Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Archive 29

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[edit] Math and Escher Book

Hi -

My name is Bryan Clair. I’m a professor of math & computer science at Saint Louis University. My collaborator on this project is Anneke Bart, also a math prof. here at SLU.

We have been teaching an innovative freshman mathematics course “Mathematics and the Art of M.C. Escher” since 2000. It’s a mature course in the sense that the material and topics have mostly stabilized, enough so that other SLU professors have taken over sections. The course fulfuills a core qualititative reasoning requirement for SLU students, and is a popular alternative to college algebra for art, humanities, and social science majors. Prerequisites are light - a little knowledge of plane geometry, angle measure but not trig, basic algebra (adding fractions, solving linear equations).

The course covers a variety of mathematical topics, mostly related to geometry. It includes symmetries and symmetry groups, tessellations, non-euclidean geometry, fractals, topology, and the 4th dimension. Of course, there’s lots of connections to Escher and his work.

It’s an innovative course in terms of pedagogy - the classes are capped at 19 students and it’s almost entirely based on group work and discovery. There is little formal lecturing.

Because of the novelty of the material and the pedagogical layout of the course, we’ve begun writing a textbook for the course. Our text (more of a “reader”, really) is supplemented by an art book of Escher’s work and another general interest book about Escher’s life and tessellations. Our text is currently about 200 pages, although much of that is workbook-like group projects. We’ve used it for a few semesters in its current form, but it is badly in need of considerable work.

We don’t feel that the traditional bound and printed college textbook model is appropriate for this material. Some reasons:

  • The group projects constitute a sort of student workbook, but they are essential to the flow of the course.
  • So much related information is available on the web that we would like to allow for copious hyperlinking.
  • The text is intended to be supplemented with other resources. In particular, Escher’s artwork would be referenced heavily but probably not included.
  • Different instructors take different paths through the course and we would like to allow for non-linear progress through the text.
  • Parts the text (group projects, particularly) should be customizable to better fit class skill level and available time.

A wiki based solution is appealing. We can easily collaborate. We get web presentation, with the ability to create a passable printed version. We get semantic markup. We get LaTeX. We get professional looking design. The students get it free, no paper. Others may learn something, or even adopt it for their courses.

We’re seriously considering creating a WikiBook, which is why I’m posting this long letter. We’re hoping to get feedback as to whether this is a good idea, and what problems to expect. We have some specific concerns, but would value any encouragement, suggestions and/or warnings.

At the moment, I’m working on wiki-fying the book on my own computer, on which I’ve recently installed MediaWiki. Hopefully, I’ll have enough of it moved over in the next month that I can demo it.

Specific questions:

  1. Has anyone ever taught a college course using a WikiBook for a required text? If so, which book and can we chat?
  2. The main concern we have is stability. Using a WikiBook for teaching a course seems problematic. The text needs to be essentially static while being used, at least to some extent. As the most extreme example, if I assign homework problems, I need assurance that, for example, the numbers won’t change - even for an hour or two. I never want to hear “well, that’s not how it looked when I read it” as an excuse. I think my ideal solution would be to have a “release”, much like open source software. At some point in time (the start of the semester?) a snapshot of the book is taken and the students can access that snapshot. I tell the students “we’re using Release 1.3 as our official text - read that version”. Pages that have changed would have a prominent note that there is a more recent version of the changed page, and students could read the more recent (probably better) version. I believe that the usual Wiki way is to always show the most recent version, allowing users to actively seek out an older version if they desire. Knowing students, that’s not going to work - the versioning needs to be somewhat coherent so once they make the initial choice to see an older version, they stay in that version across the entire book.
  3. Many of our images are .eps or .pdf files, which are vector based and so look good at any scale. It appears that inlined images in a WikiBook are required to be in a raster graphics format such as .gif or .jpg. It also appears that there is a single namespace for all images?
  4. Just to double check.. the licensing is set up so that nobody can grab the book, change it a bit and then sell it to a publisher, right?

Bryanclair 09:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Firstly, welcome! Your course does sound rather innovative and interesting. I always encourage inter-disciplinary courses. I am into math and science, but have always felt that art, music, philosophy, and the humanities in general are entirely appropriate and exciting areas of study.
I would seriously encourage you to consider writing this as a WikiBook. There are, however, some points I would like to make.
  1. The licensing is set up so that anyone can grab the book, change it a bit and then sell it to a publisher. This is the nature of the GNU Free Documentation License. They cannot, however, do it legally without attribution.
  2. There is a single namespace for all media — that is, raster and vector images, music / sound, video, pdfs, OpenOffice documents, whatever. Most music / sound and videos are generally uploaded in .ogg (Vorbis and Theora) / .flac, as they are open source. Vector images are generally uploaded in .svg, which the MediaWiki software can (I think) natively rasterise. I do not know about rasterisation of .pdfs or .epses
  3. If you want users to see a specific version, you can add links from the module to specific revisions in the history. Or you could provide on static HTML (on your course website, for example) or in an e-mail a link to the specific revisions. This would become tedious, however, if you were to need many modules from different parts of the book.
    • You could, however, relatively easily do a "snapshot" version, either off-wiki, or as a .pdf uploaded to the wiki.
I'm sorry for not addressing all of your concerns and questions. I hope, though, this helps you with your options. Cheers, User:Iamunknown 10:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Welcome! Yes, it does sound like a Wikibook is what you need. #4 is probably the most important issue for you, but the GFDL does allow a publisher to do that. I hope that won't be too big a problem. :-/
I'm not too sure about vector images in eps or pdf files, but I'm pretty sure that svg files are allowed (another vector file format). Maybe ImageMagick could convert the files to svg format for you? [[Image:Flag of Germany.svg | 50px]] is an example of how you can use a svg (or png, or jpeg) image.
For your #2 question, you can provide "stable" links that never change to your students. Make the page, then hit "permanent version" on the left side of the webpage (it is under "toolbox"). That sends you to the page that will never change.
And I'm not sure if there are any wikitext -> LaTeX programs. If you know of any, I'd be interested :-p --Dragontamer 19:43, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems and issues to look at

I absolutely am thrilled to see somebody like yourself becoming involved with the development of a formal textbook here on Wikibooks. Having edited here and participating with many Wikibooks projects, I can certainly understand some of your concerns. Some replies to what you are talking about:

As far as a university course using a Wikibook as a textbook, I am not aware of any. However, there are several high school textbooks that are being used within the curriculum of South Africa (see FHSST Physics), and several of the Wikijunior books have been used on the elementary school level.

The best example of a collge level textbook following the Wikibooks model that I can think of is Light and Matter, which was written by Ben Crowell and is in use at Fullton College in California, as well as a few other smaller colleges. It should be noted that this textbook was written several years before Wikibooks was started, where Dr. Crowell had to come with from scratch much of what is now given through the Wikibooks environment.

BTW, Dr. Crowell is semi-active currently on Wikibooks as well, even though this particular textbook is not hosted by Wikibooks. He certainly can give you some insight into some of the issues/complications that have arisen with the use of the GFDL in a textbook, and his content information can be found here.

One thing you do need to be aware of is that all images must be available under terms compatable with the GNU Free Document License if they are used here. I do know that much of Ecsher's work is still largly under copyright and won't enter the public domain until the year 2042 at the earliest (if further copyright extensions aren't enacted through legislation). This doesn't apply to all of what he did, but it is something to consider. The current proposed Wikibooks Fair Use Policy would make using the images found on the Wikipedia article improper to be used here on Wikibooks. In fact, I'm very much surprised that they havn't been deleted on Wikipedia as a copyright violation. Keep in mind that educational fair-use does not apply to Wikibooks, even though our intention here is to use these materials for educational purposes. That area is filled with so many legal land mines that I strongly suggest you don't even go there.

On the other hand, if you are able to somehow persuade the estate of M. C. Escher that they would be willing to donate some of these images under terms of the GFDL or other w:copyleft licenses, there is certainly a place to have them here on Wikibooks. I'm just giving strong caution before you get too far on this. BTW, this would also be an issue for a commercially published book, but image licensing is a bit more straight forward in that situation and would require royalty payments to Mr. Escher's estate. It may be possible that some of the famous images could also be in the public domain, but I highly doubt you will find many, if at all.

Artwork that follows the themes of M.C. Escher but are produced independently may be also available, so don't consider having the artwork in this Wikibook to be a completely lost cause either.

One other item you ought to consider is support for the book once you have completed the course. In this situation, it appears as though you intend this to be something that is for an ongoing course, which is a bit different than what has been done in the past. There are some Wikibooks like Instructional Technology that have been developed by the students themselves as a part of an organized class project. What I've seen usually is a very good initial push to add a huge amount of content, but it tends to languish for some time before somebody else "adopts" the content and fixes some of the short comings. Of course that tends to be typical for almost all Wikibooks as well, but these tend to be topics that are very specific and don't have a more general interest that tends to keep some of the Wikibooks (like the Cookbook) more fresh with new content on a regular basis. --Rob Horning 10:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some more thoughts

The problem of licensing Escher's work is actually not that daunting. The fact is, his work is all over the internet, although not typically at high quality resolutions. I do doubt that his copyright holders would free any of his images, but I think that could be worked around with creative linking.

I am somewhat dismayed to hear that one can resell GPL licensed stuff, although thinking of companies like Red Hat, of course it makes sense. With OSS, the resellers add value through ease of installation and support services. With a book, the reseller adds value through materials and convenience. In addition, with software, companies like Red Hat have been hugely influential and helpful to the quality of Linux. On the other hand, I'm not sure there's such a direct comparison between free software and free books. I don't purchase free software, because it's easy enough (for me anyway) to download and install/maintain it myself. However, I've purchased free books ( Hatcher's [Topology] and Raymond's [Art of Unix Programming] ) because I find it's really much better to own the paper volume than to have to use the net.

Neither Anneke nor I feel like we're doing this to make a buck, so it's not that we're concerned about getting paid. But it would bother me if a publisher grabbed the wiki book, typeset it, and sold it as a text.

  • Would this be likely to happen? Maybe not - the free availability on the net is a deterrent.
  • Would this be helpful to the wikibook? I don't know. This seems like a place where the difference between software and books is significant.
  • Maybe it's not even feasible, if the book is really, truly meant to be a wiki.

Finally, I'm still worried about the lack of stability over a semester for a book that's intended as a textbook. Creating a pdf, though useful, defeats the purpose of a linked, hypertext book. Creating links (from where?) to a fixed version page-at-a-time would be infeasible. Maybe only the exercises need to be stable, which would make things a little easier.

Related to this, we've got (lots of) worksheets for in-class use. I may still print these out before class and distribute them to students as I've done in the past. But if not, then these must be stable, too - at least for the time they're in use. In addition, depending on how much time I've got to spare, I'll customize the worksheets from one semester to the next. I don't see any real mechanism for creating a custom, personal version of a wiki page, except by changing the public version. These versioning/forking issues seem to be a striking difference between open source software and wikibook. Admittedly, you can't customize a printed book much at all.

Anyway, we're still mulling it over. Thanks for the good feedback, and I'll still keep an eye on this discussion.

Bryanclair 04:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

One thing you should note about a commercial publisher grabbing GFDL content is that they don't have an exclusive right to the content, which really is a very different situation compared to more traditional textbook publishing where a contract is signed and exclusive publication rights are granted to a specific publishing house. In fact, if at that point you don't like the contract you are out of luck and can be sued into submission to even publish the book even if you decide it is an awful situation and not worth the effort.
As bad as that gets, including trying to go into a legal fight to even obtain royalties due and other similar issues, some real slimeball publishers will grab some public domain text and then slap on a copyright reasserting copyright on something that has been previously in the public domain, claiming exclusive publication rights when there is no reason to believe they have that right legally. Unfortunately you have to directly challenge that in court and most often these publishers get away with that tactic.
You should note that with the GFDL, this sort of brazen abuse of the Public Domain is stopped cold. If you republish content that has been licensed under the GFDL, you must conform to the term of that license, including citing the original authors as well as granting non-exclusive republication rights to anybody who purchases that content. If they remove the GFDL notices or claim independent copyright, that publisher is in direct violation of copyright laws and can be sued for statutory damages. In the USA that is up to $750,000 per incident (aka the infamous FBI warnings on the beginning of movies also apply here). Clearly that is worth your time as an author to go after these creeps too.
As a practical matter, any commercial republication of GFDL content will only cover the basic cost of the printing itself and a modest overhead to help pay for the effort. And in a really strange twist of events, as a professor you are certainly within your means to take everything down to Kinko's (or other "on demand" publisher/photo copy business) and have your students purchase the stuff there, as was done ages ago until some of the commercial textbook publishers started to complain and filed a lawsuit against Kinkos. Here at Wikibooks we do perform copyright vetting of the content and have established procedures to remove content that is in violation of copyright, whatever that reason might be. This is perfectly legal, although your local Kinko's may be a bit perplexed at the suggestion and may have a manager that doesn't understand free content like this. Or you can put a book on "reserve" and allow students to copy it at the college library. This is not only legal but encouraged. I promise that any commercial publishing will be considerably cheaper than going to the copy center.
As far as maintaining a static version that is stable for the duration of a semister or other similar situation, we have some tools available to help with that. In addition to "fixing" the content on PDF files and other such work-arounds, we can also block editing on a page for the purpose of making a stable version. This has been talked about in the past, and is something that has been seriously considered for our sister project, Wikipedia, that would gave a more stable version for public consumption and an unstable version that is being edited and proofread that would then be moved to the "stable" version after it has been accepted, however that process is decided. For example, this move from the "unstable" to "stable" version of the page can happen once a semister. There are other tools available, and it is just a matter of what you want to have done here. Having a stable version is very much in keeping with general Wikibooks philosophies. --Rob Horning 16:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Rob - That's a very encouraging response. The licensing stuff didn't worry me overmuch, but it's nice to hear your confidence. The possibility of a stable version that updates periodically is, I think, pretty essential to using a text for an active course.
I've given this project plenty of thought over the last couple of weeks (and really for over a year). Right now, I've got a full MediaWiki server running on my own machine. I'm going to teach the course this semester, and slowly move the book to that private server as we go. This way I avoid artist rights issues, unstable course material, and licensing issues for the time being. During the spring or start of summer, we'll come back and invite Rob, whiteknight, and other kind souls who've offered assistance to take a look at what we've got. That will give us some time to resolve these issues without the pressure of student use, and I think that seeing what this "book" looks like will help you guys as well. Since it's already going to be set up for MediaWiki, it shouldn't be too hard to bring it over at that point.
Bryanclair 22:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion on consensus

Wanting to archive the RfA that this was attached to I'm copying the discussion here so that it can be seen and continued if desired --Herby talk thyme 13:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Humm this should probably be posted on Whiteknight talk page but here it goes as it may be important to the other users...

I start by stating that I don't object to the Az1568 being made an administrator (not since the input from Swift, txs), but I think the method is laking, since there was a vote against, no consensus was reached "This user is now a sysop. 7 votes for, 1 against, 1 abstain. Objections not withstanding" this is plainly wrong, or am I missing something ? (btw sysop = system operator is not equal to administrator as an user with "some" administrative rights, to be true co-sysop would approximate better the status update) --Panic 18:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what you said regarding the word "sysop", but consensus can happen even without 100% approval. An opposition was made, a sufficient rebuttal provided, and no further objection was received. Dropping a single vote in can't be a show-stopper and the amount of positive, supporting input outweighed it. -withinfocus 01:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll explain the sysop part in your talk. But on the "consensus" bit, can you point me to definition of "consensus" that doesn't state it as the complete agreement of all parties ?!? (100% in favor or against something), even if a sufficient rebuttal is given that doesn't end the discussion process until all voters/participants agree in all points, in this particular case, until I declare agreement and change my vote. if you don't agree please move this discussion (my posts and yours to Wikibooks_talk:Decision_making/Unstable, txs). --Panic 02:10, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
You have raised an interesting point. The definition of consensus is that all parties agree and one disenting vote means it fails. Until now though it had generally been understood that a good majority was all that was needed. I suggest that voting rules be updated to show that a high majority is needed rather than consensus. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 04:06, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
We really should move this talk to the proper forum, I agree that there needs to be a more clear use of Wikibooks policies and guidelines (it his my view that a large percentage of people don't understand some and don't particularly care, I'll put it bluntly, basic concepts or have even problems interpreting the GFDL). I'll strongly object for a change of that nature, consensus is a very good policy, especially in a situation like we have here at Wikibooks (or other Wikimedia projects), some people with more time and more diplomatic skill could create a power base and control the community evolution, this has already occurred in the past, even to me, so I can't agree with that solution. (Haven't you seen Survivor ?!?, with decisions based on consensus they would probably starve but this method here provides a voice to every one and there are problems with user identification and people voting more than one time). --Panic 04:30, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
No need to reply, but if you move it, please copy and paste; don't "move". — User:Iamunknown 04:43, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Consensus is not the same thing as unanimous agreement. The definition in Wiktionary is only one definition (and not a correct one IMHO.) A single individual should not be able to prevent arrival at consensus. In arriving at consensus all points of view are thoughtfully considered. Then individuals agree to take action based on the discussion. (See w:consensus) has consideration been given to the objection? Yes. --xixtas 13:13, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
xixtas said this correctly with a slight modification. Parties must be agreement, but that does not mean that all votes need to read Support by them. For instance, you raised an objection and it was addressed. I personally found the response satisfactory and you did not return in a timely manner to continue your objection. It's not fair to throw a wrench in and then take however long you want to respond. The bureaucrat that takes action must make a decision if consensus is achieved. Perhaps it is labeled a bit misleadingly, but the one oppose vote here had been countered and then discontinued, so I personally see that as consensus. Making everyone re-write votes to say Support is not helpful and unnecessary when agreement can be judged by a trusted bureaucrat of the project. -withinfocus 15:01, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I find myself in agreement with the ideas of xixtas and Withinfocus here and the link to Wikipedia is useful too. In practice no organisation that wishes to grow and evolve will be able to get full agreement for changes (and change is necessary). I would even take the point about bureaucrats making the judgment a little further. Any user can make judgments - similarly those judgments can be reversed. I was closing VfDs for some time before becoming an admin - anyone can do it but they must be prepared to justify their actions. Indeed I read on WP very recently that (with AfDs there) an admin is not looking just at the number of votes but also the quality of the arguments. I closed a VfD as delete recently where there was not an overwhelming majority of votes for delete. However - in my view - that was the correct decision BUT I will happily listen to anyone with other views - that is working towards consensus which is vital for a community. However, while I would prefer everyone to be happy with any decisions, a single vote cannot prevent that consensus. My 0.02 --Herby talk thyme 15:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The process of arriving at formal consensus can be found at Wikibooks:Decision_making#Process. Consensus is not strictly 100% agreement. Kellen T 15:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Consensus isn't the same thing as unanimity... it's unlikely to have a bunch of human beings agree totally on any particular point. Quakers have long used consensus, and an interesting bit from that article:
"A decision is reached when the Meeting as a whole feels that the "way forward" has been discerned (also called "coming to unity") or there is a concensus. Occasionally, some members of the Meeting will "stand aside" on an issue, meaning that these members do not share in the general sense of the meeting but are willing to allow the group to move forward."
Sometimes meetings even "split" because 2 groups of opinions cannot be reconciled... just as there are other meetings, there are other wikis. If a minority view is unwilling to go in the direction the community wishes to go in, the community goes forward anyway (easier for quakers of course, we don't have a "mystical understanding to guide us). --SB_Johnny | talk 16:03, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Consensus isn't the same thing as unanimity, since unanimity doesn't support neutral votes (as per your example), consensus also conveys a sense of discussion, and don't particularly calls for a vote, debate, unanimity deals only with votes and the final result.
When one says a decision was reached by consensus, one should understand it that after a debate a point won with no one objecting.
Example, in the discussions about proposals to give administrators rights, the proposal should only need objecting votes, as "I propose this and that, does any one object" if a person objects then a discussion is proper (but may not reach consensus), a voting may only be useful to demonstrate to the debating parties how the rest of the community feels about the topic.
When one says a decision was reached by unanimity, one understands that all parties voted yes or no on a given topic. --Panic 16:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Of interest: Honeybees use a consensus process when choosing a new nest. [1]
I would agree that consensus hasn't really been reached until all objections have been addressed -- to the satisfaction of the people who raised them -- or objectors have acquiesced to the consensus. But a key part of the consensus process is that people who see that their preference has no support do eventually acquiesce. I don't think we can have a bona fide consensus process here at Wikibooks because we have just too many people with a "my way or the highway" mindset. The rules we have come really close to it, though, and the practical result is the same as long as the discussion is allowed to continue long enough. Brian Brondel 23:36, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup, the main problem here using consensus as a method is the lack of general interest most discussions get here, this can easily lead to a stale mate (with in itself is not really a problem, this will only lead to less innovation and a default resistance to changes), if we had more people expressing their views it would be easier to get all parties to agree as it is, specific interest groups are generated that try to push they own agendas and most prefer doing that without other having a change to make objections. I would like the interpretation of consensus to be stated on the decision policy, and I take this change of referring to my proposal to reduce the scope of those involved on discussions, like the proper definition of book communities etc... (see the talk page). --Panic 03:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
In concensus decision-making, not only the quantity of votes but also the quality of votes must be considered. 7 to 1 is a very strong majority, but a majority alone doesnt make concensus. Current policy lays out certain requirements to become a sysop (and admittedly those requirements are vague). Votes that say "This user meets the requirements in the policy" are more powerful votes then people who say "This user is awesome, i like him". Likewise, a vote that says "This user doesnt meet certain requirements and is unlikely to be a good admin" is more powerful then a vote that says "I don't like this user for some arbitrary reason", or even "I dont think we should have (more) admins", or whatever. your objection aside, Panic, Az had 7 votes in favor (which is more then many admins have when they are elected), he does meet the requirements in the policy, and I dont think there have been any good reasons set forth why he shouldnt have been promoted. If you would like to discuss my actions or my decisions in the future, please do so on my user talk page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sysop Status

This whole issue regarding a "sysop" is something that was perpetuated by the MediaWiki developers. The idea that administrator == sysop is something that has historical roots, and is a cause of a huge amount of confusion, particuarly if you start to dig into the MediaWiki documentation.

Typically somebody with "sysop" privileges would be somebody who has root access to the computer equipment... or more likely a "system operator" who is physically present in front of the computer itself and has the ultimate authority on the computer... mainly the ability to yank out the power cord and reboot the computer. On older mainframe systems this was generally considered a person of privilege as well, as a sysop in this context had the ability to control content on the system by deleting content and changing user privileges. Keep in mind that once upon a time there was only three levels of users for Wikimedia projects: anon user, "regular" registered users, and sysops. And for a time many of the "sysops" were also hard core software developers who indeed had at least software level access to the Wikimedia computers who are now termed "developers" instead in the grand heirarchy.

Unfortunately the current "keyword" that establishes user categories on Wikimedia projects and granting access to "administrator" tools is currently called "sysop". Yes, this can cause confusion to no end and is something that unfortunately is very poorly documented. No, when you become what we call an "admin" you don't get sysop privileges (or root acess) to the Wikimedia server farm, but you certainly have the ability to make some significant changes that other more ordinary users don't have access to.

Really, a much better term (had it been established back elsewhen) would have been the term "moderator" instead of "administrator" or "sysop". On Wikiversity the term has been changed to "Custodian", which in some ways really fits better than the term "administrator". That is BTW one of my contributions to Wikiversity that I'm actually proud of. There is historical inertia to changing the name here on Wikibooks, and really gets things confused when talking to people on other projects (especially Wikipedia) if you started to change the terminology here on Wikibooks.

While the term "sysop" is very quick shorthand for those who are long-time users on Wikimedia projects (I understand the context, for example), we need to be mindful that not everybody here understand what is going on. This is something I was very confused with myself... even when I was made an administrator back elsewhen. --Rob Horning 17:46, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

We've been (half-jokingly) discussing this on IRC... "Librarian" might be better for us. --SB_Johnny | talk 17:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Tanks, for the historic background, I didn't know about that.
We should avoid to use terms that aren't "defined" on Wikibooks, with especial care to policies and guidelines...
Btw are you (User:Robert Horning or User talk:SBJohnny) proposing a change to the term "administrator" here also ? --Panic 17:59, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
No proposal as of this date, as far as I know. --SB_Johnny | talk 18:04, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the selective archival schema at the Staff lounge

As I was comparing comparing the staff lounge archives to the staff lounge history page – merely out of curiosity – I noticed that the current practice ends up with a lot of posts being de-contextualised. They end up out of order specifically because some discussions go longer than others, and those short-lived ones get archived before the long-lived ones do. I really don't think that this is appropriate. Some comments are posted here specifically because of a previous post, and for an interested user, shuffling the texts around is not helpful. I copied the page headings to the current archive and pasted three conversations in there for starters. I hope this continues. — User:Iamunknown 07:39, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Something needs to be done. I no longer read or watch the Staff lounge because it's a mess and impossible to follow. My suggestion would be to have a central Staff section which links off to other pages like 'Administrators Talk', 'Policy Talk', 'General Talk' and provides links to every important section so that users can report vandalism in the correct place rather than on this page. Any ideas? Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 14:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
This might be a good idea. Discussion does abound on this page and it could make it easier to follow and find topics if it were split up. I'm not sure what the proper split should be, though. It seems that the topics are many and overlapping, but I think we should avoid breaking it up too much in order to keep it simple.
I recently redefined the scope of the Study help desk and think we could even solve some of our problems by directing general inquiries about WB practices there, leaving the SL for in-house discussions (i.e. policy + general) — for admin talk, there is already the Wikibooks:Administrators'_noticeboard. --Swift 22:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
How about archiving discussions in order of their start-date? --Swift 22:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
herr , Wouldn't this force the archiving of still running discussions ? I agree with User:Swift that a fragmentation of this page based on topics (on the scope of the discussion) will have to occur sooner or later... It will also provide a history for already debated topics (not based only on dates)--Panic 00:05, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
No. What I meant was that discussions could be placed in the archives depending on their start-date, not based on when they are archived. The archiver would thus not append the archived topic to the current archive, but place according to a time order — following topics with earlier original posts in that archive, and preceding later ones. --Swift 01:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
In that case I'm not against nor in favor, but this seems a task that over a time only bots would have the time to perform, the acceptance of such policy should depend on the bot source to be publicly available, this also seem to imply that no archiving may be done by humans (prone to errors and with a high level of difficulty to cross check) --Panic 01:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
That's what I had in mind, Swift. I copied all the headings from the this version of the lounge to the current archive and pasted three convos in there. Of course, right now there are way too many headings in there, and they will have to be moved to a new archive when the time comes, but I hope it is a start.
Panic: It would be very nice to have a bot to archive the conversations. But a bot could not know when a conversation is finished. Even if it scraped the page history to see when the last time a conversation was added to, some conversations die down a little and then flare up. But if it were an semi-automatic bot operated by a user, that would be nice. :)
What would be the most convenient, though, would be if each conversation were created as a sub-page and then added to everyone's watchlist that elected to do so. That would, however, require a new feature. I imagine if all of the English Wikibooks went to Bugzilla and voted for the bug, then the developers would do it. But that would be a ways off. — User:Iamunknown 17:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's a thought, what if we simply just stop archiving? Just delete old discussions from the page as they are finished. Provide a link to the FAQs to the top of this page and update that list as questions become more frequent and suggest people read the FAQs first before asking any questions. --darkYin yang.svglama 01:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

That would be great but the problem is that history pages can't (at the moment) be searched (I think this is the only justification for archival). --Panic 01:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I think that a major issue is getting folk pointed to the places they need to go - if they can't find anywhere they ask here. Admin notice board is not used much and there are places where policy dicussion takes place. I don't find the "sidebox" at the top informative or appealing (and when you get there the stuff is somewhat out of date by and large even by WB standards!) - better signposting might help? --Herby talk thyme 08:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
The best way I can see to go about it is to split this page in several subtopics (reusing existing and related pages if and when possible), people that think very strongly or are having troubles dealing with the length this page can reach can and should probably do a mockup for a proposal, as examples, we can use this location for a simple menu where other pages are selected or we can even use a top menu to subpages and transclude all pages to here so people may use both solutions and provide equal visibility to all subpages, just some ideas... --Panic 19:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SVG → PNG bug?

G'day, I just created a few simple SVG files using code on this page, to replace the PNG versions of the examples. All OK, except for the text example - Image:XML example text.svg - which doesn't render. The image itself will download and display just fine on Firefox 2.0 but nothing shows on pages with this image embedded in them. I'm picking that this is a bug in the SVG → PNG rendering software - can anyone confirm? Is it being addressed, or do I need to simply work around it? cheers, Webaware 02:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

While I cannot point you to any bug listing at Bugzilla or a specific page at Commons, I do distinctly remember reading that fonts are not really supported by the MediaWiki SVG renderer. Many SVG artists on Commons do not use fonts at all, but instead convert them to paths. As evidence (of lack of support in general), please look at this page where it says that "The servers cannot render all types of SVG features, so the generated PNGs are sometimes not as the author intended." — User:Iamunknown 17:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for chasing that up, I hadn't seen that page. It sounds like it should be able to do it (it handles more complex images with text) but appears to have some problem with some SVG images with text, including this simple one. I've resurrected the PNG version for now as it isn't really a problem that needs solving at present. cheers, Webaware 01:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Final Word" clause (proposal)

(discussion copied from Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks/Unstable)

There was one previously, but it appears to have been removed. I want to reinstitute the "final word" clause into this document. Wikibooks policy and guidelines are fragmented, as in it is distributed among multiple documents. It is very possible for one policy to disagree with another policy. Considering the amount of change that has happened in terms of policy recently, and considering the massive age disparities between some of our newest and some of our oldest policy documents, I think it's important that we have something that is the "final word", that is something that trumps any other document in the event of a contradiction. I propose therefore the addition of the following text (barring revision) to the "Enforcement" section of this policy:

Any clause in a policy or guideline on the English Wikibooks that contradicts this policy is null and void.

I think this is an important addition. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Best to change it to Any policy or guideline on the English Wikibooks, approved before this one, that contradicts it will be null and void on the conflicting point(s) and should be marked for revision., since we rarely (I can't remember once) did vote a police clause/point by point. This should probably be added not only to this policy but to any policy we adopt/change in the future, this should cover all bases. --Panic 02:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I dont think we need to specify only policies that are approved beforehand. We could very easily approve a new policy that contradicts this one, and we still need some kind of final authority when a contradiction occurs. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
So... The changes I propose to the phrase clearly state that only the points in conflict will be void (as in the ones that should be fallowed are on the present policy), that's basically the same as in you proposal, the change also states priority, the last approved changes/policy will have an higher priority. (the last text discussed and approved might if conflicts arise be taken as the final word of the community, it goes even further proposing for a new discussion on that specific problematic point, I can't see how more complete it can be made.) --Panic 04:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I propose extending the idea of User:Whiteknight so that all new policies get the information added from now on. This will resolve any future interpretation problems on the specific case of conflicting rules in general. --Panic 05:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

As an addendum to the proposal, I ask that next to that phrase, the close date of the discussion that validated the text should be included (policy texts are often changed due to the Wikibooks:Be_bold rule without changing the policy in itself but making the text history confusing).

Policy discussion closed by <signature>, if the policy was closed before as Revised Policy discussion closed by <signature>, this is important also for historical reasons. --Panic 05:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Any objections or counter proposal ? --Panic 01:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

While your point makes some sense, from what I've seen I disagree your phrasing is clear about what is invalidated, there is also the matter of interpretation that could be the source of disagreements if we allow some parts to be valid while other parts to no longer be so. I believe it would be better to make an entire policy invalid rather then leaving room for personal interpretation of whats policy still and whats not. I don't have any issue that I can think of with the idea of including from now on the date of when a proposal became a policy or guideline and who turned it into one, if that is what your suggesting. --darkYin yang.svglama 01:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
A few points. First off, a discussion is never truely "closed" in the sense that a decision made is final. All discussions can be continued ad infinitem, or they can be picked up again at any time by any user. My point with the final word clause in the policy is that different documents change at different rates. WB:WIW, for instance, is a policy that has historically been very slow to change (perhaps because of it's importance). That's part of the reason why the current discussion on it appears to be going nowhere (or going somewhere painfully slowly). Consider (just as an example), that the deletion policy is expanded to allow for the deletion of videogame guides. In this case, the WB:WIW policy wouldn't be in agreement with the deletion policy, and we would be in a worse situation. To solve this problem, we make certain documents more important then other documents. As an analog (and forgive me that it's a strictly american analog), the US constitution is the final word in US law, but there are plenty of other law documents that are produced to deal with the fine points. If we set up WB:WIW to be our "constitution", then it will be the final word, and all other policy documents will be ancillary to it. That's my rationale for this clause. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:03, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup User:Darklama as it is, it falls to the disagreeing party (the one that thinks there is a conflict) to initiate discussion of the conflict on the oldest page (as it is anyone can ask for any policy to be re-analyzed) so in that regard we are safe. --Panic 07:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I have added the proposed and still not objected wording, with a small modification (changed the objected "discussion close" to "stage finished") to cover User:Whiteknight point to the Wikibooks:Deletion policy/Unstable if there is still any divergence lets continue this discussion there. Txs. --Panic 07:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Arabic verbs

Dear Sirs,

I am studying Arabic and I am looking for books on Arabic verb conjugation. Can you help?

Thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dampa (talk • contribs) 11:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikibooks, Dampa. First of all, this type of question goes in the Reference desk. Please take the time to read the instructions at the top of the discussion pages before posting. It may sometimes take a little while to find, but pretty much everything here is documented.
Secondly, you can start by using the search function: there is a little text field, by default on the left hand side of your browser window, where you can enter search terms. Entering "Arabic" and hitting "Go" will take you to the Arabic book, but hitting "Search" will give you a number of search results. You can also try other queries, such as "Arabic conjugation". --Swift 12:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Urantia United

Shouldn’t your main page be changed? It states: “Welcome to Wikibooks, a collection of free content textbooks that you can edit”. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain (Wikipedia). I edited every page of the Urantia Book (now in the public domain) with the approval of The International Urantia Assn., and called it Urantia United so it would appeal to all religions. It is not my own original work, but the Urantia Book was credited.(authors unknown) Why is it up for deletion? I read your contradictory requirements and intended to comply. It is a work in progress. Kkawohl 00:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)kkawohl

Wikibooks is a collection of free-content textbooks. One argument, as I see by reading the section at WB:VFD, is that this text reads not as a textbook would and should, but as a personal essay. While this reason alone does not discredit the text in any way, it is a reason to not include it on Wikibooks. As you said, Wikibooks is for textbooks.
Also, concerns have been raised that, if you are the founder of Transcendentalism Today, Org., that you may have a conflict of interest in writing this Wikibook. Furthermore, this material appears to have been deleted twice before. While consensus can change, any person reposting deleted content should probably counsel with an experienced user before they recreate to ensure that it is distinctly different and appropriate.
Also, while it is appropriate to post texts when one has person from their copyright owner, you must have proof. And if this text is a source text (which I infer from your comment that it is) then it should go on Wikisource.
All that being said, you may be right in identifying our policies as contradictory. That we are trying to work on right now. And I hope that you understand that whatever happens to the text, you are still welcome around here. :) Cheers, User:Iamunknown 01:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the major issues with this content that you are adding is that it is, unfortunately, unverifiable. I know that is a fuzzy standard to apply, but one of the key premises that we have to content here on Wikibooks is that it must be verifiable in some fashion. We do have a standard here that relates to what we call "Original Research". Our current guidelines are found here: Wikibooks:Original research It should also be noted that this is based off of the Wikipedia policy with a similar general philosophy: w:Wikipedia:No original research
This policy is currently being debated, with some thoughts about how much we should allow on this project in terms of allowing some original thoughts within a Wikibook. Philosophical books such as yours are particularly vague in reference to this policy, especially very new philosophies like yours that don't have anything even resembling a wide body of literature about the topic.
I should also note here that Wikibooks is not a vanity publisher. While you are certainly free to edit and add content here, there are some basic standards that we are trying to achieve. Keep in mind that the primary emphasis of Wikibooks, particularly over this past year, is to work in creating standards-based textbooks. In particular we would like to cover things that would involve secondary education and collegete level textbooks, but other instructional materials are strongly encouraged. It is particularly important if you want to see content remain here on Wikibooks that you provide a rationale related to these sort of textbooks as to why your content should be compared favorably to that sort of content. Describe what sort of school would be using a book about Urantia United? --Rob Horning 17:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] User Arbitration

Due to some issues between a few users and some apparent edit wars going on, I've decided to take on the whole situation as an arbitration "case".

In many ways, this is very unfortunate, but it is starting to spill over into the rest of Wikibooks and has raised the stress level for just about everybody who is involved with developing Wikibooks in general. I had hoped that this could be resolved in a less formal atmosphere, but that apparently is no longer a reasonable option. Instead, it is now taking place on this page:

Wikibooks:Arbitration/Panic2k4 vs. SBJohnny

This is a preceedent setting situation here on Wikibooks, and I hope that once this particular situation is resolved that we can more calmly come up with a formal process similar to what I've outlined to deal with these situations in the future. This is being added here to the Staff Lounge mainly as a notice that this arbitration is happening, particularly because we have never done something like this before.

The alternative really is that Jimbo comes in here and makes a mess out of everything, banning several users from this project and creating a considerable degree of ill will. I hope this can be something that will eventually help out Wikibooks in the long run, and air out some long standing issues that do in fact need to be resolved with Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 20:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] template links

Hello, why when i edit a page, i don't have the links to the templates which are included in the page ? Is it a bug or a feature of en.wikibooks ? 83.179.44.120 21:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oversight permission

A useful permission called oversight does not have any users here at en.wikibooks. I find this to be a very useful permission to have here and would like to request that all three Bureaucrats here gain that right. Does anyone see any problems with this or have other users who would like such a tool? Thanks. -withinfocus 01:25, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd looked at this myself. Brief thoughts - would it actually be needed at all often? Certainly if we are looking for one I would favour two so that there is a checker. If others were reluctant due to time commitments it would not worry me to have the permission --Herby talk thyme 08:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I think there's plenty of names and other personal information being written in multiple places as well as other vandalism that should go. It wouldn't hurt to have this as vandalism has definitely ramped up here in the past few months. -withinfocus 21:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
According to meta:Hiding revisions
"This feature is approved for use in three cases:
  1. "Removal of nonpublic personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public, or of public individuals who have not made that personal information public.
  2. "Removal of potentially libellous information either: a) on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or b) when the subject has specifically asked for the information to be expunged from the history, the case is clear, and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
  3. "Removal of copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel"
And I agree with this. Oversight should be used only in a very select number of situations. I do not think that it should be used to remove vandalism from history or remove names and other personal information written about people by themselves, though it would be appropriate to remove personally identifiable information written about people without their permission.
I also would like to point out the pros and cons of having multiple users with oversight permission. At first I thought we would not need three. But thinking more, it might be appropriate to have three. That way, the users can check on what the other two are doing. This is necessary because the oversight logs are not public. Only other oversight users can see them. I don't know, though, what I support – yet — User:Iamunknown 00:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I still think I would consider using oversight when a user writes personal information about him/herself here. Listing your address, phone number, etc. really isn't appropriate on our site I would think since I don't really know its usefulness. We're not writing personal works here that we hold copyright over and need to be linked to. I am not sure if any Wikimedia policies specifically allow or forbid this listing of personal information, but it seems dangerous to do to me. -withinfocus 17:17, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

You obviously have not looked at a number of pages that contain adverts with personal information on that we are "hosting" here. Not a comment on "oversight" but on personal information --Herby talk thyme 17:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

What sort of information is being displayed then? I frown at putting those kinds of things online. Do we as users here need to handle the protection of users that put this sort of stuff online? There is WB:WIW that touches on that and I would think we need to remove that sort of information here. -withinfocus 17:28, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I still think I would consider using oversight when a user writes personal information about him/herself here. For one thing, that is explicitly against wikimedia policy. "'Removal of nonpublic personal information' such as phone numbers, home addresses, workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals 1) who have not made their identity public, or 2) of public individuals who have not made that personal information public." People, whether working under pseudonyms or working in public, who post their own personal information online are making their identity public.
Secondly, personally identifiable information is necessary to establish ownership of copyright. While you may work under a pseudonym, you must, at some point, establish your true identity so that you can claim ownership of your works. And you have to be able to contacted so that said supplied information is verifiable. I am now getting wary about letting giving oversight permission to anyone — User:Iamunknown 01:17, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

As I view on the problem.
1) is there a guideline that details what personal informations a user may or may not use in references to another?
(if not one should be created)
2) has anyone requested that personal information to be removed permanently from pages ?
3) author pages and userpages should be protected from removal of personal information (unless requested by the subject or after ownership of the data is verified).
4) before giving the rights a guideline should be created and adopted here on how users with "oversight" rights should exert their function.
I don't see a need for the granting of "oversight" rights to more than a user, this user should have a good record of being active on Wikibooks and should have CheckUser rights (should accumulate both rights), if a problem arises that such function is needed then we should see if there is a need for having more people with the "oversight" right and a more evolved definition for the problem, this will be a preventive action that would solve an immediate problem if it arises. --Panic 01:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I find some of that to be a poor decision since there are plenty of people who list way too much about their personal lives online, but oh well. -withinfocus 17:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Who are we to impose limits or restrictions of how a person want to disclose that kind of data if not in a abusive way?
This falls under personal rights and we should educate but let people do as they wish if not in violation of other users rights, I don't like treating people like ignorants we should first try to enlighten users about a possible problem, the solution I gave would do all that if you have a better way to go about it, please extend your comments on it... --Panic 17:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
That seems fine to me. I think that was mostly part of the plan anyway, but attaching Checkuser onto it could prove helpful. Having more than one oversight user can't hurt anything if we trust him/her. -withinfocus 00:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Let me make a few points about this. First off, there are people with oversight, just none on this project. For instance, any of the stewards could be asked to come in here and use oversight on our project, after a private request. This means, essentially, that whether we vote to allow users with the permission here, there are people who can do it anyway. With that in mind, it's not an issue as to whether we want people to use oversight, but whether or not we want the people who do use it to be members of our project (and not outsiders).
If we want to have the permissions at all, it would be wise to have more then one. Given the nature of oversight, when it is time to use it (hopefully a rare occasion), it should probably be used immediately. If sensitive information is on our server, it should be removed quickly to prevent too many people reading it. I propose therefore that people who get oversight should be active at different times of day (likely live in different time zones), and that they should be very active. The current active bureaucrats might be a good pool to choose from initially, but I personally won't accept any new permissions without the community voting on them individually (ie, they would have to vote to give me specifically the permissions, not just "active bureaucrats").
Finally, bureaucrats can rename users, an ability that isn't used frequently, but that has been used in the past. Occasionally, a person may use their real name as their screenname ("user:John smith"), not realizing that this name is going to be used all over the internet, and everybody is going to know that person's real name. In these cases, users typically ask to be renamed to something more cryptic, but some references to that person's real name will still exist in the database. Without oversight, there is nothing we can do to remove it.
As to the issue with publishing and copyright, i think it's a moot point: we currently dont publish, and we dont defend copyright. Even if we did, we can't force people to have their real names and contact information available for public reading. Some people would rather not list their real names then try to defend their copyrights here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
As to the issue with publishing and copyright, i think it's a moot point I think that's a moot point. You missed my stated objective: to point out a case where publishing personally identifiable information is necessary.
I think your point that we (the project) should be able to react quickly to cases where oversight is a good point. Given your logic, we should have multiple users with oversight permission. As long as users with oversight agree to abide by Wikimedia policy and not hide conciously added personally identifiable information or vandalism, I will support this. Though I guess I'll never know if they hide these things or if they break policy. Maybe we should create a soft redirect from [[Wikipdia:Oversight]] to meta:Hiding revisions — User:Iamunknown 05:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pressing need for this ability

I am again disappointed by some individuals who come up with a policy governing all Wikipedia projects, particularly when it is poorly written, such as these oversight policies seem to be. And they seem to come from some individuals very paranoid about privacy issues, thinking you can legislate privacy.

A key part of this "oversight" privilege is really quite simple. It allows the user to permanently delete content. Nothing more, and nothing less. It is recommended that the purpose of doing this is for protecting privacy and culling permanently copyright violations, and that this ability should be given to the most trusted members of the community, making sure that it is not inappropriately used for something like an edit war.

As far as the policy to "Remove copyright violations on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel", I think that is patently absurd. Projects like Wikibooks already have copyright violation policies, and a notice that content will be deleted if you can't document that you in fact have copyright permission for using that content. At the moment, I can only find one instance that w:WP:OFFICE has been invoked here on Wikibooks, and even that I find somewhat dubious. As admins we certainly don't have regular access to Brad Patrick or any other legal counsel, unless there is a barrister or attorney lurking here somewhere? Certainly nobody that would be willing to stick their neck out legally even for the most eggregious and blatant copyright violations. Nor should we be expected to either.

At the same time, I think it is very reasonable for somebody to be able to permanently delete these copyright violations that we do find from time to time on Wikibooks. As has been frequently mentioned in the past on mailing lists and other fora about this topic, the current admin "delete" action really doesn't remove the content. This oversight ability would allow for these sort of very permanent deletions that would completely get rid of the illegal content.

On a more general note, and perhaps something instead to throw up on Bugzilla: I, as an administrator, would really appreciate a simplier method to selectively delete some edits from a page. Particularly to cull out blatant vandalism (they need no credit on page histories, for instance), but again also to remove copyright violations that are only on a portion of the page and not the whole thing. In theory this is possible with current admin privileges, but it is a pain to do so right now. It appears as though the oversight privilege also gives an easier time to selectively delete specific edits.

As far as culling private information such as a government ID number (aka SSN), birthdate, or other information from the edit history (when requested by the user who is so identified or because of inadvertant disclosure), that is a totally seperate policy issue. I think there are valid reasons to want to have some information like this removed, but it would generally be a rare circumstance. There are also some very valid reasons why some personally identifying information can be voluntarily published, particularly for copyright enforcement, so a blanket prohibition of publishing personally identifiable information is not necessarily needed or should even be wanted.

While the privacy issue may be something that is time-critical, it isn't so much for copyright violations. Various common carrier laws (applying to ISPs like the Wikimedia Foundation in this case) allow for a "reasonable length of time" to be used before the content is removed. The current Wikibooks policies in WB:DP is more than sufficient to cover these cases. --Rob Horning 22:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I, as an administrator, would really appreciate a simplier method to selectively delete some edits from a page. ← Well said. Recently, a user was asking for imports of wp articles related to the Holocaust... some of them had hundreds of vandal edits (to the point where the import tool couldn't work!), which don't belong in the history of those articles. Even just a "select all" button for page restoration would be a step in the right direction, so we could just unselect the vandal edits rather than having to select every version we want restored (for example, if someone vandalizes the Staff Lounge, there's no reasonable way to remove that edit as it stands now). Something like this would be an excellent addition to the B'crats' toolboxes. --SB_Johnny | talk 23:53, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly continuing this?

Wikibooks:Requests_for_adminship#Requests_for_Oversight_permission although I see this as seeking clarification prior to voting. That said based on Meta I'm not sure this will go ahead --Herby talk thyme 17:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks portal searchbox leads to Wikipedia

Is it just me, or did this get broken recently? When I go to http://wikibooks.org and type a query in the search box, I get taken to a Wikipedia page, not a Wikibooks page. This makes no sense at all to me. Hope it's corrected ASAP. --Everlong 01:35, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not just you. It's an annoying problem that we've had for a while and which I dont think is going to get fixed any time soon. sorry. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
In that case, shouldn't the search box be removed from the portal page until a remedy is found? It's misleading to visitors to leave the search box there unless it works as they'll assume it should. The portals for Wikiquote, Wikisource, etc use the same layout as the Wikibooks portal, just minus the search box. --Everlong 04:56, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The portal page unfortunately is not under the control of people here. The portal page is maintained by people at Meta, and communication between us and them is sparce. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks for DUMMIES?

I find all of the instructions here extremely complicated and confusing. I have been unable to accomplish what should probably be two easy tasks, and I am quite frustrated because of the amount of time I have spent trying to figure them out. In both cases, I have read all the instructions and tried and retried the procedures several times and in several ways.

I cannot figure out how to put my new book American Literature on a book shelf. The instuctions basically tell you just to do it. I have gone to the bookshelves page and clicked on every possible link but cannot find a way to add a book title to the list.

I have also tried and tried to put a picture from the Commons on a page, and it just won't work. I would love to have a picture of Robert Frost on the American Literature/20th Century/Robert Frost page and a picture of Langston Hughes on the American Literature/20th Century/Langston Hughes page. I have folowed the instructions and even cut and pasted the command from other Wikibooks and Wikipedia pages, but nothing worked. Instead of a picture I get a box with the file name in it and a request for the license information.

So could somebody tell me in simple and clear English how to do these things or do them for me? Logophile 08:41, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree, our help pages are rather unhelpful. I'll take care of the bookshelf issue (and the images if possible... Commons would almost certainly have those). --SB_Johnny | talk 19:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
To link an image from Commons you don't have to do anything except put the image name between double square brackets.
[[Image:Commons-logo.PNG]]

Commons-logo.PNG
More information can be found at Help Editing Images --xixtas 19:27, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moving Text

How can i space text out so that it matches position with corresponding text on the page?

View My problem Gears of War/The Cogs Basejumper123 23:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Game guides

Just noticed the elephant sitting in the corner of the room!!

Firstly Panic drew this one to my attention Ghost_Online/Monster as copyvio etc etc (I agree). Then Gears_of_War_Guide/Table_of_Contents this one from Panic, Az1568 (&I'd already watchlisted it). However I notice that Final Fantasy 1, VII, X and XI have all been "transwiki'd according to policy" (tho not all tagged the same). BUT IV, VI and VII (at the very least) are all still being worked on (and redlinks exist for others). Frankly "daft" is the politest I get here.

I am not a "policy" person but this does needs sorting for users, admins and people interested in contributing. I shall get grumpy if it isn't - you have been warned --Herby talk thyme 12:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have come across those quite a lot. I think we should have one single template for all the Wikibooks that have been moved out of here so that the template can be standardised and so that we can have one category instead of four ones. :-)
And frankly, I dislike the "according to policy" clause because the policies (as we have been seeing lately) are open for interpretation. And I also think that we should create a link (in the template I hope is created) from the word "transwiki." It's not exactly a common word, and it would be appropriate to define.
Furthermore, if you're asking that we should either delete all games guides now or let them all remain here, I am somewhat opposed to that. (That is how I interpret your post. Please correct me if I am wrong.) It appears that many of the guides move by the will of their contributors. I generally dislike brutally pushing the texts through process.
Those are some of my thoughts. User:Iamunknown 13:10, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the gaming guides, there still is no "official" policy on Wikibooks that governs this sort of content, including WB:WIW. I tried to push the development of the proposed policy Wikibooks:Game textbook guidelines, but that policy has been strongly suggested that is simply be deleted due to the fact that "game guides" are no longer on Wikibooks. I did point out that there certainly were legitimate Wikibooks that could be perhaps added to this project covering games (Chess is a noted example), but it would have to cover much more than simply a walk-through of the game and a macropedia of topics in the game. It really is something more about the quality of the content rather than a specific ban of the content.
As for left over remains like what you have shown that was moved to the Strategy Wiki, perhaps some of that need to go. Most of these images are a copyvio as well, even though fair-use is being claimed on them, which was also a significant problem with many of the video game Wikibooks in the past. --Rob Horning 22:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
There really isnt any kind of policy on this matter to help us out either way. The general feeling of the community i think (and my personal opinion on the matter) is to generally let the sleeping dogs lay. However, we need to remember that these "dogs" are in a precarious position, and they very well could be forced out of the wikibooks project in the future if we dont all just ignore them. The problem is that we have had problems in the past, especially a notable one where Jimbo himself left a message saying that videogame guides needed to be deleted. Because of all the drama, many of the videogame guides have been moving, of their own volition, out of wikibooks, and the ones that do move (to prepare for a videogame guideless future) are deleted here. If all the guides leave voluntarily, it is less likely they will need to be removed by force. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] rank beginner needs help on start up with Xcode

Following the Wiki tutorial, Programming Mac OS X with Cocoa for beginners:

I installed the developer tools I read the Wiki instructions to do this I selected New Project I selected Cocoa Application Then Next I named the Project I choose a Project Directory I selected Finish and the following message came up

(I took a screen shot of this message)

'Uncaught Exception

      • -[PBXToolbar -notificationPostingREnabled]: selector not recognized [self =0x64c6b10]

Stack Backtrace The stack backtrace has been logged to the console.'


Can someone help me get past this hurdle. I cannot name a prject hence I am unable to proceed.

Thank you, Rolf Christophersen

[edit] Need Help: Infobox not working on local version of WikiBooks

I've copied over what looked like all the templates required and followed instructions for setting up an Infobox. However, after creating my "Infobox/xyz" and {{subst:Infobox/Parameters}}, the resulting refresh is all messed up. The {{#if ... coding shows up as if it's not reading it correctly.

Any ideas on how to fix this for my local copy (e.g. http://totalbalance_work1/wiki)TotalBalance 03:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You also need {{Infobox}} for it to work. You may need more...I'm not sure, as it is the whole infobox implementation schema is rather complicated. Reply back if you have more questions. I'll try to help out. Best wishes, User:Iamunknown 04:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your offer to help and very quick response!

I solved one issue -- didn't have the ParserFunctions extension set-up. Once done, situation improved but not resolved.

Now the "Infobox/xyz" works but even filing in the req. fields and a few others, the page is blank. Here's a list of all the templates I'd previously added and show up on the Infobox page.

Templates used on this page:

   * Template:Botm Winner
   * Template:Click
   * Template:Infobox
   * Template:Qif
   * Template:Stage short
   * Template:Switch

Other templates installed referenced from the Infobox Project:

  • Infobox
  • Template:Bi
  • Template:Infobox/Parameters

What do you recommend I try next? Again, thx. for your help. TotalBalance 04:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] possible Haskell wikibook move

Some of us working on the Haskell book are contemplating a move to the haskell.org server (see the Talk:Haskell page for details). Does anybody have experience with these kinds of decisions, i.e. where we have a community wiki "competing" with wikibooks? What's the best approach to these kinds of situation?

  • Moving to haskell.org gives us much better Haskell syntax support (we get highlighting for the Haskell language), and more importantly, brings us closer to the community.
  • Staying here lets us stay closer to the general textbook-making community of wikibooks and gives us access to resources such as commons (then again, we could just move our images to the haskell.org server, and share them between different language versions of the book, for example)
  • Forking the wikibook would likely involve lots of bots/people running around keeping things in synch.

Some specific questions:

  • Would it be possible to have the same plugin on wikibooks that haskell.org (mediawiki) use for Haskell syntax highlighting?
  • If the Haskell book authors established consensus that we should move, would wikibooks accept to delete this version here to avoid a fork? The Haskell page could just point to haskell.org
  • Are there any alternatives, any ideas for getting the best of both worlds?

Otherwise, any comments, advice? Thanks, -- Kowey 18:10, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of having syntax highlighting not just for Haskell, but for all programming languages. I doubt the book would be deleted, since its an approperiate book for Wikibooks and there may be people who may wish to continue to develope it here. Keeping books here in synch with another website is discouraged and can be a source of conflict, and issues of licensing and acknowleding people who contributed to the work. The only alternative I can think of, would be to invite and get the haskell.org community involved here and work on the book, but that may not work. If the people working on the Haskell book decide to move to haskell.org I think it would be best to just continue the work there and not worrying about what happens to the book here. --darkYin yang.svglama 18:53, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't share many of User:Darklama views and I will not pretend to speak for the whole community and so will give only my view on the problem, when you say move you are probably referring to the authors moving to another version (a fork) and requesting a deletion of the book here, as I see it the deletion would be almost impossible but the authors are free to propose it, I myself will vote against any deletion on those bases, as for copying the book and moving the authors there as it is I think its the best option if you wish to enforce a greater control of the book structure, as keeping the books in sync will be very hard (you can try to), but you will probably get into trouble as User:Darklama stated, please see discussion on the policy for proposal approval, I have proposed the clarification of book communities and the possibility of establishing book specific policies and that some restrictions should be passed to the be bold guideline (you are free and should participate on the debate), I will also be involved in the discussion of the local forking policy in the future as a solution for similar book control disputes (within some limitations) that would avoid a major part of similar conflicts.
I think that yet another way you can go is to within the actual rules to get specific book guidelines approved and continue to work here, this is not against Wikibooks policies and I'm also fighting a similar problem, but proper policies need yet to be discussed by the general community as I stated above, but you will get an higher visibility and even collaboration from other user that are not only interested on this specific book subject, you can even fork the book to another site later if you do get into heavy conflict and which to avoid it.
As for the plugin I don't see a major problem you just have to get it approved, it would indeed be great if it could be extended to other languages. --Panic 19:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Regarding your question about syntax highlighting, there is the Syntax Highlighting Extension for Mediawiki. Right now it is not installed on any mediawiki server (that I know of), though there is an outstanding feature request for it to be installed. The extension apparently requires Beautifier to be installed. Haskell is supported. (See [2].) It would very beneficial for the different programming-language textbooks to have the various languages installed and, with a real-live request (as opposed to just a, "It'd be nice to have" request), I think we could get it installed.
All said, it would take a lot of work. Typically, to get bugs speedily processed, you must provide an implementation and, I imagine in this case, an off-wiki demonstration. The developers have their own interests that they are working on, so unless something is in critically urgent in the utmost extreme, they will work on it occassionally and spend their time on their own projects. I do not intend to be critical; indeed, they are volunteers and cannot be expected to everything we request. You may wish to take this into consideration before trying to get syntax highlighting implemented at Wikibooks — User:Iamunknown 20:27, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Interesting concept. Wikibooks is about the authoring of textbooks, not just textbooks that don't appear somewhere else, or textbooks without competitors, or textbooks for which there are no forks. In the end, the authors here are free to leave or project for greener pastures (i would hope they would stay), but there is no reason why the book here would have to be deleted. Also, remember that the content here is released under the GFDL, so you need to ensure that Haskell.org has a compatible license or else it is technically illegal for you to copy the material from here to there (I doubt this will be a problem, but still...) --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments, everyone!
The Haskell syntax highlighting is working for us (I have no idea how, but it is some kind of MediaWiki plugin), so we do have a working demonstraction, one that is a alive and well. For an example, see the Simple Unix tools tutorial on the Haskell wiki.
Two more questions:
  • Is there anybody in particular that I could contact re: getting this implemented in Wikibooks? Taking care of the syntax highlighting would at least equalise this aspect of the debate; we'd only have the community aspect to consider.
  • Also, (Forgive my ignorance on such matters) how feasible is it to have a situation where a site, like, say http://book.haskell.org resolves directly to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell. I gather that if anything, it'd be something for the haskell.org folk to implement, but if such a thing were possible, is there any reason not to do it?
I am not surprised that Wikibooks finds itself unwilling to delete content :-) Thanks for clarifying that... it gives us one more point to consider when debating the move (or the fork). The Haskell wiki runs under a Simple Permissive License; by analogy to us, they are BSD and we are GPL. Clearly, we won't be able to import the wikibook directly into Haskell wiki because their license is too permissive wrt ours. What would likely happen, if anything, is that we create a sub page under the wiki, under which all content will be GFDL.
Anyway, I will re-read your comments and report back to the Haskell folks. -- Kowey 23:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
Is there anybody in particular that I could contact re: getting this implemented in Wikibooks?' Anyone at Bugzilla. Specifically, you should post at bug #7163 — a request to install the Syntax Highlighting Extension on the Wikimedia servers. The current request is very vague, saying "This will be an enormous value to WikiBooks as well as Wikipedia itself," yet failing to specify how and why it will be of enormous value. It doesn't even say for which books it could be implemented or which community wants it to be implemented. If you and the community started pushing and shoving (but only politely :-)), then I think you could feasibly get the extension installed on the servers.
Also ... how feasible is it to have a situation where ... http://book.haskell.org [#1] resolves directly to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell [#2]. It would be feasible with Apache although I do not know the specifics. But one difficulty may be that, though #1 resolves to #2, users redirected to #2 (Wikibooks) would be unable to get back to #1 (Haskell.org). This could be resolved with extensive hyperlinking between Haskell Wikibooks pages to Haskell.org, but that might raise issues in itself, specifically regarding (possible) accusations of link spam. I would judge to those to be specious, specifically because (in my own opinion) the authors' (you and the Haskell community) consensus to systematically add the links is of greater weight than others' ideas — User:Iamunknown 05:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for a minor change of nomenclature

Following the lead of our "little sister" project (Wikiversity), I'd like to propose that we change our nomenclature a bit to reflect what "admins" really do.

In short: let's rename "administrator", and call those in the "sysop" usergroup "librarians".

I think "Librarian" is a nice word with nice connotations. Librarians are the ones who say "shhh!", keep people from bothering other people, tell the guy with the markers to stop vandalizing books (and perhaps ban him from the library), and help people find what they need.

It's also just something different from our "big sister" project (Wikipedia), where "admin" has over time accrued connotations that don't apply on wikibooks. The extra tools "admins" have aren't meant to be for bossing people around, but rather for being helpful for making the "library experience" a good one for all who wish to make good use of the library.

It's just a word, and a rose (or flea) is a rose (or flea) by any other name. But words do make a difference sometimes. --SB_Johnny | talk 22:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think librarians is also less intimidating and confusing than "administrator" for new users and people who associate administrator with "boss", "network administrator", etc. Librarians generally help people find what they are looking for, enjoy helping people and enjoy reading. Qualities that are positive and I think are a good reflection of what Wikibooks encourages; creativity, cooperation and helping one another create books. --darkYin yang.svglama 23:09, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Strongly Disagree - I don't have a problem with the name change per-se but in the logic presented for the name selection, I don't think we should focus on shushing people up, this is not the focus and the principal task of an administrator, administrators are just normal users with a bit more of rights to perform some specific tasks, this rights at the moment are, well, given in a way that the major factor is only the need to have the rights, there is no special evaluation of the administrator, most have more a technical knowledge about the Wikibooks infrastructure than a broad social involvement in the community, there isn't an age limit or sanity check and most are almost given as to politicians you do a certain amount of community work, do as you are told, don't create waves and you probably get a few votes to get you in the club, etc... as it is, without first fixing the opened policy/guidelines discussions, redoing and rethinking the task of an administrator and it's limits I don't see this as an urgent need and in particular don't like the thinking behind the proposal. --Panic 23:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
To be fair johnny, we are less like librarians and more like janitors. I don't really like the term "librarian" so much, but I wont go into a long explanation of why right now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:35, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Massive Support - I love this idea. Administrator has a negative ring to it and makes us seem not dissimilar to Wikipedia. Librarian is fun and a bit more appropriate to how we'd like to be perceived. Administrator is also a bit inaccurate because the differences between them and regular users are not great enough for such a name. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 00:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Apples - If people wanted to start calling sysops librarians then whatever, but I think I would still call them administrators because we administrate. It may be like other projects, but I think a rename is a bit silly. It will cause more confusion than enjoyment in my opinion. -withinfocus 02:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
What about System Optimizers :) to give a more proper designation to the sysop rights. --Panic 03:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
World Controllers. -withinfocus 03:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
bhaa why limit ourselves, Masters of the Universe, or we could give it a more positive connotation like The Mary Bunch or similar :) --Panic 03:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Even Oompa Loompas might work, and we could all have a little picture of their faces in our signatures kinda like Darklama's. -withinfocus 03:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Quinces - I agree with Withinfocus - not a useful exercise. How about putting that effort into some of the cleanup tasks that need doing, instead of worrying about titles and badges? (I'm not suggesting that you aren't already doing that, just that rebadging isn't a worthwhile exercise when there's so much tangible work to be done) Webaware 03:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Plenty to do in Category:Wikibooks cleanup if folks are bored and if they are admins then there are all the open proxies to block. If you really can't sleep try some Policy. --Herby talk thyme 08:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC) (aka Grumpy)
I know there's lots to be done but a name change could be useful but you're right it's not exactly that important. I am trying to do lots but unfortunately I'm not willing to help with the open proxies blocks as this is one Wiki policy that I can't enforce as I believe there is a need for using open proxies in many countries and that most open proxies are not misused. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 20:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Agree somewhat - A little, maybe. Librarian is better than Admin for sure, but there has to be a better name than librarian. Lol. --Dragontamer 03:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I appreciate your desire to clarify the role of administrators. But I disagree with this proposed change. I firmly believe that, if we appropriately define the word "administrator" as we intend to use in the context of Wikibooks, then we will not run into problems. Since we have appropriately defined what the word "administrator" means in context, I fail to see the need for this. To my knowledge, no fundamnetal misunderstandings have really occured User:Iamunknown 05:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
    Addendum: I am open for debate. If someone would like to point out a flaw in my reasoning or a situation that is directly etiologically associated with our current choice of semantics, please do — User:Iamunknown 23:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Disagree I'm not a librarian, and do not take on any functions of one. I do, sometimes, do administrative chores. Administrator is therefore more accurate, plus it is better understood in Wikiworld. Jguk 19:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The need for fixed and verified editions of textbooks

I was just idly searching google for references to Wikibooks and came across a persistent and obvious comment: Wikibooks is no good for textbooks because the editions are not stable and verified.

The argument that "what's OK on Wikipedia should be OK here" does not apply because Wikibooks are supposed to be textbooks. By definition a textbook is a stable and verified companion text for a course of study.

The solution to this problem has been around in the world of publishing for centuries:

  1. The publisher has an editorial board to vet content.
  2. There are fixed editions that can be used as stable references in other publications.

We could do the same. Each category of books could have an editorial board. Before PDF editions of books are created the editorial board would review the content and advise the author(s) on accuracy, impartiality etc. The usual process that occurs on publication of books would then occur. The editorial board and authors would need a single guideline to "publishing a Wikibook" to help them deal consistently and fairly with the process. Wikiversity could help here by contributing members of the editorial board and only recommending reviewed texts to students.


Some representative examples of comments about Wikimedia (there are hundreds more):

By Daniel Terdiman Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: September 28, 2005, http://news.com.com/Wikibooks+takes+on+textbook+industry/2100-1025_3-5884291.html?tag=st.prev

"Certainly, Wikibooks has several shortcomings. One is its open nature, in which any registered user can edit existing entries. That means that any entry can be defaced or, more benignly, modified by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about."

Wikinews And The Growing Wikimedia Empire

By Eloquence in Internet Sun Dec 05, 2004 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/3/163158/922

"Perhaps the biggest issue facing Wikimedia today is the lack of credibility of the content created by its world-wide community of volunteers. Wikimedians point to recent quality reviews which have found Wikipedia articles to be frequently superior to those in traditional encyclopedias, but the simple fact that an entry may have been turned into rubbish a minute before you have decided to look at it does not inspire much confidence. For this reason, lots of energy and thought has been spent on finding and implementing review methodologies."


http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2005/12/watch_your_wiki.html "I would never use or cite Wikipedia in any article or paper that I wrote. It is often not accurate and VERY often biased. When anyone can write and or edit something into an entry, the "definitions" can change from day to day."

[edit] Suggested guidelines

1. There should be several types of textbooks "study guides", "textbooks", "complementary texts" and these terms should be used in the book's subtitle.

2. The editorial board should insist on either removal of POV or, if appropriate ringfencing POV with a heading such as "the following represents a particular point of view held by a minority". (Guides and textbooks should have little POV, complementary texts may have some POV for stimulation of debate)

3. References must be given.

4. Format must be followed.(TOC, Author list, GDFL licence etc.).

5. Verified books should have a seal of approval and the edition should be clearly stated.

This suggestion only applies to PDF editions (or similar fixed editions), not to the online editing interface.

RobinH 11:22, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Taking point 4 a little further, all included media (images, sounds, movies, PDF and other documents) would require appropriate licensing (as per current Wikibooks policy anyway). I mention this because a number of pages have recently been broken because they included media that did not specify copyright status, thus image links were removed and images deleted. This sort of thing would be undesirable for fixed and verified editions. Webaware 11:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps, yes. To my knowledge however, there is only one published PDF (I'm sure there are more on the way, but they aren't announced or have been talked about). Each wikibook is kind of a personal project anyway. I agree though, there should be some official version with a nice stylebook. I just don't think wikibookians in general would want such restrictions put on them. Perhaps if it was given as a "gold star" to nicely done books. More of a reward than a necessary procedure. But then again; it would feel as if we were rewarding the bear minimum, nicely written books should be well organized, easy to read, have plenty of pictures and somewhat low text density (Newspapers and magazines go so far to achieve the goal of low text density, that they take quotes from the middle of a page, blow it up, and make it into a "picture" of sorts). --Dragontamer 15:53, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
What I meant by "publishing" was the production of a PDF file from the online text that is placed in a special area that is locked from further editing or updating. The reason the PDF version should be chosen as definitive is that it cannot be edited and so constitutes a stable version.
A gold star might make the authors feel good but we need to go further to fulfill the objectives of this site. Wikibooks is not Wikipedia. It is a serious effort to provide quality textbooks at no charge to the whole world. Having reviewed comments on the web about Wikibooks it is very clear that we will not be a respected source of textbooks until we offer books that have been vetted by an editorial board and offer these in stable editions.
This proposal is not a restriction. Books that are too personalised for school or college use can be left as they are. However, we should offer verified and stable editions of textbooks for the core curriculum in schools and universities and display these prominently. If this is not done the project will, in the long run, have failed to fulfill its primary objective. RobinH 16:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I see, I agree then. Basically, do what Wikipedia 1.0 is trying to do. I have no problem with that, we just need the manpower to do it. --Dragontamer 18:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Something that had received lots of hype in the past, but which is all but forgotten now is the concept of "stable versioning". Stable versioning was the ability to maintain two versions of a page, the "stable version" (a version that looks good and was checked), and a "working version" (where people make edits). If i remember correctly, only an admin could designate a stable version of a page, and new comers to the site would see the stable version first and then they would be given an option to see the working version. In the software world, this is analogous to software with a "stable version" and a "beta version", where the beta version may contain more errors, but represented the most current code base.
Something that we could do is implement some basic types of stable versions here. Each book could have a page "Book Name/Stable Version", that would contain a list of permanent links to known good versions of the pages. These stable version pages could be protected and edited only by admins.
It's something to think about, perhaps, but it would certainly increase the workload of admins around here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
There is another way, one that IMO is a little easier in one form at least. PDF versions lag behind the wikibooks version already. Why not take advantage of that fact and make the PDF versions the stable fork? Like software, an official stable version doesn't exist for newly found projects, or even some older projects. Just like print versions here on Wikibooks. Its harder because making a print version is pretty much "outside the wiki" work. I'm kind of experimenting by uploading the LaTeX sources for Ada to sourceforge as I'm making them, but I seriously doubt any "open collaboration" with hurdles like Subversion in the way. Ada Programming is an exception, programmers in general should be familiar with versioning tools, but asking the wikibooks community to use programming tools may cause problems.
Not saying that subversion is ill-suited for the task. It keeps track of the history and all the files better than history pages do here on Wikibooks. But the learning curve involved in that... and then the curve in learning LaTeX to collaborate... I'm not sure how far it would go. --Dragontamer 01:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I had thought about using PDF versions for this purpose, but I have a few issues with that:
  1. Not all books have PDF versions. Not all authors are capable of creating them.
  2. PDF versions that are created are not necessarily read over, edited, or checked in any way. These versions may not be faithful reproductions of the actual book content
  3. PDF versions, when uploaded, completely replace the previous version (no history for PDF files). In other words, the PDF version is only "stable" until it is next updated. Students who are relying on a partcular version of a PDF may wake up one day to a new file, with no trace of the old one.
For all these reasons, I dont think PDFs are a good or acceptable solution to the problem. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:40, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not use a naming convention for authorised PDFs? Suppose the Biology textbook were ready for an approved version, the authors would signal this fact to the editorial board and ask the board to read the current biology.pdf. When the biology.pdf is approved it would be uploaded as Appr_biology_edition1.pdf. This process is simple and answers all of Whiteknight's points except the first; but authors can ask for help on PDF creation - "Open Office" has really cracked PDF generation in the latest release.
The provision of vetted and fixed versions would be as follows:
* An editorial board is established.
* A symbol or colour is chosen to mark approved PDFs ie: links to an approved biology text might always be green.
* Authors approach the editorial board with a perfected PDF when they want a book approved.
* The editorial board vet the book and provide feedback. Authors resubmit etc. etc.
* On approval the main page of the book's PDF should say something like "Wikibooks Approved Text"
* Once approved the PDF is uploaded as Appr_(bookname)_ed(edition no).PDF
* All links to PDFs for this book should then be changed to point to the approved version.

RobinH 10:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with editorial board

I don't think an editorial board is such a good idea. Consistentcy between two very different subjects is generally not realistic. For example, books about cooking are not going to use the same styling, format, etc. as a book on computer programming and expecting them to look the same would create problems that have already been solved by applying solutions that work for the specific problem. I would rather see each book try to live up to quality based whatever established standards exist for writing books in a specific field that are used to make them look good, easy to follow and read. There is also the issue there are more than one standard typically and who decides which one is best? At any rate an editorial board would need to be made up of a large range of people with experience with book publishing on different subjects in order to have some idea of what works and should be used to make a print version its best.

An editorial board would be made up of volunteers and this seems like it would take a lot of time and effort from the volunteers to work out differences in POV over what works and is best. Perhaps more than anyone would be willing to do? Book writers are also volunteers and may not have the time or desire to put a lot of energy into perfecting the book to some standard that involves more effort than they have time to do or believe is necessary. I think most people are probably more interesting in having fun and enjoying the energy they put into contributing to books than they are in worring about what other people may think of it and getting involved in other tasks and processes. The exception to that rule I believe are probably anyone who reads the staff lounge. Thats why I believe things here are relatively relaxed and there is not much interest in doing more than what people came here to do. Wikibooks relatively few policies and guidelinesm and the nature of them are a reflection of a desire to have the freedom to just do it and reflect what the community does rather than trying to impose changes on the community.

I hope this hasn't discouraged you, just trying to point out the difficulty involved trying to get things to change and the problems involved in a project like Wikibooks where everyone is a volunteer. Hopefully I've also made it clear why I think its unrealistic. I believe for something like this to work will require some rethinking that doesn't involve much change, time and effort by the community. --darkYin yang.svglama 14:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you do bring up good points. But all you have to do is look at a "For Dummies" book, and realize, they have a consistant formatting for all their books, from cooking, to sports, to computers, to literature, to whatever. Similarly, newspapers have similar formatting for all their sections. (or at least, the Washington Post does) Consistant formatting across subjects is completly possible, though not without the effort. Additionally, consistant style has its advantages. Whenever you pickup a "For Dummies" book, it feels like all the other books, even if authors are totally different people (as is the case in the dummies series). O'Reilly also has that advantage. Not all publishers are like that of course, but it is something that should be considered. Should the community like this idea, then Wikibooks should build its own identity through layout, a complete stylebook and a board that will review books and modify them so that they are consistant.
And at the risk of "giving an idea without the will to follow through" :-), there is the possibility that a publishing group is made at Wikibooks. A group of people who are interested in making such consistancies and so forth. I'm not sure if enough people exist to make such a group possible, but, it is an idea nonetheless that doesn't involve forcing authors to "comply with the standards". Basically, we don't need "reviewers" as much as we need "workers who review and revise". Not too many books are reaching the publishing phase, and I'm sure if we started, we would run out of books to reviewe and revise before other books are made. --Dragontamer 15:39, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The idea of an editorial board is not designed as a hindrance to the creation of books in general. It is a response to the copious comments on the net which say that Wikibooks is not a credible source for academic textbooks. This criticism does not apply to the cookbook and doesn't apply to presentation. It applies to the content of academic textbooks.
What I am proposing is a voluntary scheme for mature books. When a textbook becomes mature the authors may wish that it should be vetted and issued in fixed editions so that it is credible and can be referenced. In these circumstances it should be possible to engage the services of an editorial board to provide a stamp of approval and to lodge the book in a special way on Wikibooks so that it can be a fixed and credible source for academic study. If the Special relativity book is ever finished I would be keen for it to become an approved reference work and would happily go along with the necessary changes to make it acceptable.
In the case of books where authors do not want the work to be approved I can see no reason why these books should not continue to exist and be developed as they do at present. Similarly, the online version of approved textbooks should be changed by authors in the normal way and, when appropriate, the authors might ask for a second edition to be approved (the first edition would be kept for reference and the approved second edition given pride of place).
This idea may come to a head this year as several books reach a sufficient state of maturity. I would suggest that we put in place a "beta" system for creating editorial boards, lodging PDFs of approved versions and highlighting which books have passed the approval process.
Dragontamer makes some good points, especially about the lack of books that are mature enough at present. Perhaps only 1 or 2 books would be sufficiently mature this year. RobinH 15:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll put a toe in just to say that it would be very good indeed to see a focus on quality. Quantity we have plenty of but ... A watching RC patroller! --Herby talk thyme 15:57, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Process for creating verifed, stable editions

I would suggest that when authors decide that they have a book that is good enough to serve as a reference work they should contact an editorial board and start the process described in the "guidelines above". However, to do this we need:

  1. A book that is good enough
  2. An editorial board
  3. An accepted guideline for stable versions.
  4. A separate folder for approved books
  5. A symbol to be used with approved PDFs

I would guess that there are several books (3 or 4) that are good enough to start the process. Any volunteers? RobinH 17:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Before we start taking names, I think it would be a better idea to lay out the criteria of what specifically a "good" book should have, and what specifically are the legal requirements for having a distributable or even a publishable book? The GFDL is a copyright (or "copyleft", if i must use the terminology) license, and to enforce that license, all contributors to a book are going to need to provide personal information: Real name, date of birth, verifiable phone number or email address, etc. All books are going to need to include a copy of the GFDL, but if the book contains images that use other licenses (CC images are a common example), the book is going to need to include a copy of that license as well. It might also be good/necessary for the book to include a listing of individual images that use which license.
If we aren't working to publish, we dont need all that information, but it would still be nice to have for future use. An editorial board would be a good thing, but that's a job that every joe-schmoe off the street could do. I for one don't have the time, patience, or motivation to be part of such an enterprise (assuming i was even qualified for it, which I am likely not). I think alot of these things could be implemented as a replacement program for the BOTM thing. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
In the first instance I think we should only consider online publishing ie: using a distinctive symbol or colour for links to the approved PDF for a book.
The guidelines for a "good" book will need to be developed but should be able to use existing guidelines for format.
As you point out, the editorial board is the biggest problem. Possibly the editorial board should have 3 members, the lead editor being qualified in the field covered by the book and at least one of the other editors being peripherally qualified. For example, to approve an undergraduate physics book the lead editor should have a PhD in a closely related discipline (Physics, engineering, biophysics etc), one subsidiary editor should have a degree in a related discipline and the other subsidiary editor should be experienced on editorial boards. To approve a high school book the lead editor should have a degree in a closely related discipline (ie: a botany/physiology/zoology/microbiology/biochemistry degree for a biology textbook) and one subsidiary editor should have a science degree for a science book, arts degree for an arts book etc. and the other experience of editorial boards. RobinH 11:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
An immediate problem that I see with this idea is that we would create a system where wikibookians would be qualified based on their external merits (degrees, education, etc). While this might make the most logical sense, I am highly against creating a hierarchy among users, or saying that certain users are more qualified or more desirable for certain topics. Beyond that, I would say that we simply dont have enough people with educational backgrounds in all areas to implement such a system. In essence, we would be limiting the kinds of books that could become "good" by the types of people we have on the editorial board. I would say that people who want to be part of an editorial board should be accepted without qualification, and we can blindly trust the authors of the particular book to have gotten the facts straight (a gamble, to be sure).
We could create an "Editorial Board" wikiproject, where people could volunteer to read books and proof/read and properly format them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Good points - I would favour using either qualifications or previous contribution record. There needs to be some basic level of expertise for the board to be sufficiently expert for this task. RobinH 12:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Related Wikiprojects

I have created two new wikiproject pages for use with this idea:

These projects will consist of volunteer members who find good books, proofread them, and work to make them publishable (if not actually publish them). If those pages look interesting, hopefully we can move this discussion to the respective talk pages, and continue from there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't those both be Wikibooks:Wikiproject Editorial board and Wikibooks:Wikiproject Wikipublish, or to keep things organized, Wikibooks:Wikiprojects/Wikipublish and Wikibooks:Wikiprojects/Wikipublish/Editorial board? So as not to be confused with policies and guidelines to make clear its a Wikiproject. --darkYin yang.svglama 21:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It's my opinion that brevity in this matter is a big benefit over clarity. Pages in the "Wikibooks:" namespace are not all policies and guidelines, we have templates that are used to make the distinction between different types of pages. We can worry about moving/renaming these pages if we dont end up deleting them (which could happen if nobody wants to participate). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Cool, I'll watch the second page at least, as I'm interested in the publication process. I'm no where knowledgable enough for an "Editorial Board" Bah, if it is just revision and other minor editing tasks, maybe I'll sign up too. --Dragontamer 02:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I support Whiteknight's proposal entirely. I have added a guideline that I was preparing yesterday. RobinH 10:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Let's close this discussion here then (and stop making the staff lounge any longer then necessary). We can move the discussion to the talk pages of the wikiprojects now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
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