Wikibooks:Reading room/Archive 33

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

This is an archive for historical purposes. When moving threads here, add them to the bottom of the list (or start Archive 34).

[edit] Reviving "...of the week"?

I'm wondering if maybe we shouldn't revive the "policy of the week" thing, but using a more formal and complicated approach. I think it would be good for us if we had 3 "...of the week" things: Discussion of the Week, Vote of the Week, and Community Project of the Week. I think it would also be good to use the sitenotice feature to bring this to the attention of both new and old Wikibookians... it would also give "jaded Wikipedians" an easy way to find things to do here while they get over writer's block.

Discussion of the Week could be a new policy or guideline, or even something more vague, such as whether we need a policy or guideline.

Vote of the Week would be for proposed policies or guidelines that have evolved to the point where only minor edits are being made. We could also perhaps dedicate the first (second, third, last, whatever) week of the month to RFAs, and only allow voting on RFAs during that one week. Or maybe even have every other week for VfD, with the weeks between alternating between RfA and policy voting. (The point is to have everyone's attention focused on the same page.)

Community Project of the Week could be for just doing maintenance chores. Correcting naming policy, unwikifying silly links, etc. Or even doing chores in one book or another where many hands are needed to make the work light.

Maybe also a Votes for Next Week's Agenda... the discussion, vote, or project that gets the most votes wins!

I know this all might sound silly, but the sitenotice might be a better venue than the Main Page for getting people excited about the project. Writing books is a huge commitment, and giving people a way to constructively contribute to books (and see what books are like) can help them get more comfortable, and see that they can just do what they have time to do, rather than taking on the whole world by themselves. Working on a Wiki-Book can be a lonely experience, but anyone who comes here wanting to do good things should be given an outlet... there are so many "little" things that need doing, and (I suspect) plenty of people willing to do them. The sitenotice can advertise to any and all that there's work to do here, and that they can help, even if they're not sure yet whether they want to take on the responsibility of writing a book. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 21:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

A problem with these types of things is that we just dont have enough interested people who are willing to maintain interest in these projects. I know that I am a terrible offender because I tend to start projects and then lose interest. In my defense I tend to lose interest in things of which I am the only participant, so we can chalk that up to a lack of interest among other community members. It certainly is a great idea, i just dont know that we can support it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 03:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to say that, while I approve of all of those projects, do them sometimes on my own and wish such a set up would work, I am unsure it would work. What I would like to see getting going is the Wikibooks:Community Portal; I currently lack sufficient JavaScript coding skill, but this summer I fully intend to create a script which will scrap the server for a random set of tasks to add to the Template:Opentask, such that users who just feel like doing something can. But then I might encounter the same disinterest. --Iamunknown 10:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you 100%, the community portal is a great place to focus our efforts. I dont know how effective javascript is going to be at the tasks you are talking about, but it would be easy for a bot to do (and i can write bots). --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Goodbook and Main Page

As many people have probably already seen, the main page has been updated again to include more book advertisements. I would encourage all book authors to prepare a {{Goodbook}} template for your book, especially if your book is a featured book. This template can be rotated onto the main page eventually, but it can also be permanently displayed on the bookshelf, and you can also post it on your book TOC page. Also, if the authors of the books write these blurbs themselves, other people won't have to rewrite them when we try to put them on the main page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:52, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I may be being dense, but I don't understand where to create the goodbook template. --xixtas ^talk 09:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Me too. Is it like Infobox? If it isn't, that might not be a bad style to emulate. -withinfocus 12:48, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I propose that Goodbook templates be created as subpages of the {{Goodbook}} template, for example, {{Goodbook/French}} -- Kowey 08:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Another thought: is there any way to have the thumbnail link to the book itself and not to the image page? It's just so tempting when you see one of these showcases to click on the picture, thinking that you will get the book being advertised. It may not be a good practice in general to have such links, but for the purpose of building a goodbook showcase, it seems like it would be really useful -- Kowey 14:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Try {{click}}. The images for the bookshelf list use it. --hagindaz 22:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'm having some trouble with non-square images (or rather, wide images), because they get the link underline underneath them, in addition to a blank white space, presumably from the divs that superimpose the link. Ideally, we would have something which calculates the height of the divs in proportion to the width, details details, but maybe this is not the kind of thing we want to implement in the template language. Hmm. Maybe there's a simple way out. -- Kowey 07:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Argh, sorry if I'm making a mess. I'm trying to figure out how to (i) eliminate redundancy in the goodbook templates (ii) keep things transparent so that any wikibookian can edit the blurbs without becoming a mediawiki expert (iii) keep things parameterisable so that you can include goodbook templates on bookshelves and add borders, etc (iv) keep things simple so that writing a template for your book does not involve too many arcane commands. So far I keep running into tradeoffs. Poke at it one way and you lose another aspect. Eliminate redundancy and either lose simplicity or parameterisability.

I guess what I'm looking for now is some kind of inheritance mechanism, where for example, the {{Goodbook/French}} 'passes along' any other parameters to the {{Goodbook}}, such as box, bgcolor, etc. Or barring that, some kind of quoting mechanism, where the goodbook template includes some template text which is not expanded in the template itself but in any other template that uses it. Hmmph! I promise I'm not making things complicated on purpose! -- Kowey 09:49, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

How about making a few things automatic? For example, an automatic PDF link using {{#ifexist)) (see, for example, {{PDF}}) or an automatic cover if Image:{{{title}}} cover.jpg exists, and either require covers and PDFs to follow this format for simplicity or allow other locations as optional parameters. Or perhaps not using the box only if {{PAGENAME}} is Main Page or Wikibooks:Featured books/Templates, or only using it on bookshelf pages? What do you mean by "quoting mechanism?" <includeonly>? Perhaps you might might find something helpful on m:ParserFunctions. --hagindaz 19:09, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey, that might be a nice way to simplify some uses of the template. We could then have the PDFs and the covers working just by convention.

I'm not sure if I really wanted to say "quoting mechanism" or maybe "escaping mechanism", or something else. The basic idea is that you have a template OUTER which includes a template INNER, it might be nice if template INNER had some code that could literally be placed into OUTER and be interpreted as part of OUTER. The idea I had in mind was that the Goodbook/Foo templates should have a edit=1 parameter that enables an 'edit this blurb' link; but that the code for making that work should be handled by the inner (Goodbook) template. Now could you have the inner template check for the 'edit' parameter, but then you would have to do extra work to propagate the parameter from Goodbook/Foo to Goodbook... which makes it harder for authors to write their own Goodbook/Foo templates. Likewise, I would like the Goodbook/Foo templates to have a 'box' parameter, whose code is completely handled by Goodbook. We could pass the parameters down, doing something like {{#if|{{{box}}}|box={{{box}}}}}... but ugh! Does this make any sense? -- Kowey 19:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If I'm understanding you correctly, the simplest way to accomplish that would be to add for example "|param={{{1|}}}" to Goodbook/Foo, which would pass {{Goodbook/Foo|anything here, if anything}} to {{Goodbook}} as "param" for Goodbook to handle using #switch or #if. {{#if|{{{box}}}|box={{{box}}}}} can be simplified to box={{{box|}}} which, while not ideal, is less confusing and more workable syntactically. --hagindaz 20:16, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, that's interesting. But isn't setting a parameter to empty string different from leaving it undefined? -- Kowey 04:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently it is for named parameters. As a workaround use #switch to look for a particular string ("1" or "true") on {{Goodbook}}. --hagindaz 04:24, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right! I had not thought about solving it that way. My version of it was to do {{#ifeq:{{foo|}}||desired result}}, that is, only using {{{foo}}} if it was non-blank. So we conflate blank with undefined. I think {{Goodbook/French}} could be an example of how people should make Goodbook templates. The box={{{box|}}} is simple enough, and non-technical users can just copy from the model anyway. Thanks for your help! -- Kowey 05:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 69.112.195.155 ( talk | email | contribs )

Could someone take a look at the pages created by this IP. Nothing wrong with them but they should be part of something rather than standalone & frankly I'm not sure what they should be part of. I'm short of time today - thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe Wikijunior Human Body? --xixtas ^talk 08:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I moved them all under the newly created Human Digestive System and left a note to the contributor. (I also encouraged him/her to choose another name). -- Jomegat 13:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I found this guy last night and sent him a message, but it was late and i went to bed before cleanup. All those pages appear to have been made from red links in the Wikijunior Human Body book, and I went through and simply deleted those red links (looks like a bad transwiki to me). I also sent this user a message, but i dont think he listened. Thanks for finishing the job. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:59, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops. My bad. -xixtas ^talk 23:07, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More Good Books on the Main Page

I would like to thank Darklama for the technical improvements to the main page. It is certainly much better than it was. Why not reduce the width of the left hand column to 30% and make the "featured books" 2 column to allow more featured books on the main page? I have put an example with a single featured books column at Main Page/test2. There is room for 2 cols on the right and the "Goodbook" template could be less generous with padding. RobinH 08:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to say that I like it to. My suggestion is to reduce the intervals of time by which the books rotate; one second seems a bit aggressive on the server's cache, perhaps rotate once per hour? --Iamunknown 10:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

More frequent rotate and more books would do it for me. Five minute rotation might be feasible. RobinH 11:37, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

My concern is if the main page will even re-cache that quickly. --Iamunknown 12:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

If it supposedly switches every second, the main page will really be dependent on the cache speed of the server, and the main page will appear to switch randomly. We can certainly reduce the amount of time too, if you think that will balance it out more. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

A 30% column or three columns would be too much for some resolutions. How about moving the sister projects links to the left column, for example as on nl:Hoofdpagina? --hagindaz 13:35, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

That's another thing worth considering, not all people have fantasic resolutions. My one computer is only 600×800, and the 2-column thing looks a little messy unless i have the page maximized. unfortunately, mediawiki doesnt supply a {{SCREENRESOLUTION}} magic word, so we can't make the page change for different resolutions. We could provide a "low res" version of the page, but that's just another problem. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the best way to deal with the differences in screen resolutions is to simply rearrange the contents, so that the about wikibooks and bookshelf listing are at the top together, followed by the listing of books, so it can take up the entire 2 columns without having to deal with the cap mess that can happen when the featured books list is too long or too short. --darklama 14:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I would be in favour of this. People who want to browse the best books would then get a long listing. Perhaps the intro could have a prominent link to the best books lower down. RobinH 18:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I changed it to update every hour, not every second, that should be better on the server. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The Good Books should be listed above the fold (without scrolling). They add a lot of visual interest to the front page. I think we should do lists of 5-7 books and rotate them frequently. --xixtas ^talk 02:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Just fill the main page with the good books (no scrolling or minimum scrolling). The boring text about Wikibooks history, blah blah can be removed or linked to by a 'About Wikibooks' link. The good/featured books are the best part about the main page. Xania ^talk 13:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree we should eliminate that entirely but perhaps make it a small banner across the top to conserve space for other things. We SHOULD definitely welcome our new users on the main page I think, since it's the first thing many will see. Im not sure what we'd do with the navigation scheme but a few things in that template seem outdated anyways (example: if someone clicks on dewey decimal they'll get only a small number of the books on the project, same with library of congress) so we should probably update the links in it whether we move things around or not. Mattb112885 (talk) 13:32, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks statistics

There was a concern a posted a little while ago that wikibooks was in some kind of decline, or that our project was shrinking. These concerns were based on the alexa ratings graph, which showed a general negative trend starting around January of this year. For several reasons the alexa graphs need to be taken with a pinch of salt, but what we can do is look at the statistics that are compiled automatically by the wikimedia toolserver. The last statistics were ocmpiled mid-march, so they are about a month behind, but they show a much more promising picture:

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm

  List of diagrams showing statistics by month. Grey bars indicate projected month-end results. Notice that new user accounts are up by an amount consistent with previous months, new "authors" are up (author = person with 10 or more edits), new "very active authors" are up significantly (very active = 100 edits or more), new pages are up, page size is up, new pages created per day is up significantly.

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

  This is alot of the same information as above, but in table form. This also has some information on pages most commonly edited, and the statistics of some individual editors.

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/PlotsPngWikipediansContributors.htm

  Chart showing number of "authors". The red line is for en.wikibooks, and you can see it is climbing very quickly.

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/PlotsPngWikipediansEditsGt5.htm

  Chart showing number of authors who make an average of 5 or more edits in a week. The general trend of this chart is increasing (although there are two clear dips in mid january and mid march).

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/PlotsPngDatabaseEdits.htm

  Page shows number of edits per day (light red) and average number of edits per day (bright red). Notice we had a spike last june, a crash in january, and a steady incline ever since.

• http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/Wikibooks_EN.htm

  (page is very large) This is a description of our largest wikibooks, by total amount of text. Notice that we have at least 100 books with more then 170kbytes of text.

This is only a small fraction of the data available on the stats server, i suggest people go look around and see all the information available. I hope this eases some fears that people are having. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately those aren't completely accurate either, I'm afraid. http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm shows some very skewed statistics for A Wikimanual of Gardening because of my excessive use of the import tool :). However, it might not have any effect on the "trends", since the tool they are using apparently readjusts to include historical wikipedia edits too (for example, we have logs of edits to A Wikimanual of Gardening/Digitalis in July 2001, and as far as I know we didn't even have Wikibooks in July 2001), so my guess is that as far as the trends are concerned it's logging those contributions in the past as well as the present, so any "trend" is more likely a local phenomenon. Import is a great tool, but it does screw up the stats... for example, A Wikimanual of Gardening/Digitalis had 169 revisions when I imported it. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, no other book has made as large a use of the import tool as the gardening book has, and i would say that compared to the project at large, the additional edits accured by importing those pages does not have a gigantic effect on the overall picture. I did think it was a little odd that WMOG was listed as having over 2400 distinct "authors"... --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

lol... I make from 3-10 imports a week, sometimes with over 1k previous edits. The funny thing is that (depending on how you look at it) there are over 2400 distinct contributors to that book, it's just that most of the edits were made on wikipedia, not on wikibooks.

A question about that though (sorry to hijack): have you found anything there that lists the top contributors for a particular book (on all subpages)? I'd like to start a talkpagespam campaign on wikipedia, especially now that I can help with account renaming if necessary. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

These stats are good. The good news is that the red line is nicely exponential - english Wikibooks is on the up qnd is in a sustained growth phase like Wikipedia achieved (unlike some of the other languages). It is a shame that we have no readership figures. Does anyone read our books or is this an authors club? RobinH 17:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

You are right about the readership question, there really is no way to determine who is reading what, or if anybody is reading anything at all. Unfortunately for us, that alexa graph is the only indication at all, and I dont consider it to be too accurate. The developers have been dead-set against installing hit counters, so i guess we will never know.

On the flip side, i think it's a safe bet that people don't create an account here unless they are on the site reading things in the first place. Since our numbers of new accounts continues to get bigger, i think we can take that as an indirect measure of the number of readers we have. Even if we take that, and see that readership is up, that doesnt mean we get to rest on our laurels. We always need to be improving things, and attracting more and more people. A little pride in our progress is not unjustified, i think. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:25, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Historical pages

Wikibooks has accumulated a number of pages that haven't been updated for ages still linked to from Wikibooks:Community Portal, Help and project pages, such as Wikibooks:Wikibook Press, collaborations of the month, and Help:Textbook planning, among many others. Perhaps we should delink and add these pages to a new Category:Historical project pages? Does this seem like a good idea? --hagindaz 09:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. We really need to go through some of those "dusty corners" in any case, since a lot of stuff in the Help namespace in particular was copied from old Wikipedia pages ages ago, and never really "altered to fit". --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:48, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to agree. There is some feeling amoung a few editors that i've spoken to that some of this old material might even need to be deleted, but on the grounds of historical value, i think that they should be kept and properly categorized as obsolete. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:06, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Goodbook double rotation

I was just thinking that

1. We should keep the number of featured books per slot pretty low. 6 is quite good. Any more and the books get drowned among themselves
2. But... we have a lot of books to feature
3. Anything like 6, 12 or 24 slots might be bad, because it might cause books to only be featured in certain timezones. We should probably stick to < 5 slots
4. But... we have a lot of books to feature...

So, how about having sets of slots? It would be like a clock, we would have a double rotation, featuring a different set of books every day, and within each day, a different set of books every hour. If we do 6 books a slot, 5 slots a day, 30 days in a month, we could feature up to 900 books -- Kowey 18:17, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Mathematically, it is the most fair to have a number of slots that is a factor of 24, so that the slots rotate an even integer number of times per day. I just upgraded the rotation to have 4 slots from 3 previously. After 4, we can have 6, 12, or 24. If we get up to 24, some books will only show up at 3am, which is never good for advertisement. Multiple slots is a good idea, but we have to find a way to do it that is easily extensible, and we want to try and avoid deeply-nested template calls because then we will see a lag because of server performance. What might be the best idea is to have about 6 slots total, and then refactor those slots every month, although the exact mechanism for doing that would need to be decided. It looks to me like the featured books nominations page has slowed down significantly from what it was when we first started, so hopefully we don't have any more huge influxes of books to contend with and we can extend the system slowly. --Whiteknight (talk) 18:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

PS, another thing that we might consider is to display books on different pages, not just the main page. For instance we can have books rotating in and out on the main page, the community portal, the staff lounge, etc. The featured wikijunior books can be displayed at Wikijunior in addition to regular rotations elsewhere, for instance. We can post the templates on the bookshelves (many are already on the bookshelves). My point being that even if books arent regularly rotated on the main page, they will get plenty of exposure in other places too. --Whiteknight (talk) 18:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah yes, you're right that it should be a factor of 24. I guess I was just saying that it should be one of the smaller factors. So 4 is probably good. On the other hand, if we used, say, the number of hours passed since 1970 (i.e. unix time) instead of since midnight, perhaps then it would be advantageous to use something which is not a factor of 24, as this would cause the books to rotate: some days it would be 3am, then 4am, etc. Well, I might be confusing myself with the math anyway, just a rough intuition :-)

Speaking of rotating books onto more than the front page (which I support), I wonder how obnoxious it would be of us to advertise a random featured book on the side bar?

And finally, a technical question, would embedded #switch calls (how I was thinking of implementing this) be harmful, performance-wise? -- Kowey 06:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[reset tabs] Anyway, I've gone ahead and added more slots, randomly putting in all currently featured books. To support a number of slots which is not a factor of 24, i'm using (dayOfMonth * 24) + currentHour mod N. One simple rotation -- Kowey 20:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Outreach project

One of the greatest things about Wikibooks is that our textbooks can contain the sorts of thing you "can't learn from a textbook". I think this could be especially true about "trades", as opposed to the more academic fields. So I'm interested in what people think about constructing invitation letters that Wikibookians could hand off to people they encounter in day-to-day living. There's a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything, including: trash collection, rebuilding a transmission, fixing a leaky roof, repairing guard rails, sexing chickens, dredging ports, etc.

On our part, we'd need to make some efforts at making the bookshelves user-friendly, and perhaps even have a separate "entry page" for these contributors (this might also help the Main Page debacle too). I'd also strongly argue that the "How-tos" category and bookshelf be abolished, and replaced with "Trades and Vocations", "Hobbies and Avocations", and "Life Skills and Self-Help". As a tradesman myself, I think I might speak for more than a few who would feel that classifying trades and vocations with "how-tos" (side by side with "Shaving" and "How to Tie a Tie") is rather insulting and dismissive of our fields of specialty.

User:Bastique (one of our faithful stewards) has been "talking us up" on both IRC and various lists and projects as well, and is particularly interested in "recruiting" retirees through a partnership with the AARP. Regardless of whether this is successful, it does make me think about perhaps getting in touch with labor unions and trade associations, government agencies such as agricultural extension services, museums and schools, and even web forums, mailing lists, religious institutions, or local clubs.

For AARP contributors in particular, we might even set up a new css "skin", based on monobook but with larger fonts for the edit window in particular (I personally wouldn't mind a larger font either... as much as I like the "unix-terminal" quality of the edit window, it's really not very user friendly for those with older eyes!), but also for image captions and even the main text of modules. Coming up with a more helpful "Help:" namespace would go very far too.

Within Wikimedia, 2 of our "sisters" are quite interested in us. Wikiversity's experimental style has in at least a couple cases led to the creation of very good book stubs, and their learning projects should ideally use our textbooks for reading material. Commons of course serves all projects, but the difference between the needs of Wikibooks projects and those of the Wikipedias has been a topic of many discussions lately.

As far as our relations with en.Wikiversity goes, I think we only need to ask for import to be enabled, so that we can copy over textbook-like learning projects and hope that the Wikibooks versions will continue to grow. For the commoners (commonists, commonsians, etc.), organizing "illustration projects" could both generate more interest and give image contributors a better idea of what kinds of images we need (Wikijunior, in particular, needs very different genres than does Wikipedia).

Last but not least, we need to attract Wikipedians. They know how to edit, and we might be able to identify those who are experts. Wikipedia is spotty and patchy, but there are subjects where it's very well developed because people with expertise have contributed. The problem is, no-one is an expert on everything, and the expert eventually runs out of new things to write and/or gets frustrated with the wikipedian problems of vandals, spammers, POV-pushers, and trolls.

On that, I think we've got a strong "selling point". Over the past 6 months or so, vandalism and spamming has been rather tightly controlled here thanks in large part to two of our most active administrators. We're not as strong on POV-pushing and trolling, but an influx of "angry Wikipedians" might tip the balance there. For the Wikipedians we also need to provide clear guidelines on "maintenance tasks" such as categorizing, RC patrolling, orphan pages, etc.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

This is all a great idea, and a logical extension of our drive to make this place bigger and better. Before we can really start attracting new people to become contributors, we really need to ramp up our support infrastructure. We have done alot of good work, the staff lounge looks better, the main page is better, the featured books thing is working wonderfully. All of these aspects is going to help attract contributors. What we don't have here though is the support infrastructure to manage all those people.

The most important thing we can do right now is fix up the community portal, and (forgive me for even saying this) cleanup the help namespace. A massive community effort is needed to set these two things up for an influx of new (and possibly inexperienced) editors. I'll start to focus on that problem after my last final, tomorrow. --Whiteknight (talk) 00:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually I think we could easily write a Wikibooks:New Contributor's Guide. The basics are very simple (two or three apostrophies here or there, brackets and slashes, tildes, etc.). I think we can do away with the "Template:New" stuff now that we have some good RC patrollers in the house. Categorizing and bookshelving can be done by more experienced Wikibookians (or the aforementioned frustrated Wikipedians looking for somewhere to be constructive without being yelled at al the time). We could also have a Staff Lounge/New Contributors page for people to just introduce themselves and say what their interests are, so that thouse more familiar with what (and who) is here can point them in the right direction. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks could use a better logo

Wikibook's logo is probably my least favorite out of the main Wikimedia sites. I think someone should try to make a better one. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.182.67.27 (talk • contribs) 23:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately I believe that choosing a new logo is out of the hands of Wikibooks English because the Foundation want all Wikibooks logos to be the same across the different language versions. So they decided to choose one themselves, voted on it amongst themselves without direct consultation from the individual Wikibooks communities. As a result their vote and discussion has now stagnated and we seem to be left with this logo. I, and probably many others here, would like a new logo but we would like to make the decision ourselves and for it to be the choice of THIS community. Xania ^talk 20:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spotting vandalism

Watching some interchanges on RC (specifically about Muggles but it applies to all). I've discovered that Meta have "patrolled" edits - unreviewed edits have "!" beside them on RC - those that are allowed can "review" those edits which removes the "!". May be worth discussion/investigation - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:54, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, there was some talk on IRC about that last night. Seems a good idea to me (and certainly does no harm).--SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

That would be pretty hot. I'd love to have a review team for my book so that when the final product gets going we can make sure we're delivering quality and don't have comments about Nazis [...comment censored by SB_J...] (a recent addition to some of our pages here). -withinfocus 16:17, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

No need to repeat that please... we have children and parents of children around here. The NAZI vandals are one of the reasons I'd like to see oversight used. Speaking of which, see topic below. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

BTW for those who did not know and might be interested that vandal hit almost all main wikis --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I also think that'd be a good idea. I'd also like to have seen a permanent block for that vandal (rather than 1 week). We should not tolerate nazism, racism and any uses of such language should result in an immediate permanent block. Xania ^talk 17:42, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

IIRC one Wiki has but it is an IP - we do not know whether someone "owns" it. I assure you I shall be far harsher on wikis where I have the buttons if it were to re-occur (I did extend the original block here). I have a deep objection to such things --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, the recent vote on a blocking policy didn't go through, but maybe a more specific policy should be put in place to help "catch up" returning admins like Hagendaz, who aren't familiar with the de facto policies we've established over the past year or so. I invite everyone to please vote in support of Wikibooks:Blatant Vandal Blocking Policy. I don't think there's anything objectionable about it, and since some of our "long lost admins" have been returning to the project lately, a policy specifying indefinite blocks might ease their worries about the use of indef blocks. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bugzilla request for "select all/unselect" option on restorepage dialog

I've been thinking about this for a while... in order to hide particularly offensive vandal edits from a page history, we are currently required to delete the page, and then manually select to restore all of the versions we want to keep, rather than being able to "select all" and then just "unselect" the revision we want to make disappear. It seems to me that we could really make good use of a select all/unselect feature for both very offensive edits and for edits that have offensive edit comments. I'm not sure if the oversight tool works that way (if it does, let's just get it and make it available to as many active admins as we can), but it seems to me that such a feature wouldn't be hard to provide, and since AFAIK we don't have any very young admins, having them viewable to us wouldn't be a big deal anyway. This could also help with our attribution issues, since as Panic has pointed out, any "bot or js created" attribution is going to end up counting vandals somehow.

Could we just vote on this request here, or should there be a separate page? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:50, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd vote for that - hard work to just select the ones you want back - look at WikiJunior main page! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I added some javascript to add a Select All button to do just this to MediaWiki:Common.js, the reset button already clears them all. --darklama 00:15, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I didn't notice any difference, but actually it's the opposite that I meant, I think. Basically make it so that all the boxes for restoring are pre-checked, so you can just "uncheck" the versions you want to get rid of. An even easier version (that would definitely need bugzilla) would just allow us to delete particular revisions when we're viewing the history of the page, since that would save us the trouble of having modules disappearing during the cleanup process. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:38, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Right now, it doesn't pre-check them all, it adds a button for selecting them all. --darklama 13:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, working now... I had to clear my browser's cache :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I added a pre-check script to Common.js, hopefully it'll help. --Az1568 ^(Talk) 14:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I combined it with the UndeleteAll function so it would run a little quicker. I got another idea, I might look into. --darklama 15:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

/me bows and worships our local tech geniuses :). TimStarling (on #tech) apparently developed a script for allowing delete of particular versions (as opposed to deleting all then selectively restoring). Probably not something we could implement locally, but eventually that might be a better option :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:43, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transwiki policy

We had discussed this some time ago, but I thought I'd bring it up again. Now that we have Special:Import enabled from WP, I think it would be a good policy to use that exclusively, at least as much as possible. I see three major advantages.

1. Using import preserves all contributions fro wikipedia accounts, and so if/when we figure out some way to use bots or js code to make attribution, this will work much better than a link to the wikipedia history or a copy of the wp article's history.
2. By attributing those edits here, "Wikipedian refugees" who want to work on the things they've contributed to there as parts of textbooks will at least have a "foothold" of edit counts, which for some may be more satisfying than starting from zero.
3. Since Import is an administrator's tool, articles copied using Import are more likely to be included on an administrator's watchlist, so if some of the difficulties of Wikipedia end up following the contributors to Wikibooks, we'll be more aware of it.

The only problem is that there is a bug in Import, in that it falls apart if there are too many revisions of an article. The bug is apparently fixable, so hopefully we'll be able to fix that soon enough. For the time being, we could just categorize the talk page as "needing import after the bug is fixed", or perhaps request a bot action from Uncle G. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:04, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

A bigger problem with import is that you have to be an admin to do it. It is very tempting to just cut and paste when you're faced with having to wait for an admin to do the import for you. And once that's done, there's still a lot of work to be done to incorporate the text into an existing chapter, and you have to be an admin to do that as well (delete, import, move, delete, undelete, re-edit). Because of this, I think it's going to be very difficult to talk the non-admin community into going this route. It's very much like building an invisible fence across a heavily-trafficked sidewalk and then yelling when people don't go around. What would be really nice is to be able to subst: from Wikipedia (et al). I know I'm asking for a lot here, but until this is made a lot easier, people are just going to ignore the fence.

Perhaps instead of expecting users to do this, we should develop a script that would import, edit the existing chapter (so it has the latest rev), delete the original article, move the imported article on top of it, delete it, and restore the just-edited version. Then the users could do a cut and paste and request that an admin run the script to merge the histories. -- Jomegat 17:42, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, requests at WB:RFI are filled pretty quickly, but yes, one can also just copy-paste the article and work on it while waiting for the import to be performed. I've done those types of imports before, and they work fine (just takes a few more steps... you have to import, delete/move, undelete, and restore). We're not so understaffed as we were a year ago, so I don't see any major problems with backlogs. Eventually the "large history" bug will be fixed as well, so we'll be able to just go back and re-import those articles that have too many edits (e.g., I was looking at w:Sun for import, but it has almost 3,000 edits!) If we're going to come up with a way of determining attribution, it will be a lot easier if we can always just look in the same place (the history), rather than notes on talkpages, history pages on wikipedia itself, etc. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Project Work

Good evening, i am actually an under graduate student of the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Bauchi in Nigeria,. and i am working on a project. Actually i am finding it a bit difficult to get enough material to beef up my literature review section, so i want help. The topic is COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PREPAID AND POSTPAID BILLING SYSTEMS (A CASE STUDY OF ROWER HOLDING COMPANY OF NIGERIA) Please i need help —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 196.207.13.130 (talk • contribs) 19:13, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Some info for Meta maybe?

Came across this while looking around and wondered if anyone here would have the time/inclination to add some more detail about the project (bit think as it stands and I don't have the knowledge that some long term users have)? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea, and I'll take a look at it while i have some time this morning. --Whiteknight (talk) 12:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Longevity of Wikibooks?

Is it safe to use a wikibook as a resource for a course? Are there any policies or other means for a teacher to be assured that the material will one day not just disappear and they are left stranded

Your average book, so long as it isn't spam or in terrible condition, will not be deleted without plenty of advanced warning. Unlike traditional textbooks, wikibooks can be in a constant state of improvement, so it can be difficult to use a single stable version of a book for a course. However, the course instructor can make permanent links to particular revisions of a page, and those will remain constant (although permanent links could point to older and out-of-date revisions). If you are planning to use a book for a class, please let us know and we can help you keep the book stable. --Whiteknight (talk) 17:00, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

This brings us back to the problem of stable editions. See Wikibooks:Editorial_board_guidelines. RobinH 08:14, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bookshelves

The bookshelves policy hasn't been updated in a while. I propose redirecting bookshelf requests to the Staff Lounge and changing "bookshelves should only contain wikibooks which are either complete or have active contributors" to "bookshelves should contain all books" to reflect practice.

Secondly, how about limiting bookshelf templates to good books or completed books? Bookshelf templates, such as Template:Mathematics bookshelf, largely duplicate the information found on the bookshelves themselves. Moreover, new books are often added only to the templates, reducing the value of the bookshelves themselves. Limiting templates to good books should resolve this. --hagindaz 19:56, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree the bookshelves are a mess and putting only good books on the bookshelf page would help tighten them up. And yes it doesn't seem like every book on the shelf is complete/has active contributors, I'll take a look later at the policy to see what else jumps out at me as obsolete. 76.200.210.142 20:10, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Another mention of common practice is that bookshelves should not contain red links, and neither should the associated bookshelf templates. The contents of the bookshelf templates should be left to the discretion of the community of authors on that bookshelf, although some general guidelines should be enforced: no red links, no "bad" books, and a certain size limit (to limit the amount of space wasted on pages such as Wikibooks:All bookshelves, etc). --Whiteknight (talk) 19:28, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question on Rewriting Content in Wikipedia versus Copy and Paste

I was adding to wikibooks chess and the last section was chess variants. A chess variant that I recently told someone about who liked the idea is Bughouse, so I went on to add it to the chess variants section. I then saw that there is a very good article on Bughouse in wikipedia that has photos, well organized and covered different topics such as notation. I think it would be foolish to have to redo all that stuff one at a time as different people visit the wikibooks chess variants section, and I think it has a place in the wikibooks for completeness sake, so what are people's thoughts on copying and pasting the wikipedia article into that seciton of wikibooks? Tprev 05:08, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Small sections might be included under "fair use" with acknowledement in the text. Large sections need to be treated differently. Wikipedia has open content so, provided the section is acknowledged as sourced from Wikipedia, including major author names in your author list, it should be OK to include it (as a "modified version" under GFDL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html ). RobinH 08:11, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

You could transwiki the page into Wikibooks and then modify it to keep in the style of the book you are merging it into. You can request the page transwikied at WB:RFI. Transwiking in this way keeps the edit history and thus contributors information --AdRiley 11:44, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured books

After a magnificent flurry of enthusiastic voting we have now got a good list of Wikibooks:Featured_books. The group of about 10 users who voted initially have done their bit. Users who have not yet voted can take a look at Wikibooks:Featured_books/Nominations and help the list to be cleared so that it will only host new nominations. RobinH 09:48, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New user contribs

Could someone take a look at User:Lutonia's contributions. They may well end up being textbooks however it looks to me as tho they are using Wikibooks in order to find people to help write them when they will then be on Lutonia's website (license apparently). Just one of those "not sure" ones - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:34, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Lutonia's contributions look like advertisements for help to me. I think its probably just a case of a new user not knowing the proper way to ask for help. Lutonia should of probably asked for help on this page for example, rather then creating new pages. The website indicates the material is licensed under the GFDL and there seems to be some indication that its planned to include that material on this website, once its been properly formatted, since its currently in Rich Text Format, and is nearly completed. The once completed bit does seem to be a bit questionable to me. I wonder if Lutonia intends for anything added here to remain static or be a stable mirror for the contents on their website. --darklama 15:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Folks, please have a look at Wikibooks_talk:Languages_bookshelf#Questionable_links_added. Lutonia seems to have a physical handicap which prevents him or her from using a keyboard. We should try to find a way to negotiate about this, having it so that people can edit it the wikiway and s/he can continue to work on the book in comfort -- Kowey 11:12, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] help with new book

As someone who has learned a second language (italian) later in life. I enjoy using it in order to keep my knowledge in trim. To this end, having found the interesting book on Fermat's last theorem on wikibooks.it, and not finding its equivalent in english I have produced an english translation in full. How do I go about adding it to the english section of wikibooks? Adriano 19:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

You have a full english translation? that's awesome. What do you want your new book to be titled? If you need help with this, I am available to help you if you need any assistance. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:45, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer Whiteknight, it's gratefully accepted. The title is "Fermat's Last Theorem" and it needs to go under the corresponding section to that of the original on Wikibooks.it. I have all the text as a word document with all the graphics except the pictures of the people concerned. These will need adding in and the various links establishing. This is where I come unstuck as I haven't the faintest idea how to do it. As you can see I'm a complete novice at Wikibooks.Adriano 22:18, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Game guides

Ooops - I used those words - but you could do with getting it sorted Counter-Strike: Source just started --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:57, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I posted a message to the author advising him to move it all to StrategyWiki. I've also added a speedy delete tag on the first page but let's give him some time before we delete it. Xania ^talk 17:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Book Advertisement

One traditional feature that has been removed from the Main Page that used to be a common tool for new contributors was the {{New}} template. It seems as though those that are active and aggressive in working on the main page don't want to have this template used any more for the purpose that it has been used in the past.

The point I'm trying to make is that there is a need to have a place that new contributors can comfortably "advertise" their new Wikibooks in a way that doesn't get drowned out by the sea of other book projects on this site, and can solicit ideas for starting their books. In addition, I've used this list as an administrator in the past to keep an eye out for what crazy ideas that people are adding to Wikibooks, and perhaps redirect efforts that don't belong here well before they blow up and start to seriously offend people because we are deleting weeks or months of effort. Sometimes you can catch these with a recent changes patrol, but this is another tool to see what new users have added or what kinds of interesting ideas are also being developed by somebody with a little more time on their hands.

The point I'm trying to make here is that if this feature is being depreciated, I would like to encourage a discussion of perhaps some replacement method of being able to encourage new users to have a forum for requesting help on their new book ideas. Perhaps a separate page that would be a new user resource page that also lists some new books and projects requesting some assistance. I liked the idea that you could throw up a book title, and after awhile the "advertisement" would eventually be deleted, allowing fresh book ideas to come up.

Certainly a page that covers How to participate with Wikibooks and listing some options may be a good place to do this, perhaps even using this older "new book" template on this new page.

I'm hoping some other ideas can be expressed here, and I'm not interested in fighting those who are maintaining the main page in order to put this older template back, which for the most part is looking pretty good as well. I'm also trying to avoid "feature creep" (w:WP:CREEP) on the main page here as well. --Rob Horning 01:21, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

You're certainly not the only person who has noticed the lack of the {{new}} template from the main page. I've noticed it as well, although there are so many issues at play with it that it has been difficult for me to form an opinion one way or the other. Of some note, before I talk any further, is that new authors are still adding books to that template even though it isnt on the main page any more. I assume new authors are finding it from one of our old messages, or the help pages, or the community portal, or whatever. If you look at the history, the new book template

One thing that I want to mention here is that the new book listing, especially when it was on the main page, was a target for vandals. Combine a book with high visibility, and authors which typically are new to the project or are inexperienced (as old authors tend to already have "their book"), and you end up with a vandalism problem that can become larger then needed.

Also, new books tend to be the worst of the worst, and most new books sputter out as little more then a stub outline. When creating a new book is as quick and easy as adding a link to a template, you end up with lots of people making books without any intent of following through with their development. At least as it is now, with the process of creating a new book being at least partially obscured, we know that the authors who take the effort to find the new template and add a book there are more likely to follow through with book development. Also, we've reached a point, I think, where adding to existing books is almost always preferable to the creation of a new book. We do have lots of books on lots of subjects, and most authors would do well if they looked before they created anything new.

I personally have advertised more then a dozen books on the new book template, and I can't say that the extra advertisement was beneficial in terms of attracting new readers or contributors to them. When the book is listed on the main page it is in a terrible state, and by the time it improves it's already been shuffled off to a bookshelf.

Also, as a final issue, Creating a book on the {{new}} template raises the problem of books that aren't properly linked on a bookshelf. If books are created instead on the bookshelf directly, we don't have that problem at all.

Like I said, I am conflicted about this, and I've purposefully omitted any positive arguments for the new template on the main page. --Whiteknight (talk) 01:48, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism is concerning, and I had not previously considered it, but I do agree that advertising these books is a good thing. I know that I liked maintaining the template on the Main Page, and am somewhat dismayed that it is now lacking; a "How to participate with Wikibooks" page would certainly be a good idea and, if well advertised, could be a reasonable alternative to the {{New}} template. --Iamunknown 06:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I have added the {{new}} template to the top of this page, and to the top of the Project Chat page, and to the top of the bulletin board. I figure those are some appropriate places to put it first. We can find other places to advertise it as well. I've also taken the liberty of making the template more compact, so maybe we can post it in the featured books page, or something like that. I still have reservations about putting it on the main page, but we can talk about that more later. --Whiteknight (talk) 01:52, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally I think using a template to announce new books isn't as nice as a more personal welcome. Any reason we can't just have yet another Staff Lounge page specifically for new projects and contributors? Talk's cheap, and encouragement is priceless: having somewhere to get feedback and advice seems to me a better way to go than just affing to Template:New and having cleanup tags slapped on the new book :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 23:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

We've got a new page: WB:SLN. Since {{new}} and most of the bookshelf templates are protected, this might be a bit easier to keep up with. Does anyone know the mediawiki page for new page creation? It would be good to list it there. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Favicons

When did we finally get a favicon? I like it!  :-) --Iamunknown 06:08, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I was hoping that the logo issue was going to be resolved first before this was updated, but I'm glad that somebody got a bug under the skin of the Wikimedia developers to make this change. Whoever made the push for this change, thanks! --Rob Horning

What favicons?--SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm with johnny, the favicon hasn't changed, from what I can see. --Whiteknight (talk) 19:15, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Definitately changed. It's changed since Sunday night (CEST) when I was last online. You guys probably need to refresh your cache if you can't see the new icon. I think FireFox sometimes has problems updating favicons - I presume you're using FF? The new favicon looks ok to me but I use Opera web browser and there is a lot of white in the favicon image which doesn't look good against the blue background of Opera. So who DID change the icon? Xania ^talk 22:03, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Yup, changed. Before it was the "W" from Wikipedia, and a general annoyance of mine for some time. And this has even been discussed here on the Staff Lounge in the past. While it is just the stack of Wikibooks, it is nice to have one more point of distinction between Wikibooks and Wikipedia. --Rob Horning 18:39, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, can someone please clue me in here? I see no difference. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:46, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Must be being cached somewhere along the way. Clear your browser's cache, then close it and start it up afresh. If it still shows the old "W" favicon, then it's a caching proxy server. It'll get there, eventually. Webaware ^talk 01:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Or he's using a web browser that simply doesn't support favicons. A favicon is a little picture thats associated with a page. In my browser of choice, its shown just before the website address in the address bar. --darklama 01:35, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, i see the new favicon when i cleared the cache in IE7, but i still don't see it in firefox.no worries, at least now i know what people are talking about. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:37, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Traditional Indonesian???

(this header was added by Slinkyfrog)

What about it? There is a book on Indonesian if you are interested -- Kowey 12:34, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Looking towards Single Login (hopefully)

This will not be relevant to those who are really on one wiki or to those who know about the tools already but I came across this for checking crosswiki usernames. Might be useful to someone. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:51, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've read various proposals about what may happen with conflicts but nothing concrete. Any ideas? My Wikipedia account in this name was blocked a long time ago after it was hacked so would this mean that I'd be blocked from all projects? Also I see that someone is using my username on another language version of Wikipedia (lb.wikipedia whatever that is) although with no contributions? Would it be possible to change my username to Xanucia which is used on Wiktionary and Wikipedia by myself? Xania ^talk 20:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think blocks will be cross-project, just usernames. If those other accounts have fewer edits than your account, you'll get the account. OTOH, if you're using different names on other projects, it's better to use the same one on each project (so you won't have to keep logging in every time you switch projects). I can rename you if you like, it just depends which name you want. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 20:38, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:List of Wikibookians by number of edits

Although this list pales in comparison to wikipedia's (where the 663 most prolific editor made 14577 edits, as opposed to 100 in wikibooks), I thought that the few wikibook addicts that exist would find this list interesting. Hoogli 15:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Useful thanks Hoogli - of course I am not at all interested in my position in the list <g> --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:05, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I am gunning for first place, although if Jguk returns to edit the way he used to, I won't stand a chance. And I wouldn't say i'm an "addict", more like a "connoisseur". --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:46, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Geez, Herby's ahead of me and he hardly ever writes! :) --SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

41st... not bad, though more than half of those are NC or double redirect fixes, or posts like this ;). Mattb112885 (talk) 01:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

It really does put things into perspective. It almost makes you wonder what else I could accomplish in my life if i wasn't spending every available minute in this place. Of course, I really feel like we are accomplishing a lot here, so it's a good trade off. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:58, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

The way I see it, every second I spend here is one less I would spend playing video games, so this is a little more productive. Mattb112885 (talk) 02:00, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

With my gameboy, i can actually play videogames and edit wikibooks at the same time. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately my GB broke long ago, so now if I want to play games I basically use my PC. I guess I COULD attempt to use tiled windowing but let's not go there, it'd have to be a pretty boring game for that to be effective.

I'm afraid my pace might drop off a bit. We just adopted a Border Collie and she is promising to consume a great deal of our time. --Jomegat 02:11, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] help with navigation system

And also moving stuff around. I want a box on each page of my book that has the chapters listed in order, with the current chapter "blown up" so you can see the sections within that chapter. Just a little box in the top right corner. Also, I made.. basically a new table of contents but it links to its own copy of the pages. Since I'm the only person editing the book and I agree with myself that this is a good idea. (but i don't know how to do it)... I basically want to delete the old book and replace it with the reorganized copy. Its here: First_Aid/Table_of_Contents. Also, I don't think I followed the naming conventions properly, so if you feel like correcting it, that's awesome too. I fell kinda guilty asking for people to do my work for me, but I don't really know how to do it myself. I'd probably make your servers explode or something if I tried. Thanks to anyone who helps!! Mike.lifeguard 02:12, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

We've installed the servers with explosion protection, so you are fine! A navigation scheme like what you are talking about might be a little complicated (if not impossible) to make, but there are some options. For example, check out the navigation on the Human Physiology book, which lists all the chapters at the top. Other books do it in different ways too, so browse around and see what you like. When you find something that you like, it will be easy to copy. If you can't find anything that you like, then we can try to make something custom. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:16, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Blocking policy Vote

The new proposal for Wikibooks:Blocking policy is up for a vote.

The vote is occuring at: Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote/Blocking policy

All wikibookians are encouraged to read the new proposal and vote on it. -withinfocus 15:34, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikibooks:Good books

I have been bold and turned this page from a proposal into a guideline. this page basically just reflects the way we currently operate the Wikibooks:Featured books system, and doesnt really introduce anything new besides what the community is already doing.

I view this guideline as being no big deal, and it should be a small matter for us to modify or update this guideline as needed to reflect the status of the featured books initiative. The selection and advertisement of our better books should be an undemanding, positive, and enjoyable affair, without the need to specify the minutia, or the consequences, etc. --Whiteknight (talk) 14:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I've tried to clean it up a little more, there were a few things that were bugging me, but nothing that I think changes the meaning of the text. --darklama 15:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Changes and improvements are good. Like i said, this shouldnt be a big deal, and we shouldnt hesitate to update this guideline as needed. --Whiteknight (talk) 15:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of Videogame Guides

This is certainly a sore subject, and one that was accounted for in the WIW proposal. I would like to create policy to remove videogame guides from Wikibooks permanently although I do not feel that there should be a rush to remove these guides, and that the removal should not be done with any animosity. Some of the previous objections to the removal of these guides centered around the fact that many were removed without obtaining community consensus on the matter. This, in effect, is an attempt to gather consensus, so that we can move forward on this issue as a unified whole.

What I want here, in a general sense, is a display of people's feelings towards the videogame guides. This is not a vote. When we have a general idea of what the community wants to do, we can then take the time to figure out precisely how we want to do it. If I may borrow an idea from User:Xixtas, I want to use the following templates to gauge people's feelings:

Advocate - means "I strongly support the removal of videogame guides"

Favor - means "I am generally in favor of the removal of videogame guides."

Stand Aside - means "I am not providing an opinion, and will accept any decision."

Concerns - means "I have a few specific concerns or reservations about removing videogame guides"

Oppose means "I strongly oppose the removal of the videogame guides, and feel that wikibooks is a good home for these materials"

This discussion is non-binding, it is just a way to judge people's opinions on the matter. --Whiteknight (talk) 18:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opinions

• Advocate - --Whiteknight (talk) 18:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• Advocate - --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - "This is not a vote". As people are voting it looks like a vote to me. So this is really just a vote to see if we should have a vote later? Video games should stay. I've no problem with them and there are hardly any left anyway. Xania ^talk 20:01, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• I'm not going to use all those fancy colors since there's all this mumbo jumbo about voting and not voting, but there's been plenty of discussion about this in the past. There is a reasonably clear difference between walkthrough-style guides and real books about video games that discuss more than just playing the thing. I support getting rid of walkthroughs since they have better places on the Internet to live. Wikibooks is here to deliver something more substantial. -withinfocus 21:46, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
• Concerns - - I generally agree with what Withinfocus has said on this. While video game walkthroughs are not appropriate for wikibooks, videogames are no less a form of media than films or music or books. If we allow critical annotations of books and films we should allow the same for videogames. Not allowing a book on Wikibooks simply because it talks about a videogame is unacceptable in my opinion. I think that the general bias against videogames is a kind of old-fashioned and hide-bound thinking that fails to recognize the rise of the importance of videogames in western (and particularly American) culture. Videogames as an industry now outgross the film industry. They are an ascendant media form that shows no signs of tapering off. We should recognize this and allow space for academic and critical treatment of them here. --xixtas ^talk 13:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• I have long been an open advocate for allowing content about video games on Wikibooks, and I find it very difficult to know just where to draw the line between what can be called a "video game walkthrough", a strategy guide (those are two very different kinds of content), and a more comprehensive book about a video game that goes into development history and game design philosophies. Some of the video game books here on Wikibooks skated very close to crossing the line (IMHO some did cross the line and went too far) of simply copying both screen captures, icons, and even text straight out of manuals or even the game itself as a copyvio. Still, I don't think there can be as "clear difference between walkthrough-style guides and real books about video games" as Withinfocus is suggesting here. Yes, some of these books are of exceptionally poor quality and are mainly encyclopedic in nature, but that also gets into issues of Wikibooks allowing macropedias as well. Video game characters and content also gives Wikipedia heartburn in terms of notability standards, but I fail to see why a subject which can be written about on Wikipedia is considered taboo here on Wikibooks. If there is a push on video game books, it should be to improve their quality or transwiki those encyclopedic items over to Wikipedia where they belong. --Rob Horning 22:46, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
• Concerns - - Personally I have videogames in as much high regard as movies or even a written work on fiction or historic events. Most games have a plot, characters and do tell a story, some reflect society and others even have an impact on it and they are now part of our history and culture. I have a hardtime distinguishing the "importance" on having and supporting something like the Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter, or Chess and preventing similar work to be done about a video game, one thing is evident more users == more readers == more writers == more donations, just because there are alternative services to do it is not a motive to prevent them to exist in Wikibooks (unless a Wikimedia project covers that specific topic). --Panic 01:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

  I could go into a very long explanation of how the Muggles' Guide is quite appropriate to be here, but I'll leave it to you to contact me on my talk page if you're actually interested. -withinfocus 23:34, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

  I didn't say it wasn't appropriate, it is one of the most active books on Wikibooks. I said the logic to exclude a similar book about a video game escapes me, nothing more... --Panic 00:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

  I'm not trying to start a fight with you or anything, but there was some implication in your statement by how I read it that books like the Muggles' Guide should be subject to the same scrutiny as video game guides. That's a bunch of craziness I'd like for the Guide to avoid and I don't want to really get into this video game conversation, so I wanted to say if anyone questions the Guide's relation to all this they can come talk to me about it. No worries, I'll leave all this alone. -withinfocus 00:56, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

• Concerns - - My thought here is that video game guides don't fit with the stated mission of Wikibooks, which is to provide textbooks. A game walkthrough does not add any real benefit to the understanding of the game. However, as withinfocus has pointed out, there are other things than walk-throughs. I can see the benefits to a scholarly treatise on massively multiplayer games such as Second Life or World of Warcraft; although that might initially be deemed original research and unacceptable, there could very quickly be the need of a review text for such things. A blanket video games ban would prevent the appearance of that work here. And I do have concerns about the possibility that banning an entire category might well end up with re-examination or potential ban of a lot of other, possibly worthwhile, books. So in a nutshell, I believe that a blanket ban on video games is probably not a good idea; what we want to remove are walkthroughs, which likely can already be removed as not fitting into WB's mission. Chazz (talk) 16:09, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think anyone is proposing a blanket ban on video games, only a ban on walkthroughs and strategy guides. Other things like video game programming, annotated texts and how game X has influenced cultures, would still be fine. --darklama 16:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - I know I am new here, but TBQH video game guides are just as much books as anything else. In fact I have some video game guide books sitting on the shelf behind me - they include walkthroughs also. Lcarsdata 19:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

The games about videogames have gone on long enough. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

In response to Xania, (A) I've left an explanation about why this is not a vote on your talk page, because it's not really relevant to this discussion here, and (B) there are few books here precisely because Wikibooks is not an ideal environment for them. They are like fishes out of water, and if you love the fish, and if you want the fish to live, you need to put them back in the water. There is sufficient controvery over them that they will never be comfortable here, and they will never grow like they should. It's in the best interest of the videogame guides themselves if they weren't started here. We don't need to delete anything, but we can definately stop new guides from being created here, and we can try to transwiki these guides to a more appropriate location. --Whiteknight (talk) 20:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

In response to the concerns metioned by User:Xixtas above, I just want to clarify that I am talking here about video game strategy guides. I am only talking about books on how to play a particular videogame, how to employ a particular strategy in a game, or how to accomplish certain feats in a game. I am not talking about the subject of all videogame books. Books that are acceptable, have basically always been acceptable, and likely always will be acceptable are: books on how to create videogames, annotations and books of critical understanding of the plots and design decisions of videogames, critical discussion of the videogame market including the economics and the target audiences, and books that discuss the influence of videogames and related themes on society and culture. Again, we are not talking about the subject of videogames in general, which is a subject worthy of academic discussion. We are only talking about strategy guides for videogames. I hope that addresses the concern. --Whiteknight (talk) 19:24, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Along this line of thought, are you opposed to books about video games that also include a section on game strategy (such as the Chess book does) or book which are only about strategy? Or in other words, is the entire concept of game theory and strategy something that should be a forbidden topic or concept (like how to build a meth lab or Manual of Crime) or is it really an issue of book quality and embarrassment that topics like video games would be considered equally with Quantum Mechanics? I understand the embarrassment factor that a major bookshelf on Wikibooks was devoted to video game books, and that those books seemed to be more completely developed at one point on this project than more typical academic topics, and that many fanboi websites were linking to Wikibooks as a place to "advertise" their particular favorite game. I assert it is precisely this irrational fear that this is all Wikibooks will become as a collection of video game walk throughs that drove this content from this project, and not any serious consideration on its academic merit or literary quality. In fact, it was Jimbo himself here on the Staff Lounge that openly proclaimed that no serious academic work could ever be written on the subject of Doom. I realize that you are not advocating anything so radical here, but I don't see this issue to be so cut and dried either. --Rob Horning 23:09, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

You are right that there is plenty of gray area here. how to play a game well is typically a function of the design decisions that went into that game, and the historical influences. I once read a strategy guide about SimCity 2000, a guide which included plenty of design notes about the game: why the developers made certain decisions, and the numerical algorithms of that game. Studying how SimCity 2000 was developed would invariably lead readers to a certain gameplay strategy. There is a difference between implied or causal strategy and explicit strategy, however. I think that we can stand to be tolerant of books that fall within the gray area, but I also think that we should make it clear that wikibooks is not the proper environment for a stand-alone strategy guide. Anything that is dancing with the threshold can be nominated for VfD, like all our other books, and the community can decide on a case-by-case basis. When we do decide to actually write a policy on this matter, i imagine it is going to be a difficult task. --Whiteknight (talk) 23:34, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Why is this clear? This is a debate about whether to allow video game books yet it seems the debate is a non-starter as people just claim that they don't belong here and fail to give proper reasons. Xania ^talk 00:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I dont know what you want to hear Xania, I really feel like you are trying to turn this discussion into something that it isnt. This discussion is about listening to what people want, not about doing anything. The reasons why some people don't want videogame guides around here have been stated and debated for months and even years. We've covered this ground, arguing in circles on pages ranging from the strategy guides policy, to the WIW policy, the staff lounge, and all pages in between. We've argued this on VfD most notably (and with the most obvious results). This isn't another leg of the argument, it's a show of hands: who is generally in favor of the idea, and who is generally opposed to the idea. This is a non-starter, it's intended to be little more then an informal census, base of public opinion that we can stand on when we do decide to start making decisions on this matter. --Whiteknight (talk) 00:39, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I've read the same SimCity 2000 book. And it was something like that and a couple of other books about video games that also included interviews of the game designers that I was thinking of here in regards to a legitimate book about a video game that perhaps ought to be included on Wikibooks. Proposed policies like Wikibooks:Game Books#Video Games and Role Playing Games seem to indicate, however, that a blanket ban on anything even remotely related to a book or even a formal textbook about video game design is inappropriate to Wikibooks. It is under this sort of policy discussion that tends to inflate the issues of having video game books on Wikibooks even show up and begins to raise concerns about other kinds of content being removed from this project. While I understand that you are trying to frame this debate strictly about the strategy guides and walk-throughs, I would argue that the larger debate about even having video game books is important for at least consideration. This comment by Jimbo is one of those that has been fueling the current debate as well, where he did in fact suggest the entire video game bookshelf needed to be deleted, together with all books on that bookshelf. The problem that still exists is a dogmatic attitude to think this is the final word on the subject, and those who think this is a statement that was simply over the top with many legitimate objections to the idea.

I do hope that Wikibooks:Game textbook guidelines can be updated and the concensus attitude that was moving toward improving standards of video game books could be followed. Had a more gradual approach coupled with raised standards been followed originally, this would never have been an issue in the first place. This guideline/policy document is precisely moving in the direction you are suggesting here Whiteknight, and even precedes any discussion that Jimbo brought to Wikibooks in the first place. It is unfortunate that Jimbo did not get involved with that policy development, or even care that we had tried to make some real progress on this issue before he rocked the boat. --Rob Horning 09:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Considering that the majority of people in this discussion have made statements to a similar effect, I've been bold and rejected the Wikibooks:Game Books proposal. A blanket ban on all things video-game related is just not an acceptable thing, any more then a blanket ban on all things related to fiction (reading guides and annotated texts for example). I would agree that the videogame bookshelf itself needs to be deleted. Books about videogame design could be put on the CS bookshelf. Books that serve as critical discussion about videogames could be put on a variety of shelves (this is something we could argue ad infinitum) such as the IT bookshelf, or even the annotated texts bookshelf (or cross-posted between the two). --Whiteknight (talk) 12:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I think the idea of merging the video game bookshelf with a CS bookshelf may not be a bad idea... or perhaps with one on games in general. The reason for such prominence earlier was mainly due to the plethora of content, and just trying to manage the sheer number of projects that were on Wikibooks at the time. That does not seem to be the case at the moment, although video games as a major sub-division of the CS bookshelf may be reasonable. The exact ontology doesn't really concern me much at the moment. --Rob Horning 20:53, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Get yourself a coffee, I'm in a long-winded mood tonight. :) Personally, I don't have too much difficulty seeing the division between a book focussed on analysing a video game and a walkthrough (or strategy guide, or FAQ, or solve, or whatever you want to call it) focussed on beating it. Do I think a book about the Golden Age of video gaming has a place here on Wikibooks? Absolutely. Should it have a chapter about Pac-Man? Sure, why not! Should that chapter explain the individual behaviours of the ghosts, and how their AI evolved in later games? This was part of its appeal, so yes, definitely. But once it starts says things like "stay farther away from Blinky and Pinky, even if it means getting closer to Inky and Clyde ... eat Blinky and Pinky first ... to keep them out of play longer it has clearly gone too far (this example comes from StrategyWiki's guide). While some discussion of game mechanics is inevitable (and is central to understanding the appeal of many of the earliest and simplest games), there is a difference between general analysis explaining in passing "this is how some players exploited the game's design" and step-by-step instructions explaining "this is how YOU should exploit the game's design". To help minimise the amount of non-analytical information being added the authors could round up the very best web resources to link to at the end of the book or chapter.

Rob, you've stated a desire to improve the quality of video game books, rather than remove them altogether. I can see where you're coming from, and I absolutely agree. You wants video games to be accepted as an art form alongside the plethora of books about film and literature and the like. However I strongly feel that, by placing the focus on analysis (with gameplay information being an aside or even an afterthought), the "GameFAQs" content will decrease and the "textbookishness" will greatly improve. While it is possible that any of these could evolve into an analytical work, it's not probable. Nobody would expect the Gears of War Comprehensive Guide to spend anywhere near as much time analysing the game's dystopia setting as it would on how to turn big Locusts into little pieces. The title and general layout simply indicate "this is a walkthrough/FAQ/guide/solve/llama/whatever", and visitors and editors will generally treat it as such. However, imagine if the book were to be titled "Sera and the Cogs: Epic's Best-seller Dystopia". Suddenly the book sounds more, well, bookish. This means that the expectation of game strategy would be greatly reduced; even if such a book were to have a full walkthrough in an appendix to complement its all-encompassing coverage of the work (probably with constant cross-linking to the analysis of various locations and monuments the player explores) it would be much like the bonus features on a DVD--an extra treat, rather than the primary focus.

I don't believe there is a movement on Wikibooks to get rid of anything and everything related to video games. I do believe, however, that there is a movement to rid Wikibooks of content that simply doesn't assess the work in question. That is the crucial factor of any textbook covering a work of fiction. If video games are to be taken seriously, Wikibooks must take them seriously first. Garrett^Talk 08:25, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Conclusions

Based on what people are writing above, i would like to start stenciling out some preliminary conclusions. This is not any kind of binding decision, just a brief distillation of what has already been said above:

1. A majority of the people who have responded already (and there is nothing to say that more people can't continue to respond) think that there is a distinct difference between a scholarly book about video games, and a video game walkthrough.
2. There is some concern that the difference between a video game walk though and a scholarly book about video games is very small, and that the line may be blurred in some instances.
3. A majority of the people who have responded think that scholarly books about video games should be allowed to stay.
4. A majority of the people who have responded think that video game walkthoughs should be removed.
5. There is some concern that current video game books of all types have problems, including copyright problems, formatting problems, etc.
6. A few people have indicated that there are better places on the Internet for videogame walkthoughs then Wikibooks.

Like I said, this is just a brief distillation of what I perceive to be the ideas so far. Please correct me if I am wrong. --Whiteknight (talk) 19:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiversity Template

Wikiversity has course materials on Main Page.

Template:Wikiversity links

I've created a new template {{Wikiversity}} (or more specifically I deleted the old one and made a new one on top of it). We already had a template {{Wikiversity links}}, but I wanted to name it similarly to the other inter-wiki templates, and I also wanted to incorporate wikiversities fancy new logo. The new template is on the top, the old template is on the bottom. --Whiteknight (talk) 21:49, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Cool, Thanks Whiteknight. Very handy. Harriska2 14:40, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

There's going to be some problems with that template because of subpage conventions here on wikibooks, at least when it comes to auto-linking (not filling in the variable). See the wikicode on {{ Wikiversity-bc}} for a subpage-using version.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I should add that there is a lot of interest on Wikiversity in cross-linking all of the categories accross our 2 projects. We should make a template for that as well :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:18, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

One more problem: those templates need to include "noprint" in the div part... again, see {{Wikiversity-bc}}. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:39, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I fixed {{Wikiversity}} for your suggestions. The other one, {{Wikiversity links}} is now deprecated, so i'm not going to fix it too. As to a category template, i'll get to work and see what i come up with. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity has a category with more materials on this subject:

Category:Reading room

How's this for a category template? It needs a little spit and polish, but it's alright for the job now. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:47, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikijunior Namespace

What would be involved with creating a Wikijunior namespace? -- xixtas ^talk 06:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

We'd need to establish community support for it, then make a request on bugzilla. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 11:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

All things considered, Wikijunior really should have it's own namespace, it makes the most sense to me. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it's almost like its own project, and has its own spot on the navigation bar (like the cookbook, which does have its own space), so why not? Not like it would have too little of pages on it or something. Mattb112885 (talk) 15:32, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I support establishing Wikijunior as its own namespace. The only reason to suggest perhaps it shouldn't be put in one is that the contents of pages outside of the "main project namespace" don't get counted in the total page count of the project. Of course, the Cookbook already has this problem, so it it not really something that is a serious problem except when projects are trying to compare sizes for ego purposes. --Rob Horning 15:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Rob's logic both in terms of ego (irrelevant!) and the desirability of a Wikijunior: space (I recall a while ago I asked a contributor why they hadn't named a page in Wikijunior with a colon as I was convinced it was a namespace so it's good to see this suggestion) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:47, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Wikijunior should have its own namespace. I think it would be a good idea to relax the scope of Wikijunior as well, to include both books intended to be read to children and school age children rather than limited to a specific target age group. --darklama 17:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Good point - agree with that too. I guess "read to" is educational in this age context but worth acknowledging --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Is this done on a per language basis? My guess is that changes we made here in this regard would not have an impact on other language Wikijuniors.

The reason that I brought it up is that I'd really like an easier way to monitor recent changes on Wikijunior and it seems to me like it would be easier if Wikijunior had its own namespace. I also do think that people are often confused about the naming of Wikijunior books. --xixtas ^talk 20:48, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

The Cookbook is an en.wikibooks only namespace. While there may be some desirability on other language Wikibooks projects to do this, it isn't going to be something necessarily required. MediaWiki has a limit (I think... correct me if I'm wrong) of 99 "custom" namespaces, but I don't anticipate ever having that many. At the current rate of about one new namespace per year, I don't see this being something that is going to be a significant issue in the future. --Rob Horning 01:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Straw Pole - There should be a formal namespace for created Wikijunior. -xixtas ^talk 04:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I will request a namespace be created for Wikijunior today or tomorrow sometime. -- xixtas ^talk 17:54, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, i must have missed that staw poll, above. I am definately in support of this, when you make the request just tell me where to sign. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there even an objection of any kind for this proposal? If not, I'm going to make the request on Bugzilla in the next two days (unless somebody else beats me to it). Who ever makes the bugzilla request, make sure you point to this discussion to document that it does have the support of the Wikibooks community and include the bugzilla reference number here once it is made. --Rob Horning 23:45, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

I made the Bugzilla Request if anyone can think of anything to add to what I have include please comment. I'm not sure whether voting makes a difference, but if it does, please consider casting a vote. -- xixtas ^talk 04:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

The developers do want to see that the action is not just spontaneous but is something that has widespread user support. --Rob Horning 04:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

• Support show of hands people... --Panic 07:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Wikimedia seem to treat Wikijunior as a separat project anyway and it has a different set of rules in many cases also. Xania ^talk 21:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support. My full support. This is something that should have been done a long time ago, and despite the work that it will bring (page moves from "Wikibooks:Wikijunior:" to "Wikijunior:", it's a needed change that will benefit the project. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:19, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support To make it official and obvious. --Rob Horning 16:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Just like Rob said. Mattb112885 (talk) 16:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support For all the reasons I have stated above. -- xixtas ^talk 17:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support -- Why not? Aside from moving the pages, we should also change the default search settings to include that namespace. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 18:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support As I said above. --darklama 19:21, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support - this is a good idea. It will help isolate vandalism to WJ much more easily, by allowing recent changes to be shown just for the WJ namespace - very important, IMHO. Webaware ^talk 22:53, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support a good idea. Brian 04:34, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support - of course - however far more importantly go and vote for it on bugzilla [1] --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:00, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support (late, sorry :-() of course. --Iamunknown 17:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
• Support Wikijunior is a segment of Wikibooks. --Herraotic 21:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
• Support also late. Just looked at it again, been a while. Lots of potential Harriska2 14:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion about this with the devs... apparently the request was made to have special pages (wantedpages, orphans, etc.) for the WJ namespace, and one of the devs came by the IRC channel and said that was a definite no-can do. However, commons:User:Gmaxwell has some handy scripts for this, see User:Gmaxwell/report for an example (that one searched for all links on pages in A Wikimanual of Gardening to other pages in the same book). He said it's very easy to do (took him about one minute from my request to the page create), and said he'd be more than happy to do that for other wikibooks.

The Special pages on Wikibooks are only sporadically updated in any case, because there are some tech difficulties running them here. Gmaxwell's scripts will usually have a lag (2 days at the moment), but that shouldn't be too much of a problem. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I have also written a couple of scripts, one of which is used to isolate the cookbook wanted pages (by way of screen scraping). See User:Kellen/Scripts. The grep/sed filters could easily be updated for wikijunior. Kellen ^T 16:57, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The namespace has been created and subpages enabled. What's the next step? --xixtas ^talk 03:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving all Wikijunior books to the new namespace. For example moving Wikijunior Alphabet to Wikijunior:Alphabet. I've also been deleting the redirects caused by moving them after making sure I fixed any links. I've also announced its creation on the bulletin board with how to locate the moved books, if people are having trouble locating them. I think all pages should be renamed using that minor change in its name, eg replacing the space with a colon, and the redirects deleted, as was done when the Transwiki namespace was created. A Wikijunior front page like the Cookbook has should also be created, if one doesn't already exist. --darklama 12:08, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I'd recommend that you don't delete the redirects for the first page of each Wikijunior book (at least). There will be links from external sites to these pages, and the redirects will help people easily find the books at their new locations. Webaware ^talk 12:33, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Do not delete the redirects!!!!! Undelete any that have been done so far, leave as redirects, and fully protect them so we don't need to keep an eye on them. There is absolutely no reason to delete, and plenty of reasons not to. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 12:44, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I've only deleted redirects for 1 book so far, and I had already avoided deleting the first page, before seeing any objections. A quick Google search for the Alphabet book turned up no external links. --darklama 13:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Good, you were probably lucky that time. See here and here for just a couple of examples of external links to Wikijunior pages. Webaware ^talk 00:13, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

How should templates be handled in the new namespace? If you put the template in Template:Wikijunior:foo and then call {{Wikijunior:foo}} from within Wikijunior the result is not found. {{Template:Wikijunior:foo}} is found. But should template for Wikijunior go in Wikijunior:Template:foo? or someplace else? --xixtas ^talk 16:46, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The best way to do it, probably is to put the template at "Template:Wikijunior/Foo", and call Wikijunior/Foo. You could also abbreviate such as: "Template:WJ/Foo". So long as your wikijunior books don't conflict with books in the main namespace, you could probably omit the "Wikijunior" prefix all together and simply make templates at "Template:Foo". That is, unless somebody makes an "Animal Alphabet" book for adults. --Whiteknight (talk) 16:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Infoboxes

Infoboxes, and the entire infobox project, are a throwback item that is really not supported anymore. Furthermore, the use of the {{bi}} template on bookshelves destroys the formatting of that shelf, and causes items to be indented improperly. The Infoboxes a frequently out of date, listing as "active authors" people who haven't been active here in years or months, listing BOTM and COTM as current projects, and making references to other abandoned initiatives.

I don't discourage the use of proper metadata about a book, but the infoboxes are too old, out of date, and very confusing. Nobody maintains the templates, and I can't figure out how to fix them to avoid these formatting errors because the templates are nested and convoluted.

I am proposing that we remove infobox templates from the bookshelves, and try to re-evaluate the infobox project to determine if we want to update it, if we want to find an alternative means of metadata collection and display, or if we want to abandon the idea entirely. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:09, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I actually think the infoboxes are pretty awesome. It's a standard way to list book info. The system is not even a year old and it hasn't been updated because User:Hagindaz, its creator, seems to have disappeared. The bi template does screw up bookshelves and so I'm OK with that being removed (even though I think many of the bookshelves are in terrible shape and are basically useless). The book should keep an infobox up to date and so I don't see a problem with "old" information since it's often as old as the book's last major edits. The infobox template does try to accomplish a lot and so maybe that could be pruned a bit, but no way should the system be eliminated. -withinfocus 01:24, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with withinfocus. I don't think we should start over, instead we should fix whatever's broken about infoboxes and do a better job of publicizing them. --xixtas ^talk 01:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

At the very least i want to remove the {{bi}} template from the bookshelves until the formatting is fixed. Also, it's easier to say that we need to fix something then it is to actually go about doing the fixing. I mean, i'm not going to update and maintain them, and without trying to be an ass i have to wonder whether either of you are up for the task either. Besides updating the templates, for this project to work we would need to write up an infobox for many many books, and we would need to write up help pages to help other authors write them for their own books, and the list goes on. It's one thing to say it's a good idea, but it's another idea entirely to really make it work. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you give a specific example of where this messes up the bookshelves? --xixtas ^talk 14:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Like here. You can't use them in lists for one. Bookshelves are so hideous anyway that I don't care that much, but that's a totally separate and huge project. -withinfocus 15:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Then here's the plan:

1. Remove all instances of the bi template from bookshelves.
2. Remove reference to the bi template from the Infobox instructions so that people don't try to use it on bookshelves anymore, but they are free to use it inside their book as they see fit.
3. Modify the infobox template so that it's a little more manageable and doesn't try to pack so much information in. Details below.
4. Find all instances of infobox inclusion on book pages (should all be sub-pages of Infobox) and trim the tags that we have removed as well as apply any other style changes.
5. Delete categories and new pages that were created to maintain some of the new organization this system provides i.e. Dewey decimal pages. Details below.
6. Modify the instructions on the Infobox page to reflect the re-design of the system.

If a book doesn't want to use infobox then they don't have to. Good books should but that should be up to the authors, unless they've all left and one of us can step in to add the box. My suggestions for which fields to remove:

• subject - unused
• info links - advanced, not sure if it will be used all that much, hard to manage
• last update - this happens all the time, too hard to continually update, update check can handle some of the underlying idea
• chapters - hard to abstract and keep updated
• activity level - not used really
• BotM - obsolete
• BotM month - obsolete
• BotM year - obsolete
• CotM - obsolete
• alphabetical - simple, not that useful really
• Dewey - too much of a problem to work with, I don't think people are really going to use it
• Dewey specific - same problem
• LoC class - same problem
• LoC ID - same problem

Let's add:

• some sort of featured book info or award link

-withinfocus 15:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, if we are dead set against removing infoboxes, then I guess i will help make them better. I agree with just about all the parameter removals you suggest, although the "prerequisites" thing would actually be useful for many of the books on the ENGR shelf that really do rely on each other. Also, so long as we are gung-ho about the featured books awards, we should likely add in a section for that. The Bi template does have some use, just not on bookshelves. We can delete it from the shelves (i will do that ASAP) but since it creates a link to the infobox, it can be used from inside a book. I'll see what i have time for today, but then i'm gone for the weekend. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:32, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I edited my above post to reflect all this. -withinfocus 15:48, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I think removing the "reading level" and "activity level" parameters make sense as well. Reading level is a prerequisite after all and "activity level" is hard to keep updated as well. --darklama 15:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the activity level since that's not that useful really (and so I added it above). I disagree about the reading level, though. For instance, the Muggles' Guide lists that as "Young Adult and up" which I think is helpful to show. It sets up an audience. Many books are general to everyone, but our literary works are not. -withinfocus 01:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep, remove them. Anything useful they provide is already found within the book, and everything else is unnecessary. And as Robert Horning mentions below, Wikidata will make the templates obsolete. All related pages are in Category:Infobox project. --hagindaz 22:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed some of them and some of them weren't even there to remove. I crossed out the ones I did from the above list that Withinfocus made and updated the list of parameters from the infobox usage page. --darklama 18:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sorry to ignore this for so long, but have you gone to each book's infobox page and removed these parameters as well? Based on the below discussion, the current modifications might be all we want to do for a while. -withinfocus 15:16, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] LOC/Dewey/Wikibooks catalog

I know this seems as though it is a dead project, but in fact I've been placing it as something "on hold" until the Wikidata extensions are added into the MediaWiki software. IMHO, this is the critical missing feature to really make the system work as the category system seems to break down when it is used for book classification. There is some progress with Wikidata (which would be a full relation database to be used _within_ a wiki context), but it has been unfortunately slow. The current work is mainly an effort to help improve Wiktionary but there are many other potential uses.

Cataloging content is a huge issue for Wikibooks, and nearly every system we come up with eventually breaks down. It certainly is something that needs to have some review done by people who really know the topic of Ontology. --Rob Horning 07:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Could you give an estimated timeframe for Wikidata? If it's too long I think we should just move on without it and deal with it when it is released to us. -withinfocus 15:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Along with a potential timeframe do you have a description of what, precisely, wikidata will accomplish? What kinds of information will it allow us to associate with a book, and how easy will it be to assign that data? I guess I have trouble seeing how the information that we need can't be adequately stored with a creative use of categories. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:44, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Robert: would the Wikidata extension be able to create indices for particular books? Maybe tell us a bit more about what it does. Categories are a pain, but I'm starting to add some categories to the garden book to make use of DPLs, which would help make "index pages" of a sort (I hate indexing, so the book has no index, much less an up-to-date TOC... see Category:A Wikimanual of Gardening or Category:Cookbook for examples of heavily categorized books). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 22:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I can't find any current progress concerning Wikidata on Meta Wikimedia. When I tried to look, I first found info saying the proposal is outdated and that the page is no longer maintained and from there links which show "current progress" dated for 2005. This seems to suggest that development of Wikidata has stopped and is no longer being developed. --darklama 19:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The Wikidata is being worked on, although admitttedly very slowly, and the test site has moved more than once, not to mention that the developers of Wikidata had a bit of a internal feud with the main group of MediaWiki developers and went independent (not to mention some fire and flamewars on the foundation level with some prominent resignations from some foundation positions). The current effort is now happening at Omega Wiki with a blog containing some of the latest news. It does have the support of at least one WMF board member (Erik Moeller) and they do consider themselves to be a part of the Wikimedia community after a fashion.

My idea here would be to create a similar kind of database that would index each Wikibook (and Wikisource content too!) together with meta data such as topics, cataloging numbers (like LOC/Dewey numbers), and some general schema that would allow for content searches to suggest books that would be related to each other in some way. Ultimately, we might even be able to index individual modules, even if the main topics of the "Wikibooks" are quite a bit different in nature. --Rob Horning 19:39, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess what I fail to see is how this differs in any practical way from the application of appropriate categories? For instance, it would be just as easy, if not easier, to tag the front page of a book with "Category:Dewey 300|321" or "Category:LOC NA|45.678" then it would be to learn some new interface and attempt to use that. It would be a trivial matter to write a template that even created these categories automatically, similar to an infobox but smaller and easier to use/maintain. Without a timetable, and with only a vague promise that "wikidata is being worked on", i wonder if the cost of this extension (time to wait, learning curve, implementation on all books) is smaller then the cost of the alternative (many of the LOC and Dewey categories already exist, create a template, tag books). Comparing relative cost, it seems wikidata would have to be sensational and infinitely useful to warrant waiting indefinitely for it. --Whiteknight (talk) 14:01, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The main issue with a template (or category system) is the sheer pile of work to get everything set up. And MediaWiki changes have certainly made some of these tasks easier than they have been in the past as well, so it may be something to look into in order to restart the effort. Wikibooks talk:Card Catalog Office has a few ideas that were partially followed up on along thees lines. The real issue is trying to find a consistent system for all Wikibooks that could be easily implemented. As a means to simply count the number of Wikibooks (Special:Statistics does a lousy job on this point), I created Wikibooks:Alphabetical classification which gives something of the scale of such a classification project.

The added advantage a genuine database gives is the ability to do more genuine searches on multiple criteria, and to have a central place to edit content about a specific book. Certainly you can have a "card catalog entry" on the main title page (or something similar) for each Wikibook, and this is already done to a small extent.

As far as an infobox that can be used in a practical example, I put one on Serial Programming. It was thinking through the issues involved with just adding this one example that I realized the true magnitude of the issue, and trying to see how far down each of the classification systems we want to push the categories. When I see proposals like the one above strongly suggesting that pages like these simply need to be deleted altogether, it makes me realize the sheer futility of even trying to start such an involved effort when such an effort can be thrown away overnight with a 'bot. --Rob Horning 22:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The request to delete the infobox was not an attempt to drive a nail through it's coffin, it was an attempt to find a standard that all books could follow. Infoboxes do exist and they have some merit, but they are not ubiquitous, and they arent maintained. I'm of the opinion that we ever need to have a project or we need to not have it. Either we need to make the infoboxes work on a global scale, or we need to remove them all together. It was a possible solution, but it didn't "work" (with "work" defined as being adopted by books, and helping to display proper information in those books). It is perfectly fine to learn a lesson and say "this didn't work, but we can take from it some idea of things that might work", without having to regard the deletion of the infobox as a failure. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Random page

Perhaps, someone, who has the ability, could be bold and put a link to Special:Random on the left side bar. Does anyone know the reason that was taken off in the first place? --Remi 04:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Jumping to random book pages was seen by the community as unusual. It doesn't make much sense to jump to a page about Muggles when you have no understanding of Harry Potter books. This is not an encyclopedic site and so individual pages rarely stand on their own. We unfortunately can't limit the randomization to just root pages. -withinfocus 05:31, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've just got done writing a rather quick javascript to add a random book link to the navigation bar that retries a random book from Wikibooks:Alphabetical classification, since people have been asking about this repeatedly lately. Right now it does it on every page load, but I'm going to try to get it to only do it when the link is clicked on instead. Perhaps this could be a useful addition to MediaWiki:Monobook.css? --darklama 03:52, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I and community would enjoy that I think. However, we may want to make sure Wikibooks:Alphabetical classification is accurate (enough). -withinfocus 12:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've made it delay retrieving the page until the link is clicked on now, so shouldn't be as much of a load on the servers. Also I've made it check for cases where the random book used is a dead link, since sometimes books are deleted without the page being updated. I may also check for cases of interwiki or external links, just in case too. By accurate enough, I assume you mean links to actual books and not subpages of books right? --darklama 15:30, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've went ahead an added it. --darklama 14:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal for adding the Highlight extension to Wikibooks

In the Spanish Wikibooks there are voices claiming for the addition of the Highlight extension to the Wikibooks sites. I think it would be a nice addition to our Programming books in all languages. Before opening a request in bugzilla I would like to know the opinions of the English community. Does anybody know whether there is any technical problem preventing the installation of this extension? ManuelGR 13:15, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks nice to me, though I don't understand what makes it decide to highlight one thing or another. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

You nominate the programming language used in the source code snippet, and it parses it to determine how to highlight specific syntactical elements just like a good programmer's text editor does. Look at the usage examples on this page. Webaware ^talk 14:37, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the page I saw... I just don't understand how it works :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

It works like any other parsing engine, although many people don't have knowledge in that subject (i've been planning a book on that topic with Darklama for a little while now). Basically, as the Mediawiki is reading text out of the database, it can identify "tokens" that signify certain things. For instance a == is a token that means "the stuff after this token is all a heading", and the software acts accordingly. Instead of the usual mediawiki markup, this extension causes MediaWiki to look for additional tokens, that represent key words in the programming languages. The C programming language, for instance, only has about 2 dozen key words that would be highlighted in this manner. Some languages have more, but once you have software capable of doing it, it's trivial to extend it to recognize more keywords. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the Haskell wikibookians would be interested. GeSHi, the underlying software, does not yet support Haskell syntax, but their site says that adding language files is easy, so if this plugin were running, I'm sure we could find somebody in the community to make it work -- Kowey 20:43, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup I remember someone asking for this before, I for the C++ Programming book would like to have the feature, the Java book solved it with templates (I don't like that solution as it involves active maintenance) and the Ada book seem to also address the problem using normal links to keywords. --Panic 00:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

There is already a bug about this proposal: #7163. It seems the extension needs some improvements before being installed. ManuelGR 19:09, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

It has been resolved, so this should work:

with Ada.Text_IO;
 
procedure Hello is
begin
   Ada.Text_IO.Put_Line("Hello, world!");
end Hello;

Now we can start using it where it does matter. ManuelGR 18:14, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Great! Now how do I go about having a Haskell syntax filter installed? I have the code for the filter at http://codersbase.com/index.php/Geshi_haskell ... do i add a comment to the bug? Or is this something we can do for ourselves within the wikibooks community? -- Kowey 19:25, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Probably the bug should be open against Geshi itself, I doubt the MediaWiki developers would accept this plugin if it is not integrated in each version of Geshi. But you can try to open a new bug report to MediaWiki, but in any case we editors can't install anything on our own. ManuelGR 20:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I've filed a feature request with the Genshi folks and open a new bug report on Mediawiki to ask for an updated version (when available) -- Kowey 13:39, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Would the classes be turned on to use css? According to:

[2] By default, GeSHi doesn't use the classes, so it's easy just to whack out some highlighted code if you need without worrying about stylesheets. However, if you're a bit more organised about it, you should use the classes ;). To turn the use of classes on, you call the enable_classes() method: $geshi->enable_classes();

I think the extension is using css classes, just look at the HTML source of the snippet above. ManuelGR 20:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spanish Book links to French.pdf

Spanish Book links to French.pdf

Thanks for pointing that out. Should be fixed (it does not seem to have a pdf of its own, so I removed the pdf line) -- Kowey 20:25, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

That was probably my fault, I made both templates at the same time and I must have copy+pasted more then I thought i did. Thanks for fixing the mistake. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:34, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SVG image errors

This morning there have been some errors with SVG images not rendering. User:Herbythyme mentioned that the same problem was happening at commons, and he's gone over there to investigate it. I don't have IRC while i'm on campus (which is all day, today), so i can't talk to the developers to see what's up. If it's a software glitch hopefully it gets fixed ASAP. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:47, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

There is a posting about it on Meta too so we are not alone --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:52, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

And apparently fixed --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:56, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Offline Wikibooks Reader

I have had an idea recently for creating a program that would serve as an offline reader program for complete wikibooks. I'll jot down some of my ideas here, and we can see if anybody is interested in using such a program, or if anybody is interested in helping to write it.

What i'm envisioning is a spider-like program that would download a series of specified pages (possibly specified from a TOC page), using the Special:Export tool. The spider would read through the downloaded pages, and download all page dependencies (templates, images, sub-pages, etc), storing the local copies in the XML format in a folder. A parsing engine could convert them, at run-time to simple HTML and open that with either an external browser, or an internal browser engine (IE7 or FF objects, for example) Hyper-links would be redirected to the local files instead of the webserver. An option to synchronize the book would repeat the download process, but it would only download pages that have been modified (saving bandwidth).

A benefit to a program like this is that we would be able to store books and a stand-alone reader offline, and we would also be able to create things like a distributable CD version of our books. What do people think of this idea? --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's an excellent idea. Let me know when it's ready :). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 14:40, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I have been toying with that idea also, but to convert Wikibooks into TiddlyWikis. --Panic 17:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

i've never even heard of TiddlyWikis. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a great tool, TiddlyWiki ( http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ ), a free MicroContent WikiWikiWeb created by JeremyRuston and a busy Community of independent developers. It's written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript to run on any modern browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to a WebServer, sent by email or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick. Because it doesn't need to be installed and configured it makes a great GuerillaWiki, there are some plugins that extend the default functionality. --Panic 17:40, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds hot, and I want it in a handy little language like C#. C# with Windows Forms (or if you want to bring it to other OSes you can bust out some GTK) can be made very nice-looking which really should be the point of this app. For XML processing and all that, it's my choice for a client application. -withinfocus 14:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I had originally planned to do it in perl because i have alot of perl code left over from my bot that already handles alot of the tasks (page downloading, html conversion, etc) but you are right that a more general-purpose language like C# or even java would do better for a parsing engine. I want the interface to be minimal (because i'm not a good artist and can't design a good interface), and I want to leave the rendering up to the browser. I'm not going to get started on it quite yet, but it's something to consider. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I thought you suggested that this should be a desktop application (offline use). If you wrote a little Perl EXE that took some parameters, I could write a frontend that calls that app and displays the pages in a pretty way. -withinfocus 20:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is going to be for offline use, but you need to download the pages before you can view them offline. We can save all the files necessary for a book in a single folder, and then read the pages out of the folder when we render them for reading. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The output format of the download process can be HTML if you wish, but with an application we can work with many different formats for display. Once you start going with this, tell me how it's coming and I'll see if I can help with any sort of display functions (outside of just using a web browser). -withinfocus 02:16, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I am fairly competent with Visual Basic, so if you need anything programming I would be happy to help. Lcarsdata 19:09, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I sort of forgot about this actually. Anyway, if you know Visual Basic .NET, my knowledge of C# (also .NET of course) could probably pair well since the code is essentially interchangeable. Personally I am busy lately and Whiteknight might be as well, so we'll see. -withinfocus 13:48, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] enwiki Administrator Password

An administrator from en.wikipedia had their password compromised. Apparently the password was simply "password", and another user took over the account to delete the main page.

Passwords really are here for security, so that other people cannot use your account. It makes good sense to create a password that cannot be guessed. Some good rules to creating a good password are:

1. Do not use a word from the dictionary.
2. Passwords should be at least 6-8 characters long
3. passwords should contain at least 1 letter and 1 number
4. Do not use your birthday, your address, or another text string that people could guess if they knew you

These are all just good suggestions, mediawiki doesnt enforce rules like these, but it's a good idea nonetheless. If we have a problem with a password being hacked, the time to solve the problem will involve stewards and developers, and will probably take a long time. if the problem can be solved at all. --Whiteknight (talk) 02:02, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Upload and licensing

Because I found on upload log that many people use only GFDL license for their work and {{free screenshot}} is used incorrectly, I decided to adopt new list of licenses on upload page from Commons. "free screenshot" template has been removed (users will have to enter it manually) and list of licenses have been restructured so that more people would multi-license their work.

Remember - GFDL is evil - at least for images. Read blog post by Notafish. If you want to continue licensing your images under GFDL license, please dual-license them. It's very easy with new license list - just the select first or second option.

On Wikibooks:Template messages/Image namespace you will also find {{information}} template, also copied from Commons, which can be used for providing more unified description for images. --Derbeth ^talk 09:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that GFDL is evil, and I certainly am not going to dual-license any of my images in the foreseeable future. We can discuss that issue in another place at another time, however. Other then that, i like the changes you've made, and I think this will help to remove some of our licensing problems (misuse of fair use and "free screenshots", etc). I also like the idea of the information template, although it seems like alot of work for when I just want to throw together a quick and dirty image. --Whiteknight (talk) 12:42, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

GFDL is perfectly fine when the images are used in a GFDL text (it's not like you have to print the whole license for each image). Technically, CC-licensed images can be used in a GFDL document, because the CC people decided that CC images in GFDL texts are aggregated works. The problem with the CC licenses is that they've watered it down so much that it might as well be PD... they're not truly viral like the GFDL is. CC 3.0 also has some very strange "moral terms" added as well, which could definitely cause problems.

Anyway, I used to be very much for the dual licensing, but what I've learned on commons has completely changed my mind. The GFDL keeps it free, and restricts it to use in GFDL documents, which is exactly how I like it. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quiz extension

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find the discussion anywhere. What would be the process for discussing whether to install the mw:Extension:Quiz extension here? Rodasmith 22:19, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Generally the quiz extension will not be installed on Wikimedia wikis as it is a drain on system resources and does not contribute to the projects. Consider visiting the games wikia where you can play freely with other like-minded people. Lcarsdata 19:07, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Featured book template

I didn't like the way the Template:Featured book template nags authors to create a goodbook template even when one has already been created. So I created an alternate version that only displays that message if the template for that book does not exist. I'm not all that great at creating templates though, so I'd like to vet it here before doing anything rash. Please take a look: Template:Featured Book 2. If it passes muster, perhaps we can replace the "regular" one with this (or something like it). --Jomegat 01:08, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Saw it, fixed it, and already changed the template. Great idea Jim, the template was annoying and really did need to be fixed to not "nag" so much. --Whiteknight (talk) 01:17, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Changing GFDL for inclusion

There was a suggestion/question brought up at Wikibooks talk:GNU Free Documentation License. The concern is that the license text uses level-2 headings ("== HEADING ==") when for some printable versions it might make more sense to use a different heading (or no heading at all, such as bold text). So long as the text of the license doesnt change, I can't see a problem with allowing authors to alter the formatting of the license to suit the individual needs of the book.

A suggestion that has been brought up is to make the headings part of an optional parameter, such as:

{{1|==}} HEADING {{1|==}}

The default action would be to make level-2 headings, but they could easily be changed to level-3 headings by the author by:

{{:GFDL|===}}

Or changed to bold instead:

{{:GFDL|'''}}

What do people think of these changes? --Whiteknight (talk) 22:28, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I like that a lot, and I have wanted to include a few recipes from the Cookbook in some of the work I've done here but ran into the same problem. Would it be OK to do this to selected recipes? --Jomegat 22:36, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Drop a note about it on the Cookbook talk page. I reckon it sounds OK, but you'd need to add a comment, perhaps even one per heading, to let people know what's going on - many Cookbook contributors authors editors are novices on Wikibooks, and might otherwise undo such changes. Webaware ^talk 00:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to be bold and just make these changes because I dont think it will be a big deal and it actually seems like it will help out some authors. --Whiteknight (talk) 00:27, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bloody Templates

It seems that to have a nice looking book one needs to use lots of templates. I need a template in my B2 English Wikibook. This template should show a table with some vocabulary and mixed-up definitions. There should also be a button "show" so that the user can then view the same table but with the definitions in the correct order (i.e. the answers). My template is Template:English/B2/Jobs which has been altered (stolen) from another Wikibook. Why is it so bloody hard to make templates? I have consulted Meta for help but whoever wrote that page has possibly never met a normal person in their lives and is under the impression that most ordinary people would actually understand that page. A demonstration of my template in use is available at English/English_for_B2_Students/Unit_9#Vocabulary_-_Jobs and you can see that it basically works but I need to trim the title part of the template but every time I try I end up fucking up the template (again). Any help please! Xania ^talk 23:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I understand your pain, Xania! it took a long time for me to be able to make templates do what I wanted them to do, and still I end up asking for help on occasion. I'll take a look at your template and see what I can do about it. --Whiteknight (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I've taken a look at it and made some changes. Hope it works as you want now. --darklama 23:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Xania, if you want to learn how to make templates, I'd suggest chatting with User:Sundance_Raphael (either on wiki or on IRC). She's very good at explaining how templates work, and is here almost every day (she's an admin on de.wb, but also does RC patrolling for us here, and speaks very good English). --SB_Johnny | ^talk 01:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks guys. I just had a quick look at DL's changes and it looks great. I'll try to use that template as my foundation for future templates when I have some time to continue working on the book. Cheers! Xania ^talk 22:00, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Syntax highlight function

For contributors of programming books: there's a syntax highlight function available on all Wikimedia projects. Before using it, consider consulting with other contributors, as they may not want syntax highlight in their book. --Derbeth ^talk 17:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

#include <stdio.h>
 
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
   char foo[] = "Hello world!\n";
   printf("%s", foo);
   return 0;
} /* main */

[edit] Another(?) Proposal for Music Notation

I viewed the previous discussion held here about including the WikiTeX extension in wikibooks and eventually found myself over at bugzilla. Bug 189 dealt with a music notation extension (though not WikiTeX). The extension has been created, I think, but, as I followed the syntax given on the page, the sandbox here did not create a music image. I guess that means it hasn't been installed or dealth with at wikimedia or wikibooks? I have no idea how all this works. I want to be able to create musical examples and score fragments here but have so far been flabbergasted by the difficulty of manipulating images on top of each other in order to make anything of value. If WikiTeX has security flaws but this extension mentioned in bugzilla Bug 189 doesn't have those issues, why does it not work in the sandbox at wikibooks? Thanks everyone!! --A.J. 01:19, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Plenty of extensions exist but are not installed at Wikibooks. Extensions are typically installed on a per-project basis, that is that the extensions that Wikibooks uses are different from those at wikipedia, etc. So the point is that the extension has not been installed here yet. As to the security of this particular extension, I have no idea. We can ask the developers about it, though. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I received an email last night in response to a bugzilla message I sent out re: the status of the lilypond extension in question. It said, "The status is basically that someone needs to get on IRC, bother Tim Starling about this, and hope he gets interested. He'd probably be the one to test and install any extensions for something like this." So I suppose that means I need to get on IRC and bother someone named Tim Starling (who I hope won't be so touchy about the subject...)? Thanks for the help folks; it is much appreciated. --A.J. 18:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Tim is pretty good about helping out on things like this, but I would more strongly recommend that you try to show that there is some widespread "community concensus" here on Wikibooks where a number of participants would like to see a given extension added to our little project. I would add my voice of support for adding something like lilypond to Wikibooks, but from what I understand there are some security holes in the current extension that have the developers worried at the moment, even beyond the WikiTeX stuff. I don't know the specifics, but this is something that has been discussed on the developer's mailing list in the not quite so distant past. An individual user asking for some major extensions is likely to get some major resistance from the dev team, as they don't like messing with the projects unless there is a strongly compelling reason or a large number of cries from the user community asking for a change. --Rob Horning 13:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The thing is that I don't think there is any sort of widespread community support for an extension like this... At bugzilla Bug 189 the discussion revolved around not a WikiTeX extension, which does apparently have security problems, but around a simple Lilypond extension. I know nothing of the details, except that something was actually developed in 2005 or 6 that worked (according to discussion at Bug 189). But it isn't installed here. And I think what they developed was a plug-in for local installs of MediaWiki (or maybe not - again, I don't know much about the technical aspects...). Anyway, I think I'm the only person doing anything of value on the Music Theory book. That can hardly be said to be widespread community support. I appreciate your support though. I didn't realize at first that by "widespread community support" was meant support outside of the book in question. --A.J. 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I wonder what the efficacy would be for creating our own "home brew" solution for this? Some templates and some javascript would be able to create a div with a repeating background image of a scale and over-lay small PNG images of notes on that scale. A template could do the job of lining up the images, a little javascript could identify the divs by CSS class and overlay the notes onto the scale. It would take a little work, to be sure, but it might be something we could try until a suitable solution is found. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

This "solution" does already exist. I've added the Template:OvImage, Template:OvTop, and Template:OvBottom templates for this very purpose here at wikibooks. I took them from WikiMedia. They do indeed work as you suggested. The problem is that it is frightfully impractical for use in modules here. The amount of time it takes to do all that's necessary for even very simple musical examples is enough to make it more worthwhile to simply make the example in a music-engraving program, export the image, upload to wikimedia, and include them in a module. Both methods are cumbersome. Using divs is impractical and inflexible. Music engraving is highly detailed. Using an engraving program and uploading resulting images would definitely work and be easier than overlaying images. The problem I had with that solution is my aversion to cluttering wikimedia with music examples that would probably only ever be used one time in a specific module. And there's the fact that I don't know how to produce appropriate files for upload to wikimedia. Sorry to totally poo all over this idea. What are your thoughts, knowing all this? --A.J. 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Query-String

I'm looking for a way to use the URL query string (everything after the "?") to modify the text of a page. I have a span written as such:

<span id="query_test"> </span>

I want to pass a query string to the page with a name/value pair such as "arg=something", and have the word "something" appear inside the span. I know there is a way to do this kind of stuff in javascript, but I can't figure it out for the life of me. Does anybody know how to do something like this? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Something like this might work:

var queries = window.location.search.substr(1).split('&');
 
for (i = 0; i < queries.length; i++) {
  var query = queries[i].split('=');
 
  if (query[0] == 'arg') {
    var query_test = document.getElementById('query_test');
 
    if (query_test)
      query_test.appendChild(document.createTextNode(query[1]);
  }
}

--darklama 00:01, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What are "soft redirects" for?

I've seen a few soft redirects, but I don't see the reason for them unless it is a transwiki redirect. For example, should Cello Handbook:Buzzing use a "soft" or "hard" redirect? Thanks. Hoogli 23:19, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to be honest, I've never used a soft redirect. It's one of those things that's really up to the editor to use them or not. I can understand the reasoning: you want people to fix links to point to the correct places. Of course, we have enough problems fixing double-redirects that I can't justify trying to fix single-redirects. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Soft redirects are probably a good idea for the main page of a wikibook that has changed its name. Because that is presumably is what people link to the most, which can be annoying, because the hard redirect masks the new URL. Thanks for pointing this out. I'm going to use it on Programming:Haskell now. -- Kowey 05:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

That said, perhaps an informal "policy" might be to use soft redirects for main pages, transwikis, and to use hard redirects for anything else. -- Kowey 05:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I will throw together a quick proposal at Wikibooks:Redirects. Feel free to add to it or modify it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is there a mechanism for generating pages?

We are trying to implement a glossary in Wikijunior. The glossary needs to be its own page. (In order to be printed.) For simplicity it would be best if authors just place the word and its definition in the source document. Perhaps like this.

The stomach is an <gloss="organ" def="a part of the body made up of cells doing a similar job">organ</gloss> that is a part of the digestive system.

The other choices seems to be that the authors edit both the page they are working on and the glossary page. My concern is that it won't be used or that there will be numerous glossary links without entries.

I am a programmer and I am new to wiki-work. Any help or direction on accomplishing this would be appreciated.

Emerika 23:48, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is no easy or fast way to do what you are talking about. Although I do agree that this would be a very useful addition to the wikibooks software. I would recommend that you create a template for all glossary entries that will automatically point to the glossary where people can enter the data (although that would involve editing two separate pages). As an additional idea, you could use the {{note}} and {{ref}} templates to produce footnotes on every page (but not have a single "glosssary page"). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:04, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

As a quick follow-up, I've submitted a bigzilla request for this very thing, because I think it would be useful and there have been a number of requests over the years for this or something very similar. I feel like this should be easy enough to implement (although perhaps a little time-consuming for the software). People who see a value in this idea should jump in and show some support at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10092. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

While this won't automatically create a page, I've written some javascript which adds anchors to definitions so they can be jumped to without having to use headers. It looks for definitions inside some other tag that has id="glossary". This could maybe be a useful aid for a glossary page. Example:

<div id="glossary">
; computer : an electronic device
</div>

--darklama 14:05, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Use of CSS Classes

I went through today and made a large number of changes to several pages and templates concerning formatting. Many different boxes, tables, and templates have used a very similar style of formatting:

border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
background-color: #F9F9F9;

or a close variant thereof. There was a CSS class in the MediaWiki:common.css called ".PrettyTextBox" that had this same definition, so I used this class in all of these places instead. First off, I think that having a single unified class on things makes a good deal of sense because it gives some of our "official pages" (staff lounge, bulletin board, etc) a consistent look and feel. Also, as an added benefit, we can now easily manipulate all these things at once, either as a global change (in common.css) or in individual skins. I would like to recommend that people who are making new "official" pages or templates try to use this CSS class to help keep things consistent.

Also, I've created and implemented a new CSS class, ".InformationBox" for use in things like Template:Info and Template:Warning. The appearance of these templates is unchanged, but now we are able to customize them and skin them more easily. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] blue screen on vista

My sons toshiba laptop has vista and he has a blue screen. The computer won't do anything could you please tell if a recovery disk would fix this or if I have to get a new motherboard installed..

I'm not sure about the answer to this question but its highly likely that someone in This page would be able to help. Regards, Mattb112885 (talk) 04:07, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Monobook Functions

I've added two new functions to Mediawiki:Monobook.js for people who are using the monobook skin (which is almost everybody). The first function:

function AddPersonalLink(link, text, tag, ibefore)

adds a link to the "personal links" at the top-right corner of your screen. You can call it like this:

AddPersonalLink('http://www.google.com', 'Google', 'p-google', 'pt-logout');

That will create a link to "Google" to the right of the link that says "log out".

The second function is:

function AddToolboxLink(text, href, onclick, linkid)

This function adds a link to the toolbox, and has the option of attaching a javascript onclick command to the link, in addition to a regular URL. People can use these functions in their personal javascripts to add links to these places to make the interface more convenient. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC)