Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Archive 30

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[edit] Advertising Wikibooks

Why not send emails to your teachers (and ex teachers) with a link to Wikibooks as an aid to teaching ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_as_an_aid_to_teaching ). The more schools and colleges that contribute the better. RobinH 12:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Programming bookshelf locked

I am trying to put together a wikibook targeted to a sophomore level special topics course in C with Unix.
I am wanting my students to be the primary contributers during the semester, with a view to merging the content back into existing books where the content has some value.

I want it to differ from the existing C programming book in a couple of germane ways, first the collaborating authors (at least my students are the ones I am primarily interested in) will have had a minimum of 2 semesters of Java. As a result a lot of the structural and syntactic issues common between Java and C only need to be addressed in a relatively superficial manner. In addition, some advanced topics such as embedded assembly language code, interprocess communication and database connectivity can be handled. Finally, as part of an attempt to make our students more aware of platform issues we are insisting on ANSI C on Unix. The results of this decision is that we need to incorporate shell management, scripting and make.

Having begun the process of establishing the contents page, the help pages indicate that I should add the new book to a bookshelf. However the programming Languages bookshelf is locked. Am I supposed to add the book to the Miscellaneous shelf and wait for someone to notice it is in the wrong place? Is there a reason why that particualr bookshelf is locked?

Peter Cooper Petercooper 21:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Programming languages bookshelf is set so that users have to log on to edit it and need to be admins to move it. If you are logged on when you try to make the adjustments you want to make, you should be ok. Alternatively, it may be that you tried to do that whilst the database was temporarily locked to everyone earlier this evening - if so, this is a temporary problem that happens from time to time. Trying a little bit later normally works.

You also might like to look at Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects if you haven't already done so. Although it's only at "proposal" stage, it offers good advice, and is likely to become an official guideline shortly. All the best with your book. Jguk 21:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)


,,,,,,,,,
Thanks jguk. I had read the Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects. Some good advice in there.
I was logged on when I tried to add the book. The Programming Languages bookshelf is the only one that is locked to me. All the others in the CS section seem to be available but there are no other approriate sections other than miscellaneous. I'll try again later (tomorrow probably) but this has been an issue since 1800 UTC.
Petercooper 22:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a direct link, just to make sure I'm looking at the right page? I'll try removing and then reinstating the intended protection criteria to see if that helps. Jguk 22:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

It is my understand that blocking a page from editing by unregistered users also effects newly registered users for a time as well. --darkYin yang.svglama 00:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Metric/English units

In my project there are a lot of places where we have been using both metric and English measurements. Sometimes we put the metric first with the English in parenthesis, and sometimes vice versa. We think this is ugly, and are exploring alternatives. If we just switched to metric and dropped English, I fear we would not be serving our readers, most of whom use the English system. My first stab was to make a template {{Units|default|alternate}} that would diplay the default units and show the alternate when the mouse hovered over a calculator icon, just like the short_stage template does:

The speed of light is 300 million meters per second1.8 trillion furlongs per fortnight.

I would like it better if the reader could express a preference and have whatever units he prefers show up and have the other suppressed, or perhaps swap the default and alternates in the template. Is that possible?

Jim Thomas 18:53, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

It might be possible if you wrap each unit with a span element and a specific class. You could then use a custom monobook.js to hide all elements with that particular class. Kellen T 19:32, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Just use metric. I presume that by 'English' measurements you mean 'imperial' measurements. Calling them 'English' is a bit much considering the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and most other English-speaking countries use metric measurements. The USA is one of only 3 countries in the world which still use imperial measurements (the others are Libya and Burma/Myanmar). Metric measurements are also the only measurements used by scientists even in the USA (as it's much easier to do calculations with a base of 10 and if everyone uses the same system less errors will be made). Sorry, I don't have any great solutions to your problem but if you find one please let me know as I'm trying to convert the cookbook recipes to show measurements in both systems. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 19:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

A few points to make here:
  1. This isn't the first time somebody has asked for this kind of feature. It's a common request here on wikibooks, and also at other projects (en.wikipedia gets it alot). Unfortunately, there is no good way to solve the problem (unless we do implement something in site-wide javascript). Unless somebody has the knowledge/ability to do this locally, it's not going to get done.
  2. Jim is correct in that a large number of readers of this site are american, and therefore are more familiar with the imperial units. Regardless of the merits of one system or another, we need to speak to people in a language that the audience can understand. If we need to cross-reference every metric unit with an equivalent imperial one (or vice-versa), then that's what we should do. I won't pick one set of units over the other, it does a disservice to our readers.
  3. Scientists and engineers may use metric, but the children reading the youth honors book are not likely to be professional scientists nor engineers. Again, we need to consider audience.
We could probably get together and write up a bunch of templates to handle conversions like this. Anybody want to take a stab at such a thing? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
If I get time, I'll look at it, but first I'd like to point out that a JavaScript solution is probably not optimal. Better would be to do it as CSS, using the :hover selector. Then it will work in browsers with JavaScript disabled. Additionally, the print version of the CSS can display the hidden text, much like external link URLs are (print-preview this page and look at the External links section). As I said, I'll look at it if I get time, but if someone else wants to jump on it in the meantime... Webaware 23:45, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Or we could just do what Wikipedia does. Webaware 23:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
And we even already have the template for it: {{H:title}}. Like this: 100°C.
{{H:title|212°F|100°C}}
Will that do? It won't show in print version, but that's not so much of a problem. Let me know if the print behaviour is required, and I'll look at a two-media CSS solution. Webaware 23:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
That's pretty good, but I can imagine something better. Ideally, the reader should be able to click a link at the top of the page that would switch the units from metric to Imperial, and that would carry over to the print version. The monobook.js suggestion is probably beyond the capabilities of most who would want to switch from metric to Imperial (that is, not engineers or scientists), so though that is intriguing, I don't think it would work. Instead, I'd hafta make Imperial the default and assume the metric crowd possessed sufficient web-aptitude to switch to metric. But then the default is... imperial. If I were doing this in php, I would set a cookie and switch on it in the code. But this is not php, and I am fluent in neither CSS nor Javascript (nor in php for that matter, but I can get by). I may well adopt the {{H:title|212°F|100°C}} solution in the meanwhile. Jim Thomas 00:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I think kids come with less baggage, and if we gave them metric and allowed conversion they might just come away from this better off. I think the problem is that for too many years in the United States, we have tried to make life easy by printing both units on signs, or in books, but that makes people think that metric units are some type of alien torture device because I need to remember strange conversion factors 2.2 kg= 1 pound ~39" = Meter etc. (I don't know why I even remember this number of digits of conversion accuracy)
We all know what a 2 liter bottle is now because that is what they call it. It would take about a month to get used to gas prices in $ per liter (the transition would be painful for some) but once every pump was measured this way you could rapidly know which was the better deal, and know if price is going up or down. If we are approaching this with the idea that only scientist and engineers can understand it, then I think we are missing the boat. Kids are flexible, and rapidly learn what a meter, cm, liter, kilogram, etc are. They will master it before the Adults do, and might be the generation to finally get us to move to the metric system. Maybe, just maybe, we won't have to suffer another Mars explorer.

--Rodney 00:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

  • (reset)

I've just made a template, using existing classes in the stylesheets:

{{Explain|term|explanation}}

This combines the title attribute trick with printing the explanation within parentheses. It's a little inelegant (as I'm not hacking the stylesheets, and besides, MSIE6 don't do CSS2 stuff like :after), but it works. It won't allow your readers to switch between SI and imperial, but it will allow them to see imperial if they can't be bothered joining the rest of us in SI units ;-)

{{Explain|100°C|212°F}} → Template:Explain

I hope that this helps. Webaware 03:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

One more thing - this might be a useful tool to apply to maths, physics and engineering texts, and the like, but I would not like to see it used in, say, the Cookbook. I agree with Whiteknight that Wikibooks should address its audiences, and the Cookbook audience probably doesn't want to have to learn SI units just to make it through a recipe (just as I don't want to learn imperial units so that I can cook a "pound cake", whatever that is!) Webaware 03:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

A trivial appication of Javascript could be readily applicable to address the issue. I designed an incomplete implementation at User:Iamunknown/jstest which is readable by users who do not have Javascript but does not includes Javascript in the actual document. It does not yet, however, use native Wiki Javascript functions (as I was testing it off-wiki) or test whether or not the browser will support the functions used. Furthermore, it does not yet allow the user to pick which units they want to view; indeed, they can only pick metric. I will address this and other issues further.

I would like to express my support for both units. I think that a selection process can be elegantly and discreetly executed. You will likely, however, have to choose between either metric (imperial) or imperial (metric). But either way, the user may, by way of Javascript or by way of CSS (if they are registered) pick either metric or imperial.

Finally, I would encourage other users to mess around with my JavaScript code and suggest improvements on the talk page. We could all learn a lot from this. Cheers, User:Iamunknown 05:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we could create a set of templates for "weight", "mass", "volume", "distance", and other types of measurement with common imperial/metric equivalents. Each template would create a span HTML object with the class "span_conv_mass", or equivalent. The site javascript could be expanded to search for these spans and automatically convert the contents. A link could easily be added in the sidebar to take care of this conversion process, so that it wouldnt take the time to convert when the page is trying to load. I think that Darklama and myself could figure this situation out, if anybody is interested in seeing the results. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Put me down as "interested" - this sounds very close to what I was asking for, and I think it could possibly work in the cookbook as well. I think the authors should be able to choose the units (i.e., cm, m, km vs in, ft, miles). I also think temperature should be included, but I'd need two different types - absolute and differential. To illustrate, I'll just note that a temperature rise of 32°F is not the same as a rise of 0°, even though 32°F = 0°.
Let me see what I can put together, it wont be immediate, but i should have something by early next week. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I've been working on this for a while, and I think I have a pretty decent solution to the problem (barring future improvements). I've written some javascript at User:Whiteknight/convert.js. People who would like to use this javascript can either copy+paste it to their own local monobook.js files, or simply include my script into yours with a link. My monobook javascript includes an example of such a link. The javascript includes a link into the toolbox (on the sidebar) that says "Convert Units". When you click the link, the javascript will search through the page for spans with certain classnames, and perform the conversions as necessary. I've created a test template, {{User:Whiteknight/Convtest}}, which is a mass template. To use the template, write: {{User:Whiteknight/Convtest|120}} (for 120 kilograms). Clicking the link will cause the number to change to say "264Lbs". Clicking the link again will cause the number to change back (actually, the roundoff error causes the number to say 119.999).
At the moment, the script only covers mass conversions from Kg to Lbs. However, i've made it extensible so that other units can be added by only adding in a single line of code. We can therefore add lots of other convertable units by creating the necessary templates, and adding a single line of javascript. At the moment, the code is only tested to work in firefox. If people are interested in this script, I would like to get people to test it out for me. Let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks/Unstable

I'd be interested to know whether anyone has any remaining major issues that would lead them to oppose making this text live. If anyone does, we will look to address them. In the absence of any such issues arising, I will shortly formally propose adopting it. Jguk 20:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I resent that you propose it now when there are so many other issues occupying users' time: the arbitration, the mailing list, proxy blocking, and general Wikibooks maintenance for starters. I have been neglecting talking at Wikibooks policy pages in lieu of other pressing tasks. And I presume that some others may be doing that as well — User:Iamunknown 01:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm highlighting the page here so that people who are interested are aware of it, and the page has been going since May, so most, though clearly not all, things have settled down now. I don't intend proposing it until remaining major issues have been addressed, and I hope no-one else would propose it until then either. Jguk 08:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hi From WikiCast..

Hi,

Any admin equivlants around, I need to clarfiy something in relation to WikiBooks cookbook recipes.

One of them is planned for conversion on WikiCast, but WikiCast uses CC-By-SA not GFDL. One option is to make the specfic script page GFDL (if this is possible)

Your advice welcomed. ShakespeareFan00 01:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thinksheet on community definitions

I put down some notes on Wikibooks:Community_Definitions, it would be nice to try to hammer these down (and other jargon we use).--SB_Johnny | talk 16:08, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

There was a similar page somewhere, although I dont remember where, precisely. I'll see if i can find a link. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
That page is Help:Glossary of Wikibooks jargon. It's poorly named, and hasn't been updated in a while, but there is still a good amount of information here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:26, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reusing modules across textbooks

i am working on an animal behavior textbook Animal Behavior. in this i am including a summary of neuroscience and what we know about the physiological mechanisms that control and coordinate behaviors. a similar section is included in the intro psychology textbook.

  1. Biological basis of behavior

given the overlab in scope i think it would make most sense if contributors would work on improving one set of files that can be used in both books - at least initially. branching out would just double the effort at this point. alternatively, i would start a separate project, reinvent the wheel and spend much effort on coordinating the material in these sections across the two projects. i guess a "see also" approach could be included but really does not work well for textbooks. i could copy the content that is currently in the psych book as a startiing point, but that probably would be a no-no - right? i could link to the chapter from my table of content, but then all included navigation would be to the psych book instead of back to the animal behavior one. i could try to do an import with WB:RFI but that would only copy the current status of the file.

now, a great solution would be via aliases in the folder hierarchy. if the original chapter resides in the psych book, i could place an alias for the chapter into my folder structure and call the alias instead of the original. navigation would be intact as long as the authors coordinate how they use page navigation across the textbooks, this ought to work but i havent seen any mention of aliases. - sorry, just trying to be bold :-)

are there any collective thoughts on how to handle such situations? any input and help greatly appreciated, Robert Huber

That's a tough call. Books sharing modules doesn't seem a good idea at all. The best option would be to somehow "import" the page from one book to the other, then integrate it into it's now home. I've thought about something like having reciprocal import functions between here and wikiversity for that, but it seems awfully complicated. --SB_Johnny | talk 14:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
You can include content from another module like this:
{{:Name of other module}}
I do this in my Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book a lot, but that's a slightly different case. Most of my chapters are meant to stand alone, but information is shared between chapters. For instance, a lot of the First Aid stuff is needed in multiple places - not only in the first aid chapters, but also in some of the camping/wilderness chapters as well. I would hesitate before including content from an entirely different book though, but if that's what you want to do, this is one way to do it (within the Wikibooks project anyhow). Jim Thomas 14:48, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
That works for some purposes, but if you were writing a science textbook for a UK curriculum, you might want to use a modified version of a US or Australia book on the same subject. They'd be similar, but not absolutely the same approach (and of course the spelling difference problems). It would be nice not to have to reinvent the wheel every time you're discussing Aluminum (oops, I mean Aluminium). --SB_Johnny | talk 16:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
To use another book's pages in a book, one must be aware of some facts, both books communities (or if you wish since there isn't a definition) people working on those books must agree in having shared pages, you have to give credits to the original work on the book that will be importing the page(s) (as per GFDL) you probably should use transclusions as stated by User:Jomegat since it reduces duplicated of content and permits collaboration of both book communities on the same page (probably a notice on that book talk page wouldn't be a bad idea also), this is the best option but the evolution and subject matter of books tend may tend to diverge and with time the evolution of the page that is shared will make it difficult to keep the shared.
I personally don't like to refer to book pages as modules, books are modules of Wikibooks, book pages are part of a book. It is my view that this is a result of the limitations of the Wikimedia software, in Wikipedia each article has a single page, not here. --Panic 17:35, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

folks, thanks, i really appreciate your thoughts on this and i perfectly agree that in its final version each book should have its particular version of covering a specific area of interest. my main concern is that it will be a bear of time to get the community to contribute a concise summary on a highly complex field with contributors in different areas of academia who rarely talk to each other. Wouldn't it be great if a couple of different book communities (which will share about 99% of the material on the subject eventually) would actually have to rough it out during the early stages. i bet the final result would be infinitely better and the effort to arrive there would be a lot less. - just a thought. so, i take it that it is neither encouraged nor particularly feasible :-) thanks, ciao, Robert Huber

Well, it's certainly not discouraged, it's just a new idea. The authors of the two books wouldn't necessarily have to "formally agree" to share, but if a module from one book is to be signifigantly altered to fit into the other, it would be nice if we had some way of making an attributed copy for use in the derivative version. There might be some way of creating an import space on meta or perhaps wikiversity, where the module could be uploaded as a copy, then re-imported to wikibooks as a second copy with the edit history intact. The other way would be to just do things as we used to transwiki in the past, namely copying the content to a new page, and placing a copy of the edit history on the talk page for reference. --SB_Johnny | talk 20:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Wouldn't that be only for "finished" books, Wikibooks books aren't never, well, finished (they can reach a "usable" version), the need to keep the attributed copy isn't a imposition to use content (it is a nice concept) but can be problematic as books have in the past been merged without giving credit to the original work, as for single or even multiple pages if the content is to remain shared on both books a simple trasnclusion would suffice, if content were to diverge, a simple copy and resync of history logs would suffice, we should probably work out some sort of guideline. I think I saw several books talking about similar proposal, if I'm not mistaken the last one I took notice was between the Vi and Vim books. --Panic 21:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reusing modules across textbooks, section break

(break added because the edit button was too far up!)

Well, the problem in the past was because no-one knew that histories could be merged (I'm afraid I'm mostly responsible for introducing the laborious yet advisable history-merging thing... I sort of came across it by accident). I think the best option by far would to use export/import to make 2 *full* copies (each with a version of the history). This might be easy to set up actually, because wikiversity has the same need (forks are actively encouraged there). I'll scribble up a proposal on both projects.

Unless the module served the exact same purpose in the two (or more!) books planning to share it, it's probably a better idea to just duplicate the module (and it's history) so that it can be developed independently on both. I guess the best way to explain it would be to use a gardening page as an example (the subject I know best).

  • I mostly work on a book about gardening. The chapters in that book are fairly specific in their audience though, in that they deal with issues for temperate-climate gardening. When I started working on the book, I thought it could be of universal scope (for all gardens, everywhere), but I've come to realize that there's just no way. A horticulturist in Panama might want to talk about the same plant, but what applies to that plant in a temperate climate won't apply to it in a tropical climate. Or a greenhouse. And how a Farmer treats the plant won't be the same as how a gardener treats it.
  • In other words, this book can't cover all the bases for everyone, but the individual chapters come pretty close. If someone came along later and wanted to write a book on tropical gardening, they should have some mechanism for making a copy of the chapters they want, and then modifying them to be relevant for tropical horticulture.
  • The original chapter in the temperate garden book might change over time as new methods are developed or more contributors add to it. The tropical version would change too. After a few years, they might not resemble each other much, but they'd share a common deep history.

I think Robert Huber's project runs along similar lines... one book is about zoology, the other about evolutionary human biology (and psychology?). Very similar, but different, and the work that's already been done can be brought in two directions in the two books. --SB_Johnny | talk 23:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, here's the proposals:
--SB_Johnny | talk 13:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I am a pretty firm believer that we don't always need to copy the history pages, or even go to great lengths to copy pages (and thus their histories). A simple footnote that says "The orignal text of this page came from another place" should suffice as the necessary attribution. Also, I would far prefer the use of page transclusions to solve the problem over any sort of content copying. Beyond even the transclusions, It would be the absolute best thing for you to include a hyperling that says "For more information about this topic, see module X", or even, "As module X will show, there are a number of points about neurology that are common between animals and humans. We will summarize those similiaries here:". Copying material between two different books should be avoided, because it's a practice that simply isn't used (and generally isnt legal) in the world of real textbook. A textbook should be self-contained, and if it can't include all the information it needs, then it should be able to reference outside sources. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:23, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I think there are circumstances where this might be very useful. In Wikijunior The Elements, there are these very interesting and extensive articles on basic chemistry. They, in fact, would be a good foundation for a Wikijunior "Chemistry" book. But I strongly feel that the information should be pared back extensively for the purpose of "The Elements". If we could fork in this way, then both copies could keep the history, we'd have good material for two different books and each would be able to evolve in it's own way. I don't think it's the best solution for every situation, but it seems like a good idea in some circumstances to me. --xixtas 04:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with User talk:Whiteknight, It is clear that we don't need to copy the history page (unless the authors of the works chose to use trasclusion from pages into different namespaces, what would be good as this would keep low the need for duplicated pages), the only imposition to make references to the other works comes from the license we use, several books already have acknowledgments to other works or/and authors (the authors page is probably the best place for it as it has already a special status inside a work), but there is several issues on the use of the GFDL and Wikibooks I don't see eye to eye with many of you so please take this only as a statement of my opinion and not as initiating a discussion on that. --Panic 04:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
A book on "Wikijunior Chemistry" can build off the material from "Wikijunior The Elements", without having to duplicate that material. The two projects should be asked to work together, so that the elements book will contain all the information necessary in the chemistry book. The chemistry book would contain discussion about the elements book that is necessary for chemistry, but is not necessary in the elements text. Page transclusions could be used in this situation as well, but i don't think it would be useful or even beneficial. A statement of prerequisite at the start of the book should grease the wheels: "Readers of this book are assumed to have a basic working knowledge of the periodic table and the elements. Wikijunior's The Elements is a good book to read to gain this knowledge". Also, another statement will help ensure that readers will keep both books in their list of bookmarks: "This book will make frequent use of information from the Wikijunior The Elements book. That book should be viewed as a companion text to this text." Remember, wiki isn't paper, and it is completely acceptable (if not expectable) for people to have two books open in different browers (or different tabs of the same browser). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I think you've missed the point. The reason you'd copy from one book to another is to make use of the work that's already been done, without having to start from zero and without doing an unattributed copy-pasteed new page. Books and modules are GFDL documents, and the reason we use those kinds of licences is so that a book can be stripped down and rewritten for another purpose, while at the same time honoring the contributions of past contributors. It's the same thing as what we do with wikipedia articles when we import→strip→expand them, this just lets us do that within one project. --SB_Johnny | talk 15:02, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I understand the possibilities. Typically articles are imported from a place where they are less appropriate to a place that is more appropriate. I would think that information is rarely suitable for two projects simultaneously, and only under condition that the two copies become sufficiently divergent within a set timeframe. Besides the fact that it is theoretically possible, I suppose I can't think of a single instance where duplication of a book or book module is preferable or even necessary. In general, it is always better to maintain a single copy of information, and therefore maintain a single pool of potential contributors. duplicating the material only serves to divide the number of people willing and able to contribute to each module, and this is something that wikibooks cannot afford with it's low population. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:19, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Transclusion would increase collaboration and should be given a chance before we make any action against it's use, we should have a project or two using it with other projects to see if there are problems or even a source for conflict, the number of works that could benefit from another book's pages is not that big, authors interested into getting into it would be even less, as for dividing the number of people by the duplication of content across projects it is a fact that can't be avoided but as we know the ratio of number of active authors (not contributors) to any project is pretty small, the real problem would be resynchronization of content that was intended to be equal in several works but we should leave this up for the people working on the books as it will not affect the community in general. --Panic 15:34, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
In this situation I think it would be appropriate to *remove* (permanently) about 2/3 of the material from the Introductory sections in the book. The primary reason I haven't done this yet is because I see that material as being very valuable in a different context. Transclusion would not be an effective way of dealing with this situation because the content (though related) would be dissimilar and have different aims. While I understand that Wikibooks is not paper, the goal of Wikijunior has always been to develop books *for print*.
Our options are to (a)Leave the large amount of content in the introductory sections. (currently there are more words in the "introduction" than all the other articles combined.) (b) Pare down that content that someone worked hard and well to create without regard for its usefulness in another context. (c) Copy it with limited attribution. (d) Fork it, leaving a copy in both contexts that can be reworked to fit the new context. (The Chemistry fork expanded and the Elements fork contracted.)
To my mind, it's not even close as to what is the best course of action in this situation. The fork solves every problem and creates only a limited number of workable problems in place. The primary downside, that we would have duplicate content for a short time, and overlapping content for a longer time doesn't seem like that big a deal to me, especially since there would be no reason or need to keep them synchronized. --xixtas 17:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] reusing modules across textbooks, section break 2

in my specific case, transclusion would be the best solution in the short term, and once the basic material is far enough developed, it should go through forking. the chapter is a good start but needs a lot of fleshing out of elements before it can really be called useful for the readers of either book. i rather do the fleshing out instead of starting over. i will probably run out of effort, time, or whatever when i get to the same place where the psyc chapter is right now :-)
so how can i transclude (or request transclusion of) the page # Biological basis of behavior into the textbook Animal Behavior? i have the empty entry for it in chapter 3 (Intro to neurscience). i assume that i can keep editing and adding to transcluded text like normal? where do i go to have the chapter forked lateron when i have the material fleshed out? much obliged ... Robert Huber
First you should post a message in both books talk pages to see if anyone objects with the idea and give them some time to comment on it and later remember to give the credit to the original book on the destination book. As for transclusion you use {{:namebook/page}} as for the fork you best be involved on the debate that is still active on that point, but simple pages reuse doesn't fall under the fork definition, to fork a work you must copy all the content (or a very significant part of it).
If the book communities later later decide to remove the trasclusion, just ask any administrator to copy the page and the history as replacement for the trasclusion. --Panic 19:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
"Typically articles are imported from a place where they are less appropriate to a place that is more appropriate." ← that's one reason, but there are others. The cookbook, gardening book, some dance books, and now the Holocaust book all are in part transwiki-built, taking Wikipedia articles and adapting them for another use. The wikibooks versions and wikipedia versions often link to one another, but there's no need to keep them "synchronized"... each copy develops in a different direction independently sharing only the history up to the particular historical version that was duplicated. Transclusion is a very awkward solution, because it creates an inflexible element that can't be altered for the use of one book or the other (in a way, an invariant section), limiting the creative flexibility of both projects. It might be different if you could just transclude paragraphs or even sentences which could be couched with other stuff, but this seems to be making a lot of work (it's also harder to edit if you can't "see" all the text in the actual edit window). It seems to me that if a contributor wants to take a text on one subject and use it as a basis of a text on a similar subject, we should be helping them, not making them jump through transclusion hoops :-).
They don't need permission to make a new book out of an old one... the fork (is "branch" a better term, perhaps?) would be a separate project, and have no effect whatsoever on the first book. "...just ask any administrator to copy the page and the history as replacement for the trasclusion" ← that's precisely what I'd like to be able to do, upon request (and perhaps even some approval process). But there's no way currently to make a copy like that, which is why I'm proposing the bugzilla request. --SB_Johnny | talk 19:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, so how is that for a plan, you guys help me copy the text and history into the respective chapter in the book that i am working on. i will flesh it out into a formal chapter and if there is interest from the original psych book then they newly fleshed out version can be transfer from my side back into theirs. i think there will be little overlap given that there hasn't been anybody working on the pages since nov.. so if you can make this work, then i will happily propose that solution on the psych book pages. ciao and thanks, Robert Huber
Perhaps we should submit a request to bugzilla asking for a "copy" feature, where we can copy the text and history of a page to another page with a different name. If both wikibooks and wikiversity ask for this feature, i'm sure the developers would go for it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:43, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New language project: Freistil

Hi, I have just started a language project for those learning German as a second language: Freistil, a loose collection of actual texts with annotations. Feel free to contribute. --Bitbert 16:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I love this idea - learning the language from real texts together with promoting our sister project Wikinews. The book looks great and I like the idea of "tooltips" with translation and boxes with important information. Also interesting information is provided. I only think that every article should go to a separate subpage so that they may be archived properly (you can "paste" these subpages to main page of book just like you use templates). Oh, and perhaps these boxes should also be templates. --Derbeth talk 18:56, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yep, you're right in every single aspect. Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to initiate it all in one rush. Also, I'm not sure how to deal with the boxes as templates (my experience in layouting wikis is limited). So if you can spare a thought, feel free to contribute ;-) --Bitbert 20:12, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The technical details have been settled. The book is on the air and can be used. Since this is a loose collection of texts there will be no indication of progress such as xx% finished. Before long, printable PDFs will be available. Hopefully, soon the texts will be available as audio, too. Spread the news for this exhilerating new tool for foreign language acquisition. --Bitbert 15:01, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikijunior New_Title_Policy/Unstable

I have created an unstable branch of the new title policy for Wikijunior so that it conforms to what I understand the existing practice related to new titles to be. Please review and comment. --xixtas 18:07, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ISBN for Wikibooks

Completed Wikibooks should have an ISBN number. ISBN numbers are globally accepted (part of ISO) and not solely a US standard. As a US based organisation we would need to obtain ISBN's from http://www.isbn-international.org/en/agencies/usa.html unfortunately it will cost a couple of hundred dollars for a 100 ISBNs.

One advantage of ISBNs, amongst others, is that Wikibooks might be advertised for free on Google Books http://www.google.co.uk/books?hl=en . RobinH 22:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Can't Wikimedia come to a deal with Google that will remove a need to spend money registering ISBNs ? (in a later date if books do get published on paper) will probably get an ISBN. --Panic 19:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think that we an ISBN number should be on our to-do list. Currently, however, that is not the goal of Wikibooks, nor do we have an infrastructure set up to become a free-content publishing house. It would require a lot more commitment than I am currently giving and (I assume) than some others are also giving.
Regarding infrastructure, I would like to point out to the special pages. There is quite a bit of clean-up to be done (especially with categorisation) and I would immensely appreciate any help I can get there. It would be nice to take inventory of what we have here. I am unsure whether categorisation is appropriate, but until we can find out what we have, we can (as far as I am able to discern) not feasibly begin on larger projects of professional typesetting and publication. --User:Iamunknown 19:49, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
From what I have read about ISBN it would be up to Wikibooks to decide which books should be given ISBNs and the format of such books. ISBNs can be given to ebooks where there is no printed edition so the ISBN could be applied immediately to any Wikibook. My suggestion is, if Wikibooks obtains, say, 10 ISBNs these are applied to books that pass through Wikibooks:Wikipublish and Wikibooks:Editorial board and lodged with Google Books. RobinH 20:06, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with ISBNs

Just as an FYI, several Wikibooks have already been issued an ISBN number... under a Canadian registry interestingly enough, but we are still trying to work out the details on this.

The primary issue with obtaining an ISBN number is that it is registered to a "publisher" who is able and willing to provide copies of the published material (usually dead-tree format) that can then be ordered by book retailers. The infrastructure that needs to be set up here is that we need to establish some organization, for profit or not for profit, that is going to be handling this sort of situation.

I have a few suggestions on how to get such a project going, and I've deliberately tried to go slow on getting this going mainly to avoid getting too many people pissed at me. If Jimbo's reaction to the publication of the Wikijunior Big Cats book is any indication, this is going to cause explosively negative feelings if any substantial amounts of money are earned off of these books. It is also very unclear how and when logos and mentions of Wikimedia registered trademarks (aka "Wikibooks", "Wikijunior" and the associated logos) can be used.

I will note that another very famous trademark, "Linux", is a regsitered trademark by Linus Torvalds (he got it from somebody else a while back) and is held by him for and in behalf of the community to make sure that mainly nobody else can claim trademark status on that name. I wish that the WMF felt the same way about the use of the name Wikibooks, but unfortunately they want to use the WMF trademarks for some kind of future fundraising efforts.

I'll have to add some notes on how I would like to proceed, but there is obviously some interest in trying to get a formal publishing group put together. I certainly want to be involved with that, and make sure that such a group is made up of Wikibooks users and volunteers. This does not have to be run by the WMF (or certainly approved by them), but the stronger the spirit of volunteerism and cooperation between those doing the publishing and those creating the content here on Wikibooks, the better off both projects would be for each other. --Rob Horning 21:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that some books already had an ISBN number. Which books? How easy was it to obtain such numbers from this canadian company? This information would likely be a great help to the new wikiprojects that have been established. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
The Canadian government offers this to Canadian nationals for free, but there are some exceptions and there are some other rules involved here. As an American, it is not directly within my ability to do this, but I've been working with User:Munchkinguy, who is a Canadian national. I'll have to post what ISBN numbers have been assigned once everything gets settled down.--Rob Horning 17:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Rob, thanks for this info. Are you absolutely sure about the need for "dead tree format"? I cant find any reference to an absolute requirement for paper copy. RobinH 15:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it has to be on some sort of "tangible" medium, but I may be mistaken. The whole ISBN numbering system was mainly set up by book retailers to help coordinate publication of material, and is in the format of <country code>-<publisher code>-<publication id>-<check digit>. That is where the dashes come into the number, BTW. As an interesting point too, once you have done a formal registration of the content with a government agency (we are doing that right now with the Wikijunior Big Cats book), it also gets assigned a Dewey decimal/card catalog number as well. That might get interesting where some of these books actually end up. --Rob Horning 17:18, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured Books

I think this is the time when we need to decide what to do about the BOTM and the COTM projects. It's my opinion that both should be replaced, but i know some people have suggested keeping COTM and replacing BOTM. These are my suggestions for what to do next, I would like to get some more input on these:

  1. Disband BOTM and COTM projects permanently
  2. Use Wikibooks:Featured books as the new mechanism for promoting books that are "good". Good books can be listed as such on a continuous basis (more or less then one book per month).
  3. Come up with some kind of set requirements for a book to be listed as "good" (perhaps give the job of good book selection to a wikiproject)
  4. Create a wikiproject to replace the functionality of COTM. This wikiproject would select books in need of help on a continuous basis (as need and resources allow), and work as a group to improve these books.
  5. Place prominent links on the main page to Wikibooks:Featured books, and Wikibooks:Wikiprojects, as well (perhaps) links to the most active wikiprojects.

These suggestions are aimed at performing a number of tasks. First, they improve the old BOTM and COTM ideas, without completely abandoning the ideas of "good books", or "books needing help". Also, it helps to strengthen the "Wikiproject" initiative, which is something that i think will really help the wikibooks community in the long run. Any comments/suggestions? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:15, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between good, completed or nearly completed books and books that have made good progress or are worth an edit or two. BOTM has always seemed to be about "nice" books rather than good, nearly complete books.
That said, featured books need more attention, particularly an effort to push them forward to being completed, published e-books. Other books also need to be encouraged towards featured status. As a first step the project that you are proposing could produce a set of phases that books should complete to go from an idea to an approved and published ebook. RobinH 22:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Having a set process and dedicated volunteers that will move "good" books to the status of "better" books, and eventually "great" books is something that we need to establish. The use of wikiprojects will be, i think, a good way to accomplish this, and the wikiprojects themselves will constitute the stages in this process:
  1. Books that are decent are found and listed by the Wikibooks:Featured Books mechanism (based on a forthcoming set of criteria).
  2. The Wikibooks:Editorial board wikiproject will see these good books, review, edit, and revise them. The good books become "better" books.
  3. The Wikibooks:Wikipublish wikiproject will find the "better" books, create printable versions, PDF versions, and work to make them publishable. The books become "great" books, and we can work to distribute our great books (print them, distribute CDs, have them hosted on other websites, etc).
The best part of this pipeline process is that people can participate in the process at any point they want. I could help to edit a book, but not feel obligated to create a PDF for it (or vice-versa). Also, people who dont know what to do or how to help can be given tasks to work on. I think it's the best solution to the problem. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:36, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Captcha Problem / Can't create new account

No matter how many times I solve the simple math problem I can't seem to create a new account for myself. I am correct answering the math problem yet I keep getting the error message: "Login error:Incorrect or missing confirmation code" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.151.97.23 (talk • contribs) 13:59, 17 Jan 2007 (UTC)

No idea if there is a tech problem but I suggest you keep on trying - if the problem persist try here again and we will see what we can do (hum - as I am getting a database locked message it may well not be you!) - regards --Herby talk thyme 14:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if it is still an issue, but historically people using IE have had more problems with the captcha then people using other browsers. I've been able to create accounts with multiple browsers, but other people haven't been so lucky. Try it in a different browser, if you can. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:37, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Images with unknown copyright status

I am in need of some guidance,

What is the policy for dealing with the images with unknown copyright statuses? The copyright tag clearly states that:

"This image does not have information on its copyright status. Unless the copyright status is provided, the image will be deleted seven days after this template was added (Date). Once a copyright tag has been added, this template may be removed."

I know that copyrighted images are not allowed on wikibooks. What is the best practice for removing these images? After how many days of the tag being attached to an image should the links to such a file on pages be removed?

Is there any specific reason, in general, why images are not deleted on time, as there are over 500 images currently with unknown copyright statuses. Is this due to a lack of people who have enough time to deal with deleting all of the images?

Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 18:47, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Please note, this is in no way a derogatory set of questions, no matter how they are read.

The only people who can delete images (or any pages for that matter) are admins. The number of admins that we do have is preciously small, and of them few want to take the time to delete 500 images outright. There has been some progress made (a month or two ago there were over 3000 images in this category), but this is also a continuous problem and new images are uploaded all the time with improper copyright status. In short, we will get to it when we get to it. While we might not delete the images within the 5 day timelimit, rest assured that we will do it eventually. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:27, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
Whiteknight's answer is pretty much what I would have said. Despite there being a numerical quantity of admins the active ones are rare on the ground and there is a fair amount of housekeeping to do. That said there is really quite a lot that folks other than admins can do. Watch Recent Changes (great insight to what is going on). This means you will see when someone uploads images and you are welcome to tag any that are unlicensed and inform the user - templates are here. Another place that is worth a look is Wikibooks:Wikibooks maintenance - there is work to be done and it helps in getting to know the place. I do hope that these comments help you to understand some of the issues involved and that you may consider assisting where you can. The deletions will get done but time here is a little different (how often was I told that!). --Herby talk thyme 13:16, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I would like to add that it is far more important to actually identify those items that may have some problems. If you see something that may be a copyright violation or where it certainly should be questioned, please mark it up with the appropriate tags from Wikibooks:Template messages/Cleanup, Wikibooks:Template messages/Deletion or some other notification message. Adding these notification messages on a page automatically add it to a category and I promise that eventually action will occur. Adding messages like this is something that any Wikibooks contributor can perform, and it will certainly be something reviewed carefully by others in the Wikibooks community, especially administrators. Far too often some content will simply be added that nobody is even aware of, as it was missed by those who have performed a routine review of the project, but with over 20,000 pages to review, we don't always get to everything. I certainly have not seen every page on Wikibooks (although I've done a pretty good job of seeing most of it).
BTW, as a general suggestion, if you want to help out Wikibooks and eventually serve as an administrator to help clean out this backlog of problems, I would strongly suggest that you help with marking up pages you might see on Wikibooks with these template messages. It is a very good way to let others know what sorts of content that you value, and if you seem to be making good decisions. Don't worry about trying to "overload" the other administrators with work to do in terms of cleanup on these messages, as you may likely get the job yourself to help with the cleanup. --Rob Horning 17:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Just a side note here in response to a comment rob made, The current administrators around here typically do a good job of avoiding "overload". While this means that some jobs don't get handled in a timely manner, it also means that our staff can stay energized and enthusiastic about the project. I personally value keeping our administrators happy and productive over getting all those work backlogs cleaned out. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
And something else for non-admins (like me) to do: look at the images with unknown copyright status and see if you can do something constructive about them. For example:
  • Find an equivalent image on Commons to replace the image, change linked pages to use that image, and tag the local image with {{NowCommons}}
  • If the image is trivial (like, say, a green circle or a simple chart), build a new one and donate it to Commons or Wikibooks
  • If the image is something that could be replaced with wiki markup, then do so - e.g. formulas, tables (see m:Help:Displaying a formula, m:Help:Table for more information)
Incidentally, could one of the admins please resurrect the deleted images that this page links to, so that the above process can be applied? I asked about this on 1 January, but haven't had any response to the request. Webaware talk 01:02, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
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