Where can I put a thesis?

I wrote an academic thesis in 1997 on "Water management in Indonesian cities". I'd like to put it on the web somewhere so it can be of use to others. I'm sure many others would like to do the same with their own theses. Is there a Wiki site where I can do this? Of course this would leave it open to editing by others, but that's okay - it would be possible to use a permanent link to the original version if necessary.

Wikisource appears not to be suitable unless it's "verifiably published"; Wikibooks is supposed to be NPOV and it would take a lot to establish, on a case-by-case basis, where a thesis was NPOV.

The only thing I can think of is to post it to a relevant Wikicity. Any other ideas? (A "Wikithesis" even?) --Singkong2005 04:07, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Some recent discussion has occured about perhaps using Wikiversity as a place for content of this nature. At the moment there is no reasonable place to put content like this, although you might want to look at the Academia Wikicity. Another place to put something like this is on Wikisource, but that may present some problems. I would suggest if you plan on putting something like this on Wikisource to first contact the Scriptorium (their equivalent of the Staff Lounge) for guidance on how to proceed. --Rob Horning 04:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Another place might be an introductory life sciences course tied into microbiology feedstock management etc. (Bioloogy) is current a bright spot at Wikiversity because we have a highly qualified and experienced university researcher user:JWSurf participating with improving the learning portal Microbiology needs help.that this might attract. Likewise the engineering division needs some experienced interest to attract student and free projects to the Engineering College. I have not checked but I do think we even have Space Physics Engineering which means no lazy flight test engineers from Dryden or Air Force Flight Test Center are likely to divert effort from usenet sci.space.policy to see if a little local joy riding or pet peeve management will return bread from the NPOV or universal ether. I have some very limited experience with controlling pumpstations supplying feedstock to waste fermenting/consumption/conversion basins and tanks. If you provide a link to the paper or email me a copy of it with applicable information and permission to publish under the site FDL I will help you or put it on the site myself and build an intitial course development action plan and work breakdown structure and task list and then review paper for techniques or inspiration regarding the lunar base prototype golden path variations for fan in and fan out points. If you are discouraged locally please check back occasionally. A pen stroke or forks or divine interaction or neutrion cancer or something is surely impending? later lovers Lazyquasar 11:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC) michael_irwin@verizon.com

p.s. Forget majick words and codes. Kim Possibles delegates picked mango waste and shipped to University of Oregon for initial analsysis and feedback. Which means I hold the high ground on local ducks who have MIA from student body and hometown responsbilities too long. I delivered the wooden grenade to the Class Adivser, tennis coach (new program initated, awesome!), in middle of his remedial math hogs. RR owes me bigtime (RR` can block for him, incredibly embarrassing situation never ever revealed, referenced or heard about again anyway or anytime, good back plate armor materials & local new zealish gold reservationist) and this paper has serious possibilities to attract a PE I desperately need to make good big braggs at Space-Frontier.org regarding drinking our own sewage a few thousand times before inflicting it on the Lunar Tourist Customs/Border Town. Enough. Hope to see a link to the loaded paper on my yakk yakk page soon or well title email that can PASS the spam filters. Sincerely Lazyquasar 11:43, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource:What is Wikisource?: "Some basic criteria for texts excluded from Wikisource are: ... Original writings by a contributor to the project". The rule is there to prevent contributors from using Wikisource to write anything that they want. So, do not put your own thesis on Wikisource.

If you do not use http://acamedia.wikicities.com, then you might want to start a wiki only to hold your thesis. Try Wiki:WikiFarms. For example, you could probably use http://pbwiki.com or http://www.wikispaces.com. --Kernigh 19:35, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks all. I've just created the Development and Sustainability Wikia and it occurred to me that my thesis would fit quite well in there. This doesn't solve the problem for everyone, but if anyone has a thesis on issues relating to sustainability or development, then they're certainly welcome to put it there.

The next issue is: how do I convert from a Word document to Wiki markup? If there's no easy solution, I can save it as HTML, which should work. There's over 300 footnotes in the whole thesis, so it's important that the translation handles footnotes.

I'll check Academia Wikicity as well - maybe link it from there. --Singkong2005 16:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Further improvements to be made

I put here some (edited) comments that I have raised in a discussion with Rob Horning as I'd like to air some of these issues to a wider audience:

When I came to wikibooks, it was clear that it had an identity crisis, which had seen a number of splits - the cookbook, wikijunior and wikiversity in particular had all been split off in some way. There was no standard naming convention, so each book looked separate rather being as part of a whole. There were many remnants of former days as a multilingual site, a lot of latent vandalism (eg a number of pages still needing ass pus or still having been damonized), and serious difficulties navigating to find what books are actually worth reading. This, through the efforts of a number of editors, is improving (although I'm sure not as fast as we'd all like).

There is still some way to go - personally I very much do see wikijunior and wikiversity as being part of the remit to host and develop textbooks, and I would love the rifts to disappear. The Cookbook namespace should disappear too. Hopefully making wikibooks look like something to be proud of will bring them into the fold. For me, we also need to resolve textbooks such as Knowing Knoppix and Gardening, which have already been published, but which are clearly textbooks that would not be out of place here had they originally been started here. To my mind wikibooks is the wikimedia project you look at for textbooks (and if it isn't, it bloody well should be). They are not appropriate for wikisource (which does not appear to cover things even remotely looking like textbooks), yet provide a welcome addition to wikibooks.

Other issues to resolve are to make things more user-friendly. I have already changed the Wikibooks portal (along the lines of what is done for other wikimedia projects), though this probably deserves more work as it is the first thing many first-time visitors see. I have started to redraft the Help namespace content using modified wikipedia content - this too needs to be completed. The main page, no doubt, can be improved further.

In summary, there is much to be done to make wikibooks look like a good place to develop new textbooks - but that is the noble aim. If we can succeed, we can help bring down the cost of textbooks generally, which will greatly help education throughout the English-speaking world, Jguk 11:59, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I would say that Wikibooks is still in a state of trying to find its own identify, although it has calmed down to a more leisurely pace of discussion and more reasonable concensus opinions being reached, as opposed to when Jimbo went in and effectively put in a VfD for three Wikibooks with a strong opinion that the content should have been deleted much earlier (I still wish he would have used the VfD forum for that instead of the Staff Lounge).

Wikiversity and Wikijunior both are examples of new Wikimedia projects that are using Wikibooks merely as server space to try and find their own way as independent projects. Wikiversity started out as one idea and has grown to become apparently something very different from the initial suggestion, although it is clear even from this very early edit that Wikiversity was to be about teaching courses and not just writing textbooks, as apparently the Foundation board seems to want it to become.

The point here is that Wikibooks has been used repeatedly as the starting point for brand new project ideas and I've worn this point down so hard that few people are even listening to me, thinking I'm crying wolf all of the time. These new projects keep getting added to Wikibooks, as is evidenced by Wikilanguages and Wikitopia. I have tried to resolve this situation by not only letting new users know that this is inappropriate, changing policies and "welcome" messages, but also trying to get a place to put concepts like this. Wikicities is a place to put them, but it feels hollow as it really isn't the same as Wikimedia sister project. Creating whole new projects has turned into such a nightmare that I've proposed that the Wikimedia Foundation board simply adopt a new policy toward them: No new Wikimedia projects will ever be created. Thank you for your suggestions but please look elsewhere.

That puts us here on Wikibooks in a huge bind as these projects keep getting created, and some of them are very worthy ideas that perhaps even as regular Wikibooks participants we feel should be done somewhere but just not here on Wikibooks. There really is no place to put this sort of content, and it gets to be very harsh to simply say "goodbye" to Wikiversity through a VfD instead, with defenders not really having a leg to stand on in their defense.

Defining exactly what is a Wikibook can help. If the definition is clear, it is easier to convince others that content should or should not be developed here. It would also help us to cut down the VfD page to only occasional discussions rather than a huge dynamic process that it currently is. Of course, Wikipedia ought to be pretty clear as to what is an encyclopedia article, and they still have problems with even whole book-like projects getting started there and moved to this project, so I guess this is something that all of the Wikimedia projects have to live with. --Rob Horning 14:41, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Etiquette

I've posted a comment on Wikibooks_talk:Etiquette, to try to "resurrect" this guideline. I think the policies and guidelines on Wikibooks need work in general, so I'm starting here. I'd appreciate your thoughts and comments. Cormaggio 10:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I would like to go further than etiquette. Wikipedia has numerous instances of bullying such as personal attacks, edit wars etc. This is not happening yet at Wikibooks, we are all friends here so far and behaviour seems to be almost exemplary. I would like to propose that every bookshelf has an administrator who is an Editorial Executive. The role of the executive would be to:

• Nip Wikipedia bad behaviour in the bud; to spot edit wars and personal attacks at the outset.

• Provide help on the correct structuring of a Wikibook.

RobinH 16:36, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, well I tried to resurrect this proposal for the very reason that I observed behaviour that was far from exemplary, believe me. I probably didn't give the greatest response myself, but that's neither here nor there as regards the proposal itself. A collaborative social space needs to set its codes/rules/values, whatever you want to call them - otherwise it is vulnerable to being manipulated by bullies. I'm not sure an editorial executive is the best way, but, as we develop, we do need processes that go beyond simple admin duties. Cormaggio 12:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

How do we go from here to a policy proposal? I would propose that:

• Any edit war is immediately taken "offline" and moved onto a separate page for discussion. The text should be reverted to the state it was in before the start of the edit war until resolution has been achieved.
• Personal comments ranging from "idiot", "fool", "ignorant" upwards are outright banned. Perhaps a one week suspension for the offender. We discuss the content of books at Wikibooks. It is essential to stop personal comments instantly - zero tolerance.
• On each bookshelf there is an Editorial Executive who is an administrator who oversees the above.
• There is an Editorial Board of 5 Users who can be asked to intervene after a 2 week delay if the actions of the Editorial Executive are called into question.

Civilisation thrives under the rule of enlightened and liberal law. RobinH 20:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I fear this is all too complicated. Also the two problems with Wikibooks:Etiquette are that it stresses some negative behaviours, particularly at the top (eg no personal attacks, rather than the positive - be nice and understanding), and that it is too long. At present, administrators are free to use their discretion in disputes in which they themselves are not personally involved, subject to re-affirmation of their approach by other administrators. Or, to put it another way, we have no firm policy. Where is the problem that needs resolution here. I appreciate that you'll be reluctant to cast a stone, but without concrete examples of where there is a problem at present, it is difficult to know how to resolve the issue, Jguk 06:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks is a pleasant and creative environment but I have peered into Wikipedia and feel strongly that we should prevent the sort of behaviour that occurs over there from happening here. Just look at the requests for arbitration page, its the Wild West out there! I believe that two simple policies will stop this sort of thing from happening here:

• If edit wars are immediately taken off-line onto a special administration page until resolved the heat of the situation would be dissipated immediately. No one would win by edit warring, the only way forward would be discussion and compromise. See Editing policy and add a comment.

• If there is an Executive Editor on each bookshelf who can keep the peace, stamp on personal attacks and arbitrate at an early stage then the situation will never arise where two contributors go to war or seriously offend each other. There will always be a third party to break any deadlock. See No personal attacks policy and cast a vote.

I know that this all seems overblown given that we are fairly civilised at Wikibooks but if we put these two simple ideas into effect we will always be civilised. RobinH 08:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I have transferred this to "Three important policies - act now". RobinH 10:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Overhaul of the Bookshelves and Wikibooks:Bookshelves

This is a subject that has been laying around on the back burner for some time, and does get brought up from time to time as well. In trying to fix the Ontology of Wikibooks, I've already made some changes in how you can look up a specific Wikibook.

One of the common practices here on Wikibooks is the grouping of Wikibooks into bookshelves. From a rough count of the total number of independent Wikibooks on this project right now, we have about 700 different books that can be organized. About 200 or so are missing from the current alphabetical listing, from a rough guess based on my preliminary review of the bookshelves I did before starting this post. The current count on the alphabetical list is 564 books. BTW, anybody notice the change on the main page where I listed the total number of Wikibooks?

By any measure this is a huge number and is going to require multiple levels of topical structure just to be able to put all of these books into a systematic organization. And this is something that is desperately needed as I've seen several duplicate modules also come up, and some very good Wikibooks that have been lost in the shuffle, especially noting some of the poor candidates or even winners of the Book of the Month contest, when clearly superior books were available.

Even if you assume about 10-20 books per bookshelf, that is still going to be over 30 different bookshelves on Wikibooks, which is clearly overwhelming. And some topics like computer related books have some perhaps disproportionate represenation compared to what you would normally find in a typical library situation.

To further complicate matters, some books are listed on multiple bookshelves. There may be valid reasons why this is done, but we need to come up with some more clear guidelines on how this is done and when it can occur.

Basically, I consider the current bookshelf organization to simply be broken. I am not suggesting that they be deleted, but a holistic reorganization oriented not just toward a few bookshelves but to how they are all put together should occur. The suggestion of "departments" that have collections of bookshelves is perhaps a good way to form super categories, but subcategories and other organization methods need to be dealt with as well. And to decide on how many levels of organization do we want? Finding a book shouldn't be a process of clicking through a dozen pages just to find the content you want.

We also want to group similar books together. That is the whole point anyway, where you can look up related books that are all together on the same "bookshelf".

There are a number of "wikibooks" that are also bookshelves in disguise. I've recently renamed Biology and Physics because they really were bookshelves to a bunch of independent books and not the main page of a Wikibook. Currently there is no policy, instead I'm just being bold and trying to fix a problem as I perceive it. This is indeed something that needs to be addressed in terms of policies, and something I've run into before with my wikibook Serial Programming that has inadvertantly turned into a bookshelf. (I call it my wikibook because I'm the principle author of most of the modules and I started it). The Serial Programming book has even gone up for VfD because of the way new modules were added when people treated it as a bookshelf.

Based in part on our content, here are some signicant divisions (or departments) to consider for the very top level of organization:

Society

Humanities, History, Arts, Social Sciences, Law, Economics, Business, and Politics (books like Voter's Guide and something about politcal organization)

Science

Mainly "hard" sciences, but thing like Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and those things that have to do with scientific enquiry in general. The distinction with social sciences may at times be tricky, but that is often grouped with humanities anyway even at many major universities. Where to put Mathamatics is an issue to deal with here as well.

Engineering

This is one I'm not entirely sure if this is the way to do it. There are many engineering books and there is a bookshelf just for engineering, but I was thinking of generalizing the category to include even the computer books (aka software engineering). The title of this category is debatable as is even the organization, but basically those books that deal with how to create stuff. Computers could perhaps be the category, but then engineering is kinda left out in the cold by itself or improperly placed.

Games

Game guides are such a major part of Wikibooks that it really deserves its own top level distinction, and they will need to develop their own standards as a community of game guide developers anyway.

How-to

Another top-level distinction if for no other reason than Wikipedia has a specific policy about this topic, as does Wikibooks. There are also enough different How-to books that sub-categories of these books (aka seperate bookshelves) can and should be created as well.

Miscellaneous

No matter how hard we try, some books simply defy any attempt to categorize them. Even the major classification systems like Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress have general categories to dump in books they really don't know what to do, which BTW is the reason for the 003 and 004 codes for computer books that were totally unanticipated by the Dewey Decimal system except in the general anything goes category.

I know there are many other opinions on this topic, so add to the discussion and let's see if we can come up with a reasonable top level organization for Wikibooks. I'd like to keep the number of top-level categories down to between 5 - 10 significant major subdivisions, as having too many more than that is simply too confusing to people coming to Wikibooks for the first time. --Rob Horning 17:13, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to propose combining engineering and science into one shelf- science and technology. After all, engineering is just applied science. Under that we could have subsections- natural sciences, math, engineering (possibly further broken down in the future), computer science, IT, etc. It makes a more logical sense to me, especially as some things in the two have so much overlap (is discrete math under scinece->math or engineering->computer science?). This way they'd all at least have the same top level bookshelf.--Gabe Sechan 21:45, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

There really are enough different technology books that they deserve their own shelf seperate from science books... and enough science books as well to stand on their own. This is one area that Wikibooks is particularly strong in right now. I would like to "reunify" the computer books somehow, as they do seem to be splintering into seemingly infinite groups. --Rob Horning 02:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Comp Sci vs Comp (software) Engineering are another two topics that should go on the same bookshelf. On the other-hand, I'd prefer few large bookshelves over a "tree". Yes, we can subdivide and subdivide until we got very specific bookshelves, but there is a point where it just won't work. And given the current content, I think 5 or so bookshelves is all we need right now. Basically, I'd like to avoid books on more than one bookshelf. --Dragontamer 22:19, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

So you are saying that you don't mind having over 200 Wikibooks on one bookshelf? Because that is the resulting number of books that are going to be listed, and precisely why there are so many computer and information technology bookshelfs: So many books were listed that it became a blur about what what was really there. I'm not talking about a category or bookshelf with just one or two books, instead I'm talking perhaps 30-50 as a target size. With this number of Wikibooks, that is still going to be about 20 different bookshelves, and that is the point I was trying to make earlier.... it needs a better organziation. And bookshelves now need groupings, at least if this more moderate goal is to be realized. This is not a theorhetical discussion, but actual content that is so diverse and so deep that it needs to be organized into more than just a small handful of flat categories. --Rob Horning 02:47, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

The books can still be "treed" and kept on one page, by use of sections. Using sections also takes away a disadvantage of large bookshelf pages: Navigation - individual sections get links in the TOC, so one can easily jump to whereever they need to go. I think an easy way to add new books for users unsure where to put them would be useful as well - one of the reasons so many new books go unshelved is because a lot of new users don't know where to put it. Perhaps a notice on the edit page when creating a new page in the main namespace could help with this, i.e. something like "Things to do when creating a new book" that lists some things that need to be done with new books (as well as providing easy links, so users don't have to search for the proper pages):

• Add this book to a bookshelf.
• Place this book in a proper category.
• List it on the list of new books.

And so on. This could probably be made into a template and used in a few other places, as well.

As far as organisation of the shelves goes, a single large "Science & Technology" shelf could probably encompass all of the needs in that category, with proper subdivisions.

The Dewey codes were mentioned as well; perhaps we can try to keep each section to a specific number/range and put that in the section header, so people can search by number if they want to, or provide a seperate template with section links, but using the numbers as the link text. --Xerol Oplan 00:43, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I created a page at Wikibooks:Bookshelves/Generation 2 to store notes. --Kernigh 20:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

April 1st Madness

April 1st tends to bring out the best in editors, and candidates generally worthy of the Uncyclopedia.

I noticed that Quantum field theory was just proclaimed as the Wikijunior New Book of the Quarter, and I would venture to guess that other interesting things are happening as well. If you could simplify that topic for 8 year olds, that would indeed be quite an interesting text! BTW, I'll give it a day in the sun before the real winner, Wikijunior Languages is put up instead.

If you see anything else that is worthy of a chuckle, please post it here, and then this will be archived to Wikibooks:Bad Jokes and Other Deleted Nonsense at some point in the near future. --Rob Horning 12:23, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, this was my idea :) I was updating BOTM, COTM and Wikijunior book of the quarter and I noticed that book called "Languages" won the vote, although it was not linked to the voting page and I could not find it using Wikibooks search. I came into idea that if I can't find any of books from the voting page, I would play a joke and make something funny. Of course, this is just for April 1st, but Wikijunior people should learn a lesson from this case and 1) give normal links at voting page 2) make all Wikijunior books easily available from Wikijunior main page and perhaps 3) instroduce a rational naming convention. I and Kernigh also noticed that this vote is not protected from sockpuppets as anyone can vote. There were cases of people having one edit - the vote. --Derbeth ^talk 15:50, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, the standards perhaps should be improved to at least the 20 edit minimum. I think I'll make that change for the next round of voting that finishes in July. The reason why the book isn't linked to the page is because it hasn't been created yet! This is a vote to decide what the next book should be, not what the next one is that we are working on. A few Wikijunior books have been started outside of this process, but how they are going to be linked is currently up for debate at the moment. In the past, Wikijunior books created out of process were speedy deleted, which I felt was inappropriate as it was not really policy.

As far as a rational naming convention, they are independent Wikibooks, so according to WB:NP there should be a title of a book, which has always been Wikijunior xxx for the current set of books either under development or proposed if they have been created early. Are you suggesting something else? Wikijunior is not the name of the book, but rather the bookshelf. In this case I might support a move of Wikijunior to Wikibooks:Wikijunior, but I wouldn't make that move yet. Wikijunior is also being used as a project namespace, and there may be as valid if not more so reasons to start a formal Wikijunior namespace than was used for the Cookbook namespace. --Rob Horning 19:27, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

There was a rush earlier today to update the Main Page for April. If I recall, I was on IRC with Derbeth and Jguk. We managed to update BOTM and COTM, but I suddently had to disconnect from the Internet before anyone changed the Wikijunior new book. I would not have supported using Quantum field theory as the new book, but it might be a sign that Wikijunior is becoming more popular and successful. --Kernigh 19:57, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy about books dealing with illegal activity

So far, the response from the Wikibooks community has been to attack individual Wikibooks, but no very consistant project-wide policy has yet been adopted. In almost every case when illegal activity is documented in a Wikibooks, it has come up on the VfD forum and has been eventually deleted as well. Another couple of Wikibook just came up today that brought this to my attention: AIM Password Cracking and Rip a karaoke cd

Together with the Manual of Crime, Drugs:Fact and Fiction, and Computer Hacking, this shows that content of this nature is going to be added to Wikibooks anyway, so we need to try and have some solid guidelines over what is acceptable and what is not. I don't think a simple disclaimer saying "don't try this at home if you don't want to be arrested" is going to be sufficient, or any similar statement. This has been discussed in other forums before, but it does need to be made clear. See also w:Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors for some other insight to content of this nature.

I don't support a general no reverse engineering policy, nor do I support a blanket ban on books that might be shown to encourage illegal activity. That is a policy that if used agressively can remove half of the books on this project and can be abused by rogue administrators. That is perhaps why this hasn't been covered or dealt with in the past.

How do you get rid of books that are a criminal's how-to book but keep books that are genuinely useful for security advise and protection? What role to disclaimers have in books like the AIM Password book have, and is that sufficient or should it be stronger? Do we want to have, even in a small corner of Wikibooks, an equivalant of Paladin Press? If not, why not, and what policies should be in place to make sure that doesn't happen? If we should have a "bookshelf" of this sort of content, how do we keep it under control and avoid liability problems for Wikibooks contributors? --Rob Horning 13:21, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Please explain to me why it it is appropriate to "get rid of books that are a criminal's how-to book but keep books that are genuinely useful." This cannot be done while maintaining a neutral point of view. Why not have a Manual of Crime? Any information can be misused. The censorship of information should not be the answer to the problem of misuse. Who's law does wikibooks follow? This is very serious problem... I believe I have the answer to all our concerns. I propose a Ministry of Truth (Minitrue for short) to set legal standards and to oversee the production of wikibooks so that they may always be harmonious and neutral, this should prove to be a doubleplusgood thing.--Hapa 20:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

As far as the Manual of Crime is concerned, it was a Wikibook that had many people participating in its development and was brought up on both the Votes for deletion page and the Votes for undeletion page. All told the main module had over 167 different edits and at least 4 different attempts to recreate the content and 15 sub-modules involved, so this has been a rather contentious issue here on Wikibooks. Along the way even Jimbo himself was brought into the discussion (he discouraged the content, but was not going to personally get involved) and the eventual decision was to remove the content. Surprisingly I stayed quite on this issue myself. I bring this book up precisely because of the fact it was a large Wikibook and involved multiple contributors, and it didn't die easily here on Wikibooks either.

This issue is a far cry from the Ministry of Truth, like the Foreign Minister of Iraq claiming that the Iraqis were invading New York City (in 2002) only to discover a U.S. Soldier walking into his studio in the heart of Bagdad, and how his credibility was shot to pieces. Yes, I've read 1984, but that is not what we are talking about here. This is discussing how to break laws of varying degrees, and a strong concern that the main focus of Wikibooks is about writing textbooks for educational purposes. Having Wikibooks famous for being a modern alternative to Palidin Press is going to, at the moment, seriously detract from our ultimate goal of providing serious textbooks to educational institutions. I have long been an advocate for the idea that Wikibooks is more than just textbooks, and there are a number of books here that are not strictly about teaching a class at a formal educational institution. Still, I am suggesting that there is potentially a place for some of this content, and that a line needs to be drawn from the blatant advocation of illegal activity.

Mind you, I didn't delete Rip a karaoke cd either, but brought up some strong concerns in the discussion page and even brought up some issues on your user page. Thank you for addressing some of those issues, and I think we can come to a compromise on what you have written. Other participants at Wikibooks are going to be reviewing what you wrote as well, and they will come to their own conclusion. This whole discussion is about the general policy and perhaps even where that policy change should take place. Another discussion about this issue (I had to do some serious digging to find it) took place here: Wikibooks talk:Policy/Vote/Archive 1#A directly enumerated WikiBooks policy Other subsequent discussion also covered some of these issues.

When this issue was brought up earlier, it really didn't come to a conclusion, and the issue has been swept under the rug. I'm hoping here that perhaps some other contributors to Wikibooks might be interested in resolving this issue and helping to come up with some sort of policy statement about this sort of content. Or at least to get the current mindset of contributors to Wikibooks about this topic. --Rob Horning 00:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Currently, it seems that a "how to rape" guide is out-of-scope for Wikibooks, but a "how to prevent rape" guide is in scope. (For those of you who recall the now-deleted Wikibooks Manual Of Crime, I refer to a generic "how to rape" guide, not the particular guide from the MOC.)

My problem with "how to rape" is that I would perceive as a soapbox for the promotion of crime. Then certainly "how to prevent rape" is a soapbox for the prevention of crime, and Guide to X11 is a soapbox for the usage of the X Window System. This is a reference not to the policy of neutrality of point of view, but to Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks.

In particular, this policy contains too much Enwikipediathink, because it is among our earliest policies, and most of the Wikibookians at that time came from Wikipedia. The policy is actually a derivative work of w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not. It does not work well on Wikibooks, because Wikibooks is not an encyclopedia. Rules like "Wikibooks is not for developing new Wikimedia projects" and "Wikibooks is not a general repository for nonfiction works" do not ban anything specifically. "Wikibooks is not a free wiki host or webspace provider" is misleading because Wikibooks is a free wiki host and webspace provider, even though this provision is not for personal pages. "Wikibooks is not a place to publish original works" is an unfortunate contraction of "original works of fiction or literature", because in fact each Wikibook is an original work, though it is not an original work of fiction. In fact each Wikibook is an original work of literature, so that is another problem. "Wikibooks is not censored for the protection of minors" was hastily copied from Wikipedia (in late 2005, I think) and has its own bias because it assumes that older persons do not require any protection from offensive content.

Actually, Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks remains the doubleplusgood policy at Wikibooks. It is a good attempt at describing the scope of the existing contents at Wikibooks. However, users keep adding irrelevant pages like The Storyteller by Martha Whittington. The ultimate effect is that Wikibooks is good for new users who join to work on existing books, but bad for new users who join to start new books. In my case, I worked on Guide to Unix before starting a similar Guide to X11. Thus, I propose to overhual Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks. --Kernigh 00:19, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

We need a "top shelf"! Books with adult content should be permissible except where they violate a legal concept of incitement.

If I were to write "a U235 bomb is much easier to construct than a plutonium device because it can be made from a sphere with a hole drilled that can receive a large cylindrical plug of uranium that can simply be dropped into place" I have merely disseminated neutral information. If, after the above, I write "the uranium storage facility at Alma Ata is isolated, patrolled by two guards and currently has a faulty telephone connection to the local police station" I am inciting terrorist behaviour.

Perhaps the simplest way out of this problem is to create an "Adult Wikibooks" that activates child protection on Firewalls etc. and which can contain any book that would be permissible in the European Union - the EU being literate, secular and liberal and yet not a global superpower. RobinH 09:11, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

This is something that may have some very strong merit. The Open Directory Project has precisely this sort of "walled off" area that is not linked to the main page and has an explict policy that other areas of the project can't link into the adult section (although it is considered acceptable to go the other way). For the not so faint of heart and those that can handle genuine adult web content, here is the link: http://dmoz.org/Adult

Don't say I didn't warn you. That is genuine adult-only content there. Although it is not explictly stated anywhere on any Wikimedia project, pornography has long been forbidden from Wikimedia projects and was one of the motivations to remove the Naturism Wikibook. It really takes a special kind of editor to wade through most of the raw garbage that ends up being called "adult-only" and to try to come to terms with enforcing policies and having some basic content standards but yet permit this sort of content. We have been lucky in many ways because writing a Wikibook really is very hard work, and most adult-only content is usually excluded from Wikibooks simply because it violates other Wikibooks policies, such as being a copyright violation, being a work of fiction, original research, or NPOV issues. The Naturism book was unusual because it passed all of those restrictions but it failed the Jimbo test... Jimbo didn't like it. It also had problems because some of the photos depicted what could be arguably child pornography.

We certainly don't want to allow anybody being able to go from Wikijunior to some adult-only content with just a few easy steps. I'm also questioning the need for this sort of seperation, but it at least is a reasonable and rational proposal. In this regard, I would almost prefer a seperate Wikicity (Wikia project now?) to allow people to set up their own policies in an adult-only content environment. I highly doubt you will get board approval for an adult-only Wikimedia project. --Rob Horning 13:53, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not create an "Mature Minds Only" sort of tag, <MMO> which could be used to mark controversial content. Some sort of firewall could be setup to protect those who would not, or should not see such content. it would be of like putting the Playboys behind the counter instead of in the candy aisle. User:RobinH said "EU being literate, secular and liberal and yet not a global superpower." That doesn't seem to be very NPoV. Don't underestimate the illiterate, religious, conservative super powers. The fact that the EU may be (arguably) literate, secular, liberal, and a minor global power, does not automatically give their censors superior judgment. I don't think that our personal biases should be used for the basis of creating policy.--Hapa 20:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how banning the advocation of illegal activity is necessarily a major point of contention. I guess it is for some people who feel that you should be free to say anything and everything. As mentioned on the WB:WIN talk page, the How to Rape book is discouraged because of the fact it does encourage breaking a law that is usually described as a felony in most legal juristictions around the world. Some kinds of activities are permitted in some countries and not in others, like some of the illicit drug usage, but even here if you are writing on how to evade law enforcement when doing that activity in places where it is illegal, it should be put on the list of banned types of content. This shouldn't be something difficult to understand, nor something that can easily be abused by an administrator, and is a clear line that IMHO is something that people should not cross on this project. That in many cases all that is needed is to clean up the content to avoid the out right advocacy of breaking laws, there can be some content that is so blatant on this issue that it would simply have to be deleted. We live in a society of laws, and those laws are necessary for us to even have this project at all.

As for other content that is meant for mature audiences, creating the firewall is going to be harder than you might think. If you have a link on mature content that goes to a Wikijunior module, it is really only two clicks away for a younger child to get there via "What links here". The only real way I can see you doing a proper firewall is to put it on a completely different domain and project. And that brings up the whole issue all over again over what sorts of content would be put onto the "mature" domain and what would be kept here. A seperate bookshelf for mature content is not going to be sufficient.

I want to seperate the discussion, however, between allowing mature content and those books that advocate breaking laws. Deciding wheither to allow adult-only content on Wikibooks is something that can be decided seperately and independently, as you can have some content that is not intended for use by children but is not advocating illegal activity, and there is some content that doesn't matter if children see it other than the fact that it encourages you to break various laws. Like ripping CD-ROMs in violation of the DCMA and how to avoid getting caught sharing the music on P2P networks. --Rob Horning 02:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

To follow your lead, limiting the discussion to illegal activity with pornography excluded, the real problem is "who's laws". I mentioned the EU earlier because it is a loose liason of states so, for instance, anti-terrorist laws are not universal within the EU. But as a contributor pointed out, people from other places might take offence at EU laws being the benchmark. So where is the body of law that defines the content of a book as illegal? Many Wikibooks are probably already illegal in the context of Chinese or Byelorussian law. There are UN guides to what is generally acceptable (ie: what violates fundamental rights etc.) but we would need a full legal apparatus to interpret these.

Incidently, as a European, I find sex less offensive than violence so Jimbo's imposition of North American mores seems a little strange.

This whole issue seems appallingly difficult. It seems wrong to ban a book just because it irritates a particular culture (but is a book on cartoons of Mohammed wrong?). The best we can do is create somewhere where we can put things that are genuinely doubtful, whether it is Naturism or terrorism. But where can we put these items? RobinH 14:20, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I found the cartoons about Mohammed to be incredibly funny. But on to other matters... Yeah, this is a difficult issue, and a veiled critique of my admin skills was made on Foundation-l when I brought this issue up there. I was just trying to get some input from other admins about how they dealt with this kind of content on their own projects outside of Wikibooks. Instead, they came here to Wikibooks, marked up various books for VfDs or speedy deletes, and have chosen to help do the culling themselves. That is not going to deal with this issue in the future, which was exactly my point. Jimbo should __**NOT**__ have to come here to Wikibooks and help decide each and every case. With over 700 Wikibooks and a rate of growth of about 2 realistic new Wikibooks every day, there is no way a single individual can possibly keep up with this and do the other things Jimbo has to do. Indeed I can't even keep up with the growth of Wikibooks by myself, nor should any individual be expected to.

As far as what laws to follow, I think it is more what I said on the A guide to cheating during tests and examinations VfD that should apply: If you feel compelled to need a disclaimer suggesting that the content is for research purposes only, you might as well have considered that you just put a NPOV tag on the page instead. Indeed, I'm going to do exactly that from now on when I see disclaimers like this, but that is a personal policy and not a general project policy. If you can't write a book in a way that you would be safe from prosecution or a lawsuit without the disclaimer, then it really shouldn't be in Wikibooks in the first place. How about this as a general policy? --Rob Horning 15:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for an Editorial Board

I have put forward a policy proposal for an Editorial Board for Wikibooks to oversee policies, guidelines and dispute resolution. See:

Editorial board

RobinH 11:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

We really don't need this yet... if ever. One of the key things about Wikimedia projects is that we are free from the traditional heirarchy of things like this, and we do have of sorts a de-facto "Editorial Board" anyway in terms of a group of "moderators" that have been elected to help smooth things over try to keep the peace. Or a group of people who are interested in working with policies and help to make changes to those policies when things aren't working out, such as what has been said frequently here on Wikibooks.

One of the problems that happens when you get into a strong heirarchy situation is that you also get into the situation where a small select handful of people start to make huge changes, and there is no avenue for appeal. It also drives large groups away and if you are not careful it can collapse the whole project.

Wikibooks and other Wikimedia projects are experiments in pure democracy, where your influence is directly proportional to your involvement. In addition, there really is no restriction as to who can achieve that "status" in terms of who can work on the policies and help set the tone and direction of Wikibooks. Any active contributor can get involved and help out.

There might be a point about setting up an "arbitration committee" that can help to independently resolve disputes. I would prefer the term "moderation committee" that seeks to find a resolution between parties and not necessarily impose a verdict or ruling, such as the common law AbCom that is currently on Wikipedia. The big concern I would have about setting something like this up is to make it large enough so you don't have a cult of personality controlling the whole project. The Wikipedia committee in this regard was setup more as a delegation of authority from Jimbo so he wouldn't have to deal with the day to day affairs of Wikipedia. Jimbo has come into Wikibooks on occasion to resolve problems here, but he can't possibly keep up with all of the policy changes that have occured on not just on Wikibooks but all of the other projects as well. Or the "legislative history" over why each of the policies were established. My fear would be that if you set up a larger arbitration board, the first major dispute that would have to be resolved would be between members of that committee, since it is made up of active Wikibookians.

There are avenues to help police and work out most areas of conflict on Wikibooks. None of them are perfect and all of them have been questioned regarding their effectiveness. The current most active dispute resolution forum is Wikibooks:Votes for deletion. An arbitration board would be completely useless in this situation as anybody who really has an opinion on the matter usually raises their voice anyway. There have been some very tough situations where there are clearly two different schools of philosophy to keep or remove content. An ArbCom action on the VfD forum would be strong arm tactics and simply not appropriate behavior for anybody on such a committee. And again it would likly involve members of the committee anyway in terms of who would have started the VfD and other members having a different opinion on what to do with the content.

The other significant role for an arbitration board is over editorial conflict on actual content. Wikibooks tends to take things at a slightly slower pace than the other Wikimedia projects, in part because of how difficult it is to simply write a book. The number of participants on any given Wikibook is also low enough (usually) that any disagreement over content can usually be resolved through the discussion pages alone. Far more often books are simply abandoned and all you have is somebody coming in and perhaps giving the book a new direction, but nobody really cares because the original contributors are long gone.

One other huge thing on this proposed Editorial board that may be from a misunderstanding of the role of Administrators here on Wikibooks. Yeah, administrators seem to have some "stripes" on their shoulder in the sense that they can do a few more things than other users. But an admin is just another contributor and their opinion should not really hold any more weight than any other Wikibookian, other than they may be slightly more familiar with the already codified set of policies. To explictly codify an arrangement that gives extra privileges to administrators when none are needed is going to cause additional problems. On the other hand, if you set up such an editorial board that restricts membership so that no more than one or two administrators can serve on it, with the potential that all of the members of this committee could be non-administrators... that may be something to look into. On the other hand, we need more admins here on Wikibooks to help with the project cleanup and to help moderate each of us here who are admins. I'm not prepared to block somebody from becoming an admin simply because they are serving on an editorial board. --Rob Horning 13:34, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I can see that you have thought carefully about this issue and perhaps, in the light of your comments, my proposal is too broad. I started the proposal after looking at Wikibooks:Dispute resolution. It worried me that there seems to be no official process for dispute resolution. In Wikibooks there must be a system for saving people from bullying, either personal or through disruption of their creative work. You wrote:

"There might be a point about setting up an "arbitration committee" that can help to independently resolve disputes. I would prefer the term "moderation committee" that seeks to find a resolution between parties and not necessarily impose a verdict or ruling, such as the common law ArbCom that is currently on Wikipedia."

by late post user:fabartus adds: recommend you keep same names, your 'moderation committee' sounds like wikipedia's mediation committees, and are a step below and before the arbitration committee.

We both seem to agree that there should be a moderation committee or editorial board. Where we differ is in powers of sanction. If we take some quotes from recent arbitrations at Wikipedia it can be seen that reason alone might fail:

"I have said I believe he suffers from a mental disorder because I think his behavior is only explained with that."

"I would like to ask the Committee to review the conduct of Messhermit. He seems to bear a personal grudge against me, wikistalking mi edits & accusing me of being an Ecuadorian POV-pusher bent on selling biased Ecuadorian propaganda"

This level of trouble does not seem to have hit Wikibooks as yet but I think we should have a process in place to deal with it before it happens. My concern is that a problem will arise (such as those at Wikipedia) that requires arbitration. It will then become apparent that we need a moderation committee or editorial board but the election will then be about the case in hand and will be heavily influenced by those who are involved in the case and whose behaviour is dubious.

I have changed the policy proposal to take account of some of your concerns about it being too broad and have removed any reference to promoting Wikibooks or to admin/user composition - see: Wikibooks:Editorial board. As you have pointed out, the frequency of problems at Wikibooks is fortunately quite low so a single Board could provide the place of final appeal for decisions under any policy. RobinH 10:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

In this regard I wish the stewards would take on a larger role in helping to resolve project disputes as a sort of "circuit court" of moderators/arbitrators for various Wikimedia projects. In the "old west" of the USA during the frontier days, a judge would travel from town to town on a "circuit", and come by only every three months to hear what local issues needed to be resolved. The town couldn't afford to keep a full-time judge, so sometimes as many as 30-40 towns would all share the same judge, generally a retired senator or somebody that was respected in that part of the country. Something like this can and should be available for all Wikimedia projects, as certainly a forum for dispute resolution where a 3rd party can review what is going on and impose sanctions if necessary. And stewards do have access to all administrator functions including user blocks, page deletions/undeletions, and desysoping abilities. In short, they in theory could act and give teeth to their decisions as well, as a judge should be able to. Having a general Wikimedia group to do this would remove the necessity of having to go through the politics of setting up a committee like this locally until there is enough activity going to the general arbitrators that an additional level of appeals would be useful. I just don't want to "sit" on an arbitration committe and not been used for a couple of years but still have to campaign for getting the seat. --Rob Horning 13:50, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I haven't heard of Wikibooks stewards. Do you have any links? Certainly an ad hoc combination of stewards could substitute for an editorial board. I like this idea, it would be less formal. Stewards could be appointed permanently and only be removed for extended absence or misbehaviour. But we do need something vaguely formal, such as an ad hoc committe of stewards, if policies are to be enforceable. I am particularly concerned about bullying and edit wars, these will happen as Wikibooks expands and we need something in place now. RobinH 11:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The Stewards are not just for Wikibooks, but for all Wikimedia projects. They are elected by Wikimedia users at large, and are to be general guardians over all Wikimedia projects. They mainly perform tasks like grant checkuser privileges and creating administrators and bureaucrats on projects that have smaller communities. It is encouraged for stewards to also be multi-lingual, but not all of them are. Certainly speaking English is not a critical requirement, although it appears as though all current stewards currently do. Current steward policies are not directed toward being a global arbitration committee, but rather to help projects create their own communities instead. Some of this is just a vision of what they really might be all about, but this is a group of people to draw from that are highly respected Wikimedia user. --Rob Horning 13:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The stewards are quite general. What about allowing administrators in wikibooks to form the ad hoc committee discussed above? (ie: the committee would be any 3 or 5 administrators who are available). This would provide a formal enforcement apparatus for policies which could be modified later, for instance when Wikibooks becomes much larger or problems arise. My concern is that there is no formal apparatus for resolving problems at present. Our books represent a substantial effort and it is easy to foresee wrecking disputes in areas such as evolutionary biology, national histories etc. in the near future, as Wikibooks becomes better known. RobinH 15:04, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

One key problem with a formal policy on resolving disputes is that it encourages people to use it to escalate minor disputes to the highest level possible. That's a key problem WP has faced - and it usually involves coming to conclusions that most favour those who like to engage in disputes and argue their cases rather than make good positive contributions to WP. At present the highest level anyone can bring a dispute to is the Staff Lounge to allow there to be wider discussion. Ultimately, I suppose one of the admins could choose to ban a disruptive user, but I doubt that would happen unless there was clear community consensus for it. In essence, this is not a problem that has happened in WB, and it does not seem worthwhile instituting a whole new bureaucracy to deal with a non-existent problem. Admittedly we could go for a small-scale addition to our approach to state that in the event of a dispute, a steward may be asked to intervene in a dispute that has not been resolved after community discussion to propose a way forward (with possibly the threat of blocks for parties not following the approach suggested by the steward), but that would be dependent on getting agreement on meta to use stewards that way, Jguk 05:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I am vaguely persuaded that all that is needed is a fall-back, ad hoc committee that can intervene if policies are not respected (see below). RobinH 10:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Converting completed book to wikibook

I have a completed book in MS Word. It has images and tables. It is about 230 pages. I am in the process of converting it into HTML so that chapters and page numbers are linked and each page has pagination with a chapter. When I complete the HTML version, how do I convert the entire book in HTML to a wikibook? I did find a few HTML to Wiki converters. But they convert only one page at a time and it would be a tedious job to do it that way. I am planning to publish the book through wiki publishing too. Any help is appreciated.

I have used Word macros in the past - make a macro to put == or '' at the beginning and end of a line, click on a heading and press the macro keys. You could also try saving as HTML in Word then doing global changes of H1, /H1 tags etc. to Wiki markup in "view", "HTML source" then viewing the file and copying and pasting into Wikibooks. The Word document is an excellent starting position for using PDFCreator to make a PDF. 81.98.73.236 22:36, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Do understand that all wikis are not the same. Wikibooks uses MediaWiki, so we have syntax like "== this ==" and "'''this'''", whereas some wikis use "!! this" and "**this**". MediaWiki grew from UseModWiki, which has an ancestor at very first WikiWikiWeb. WikiWikiWeb was intended for collaboration, not for high-end documenting publishing, which helps explain why Wikibooks lacks automatic converts. Thus, expect to do a lot of manual conversion.

That is bad, because I would like to export books from Wikibooks to something like Docbook or LaTeX. --Kernigh 03:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Swedish wikibooks

Swedish Wikibook now no. 10 in the statistic. Please change the Wikibooks portal .
10 Swedish Svenska sv 512 2358 7150 13 231 2006-04-05 00:10:12 --81.234.119.136 18:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

By my reckoning, Swedish is 11th and Hebrew is 10th. I unilaterally increased the number of languages to 12, and added Swedish and Hebrew, which currently have more modules than Hungarian. However, I need messages translated into Swedish and Hebrew. See my post to textbook-l. --Kernigh 05:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC) (sysop)

Meta:WikiProject on open proxies

Comment from Kernigh: Recently, I flooded Special:Log/block by blocking several open proxies from the blacklist of the interwiki Meta:WikiProject on open proxies. These are IP addresses already blocked at Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Wiktionary from a blacklist at Meta.

An open proxy allows users to edit from a different IP address, thus evading bans; blocked vandals simply switch to a different proxy. Currently, open proxies are used mostly for vandalism, for example 192.165.166.4 and 200.122.153.250. I am told that recently, open proxies hit our sister project Wiktionary with large amounts of vandalism. Cspurrier took the lead and started blocking a few proxies from the long list. Recently, after chatting with Tawker in the #vandalism-en-wb IRC channel, I blocked some. (Unlike Cspurrier, I cannot block IPs on Wikinews or Meta.)

I want comments from Wikibookians concerning these three situations:

• The current procedure is to have a page containing users who can verify proxies – eventually to be maintained as a protected page by a Meta sysop. These "verified users" will put open proxies on the blacklist, but will not provide details (such as whether it was a HTTP proxy, SOCKS proxy, service such as http://anonymous.org, or Tor exit node). Thus I wonder if there are any Wikibookians here who would prefer administrators to not use this blacklist.
• Some of you might want to allow Tor users to edit Wikibooks. (Tor defends against "traffic analysis", so it is more useful than plain proxies that only hide your IP address, as anyone here can already create an account and hide their IP address.) I started trying Tor in April and have been able to edit both Wikibooks and Meta, but I plan to block Tor exit nodes if they appear on the blacklist. The reason for this is because Tor users have attacked Freenode IRC network, and have the potential to attack English Wikibooks. Unlike Freenode, we have no method of applying quick temporary bans to Tor users.
• Most of the proxies on the blacklist remain unblocked, because the list is too long. Tawker is planning to obtain a bot that would block everything on the blacklist. I suggest that Tawker have a sysop bot account for this purpose. This would require a vote on WB:RFA. It would technically give Tawker, who has few edits, access to sysop functions, but I trust Tawker not to misuse them: Tawker is already a sysop at en.wiktionary and is doing well in an open RFA on en.wikipedia. Further, Tawker provides the tawkbot3 to #vandalism-en-wb. We could instead arrange to have a Wikibooks sysop to operate the bot, but I think it would be easier to have Tawker operate it.

--Kernigh 06:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I will support every effort aimed at blocking open proxies and networks like Tor. --Derbeth ^talk 11:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I support this idea as well, and am even willing to make it "official, enforced" policy. From what I understand, the IP blocks for editing don't stop you from creating a "registered user" account, so in theory you can still edit content with a blocked IP, just that you need to log in as a user. It has been debated on Foundation-l and other forums that anon users could be blocked entirely, or have some additional restrictions put on them that would help slow down some vandalism, such as blocking new page creation for anon users.

I have seen some positive contributions to Wikibooks by anon users, however, and I don't want to block them completely. --Rob Horning 14:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

No, that is not right. It should be documented better, but yes, IP blocks also block registered users at that IP. The block is against the user, not the IP. (I meant to write that "The block is against the IP, not the user." --Kernigh 04:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)) For example, meta.wikimedia.org blocks some, but not all, Tor exit nodes. If I, as m:User:Kernigh, try to edit Meta from a blocked Tor exit node, then I am blocked. However, if I switch off Tor, or if Tor moves me to an unblocked Tor exit node, then I can immediately edit again. Thus these blocks will effect both anonymous and registered users.

In contrast, when a blocked user reads the wiki, that IP becomes blocked. I tested this by creating and blocking a User:Kernigh sockpuppet for two hours. --Kernigh 05:21, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

This is completely contrary to discussion that took place on Foundation-l, where there were some users who leveled some major complaints because they were being blocked due to their IP address falling onto dynamic IP addresses. They were clearly trusted users... even administrators. I think Anthere even got blocked once because of this (I need to check this to make sure). The developers apologized and the concensus of the discussion threads were to permit registered users to log in even if the IP addresses themselves were blocked, just because of this issue. If this has changed, this is a huge deal, and something that will even affect my own account. I use dynamic IP addresses myself right now from a public ISP, and potentially a vandal could be blocked and I subsequently get that IP address. Either that or something that needs to be brought up again on Bugzilla as something to fix. --Rob Horning 06:56, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is a link to Bugzilla:550, and to a foundation-l thread that mentions it. --Kernigh 04:40, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Developing A Universal Religion

I think this book should be transwiki'ed to wikisource (I shan't explain why here, as I'd like to let you make your own mind up). However, before doing this, I'd welcome comments for others, Jguk 21:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

This book was donated to Wikibooks by its author, User:David Hockey, with the intention that other users would edit it. The problem with putting this on Wikisource is the rule, Wikisource:What is Wikisource?, against material written by contributors to Wikisource. However, a proposed policy, Wikisource:What Wikisource includes might allow that in certain cases, but it still prohibits contributions where later content edits (not formatting edits are expected).

In the archived RFD, David H wrote, I sent the book to Wikibooks because I thought that it contained enough facts to be useful to those searching religions, and maybe interesting to those trying to understand why we have religions. (I am also sure that the book could be improved by edits!) Thus I believe that this book is outside the scope of the Wikisource project, and should not be transwikied to Wikisource. Still, the VFD did not yield consensus (and was distracted by allegations that there was a copyright violation), so there might be reasons to not have this book (and the three related books) at Wikibooks.

Jguk has recently done a lot of work to remove out-of-scope material from Wikibooks, and I hope that this user continues to identify things that need to be moved elsewhere. --Kernigh 05:13, 9 April 2006 (UTC) (also s:User:Kernigh)

Keep in mind that self-contributions to Wikisource are not permitted... of course this wouldn't necessrily be a self-contribution, would it? In this situation, you ought to get some Wikisource individuals to agree to help take it if it comes their way. BTW, this book was the subject of a RFD that ended inconclusively, although there were both delete and keep votes and some valid points for both points of view. This is a philosophy book, and the author is willing to let Wikibooks contributors help to change the content/merge/reorganize to improve what is here.

One other problem to keep in mind is that this book is actually broken up into several titles. I personally think they should be merged together into one single "volume", but that doesn't require a full RFD. See Thinking And Moral Problems, Religions And Their Source, and Purpose that really all go together with Developing A Universal Religion. There was a purpose for them being seperate volumes.

This book does bring up the issue about what to do with substantial contributions of material that is added to Wikibooks. Generally we try to generate content on the fly, and books that have "grown up" on Wikibooks are not considered for being transwikied to another projects with just a few exceptions. Content consisting of dozens or hundreds of pages that was already created and edited elsewhere before its inclusion into Wikibooks is obviously going to present some challenges. Should contributions this large be allowed on Wikibooks at all? Why or why not?

I think substantial contributions can be added to Wikibooks, provided GFDL licensing clearance is obtained, maintains NPOV guidelines, and the author is willing to let Wikibooks users have at it and rework the content to perhaps unrecognizable from the original material or even a very different (hopefully NPOV) viewpoint. Perhaps some guidelines on what major contributions like this can be added to Wikibooks should be made, and what an author using Wikibooks for publication of textbook-like material should be informed of for large contributions. --Rob Horning 06:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I had the impression that Wikisource was intended for copies of material that existed with exactly the same content outside the Wiki (except for translations, source code, statistics and similar data) and that the point was to provide an easily accessible copy for reference purposes. Developing A Universal Religion no longer falls into that category because it has already been edited on Wikibooks so the hardcopy version that was or is available as a printed work is out of sync with the Wikibooks version. If this isn't what Wikisource is for then how does it differ from Wikibooks? Here is a quote from Wikisource: "New collaborative creations of fiction or non-fiction ("self-contributions") do not belong at Wikisource. This project is primarily for previously published works that have normally undergone some sort of peer-review, ..." (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:What_Wikisource_includes#Original_contributions). The proposal to transwiki Developing A Universal Religion seems to me to be one step toward proposing that any book that counts as complete should be transwikied there so that Wikibooks only contains work in progress. --kwhitefoot 12:28, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

CheckUser vote dead

After taking a look at Wikibooks:Vandalism in progress I came into opinion that we really need users with CheckUsers rights. There are regular cases of registered vandals. Unfortunately, voting at RFA has been inactive for a long time and we still lack about 10 votes to finish it. I ask all users who haven't seen it to take a look at explanations provided there and think about adding their vote. Please remember that only if both candidates get support the vote ends with acceptation. --Derbeth ^talk 10:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

It is notable that some stewards are suggesting that you don't need the total number of affirmative votes if you have a smaller project. The minimum number of votes was for larger projects to put some sort of threshold on who could get the "privilege" of doing a check user scan.

From my viewpoint, I think this is over-paranoia at what should have been from the start a power given either directly to bureaucrats or admins. Either administrators are trusted users and therefore should be able to be trusted with this apparently sensitive information, or they are not and the whole concept of administrators is dead in the water, with all admins being desysoped effectively.

And what is really revealed if you do a checkuser scan of an account? You get the IP address. Big deal! Really, I think this much ado over nothing. If you were worried about government action against you, they can get your IP address without the assistance of the Wikimedia Foundation if necessary. And your IP address is logged in on every website that you visit, including google, amazon.com, or anything else that you use on the internet. It is not like this is a national ID number that can be used to mess over your credit rating or get you enlisted in the military service of some country.

The whole point about having this is to deal with the occasional sock puppet problems when doing a vote, and to perhaps take additional measures against vandals who seem to do persistant damage. In both of these cases, you have a powerful tool to help combat this sort of damage but it is being denied from those who really need to use it. And the contrary issue of abuse is comparatively insignificant.

The worst abuse I can see happening with this is outright publication of IP addresses of all users on the project where somebody has checkuser privileges, with a trace or reverse DNS to reveal exactly what ISP you are using and perhaps where you made the edit from. It still reveals absolutely no personal information of any sort at all that can be traced to an individual without many additional records, most of which you would have to go through government procedures like getting a supenoa or search warrent to obtain that information. Again, if you are paranoid about the government knowing what you are doing on-line, you simply shouldn't be using a private connection from your home or someplace that links the computer usage directly to you. Disclosing or not disclosing this information is not going to make a bit of difference. --Rob Horning 15:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I need to add that I have made a formal request on meta for having a Steward to make a pronoucement over this issue. I admit that this is forcing the hands of the Stewards to make a political statement, as clearly the attitude seems to be right now that only Wikipedia can have anybody with Check User rights. This is really silly, and IMHO is something that needs to change. The problem is, how do you make the policy change? There is no procedure to even bring up a policy change for things like this, and the stewards don't seem to give any respect to local policy procedures regarding Check User right granting. --Rob Horning 16:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Stubs

This is an issue that has to be decided soon, or there will be no stubs to discuss. User:Jguk is deleting a whole bunch of Wikibooks that are stubs. Perhaps this is a good idea, but this is not a part of Wikibooks:Deletion policy#Speedy deletions and I'm raising a stink right now to complain about this. Far too much has been deleted lately and IMHO if this keeps up we might as well just nuke the whole project like has happened to the French Wikiquote. OK, I'm pissed, and I've warned this user on his talk page.

Deletion is something that is reserved for trusted users, and I would agree with many of the decisions that Jguk has been making are pretty good, especially the recent addition to this policy of deleting "A redirect where it is unlikely that anyone will inadventently search for a page under that name." I think a few too many of these have even been deleted, but those are easy to restore if you think they really do belong. BTW, this policy was added to the deletion policy without vote or really any conclusive discussion, and huge amounts of content on Wikibooks has been deleted due to this "new" policy. For so much activity based on a self-written policy, that is quite dangerous.

As far as deleting "permanent stubs", I refer to Wikibooks talk:Stub#Stub Deletion Policy of which there are only two comments at all about the idea. This should not be the basis for a policy change here on Wikibooks. There are some postive things that can come from having stubs... even ones that are seemingly hopeless to languish forever. See Wikibooks:Stub for the current philosophy (not policy) on the subject. The policy is to keep them here on Wikibooks, and edit them if you don't like it. Very trivial stubs that are just a few sentances may be deleted, but still assume good faith where possible.

I think it is reasonable to have a debate over what to do about larger stubs that still don't seem to show any progress to becoming a substantial Wikibook. If you think these need to be deleted at the moment, nominate them for a VfD where they can be decided individually. Perhaps a change of policy can be enacted to clean out some of the additional cruft that has been building up over the past few years, but that should be done through community concensus, not just the actions of a single user and his own opinion. --Rob Horning 15:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Under no circumstance should a stub be put up for a speedy deletion. A VFD, if there is very little to build off of and no activity, is perfectly fine. But making them speedy is a mistake. Bringing up a VFD publicizes these books. Quite frequently, the end result is not a deletion but 3 or 4 people see the VFD and take over the book. I've put several stubs up for VFD, and later reversed my decision as people started contributing to it again due to the new publicity. I think this is a far better method- give those books a last chance. --Gabe Sechan 16:35, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I do take deletion seriously, and consider carefully what merits there are in retaining the text versus the benefits of tidying WB up that little bit more - and I do consider using the {{delete}} tag, and VfD where I am not sure. On occasions, no doubt others may come to different conclusions, but that's no problem - it's all logged and I'm happy to restore articles on request and move them to VfD if I am not persuaded they will grow.

Many of the permastubs I have removed are mere outlines of books put together by users who only edited the site on one day many months, or in many cases, years ago. Often these are about arcane issues, and quite frankly (1) they will never be books; (2) in the (unlikely) circumstance that someone now wanted to develop a book on that subject, the value in starting from what was already there is negligible. To my mind, for these entries, there is negligible chance of them avoiding VfD. However, if I find more, let me assure you I will add them to VfD - it may mean that VfD gets much larger, but it will allow for more discussion.

There are many orphaned incomplete one-pagers that I have deliberately left for now - including all those that could be developed into sections for a general "how-to" book, as well as those that have subject areas similar to existing books and may (although more likely may not) prove to be worth merging. The larger permastubs (except those unambiguously falling outside WB's remit - eg should be on and already on wikisource), I have left untouched.

Looking at the broader picture - I think it is important that Wikibooks encourages complete books rather than short stubs. It takes a lot of work to complete a book, and most people are not willing to put in that level of effort - there are many "false starts". Some of the larger stubs can, I believe, usefully be grouped together to give a coherent book - the Cookbook is one example of this, Bartending (once fully tidied up) will be another such example. The "How-to" bookshelf could, and should, be transferred in format so that it is a coherent Book in its own right, to which little pieces of information can easily be added. Many of the stubs do share certain themes, and grouping them thematically into several wholes will be beneficial - it will also set a good example to other (future) editors. Jguk 17:12, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Hit Counting

I slipped a hit counter into the "consciousness studies" book. The counter file html provided a redirect back to Wikibooks. It used computing power on an ISP's computer, not the Wikibooks servers. The results were 20 hits a day to the first embedded page of the book (not the main page) and 16 hits a day to the PDF versions (apart from the PDF accessible from the Wikibooks main page). This means that a fairly esoteric and academic book such as Consciousness Studies was probably accessed in earnest by at least 50 people a day, possibly more if there were numerous accesses from the front page. This result is very encouraging (hardcopy sales of 18000 academic textbooks on consciousness studies per annum would be amazing, perhaps impossible).

Is it possible to place the Wikimedia hit counters on selected pages for sample periods so that people can tell which books are popular and so that administrators can tell which paths are most popular? It would encourage people to write Wikibooks if they knew they were likely to be widely read. RobinH 18:32, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I second that. It's dispiriting to spend ages writing and then get no feedback at all. Speaking for myself this is the principal reason for my lack of edits in the last couple of months. perhaps you could give a rcipe for those of us who have never added hit counters to a web page. How much bandwidth is consumed by a hit counter? --kwhitefoot 08:59, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

What I did was to link to my own HTML file: Countit.htm. If you open the file then "View"/"Source" in Internet Explorer you will see that it has a trivial Javascript at the start with a redirect, an "Onclick=" on the BODY that activates the redirect if people click on the page and a counter at the bottom. The hit counter runs on my own ISP's servers, not Wikibook's servers, it does not burden Wikibooks at all. The link to the file is put in place of a link to one of the book's opening pages or as a substitute for the <nowicki>media:consciousness_studies.pdf</nowicki> statement. If you were doing this you would need to copy countit.htm to your own computer, delete the SymError() and SymOnUnload() scripts, amend it for your chosen redirect, insert the code for your own ISP's counter and then upload it to your personal web space. If your ISP does not provide a hit counter (most do) you can search google for freebies (just search for "hit counter"). The link that you add to wikibooks would be to www.YOUR URL/countit.htm - this diverts the user out to your ISP for counting and then, with a click, diverts them back to read the wikibooks page.

Ideally we should have access to a single media wiki counter per book within Wikibooks, run on the Wikibooks servers, that is allowed to run for 1 week only on a given page. This would allow sampling without all the faffing about described above and would not overburden the Wiki servers. RobinH 10:18, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, having some hitcounters would be nice. At Ada Programming we monitor your success by looking at the download statistic for the demo programms attached to our book. Currently we are at a steady 30 to 40 downloads a month - which is pretty good as it shows the amount of readers interested enought to actualy download the demos. Still it would be nice to know how many readers download the pdf or read the different pages. --Krischik ^T 11:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

You really have to be careful when you just look at hit numbers with a counter. If you actually look at what hosts are viewing the pages, often times you will see that a majority are bots of some sort like Googlebot and MSNbot. 16-20 hits a day to me says it's more random automated traffic and less determined users. A true stats package (not sure how it would work with a simple page inclusion but many are available to analyze Apache logs which I bet is unfortunately unavailable here) to analyze who is viewing a page would be more appropriate in my opinion since you can get much more information. -Matt 13:16, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know who is responsible for the reinstatement of hit counters? We could control for Bots by having some sort of hidden link on the main page (a link that is part of some innocuous text at the bottom of the page). The bots would follow this link but people would not, so the hit count on this could be subtracted from any other hit count to give true views. RobinH 17:20, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Why do we need hit counters? Why not just sample the server logs? The sampling interval could be chosen to reduce the cpu load to an arbitrarily low value at the expense of timeliness. --kwhitefoot 20:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you know how to do that? I have had a look around the stats pages and cannot figure out whether the current dumps are XML or SQL, cannot find any documentation of field names and cannot find any sample code from previous attempts at doing this. RobinH 15:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

With the current fiasco that is going on right now with even trying to get somebody with checkuser rights on en.wikibooks, I seriously doubt that anybody here is going to get access to the server logs. That would require developer access, a formal proposal to the Wikimedia Foundation board directly, and some kind of escrow or some other means to strongly demonstrate that you are not going to abuse access to the information. In short, while technically possible as a practical matter it is impossible. The current database dumps are only edit logs, and not access logs. And that information is already available anyway from the history tab on all of the pages, so the db dump would only be useful for large-scale scanning... again to keep bandwith hogging down. --Rob Horning 16:06, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Which brings us back to using Wiki hit counters on a sample basis only (ie: put them on certain pages for a week then remove them). Orthodox wiki is the first wiki that I found on a google search with the counters still in place. Does anyone know how to do this? RobinH 18:05, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

As Matt says analysing the Apache logs is the best way. I presume that the fear is that the IP addresses of the readers could be used to compromise them somehow. Couldn't we sidestep both the abuse question and the developer access a little by partitioning the problem: ask the developers to provide a filtered Apache log that doesn't include sensitive information; then anyone could analyse the log. The sensitive information is, presumably, the IP address and referer. The Apache Common Log Format puts the client IP address as the first item on the line and doesn't include the referer. The first thing to do would be to replace all the IP addresses that belong to well known spiders by, say, 'spider' and all the remaining ones by, say, 'human'. To hinder timing analysis the hours and minutes of the time stamp could also be removed. Then the log can be published and whoever wants to can analyse it. Otherwise I suppose we need a bot to walk the modules adding and removing hit counter links. For a given degree of quality of statistics this would surely be a greater cpu and bandwidth load than log analysis. --kwhitefoot 19:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The important thing is to get the data so that Wikibooks can be customised according to popular access paths and authors can get some feedback. The Apache logs are an excellent idea. If we can't get the logs then hit counters would be a backup position.

I suggest that, in the first instance, we ask for weekly logs without IP addresses or times. This request cannot be contentious and involves very little development work at the server end. It will give us the same data as would be provided by simple hit counters so we would need to be wary when interpreting it. Having got these we should ask for more complex data. RobinH 09:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that it would still require somebody with very high trust even among developers to put in the software for this sort of request. This is, however, something that would be of interest to people even outside of just our little project here, so creating a formal proposal on the Wikimedia Meta Wiki would be a good idea, as would creating a Bugzilla request for the developers that gets into some specific details about what sorts of information would be useful. The only way this is going to get accomplished with any speed, however, is to get directly involved with trying to code something like this. Still, even bringing the issue up might get the interest of additional projects and other people with technical skills. --Rob Horning 13:00, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I contacted one of the developers on this issue, unfortunately they do not maintain access logs - see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Brion_VIBBER#Dump_of_Apache_Access_Log - he replied:

"We do not keep such logs at this time; our traffic level and proxy setup makes it prohibitive. --brion 22:27, 18 April 2006 (UTC)"

So, it seems that hit counters/hit sampling is the only possibility. RobinH 08:45, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Policy Review

Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines has numerous policies that have not been cleared or implemented. Another user (Xerol Oplan) has proposed that these policies should be reviewed.

The most important omission is Wikibooks:Dispute resolution which begins: "Currently there is no official organized process to resolve disputes between users". I would suggest that Wikibooks:Ad hoc administration committee is put in place to plug the gap temporarily (even though the staff lounge is used for this purpose at present).

The next policy that needs immediate attention is Wikibooks:No personal attacks, this has received a majority of votes to be taken as an enforced policy but has not been moved to enforced status.

The Wikibooks:Editing disputes policy would probably stop edit wars and forestall most trouble and might be moved to a vote ASAP.

The list below summarises all the outstanding policies:

• Wikibooks:Deletion policy - How to delete pages
• Wikibooks:Editing policy - How to edit pages
• Wikibooks:Image use policy - How to use images
• Wikibooks:No legal threats
• Wikibooks:No personal attacks
• Wikibooks:Protected page - About protected pages
• Wikibooks:Talk page - How to use talk pages
• Wikibooks:Title pages - About title pages
• Wikibooks:No offensive usernames
• Wikibooks:Fair Use Policy - What limits on Fair Use are acceptable on Wikibooks
• Wikibooks:Ad hoc administration committee - committee to enforce policies
• Wikibooks:Editing disputes policy - proposal for dealing with edit disputes

RobinH 18:59, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we should reorganise Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines to make it more readable and start using navigational templates like the one in w:WP:NPOV. I think we should have several templates like this: one for policies/guidelines, second for book maintenance (vfd, copyvio, textbook planning), third for administration tasks (WB:VIP, WB:RFA). I think it's neccessary to allow new users to browse easily through our meta pages. --Derbeth ^talk 19:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

It would be useful to have some pruning first. The Dispute Resolution, Editing disputes policy, No legal threats, No personal attacks, No offensive usernames and Ad hoc administration committee proposal pages could all usefully be replaced by a single, short "Be Nice" proposed policy, which could then be adopted, Jguk 20:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is that we really do need a central place to hold these policy change votes. There is a place that has some of these votes, which is Wikibooks:Policy/Vote. Unfortunately, this page isn't being used nearly enough, and we need to start plugging through the rest of the policies like the no personal attacks policy and make sure it is linked to this main voting page somehow. I guess this is a policy question about how to make policies.

I hold the opinion that any Wikibooks user should be able to propose any policy change, and there should be a common place to let the Wikibooks community know that this policy change is being debated and voted on for approval. Far too many of these policy change votes have been taking place on individual policy talk pages, and even somebody as active as I am has missed many of these votes simply because I havn't been able to find even what page they are located at. A significant policy change such as WB:NP (this did get quite a bit of input, so I'm using this only as an example) should be widely advertised here, as well as perhaps even on the main page itself. When you make a policy change like the no dictionary policy, it shouldn't be decided by just a very few users by default because there is no apparent oppostion. Voting standards (the 20 edit minimum, for example) and details over what is being changed should be quite clear. There should also be a clear time limit on the voting, so everybody knows when it will be official, or when the issue will drop dead. There is no point for considering votes that are months old, or if a policy with little support suddenly gets a bunch of users who hurry up, vote to support (or reject) the policy, and then move to say "see, this is the result of the vote!" The time limit on voting also gives a neutral end to the voting process, so you can declare a winner or that the policy has been rejected. The No Personal Attack Policy vote lacks this feature, so it is still in "limbo" even though it is clear that this is an acceptable policy to most Wikibooks users. --Rob Horning 15:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I made substantial changes to Wikibooks:Title pages and Wikibooks:Image use policy. Please see talk pages for details and feel welcome to leave any comments. --Derbeth ^talk 09:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion to Create Standardized Book Info Templates

I read the related section of Wikibooks:Bookshelves/Generation_2 and thought that we should expand on it. I'm suggesting to create templates not related to the academic content of each book. These templates would be stored as {{Book Name/Infobox}}, simply {{Book Name}}, or perhaps on their own namespace. The main advantage is that information could easily be added to a variety of places, especially those not thought of or in use yet.

Usage examples and advantages:

• Cover page of a book - See Finance and Final Cut Pro. Wikibooks has often been criticized for not having unity between its books and this is an undisruptive way of adding that unity. Wikibooks from the same bookshelf, for example, can all have the same color scheme on the cover page bar, similar to related Wikipedia articles using the same infoboxes, and could all be automatically added to the same category.
• Lists, specifically Wikibooks:Alphabetical Classification and the bookshelves. - See the two examples on Wikibooks:Alphabetical_Classification#F. Only having a book's name in the left 10% doesn't really help a user to pick out a good book quickly. Using templates would allow the books on a bookshelf listing to have a parameter added to or removed from the list en masse.

Sample Parameters:

{{Book Infobox|Finance|25%|shelf=Business
|dept=Social Science
|image=...
|category=...
|chapters=...
|prerequisites=...
|authors=...
|alphabetical=F
|reading level=13+
|last update=April 10, 2006
|(short) comment=stub
|notes=Equivalent to an introductory college course.}}

could produce

• Infobox - standard template message
• Cover page bar - on the main page of a book
• Extended list entry - currently set for all Wikibooks namespace pages but can be limited to specific pages
• Compact list entry - the same as the page name + {{stage}} listing currently in use, not currently set for anything

All parameters other than book name are optional, so templates can easily be created by bots or a simple {{Book Infobox|Finance|25%}} by a new user. See Template:Finance/Infobox and Template:Final Cut Pro/Infobox for more examples. --Hagindaz 22:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea, and I like how it is turning out. The only issue that IMHO needs to be resolved is the bookshelf organization, which I would like to see dealt with before we make a huge inroad into adding this template all over Wikibooks... especially in the book search pages. Dispite an initial burst of discussion, there hasn't been any additional work or alternate proposals for reworking the bookshelves. Barring none, I might just go in and be bold to make the changes. --Rob Horning 16:30, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. Just to clarify, what I'm proposing here is the creation of book records templates. Adding it to search pages is just one example of its potential usefulness, and should be discussed later. If a bot creates templates for all books from all lists and bookshelves, simply adding [[Category:Alphabetical Classification|{{PAGENAME}}]] to {{Book Infobox}} would make forming an alphabetical listing by hand needless, so I think that this (whether standardized templates are a good idea) should be decided sooner rather than later (and their implementation later). Also a comment on bookshelf reorganization - I think it would be a good idea to first organize books into the categories within each bookshelf. Then we would only be taking into consideration the number of categories when creating bookshelves, rather than the total number of books. --Hagindaz 16:56, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

A problem here to keep in mind is that there are many new bookshelves, and some that are defacto bookshelves that were created by various contributors. I've moved most of these to the Wikibooks: namespace, but there are some others still out there, including Computer programming, which is really a bookshelf with some added material, and not a book per se. I agree that organizing books into categories would be a good idea, but there are some books listed on these alternate bookshelves that are not listed anywhere else. Knowing where to merge these bookshelves, such as Wikibooks:Biology bookshelf is one of the questions that is up for debate. Some bookshelves have really grown substantially and are in the same shape that the information technology bookshelf was about a year ago. I am now estimating that there are close to 1000 Wikibooks (my original estimate was about 700), and my current count is over 850 on the alphabetical page alone, and many of those aren't even on a bookshelf yet of any kind. I would hate to see a major effort go into classifying books into various bookshelves when in fact the whole organization is going to be thrown out, just in time to reclassify everything all over again. --Rob Horning 18:28, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

One way to bypass classification problems is to record the most detailed level a book could be at on the info template. So biology books would be templated as "Classification=Biology," then we would be able to change that on all biology books to "Bookshelf=Natural science" using {{Book Infobox}} if that's the shelf we decide to use. I would like to know whether it would be possible to add books from all pages books are stored at to a list and have a bot create the info templates with only the book name. If that's done, an alphabetical listing category would be generated automatically, saving a lot of work. (Note that I used category to mean "subsection of a bookshelf" above, different from my below proposal.) --Hagindaz 20:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Auto Generation of Classification Tables

I've been thinking a little bit about this, and it would be nice to automate the generation of some of these tables. This really is a database problem, where some ability to search Wikibooks on multiple criteria needs to occur. It is making me very tempted to try to brush up on php and try to join the MediaWiki developer team to at least add a plug-in to help us out with this task. I could try and write a 'bot to help deal with this issue, but this is something that really should be a permanent feature on Wikibooks and not something I or any one person can do and have everybody else plead that I update such and such table with some new information.

The Wikidata proposal on Meta is something that would be ideal. Perhaps a temporary solution needs to be implemented before the flexible database is added to Wikibooks? There are other options including the tools server that is hosted by the Wikimedia Deutschland chapter. This has access to the full Wikimedia database, including all of the Wikibooks pages, with all of the edits as well. I'm sure that there is a group of technically inclined people here on Wikibooks that could get together and help put something like this together that would help the project as a whole.

Goals I would want to have with auto-generated pages (including perhaps an improved Wikibooks:Top active???):

• Content on that page should be updatable by any Wikibooks user. Perhaps restricted to only registered users or some other restriction if it chews up server CPU time, but any trusted user should be allowed access, and it should be "no big deal" to request access. This implies that any user could access the updated data. See Meta:List of Wikibooks for an example of an updatable page that ordinary Wikimedia users can update easily. I was thinking something like this for other dynamic pages as well.
• The source code should be available to trusted users to modify the way it works. Unlike the List of Wikibooks, this should not be on a private server that only one user has access to. Users and people come and go over time, and if things just aren't working out but need an overhaul, it should be available for a whole new group to go in and potentially rewrite the whole thing if necessary. Hosting on a Wikimedia-affiliated website would be a major plus, hence the request to use the tool server as a significant option.

If there is any interest in this at all, even just moral support, but other software developers who are interested in doing this, please make your mark below. I'm also starting up a page with Wikibooks:Content Tools to help with the coordination of various projects that can be done to help with the development of Wikibooks. --Rob Horning 14:24, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Top active is not as interesting as a "Top Accessed" page. This would allow Wikibooks to market the most popular books most prominently and so draw in readers. RobinH 17:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out that the reason why the internal hit counters were disabled on the Wikimedia servers was because of the CPU processing time alone. By turning off the hit counters, the developers were able to get something like a 30%-50% increase in page throughput to end users (I really think it was this big). Of course page demand quickly ate up all of the available bandwidth, so turning the hit counters has not been a priority for quite some time. The solution of using a 3rd party server is an idea, and that is something very interesting to try out. It certainly would be interesting to see how our own generated stats compare to the stats being claimed by Alexa. --Rob Horning 02:08, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's a much better solution! I always thought we were limited by the MediaWiki software, and tried to think of ways to work around it. But integration into the software is clearly the better course. Best of luck in creating it. --Hagindaz 21:01, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Replacing Shelves with Portals and Categories

I decided to add this here because it relates to the above proposal.

Categories

At the present, I can't see how bookshelves are any different from categories. I also think using categories can provide easier access to a book, because they allow for several autmomatic classification methods.

An example with Category:Programming:

• Category:Programming languages (all) (sorted by subsection)
• Category:Programming languages (all) (sorted alphabetically)
• Category:Programming languages (list of subcategories)
• Category:Programming languages (sorted by completeness)
  • Category:Programming languages (completed books)
  • Category:Programming languages (75% complete books), etc
• Category:Programming languages (sorted by difficulty)

Also having general categories (All books => Sorted alphabetically, sorted by completeness, etc). Books could be added autmoatically to all of these categories by adding "Classification=[type of programming language]" to the book's info template (proposed above).

Portals

All shelves are unique and shouldn't all have their contents displayed in the same fashion. So I propose the creation of individual portals by those familliar with the books on a certain shelf. The portal would also act as its own Wikiproject - listing stubs, collaborating between books, and creating book standards. This would be useful because experts in a specific field have general knowledge of related books, and many basic books are missing or incomplete.

Possible functions and sections:

• featured book
• list of popular books
• related wikiversity schools section (w/ links, classes currently enrolling, and news)
• portal collaboration of the month section
• which books are for who, books for beginners on the subject section
• stubs for popular or general subjects section
• news on book developments and changes section
• to-do list / maintenance tasks for books section
• list of book series section
• list of subsections (linking to the categories) section
• list of sort types for all related books (linking to categories) section
• links to related vfd discussions and proposed merges section
• collaboration between similar books (examples: 1, 2, 3)

--Hagindaz 20:25, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Programming languages are not a good example, because they are overrepresented. This is a very specific category of books being specially popular here on Wikibooks. Other bookshelves are more general and it's not easy to link all of them. Take Science bookshelf - there is physics together with neuroscience. I don't think there is much sense in sorting Physics books in lots of different categories, because there is too few of them.

Also, categories can only show title of book. With bookshelves, you can provide a brief description of a book, show its stage development and for example availability of print version.

When it comes to portals - there's a similar situation, Wikibooks don't have much active contributors and I fear most of such portals would be dead. If Book of The Month wins with less than 10 votes, how can we maintain: to-do lists, current lists of stubs, current VFD's and so on? I think it's completely unreal in present state of Wikibooks. --Derbeth ^talk 21:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course Physics shouldn't have its own category! But science should. The science category would be divided into subcategories offering books sorted by type (physical, biological, etc), completion, etc, just like programming. Physics books would be sorted into a lot of "Science" categories, not its own set of categories. I'm talking about applying this only {{Bookshelves}} deep. The beauty is that you wouldn't have to manually sort books. If the info template of a Science books says "status=75%" and type="science", it automatically goes into all those categories. That's not possible with bookshelves. I agree that only showing the title of a book can be a problem. but in the case of print versions, there's already a category for that, and its relatively empty. As for portals, I think it's reasonable to assume that at least one person on a shelf of dozens of books is willing to create a portal. Other than collaborations, which wouldn't be done on the portal page, I don't think the portal page would have more upkeep required than could easily be done . --Hagindaz 21:37, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The thing is that bookshelves are portals! I think this is mixing terminology with function. There is no reason to have each bookshelf be so rigid as it is just a carbon copy of the next one, and indeed each bookshelf does have a little bit of unique flavor to it... especially if it is a bit older and has had some different people working on it. The only reason why the bookshelves look similar right now is because they have all been maintained by essentially the same group of people.

The problem I have with the categories is that they are so rigid in terms of what content is displayed that you can't add things like the Wikibooks stages icons, links to PDF files, "main discussion page", or a list of all sub-modules. The category setup works very well for Commons and Wikipedia, and it was built with those projects in mind. For Wikibooks, I would almost ask to have the whole category system shut off completely. There certainly is no need to categorize each and every page in Wikibooks, and Special:Uncategorizedpages is particularly useless here on Wikibooks. Special:Wantedpages is a close second most useless page on Wikibooks, and Special:allpages being a very close 3rd. Special:prefixindex, on the other hand, is more valuable on Wikibooks than it is on Wikipedia. BTW, WB:NP has actually helped improve the allpages, but most of that is currently garbage and improvement is relative. It isn't too hard to go from awful to nearly awful.

Another drawback to categories is that it is very difficult to tell if a subcategory is empty, or links to a hive of 1 million different modules/articles. Perhaps I would like to look at all of the books in the Computer Department, for example. Unless you do the incredibly redundant multiple linking in both the parent and child categories, you can't pull this list out. And some pages are linked on the parent category but no the child category and vice versa, with no tools to reasonably search for inconsistancies here either.

The one advantage that categories have over just about any other MediaWiki feature at the moment is that you can add the category links from within each book as it is created. This gives some flexability to content developers, and lets the authors create the category references, for where they want to catalog the content. It is also harder to vandalize categories without a bot, although that is a two-edged sword in the sense that if you want to reorganize a category (pushing content into subcats), you need to edit each and every module that needs to be moved. I've done that on Commons, but it is a pain.

I think there is a role for categories, however, and it is a powerful tool if we can really get a handle on how to use it properly. Some books, like the Cookbook, have really taken advantage of the category system and used it to its full potential. There are some Wikibooks like RuneScape that IMHO could try to do the same thing for some of its content. Its role within Wikibooks for the project as a whole with a single hive of links is somewhat more questionable. --Rob Horning 15:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the current categories system is useless. I want to create a main "bookshelves"/"all Wikibooks sorted by type/genre" category, with the subcategories being those now found in {{Bookshelves}}. The subcategories of those would only be the various sorting methods. My proposal is highly dependent on whether Wikibooks decides to use records templates for books. If the records tempalte states "classification=physics" and "status=100%" {{Book Infobox}} would automatically include the book in the "Science/type|Physics," "Science/alphabetical," and "Science/completed," subcategories of a main "science" category. If, whenever Science gets too large and a new Physics shelf (portal+category) is created, you would only need to change {{Book Infobox}} to categorize Physics book on their own. Many other ways to sort books, such as the last updated date, would also be possible.

I guess I want the portals to act as the short templates at the top of bookshelves, and the categories as the book lists. There are very few high quality books on Wikibooks. I would guess less than ten. So I think the best way to highlight those books while still giving attention to important stubs and encouraging development of those stubs is with portals. Am I wrong in believing that the bookshelves don't perform that function? Portals would also be future-proof: if the number and quality of subsections (physics books, for example) increases to those of the general sections (such as all the science books right now), they can be split off into their own portals, highlighting the best physics book and encouraging development of important stubs. But I'm not going to push the issue. You two know a lot more than I do on what's best for Wikibooks, and I just wanted to throw my ideas out on the table. --Hagindaz 20:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Interactive Self-test Template

I made a template called "Peekaboo" to provide a degree of interactive, self-test abilility to Wikibooks. A question is placed in the first box, then by clicking on the [Show] button to the right, users can reveal the answers in the second box without leaving the page. Everything prints out as currently displayed on-screen. Hopefully this will be useful to a few of you and help some Wikibooks. -- Everlong 02:17, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Example: Template:Peekaboo

Example code:

{{Peekaboo|Question|Answer}}

Yes, like {{solution}}, it will be especially useful for Puzzles, which has a lot of one word answers on separate pages. You might also want to change {{qif|test={{{2|}}}|then={{{2}}}|else=70%}}, since {{{2}}} is already used by the answer. --Hagindaz 02:23, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I was unaware of the existence of {{solution}}. I just came up with it after seeing a [Show/Hide] link in someone's TOC template. I'm still a bit mystified by all the markup, and the Template:qif page wasn't very illuminating, so how would I go about fixing qif? Change it to an unused number? What does that line do anyway? -- Everlong 02:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The show/hide part is HTML. For whatever reason, it starts open/shown unless there is more than one "NavFrames" there, so I got around that by calling "NavFrame" and then closing it at the end. For some ideas of using it, see my {{French Exercises}}. Also check pages with the template using internet explorer, as it sometimes renders it wierdly.

{{qif|test={{{2|}}}|then={{{2}}}|else=70%}} states that if {{{2}}} exists, dispay {{{2}}}, otherwise display 70%. So, if you type {{{Peekaboo||100px}}, the width becomes 100px. You can delete it since there probably wouldn't be situations where the width would be changed. For future reference, {{tl|switch}} is a similar template, in the format <nowiki> {{switch|{{{1|}}}|case: a=b|case: c=d|default=e}} . "If you type {{templatename|a}}, you get b where a would be, etc.." See w:Wikipedia:Qif conditionals and m:Template talk:If. For a real-world example, see {{French Table}}.--Hagindaz 03:12, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Reverting vandalisms

I occasionally revert a vandalism from an IP address. Often it is the only vandalism from this IP. I was wondering what else I should be doing. I generally leave a {{subst:test}} message at the IP's talk page—though a quick look at WB:VIP suggests that this is not the usual practice except for logged in (non-IP) vandalisms. Since some IP's have multiple users, that may be the better practice. I also usually do not report the vandalism to either WB:VIP figuring that it is for recurring or unreverted vandalisms. So, should I be continue adding {{subst:test}} to IP address talk pages? Should I be reporting these somewhere (such as WB:VIP, even for only one reverted vandalism? Is there something else I should be doing? Thanks. --JMRyan ^T E C 20:09, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

It is not necessary to report occasional reverts of vandalism. If you find a user or IP that vandalises a lot, or a page that attracts much vandalism, you can report it at WB:VIP. In general, use WB:VIP when you want to alert other users. Also use WB:VIP if you need an administrator to block a vandal.

If you want, you can leave messages on the User talk page. I leave a message when I feel like, for example:

There is no standard procedure for contacting such users, and sometimes I do not. However, I do suggest that you avoid any "user talk templates" such as Template:Test. I find that user talk templates are good only as suggestions; none ever seems to say what I want to say. If you insist on using a user talk template, check that it is not redundant to something already on the user talk page. English Wikipedia has abused user talk templates badly, and provides examples of how NOT to use user talk templates: --Kernigh 23:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:State of the Project/2006

I've been thinking of trying to put together a formal report to the Wikimedia Foundation and other Wikimedia users on behalf of Wikibooks and what we have accomplished over this past several years. Some really interesting and amazing things have occured, including some changes that people from outside of the project may not be aware of.

Technically, there were supposed to be monthly reports written up by community members and filed on meta:Reports, but the last report for Wikibooks was file in January 2005, and it has been a year since even Wikipedia filed a report on this page.

What I'm proposing to do is to try and come up with something that represents all of Wikibooks, including the non-English projects if possible. I know there isn't a forum for dealing with the other languages of Wikibooks, but I'm hoping some of the editors here could help out in that regard as well. I would like to emphasis on some of the positive aspects of what has happened, including the print versions of Wikibooks (aka PDF files), significant milestones achieved, and some examples of outstanding content that has developed with Wikibooks.

The intended target of all of this is for the Foundation Board itself as well as for the other Wikimedia projects, but I would like to include this in Quarto as well as perhaps even make it well written enough that it could be used as a formal press release on the three-year anniversary of this project.

Obviously there is no huge rush to get this done, but it would be nice to get some things put together to show Wikibooks in a positive light. There are some misunderstandings from regular users on other Wikimedia projects that don't understand what goes on here, as well as some confusion by the academic community over what Wikibooks could be. I would like to submit this to the Foundation a little before the anniversary date so they could review it and "approve it" as a formal press release, adding their own comments as well. Or simply use the big #3 as a chance to do some chest thumping and say that we are doing some cool stuff. This shouldn't be the work of just one or two users either, which is why I'm bring it up here. I'm also curious what anybody else thinks of this idea. --Rob Horning 13:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Embassy

Hello All,

While thinking of ways to contribute to the Russian Language wikibook, I came across the idea of a wikibooks embassy. I have studied Russian for some time, but would like the exercises I write to be checked by a native speaker, and it would also be nice to have audio files created by native speakers. It would be nice, I think, to have an “embassy” page where speakers of different languages could collaborate their efforts, and request help in translation. Also, wikibooks in different languages with fewer modules might want to translate some modules from en.wikibooks (and vice versa)- similar to translating pages in Wikipedia.

An “embassy” page would be a forum for communication between two wikibooks languages (where writing in either language would be acceptable?), and people speaking different languages could better collaborate their efforts: this would be invaluable for language modules. Also, people seeking help in writing modules might ask for help from others who speak other languages, even if through a mediator who speaks both languages. It seems to me that this would improve both the English wikibooks page, and those pages in other languages.

A similar idea for Wikiversity (which I do not really keep up with) is a collaboration with WikiNews, where people studying languages could translate WikiNews articles from one language to another, perhaps with a “head editor” to look over their translations, and provide feedback for them.

I would love some feedback on this idea. Do you think the Russian Wikibooks Staff Lounge is adequate enough for this type of communication? Does something like this already exist? Where would this page exist: would there be a Russian embassy page on en.wikibooks, and an English embassy page on ru.wikibooks? Is translation simply too hard (and high-paying, and time-consuming) of a job to find people to do it for free, even in this community? DettoAltrimenti

There is already an "embassy" system at MetaWikipedia:Wikimedia Embassy. This lets you send messages (in English) to foreign-language Wikibooks. However, en.wikibooks did not have an embassy; as of 25 March 2006, User:Everlong is listed as ambassador, but we still do not have an embassy page like de:Wikibooks:Botschaft. --Kernigh 01:09, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I would like to point out that if you want to solicit help for translations between different languages, or to be able to solicit some help on inter-language issues, a good page to look at would be meta:Translation, which includes a list of users and what languages they speak, and what languages they are willing to translate from. meta:Category:Users by language has some additional people you might want to look at as well.

In terms of a general embassy for common inter-project relations, I think this is a good idea as well, especially if you note that less than half (and going down) of all Wikibooks content is in languages other than English. And there are some common problems to all Wikibooks projects that could use some cooperation. Currently Wikibooks does not really speak with a common voice, or is dominated by en.wikibooks. That is not necessarily a healthy thing. There are some cross-project social links like User:Derbeth who is also an admin on pl.wikibooks, and I've certainly been active on meta as well. I've thought about trying to add my name as an ambassador, but I have avoided it because I felt my plate was already too full. I'm glad that Everlong has decided to try and take on that issue. --Rob Horning 13:26, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we should make wider use of our meta page: meta:Wikibooks. For example, Wikinews created projects like meta:Wikinews/Interview of the month. Language books seem to be a natural place for interlanguage cooperation. Instead of discussing this issue in general-purpose "embassy", we can create a project page at meta. --Derbeth ^talk 21:22, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Paul, I wrote a proposal on your talk page. The Russian Wikibooks Staff Lounge, or the Форум as we call it, certainly is an appropriate place for enquiries such as yours. Actually, I am now in your Staff Lounge with a similar idea. I believe that we should make a cross-language Wikibooks forum (Staff Lounge, Village Pump, — whatever) for common issues. Ramir 04:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Educational Technology Innovation and Impact/Virtual Learning Environments/Virtual Classroom

This module was posted by Rkshiwed, marked {{copyvio}} by myself Kernigh, then blanked 3 times by 143.53.157.209. I am not reverting it a third time; I am not deleting it because 143.53.157.209 might not be a Rkshiwed. I will let other users handle this situation now. --Kernigh 01:00, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Card Catalog Office and other sidebar issues

I'm not sure this is consistent with the best way of searching for things and the discussions regarding categorisations above (although I do appreciate that a lot of effort, particularly Rob's, has gone into it). I do wonder though whether it has a future, and even if it does, whether it is really worthy of being linked to in the sidebar. Indeed, to my mind, the sidebar needs a bit more reorganisation, putting the links to community pages down a bit, and perhaps renaming the "all bookshelves" and "all books" bits as "search by subject" and "search alphabetically" instead, Jguk 18:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, unless categorization in the card catalog office is forced (via a {{cleanup-link}}-esque template) and {{Catalog}} is used, I think the card catalog office should be scrapped altogether. (Imagine if a library only had a random half of its books catalogued.) As for the sidebar, I think that having both a "tools" and a "toolbox" section is redundant. --Hagindaz 23:05, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of the Card Catalog Office was to bring up the issues of organizing the content of Wikibook, and have a central discussion area that was seperate from the Staff Lounge where people who are interested in organizing the ontology of Wikibooks could occur. In that regard, I think it is still a valid project, but the problem here has always been trying to recruit people to be involved with the issue. If the CCO is a failed experiment, so be it. I still think major discussion about this issue needs to take place, and it will be an ongoing issue as well. And if the CCO is being scrapped, there should be something to take its place. If you don't think finding content on Wikibooks is a problem, and that Special:Allpages is the best solution, go ahead and scrap the CCO and the idea.

I am opposed to a monolithic ontology for Wikibook, and the category system of MediaWiki software is also inadequate for cataloging Wikibooks as well. Much of the problem I've been facing is to simply identify what is a Wikibook, which is precisely why I started Wikibooks:Alphabetical Classification. If you are complaining about how slow I've personally been in trying to catalog Wikibooks, you are operating on far too short of a timespan here. This is something that is going to take time, and I've been deliberately moving slow to make sure that I've covered the major issues, as well as to identify the tools necessary to deal with the task. It is a huge task to try and catalog anything, and with almost 15,000 pages of content and no real organization at the moment, the task for the current Wikibooks content alone is in reality something more than one person can deal with on their own. --Rob Horning 09:33, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Help!

This section has temporarily been suppressed. I have started moving some info from WP and modifying it - but it needs quite a bit of improving. Also, many pages currently in the Wikibooks namespace, more properly belong in the Help namespace and should be moved there. If people have ideas on how to improve it, please just go ahead, or note the ideas here for discussion, Jguk 18:29, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It looks good, definitely the right direction. RobinH 19:24, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Any help, Robin? :) Jguk 19:44, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

request help

I am begining to see the challenges of working here at wikibooks. I have to confess that I'm a POV warrior, but I am trying to reform. I keep finding myself with serious writers block. I think my biggest problem is that subliminally, I'm still an info warrior in a solitary crusade against an army of trolls. I keep trying to solve this problem by imagining Jimbo Wales as the guy I am writing to. This works some, but Jimbo Wales is pretty absent from my process, and haunting his discussion page doesn't really put me in touch with his head as much as it makes me realize that lame people are everywhere. I had a big brain storm yesterday. I was happy and proud of myself for writing a few pages in as many hours for the first time. Until i went and looked at it this morning. Its a big phat POV nightmare. Honestly, as such things go, its more factual and truthful than almost any other POV nightmare, but its still not even something I'd normally want anybody to see here. My original idea was to vanish it and start over, but theres a lot of good points, and, I think that even the pov pionts could be considered as good starting points. What I guess i am looking for is a compassionate NPOV coach, somebody to help me draw those lines, and to help me frame my reference point in my head for who and how i should be writing.

If anybody has the spare time and energy, I'd appreciate some feedback. Please know that I have no intention of leaving the big mess up any longer than it takes to fix it. Prometheuspan 18:46, 19 April 2006 (UTC) http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/THINKSTARSHIP/Think_Tank_Theory

Wikiversity status change?

I noticed Wikiversity has been removed from Wikibooks main menu. Has the Board finally moved to approve/disapprove Wikiversity or is this unilateral action by some Wikibookean at large? Lazyquasar 09:35, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a (hopefully temporary) cock-up by the developers, who are tested out something new with the sidebar. Somehow our sidebar, which remains unchanged on MediaWiki:Sidebar, has been replaced by that of the English Wikipedia! I hope normal service will be resumed shortly. I also hope that Wikiversity makes a proper go of it at Wikibooks and the proposed schism gets put to rest, Jguk 10:09, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

There is nothing on the part of Wikibooks administrators to formally remove Wikiversity from Wikibooks in any significant manner, and I would fight that until http://en.wikiversity.org/ was live, or some significant alternative was presented. There was a substantial server crash that happened yesterday with the english-language server farm and I think the developers are trying to recover from that incident, together with a huge crushing load of page requests. I suspect that the sidebar issues are a result of that issue as well, where they had to recreate some of the content from backups. If you made any substantial edits in the past couple of days, I would strongly suggest that you review your recent contributions to see if they made it into the current database. --Rob Horning 10:19, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Categories Within Pages

Is there any way to include part of a page on another page, but not the whole page (possibly with using categories). For example, imagine a language book had 4 pages: Dialoges, Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises- each with content organized by lesson and section. Could you create each section's page by including the grammar, dialoges, vocabulary and exercises from the 4 pages(dialoges grammar vocab and exercises)? Kind of like how US History/Print version was created, except taking only sections of pages instead of entire pages. DettoAltrimenti 11:03, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Use <noinclude>text to not include in transcluded page</noinclude> around text you only want to appear on the page itself, but not on the transluded page. To only include text on another page but not on the page itself, use <includeonly>text to include only on the transcluded page</includeonly>. That may be useful for titles or categories.

If you want to include different sections of a page on different pages, you can use

<div class="{{switch|{{SUBPAGENAME}}|case: Dialogues=|case: Lesson 1=|default=hiddenStructure}}">
text to only appear on pages titled "Language/Dialogues" and "Language/Lesson 1," but not on any other page
</div>

--Hagindaz 13:47, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

weird glitch

don't know where to go to report this. Its happening on wikibooks and wikipedia. When i go to log in, the entire user options bar jumps sideways. In fact it tends to do this whenver i put my cursor over the general area??????? -perplexing- Prometheuspan 02:39, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Prometheuspan My talk Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log 
out 

keeps hopping to the left side of the screen.

Wikibooks is not a depository for video game manuals

This is an instruction that Jimbo has added to Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks . He has also noted this on Wikibooks talk:Computer and video games bookshelf, where he has made it clear that, although time would be allowed for the video game manuals we have to be moved elsewhere, that they really do not belong on Wikibooks. It also seems that his thinking is that Wikibooks's scope really should be textbooks for educational reasons.

Because of the terms of WMF's educational mission charter, it seems that we have no choice on this. Personally, I must say that (even ignoring WMF's educational mission charter) I would agree with Jimmy - Wikibooks should be for textbooks, which to my mind means books that encourage or aid learning (for school, university, profesionals or for the kind of subjects you see in adult learning courses, such as cookery or flower arranging, or what have you). Video games walkthroughs quite simply do not belong.

I think we should agree a cut-off date after which video games walkthroughs will be deleted - a generous one, perhaps the end of July, say. This would give plenty of time to allow them to find a new home, whilst also making it clear that they will be removed. In isolated cases, for exceptional reasons, any deadline chosen could be extended - but the message would be that we are serious about removing them, please move your work elsewhere (could wikicities help?), you have plenty of time to do this, but do move them or your work will be lost.

In the meantime, I propose that any new video game walkthroughs that are started are speedy deletion candidates, with a requirement that a note be placed on the author's page explaining our new approach. Discussion of this proposal can be on Wikibooks:Deletion policy, Jguk 06:03, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Finally! That's good news. While I'm impressed by the depth and quality of the guides we've amassed, as textbooks they all fall flat. But this is going to be a big effort. There are many things to do now. I wonder though, what's the best way to transwiki? I assume a database dump could be downloaded and then installed on the new host server, or is cut-'n'-paste with a history list still the best way? If a database import isn't viable I can get onto contacting authors and transwikiing content right away. I suggest that rather than expect the authors to find their own hosts that they all be moved to StrategyWiki. From there the authors can contribute or fork off to their own server as they please, and it would mean Wikibooks could be emptied by the due-date without worrying over books that didn't get dealt with in time. In closing, yay! :) Garrett^Talk 08:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A number of points regarding your suggestion (which on the whole seems like a great solution):

1. Is the licensing of submissions to StrategyWiki compatible with the licensing used for submissions to Wikibooks?
2. Assuming the answer is yes, would StrategyWiki accept the material? (we could easily ask them that)
3. We'd then need to agree with StrategyWiki how to transfer material (assuming we've dealt with 1 and 2 this should be possible, but I wouldn't want to introduce lots of material to StrategyWiki en masse in a way that disrupts what they're doing).
4. Presumably once transwiki'ed (however that is achieved) we can delete each book here straightaway - though we probably ought to offer a link from the title page of each book to the StrategyWiki page for a period (a year say) so that anyone looking for it here can find it on StrategyWiki.

Finally, I have never seen StrategyWiki before. Visually it looks excellent, much better than what we've got here at Wikibooks. And it all seems to be on MediaWiki. I'm jealous. How do we get the appearance of Wikibooks to look equally excellent? Jguk 09:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

1. Both are GFDL, so it's all go in that respect. :)
2. In the past they've expressed an interest in receiving WB content (and also began copying over the ever-popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas guide). I've mentioned this policy change over there so they can reaffirm their opinions.
3. As long as each book conforms to the subpage structure it shouldn't be too hard to manage.
4. Sounds like a good plan, as there are bound to be some incoming links for a while yet (especially from fansites and outdated WP mirrors)

As for the visual theme, you just need time and artistic talent. :) MediaWiki skins are merely CSS stylesheets, and adding new ones is basically drag-'n'-drop. Another good example of an unrecognisable MediaWiki install is the Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki. Garrett^Talk 10:54, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Where do you drop them into? Also, what do you need to design them? Jguk 17:30, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Anyone with access to the server can dump them into the skins folder (and also have to add a line or two to a PHP file, I think). If you were to replace an existing skin however this can all be done from the MediaWiki: namspace. All you need to design them is CSS knowledge, no special tools really. Garrett^Talk 21:50, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks: No personal attacks policy changed from "enforced" to "proposed" again!

Jguk archived the discussion of this item on the 24th then changed the policy from enforced to proposed again! See Archived discussion where for about 2 weeks no one demurred from the policy being enforced. Perhaps it was only after archiving the discussion that he spotted the change to "enforced" status. RobinH 08:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to restore "enforced" status to Wikibooks: No personal attacks - why we need a limited constitution and enforcement apparatus

A vote was taken at Wikibooks: No personal attacks and 10 users voted. This is a high number by Wikibooks standards. 8 of the 10 voted for the policy to be enforced. Surely reopening the issue after a vote (and several months) cannot be reasonable. I propose that the policy should be restored to enforced status.

The fact that a vote has been overturned unilaterally in the manner described is a graphic demonstration of the need for a limited constitution in the form of enforced policies and an enforcement apparatus.

At Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines there are several proposed policies that require review. The most important of these is probably Wikibooks:Ad hoc administration committee so that enforced policies can be enforced. RobinH 10:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Somethings happened to my account

I've not been on wikibooks for a while and I think that possibly my account has been disabled. I can't log in, and emailing for a new password doesn't seem to work either. I've had this new account (note the capitalisation). The problem is however my admin privaledges. I run a computer club here at my school and starting on wednesday intend to get the kids to edit a new wikijuniour book of science experiments that can be done at home. The problem is that this school is on a huge shared network that regulaly gets blocked from Wikipedia because of vandals from other schools. I need to be able to unblock the network so that my (lovely, well behaved) pupils can edit (and reblock when we have finished if necessary). I also need to be able to delete pages created in error (my pupils are only 11, I expect a lot of errors). Are there any stewards here? Can someone give me admin powers on this account or reactivate the password on my other account? Theresa Knott 10:03, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Hm. A while back it was decided to de-admin inactive sysops, but you don't seem to be on that list. Anyway it could be that removing your powers somehow glitched your whole account. I'm not sure about stewards, but I'm pretty sure beaureucrats can give sysop status too. In which case try Dysprosia or Derbeth. Hopefully they can fix whatever's wrong. Garrett^Talk 12:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks it is all sorted out now. It was the email confirmation thing that was causing the problem. Theresa knott 14:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Bulletin board updated

I am planning to add more longer texts, vaguely similar to Wikisource:News, to Wikibooks:Bulletin board. I have started with:

• Local CheckUser status in doubt
• Potential consensus to remove computer and video game guides

--Kernigh 02:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Great! Definitely a way for people to keep up to date at a glance without having to read the actual discussions themselves (which in thes two cases are especially confusing). Garrett^Talk 05:12, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Cookbooks categorisation system

Hello,

Is there a staff lounge specifically for Cookbooks? I couldn't find one. (Like maybe, hmm, Cookbook:Kitchen? :))

I wanted to ask what the story is with cookbooks categorisation. I've spent a fair bit of time at Commons and they're (necessarily) pretty strict about categorisation norms. I started 'fixing' a bunch of pages then realised it might not be appropriate. Is there guidelines anywhere?

How is Cookbook:Recipes (the index) kept up to date? Is there a way to see all the recipes, or is the best bet Special:Allpages?

Thanks, pfctdayelise 12:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

...Anyone? pfctdayelise 01:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Try Talk:Cookbook. --Kernigh 04:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Cookbook is the main cookbook discussion page. From there you can find a link to pages in the cookbook namespace or you could browse to Category:Recipes to see the recipes that have been tagged with {{recipe}} Kellen ^T 11:49, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Requesting 'bot status to accounts

This is an FYI to all Wikibooks users, that a recent change in MediaWiki software on the latest round up updates has included a feature for marking accounts with the 'bot (for robot or automated) flag on accounts can now be set locally without having to deal with stewards on meta. This is now an "additional" responsibility that can be performed by bureaucrats.

As usual, you should still use the Wikibooks:Requests for adminship#Requests for bot status to let everybody know that you want to have the bot flag added to an account, but you no longer have to make the request on meta after the decision has been made unless there aren't any active bureaucrats that are paying attention. --Rob Horning 12:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

School project

I'm just letting everyone know that some of my pupils will be working on some wikijunior pages with me over the next 5 weeks. You will recognise them because they all have (knott) in brackets after a nickname. If you have any problems with them please let me know. It would be nice if someone welcomed them, and edited some of their pages. Their spelling and grammar is likely to be in need of a little help, and thier formatting will be terrible at first.

Also we only managed to create 3 accounts. We are using a proxy and we got a message saying that there have already been 6 accounts created. Is there a time limit on this? Cdan we create more accounts next week? Theresa knott 15:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

It's possible, and probable, that your connection is going through one of the many proxies used in the UK for educational Internet providers, which might appear to Wikibooks et al. as having the same IP address, depending upon a number of factors. If this is the case, then it's quite plausible that the account creation limit from that apparent IP address has been hit. This should be reset within 24 hours or so. 86.133.210.53 20:09, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Normally I wouldn't suggest this, but an IP spoofer might be the way around this. Garrett^Talk 20:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Need more books

Excellent wiki you have here. I love the language section. The only thing this wikibook website needs is: books! I anticipated finding lots of public domain literature here. But alas, not a Shakespeare sonnet to be found. Perhaps that's in the works? 129.174.63.163 11:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC) Jess

Ah, you're looking in the wrong place. Wikibooks is for textbooks. For public domain literature, you'll need to look at our sister site, http://www.wikisource.org Jguk 11:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Votes for adoption?

Erik Moeller wrote on textbook-l:

For projects which are deemed outside the scope, as an alternative to deletion, it might be a good idea to have "Votes for adoption" - books tagged in this form could continue to be developed for the time being, but people would be encouraged to find a different, free content wiki to host them. Once there is consensus about a new home, the Wikibooks version would be redirected there.

I now forward the idea. --Kernigh 05:17, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem for using wikibooks in that way for books which have previously in practice been allowed here, but which are now considered outside our scope, provided (1) there has been no final determination that they are now outside the scope; or (2) if, as with computer and video walkthroughs, there is general acceptance that they are now outside the scope, as long as an alternative location is actively being looked for (which is the case for the walkthroughs). I would not be in favour of Erik's proposal for new books, Jguk 06:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)