Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2011/February

Quizzes and Exams

It is a suprise that this isn't already integrated on the Wikibooks English site, but we really need to apply for the Quiz and Exams multiple choice addon to fully characterize and emphasize our wikibooks. We have many language books, mathematic books, and other educative books that could use a nice addition of a practice quiz at the end or middle to check the user's progress. Those studying for exams (let's face it, students today use Wikimedia projects as a primary source) will love to test their knowledge on the topics they are studying to make sure they have obtained the knowledge required of them.

The Icelandic Wikibooks has already incorporated this. Check out an English learning guide in Icelandic, this midterm exam.

The full Mediawiki link is here, Extension Quiz. Let's do it and push this amazing project forward! --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 22:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Support For reasons mentioned above, I feel this addition and extension will really optimize our wonderful Wikibooks project! --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 22:11, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Support Let's give it a try. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 23:32, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Support. At least if people don't care for it, they don't have to use it. I could see concerns about the answers not showing up for printing, but then again, in my tests, the alternative {{question-answer}} doesn't expand when you go to print either, hiding the answers. (I'm sure some CSS to make all collapsible tables expand when printing would resolve that). Wikibooks is not paper; this would help bring a new level of interactivity to the content here, which shouldn't be limited just to Wikiversity. – Adrignola discuss 16:34, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Of course we don't have to include the interactive tests in the printable version. So one downside of this, as you brought up, would be a bit more work on the conversion process from electronic to PDF/Printable versions. But as you said, if a book doesn't call for it, or if authors of some books agree not to have an interactive test, then they just simply don'T have to use it. :) --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 16:50, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Support Sounds good to me. I think the question forms can still be printed out. The answers, if considered important can be included in an appendix or such. --darklama 22:07, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Great! I don't think we will have an overwealming 5 more opposers, so where can we submit our formal request to get the quiz extension on our Wikibooks? --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 23:11, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

At Bugzilla. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 00:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Submitted, bug number 27209 --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 00:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

• Support - hmm, sounds great! [[::User:Kayau|Kayau]] ([[::User talk:Kayau|discuss]] · [[::Special:Emailuser/Kayau|email]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Kayau|contribs]] · logs · count) 13:47, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support if Wikibookians are made aware that Quizzes and Exams should only exist to support already present textbook content. I would also like that some effort is made to make Wikibookians informed of the limitations and possible solutions to permit the dewikification of the content... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 15:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

We could start working on and including a guide on the usage of quizzes under Help:Contents in contributing and editing. There it can be known that quizzes are only used for textbooks and not stand alone. --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 17:08, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Done, here is the source code, not sure if we have to do something with that locally. Thanks to the guys at Bugzilla for their help! :) --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 20:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Try it out!

Isn't this awesome?

	Yes!!.
	Maybe...
	I don't care
	No, it's horrible

Tried it out on a page I created. I'm liking it. I can use a div with the "printonly" class to hide a section with the answers until a reader goes to print. Using {{hiddenh2}} or similar for that section will also hide the heading from the page's contents. Best of both worlds. – Adrignola discuss 00:49, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Great! I knew you'd like it! I am suprised it hasn't been integrated earlier, and only 5 or 6 other Wikimedia projects have it integrated. --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 00:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

That fixes the IE collapse problem! It's awesome all right. :) [[::User:Kayau|Kayau]] ([[::User talk:Kayau|discuss]] · [[::Special:Emailuser/Kayau|email]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Kayau|contribs]] · logs · count) 08:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Looks great :) already given it a shot with some success. Saves messing around hiding answers yourself. --ErrantX (discuss • contribs) 16:50, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

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Is there any way to usefully have more than one quiz on a page? On Help:Quizzes (substantially imported from v:Help:Quiz), submitting one quiz on the page causes all the quizzes on the page to be graded. One would think if this problem could be gotten around, the Wikiversitarians would have done so for the help page. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

$wgUseCommaCount

Please provide your position on setting $wgUseCommaCount to true for determining the method of counting content pages, with discussion in the technical room. – Adrignola discuss 23:15, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

• Support – Adrignola discuss 16:47, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 19:57, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support QU ^TalkQu 23:31, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
• Support Tempodivalse 15:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

27256 filed. – Adrignola discuss 14:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Cookbook meta

Ther is any way to use cookbook templates for other type of receipes, not necessary food related? I'm thinking at photographic formulas that are not covered by copyrights per se and could easily be used by many people. I'm very interested in this topic and i know couple of others that are too. Any ideas will be much appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atelierelealbe (talk • contribs)

It would be relatively simple to create "clones", appropriately modified, of the Cookbook templates (e.g., {{recipe}}) - assuming that's what you mean. Or, do you mean by "template", following the structure of a typical Cookbook page? If so, that's even easier. QU ^TalkQu 14:09, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Bunch of proposals

Button to add/remove all pages of a book to one's watchlist

This could be done fairly easily with some Javascript and the Mediawiki API. (I'm not sure where the button should go (any ideas?), but it can be done.) --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You can use the feed from Special:RelatedChanges/Category:Esperanto for example to watch an entire book without the need for JavaScript. That method will also begin showing changes for any new pages added to a book as long as the category is maintained. With the JavaScript approach, only pages that exist at the time the button was clicked would be added to one's watchlist. I think a better option would be to create an MediaWiki extension to allow books to be watched, and such an extension could even possibly alert people when pages in a book are added, deleted, or renamed. --darklama 00:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that would be a much better solution, if it were possible. Unfortunately, the process to get an extension reviewed can take years, so it really isn't a viable solution. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 02:13, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Was just thinking about that today! That'd be great to just let all pages falling under BOOK/subpage/subpage to be added to a watchlist! I support. --Girdi (discuss • contribs) 02:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I was thinking a while back (before I got sidetracked and went on de facto wikibreak from Wikipedia) of floating the idea of an extension of this nature at w:Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab), to see if I could drum up any interest, or other interesting feedback. My hope was that users on many projects, including Wikipedia, might find it useful to be able to auto-watch all new subpages of, say, a requests page (deletions, adminships, what have you), an elections page, or the like. (Anything whatever to do with Arbcom? All specializations of the MOS?) Cross-project support from Wikipedia might help move things along.

This would require a proposal flexible enough to gain wide appeal, and potentially efficient enough that the devs wouldn't balk at it. A variant I've been mulling over: a "subpages" bit on each item on one's watchlist, and an extra timestamp associated with each page. When you watch a page with subpages bit on, all its existing subpages also get watched. When a new subpage is created, it updates the subpage-creation timestamp of its longest-named existing ancestor (e.g., if pages foo and foo/bar exist, and you create foo/bar/quux, only the subpage-creation timestamp of foo/bar would be updated). And when you check your watchlist, if you're subpages-watching a page, and its subpage-creation timestamp is more recent than the last time you checked, then its subpages are checked to see if they were created since then and, if they were, they get watched. (That's a depth-first search of its subpages, but it doesn't search for further descendants of any subpage that already existed the last time you checked your watchlist.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 03:38, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

That sounds pretty complicated, with very little usefulness for Wikipedia. I don't think that the likelihood of it being implemented is very good. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 00:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Although I don't agree with "very little usefulness" on an absolute scale —my recent thoughts of pitching to Wikipedia were stirred up by, iirc, a wish for functionality expressed by a Wikipedian (I should track that down while I still can)— my plan to get the functionality without unacceptably slowing things down did, I agree, result in data structures out of proportion to the functionality provided. I.e., too complicated.

Tacking a different tack, and keeping in mind that recent changes of a category requires actively checking, omits pages improperly categorized, and omits talk pages,

┌────────────────┘
given a javascript means to add all existing pages of a book to a user's watchlist, is there a way to arrange to automatically repeat that every once in a while, so that new pages eventually get picked up as well (even though not instantly)? We might want to adjust the interval between repetitions depending on the user's activity level; at the extreme, inactive users don't need the updates while they remain inactive. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:32, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Given that all subpages start with the same prefix, I think returning all changes for pages beginning with a given prefix should be easy to do. No need for bit flags or complicated structures. --darklama 15:39, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that repeatedly automatically rewatchlisting entire books would be workable. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 14:39, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think the current system is good enough for me. Thanks to Lupin, it is possible to watch all the pages in a cat without leaving the page. It's a very useful gadget. 14:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Enlarge the size of the title on book front pages

The title pages right now really don't look like title pages. Enlarging the titles could be done either with Javascript, by adding a DISPLAYTITLE bit to some common template, or by just having a new template and adding it to each title page. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Can be done with CSS too. Have you tried editing your personal css page? --darklama 00:20, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

CSS can detect whether the page is a title page (non-subpage) or not? How? --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 00:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

By the presents or absents of the subpages class. --darklama 00:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

There's a CSS class that indicates whether the page is a subpage? What is it called? AFAICT, the only class on the first heading is .firstHeading, whether it's a subpage or not. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 00:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess you misunderstood my previous comment. There is literally a class="subpages" on a html element when a page is a subpage. That class isn't placed on the first heading though. --darklama 15:42, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't know that CSS could style something based on whether a certain class exists on the page. If it can, then that method should definitely be used instead of JS or DISPLAYTITLE. --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 20:53, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Standard navigation bar

If an #ifexist function in the tagline checked whether the current page's superpage had a subpage titled "X/Navigation" (or something like that), and transcluded it if it did, and the /Navigation page had a standard template which had a list of the various pages in the section/book, it would be pretty simple to have a bunch of parserfunctions in it provide back and forward buttons leading to the following/preceding pages in the book... --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I previously tried to use wiki markup in the tagline, but it displayed the text as if wrapped with nowiki. Would require a software change to be doable. A MediaWiki extension could probably do this too. --darklama 00:24, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Portuguese Wikibooks does something like this, only instead of /Navigation they use subpages of a "list of chapters". See pt:Special:PrefixIndex/Template:Lista_de_capítulos/. Then they use pt:Template:Capítulo_anterior and pt:Template:Capítulo_posterior called from pt:MediaWiki:Retrievedfrom to create automatic forward and backward navigation based on the current page and where it is placed in that list of chapters. The MediaWiki parser functions might not fly on a larger wiki, since that interface is called on every page load, but I thought I'd mention their system. Possibly something could get put into {{BookCat}}. It seems like Pi zero is working on a similar system with Template:Navlist. – Adrignola discuss 00:54, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Redesign title format

(I proposed this a while ago and it was archived without really getting anywhere, but I think that something really does need to be done about this...) The title format on Wikibooks of BOOKTITLE/SECTION/PAGE format really looks ridiculous. Certain books have tried simply fiddling with the title to either just show the book title on every page, or just the page title, but neither of these really work well, and the format should really be standardized. I really don't have any idea of what kind of thing should be there at the top of the page indicating what the user is reading, but I'm pretty sure that the current format is not the best solution. Anyone want to throw around some ideas? --Yair rand (discuss • contribs) 23:54, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

A few notes: the archived discussion is at Wikibooks:Reading room/Proposals/2010/August#Book page top header. The template being used for the title tweaking mentioned above is {{displaytitle}} (tab renaming doesn't work on Vector). Personally, I'm not a fan of the multi-line options. I know the titles take some getting used to if you're used to Wiktionary titles. Probably even before looking at technical implementations, we'd have to decide whether this would be something all books would be fine with having standardized since there are different implementations currently, as noted above. – Adrignola discuss 04:55, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

I also agree that the display title format on Wikibooks (of BOOKTITLE/SECTION/PAGE) should have be given some extra consideration, users should be able to turn off or customize it on the their preferences.

The current default state can be seen as preventing the use of deep page trees (this can be bad or good) and the font size by default could be smaller.

Personally my views is that beyond the title page the need to have the tree path in evidence is mostly null (I appreciate having easy access to it when editing), beyond this I wouldn't have the foggiest idea on how it could be improved.

As for the establishing what should be there, I also doubt that a consensus could easily be reached, as Adrignola hints above, and that if reached it should be an imposition of a style. I would support some work on Wikibooks:Manual of Style to provide some guidelines on how to make the tweak and establish what should be acceptable. That would be useful and a step toward determining what could be altered. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 06:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The complication here that, as I remarked (ad tedium) at the general reading room thread about Yair rand's essay at meta (circles within circles), Wikibooks really isn't a project made up of larger units than Wikipedia's — it's a collection of very small separate projects, each with such small scope that very few of them can sustain a continuous community. So title format isn't something to customize primarily by user, it's to customize primarily by book, with different books wanting different formats.

An obvious (probably too obvious) thought is that there might be some sort of per-book customization we could rig using {{BookCat}} — though I suppose it'd have to be JS, since the DISPLAYTITLE: magic word doesn't seem to be flexible enough for what we want. (I'd be tempted to use {{Navlist}} instead, except that still needs significant work before I consider it ready for prime time.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Both views can be defended (I've unsuccessfully attempted to read your past discussion on the subject so I'm expanding only on the above lines), personally in my edits I've attempted to create links to other works on Wikibooks (if relevant to the section I'm editing, going so far as to directly pointing to other Wikibooks that deal more in depth with an issue that goes outside of the scope). I'm also a defender (and understand that this view is not shared by all) that wikilinks to Wikipedia are valuable to works, readers and even editors, this is something that I make a point in defending when dewikification is mentioned in a discussion. On the other hand I fully agree that books, to some degree, should be allowed individuality and that too much normalization can restrict creativity, even create a barrier to participation. Having said that I recognize that having something in the lines of Wikibooks:Manual of Style as to establish best practices in this matters is a good thing.

Over time I've created some aversion to navigation templates, as an editor (they are costly to maintain) and as a user since they can change dramatically from work to work and often are outdated, in reality they bring no added benefit, if they define navigability not structure. We have now automated paths to deal with navigational problems that make most of this types of templates unnecessary distractions...

I have used DISPLAYTITLE: recently in the Hypnosis work and will be extending the use to other works I actively contribute to, in that respect Yair rand call for consistency or at least a chance to have people state valid objections or establish best practices or even alternatives is welcomed. PS: {{Navlist}} Seems not to be in use anywhere. I've just looked at it for the first time and some of the functionalities seem replications of stuff the browser already does... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 15:37, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The navlist suite of tools is used by Conlang, which is my test case for it until I feel it's polished enough to start advocating it for additional books (which will tend to freeze certain elements of its design). Take a look at Conlang for a practical illustration of what it does (which may get the idea across more clearly than the documentation does). Upgrades I have in mind are additional header/footer formats, support for automatic generation of "Print version" pages, and support for a sort of page-indexed-information (e.g. bibliography) mechanism I've been mulling over. (Oh, and a small but significant tweak: I want to move the default location for navlist pages from mainspace to template space, because really that's where it belongs.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 16:46, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

They have a gadget at pt.wikibooks that will hide all but the last portion of the path, with the book/chapter shown by virtue of the breadcrumb links. See translated discussion. – Adrignola discuss 05:21, 25 February 2011 (UTC)