

(I posted the above on one of the wikipedia village pump pages, I'll go into a little more detail here since you all may care more than they do, as you'll be the ones receiving the 90 new articles) The articles are all cocktail recipes, they make up about half the articles on this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Move_to_Wikibooks They need to end up the in wikibooks bartending area. If someone wants to give me some advice on this, feel free, I'm trying to clean up a mess on wikipedia (recipes don't belong there at all) and am looking for the best way to do it. --Xyzzyplugh 06:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Before you start, may I ask what the 90 new articles are. It is unusual, to say the least, for a short article originally on WP to develop into a viable textbook here on WB. Whilst recipes (for the Cookbook), drinks (for Bartending) and How-tos (for the How-to bookshelf) can be pretty much standalone, other individual articles/pages tend not to be worth transwiki'ing.
On the other hand, the only real issue is to allow the history of an article (including in particular the names of the contributors) to be traced. Provided everything being transwiki'ed in goes to the pseudo-namespace, Transwiki:, under the name used in the old wiki, that the old location is identified in the summary and the transwiki page redirects to the new page, that is sufficient - and I wouldn't worry about the rest of the bureaucracy, Jguk 07:24, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
(Actually, I said this above, but...)they are all cocktail recipes, which would end up in the bartending area here. Click on the link I gave above, if you want to see them; of the 150 articles on that page, 90 or so of them are the ones I'm planning on moving. And, thanks for your response. --Xyzzyplugh 13:39, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

A fair number of those articles are duplicates/alternatives of existing articles. Also, be sure to liaise with User:Discordance, who is the main editor of the Bartending book. We're currently looking at how best to organise the cocktails, and the addition of 90 more needs to be organised carefully, Jguk 15:26, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, but I've checked them all, and the duplicates all have substantially different content, meaning they could be merged or replace the current ones. I tried to make sure that if the wikipedia version was lower quality than the wikibooks one, I didn't bother transwikiing it.
And, another notification -I've begun transwikiing these articles. Wikibooks is not currently accepting articles which contain external links. There is a server which is supposed to send you the picture which you type the matching text in for, to prove you're a person and not a spambot. I'm assuming this server is down or so backed up it is non-functional. So I've begun deliberately breaking the external links by inserting spaces into them. Such is life.(fixed and cleaned up now) --Xyzzyplugh 15:42, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
The real point of the transwiki is to do several things:
  1. help copy over the content from one project to another. Sometimes things get left out by new users doing a transwiki, so it helps to make sure that everything has been moved over... including the page history from the previous project. This is omitted so often you wouldn't believe.
  2. to notify administrators and other active members of the new project that new content has been added that has at least been partially reviwed for copyright clearance, but is being added by people who don't have a clue as to what the policies of the new project. Perhaps it is misplaced and needs to be moved elsewhere.
  3. log that the move has been made and there isn't a variation of an "edit" war that is more a transwiki war where neither project really want the content. In theory we can (and should for many items) send stuff right back to Wikipedia with a note that it is completely inappropriate to have it on Wikibooks and it really belongs (from our perspective) on Wikipedia. If an article ping-pongs between the two projects, we can either delete it or even move it to Wikicities somewhere.
  4. sometimes links and markup of content must occur where there are huge differences between the two projects, such as category naming systems, wikification (dewikification in the case of Wikibooks), and linking into any classification system (which is critical for both Wikibooks and Wikisource).
  5. it is a way to keep cordial relationships between each of the various Wikimedia projects and not seem to be imposing policies on each other.
  6. and most important: Allow a project to simply "accept" the content altogether before it is moved into the main project namespace.
Mind you, Transwiki policies are not Wikibooks policies but rather Wikimedia policies. Please refer to the process on Meta for more details. I've been a pain in the a&& on Wikipedia by changing the {{move to wikibooks}} template because I saw so much pure cruft that has been dumped on Wikibooks that I knew was from Wikipedia (I even found the deletion commons on Wikipedia). The users who put the content here totally bypassed the transwiki process and I couldn't stand it anymore. More to the point, I warned Wikipedia users in a very visible template that if you dump content on Wikibooks without going through the transwiki content, you might as well consider that you have just deleted it from all Wikimedia projects, and have caused grief and pain to Wikibooks administrators in the process... not a way to make yourself welcome here.
As far as moving 90 pages of content... I don't consider that to be that big of a deal, unless it is 90 pages of content that accumulate over a week and every week this happens again. If there is that much content on Wikipedia that new users are adding to warrent this sort of content volume, perhaps some policy changes need to happen on Wikipedia instead to allow the content (obviously many users think it belongs there) or some very clear new user pages to help mentor them to keep from creating this sort of content. --Rob Horning 15:52, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually this is perhaps a year's worth of cocktail recipes, so there shouldn't be any more coming soon. I have been/will be communicating with the people on the bartending book as to how best to handle these articles once they get there. And, I'd like to once again thank you all for responding. I can't get any responses on any of this on wikipedia at all. --Xyzzyplugh 16:33, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
BTW, the reason why you are being blocked for external references is because you have a low edit count and that you have a new user account. This was a recently added feature to MediaWiki software that was to help stop some of the link spamming that has been going on for some time now. Any admins/recent changes patrol guys notice any difference lately on that? --Rob Horning 17:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I had to pass the "image test" for an external link on my recently-created de.wikibooks and en.wikinews user pages. However, other than that I forgot about it.
However, I have been reverting vandalism and test edits from this wiki, and none of my recent reversions was against WikiSpam. It is as if all of the spammers disappeared. --Kernigh 23:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

introductory course edit.

hello, i dont really know how who (if any) will read this or how the system of editing works but i have recently stumbled on wikiversity and saw a few probs in your school. firstly id like to say that this is the best idea and i love whats happening. i have been looking around wikipedia for weeks trying to improve my knolage in a few areas (spellings beyond hope) one of those being physics. i found that to go too quickly to subjects i desired to know about was in-practicle as they where complex and required much back reading, so started going through basics and improving my maths. you have created exactly the tool i and others will need, and that is great. howether, on aprouching your scool and being derected to high school physics (i doupt i need to go back this far but i thought id brush up) i was supprised to see that from the first paragraph the piece was badly written. im sorry to the auther but the grammer is awfull and the flow messy. im not suggesting that i could do better (indeed i touched my first edit button but pondered the legality of scrubbing whole sentances) but for me or another to take it in it needs clarity, i read the standard modle wiki the other day and it was clearer than the basic physics para 'the atom'. another problem i thoght of was the possibility of bad editing. perhaps this article started out clear and consice and was then edited by a, less clear person. i hope someone can take a look because if basic phisics isnt accessabe then the whole thing will fail. and i for one think wikipedia is genius, and the future. thankyou for your time. john f


sorry id like to ammend myself, some of 'high school physics' is fine. the atom needs drastic work. and electricity is great but it is insyncranus, its first sentance is already assumes knolage of ac dc etc. sorry, thanks john f

Further improvements to be made

I put here some (edited) comments that I have raised in a discussion with Rob Horning as I'd like to air some of these issues to a wider audience:

When I came to wikibooks, it was clear that it had an identity crisis, which had seen a number of splits - the cookbook, wikijunior and wikiversity in particular had all been split off in some way. There was no standard naming convention, so each book looked separate rather being as part of a whole. There were many remnants of former days as a multilingual site, a lot of latent vandalism (eg a number of pages still needing ass pus or still having been damonized), and serious difficulties navigating to find what books are actually worth reading. This, through the efforts of a number of editors, is improving (although I'm sure not as fast as we'd all like).

There is still some way to go - personally I very much do see wikijunior and wikiversity as being part of the remit to host and develop textbooks, and I would love the rifts to disappear. The Cookbook namespace should disappear too. Hopefully making wikibooks look like something to be proud of will bring them into the fold. For me, we also need to resolve textbooks such as Knowing Knoppix and Gardening, which have already been published, but which are clearly textbooks that would not be out of place here had they originally been started here. To my mind wikibooks is the wikimedia project you look at for textbooks (and if it isn't, it bloody well should be). They are not appropriate for wikisource (which does not appear to cover things even remotely looking like textbooks), yet provide a welcome addition to wikibooks.

Other issues to resolve are to make things more user-friendly. I have already changed the Wikibooks portal (along the lines of what is done for other wikimedia projects), though this probably deserves more work as it is the first thing many first-time visitors see. I have started to redraft the Help namespace content using modified wikipedia content - this too needs to be completed. The main page, no doubt, can be improved further.

In summary, there is much to be done to make wikibooks look like a good place to develop new textbooks - but that is the noble aim. If we can succeed, we can help bring down the cost of textbooks generally, which will greatly help education throughout the English-speaking world, Jguk 11:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I would say that Wikibooks is still in a state of trying to find its own identify, although it has calmed down to a more leisurely pace of discussion and more reasonable concensus opinions being reached, as opposed to when Jimbo went in and effectively put in a VfD for three Wikibooks with a strong opinion that the content should have been deleted much earlier (I still wish he would have used the VfD forum for that instead of the Staff Lounge).
Wikiversity and Wikijunior both are examples of new Wikimedia projects that are using Wikibooks merely as server space to try and find their own way as independent projects. Wikiversity started out as one idea and has grown to become apparently something very different from the initial suggestion, although it is clear even from this very early edit that Wikiversity was to be about teaching courses and not just writing textbooks, as apparently the Foundation board seems to want it to become.
The point here is that Wikibooks has been used repeatedly as the starting point for brand new project ideas and I've worn this point down so hard that few people are even listening to me, thinking I'm crying wolf all of the time. These new projects keep getting added to Wikibooks, as is evidenced by Wikilanguages and Wikitopia. I have tried to resolve this situation by not only letting new users know that this is inappropriate, changing policies and "welcome" messages, but also trying to get a place to put concepts like this. Wikicities is a place to put them, but it feels hollow as it really isn't the same as Wikimedia sister project. Creating whole new projects has turned into such a nightmare that I've proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation board simply adopt a new policy toward them: No new Wikimedia projects will ever be created. Thank you for your suggestions but please look elsewhere.
That puts us here on Wikibooks in a huge bind as these projects keep getting created, and some of them are very worthy ideas that perhaps even as regular Wikibooks participants we feel should be done somewhere but just not here on Wikibooks. There really is no place to put this sort of content, and it gets to be very harsh to simply say "goodbye" to Wikiversity through a VfD instead, with defenders not really having a leg to stand on in their defense.
Defining exactly what is a Wikibook can help. If the definition is clear, it is easier to convince others that content should or should not be developed here. It would also help us to cut down the VfD page to only occasional discussions rather than a huge dynamic process that it currently is. Of course, Wikipedia ought to be pretty clear as to what is an encyclopedia article, and they still have problems with even whole book-like projects getting started there and moved to this project, so I guess this is something that all of the Wikimedia projects have to live with. --Rob Horning 14:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Some users debate the word "textbook"

Jguk wrote: To my mind wikibooks is the wikimedia project you look at for textbooks (and if it isn't, it bloody well should be). They are not appropriate for wikisource (which does not appear to cover things even remotely looking like textbooks), yet provide a welcome addition to wikibooks.

I must wonder what that means. Some Wikibookians seem to have a different understanding of the word "textbook" than I do. Even the dict.org definitions of "textbook" give no consistent idea. In November 2005, I requested that someone define "textbook" in Wiktionary. Wiktionary:textbook now defines it as "a formal manual of instruction in a specific subject, especially one for use in schools or colleges". I still believe that the word "textbook" simply means "book of text", thus ignoring any idiomatic meaning. Thus Wikibooks, Wikisource, and http://novelas.wikia.com all have textbooks.

But I expect to find instructional textbooks at Wikibooks (unless they are encylopedias or dictionaries). However, I also expect to find previously published instructional textbooks at Wikisource. I cannot understand how to make "textbooks" inappropriate for Wikisource. I would prefer having Knowing Knoppix at Wikisource, and also having a modified version here at Wikibooks. --Kernigh 17:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I think you have a misunderstanding here. The word textbook does not mean "book of text". The wiktionary definition does not appear to be too wrong, although how "formal" the book has to be, I'm not sure. Incidentally, although I believe Wikibooks should accept all textbooks (under the generally understood definition), we also have content which I wouldn't propose removing that are not textbooks - eg cookbook, games runthroughs, other leisure books such as chess, Jguk 20:28, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
No, Kernigh is closer to right. The idea that textbook==school book is a fairly modern idea. An older definition is a textbook is a text- a non-fictional work. Schoolbooks are a proper subset of that.
Secondly, several of the books you mentioned ARE school books. A cookbook is in a culinary class. Chess is frequently taught in logic classes, my logic grade in 4th grade was based on a chess tourney. Game design is now a college major at several schools, game runthroughs would be a schoolbook for that.
Thirdly- wikibooks is not, and never has been, merely schoolbooks. Its scope is instructional resources, which is slightly more inclusive. Basicly any non-fiction work which instructs or teaches you about a subject (with a small list of exceptions as listed in the what is wikibooks). There has never been a consensus to restrict wikibooks to merely schoolbooks. --Gabe Sechan 21:39, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Returning Wikijunior and Wikiversity to Wikibooks

Jguk wrote: There is still some way to go - personally I very much do see wikijunior and wikiversity as being part of the remit to host and develop textbooks, and I would love the rifts to disappear. The Cookbook namespace should disappear too.

Rob Horning wrote: Wikiversity started out as one idea and has grown to become apparently something very different from the initial suggestion, although it is clear even from this very early edit that Wikiversity was to be about teaching courses and not just writing textbooks, as apparently the Foundation board seems to want it to become.

Books like Wikijunior Kings and Queens of England are not on a bookshelf, but I plan to add them. Also, I think to move Wikijunior to "Wikibooks:Wikijunior" (leaving the redirect), as it is a project page, not a book itself.

As for the Cookbook namespace, I think that is only a technical situation, not a political situation. The separate namespace allows searches inside only that namespace. It also improves linking, as Cookbook:hamburger (lowercase h after colon) and Cookbook: Hamburger (space after colon) are always Cookbook:Hamburger.

The difficult situation, in my view, is Wikiversity – I started a No to Wikiversity page at 9 December 2005. I was interested in a MetaWikipedia:Wikiversity/Modified project proposal, hoping to lean Wikiversity toward coordinating learning groups instead of hosting instructional material. That page and Wikiversity both state that "Wikiversity is a centre for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities," which I hope are group activities. Much of the Wikiversity#Recent Material seems ready for a move to the new wiki "en.wikiversity.org".

However, much older Wikiversity material, such as Wikiversity:School of Mathematics, consists of books that should remain at Wikibooks. These could form the basis of a collection of university-level textbooks, analogous to Wikijunior. I have not considered the problem of the overload - "Wikiversity" being used for two different concepts, a new wiki and a section of Wikibooks. --Kernigh 04:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I will note here that I knew this was going to be a major issue once en.wikiversity was established. Trying to decide what content should go to the new domain is going to be a huge issue and a point of contention in some areas. I've also seen recently an effort to list the various Wikiversity schools as navigation links from several Wikibooks. I don't see an explict problem with that, but it does make trying to decide what exactly is meant by the term Wikiversity sometimes hard to define. I don't think that you can even find two people to agree on what exactly is Wikiversity, and that is going to be something that will continue with Wikiversity for years to come. --Rob Horning 14:13, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Notice that what is hosted at the Wikiversity wiki will not be a problem for the Wikibooks community unless they fear the competition for web traffic. It is always possible for the Wikibooks community to place a copy of a Wikiversity improved text with proper attributes on their bookshelves. It is also possible that Wikibooks will do such a good job of hosting mature textbooks that Wikiversity processes will choose to work with Wikibooks to present mature textbooks to the public at large independent of Wikiversity. We probably do not need or want random readers traipsing through our learning processes. It is extremely unlikely, at least in the engineering school, that Wikiversity will mandate to its learning communities that they will be allowed no local textbooks or class notes for active local markup free of harassment or oversight by outsiders. I would advise Wikibooks participants to be cautious in attempting to mandate monopolistic practices to participants at Wikiversity. Participants there can always fork your FDL'ed draft textbooks to another server and then link to it from Wikiversity. At that point even recourse to "Jimmy says ..." becomes complicated. There is no benefit to hosting texts in progress at Wikimedia servers if some local control over the materials is not possible for Wikiversity participants. Notice that the bandwidth requirements for a single study group of three to three hundred participants placed randomly around the globe accessing a single draft text is probably well within the capacity of a typical U.S. dsl connection. It might be productive to consider ways in which friendly cooperation with Wikiversity, rather than outspoken opposition, would benefit Wikibooks. There is no reason Wikibooks could not evolve to be a much better library or repository or archive with a higher aggregate quality of material; while some of the draft or book in progress stuff tended to start at Wikiversity and then migrate to Wikibooks as it matures. It then becomes the Wikibooks editorial board or community or quality review peoples responsibility to decide when some draft book is good enough to be hosted at Wikibooks instead of attempting to tell others they cannot use their own ebooks. Some of the gunk weeding would thus be offloaded to Wikiversity while Wikibooks would inevitably gain substantial proofreading and participant testing from people using their more mature products. It is highly unlikely that Wikiversity will end up hosting Wikibooks not used and marked up within learning processes. Too much liability and risk from vandals attacking at nooks and crannies not subjected routinely to Wikiversity policy scrutiny. So what is the big deal if a section of Wikiversity participants copy a Wikibook for their local markup and then leave in it the obscure Wikiversity archives for future sections? Eventually someone either decides the accumuluated changes should be merged into the current edition delivered to public at large via Wikibooks and does so or the class scribblings remain indefinately in the archive for future students or internet archeologists or Wikiversity participants themselves decide to recover the disk space. Where is the threat to Wikibooks that has some believing they should control exclusively the etexts that Wikiversity participants choose to use or markup? Lazyquasar 12:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
It isn't "control" but rather needless duplication of effort regarding forking content from other Wikimedia projects, including Wikipedia and Wikibooks. If it is already hosted on a Wikimedia project, it is easily accessable and you can even help with developing the content. Under some very limited circumstances can I see that you might want to fork some content. For example, the Japanese has a section called Japanese/Reader that has forked some Wikimedia content. In this situation, however, some significant added value is being done because hints and notes are being added in English (for otherwise all-Japanese content) and some effort is being done to integrate the content into the lessons as well. And for this purpose it doesn't have to be the most up to date content either. Forking a Wikibook because it doesn't have the POV that you like is hardly an excuse to want a local copy on a seperate project, unless you want to have a strong POV and are making it a private website independent of the Wikimedia Foundation for that purpose. --Rob Horning 13:49, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
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