Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives/2007/June

Is there a mechanism for generating pages?

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

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

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

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

Emerika 23:48, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

New user contribs

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

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

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

New Book Advertisement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking towards Single Login (hopefully)

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

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

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

Wikibooks:List of Wikibookians by number of edits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Removal of Videogame Guides

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Opinions

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

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

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

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

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

Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

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

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

Wikiversity Template

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Offline Wikibooks Reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quiz extension

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

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

blue screen on vista

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

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

New Monobook Functions

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

function AddPersonalLink(link, text, tag, ibefore)

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

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

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

The second function is:

function AddToolboxLink(text, href, onclick, linkid)

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

From "Chat"

Nomination of a course outline on Entrepreneurship.

If and whenever possible, a course outline on Entrepreneurship on Wikibooks will be much appreciated. Hopefully, it will also show what business &/or math &/or literary subjects will be prerequisite(s) before one can proceed to each of the next level of Entrepreneurship.

This request was not copied from a public domain or similar free resource but solely from my personal experience(s). I do not wish that this contribution will ever be released in the Internet. I'm just hoping that what I have nominated may be realized in the near future to benefit a lot of readers worldwide through your Wikibooks webpage.

Thank you for your kind consideration on the matter.

Anonymous. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 122.2.40.137 (talk • contribs) .

This comment was posted on Wikibooks:Featured books/Nominations. I have moved it here as it seems like the more appropriate place for it. -- Kowey 08:03, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

help in starting a new book

I would like to start a new book about classroom management theories as a project for a class, but I'm a bit confused with the directions. I have created a user name and completed a title page, but I can't figure out how to get it on the Education bookshelf. I have tried going to the Education bookshelf and editing the template to add my title, but it is locked. Any suggestions or easy step-by-step directions that you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hello and welcome to Wikibooks! I have added your book to the Books for educators subsection of the education bookshelf, I'm not sure how the protection on the at page works (someone else will) but it mostly is protected so that random anonymous users don't come in and vandalize the pages. If you can't edit it while you're logged in, you should be able to in a couple of days (if it's semiprotected like I think it is). Let us know if you need any additional guidance. Mattb112885 (talk) 17:05, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I have exactly the same problem. I'm trying to put Human physiology (Wikipedia link-book)‎ into the Health science bookshelf. There is a lot of information of how to create a book, and encouragement to put it in a bookshelf, but no information whatsoever about HOW to put it in a bookshelf. It's not just to press it into the computer screen with your hands. Could anybody please tell how to do it?Mortsggah 06:34, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree the help files are pretty useless and Wikibook bookshelves are obviously not like bookshelves in conventional libraries. First go to Wikibooks:Health_science_bookshelf. Next find the appropriate section for your book (Basic Medical Sciences, Dentistry, etc.) and then click 'Edit' which you'll find on the right of the heading. Then add your book to the end of the list by writing *[[Human physiology (Wikipedia link-book)]]. I think tht's all that's necessary to add your book to the appropriate bookshelf. Xania ^talk 18:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

article contribution help

hello. i created an account on wikipedia. how do i contribut an article? thanks.

I think maybe you want The Village Pump? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

New Wikibooks Logo

It looks like somebody has finally decided to re-start the Wikibooks logo discussion at meta. The vote to continue the process is located here:

Meta:Wikibooks/logo#A_vote_to_close_color_nominations_and_choose_the_final_logo

As is my understanding, we are voting now to stop talking about color variations, and then to start a final logo discussion. This final discussion conceivably will lead to a new Wikibooks logo being chosen.

On a related note, It has come to light recently that the term "Wikibooks" has not been copyrighted yet by the WMF, even though most of the other project names (including "Wikijunior") have been properly copyrighted. According to Anthere on the mailing list, the term "Wikibooks" was considered to be too generic to copyright. However, Anthere also said that a combination of the term "Wikibooks" and an accompanying logo would be possible to be copyrighted. I only say this because it would be legally possible (although unlikely) that another entity could copyright the name "Wikibooks" and then require us to stop using it. Finalizing a logo discussion will help us to achieve a level of legal protection for our project that we are really going to need as our project gets bigger and more popular. I would like all wikibookians to vote on this proposal, and to join in the new logo discussion on meta. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

My views on the new log have been made very clear in the past on Meta. I won't support any new logo which isn't decided by the Wikibooks communities rather than those at Meta. Also I can't see how anyone else could register the Wikibooks name as it would be very easy for Wikimedia foundation to prove that they were using it first. Xania ^talk 21:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This isn't a copyright issue, but rather a trademark issue, which is a completely separate set of laws that have little or nothing to do with copyright. However you are correct that the term "Wikibooks" is not formally registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It still is a trademark, and the WMF certainly has "first usage" claims if there ever is a dispute with another individual who uses the term. The problem (for the WMF... not so much for us as content developers) is if somebody else decides to use the term "Wikibooks" in another context, such as "Wikibooks Publications" or "Wikibooks Insurance Company", it is much harder for the WMF to go after individuals or corporations who use this trademark without permission of the Wikimedia Foundation.

The worst possible problem I would see is something like "Wikibooks Press", where somebody tries to sell Wikibooks content using the name "Wikibooks", claiming an endorsement from this project when none at all exist. A situation like this would, however, bring the issue to a forefront and IMHO would not be leaving the publisher in too good of a legal situation. But they might just get away with this sort of trademark infringement.

Concern about having another entity or individual registering the name "Wikibooks" is not even a concern (at least to me). We (speaking collectively as Wikibookians) clearly have first usage by several years at this point, and we also have a "registered agent" who acts for and in behalf of this project in the form of the WMF. And we can show Alexa stats and other measurements (like domain name registrations) to demonstrate clearly that not only was this name registered some time ago, but it has been widely used and noted by even people outside of this project... or even outside of Wikimedia project altogether. If somebody does succeed in registering the trademark and then tries to sue the WMF, they would find it to be a legal backfire far worse than simply shutting up and leaving well enough alone. Trademarks do not need to be registered in order to be recognized legally. Not having a trademark registered does make a weaker claim, but it still can be recognized.

International trademark law is a bit trickier in terms of having one country recognize trademarks of another country (like Coca-Cola). Often companies will register with multiple governments in this situation when it is a widespread international trademark, but even in this situation it isn't that big of a deal. Generally first usage is the most important, and the only real issue is if two groups of people came up with the term at nearly the same time. I do not know of any other group of individuals who currently are using the term "Wikibooks" other than this project, and a simultaneous usage can clearly not be claimed without the knowledge of any 3rd party not already aware of this project. Even http://wikibooks.net/ does not really claim to be anything but a mirror (they were at one point) and a URL mis-spelling portal.

The logo is a nice thing, but the "legal protection" is not IMHO a critical issue. And the other problems with the logo (not involving Wikibookians and "outsiders" helping to decide the logo) present other problems and challenges that need to be dealt with as well. --Rob Horning 22:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Rob is right, i meant "trademark" instead of "copyright". My mistake. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:37, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

American History Wikibook

I think there's something wrong w/ the American History wikibook - it goes directly to the great depression. What's up with that? #10:15, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

You're looking for the US History book instead. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:56, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Language standards?

There used to be a page that proposed some standards for writing language textbooks. Does anybody know where it is? I can't even figure out what to ask a search engine. I only have a vague memory that it tried to have basically the same outline, the same kind of dialogues in all books and it was a while ago. I think it's high time it got an update. Thanks, -- Kowey 11:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and I'm pretty sure it's not Help:How To Build An Excellent Wikibook Teaching Any Language. The book in my mind's eye was far different from that, and for a time, a lot of foreign language books seemed to be inspired from it. -- Kowey 11:48, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Print Version template

It seems like the Print Version template has been changed and many previously-working usages of it have been broken (the link to the page no longer shows up), see for example Communication Systems, would it be possible to alter it so that this usage makes a link like it used to? I'd do it myself but templates aren't quite my forte. Have a good day. Mattb112885 (talk) 14:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I think I may have fixed it. The link you provided works now, does any others you've seen as broken, now work as well? --darklama 22:16, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes the ICEP one was broken before but now works; thank you very much for fixing it. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk) 03:20, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

New project?

Could there be a subset of how to books that is dedicated to manuals? I'm imagining a searchable database of electronic and mechanical devices and how to do the most common functions you would need or want to do with each one, along with button diagrams and screenshots.

I actually like to read users manuals and it's the first thing I do with anything right out of the box, but who can remember every little option of every device and, furthermore, who wants to go looking for manuals they've already read or search through the hundreds of websites that might also have the information? Jonnyapple 20:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with this, as long as you can both verify independently the information presented, and try to keep a neutral point of view on the content (it shouldn't be hard for technical manuals like this). By far and away the hardest challenge would be to simply find the information in the first place on some content, and to avoid blatant copyright violations.

BTW, if you have a manual that is in the public domain (such as for a device where the manual was written before 1923) or where the copyright holder has given copyright permission in the form of something compatable with the GFDL, it would be better to add the content to our sister project, Wikisource. Such information is reasonable to also link on the bookshelves here on Wikibooks as well, pointing at the content on Wikisource. Otherwise, be bold and add this content. Please! --Rob Horning 13:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to add to Robert's comments: even for old manuals that aren't copyrighted, there might be "new tricks", alternate uses, and so on, which would be good content for Wikibooks. For example, if you were working on something that uses vacuum tubes, sections on how to find or make them would be a good addition (since one can't just go to the general store for these things any more.

Screenshots might be a different issue due to copyright stickiness... this would depend on the device in question. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 16:00, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia Board Election: call for endorsement is opening soon

Hi Wikimedians,

As you may know, we are currently holding the Board of Trustees elections. We are very grateful to your collaborations for sharing the info, through translations, forwarding and other several ways.

Next Sunday, June 17, the Board Election will enter its second phase: call for endorsements from the community to the candidates. Only candidates who get 12 or more endorsements in the following week will be able to run in the election.

For further information, please see m:Board elections/2007/Endorsements.

Also we would like you to aware we are planning to use Wikimedia:Sitenotice to inform you that call for endorsement while it is open. Please modify the message in an appropriate way to your community. The notice will be placed at most in seven days.

We would appreciate your translation of this message as well as other Election related information. If you'd like to offer further help, just contact your language coordinator and regularly check the list of candidate statements.

If there's no coordinator for your language, please consider joining our translations team. Please contact User:Schiste or User:Aphaia on meta if you have any question.

Cheers, --Aphaia 14:28, 14 June 2007 (UTC), on behalf of Wikimedia Election Steering Committee

Oh how exciting, I can hardly wait. Xania ^talk 17:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiFiction, new sister project?

Hiya,

I'm sorry if this is in the wrong section, or the wrong thing to do. I'm really new to all this, and I just started editing things. But I have this great idea, a sister project of WikiBooks, becuase it's so heavily focused on manuals and textbooks, what about WikiFiction? User Generated fictional stories, even ones that are a collaboration. Even though the details would be hard to hammer out (e.g. Would everyone be able to edit a story posted by a user? Stuff like that) I think it'd certainly be worth it. I don't really know who to contact or anything, but this seems like the right board... If it's not, would someone be kind enough to A. Tell me it's not, hehe, and B. Tell me where the right board or whatever is?

I don't know, I think the idea sounds pretty cool? Nate-D 23:59, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Starting a new sister project is hardly a trivial task, unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately. I'll try to avoid being very cynical here, as I have been through the process of helping to start a couple of different sister projects, one of them successfully I might add (Wikiversity, if you want to know details). The Wikimedia Foundation, the governing body who owns and controls the server farm and is responsible for deciding what can and can't be created as a "sister project", as well as being the ultimate arbitrator over what is within the scope of each project, is run by a board of nine individuals although as a practical matter only about 4 or 5 really matter in terms of ultimate policies.

If you are serious about trying to get a new sister project started, it would be wise to look at the following pages on the Wikimedia Meta Wiki:

• meta:Proposals for new projects
• meta:New project policy

I should note that the idea of a fiction-based Wikimedia sister project is one of those perennial ideas that keeps coming up from time to time, for many of the reasons that you are mentioning above, and a desire among some Wikimedia users to keep content within the Wikimedia family.

The prevailing attitude among those running the current Wikimedia board is to strongly discourage the creation of additional wiki projects... so strongly that my advise is to forget the idea and try it somewhere else, but every once in awhile some crazy ideas do get created and expanded.

By far the easiest way to get a new Wikimedia sister project is to have it be the idea of one of board members (especially the board chairman) and simply get it created without community input. This has happened in the past (even recently) and is a part of my cynicism about the whole process. Since you are not a board member, the process is an incredibly difficult and uphill battle. Not exactly impossible using the dictionary defintion, but certainly not a user-friendly process and your name will be dragged through the mud with all kinds of people saying stuff about you that you could not possibly believe... if you are on the "point" of trying to see the project succeed.

If you are serious about trying to get this going, the best place to get it started is on Meta, although you can certainly plea for support from those who are on Wikibooks and other Wikimedia projects. --Rob Horning 02:37, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Changing/Updating "Upload File" text

I've been uploading several image files recently, and I've been a little "annoyed" at the advise given on Special:Upload. Most particularly, it points to policies on Wikipedia and not Wikibooks, even though we have pages like Wikibooks:Fair use policy and Wikibooks:Media that IMHO do a reasonable job of explaining the topics within the context of Wikibooks.

One other bit of "advise" which is given is also in regards to the "policy" (I've never seen it discussed here on Wikibooks to any sort of degree at all) that we must "Upload your files to Commons unless their licensing rules prohibit it."

I am not against uploading files to Commons, and I think it is an outstanding idea in many cases, but this hard and fast rule that all free content simply __*MUST*__ be uploaded to Commons is very Wikipedia-centric and myopic in terms of textbook development. To give a strong counter example of where I believe this to be not only wrong advise but a good example of where textbook development is substantially different from encyclopedia articles, I give this page I just created:

Scratch/Lessons/Introduction

All of these images are "free images" in terms of something that Commons would accept (you can debate the individual license here, but that is irrelevant at the moment). My argument in keeping them "local" to Wikibooks is that the content is tied explicitly to the textbook itself in order to put the image into context, and the images are also language specific due to the nature of what is being used... in this case screen shots of a free software program.

I would support a general "policy" of strongly encouraging images to be uploaded to Commons if they are generic in nature and will likely be used in other projects, including other language editions of Wikibooks. I guess my main complaint is that this "warning" is simply too harshly worded, and that there are strong arguments to retain the ability to permit local image and other media file uploads to specific projects. Several discussions on Foundation-l (the main Wikimedia Foundation mailing list, and usually where many cross-project discussions take place) about this topic have several individuals advocating for even the complete elimination of local uploads. It would be useful to begin a conversation over what sorts of content we would like to keep locally on Wikibooks and what perhaps is indeed better to have uploaded onto the Wikimedia Commons. I know there are some people active on both Commons and Wikibooks to offer their opinions on this topic as well. --Rob Horning 16:43, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not jumping into this argument just yet, but for any interetested admins, the page to be edited is: MediaWiki:Uploadtext. Only admins may edit this page, and I would highly suggest that nobody make any significant edits to it without proper discussion. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

That was some of the reasons for why I wanted to raise this issue here. I don't want to unilaterally change this text, as it has been done in the past. --Rob Horning 04:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Outside criticism of Wikibooks

I thought this blog post by somebody very much outside of the Wikibooks community would be of interest to those within Wikibooks, particularly because Wikibooks is mentioned explicitly as one of the "most visible free online textbook initiatives".

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/02/online_multimed_1.html

The rest of this post is certainly something interesting as well, noting other alternative textbook development projects and a rather bold idea on what may have to be done to genuinely create complete textbooks that are free to use. --Rob Horning 07:20, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

UNDP-APDIP Books

I just wanted to post a quick note here about the status of this project. Some of you may know that these books have been donated to Wikibooks by the UNDP, and some more people may realize that this book collection has been "featured" and can be visible randomly on the main page. The UNDP-APDIP has posted a link to this book collection from their homepage: http://www.apdip.net/. The link can be seen at the bottom of the left-most column. I don't know how many visitors this link will produce, but any attention is good for us.

I received an email from these people today, apparently they have two new books to be uploaded, and there are more books in the process of being written (which will, conceivably, be uploaded in the future). If anybody would like to get involved in this project, let me know. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Allowing Userspace Blogging?

Wikiversity allows (it seems they "encourage") their members to write blogs in their own personal namespace, especially blogs about wiki. Wikibooks members have been writing essays in their own user namespaces for as long as I have been a member here, although we have never referred to them as "blogs" or anything like that. On WB:WIW, there is a standing rule that "You may not host your own website, blog, or wiki at Wikibooks". If we consider that the conceptual difference between a "blog" and a collection of POV essays is very small, it would seem that for years wikibookians have been breaking this rule. This makes me wonder whether we should change the rule to match what the community does, instead of either ignoring the rule (and then what good is it) or demanding that wikibookians not be allowed to write essays in their own user namespace (which seems awfully totalitarian).

I would like to suggest that we alter the rule to allow wikibookians to write blogs in their personal user namespace. We would not allow blogs or essays to be written in the main module namespace, the Wikibooks: namespace, or anywhere else. Blogs written in this way should be focused on Wikibooks, textbook authoring, free content, wiki, or a related topic. We could certainly call them something else (as the word "blog" might not seem the most appealing for it).

It seems very natural to me that within certain reasons we should be encouraged to use our User namespaces in productive and interesting ways. There certainly is an area of unacceptable material that really doesnt belong in the user namespace, but the lines are very vague, and I would be hard pressed to think of reasons why a personal blog on a related topic should not be allowed here. What do people think about this? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't feel like being verbose tonight, but I'll say that blogging is definitely a large waste of server resources, especially since things are versioned here. Day-to-day minutiae should be strictly forbidden. Some opinions on Wikibooks-related matters sound just fine to me, though. I think it's a good idea to have a "statement" that each user maintains to get a feel for who they are and how/why they do work here. Making these stories a regular practice is a very bad idea in my opinion, though. Keep personal matters seldom mentioned here since that's not the purpose of the Wikibooks project. Wikibooks isn't a log of user experiences but of textbook development. -withinfocus 22:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not talking about all the nonsense that comes with an ordinary purposeless blog. That is, I dont expect people to be talking about what they ate for breakfast, or a date they went on, or whatever. What i'm saying is that people should be allowed to record their thoughts about wikibooks, textbooks, etc, on a regular basis here. On more then one occasion, a passing statement into which little thought was put has blossomed into a full-blown project around here. If we give people license to discuss this project in a free-form way, it has the potential to reveal more new ideas. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:32, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I would also have to add here that I don't consider it appropriate to be using Wikimedia resources for blogging, when so many other potential resources exist if you wish to engage in that sort of activity. I did consider the idea briefly myself to write a blog of some sorts here on Wkibooks.... concentrating on just the activity of Wikibooks. However for multiple reasons I choose to deliberate go "off project" and use another server altogether. I'm using Blogspot, which offers their services free of charge and without advertisements, or you could even hire an ISP and set up your own independent blogging site. There are so many different Wikimedia users who follow this pattern (even talking about Wikimedia projects almost exclusively on their blogs) that an amalgamation service has even been set up to read the various blog entries about Wikimedia projects.

This is also a very slippery slope, as once you have a significant blog about a topic, others will want to push the idea even futher. What we certainly want to avoid is the potential of having somebody use Wikibooks where their only contributions of any sort are just on their blog entries. While certainly some people helping with the project don't necessarily spend much time on actual content development, they should be engaged in using server resources supporting those that do develop content. This is also the same reason why Wikipedia has prohibited posting resumes on user pages, as there is a tendency of having some people creating a user account, and the only contributions is to the resume page. Hence using these pages as a free webhosting site.

Personal essays about a Wikibooks-related topic have been done by some long time users (I've even done it myself), and I suppose that is a sort of blog. The question is at what point does it become something that is excessive? --Rob Horning 23:01, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

My only point with this suggestion is that people have been writing these essays, and that the line between them and a "blog" is a blurry line at best. In fact, if I had to nail it down, I would say the only difference between the two is the quantity of separate subjects discussed, because the frequency of edits can be quite high for a person trying to perfect a new essay page.

I would go so far as to say that the solidification of a person's thoughts can actually save resources because having your thoughts written out already on your user page can save you from having to repeat those same thoughts ad infinitem in a dispute. It's a long shot, perhaps, but something to consider nonetheless. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I think two things:

1. That essays about wikis should have their own categorization scheme (and perhaps even go into the Help namespace), since they are potentially valuable to people looking to learn about the culture of the wiki.

2. That essays about other things probably don't belong here, to avoid this becoming another "blogspot" or something. Potential bloggers could always make a blog at another site and link to it from their user pageif they really wanted to (I think panic did this at one point iirc, maybe still does) unless the spambot blocks it. Mattb112885 (talk) 23:21, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

{reset) I don't see a huge problem as lng as the blogging is restricted to Wikibooks/Wikimedia topics. Wikiversity permits blogging, probably the best example is JWSchmidt's blog. I guess the only difficulty with blogs here is that they're inherently "POV", which is permitted to some degree on WV, but not permitted here in any other case.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:26, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

It shouldn't be allowed on Wikibooks in my opinion as it's distracting from the real idea of Wikibooks just like long personal essays and other soapbox things. Xania ^talk 21:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

WIW and welcome message

G'day, the recent contributions and subsequent retraction by Ohadaloni suggest that our welcome message, {{welcome}}, should have something in it about what Wikibooks is for. At minimum, I think it should have a link to WB:WIW, but perhaps it should also mention some of the basic criteria so that new users aren't put off when their first contributions are met with "it's not a textbook" as has been the case with this new user. Webaware ^talk 00:24, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

There are a lot of places, perhaps, where we could write what wikibooks is for. The very first sentence on the main page says "Welcome to Wikibooks, a Wikimedia project that was started on July 10, 2003 with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks that anyone can edit". I think that the entire {{welcome}} template needs to be redone, but then I think that most things around here really need to be redone. If you want to add some information to it to talk about what Wikibooks is for, then i am all for that. However, If we make that template too large and too information-packed, it will be difficult for anybody to read. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking that we could simply add "Wikibooks is a collection of open-source textbooks. See WB:WIW to find out what types of books are acceptable." What do you think of that? Webaware ^talk 01:12, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Good idea. Be Bold. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:20, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. Webaware ^talk 02:01, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikimania 2007

Do we have any other Wikibookians coming to Wikimania? At the last one we had way to few Wikibookians, so Ihope to see more there this time. --Cspurrier 00:43, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikijunior PDF error

I downloaded the PDF for the Solar System. The first page on Pluto still lists it as the ninth planet. This has been corrected in the html that I saw. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.244.31.175 (talk • contribs) .

Looks like we need to update that PDF. That's not something I've ever done before. So I hope some good samaritan with PDF making capability will do the update for us. --xixtas ^talk 03:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

One of the reasons I havn't updated the PDF file for the Wikijunior Solar System is that the text of this Wikibook is still undergoing a major revision to help simplify the content. The original PDF file has content which is far too complex for a target audience of about 8-14 years old, and a substantial effort was made to reduce the reading level of the book using multiple standards and to shorten the pages somewhat. Unfortunately, the effort to work on this fizzled out and is incomplete. It would be nice to get some additional help in cleaning up the content so it could be put into a much more publishable state than it current is at right now, but that takes some editorial effort (grammar) and not just formatting.

BTW, I will point out that while the IAU did "demote" Pluto, this is not a universally accepted philosophy among all astronomers and was a very controversial decision. Wikijunior:Solar System/Pluto does mention the controversy, or for more depth about this see w:Pluto. In an attempt to stay NPOV, I don't think this Wikibook should step necessarily into this controversy either by removing this section from the book but rather "promote" objects like Ceres and Quoar as major sub-articles instead (both are called "dwarf planets" by the IAU definition). That does take some more content work, however. --Rob Horning 14:01, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks Blog

My suggestion above about allowing userspace blogging drew mixed reactions at best, so I've abandoned it in favor of a traditional alternative. I've started up a Wikibooks-centric blog at blogspot:

http://wikibooks.blogspot.com

This blog has already been included in the aggregator at Planet Wikimedia:

http://planet.wikimedia.org

I'm going to be writing up news and other things about Wikibooks, and I would like to invite other wikibookians to join it as well. If anybody here has a blogger account and would like to join the blog, please let me know. If people dont want to join the blog, but still want to post some stories or whatever, send me a message about it and I will post it. Since this blog is visible on Planet Wikimedia, the entire wiki world will be able to read about our project. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:03, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks Foundation

A rather interesting topic that has been raised by a couple of candidates current running on the Wikimedia Board Elections is the creation of completely independent project "foundations". Essentially breaking up the WMF into seperate entities and their own completely independent boards (and legal overhead, etc.) for each of the separate Wikimedia projects.

Most particularly I would point to discussions for two of the candidates:

• m:Board elections/2007/Candidates/Kate/questions#Sister projects
• m:Board elections/2007/Candidates/UninvitedCompany/questions#Sister projects

Kate in particular is running with this as her primary platform and justification for having people vote for her.

I think it is important for Wikibookians to be aware of this effort, and to try to either decide to encourage this effort or to come up with rationales or defenses to allow us to continue our association with the Wikimedia Foundation. If this sort of idea catches hold and is acted upon, it will be a major event in the history of this project and have some long term implications as well.

I can see some positive aspects for a move like this, and I think we are getting to the point that we might be able to sustain such an effort, but it would be a rough transition for us regardless of how it was handled. I would also advocate that we try to join with at least a couple other Wikimedia projects for a joint foundation, even if Wikipedia wants to go off on its own and deal with building the encyclopedia independently. Certainly projects like dead-tree print publishing of Wikibooks content would have some support from a Wikibooks Foundation that currently is discouraged by the WMF.

I should note here that this is not a universal opinion that such independent foundations should be established, nor is this something coming from the current WMF board. But these are strong candidates who may be elected to the board and if serving there may have a substantial impact upon our future as a project. It would be wise for us to at least have a voice in deciding this sort of future as well. --Rob Horning 14:46, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Not many people here may know about it, as we haven't been advertising it too well, but User:SB Johnny and myself are currently in talks to start a new WMF Chapter. In response to some of the discussions by board candidates, We have considered the idea of "adopting" wikibooks (and possibly some closely-related sister projects such as Wikisource and Wikiversity). Nobody is doing anything quite yet, because I think everybody would like to be part of the WMF if absolutely possible. However, we start to hear things on foundation-l, where Erik Moller wants to rename Wikibooks to be the "Wikipedia Textbook Project", or where Kate wants to remove all the sister projects from the WMF, essentially creating a "Wikipedia Foundation", and letting all the other sister projects fend for themselves (or possibly die alone). For the record, I do not believe that the majority of the board agrees with these opinions, so in the short term we don't have anything to worry about.

It is worth noting here that Wikipedians tend to be very Wikipedia-centric. Board members who started as Wikipedians tend to focus their energy (and money) on Wikipedia, leaving projects like Wikibooks to be meerly an afterthought. There may come a time when it will legitimately be in the best interests of Wikibooks, in terms of financial stability and potential for growth, to separate ourselves from the WMF. Of course, that's an issue that we can discuss later when the time comes, but as Rob points out: it is something that we should think about. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Are you talking about the perennial Wikimedia-USA chapter proposal? I haven't seen too much lately on the mailing list (WikimediaUS-l) but it is something that does need some leadership. I hope that you succeed here on that point getting something put together, as this is a tough nut to crack and get going. I would like to see something up and going in the Western USA as well, but it seems like a much tougher task than I have time to take on at the moment.

BTW, I agree that the hard-core "I'm a member of the arb board so vote for me!" candidates tend not to pay attention to the sister projects, and there is a presumption that votes from the non-Wikipedia projects don't matter. This is one of the first substantial elections where Jimbo isn't hovering above the election ready to kick the "elected" members off the board, and may be one of the first regularized WMF board elections that I hope becomes a standard for how the governance of the WMF will be functioning in the future. The last two elections were much more Wikipedia-centric in nature, but there are some issues like Wikinews accreditation and the media use policy that have come up forcing candidates to think beyond en.wikipedia. It will be interesting to see where this election goes and what personality emerges ultimately as the final board members. --Rob Horning 21:20, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I've sent a message to you about the chapter, no need to talk about it here.

Besides the occasional rumbling on foundation-l, or the few wikipedia-centric candidates in the board election, I think that the general whim of the board has been to encourage sister projects, even though there has been no impetus lately to start new projects. Things like the creation of commons, or the eventual rollout of SUL are demonstrations of how the board is interested in all the projects, not just on Wikipedia (even if a majority of their attention is focused on Wikipedia).

Even if the WMF is interested in keeping us around, we really have to ask whether we want to remain under the WMF umbrella. Anybody who can remember the fiasco over the Lulu-press thing will understand why, perhaps, we might want to be our own separate entity. Other issues, such as our inability to form partnerships with other textbook or educational organizations (at least without the express permission of the WMF) may seem like a minor annoyance, but is something that could be remedied if we were our own project, and not a WMF sub-project.

I'm not advocating a separation or anything. This is a very important issue, however, and Wikibookians should think about these things and participate in the board elections with the issues on their minds. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:39, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

EN? Wikibooks

OK - policy is not my strong suit but Blender 3D: Шаг за шагом seems to be outside the scope (plus subpages)? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:42, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you, this page needs to be transwikied to the appropriate language project (or deleted entirely, if a more suitable home cannot be found). I can't even identify precisely what language this book is written in, so finding the appropriate home might be a little difficult. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the language is Russian. And it appears as though it is a full translation of the Newbie to Pro Wikibook done in Russian. It would make a very useful addition to the Russian Wikibooks... and something that doesn't currently exist on that other project. --Rob Horning 22:18, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

OMG Transwiki! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk)

Board Elections

For anybody who is interested, the Wikimedia board elections have started and all wikimedians (i think there is an edit requirement of about 400 edits or something) may vote.

One of the issues that has been brought up in this election is the issue of the sister projects (such as wikibooks or wikiversity). Several candidates are running on the platform of removing the sister projects on the WMF, or focusing more attention on Wikipedia and less attention on everything else.

There are, however, a few candidates who are running on a pro-sister-projects plaform, that is that these candidates want to help us and support us. Some of the candidates that I have found that appear to be interested in the sister projects are:

• Ausir (likes wikibooks, doesnt like some of the other sister projects)
• Danny
• DragonFire1024
• Frieda
• ^demon

Some of the other candidates may also be in support of our project, but didnt explicitly mention it in their pages. A few of the candidates are also anti-wikibooks (or anti-sister-projects in general). If you are going to vote in the election, I recommend that you read the statements carefully before you cast any votes. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:54, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Candidate statements can be found at candidates on meta. --xixtas ^talk 03:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, so how do I vote? I don't have any edits on meta, and I don't see how to have them check me out on Wikibooks. All I get is this

You are not qualified to vote in this election. You need to have made 400 edits before 00:00, 1 June 2007, and your first edit must be before 00:00, 1 March 2007.

That's a good question. They haven't updated the sitenotice yet, so the link isn't obvious. If you want to vote, you need to go to Special:Boardvote, while logged in with your primary username. That page will note your username and your project (jomegat@enwikibooks, for example), and will then redirect you to the voting page. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:56, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

They check accounts on a project by project basis, and ask (pretty please... technical means are hard to prove here) that you try to vote using only one of your accounts if you are qualified to vote on multiple projects. I'm actually qualified to vote not only here on Wikibooks, but also on Meta and Wikipedia to give an example. I'll be voting using my Wikibooks account. Few sock puppets will go through the effort to make more than 400 edits over the course of 4 months just to stuff the ballot, but it still is an issue. This is but one of the reasons why there is a huge push for a single user login for all Wikimedia projects.

BTW, don't be offended if you don't "qualify" for the elections at the moment. The WMF isn't trying to "disenfranchise" anybody, but they would like to see people voting who are actual participants on Wikimedia projects and not a group of wringers who really don't understand the problems that are facing these projects. If you are relatively new to Wikibooks, you will be qualified to vote in the next election. Even if you missed the numerical cutoff by just a few edits. Just keep your participation and help grow this project. --Rob Horning 15:20, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I've seen at least one instance where a vote was stricken because it came from the same username on two separate projects. If you share a username with another person this might be a problem, but I think the odds of that are relatively low. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I've made my vote for this beaurocratic bunch of wannabes - I voted and chose nobody. Requirements of 400 edits just makes Wiki projects even more elitest and dominated by those who feel that they have more rights because of their large number of votes. Xania ^talk 18:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

From "New Books and New Users"

New staff lounge page

In response to a conversation i've been having with SB Johnny, We've created this new staff lounge chat room for 2 reasons:

1. For new users to ask questions, get guidance, and get help.
2. When people start writing new books, and have trouble shelving or advertising them, they can announce books here and other wikibookians can help.

I hope this room gets some attention and helps with the problem of acclimating new users. If not, we can always delete it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this will work a lot better than asking (or "requiring", as it might feel like to a new user) people to edit templates, especially since most of those templates are at least semi-protected. Besides, we're a fairly chatty and excitable bunch when it comes to discussing new content, so having a SL page for this will be a good way to welcome new users, encourage them, and answer their questions. Between this and an improved Help book (however it's created), becoming a Wikibookian will be a much easier thing to do. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 19:31, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for starting this page. I think it is a welcome addition to Wikibooks, although it might be something that starts rather slowly... just as the original Staff Lounge did back elsewhen. I may even add my own "new" projects to this page from time to time. --Rob Horning 22:14, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, I am Lcarsdata. I was asked to help out here by a couple of users, so here I am. I hope to mainly do work on organising the wiki (I know, a sensitive issue) and quite a lot of categorisation work. Please tell me if I do anything wrong. Thanks. Lcarsdata (Talk) 11:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Hello Lcarsdata, welcome to wikibooks! Despite my comments on WB:RFA, I am very happy to have any organizational help around here, and categorization is a very valuable help. Please let me know if you need anything. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:47, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Thinking of creating a college guide

I'd like to create a book similar to Princeton Review's "361 Colleges". However, I'm not sure whether or not it would be appropriate for wikibooks. It wouldn't be a textbook or a how-to per se, but it would be educational, non-fiction, and NPOV.

For an example of what it would be like, see this I started the page at College Guide, since nobody seems to dislike the idea enough to comment.

Hoogli 17:39, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I do like the idea, and I am interested to see how it works out. If you frame it more like a "how to get in to college" instead of simply a listing of colleges, the book will likely fit in better with our inclusion criteria. Get some things on paper, and let's see how it turns out. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:15, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

We have a long standing project (and quite neglected I will note too) called Voter's Guide, which IMHO would be something very similar to what you are proposing here. It seems as though I've seen a college guide on Wikibooks as well, but I can't seem to put my finger on just where it is located at.

Something that may be of interest to you is also the College Survival Guide, and you could add a list of colleges into this book as a major section.... in terms of trying to group related content together and to hopefully give this other related book idea a good shot in the arm.

Mind you, this is just a suggestion and not a hard rule. Feel free to start a whole new book if you like to try this with a fresh start. You are proposing a reference book here that would not be a general collection of encyclopedia articles about colleges, but something specific to compare various schools and universities with each other in terms of what prospective students may want to know. What you may also want to do is come up with a list of questions you can ask about each college in a sort of Wikijunior format that could be used to compare each college, such as "What is campus life like?" or "Where is student housing located from the main campus?" or perhaps "When I am an entering freshman, who will teach my class?"

The answers to many of those questions is subjective and may have some NPOV issues, but it is certainly something worth looking at. You may also want to try to come up with some quantifiable statistics such as the student body size, average freshman entrance exam score, average grade point for students (showing grade inflation), number of students with scholarships, or typical price of tuition per term or year.

Try to think about what you want to accomplish with this book, and how it might be an improvement upon other guides that are available, such as the ones you have mentioned. Setting the standards in terms of what a high quality report on a particular educational institution is going to be critical to the success of a project like this. --Rob Horning 22:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

From "Project Chat"

Help

I've written several books / study guides for the new GCSE Science Gateway course that the UK will follow next yr. I've got them as pages / doc / pdf files. The current GCSE science text on wiki only goes up to this yr (ie old syllabus) DO I start a new book and upload my modules, or add them as modules to the existing one?

I would recommend creating a new book, however I am kind of new. Lcarsdata 19:40, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

COBOL PROGRAMMING

Hello. I would like to know if or when you all will have text books on COBOL Programming Language67.34.240.228 00:51, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The beginnings of one already exists at COBOL, beyond what's there it's up to the contributors to decide the pace at which the textbook will be written. If you know something about the language, be bold and help expand it! And feel free to ask here or on one of our talk pages if you have any formatting-related questions. Regards, Mattb112885 (talk) 02:33, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

If this is what we have for a COBOL book..... yuck! This is a case of where simply deleting the redirect may actually be useful. Certainly I would encourage anybody motivated enough to try and start a COBOL Wikibook to simply start from scratch and not necessarily try to use this content except as a pure reference alone. --Rob Horning 12:00, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Help Namespace Project

I've been working on some preparations for a large, over-arching project to help clean and reformat the help namespace. It's about time that we do something with the help namespace, and I'm ready and willing to put in the effort myself.

My plan consists of two major components:

1. The creation of a new help bookshelf (such as Help:Bookshelf, Help:Help Bookshelf or Wikibooks:Help Bookshelf). We will redirect the current help main page, Help:Contents to this new bookshelf page, and update any shortcuts and links to point to the new bookshelf.
2. The creation of several individual help books, both by moving and merging the existing help pages, and creating new pages.

I have created a page in my user namespace to plan the project, and I have created planning pages for each individual help book that I would like to create. I am planning at least 6 books right now (with a possible seventh), although more books can certainly be added to the bookshelf by other users at any time. The planning page for this project is at: User:Whiteknight/Help Book.

I am not starting work on this project just yet, but something does need to be done. This plan is not set in stone, and I welcome changes, comments, questions and suggestions. If you have a better idea for the help namespace, please let me know. However, I won't listen to people who disagree with this plan without putting forth a suggestion for a better one. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I think only one help book is really needed to cover the subject. Divided and organized to progress from beginning reader to expert book writer. I think this book can include appendixes in the form of FAQs. I don't see the point in moving it out of the help namespace. The Help namespace can be treated like the Cookbook or Wikijunior namespace. More Cookbook then Wikijunior, since the cookbook I think is treated as one book. What do you hope to accomplish by basically eliminating the Help namespace? --darklama 23:52, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

No, I'm not getting rid of the help namespace at all. All the books (or only 1 book, if that's all we have) will be in the help space. For instance, it will be "Help:Help book 1", not just "Help book 1". I am treating it more like the wikijunior space, where there are several "wikijunior" books, and all of them are in the wikijunior space.

The exact way that we organize the pages in that space is always up for debate. However, i think it makes the most sense to separate the material into several logical books. Something like an FAQ certainly could be made an appendix of an existing help book, but it could just as easily be made a separate book. FAQs are really a very small part of the plan, and where we choose to put them is inconsequential to me.

On the project page I list a number of reasons and justifications for wanting to create multiple books in the help space. Even if we just look at target audience, we have several groups who could each have their own books: new users, readers, editors, administrators, etc. Furthermore, if we cram a bunch of unrelated subjects into a single book, it's going to be a lousy book and a lousy example for future authors to follow. If we are going to make help books, I'm going to insist that they be good and exemplary books. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with WK that we should have separate books for disparate topics, there is simply too much to fit under one heading without getting overwhelmed. I like what WK has there, though I think that the FAQs for editing, reading, etc should go in the appropriate books rather than in the separate "FAQ book", this as WK said is a minor point. Something that may be worthwhile to put on there is a "policy" book in which the policies that are on Wikibooks are consolidated, linked to, and explained (since I know at least I was very confused about what the policies were on the project when I first started, and still stumble upon one I haven't heard of once in a while...). I also think moving the pages will help us to consolidate our efforts on rewriting in smaller chunks at a time so we don't get overwhelmed. I'm not sure about the pages you marked as "useless", I'll have to look at them to assess my own opinion of them. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk) 02:07, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Many of the pages I marked as "useless" were just red links, but they were in the TOC anyway. Some of the others are either duplicates of better pages, or are stubs with no content. Two people have mentioned the FAQs not being a separate book, so I will change my plan to reflect that instead. A book that explains policy and guidelines in "plain english" would be a good help as well. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think trying to create too many books and trying to get people to agree what should be covered in what book will be just as overwhelming. I think starting small with just one book is better and if it becomes too big, maybe than we should talk about splitting it up, but not right now. --darklama 03:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Setting up Help as a bookshelf is really a necessary component, and it serves a number of useful purposes. We don't need to have "too many books", the material in the help namespace now can really only be used to make a handful of books, and among those books there will be very little overlap. We can have a book about editing (syntax, etc), a book about reading (searching, navigating, etc), and a book about our community (policy, guidelines, VfD, RfA, Featured books, etc).

However, once we have these few books done, we can open up the floor to a large number of other books written by authors: how to create custom javascripts and stylesheets, for instance, or other "how to do this" books that people can write. The beauty of a help namespace that is 100% wikibooks metadata is that we can have a large number of books on a large number of subjects without having to limit ourselves to a single book structure. We can write things on a help bookshelf (as one small book at the bottom of the list) that we just couldn't reasonably squeeze into a single "how to edit wikibooks" book.

On another note, one of the ideas that is most enticing to me is that we could create a Wikimedia-wide manual for editing. In other words, wikibooks could become the host to "the official wikimedia handbook". Most the the information is on Meta, certainly, but it is all organized as articles, not as comprehensive instructional books.

Even if we only start out with one book initially, a bookshelf gives us the potential to expand as we need to expand in the future. It also gives us the possibility to create more resources for people to use, not just here, but through our sister projects as well. What we don't want right now is to be too short-sighted and create more help-namespace problems that wikibookians are going to have to sort out in the future. We should do it right this time, so that it doesnt need to be redone again. The ensure that our solution is a lasting one, it should be expandable and flexible, which a bookshelf (and not a single monolithic book) can be. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to hold off on the bookshelf idea as well, when if it happens, that the book needs to be split up. Also I wonder how your bookshelf idea is any different from the How-to bookshelf or how it would be clear what the differences are, and why a separate bookshelf is necessary. --darklama 16:17, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The help bookshelf would contain help metadata, while the how-to bookshelf does not. Because the help shelf is not a "real" shelf, it's conceivable that we could employ POV (which we can't on the how-to shelf) such as "do things this way because it's better". Plus, having a help shelf that is linked to from the sidebar will make it easier for people to find the help topics, instead of having to search through the other shelves blindly.

I'm not really willing to "hold off" on fixing the help shelf any longer. We get complaints from new users all the time that the help pages are simply not helpful, and up till now we've just ignored it. We've gotten a few complaints this week alone, and we've had to say "yeah we know, the help space really sucks". Since i've been a member here, the help space has essentially remained in poor condition with little to no progress being made on it. Even when the help space was designated "collaboration of the month", no progress was made to speak of to make it a better resource. Even if my idea is not the best idea (and I haven't heard anything that sounds like a better or more comprehensive idea to replace it), I'm not willing to not put it into action any longer. The alternative that you gave to me was that we needed to "merge duplicate pages" and do some other "general cleaning" which is both vague and uninspiring. I'm willing to do the work that i've proposed and—better yet—I'm willing to do it quickly to make this happen. What I don't understand is why anybody wouldnt want there to be some improvement to these help pages ASAP. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:36, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I think new users can't find the help they need from the help pages because there not linked to one another, making many of them orphaned. I think getting rid of the duplicates is the first step to solving that problem, since once there are no more duplicates to worry about, deciding what pages to link together shouldn't be as hard to decide and will make it easier to improve on what already exists. I believe Help:Contents is fine as it is and looks great compared to everything else. Help:Contents/Editing Wikibooks already tries to begin to be a table of contents for some pages which too is a good thing. I'm not trying to hold off improvements, I'm saying work on improving the quality of the help that exists, merge them, fix them, etc. and link them to the table of contents that already exists, right now, and worry about bookshelves and how many books are needed later. Start small and work are way up. Use correct headings, remove links to pages that don't exist, remove or replace information thats obsolete or refers to things specific to Wikipedia or other projects. These are things which I think can help make the help pages useful to new users quickly. --darklama 19:14, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are alot of unused pages, and duplicate pages. However, cleaning those pages up will be easier if we have a solid goal in mind. If we move and merge and delete a bunch of pages now, and it turns into another disorganized mess, what have we accomplished? If we know what we are aiming for, we can better work to complete the job without having to do alot of things twice.

I'm not going to stop you from working on the help pages, and i'm not going to try and "force" you to do things differently. Just keep in mind that if your work doesnt lead to a significant improvement, it will need to be redone, again. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:03, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Both of you raise good points, how many books are necessary to warrant having a bookshelf? We would definitely need some sort of organizing principle if we were to break up the help space into multiple books. The linking I think would help us a great deal, and is one thing to keep in mind as we reorganize the help namespace. I agree that the contents page looks OK, I would almost say that it could serve as our "bookshelf", and we could treat each of the subcategories as a "book" (yes, it has an FAQ section, this is a minor point to me), if we desired, this seems to be at least part of the motivation for WK's organization scheme anyways. I think the greatest benefit to thinking of them as separate books is that it gives us a better guide as to what belongs in each section and what doesn't, and therefore can keep them organized, helping both contributors rebuilding it, and newcomers looking for help. Mattb112885 23:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Back up a sec! The Help mainspace (or pseudonamespace, as it were) is not a book! It's for new users, or "advanced"users looking for more info. If we want to make our help pages better, we should help Wikiversity make them, and enable import from wikiversity so that we can import the pages when they've been made the right way. Wikipedia's help pages suck almost as badly as ours do, by the way... but there are aome very interesting interactive pages on wikiversity (I wish I could remember the links!) that really walk the new user through it all. Subpages are enabled there too, so we ("we" meaning "experienced wikibookians") might do better to add a bit of eneggy to Wikiversity's "global help pages" rather than trying to re-invent the wheel with our own. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 01:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

First off, help is an actual namespace, not just a pseudonamespace. Second, i disagree that we should be looking to import our own help pages from anywhere, wikiversity or wikipedia or meta even. Wikiversity, despite our similarities and relatively close relationship, is not wikibooks. Even if we could import most of our help pages from wikiversity, we certainly can't import them all because wikiversity is simply a different project with different content and different structures.

Second, the help space is currently not a book, but I see no reason why it shouldnt be structured as a book. There are many good reasons to organize our help information in book form, not the least of which is the fact that it sets a good example for new authors, and that it creates a logical and hierarchical navigational structure that makes contents easy to find for a new user. Many of the people who come here are not familiar with wikis, but they are familiar with traditional books, after all. Too bad more school classes are not taught using wikis!

I know you are a big fan of wikiversity, but leaving our help pages in shambles to focus our attention on their help pages really seems like a bad idea and a waste of effort to me. Even if we can collaborate with our sister projects (more then just wikiversity) to create a global set of help pages, we still will need to sort out our own help page issues, and write content that is wikibooks-specific. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The reason I think it would be good to import from there is because they've developed really good materials. See, for example, v:Wiki 101. What's nice about these learning projects is that there's a lot of people adding to and editing them, since teaching people how to wiki is one of the core aspects of Wikiversity's mission. If we can use it, we should. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I do agree that some amount of partnership would be wise. I spent a long time last night talking with JWSchmit about the help pages (theirs and ours) and there is certainly a lot of common ground between the two projects. I certainly understand sharing and helping between wikiversity and ourselves, but that shouldn't excuse us from cleaning and organizing the pages that we already have.

Talking with JWS, it seems that the wikiversity help pages are being organized as a learning course. This is to be expected, because "learning courses" is what wikiversity does. The Wikipedia help pages are structured like a series of articles, which is precisely what Wikipedia does. It should come as no surprise to anybody that I, a wikibookian, want to create a help resource that is a book. I would also go on to say that done properly, any of the different methods of organization should be perfectly adequate. Only the finished products will be able to tell which is a superior help resource. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Articles for Review

I sort of stepped into something perhaps I should have left well enough alone, but I am trying to come up with something that would signal that a particular page is something that should be looked at by the Wikibooks community, but does not warrant being marked up as a speedy deletion candidate.

See Wikibooks:Votes for deletion#Project+ for details about the specific page that is giving me and other grief at the moment.

I think there should be some way of marking up a page (perhaps even just on the talk page if you don't want to make it too ugly on the main body of content) that a particular page deserves some special community review, with some questions about if it belongs on the project but you don't think it necessarily ought to be deleted immediately as pure dribble and vandalism. This should also be adding these pages to a category similar to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, but with the understanding that they will not be deleted immediately without at least some discussion on the talk page of the module that is so marked.

In other words, a community review of the page instead of an out right deletion. And to let some new users to Wikibooks know that others are watching what is going on with the new content which is added to Wikibooks. This will also let people know that by being "reviewed", it doesn't necessarily mean that the page is going to be deleted at all. Not everything which is added to Wikibooks would merit this sort of attention, but quite often pages are added that make you wonder and think that something is not quite spot on and may have to eventually be substantially fixed or simply deleted at some point in the future.

Primarily this is for borderline situations where you may not want to delete something, and acts as yet another speed bump before a page really is deleted. Pages marked for review could be turned into a speedy delete candidate or perhaps even moved to the VfD page, or simply have the tag removed altogether if upon review it seems like a perfectly legitimate page for this project.

This is also to try and be a little more friendly that the page is simply going to be reviewed by more than one long-time Wikibooks user, and that it deserves some special attention. The wording of such a template should be friendly, and state clearly that pages marked will not be deleted by project administrators, but some concerns have been raised about the quality and content of the page that should be eventually resolved. What I'm seeking input on is if this is something which should be added to Wikibooks as a regular feature? --Rob Horning 20:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

There are two templates that come to mind that could of been used:

{{attention}} {{cleanup-clarity}}

or are these not what you have in mind? --darklama 20:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Must read up before posting! My posting here concerns this. I know the cleanup tags exist - however in general what happens is a "cleanup" tag gets placed - period. The RFC direction might make the community as a whole more aware of the issue. Covering the situation(s) that Rob outlines that was behind my suggestion originally (I was working in that direction when Johnny came up with his idea - I merely placed mine within it as they seemed to hang together). I would love to see it used. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:21, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I've been thinking lately a lot could be put into the RFC model, VFDs, RFAs, Policy/Guideline proposals, copyright violation concerns, user and book feedback, etc. Could use a similar setup as we have now for Staff Lounge, such as Wikibooks:Request for Comments/Books, Wikibooks:Request for Comments/Wikibookians, Wikibooks:Request for Comments/Proposals and Concerns and Wikibooks:Request for Comments/General. With maybe VFDs, Featured Books, Copyright violations and forms of book reviews being discussed on the Books page, RFAs, VIP and other forms of User review being discussed on the Wikibookians page, Policy/Guideline proposals, other types of proposals and concerns dealing with Wikibooks in general on the Proposals and Concerns page and anything else which doesn't quite fit those 3 pages on the General page. That way discussion/comments about both the good and the bad are discussed in the same places. --darklama 14:04, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Probably about my last post for now but I think this is good DL - I guess my only concern would be too many pages for folk to watch. However some careful transclusion might fix that. Certainly watching RC there are "offerings" that I see that (even to me!) are not speedy but look unlikely to become good content. I would love somewhere to bring them to the communities attention in the hope that some get fixed. Catch in a week or so! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Sister Project Outreach

While we seem to have a relatively good relationship with Wikiversity, we at English Wikibooks tend to have a poor or non-existent relationship with our other sister projects. One project that I think we really should develop a better relationship with is Wikisource, considering the similarities (we both write books) and the overlap (we both allow annotated texts, etc). However, Wikisource is not the only sister project that we should try and get closer to. I would like to start an outreach program of sorts, where we get in touch with our sister projects, offer any assistance to them that we can provide, and request in turn any assistance that they can provide. Some projects we certainly aren't going to have a good relationship with whatsoever, but there are others were it would be well worth a shot for us. What do people think? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think its a good idea. I think outreaching to Wikipedia is needed for example, so that Wikipedians can become better informed about whats contents are allowed here. There seems to be misunderstands that anything up for deletion on Wikipedia will be within the scope of Wikibooks, when it seems like a lot of time its no more within Wikibooks scope then it was within Wikipedia's. --darklama 14:10, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I do need to get more involved with the Wikisource Scriptorium and at least try to follow concerns and topics of discussion that happen there. My primary interaction with Wikisource has been to help with transfering worthy projects from Wikibooks to Wikisource, and helping to give the primary contributors an extra boost to get those kind of projects going. Most notable was the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica and a dental textbook that was being translated from English to Hatian. Both were advised by Wikipedians to start a Wikibook on the topic instead of going to Wikisource, where they are much more appropriate and both have received much more attention as a result of this move as well.

I've also tried to work with Wikipedia in particular with adding Wikibooks templates pointing at relevant Wikibooks and also changing the wording of the "Move to Wikibooks" template to strongly encourage Wikipedians recommending moving deleted content from Wikipedia content to Wikibook that they at least read WB:WIW first to see if it fits with our mission, and noting that it may be accidentally deleted even if that wasn't the intention. A transwiki is always a messy process, even with some of the new tools that the developers have given to us recently for page imports. There is also an arrogance (as noted by Eric's commentary about rebranding) that Wikipedia is the only WMF project that is worth even keeping, and the only one that brings any revenue to the WMF in terms of donations. Some teaching about what it is that we actually do, and letting people know about our accomplishments is something that many Wikipedians need to know much better.

One project that I know needs to be integrated much more strongly with Wikibooks is Wiktionary. Some of the worst content moves in terms of losing material has been between these two projects. It would be nice to see some sort of organization within Wiktionary that we could use to help build glossaries and specialized dictionaries that would generally be more fitting for that project, but are key components for some Wikibooks. And involve people from both projects to get these structures built and organized. With Wiktionary being the #2 project of the WMF (both in terms of numbers and sheer content) and the lack of cooperation in both directions with that project, I see this as a huge area of improvement. --Rob Horning 19:02, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Languages bookshelf

AR King has done a wonderful reorganisation of the Wikibooks:Languages_bookshelf, making it much more useable for the average person on the street. Do run over and have a look. Thanks Alan! -- Kowey 07:40, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Organizational Project

I've been dissuaded from my mass-reorganization of the help pages, at least temporarily. Instead, I would like to focus my efforts on a revitalization of the various organizational tools here on Wikibooks. I would like to do the following things:

1. Improve WB:DDC and WB:LOC pages, and associated templates, to make the categorization of books according to these methods easier and more automated.
2. Improve WB:CCO to make it a more useful organizational resource, including possibly re-adding a link to it in the side-bar.
3. Associating together bookshelves, Categories, Dewey-Decimal Categories and LOC classifications, so that books can be found and organized by various different methods quickly and easily.

On the mailiing list, User:Bastique has mentioned the possibility of attracting outside organizational experts to help us with these kinds of tasks. I would like to get at least some preliminary work done so that any external help that we receive that be put to good use. What do people think about this kind of project? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:24, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

An excellent idea that's long overdue. How about first creating a central "browse" page (or converting Wikibooks:All bookshelves into one), listing all our cataloging schemes using a categorytree? For example:

• Books alphabetically
• Books by subject
  • (links to our current bookshelves w/o how-tos and study guides)
• Books by type
  • How-tos
  • Study guides
• Books by audience
  • Books for children (Wikijunior)
  • Books for students (Wikistudy)
  • Books for professionals (Wikiprofessional)
  • Books for adults (Wikilearn)
• Special books
  • Featured books
  • Books with print version
  • Books with PDF version
• Books by Dewey Decimal classification
• Books by Library of Congress classification

--hagindaz 19:12, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Bastique said you guys are in need of some organisational help, so here I am. Anything organisation wise just leave me a message or post here (the latter is probably better) in the mean time I will proceed with some organisation work of my own. Please, if I am doing something wrong tell me. Thanks. Lcarsdata 19:15, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

All the help is certainly well-appreciated. First off, User:Lcarsdata, don't let my comments on the RFA page stop you from helping. My comments there were mostly in relation to use of the bot flag, not to the job that you are doing. Second, User:Hagindaz, you are right that we need a centralized indexing page, although I would say that the Card Catalog Office is the better selection then the "All bookshelves" page is. I would like to envision a very unified organizational apparatus: every category has an associated LOC and Dewey number, every LOC class gets an associated Dewey number and an associated bookshelf, etc. This way, people who are familiar with any navigational system can easily swap back and forth between systems in a painless manner. In the card catalog office, we could have the entire hierarchy of organizational tools available, and we could use that page as the top-level node in the large organizational tree structure. I'm doing some preliminiary work on the Dewey pages now, to see if i can make them easier to edit. I'll get to work on the rest of it ASAP. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:21, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, i've done a little work tonight, and I think we have a system that we can use to start categorizing books. I've created a few templates:

{{Alphabetical|<FIRSTLETTER>}}

Where <FIRSTLETTER> is the first letter of the book's title.

{{DDC|<CLASS>|<ID>}}

Where <CLASS> is the Dewey-decimal classification of the book rounded to the nearest hundred (ie 200 or 500), and <ID> is the specific dewey decimal number of the book.

{{LOC|<CLASS>|<ID>}}

Where <CLASS> is the single-character for the class of the LOC number (such as T or B). <ID> is the specific LOC code for the book such as (TK402.1).

I've also taken the liberty of rearranging the following pages (and creating the necessary shortcuts):

WB:CCO Card catalog office

WB:DDC Dewey Decimal System

WB:LOC Library of Congress System

WB:ABC Alphabetical Classification

All of these pages are based off categories from the above templates. When you add the necessary templates to the books, they are automatically categorized, and listed in the respective Dewey, LOC, and Alphabetical pages. Because we don't need to manually add books to these lists, it is my hope that we can use these systems more easily. Please let me know what you think about these changes, because there are more changes to come, and I want to know what people think about it so far. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, are these templates to be used solely on the front page of a book, or is there some other criteria for using these templates. Lcarsdata 06:36, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Just the front page of the book. I went through several bookshelves last night and applied the {{alphabetical}} template to the books on those pages with my bot. I don't know enough about Dewey or LOC to be using a bot to apply those templates automatically, although I'm sure we can make some generalizations (such as all engineering books being "T" in the LOC system). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like to note that the "Card Catalog Office", as I originally envisioned it, was to be a sort of "Wikiproject" that would help with the organizational effort of trying to catalog Wikibooks, and to provide a central place to hold discussions about the organizational efforts that could avoid having to tie up discussion on the Staff Lounge :)

I think this is one huge area of Wikibooks that does need some work, and there were several key areas that IMHO still need to be addressed:

• New Wikibooks Classification - As new participants come to Wikibooks and try their hand at writing a new Wikibook from scratch, we need some individuals who can both provide "mentoring" of these new members of our community as well as try to help link this new content in with the rest of our cataloging system. Quite often they have been directed to Wikibooks by well meaning but misinformed individuals from other Wikimedia projects (especially Wikipedia) to create some crazy new idea that really doesn't even fit with WB:WIW but is going to involve multiple wiki pages (hence "Wikibooks" to some Wikimedia users). An active support group for this sort of activity is essential, and something that while related to the "RC Patrol", is something just a bit different.

• Orphaned Module Classification - Primarily cleaning up the older stuff that has been lying around Wikibooks for years. Wikibooks more than most Wikimedia projects suffers from a huge number of "orphaned modules" due to the way we tend to write our content, and that the typical schema of Wikipedia where an article title is usually good enough to find needed content doesn't quite work as well here either. While Special:Lonelypages is something that does need work as well, keep in mind that there are some pages that are sparsely linked (perhaps just on the VfD pages or something like that) which also need to be brought into the classification system. By going through pages and simply organizing them into bookshelves and the various tools we are using for classifying our content, we will also find cruft and even nonsense pages that simply need to be deleted.

• Ontological Support - Nearly every clasification structure breaks down, and breaks down quickly if you are aggressively using the tools properly. Resolving these classification problems is just as difficult (and contentious) as POV fights, and in some ways even worse as there really isn't an easy solution to resolving two or more conflicting visions. Still, it is critically important to come to a genuine concensus and to hold the discussion in the first place. Some classification efforts can be handled "locally" such as an individual bookshelf, but often reorganization needs to take place project-wide as well... even if it is simply moving one type of content from one bookshelf to another (or one "category" to another).

I am also not convinced that any one particular classification system is "the best", as each type of content classification has its own strengths and weaknesses. As I mentioned recently on textbook-l, the ultimate goal of a good classification system is to find content on a topic you are interested in learning about, and to have "similar" content be accessible. Using the analogy of a library, books on the same topic are "nearby" with (hopefully) books with increasingly dissimilar content located much "further" away. The DDC and LOC classification systems are both designed with this philosophy in mind but have their problems as well. The MediaWiki category system breaks down when you try to find similar content that is not in precisely the same category, and this "nearness" of similar content is completely lost. It serves its purpose, but often trying to find content through a category hierarchy is as problematic as looking up a Dewey number or worse.

We do need a central discussion page, however, where we can discuss this sort of effort that will both help clean out cruft of Wikibooks as well as help people to find out what has already been done. Cleaning out cruft is not just using the "delete" button in the admin toolbox. --Rob Horning 14:41, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I think that if we need a central discussion area for discussing the organizational system, and the way in which new books are added to that system, we should look to the New Books Staff Lounge Page, which was recently created. User:SB Johnny and myself have been discussing this issue at length, and I think we both envision a centralized noticeboard where a new user can say "hello, i'm starting a new book. This is the title of the book, and this is what the book is about", and experienced readers can take that information to: put the book on the appropriate shelf, add the book to the {{new}} template, and tag the book with the appropriate categorization templates such as {{Alphabetical}} or {{DDC}}. This way, new users really do get the help they need in starting and promoting a new book, and experienced users have a central point of interface where they can help. As to the choice of categorization scheme, I've purposely set things up so far so that all the different schema (DDC, LOC, Alphabetical, Bookshelves, and Categories) are being set up in parallel, so that that readers can use whichever method they are most comfortable with. Instead of being a wikiproject, the WB:CCO serves as a central node, the hub from which searches can be started.

On a side note, I've already started applying templates to books as of last night with my bot, and I think User:Lcarsdata has volunteered his bot as well to tag pages appropriately. If we can get the majority of current books tagged now, it will be a trivial matter to tag new books as they are created. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I see that you have moved to using entirely the MediaWiki categorization system. One of the reasons I was avoiding this in the past was the issue of trying to move large blocks of books to other "categories". In addition, you have also lost nearly all of the "added" features such as side notes, noting featured books, PDF versions, or other remarks within the text next to the book title. Using the category pages eliminates these potentials, as we are "stuck" with whatever page formatting that category pages give to you. The only "customization" is through the application of skins instead.

I'm not necessarily saying that this is a terrible change, but you are giving up some features in exchange for other aspects to this new organizational scheme you have implemented. And it is indeed a major change that would be very difficult to "revert" back to how it was done in the past. It is important that the rest of the Wikibooks community understand the significance of these changes you are engaged in at the moment.

BTW, the idea of using the "New Books" page of the Staff Lounge also to be used for ontological discussions seems appealing, and does seem like it would serve better than the WB:CCO talk page. If/when Wikibooks grows enough that this page is exceptionally busy on both topics, it could be separated into two separate discussion pages. I don't see that happening any time soon. --Rob Horning 05:42, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorizing doesn't preclude using other organizational methods in tandem, and in fact would make implementing other systems much easier to do (since the person doing the implementing can just go up and down the category trees). Putting all the book pages into book categories serves a few purposes: first, it keeps Special:Uncategorizedpages as empty as reasonably possible (thus making it possible for us to use that list as a way of detecting new books and pages which may have been added but not integrated), second, it can be helpful if and when a book's pages are broken into smaller categories (creating "chapters", in a manner of speaking). Third, it allows better tracking of recent changes either through other special pages or DPL.

One other advantage of categories is that they're used on other wikimedia projects as well. Our friends at Wikiversity, for example, would like to cross-link our categories with theirs in order to maintain some level of integration of the two projects. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 09:51, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The loss of the ability to adorn the book's title in the category pages was not lost nor overlooked when I made changes. What we had was a system that was broken simply because it could not be maintained. The page for alphabetical listing simply had no adornments whatsoever (except for a little picture of a basketball next to the Basketball book, which carried no significance), and it was so long that the server warned you every time you edited. The library of congress system as well was so difficult to maintain, requiring the user to navigate through a seemingly endless see of category pages and sub-pages. And what's worse, so few of the category pages were even created, that the prospect of attempting to complete the system as it had been started was daunting, if not impossible.

I'm comfortable with the idea of making trade-offs. What we have now is a system that can be used, even if it doesnt have all the same potential that the old system had. When it comes to the difference between a great system that nobody can use, and a good system that everybody can use, the decision is an easy one in my mind. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:41, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

On the issue of adding every Wikibook module to a category, we are going to have to agree to disagree here. I disagree with the premise, but I'm not going to deliberately revert every module that has been categorized.... as long as you don't get into a edit war if I remove the cateogires on books that I'm working on and otherwise adding large amounts of content. Or force others to accept this practice if they don't want to get involved. I'm not objecting to those users who want to do this sort of categorization, but rather complaining about forcing it project-wide on everything as if it were policy.

This isn't the first time this topic has been brought up (see User:Andreas Ipp/Why move books? for a much earlier essay about the topic), and I'm also pointing out that there is more that one opinion about this topic. As an experiment to see how this might help Wikibooks, I support it, particularly as Whiteknight has pointed out that the previous system just doesn't seem to be working. Perhaps there are still other ideas on how to organize Wikibooks content, but let's give this one a try. And it is something that can be "undone" without damaging Wikibooks too badly if it doesn't work out. --Rob Horning 23:43, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I consider it a matter of primary importance for the main page of a book to be properly categorized. I do not consider it to be particularly important for the sub-pages of a book to be categorized. In fact, I think it has the potential to mess-up the categories if all subpages are categorized.

If your primary concern about page categorization is that it is performed without the backing of a proper policy, perhaps the solution is to draft a policy that both specifies how to category, and limits the way in which pages are categorized. We definitely don't want to be like wikipedia where every single page has dozens of categories, and every category contains hundreds of pages. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:20, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

• reset

& in haste This is a great way for Wikibooks to go. My view would be that the "book" should be placed in a category and then the subpages placed in a category. IIRC Wikijunior has some great examples of this done well and would be a good model to follow - more time soon I hope but always interested - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I've re-written much of Wikibooks:Categories to try and demonstrate the way that things are generally done around here in the best way. This draft could use alot of help, so anybody with thoughts on the matter should join in. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:50, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Community Portal

With the other organization projects up and running (if not completely perfect), I would like to start focusing on the Community Portal now. This page is mostly out-dated, with sections on the collaboration of the month, many links to help pages on Wikipedia, etc. I would really like to find out from the people what kinds of pages and resources are useful (ie, what pages/special pages/categories do you consult on a daily basis). I would also like to write up short "project description pages" where we can talk about some of the tasks that need to get done around here, and how to do them. For instance, I would like to have a help page dedicated to new-page patrolling, RC patrolling, Unlicensed image tagging, new user welcoming, etc. I would like people who actually perform these tasks on a daily basis to assist in writing these little pages (I expect them to be short and highly informal).

I would like to post links to the various categories that need to be monitored: speedy deletion candidates, queried pages, images with unknown copyright status, etc so that we have a nice central location for finding and fixing problems quickly. I'm not in a gigantic hurry to do this, but If i can get some good responses here, I would like to get started on it soon. Help is very much appreciated. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikitoddler

This page is an effort that never really panned out. This is for a number of reasons, both because users became disinterested in it, and also because Wikijunior's charter was extended to include toddlers in it's target audience.

There is only one book in this group, Wikitoddler Animal Alphabet, which bears a striking resemblence to the already completed Wikijunior Animal Alphabet. However, the writing style of the former book is different enough from the latter that perhaps they could be kept separate (and not forced together in a messy and lossy merger).

I would like to propose that we delete Wikitoddler because it simply isnt being used, and is redundant with Wikijunior. I would also like to propose that Wikitoddler Animal Alphabet be moved to a more appropriate name, such as Wikijunior Animal Stories or something similar, to suit the writing style of the book and not to interfere with Wikijunior Animal Alphabet. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:55, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree... the expansion of focus for wikijunior makes the smaller project unnecessary now. Leave as redirects though, since the names won't have any other purpose than the ones they had. Protection is probably a good idea too, since the pages were apparently vandalized a bit.--SB_Johnny | ^talk 01:16, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

How about moving Wikitoddler Animal Alphabet to Wikijunior as "Animal Facts A to Z"? -- xixtas ^talk 03:44, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Book portals

I'm plowing through a whole bunch of Wikibooks, going through the process of refining the classification effort to more specific categories (and especially trying to cut down the size of the LOC "Q" category to something more manageable), and I've come across some books that simply don't really seem like books.

Some examples are as follows:

• Assembly Language
• Blender 3D

What I'm asking here is if "books" of this nature ought to be moved out of the main project namespace (as they really aren't books) and turned into something like a Portal. We don't have explicitly a "Portal" namespace, and I'm not really sure that these pages ought to be turned into bookshelf pages either (something more commonly done here on Wikibooks in the past) or even just left alone.

I know this is something similar to the huge Programming Wikibook that has caused the spilling of much ink on the Staff Lounge in the past, and in some ways these are all Wikibooks that started out as a single idea and have grown to the point that the content really is multiple books... all separately linked as independently books elsewhere here on Wikibooks as well.

I'm leaning to moving these to the Wikibooks namespace, but I would appreciate other suggestions as well. --Rob Horning 15:46, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I can't speak for the Blender book, but I can tell you that the Assembly Language is really in a grey area. I wasn't sure what to do with it, so I left it alone as is. I dont necessarily like the word "portals" as much as I like the word "Indexes". Some other examples of index pages that do exist are Modern Physics and Electric Circuits.

While each individual "Assembly language" has it's own book (MIPS Assembly, x86 Assembly, etc), there are some discussion topics which are common to all assembly languages. In that sense, the Assembly Language book is a very small introductory book that points the reader to the specific dialects, as needed. On the other hand, it also functions as a bookshelf of sorts, storing related books together in a single place. All the assembly language books are already listed at the Wikibooks:Programming languages bookshelf, but having this page make it easier to search for and find these books.

I would advocate for leaving these pages (and any other pages like them) where they are, and I say that for a few reasons:

1. Many pages link to these books, especially Modern Physics.
2. These books are not full bookshelves, and the links they contain are frequently already located on another bookshelf.
3. We can treat these books as large "volumes" composed of other smaller books.
4. These pages act like necessary disambiguation pages, and they help when people search for common terms on which we have multiple books (like Assembly Language or Electric Circuits). Searches for these terms can't be properly redirected to any one place, because they really do relate to multiple books.

Maybe we need some kind of way to denote these books, like a template or a little icon or something to show that they are indexes and not true "books". --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:18, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I think as more books on a given subject appear there will be a need for more disambiguation pages that can be used for finding all related books. Perhaps a template or icon could be useful as Whiteknight has suggested, but a new namespace could also help. One that perhaps could encompass bookshelves, departments, the community portal, disambiguates pages and all other organizational tasks. For example "Subject:" could be the new namespace with the community portal becoming the main page of subject namespace and each bookshelf/department being moved to the subject namespace. For example "Computer Science bookshelf" becomes "Subject:Computer Science" and "Natural Science department" becomes "Subject:Natural Science". Card catalog, LOC and DDC could also be moved as "Subject:100", "Subject:200", "Subject:QA/150", etc. --darklama 17:59, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm with you until the very last point, Darkcode. Using categories for organization makes the most sense for us now, and I can't imagine trying to replace it with a manually-updated list. Especially not now that we are starting to see how well the system is working, and making minor adjustments to get it even better. Robs work on this in the last few days has been a great help towards making the system even better and more usable, for example. However, if we could keep the category system, but use DPL to transclude the page list into a related "Subject:" page, that might be something to consider.

A new namespace might also help us if we wanted to start expanding on particular curriculums. for instance we could have a page like "Subject:XXX Schools Curriculum", and list there all the books that conform to that particular curriculum. In this way, we could see at a glance which books are usable for which children, and that would be a great way to assess exactly how much "stuff" we have here. That's all a little far in the future, of course, but a little foresight in making major decisions is always worthwhile. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:02, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Changes to Managing Groups and Teams Book

I am an MBA student at the University of Utah and I am working on a joint project to improve the Managing Groups and Teams Book.

This message is for the other members of my team.

I have added an anecdotal lead-in to the "Challenges and Methods for Establishing Influence over the Team " section.

I thought that this would break up the monotony of the reading and is a good lead in to the exmaple given below of the engineering group. The example itself, however, is chopy and doesn't seem to make a clear point. I'll work on it tomorrow.

Please review the changes and provide me with feedback.

I think it is a good idea to have a lead-in section, it helps one to understant the arguments that will be coming later. One comment about the section as a whole is that it is rather long (I find large blocks of text difficult to read on a computer screen, of course in a print version this wouldn't be an issue; let me know when the project is finished and I'll be glad to make a PDF and print version of it), it may be beneficial for you to break it up in order to help clarify the point of each section. I look forward to reading this book when you are finished improving it, as I think it has some very interesting information from what little I have read. I'm not sure if you're the anonymous user that added the information about the company in California, if you are then I think that's good too, it'd be better if you cited a source for it so people didn't think you were doing original research. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk) 17:10, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Mattb112885, thank you for your feedback. We'll be sure to keep you informed.

From "Technical Chat"

Pandoc converter

Folks, just wanted to call your attention to a piece of software called Pandoc, a sort of universal text formats converter. Sadly, it does not yet support the mediawiki syntax (but it does write docbook, latex, html, markdown, restructured text). If somebody were willing to learn just the smattering of Haskell needed to add mediawiki to the mix, this would be a useful asset to the community. Actually, it may already be useful as HTML => mediawiki converters exist, but it would be great if we could have it go the extra mile -- Kowey 07:29, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

www.en.wikibooks.com doesn't exist

When I type www.en.wikipedia.org, it redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org. So why doesn't wikibooks do the same? For me, it's a minor hassle, but for other people who equate www with the internet, they may be confused. Hoogli 18:25, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

I presume you mean that typing www.en.wikipedia.org redirects correctly but not wikibooks. I often have the same problem when I'm at a computer which hasn't got Wikibooks bookmarked. Anything that can be done about this guys? Xania ^talk 21:09, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

That's what I meant -_-. Fixed now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Hoogli (talk • contribs) .

The link http://www.wikibooks.org works fine... for myself, I just type in "en.wikibooks.org"; I think most newcomers looking for wikibooks would type in http://www.wikibooks.com which actually DOES redirect to the English site. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

There was once a bug report submitted about this issue, yet the system administrators failed to take action. See, while it does not cover Wikibooks specifically, I assume anyone who has the ability to fix this will also fix it for all the wikis. Lcarsdata 19:00, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Stuff like this can take a long time to fix because it is low priority for the devs. You may want to see if you can find a server admin on IRC and politely remind them of the bug. --Cspurrier 00:38, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Java and Flash

Can I use Java and Flash in WikiBooks to enhance the presentation ?

No, for security reasons, you cannot use Java or Flash, or other types of programming tools to enhance Wikibooks. Each user is allowed to have personal Javascript pages, but that javascript is only used for you, not for other users. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Commons ticker stuttering

G'day, the Commons ticker appears to have a stutter. It has three times placed a notification on Cookbook talk:Cilantro about an image deleted off Commons, after the image had been replaced by a different image (a cute picture of bunnies eating cilantro). Anyone interested in taking a look? Webaware ^talk 06:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

It was doing the same thing last week with an svg of the Kentucky State Flag. --Jomegat 10:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, i've noticed it happening several times recently. I'll contact the bot's operator about it, to see if he can help. What we need to decide now is whether we want to block the commons ticker bot from editing, until the bug is resolved. I know that Wikipedia has a policy of blocking bots that malfunction, and on more then one occasions Wikipedia has blocked the commons ticker (much to the anger of people on commons). I'm not against blocking the bot, although I would rather try to fix the problem first. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 11:54, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Image woes

I'm having a bit of trouble with an image in Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Knot/Prusik. No matter what I do, I cannot get that first image in the gallery to appear. It will also not appear for me when I try to display it as a thumb, a la:

Where's the photo?

Though if I leave off the "thumb|120px", it shows up just fine (though a little bigger than I want). Any help is greatly appreciated. --Jomegat 13:40, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks like a corrupted thumbnail. I tried to purge the thumbnail but I obviously can't follow instructions properly at this time of night - perhaps you can try it. Webaware ^talk 15:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I tried too, but received no joy. I tried purging the page where the image should appear on Wikibooks, and I tried purging the image on the commons. No effect. --Jomegat 17:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

There was an issue very similar to that in Fermat's last theorem where the image simply would not appear correctly unless i left it the same size. I tried everything, and all different resolutions, but i couldnt make it appear unless I let it be the normal size. It was an SVG image too, so it seems we have a relatively large problem on our hands, and maybe it's worth setting up a bug report about it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Maybe the image was too large to fit in the margin ;-) --Jomegat 18:39, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

But kidding aside - how do you file a bug report? --Jomegat 22:18, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I haven't gotten around to it yet today, but you can go to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org and file the report that way. When you file it, make sure you keep a copy of the link, so that you can keep track of the bug. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:42, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Note that I think you are talking about two different bugs. First, Jomegat's image is a JPEG and it does correctly thumb when different sizes are specified - see User:Webaware/sandbox. There is a corrupt thumbnail that won't clear. Second, Whiteknight's image was an SVG that sounds like it struck rendering problems when converting to a PNG thumb - which the SVG to PNG rendering software is known for (especially with text). Bear that in mind when submitting the bug report. Webaware ^talk 00:03, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Where's the photo?

Prusiks are really hard to tie at 120px (unless you have incredibly small fingers)... would 150 px do? (I have no idea why that works, but I've seen problems rendering things that small in the past somewhere or another.)--SB_Johnny | ^talk 10:12, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I was trying to use the image in a gallery which automatically makes them 120px. The other approach would be to slap them in a table, but this particular gallery is used within the "tying_instructions" parameter of Template:Knot which already puts it in a table. I understand nested tables are supposed to work if you hold your mouth just right, but I haven't figured out how to do that. I'm certainly not opposed to a larger image, but making it work within Knots is a tad over my head. --Jomegat 14:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll show you how to do it. I wonder though... is there a tag or something to make galleries show larger (or smaller) images?--SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I saw a request for that feature in Bugzilla which makes me believe that the feature does not (yet) exist. --Jomegat 01:50, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I found some very good instructions for you wikiversity for table-making. --SB_Johnny | ^talk 13:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Download Wikibooks Source

Hi!

Where can I get the source code for wikibooks? I'd like to install it on my own server (like the normal MediaWiki).

Thank you 85.176.159.80 18:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Martin

The software that runs Wikibooks is the same as the software that runs Wikipedia, and a number of other Wiki websites. It's called "MediaWiki", and you can download it from http://www.mediawiki.org. When you set up a wiki, post a note back here, and let us know about it! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:05, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I am playing around with MediaWiki, but I am missing the features of Wikibooks. How can I install those? 85.176.129.45 19:32, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Martin

First things first, what version of MediaWiki do you have installed, and what "features" do you seem to be missing? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

The newest version 1.10 - and I am missing features like creating a new book, adding icons for the development status of a book, using "modules"... 85.176.129.45 20:22, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Martin

"Modules" are just what we call "pages". I know that you can create new pages, If you can create pages, you can certainly create new books. Also, the development status icons are a series of images and templates that you need to create or upload, they aren't included by default. In fact, we use alot of templates here on wikibooks, and if you want to have them, you need to create them yourself on your own wiki. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:28, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I presume templates are GFDL? (as long as the images within them are). If so, you can use them for your wiki as long as you also license the code under the GFDL. Does Mediawiki software automatically come with template capability? Mattb112885 (talk) 23:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, i'm pretty sure that templates, along with categories and image capabilities, are built right in. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:50, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

wikibooks is very slow recently

Has anyone else noticed this? I'm from New Jersey, USA, if that makes any difference. Hoogli 22:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

You mean the software is slow, or the community is slow? The community always slows down in the summer, and the software has been having a slow day today as well. I know people have been complaining all day that wikipedia has been loading slowly, and since wikibooks is part of the same server farm, we would be affected by the same problems. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:42, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I meant the software. Yeah, I just realized wikipedia has been slow too. Hoogli 22:43, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Summer is a traditional time of very heavy use and activity on Wikimedia projects, and bandwidth growth on the Wikimedia server farm seems to show about at compounding 30% growth per year or more. And shows no sign of leveling out either. For what is already one of the busiest 10 server farms in the world, this is a big deal, and some Wikipedia pages are now showing a slashdot effect when you add new links to them. If you want to help make a difference, make sure you click on the "Donations" button on the sidebar and financially support the WMF as well. While donations have no impact directly on your ability to contribute, the WMF doesn't have much of a financial reserve to substantially expand the server farm at the moment. And every donation, even just a few dollars/euros/yen/rubles/or whatever will make a huge difference in the long run with getting better equipment.

In terms of money spend on actual project expenses instead of going to the pockets of the project managers and administration staff, the WMF is by far and away one of the better charities you can donate to as well. I would put it at close to 80%-90% of the money gets spent on things you use regularly such as project server expenses and equipment maintenance that directly improves project performance. If you want exact figures, I could get you official annual reports and public tax records that show detailed expenses, which I have read through in detail and confirmed these figures.

BTW, the server farm is in St. Petersburg, Florida, if that means anything to you in terms of network bandwidth. I'm not sure of the exact line they are connected to, but I think it is an OC10 or better trunk line to some major ISP routing nodes. You can get further details from the Wikitech-l mailing list if you are interested in the details. --Rob Horning 01:14, 28 June 2007 (UTC)