Testwiki:Staff lounge/Archive 32

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PDF Versions?

These textbooks are great, but suppose I wanted to print out a text book. It'd be nice if we had some type of functionality built into Wikibooks such that when you click "Get PDF Version", it would output the entire Wikibook into PDF form, complete with copyright pages, TOC, index and cover pages. This could be done using standard algorithms that just parsed the mark-up. Cool, eh?! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.229.113.106 (talk • contribs) .

This is something that perhaps ought to be put on a FAQ page instead. Yes, creating a PDF file directly from Wikisyntax would be a fun and interesting project. Unfortunately, like so many other things, what we do here is done with volunteer labor. And to do a whole Wikibook you would have to do markup for more than just one "module", but to do so for a whole range of modules, and there are other considerations as a PDF file is more or less a way to make a "printed" version as well. There are also legal requirements, such as including the GFDL that would have to be done as well, not to mention a way to scan all of the modules that are included and to try and list all of the authors who have contributed to that content.
Some of these issues havn't been completely decided yet either. Who is an author of a Wikibook? Certainly somebody who has been very active in content development and has dozens or hundreds of edits would count, but what about people who are good copy editors and have helped clean up grammar and spelling? How about blatant vandals who deliberately try to mangle and deface the pages? How do you identify which type of contributor has made an edit? It may seem obvious to you who are human and can tell the differences, but how do you automate that sort of decision making? It isn't as easy as you may think, and would be a very complicated computer algorithm, especially when dealing with all of the subtle exceptions.
The other aspect is merely the technical side of even converting HTML to a PDF format. You can do that simply enough, but the resulting document will frankly be something absolutely awful to look at and to read if you use the typical converter programs that are available at the moment. I've done some conversions myself from the Wikibook pages by using Open Office, but when I have imported the web pages, there is still considerable room for reformating that is necessary. And sometimes there are some elements that are specific to the on-line nature of this project that simply don't translate to a printed document easily, if at all. If you edit the imported HTML by hand, you can make these decisions easily enough, but trying to automate that decision making is not trivial.
Writing a very good Wikisyntax to PDF converter is certainly something that in the long term would be an excellent project to work on. It is also something that will take years and years of effort by very highly trained individuals who have the technical expertise necessary to get this task done and must be done by volunteer contributors. Do you have the skills and the time/money necessary to help out here? --Rob Horning 16:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Well... I agree it is a project that takes time! I'm working on a wiki to pdf converter based on latex to get a good presentation, but it is far from finished ( http://wikipdf.sourceforge.net/ ). In the meantime, you can use Magnus' online tool (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/wiki2xml/w2x.php ) to do the conversion (you can contribute to wikipdf too if you know python). CyrilB 21:03, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
It still looks like a poorly formated webpage that has been transformed in an automated process... at least most versions that I've seen of stuff like this. I am not commenting on this particular software here, but these are two very different formats, and they don't translate too easily from one to the other. I look at this similar to something like an automated machine language translation software: It works reasonably well to give a native speaker of the target language something to work with and clean up without having to know the original laguage of the content.. I certainly wouldn't want to rely upon the machine translation to give you the finished product.

With this regard, having a LaTEX converter would be a good first step to helping clean up the various pages when they are imported into PDF files, but I'm pointing out that at best it is going to some stuff that simply must be edited by hand. --Rob Horning 06:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Can I get unique articles of Computer Networking

Hi there,

I want to contact with the computer networking writers.

I am looking for help that how can I contact them directly?

Any help will be highly appreciated. Regards Bushra

— Answered at the Wikibooks:Study help desk — Iamunknown 17:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for a games policy

See Wikibooks:Game Books. This issue keeps resurfacing every few months, and we never seem to get anywhere on it. Included is a policy about Video Games and RPGs, which are banned on at least some of the other-language Wikibooks projects and have in practice been more or less banned here as well. --SB_Johnny | talk 16:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is a whole new guideline being proposed instead of working with Wikibooks:Game textbook guidelines? It is an approach to take, and perhaps from a certain perspective it may be useful to try to address the issue from a totally new direction, since the current approach has failed miserably.
I have specific objections to some aspects of this proposal, but I'll take that up on the appropriate talk page. If this proposal is accepted, I would like to push the original game textbook guidelines as a failed or rejected policy instead, and left as a historical footnote. --Rob Horning 20:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Honestly, I didn't even know about that policy. It's apples and oranges though... that policy seems to be more about quality standards, and the trend of late has been to be rather tolerant of stubs. the sentence "A useful question to ask is "Will my textbook be useful to non-gamers as well as gamers?". If you can say yes, then that is indicative that the textbook may be able to stay." captures a lot, however... I think books about the history, culture, and (perhaps) economics of gaming would be a wonderful addition. --SB_Johnny | talk 20:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
I think alot of people make the assumption that any book about videogames is against policy. This is not the case, we can have plenty of books about videogames (history of, how to make, critical understanding of themes, etc), just not how to play videogames. Similarly, we could have a book about the history and effects of pornography, but not a simple pornographic book. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Yet banning all video game books is precisely what is being proposed here, and what is being said on the Administrator's Noticeboard as well as what has been said on numerous VfD discussions (that it is already policy that there are no video game books allowed). --Rob Horning 08:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
I did not realize that change was being made. Under the current text of WB:AT, books about videogames are allowed in some circumstances:
it may be possible to annotate a motion picture, a video game, or a musical song/album. Such cases might be permitted under this policy if they are shown to be academic and well-written.
Anything being proposed against the fact has a very hard uphill battle ahead of it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:00, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Template on discussion page

On Wikipedia there is often a template on the discussion pages saying "# Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (Poppy 17:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)). # Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.". There is an example of it here: [[1]]. I was wondering if there is a similar template available for Wikibooks as I saw quite a few comments on the book I was editing with no signature. Poppy 17:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

A (northern) springtime update on Wikimedia projects

As the weather turns to the warmer in the Northern Hemisphere, I wanted to remind everyone of all the wiki-projects out there having to do with plants.

On Wikiversity, there are some budding projects, including the Bloom Clock and Plant Identification. The Bloom Clock is a "research project anyone can contribute to", where contributors can record any flowers they see blooming on any particular day and in any particular region, with the eventual goal of creating a database of bloom times that will be informative both about the plants themselves and the regions they grow in. The Plant Identification project is aimed at creating learning materials for students of horticulture, botany, and agriculture by creating quizzes that make use of the vast resource of photographs on Wikimedia Commons.

On Wikimedia Commons, there are always plants needing identification and new images needed. Check in at Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life to see what's going on there.

On Wikibooks, A Wikimanual of Gardening has been growing by leaps and bounds, thanks in no small part to the Import tool, used to copy articles from Wikipedia. There are hundreds of pages (many needing help).

Last but not least, the Plants Wikiproject on Wikipedia is always active, with plenty of friendly and knowledgeable participants who are happy to help you identify photographs or answer questions.

So, while you might not be able to bring Wikimedia to the woodland, meadow, or garden, there are plenty of ways you can use Wikimedia to learn and teach others about the flowering plants which are so welcome a sight after a long cold winter.--SB_Johnny | talk 18:24, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

History of Wikibooks

This is a general call for assistance on this project. I've been doing some general research into the very early history of this project... particularly trying to find out what motivated the creation of this project in the first place (would you believe a VfD?)

If there are any amature (or even professional!) historians who want to help me with trying to dig up the original documents and discussions which formed what is today Wikibooks, I would be very grateful for that assistance. Or help in the collaboration of actually writing this book. I don't believe it will be too large (we aren't even four years old yet), but it is something that I think has some general significance to many of the discussions that we have been having here lately.

Thanks in advance for those who might want to help participate with this project. --Rob Horning 09:30, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

A new user Template:User has contributed quite a large number of recipes yesterday. They all have links on to a website and are direct copies of the material on the website. If you look at my talk page (& the user's one) you will see that they appear to be connected with the website and assure me that they have permission to publish the material. I have directed them to Commons licensing to see how Wikimedia need the permission confirmed (OTRS presumably).

However the user has also been warned for placing links to the site on many Wikipedia pages (& was blocked for doing so, unblocked on the understanding that they stopped which they did). Therefore I see another issue of attempting to promote the website via Wikibooks and so, whether the content is licensed or not, the links and promotion of the website are unacceptable to me. I have said that I will seek a broader view (& not delete any pages that are currently copyvios and mostly marked) until this is resolved. Thanks --Herby talk thyme 10:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I added some comments of my own onto this user's web page that I hope explains the copyright situation in friendly terms, and reinforces your comments here as well, Herby. Ideally, this website should explicitly mention that the text (and possibly the video files too!) are available for redistribution under the terms of the GFDL. I don't know if they are prepared to go that far, as the website doesn't appear to take licensing too seriously. The terms of use are for the most part "non-commercial use only". Since Commons discourages (doesn't completely block) video files from being uploaded, having an external source for videos like this may be complimentary to Wikibooks, but asking them to change to the GFDL may be a bit much to ask. --Rob Horning 11:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I think that Robert highlights the only viable path for these recipe pages: either the company in question explicitly permits redistribution of their content under GFDL, or it's all in violation of their copyright. Let's see how the company now responds to your detailed message on Reever2's talk page.
On the separate but related subject of external links in these recipe pages, I think that if the copyright issue is resolved, the links should stay. External links should be allowed only if they are directly related to the the book/article/page/recipe and provide additional benefit to the reader, and in this instance, they do so by providing a video of the meal being prepared. Webaware talk 05:59, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I think as Robert said, there terms of use would have to change to GFDL. Alternatively the the terms of use could allow duel licensing in which GFDL is an acceptable alternative. From what I understand Wikimedia Foundation's position is that "non-commercial use only" is unacceptable. I believe the website to have an even more restrictive policy then that. In addition to obtaining a copy for "non-commercial use only", copying is restricted for "personal use only" and given only for the purpose of obtaining a local copy rather than for redistribution. Which are incompatible with the GFDL. I would say go ahead and delete. If the website later changes their policy to allow their content to be redistributed under the GFDL, than the contents can be readded/undeleted. --darklama 12:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
The licensing issue I agree with all said and it can be sorted. However for those it doubt on the intentions regarding the website I think folk should at least look here and at the contribution log etc, something like 100 links to the website in two days and no edits since they agreed not to place links --Herby talk thyme 12:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually, this is flat out copyvio since you can't duplicate or redistribute "any material on the VideoJug Site except as is strictly necessary for Your own personal non-commercial home use unless otherwise agreed in writing with VideoJug." We can't fairly demand that others comply to our copyrights if we don't comply with theirs. These are all speedy deletes unless VideoJug releases under a free licence. --SB_Johnny | talk 14:34, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
This user claims to be an employee of VideoJug, and it appears that all contributions from people external to that company must transfer copyright ownership to VideoJug before it can be seen on that website. I personally think they would be better off relicensing under the GFDL, but that is not my call to make here. I'll have to see if this individual is going to come back and give us the permission that is needed, as I indicated on his user page. We can decide (or the main contributors to the Cookbook can decide) if the external links are something that is reasonable. There is some added value to having links to a video on how to make the recipes, so I think there may be some merit to keeping the links... if we can get copyright permission in the first place. --Rob Horning 18:49, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure how most cases to verify this are handled. The most straight forward method of verification that I can think of, is simply a matter of the website indicating that the contents can be used under the terms of the GFDL. Isn't this something that the Wikimedia Foundation usually takes care of verifying? I think it would be risky for us to assume to be able to verify it independently. I would have to agree with SB_Johnny, that its an out right copyright violation and so must be speedily deleted. When and if, later it is verified than it can be readded or undeleted, but until then deleting it is required by policy. --darklama 21:28, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually, the Wikimedia Foundation does not have responsibility over the content of projects.... or so I'm told repeatedly, even though there are some very contradictory issues here. As the Template:Tl template is quite clear about, any formal permission to use the content must be on the talk page of each module that may have some question as to its copyright status. And no, we don't need to work through or with the Wikimedia Foundation on this issue. Certainly if there are any formally signed "copyright permission" letters that have been signed, that they could send them to the Wikimedia Foundation general counsel, but since Brad just resigned I don't know who that might be. I suppose sending such letters to the WMF office or to Anthere directly would work.... but they would only be agents acting on behalf of the Wikibooks community here. We could in theory even set up somebody else to receive these letters or establish other policies here.... although the WMF certainly would be easier to work with in this situation.
As far as verification of copyright... that is completely up to us as a community to decide how that is done and to do the actual verification of copyright status. While a copyvio is a speedy delete, we do have as written policy (again, see the copyvio template) that we will give the person who adds the content at least a week to try and demonstrate that they do have a license to use the content. That week certainly hasn't passed yet for these recipes. This particular individual who is adding this content seems very sincere to me and this is unusual enough that I would like to give him a chance to show he really does have permission to add this stuff. I don't think he has encountered people like us here on Wikibooks (and Wikipedia) that are as paranoid about copyright on a project that allows anybody to edit, and you have to admit that wiki cultures and communities do have their own unique philosophies on stuff like this if you havn't dealt with this kind of situation before. --Rob Horning 15:10, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

The person that does the contribution is responsible by the content he adds, if any challenge is given to that contributions by the community the contributor must provide or extend the info as info on the original works is by default required by the GFDL. I personally have done so in 2 distinct times because of the C++ Programming book, one involved a Java book, I moved the GFDL content to Wikibooks at the time to close the subject and another a challenge that even included a VfD, all challenges were drooped, this types of challenges is a way of the community to protect itself but it can still be based on a user intending to cause trouble or as expression of bad intention as such some care must be given on initiating such actions, even if the community can take preventive action, ultimately the original authors of the works are the only ones that can request a pull down on copyright violation charges and the contributor can probably have legal problems based on his actions. --Panic 15:37, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

(Tabs reset) I don't think anyone has deleted yet, have they? In any case, whether or not it's a Foundation issue or a WB issue isn't really the issue, unless we want to make a major change and accept things that aren't free. Our mission is to produce free textbooks, whether on Engineering, Physics, the Culinary Arts, or even Horticulture. While we obviously can't rely completely on PD/GFDL/CC sources (for example, I'd guess that a lot of the out-of-copyright cookbooks use an awful lot of lard, and some of the older garden books I've seen often mention Nicotine sulfate, Arsenic, and Cyanide as being wonderful pest controls), wholesale copying from websites that have clear copyright restrictions on how things are used is not at all a good idea. Speedy removal of such material is also quite important, since anyone who comes along later to improve copyvio material are essentially just wasting their efforts, since "derivative works" of copyrighted materials are still copyvios.

We want good, free content. There's plenty of good content around that's not free of course, but we are here to provide good, free content. No matter how good it is, if it's not free, then it's not good for us. --SB_Johnny | talk 15:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Worst still is if someone were to duplicate the copyvio content somewhere else under the belief its GFDL material. The website clearly states its copyright, so this isn't a question of whether or not its copyvio or not, so it should be deleted. My suggestions/comments are for what might be able to be done to allow it to be here in the future. I have no problems with people working to try to verify that it can be here, but since the webpage states its copyright, until its verified by whatever means, it needs to be deleted, to prevent copyright problems. Discussion on how to verify it and getting it verified should be done after the current problem of being a copyvio is taken care of --darklama 16:07, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
It has never been project policy to immediately delete content like this. We are supposed to mark it as a copyvio, and work with those who added the content to see if they really do have permission. I've done that and it is something currently being resolved. I actually think in this case (unlike most copyvios) that we may actually have the ability for a very large contribution to Wikibooks. Potentially we could even have a bunch of videos and other multimedia content added here as well. Please don't flame this individual or push him out, and certainly don't ruin this excellent opportunity to significantly expand and improve Wikibooks. This sort of flaming is very counter-productive to actually helping create content. --Rob Horning 16:17, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Who's flaming? (And who is being flamed?) And since when do we not delete copyvios? --SB_Johnny | talk 22:40, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I never said we do not delete copyvios. We just don't delete them immediately on sight. It is right there on the template, and that has been the defacto policy for Wikibooks since the template was created. And I will immediately undelete any such content which has not had a reasonable chance for the contributor to defend why they added it to Wikibooks. If the contributor doesn't respond (a very typical situation) and some time has passed, it will then be deleted. I just got through deleting a couple of images and other content from the copyvio cat earlier this week. There are legitimate reasons to delete copyvios. I just don't think this one needs to happen immediately. It will not damage the project if we let a copyvio (clearly makred as such) stick around for a month or two. The template suggests a minimum of one week. Is that a problem for you? --Rob Horning 06:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Robert, calm down. As far as I know, the pages haven't been deleted, but rather we've been discussing whether they should be "speedied". Speedy isn't very speedy around here anyway, and we've been using some other tags (Template:Tl for example) precisely in order to have some step between speedy delete and VfD. Blatant spam and nonsense creates are speedied on sight, but everyone (including Herby, Darklama, and myself) makes an effort to talk to the contributors before removing content (I even make it a point to notify the "fiction" contributors, so they can save the file locally or find another place for it).
Are all the pages marked with Template:Tl? If that's the case, then no problem... I doubt anyone will try to work further on the content until those issues are settled in any case.
We do need to be able to talk to a contributor who might not understand the licensing issues, and even stop them in their tracks if they don't respond (I don't know of that ever having been needed here on Wikibooks, but on Commons we do block people for repeatedly uploading proprietary/unsourced/etc. images without responding to queries (BTW, Herby and I are both Commons administrators, so we deal with this issue a lot more than most admins here), and in fact we even have terrible problems with sockpuppets doing this (particularly with porn)). It's not flaming, it's just an administrator's responsibility to clean up messes that are made, and prevent further messes.--SB_Johnny | talk 15:18, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I guess I'm not understanding why this part of the thread even came up, and why you said "Speedy removal of such material is also quite important, since anyone who comes along later to improve copyvio material are essentially just wasting their efforts, since 'derivative works' of copyrighted materials are still copyvios. " That this was clearly marked as copyvios is true, and even the context as to why we were deciding to keep this content was also quite clear at the beginning of this discussion. This is not some sort of pornography, and indeed it would be unbelievable that the content we are talking about here would ever be deleted except for the fact that we can clearly identify the original source of this material. This is not vandalism nor tasteless content being added to Wikibooks. And the contributor is very clear that he thinks he has copyright permission to add this content, even if we are questioning it. It is within that framework that I was talking about how we could verify that he is in fact authorized to add this content to Wikibooks. I am not trying to "make a major change and accept things that aren't free", but try to get what is here that we know about and make that free. It is these points I'm responding to, together with the comment that it is "Worst still is if someone were to duplicate the copyvio content somewhere else under the belief its GFDL material. The website clearly states its copyright, so this isn't a question of whether or not its copyvio or not, so it should be deleted." Since this is clearly marked as a copyvio, who is realistically going to modify this and use this elsewhere? The copyvio template sticks out like such a sore thumb that anybody copying content marked as such ought to be chastized, as the template clearly warns anybody that the GFDL is null and void for that content until the copyright status can be resolved...including by deletion as one form of resolution. And while "We do need to be able to talk to a contributor who might not understand the licensing issues, and even stop them in their tracks if they don't respond", this particular individual has responded frequently to the requests of two totally different users, myself and Herby. What we are trying to cover is where to go from here when they think they have copyright permission, which is a totally different situation. That this is a weekend and he is a full-time employee working a normal 9-5 job monday through friday and hasn't responded since he went home for the weekend shouldn't be a reason to complain that he hasn't responded yet. He is actually being very timely on his responses, to be honest. --Rob Horning 15:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Well yeah, sure! But this conversation isn't on his/her talk page (where some are talking specifics and working to see what can be done), this is on the Staff lounge (where we've drifted into a more general conversation). Conversation is good. Accusing people of flaming (when they're not) is bad. What you seemed to by saying above (or below, or somewhere) is that we shouldn't insist on the material being free, and perhaps even consider it free regardless of what the site owners say because their contributors might have really intended to make it free, but didn't understand that website owner's copyright. That's just unacceptable to me. --SB_Johnny | talk 15:54, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
Where did I insist "that we shouldn't insist on the material being free, and perhaps even consider it free regardless of what the site owners" said? I said nothing of that nature at all. I just said we didn't need to delete it immediately. The DMCA, which is the U.S. law (and directly affect Wikibooks because the server is in the USA) that governs this sort of stuff, only requires a removal of the content within 90 days after we have been formally notified by a take-down notice. In this case, a notice of that nature wasn't even given at all, but instead we have gone well above and beyond what is required in normal copyright law for websites and have taken active steps to determine copyright status of this content. We need to insist on the content remaining free, but we also need to assume good faith on new contributors. Last time I checked, one week was substantially less than 90 days. I don't know of any copyvio markup that has ever lasted more than 90 days in the copyright infringement cat. There is no need to hurry on these matters and get them resolved in just a couple of days. --Rob Horning 19:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't think the dispute here is if it is free content. I just have my reservations that this particular individual {User:Reever2) has the authority to relicense this content under the terms of the GFDL. And I've tried to make it very clear that we need to have this formal permission. He is just confused about the whole license thing, as the VideoJug website (and other similar websites, I might add) insist on a full copyright transfer to them when you submit stuff to them. This is such a common practice in the entertainment industry that this whole idea of keeping copyright but only granting a license is very strange when coming from that sort of content culture. For example, if you submit a story idea to a popular TV show you like.... the idea becomes property of the producers of that show, or they won't even look at it.
I am just suggesting a bit of patience here in allowing all of this to soak into the mind of this particular contributor, so he can genuinely understand what it is that we are doing here. And I'm trying to assume good faith in this particular individual, and I'm not trying to change any sort of project policy here at all. We can't have copyright violations, but we can seek to get copyright permission (in the form of a license under the terms of the GFDL), and that has been project policy from day one here on Wikibooks.
Please, let's not flame this issue to be anything more than it is.... somebody trying to add content here that doesn't understand the issues of licensing and the GFDL. --Rob Horning 16:12, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
Agree, If no authorization is claimed and seems that the user has indeed violated the copyright of the work a copyvio tag should be placed on it and an attempt made to contact the website after some time or if no authorization is recognized the book (not only the page) should be reverted to a date previous to the insertion of the material or placed all for VfD. But we have to go by the process... --Panic 16:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I have clarified my status with an e-mail from my Videojug account to Robert Horning stating that i do work for the Videojug website. Thanks for your responses and I have been reading the discussion on the staff pages since Friday. You are correct- I do work a Monday to Friday job and this is the first time I have had to respond to this particular message and thread. For arguments sake, I am happy for the pages to be deleted until our organisation have made a decision on the 'copyright material', which unfortunately due to a hectic schedule (launch in the US), this is to be put on hold for a couple of days. Once a decision has been made at the Videojug office, I will notify you or another Wikibook contributor to ensure that it can be re-added to the your pages under GFDL copyright. I didn't fully understand the copyright law on Wikibooks, and therefore have caused an untimely argument between the administrators and i'm sorry for that. In view of some of the comments "The user added 100 external links to the website, and then didn't add any more"- basically as I was adding my website's content on Wikipedia I had to provide a referenced source for the material, and therefore when I was told off for spamming, I couldn't add the material without the referenced source i.e. had no content really to provide so didn't add further. So just to clarify, I am happy for the content to be removed from the Wikibooks website until further notification from my company- however the information provided from a Wikipedia administrator I am still a little annoyed over as he has wasted about 2-3 hours of my time by stating that I could add material to the Wikibook's website. Thanks for your responses and I hope that I can be of assistance to your website in the near future

Moving on policies

I am bringing up a comment here from User:Withinfocus that was made on Wikibooks talk:Administrators#Trolling. I would add that I can understand the frustration here about trying to get policies written and changed here. On Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks/Unstable, there has been an attempt to try and get a vote going for approval twice, but both times seemed to have failed due to some ongoing discussion about some of the fine points of policy and continuing changes.

In addition, the voting on these policies tends to be rather diffuse and sometimes hard to even find out if there is a vote going on at all. I'm not claiming to have any special magic here, but I would like to point out a page that I worked on (User:Garrett started it) that may help out: Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote

The point here is if we are moving to try and formally ratify some of these policies, that perhaps the voting on them ought to be separated from the discussion about the policy, and that once the decision is made to attempt ratification of the policy, it ought to be "frozen" until it is accepted or rejected.

This also gives the additional ability for users to monitor if new policies are in the works, and if there is any current voting taking place on policies. This isn't really a new thing, as several policies have already been adopted using this system. Unfortunately, it hasn't been used since the deletion policy was passed. I hope this is only because others may not even be aware of its existance. It also provides a central clearing house for what policies are being actively developed.

Certainly we need to get moving on several of these policies, and there is mostly concensus in many of these cases to ratify what is curently written proposed policy. When this voting page was used, we were able to move quickly on several policies that had some long-term consequences to Wikibooks, and do so with few disgruntled feelings either. This is the page where the Deletion policy was decided, and it should be noted that substantial community participation did occur here. I hope that something like this may unblock the current logjam that we have to getting any policy passed. --Rob Horning 19:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a fantastic help Robert! I am constantly aware of many different proposed policies but usually have no idea how to find them or where to vote. It would be easier if policies were just written and people votes in support or against. If they have any changes to suggest to the policy then they should vote 'against' and write their own version of the policy. Xania talk 21:35, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, ok now I'm confused. According to that link there are no current votes on policy. This may explain why people aren't voting on proposed changes to policy - because we have no idea where to look and some policies have a template linking to 'an unstable branch' whatever that means. It's no wonder that people aren't voting as it's impossible to find current votes and the votes are full of lengthy comments rather than simple 'support' or 'oppose' votes. Xania talk 21:48, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree, I think that most people check the staff lounge or the bulletin board nowadays (even with all the redesign), but there is no standard way to place an announcement, any proposal should be stated clearly and publicly. Another problem is on rehashing discussions, for instance discussion is initiated on a policy and posted on the staff lounge, after discussion on the policy tries the policy suffers huge changes or is proposed to be made a guideline or vice-versa or just is polled again and in some cases no announcement is even placed, another problem is people sometime can't or are unable to access Wikibooks a good way to be informed of this types of events would be the mailing list. --Panic 23:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Why not a simple update to Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines and turn it into a guideline policy (making sure no overlap exists with WB:DM), and start using all the already existing infrastructure Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Proposed reform to state new proposals and status changes and Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote etc... --Panic 23:21, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I decided to follown the link and read about 'What is Wikibooks "unstable"' yet discovered that the talk page was much much bigger than the actual proposal being discussed. I had no idea what the hell made the proposal any different from the current policy - surely that should be emphasised. Why can't people just vote on the policy and be done with? There appear to presently be only about 7 or 8 people actually involved in policy discussions (well done for having such patience guys) and it's crucial that more Wikibookians can find out what's happening. Xania talk 12:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I noticed the same problem, Xania. A few weeks ago I started working on a list of policies and their various states in table form in my sandbox. My thought is that we should create a page Wikibooks:Policy votes and put everything that is currently marked as proposed up there and see what happens. There would probably be consensus to adopt one or two, consensus to reject 3 or 4 and the rest would have some kind of dispute to be ironed out. But that would at least get the process rolling and provide an effective overview of the state of these proposals. As a matter of fact, I'll probably just Be bold and do it this weekend. --xixtas talk 13:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I changed your proposed page into a redirect link to the above voting page. I'll also have to create a shortcut of WB:PV that may make it easier to do this as well. I did some further cleanup of the policy voting page to list a couple of policies I know that are under development, and I think perhaps this page ought to be put into the sidebar as well. It is certainly general enough that it also has an impact upon people who are participating on this project.
As far as what the difference on WB:WIW between the current and unstable versions, the wording of the two versions is incredibly different and does represent the largest change to this policy that I have ever seen ether here on Wikibooks or for that matter on any Wikimedia project that I have ever seen for a similar kind of policy. On a substantive level, however, there really isn't that much change, which was one of the points of the rewrite. Much of the discussion is about what was left out of the newer policy compared to the older policy that was substantive and may still be needed (my arguments were primarily along this line of thought), and how to clean up wording to emphasize some aspects of Wikibooks (such as an increased focus on textbook development) and reduce the emphasis on "What Wikibooks is Not". Since this is the "foundation" policy that was established at the very beginning of Wikibooks and is essentially the most influential policy document for this whole project, it is a very big deal that this is both being worked on and that many of those who have worked on it seem to feel that it is nearly done with the current round of revisions. It is a compromise of wording from many people, and not everybody (including myself) is completely happy with the way it has turned out, but as a fundimental charter to Wikibooks I think it will be an outstanding policy. By all means if anybody else is reading this wants to get involved with helping to draft this policy, I hope they come to Wikibooks talk:What is Wikibooks/Unstable and join in the discussion. --Rob Horning 14:52, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedia licensing policy resolution

Many people will remember my last post on the subject of copyrights in reference to an essay posted by Kat. At the time we generally adopted a "wait and see" stance, to see what the wikimedia foundation's official stance on the issue would be.

Well, the wikimedia foundation has finally posted an official resolution on the matter: HERE it is.

Under the terms of this resolution, all uploaded material must be under a free license except for a small number of exceptions. Our project gets to author an "exemption doctrine policy" (EDP) for material that is allowed to be uploaded here that is not under a free license (fair use). Here are some of the limitations:

  1. "EDPs must be minimal". Important historical items, logos, and information about contempory copyrighted material. This means that screenshots of copyrighted software is allowed.
  2. Media uploaded under the terms of the EDP must be deleted if a free alternative is provided, or if there is a reasonable expectation that a free alternative could be provided.
  3. Media uploaded under the EDP must be deleted if the rationale of the exception is not properly expressed. A simple tag on an image of "this is fair use" might very well not be appropriate rationale.

Also, since we do not currently have an official EDP (the fair use policy has never been made "official", despite wide-spread ad-hoc adoption) we are subject to section 6 of the resolution, which I will post in it's entirety here:

6. For the projects which currently do not have an EDP in place, the following action shall be taken:
  • As of March 23, 2007, any newly uploaded files under an unacceptable license shall be deleted.
  • The Foundation resolves to assist all project communities who wish to develop an EDP with their process of developing it.
  • By March 23, 2008, all existing files under an unacceptable license as per the above must either be accepted under an EDP, or shall be deleted.

By this, basically, any new media that is uploaded here that is not under a free license must be deleted until we officially adopt our Wikibooks:Fair use policy. This means that any image uploaded under a fair use tag needs to be removed. Also, any existing files that we have here must be covered by our EDP, or they must be deleted also. Even after we adopt the fair use policy, we need to insist that all future fair-use media must have an appropriate "exemption rationale" or they must be deleted.

Everybody should read this resolution, and I think we need to get to work ASAP on our fair use policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:23, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

You have so throughally misinterpreted what has been said here by the Wikimedia Foundation that I don't know where to begin. We do not need to immediately delete fair use images off of this project, or to really change anything we have been doing on this project for the past year or more. Yes, we need to be careful about what gets uploaded, and we do need to watch and make sure that all images are tagged for copyright license status clearly. And the WMF board has also said that if we do come up with a formal policy (like WB:FUP) that they have the "right" to come in and modify this policy.
But do not use this as a call to arms for deletionists to come in here and start culling even more content here on Wikibooks. This is not the intention of this policy. Trust me that the last word on this policy has not been said, and that when the full implications of this policy are realized (including your suggestion that it implies removal of all current fair use content) that it will be tweaked even more.
That we should move on trying to decide what would go into a fair use policy is true, and we should use this as an opportunity to review fair use on this project. But we don't need to start making huge changes and waves here that is substantially different than what we have been doing in the past.
We can allow fair use on this project, and keep in mind that the reason I started the current fair use policy was to limit fair use on this project, not to expand permitted content. All the WMF is trying to say here is that we need to take this issue seriously, and that for those projects who havn't even given this topic this level of consideration (en.wikibooks was not the target of this policy discussion... but even held out as a good example of a project that was trying to resolve this issue) that perhaps it was time that something of this nature become a part of the conversation of that project.
I have no idea why there is this very arbitrary deadline that was given, but it seems as though this was something in particular that was not thought through. Let us try to decide as a project what direction we would like to go, and to fit within the guidelines of what is considered an acceptable content license policy for the foundation. I think the current WB:FUP is certainly within those guidelines, although I would have to say that what the WMF is asking here goes beyond even the scope of this policy and addresses all licenses. There are content licenses that are not fair use which we need to look at as well. --Rob Horning 13:49, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi I am new to Wikibooks, and am learning the tricks and ways in navigating through. I have been reading the help and other introductory materials; curiously I haven't yet found out an answer to some basic questions I had in mind.

  • Q: Is there an efficient way to navigate through the chapters of a book? It seems a little bit round about if I go back to the contents and then find and click the next logical chapter.
  • Q: Is there some way to have some sort of a bookmarking system, so that I can easily resume reading from the last section I was reading on a book?

Thanks in advance. --Hirak 99 07:20, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I would like to welcome you to Wikibooks, and thank you for coming here. I hope that you can not only enjoy the content which we have written, but that you would be willing to help us out with some of these issues you have raised here as well.
As for navigation through chapters of a book, there have been some efforts along those lines for some of our Wikibooks to provide navigation links between each chapter. Unfortunately, that needs to be added manually and is not a universal practice here on Wikibooks. This is one area that your assistance in helping to grow Wikibooks would be very much appreciated. If you would like some further help on how to add some navigation templates to your favorite Wikibooks, I and many others would be very happy to give you some specific details on how to accomplish this task.
In terms of bookmarking a page, I would suggest at this time to use your web browser to mark where you are at in terms of reading a Wikibook. Still, this is an interesting idea that perhaps could be developed even more and added to the MediaWiki software that is running our website here. I don't think any real consideration has gone into what a bookmarking system might be like.
One alternative you may consider is to click on the "watch" button at the top each page. While this isn't the intended use for this tool, you can build up a list of your "favorite" pages of Wikibooks and have them available to go back to if you want to remember where you were at. And you can delete pages from this "watchlist" just as easily as you can add them. Doing this doesn't affect any other user.
Good luck, and if you have any other positive suggestions for Wikibooks, we would be glad to listen to them. --Rob Horning 14:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Data collections

The question has come up on two current Wikipedia AfD discussions, of the proper place for collections of standard data. In one case, the matter under discussion is a summary of part of the LC classification [Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Library_of_Congress_Classification:Class_B]. In the other, it is a portion of an astronomical ephemerides [2] . Wikisource is apparently not the place, they are clearly oriented around text. Is Wikibooks suitable. (note that in either case these are not research-level or professional-level data -- a professional would use a much more detailed source. Rather, they are convenient summary tables, to use in connection with more general work. It has also been suggested that we need a new Wiki Project for such information. DGGB 01:08, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It has been the general historical position around here that lists of data are not acceptable for wikibooks. Typically a wikibook should have some sort of instruction or narrative. Tables of astronomical data from wikipedia were moved here in the past, and they were all deleted. Some tables have been integrated into related books, however. Tables of Unicode characters, for instance, were integrated into related programming books as appendices. Such an occurance is typically more the exception then the rule, however. Unfortunately, this data probably just needs to be deleted. I would be willing (or any number of other wikibookians, i'm sure) to address this issue directly on wikipedia, as the question of what precisely belongs here is often called into question. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Robot help needed

I have a huge task ahead of me that would best be performed by a robot. I was working on the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Birds chapter in the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book, when I realized that I had made a pretty good start on a field guide for birds. I decided that it might be better just to move my work out from under the AYHAB pages and into a field guide in its own right. But when I tried, I found that Field Guide/Birds already exists. Luckily, all the work I did pretty much applies to eastern North America, and that chapter in the Field Guide was a red link - so I ended up moving the field-guidy part of my book to Field Guide/Birds - Eastern US and Canada.

However, each bird detailed there is on its own page, still under the AYHAB hierarchy. It needs to be moved under the Field Guide/Birds Hierarchy instead. I do think that each bird should be under "Field Guide/Birds/Bird Name" rather than "Field Guide/Bird Name" though, because some species of animal and plant share a binomial name. Therefore, I don't find it difficult to believe that they could also share a common name as well. I suppose one could argue we should deal with those rare instances as they occur and disambiguate parenthetically.

Does anyone have a robot they could arm to move these pages for me?

I will probably do something similar to the Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Edible Wild Plants chapter too, so please stay tuned, and I'm sure there are a few other similar chapters in there too. -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 02:45, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you know perl? I've got a bot that could do something like this, so long as we specified a complete list of page source and destination locations. Also, my bot has a strong regular expression engine, so I should be able to convert over any links and templates. Let me know what kinds of things you want, such as inter-page navigation links or navigation templates, page categorization, etc, and I will start writing up a script to do it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I am not comfortable enough with Perl to risk it (it's a write-only language, no?)
Basically, all the pages with a prefix of "Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Nature/Birds/" (including that trailing slash) need to have their prefix changed to "Field Guide/Birds/." They should also be added to Category:Field Guide, and Category:Birds. I guess. All of these pages are transcluded in Field Guide/Birds - Eastern US and Canada, so I don't see a need for navigational aids. Many of them will eventually be transcluded in Field Guide/Birds - Western US and Canada as well, and perhaps in others. That complicates navigational aids, so I say leave 'em off. -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 03:10, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd recommend actualy just splitting into "Field Guide to Birds/Bird Name" rather than going the sub-subpage route... it's an awful lot easier to interlink chapters that way (two birds won't share the same binomial). I ran into the same thing in the garden book (a genus of moths having the same name as a genus of plants), but there I'm just going to do a parenthetical title ("Pieris (insects)"). There's a guy on meta who has a bot designed for this, but you'd need to come up with a list for the bot to work on in any case (and by the time you made the list, you could have been 1/2 way through the pagemoves). --SB_Johnny | talk 11:31, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Where is the old Help Cheat on wiki syntax?

I used to rely on a page for wiki syntax that seems to be gone now. It was a single page that had tables where one side showed the sytax and the other side showed what it looked like. Is it still around? Harriska2 14:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps your referring to the table at Help:Editing#Wiki_markup? --darklama 14:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

embed java applets?

Is it possible to embed java applets in wikibooks? Thanks in advance.--PegasusRoe 14:35, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Book stub

hi, i would like to create a book specific stub, i found where the existing stubs are listed but could not find info on how to create one. i am working on the animal behavior book and any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks, —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robert Huber (talk • contribs) .

I think you mean you want a book-specific stub template. Create Template:Behavior stub, for example, then fill it with the text you want to show up. Then to use it, you'd type {{behavior stub}}. Change the name to suit your needs. Kellen T 14:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

State of Wikipedia

I want to draw some attention to a recent essay written on wikipedia concerning the state of that project: w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia is failing. This essay shows some problems with wikipedia, some of which I will enumerate here:

  • A lack of good articles on "vital topics".
  • Good articles tend to degrade over time, as a result of vandalism, and poor-quality (but good faith) edits that aren't patrolled.
  • The vast majority of all articles (over 99%) are low-quality.

This raises some questions about our work here on wikibooks. We also are criticized for our lack of books on "core topics", and several books in the page Wikibooks:Featured books are too poor to really appear on that page. These are things that we really need to be thinking about, because they are issues that could become bigger problems for us in the future. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Many of my postings have been on trying to get an emphasis on quality (well before the "almost ready" book status), much of my frustration is about the lack of action, a part of the weakness is the lack of workers (I've still kept an eye on RC but - effectively - there have been no "welcome" templates handed out to newbies since I stopped & apologies to the ones who have but there are not many). Look at the naming of some "offerings" for example - however I am one person and less of that than I was! Apologies for the negativity but each time there is a new initiative (holiday cleaning, RFC, Cleanup, Active Wikibookians, Gazette etc etc) things start or sometimes seem to.................--Herby talk thyme 15:55, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I can understand your frustration! I've been dealing with the indecisiveness of this community for 2 years now, and it never gets any better. A big problem that I see is that there is alot of work that needs to get done, but there is no plan to do it. And worse then not having a plan is having a whole community that refuses to agree on a plan. People generally would rather have no solutions at all then to have a solution that isn't 100% agreeable. I think what people really need to realize is that much of the time they aren't going to agree with things that happen around this project, but that doesnt mean that things should stop happening. Sometimes the best thing for a person to do is simply stop arguing for the greater good. Once we start getting a plan together that people can all follow (whether they agree 100% or not), it will go a long way to improving Wikibooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:22, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
It sure as hell doesn't help but I so agree with you. In the real world people know things have to changed (or indeed they are left with no choice) and they get on with it. Here there seems to be a virtue in not moving forward (& of course standing still is not possible). (how many postings before this one dies, certainly the odds are against anything actually happening <g> --Herby talk thyme 17:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, in any collaboration people will have to make compromises in order to move forward, the thing is that a lot of people seem to only be interested in moving forward on their own terms on this project since there is no real "deadline" for things to get done, unlike in many "real-world" collaborations, so people figure the most patient\stubborn will have their own way. It may be something inherent in how the wikimedia system works, since no one has the power to cause change unless they claim it, and if someone does claim that power there'll always be opposition. The solution I'd suggest is to decide what needs to be addressed first, and then we can address it and look for a majority decision (there is a reason government is not run by the consensus of its people, and I do not personally feel that it is feasible to go based on having unanimous decisions), and go based on that. Maybe we can use the main page as a place from which we can inform people of what is happening? If we put it in a prominent place we cannot say people are unaware of the decision, and therefore if people do not vote we can only go on what votes we have. As a side note, with regards to the RC, I admit that I haven't been welcoming people, I thought that was your niche in the project ;). But yeah, if I see a red talk page for a registered user I could do that. Regards. Mattb112885 17:36, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
  • —reset

IMHO, whilst this project has many and varied needs, there are two specific ones that stick out a mile and that Whiteknight alludes to:

  • We need a lot more contributors, especially ones that have time and inclination to do some of the donkey work (i.e. not focus on a specific book)
  • We need better organisation

Getting better organisation is the hard bit, as it requires some agreement from people, and some policies (which I believe some, like Whitenight, have been working on). There truly is an enormous amount of work to be done here, but it needs to be done through coordinated effort. The Wikiprojects mentioned a while back are a prime example of the sort of coordinated effort needed here. Good contributors need to be enticed to join projects so that there is a chance of getting things done. Some of the projects that I perceive, outside the obvious book-specific projects, are:

  • Policy - a coordinated effort to hammer out Policies and Guidelines, and get them agreed upon (Whitenight has been doing a lot of that already, I believe).
  • Help pages - the help system here isn't up to scratch, and needs a lot of work.
  • Images - there is still a licensing problem with some images (and other media), plus now a lot of good images have been erroneously deleted and pages vandalised in the process; needs a coordinated effort, with a set of guidelines this time.
  • Quality patrol - I believe that WB would greatly benefit from a coordinated effort to address book quality, operating under a strong set of guidelines and addressing a book or bookshelf at a time.

However, even if it could be agreed that the above Wikiprojects were needed, there remains the problem of contributors. We need more! Those that are here now are generally here for a purpose - the book(s) they are working on - so we need more contributors if we want to address any of the above points. Maybe we need to advertise on the Wikipedia:Community Portal or something - I don't know - but we need more contributors (and we need guidelines for them to follow, and we need contributors to write the guidelines...)

(sigh) My AUD0.02 is running out now, and I don't have another to put in the slot. Webaware talk 22:49, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

"Better organization" is certainly a need here, but it's so poorly defined. We do have the bookshelves, and to some degree that is a very good start. There have been other efforts to organize and categorize books, such as the Card Catalogue Office, the infobox project, the dewey-decimal categorization, the alphabetical list of wikibooks, etc. The list at Wikibooks:Requested books is essentially useless, because that list isn't well maintained, and the books listed there don't get started. The list at Wikibooks:Featured books is similarly unmaintained, with a number of books on that list being in poor condition, and a number of good books not being listed. Mass-categorization was a strong effort at organization spearheaded by User:Jguk, but with his decline in activity, that project has fallen by the wayside.
The issue about getting new contributors is one that is echoed frequently, but that there aren't any good ways to fix. We could advertise on wikipedia, but that is likely to be scorned or even deleted outright. I think there are some places where we could advertise, like websites for educators or websites for textbooks or whatever, but that's likely to create a problem in itself. Unfortunately, I dont think that getting new contributors is going to be particularly easy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:52, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Um, I meant organised effort. There are some groups of people who have spontaneously organised themselves around specific books being edited, and it seems that some educators have organised their students into editing a book here and there, but there is no concept of the Wikiproject here as there is on WP; this is what I meant, essentially.
Categorisation is something I haven't looked at here (mostly because it seems that someone is or has been looking at that), but it sounds like a candidate for a Wikiproject.
In terms of attracting new contributors, perhaps we need to think about what brings people to WB in the first place. I came here because I had a need to post some recipes somewhere, and the Cookbook looked like a good place for it, but what specifically brought me to WB was a link to the Cookbook from a WP page. Since then, I've had a need to record centrally some software documentation and notes, so I've started a book here, but would never have conceived of doing that before I stumbled into the Cookbook.
Maybe we should look at promoting WB though sister links in other Wiki projects, particularly WP. Links do get followed. What is then needed is a slick Main page that encourages people to become contributors :-) Webaware talk 01:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh, organized effort is good too (sorry for the misunderstanding). The wikiproject idea is one that I have been trying to promote, but there have been some notable criticisms of them have have slowed me down. The wikiproject system is a really good one to manage large groups of editors, which we dont have yet. If we have the system in place though, we will be in good shape to support more editors when we start growing. Of course, this brings us back to the need to have more contributors, which is likely our most pressing problem. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Agreed! Webaware talk 03:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

I agree with most of the above and so OK - I must be mad. Below this there is a proposal.

Do not discuss it, do not wonder if the tag would look better in a pretty colour, do not say that it is not your book, under no circumstances refer to policy and a discussion.

Maintenance tags are necessary - they do not enhance the image of Wikibooks. If you want to make Wikibooks better let's deal with some of these (you may find it hard to get to the category as it is buried in dust - in the one I am pointing to some birthday celebrations are due).

Proposal

Everyone reading this goes to Category:Naming convention change. They take one book and they correct the naming of it (including the redlinks) and remove the tag. If you do not know what to do ask. When this is done we deal with something else. This is a community wide issue and requires community wide action. Do it - bad karma will follow you for an hour if you don't! I'm off to do the first on the list now. --Herby talk thyme 11:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Ah well - first red herring of the season and only took 5 hours. Still it was good while it lasted - sincere thanks to those who just got on with it. --Herby talk thyme 16:19, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
One of the meta people actually has a very efficient bot for this sort of thing (he used it a couple months ago to move things from "talk_transwiki" to "transwiki_talk"). Maybe just make a request for this? --SB_Johnny | talk 16:54, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I was was swamped yesterday because of the weather, but this is a great idea and i definately have time to fix a book tomorrow. Maybe that's what we need to do, have either a "small project of the day", or similar for a week. We can pick things that require less then 30min of work, and ask each person to just do one (fix one bad naming convention, tag 10 images, dewikify 1 page, etc) task from the list. This requires, of course, people to compile such a list of tasks. If there was a finite list of things to do, I would likely be motivated to do them more often. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I also agree this is a good idea, I know I tagged one book for NC, I'll see if I can fix that one up tonight (right now I'm in the middle of stuff, just passing by, but tonight I'll have some time). Some of the NCs are extensively cross-linked which makes things more interesting/difficult, but just gotta go back and fix the crosslinks/double redirects after its all moved, and work from the outside in on branched books. Mattb112885 19:37, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks should do it a book at a time

The most important objective in Wikibooks is Wikibooks:Wikipublish. Each set of authors should try to get their books into a state suitable for a fixed edition. RobinH 16:13, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

This fails to address the vast majority of books that have no "current author" and bring down Wikibooks as a whole IMO --Herby talk thyme 16:22, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The trouble with a Wikipedia approach to Wikibooks is that a book is so much bigger than a Wikipedia article. Two hundred pages in a book are the equivalent of two hundred Wikipedia articles and about 400 Wikipedia editors. We are never going to get 400 editors per book on Wikibooks. Wikibooks needs a few individuals with wide expertise and drive or whole classes of students doing a project and these people have to see the book through to the bitter end. The books that are left open ended with a few outline chapters tend to stay that way. So Wikibooks is not Wikipedia, not even vaguely. I favour putting the skeleton books into a closet so that if a motivated author or group arrives they can resurrect a given book if they desire.RobinH 19:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
OK now we have some common ground I favour putting the skeleton books into a closet so that if a motivated author or group arrives they can resurrect a given book if they desire works for me. From either end
  1. Good books for editorial review
  2. Middle ground still be worked on currently
  3. Hum - I'm sure we will come up with a word for it but it is a category that should be "parked" and not in full public view (my view would be to reverse the order btw!)
I'll go think --Herby talk thyme 20:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Scrapbooks! :P --SB_Johnny | talk 20:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I would go further and only put the best books on the main page. The middle ground and SBJ's scrapbooks would be accessed via the bookshelves (see discussion of Main Page below). Also see Wikibooks:Nearly_complete. RobinH 14:50, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
It will be easier to write good books, if the authors have examples of other good books to emulate. Even though it is certainly possible for an author to not follow an example and still make a good book, it is more likely that regular authors will repeat what they see. It should be the goal of every book to be used in a classroom somewhere, and that requires publishing and distribution. Many books do have no current author. Perhaps we should start an "Adopt a book" initiative as a way to find authors, and possibly draw new contributors to wikibooks. The books that we advertise in this way should be salvagable, not completely useless. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, if a few books are set as examples to work from, and used as 'quality templates' then a large number of the books here at wikibooks could be raised to such standards. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 19:50, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I also agree, which is why perhaps everyone should get onto the good books wikiproject and nominate one book soon, so that we have a good list to work from from which we can choose some to display on the main page. This may be more encouraging to potential contributors than seeing stubs on the main page, since they'll tend to think "oh my, if there is nothing here there's too much work to be done and no one is here to do it, I better not get involved" or something like that, I know I thought that when I first came here. I was also somewhat shocked that it wasn't formatted the same as wikipedia (though I got over that more quickly). Whereas if potential contributors see a good, solid start in the good books we have so far, they may be more willing to build on the groundwork we already have.
As for the adopt-a-book project, I think its a good idea, problem being that since we have a limited number of contributors, a large number of books would have to be left alone since no one here would know enough about the topic to write a book on it. I mean, we could adopt books and then just add as much as we could to them. I think, however, that whiteknight is right: It would give new contributors something to concrete to work on and therefore make them more likely to contribute. It's like all the old writing prompts from middle school, the hardest ones were the completely open-ended assignments, give them something more specific and they'll be more comfortable starting off.
One final point, if we DO end up going the route of having a stable and unstable version, the main page should point to the stable version, since for example we wouldn't want a new contributor coming into a book full of vandalism or that's currently in transition or something, and thinking "why is this one of the best books on Wikibooks?". This is another argument for use of stable versions and I think they're an excellent idea, though I can't remember what the arguments against them were. Mattb112885 16:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Listing problems by time to correct

I think one of the most helpful things that we can do is to list problems in terms of how much time it will take to correct. For instance, we can say:

  • Fix Naming Convention: 10 minutes
  • Create Inter-page Navigation: 30 minutes
  • Categorize book and all pages: 20 minutes

We can break this down into categories, and people can go to "Category:10 Minute Problems" or "Category:30 minute problems". There are plenty of times in my day when I have 10 or 20 minutes, and I dont want to start anything "big", but I do want to help out. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:04, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Here's another couple (some of these were your suggestions):
  • Dewikify a page: 10 minutes
  • Add verification to an unverified page: 30 minutes
  • Write a module with a red link/fix a stub: 1+ hours (depending on how detailed you want to get and how much you know about the topic)
  • Check the user creation log and welcome newest contributing users: 10 minutes
  • Make a print version for one book: 30 minutes
  • Fix 30 double-redirects (if any exist of course): 10 minutes
  • Rewrite one help module so that it makes sense, and mark it as such: 1+ hour (note that I DO think we should mark the useful vs. non-useful help pages, if not just for the sake of knowing which ones still need the most work and also for people to know what is still a work in progress)
Feel free to add anything else you want. From where would we link these categories so that people see them? "module cleanup"? Staff lounge (top)? Main page? (probably not if we're looking to get substantial contributors) Mattb112885 00:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd suggest that Fix naming convention would be at least 5 minutes per page, if done correctly. Bear in mind that one needs to:
  • Check to see what links to the page
  • Check to see whether the page / book will be merged into something else (at which point the page move effort should end!)
  • Move the page, including the talk page (just a checkbox on the page move request)
  • Fix links in other pages, so that they point to the moved page
  • Fix any links that may be referencing other pages in the book, also to be moved
  • tag for delete any unlinked redirects to the page, unless it is the root page of the book (bearing in mind that external websites, including Wikipedia, may link to the old book name)
  • tag for delete any unlinked redirects to the talk page, if it exists
  • Fix any red links for pages in the book, so that they point to (non-existent) pages that comply with the naming conventions also
So, at least 5 minutes per page, bare minimum. With a complex book, that can mean a good couple of hours with cross-checking of interlinked books. Anything less is asking for another "image cleanup" debacle :-) Webaware talk 01:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

All printable versions

Where can i find printable and pdf versions of all books and i am want to convert some books to printable versions,how can i do it?

Vinay h 19:47, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Go to Wikibooks:PDF Versions

(Open Office is probably the best way to make a PDF nowdays.) RobinH 21:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about that, i personally use something called PRIMO PDF, it's nice because you can make anything you can print into a pds, because all you do is select print and select Primo PDF for the printer and it has a dialog that allows you to setup the pds and where to save it then click ok and you got a PDF. So i can use word or whatever app i want/need to.RyanB88 21:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, CutePDF does the same thing... problem with those programs though is that you're stuck with what you get, unless you copy and paste it into a word processer and change the indents, page breaks, etc. first, and THEN print it. OpenOffice would be more convenient if you're going to do this since you don't need to install another program, but programs like PRIMO and CutePDF do allow you to make PDFs from whatever you want (including HTML, as I do all the time, and also PS files which I personally do not like since I cannot scroll between pages like you can with PDFs, so I just convert them). Regards,Mattb112885 22:07, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Possible templates of interest

I happened across the given templates surveying templates for Wikiproject template sharing, and thought some here might be interested or make use of such:

  1. Template:Tlxw -- poets by country indexed template plus poets by type (class) of poetry.
  2. Template:Tlxw -- Handy formatting tool for writing technical modules, it (manually) numbers equations on right hand side of page, displays math in the middle.
  3. There may be a few others of use as well, see W:Cat: List templates.

Best regards // FrankB 01:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

We do have a local template, Template:Tl that can be used to label an equation. The list of poets one just doesn't seem particularly useful to me, outside of the occasional poetry book, of course. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:20, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
  • The overall purpose of Wikiproject template sharing, is to empower all editors with choices and to make us all more productive when doing cross-sister contributions by providing as much as possible, the same standardized tools with good documentation. M:DPP was in fact in part inspired by lobbying I'd been doing all last summer to improve documentation practices on Wikipedia. DPP (and why) is a bit more formalized and elegant than the include/noinclude nesting I'd suggested and started by including snippet sections of talk pages, where inefficient and disrespectful of a volunteer's time, usage was haphazardly sometimes good, sometimes awful, but nearly always mixed in with discussion loaded with Jargon and arcana. That movement to better face documentation for the benefit of the user was all in flux when Tim Starling put the limits on template expansion, so the two merged and became the doubly beneficial doc page pattern. That will hopefully soon also extend internationally (Already does, based on interwiki's on many templates-- See the lists in Template:Tl in edit mode for example). So until we get some of your local editors involved directly, if it's all the same to you, I'll just drop the occasional note about something I think someone here might find useable and useful. <g> Template:I2"Useful" does not equate "directly" with immediately useable in the case of the poets template... but the stimulus of seeing it might be inspirational to someone here who is into poetry and perhaps assembling an anthology of such. Hence, without a crystal ball, I mentioned it. OTOH, the 'equation' I mentioned does the math formatting AND the same labeling function as your 'eqn', so it's a better human time saver--less keystrokes==less chances of a typo. So far as I sampled, it's output and 'eqn' are virtually identical with respect to the template labeling. Q.E.D.Template:I2A new mention for your collective consideration is the flexible set of templates illustrated here: Template:Tlxw, which can be used to make a variety of bar graph presentations. If there is any tool of a particular nature someone is desiring, do let me know, the guys working on surveying an recatting the wp templates are well along, and I can have them keep an eye out, etc. Best regards // FrankB 06:19, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Movie Making Manual

I'm not a contributor on Wikibooks, so I'm a bit leery on toe-stepping, but, I noticed something at the bottom of the"Movie Making Manual" that begins with "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE". To me, it looks like advertising, and I'm not familiar enough with the way things work here, so I figgured I'd bring it to somebody's attention. Weaponofmassinstruction 16:05, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Gone now. Looks like random text-copying. Thanks for noticing. -withinfocus 16:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Special pages

I've been doing some cleanup lately using Special:Wantedpages. It's a good way to look for certain things, like copy-paste transwikis, and books that use wikipedia style linking rather than chapter linking. A lot of the ones at the top of the list are created through TOC templates, but further down there are a lot of "one-word" links (including a lot of links to dates!), which can be followed to find books that aren't using links properly.

Also, I had gotten Special:Uncategorizedpages below 1,000 a few months ago, but it's well above 3,500 now. We haven't done a "policy of the week" for a while, but maybe we could try to finish up with Wikibooks:Categories, in order to have a consistent way to clear that log? --SB_Johnny | talk 13:28, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

BTW, a lot of the "wanted pages" are linked from the old "top active" pages. Any thoughs on what to do about those?--SB_Johnny | talk 16:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
The top active pages will be deleted shortly. I figure I'll process the February statistics once March starts. -withinfocus 01:47, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Mind if I delete (or at least blank) them before that list is updated then? That way I won't be chasing shadows. --SB_Johnny | talk 09:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Go ahead and just delete them then; wipe the whole book. If I need to see a previous page I can since I am able to browse the deletion history. -withinfocus 16:53, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Will do. --SB_Johnny | talk 17:08, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Working on a New Book Wireless_Mesh_Networks need a review

As a first time Wikibook author, I have worked on the outline of a new book I would like to write here. Could one of you guys take a look and offer some comments? I would like to apply the same structure to two more IT books, but need a good review before I spread the mistakes.  kgrr talk13:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

I had a look yesterday, but to be honest I have no idea what it's about. Maybe an introduction chapter to start? --SB_Johnny | talk 14:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
I know a bit about such networks, so i can give you a quick review. I'll also post links from that page to the Communication Systems book, and a link back to your book too. This is definately a good start to a book, at least a good outline for one. From what I can see you've put alot of good thought into this before you started writing, and that's one of the biggest keys to success in any book.
Your style and structure both appear to be good, and if you want to apply this to other books you certainly have my blessing. I dont know if i will be able to contribute to this book much, but I can certainly help serve as an editor and a proof-reader. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:36, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
SB Johhny, Whiteknight - The point was asking for a review of two things - not so much the contents of the outline, but more the structure and to a certain extent style. What I'm looking for in the review is feedback about specific pros and cons of the outline and style I'm using.
For example, I start with a template that gives the reader the ability to navigate from any page to any other page to browse the book. Is this good, or is it wasteful of wikibooks resources since each book will have its own navigation template?
Then on the cover page, there is a picture with its credit below. Of course it's licensing is correct - public domain, cc, or gnu, etc. The purpose of it is to provide an appealing cover picture like you have in real books. But is it a waste of space?
The table of contents follows a pattern:
1. Acknowledgements Image:00%.png
2. Introduction Image:00%.png
3. chapter Image:00%.png
1. section
2. section
4. chapter Image:00%.png
1. section
2. section
3. section
...
30. Conclusion Image:00%.png
31. References Image:00%.png
32. Index Image:00%.png
33. Glossary Image:00%
34. Appendix A - appendix Image:00%.png
35. Appendix B - appendix Image:00%.png
36. Appendix C - appendix Image:00%.png
37. Appendix D - appendix Image:00%.png
External links and resources
Indirectly I was fishing for some constructive criticism that would help me answer a few questions 1) I believe there is benefit in not numbering the chapter and section file names so that one can insert a chapter between two existing chapters or sections. Is there a reason why some people prefer to do it in a rigid matter by including numbers in the chapter and section names? 2) I believe there is a need for all the references in the book to be together in a reference chapter so that they can be referred to within the whole book rather than in one chapter or section at a time, but wikibooks seem to force you into the footnote style with the available tools. Are there tools to collect references into one chapter? 3) I believe an Index is a good thing so that a user can find a section from a list of topics. Are there tools that can help build an index? It's nice to hyperlink the online version, but how do we reference from a key term to a module number inside the book? 4) I believe a glossary is great for people to understand unfamiliar terms. If the book is printed out, hyperlinks can't be counted on. But nevertheless, there should be a table of acronyms and common terms to define them in the context of this book. 5) Is there a page that has all the copyright/copyleft that creates a chapter within a book so that when it's printed out, it's part of the book? 6) Is there a way to letter chapters instead of numbering them with the # sign. My appendix names include the alphabet letter, which keeps me from re-ordering them later.
Whiteknight, I shamelessly applied the same structure to the book CCNA_Certification. I've provided an outline that covers most of what's needed to cover for the two exams. But it's open so that if I've left out a topic, it can be inserted. Also, IMHO, it looks much more appealing as a book and will hopefully attract some help to fill-in the topics. My next plans are to provide links to Wikipedia for each chapter. And in Wikipedia, I will put references back to his book. Hopefully, with a little guidance, the book will come to being by osmosis and bring some technical Wikipedians into Wikibooks. By the way, since Wikipedia is open source, I should be able to heist entire more or less stable articles of information and de-wikify them and include transitions to help create the book. Please let me know if I've destroyed CCNA_Certification. It looks like the project was abandoned and the structure was such that another person could not easily come in and move things around if they needed. kgrr talk15:38, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Featured books project pages

User:Robert Horning has created a new nominations page for good books, and I've updated the text of Wikibooks:Featured books and Wikibooks:Good books to point to it. I have changed Wikibooks:Good books from being a wikiproject to being a proposed guideline.

Now, if you find a good book that you think warrants some kind of recognition, you can nominate it at WB:FBN. It will run similarly to a VfD discussion, only more positive. Everybody should take a look at these pages and see what's going on. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Book about using Wikibooks

I'd like to propose a book about using Wikibooks. This book would progress along the same lines that Wikibookians progress:

  • The Wikibook Reader
    • What Wikibooks is for
    • What you can do with a Wikibook
    • Solicit reader feedback on the this book's talk page.
  • The Wikibook Editor
    • How to contribute
    • Be bold
    • Copyright Policies
    • The Advantages of Registering
    • Markup help
    • Communicating with other Wikibookians
  • The Wikibook Writer
    • What is Wikibooks, What it is not
    • The Sandbox
    • Starting a new book
    • Naming conventions
    • Moving Pages
    • Uploading Images
  • The Wikibook RC Patroller
    • What is an RC Patroller?
    • Reverting non-productive edits
    • How to report vandalism
    • How to fight vandalism (be gentle, assume good intentions unless it's pretty obvious)
  • The Wikibook Administrator
    • Becoming and Admin
    • Importing
    • Deleting
    • Blocking Users

This could continue, but I think I've sufficiently fleshed out the general idea, and I'm beginning to get out of the area with which I am fairly familiar. This would be a book that would be read linearly - the longer a person hangs out here, the more of this book he (or she) would need and (presumably) read. It always takes you to the next step, and it's all organized in one convenient place instead of scattered about in various help pages, policy pages, etc. Thoughts? -- Jim Thomas 01:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

There was some significant amount of discussion in the past that the entire help namespace should be converted into a book. One of the best reasons that was presented for this was that a "help book" would have the added benefit of leading by example. Ie, the help book itself would be a good template for future books to follow. What you are proposing is a very similar idea (if not identical) to the idea of a help book, and if you started it, i would certainly have alot to contribute. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, I started one. You can find it at Using Wikibooks. I axed the RC Patroller chapter from the get-go, though if someone else thinks it merits its own chapter, I obviously can't stop you from adding it. Perhaps that belongs in The Wikibook Editor chapter. -- Jim Thomas 02:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


I actually like the idea, however, of writing what amounts to be an entire bookshelf of Wikibooks about editing and working with Wikibooks content. I did get into a major argument with some individuals who felt that any content related to editing or moderating (aka admin stuff) ought to fall completely within the "Help" namespace. I disagree here. I think there is clear room for such books, which is one of the reasons I started MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook. I even got into a minor edit war here where another user moved this admin handbook to the Help space, and I moved it back to the main namespace.
Another book is Help:MediaWiki Developer's Handbook, which was I should note another book that was in the main book namespace and then moved, without discussion, into the Help namespace. This is clearly a stand-alone book and does not really need to fit with something in a completely different namespace. In both of these cases, they also don't have to apply strictly to Wikibooks users.
As far as what to put into the Wikibooks Help namespace: I would like to see things like "how to create a Wikibook" or "Common mistakes of a new Wikibookian". There is plenty of content that could be added that would be of a general nature that wouldn't necessarily be a book. I don't think these pages ought to be so restricted or even so formal.
Also, it is a pet peeve of mine to take several books and combine them into one mega book (like the Programming Wikibook) when the only real unifying theme is just that they are all related topics. One of the problems I have with the Meta help pages is that they are so dogmatic and structured that the creativity for going beyond those basic structures is nearly lost. It was also very, very difficult to localize to a specific project, particularly when it was mirrored. This was just a few of the reasons I created the VfD to remove that content when it was mirrored here. I'm not saying that there isn't useful stuff on the Meta help pages, but we can do something very different here. Because "Help" is indeed a seperate namespace, I don't think the normal restrictions of being a textbook would necessarily need to apply here. --Rob Horning 02:51, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
The help namespace, in my opinion, should likely only be used to point people in the direction of more appropriate discussions on the topics. For instance, the help namespace could contain some general rules and basic distillations of policy documents (don't vandalize, etc), while pointing interested readers to the full-text of those documents. Meta already contains a large number of help documents explaining mediawiki including development and administration. However, what meta does not have, is a book on either of those subjects. Help books serve a number of valuable purposes:
  1. Can serve as an example of what a good book should be, not just a description of such.
  2. Can provide a narrative, and a concerted effort to teach the subject, not just present the material in a list or an article.
  3. Enable help materials to be found through a normal wiki search, without having to update your preferences to include the help namespace (which many users in need of help won't know how to do anyway).
I think that the following things need to happen:
  • The new Using Wikibooks book needs to remain in the main namespace, and be placed on a normal bookshelf (likely the computer software bookshelf).
  • The MediaWiki Developer's Handbook needs to be moved out of the help namespace, and placed on a normal bookshelf.
  • The MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook needs to be put on the same bookshelf as the above two, and not moved to the help namespace.
  • All three books listed above should be collaborative, that is that they should contain appropriate cross-links where needed.
  • The current help pages should be mined for information to be used in these three books, and links should be made from the help pages to these books, where needed.
If nobody else does it today, i'm going to move the developers handbook out of the help namespace sometime later, and we can get to work on this project full-steam. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 15:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
Someone should finish merging MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook with A Wikimedia Administrator's Handbook. Most of it has been done already. I've been meaning to get onto it but I probably won't have the time this week. GarrettTalk 19:50, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Resolving disputes

The dispute resolution / resolving disputes policy has been discussed in the past and progress has recently stagnated. Please voice your opinions regarding any changes to the policy on its talk page or be bold and make changes to the text directly. This policy is the first step in developing several other policies including the Wikibooks:Editorial board, WB:RFC, and Wikibooks:Arbitration Committee and needs to be approved before other progress can occur. There's no point in discussing matters like arbitration if the community doesn't include them in the dispute resolution process. If you disagree or support something, make it known on the resolving disputes page so we can set up a chain of positive updates to our policy system. Thanks. -withinfocus 12:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Arbitration was removed from resolving disputes, because everything else was a far as people could agree on. I think the resolving disputes proposal should be market as rejected. The decision making policy is the first step in making decisions and how to resolve disputes. There is also a Unstable branch of the Decision making policy which has stagnated too. I believe that would be the better place to reflect the need to be civil and suggestions of mediation when a decision making process has stagnated. I think the editorial board is no longer trying to be a way to resolve disputes and is instead trying to focus efforts to deal with ways to prepare textbooks for publishing in print and related issues. --darklama 14:18, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I definitely disagree. A policy such as Revolving disputes cannot be rejected as I see it; it's an essential process here. This matter has to be solved and this page definitely covers a different process than Decision making. Decision making is quite general and covers how to achieve objectives here. Resolving disputes is a process for handling disagreements. This page still needs development and once that happens we'll mark it as enforced. -withinfocus 19:40, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Translating books into bangla language

Hi,

I'm a user of Wikipedia and trying to contribute with the project. The Wikibooks project has attracted my attention and I would love to translate a few of the books into Bangla language, so that the people of Bangla language can be benefited.

Would you please inform me more about this?? I would appreciate your any comment.

Thank you,

Sheikh Tuhin sheikhtuhin@yahoo.com

There is a wikibooks project for bangla: http://bn.wikibooks.org. If you want to write books in bangla, you can write them and host them on that project. If you would like to translate books from our project onto that project, you can certainly do that too without requiring any extra permission! --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks

If I wanted to upload screenshots of the Wikibooks website for use in the Using Wikibooks book, would i be allowed to do this? Is the website interface copyrighted in any way that would prohibit use of screenshots being used in this way? And if not, what copyright tag would be affixed to such screenshots? Thanks. Urbane User (Talk) (Contributions) 13:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it depends what browser you are using. The folks at the Commons Village Pump would probably be able to explain it all a lot better than I can. --SB_Johnny | talk 13:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Auto category

Just thought I might mention the Book category template. It is used for saying that a module of a book (say Foo/SomeModule) belongs in a category. {{Book category|Foo}} is equivalent to [[Category:Foo|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]], which avoids every module getting indexed under the same letter 'F'. The main usage is to categorise all the modules of a given book. Just say {{Book category}} and your module Foo/Module will be placed in category Foo under 'M' for Module. -- Kowey 14:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

That's a hot template. Is it new, or is it old? I've certainly never heard of it (but I haven't heard of everything, I'm sure). Either way, it's good to have a template for this, so that our categories can be sorted properly. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:27, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
It's pretty new. I made it for Haskell and thought it might be useful for the community. Another template which might be interesting is the {{Specific book stub}}, more of a meta-template which you can use to make templates like {{Haskell stub}} -- Kowey 09:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Whoops! I've renamed it from Book category to Auto category to communicate its generality. Could somebody please bot-replace all Book category and Module category by Auto category? -- Kowey 14:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Anyone took action on this ? --Panic 23:53, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding WikiCharts to en.wikibooks

A very interesting tool has been added to the Wikimedia tool server which attempts to calculate page access (not page editing) statistics. It involves partially modifying the System messages for this project, particularly for the javascript that is used to generate each of these pages.

It does this at a small cost of aditional HTML code that is appended onto each page as it is generated, which makes a quick http request to the tool server for counting stats. This is certainly more efficient than the typical 3rd party image links usually used for stat counting, and it is done entirely within Wikimedia projects in this case.

My question here is if this is something we would like to add to Wikibooks or not. The stats certainly are something interesting, and it would be able to help us to determine if some of our content reorganization efforts are actually having any impact with those who come and stop by to read some Wikibooks content. Until this tool has been available, we havn't been able to obtain these stats as the MediaWiki stat counter has been turned off. --Rob Horning 14:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Does it monitor every page access or we can select what pages we wish to generate a "readers" chart ? --Panic 18:17, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
If we can use this for the new Wikibooks:Top Active instead of using third-party tools I would be for it. -withinfocus 19:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
What this does is create a log entry for each time the page is accessed. Keep in mind that the Top Active pages were what pages have been edited the most.... which is a completely different topic. I think there is a role for both pieces of information. This does monitor every page that is accessed, and perhaps as importantly, it is automated so there is no need for any particular user to have to manually edit or scan the stats. The only draw back right now is that the code base for analyzing the stats is still considered experimental. For more details, go to the WikiCharts page that even has an active demo for en.wikiversity and wn.wikipedia. --Rob Horning 22:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Top Active does not have to represent most edits necessarily. It can simply show the most accessed. -withinfocus 00:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. It would remove a lot of supposition by providing measurement. Webaware talk 22:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Something worth imitating?

Commons now has the following appearing on their uploads page:


It's all about freedom

All users of files found on Wikimedia Commons must be given the Four Freedoms:

<imagemap>

Image:Definition of Free Cultural Works logo notext.svg|75px|Free Culure rect 0 0 220 220 Commons:Licensing desc none

</imagemap>
  1. The freedom to use and perform the work.
  2. The freedom to study the work and apply the information.
  3. The freedom to redistribute copies.
  4. The freedom to distribute derivative works.

(From the Definition of Free Cultural Works, inspired by the Free Software Definition.)

Traditional copyright law does not grant these freedoms, and unless noted otherwise, everything you find on the web (including book covers, screenshots, logos, promotional photos, and so on) is copyrighted and not permitted here. Please only upload files that are in the public domain (author died more than 70 years ago), or those which are explicitly covered by a license which grants the Four Freedoms. See the list of acceptable licenses.

For works which are your own, please use one of the recommended licensing options below ("Own work").

Maybe something like that yould be good for the text appearing on the edit pages here as well? --SB_Johnny | talk 14:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

It is interesting that the text on the bottom of the edit page (it can be modified using this page) has been modified substantially by each one of the Wikimedia projects. In fact, Wikibooks has been rather tame and timid in what has been put in here, with only three edits at all from the default, and the default text is nearly identical.
This is something that certainly can be modified, and there is nothing "sacred" here to keep anybody from editing this content just like any other page on this Wiki. The only difference is that it will appear on the bottom of every page when it is edited.
I would suggest that any changes try to stay relatively short and get to the point that Wikibooks expects all contributions to be under the GFDL, and that they can also be revised by other Wikibookians. Still, the idea to express some general principles about free/open content development is something that certainly new users ought to be made aware of. --Rob Horning 15:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
We've updated a few of the mediawiki pages lately, but not so much on that one. I like something along those lines as it goves a more positive explanation of what the contributions mean, the current text seems a bit surly. I do think we could almost just copy that wholesale for our upload dialogue, though actually I'd like to include something there about uploading to commons as a normally better alternative (since presumably some books might get translated to other language wikis someday). --SB_Johnny | talk 16:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Some projects I think include text above every edit box as well. I think these principals would be better to be placed above then below. --darklama 17:13, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
That would be fine too.--SB_Johnny | talk

Special Statistics...

Special:Statistics says there is only 25,000 page views, but according to the other data this is not possible. Is this a bug? --Remi 22:59, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yup... I forget why, but I'm pretty sure whatever the problem is isn't going to be fixed (the page view tracking was turned off for some reason). --SB_Johnny | talk 23:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Keep in mind that the MediaWiki software has a feature to count page views and do other sorts of statistical analysis. On some MediaWiki implementations this "feature" is still turned on, but for Wikimedia projects it was determined that this page count chewed up so much CPU bandwidth (and just as importantly, required a hard drive write request to update the counter) that this feature was turned off. For almost all Wikimedia projects this number is zero, but Wikibooks was one of those projects that is old enough that it was turned on for some of the early history of this project. The 25,000 page views reflects this statistical counting from about the first six months of people using Wikibooks.
It is highly unlikely this feature will be turned back on again, even though all that needs to be done is for a Wikimedia developer to edit one line in the configuration file for this project. The arguments for keeping this feature off are just as valid as what they were when the decision was made to turn off this feature. If there is sufficient demand we could make a bugzilla request to turn the page counts back on, but I'm against the idea and I think there would be some considerable opposition among the developers as well. --Rob Horning 16:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to see the reporting of that number and all that are based on it turned off too then. It's disheartening to read that there are "0.03 views per edit." -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 18:46, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Integrating Imported Material into an existing chapter

I have just imported the Wikipedia Barter article into transwiki space, and now I need to cut it way down and add major portions of it to an existing chapter. Is there a way to do that? How do I merge the histories? The only thing I can think of is to chop it down to what I want and transclude it in the existing chapter, but that is such an inelegant way to proceed that I can almost not bear to do it. Is there a better way? -- Jim Thomas (aka Jomegat) 01:08, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

There is a better way to do it, although i admit that I can't quite remember how to go about doing it. If i remember correctly, it involves deleting the page, and then undeleting it, or something. Ask SBJohnny. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:19, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
For admins, I would recommend reading MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook/Page Deletion#Merging page histories. The only real problem I see about merging page histories is that it messes up the history of the combined pages, where it is difficult (I would say virtually impossible) to sort out what page edit was from what earlier page. This is a shortcoming of the MediaWiki software, but at least you can give credit to all of the authors who might have been involved with the content in this manner, and see exactly what they did add to the edit history.
For non-admins, I would recommend that you combine the text and reorganize the content to what you think the final version of the merged pages should look like, and then make a request on Wikibooks:Administrators' noticeboard to perform the actual page merger. Indicate what pages should be merged together together with what version should be left after all of the pages are merged together. --Rob Horning 00:33, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
On a similar note, is it possible to use transclusion and/or substitution from another Wiki? For example the CCNA Certification book can "inherit" a lot of text from Wikipedia. It would be very useful to have a living book that is updated by Wikipedia. Kgrr 15:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
unfortunately, it just isnt possible to transclude from one project to the other. Wouldn't it be great if you could? Besides importation, there really isnt any other good way to do this kind of stuff. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 18:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Algebra and merger

I know that Whiteknight is more directly involved with the reorganization of this Wikibook, but I would like to point out that we shouldn't lose the history of this book if possible. I mean, this was a Collaboration of the Month project (featured on main page), and there certainly were many contributors to this project whose contributions should not be left unnoticed.

What I'm asking here is that whoever is going to take on this task of deleting these pages, that I'm recommending that we do a full page merger to preserve the edit history of these pages, through the process of deleting both pages and merging them together through page moves.... to where ever the pages have been copied to ultimately. I know this is a tedious process, and sometimes the pages don't always fit together in a smooth fashion. But this is a better way to deal with full book mergers than simply ignoring the previous contributions. I mention this here because I don't think I have the time available to completely make this merger myself, and I don't want to have this half-way done either. I'm certainly willing to help out and do this for some of the pages, but I'd like to get some coordination and assistance from some other admins in this process as well. If we can map out what pages need to be merged and where, that would also be very useful. I would encourage the coordination to occur on Talk:Intermediate Algebra. --Rob Horning 10:06, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

So far in this project, what I have done is moved pages with good content to more appropriate places, and deleted unnecessary pages that contained little or no content. The problem with the Algebra book that I wanted to correct, was that it was a mishmash of unrelated and unorganized topics that loosely related to algebra. In general, considering the poor state of Algebra currently, I dont think much merger needs to happen. So many pages from Intermediate Algebra could simply be moved to the "Algebra/" namespace because there are no conflicting pages in the destination book to require a merger. By my count there are only 11 pages in the Algebra book, compared to at least 16 subjects listed on the TOC without an associated page. Even with a worst-case scenario, we are only merging page histories on 11 pages, and there is a possibility that many of these pages originated as forks and dont need to be merged like this.
I may have some time this afternoon to work on this project, god knows I've let it sit unfinished for long enough. After about 2pm EST I should be getting to work on it. Anybody who wants to join in the fun is more then welcome. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I'm not going to do any work on this today. There appears to be some confusion over what precisely is going to happen. I had proposed that the Intermediate Algebra book be merged into the Algebra book. Apparently, one of the active editors of the Intermediate Algebra book has proposed precisely the opposite thing, and has nominated the Algebra book for deletion. We need to resolve this disagreement before we can start doing any work. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. This is a complex enough task, and I feel hesitant to delete a "book of the month" winner, even if that quality has been passed up by another book on the same topic. Thanks. When the decision is resolved on the merger, or if the merger is called off, let me know. --Rob Horning 00:24, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
It's my opinion that the content and structure of the Intermediate Algebra book should likely be kept, but the whole book should be moved to the Algebra namespace. A simple name like "algebra" will be much easier for people to find in a search, and it reduces the inclination for people to draw arbitrary distinctions between algebra material that is "intermediate", "basic", or "advanced". If the authors of the book do decide to delineate material in this manner, they can do it internally to the book, and not create 3 or more books on the same subject. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:36, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

about Wikibooks navigation header and float bars

I have lost the post/thread about this subject. Does anyone know or can give me some input why the float bar states some projects that even if active should be stated on the header bar as they are not useful for "most" or all users, there is also a duplication of the Donations link and the header bar gives only information on the privacy policy and misses the opportunity to link to a pages that provides a general information of site policies and guidelines. (I remember that someone on the post stated that it would take some time for the update) see me (image) Txs. --Panic 02:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Well i'm not entirely sure what you are talking about here. What skin are you using? different skins have links in different places, and i'm not entirely sure what links you are talking about. I only see one "Donations" link on my page, no duplicates. Also, the privacy policy is a pretty important thing, and we shouldnt remove any links to it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:16, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
I have included an image (see above). The skin used is Classic. I tested all default skins, the Simple skin doesn't even have the Donations link, Cologne Blue has more or less the same problems as indicated on the Classic, the Chick, MonoBook and Nostalgia seem ok (no duplication). --Panic 17:54, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Editing Template

When you click "edit this page," and it arrives at an uncreated page, Wikibooks displays the following: 

Wikibooks does not have a page by this name.
    * If you're here by mistake, just click your browser's back button.
    * If you're a Wikipedian, see Wikibooks for Wikipedians for a primer on how things work here (it's a little different).
    * If you're an instructor and plan on using Wikibooks for a class project, see Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects.
    * If you're basing your work on materials from Wikipedia, please use WB:RFI to bring the material over in compliance with the GFDL.
    * If you're starting a new book, remember to add it to a bookshelf and to Template:New. 

    * To experiment, please use the sandbox.
    * To prevent duplicate work, check if a subject is already available by searching for this title in other pages.
    * To ask a question, visit the Study help desk, the Staff lounge or our IRC channels.
    * To create this page, maintain a neutral point of view and type in the box below. When you are done, add an edit summary and click save page.
    * Remember to follow our naming conventions when creating a new page. For example to create a chapter on Baseball inside a book called Sports use Sports/Baseball for the page name.

How and where would I go about proposing a change to this page? I think that perhaps a link to the Wiki syntax (Help:Editing) should be added at least, and perhaps some other stuff taken out. Thanks. --Remi 21:30, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a "MediaWiki" page, and can only be changed by an administrator. What kinds of changes do you think need to be made? If you post changes that you would like to make, we can talk about it and hopefully upload those changes. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:49, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Alternatively, you can go to Special:Allmessages, search for a short subset of text with your browser find button (I tried "Wikibooks does not have a page by this name.") and find the specific message that it is (it is MediaWiki:Newarticletext). Then go to the talk page and add Template:Tl and type your suggestions. --Iamunknown 22:08, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Licencing issues

I'm not sure if this is bad news or not, but apparently the Free Software Foundation (who hold the GFDL license) are being aquired by Time-Warner. The issue is being discussed on wikipedia if you want more details, but apparently one option being discussed is that anyone who wants to release anything under the GFDL will need to register themselves with the company (apparently there are liability concerns). --SB_Johnny | talk 16:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm really worried about this and have registered my concern over on Wikipedia. Xania talk 17:06, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I did too (though honestly the conversation should really be on meta rather than Wikipedia, because it affects all the other projects too). I'm wondering however if there's going to be a "grandfather clause", since obviously all contributions made up to this point were made by people they haven't registered yet (IP edits in particular would be impossible to track down in most cases). --SB_Johnny | talk 17:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Most troubling, and so close on the heals of the announcement that Wikiversity is under new management. Has anyone heard if the Wikimedia Foundation is going to change the license notice to encourage use of the Creative Commons share-a-like license like Wikinews uses? --darklama 18:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, from what I understand, the CC licenses allow using CC licensed stuff in GFDL documents, but not the other way around, so we'd have a hard time preserving what we already have if we tried to move the project to CC. OTOH, I'd really like to see if I could relicense the gardening book under this license, but I'm not sure whether it would be compatible. --SB_Johnny | talk 19:21, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
With AOL splitting off Time-Warner, it might make publishing GFDL text on the internet impossible. I have a program that could turn textbook pages into a video slide show, that we can burn onto DVD. We should come up with a title for the DVDs, such as "Wikibooks: The Movie", "Wikibooks: The Revenge", "Wikibooks: First Blood", or something like that. We might want to get an MPAA rating for the videos, so they can be played in movie theaters. This is so complicated, i'm going to start converting some of my books to video. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:18, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Well... we could just delete everything and start over with a CC license. --Az1568 (Talk) 22:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Don't forget to add Template:Tl to the front page and explain why Wikibooks needs to be deleted on Wikibooks:Votes for deletion#Wikibooks, so everyone can vote to delete Wikibooks. --darklama 23:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't agree. we can't delete anything yet, because we need to convert these pages to video first. Also, i think we can monogram some of our books onto napkins. I've sent an email to christopher walken asking him if he will read some of our books for the movie addition. I sent out an invitation to Keanu Reaves to play the part of Jimbo, but he declined. some people just arent interested in making motion pictures of free textbooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:23, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, napkin designs are probably copyrighted, so we'll need to stick to the plain napkins if we decide (with full consensus of the community, of course) to go the napkin route. --SB_Johnny | talk 03:13, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

IMHO most wikibook titles and covers are not really inspirational

Sorry for being contraversial, but I have been thinking that perhaps the way Wikibooks are named reflects Wikipedia a little too much. For example, when was the last time anyone bought a book simply entitled "Math" or "Flute"? Basically I think that the naming might be not attracting enough people to read the books. I have been working on the Persian language wikibook, but at the moment it seems to me too dry and boring to use "Persian" as a title. I think French sets a good example with its heading, "Réalisez! French...just one book away," and its aesthetically pleasing font cover. On the other hand, if I were to try and publish a Persian langage course book called "Persian" with a blank page as a cover, it would definitely be left languishing on the shelf. Apart from not attracting readers, I think it could lead random visitors to not distinguish between Wikibooks and Wikipedia, and therefore not see the merits of Wikibooks and that they are books and not articles. In my opinion more people would be interested in the books here if there were more examples of book covers and interesting titles such as "Wikijunior Big Book of Fun Science Experiments", "Réalisez!" or "Writing: A Guide To Urban Calligraphy", especially featured on the front page. What does everyone else think? :-D Poppy 16:32, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Linking to a Catagory page

How do I list and link my http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Honda_Nighthawk_Owners_Repair_and_Maintenance_Guide#Overview in the Catgory page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Motorbikes thanks Rob

All I had to do was add the text [[Category:Motorbikes]] to the bottom of the Honda Nighthawk Owners Repair and Maintenance Guide page. Once your book gets large enough we can also create an entire category just for its pages. Hope this helps. -withinfocus 17:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Authors and attribution

I'd really like to have a serious discussion about authors and attributions, particularly in regard to print versions of individual modules but also in regard to entire books.

The printing of individual modules is both more and less complicated, since presumably all you'd need to do is include the top 5 contributors to each module. Edit count is probably the easiest way to come up with the "top 5", though presumably a bot could figure out how to sort by characters added. Modules that use CC-licensed images would also need to attribute those (which is yet another reason not to use CC images in GFDL documents).

I'm having trouble putting this into prose today (too many burners going at once), but I think we need the following features, to be provided either by bot, changes to the css and js, or even bugzilla requests. All of the below should appear somehow on the bottom of a printed page:

  1. The top 5 (or even top 10!) contributors, listed by username (preferably by "real identity", but we'd need some way to connect usernames with real identities through some sort of machine-readable database)
  2. The contributors of any images used (same as above, but also taking into account the license under which images have been released). If this could be done automagically somehow using the mediawiki software to make a "footnote" (i.e., automatically include an attribution under the <references/> header), that would be a lot easier.

Anyway, I'd like to get this a bit more concise, and just figure out a way how to get this to appear on printouts, rather than just relying on the "retrieved from <url>, version last modified on <date>" to cite contributors, since that's not really a citation if the person receiving the printout doesn't have internet access. I'd also like to know what to ask for if I go making requests from the toolserver people (or even bugzilla) --SB_Johnny | talk 18:15, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Not to be a troll, but to participate in a serious discussion, I will give my input on this since it is parallels other discussions I have been having on the subject.
I personally and know some others also support this understanding, think that a module of Wikibook is covered by the general licensing one enters when adding content to the site, as for considering all book part and covered by the same license under an agreegated work I particularly don't think it is correct, the simple base for this is that the notice on the commit page was not always there and GFDL requires an express written license from the "author", and on each book we have a work that is covered by it's own licenses, more I have imported other works under the GFDL to Wikibooks, can we considerer that I have the right to commit the original author to the site wide licensing and so "dilute" the work into modules that can be copied without particular attribution on site ? I think not.
So, my opinion on the subject is that all modules (pages that are not inside a book and its license) are indeed covered by a site wide license and the agreement is expressed by committing content to the site, on the other hand books have their own license and the GFDL makes special imposition on that particular book, author pages and other minor points some can defend that it is all an aggregation of GFDL works, but lets look to other twin projects of ours some are using now incompatible licenses can works under a incompatible license be aggregated under a GFDL license ? Someone has to test this, as an author my problem with this concept is only the "dilution" that exists or the fee way pages can then be moved from work to work without any respect or attribution to the original creators and erodes the need to make references to authors at all.
Another point I have made is that authorship can't be imposed or claimed for you (it can be accessed), it must be a claiming of rights and an acceptance of responsibility toward the work you have done, a bot or another human can verify if the claim is valid but shouldn't be used to automate claims that is a right of the author.
A request to have this subject addressed have already been posted to bugzilla here (Bugzilla:2993) and is also a subject to be addressed here [neta:Summer_of_Code_2007#Authorship_determination].
As for the use or "real identity" I have a problem, I don't have knowledge on how the US law treats anonymous authors to my knowledge must other countries need that information for legal reasons and it is needed as a way to legal proceeding can be not only addressed to the publisher but to the author, in the Wikibooks case we have Wikimedia as the publisher and Wikimedia has the possibility to verify the authors identities so no express statement of identity is required or particularly useful and would even infringe on the personal information restriction, anyway, besides legal proceedings the information is needed to establish the limitations of the copyright over the work if the author is not identified the limitations start to count from the date the works was published. --Panic 20:15, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Oh Panic, I don't think you're being a troll! One of the (many) things we share in common is a concern about the lack of a policy or accepted method for making attributions, and to be honest I've been waiting for you to be "available" because I think your input on this is important (since you, like me, think about it). You sure put a lot on the table though... keep in mind that I'm really just being self-serving here when I say that I want a system to address "module-by-module" printouts (as would be appropriate for the Cookbook and A Wikimanual of Gardening, and perhaps other books).
I'm really in scatterbrain mode today (aside from the usual distractions, I'm also doing a major reconfiguration of a pet project on Wikiversity), but I do want to make it clear that this sort of conversation is a sort where we need a thinker like Panic, because most of us don't think about this sort of thing. --SB_Johnny | talk 22:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
The problem with the "module-by-module" printouts is that due to the use of the GFDL a copy of the license must be included (or at least be offered for printing, what the user decides to do is outside of our control) and if no one has claimed authorship of that page (or if it is part of a book without authors) the attribution is to Wikibooks (or the bookname/location since Wikibooks on the copyright information makes that attribution voluntary), and Wikibooks expressly distances itself from the content it publishes.
I don't understand why most of you that live on the US (with a very aggressive capitalist structure and an overactive legal system) find that thinking and being aware of this implications to be so bizarre, most people when at University if they publish or create something as result of a class/project know that the work done will revert to the University, the same if you are working for a second party (unless a contractual restriction exists), I doubt most people that work on source code have so much trouble understanding this sort of implications but it may depend on the environment you work on... --Panic 23:38, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, just replying to the above: (1) module-by module printouts are perfectly fine, as long as a copy of the GFDL is provided with any aggregation, and (2) I suspect that most of "those of us from the US" want to contribute under a free license because we don't want our contributions to be part of that system. --SB_Johnny | talk 00:25, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
This is an important discussion topic, I agree. I would like to draw attention to Wikitravel, which lists authors at the bottom of every page. Such a mediawiki extension clearly exists, and it would simply be a matter of getting the techs to enable it for our website.
Single page printouts for personal private use likely don't need to be accompanied by a copy of the GFDL. In these situations use of such a work likely qualifies under "fair use" or "educational fair use". The problem arises when you print out a book with intent to copy and distribute those copies. If copies are made for non-personal use, or if they are copied and distributed, they do need to be accompanied by not only a copy of the GFDL, but also a copyright notice stating that the work is released under the GFDL.
Unfortunately, there is no way that you can avoid including a copy of the license. However, the GFDL states that authors only need to be stated explicitly on the cover of the book if the authors don't release you from the requirement. In other words, We only need to list authors who explicitly want to be listed, and we can implement this by simply saying that people may choose to list themselves as authors if an author's page (or author's section) is provided. If no such page is provided, and if people haven't listed themselves on the book somewhere, then we can assume that they have released future users of the book from having to list them as authors.
We could take a pro-active step forward and state on the edit pages that "all contributions are released under the GFDL, and the author waives the right to be listed as an author of the book". Doing this would solve the problem for all future contributions, but all authors pages that are in existence before the change must remain unchanged.
It's all alot to think about, and we shouldnt rush to any conclusions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't know how things goes on the US copyright law on this but authorship can be attested but not attributed by others, in some cases states can substitute the author, this goes by logic, several authors intentionally don't sign their works or paintings or use false names or even aren't the real authors (ghostwriters), and in most places copyright can only be enforced by the rights owners.
Another point is that all services Wikibooks offers or makes available to print GFDL licensed works must include by default the GFDL text as part of the print out (as WK puts it "there is no way that you can avoid including a copy of the license"), we are not entitled to make suppositions on how the copy will be used, it is the responsibility of the user to do the right thing and make the correct decisions, if not he will be breaking the license agreement.
Just took a look at Wikitravel, again I make note that it doesn't refer to "authors", it states in each page "This page was last modified 23:00, 5 April 2007 by Anonymous user(s) of Wikitravel. Based on work by" list of "editors" and the site uses Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0. (the list is preserved on the print version, but doesn't seem to grade in special way the edit actions, or state a limiting number), another relevant information seems to be the on site images also seem to share the license (no information is provided at least on the few images I've examined, some great pictures there).
An extension that would list or better yet make available a list of the top contributors to a page would indeed be useful and fantastic if it would work also for a groups of pages, but we have to remember also that not all work that exist on Wikibooks was started here, i myself have added other GFDL works to Wikibooks, these authors may not have been credited (if no author page existed) and are not part of the history log, and not all contributions to the history log may have rights to be claimed (size, and value), I see this not as a simple matter at all.
The proactive approach seem move valid, even if there are several problems with it, for instance the other day I've added a phrase with a reference to the original publication, this is a valid quote but fails to the letter the requirements of the edit notification "You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!", another concept is that by limiting the GFDL we are creating another license, it is beyond me all the implications this would have... (there is yet the case against considering all pages including books an aggregation of works under a single license, this is not made clear on the notification) --Panic 03:28, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, the Wikitravel method is certainly a major improvement over nothing. I really think treating the modules as documents (and a printout as an aggregation) makes a lot more sense though, since it allows for freedom to make many books out of one (for the Garden book, e.g., you could use different arrangements of the module for books on organic gardening, market gardening, herb gardening, native plant gardening (you'd need a different one for every region), gardens in sun, gardens in shade, garden books by hardiness zone, etc.). They're called modules for a reason, after all... I've been thinking a lot about modularity lately, and wonder if we prehaps haven't been taking advantage of modularity as much as we could.
To make it work even better, it would be nice if it could also have a separate section for attributing images used on the page, and for transwikis identify Wikipedians as Wikipedians (it would need to be smart enough to recognize the transwiki notification in the edit comment ("266 versions from w:Article"). Included pages and templates might be a problem too... how do we identify those? Best of all would be if it could also keep a database for anyone who wants to be attributed by real name rather than moniker, but that would probably crash the servers :P. --SB_Johnny | talk 18:53, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I do agree that treating individual book modules as being "documents" does make the most sense for our project, even if it makes the least logical sense. We do use the exact same software as wikipedia, and the only difference between a collection of wikipedia articles and wikibooks textbooks is an arbitrary order and hierarchy that we impose on the material. It's easier to say "we write textbooks" then it is to say "we write a series of independant modules that are intended to be read in a particular order as a textbook", although the latter really does seem to be the most truthful when you really look at the underlying MediaWiki software.
Your interest in modularity has been something that i've also been highly interested in, although it's such an abstract topic (and so superfluous when you consider the other problems our project has) that it hasn't gathered much other interest or attention. If you look at the Control Systems Book that i've been working on, there are multiple sub versions or "child versions" that use the pages in a different order to teach the subject in slightly different ways. each sub version has it's own TOC, it's own print version and (eventually) it's own PDF as well. The C++ book is expermenting with (suffering from) the same exact idea, where multiple suggested reading orders have been proposed, each with their own table of contents. It's not necessarily a new idea, but considering the problems being faced by the C++ book right now, it certainly is one that could use some further community attention.
As for the real name business, that's a different can of worms entirely. If an author wants to be attributed for their work, it should be their own responsibility to write their name in an appropriate authors page. In this way, a person can choose to be listed by their real name, and people can choose to post any relevant contact information if they so choose. Remember, we only need to list people as authors if they don't release us from that stipulation of the contract. We can assume, this being a wiki, that anybody who doesnt write their own names in the authors section have implicitly released us from this requirement. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I guess my concern was for wikipedians who might not even know about a transwikied version of a book... maybe we should come up with templates to use on article talk pages to make sure as many as possible are alerted.
The modularity stuff is a whole nother ball of wax, of course, but would be nice to discuss it a bit. I'd like to use it a lot more in the garden book, but it's hard to go back and fix things once they've been set up already. --SB_Johnny | talk 23:33, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  • reset

I have identified a problem we have in active discussions of this nature, probably due to the aversion every one has when dealing with laws and intellectual property (I to don't particularly like the subject but I as anyone else has to live within the rules society in general enforces and validates), it is well known that lawyers are (especially in the US) regarded sometimes with disdain, I have see some funny remarks on this subject, this all culminates on the way accusations of w:WikiLawyering ( w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiLawyering ) every time some legal aspect of what we do is put on the table for discussion, ultimately laws are needed to defend ones rights and to provide a structure were we all can live and work together, and those that have the knowhow and experience and specific formation to deal with it are lawyers, this is why we have and use policies and guidelines on Wikibooks and ultimately leads one to defend a particular social order above others.
I'm not a lawyer, on that regard I can only claim to know in general the subject and probably a bit above the average due to have some formation on copyright law especially directed to personal data, electronic signatures and software and contracts none based on US law (but some core subjects are more or less the same) the US to my knowledge hasn't signed all the international treaties and have some particular laws like the controversial DMCA (that is also shared with other countries like Australia), more, even in the US the law in this regard is not standard, some states have limitations or different interpretations of the federal guidelines on the subject, this is due to how law is "created" on the US, not all countries use the same system. (btw there is a copy of the US Copyright Law on Wikibooks.)
I would like to list several points that seem not to have consensus:

  1. What law should we fallow ? (the International law, the US law, the states law where the server resides or the national laws of contributors, the copyright notice on wikibooks seems to indicate that we use the law were the wikibooks server resides and Wikimedia is the publisher.)
  2. What distinguishes authors from contributors and how we define an editor as a contributor? (the information on the US Copyright Law gives some lights on that regard but talking with several Wikibookians some are even opposed to that concept, and as with all laws understanding may not be clear to all, as stated above a request to have this subject addressed have already been posted to bugzilla here (Bugzilla:2993) and is also a subject to be addressed here Authorship_determination, an additional note is that it falls to authors to protect the license and the work even if FSF can provide assistance the rights granted to the FSF are regarding the freely distribution of the content under the GFDL not to enforce copyrights. )
  3. Is Wikibooks an aggregation of works? (this is contested even in regards to Wikipedia, personally I think this can't be supported on Wikibooks based on the fact that not all works have originated on the "service" and used the commit clause and that in it self is not clear to what work or license one is committing the text, one can argue that the page resides or not inside a closed work with its own license even Jimbo has pointed out refering to a post from Richard Stallman about fairuse Additionally, RMS doesn't seem to think we need to rely at all on the aggregation argument, and finds that aspect of things confusing.
  4. What is required for Author attribution? (real names, age, legal address etc... it seems to me overkill to have this sort of personal data available to the public, Wikimedia has or should have the ability to verify and determine the "real person" behind the username if any dispute arises it falls to Wikimedia to provide the needed information)
  5. Are Author pages required? (they are not requires nor an obligation but contributor that need or have rights over a work should be able to add the information, this should be only done as stated on the GFDL since it is a requirement of the license to have that express declaration from copyright holders)
  6. What are cover pages as referred on the GFDL on the Wikibooks context?

If I have forgotten any topic feel free to add... (I will research a bit more and add relevant links to the points) --Panic 23:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

  1. I dont think that anything we are talking about now are dependant on jurisdiction. The GFDL is the same no matter what specific jurisdiction we are in, and it makes no difference to this particular discussion what jurisdiction we consider. The GFDL represents the copyright under which wikibooks are released, and we must satisfy that contract first and foremost.
  2. The GFDL makes no distinction between an author and a contributor, this has been pointed out to you on numerous occasions. Section 4 of the GFDL discusses only "modifications", and does not distinguish between the size or the scope of those modifications. Any person who makes any modification to the "document" must follow the rules in section 4. It's my interpretation that any attempt to distinguish between authors and contributors, or an attempt to prevent a contributor from being listed as an author is a violation of the GFDL. With that said, let us never speak of this matter again.
  3. Whether we view a page as a "document" or a complete book as a "document" with respect to the GFDL makes little difference because they are under the same license, and can be treated the same way. The former interpretation is more convenient for us, and it causes no problems. Even if we do view a book as being a single document and not an aggregation, section 1 of the GFDL states that a modified version may represent "the Document or a portion of it". This means that we can take pages out of a book, and treat them as independant documents anyway, so long as they are accompanied by the text of the GFDL. My point again is that it makes no difference how we look at it, but it's more convenient for us to view pages as individual documents and books as aggregations.
  4. Nothing is "Required". If an author wants to be attributed, they can supply their name, age, place of birth, and current residence. Authors do not need to supply this information, and in such cases they cannot defend their claims of copyright.
  5. Author pages are not required. Under section 4(b) in the GFDL, an author may release future users from listing authors. If we take the stance that authors are listed in the history pages already, it is up to the authors themselves to add themselves to a list if they want to be added. If an author does not add himself to the list, then the author will not be attributed. We should make a policy about this, or amend this to Wikibooks:Copyrights.
  6. A "cover page" is a page with the book title, a listing of authors (unless the authors release us from this requirement), and a notice that is similar to the following:
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".
With that notice, we dont need to include the invariant sections, such as the history pages, with the printed versions. I hope this answers some of the questions. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:44, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
  1. I agree with you that our foremost concern must be the GFDL, but the GFDL only has validity on the context of a copyright law, were author or rightholder have exclusive right to do, authorize and grant rights to others or license them (in this case, under the GFDL), since the copyright law isn't uniform there may be limitations or presets that must be respected and may have implication on the other points this is something that has yet to be made clear.
  2. GFDL doesn't address contributors, if you wish to simplify lets define authors as rightholder, not all editors are rightholder and they may be considered contributors, this is the point were we have some conflicting interpretations and this goes directly to the copyright law we are using since rights are not equal or equally claimed under a general copyright law and we have not a clear clue to what we should use to resolve this (this in regards to the above point).
  3. Ok lets consider the optimum way and consider Wikibooks an aggregation of works, how do you satisfy the GFDL requirements (taking in consideration what has been said, but consider for now only that there may be works not "initiated" on Wikibooks and have for instance author pages, how would this be resolved?)
  4. We seem to agree here, but by not making it public the rightholder don't lose any rights they can make the claim at any time (this depends also on the copyright law and if we consider every edit a modification of the work, since the work is "published" after each edit).
  5. Agree, but not just add, they should be able to remove themselves (I also make a note that in case an rightholder doesn't "sign" the work there may be consequences to were the rights of his contributions fall back, in my national law all contributions not claimed fall to the other existing rightholders or even the publisher at the time of publication, this also has implications on the duration of the rights that can be claimed), a good place to start this would be Wikibooks:Ownership.
  6. I don't think we should make a requirement for the rightholder to be stated on the cover (providing a link to the authors page seems to be sufficient and the attribution to the GFDL a required presence there, many books at this time lack the direct attribution to the GFDL on the authors page), I would support a solution similar to Wikitravel for all editors to be listed at the bottom of the cover page and if some limitations (size, number) could be found include that information on the print version as well.
Invariant sections aren't a problem since they are discarded on the Wikibooks license, just for my information has any work been VfD because it was added to Wikibooks but failed to comply with our GFDL restriction on invariant sections ? --Panic 01:20, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
  1. Don't call wolf, if you find a problem with local copyright law you can tell us, and if you can't find a problem then we don't need to talk about it.
  2. GFDL doesnt address "contributors" because it treats all people as "authors". introducing the term "license holder" just complicates the issue but doesnt change the point.
  3. The GFDL requirements of a page are the same as the requirements for a book. The text must be prefaced with a notice like the one i posted above, and it must be accompanied by the text of the GFDL. Technically, if you want to split hairs here, an "authors page" is not recognized by the GFDL: authors must be listed on the "title page" of the work. An individual module doesnt have a title page. Perhaps we could create a generic title page that could be used for all pages in these situations. Read section 4(b) of the GFDL.
  4. The rights holder can only assert their copyright if they supply their real name and the necessary information. Wikibooks cannot force people to do this, authors must list their information if they want legal credit for their work. Either way, there is nothing we can do about it.
  5. Authors can remove themselves from the list just as easily as they can add themselves to it. Plenty of anonymous people edit our books, and similarly registered authors can choose not to make their identities known.
  6. I prefer a solution where we ask authors not to list themselves at all. We could make such a stipulation part of our copyrights policy. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 01:51, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

How to put a book in a shelf

I just created a new book (Carbon Nanotube Cookbook). I would like to be in a bookshelf and visible for other people. The help text suggest to just put it in the shelf I want (Physics -> Nanophysics) but doesn't tell me how. There is no edit link on the category page. How to proceed? --Lorenz 08:37, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I can see how this can be confusing, categories and bookshelves aren't the same thing, even though they do have similar purposes I suppose, something can have more than one category but should probably only be on one bookshelf (which signifies a much broader category). I have added the book to the desired shelf but for your reference, there is a link to "bookshelves" on the sidebar on the left, if you click on that you'll get a (very large) list of all the bookshelves on the project. Physics is on the right side under "natural sciences", click on that then edit the page and add the link where you want it (I put it under "micro and nanotechnology" since that subheader already existed). Thank you for your contributions! Mattb112885 (talk) 12:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

How has Wikimedia Changed your Life?

This message is being crossposted around village pumps and mailing lists - apologies if you receive it more than once!
Have any of the Wikimedia projects had an effect on you in real life, or do you know of someone, or some group of people, who use our projects in real life? If so, we want to hear from you at m:Success Stories - How has Wikimedia Changed your Life?. The hope is that this page can become somewhere to which we can point members of the press so that they can immediately get an idea of the usefulness of our projects. Please, take a look, and add your stories! Martinp23 16:02, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Ratings disaster!!

For the first time Wikibooks is showing a ratings decline! See:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikibooks.org%2Fwiki%2F

The temporary dip at Christmas is expected but the decline that set in in February is surprising. I believe the decline is related to the new main page. This is oriented to contributors and leaves the reader out in the cold. I would strongly advise either a return to the old main page or a new, reader oriented page such as:

http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page/test&oldid=825986

I can think of a dozen other reasons why our ratings would have dropped since christmas, although i do agree that work needs to continue on the main page. I do not agree that the old main page needs to be reinstated because i found that page to be the least helpful of all. We do need to attract more readers, but we can do that by improving the current main page, not by regressing back to an inferior one. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 12:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
What other reasons would you put forward? It is important to pin down why the ratings have slipped. RobinH 12:15, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I do agree more work needs to be done on the main page, such as putting featured books into action. I also agree with Whiteknight in restoring the previous front page would not be helpful, since Books of the Month and Collaborations of the Month have both been discontinued in favor of Featured Books. I would also have to agree with the regressions as being inferior, I've never liked how the long list of books were displayed. I've changed it again and tried another possible arrangement for the featured books, listing only the ones which have support from Wikibooks:Featured_books/Nominations as well as the Wikijunior book of the quarter in it, in an attempt to move forward. --darklama 14:54, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Why not simply feature books that are fairly complete? There are not that many. The books at http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page/test&oldid=825986 are all reasonable. Why restrict access unnecessarily? Give the readers something to read now'. RobinH 16:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
I dont feel like this is an issue worth getting excited about, and it certainly isn't justification to demand site-wide alterations. there are a number of reasons why our hit count has been going down, the most important of which is that many of our most active members have been decreasing their participation lately. Editing a page typically requires 3 page loads: one to see the page, one to edit the page, and one to save the page and view the results. In august 2006 I personally had over 2900 edits, which accounts for at least 8700 page hits. Last month, I only managed to make about 400 edits. That means, that counting my activity alone, Wikibooks has lost 7500 page hits per month. User:Jguk averaged over 1000 edits a month for 2 years before he became inactive around february.
Furthermore, i've looked at the graphs on the alexa website and I would hardly use those as justification for alarm, and I certainly would not use the word "disaster". If you want to change the main page suggest a change, but dont try and frighten people into it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
The edits per month for January, February and March are consistent or even rising but this is the period when the Alexa ranking has been falling. It is our readership that is most important and there is certainly a suggestion that this has declined. RobinH 09:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Alexa rankings are based on surfing activity of people who have the Alexa toolbar installed (and only those people). The absence or presence of a single frequent user running the toolbar would make a huge difference in Alexa rankings for a site like this one. IMO, better indication of site activity is the [Wikimedia en.wikibooks stats], which show a pattern of steady growth over the last year. It's true that they do not tell us information about page loads, or visitors, but as long as new authors continues to grow, that's a healthy sign. --xixtas talk 02:48, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
It is the readership that is all important and it is curious that the new main page which offers nothing exciting for readers has presided over the period of falling Alexa page views. Certainly if I were a reader and were to see the Wikibooks front page for the first time there would be nothing to inspire me. The change I would suggest is either to use a Main Page such as: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page/test&oldid=825986 or revert to the previous main page before the current clinical version. RobinH 09:12, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Main Page

Whether or not there is a decline in ratings the main page is still a problem. Here are some comments about main pages in general, taken from the discussion section of the page:

As a newcomer, I find the Main Page not very helpful. It's not easy to see what Wikibooks has to offer, and were it not for my preconceptions from Wikipedia, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

One of the things not easy to find is what completed books there are, and how much assumed knowledge each book has. I'll try, if I may (I don't wish to over-impose myself as a newcomer and hope my comments are taken as being constructive), to make an initial mock-up of what the Main Page could look like to encourage further comment, Jguk 08:53, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

I think that maybe you should consider making the main page less like Wikipedia and a little easier to navigate the bookshelves. The ideas are great, but the books themselves are difficult to navigate, and so you really have to know how to use one of the other Wiki sites in order to navigate, which can make it quite difficult for the new user to understand. Just a thought . Anon.

IMO it would be a good idea to have a main page specificly for readers with link to the current front page. The idea is that a person should be able to start reading without knowing a thing about wikibooks. I think of a small introduction followed by a organised portion of completed books, follow by the less completed books in seperated sections. just my 2 cents --Patrik 14:37, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

  • Include links to the 15-35 most complete boks, in a section that might replace the highlighted books section
  • Include a link to a page with just "good" books, instead of "all" books
  • Replace the browse section by a link to a new page called "find a book"
  • Include link to a page of downloadable PDFs

--Karl Wick 22:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Yet all these comments are being ignored. People are not taking the time to comment because they want to wind up admins, they are doing it because they believe we are not putting our best foot forward. The main page does not answer the needs of readers. It is designed for admins and contributors. If you look at any commercial ebook site they lay out their books up front, they dont present the browsing reader with a library catalogue! RobinH 12:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

All those comments were directed at the old page before its current form, which didn't happen until February 2007 and they were listened to at the time. The current version is the result of listening to problems with that version. People said it was too big and jumbled up to navigate, complained that too many incomplete books on the main page was scaring readers and contributors away, that it focused too much on readers or too much on contributors, and thats just the things I can recall right now. Quite a few of the commercial ebook sites you provided links to, do have a catalog listing categories of books on their front page. The current version is better then the alternatives you've suggested so far, why not put some effort into working on some other suggestions? You could also try reading Talk:Main Page/test, to see whats been said about the test page and what people want for the main page. --darklama 14:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
No, all except one were directed at the version before that which was almost the same as the version instituted in February.
This version: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Main_Page_content&oldid=556442
was introduced in August 2006 specifically to answer the concern that there was no direct access to nearly completed books. This concern has been completed overridden in the new front page. The one comment after august 2006, by Patrik, was that "The idea is that a person should be able to start reading without knowing a thing about wikibooks." ie: the change had not gone far enough! RobinH 19:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the comments on Main Page/test, only Whiteknight adds more, saying: "I like that idea alot! every department should contain, right on the bookshelf, listings of the best books. This could include little blurbs like cover images and summaries. If we had a standardized system for displaying these blurbs, it would be a trivial matter for a bot to read them, and create templates for inclusion on the main page. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)"
Whiteknight is pointing out that highly visible summaries of the best books should be available. As far as I can see the current front page does not do this. RobinH 19:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Uh, what's the connection between "winding up admins" and commenting on a page design? I don't think any of the admins are acting wound up about it, to be honest.
Having a prominent link to a list of "ready-to-use" textbooks might be a good addition, of course, but I don't think returning to the "scads of tiny typeface" is a good way to move on it.
I don't have alexa on my browser... if I did I might single-handedly bring us back up to where we were (well over 1,000 edits in March alone, and add the edit window, preview, and saved result page and that would make 4,000!), and as Whiteknight pointed out, the actual pageviews have been steadily increasing. I agree that the current page might be a little biased now towards contributors, but not by much, and a bit of tweaking could bring it into line. However, the survival and growth of wikibooks as a wiki really depends on people contributing to more books, because we can't get more readers if we don't add more good content for them to read. --SB_Johnny | talk 15:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I said they are NOT doing it to wind up admins or for any facetious purpose, these people have the best interests of Wikibooks at heart and are all saying that nearly completed books should be prominently displayed. Yes, I agree, returning to a small typeface is a bad idea. Instead we should present the books that are ready in a clear and bold fashion. Contributions will increase if people can see that Wikibooks works and if they have some real examples of how books can be completed up front. RobinH 19:19, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I doubt the decline has anything to do with the main page but it could be improved but is certainly a huge improvement upon the previous main page. I don't think that many "readers" find us via the main page. People find Wikibooks either through links from Wikipedia (add more links to related articles on Wikipedia) and via search engines when they're looking for a particular topic. Only people who have no idea what they are looking for (or have a lot of time on their hands) would get to us via the main page. I've run the Alexa toolbar for many years but I'm still not entirely sure how they accumulate their ratings. Considering that a large bulk of our page views must come from highly active Wikibookians I can name one specific recent incident which may have resulted in less visits by some regular Wikibookians. Xania talk 01:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not have a main page that is largely dedicated to readers with a clear link to a page dedicated to contributors? See Main Page/test. RobinH 08:17, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Main Page/test2 is not dedicated to contributors, its balanced for both readers and contributors. Both pages provide basically the same info, just that test2 is more pleasing on the eye. Nobody so far is saying a list of some books shouldn't be available on the front page. People have been mostly focusing on their disagreement with your reasoning of why Wikibooks might be on a decline in activity. Last I am aware of people were saying a small list of books should be displayed on the main page cycling through a bigger list generated from what featured books are listed on each bookshelf. However not much work has gone into it so far, because there has been bigger fish to fry and people probably just forgot about it. --darklama 12:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Most people were saying that there should be a list of most of our completed books on the main page:
"* Include links to the 15-35 most complete boks, ", "I think of a small introduction followed by a organised portion of completed books, follow by the less completed books in seperated sections.", "As a newcomer, I find the Main Page not very helpful. It's not easy to see what Wikibooks has to offer". RobinH 13:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
The comment of mine that was cited above (about the book blurbs on the bookshelves) is still a relevant one. If people want to put more books on the main page, we first need to identify books that belong there, and we need to prepare advertisements.
I've created the Template:Tl template, which does precisely this. It presents a cover image, a link, and a short description of a book to serve as an advertisement. For examples of this template in use, you can see the ones I have prepared at the Engineering Bookshelf. If everybody would take the time today to create one such template like this on a bookshelf and advertise one good book, it would be a trivial matter to harvest those advertisements and move them to the main page.
Depending on the number of blurbs we have prepared, we could put all our good books on the main page, or we could put a rotating subset of them on the main page. This would serve the dual purpose of attracting readers and inspiring new contributors. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Good idea Whiteknight. At present probably all the good books should go on the main page.

Template:Goodbook

Only one problem, the bookshelves are all protected. RobinH 14:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I think they're only protected from anonymous and/or very new accounts, presumably to prevent vandalisim of templates that appear on multiple pages (actually, if I remember correctly the concern was that they appeared on the main page, which they don't now). Any objection to unprotecting them for editing, but doing a hard lock against moving them?--SB_Johnny | talk 11:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
The bookshelves, at least the few that I just looked at, are only protected against editing by anonymous users. I dont think that's really a policy that should be changed. If people want to promote a particular book, they should probably register an account, and if they dont want an account they can do all the other kinds of editing work that we need around here. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I love the new Main Page. I tried to make the same point on this page but no-one replied to my comment. Poppy 04:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

User:SB Johnny nominated for bureaucratship

Whiteknight (talk) (projects) has nominated Template:User3 for bureaucratship, the voting is running at Nominations_for_bureaucratship, feel free to participate, for more info take a look at Wikibooks:Administrators. --Panic 02:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

root redirects

Should root redirects be used? in wish circumstances? should they point to books or book pages? should there be any limits ? I can't find a consistent process to address this issues (and in past decission were taken in both ways).
I have marked a page for {{delete}} (a root redirect that was a result of a wrong move), anyway another user disagreed with the redirect and with some valid points objected to the deletion. posts here --Panic 06:29, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Under which wikiproject would I post a critical essay?

Like one that might be found in a scholarly journal? It doesn't seem to quite fit anywhere, as wiki books seems mostly to rest upon factual interpretations and not critical ones.

What is the subject of the essay? --Panic 18:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Subject of the essay not withstanding, you would likely find some success either at Wikiversity or at Academia wikicity. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:27, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

WB:WIW Vote

The new proposal for WB:WIW is up for a vote. The text of the proposal is at: Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks/Unstable

The vote is occuring at: Wikibooks:Policies_and_guidelines/Vote/What_is_Wikibooks

All wikibookians are encouraged to read the new proposal and vote on it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:44, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Synchrotron radiation software Fit2d

Fit2d is a computer program that is used by many users of synchrotron radiations sources to process data mainly from X-Ray Diffraction experiments. Users come from all over the world from many fields of science and technology. A 300 page rather technical manual is available, but as most manual go they are not the fastest way to learn how to use the program or figure out what the program is actually doing to your data. I think a good wikibook that helps users with that would be advantageous to many in the scientific community.

Question: where do I best put it?

Quatt 13:53, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That's an interesting question. You are likely going to want to put it on the computer software bookshelf, although the physics bookshelf is not out of the question either. You might even try cross-listing it on both shelves to start out with, and maybe pick one or the other later. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I see at least 5 different pages in the "help" namespace discussing how to make links -- Help:Link, Help:Piped link, Help:URL, Help:How_does_one_edit_a_page#More_on_linking, etc. Is there a better way to handle this? (Should I go to the MediaWiki wiki and fight the redundancy at its source first?) --DavidCary 15:22, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

It does seem a bit redundant, doesnt it? Sorry i didnt respond sooner, i must not have seen this message. We should definately work on merging these pages, or deleting the duplicates if they are not needed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 22:00, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I took care of some of that yesterday. --darklama 22:37, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

nl.wikibooks dual-licensing

NL.wikibooks posted an announcement recently that they would be dual-licensing all new contributions under the GFDL and the CC-BY-SA-2.5 license. Old pages would be marked as "GFDL Only" unless all previous authors explicitly agreed to re-release their contributions under both licenses. All new pages would be released under both licenses.

I am not necessarily suggesting that our project should jump onto this bandwagon, but it certainly is something that we should likely consider. Some people recently have been criticizing the GFDL because it appears to be too restrictive for some purposes, etc. It is, however, something to consider. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:46, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Just one question: is there anywhere where we can read about the major differences between the two licenses? I wouldn't want to agree or disagree with it until I see such documentation (as I'm not a lawyer I probably wouldn't be able to notice by reading the licenses directly what the major disparities are). I'm assuming this wasn't an april fools joke. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk) 23:15, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
The text of the GFDL is available HERE. The CC-BY-SA-3.0 license is available HERE. I dont think we need to make a decision now, but this is a good opportunity to discuss the implications of licensing. Keep in mind that many of our images are already released under CC licenses. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:30, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Cc-by-sa-3.0 is, according to some, not a pretty license. See commons:Commons talk:Licensing for more details. --Iamunknown 23:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
Prettiness aside, the CC licenses are not the only free licenses that we should be looking at. Use of the GFDL was basically an inherited license, and not one that wikibookians selected because it was particularly good for textbooks. I would say that GFDL is not good for textbooks. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
According to the FSF the CC license is not compatible with the GFDL, so would it even be possible to dual-license it under non-compatible licenses? I don't know how this works, but doing something like that doesn't make much sense to me. What do you think is wrong with using GFDL for textbooks? Mattb112885 (talk) 23:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I think GFDL is appropriate for textbooks. Just add three-or-so pages of text to the end, it doesn't cost that much. --Iamunknown 23:56, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I'll try to remember to look for the link later, but apparently the CC people think it's fine to use images under CC documents in a GFDL document, but I don't know if text is compatible. Using a GFDL licenced image in a CC document would not be OK. (Using Public Domain images in either sort of document is fine, and doesn't make the document public domain because it contains a PD image... licenses sometimes work differently depending on which direction you use them).--SB_Johnny | talk 23:25, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Just curious, you commented on the fact that "prettiness" is moot (which, I agree, it is), but not on the discussion at Commons. Have you read it? I'd suggest reading it; there are real concerns about the latest batch of CC-3.0 licenses that are yet unresolved. --Iamunknown 00:01, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps i'm using a different definition of the term "prettiness", as being an aesthetic quality. I have read much of the commons discussion, i am reading the remainder. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:06, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset tabs:) The more I learn about the CC licenses, the less I like them... to the point where I've recently stopped dual-licensing the images I upload. The folks at CC are playing more loosely all the time, especially when it comes to derivative works. I don't mind if my images or contributions help someone make a few bucks, but I do want to be assured that what's made of my contributions is still free (and if they make an improvement, I want to feel free to improve their version too).

The GFDL is a pain in the tuckus sometimes, but FSF is very conservative about maintaining the "viral" quality of the license, and CC really isn't as concerned as they once promised to be. --SB_Johnny | talk 23:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal for adding WikiTeX support to Wikibooks

I'd like to propose adding the WikiTeX extension to the repertoire of tools available to authors on Wikibooks. This extension supports creating a variety of LaTeX output formats from directly editable text sources. The topic areas in my mind most likely to see direct advantage are as follows:

  • Music: Currently the state of notation editing is in a sorry state of affairs. Should a person notice a minor error in an image they either must recreate the notation from scratch or manipulate the original image via photoshop or similar program.
  • Mathematics: LaTeX has numerous mathematics extension, and in my opinion any books on mathematics is likely to be written by an individual familiar with LaTeX or similar notation style.
  • Generalized graphing (via. Graphvis extensions to LaTeX) This most likely applies to books on computer science or other algorithm intensive topic. However the graphvis product is highly versatile. This means people will have few software imposed limitations.
  • Language Studies. The current WikiTeX modules include the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet). Being a foreign script buff, I've often run across the IPA when reading up on yet another "funky alphabet".

Items I can see as potential concern are as follows:

  • Disk space usage. If images are stored after module submission to save on CPU resources, then I can easily see disk space becoming an issue.
  • CPU usage. From what skimming I've done it appears that Lilypond -- the music generation back-end used by LaTeX -- can be CPU intensive.
  • Readability. Many of the data that I looked at on the sample page, may not be very accessible, in a readability sense, to the non-technical audiences who might like to author content using these extensions.

-- Jason C Daniels 02:26, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

We already have a math rendering engine with the <math>...</math> tags, so I dont think we need to add a new engine to wikibooks. Books on music and chemistry, i think, stand to gain the most from this extension and I would be perfectly happy if we only installed the lilypond extension and possibly the XyMTeX one. Some of the other extensions, while nice, are not strictly needed around here. I think we should put in a request about this on bugzilla, and see if the developers are up to it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 13:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Latex sounds like it is very commonly used so that would be a plus. There's lots of books on it. On the bad side, someone will need to implement it and keep it patched. I'm a no-one but I support it assuming it can be implemented. Harriska2 14:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
There is a known extension to mediawiki that covers this, the wikimedia developers are likely aware of the extension but have never activated it on any WMF project that I know of. Wikipedia had tried in the past to have the extension installed, but that discussion didnt reach any kind of consensus. Other non-WMF wikis have used this extension, however, so i assume it is working and properly maintenanced. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 17:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Whiteknight, Thanks for the feedback on the math extensions. Being a newbie, I'm a bit unfamiliar with the "vanilla" wiki offerings. As well I was just picking a few items that I personally saw as definite possibilities for WikiTeX. (Who knows maybe there's things that LaTeX does that the current math extensions don't handle.. that's just speculation) But in any case, what I'm gathering from this conversations is that, independant of implementation the following are perceived desires for the authors on WikiBooks:
  • Some form of inline wiki-ish music typesetting.
  • Some form of chemistry related markup.
  • Generalized graphing capabilities.
As for implementation specific items. TeX is viewed favorably and will likely be a familiar way for people to input data. WikiTeX with specific extensions meets all of these desires. But, we need to convince the powers that be to install and maintain the software. As well, reaching consensus seems to be the biggest perceived challenge if one were to draw on Wikimedias foray at getting this same extension enabled. Does that sound like an accurate summary? -- Jason C Daniels 21:29, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Accurate indeed! I should have some time tonight, i will go over to bugzilla and put in a request for this extension. Also, i will be on IRC later tonight and I will try to ask the developers directly whether this can happen or not. I dont know if i will get any straight answers, the developers are very busy people. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 21:59, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, some bad news. The developers say that lilypond introduces "non-trivial security concerns". Apparently there is already a bugzilla request to have it installed on a number of projects, with several hundred votes. I dont think that wikibooks is going to get it right now. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 02:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Since lilypond is used indirectly, it is still technically possible to install WikiTex with associated other apps (each would need to be evaluated for security risks, of course) to provide the modules of interest. (i.e. Remaining are chem, and generalized graphing) As well if the real concern is latex and not so much lilypond, there is a Graphviz specific extension. I've installed it, and it seems to work fine on my 800MHz web/mysql/file server. (A bit slow to generate a graph, but the box is underpowered, underrammed...etc) So with all that in mind, Whiteknight, would you be willing to pick the developers brains to see if they have similar concerns with graphviz? And once I get the right modules installed locally here, I'll get the names of the one(s) used for chemistry ...etc. WikiTeX seems to have a lot of potential modules, though some of which seem to be unavailable from the stock Ubuntu sources. -- Jason C Daniels 22:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

HELP! Some pages not loading right this morning.

Hello,

I have been reading the blender noob to pro tutorial for the last couple of days. This morning the pages are not loading properly! the link to the page I am accessing is:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Detailing_Your_Simple_Person_1

[Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Detailing_Your_Simple_Person_1]

I see the normal layout (navigation sidebar and topbar) however the content is (mostly) missing, and the footer of the content area is covering up any content that is on the page. I tried forcing a refresh several times, and I even closed my browser and came back. No luck.

My guess is that a service on the webserver or database needs to be restarted.

Thanks,

Greg —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 205.213.124.37 (talk • contribs) 2007-04-11T23:06:09.

G'day, I just took a look in Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0, both seem fine. Perhaps it was a transitory problem that has now been resolved. If you still have a problem, I'd suggest that it is local to you somehow - e.g. ISP or PC. If the problem persists after you clear your browser cache, close your browser, then restart it, then please upload a screen capture of what you are seeing and we can examine the problem further. Webaware talk 14:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Resetting headings...

How do I reset headings? That is: I start on ==Heading2== go to =Heading1= and then I want to start using ==Heading2== again, not under the just used =Heading1=, without having a new =Heading1=. I hope that makes sense. --Remi 04:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

<h1>Heading1</h1>
I don't completely fallow what you are requesting but see if this in any way helps you (just add for sub Headings)... --Panic 04:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
It doesnt work like that. The headings act like an outline, where smaller headings are always treated as children of larger headings. I personally avoid the use of level-1 headings entirely. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 14:14, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Level one headings are used for the title of the article, so they should be avoided entirely. Kellen T 17:00, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Okay, I agree with this... but see what I'm being told over at GFDL talk. Let's you and him fight. —Chowbok 04:37, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
You're talking about two entirely different things here. In a regular page you should avoid level 1 headings because they are used for chapter titles. In a print version, however, you use level 1 headings to head new chapters. If you use level 1 headings in the page, you have nothing to separate the pages in a print version. --Whiteknight (talk) 13:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Headings bug(?) in huwikbooks

Today in huwikibooks I've noticed that headings don't work very well. The "Contents" div can't make a difference between == ... == and === ... === headings. I would like to ask that are here similar problems in enwikibooks? Maybe developers've misdone something? See this page 4xampl, after "megjegyzések" title all titles there should be third-order. Please answer on my hun talkpage, or leave a short message there if you answer here. 100×thx: Hun admin. Gubbubu 10:12, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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