Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 31

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit] Comprehensive reorganization

There have been a number of fragmented conversations recently all aimed at reorganizing some important pages here on wikibooks, and hopefully to produce a more efficient system of discussion. I am going to summarize some of the important points here, and interweave them with some of my suggestions:

  1. There is a push to reorganize some of the "get help" pages into a single resource. Specifically, the WB:VIP and WB:AN pages, along with new sections for requesting other types of help and services from administrators and staff are going to be merged into a comprehensive new page. It has not been decided what the name of this new page will be.
  2. The staff lounge is far too long, and there is some sentiment that we should break it up into a number of subject-specific subpages. The staff lounge would become predominantly a wikipedia-style disambiguation page that will direct people to the appropriate venue. The general concensus is that there should not be too many subpages to the staff lounge, because that will only create more confusion.
  3. Some of the proposed subpages of the staff lounge are:
    • news (points to the bulletin board)
    • help (points to the new "get help" page, discussed in point 1)
    • announcements (points to a page where we can announce other discussions, such as important RfA votes, and policy votes)
    • basic help (points to a page where people can ask for general editing help)
    • subject help (points to the study help desk)
    • General discussion
  4. The staff lounge page can be kept as either the general discussion area, or a general noticeboard to post links to important discussions happening in the subpages.

While all of these points won't necessarily be implemented, there is some change coming to a number of pages here on wikibooks. I would like people to post their questions/comments about this project here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:46, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that a reorganisation of the help sections would be a good idea, as specific help items can be dificult to find, especially for new users. I also believe that a reorganisation of the staff lounge may have the potential to be a good idea. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 19:15, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Don't even start talking about the help pages. That entire namespace is a complete mess. Let's ignore that for now, and focus on smaller projects, such as the complete reorganization of our entire discussion mechanism. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I really like how the Wikinews water cooler is set up. I think we should categorize similarly here.
-- xixtas talk 23:22, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks Merchandise

I dont know if anybody knows about this, but there has been a shop created to sell wikibooks merchandise. I think this shop is relatively new, because it didnt exist last time i went looking for it. I am certainly not trying to advertise this stuff, and I have no idea where the profits from these sales go. However, there are some interesting things in this store, and since they contain the original wikibooks logo (considering that the official logo is going to change eventually) they might be partly nostalgic for people who have grown accustomed to the old logo. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:03, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a URL? I highly doubt that they have permission to use the logo, as I've tried persistantly to get those permissions. The only place that has "permissions" to sell Wikibooks-related merchandise is:

http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/529053

The profits from the sale of this merchandise goes directly to the Wikimedia Foundation, and is used to support Wikibooks specifically, even if it is to help out with the server farm in general. If you see anything else, I would strongly recommend that you notify the Wikimedia Foundation at the following address:

board at wikimedia dot org (to keep the spam bots from killing this e-mail address)

Or simply post a message on Foundation-l about the issue.
There are some logo licensing options being discussed on Meta, but those are very preliminary and I've been trying desperately to stay on top of any changes to those discussions. Certainly nothing official has been issued by the WMF about the topic. --Rob Horning 00:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
That cafepress address is the shop I was talking about, sorry i didnt include a link. I had been to the cafepress shop some time ago, and they didnt have anything wikibooks at all. I was pleasantly surprised to see the wikibooks logo being used, and I might be buying something from there for myself soon. I just wanted to know if other people know about it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Just thinking out loud here, but I wonder if it might be possible to have a link to this Cafepress website from somewhere here on Wikibooks, in terms of "fundraising" and such. I was thinking mainly something simple and discrete, and certainly not a "banner ad" or anything as obtrusive. The side bar may be over the top, but something on the "main page" might be reasonable. Any ideas? --Rob Horning 22:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree but as User:Whiteknight said, it should be clearly stated to users where the profits from these sales go. --Panic 22:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
If the merchandise benefits the WMF as Rob mentioned, then maybe we should post a link to it somewhere? How cool would it be to see people walking down the street wearing wikibooks clothes? I know that I would feel good about that (even if it is unlikely). I think the new logo would look better on those clothes then the old logo, but that's just me. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:37, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adopt-A-User

I don't know how many of you will have seen/been involved in the adopt-a-user programme on wikipedia, but i believe that it may possibly be a useful project to setup here on wikibooks.

For those of you who may not know about the adopt-a-user programme, it is a way of formally pairing new users who know little about the site, and pairing them with an experienced editor in order to help them learn how to work with the site. There is no formal selection process for being an adoptee or adopter, but rather the system works through volunteering.

What do people think of the idea of perhaps implementing such a programme here at wikibooks? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Urbane User (talk • contribs) .

It's an interesting concept, but I dont know how it would work. Do new users ask for a mentor, or do mentors ask for the mentee? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:06, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
New users will ask for a mentor by placing an 'Adopt Me' template on their user page. The mentors will then search through those pages which have this template and will assign themselves to one of the adoptees. For a better explaination, see here Page
Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 08:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I find placing welcome templates tends to mean I adopt some whether I want to or not <g>. That isn't a complaint btw. I do think that those who seek help will (I hope) find someone - those who don't may well be the ones who need it tho. I guess in the end I was adopted (!) and I have adopted some (or they me) and I am unsure formalising it will help --Herby talk thyme 09:35, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I see, so it may actaully be better to continue the informal mentorship that is currently in action.Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 10:34, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I would agree with Herbythyme, it's my experiance that the first user who leaves a friendly message and offers to help becomes an unofficial mentor to the new user. That user will then go to the first familiar user to ask questions. An "Adopt Me" template might be a nice idea, but I would feel pretty bad if somebody put that template on their page, and nobody ever responded to it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I'm happy to be a part of wikibooks

I'm so new to Wikibook and I'd appreciate all suggestions. Thank You.

Lolit cbls 04:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)Talitz25549 21January2007

You are part of it - you are here! Really it is up to you to take a look around and see if there are aspects that you want to know more about or help with. Folks are friendly and it is good to have you here --Herby talk thyme 09:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
G'day, and welcome! Best thing I can suggest is that you read everything in sight. But that will take too long, so instead, check out some really good help files: m:Help:Editor. They're the help files on "Meta", and are more up-to-date than the ones here. Also check out WB:PAG, to see how Wikibooks likes things done. Webaware talk 13:50, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Note on Wikibooks:Deletion policy/Unstable

Just to inform you that the policy is up for discussion.

Action initiated on 22 January 2007 by user:Whiteknight main purpose is to provide support for transwiki nominated pages --Panic 05:34, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The deletion policy is an older policy document, and I think it could stand some basic upgrades. Basically, i want to improve the readability of the policy, and update it to include several of the de facto rules that we already abide by. I did not create the unstable branch to propose any major changes. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influx of copyright violations

Look at the upload log. We are getting a massive influx of images with copyright tags, without sources, or with totally wrong tags. I've tried to tag and notify some uploaders, but for other images, I'm totally unsure how to go about it. I'd like to start developing more user-warning templates, but I don't know enough legal jargon. For example, on my sub-page User:Iamunknown/Cleanup/Image tags, I'm trying to identify the copyright status of the OSI Adaptive Public License, which is the license for images a user uploaded the SwisTrack wikibook. Any help or ideas would be very appreciated. I'm going to Commons to ask about the OSIAPL now. I have so many questions about everything. --Iamunknown 19:48, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm just on for a few minutes, but maybe have a look at commons:Commons:Templates, which are mostly image-related. If you see any we need here, just copy them.
If it's the same users and they have ignored your warnings, please list the users on WB:AN... I strongly suggest we block them until they answer the queries (that's what's done on commons).
Thanks for keeping a good eye out! --SB_Johnny | talk 20:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
If you find a user who is uploading copyright images repeatedly, the legal jargon that you should use is: "Knock it the heck off or you will be banned!". If you find somebody who needs to be banned, you can mention it here, on WB:AN, or you can even tell me about it on my talk page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image Delinking

Several users on this project are busy dealing with our backlog of untagged images. Previously, we had been deleting images indiscriminately, a process that drew criticism. These image deletions, while appropriate under policy, have created another problem with books being filled with red links where images used to be. An effort is underway now to correct these red links, attempt to find suitable replacements, and contact the original uploaders for more detailed copyright information.

I would like to ask the community therefore, not to delete these red links, and instead report them to myself or User:Iamunknown as they are found. All help in this matter would be greatly appreciated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Probably OR problem

Herbythyme and I were discussing the book ATALL, which appears to be an approach developed by the main author and added to by his students. On his website, he writes "I am currently focusing my research activities on what I call Autonomous Technology-Assisted Language Learning (ATALL). ATALL involves using and developing technology, in particular Internet media and communication tools, to enhance education in foreign-languages and cultures."

While it's a good, active book, it's probably something that should be transwikied to wikiversity because of the Original Research component of it (if I understand correctly, it's more or less describing the author's pedagogical approach, which is precisely what Wikiversity is designed to do).

I thought I would bring this up here rather than on VfD, but perhaps it belongs there? --SB_Johnny | talk 17:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Manifestation of Wikiprojects

Does anyone know of a page where the two Wikiproject portals, Wikibooks:Wikiprojects and Wikibooks:WikiProject are being discussed?, it seems to me that this should be resolved as the former is a meagre manifestation of the latter. --Herraotic 19:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I've redirected the latter to the former as the former is currently being developed and it much more useful. -withinfocus 21:49, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
I created Wikibooks:Wikiprojects because I wasn't able to find the original Wikibooks:WikiProjects page in a search. It's my personal opinion that pages should be named in such a manner that they can quickly and easily be found in a search, and i didn't think that the mid-word capitalization lent it self particularly well to searches. People tend not to capitalize in their searches, or else they tend to use title-capitalizations (first letter of each major word). Nobody is going to type the word "WikiProject" into the search box unless they know beforehand that the page is named as such. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:45, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematics series of textbooks

I have recently been thinking of creating a series of mathematics textbooks that don't conform to any particular curriculum, but just progresses at the rate of one's learning and organised with adherence to one's prerequisites. My current thoughts for the textbooks are for them to be used from the introduction of a toddler/child learning how to write numbers to pre-university. This obviously will be a big task to undertake but I think its importance will most definitely attract many editors from other wiki's and society in general. What I have written is only an inspiration for other thoughts and I expect many constructive criticisms. --Herraotic 20:20, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like it would be an excellent task for the Mathematics wikiproject. The first thing that we need to do is prepare an outline of the various subjects. We should be able to break the whole of "mathematics" into various sub-disciplines in a logical way. A number of books already exist for Arithmetic, and Algebra, and Trigonometry, for instance, and they already contain TOCs that include logical amounts of information. Using these books as a starting point, we can use our outline to identify gaps in our "curriculum", and start to prepare books to fill those gaps. For instance, we could set up a general progression as such:
  1. Numbers and Counting (being a first course for pre-school and kindergarten)
  2. Elementary Arithmetic (basic arithmetic operations using pictures and diagrams, for elementary students)
  3. Arithmetic Problem solving (introduction to word-problems, pre-algebra, long division)
  4. Algebra
And we would go on from there. I do know that many school curricula break "algebra" into a number of numbered segments such as "algebra 1", or "algebra 2". We would have to decide whether to segment our algebra books in a similar way, or to have only a single book with different sections, etc. But, we can worry about that problem much later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Future of Cingular Wireless FAQ

As a result of the merger between AT&T (formerly SBC) and BellSouth, Cingular Wireless is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of AT&T and is being rebranded as wireless from AT&T, whereupon the Cingular name will be retired. When that happens, the Cingular Wireless FAQ will have to be moved/renamed and substantially reworked. Before undertaking that effort, and because of my bad experience with my former Wireless book here (which was summarily deleted without warning or even notice, forcing me into a painful crash move to Wireless Wikia), I'd like some substantial reassurance that my reworked Cingular/AT&T book will continue to be welcome and hosted at Wikibooks. Otherwise I'll probably move my reworked content to Wikia. Thank you. --John Navas 20:45, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Having a FAQ doesn't seem much like Wikibooks material to me, but a book about working with a Cingular/AT&T phone definitely could be. I wouldn't title the book to be a FAQ but something more book-like. By the looks of its content, this is much more than a FAQ. I would say your content is safe here but if you find a more helpful wireless community at Wikia then that may be a better move. Your choice (as well as other active authors of the book here) of course. -withinfocus 22:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Semantics aside, this book has been deemed in the past to be acceptable for wikibooks, and even though the name of the book may change, the book doesnt need to be reconsidered for deletion. As a simple suggestion, when you come up with a new title for your book, you may want to omit the word "FAQ" from the title, so that we dn't raise any eyebrows over inclusion criteria. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:42, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sister project for Freistil

Freistil, launched on January 15th 2007, offers actual German texts adapted from Wikinews or written from scratch by native speakers with English comments and explanations. I'd simply love to launch a mirror project Freestyle in German wikibooks offering the reverse, i. e. actual English texts with German annotations.

If you are interested in participating in such a project, please let me know. Although advantageous, knowledge of the German language is not required. Things you might want to do include:

  • writing short English texts of about 100 to 300 words about actual topics, either once or on a regular basis,
  • annotating articles with vocabulary translations or in-detail boxes,
  • layouting existing articles on the web or for printing via PDF,
  • reading existing texts aloud and making OGG recordings,
  • finding and recruiting potential writers for singular or regular participation,
  • ...

I will offer help in any stages of the project, including the setup, translations and interlanguage cooperation in between the sister projects. --Bitbert 16:46, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


Some more details: The basic idea is this: a native speaker writes a short article on an actual topic for foreign language learners. The text is then enriched with vocabulary translations that show up on hovering the mouse cursor over words in the text and provided with one of the grades beginner, intermediate or advanced. Other annotations may be provided as well, such as "What's worth learning?" boxes that compile the vocabulary of the text that is of daily use, "In detail" boxes that explain surroundings of the topic in the learner's own language and activities known from common language books. Eventually, an audio recording of a native speaker reading the text aloud is attached to the article. And finally, the article is provided as a one or two page PDF optimized for printout.

There is also administrative work to be done: taking care of the project's layout and templates, administrating the archive of existing articles, strolling the grounds looking for people that will contribute an article or two or will read one aloud, ...

You're free in choosing your favorite task or tasks in this process. The tasks vary in requiring the ability to speak German: as can easily be seen, writing an English article or reading an article aloud does not require any knowledge of a foreign language whatsoever. You're welcome, no matter whether you want to contribute on a regular, once-in-a-while or once-and-never-again basis.

My request is also listed in the German Wikibooks. If some more people show interest I will launch the project including technics and templates. The projects here and there will then be linked for interlingual collaboration and all cooperative pages will be offerd in English as well as German. --Bitbert 10:41, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I would certainly be interested in writing some of the articles for such a project. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 11:27, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Update: The project has been launched. --Bitbert 22:05, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Development Page

Is it acceptable to create a temporary page to do development in? I want to rework the Monoploy book contents page, but want to spend a few days trying different things out. Is it acceptable to create a page for this purpose and where should I create it? Can I create sub pages to my user page? Or add it as a sub page to the monopoly book? --AdRiley 09:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

You can create 'sandbox' sub pages on your user page for this purpose. These are ordinary sub pages that are usually used for testing and development of other pages. I myself have used them myself for the development of other pages, specifically the main Wikijunior Bugs page. This method is perfcetly acceptable. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 10:02, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
My view (similar to Urbane User) would be a time based one. Own sandbox is fine and would normally be my answer. The only thing might be how quickly you get it done. If others contribute not know you are working on it there could be confusion. If that might be the case a subpage in mainspace with a pointer to "work in progress" might be useful? Cheers --Herby talk thyme 10:07, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. --AdRiley 10:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Completion-o-meter

I've started to edit the Welsh language wikibook, but was wondering how the completion-o-meter can be updated on the languages bookshelf? When I have added enough, is there a review mechanism I have to submit it to? Also, this is an appeal for any welsh-speakers to come and contribute! Kijog 15:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The completion-o-meters (also known as the "Stage template") can be updated by anybody, even yourself. At the moment, we don't have a good set of criteria for what qualfies a book for different levels of completion, so you have to use your best judgement. I would recommend that you don't give your book a status of "100%" unless you are absolutely certain that it doesnt need any additional contributions (and most books need more contributions). If you think your book is really good, and worthy of some recognition, then you can submit it to the Good Books Wikiproject, and eventually your book may end up on the list at Wikibooks:Featured books. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick reponse, I think my confusion might have arose from the fact I might not have logged in when looking at the bookshelf, I couldn't edit it, could only look at the source so rushed in and thought it was a peer/admin thing. As for criteria, I suppose it's a question of how long is a piece of string - is a Wikibook ever complete?.... Kijog 19:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
That confusion is common, several new users are confused by the protection on the bookshelves. Unfortunately, it's needed because of the spam and vandalism that we get here. Good luck with your project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:21, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wikibooks junior physics: the elements

I just discovered Wikibooks, and see that the section on physics needs a lot of filling in. For example, under the heading, "common non-metal elements", nothing exists! Right underneath, however, one common non-metal element, hydrogen, has an article already written under the heading "published articles." How can I have this entry appear under "common non-metal elements" without necessarily removing it from the other list, where someone may want to find it?

Also, how can I add new, obviously-needed, elements to the list(s) while still conforming to the rather nice format that already was used for other elements? Is there a template available for that? I have the ability to fill it in, but want it to appear in a consistent fashion.

Thanks. Thinkbridge Thinkbridge 01:32, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Most of those pages already exist, and there are links on the main page. All the elements have subpages of the form "Wikijunior The Elements/XXX". where XXX is the name of the element using title caps. You can add links to these pages in the non-metal elements part by using this format. Links that show up as blue lead to pages that already exist, and links that are red do not yet exist. Please let me know if you need anything. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:43, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can I do a complete rewrite of a book not started by me?

Dear all,

I am a newbie and if this sounds stupid, kindly forgive me. I am working on the book on Principles of Finance. I wanted to know if I could do a major rewrite as right now the thing is not in proper shape and I would like to arrange it in an orderly fashion. Can any of the senior editors help me out with this. Also, wanted to know if I could create a table of contents of my own instead of the default one that is being displayed on the page right now??

Thanks in advance and sorry once again if I asked a stupid noob question.

--Venky 13:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like the book isn't all that active, so I'd say go ahead and be bold! The Table of contents on that page is just for the headers... you can make it disappear, but you can't really re-order it unless you reorder the headers. Probably your best bet would be to start making chapters... you can make "red links" to the chapters from the main page by adding [[/CHAPTERNAME/]] on the main page, then click on the red link and start writing. So far there is only an author's page and a to-do list as chapters. --SB_Johnny | talk 14:25, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Holy shortcut batman! I had no idea you could replace the book name with a slash! I don't know how many times I've typed out the whole name of my book in the past ~17 months, but I'd bet it's close to 500. Too bad I didn't know about this a long time ago! Thanks SBJ! Jim Thomas 15:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
LoL... we really need to work up those help pages :).--SB_Johnny | talk 16:36, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot Johnny for the prompt reply. Really appreciate it a lot. Can you help me disable the default TOC that appears on the page, I would like to design my TOC. Thanks once again in advance.
--Venky Msg Me 05:45, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Update - Johnny I have no removed the TOC from the page, thanks a lot for your help.
--Venky Msg Me 06:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Subprojects, etc.

I realise we've been discussing wikiprojects a bit, but it seems to me a more specific kind of "project protocol" might be useful for getting the individual books organized. I've brought up pieces of this before, but I'm hoping we can re-address the topic a bit.

There is often talk about each book having it's "community", and it seems to me that some steps towards making that sort of thing "official" might be a wise idea, since the various books sometimes have radically different approaches to style, inclusion, and so on.

What might be good is if each of the larger projects has some easy to find features, such as:

  • A "policy" or "LMOS" page, which defines the scope and standards of the project
  • A "contributors" "community" or "authors" page where contributors sign in to be recognized (book-specific userboxes would be nice too!)
  • A "project" or "discussion" page where policies, to-do lists, and chapter deletion are discussed (the deletion of chapters from books with large, active communities probably doesn't belong on WB:VFD).
  • An "interproject communications" page, with boxes similar to sister project boxes that might be used from other books (or indeed other projects). Perhaps "book-specific welcome templates" could be added there as well for new contributors to a particular book.

The idea is to have a "standard notation" that will give any wikibookian who is aware of the standard some quick and easy access to these pages. For example, you could find if the book has specific policies by going to Bookname/Policy or Bookname/LMOS, find the contributors by going to Bookname/Contributors, ask questions about the book on Bookname/Discussion, and so on. This would perform a similar function that is provided by wikipedia's wikiprojects... essentially making it easier for new contributors to find their way around, and for other wikibookians to use when they need to know something. --SB_Johnny | talk 18:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly support this, under the condition that we specify what happens if a book doesnt have these things you've pointed out. Many books hvae only one author, or no active authors, and these are not likely to develop a set of standardized policies or even an LMOS for future contributors or editors to follow. For instance, we cannot leave the VfD of individual chapters up to the book community if that book has no community to speak of. If we created a template with links to a "/Contributors" page, and a "/Projects" page (among others), and we automatically tagged all new books with this template, authors would be more likely to use them. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I don't think this should be a requirement, but rather an option. A modified welcome template for those who start new books might be a good idea, but on the other hand if they don't get collaborators right away the /Project page in particular might emphasize a certain kind of loneliness that is inherent in the writing of wikibooks, and particularly discouraging to wikipedians who expect more input. It seems to me that some sort of combination of this and parts of what's on WB:RFC might ease the way... my hope is that we can find a way to both encourage new contributors while at the same time giving the established contributors of a book a way of relating their aspirations, lessons learned, etc. --SB_Johnny | talk 22:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

As a new member of wikibooks I think this sounds like an excellent idea and one which I felt was missing when I first began to look at the different books. After all each book is a project in itself, so a project page makes a lot of sense. I wasn't sure about the policy of adding "non-book" subpages, would it be acceptable just to add a "/Projects" page to a given book? Would it make sense for each project page to have standard sections such as: what is in and out of scope for that book; A list of tasks needing attention on that book; a projetc log etc..? I'm sure we can come up with some others--AdRiley 19:55, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Appropriate to use Wikibook for Tech Manual?

I'm a member of the Experimental Aircraft Assocation. We build airplanes in our spare time. Would it be appropriate to use Wikibooks for creating a detailed "User Guide - Technical Manual" on how to use a specific manufacturer's Electronic Flight Instrumentation System (EFIS)?

The current manual isn't bad, but we have a Yahoo Group of about 600 members that use the EFIS system, and we would like to improve the existing technical manual in a collaborative manner. The company that makes the EFIS comes out with updates to the technical manual about once a year. The Yahoo group would like to create updates much more frequently (say once per month or quarter) and greatly improve the content.

We would have to obtain company approval to do this given the GNU licensing...but before we press the question...is writing a tech manual using WikiBooks appropriate? Or should I look for another collaborative writing environment?

Thanks for the great site!!! Sincerely, HplevyakHowardHplevyak

If it's under GFDL, it should be fine, but getting the company to agree to that might be difficult. --SB_Johnny | talk 11:37, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
If the how-to tech manual turns more into a set of connected procedures that is not appropriate as a Wikibook textbook then please consider using www.wikiversity.org to host the GFDL'ed procedures and lessons. We are a pretty new project and could certainly use some expertise from craftsmen capable of building airplanes! user mirwin @ wikiversity.

[edit] Edittools

G'day, could a superbeing type please take a look at the request at MediaWiki talk:Edittools#Fractions symbols and either comment or action? It would be just a bit easier than having to pull up the Windows character map when I need ⅓ or ⅛ (used too infrequently to remember arcane magical key manoeuvres). thanks, Webaware talk 13:40, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I added those into the template for you, they should take effect nexttime the cache updates, or whatever it does. I can't see a reason not to add them. If any other admins disagree, let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:20, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks mate, much appreciated. Webaware talk 22:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] help

I need help, I have a SanDisk Sansa mp3 player and I dumped my computer, now I cannot find the sever or whatever I need to transfer my music,the spot were it was before now sais remove hardware..what do I do?

[edit] Editing Wikibooks

I am a new user that just discovered wikibooks. I was reading through an ancient history book and there are many gaps in the information. Sections that the author has left out. I have studied a little bit in this area and would like to do some research and fill in some of those gaps, is there any way I could go about doing that?

Muffiner 16:16, 25 January 2007 (UTC)Doug January 25, 2007

G'day Muffiner, just click the link that says "edit this page", and start filling in those gaps! I'm sure that what you have to offer will be most welcome. Click on the Editing help link below the edit box, to find out how to write and format a page. You might also want to check out our policies and guidelines, to see what is and isn't acceptable. Webaware talk 06:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Software configuration

It's a bit weird seeing in the block log examples like the one below:

  • 11:12, 25 January 2007 Herbythyme (Talk | contribs) blocked "193.60.223.142 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 1 day (anonymous users only, account creation disabled, autoblocker enabled) (warned vandal).

Looks too similar to Special:Ipblocklist rather than a block log. This looks a bit confusing to some people.... it should revert back to the original way it was (like in MediaWiki 1.8)

I preferred the original, which was:

  • 11:12, 25 January 2007 Herbythyme (Talk | contribs) blocked "193.60.223.142 (contribs)" with an expiry time of 1 day (warned vandal).

anyone else agree this should be changed?? --82.42.237.84 16:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The change represents an update to the software where admins are given a large number of options when performing a block. The block log needs to make explicit mention of those options. Also, we don't have any kind of control over the source code of mediawiki, for that you need to go complain at meta. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I'll leave a note at meta. I just thought it looked too confusing! --82.42.237.84 18:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

On another software configuration note, Wikipedia now has a javascript trick in Common.js that allows editors to manipulate the way a page title is displayed. If you have javascript, try w:E (mathematical constant). This would be great for us. Any chance we could get something like this? --Brian Brondel 21:33, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] copy feature

(talk) started a discussion to implement a "copy" feature, where we can request to copy text together with its history to another page with a different name. man, it would be great to have that tool. you could use some elements as starting points and go from there without reinventing the wheel. how far did this proposal go?

if this is not available, i would like to request a forking of Biological basis of behavior so i can tailor it to the animal behavior book, this fork should be called Animal Behavior/Neuroscience. i had proposed it about 2 weeks back on both books - with no objections. your help is greatly appreciated. Robert Huber 12:21, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I made a copy following the old (pre-import) transwiki protocol. If we get the import stuff enabled at a later date, we can duplicate the history after the fact (feel free to modify it now). --SB_Johnny | talk 14:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikitables

I'm looking add some format to the table of contents of the Welsh wikibook. I can use a simple 'wikitable' but could anyone point me in the right direction to a 'How to' guide for tables so I can find out the correct syntax for more complex stuff such as borders, alignment etc.? Kijog 17:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

G'day, your best bet for wikitable syntax is m:Help:Table. However, if you want to play with stuff like custom borders, you'll need to know some CSS. Take a look at what I did with the logic truth tables here. Drop me a line on my talk page if you need a hand. Webaware talk 23:45, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bot needed for printouts...

I'm wondering if any of our local scripting gurus could help me come up with a bot for making semi-automated author lists using edit counts. I'd also like to know how to make some slight modifications to the css (or maybe js?) to hide links to the parent directory and categories, since those aren't useful in print versions.

See User:SBJohnny/Print version thinksheet for details... the boldface stuff is what I need help with. --SB_Johnny | talk 17:45, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look at it. It sounds like the kind of thing that I could probably take care of, especially considering all the massive amounts of wiki-related source code that I have lying around on my computer. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:05, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Covers for print version

I have created two templates: {{print version cover}} creates "cover" of a book when the book does not have a separate cover page. Second one, {{print version cover text}}, was designed to be used on separate cover pages, to add link to original book (required by GFDL) and "GFDL disclaimer". Detailed descriptions can be found on template pages, together with application examples.

How do you find these templates? Should GFDL disclaimer be more formal ("Copyright... Permission is granted... with no Invariant Sections..." etc.)? --Derbeth talk 23:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind a little more info about the GFDL on there. I also wouldn't mind a little fancier of a design to the page. Yes, I know it needs to be suitable for print but I feel it could look a little better. However, I don't feel qualified in sprucing it up. -withinfocus 01:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks New Title Policy - Move to Adopt

I have made a motion to adopt the proposed Wikijunior New Title Policy. Please review it and comment. -- xixtas 17:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can a section expand/collapse script be created?

Dear all, I was wondering if a section expand/collapse script be created on the lines of the expand/collapse script at the category template page. This would help as the reader does not have to scroll too much.

Thanks in advance

--Venky Msg Me 07:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I might not have fully understood what you need but it sounds like you need a drop-down box control. See Template:Dropimage , or Template:Droplist within WikiBooks. 81.131.67.219 (talk) 11:26, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Copyvio template bug

G'day, a template wizard is needed to take a look at the {{copyvio}} template, which doesn't account for talk pages outside the Talk: namespace; see Cookbook:Khagina for an example. Webaware talk 12:48, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it. --darkYin yang.svglama 13:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Ta, I have a feeling I'll be using it again in Cookbook. Webaware talk 13:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] how it works

it will be great to know how wikimedia works

Whih part of it, how to use the wikimedia, or how it actually runs? Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 11:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia & Wikibooks

Exactly what is the difference between Wikipedia and Wikibooks? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.116.6.73 (talk • contribs) 21:09, 11 Feb 2007 (UTC)

The goal of Wikipedia is to create a digital free-content encyclopedia. The goal of Wikibooks is to create digital free-content textbooks and other narrative-style educational material. --Iamunknown 21:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing TOC

I'm working on ERP Internals. In some sections, == title == commands produce a TOC as expected. In others, they don't. I can't see any difference between the code in the different spots. I would appreciate any help. AlanClifford 17:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the book specifically, but there is a command __NOTOC__ that can be used to suppress the Table of Contents. Is that perhaps the culprit? If not, you might put up a link to a page that is not working as you expect. --xixtas 18:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the quick response. I haven't used the _NOTOC_ command. ERP Internals/Modules/Accounts Payable works as expected. ERP Internals/Modules/Bank Reconciliation doesn't. AlanClifford 22:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
ERP Internals/Modules/Bank Reconciliation is too short to have a TOC automatically. If you want to force one, add __FORCETOC__ to the page (NB: two underscores + FORCETOC + two underscores). See: Help:Magic words. Webaware talk 23:23, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
For a page to automatically generate a TOC, it must have at least 4 subheadings. If your page does not have that many, you can either use the __FORCETOC__ keyword as User:Xixtas pointed out already, or you can try and subdivide some of your existing headers into subsections. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to both of you AlanClifford 00:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Main Page

Is it just me or does the main page of Wikibooks looks awful? Until you scroll down all you can see are rows of boring text and not even a single image outside of the sidebar. I rarely visit the main page as I usually head straight for the RC list but most new users see that depressing main page on their first visit. I certainly wouldn't stay around if that's what greeted me. Anyone else have an opinion about how the current main page looks? I just think we need to remove the first few tables of 'hot picks' and stuff like that. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 01:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

This issue comes up about every six months or so... and for a good reason. This is the "main face" of Wikibooks and is the best way to introduce this project.
One of the issues that has come up is the elimination of the "Book of the Month" and "Collaboration of the Month" in January, because it was felt that a general cleanup of Wikibooks needed instead of pushing for any specific Wikibook. I believe this to be a failure, so far as it has made the main page very empty and nothing was put into its place. So unless there is a serious objection, I would like to reinstitute those two "features" of Wikibook for March. If they are not restarted, I would like to have something very significant that would take their place that would also feature a significantly completed Wikibook or something that certainly is "the best of Wikibooks" that would rotate every month.... in essence, a Wikibook of the Month. I also don't think it should be arbitrarily decided by the admins or a special committee, but by the rank and file Wikibookians.
The main point of the Collaboration of the Month was to pick one particular Wikibook that could become a featured Wikibook, but at the same time needed a serious infusion of support and effort. I don't think this need has passed either, and the real question again is how is this Wikibook selected? For this particular Wikibooks feature, I think it was abused and turned into mainly a P.R. campaign by the group developing that particular Wikibook which became featured. At the same time, if competing Wikibooks try to get the same coverage, what seems to be the problem here?
de.wikibooks has a feature we don't have which is, roughly translated, a "finalization of the month", where a significant Wikibook that is near ready for publication has requested a formal editorial review. This is essentially like the Wikipedia A-Class review, but is done on one Wikibook per month.
We have also in the past had a statistical summary for "growing Wikibooks" and other interesting statistics. I know that these features can be "gamed", but it might also encourage the primary activity here of actually developing content, which is something we need to refocus here on Wikibooks. A statistical graph showing current growth of Wikibooks is also something that could add some extra splash and pizzaz to the main page. Raw information about Wikibooks (the full text of all en.wikibooks content) can be downloaded here, and there are some tables that don't require the full db download in order to be useful and allow comparisons between various Wikibooks. The full en.wikibooks data dump (minus images) is 86 MB, for those who want to be adventurous and try to plow through that much data.
The point to all of this is that there are things that can be legitimately added to the main page that either have been there in the past or have been done by other Wikibooks projects in other languages... and have enhanced the appearance overall of this project. I agree that this is something that needs to be worked on. --Rob Horning 16:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd also like to see the return of the Book of the Month and Collaboration (although I agree that Collaboration seems to be just another book of the month in practice). If we can't agree to return these features then we should at least move the Categories panel (Natural Sciences, Computing, Social Sciences, Humanities, Miscellaneous and Special Groups) to the top of the main page as this is more appealing visually and less cluttered. I also like the idea of 'Finalization of the month' and this could also be an added feature in Wikijunior and the Cookbook. Also maybe we could have a Cookbook feature on the main page because Cookbook pages tend to have nice bright images, somewhat which is much needed on our main page. Any comments? Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 17:13, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I think having "featured books", "collaboration of the month", etc. on the main page is a bit silly... almost all of the material here is "not ready for the presses", but it is a good start. IMHO, the main page should be aimed towards inviting people to contribute, rather than inviting institutions to "keep us in mind, because some day we'll have some good textbooks for you." I would even go so far as to suggest that "completed books" don't need listing on the main page at all, except perhaps at the bottom of the page.
I think we need to be realistic about this: it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to write textbooks... Wikipedia is essentially a single (many volumed if it were paper) reference book which has tens of thousands of contributors and yet is still not completed after several years of hard work. Wiktionary likewise. Wikibooks is responsible for writing all the other non-fiction books in the library... if your mental image is anything like mine, I've made my point.
We also need to be hopeful about this: given a decade or two, someone might be able to go to college (or high school, etc.) and see that GFDL license on the back pages of most of their textbooks, and be a few bucks less into debt because we (you and me, the Wikibookians) have come up with the world's best textbooks.
What we need now are contributors, and the Main Page should be directed at them. --SB_Johnny | talk 00:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
The main page does need work, but that's only because it's been so neglected of late. User:Hagindaz had done a large amount of work on that page before he became inactive. Before we can make any gigantic changes to that page, we as a community need to decide precisely what we want to appear there.
  • Should we be focused more on readers or contributors? Considering our dearth of "really good" material, I agree with Johnny that we should probably be catering to the latter for now.
  • What books do we want to advertise, and how do we want to advertise, and how exactly do we want to advertise them? Do we want a "Book of the Month", or a "book of the Week", or a "Book of the day"? Who is going to take charge of the advertisment on the main page?
  • How do we pick books to advertise in this way? Do we pick books that are "good enough to publish", or books that are "generally good books", or do we pick books that are good "collaboration projects"? Who decides on the criteria, and who decides what books meet the criteria?
I've put forth the idea of a wikiproject for doing these things at Wikibooks:Good books, but this idea was met with some resistance and criticism. The BOTM and COTM were unabashed failures, that didnt help to increase interest, or contributorship, or readership. The COTM books didn't get any boost from new contributors, and the BOTM books were chosen so arbitrarily that they often weren't great examples of what we do have here.
What we need is for the community to decide some of these questions, and it's my experiance that people tend to either avoid this issue, or get tied up in endless bickering about the specifics. I'm willing to take some initiative and make these changes by my lonesome, but not at the expense of the endless criticism that inevitably follows. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Any book requires both good contributors and good readership. Without the former, there's nothing much to read, whereas without the latter, there's little point in writing it.
With the way that Google works currently, I imagine that readership wouldn't really be that much of a problem - the Wiki projects are well represented in search engines, often appearing in the first few links on the first page of a related search. What we don't have enough of is good contributors.
Thus, I would argue that the Main page should be focussed towards encouraging people to contribute, first and foremost, for now at least. "Build it and they will come", as they say - so let's get on with building it! Webaware talk 01:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

After changes the main page is very unfunctional. We should advertise ourselves by showing the best we have. Instead, we give just a list of categories. This is not the way. We have to convince visitors that there's something finished, worth reading on Wikibooks. Look at the main page on Wikipedia: the list of categories is very small, most content is "self-advertising": fragments of good articles.

List of books near completition is essential on main page. We need it to boost Google PageRank of our books, to encourage visitors to try out some good books. Currently the main page is too spartan. There is even not enough content to make main page as long as list of interwikis on the left. --Derbeth talk 21:36, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transwiki

Hi, I've requested a transwiki move for a Wikipedia article but I'm not sure I've put it in the right place. I placed it on Wikibooks:Requests for Import but now I've discovered Wikibooks:Transwiki log and the related page Wikibooks:Pages to be transwikied which seems to have a different list. Which is the correct one? Kijog 11:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You listed it in the right place, just no-one saw it :). Unfortunately there were too many edits on the wikipedia side for the import tool to handle though... the best I could get was all edits up to June, 2006. If you like, you can just copy from there and leave a note on the talk page about the copying (include a link to the current diff). --SB_Johnny | talk 11:40, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

This book, IMHO, would be improved by adding a Categories section to the title page for (among others?):

Appetizers
Canapes
Tapas
Breakfast
Lunch
Entres
Deserts

Authors may then categorize entries with appropriate (multiple) tags that will get their entries listed for the category.

Also a User Rating box, along the lines of Amazon's for books, say a 1 to0 5 scale, that dispalys a running average of what others think of the recipe, presumably having tried it. I don't know how to impelement this; but some Admin may do that for us. Yes? Frankatca 19:47, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

G'day Frankatca, sounds like you are talking Cookbook recipes here. I like the sound of the user ratings page, perhaps we can discuss it further on the Cookbook general talk page. I'll go add a topic there to kick it off.
Also, you might be interested in checking out the links at the bottom of the Cookbook:Table of Contents – might help answer some questions you may have. cheers, Webaware talk 07:59, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How to find out if the image is copyrighted or not?

Dear all, How do I find out the copyright status for images I wish to use for my book. Kindly advise on the same. Is there a way to identify it? Thanks in advance.

--Venky Msg Me 06:17, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Current international copyright law says all images are copyrighted by default. If there is no explicit statement of releasing an image into public domain or licencing it under a free license, there is no way to use it. One exception is a narrow scope of fair use we have on Wikibooks. Old images become public domain 70 years after death of their author. --Derbeth talk 09:38, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Derbeth for your response. I will now not try to use any images unless I know whether it is covered under Fair Use guidelines or not.
--Venky Msg Me 17:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Surfer Comment

Was just researching rape, this page needs some serious work fast.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.25.117.25 (talk • contribs) .

Be bold. Help us fix it. -- xixtas 17:58, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I've been looking at this page, and I'm going to do some work on the page he was talking about, because it's just a stub at the moment. I'm not exactly an expert in this subject though, so we will see what I can come up with. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
In this case it might be a good approach to transwiki w:rape and prune it back to fit the needs of the book. --xixtas 03:58, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I was planning on harvesting wikipedia pages, and possibly see what other information I can gather from around the internet. The hardest part is figuring out what information to include, what not to include, and how to word everything so that it fits in with the theme of the rest of the book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 04:17, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is this a Wikibook?

Hi. I've been putting together a wiki-version of an academic art book called New Media Art, by Mark Tribe. Tribe teaches an entire course based on the book at Brown University, and I know it is used in classes at other institutions. I started to put it up on wikibooks, since that seemed to be where it fit best (rather than wikipedia or wikiversity). You can see the content so far at: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/New_Media_Art. I was soon warned by two editors that it was not appropriate content -- that it was encyclopedic/macropedic and thus not a "textbook." Though the content of the book is structured in an encyclopedic way (a series of sections, each on a particular artist or artist group), it can still be considered an art historical text. The introduction, for instance, gives a broad overview of the New Media art tradition and ties together the artists discussed in the rest of the book. I've already been told that the content I've put up so far will probably be deleted. Where does this book belong, if not in wikibooks?

Your help is greatly appreciated! I'm new to the whole wiki communication thing, but I think you can leave me a comment on my "talk" page: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/User_talk:Lblissett

Thanks again. Lblissett 20:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)Lblissett

The "not a macropedia" guideline was created to help distance our project from our more popular older sister, wikipedia. The idea behind the guideline is that a book should not just contain information, but it should also teach that information to a specific target audience. This book is still young, and you are a new contributor, and I think it is unlikely that any new user would understand these little difference from the start.
The fact that this book currently resembles a macropedia does not mean that it will always remain so, and If you were willing to work to fix the formatting (under no particular timeline), then I am inclined to say that you and your book should stay here. I will even be willing to help you out, if this is your intention.
By the way, how closely is your book related to Mark Tribe's book? You can't just copy+paste information from a copyrighted book to this website, unless you have his express permission. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for offering your assistance. After more thought, we've decided to put the book elsewhere.

[edit] Monitoring Wikijunior

Today (Fri, 9 Feb 2007), I scanned the Wikijunior page, and, under "current titles" read the list copied below. It, and the introductory paragraph (copied at the very bottom), are clearly cases of vandalism, but I see no way of deleting this stuff myself -- that page seems not to be editable, or perhaps I'm too unfamiliar with the protocol to find out how to edit it. I hope someone who knows how will rectify it soon!

-- Offensive content removed, no need to keep perpetuating it here.

Welcome to Wikijunior The aim of this project is to produce a series of full-color booklets for children aged 8 to 11. The subjects will be appealing to kids, and the writing will be light and friendly. These booklets will be richly illustrated with pornographic photographs, diagrams, sketches, and original drawings. The texts will also follow a format, so that each booklet, while different, will also have certain common features. --P

I fixed that page and blocked the user who vandalized it. -- Thanks for the heads up.--Az1568 (Talk) 22:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I know this would be sort of a pain in the neck, but maybe we should protect the WJ main page to "sysop only"? This would mean that the admins would have to be quick about responding to recommendations on the talk page, but might be worth it: I would be really pissed off if I were surfing Wikijunior with my daughter on my lap and found offensive text (let alone images!) on that page! --SB_Johnny | talk 23:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I would fully support protecting the main and main Wikijunior pages with cascading protection sysop-only edit and move. --Iamunknown 23:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Eek, yeah, cascading protection would be wise in this case, the problem is that I don't fully understand how it works. Some of those images might be on commons too (I could in theory protect them on commons, but I don't think protecting on commons just because it's used on wikijunior would go over well). --SB_Johnny | talk 00:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
True. We could upload them to new file names, protect those, and then delete them when they are off the page. --Iamunknown 00:22, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
You know, if it was anyone else suggesting that my response would be "OK, and who's gonna keep track of this?"... sound good to me as long as we have people like you watching the shop, but that of course depends on us having people like you around watching the shop. OTOH, having orphaned and protected image files sitting around wouldn't be any hinderance to anyone, so why not? As long as the WJ people think it's a workable solution, I think we should just go ahead with it. --SB_Johnny | talk 00:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
I know of few administrators who are very active at Wikijunior. I think that the current level of protection is good enough. Perhaps it could be protected against users with few edits, or whose accounts were too recently created? --xixtas 04:29, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
If it would stop the kind if vandalism listed above in a project for younger people, i, as a wikijunior editor, would welcome full protetion for the main wikijunior page.Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 08:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

<--- Reset Tabs

Speaking as the only person who has made any substantial content edits to the front page of Wikijunior since August of 2006. I don't think that making it so the only person who maintains this page can't do it anymore is a good idea. --xixtas 14:51, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I should point out Xixtras, that I have been monitoring the main Wikijunior page, and have not had a reason to question what you've done there... and I've been caught up with other details, so I felt it was in good hands. Thanks for the work you've done here on Wikijunior, and it is generally appreciated by the community even if it isn't always acknowledged. It is little things like this that actually make this project so much better than what it would be without people like you trying to help out. --Rob Horning 00:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
That's good to know. I didn't really think that nobody was noticing when I made changes. Just that nobody else seemed to be jumping in and actually doing them. --xixtas 05:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there a way to allow a select group of individuals to edit a page, not necesarily admins or sysops, but orinary users who have the bility to edit certan protected pages?Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 15:27, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
There was a discussion on Wikipedia to set up a group of users that would fall somewhere between "administrator" and "registered user". I was actually quite supportive of the idea, as I believe the full admin powers are perhaps a little to overwhelming and perhaps powerful for those overzealous new users who are just starting out. The main feature to be given to this group was the ability to do the quick reverts when doing a recent changes review (or looking at your watch list) as an attempt to help fight against vandalism. Adding a level to page protection could be viewed in similar light, where people who are generally trusted could do edits on semi-protected pages but wouldn't have to deal with the hassels of doing all of the duties of being an administrator. Unfortunately (from my viewpoint), the proposal was defeated on Wikipedia. We do have the ability to semi-protect pages so that only registered users with more than a certain number of edits and has been around for more than a few days would be allowed to edit a page. This keeps the typical vandal (generally they create the account, do the damage on the same day immediately, then throw the account away) from being able to do too much damage, but allows serious user the ability to edit. We have had some complaints about this when done on voting pages, but I havn't seen too many problems when this is done elsewhere. Semi-protection, however, seems to be flaky in terms of what is actually protected by the software. --Rob Horning 00:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the page is already semi-protected as you describe. It seems that this vandal created the account, came back 4 days later and vandalized the Wikijunior front page. A very unusual situation to be sure. It was reverted quickly despite having some of our most dedicated vandal fighters on wikibreak. If vandalism on Wikijunior becomes a real problem in the future I may change my mind, and that might in turn push me into trying to become an admin, but I wish that everything could just be peace love and baby ducks instead. --xixtas 05:04, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I have a few points to make that seem pertinent to this discussion:
  1. Protecting an image does not prevent a new image from being uploaded to that page. If we protect an image used on WJ, it can still be overwritten by a new upload.
  2. Besides the images, I would say that that wikijunior main page is sufficiently "high traffic" as to warrant some sort of protection. I would be inclined to say that only sysops should edit that page (because there currently is no middlground between registered users and sysops).
  3. If User:Xixtas is the key contributor to the WJ page, I would be inclined to say that he should become an admin. This would serve the dual purpose of making the main page more protected against vandalism, and giving a trusted user of this community some recognition.
In fact, if nobody else makes the nomination, I will likely do it myself soon. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WikiCast

Hi , In relation to Wikicast - The free content brodcast,

I was wondering if anyone from WikiBooks would be intresting in contributing, or finding a way to use WikiBooks content on-air :-). ShakespeareFan00 13:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what kind of content we would contribute, although I don't rule out the idea that collaborations with other open-content organizations might prove beneficial. I wouldn't mind swapping some advertisements between our two sites, but i certainly can't speak for everybody. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I thought you abandoned using WB content due to licensing concerns? Kellen T 21:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Licensing issue was resolved. ShakespeareFan00 08:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair Use

I ask all wikibookians to take a look at this link: [1] The WMF has decided to not allow Fair Use materials on the projects, something that Wikibooks traditionally allowed here. This link is an unofficial announcement, but it has claimed the WMF will make an official declaration about it in the future.

With that in mind, I have altered the text of both Wikibooks:Copyright and Wikibooks:Fair use policy to reflect this stance. While the wording of my changes may certainly be open to debate, I think it would be a very bad move for this project to try and oppose the WMF on this issue. Once we get the wording right, I think we should make the Wikibooks:Fair use policy an official policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:24, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I've also made the necessary changes to the proposal at Wikibooks:Image use policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Wait. This message from Kat Walsh does not forbid fair use from what I understand. Kat only writes that no project should use "licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons and limited fair use" - so there should be no transitional licenses, like Noncommercial or No-Derivs. I think you overinterpret the message. --Derbeth talk 10:25, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I share Derbeth's sentiments; Kat Walsh is not expressly forbiding fair use, just severely limiting it. Also, I think you may be jumping the gun: remember, "A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet been made and will be forthcoming." While I definitely support limited fair use, I think that we should not forbid it in its entirety. --Iamunknown 17:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I Posted this on the mailing list but for community's sake I'll post it here too. Now that I've thought about it, and read the letter again, I think that the WMF IS saying that fair use should be limited a lot more, but they didn't say that all fair use could go (indeed, they explicitly said that if there was no possible alternative to fair use, then it would be better to use it). That said, I do think a tightening is in order, and I would propose that we should either have some specific categories in which fair use could possibly be allowed (such as perhaps screenshots and logos as someone mentioned on the fair use policy talk) or judge the images on a case-by-case basis. Of course the latter would not be too practical if we had a lot of requests, but the purpose would be to limit the number of requests so that people are willing to seek other options, such as a free alternative or corporate permissions, or such things as that. I also propose that we have a more formal way to recognize the current copyright owner for those fair use images that ARE used, since by law one's sources have to be cited regardless to avoid plagiarism and other nasty stuff, unless it is common knowledge, and the fair use images probably can't be considered common knowledge since by definition they are copyrighted by someone. Mattb112885 18:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I disagree with both User:Derbeth and User:Iamunknown. I find these quotes from that message particularly illustrative:
  • The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational content under a free content license or in the public domain. For content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the content for any purpose.
  • ...all media we allow on our projects must be free for all users and all purposes, including non-Wikimedia use, commercial use, and derivative works.
  • ...all media on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission for Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out..
It is important to remember here that fair use is "no-derivatives", and is not usable for "all purposes", two things that Kat expressly says are not acceptable. The two exceptions that are listed are "historically important photographs and significant modern artworks", a category of images that is small, and can be dealt with individually. Kat also says
...no project may have content policies less restrictive, or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons and limited fair use.
This says to me that we at least need to impose the limitations that are being described here, with the possible exception of historical photographs and modern artworks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think that you misunderstand the message. Kat says: "Some works that are under licenses we do not accept (such as non-derivative) may meet these [fair use - Derbeth] conditions." Kat does not disallow fair use: she mentions "limited fair use" as an acceptable license for images.

Whiteknight, I'm not sure if you are familiar with image copyright issues. Some time ago, English Wikipedia accepted images which terms of use disallowed commercial use or making derivative works; these "Noncommercial" and "Non-Derivative" terms apply mostly to Creative Commons licenses, which have NC and ND variants. After message from Jimbo all these images were either removed or their license was changed to "fair use". I think that Kat's message is an enforcement of similar policy on all Wikimedia Projects. Works of "noncommercial use" and "no-derivative works" are not equivalent to "fair use". "Fair use" is a "backdoor"; with NC or ND works you can legally use them (copy, sell, etc.) as long as you follow their license having NC or ND clauses. Please read about variants of Creative Commons licenses if you already haven't done it.

From what I understand, Kat is saying that there should not be any "half-free" works: either the image is fully-free (no NC, ND clauses in license) or it has to be a subject to fair use. The motivation is to make authors of NC and ND works to license them under fully free licenses.

To sum up, you should not change important, project-wide, enforced policies (Fair use policy‎, Image use policy‎, Wikibooks:Copyrights) without asking anyone for opinion. There was no clear "Foundation does not allow fair use on any project and wants all of fair use media to be deleted"; Kat wrote: "A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet been made and will be forthcoming". You have no right to make such changes without explicit order from the Foundation. I expect you to revert all your changes to project policies. --Derbeth talk 21:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

My changes to the Wikibooks:Copyrights page were premature, I admit that and I apologize for my haste. The Wikibooks:Image use policy and Wikibooks:Fair use policy page are both just proposals, and I don't feel that I need any special permission to alter the text of those pages. Both of those proposals are old and have never been accepted, making me wonder how much the community wants them to remain unchanged. I wont make any further changes to these pages until after the WMF makes an official statement on the matter.
I don't feel that my understanding of Kat's message is a "misinterpretation". Many people here are reading that message with a bias towards keeping Fair Use images, and people are trying to find a means to that end in the text of the message. Everything in that message says to me that the WMF wants to ban fair use images, barring a very limited set of exceptions. We all need to prepare for the WMF's final word on this matter, and I am urging people to prepare for the "worst". --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:37, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to main page

Wikibooks:Nearly_complete has a list of most of the books that are fairly substantial. If we were a commercial site we would have a listing of this type as the main page. Should our main page look like this test version with a booklist incorporated? RobinH

Here are some examples of commercial ebook sites:

http://www.ebooks.com/

http://www.free-ebooks.net/

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.ebookimpressions.com/

Wikipedia was based on the layout of existing encyclopedias. Wikibooks has copied this layout to some extent but Wikibooks is not Wikipedia. At Wikibooks we need to advertise our books, up front, to give people a good read straight away. Most people are coming to Wikibooks to read, not to write.

I would like to propose that the main page is changed into a classic ebook front page with a book list, images of front covers and brief descriptions of books. The Spanish Wikibooks has already opted for this type of layout but, unlike Spanish Wikibooks we can populate our main page with virtually complete textbooks (Although their guide to Seville Cathedral is interesting). RobinH 12:20, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't remember where I heard the statistic, but apparently over 90% of traffic to WMF sites is composed of readers, not writers. With that in mind, I think that more people are going to appreciate wikibooks, and hopefully join our project if they see some inspiring examples of good books right on the front page. I agree with this effort 100%, and besides a few minor changes, I like this new page, and I like the idea of transcluding it into our main page.
I've started working on a set of criteria at Wikibooks:Good books. Ignoring the fact that this page is a "Wikiproject", I would like everybody to take a look at these criteria and make sure they are acceptable by the community. If we dont want this to be a wikiproject, then we should likely turn the criteria into a policy or guideline. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think that the main page needs to approcahed from a PR perspective, to draw in readers. If necessary a link could be put on the main oage to a secondary main oage for editors. If the main page was designed with the reader in mind, i think that wikibooks would definitely get more traffic and consequently more editors. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions)

I also think that a list of "good books" should be an essential part of Wikibooks main page. As I have written in another thread, current main page is very poor from PR point of view; it does not offer anything to a random visitor. --Derbeth talk 01:24, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

It's a big improvement over the previous version of that page, but you are right that we still need more content on it to catch the attention of visitors. I say we transclude the book list onto the main page, and maybe add additional links to books later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:32, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I see that the book list has been hidden again. Is there really a problem with displaying the full list (about 50 items when complete)? RobinH 11:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Common resources for language learning

Hello. I am active on fr.Wikibooks where I am working on a book see here. I think that some work may be shared between different courses on the same wikibooks and on courses on different wikibooks. For example, I made several galleries with pictures from Commons to learn vocabulary. See for Vocabulary on transport. I think that such galleries may be used for learning Spanish, Japanese, etc on all Wikibooks. I am not very familiar with Wikibooks in English. Could you suggest me a good place to start importing these galleries on this site?. Regards.--Oualmakran Youssef 12:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks for your message. I like your idea and think that different Wikibooks should work together more. With regard to sharing language resources - this is a great idea. I've done some work on the English and Polish books and having such a vocabulary list readily available would be useful for other language books on Wikibooks English and of course for other Wikibooks also. I may have to steal your example given and then I'll make some other vocabulary galleries myself... Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 20:03, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reports

Well i have a question, obviously wikibooks is meant to have books posted in it, but can reports be posted as well? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.217.206.24 (talk • contribs) .

Class assignments, you mean? It would depend on whether you want to include it in a book or use it as the start of a book, since our goal is to create textbooks. What topic are you thinking about? --SB_Johnny | talk 02:50, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Well i am working on a report on softwarepiracy and i think that the information of my report could be useful for others and am woundering if thats something that could be posted to wikibooks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.217.206.24 (talk • contribs) 03:12, 18 Feb 2007 (UTC)
Well, there is a book called The Computer Revolution that addresses that in some chapters, I think the book was actually a class project at some point, but not sure what the status is now. Perhaps you could include it in that book? --SB_Johnny | talk 03:23, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
In general, Wikibooks is for the creation of Textbooks, for the full explanation of that subject, see WB:WIW (it's very long). If you have a paper or a report of your own that you would like to post here, you need to ask yourself a few questions:
  1. Is it acceptable material as a "textbook"?
  2. Can it fit into an existing book?
  3. Could it be modified to become a stand-alone book?
If the answer to all these questions is "no", you might do better to upload your report to academai wikia, or even wikiversity, depending on the policies of those sites. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Create subpage for arbitration discussion

I would like to propose that all discussion on staff lounge related to arbitration, dispute resolution, and the current dispute be moved to a subpage titled Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Arbitration. This would help to make both workplaces more productive, IMO. The conversations I would propose to move are:

  • Wikibooks:Resolving disputes
  • Arbitration Policy
  • Taming the elephant in the room...
  • Wikibooks:Editorial board
  • Arbitration, my role, and the Wikibooks "community"
  • My thoughts on Arbitration Committee proposal

Individuals have argued that some of these discussions should not be in the staff lounge at all. I think moving them to their own temporary workspace makes sense. -- xixtas talk 16:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Symbol support vote.svg Support -- There are other issues we need to work through, but the page is dominated by one issue as it is now. --SB_Johnny | talk 16:38, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support. be bold and just do it, but make sure to include appropriate links from the old discussions to the new locations. I still want to go forward with the plan (some weeks ago) to partition staff lounge into a number of sub rooms, but I haven't had the time to do it just yet. Maybe I will have time tonight or tomorrow for such an undertaking. Of course, perhaps it would be prudent to get everybody's permission again. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I was bold and went ahead and moved it. I hope the addition of an Arbitration link near the top of this page is noticeable enough. --darkYin yang.svglama 17:49, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Search in Help

How to search in help easily,so that i can find the help regarding the topic i want. 203.197.43.34 16:29, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

You'll need to make an account, then modify the "search" part of "my preferences". --SB_Johnny | talk 16:59, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sub Discussion rooms

I want to re-raise this issue now, in light of the previous discussion. Are people here still interested in breaking the staff lounge into smaller discussion rooms? I envision a small number of "standing rooms" for discussion, such as an administrators room (to replace WB:AN, and possibly other rooms), and a general discussion room. Other rooms could be created for the discussion of particular topics, as needed. This main page could likely contain links to the sub rooms, and links to the archival pages. There previously was support for this, and then we all got side-tracked. If people are still interested in this, I have time to work on it this week. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - I don't even know if we're using the green things here or not, but I'll be trendy and give a support vote. I'd like for WB:AN to be removed and somewhat hybridized into having items for admins in several other pages. I think we need to define a hierarchy here of how things will work. We will use WB:RFC to handle user issues (and I think we should split that page up too) and then split up the AN functions into several pages as well. I don't think this should be under WB:SL, but under a new Wikibooks namespace page elsewhere. -withinfocus 18:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
    • WB:AN, and WB:VIP should likely be merged into a single room, that would be easier for an admin to monitor. Whether this new administrators room is here in the stafflounge hierarchy or not is not really an issue of concern (we can move it wherever we need). I think we could have several pages here: (1) General Discussion, (2) Administrator Discussion, (3) Technical Help, (4) Subject/Project Help. At the very least, if we have the administrator page somehwere else, we could post a link from here to there. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - particularly things like arbitration discussions and similar slanging matches really should not be paraded here for all to see (a likely source of discouragement for new contributors). If people want to know about them, they can wander into those sub-pages. Kind-of like "take it outside, fellas". However, I think that the main Staff lounge page should still be used for General discussion, Technical help and at least the requests for Project/Subject help. I for one have learnt a lot from reading this page (particularly, "never become an Admin" :-) Webaware talk 21:52, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - I only pay attention to what ever's at the bottom of the page as it's now too time-consuming to dig through the rest. Separate rooms would be a great idea provided that they're linked to from here. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 21:59, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - I like this idea since staff lounge is way too big for anyone to keep track of... I do think though that we should make the links more prominent (maybe where the links to reference desk and such are now?) because otherwise people will ignore them and just post their comments here anyways, I know I wouldn't have noticed them if it hadn't been for this topic. Mattb112885 02:34, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm preparing a quick and dirty version of my plan at User:Whiteknight/stafflounge. People who are interested can feel free to check out that page, make suggestions or changes, as needed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I like it so far. Maybe the new staff lounge should be protected so NO posts are made there and only on the appropriate pages. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 18:52, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I like it too, although I still want to do a little more work on it before I move all the pages around. I dont think that the staff lounge should necessarily be "protected", but we should put a note that discussions on that page will be moved to more appropriate places. We'll see what we come up with though. It looks like we have plenty of support for this, now we just need to do it right. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - Woo! I'm trendy! Umm... seriously... yeah. Staff lounge has gotten far too large; hard to see new stuff going on. If there were sub-areas, it would be a lot easier to set Watches on specific areas that actually were of interest to us. Chazz 00:35, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Symbol support vote.svg Support - This was already discussed in the past, the benefits outweigh any problems, as it is the staff lounge is not of great use to common users. Go for it. --FallenKnight 19:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Done. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Goodbook

I've started work on this template which produces a "book blurb" for advertising high-quality books. The template is based off the current text blurbs used on Main Page/test to advertise good books. I would like to get some feedback about this template before we try and put it into wide-spread use.

Eventually, I think that book authors can insert these blurbs on the bookshelf pages, and a bot (or patient human) could scan the bookshelves, find these templates, and use them on the main page automatically. This would help to partially automate the task of updating the book entries on the main page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:34, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Staff lounge archive links

Immediately after I finished moving around the staff lounge, i started getting complains from people who thought we should delete the archive links from that page. The archive links do take up a lot of room on that page, but I dont necessarily see a problem with them staying on that page. There are a few options:

  1. Do nothing, leave the links where they are.
  2. Move the links to a different "archive main page" or something, away from the staff lounge main page
  3. Remove the links entirely, delete the archive pages, because all the discussions are available via the page history.

What do people think? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:56, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I think the links and archives should be deleted like option 3 says. --darkYin yang.svglama 23:59, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I pick Box #2, as this keeps the archives easily readable and able to be referenced next time you lot get into a shirtfight. However, I agree that they detract from the new image of the Staff Lounge and should be removed from it. Webaware talk 03:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I strongly oppose deleting the archives as I regularly refer to them. I have been bold and made these three edits to preserve the archives. --Iamunknown 07:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I am strongly in favour of Webaware and Iamunknown's views and the action of Iamunknown --Herby talk thyme 08:09, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Ditto. :) --Remi 09:17, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Progress indicators for Wikiversity

  • I'd like to give you all a big HOWDY from Wikiversity. We are discussing the possibility of implementing progress indicators on the site. I know Wikibooks uses a square graphic divided into four smaller squares, but I also remember seeing a while back like 10 tiny squares all lined up horizontally with different colors. I can't find it, and it might suit our purposes more appropriately. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction. Thank so much.--Remi 09:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
You might be looking for this which is the closest thing I can think of. -withinfocus 14:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving

The previous monolithic staff lounge became large for a number of reasons. First, it was the only place to go to discuss a large number of topics (since remedied), but also because there was frequently a large delay between archivals of old discussions. Wikipedia is very aggressive in archiving it's village pump: Messages are sent to the archives after 1 week, and are deleted from the archives a week or two after that. That system mandates that discussions must be moved to a better place within 2 weeks if people want to continue the discussion.

I don't think we need to quite to go the lengths that wikipedia does, but we should give some serious thought to how we want to archive, and how frequently we want to do it. We now have 4 or 5 discussion pages that we can use for a variety of subjects, but if we neglect maintenance, all of them will be large and unwieldly like the old SL was. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:31, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit]

I haven't been active here for a while, but was surprised to see the progressive changes that have taken place both with the main page and the staff lounge, though I don't think the logo discussion has moved on with as much pace. Looking at the page, it seems that they have pondered over the colour specifications for three months. My question is, echoing the previous debate, do users present at Wikibooks actually support changing the logo? --Herraotic 19:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I couldn't care less, honestly :). We can't actually change it locally (at least i don't think we can), but I assume the devs will make the switch whenever a consensus is reached. --SB_Johnny | talk 19:51, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I would be in favor of a change, the new logo is far more professional and sleek then our current version. There is something to be said for nostalgia, but the current logo is simply lower-quality then he newer logo is. I think the whole discussion over the colorscheme is moot, but if the WMF wants to impose arbitrary restrictions then we can't argue too much. I just wish they would finalize it, so we would have something to actually vote on. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I've already voiced by opposition to the new logo over on Media. My opposition isn't that it's a bad logo but that the muppets who voted for it don't even use Wikibooks. This vote should only be open for users of this project. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 21:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
A good portion of people who voted were members of other wikibooks language projects. Just because they aren't members of en.wikibooks doesnt mean they aren't wikibookians. Also, you shouldn't condemn people who want to help our project just because they arent members of it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, yes I knew that some were from other language Wikibooks but my point was that this is a decision that should be made by Wikibooks users and not Meta users. Community is important in Wiki and their decision didn't represent a community decision from Wikibooks users. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 22:06, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion the logo selected on meta is very amateurish, I can't see any good things of it apart from possibility to create a favicon. The discussion about the colours makes it only worse and for me, it's agains good habits to change the project after it was chosen. People voted on a certain design, including the colour scheme, and it's a manipulation to completely change the chosen logo after the vote is finished. --Derbeth talk 12:33, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been lead to believe that the new logo will not be implemented here unless our community votes and agrees to include it here. In other words, en.wikibooks could vote not to use the new logo, in the same way that fi.wikibooks has voted to use the new logo with the red-blue-green colorscheme. Similarly, I think that we could vote to use the new logo as-is (without changing colors), or that we could vote to keep the current logo. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I actually like the fi.books logo with that color scheme since that's a color group that actually works. I'd like it if we brought that one in for ourselves and not worry about people above us disliking the colors. -withinfocus

I don't like the situation when different language versions of a project have different logo colours, not to mention completely different logos. It's unprofessional. On the other side, the new logo is catastrophic for me. --Derbeth talk 18:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

"Catastrophic"? that seems awfully dramatic for a simple logo change. The current logo is very low quality, both in terms of design and resolution. I've used CSS to change the logo manually in my browser so that I don't have to look at it anymore. The new logo might not be the absolute best choice, but i think it's certainly better then what we have now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I think the design of the existing logo is fine. It's certainly better than the new one, that looks like we've been incorporated into the Freemasons. Webaware talk 01:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A "bill of rights"?

If Panic is right, I'm outta here. Let me explain:

He seems to believe that he can change his mind about any content he contributes under GFDL (as in, change the licence), and that minor contributions (such as copyediting, etc.) don't mean that he can't revoke the license. This would mean that if someone starts a book, and I lend a helping hand here and there, the author could later just change his or her mind and demand the book be deleted, meaning that my good faith efforts to help improve the book were just time wasted.

I'd like to be clear on that, because if that's really what the GFDL means, I'd rather not waste any more time here. If the GFDL "might" mean that, then I think we need to make a very clear local policy, stating that previous contributors do not have the right to demand their contributions be deleted (because they've decided they didn't want to release it under GFDL after all, and including their contributions is now copyvio), since it's unfair to those who come later in the interests of improving the book. --SB_Johnny | talk 13:55, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

For me, the only way for Panic to revoke his agreement to use his work here, is to show that he was insane any time he edited here. It's like selling a car: you cannot come back one year after making the deal and say "hey, give me my car back, I need it desperately". --Derbeth talk 17:14, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, it turns out that he can do this (on pages he started), though he would have to pursue legal action against subsequent editors to force them to revoke the GFDL as well. I've offered to simply delete the C++ book, since it's crap now, and has no chance to grow until he gives up editorial control (which he clearly won't do). --SB_Johnny | talk 17:56, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Derbeth is right. To paraphrase Lawrence Lessig (and the below was written by him under a creative commons license, but because I'm crediting him, you need not worry about it): One point to clarify, however, is that GFDL licenses are permanent, in the sense that the term is as long as copyright runs.
But just because you can’t revoke a particular license doesn’t mean you can’t revoke the offer. If, for example, you offer content under a GFDL license for a month, and then change your mind, you can stop offering the content under that license. Anyone who accepted your offer while it was valid, of course, has a deal. But no one after you withdraw the offer can accept anymore.
In other words (I am no longer paraphrasing Lessig here), he could republish his original contributions under a non-free license (such as the default of traditional copyright), and no one would be able to copy it. But when he submitted the text to wikibooks under the GFDL, he irrevocably licensed that text to wikibooks under the GFDL, and that license on that work will last until his death. He may no longer want to license his work under the GFDL to anyone, and he may wish he hadn't licensed his works under the GFDL to wikibooks. But the fact of the matter is that he did, and now wikimedia gets to alter, republish, publicly display his text, etc. and he cannot restrict us from doing so on the basis of copyright violation.
By licensing his own work to us under the GFDL (by submitting it) he gave us a license to use that work, and that license will last until his copyright expires and the work goes into the public domain. It changes nothing if he later regrets said licensing. -Monktalk 19:42, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Once an edit has been made to an author's original contribution, even a minor edit, that work ceases to be the author's work, and instead becomes a derivative work with multiple copyright holders. As a GFDL derivative work, it is not possible for an author to unilaterally alter or remove the license. Further more, The author has granted that license to the WMF (and wikibooks in particular) for use, and no author can have his contributions removed without consent from the WMF or Wikibooks. Panic, as usual, is wrong about the GFDL. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:05, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
To reiterate this point, let me link to Section 9 of the GFDL, where it states expressly that an author may not cancel the license agreement with the licensee (Wikibooks) unless the licensee is found to be in violation of the GFDL. By clicking the "Save Page" button, an author is granting a license to Wikibooks to host the material, and that license cannot be cancelled or modified unless Wikibooks screws up (which it doesnt). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Annotated texts

I've gone ahead and labeled WB:AT an official policy. This has existed for some time and basically just needed to be cleaned up and modernized a bit. We've been working with annotated texts for years and I think it's appropriate to label this as policy. Please voice your opinion below if you disagree and perhaps we can make some changes, but this looks easy and solid to me. Thanks. -withinfocus 05:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Good job, i'm glad this is official now. There is nothing on that page that seems particularly controversial, and nothing that I can find that differs from the way the community currently handles those texts. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:07, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Main Page

The main page is still oriented towards authors rather than readers. There is a discussion of this at Main Page/test where there seems to be some agreement that details of a few choice books might be shown on the main page and subsidiary pages have their own book lists with pictures and annotations. What do people think about this? If you have an opinion please go to Main Page/test. RobinH 14:06, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

I think all the efforts made on that test page are very valuable. I think that the current look of the test page is fantastic, and the people who have worked on it should be proud of it. Where do we vote to make it official (because you have my vote). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Good job. I like the 'test' page. It would be nice to feature an item from the Cookbook and Wikijunior but that's just me being picky. You have my vote too. Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 21:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
I like it too. It's a huge improvement over what was there three weeks ago. Kudos to everyone involved. --xixtas talk 03:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Making a method for easily finding author's names

I was looking at a book and I wanted to go to the author's talk page. How exactly do we find that page if they haven't discussed it in the book discussion page or signed it in the edit page?

I know that we are all open and sharey here, but shouldn't there be some kind of box or other special catagory where author names are listed automatically?

Is there one that i simply haven't noticed? Rozzychan 00:13, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

All the authors of a page, and all the contributions that have been made to a page can be found in the page history. At the top of every page there is a link that says "history", and if you click on that you will see a list of all the authors and their contributions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:50, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Rozzychan 19:25, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Community Portal

I would like to commend RobinH and the other contributors, for their outstanding design of the recent main page overhaul. Though attempting not to sound idle, I would like to bring the community portal, to the attention of Wikibooks users. It has not been edited since the 18th of October 2006 and is a testament to our lack of structure. If we were to produce a similar test page to that of the main page and contribute, I would confidently foresee that it will develop to become intuitive and informative. --Herraotic 23:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The Wikibooks:Community Portal was nice a few years ago, but you are correct that it has since fallen into complete abandonment. Updating the staff lounge and the main page are, i hope, harbingers of a new renaissance here at wikibooks, and updating the community portal seems to be the next logical step in this process. You can feel free to start creating a new page at Wikibooks:Community Portal/test if you would like (and i assume that you would like). In fact, you should feel completely free to create a proposed revision of any page that you see that needs a little work. I would certainly help with the community portal project, at least at first, but i'm not nearly the HTML/CSS wizard that some people around here are. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree with revising the community portal. I would recommend maybe using a similar theme to Main Page/test with the box style. Be bold comes to mind and using a test page like Whiteknight suggested. --darkYin yang.svglama 23:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Making an Island

Is this for real? 01:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

LOL Yes. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:18, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
It's just amazing what man can achieve with a solid endowment of fossil fuels! :-) Webaware talk 02:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Habermas Commentary

Beginning with the link to "Habermas Commentary" on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory, I have taken a few fledgling steps toward creating a wikibook. If someone has time to comment, repair, or otherwise render constructive advice or assistance, I would appreciate it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Raywood (talk • contribs) 04:29, 1 Mar 2007 (UTC)

The text looks fascinating. One suggestion: please read our Wikibooks:Naming policy. I noticed that the subpages you created are not in a "subpage" system. That's no big problem; just click "move" at the top of each subpage (being the "contents," each "volume," "section," etc. page) and move it into a name that is more appropriate. If you have questions, feel free to come back. BTW, I really appreciate your notice Note: do not post excerpts directly from Habermas's writings. They will continue to be protected by copyright for some years to come. Instead, just refer to specific pages and indicate the text on which you are offering commentary. I have dealt with many copyright issues on Wikibooks, so I heartily approve! :) Finally, nice to see a new contributor! --Iamunknown 16:44, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your kind words, and also for your patience. Sorry for the first of my many anticipated errors (saving faux pas and gaffes, which begin with F and G, for later). I see the notice on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary telling me that I use deprecated naming policy, but I don't know what that means. (There's no reference to "deprecate" on the Wikibooks:Naming policy page. But I assume it just means unapproved.) But I did find a link to the Harry Potter thing, whose deep hierarchical structure appears most suited for this project. I'm not sure how to delete pages. I've got duds at:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Contents
http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Vol._2:_Lifeworld_and_System
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/V._The_Paradigm_Shift_in_Mead_and_Durkheim
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/3._Rational_Structure_of_the_Linguistification_of_the_Sacred
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Linguistification_of_the_Sacred

And now I see I've created new pages without putting "Habermas Commentary" in the file name. I don't know how to fix that. Also, my new page titles are terrible. "2/5/3." Whatever! But I've got to knock off for the night. Thanks again.

--raywood

No problemo. :) I didn't realize Wikibooks:Naming policy didn't have a mention of now-obsolete naming conventions. See Wikibooks:Naming conventions#Naming conventions for existing_books for examples of obsolete conventions. (It doesn't mention there that they are obsolete, but mentions at the top the whole page is obsolete ... and those conventions are obsolete nonetheless.)

For your "dud" pages (also called "orphan" pages), if you do not need them anymore, just tag them with {{db|Deletion requested by author}} Also, if you create a page (often called a "module") and you want to rename it, just click "move" at the top of the webpage and type the new name you want to use.

So for TCA2/5 and TCA2/5/3, go those modules, at the top of the webpage click the tab that says "move," and change the name for the "To new title:" box from TCA/2/5 to Habermas Commentary/TCA/2/5 and change TCA/2/5/3 to Habermas Commentary/TCA/2/5/3

Finally, you can sign your posts with four tildes ~~~~. Where you would normal type "--[[User:raywood|raywood]]", just type "--~~~~"

Hope this helps! Come back if you have any more questions. --Iamunknown 06:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

To change the title of the page, you click the "move" tab at the top of teh page, and type in the new page title in the box. For instance, in your example above, you would type "Theory of Communicative Action/Vol 1", and then click the button to move. If you have trouble with this, please let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:05, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
  • Two questions:
  • (1) I want my pages to have short relatively URLs. Example: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary/Books/TCA2. This is what the wiki automatically presents as the title for the page, on the first line of the visible page. It's a beautiful URL, but it's a lousy title. What I would actually like readers to see, on the first line of the visible page, would include the full name of the book under discussion. That is, instead of TCA, the visible title should say, "The Theory of Communicative Action, volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society." My question is, how can I change the visible title to this longer version, without simultaneously making the URL much longer?
  • (2) A reader tells me that the tables I have posted on http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Habermas_Commentary/Books/TCA1, or possibly TCA2, are not displaying properly. I can't figure out why not. I did have a problem seeing those tables initially, but now I'm not -- so I can't proofread them. Could someone talk a look and tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks! Raywood

Regarding point (2), the first table on TCA1 had an errant extra cell in the first data row; removed. Webaware talk 23:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding "Featured Book" or restarting Book of the Month

I know there was some opposition to the book of the month feature, but it seems like the rationale for removing it from the front page was mainly to encourage building some more infrastructure to Wikibooks instead of concentrating on just content development. I believe that we need to focus back onto that content development instead. The real question here, then, is what should we do to "feature" a particularly good Wikibook, and how can those be identified?

I will accept that the collaboration of the month tended to be "Book of the Month II", and that may be quite a bit more legitmately left alone.

I also understand that, realistically, there are only a few Wikibooks that are really of outstanding quality and really deserve some sort of feature status on the main page.

Here are some proposals to featuring good books:

  • Simply restarting and resuming the "Book of the Month" such as we had going most of last year. One positive aspect of this is that it did help in identifying some relatively obscure Wikibooks that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. It was also very "democratic" in the sense that it was chosen by regular Wikibookians and not some exclusive committee.
  • Putting on a rotating "Book of the day" that would repeat itself every week. This would eliminate the need to constantly struggle to get the main page fixed on the first day of the month (a serious problem with the BotM feature), but still allow a significant feature and have the content of the main page to be fresh when new users come and visit Wikibooks. The rotating templates could be updated or changed depending on new Wikibooks that have reached a certain level of quality, and it could be expanded potentially to a new book for every day in the month, if there are that many Wikibooks to display.

I would like to see some additional suggestions here, but focusing in on one book would be a good thing, from my perspective. --Rob Horning 20:51, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The new proposed layout of the main page at Main Page/test has something similar, where good books will be featured using rotating templates. I've proposed the use of a new {{goodbook}} template to display books in this format. People can use this template to highlight books right on the relevant bookshelf (as I have already done on the engineering bookshelf with two books). Once the templates are filled out, it would be a trivial task for a wikibookian (or even a bot) to find them and add them to the rotation for the main page.
The best method that I think we have for keeping track of good books is the Wikibooks:Featured books page, although that page could also stand to be cleaned up (perhaps with a set of rotating templates of it's own?). Unlike BOTM, books can be added to the featured books page at any time, not just at the beginning of a month.
I've created a general set of guidelines at Wikibooks:Good books that we can use to help with the selection and judging process. At the moment that page is formatted like a "wikiproject", but it would be a simple enough matter to make it a proposal for a new guideline instead, if that's what the community wanted (otherwise people can just join the wikiproject!). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:13, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
One thing that might be useful here to also help out is to restart our book quality classification system. Wikipedia is using the "FA,A,B,C,Start,Stub" system with some very high standards to be considered either "A-class" or "FA-class" (with FA class meaning it has appeared on the front page of Wikipedia). Some of the early FA articles have even been downgraded afterward to drive the point home.
Here on Wikibooks we have been using the per cent (%) complete icons that were used along a similar line of thought, but it has been some time since these have been seriously reviewed, particularly since the massive list of Wikibooks was taken off of the front page. Perhaps adding a template to the "main page" of each Wikibook and have that template automatically add these books to various categories? --Rob Horning 22:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
User:Darklama has developed a series of templates that change over time. the system isn't perfect because of cache performance, but if we were talking about changes over months it would be less of a problem. We could have a template that would mark a book as being a "good book" (similar to the old {{botm}} template), and have the status expire after 12 months so that old books would have to maintain the same standards as new books. FA, A, B and C designations might not work great here, because it is difficult to give a book a single measure of it's quality. We could, however, comeup with a label system similar to the Jung topology test: FROP would be featured, good prose, good formatting, and a PDF version. This is a very slipshod example, of course, but the effect is well-illustrated. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
As an addendum, a series of small icons, similar (if not the same) as those used in the {{infobox}} template could be used as a quick and graphical way to express the merits of a particular book. The same {{stage}} graphics that we have been using could easily be incorporated into such a scheme. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I think BOTM was abandoned because there wasn't enough community involvement, not because there were "more important things to do". I'd like to see it revived, but I'm not sure how we can get more people involved. Maybe that's what we should be thinking about? --SB_Johnny | talk 23:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I disagree. BOTM was good when it was created, but wikibooks is large enough now to be beyond such a slow and rigid system. Books that are quality should not have to wait for the next month to be recognized as such, and books which are genuinely good should not be put head-to-head in a vote, but instead all accepted at once. If there are no good books to promote, we shouldnt be promoting any. Likewise, if there are 10 good books worth of recognition, we should list them all. I envision a system similar to RFA, where quality books can be nominated, voted on by the community, and then promoted without any arbitrary timeframes, and without saying "Well, X was promoted, so Y cannot be". If we put the effort into revamping Wikibooks:Featured books and stabilizing Wikibooks:Good books that we would waste on reviving BOTM (or creating a close analog), we would all be much better off. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:40, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
What we are trying to avoid doing on the "Main Page", however, is to avoid getting it cluttered up again. This has been a recurring issue where as the project grows we end up having a very real manifestation of "instruction creep" that is obviously displayed on this page. If we do have a featured book, only one should be displayed at a time, even if we do put it into some sort of rotation system as I mentioned above. Still, I like your system you are proposing where a book would go before a featured book review (or a positive version of the VfD page) where interested Wikibookians could give a positive or negative review on that book. It still has the potential of sock puppetry becoming an issue, but I think that can be kept under control for the most part. There certainly are a small handful of books I would consider to be worthy of this sort of attention right now, and it will act as a platform to raise standards, where books which havn't been improved for some time could be "re-examined" to see if they fit the new higher standards. --Rob Horning 00:06, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
(reset) I dont think sockpuppetry would be that big an issue here as it was on occasion with BOTM. People had to get high numbers of votes on BOTM, or risk losing the title for an entire month or more. Here, there would be no restrictions on time, so there would be less urgency for a particular book community to "push through" a particular book. It would serve as an excellent counterpoint to VfD discussions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Climatology online text

Is there wikipedia online text covering the science of climatology as well or instead of the politics of global warming? 69.145.72.216 19:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Back / Next

Is there a specific method to adding Back/Next links for pages. I've seen it a couple different ways; Some pages have them at the top, some on the bottom, both for others, and some are completely different. Are they even required - I searched the guides but can't seem to find anything on the subject... --Jimmyatic 21:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

There is no specific method of doing this, as you have already seen each book tends to do it a little differently. There are a list of usable templates at Wikibooks:Template_messages/Navigation, or you can feel free to create your own templates for each book. If you are unsure about how to make your own template, or if you dont want to spend the effort, you can certainly use one of the generic ones. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:32, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Assume good faith

I did not realize until recently that this was only a proposal, and not an actual guideline. I can see no reason why the current text of this proposal should not be made into an official guideline. We already follow this rule, so it should not be that big of a leap. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:06, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a good candidate for tightening up the prose to me. It seems too long and mentions a lot of things that are only peripherally related to assuming good faith. I would start by scratching all of the bullet points. --xixtas talk 00:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
And here I was thinking that formalizing this would not be that big of a deal! If people really want to make improvements to it, i won't say no. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:19, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] WB:RFA Nominations

I have nominated 4 new users for adminship, User:Iamunknown, User:Xixtas, User:Jomegat, and User:Webaware. I dont feel that we've had any nominations in a long time, and we need to ensure a constant inflow of new admins to fill the ranks as old admins get fed up and leave this place. I encourage these 4 nominees to either accept or decline their nominations (hopefully accept), and then I encourage all wikibookians to cast votes in these discussions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:53, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unnecessary input

In the book category of "Religion and Their Sources" ch.6 stuff is written that denotes someone's opinion "My dissaticfaction..." and I believe it shouldn't be there. No matter how anyone feels in their convictions or "dissatisfactions" about certian things the articles written in Wikibooks are there to inform the reader of what life is. Anyone can write the same things about other things on this web site. I have a "dissatisfaction" with a lot of Rock and Roll celebreties that are ruining the minds of our youth but that doesn't change the course of history and I can't stop the World Wide Web from printing stuff about them on their sites.

Be Bold. If you see something you don't like, change it! If you need help knowing how to edit articles let me know. Regards, Mattb112885 03:45, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linking contents listing to recipe

How do I link the contents to the new section & recipe I just entered? Vis; Cookbook, contents; Figgie obbin. (new section) cakes (new recipe) Figgie obbin recipe. I think I'm missing something obvious --Archolman 03:00, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

G'day, I've moved the page into the Cookbook: namespace, under the name of the recipe, so you will now find it as Cookbook:Figgie 'obbin. I also tagged it as a recipe with {{recipe}}, and put it into a couple of recipe categories so that people will find it. If you go back to it now and click on the "edit this page" link, you'll see how I've done all that.
Incidentally, you'll often get the attention of another Cookbook editor by asking on the Cookbook talk page; just click on "Cookbook" in the navigation links on the left, and go to "discussion" at the top of the Cookbook front page. cheers, Webaware talk 12:37, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Featured books/Nominations

I'm seeking community acceptance of the policies that I created on this page. I think I captured the essence of what was said previously about trying to get a series of featured books that could be voted upon by the rank and file of Wikibookians, but get rid of some of the problems that the "Book of the Month" feature created.

I am not saying that these procedures are graven in stone at the moment, and since this is a whole new concept perhaps other ways of dealing with this can be created. Still, I think this is the next step for putting some sort of featured content back onto the main page, and help to keep this from becoming some cabalistic editorial board.

In the next couple of days, I would like to put some of the first of these books onto the main page, unless there is a serious objection. I will be seeding this list with mainly books that have achieved the "Book of the Month" status previou. sly unless there are already several ready to go on this nomination page. Books that have already been added to other "featured books" lists would also be eligible for rapid acceptance to those books which have ths featured book status.

For now, all I'm suggesting here is that a Wikibook is either "Featured" or "Not Featured", although we can come up with more "grades" to classify Wikibooks in the future including some of the current systems. --Rob Horning 22:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I've also created Template:Featured Books that would be used to help with the rotation of Wikibooks. At the moment, I'm using the current day of the month to determine which book will be featured, and an addtional template, Template:FEATURENUM which is being used to count (manually) the number of featured books and can be treated like a variable. I would appreciate helping with some of the other formatting of this template to match a little closer what the theme is on the Main Page, but it is a start.
I chose this method so we could grow the number of featured books and not have to worry about running out of days of the week, or having to have a specific number of books. Ideally, I would like to see perhaps a Julian Date to be used, but that is going to require a Bugzilla request as that number is not currently calculated by MediaWiki. I don't think anybody has even thought of the idea in the past to use templates in this way. --Rob Horning 23:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
The nominations page and the template are nice, and I think they will work well. A good starting point for us will be to do quick reviews of the books already listed at Wikibooks:Featured books. There is no sense in nominating books that are already on the list, but at the same time we can prune books off that don't meet the criteria any longer. I agree with the binary designation, I dont think there are many good ways to "grade" books beyond that.
As an aside, the Wikibooks:Editorial board that I proposed wouldn't really have dealt with this kind of issue, instead focusing on publishing and distributing books (so the term "publishing board" might have been a better name). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:23, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
BTW, I really like the idea of a group of Wikibooks users that are perhaps a little more proficient at doing content editing as opposed to content writing. That is two very different skills, and a good book editor is something that can make or break a book perhaps even more than the author in the first place... and the editor is usually unmentioned as well in most cases. I was more trying to discourage something like an editorial board found in a newspaper office that has control over content regarding what can or can't be seen. That idea, the strong central control board, doesn't belong on a Wiki such as this which openly encourages people to join in and contribute, where the distinctions between one user and another ought to be minimal. --Rob Horning 01:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Okay, thank you for the clarification. I had tried to make the Wikibooks:Good books a "wikiproject" in an attempt to drive up interest. Needless to say, that didn't work. If people would vote without making any other committments, as a wikiproject would have required, that i think will get the most people involved. Of course, we run the risk that this is something that maybe this is something nobody cares about. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your site

Love your site! It's very resourceful. Thank you for making it available. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.130.203.190 (talk • contribs) 13:49, 8 Mar 2007 (UTC)

Glad you like it, feel free to edit it as you see fit! Mattb112885 (talk) 14:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Advantages and Disadvantages of Wikibooks vs. Publishing

I'm writing another book. This time it's on the Internet instead of a paperback. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wireless_Mesh_Networks

I've debated the merits of writing a book collaboratively online versus writing it for a publisher with a co-author for a while. However, there are a couple of factors that convinced me to try writing a wikibook: 1) Time to market - by the time a technical book from a publisher hits the shelf, it's almost obsolete. With a wikibook, people can start reading material as soon as it hits the Internet.

2) There are no easy way to correct books in print, or update them.

With a wikibook, it can be fixed quickly and acurately.

3) With a really popular technical book, you might only sell about 10,000 - 50,000 copies. The money is not all that big. The royalties are only a couple of bucks out of the big $50 shelf price. While the royalties are a little incentive, I believe that getting something out in circulation is much more important. Dissemination of knowledge is more important that cash sometimes.

4) With a publisher, your copyrights are signed away. You don't have the right over your own material once it's published. You can't take your own work and modify it to fit into another book. With wikibooks, your rights are preserved with copyleft schemes such as GNU Free Documentation Licence and Creative Commons. There is also something to be said about the Public Domain. But the best part, you have the right to stand on someone else's shoulders - to build on someone else's work.

5) A published book is on paper. If you are teaching a class, all students will all have an identical copy. Actually not. I've sat through many classes where half of the class had a used older edition and handouts had to made for the corrections. Also, the bookstore ran out of the books, so if you did not buy early, it was not available and had to be special ordered from the bookstore.

With a wikibook, if it's needed on paper for teaching a class or something, it can be published by www.lulu.com, kinkos, staples or a dozen other places. Maybe wikibooks can offer such a service to print books to help defray the cost of running the online library.

The only misgiving I have is that wikibooks may not be an accepted way of publishing anything for the sake of a resume. Essentially, a URL may not be as good of a calling card in some people's mind as an ISBN number. Once the work is published in a hard medium - paper, CD... it gets an ISBN anyway. Maybe that's one of the incentives.

Am I missing something?  kgrr talk15:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think you hit it square on here. And as you mentioned, writing content here on Wikibooks does not stop you from republishing this content elsewhere. And if you only stick to contributions you make, or with agreement of others that work with you, you can even republish this under licenses other than the GFDL, including things as nearly opposite like the Microsoft EULA. As you mention here, this is a freedom that normally doesn't exist in the traditional book publishing world.
On the flip side, I would warn people that try to publish here first that a traditional publisher may treat some of what we do here with either bewilderment due to its novelty, or even out right hostility. Certainly this is something that directly threatens many publishing business models, and there are economic reasons to try and oppose content creation such as does occur on Wikimedia projects. While we strive to remove this stigma, some publishers may look upon Wikibooks as a sort of vanity publisher, with the view that such authors are tainted and not worth serious consideration. This may or may not be an issue for some people trying to get involved here.
As far as the physical publication of Wikibooks content, this is something that requires some fairly substantial up front capital in order to make Wikibooks to be comparable or cheaper than traditional books. This is something I have spent quite a bit of time and effort in trying to work on, and it hasn't been easy. Nothing personal against Lulu, Kinkos, or other publishers, but for low volume print runs their prices are too high and discourage people from taking risks. If you want to have a personal copy of a Wikibook that you have labored over and spending $40-$50 USD for a single copy, they aren't a bad place to start. But when competing against major publishers who through high volume sales can reduce a price of their books of similar quality and content to about $5-$10 USD per book (and make a profit!), it is very difficult for us to compete.
We are currently in a chicken or egg situation where neither the egg has been laid nor the chicken is around. Somehow we need to be able to take some of the already outstanding content and turn this into something that can be handed to actual readers. The efforts to create PDF files for several Wikibooks are certainly one very significant step in this direction, but the next step, of distributing the content outside of the circle of internet websites, is going to be a little bit harder. About the only benchmark we have to compare what the potential market for Wikibooks might be is to use the Alexa web page ratings (or something similar that counts the number of visitors to Wikibooks). The Alexa rating has stagnated with Wikibooks ranking somewhere in the range of being in the top 3000-4000 websites in the world (with usual disclaimers about Alexa ratings). This is not the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects combined, but just Wikibooks including all other language editions of Wikibooks.
BTW, in regards to the ISBN numbers..... hold on. This is something that will happen shortly for Wikibooks in a big way, but it is going to be something that may take some patience. If there is an educational philanthropy organization that may be wanting to help out with getting published books derived from Wikibooks, it would be useful to note that here on the Staff Lounge. Supposedly we did have such a grant for the Wikijunior books, but I have not recieved any accounting of where the money actually went, other than into the huge abyss of the Wikimedia server farm. I'm not saying that the Wikimedia Foundation is corrupt, nor that the need for maintaining the servers is cheap (it isn't!), but some things were promised back elsewhen that have unfortunately hurt the physical publishing effort. --Rob Horning 16:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Rob. Remember eggs existed before chickens! (Dinosaurs had eggs) In the same way, you have to have content to publish before you can publish. I will work on some useful content. Perhaps someday it will be easy to order books in print from Wikibooks. kgrr talk21:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image_needed image

Does anyone know of an image on the commons that would say something like "Image Needed"? In several chapters of Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book - such as Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Poultry, I have a section where I used a Breed_id template which is something like a Wikipedia taxobox, but more tailored to my needs.

I have not been able to find appropriately licensed images of some of the chicken breeds that are called for. Instead of having an image, the best I could do (short of buying a Wyandotte chicken and photographing it myself) is provide links to web sites that do have the images. However, this is far from satisfying.

What would be better than just having links to unusable images is to have an image that petitions the reader - something to the effect of "We need an image of this - if you have one, please upload it." That would be useful on Wikipedia as well - such as in a taxobox with no image. As a bonus, a "what links here" page for that image could be placed somewhere prominent so that people who just want to be helpful (perhaps by buying and photographing chickens) would have a place to check for requests. -- Jim Thomas 03:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I found one on the commons similar to what I was asking for:
(see the Wikimedia Licensing Policy before uploading an image)
I might start using it - but I still think it'd be better to make the plea more explicit, and I don't really want a picture of a ladybug in the background. I think whoever made this was facing a situation very similar to mine. I do think that having a generic image like this would be useful - especially with a "what links here" page. -- Jim Thomas 03:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I would change the wording to emphasise the need for freely licensed images.Otherwise people will just go to google images and replace it with whatever copyvio they find. pfctdayelise 00:02, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
That's a good point. I have not yet attempted to wordsmith the message, but I agree that licensing should be a part of it. I'm still astounded by the amount of copyvio text I get "contributed" to my projects - in spite of the bold text above every "Save page" button. Should this "image needed" idea go on meta.wikimedia.org where it would have a more global impact? -- Jim Thomas 00:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
I added a caption to the image above... would that help? --SB_Johnny | talk 14:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tech help needed with NavFrame (Spanish Wikilibros version), please!

The version of NavFrame in the Spanish Wikibooks project seems to have developed a "tic", and I need somebody to "cure" it please, as I am making heavy use of several templates that call up NavFrame. I posted a request for help in the Wikilibros café yesterday, but nothing's been done and there has been no indication that anyone is going to do anything, so I wonder if perhaps somebody here who understands the technicalities would be kind enough to drop by and fix it? I am developing books following a very similar pattern, with virtually identical templates, on both English and Spanish wikibooks and the English ones work fine, so the problem seems to be a glitch in the programming of the Spanish NavFrame version. It would be great if both versions of NavFrame could behave identically except for the language of the buttons: "Show" -> "Mostrar" and "Hide" -> "Esconder". At present, the "tick" of the Spanish NavFrame consists of displaying both of these buttons twice in succession, so what you get is "Mostrar Mostrar" and "Esconder Esconder" (with two separate links). Apart from being unsightly and looking silly, the real nuisance is that this takes up too much room on the bar leaving the bar's own text cramped (especially when the width is set to less than 100%). Another "funny" behaviour of the Spanish NavFrame I've noticed, not present in the English one, is that the text of the title bar is not centred on the whole bar as it should be, so that when you click on "Show", the title bar text is not aligned with the rest of the table, which is centred properly, but shifted somewhat to the left. This also affects the aesthetics of my templates. So again, can't the Spanish algorithm just be realigned with that of the English version and just the language of the buttons replaced? Here are examples of my templates in action in both languages: English here and Spanish here. Many thanks to any wizard who can fix this! --A R King 07:06, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

The JavaScript that creates the navigation bar differs between en and es. This may or may not be the problem - I see it in both IE and FF (contrast that with the script comment below). The en copy has this for function createNavigationBarToggleButton():
// Find the NavHead and attach the toggle link (Must be this complicated because Moz's firstChild handling is borked)
for(var j=0; j < NavFrame.childNodes.length; j++) {
  if (NavFrame.childNodes[j].className == "NavHead") {
	NavFrame.childNodes[j].appendChild(NavToggle);
  }
}
whereas the es copy has this:
// add NavToggle-Button as first div-element 
// in < div class="NavFrame" >
NavFrame.insertBefore(
	NavToggle,
	NavFrame.firstChild
);
Perhaps someone more familiar with these JS files in wiki could fix the es copy and try the page again. Webaware talk 08:20, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Webaware. Would somebody out there be so kind as to try and do the fix suggested. I'm not at all familiar with the syntax so it would might risky for me to try going in there myself. As I said, I already asked for help in the es community and so far there's been no response! --A R King 10:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Note that this JavaScript can be found (changed) in MediaWiki:Common.js on the en.wikibook; however, it appears to be under a different configuration on es.wikibook, as es:MediaWiki:Common.js only has a comment. Note also that you need certain privileges to change such scripts. Webaware talk 11:58, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

All the more reason why I need help, then. Where or how can I go about getting such help? --A R King 12:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

You'll need to enlist the help of an admin or sysop on es.wikibooks, or alternatively, a Spanish-speaking admin from en.wikibooks. If you're lucky, one might notice this here soon; otherwise, add a link to this discussion from your post on es.wikibooks' Café. Webaware talk 12:21, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, I'll do that now. --A R King 16:42, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Persian Language Learning Template

I was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to help create the Lessons navigation template for the Persian Language Wikibook please. I can't get the two rows to sit directy above one another, one aligns left and the other right. Can anyone tell me what is going wrong? It's at Template:Persian. Thanks :-D Poppy 22:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Try now. Webaware talk 22:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! It's like magic. :-D Poppy 23:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A Puzzle for the Mathamatically Inclined

I have an interesting challenge for those Wikibookians who want to try and come up with an interesting algorithm that can be used for the rotation of featured Wikibooks:

Right now, I'm using the formula of

 {{JULIANDATE}} mod {{FEATURENUM}}

to determine what Wikibook will appear as the current featured book of the day.

Here is the dilemma. When the value in FEATURENUM is modified (due to adding new books into the rotation), the resulting calculation will reshuffle all of the existing rotation in a seemingly random fashion. BTW, this is nearly the same algorithm that is currently employed for most implementations of psuedo random number generators, so there is more than coincidence here that it would seem random when changed.

What would be nice to have is some way to keep the existing featured wikibook when the number of featured books changes, and merely tack on the new featured books onto the end of the rotation. It should also be something that would be of very low maintainence in terms of day to day operations of Wikibooks. The idea here is that if the number of featured Wikibooks changes frequently (more than a couple of times per week, for instance), it is likely that some supposedly "featured Wikibooks" will never make it onto the list just because of holes in the mathamatical sequence that is finally generated by the above algorithm.

The above formula is more than likely going to be sufficient for a limited number of featured books, but I can envision a time in the future where that may not be the case. I would at least like to have somebody else think about some alternative approach to accomplish this same goal. --Rob Horning 17:36, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

This would not work if we had to change it manually, but if we can have it done automatically, do we need to have it last for a day? If not we could just do it per hour or something so that the randomness doesn't have as much of an effect, i.e.
(24*juliandate) mod featurenum
This is, of course, beating around the bush. Mattb112885 (talk) 18:08, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Since the method of calclation of the JULIANDATE template I created (much simplier than the Wikipedia version) uses the UNIX timestamp for calculations, giving us the w:Year 2038 problem (we can only hope Wikibooks last that long!), changing this to hours is trivial in this situation. Still, as you said, this only pushes back the timeframe that this would become an issue, not a real solution to the problem. --Rob Horning 20:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I think what he was suggesting is that if we have a lot of books that qualify, rotating every hour would mean that books would have a fair chance of being on there more often, since a random rotation might make 1 out of 100 books only appear every 700 days :). --SB_Johnny | talk 21:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I do get the argument about the hourly rotation, as with 100 featured Wikibooks it is unlikely that they would be reshuffled every 100 hours (about 4-5 days) due to new Wikibooks being added, but it may still be an issue eventually. I would have to do a solid mathamatical analysis, but it wouldn't be that even in this case the featured book would appear only once every 700 hours, but rather that some would keep reappearing repeatedly and others wouldn't even be seen at all, just due to their position in the list and the fact that the offset keeps changing. What positions keep repeating and what parts remain hidden is determinstic in nature, but a complex enough problem that it isn't worth worrying about for an individual book.
Pushing this from a daily book problem to an hourly problem is just a "hack", and not a proper solution this this issue, or only a short-term fix at best.
One possible "solution" would be to reset the start date of the "Julian Date" algorithm to when the sequence began, but this is a bit more "manual editing" that would require an additional "variable" that would have to be updated when new featured books are added. This wouldn't be hard to explain in a protocol document, but it is also one more thing to mess up. --Rob Horning 14:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] short_stage template

The short_stage template was changed today to use svg instead of png graphics. Unfortunately, this broke my book in a very unpleasant way. I was not using the short_stage template EXACTLY as it was supposed to be used. I had created a Now_work.png graphic, which is a 9x9 transparent box. I have been using that as an argument to short_stage to indicate that no work has been done writing answers for the honors in my Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book, though the honor requirements are all in place. I use 00% to indicate that less than 25% of the answers have been written, but more than 0%.

On my index pages, (such as Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature) I use the No_work graphic to line all the honors up - they all have a short_stage macro to the left. I made an ill-fated attempt to create a 9x9 transparent svg, but it ended up being more like 256x256. Didn't notice that until I uploaded the graphic. Now my index pages are completely hosed. Is there anyone out there who can make a transparent 9x9 box as an svg? -- Jim Thomas 02:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Try this one. Let me know if I need to modify it at all. Webaware talk 02:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I've uploaded a 9x9 transparent SVG to commons, over the top of your Image:No work.svg. Webaware talk 02:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
And over mine. :) --Iamunknown 02:29, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. While I was waiting, I made a stoopid version of stage_short called stage_short_png. I went through a couple of my index pages and replaced all the stage_short templates with the new one (I've reverted again now). Now that it's fixed, maybe someone can delete stage_short_png? And maybe I should adjust the patience threshold. -- Jim Thomas 02:48, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Just tag it with {{delete}} and pass in a reason. Sorry, Iamunknown, the tortoise beats the hare again ;-) Webaware talk 02:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Top active

I plan on redesigning this old little "project" of ours that has stagnated for some time. The previous content in the pages is incredibly outdated and I'd like to remove it all and replace it with my new instructions and results. Most of the formatting will stay the same, but I'd like to hear what everyone would like to see for statistics. I guess the first question would be, do we want a nice interface for this at all? The information is available in other places. If we don't want it, I'd like to propose (again) to delete all these pages since they're quite outdated and an eyesore. If not, I plan on having these sections which will be completed on a monthly basis:

  • Top active authors (most edits made in past month)
  • Top active books (most edits made in past month)
  • General site statistics

Tell me what you'd like and I'll see if I can abstract it. -withinfocus 13:46, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I thought that was stopped because the method used for tracking this was no longer available? If it can be revived, I think that would be a nice idea, and a nice thing to link to from the Main Page.
One concern I have about it though is that a lot of the old books that appeared there have since been deleted, Which makes a bit of a mess on Special:Wantedpages. Would anyone object if I switched those links to the deletion logs for those pages, and made a note that they were deleted? --SB_Johnny | talk 14:13, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Like this, for example.--SB_Johnny | talk 14:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I plan on deleting all those old pages (the Top active pages) upon creating the new system. Would that not take care of this issue? -withinfocus 15:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Just a quick question, how are you planning on reviving this project? Are you going to be watching the RC list, or are you going to be analyzing a database dump? Do you have the necessary software for this?
I think it's a really good idea, and it will definately help to have something that says "this is where our effort is going", so we can identify active portions of our community, and advertise their efforts. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I've found a relatively simple way which is to analyze CSV files created by the Wikistats tool. I could of course run the Wikistats tool myself and then use its output, but it looks far easier to use the auto-created CSV files and someone could pick this up after me without much problem should I disappear in the future. Our output for our top active pages would be more customized and much nicer on the eyes. I find the Wikistats tool to be too much data usually and hard to decipher, so we can make our own display of it. -withinfocus 15:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm putting this on hold for a little bit since I'll be busy with some other stuff outside of Wikibooks. -withinfocus 19:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Just a note. I don't think "Jan 20, 2007" should be considered as "available" information, that is pretty inaccurate too IMO. (Of course, now that i can't possibly guess what was at Wikibooks:Top active, i can't compare the two sets of info, but still...) Good luck with this anyway. -- Jokes Free4Me 18:45, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the maintainer of the Wikimedia-wide stats system seems to be slacking. Maybe he quit, I didn't look into it that much. The stuff that used to be here was two or so years old and had little to no value since many of the books worked on back then have been deleted or abandoned, as well as the contributors working on them leaving the project. We'll see where this project page goes ... -withinfocus 22:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bird_id Template troubles

Hi everyone,

I have written a template Template:Bird id that I'm having a bit of trouble with. There is a named parameter called "description", and no matter what I do, the template insists on putting the description text in bold.

Here's an example:

Baeolophus bicolor (Tufted Titmouse)
Tufted Titmouse
Range
Description
These birds have grey upperparts and white underparts with a white face, a grey crest, a dark forehead and a short stout bill; they have rust-colored flanks. The male and female have identical plumage.


Another thing I would like to do to this template is conditionally add an icon for an audio file (assuming I can find bird call audio on the commons). I'd also like to change the layout depending on how many of the four image arguments are included. I have room for image_male, image_female, image_juvenile, and range_map. If all four are specified, I'd like a 2x2 grid of the images. If any two are specified, I'd like them to show up side-by-side. If one or three... I'm undecided and solicit input. Perhaps have the description and an image side-by-side, or perhaps scale the width of the images and have them three-across.

I know that's asking a lot, but I'm trying to put together a mini-field guide, and if we can get this tweaked nicely, I could see building on it for other field guidish modules as well. Thanks for any help you can render! -- Jim Thomas 01:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

You had the description text as a cell heading by starting the line with a bang (!). Now fixed. Webaware talk 01:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! -- Jim Thomas 01:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Nice template! Some "identification quiz" templates are in use on Wikiversity: v:Plant_identification/Symplocarpus_foetidus... I can help you make some for animal identification if you're interested. --SB_Johnny | talk 12:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do to add to this template to make the changes you talked about. What image do you want to use as an audiofile icon? I'll pick one at random now, and we can work on a better one later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:38, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to everyone who has worked on this. Your efforts are greatly appreciated! WK, the icon you choose is more than sufficient. I'm going to leave it as is. -- Jim Thomas 01:42, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wikia.com - wat is the difference between this and wikipedia !

wikia.com << wat is the difference between this and wikipedia !

Wikia is a commercial wiki project and so features advertising. There are also more specialised categories which makes Wikia suitable for some topics which are currently not allowed on Wikipedia or Wikibooks, etc. (like game guides and fiction). Xania Flag of Poland 2.svgtalk 19:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikia was started by Jimbo Wales, just as Wikipedia was, and there are many people who have been active contributors to Wikimedia projects (like Wikibooks and Wikipedia) who are also very active contributors on Wikia, so I can understand a source of your confusion here. Wikia is also noted for being much more open about creating new Wiki projects, as all you really need to have is just a very good idea and they will likely let you start the project. Things like fiction and original academc research are examples of projects that have been very difficult to start as a Wikimedia project which Wikia didn't even hesitate to get started.
Since they are not Wikimedia sister projects, there really isn't any special distinction they have over any other Wiki or even conventional website as far as Wikibooks is concerned. We do mention a few Wikia sites explicitly on Wikibooks mainly to suggest alternatives when there are regular sorts of contributors who do show up on Wikibooks asking about specific kinds of content.
A small portion of what Wikia earns does go back to the Wikimedia Foundation to help support financially this website, and Wikia in the past has also offered technical and server bandwidth to help support the Foundation as well. So there are some additional ties to Wikipedia, but they are more indirect and certainly something that any other group could also do to help this and other Wikimedia projects. --Rob Horning 20:07, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
It's like asking what is the difference between Google and Yahoo? different websites with different goals, even if they are both based on "wiki" technology. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Reading_room/Archive_31"