Wikibooks:Requests for deletion/Archive 7

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Jump to: navigation, search
Replacement filing cabinet.svg

This is an archive of past discussions. Please do not edit the contents of this page.
If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current discussion page

Contents

Help:Editing and most of the Help: namespace

Notice: There are no {{vfd}} tags on any of these pages because the pages state, "Do not edit this page." --Kernigh 23:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Due in part because of the above VfD, and because I thought this issue had already been resolved earlier but I guess it is coming back up again, I am requesting a VfD for help content that is already duplicated on Meta anyway and has all of these silly warnings that you should not edit the content here on Wikibooks. This is also IMHO a violation of Wikibooks:Forking policy, at least in spirit in regards to the fact that this content is already available on a Wikimedia project. If there can be some specific technical reason for hosting this content on Wikibooks, I would like to see that spelled out very clearly. Simply trying to maintain this content on Wikibooks is going to be close to a full-time effort and I see no reason why it should be done, not to mention having to patrol these pages for vandalism and other efforts that are better done on Meta as well. I had earlier changed the "Editing help" (see MediaWiki:Edithelppage) tag to open the content directly on Meta, but that link was reverted back to Help:Editing by User:Uncle G without comment. I don't want to get into an edit war with Uncle G, so I am willing to carry on the fight here in this forum as a VfD instead. --Rob Horning 15:45, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Keep The Help: modules are in poor condition, as I noted at Talk:Wikimedia Administrator's Handbook. Further, it is Meta policy, not Wikibooks policy, to copy the pages from Meta to Wikibooks. I have also seen these pages copied to Wikiquote, for example Wikiquote:Help:Editing. Also, Help:Image fails because it uses an untagged m:Image:Canterbury Tales.png, not a free image from Commons. If a Wikimedia wiki wanted to oppose Meta's policy of copying help from Meta, than Engish Wikibooks is a good place to start such opposition.

    I strongly recommend against copying the MediaWiki Handbook to the Help: namespace of a non-Wikimedia wiki. For example, Wikicities:c:NetHack:Help:Contents links to help pages at other wikis, including Wikimedia Meta.

    Despite this, I vote to Keep our Help pages, instead of using the Wikihack approach. I can link to our Help pages without using interwiki links, and I can include project-specific information at the bottom of each page. Now I will go to m:Help:Image and replace the nonfree image with a free one. --Kernigh 23:14, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

    • Why does Meta policy dictate what we do here on Wikibooks? And more to the point, what technical reason is there for having the content duplicated on Wikibooks? Is there a concern that Meta is going to go down and not Wikibooks, so we won't be able to access the help content? Since the two projects are physically hosted on the very same servers, I don't see what additional advantage of doing that would be. In that regard, I would strongly recommend the copying of the MediaWiki Handbook to the Help: namespace of your project if you were running an independent server that was not one of the Wikimedia sister projects, simply because you don't know how dependable the Wikimedia Foundation is going to be. If the Wikimedia Foundation closes up shop, Wikibooks is already going to be history so that is never going to be an issue or a concern. Wikicities is another issue still, and I would recommend only one set of help pages at Wikicities, but that is an issue for the people at Wikicities.

      We don't need to burden the database for Wikibooks any more than we already do with current Wikibook development. Already Uncle G has a 'bot that is doing the duplication of Meta content. It also blatently invites vandalism for the help pages here on Wikibooks (I'm not watching them, are you?), and there are so many new pages all of the time on Meta that trying to keep track of all the changes is going to be a nightmare by itself. BTW, the whole issue of the Canterbury Tales image is a non-issue if it stays at Meta, because we don't have to transwiki the image to Wikibooks and deal with the copyright issue. That is for the admins on Meta to deal with. We only have to deal with that image if it is moved to Wikibooks, which I'm opposed to in the first place. As it is, Uncle G's 'bot is also overwriting the Wikibooks specific talk pages including discussions about why the pages should not be hosted on Wikibooks that happened in the past. --Rob Horning 03:49, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

      • I have cancelled my "keep" vote while I go to Meta and examine the origin of this policy to copy the help pages. --Kernigh 23:00, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
        • The origin of this policy stretches back several years. See for examples this edit from 2003, where help text was copied from Wikipedia, and this edit from 2005, where the very editor who is complaining about copying things from Meta copied text from Meta. The only thing that has changed is that instead of editors copying the help piecemeal from other projects resulting in a patchy and confused help system someone, me, has actually sat down and copied the entire help in one go. Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Most of your arguments are spurious. That argument about vandalism is entirely spurious. All non-protected pages "invite vandalism". By that spurious argument we should delete all pages on the wiki. The argument about new pages on Meta is spurious. New pages are not added to the help all that often. The argument about keeping track of all of the changes is spurious. That's implicit in the transwikification. The argument about burdening the database is spurious. Note that it is more of a burden upon the servers to use soft interwiki redirects, not less, because it involves multiple page fetches before a reader actually reaches the actual help text. The argument that maintaining this content will be "full time effort" is spurious and self-contradictory, given that you are complaining that it's being done (semi-)automatically rather than manually as before. Your argument about "discussions about why the pages should not be hosted on Wikibooks" is spurious. The argument was in fact that since no-one at the time was regularly copying the help text from Meta, the page should be a soft redirect. Clearly, that argument has no foundation any longer. Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
        • How vandalism is a big deal here is that the active development of these pages is not happening on Wikibooks but rather Meta, so the people doing the development of the Help pages won't necessarily catch vandalism. These are also pages that by defintion are going to be viewed primarily to people new to this project, so the importantce of keeping them free from vandalism of all sorts is more important than typical pages. Also, established users are less likely to be monitoriing these pages simply due to the way they have been copied over. As popular pages, vandals are also going to be seeking these very tempting pages just because of the nature of the content and all of the above reasons. This is not going to be the same as a typical page on Wikibook as you seem to suggest. --Rob Horning 17:45, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete -- There is no good reason to fork Meta content at 'books. Soft redirects to the pages at Meta is a better solution. Gentgeen 02:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
    • This isn't a forked book. This is infrastructure for editors. It's no more a fork than Wikibooks:General disclaimer is. These are not modules in the article namespace. These are help pages in the Help: namespace. Ironically, one of the pages that you are wanting to delete is the Help:Namespace page explaining the differences between the two namespaces, for any editors who don't understand them. ☺ Uncle G 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    • We are not forking the content, we are mirroring the content. But we are doing it porely. Several the help pages are missing, Help:Introduction (which I copied) is not linked in, Help:Template misses the templates, though Help:Editing and Help:Namespace are both in good condition. Redirecting to Meta is not a complete solution, as some parts of this book are broken at Meta (several remain outside the "Help:" namespace). --Kernigh 21:55, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Where on Meta is the book broken where it is not broken here? If the pages remain outside of the "Help:" namespace, as a registered user it is trivial to move them or fix the broken links, but that should be done on Meta anyway. The Help namespace here on Wikibooks should be for help pages that are specific to this project, of which there are a few. These Wikibooks-unique pages are not reflected in the list of help pages on Help:Editing either as they don't appear anywhere on Meta nor should they. Not even Wikipedia does as complete of a mirror from Meta as we seem to do here on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 09:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
  • This isn't a fork creating a module in the main namespace. This is infrastructure in the Help: namespace. And this is a simple continuation and completion of a process that has been ongoing for three years, now — one that Rob himself has even participated in. Keep. 13:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
    I don't hide from the fact that I participated in moving some of the pages over here. I believe now that was a mistake and I feel they should go. I also fail to see exactly why content has to be mirrored here on Wikibooks, or even where the policy is written down or even generally acknowledged except by the note on the help page itself. That "policy" certainly didn't have any widespread support or approval. That was simply one user's assertion that has subsequently been accepted as fact without question by other users. I am now challenging that assertion, even if it goes against current practice. BTW, I could simply delete these pages, but I am choosing not to do that and instead trying to get community input on removing them... unlike what was done apparently to force a mirror of these pages onto here. If you (or anybody) can, please give a specific technical reason why this content must be mirrored as a part of the infrastructure now that inter-project links are available. Prior to the MediaWiki changes that allowed interwiki link, it made a bunch more sense to mirror the content. That is no longer the case. --Rob Horning 09:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment The idea of maintaining a "MediaWiki handbook" at meta.wikimedia and copying it into the "Help:" namespace of each MediaWiki originated in March 2004.

    At 22 March 2004, MediaWiki developer Erik Moeller reported to wikitech-l of the addition of the "Help:" namespace to MediaWiki. Quote:

    As some of you may know, there is currently a user guide under development on Meta. This user guide really belongs in its own namespace, which allows us to easily export it and bundle it together with MediaWiki. It will also be quite neat to have links like Help:Editing, [[Help:Redirects]], Help:Preferences etc.

    In a later email in the same thread, Daniel Mayer mentioned that "I started the handbook on Meta". This implies that the handbook started existence before the "Help:" namespace. This thus explains why some the handbook pages are not yet in the "Help:" namespace, and why some of them are missing features like the {{h:h}} header and {{h:f}} footer. Quoting Daniel Mayer's same email:

    Would it be possible to have development on the handbook occur on Meta MediaWiki pages (at least for English) and have those versions exported (via an interwiki msg or something like it) to the various wikis' corresponding help:namespace pages? ... That would mean that the English help:namespace pages would be protected with an interwiki msg (or something similiar) on them pointing to the Meta versions of those pages.

    The idea was to supply Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other MediaWikis (internal and external to Wikimedia) with help pages, protect the pages, and set up some mechanism for importing the pages. Our current mechanism, though, uses no protection and relies on normal users to import the pages. It also has several flaws such as missing templates. Thus I have depended on the MediaWiki Handbook to learn how to use MediaWiki. (Some users apparently read the English Wikipedia's project pages instead, but I did not start with Wikipedia and am much less familiar with that wiki.) However, I normally read the handbook at Meta, not at English Wikibooks.

    It is apparent to me that there is no consensus among users at English Wikibooks whether to import help pages from Meta. However, it also is apparent to me that our "Help:" namespace has no purpose otherwise. --Kernigh 04:43, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

It is indeed possible that our Help link could become nothing more than a link back to meta, but it does not have to be so. For example any out-of-box wikicity has nothing more than a link back to Central on Help:Contents, but the communities quickly develop new exclusive pages to cover use and presentation of their content. We already have Help:Development stages for example. That is the sort of thing we will keep and maintain. GarrettTalk 06:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete mirrored pages. Leave the rest. It's not like anyone will notice... GarrettTalk 06:54, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • delete mirrored pages. Make them soft redirects to the original version on Meta. All the warnings against editing those pages would be unnecessary if we were sent to the original version on Meta. For people (such as myself) familiar with other wiki, this also helps distinguish new stuff specific to Wikibooks, so they come up to speed faster. --DavidCary 18:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • comment I am confused by the statement that I can link to our Help pages without using interwiki links, and I can include project-specific information at the bottom of each page. While today you could write Wikibooks-specific information on, say, Help:Moving a page, wouldn't that information soon be lost the next time that page is mirrored from Meta? After the mirrored pages are deleted, won't we still be able to link to "our" Help pages (such as Help:Development stages) using local links (rather than interwiki links)? For example, WB:NP currently links to the (mirrored) page Help:Moving_a_page. Say we replace that mirrored page by a soft redirect to the original version. WB:NP can then be left unchanged, continuing to use a local link (rather than interwiki link), right? (I agree with Horning that a MediaWiki on a different server should mirror the handbook, to keep it accessable whenever that server is accessable). --DavidCary 18:38, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
    I'm trying to add that the "Editing Help" link in the edit window could either point straight to Meta (this was done earlier and the VfD is partly about that reversion back to Wikibooks), or we could make a Wikibooks specific help page that would cover unique aspects of Wikibooks and a link to Meta for more detailed editing help. Nowhere in this am I advocating to delete any content that is unique to Wikibooks, and can be linked using local links. One source of confusion is that there are some templates built into the MediaWiki manual on Meta that can be "customized" for a local project, including project specific pages like the stages descriptions. The problem I see with this is that you have to be fairly savvy with trying to edit templates before you can even begin to make changes on them... or even try to find what template needs to be changed in the first place. And you have to make sure that the template is not overwritten on a mirror move of content. --Rob Horning 12:25, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep! - delete it only if you write something as good, as informative, and as educative as that. --George D. Bozovic talk 10:43, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete I originally voted "Keep", but I see several problems in maintaining this mirror (look at Help:Template for example). There is also lack of consensus concerning the purpose of the "Help:" namespace. I also find the system of copied-pages-and-templates to be too complex; I still do not know the function of MetaWikipedia:Template:H:1 (which currently is a red link at Wikibooks, see [[[Help:Namespace]]). --Kernigh 21:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • comment quite shocked to see help was up for deletion. If people have a problem with the help pages then surely the best solution is to go over to meta and edit them there. Forking the help pages will cause all sort of problems when there is a software update. Editing on meta will help the whole wiki community. (meta:User:Salix alba) --82.138.219.137 18:13, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
    That is preciesely what we want to do... encourage people to edit these pages on Meta and not Wikibooks... where the content will be quickly reverted and overwritten. This is not a VfD to remove the content on Meta at all. This is to remove the forked content here on Wikibooks alone. --Rob Horning 13:41, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep out of principle, or even better, move from Meta. Ultimately, it doesn't matter if the pages stay here or redir to Meta. However, I think we need to look at the issue from a broader perspective. Something to consider is that these help pages from Meta are only directly usable on English projects. Even Simple English Wikibooks (very small at the moment, but not at all the same as Wikijunior, and not deserving of deletion, despite Angela's nomination to the contrary) will have to have its own (simplified) version (at least eventually, though for now all editors are fluent English speakers). The direct usefulness of the Meta help pages is limited to English projects, and therefore the differences being argued about here ultimately only affect a small percentage of Wikibooks and its sisterprojects (despite the fact that English is the largest of them), because obviously French Wikibooks (for example) cannot mirror the Meta help pages. Theoretically then, even though this is mentioned as Meta policy, somehow that policy only applies to English projects. This is extremely inconsistent. If every other language must make their own help pages, this is an extremely English-speaker-centric policy (as if English were a more important language than the others), so I think that even seeing it from a respect-for-multiculturalism point of view, English Wikibooks should have its own help pages, whether or not they are on Meta as well. If Meta wants to be a repository of help pages, let them have help pages in every language, or at least every language with x number of articles/entries/books/etc. When we get right down to it (though this is not really an argument appropriate to this forum), the fact that Meta is pretty much exclusively in English (with the exception of the Main Page, which in every language I checked (4-5) has very few links to non-English Meta pages) is rather English-centric (though it seems they're working on it), but that's another story. --66.181.63.9 06:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC) (my sign-in expired without me noticing; my apologies) Cromwellt|talk
    Having given this some thought, I would like to do more of a massive reorganization of the help pages where here on Wikibooks we have the Help:Editing page be more of an introduction to page editing, with a prominent link to the content on Meta, and many cross references within subsequent help pages to Meta as well. The deletion request is to remove those pages that are duplicated on Meta, giving Wikibooks the room to develop its own content, and to get rid of the silly notice on the top of each page here on Wikibooks that says you can't edit the content here. We should be able to independently edit the help pages on Wikibooks without regard to Meta or what is happening there.

    As far as moving the content from Meta, I think that would take an act of God (and not just the full support of Jimbo) before that would happen. The users are far too entrenched on Meta who are developing this content, and far too many links on too many other Wikimedia projects to it. I would agree that this is in essence a seperate Wikibook and as such perhaps should be here instead of on Meta, but that is the historical status quo and I'm not prepared to upset that apple cart. I won't touch the multi-lingual aspects of Meta, but Wikibooks seems to be doing just fine for many multi-lingual components as well. Just look at both Wikiversity and Wikijunior for the number of languages that those have been "ported" over into. --Rob Horning 19:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The whole of the "Help" namespace needs to be rewritten so that it only contains information useful to Wikibooks, and is useful to Wikibooks. I have removed some of the more obviously irrelevant pages. The rest needs to be rewritten. I am asking Uncle G to no longer use his bot to update this section from meta, Jguk 03:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Physics in English

  • Delete

This looks to me as very subquality book. I vote for deletion for the following reasons:

  1. The book is presented as advanced undergraduate book, while the material is at best (bad) highschool kid notes. I'm an astrophysics graduate student. Most of the entries look like item lists (loosely) related to the subject.
  2. All of the material listed are covered in depth in other physics books/wikipedia article.
  3. Some of the entries are pure nonsense, some others are common sense facts, others are excessively technical -- especially the ones covering QM topics. It looks like the author read some popular science books, didn't understand them, and nevertheless thought he did and wrote a super-super-short summary.
  4. Issues in society and vitamins sections? in a physics book?
  5. Many silly and serious mistakes, and a lot of pure gibberish.

I think it's wholly possible to create a formulas-free and yet quality physics book. The book gets unnecessarily technical in sections, and plain wrong most of the time.

--Lipschitz 15:54, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment I think it would be very interesting to have a good physics book without mathematical equations. I thought such a thing would be impossible, before I started reading w:QED (book). Do you think it would be easier to build such a thing from scratch, than to use this book as a scaffolding? --DavidCary 07:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or Merge. We have other physics books. We can merge this material if it makes sense to do so (which i doubt), or we can delete it. The material as it currently stands, is garbage. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 06:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Crap.(but hilarious) Perhaps it could be merged into an Uncyclopedia article somewhere. This module is hilarious, but does not belong in Wikibooks. My favorite part is the part about quantum physics including the "obvious" particles and the "less obvious" particles.CatastrophicToad 22:45, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I would now vote to delete, because most of the book is dictionary definitions or stubs of encyclopedia articles, and Wiktionary and Wikipedia probably already have some, making them the transwiki unnecessary. However, there are other pages, like Physics in English:Atmosphere, that we might keep. --Kernigh 01:26, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • comment: I wish I could vote on this one, but to be honest I feel I don't have enough knowlege. What delimitates the difference between a well written book vs a book that is poorly written. And how can we tell when the other is planing to use common definition or simply words (often linked to a poor stub or definition) to expand vs leave as is? Should we not be looking into the global overview of the book?

Jguk deleted this book. --Kernigh 23:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

GCSE Science/Electricity multiple choice

This looks like a dump (from years ago) and hasn't had any edits for quite a while. "Multiple choice questions" are riddled all over Wikibooks. Hopefully once this VfD goes through, an admin can check Special:Ancientpages to make sure they're all gone. -Matt 20:23, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep and redirect Part of the book GCSE_Science. It uses a very poor naming convention, with the book name in () after the page name. I'd suggest reworking it to be GCSE science/Electricity/Multiple Choice. But since its part of a decently fleshed out book it should not be deleted. --Gabe Sechan 20:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I would keep multiple choice questions like these, because such questions are instructional materials. Some printed textbooks have multiple choice questions too, though most provide questions in other formats, and no printed textbooks have hyperlinks (one advantage of a wiki). I think that I have previously cited GCSE Science/Electricity multiple choice as an example of a reason to write classroom questions at Wikibooks, not at a proposed separate wiki for "Wikiversity". --Kernigh 01:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Drugs:Fact_and_Fiction

  • Strong Delete I don't think Wikibooks needs anything promoting drug use. For specific violations of the official policy here are a few: it violates NPOV in many instances - most importantly it does not say anything about the harm of drugs; it is violation #1 and #2 from Wikibooks:What_is_Wikibooks#Wikibooks_is_not_a_soapbox by advocating drug use and having personal essays (for example see Drugs:Fact_and_Fiction/Meth), in fact one of the beginning paragraphs of the book encourages personal essays. If not delete all of it, at least some parts of it.--Konstable 06:01, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - While I in general support the NPOV dispute as a valid argument for module cleanup, and that this needs to be organized into chapters and turned more into a book-like format (at least for Wikibooks-like format), this is slightly more than a stub and is something that has general value to Wikibooks readers. There is no reason to delete the factual information about psycedellic drugs that are illegal in many countries. This is more a discussion about the effects of such drug consumption, and often is even included in the core curriculum of many school systems as a required subject. The harmful effects of drug useage should be documented, and Wikibooks is certainly an appropriate place to do that sort of documentation, given a NPOV and objective fact checking. --Rob Horning 16:04, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I have not found any significant attempt to present NPOV in this article, no long term effects are mentioned, nothing about addiction and only very limited mention of negative short term effects and dangers. There is a lot of work that needs to be done ot make it be useful rather than damaging, and to conform to NPOV. It seems to me that the whole idea that the authors of the book try to present is viewing drugs from the perspective of the user, hence the article is written in a fundamentally NPOVish way.. This reason I listed for Delete rather than suggesting a clean up, but maybe in fact it would be better to just clear or heavily alter some sections of it - in particular some particular modules that I've noticed: Drugs:Fact_and_Fiction/Meth, Marijuana Myths section, Personal notes on Hydrocodone and Ritalin Trip Report. --Konstable 23:49, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I guess I could say BE BOLD and do it! I don't deny that this book needs some cleanup, but the topic is certainly not too far off for a project like Wikibooks. The only point of deleting a book like this is to wipe the slate clean so that a proper book on the same topic could be written that would follow NPOV guidelines. That was done BTW for Monopoly and a few other Wikibooks, but it is a drastic step. --Rob Horning 21:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep There's no reason we should not have the book because its about drugs- please remember that drugs are not illegal everywhere. THere's probably a few turns of phrase that ought to be cleaned up and a few places with bias showing (the marjuana page ought to stress that smoking the sutff is just as harmful as smoking tobacco, although you tend to smoke fewer blunts to lessen the total effect). But it shouldn't be deleted for those cleanups, it should be fixed. If you want to nominate some of the user stories, I might support deleting those. --Gabe Sechan 00:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Most of the individual drug pages are NOT written by me, but by some of my collegues on an internet forum. I have not had time recently, but I will in-time get around to changing those stories into more factual works.

    The legality of drugs is not the issue at hand here, however. The book in now way recommends or encourages drug use. It encourages the knowledge of them, and the choise of the individual as to whether he or she wishes to persue that lifestyle.

    Also, just to point out, marijuana should not be compared to tobacco in terms of detrimental health effects. The act of smoking anything is harmful; The substance itself is not. - Floydian 23:53, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep This book has not encouraged me to use drugs, because it includes lists of scary side effects. --Kernigh 00:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Cleanup or delete. This book is written for druggies by druggies. As such, it includes, um, original research in violation of WB:WIW. This makes the book a problem for the reputation of Wikibooks that could negatively affect our efforts to be taked seriously and to attract good authors. It needs to be refocused to be straight-up informational. In particular, the first non-template paragraph encouraging first-hand accounts with the various drugs needs to go (as well as the existing first hand accounts). Slang geared to a druggie audience (like "tweaked") needs to go. My guess is this. There is enough good stuff here to be worth keeping if someone is willing to take on the cleanup task. However, there is not so much good stuff to be worth keeping it around in the vague hopes that some good samaritan will come along and take on the cleanup task. Ask for someone to do the cleanup. If someone volunteers in, say, a month, then great. Otherwise, delete. --JMRyan 09:13, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately you won't find many places with actual proven facts on most drugs. "Druggies" (Obviously a derogative term, there's some irony there) would provide the best facts with written accounts of their experience since many of them have been doing said substances for several years and thus would have the best account of long and short term side effects.
Or you could go look up a study done by the American government (NIDA) that would be misleading and completely false. Drug studies cannot be trusted because all too often the "facts" are made up simply to discourage the use of a substance.
Also, I am not a druggy. While I may use them from time to time, I definately do not fit the classic (And for the most part false) cliche of a druggie.
I have also moved all of this to the Talk page of the article. -Floydian 07:16, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


  • KEEP

Honestly, who would seek out an article/book written about drugs besides either A)Curious people who wish to gain more knowledge, or B)Other "druggies". Most of my friends that do drugs wouldn't be able to read 5 words into that without getting bored and going to do something else.

Also, this article wouldn't encourage anyone to use drugs, because it also catalogues the harmful effects which could occur. If anything, it DIScourages drug use.

Prometheuspan 02:59, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

  • KEEP

So far this book is a mirror mostly of Wikipedia anyways. The issue I would be pushing if I were you guys is linking to that information so that the Author realizes that their responsibility is to provide details not allready available.This brings me to a thought I have had a lot about the whole thing over the last few days. Writing ThinkStarship, The first thing to do in my order of operations is link to any and all existing architectures on the network that are relevant. If i didn't do that, I'd be duplicating Wikipedia at a very expensive personal rate. That is the kind of thing Wikibookians could do in a situation like this...go find all of the relevant links and splice that information in. This will also help to sort out errors and the approach of the Wikipedians will help set the model for a precedent of how to approach the subject sans POV. I think the book is currently a mess, but I think that we ought to have a book like this on the topic, And for my own purposes, it would be nice to have a "basics" book to link back to when I go into the Depth Materials. THINKSTARSHIP/Psychonautics

Kept. An anonymous user removed the {{vfd}} tag at 20 March. --Kernigh 01:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

How To Ride The Bus For Free

The is a new page that has been nominated by user:Derbeth for speedy deletion. His explanation was that he find it to be "useless." This is a subjective qualifier and should not be used for speedy deletion. Secondly I think his reasoning is illogical. Perhaps someone could give this article some loving attention or explain and clarify the issue. --72.57.8.215 22:49, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep as per above critical comment. --72.57.8.215 23:01, 6 February 2006 (UTC)unregistered users cannot vote
    • I would like to point out here that it is policy to wait several weeks before nominating an article for deletion and this process was brough up by me because user:derbeth nominated the article for SPEEDY deletion. On top of that I am a new user and it is suggested that such article wait even up to a month or more. user:derbeth has decided to remove the speedy delete and this demonstrates that this article no longer needs to be listed here (as per the original request that I posted here). As per deletion policy this discussion should be postponed for the next month. Hence my vote, in one month from now will have some meaning --72.57.8.215 00:32, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Speedy delete. I think such material is rubbish and useless for normal people. The author writes at the beginning that readers should obey law, but in fact the whole articles is instruction how to break law and no disclaimer can change it. Wikibooks is collection of open-content textbooks, not random pieces of rubbish. We don't have to include anything, especially articles like this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Derbeth (talk • contribs) 23:16, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
    • This book has usefull information on how to also avoid breaking the law! --72.57.8.215 00:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Hypothetically, should a book on how to make a bomb be excluded? --72.57.8.215 00:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • It's not just about breaking the law it's about bieng socially irresponsible. Where the elected powers are trying to provide a service to the communiuty, this book is encouraging people to go against this, and if enough people follow it, will end up with higher security on buses, more wait time and less nice services like buses bieng provided. As a benevolent government agent, why do I want to keep helping people, who just want to rip off the community. Delete this socially irresponsible information. -- [User:matiu]
  • Added {{vfd}} tag. --Kernigh 00:24, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Though there is a section on how to forge a bus transfer (and we might debate how to handle that), this page also has some other tactics, such as "how to beg people for bus fare". --Kernigh 01:00, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Kernigh, I think we should be a serious project. Do you want Wikibooks to be filled with such brilliant hints like "how to beg people for bus fare"? Maybe also "how to get into a lift" or "how to drink at parties to avoid becoming drunk"? There are lots of possibilities. Many people don't take us serious because of such rubbish materials and if we don't stop accepting what is in fact immature and silly, people would laught at us. And, of course, I don't think we should allow any book on how to make bomb, regardless it is legal or not and how long its diclaimer is. We have to make some selection to maintain a minimal level of quality. If you want to make books like avoid paying for bus or how to make a bomb, look for another host. --Derbeth talk 07:35, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Who is to decide this "minimum level of quality" and by what criteria can we get rid of stuff like this? Advocacy to commit crimes IMHO is a different issue than what this book module brings up. I don't think books like this should be main page stuff, and if it wins Book of the Month I would just cry my heart out, but perhaps it would be better to make a "sandbox" for stuff like this for those individuals who want to make books of this nature. As long as it is factual and otherwise doesn't violate Wikibooks policies (like violating copyright), I consider pages like this to be harmless. The real question here is how to distinguish from real "How to" books like "How to build a deck" from silly stuff like this. --Rob Horning 15:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
        • Wikibooks is not a free host for writing anything, so I'm surprised you are talking about making a "sandbox" here, Rob. There are many wikis and we should not be the one who gives place for authors with odd ideas. Things like this are removed from Wikipedia immediately. I think we are too tollerant and sometimes forget what Wikibooks is for. I'm sure Karl Wick wasn't thinking of "How to ride the bus for free" articles when he proposed creating this project. --Derbeth talk 16:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
          • This response still doesn't answer one of two questions: 1) What policy does this module violate? 2) If it doesn't violate any current policy (even proposed) what would be a reasonable new policy to exclude content of this nature that is general and not "we can't have a textbook titled How To Ride The Bus For Free"? Make this a policy we can also all agree on as a Wikibooks community. Simply saying it is trash is not enough. This module is more than mere random gibberish, nor is it a personal soapbox. I will grant that this is marginal content, however, and certainly pushes the boundary of what is acceptable content. The question here is what side of that line do we want to draw that line of acceptable content in regards to this book. --Rob Horning 18:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
            • So what they are saying is that wikibooks essentially copies existings books? Sort of a funny twist on allowing people to break the law. Isn't it just ironic how close these two subjects are! This material seems to conform to a textbook. It the 101 on how to get to school. It the first thing you need to go to class. When you open up your school agenda, one of the first of pages is usualy how to ride the bus in your area. Maybe that should be the title how to ride the bus. Sub-chapter -how to ride the bus for freeI also took a look at one article from uncyclopedia and well... it's exatly that... no cited sources. This book will incorperate profesional expert opinions (But you can't tell because this entire process is out-of-process and out of good taste. As per procedures... we are supposed to wait one week before posting here... this is vandalism... it can be removed (no matter how sound any arguments are) (Bring it up in a a couple week from now) --72.57.8.215 20:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
              • Generally Derbeth is a bit more gentle in regards to new users, and as an admin he should know better than to bite newcommers. Since he classified it as a speedy delete candidate, I'm leaving it up to him to explain his reasoning. He certainly has expressed some reasoning as noted from the message above, but I am disagreeing with that reasoning. His and mine are just two voices, however, and others can express their opinions. If you want to see this book be considered "legitimate", adding citations is going to be for your benefit. The Uncyclopedia, you should note, is a parody site and deliberately goes out of their way to make either bogus citations or have none at all. I wouldn't use that as a standard for anything taken seriously.

                BTW, while not strictly necessary, it give a little more legitimacy if you register an account on this project and participating in the discussions. That also helps if you have rotating IP addresses you are working on or decide to log in from different computers.--Rob Horning 22:34, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

            • Rob asked what policy (current or what might reasonably be proposed) is violated here. As I read WB:DP, a book does not have to violate policy to be worthy of deletion via VfD. WB:DP includes this: "In general, delete pages that simply will never become instructional resource modules, for example, modules that represent completely idiosyncratic non-topics ("Teaching 100 monkeys to type the works of Shakespeare"), etc." Anything that would be better placed on uncyclopedia: (as is the case with How To Ride The Bus For Free) certainly gets covered by that. Besides, it probably counts as primary research and certainly is not verifiable without primary research. Rob also asked who is to decide the minumum level of quality. We (the Wikibook community) are. I guess I would ask Rob what his limit on the inane would be? "How to Pick Your Nose"? "How to Poop"? At least with the latter, one can (unlike How To Ride The Bus For Free) a cite source: Deuteronomy 23.13. --JMRyan 10:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
              • No, "How to Poop" may be a little bit too much, but it helps quite a bit if you can point to a specific policy as a part of your argument to remove content. BTW, I might consider renaming a module of "How to Poop" to perhaps Human Digestive Systems and go into the details of how food is broken down and consumed through the digestive trac, including the lower intestines. Perhaps something like that needs to happen with this module, with a "hijacking" from being silly to something that is much more serious about what to do when you need emergency transportation and you are without funds. This whole discussion reminds me of Making an Island VfD that came up earlier. --Rob Horning 15:13, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Original research, not a textbook, and—I'm sorry—just plain silly. Perhaps we could transwiki it to the uncyclopedia:? --JMRyan 05:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Note: The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license of Uncyclopedia is not compatible with our GNU Free Documentation License; thus we cannot transwiki a page there without permission of all copyright holders of that page. --Kernigh 01:12, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Actually. I read through the definition of what wikibooks is and is not. 1) You fail to prove that this is original research however, 2) You raise a good concern about this being a textbook. I will hence concentrate on #2. According to WB:WIW#What is Wikibooks#What Wikibooks includes "A textbook is a book which is actually usable in an existing class." The important part to look at is "class". What definition do we mean. It is my belief that what was meant by class was the first definition found on wiktionary; #A wikt:group, wikt:collection, wikt:category or wikt:set sharing wikt:characteristics or wikt:attributes. The now called book "How to ride the bus" meets these definitions. It fits within the approved collection or category called category:How-Tos. It also fits within the category category:Humor but is now being sent into the category Transport. Be do to it's infancy it is obviously hard to tell where it may go. But does all this really mater. This entire process is out of process. And Though this comment seems good to me it's totally irrelevant because according to WP:DP#Votes for deletion "If, and only if a page has existed on the system for more than one week, you may add a new section to the end of Wikibooks:Votes for deletion, using the unwanted page's name as a title, so that other Wikibookians can have a chance to argue for or against the removal of the page." Oh! Wait the name has been change. <sarcastically> Oh! Darn. I sure hope an administrator will notice sometime soon. Perhaps then he can erase this entire discusion (actually we might as well let it go... <still sarcastically> just to show how stupid it is and how easy it is for someone to break the rules because he "simply doesn't like it.")(maybe then we'll be able to make a book called "How to break wikibook rules"... hummm... maybe... but it maybe hard to do without original research? Or would it?) --72.57.8.2I5 06:05, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I agree, this material should not be here.--Konstable 08:15, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep as per refutation from Rob Horning --FR Soliloquy 23:29, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Special:Contributions/FR Soliloquy: this vote is the user's second edit. --Kernigh 01:20, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
      • I promise you it is not my sock puppet. This is an independent contributor voicing his own opinion. --Rob Horning 05:14, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
        • Rob, no matter how strongly one might disagree with you, nobody who's been around these parts for a while could imagine you creating sock puppets. You may be a (IIRC, self-described) rabid inclusionist, but a creator of sock puppets? It just doesn't compute. My guess (and it's admittedly only a guess) is that 72.57.8.215 took your advice and registered an account. If my guess is correct, then I wouldn't count him as either an independent vote or a sock puppet. --JMRyan 10:23, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
      • By the way, we recently managed to change rules of BOTM vote to exclude users with minimal number of edits. Perhaps we should make such limit here, for example equal to 20 or 50 edits. --Derbeth talk 11:56, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Useless trash Gerard Foley 11:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - I've gone over the past discussion and it seems to be more red-taping by the editor in an effort to save the work than anything else. The important thing I saw was how to judge "taste" with respect to books. Maybe we should actually create a guideline on what's considered appropriate here. We are of course supposed to be a free and open textbook system, but some book topics can be just silly and over the line of helpful and more for humor. Making an Island had real applicable value whereas this book seems to promote deceit and bad ethics. I think we could hold our standards a little higher to keep out garbage yet not restrict editors' rights. -Matt 18:49, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't see anything humorous in this article anymore than a book on how to have anal sex, or how to prevent post surgical infections after a hysterectomy. Please, give an example of why Making an Island would be considered useful? Personally I would answer if someone finds the article useful then it probably is. I find that the now called article "How To Ride The Bus" is useful. It fabulous for travelers. It is great fork from the article in wikipedia w:OC Transpo. This book promotes a "How to" instructional guide to ride the bus. But this is obviously hard to see for anyone that has his head stuck so far up his ass he can only see the mathematical equations and psychological influences that are quoted from rare and renown experts. Unlike the many experts that exist for this article. There is so much information on this article that is overwhelming our sense and we can't even see a clear picture. One section happens to be on ridding it for free. So what? There are many fabulous hits on Google search for Hot To Ride The Bus. There are even free videos and thousands of cities that have various ways on how to ride a bus. There is even some cities... if you read carefully this is already in the book, that offer free bus rides. Wouldn't you like to know the if you went to Seattle you could ride the bus for free from 9h00 a.m. to 6h00 p.m. Or if you move to another city and are a parent of 3 to 4 children you can ride the bus for free. I must admit as the primary creator of this article. Simply looking at the first name "how to ride the bus for free" my intentions where to elaborate a list of illegal activities. But the more I actually read into the subject the more morale and ethical is appears to be. Negativity just seems to stench the air around here because of the way the article was started, because of my frustration toward this entire ludicrous and out-of process deletion and because of the lack of respect that was demonstrated when I first got here. That's right. Where was the respect when I got here. Do you expect me to be nice now and follow WB:NPA. I've only been at wikibooks for a few days. To be honest user Derbeth is evil. Not pure evil though because he could have simply deleted it. But Evil. User Derbeth has violated WB:DP. He has forced a speedy delete on the article How To Ride The Bus to turn into a a VFD. In turn because of the way wikibooks is set-up, unavoidably, the article was sent to WB:VFD. However according WB:DP no article should be nominated for vfd for at least 1 week. WB:DP suggests, for new users, such as me, we should wait up to a month before nominating a VFD. I made a vote. And now he says it doesn't count. How the heck am I supposed to vote? The worst thing is. He made me, now a new user, do his dirty work. Now he doesn' even have the guts to stand up and say that the entire process is out of process (as per WB:DP). Think about it. I do 4 to 5 edits to a new article that I created and he is nominating it for a speedy delete. You know, that I myself have been raising the tone recently, it would be nice for sake of tension sake and to ease the situation, if I received an apology. I see like this: this must be either a pure miss-understanding on my behalf or a bad wikibook policy incident that requires re-writing or just evilness from non-complacent users, such as derbeth (the antagonist of this situation) or anyone that votes anymore, to encourage wikibook policy violations. But, I'm going to shut up now because, actually now that I think about it... I'm slowly changing my mind and agreeing with you. Perhaps it is a good idea to have it all deleted. I can then publish the book myself. Yah! Actually... Now that I think about it... I think all of this is a copyright violation and was submitted copyrighted work without my permission. I was sick the last few days and I have been taking some strong medication that my doctor prescribed for the pneumonia of mine. I would have never really in my conscious mind given permission for this to be published. (<grin> soliloquy... I'll be publishing this book and making some serious coin soon.) Oh! Thank you wikibooks... but I figured out that free stuff really ain't for me... well actually you, from me... and before I say anything else. Bye Bye for now! --72.57.8.2I5 03:48, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Note that I am not sure if registered user User:72.57.8.2I5 (with a capital letter I (eye)) is the same as IP address User:72.57.8.215 (with a numeral 1 (one)). We could use CheckUser to check. However, enough other users (not including myself) have voted to delete this book so a check might not be necessary. --Kernigh 06:31, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
This vote may not be valid as I havn't edited in a long, long time, but I think it should be kept. 00:08, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

-- Neutral Early on (checking early edit history) I'd have to say speedy delete. But now, this looks as if it may have some potential. I'd like to see where it goes before taking a definitive stance. --Dragontamer 02:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted - especially as it was categorised as "humour"!, Jguk 16:42, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Cookbook:Full Meals

Unused, useless. Delete. Morgan695 20:28, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Speedy Delete - Stub. -Matt 20:59, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - This is linked to the main Cookbook page, and as such IMHO it should be discussed within Cookbook talk page to come to a conclusion. Also, since this page is hardly even a month old, it doesn't really qualify as an eternal stub compared to other similar content elsewhere on Wikibooks. I don't know the direction that the anonymous contributor intended to go with these pages, but I don't think it quite merits a VfD at the moment. --Rob Horning 16:30, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Discuss on Talk:Cookbook For these sorts of project-internal deletions, I think we can deal with it on the appropriate project talk page. I'm partial to a speedy in this particular case, but it would be good to give other Cookbook contributors a chance to talk about it. Kellen T 20:57, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
    Just to expand a bit; for larger WB projects (Cookbook, WikiJunior, etc) I think pretty much all deletions/additions/whatever can be resolved internal to the project contributors and unless there is some violation of WB policy and the contributors do not agree, it is unnecessary to bring it to VFD, etc. Kellen T 21:05, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete --Kernigh 01:45, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Cookbook:Small Meals

Useless, unused. Delete. Morgan695 20:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Speedy Delete - Stub. -Matt 20:59, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Discuss in Talk:Cookbook Same as above. Kellen T 20:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. You can discuss in Talk:Cookbook too, if Cookbook wants to keep this, then we should not delete it! --Kernigh 03:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Hud and Hel

Fiction that was listed as a speedy delete that I think perhaps needs a little bit more community input on. I would lean toward deletion on this one myself as it is a work of fiction, but it certainly is provoking some thought with the comprehension exercises that are listed at the bottom of this page. Fiction is a useful tool to teach language skills to young children, and I'm wondering if perhaps we are being too zealous in deleting content like this out of hand. The problem here is that unlike Aarvard the Aardvark, this has not been simplified for comprehension by younger children, and the comprehension questions seem like something tacked onto the end. This is likely going to go, but at least I want to cause a few people to think about this topic first, with a clear example here. --Rob Horning 04:33, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

A short story attempt followed by a poor attempt at adding pedagogical value. Who is the main audience? (children 9 years old?) The questions seem a little more advance though? (Perhaps a grade 6 or grade 7?) Who is the main clientel? (teachers?) What are the measures used to elaborate a specific educational unit? Is the story to complicated for a the audience? Is it to long or is it to short? But again, the key issue I think would be, is this trully pedagogical material that may be used in a class room? These are some of the questions I think you will have to evaluate. Personnally I think there are many fictional child stories that might be used for teaching. Why this one? If I was to support this I would say because of the various memmorable names. The H sound is almost breathlike sounding and if students where to dictate this story it may be easy to remember. I would be very intrigued to see some music and rythm added to the story. Remember though, this must be a type of "method" of study. Currently I feel it is more of a story. It is for that reason I would say, if in 1 month or so, there are no significant improvements towards the teaching side, I would probably consider delete it. Right now however, keep. user:72.57.8.2I5 --72.57.8.2I5 02:00, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete I feel like I'm biting the newbie and being a bit of a heel after reading the author's plea at Talk: Hud and Hel, but this is a work of fiction and Wikibooks is not the right venue for fiction. --JMRyan 20:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - The user who uploaded this content decided to move it to his personal user space. Generally we give quite a bit more lattitude to content in the user space, but this is an unfortunate development. It seems as though this is a tactic to avoid deletion, and something that by itself that should be strongly discouraged. I'm not going to invoke other Wikimedia projects, but it does seem to violate WB:WIN at least so far as being a personal soapbox and blog instead. Generally the user space should be things that are going to be useful eventually for the development of Wikibooks, such as an experimental book or trying new techniques, such as a personal sandbox that won't be messed with by every new user. --Rob Horning 02:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Salsa

See the Talk page for some reasons. Ricky Clarkson 09:51, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Treatise on life and every thing that matters

The main "Wikibook" doesn't exist, but there are two sub-modules that are the subject of this VfD:

Both are orphaned modules and seem very soapboxish. I would mark this as a speedy delete, but decided to bring it up on this forum first. I feel this needs to be deleted. --Rob Horning 20:14, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep. I quite like them. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.9.50.32 (talk • contribs) 13:43, 17 March 2006 (UTC) diff
  • Delete Soapbox --Gabe Sechan 08:04, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Orhpans without a book, and just plain silly. --JMRyan 11:44, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Text Input

I'm really scratching my head on this one. It reads more like something I've seen many time on Meta, and it is indeed a "Meta discussion" about textual sources and perhaps ways to organize content like Wikibooks.

I have two suggestions for this content: Move it to Meta, or perhaps moved to some user space. Possibly into the Wikibooks namespace and a link from the Community Portal somewhere?

Or perhaps it simply needs to remain and placed on a bookshelf. I guess I'm trying hard to read this as a book, or at least a chapter in a book. Since nothing links to this content, I'm not even sure what it might belong with or where it might go. --Rob Horning 18:39, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete Not a book. If this is a module in a larger book somehow, I may change this. --Gabe Sechan 18:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete as per Gabe Sechan. Don't be too quick about deleting it; perhaps someone will come by and explain what this thing is. But barring further information, do delete it. --JMRyan 10:33, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Portions of Astronomy

At Astronomy, I've been working on the cleanup requested by Rob Horning. I deliberately left a run-down of the planets off of the revised table of contents because it's poor pedagogy and articles at Wikipedia will do a better job of this in the short term. The material presently at Wikipedia is much superior anyway. We might want a run-down eventually just for completeness, but I think we should wait until someone has the time to sit down and rework the material from Wikipedia or write something from scratch. I am nominating for deletion:

Astronomy/Mercury
Astronomy/Venus
Astronomy/Mars
Astronomy/Jupiter
Astronomy/Saturn
Astronomy/Neptune
Astronomy/Pluto
  • Delete Brian Brondel 23:11, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Mercury has some material that could be useful in the future; Venus, Jupiter, and Pluto are just stubs, and Mars and Saturn are just forked wikipedia content (and older versions, as well). So I say Weak Keep on Mercury (but mark for cleanup) and Delete on the rest. Xerol Oplan 23:53, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - This was the main point I was trying to make earlier with the Astronomy Wikibook VfD. Indeed some of the stuff that was deleted out of the Wikijunior Solar System would IMHO be better than most of the content that is here right now. I'll reserve judgement of the Mercury module and suggest that this is some original material that could be reworked into a more complete major section. The rest can certainly go. --Rob Horning 02:10, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Xerol Oplan. Keep Astronomy/Mercury for possible cleanup, but Delete the six other modules. --Kernigh 04:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Brian Brondel has been doing excellent work cleaning up Astronomy. I'll take his word for it that these don't belong there. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by JMRyan (talk • contribs) 19:35, 21 March 2006.

Deleted all but the Mercury module, as seems to be the overwhelming concensus on this issue. This section can be archived in about a week. --Rob Horning 14:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

In Memoriam: September 11, 2001

It looks like it was an attempted transwiki of The September 11th Wiki that was started after the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. Several attempts have happened to remove that wiki altogether, and I guess this was one of those attempts. This is a direct fork of that wiki, and in fact an exact copy of that front page. The debate over wheither that content should be moved here to Wikibooks is perhaps valid, but there is no point in forking the effort until after that debate has gone through its full conclusion. There is still some activity on that wiki even now. And the apparent concensus on meta was not to have it on Wikibooks, but rather to MemoryWiki.org, a non-Wikimedia site. Wikibooks wasn't even listed as an option during the vote for that matter.

In short, if it has its own seperate domain and wiki, why should it be mirrored on Wikibooks? --Rob Horning 17:37, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd have no problem with you speedying this, Rob. It's clearly not within our remit, Jguk 19:09, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
The only reason why I even hesitate at all is because the person who is listed as the first author was one who I got into a little bit of a fight over with the Wikimania proceedings, and came up just short of a few votes to becoming a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board member (taking 3rd place instead). Indeed a very likely person to get the nod during the next election cycle. --Rob Horning 23:40, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete --Kernigh 20:29, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Nice sentiment, but not in our purview. --JMRyan 00:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete -Matt 04:36, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete --Everlong 05:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Derbeth talk 09:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted - I know that I'm moving fast here compared to most other VfDs on this issue, but I havn't seen even one single reason to keep this here. Thanks for the comments. This can be archived in about a week. --Rob Horning 14:27, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Calculus:Improper integration

Seems to be a start to the same type of material covered much better at Calculus:Improper integrals; the module is orphaned and hasn't had a meaningful edit since 2004. Someone might be able to merge it into Calculus:Improper integrals but it doesn't look like it could be done effectively. Xerol Oplan 22:42, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete Orphaned stub, the book covers the same material in more depth elsewhere. --Gabe Sechan 22:53, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete It looks like the same topic got started twice. There isn't enough here to merge into the better version. --JMRyan 00:16, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Strong Delete - This is a forked stub from the same Wikibook. All of the concepts in this module are covered completely and much better in Calculus:Further Methods of Integration:Improper Integrals. This could even be speedy deleted IMHO. --Rob Horning 01:28, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Calculus:Improper integration, though it is the older module, it somehow became succeeded by a different module. --Kernigh 20:54, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikitopia

I know it's very early days for this book, but it appears to me as though it will inevitably fail either of both of our rules against original research and soapboxing, Jguk 07:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Subpages:

  • Delay Way too early to delete it, its 1 day old. There's definitely the possibility of NPOV issues here that need to be looked at. But I'd like to see how it develops before deleting it, it could go in directions in accordance with the rules of the site. I don't see anything in the topic list thats inherently original research (the links between wikis and Free Software and the Cathedral/Bazaar ideas have been written about for years). Definitely some loaded terms like manifesto to worry about though. --Gabe Sechan 08:09, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Mentor, don't just lash out at the user. I would agree that this appears to be a new Wikimedia project proposal instead of a Wikibook, but you need to make sure that contributors to Wikibooks understand what sort of content is acceptable here. I don't see any notes on the discussion page for this module, nor any effort to try and deal with the user who is contributing here. --Rob Horning 17:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • When I saw this I was busy - and I'm not aware of any ready made boilerplate texts that can easily be placed on a talk page. If my actions seem a bit brusque, then I apologise. I was also conscious that if I did not in some way mark the page, I might forget about it, and risk this user spending a lot of time developing it, only to see it deleted wholesale at a later stage. There are swings and roundabouts, and it's not always clear where the balance should be struck. I would note that mentoring takes up an awful lot of time, which leaves a tendancy not to do it. Standard texts to use/adapt in situations like that would be useful, Jguk 17:55, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
    I appreciate the enormous amount of work that you have been putting into Wikibooks lately. Special:Log is simply full of all of the activity that you have been doing, which is simply outstanding. The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes we all need to stop for a moment and realize that we are dealing with real people (and real egos... I know), and not just a bunch of mindless robots. BTW, take a look at User talk:Wikitopian and the response I got from not trying to push for a VfD or fight the user, but try to explain policy. And there is broilerplate that you can do for new users with the {{welcome}} that does explain the basic set of Wikibooks policies without having to look up the links to all of the policy pages. For myself, I try to add a more personal note onto the standard welcome message, but I understand if an admin feels overwhelmed and doesn't want to put too much into it. It looks like this VfD can be taken down shortly as a resolved issue. --Rob Horning 00:21, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. Just a quick note. There is a difference between lashing out at the user and failing to be as helpful as one should be. Jguk may be guilty of the second but not the first. Indeed, he may not be particularly guilty of the second: the VfD went up when the only authors of Wikitopia's front page were IP addresses. But still, leaving a note on the book's talk page and waiting a respectful week before putting up the VfD would have been better. --JMRyan 19:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - the writer calls this an anarcho-capitalist project. This would violate NPOV, heavily, implying wikipedia is an "anarcho-capitalist utopia". Furthermore, it's a completely original idea, and would also violate OR. Infinity0 21:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • It seems that this books, after a brief sojourn at meta, has gone to seedwiki. I wish Wikitopian all the best for it there. I have already deleted the subpages, and the main page should be deleted after a short while, Jguk 07:51, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete Moved to another page. --Derbeth talk 09:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment From the new location at http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/wikitopia I read: "at 12:00 Pacific Standard Time seedwiki will go offline for about 2 hours so that we can transfer its data to a new server". --Kernigh 20:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
    • Delete --Kernigh 03:11, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Because everything moved to Seedwiki, Jguk deleted this at 24 March 2006 (except for main Wikitopia page, which is now a redirect). --Kernigh 01:08, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Errata

Does not seem to comply with WB:WIW and looks like a dumping ground for editors' notes. -Matt 00:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep I think Errata is great idea. If you want to delete it, please tell me a more appropriate place for this content. The section WB:WIW#Wikibooks_includes_annotated_texts seems to specifically allow annotations like this. What part of WB:WIW doesn't allow it? --DavidCary 07:38, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
    • WB:WIW does not allow content like this in regards to annotated texts. This is not an annotated text since the original work must be included. The pages in Errata seem to have little to no context here at Wikibooks; a visitor to the book merely sees a big long page of footnotes and there is little to nothing explaining what these notes connect to besides an ISBN number. Wikibooks is not a general repository for notes or a webspace provider. The content in this book looks more appropriate for someone to personally store on their own site somewhere. Although this content has a purpose, in my opinion it isn't here. Wikibooks seems like a note dumping ground for this book. -Matt 17:08, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - Errata is not an annotated text, but it is an instructional resource that is appropriate for Wikibooks. We already have Atlas Shrugged (a plot summary of the book) and Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter. --Kernigh 03:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Errata violates this part of Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks: Wikibooks is not an in-depth encyclopedia on a specific topic. This is sometimes called a Macropedia, and is discouraged because most projects of this nature can be dealt with directly on Wikipedia itself anyway. Books generally have a stronger organization that builds knowledge from one module to the next with a suggested chronological order to the content. Encyclopedic entries usually stand alone with only passing reference to other content, demonstrating a difference between Wikipedia and Wikibooks. I wonder if I should change my vote... --Kernigh 04:27, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. This isn't a book on it's own, nor is it an annotated text of any sort. It is a partial listing of notes on various books. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 05:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep this section is linked to from Wikipedia via the w:Special:Booksources page (defined at w:Wikipedia:Book sources) and is used to provide Errata for books described there. I agree, the current content might leave something to be desired: some of the entries are lists of mistakes, but without any indication of what the correct version should be. Maybe someone ought to fix it rather than throwing the baby out with the bath-water? —Phil | Talk 16:55, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Wikipedia's linking to the book in no way should reflect this VfD. Your mentioning that fact makes me question this book further because I think that connection suggests Wikipedia is using Wikibooks as a dumping ground for content they don't want to hold or is too large. As explained above, I don't think it fits into Wikibooks policies and the book would need to be totally redone to make it so (for one, the book organizes by ISBN and is a long list of cryptic references). I notice you have only made four edits in the past year and Wikibooks policies have changed quite a bit since then. What was possibly acceptable then is most likely no longer true in my opinion. -Matt 17:49, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Move to Wikicities, per Whiteknight. Seahen 18:43, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep or Move to Wikicities if an appropriate landing place can be suggested. This book is envisioned a community resource. Its entire utility derives from it being a wiki editable project. It is not a dumping ground for any one person's notes, nor is it in any way a dumping ground for Wikipedia. (The content of Errata obviously has nothing to do with Wikipedia; it has to do with books and printed articles.) Errata is not a textbook in the traditional sense, but it could be compared to a reference handbook that can be consulted by students or teachers who are concerned about errors in textbooks they are using. As such, Errata could be a very valuable resource in the teaching of courses that use popular but error dense textbooks, especially those whose errors are particularly confusing, such as math and science texts. --Chinasaur 00:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I definitely support a move to Wikicities. Although Wikibooks has extensive resources, I think writing a book that contains (possibly) references to the errata of any printed book in the world is a bit large. This content needs to go to its own specific wiki. -Matt 19:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I think the fear of overloading Wikibooks resources is a little outlandish as the main idea is to focus on heavily used but error-laden books, a group which is numerous but not overwhelming. Also, many entries in the current Errata are links to editors' own Errata sites, which are still useful as these are not always easy to find with a simple web search, but which don't take much space or resource to maintain. --Chinasaur 18:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
    • I didn't take part in the WIWB discussions, but ultimately it seems to me that this comes down to whether WB is supposed to be an open-source vehicle or an academic resource. Errata very much belongs in a domain with other books used by academics for learning or teaching purposes. However, if you see WB as an attempt to eliminate the need for commercial textbooks then I can understand how a resource that increases the utility of commercial books would be out of place. Where in wikicities would this go? Or can someone suggest a good free wiki host? --Chinasaur 18:30, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I think there's a lot more to it than what you've just said. This book seems like a dropping point for large amounts of cryptic information. Lots of it. I've listed many reasons above. You can create a new project at Wikicities and request a subdomain. -Matt 05:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
        • This is starting to irritate me: what is cryptic about the goal of this project? Nobody is writing in code; the whole thing is explained clearly on the front page. "This equation should be corrected in the following way so that you do not spend 2 hours yelling at your calculator". What is cryptic about that? Now, I am prepared to move the project on the grounds that it does not fit the latter-day determination of what is appropriate for WB. "It is not a textbook." Fine, I agree. (Although it has the potential to be useful to many more real students and real teachers than a book about "fighting video game moves", etc. </rant>.) But I am annoyed by off-base criticisms that lead me growingly to suspect that you only glanced at the project before listing it here and have not yet taken a second look. Anyway, I will look through wikicities for another place, and if anyone can suggest a wikicity or best available free wiki host, that would be appreciated. --Chinasaur 19:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
          • Mainly, this book looks like a big database. Since it is organized by ISBN, the book has little browsability. Many of the pages are seemingly stubs, some over a year without edits. Many of the pages also only have links to authors' own corrections, making this book look even more like a database and a link repository. I only see approximately one to two dozen subpages even though this book is over a year old. A significant effort would need to be made to develop this large subject matter. Also, the material is like a project of its own; the topic itself that the book tries to organize is massive. That definitely suggests that this should be an independent project. I think it should be moved and deleted here. -Matt 23:48, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
            • Summary as I see it: Errata is not a textbook, and so does not fall under the current WIWB definition. This remains the only solid criticism. Other criticisms are basically ruminations of this point, or are simply ruminant. Whether the current WIWB definition is sacrosanct is a difficult question. Whether the WIWB definition is being fairly enforced on other questionable "textbooks" is a secondary issue. The current votes on Errata are inconclusive. I have agreed to look for a new home for the project. There are several places on wikicities that seem appropriate. I would like to look at locations outside of wikicities in case any other infrastructure seems better suited. This will take a few weeks, so let's check in again towards the end of March. If we want to move to wikicities, is there an admin who can manage this transition? --Chinasaur 07:46, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or Move, whatever, get it off here. It may be useful, but it's not a textbook. --Tetraminoe 08:49, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete or Move. Not a textbook. Moving to Wikicities should count count as a delete since we are deciding what is appropriate for Wikibooks, not what is appropriate for other wikis. --JMRyan 11:38, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree that move should be counted as delete. At least one said only to delete if a good landing place could be found. Some of us value the content, even if unsure where it should be. --Mathwizard1232 22:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I changed my vote to Delete or Move. Moving satisfies my interest as I don't see it as belonging here. But I certainly have no objection to moving it first. I don't even have any objection to moving silly books (which this clearly is not) before deleting them here. I am somewhat sceptical about the project: keeping up with all the errata through multiple printings of multiple editions of potentially a gazillion books seems to me a thankless task, and I'm not so sure it is really worth the effort. But that scepticism is irrelevant to my concern. Worth the effort or no, the project seems better suited elsewhere as it is too unlike a textbook. --JMRyan 00:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
Although I agree it's off-topic, I'm interested in the argument: I think your skepticism is off base. Errata needn't be all-encompassing to be useful. My hypothesis is that Errata should inherently weight itself towards "important" errors. The more a book is used, and the more error-laden it is, and the more problematic its errors are, the more likely it will appear in Errata. That's why I consider the prime demographic to be math and science textbooks used in large undergraduate classes, or old classics that many people keep on the reference shelf but that haven't been republished in decades. I wholeheartedly agree that some errata are not worth correcting (at least for now), but I think you would agree that some errata are worth correcting and publishing to the world. Hopefully I'm correct in supposing that the latter are inherently more likely to appear in our wikibook. --Chinasaur 08:15, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep It is instructional and useful. In the long term, however, I think a textual wiki is not the best way to go about this- you really need a database, so you can do quick searchers based on ISBN, author, title, etc. If/when WikiData ever comes into being, this would be a great fit there and I'd vote to move it. --Gabe Sechan 19:23, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I like it. I however wonder if we should not have an entirely new wikipedia just for that. ISBN's. Really I think this is a logical place to have it. And is some cas perhaps it should be placed in a section or tool on wikibooks called the "ISBN Almanac for wikibooks." --72.57.8.2I5 03:18, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Like you just said, this book can be its own project. How would ISBN lookup benefit Wikibooks as a tool? Books here do not have ISBNs. This project is a data dump / repository. -Matt 06:14, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep I don't particularly care where, new project, here, wikicities, whatever. However, I think this is valuable information that should not in any case be deleted, and we should be very sure that its destination will welcome it before we remove it here. --Mathwizard1232 22:16, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure I understand your vote to keep when you have explained it should just go "somewhere." I don't see how a vote could be made when you mention that the book's true location might not be here at Wikibooks. -Matt 04:15, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Sj 04:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - This is an attempt to create a new Wikimedia project using Wikibooks as the seed wiki. I'll say it before and I'll say it again, I think this is a good role for Wikibooks, but the powers that be don't like to see it done that way, and for consistancy sake it shouldn't happen. A major complaint I have is that this content is not really integrated into Wikibooks either, as I would imagine something like this ought to be. If/when Wikidata ever gets up and going, this would IMHO be a perfect project for that db engine. Indeed a new Wikimedia project proposal on this very topic was created, with surprisingly the very same conculsion I had here was also made by none other than Angela. Furthermore, comments like this one by the person who started this project seem to reinforce the fact that Wikibooks is being used as the seed wiki for a brand new project.

    I agree that this is very valuable information, and it is something that does deserve attention and should go somwhere useful. It would be nice to have a "seed wiki" setup for precisely projects like this that don't seem to fit quite anywhere on any Wikimedia project, but have general value to the Wikimedia community. This isn't a textbook, and it really isn't source material, even though the content perhaps ought to be protected in a manner similar to Wikisource texts. Some considerable effort has gone into this content, and it is not random gibberish but content of general value. The real question is if this belongs on Wikibooks (and perhaps even featured as a special project next to Wikiversity and Wikijunior) or moved to Wikicities or a seperate Wikimedia project? My vote is to move the content, but there really isn't a place to do that right now (unfortunately). --Rob Horning 06:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep or Move I just checked Wikicities and apparently they just recently rejected it, and the only reason given was that it already exists here! Like others, I don't care where it is (I find some the purism voiced here amusing - y'all take yourselves and your policies way too seriously) I just want the content to exist, and to exist as a public wiki. If the purists here really need this content to live elsewhere, can they please inform the powers-that-be over at Wikicities that there is no intent to have duplication: it is desired that this content _move_ over there, not live in both places. But as I said, I for one don't really care where it lives. DG

--Dgoldsmith 21:37, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Request If/when the decicision is made to remove this book, might I be given notice and some time to try to recruit an alternate host? Thanks! DG

--Dgoldsmith 21:50, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

  • I just started a new proposal on Meta with Wikikernel. Indeed I mentioned this content as an explicit reason to create this new project, because it needs to go somewhere and does serve a valuable function for Wikimedia projects as a whole. As far as Wikicities rejecting it, supposedly Wikia is a totally seperate organization from the Wikimedia Foundation, but sometimes it is hard to tell. Perhaps in the proposal to create the new Wikicity you should have mentioned that it was up for a VfD on Wikibooks? --Rob Horning 01:34, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

A small list of similar projects like Errata in other languages:

Removed {{vfd}} tag, kept for now. There are apparently reasons to delete Errata, but there is no agreement concerning what the reasons are, and there are also plenty of keep votes. Because of this lack of consensus, Errata might again reach VFD in the future. --Kernigh 00:04, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest that if this could be moved somewhere else, or a proposal for a new Wikimedia project be started, now would be the time to do so. I'm going to give this project some breathing space as well for now, but I'll likely be the next person to mark if for VfD in the future if somebody else doesn't beat me to it. This project certainly should not be used as a rationale to keep similar new projects on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 13:07, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

A practical guide to picture framing

This was transwiki'ed in from Wikipedia in August 2005. I don't think it's worth keeping, Jguk 12:20, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete. It looks more like a stub to me than an exercise in silliness. But after six months of no activity, and indeed no activity at all after the transwiki, I'm willing to call it an eternal stub. --JMRyan 16:22, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - Empty transwiki. -Matt 02:45, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Have we considered a merge into How to frame a picture? --Kernigh 04:43, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep and merge into How to frame a picture as suggested by Kernigh. It has some useful info in there, I don't see why it should be deleted.--Konstable 12:08, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Merged --Kernigh 16:11, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Baxilic and Baxilic/Alfabet (alfbesh)

Per the (two-page) wikibook, Baxilic is "a language based on the language in Orson Scott Card's Memory of Earth". It appears to be entirely fictional. Google comes up with only five pages, of which this wikibook is listed number one. This doesn't seem like something we should be covering, Jguk 08:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep - Dispite rumors to the contrary, I am generally an inclusionist, especially if I can't find a specific policy that the content violates. The content here is just enough, for me, that it goes beyond the eternal stub, and there is some real, actual content on the subject. It barely crosses that line for me, however. The only issue that I see which needs to be resolved is if most of what is here is a copyright violation (copied from a fan site or from notes by Orson Scott Card). While there may be some controversy over the creation of full Wikimedia sister projects in languages like this, I fail to see how that standard needs to be applied to content like this here in Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 13:42, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete We have other made-up languages at Wikibooks, but only Quenya is a language book we have introduced as part of fiction. Perhaps Klingon or Middle Earth languages (such as Quenya) are or would be of enough interest to be worth keeping. But that lack of Google links and Wikipedia entry would suggest that there is no similar interest in Baxilic. I am somewhat uncomfortable voting to delete without leaving notes on the authors' pages so they could contradict me. However all of the authors are IP addresses. (To be clear, I don't see their being IP addresses as reason to delete the book; I just wish they weren't IP address so we could let them know of this vote.) --JMRyan 22:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete To me, this language "Baxilic" does not exist, so we cannot write a book about it. My search yielded 18 results, all connected to Wikibooks! --Kernigh 00:32, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

An Introduction to Buildsystem Design

Transwiki'ed in from Wikipedia. It would have been a stub there. Going by its wikipedia entry, it hasn't been edited since 12 March 2005. Not a book, no realistic prospect of becoming a book, so delete, Jguk 20:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment - I would like to get some input from the author if possible. The content on Wikipedia (from a user talk page that links to the former Wikipedia content) suggests that a Wikibooks admin, UncleG, invited him to move the content to Wikibook with the argument that the flavor of the content was more textbook oriented. As this appears to be a new Wikimedia user as well, I'm sure his head is spinning right now just trying to figure out what is going on. A quick deletion is certainly out of the question, and the content by itself is not inappropriate, even though yes it is just a stub. My main note of caution here is to not bite the newcommer too hard. --Rob Horning 01:07, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete The problem is that Orca itself is abandoned. Without the Orca TDD Buildsystem, there is no chance to write this book. --Kernigh 00:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

2006 Merrimack Town Meeting Season Voters Guide

Seems to be someone's personal project that they needed webspace for. Could be instructional, but it seems a little too specific and personal to be here. Thought I'd let some voting decide if it should stay. -Matt 22:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

This was voted upon a few weeks ago. I'm removing the tag, considering that didn't end in a consensus. Karmafist 04:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I listed this, which is Karmafist's project, for speedy deletion immediately after its creation on similar grounds to Matt, together with it clearly not being a textbook within Wikibook's remit. The speedy deletion tag was replaced by a VFD tag, but we didn't proceed to a vote as the article had not existed for at least 7 days. It's right that we now discuss this again, so I have replaced the VfD tag. After the further development, it is even clearer to me that this is not a textbook, and as it is about one town's election that is to be held next month, it is too specific, has no lasting value and is not a textbook. Delete, Jguk 07:26, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep I disagree that it has no lasting value- those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it. While its not a textbook, that is not and never has been a requirement of this site. It is nonfiction, which is a requirement. The fact that its based on a specific locale is also not a reason to delete it- many of our books are of interest to only specific countries, usually the US. This is violating no Wikibooks policy. On top of that, I find it an interesting project- I'd like to see how it turns out, and wether its useful to the people of Merrimack. --Gabe Sechan 18:00, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Strongly Keep - While I might agree that this should be merged into the Voter's Guide or perhaps as suggested by Karmafist into a more general guide to politics of Merrimack, there is absolutely no reason to remove this content. Being content of a very local nature should not ever be a criteria here. If I were to write a Wikibook about the plants and animals in the Grand Canyon, on Mt. Rushmore, or perhaps a canyon within walking distance of my home, I don't think it should be removed either. Books of that nature are not only useful, but are prized in academic circles because sometimes that is the only authoritative content on a subject that specific. While a general interest bookstore might not carry content like that, it is something you would find in a University library and IMHO is precisely the kind of thing that Wikibooks should be about.

    NPOV complaints may be a valid reason to complain about the content, but I fail to see that being an issue here at all. This is a good faith effort to add content to Wikibook that also exists already in other forms. It is also very premature to even add a VfD in this case as the author still has barely recovered from the previous VfD that was stricken down. This is not a way to treat brand new contributors to Wikibooks. BTW, WB:DP says one month before a VfD. Look it up. --Rob Horning 18:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Strong Keep and possibly Evolve. Ok, since we're having the vote, I might as well add something -- this could be the starting point for a Wikibook on Merrimack politics as a whole, an incredibly textured and deep subject going back over 200 years and continuing on to this day that even most people in my town don't realize. I hope to get down to the library soon and add information from prior Deliberative Sessions and Elections as well as other political topics having to do with the political past, present and future of my town to this current Wikibook. Karmafist 19:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep To solve the problem of "too specific", I want to keep this book, so we can encourage the creation of similar books for other minor cities. --Kernigh 04:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - one issue I have with this which the "keep" voters have not addressed is that this is a voter's guide for an election in April. After then it will have very limited, if any, value. That is the limited scope is not just to one town, but to a very specific time period that is nearly up. In direct response to Kernigh, I disagree - I would not like to see wikibooks become host to hundreds and hundreds of short books about elections in small towns, Jguk 12:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
    I would like to point out that although the "issues" will be over by the end of 2006, the town of Merrimack will still be there. And they will still have elections next year and for years in the future. The #1 point I was trying to make earlier is that it should not be a VfD about having content about a small town, which is what all the arguments seem to be about. A discussion of voter guides IMHO is much more relevant, but that would presume a VfD about Voter's Guide instead, not just a guide to a small town's election. If voter guides are going to be allowed, I fail to see the problem with having hundred or even thousands of very short books or modules about every small town in the world. If you can find people to write them, why not? I don't think that there should be hundred of stubs, but if some real content has been developed, it just adds value to Wikibooks. As far as organization of that content within Wikibooks, perhaps they could all be grouped together as one book, as I mentioned earlier. And they must maintain NPOV guidelines. Just like discussion pages like this one, it would be reasonable to preserve older voting guides in an archival format, and something Wikimedia practices can deal with including page protection to keep vandals from messing with them. --Rob Horning 12:43, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
    Just because the vote occurs in April does not mean its value is gone after the vote. In the future it can become valuable for its insight into the history of the town and its politics. Go to your local historical society and you'll see vaults of books just like this, still being used by historians. The only issue I see here is possible NPOV problems, which are better solved by editing than deletion (and I didn't see any NPOV issues when I last looked at it). --Gabe Sechan 18:34, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Move - to something that can at least be more generalized. I really dislike something so specific and temporal to always exist here as it is, like its own separate book project. I think it would be much more useful to get the ideas of the guide into something as a part of the Voter's Guide. This book in my opinion could be better applied to a general work because I think this is just website storage right now. -Matt 04:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikilanguages

This seems to be a separate, unofficial wikimedia project, Jguk 09:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete I would have to agree this is an attempt to create a new Wikimedia project, and an orphaned page at that. I would try to encourage contacting the original author, but it appears as though his last edit was in April of last year. --Rob Horning 12:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I am the original author and have been unable devote time to this project recently. I was hoping that others would take it up. Is there someway to publicize this and perhaps make it into an official Wikimedia project? I don't think many would disagree that having spoken examples of all the world's languages and dialects is a good idea and would make a major contribution to the wikisphere.Gary Cziko 12:48, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
    There are a number of very worthy projects like this that IMHO should be started in somewhere, and Wikibooks has been an incubator for a number of these in the past. If you look at meta:Proposals for new projects, there are a very large number of projects like this that have been proposed over the years, so this isn't even something new. The biggest problem that most Wikibooks contributors have with things like this (or Wikiversity for that matter) is that they draw a focus away from the development of textbooks and make it very hard to define what Wikibooks is even about. I just started a new project proposal called Wikikernel which is specifically oriented toward providing a place for neat ideas like this. Let's see if the idea gets any sort of support. --Rob Horning 17:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. I would suggest a transwiki to the Wikimedia Commons, but the entire project appears to be empty. In whatever case, a gallery of sound files should be at the Commons, not here. --Kernigh 04:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. In addition to the objections from Rob Horning and Kernigh, this is original research. --JMRyan 00:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Ahmadiyya Books

This is an interesting user experiment. Ignoring the issues of having a bunch of modules with a completely inconsistant naming system, this Wikibook is essentially an advertisement for English translations of books that would be in the public domain now. The translation is copyrighted, which is why I think this user decided to go this route instead. The question I'm bring up here in this forum is if creating a catalog of external books is an acceptable practice on Wikibooks, especially if that is the objective and purpose of the Wikibook. I don't mind some references to external books exist, but this is seemingly a stealth advertisement to another website. --Rob Horning 07:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete I don't think we want collections of links. Its ok as a temporary stage while writing the content, but we want more than just links in the end. There have been no substantial edits for months. In addition, I think there are major POV isues here. --Gabe Sechan 08:14, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Weak delete. I left a message at the author's talk page. I suppose this could become more than a list of books. There is some small attempt at commentary, though I would guess that more is needed to make this worth keeping. Will there be more detailed commentary? Is there a unifying theme? Will there be more discussion of Islam in general? Will there be any clue as to what an Ahmadiyya book (as opposed to other books on or within the Islamic faith) is? As for POV issues, it's been my vague impression that we've been a bit more tolerant of pushing the POV boundry on pages about religions than on other pages. I don't see this book as worth keeping in its present state. But let's at least give the author a chance to respond. Maybe he or someone else will rescue this and turn it into something to be kept. We shouldn't wait indefinately for this to happen, but we should be somewhat slow to delete this. The VfD on Astronomy inspired someone to take it under his wing. If we're lucky, someone will do that here as well. --JMRyan 19:59, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I think its a mistake to put the religion books on a different standard. Many of the religion books here need MAJOR cleanup, including the Christianity wikibook, and I think its well past time someone strong armed the contributors into doing so. The only reason I haven't put a vfd on it already is that I don't want it actually deleted, I want it fixed. But by putting religion books on a different standard you set the stage for the loosening of standards in general. If anything, being such highly divisive topics they should be held to higher standards. --Gabe Sechan 21:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Sorry, I wasn't clear. I didn't really mean to put religion books on a different NPOV standard, I merely intended to note a trend. I had intended (but apparently forgot) to add a "for better or worse" phrase to that sentence so that I wouldn't be approving or disapproving of the trend. We certainly shouldn't have an official policy of being easier on religion books. As for an unofficial de facto policy of being more tolerant of a POV slant on religion pages, I guess I'm of two minds. On one hand, we ideally need to hold all pages to the same high standard. On the other hand, idealism is sometimes impractical. There is a LOT of mess on Wikibooks to be cleaned up, religion books can become magnets for POV fights, and it may not be worth the effort to expend alot of energy on such problems. BTW, after an admittedly very brief check, the Christianity book did not seem nearly as bad to me on the POV issue as Christian Theology—though Christianity's long list of claimed prophecy fullfillment listed as fact on the front page did seem rather much. (Note on Christian Theology. It has a lot of links to Wikipedia pages, but a few of its front page links are to its own subpages. Those subpages have some pretty bad POV problems. Christianity may look worse than it is because some of its front page links are to those POV infested Christian Theology subpages.) To get back to the subject at hand, namely Ahmadiyya Books, I think it needs some rescuing to be worth keeping and that I would want to see where such rescuing (if it occurs) goes before worrying too much about its POV issues. --JMRyan 20:08, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment I actually have this entire book, except for its one longest subpage, saved into my sandbox. I decided against merging everything into one page, and was planning to move the subpages to start with "Ahmadiyya Books/". Most of the external links point into http://www.alislam.org which is a suitable reference for writing a book about this religious movement. Most of the book content appears to be summary information, not advertisement information, though I did not check the content carefully. However, the subpages do not well form a Wikibook; they describe not the relationship between the different Ahmadiyya books, and might work better as independent encyclopedia articles. The information should already be available at alislam.org or in Wikipedia; if this book was deleted, anyone could attempt a better book using alislam.org as a reference. --Kernigh 07:01, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted No opposition to deletion. --Kernigh 01:02, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

London and all subpages

  • Transwiki to Wikitravel, Jguk 08:12, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep Wikitravel is not a Wikimedia project and has incompatibile license. I'm not convinced that we shouldn't host travel guides. --Derbeth talk 09:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - A collaboration of the Month winner being up for VfD? It wasn't like this Wikibook slipped under the radar and was developed by stealth and nobody knew of its existance. Ditto to what Derbeth said above. --Rob Horning 13:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep --Kernigh 20:50, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - I don't see any reason to move it, I mean it was CotM. --German Men92 01:57, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Russisch:_Wörterbuch_Deutsch-Russisch

A german - russian dictionary, touching many subpages here on en:wikibooks -- one for each word with a nontrivial declension in Russian. Requires careful transwikiing to de/ru/other:wikt. Sj 19:10, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Transwiki But to which language Wiktionary? --Kernigh 00:03, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
    • Comment This was deleted, but was it transwikied? --Kernigh 01:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
It was actually from the German wikibook to here, so it does not need transwikied. --German Men92 00:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Whole Earth Catalog

This is a very old Wikibook that may have been worked on had it been publicized a little better. The last edit was on 11 November 2004, and every edit was by the same author. It seems to me an attempt to use Wikibooks as a seed wiki to start a whole new type of project. On the whole a neat idea, but something that doesn't fit with what Wikibooks has become. I am not trying to target User:Sj here, but it seems as though I'm going through some of the early contributions he made to Wikibooks and this project has evolved and changed over time. --Rob Horning 14:34, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete - Hasn't gone anywhere for quite some time. -Matt 04:47, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete This project might work at Wikibooks, but there is nothing here that is not in the linked Commons gallery or Wikipedia article. --Kernigh 06:11, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Move: Could someone please undelete the pages and move them to my userspace? Also, I note that despite still being listed on this page, the book has been deleted... and with no notice on my talk page. Can this process be replaced with a slightly more polite one? Thanks, Sj 04:25, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Moved to User:Sj/Whole Earth Catalog by User:Robert Horning, after an earlier deletion by User:Jguk. --Kernigh 04:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

GAT: A Glossary of Astronomical Terms

This is one Wikibook I didn't know about when we made the policy change on WB:WIN regarding glossaries and dictionaries. It is an outstanding reference book in its own right, and has done a better job with some of these terms than Wikitionary.

I am proposing one of two possibilities:

  1. Doing a transwiki to en.wiktionary (our loss but a big gain for that project)
  2. Merging this into the Astronomy Wikibook (turning that Wikibook into something really outstanding)

I don't think it should remain as an independent Wikibook, however, in keeping with the spirit of the idea that Wikibooks is not a dictionary --Rob Horning 16:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Transwiki to Wiktionary or delete. Do not merge this into the narrative of Astronomy! I'm not kidding. Nothing in there is suitable for the main text, with the possible exception of the "canals" entry. Trying to merge the entire thing into astronomy would just create a big headache for me and waste your time in the long run. If you're talking about consolidating it into a one page glossary for Astronomy, that's more of an option, but also something I don't want for the Astronomy book right now. It would need a lot of cleanup to become something resembing a glossary, and I suspect it would constantly suffer from drive-by contributors adding in material of dubious value. I've long been thinking about what to do with GAT and have been avoiding it. Make it go away. --Brian Brondel 21:28, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
    I just dropped a note at the Wiktionary Beer Parlour to see if anybody there is interested in helping with a transwiki of the content... or at least if they think it is a good idea to send that content over to Wiktionary. If they don't want it, I'm fine with just deleting the content. IMHO a specialized glossary on Wiktionary of astronomical terms might be something useful to link to, but that is something for another discussion elsewhere. --Rob Horning 16:00, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
    As per this earlier conversion, I'd say this is welcome at Wiktionary. --Connel MacKenzie 16:07, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
    In the process of moving it to Wikt:Appendix:Astronomical_terms --Dangherous 16:13, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Transwiki Dangherous's link now redirects to Wikt:Wiktionary:Astronomical terms. --Kernigh 03:12, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I'd say that a lot of this is encyclopaedia, not dictionary material. I know we'd like to have a lot of it in Wiktionary, stripped down to simple defintions, but I think it will have far less value in Wiktionary than in it's present form. A technical glossary is a lot more than a dictionary. Richardb of Wiktionary. 4/4/06

Global political economy

As can be told by the many VfDs I've added here, I'm doing some serious house cleaning on Wikibooks. This is a Wikibook that is very soapboxish, and was added by an anonymous user. I remember seeing this back elsewhen, but I wanted to give the author a chance to prove himself. That time has passed and I think this deserves a good review to see if it belongs on Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 16:23, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted With almost three weeks, no one voted here. However, the book violates Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks by trying to introduce new arguments about "global political economy" concept. --Kernigh 01:41, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Internet Server Directory

This is merely a list of different servers. While an interesting project, I think it falls outside of the scope of Wikibooks. Note about this the discussion linked at the bottom of the page to the WB:WIN talk page about banning lists on Wikibooks. This is a clear case of where this book might be the catalyst for making another policy change. --Rob Horning 20:48, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Delete However, if this became a how-to guide on how to use the linked services, then I would keep it. --Kernigh 03:30, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Deleted - but I left urls of alternate resources on the Internet Server Directory page. --Kernigh 02:21, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

RuneScape/Guides/Cheats

This was nominated for speedy deletion by User:Richard x:

{{delete|Much of this information is covered in the Anti-Scam and Anti-Hack guides. This guide also only gives ideas to mean players.Richard 02:12, 26 March 2006 (UTC)}}.

The user is referring to RuneScape/Guides/Anti-Scam and RuneScape/Guides/Anti-Hack. However, 68.163.136.216 decided to remove the tag, claiming that "I cannot see any reference to it on TBD, and therefore have removed the sign".

I mention that RuneScape/Guides/Cheats is a recent transwiki from Wikipedia. The page is now also on WB:VIP because of vandalism. It appears that Richard x's request for deletion, and 68.163.136.216's removal of that request, are both independent of any vandalism. I now open this poll. I would suggest keeping this page, unless the page is redundant with the anti-scam and anti-hack guides already here, in which case I would suggest deleting the page. --Kernigh 03:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

  • Merge and Delete - Most of the content on this page is found elsewhere within the Runescape guide. I came very close to deleting the page earlier, but I wanted to give the regular Runescape contributors a chance to look at it and pick through what they wanted to keep before I got rid of it. I still think this should be the direction this content should go now. --Rob Horning 15:21, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - This guide is useless. Almost all the information in the guide is covered in both RuneScape/Guides/Anti-Scam and RuneScape/Guides/Anti-Hack. The only part of the article that isn't in the two guides is the Bot/Auto/Macro/Scripting current issues, which I, from my POV, has nothing to do with RS. And what the heck is TBD? Richard 22:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete - Having reviewed this, I now agree with Richard that this "Cheats" page is redundant, and we should delete it – no merge necessary. Remember, this page was moved from Wikipedia, not originally submitted to this Wikibook. I was not able to verify that scar, Aryan, Sbot, xScar exist as they are described here. The bot community is trying to make contractually illegal the informing of JAGex or the public about bots; maybe we should mention that somewhere in the book. --Kernigh 15:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Deleted - This page has shown repeated vandalism, so much so that I "borrowed" the {{deletedpage}} template from Wikipedia and updated it for Wikibooks, and added it to this page, in addition to protecting the page from edits. This should be a temporary fix, and I don't mind having even this page content deleted, but this at least gives notice that it was voted out of existance. I guess Wikibooks is growing up and having to deal with this kind of garbage. This whole section can be archived in about a week. --Rob Horning 02:34, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Scriptol

Blanked with the following comment:

Delete by the author. Don't revert, ask to Ruud

Either we should delete it or reinstate the content.

--Krischik T 16:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Reverted - Legally once you have committed content to the GFDL, it is "out there" and it can't be taken back in. I don't know if perhaps we need to establish a policy allowing authors to "take back" their work, but the disclaimer at the bottom of the edit page pretty much says it all: Please note that all contributions to Wikibooks are considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (see Wikibooks:Copyrights for details). If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. We can't be more blunt than that.

I've done a google search for the programming langauge, and I've come up with the following links:

This isn't original research, as has happened in the past, but is a real programming language. I don't see why this content should necessarily be removed, but it is unusual for an author to want it removed. It is at least as clear as anything else written about the programming language, and I don't see a reason why it should be removed.

The other issue is that the edit asking for its removal is from a different IP address than the one that contributed the content. It would be difficult at best to even find who might have been the original author, and if it was from a dynamic IP address you would have to get ISP records to trace the IP to a specific computer to legally prove that you had even written it. From this perspective we have the contributions of at least three different users (three different IP addresses) and any effort to remove the content would have to prove that it is a copyright violation prior to its creation here on Wikibooks. We could simply state for the record that the blanking instead was just vandalism. Harsh, but that is a pure legal stance on this issue.

I suppose we could be nice and simply kill the page to be polite to the author using perhaps common sense, but it isn't something we absolutely have to do. --Rob Horning 17:11, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Yubnub commands

This appears to be a Wikipedia article moved to Wikibooks without cause. We do not seem to have a Yubnub book that this would be part off. I want to transwiki this back to Wikipedia:Yubnub commands. For example, Wikipedia:IRC commands is at Wikipedia. First I open this poll. --Kernigh 21:12, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Comment - leaning to deletion - This doesn't seem like a Wikipedia article to me, and something likely to be deleted from Wikipedia in its current condition. Obviously there were a number of quality markup tags on Wikipedia as noted by this earlier edit. It seems as though this is more of a beginnings of a language reference book, which seems to fit more with Wikibooks than Wikipedia. Still, I'm not attached to it, and I would have to agree that I would like to have seen some discussion on Wikipedia first of some kind before this was removed. I don't see any of that discussion at all, and your comment on Wikipedia seems to be the first comment that anybody made on the discussion page. --Rob Horning 23:06, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
    • From what I know, transwikis do not require discussion. For example, transwikis from Wikibooks use {{transwiki|destination}}

, and discussion (through this VFD) page is optional. --Kernigh 15:32, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

      • While a full discussion may not be completely necessary, a rationale can and should be included somewhere for why you move or delete something. Leaving out the rationale anywhere on either a talk page or even in the transwiki comment is not a good idea. Obvious transwikied content (aka it is not in English) is reasonable, or if it simply fits better in another project might be a good idea. In this case, it was tagged by a Wikipedia admin for transwiki to Wikibooks, and he may have a point. The real question that would have to be asked is if this content can be expanded into a more book-length multi-page work, or is it something that can be simply covered as a simple encyclopedia article? If deletionists on Wikipedia want to remove content like this, I would support setting up a bookshelf on Wikibooks just for this sort of content. --Rob Horning 15:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Kept - no one voted to move this back to Wikipedia. --Kernigh 01:44, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Travels With Charley: In Search of America

The person who nominated this for deletion did not make an entry on this page. I disagree with the nomination. Please see Talk:Travels With Charley: In Search of America for further discussion. -- Stbalbach 21:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep and develop/expand into a bigger Study Guide. - Stbalbach 17:46, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment - I was hoping to resolve this issue with user talk pages instead of getting to this forum, but OK. I nominated it for a speedy delete because it was mostly an exact word-for-word fork of a Wikipedia article and as such was a violation of Wikibooks policies. I find it very unfortunate that the contributor here is being bullied by an admin on Wikipedia, and I strongly disagree with the rationale for reverting the addition of this material on that project. Still, Wikibooks should not be a forum for content fights on Wikipedia and I was trying to suggest to these contributors that they resolve the issues on Wikipedia first, and then move it here if the discussion has come to some sort of conclusion.

    It might just become worthy of becoming a book study guide, and fit better on Wikibooks. And if Wikipedia really doesn't want content like this, perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement with Wikipedia to move stuff like that here, such as happened with some of the Cookbook recepies or the How-to books. Please read my comments on the talk page for some further details about why I speedied this book module. --Rob Horning 03:54, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Keep - Well, as the creator of this content, I must say I'm exasperated! This site was created by 21 tenth graders. It was an interdisciplinary course assignment where each group of three worked collaboratively through the use of weblogs to create each section. I hoped it would provide a lesson in collaborative writing and researching and provide the whole class and others reading this book further insight into America in 1960 according to Steinbeck. I could see this growing to include more references and material on a very interesting and transitional time in our history and culture. I'm not sure if it serves better as a book or a pedia and I apologize for not understanding each of the site's purposes better. My students use Wikipedia as a resource frequently and were excited about the prospect of building on their stub. I think now my students are learning a very different lesson. If you vote to keep it, I will take care of the image licensing problems and remove the discussion questons if you like. --T McHale
I guess I'm confused here then. The study guide questions are fine, and indeed this is something that would be useful here on Wikibooks. The issue here is that this was added to Wikipedia with the intent to make this into a Wikipedia article, and the content was then deleted by an administrator citing some sort of Wikipedia policy, mainly because he felt this was original research, and an editorial review of previously published material. That is also banned on Wikibooks as well, so this certainly deserves a second look for this as well. I don't think this is original research nor an editorial review, so I don't think that applies here, nor should it have applied on Wikipedia.
What I'm asking is if you really do intend to create this as a Wikibook, or is this simply being put here to avoid trying to have the content deleted from Wikipedia? The principle here is that Wikibooks should not be a battle ground for content disputes on Wikipedia. If you and your students do learn a lesson, it is that there is a huge diversity of opinion in the world over what different philosophies and ideas mean to different people. That and you need to realize that there are content standards to these projects so you can't put any random junk up on these Wikimedia projects and expect it to remain, unquestioned and unedited.
I'm trying to see in part what you want to do with this content and where do you want to go with it? If you want to turn it into a Wikipedia article, that is an option, but it is going to take some heavy editing to put it into the "Wikipedia" style. Turning it into a Wikibook has a slightly different style, and a little more lattitude in terms of putting in study questions and other features that make it attractive to becoming a textbook. As it is right now, this content is sort of halfway between both projects and really not ideal for either. --Rob Horning 14:54, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree Rob, and I hope we create both from this content - a Wikipedia article, and a Study Guide. I have started converting it into Wikipedia format, and hope T McHale and team continue building a Study Guide, they have more freedom and leeway here to do more things, than the more restrictive Wikipedia side of things. -- Stbalbach 16:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Delete. Wikibooks is not for editing Wikipedia articles. I understand that this book is here not as an expansion of an encyclopedia article, but because of a dispute related to Wikipedia:Travels With Charley: In Search of America. Tmchale and Stbalbach are both trying to improve the Wikipedia article now, and to help them improve Wikipedia, they are storing Travels With Charley: In Search of America at Wikibooks. This is well and good, except that Wikibooks is not an encyclopedia. I would have preferred that we edit the Wikipedia article at Wikipedia. Also consider Wikinfo, a project that allows forks of Wikipedia articles. --Kernigh 06:49, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
This is an inaccurate portrayal and misunderstanding of what transpired. See my other comments this page. --Stbalbach 16:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
Keep Okay, since Stbalbach said that I was wrong, I will believe it for now. --Kernigh 16:08, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep. As I understand the issue so far, the primary reason to delete is its Wikipedia origin. But as a study guide, it is more appropriate here than there. In general, forks from Wikipedia are a no-no. But if the reason it was forked was that it was Wikibook material that didn't belong on Wikipedia, then surely that should count as an exception. I have several concerns that could make me change my mind. 1) Perhaps I've missed somethng in the debate so far. 2) There were some concerns about its being a possible copywrite violation when this was at Wikipedia. It appears that those concerns were successfully addressed before the material was transwikied. But if it is a copywrite violation anyway, then that absolutely cannot be tolerated. 3) In general, I do not like the idea of Wikibooks becoming a repository for school projects. That violates (or at least strongly risks violating) the "Wikibooks is not a free wiki host or webspace provider" of WB:WIW. The result here is a high school level book report on what is probably Steinbeck's least enduring work. We had another originally controversial school project here, the much better quality Engineering Acoustics. I'm not ready to delete the book on that grounds yet, but seeing Wikibooks becoming a home for such projects is worrisome. --JMRyan 09:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
You are correct, that is what transpired. Someone uploaded Wikibooks material to Wikipedia, and so it was moved off Wikipedia. 2) There is no copyright violation the material is all original to Tmchale. 3) It is a general study guide, so long as it's generally applicable to anyone, I'm not sure it would matter who made it, so long as it's not specific to their school. -- Stbalbach 16:23, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Well this has been an interesting discussion and I've learned a lot, but I guess I still don't have a very good understanding of what qualifies as a wikipedia article and a wikibook. Yes, I guess right now this appears as a general study guide to "Steinbeck's least enduring work." But what makes this work interesting to is that it is nonfiction and represents the impressions of a distinctively American writer about his country during time (1960) of transition and great uncertainty. In that way, I'd like to see this site continue to expand the historical, cultural, and georgraphical observations that Steinbeck makes through hyperlinks and perhaps even disenting viewpoints from the time period. I'm not sure what it would become at that point (and I'm open to suggestions), but it seems to me that it's much more than a book report. -T McHale

  • To the extent that this is a reply to my vote above, remember that it was a "Keep" vote. As far as what qualifies for a Wikibook, well Travels With Charley: In Search of America for one does. If I understand other posts correctly, the view that it does not qualify as a Wikibook was based on a mistaken view of what was there. I did express some lack of enthusiasm for the book, but that is not the same as failing (or even almost failing) to qualify as a Wikibook. I am unenthusiastic about the quality of the book. But don't take that too seriously as I am unenthusiastic about the quality of many Wikibooks that clearly that qualify as per WB:WIW. (I think downright silly books, some of which have survived VfD's, do not qualify to be Wikibooks, but I don't see this one as downright silly.) Indeed, lesser quality books do sometimes grow up to become higher quality books. I am sceptical and unenthsiastic about starting Wikibooks as class projects. However, this scepticism applies more to the general practice of of creating Wikibooks as school projects than to any one such creation. I guess I see it as a practice to be discouraged, not as a reason to delete existing books. --JMRyan 20:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Keep - I'm formally expressing support for this Wikibook, so far as it might become something really interesting. I would even encourage a more general Wikibook about John Steinbeck, where this would become but one "module" or chapter of that much larger book. That is certainly something very worthy of Wikibooks, and there is plenty of content available to go that route while still maintaining a neutral point of view. I know that sometimes it isn't really all that clear what a Wikibook really is about, and I apologize for that, and is something that the regulars to Wikibooks do need to clean up, especially from links on the Main Page. I'll even try to wade in and clean up the page formatting if I can find the time. --Rob Horning 16:25, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Removed {{vfd}} tag. I presume that this is kept because there are no "delete" votes left here. --Kernigh 21:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Requests_for_deletion/Archive_7"