How to get an ebook published at WİKİBOOKS

Hello, I am new. It sounds funny, but I couldn't find a link for a submission of an ebook for wikibooks. Where to go? Where to submit? How to upload? My book is for educational purpose /university.

Any advise welcome

Alex

What is the book about/for? In general books should be available as wiki text and if wanted complimented by other formats uploaded to Wikibooks, rather then just simply uploaded to Wikibooks in its current format. Additionally for any book to be acceptable here, it must to be licensed under the GFDL and only the author(s) or whoever owns the copyright to the ebook can agree to release it under the GFDL license. By "educational purpose" do you mean the ebook can only be used for "educational use only"? Educational use only is unfortunately not compatible with the GFDL. Again though if the authors/copyright holders are willing to release it under the GFDL it may be appropriate to include on Wikibooks, depending on what type of book it is. --darklama 11:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

We've set up a whole guideline page for book donations at Wikibooks:Book donations. This page should answer all or most of your questions. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

User Bio

Hi all, I just created my account yesterday so that I could add some articles to the book Blender 3D: Noob To Pro (Check them out if you're interesed, they are Landscape Modeling I/II). I look forward to contributing more articles and maybe even starting a wikibook in the future, but first I'd like to create a bio for myself on my use page. Does anyone know of a good tutorial for this, as far as what all should be there and how to set it up? I suppose I could look at the source for other people's user pages, but that may take awhile.

Also, I'd prefer to use internal links whenever possible, but I don't like the way they appear on the page (ie, Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro). Is there a way to change the caption for an internal link without simply posting it as an external link? I'm still learning a lot of the wiki format.

Thanks for the help! Moohasha 12:10, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no one correct way to use your user page nor any requirements for what should be there. Some people use it to list what their interests are, some people use it to list what books they are contributing to, some people us it to provide bio information about themselves. The only requirements I would say is if your using it, that your using it productively for your work here at Wikibooks. Other then that you can put whatever you want on it.

What kind of changes to the caption are you wanting? This may be something you can change for yourself using javascript in your monobook.js. --darklama 12:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I just wanted to change the text that is displayed in the article, so I can say "this article" or something instead of displaying the title as is. I figured out how to do it though (using the pipe, |). Thanks for the help. Moohasha 13:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Another question: Is there an easy way to search for images? I want to add pictures to my bio that I'm SURE already exist in the database (christian cross, computer, etc...) so I don't want to add new ones, but I can't find any way to search existing files without just browsing through a list. I want to search keywords. Moohasha 13:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

There are two ways to go about doing this:

1. The first and best way to search images is to go to Wikimedia Commons. All images on commons can be searched by keywords, and all images there can be used here on wikibooks directly. This means that any image you find on that website can be used here as if it were hosted here: no need to upload the image to our site.
2. the section option is to perform a search here on wikibooks. Enter the keyword you want to search for here and click "Search". You should see a list of possible page results (not image results). Scroll down to the bottom of the page, unclick the "Main" box, and then click the "Image" box, and click the search button at the bottom of the page. If you do this, you will do a keyword search on the images loaded here. Notice that our images are not tagged with keywords as consistantly as the images at commons are. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Awsome! Thanks for the help! Moohasha 15:18, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Submit a Book

It's too difficult to submit a book.

I have a book dealing with risks, issues and crisis in companies and our company thought of putting it out here.

After 1 hour of searching ways to do that, we actually can't find a solution.

Please email us at services@nielsenandcompany.com.

You have a great day,

Erich N—Preceding unsigned comment added by Neilsen (discuss • contribs)

We've written up a series of instructions at WB:DONATE. Go to that page, read the instructions, and let us know if you have any questions. On a side note, it's true that this page isnt well advertised. I'll work on correcting that. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:03, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedian and new member

Actually, not new in the sense that I have been using Wikibooks for quite some time. But yes, I am a (as Uncyclopedia calls it) noob here. If I goof up, please let me know. --Kushal one 02:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Textbooks for particular courses

Are textbooks made for particular courses (say Philosophy 101 at some random school) with in the scope of this project? Should all the books be general in nature? For example there is a book called The Ancient Greek Philosophers, could I copy and change it so it suits a particular course in my school? Like The Ancient Greek Philosophers/School X? --157.157.207.115 13:28, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

In general, I would say no. When you consider real classes, most textbooks are not designed for a particular class, but are used in many classes at many different schools. A teacher could use the book but say "we aren't going to cover some chapters, and we are going to cover other material that is not in this book". Or a teacher could say "we are going to cover this material, but in a different order". If you are just talking about small changes, or organizational changes, there are a few things that I would suggest:

1. Add material that you think needs to be added to the book. This is a wiki, and anybody can add material. Feel free to add new pages, or add content to existing pages.
2. Skip material you don't want to cover. No sense deleting material from the book, because it might be useful to other people. Simply have your class skip over material that isn't of interest.

Unless you are planning on making serious changes to the whole book, I would recommend that you try to work with what is already there. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:46, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

You could also include notes, lessons and other things specific to your class/school needs over at Wikiversity with references to specific chapters to be read in the books provided here and in what order. By using Wikibooks and Wikiversity together you may be able to accomplish your curriculum needs. --darklama 15:49, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Can someone check this out?

This image doesn't have a thumbnail, but the full-res works. Can it/does it need to be fixed? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 22:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Alignment of Images

I would like to be able to vertically align a group of images to the bottom, but I cannot figure out a way to do it. Can anyone help? For example how can I get all of these images to line up along the bottom instead of along a vertical centerline?

I've been banging on this for a few hours and can't seem to get it right. Using the valign tag as is documented here doesn't seem to work on images. --xixtas ^talk 03:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

You mean like this? :) --darklama 03:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, thanks. That's exactly what I needed. Where is that "bottom" thing documented? I wonder why it's not documented here? --xixtas ^talk 05:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Google Analytics Results, Week 1

Including myself I think only three or four users have participated in the google analytics test. I would like to get more users involved in this, in an effort to try and get more reliable and accurate information. The participate in the google analytics test, insert the following line into your personal monobook file. That file can be found at "User:YOUR_USERNAME/monobook.js":

import_script('User:Whiteknight/google.js');

Doing this will record information about your page hits and a few other pieces of data, all of which are aggregated (and therefore are not idenfifiable). I can see where people are coming from (directly, through another website, or through a search engine), I can see how long people stay on the site, how long they stay on a page (average), how many page views people make per visit (average). And several other statistics. Here are some partial results for the first week of tests:

54 Visits (4 unique visitors)
1,456 Pageviews
26.96 Pages/Visit
14.81% Bounce Rate
00:31:21 Avg. Time on Site
7.41% % New Visits

Google normally allows the results to be exported to XML or PDF, but tonight it seems there is some kind of problem with that. This is strictly opt-in, and if you dont want to participate, your clicks won't be counted. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:35, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Whiteknight, unfortunately, newbies like me don't know what one must do in order to use or view the results of this script. ...Selden 11:22, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The results are aggregated by google, under the account name that I set up. At the moment I'm the only person with direct access to the results, but I'm working to set up a way (probably by bot) to download the results from google and upload them to a page here. At the moment, All the information will have to be posted by me manually.

For that matter, if there are any people around here who know a thing or two about parsing XML files, i might want to enlist the help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I've created a ticker-style page for the results at User:Whiteknight/Analytics. I'm working on a bot, as we speak, to update this page automatically (or semi-automatically). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:58, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I shall be adding the gadget to my monobook this afternoon once i have had a hance to have a quick look at it's code. Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 16:11, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Good luck with that! I've looked over the code myself and can't really make heads nor tails of it. The only thing in there that was written by myself are the comments at the top and the two lines of code at the bottom that set the account number and actually call the tracker. That said, I tend to have a little bit of faith that google isnt doing anything malicious (although perhaps that brand of faith is misplaced in any large company). It's for that reason that this project is strictly opt-in. Rest assured that If i do find something that isnt completely acceptable, i'm going to shut this whole program down. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:18, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Brilliant work. A couple of early questions:

1. What is the performance impact on the servers?

2. Is it possible to put the script on 10 featured book front pages themselves for a while to see how big a shock this is to the system? RobinH 11:04, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Decent questions, let me see if i can give decent answers.

1. Concerning the WMF servers there is an additional page load to get this javascript loaded into your browser. However, caching on both the server-side and on the browser-side will reduce this effect to nearly zero. Keep in mind that many users, myself included, load multiple custom javascripts already, so it's not an effect that the serves should be unaccustomed to. Since this is a google script, all the processing is done in your browser and on the google servers. Since we arent paying for it, the load on the google servers really isnt any of our concern right now.
2. Yes and No. At the moment the script can only be loaded in two places: in the personal javascripts (which is what we are doing now) and in the global javascript. In the personal javascripts, the counter only tracks logged-in users who have installed this script. Without making the script global there is no way that we are going to get information about the click habits of ordinary readers. I'm also working right now on a "per book" javascript loading mechanism that can be used to load book-specific javascript for all readers of that book. If we use this tool, then we can track the readership of certain books without having to enact a global javascript change that some users might not be comfortable with. In these situations we would have to ask whether or not we want such tracking to be permanent, and whether we want to post warning templates that certain books are being tracked in this method. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 11:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Then there is the privacy issue. The introduction video for the google statistics suggests to add it to any book or globally would be a violation of the privacy policy, because each viewer would not be asked for there permission to do so beforehand, as required by the privacy policy. I think for clarity it might be a good idea to ask about it on the foundation mailing list before trying to implement it globally or on a per book bases. --darklama 11:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I am drafting up a letter to the foundation-l about this. I've also written some blog posts about it so when the list finally gets my letter they shouldnt be strangers to the situation. It would be a trivial task to only run the tracker for un-logged-in users, such as testing:

if(wgUserName == null) urchinTracker();

Also, users could "opt in" explicitly by adding the code to their personal monobook files as they are doing currently. In other words, anonymous users would continue not to have an expectation of privacy (as their IP addresses are clearly visible when they edit), and registered users would have an expectation of privacy unless they specifically opt in to the program. Tracking readership data is far more important then tracking editor data anyway. Plus, for security considerate readers, it would be an additional impetus to register for an account. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:48, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think darklama is right to be careful about prvacy but if I have understood this right the Google data does not contain ip addresses. If this is the case then why is there a privacy issue? Furthermore, if two trusted admins were the only people able to access the Google account then even if ip addresses could be seen this would be no worse than the existing checkuser rights available now. RobinH 14:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Checkusers are granted their tools for occasional checks for specific problems. I would likely have my CU tools removed if I were doing random checks against trusted users. This log data does not include IP addresses, but it does include some information that might be considered sensitive such as ISP, browser (including information about plugins) rough geographical location, etc. None of this information is tied in any way to the user's screenname. There is no way for me, without a priori knowledge, to say that a particular geographic location or ISP corresponds to a particular editor here. Likewise even if IP data were aggregated, i wouldnt be able to associate that with any particular user here.

A course of action that might be worth exploring is to modify the tracker code to exclude certain types of information. That is, ISP and geographical information could be suppressed or set to a default value in the code. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 15:36, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

This sounds pretty safe. So if it is operated by trusted admins there shouldnt be a problem. Is geographical data sensitive? Browser data is quite useful. ISP data is the only slightly questionable info, perhaps it could just be excluded from reports by the trusted admins. Is there really any reason not to test the global script? What does darklama think? RobinH 16:33, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

i've sent off an email about this all to the foundation-l. I would really prefer not to make this a global change until we hear back from them. However, in lieu of installing the script locally, perhaps we could make two other changes:

1. Enable per-book javascripts on a test basis
2. Install the analytics only on one or two "test" books on a temporary basis.

I assume you are interested in trying the special relativity book out with this? I have a book I would like to track as well. Maybe this will be a more amenable temporary solution while we wait for the foundation to flame consider my proposal. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

(reset)

The request message itself has nothing to do with it. When the Google script sends information to the server, that server has a log of the IP address used from the request being made because the internet protocol includes the IP address of the sender. The http protocol includes the browser information and possibly other information in addition to the IP address of the sender, the IP address would be sent even if the http protocol was not being used. The only way to prevent Google from having the IP address of the sender would be to use a proxy, but then the proxy would have the IP address instead which would still a privacy policy issue.

The difference is that checkuser is accessing local data thats already there from a local request being made, while Google or a proxy being a third party would have no way of knowing that information without the request being sent to Google. That is where the privacy issue comes in. The privacy policy seems to be concerned with the IP address being sent to a third party irregardless of who or how that information is used, being done without each users permission. The Google search function isn't a problem, because the user has to make a manual request, which means the person is giving permission for it to be done. The Google page counting, if added globally or to a book, on the other hand would not involve such a manual request being made by the user and would instead be done automatically, so individual permission is not established. So unless the Foundation says its not a problem I think even making a request for anonymous users would violate the privacy policy. This isn't about what I think or want, but about what the privacy policy claims to ensure and that this could be violating that insurance by making a request. This would be like a checkuser sharing the IP address with Google. Personally I think its ridiculous for anonymous users to be covered by such an insurance since there IP address is plastered everywhere, but I didn't write the privacy policy, so its the Foundation's issue to deal with and to clarify. --darklama 19:50, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that clear explanation. The daft thing about all of this is that a single PC on a Wikimedia server farm could probably cope with the counting. A script that just sends a message to the IP of that PC with the URL that was visited would be sufficient at the browser end and a trivial internet interface like the toy applications distributed with compilers (like the "Webster" app that comes free with Visual Studio) could provide the count for almost any amount of activity using just one machine.

However, frustrated ranting aside, we could get round the permission issue by presenting readers on their first ever use of Wikibooks with a page that explains the mission of Wikibooks and has a check box at the bottom that says "It is very useful for Wikibooks to know the usage of each page. If you wish to opt out of this uncheck the box". If they leave the box checked their ip would be added to a list of approving users. The counter script would consult this (or a list of disapproving readers) before sending stuff to Google. RobinH 08:59, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

About your rant: Thats actually what the script used with WikiCharts does, it sends the name of the page visited and the name of the wiki to separate statistics by wiki. I don't know if you've been following the discussion on foundation-l mailing list, but so far they've been pretty insistent that Google is unacceptable and that we must use the toolserver for doing this. Only one person so far has commented on the opt-in only approach suggesting that it might be an interesting experiment. I don't think unchecking a box would be sufficient, instead the box would need to be uncheck by default and checked by the user wishing to opt-in. Also cookies could be used instead of keeping a list of users. I think though the discussion on the foundation-l mailing list only helps to reinforce the need to stick with a toolserver option. --darklama 12:30, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikicharts

Thanks to User:Darklama and the folks at the tool server, the Wikicharts hit counter is now actively counting page hits at Wikibooks. The Wikicharts page counter is located here: .

The hits on that counter are counted per-page (not per-book), and cannot be readily sorted by book. As a service, I'm going to host a version of these page results on my userpage here: User:Whiteknight/Count Ticker. The values that I host will be aggregated hits per-book, which can probably help to give a clearer picture of which books are drawing attention and which are not. As an added bonus, viewing the results here will help to minimize strain on the toolserver. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:11, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

I second the thanks to User:Darklama and also to User:Whiteknight. As an editor I am partularly interested in page hits. The aggregation to the book level will be handy for Wikibooks marketing, allowing the most popular books to be put up front. The individual hits per page will provide guidance for editing within a book (access paths, popularity of subject matter etc).

I see that the counter is working on a statistical basis, is there any way that it can be tested for system load on an exact hit count basis? On more specialist books this will be essential for finding out what is happening. RobinH 13:55, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

For now 1:1 correlation is not allowed, but people are working to make it possible to have 1:1 for every wiki even English Wikipedia. --darklama 14:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If you believe the totaled results on my counter ticker, Wikibooks has received approximately 30,000 page hits in the last 2 days of counter operation. That's 15,000 hits per day (and that's only totaling the hits to the top 100 pages in only a handful of namespaces). Based on recent load data that i've read on foundation-l, en.wikipedia receives approximately 300 times as many hits as en.wikibooks does (en.wikipedia = 30% total WMF server load, en.wikibooks = 0.1% total load). This means that en.wikipedia must register in the neighborhood of 45,000,000 hits per day. Dividing, that's 31250 hits per minute, and 521 hits per second. This is a non-negligible counting task, and would easily overrun the toolserver (which has many other processing tasks to devote attention to). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:32, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Thats about 1 or 2 hits a second for Wikibooks... I was just looking at the top 100 its almost all languages, either computer or human plus a bit of human physiology and sociology, fascinating. Is Wikiversity really 20 times as popular as Wikibooks? RobinH 11:50, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

The Book of Mathematical Proofs

I have created a book entitled The Book of Mathematical Proofs. Aside from proofs a lot of definitions and examples are intended to be apart of this book. Please help develop this book. Thanks--Shahab 06:50, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

My name is Jaipal Singh Datta. I am new to wiki books. On google search engine I read recently that I have placed some literature at a wrong place. I do not know where did I write?. Kindly help. Kindly read my web sites www.jaipalsinghdatta.com, www.kapildevmohan I am interested to share some Astrological Lessons to Web site and want to publish open book free of any charges. I shall also publish Srimad Bhagwat Geeta www.srimadbhagwatgeeta.com as analyzed by Jaipal Singh Datta

I shall be thankful if you can help me in publishing these.

Jaipal Singh Datta

Some one else by the name shahab has posted links with my link. Kindly check spam. My name is jaipal Singh Datta and i am supposed to introduce my self. My Time is here 00:0025 hrs of 15 th September and Shahab time is on 13th september morning 7 hrs.

My name is Jaipal singh datta. I am interested in Astrology. Kindly help me. Some one by name Shahab is wrongly utilizing my identity. Kindly check at your site. Jaipal Singh Datta —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jaipaldatta (discuss • contribs)

I don't think I understand what you are saying. Is User:Shahab impersonating you? What do you want us to check? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:15, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I am impersonating no one. My contributions to wikibooks are all here. --Shahab 04:41, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It looks it was my mistake . I am new and I do not know how i wrote here. But soon I shall be part of wiki books or wi ki groups or wiki helper--Jaipaldatta 17:12, 8 October 2007 (UTC) My Time in India is 22:40 hrs

unfair blocking of IP!!

Hi,friends! Is anyone there who can help me. i have got into a trouble.My IP has been blocked ,i am now unable to edit .I don't know what to do now.i am very shocked and sad.I am new here .The blame put on me is of having multiple usernames.someone other than me also uses wikipedia through this IP.Whatever happened ,it was all mistakenly occured.i have no intention to harm the web contents or its concerns. i am a knowledge lover and respect the knowledge and knowledge provider.i am a science(medical)student and also write in local newspaper.I also wanted to write here but to my dismay,this damned thing happened.Please someone help me.i hope someone get me out of this trouble and to unblock my IP. Thanks,Aquistive 21:49, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Call me crass, but it appears from your post above that you are able to edit and that you have not been blocked. If this is not the case, send me an email with your ip address and I will see what you can do for you. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

This isn't Wikipedia. You would need to ask for someone to unblock you on your user talk page there, which you should still be able to edit. You can use {{unblock|reason why you should be unblocked}} there to make your request. --darklama 22:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback,friend!

Yes, the actual matter being that i have been blocked on wikipedia,not on wikibooks.But the all problem is that i once,long ago,registered an account on wikipedia but never used it. There was also some problem with that account. That was a quite old stuff to be remembered and i even have forgotten the password on that account. So,haplessly,i have no access to my user talk page there.A date was issued for unblocking,at the time of unfortunate blocking,so,will my block be resumed with all the priviliges after that date?Thanks,Aquistive 21:56, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Books vs. Chapters

I would like to know how it is decided whether a topic should be book or a chapter. For example, Topology/Set_Theory is currently a chapter of Topology. What if lots of sub-pages are added to Topology/Set_Theory? Will it be turned into a book? -- 203.158.89.10 08:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

It could be, but if lots of set-theory information were to be added, it might be better to make a separate "Set Theory" book. It turns out that one already exists, so if you want to make an in-depth coverage of the material, you might want to do it at Set Theory. At Wikibooks you can cover the same topics in multiple books, under the assumption that the material is covered differently in each. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 11:49, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

If the same material is covered in different books, how do you ensure that the material is updated at all the places whenever an update happens? -- 122.167.100.92 18:18, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

There is no assurance. However to expand on what whiteknight said, set theory in the topology book would discuss set theory as it relates to topology, while set theory in say a book on algorithm programming would discus set theory as it relates to algorithm programming. So set theory on those books would have a narrow scope as it relates to the main subject and would not necessary need to be updated or updated in the same way. A book called "Set Theory" is likely to discussion the topic of set theory more in-depth, in broad terms and differently then in a book about Topology or Algorithm programming. --darklama 18:42, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

And as another point, we're all volunteers here, there is no assurance that anything will ever happen ever. The best way to ensure that things are the way you think they should be, you should create an account and try to fill in the gaps yourself. In fact, we encourage people to make accounts here, we enjoy new helpers. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:13, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Do I have to rewrite my geology text completely to upload it to you?

MaryDaly 14:47, 28 August 2007 (UTC)Mary Daly

I dont think I undestand the question. Have you written a textbook about geology, and would like to donate it to Wikibooks? If that's the case, and if you are the author, you can definitely donate the book, but you probably need to rewrite it in wikitext. There is a draft guideline for how this process can happen at Wikibooks:Book donations. What is the title of the book?

If you are not the author of the book, then you can't rewrite it or upload it. That would be a copyright violation. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:54, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

If you are the original author, then please do donate your geology text to Wikibooks. Give us a dump of the plain text. Later, it will be "wikified". No, you don't have to wikify it yourself -- feel free to allow some other volunteer to do that. --DavidCary 04:51, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Navigation Help

How I got my book to go to the "next page" —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rozzychan (talk • contribs) 12:39, October 11, 2007.

I want to make a template that has previous and next buttons. Is there a way to do that?

Rozzychan 23:17, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes. You can look at some of our existing navigations listed at Wikibooks:Template messages/Navigation to get an idea how. --darklama 23:22, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

The logo

Why's the logo of WikiBooks so ugly compared to the rest of the Wiki logos? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 84.64.136.137 (talk • contribs) .

Good Question! We're working (slowly) on changing it. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 19:25, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Ah cool, thanks for answering. 84.64.136.137 19:28, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

If i may take this chance to piggy-back onto this conversation, I want to post a general announcement that the Wikibooks logo selection process is continuing, slowly, at meta:Wikibooks/Logo. We are in the phase now of selecting rules for the remainder of the competition. The quality and specificity of these rules will determine how successful this whole process is.

I want all Wikibookians to participate in this discussion. The last time people tried to create a new logo, there were a lot of criticisms that the process wasn't sufficiently advertised to Wikibookians, and the accusation was made that people at meta were trying to "force" a new logo onto a community that did not want it. I am going to be posting regular updates here about the process, as well as notices on the bulletin board, and possibly on the site notice as well. There really will be no excuse why wikibookians won't be involved in this process unless they choose not be involve themselves. I will also be trying to get in touch with wikibookians on other language projects. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:56, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Import sources

Can we ask (at risk of annoying the developers) for meta as an upload source? I keep noticing pages and templates that would be useful here (ie. {{Edit-top-section}} & others, and many many help pages). – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 19:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I guess just to get it over with we should get wiktionary, wikispecies and mediawiki added as well. However I disagree with the idea of importing the help pages from Meta or any other wiki project.

• Most of our help pages already come from Meta and other projects and is the very reason are help is in bad shape and messy.
• Most help pages on Meta and other projects rely on heavily nested and ugly templates, making it unreliable to duplicate.
• Most help pages on Meta and other projects are centered around article writing and not book writing, making them not idle for Wikibooks.
• A lot of help pages on Meta are currently in the process of being moved to MediaWiki or already have and been turned into soft redirects.
• Wikibooks needs to move forward not backwards. Help pages need to have a scope thats specific to Wikibooks and help new users do things in a way appropriate for Wikibooks instead of for Wikipedia.

--darklama 20:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with darklama: We don't really want the help pages from meta imported to here. They have pages that become very technical, and pages that are too complicated are not useful help pages for us here. They are good as fall-back references, for instances when wikibooks doesnt include information about a particular topic. However, it's usually better to translate the material from meta then to transwiki it directly. As darklama pointed out, most of the pages on meta are very wikipedia-centric anyway. I'm not against enabling import from this source, i'm just against a wholesale importation of help pages. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:29, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

On the issue of help pages: fair enough; I'm advocating enabling meta as an import source, not importing everything under the sun.

There are some templates that meta has for purposes of distributing them to all projects (things like {{Edit-top-section}} etc) which would be useful. I left a comment on the bugzilla request that all the import sources would be nice, but that didn't happen. I think we should ask to enable all possible import sources, if only on principle. If not, then let's at least expand the list to wikis that would be useful, meta being one. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 22:14, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikimedian Demographics on Wikiversity

I've started an "introspective" research project on Wikiversity, Wikimedian Demographics, which I'm hoping will be helpful in helping wikimedians understand one another. My natural bias is that everything, eventually, leads to Wikibooks (wp articles, wv resources, etc. are all fodder for textbooks once they've "evolved" past a certain point), so I'd like to ask everyone who is active here to help come up with questions for this research effort.

Some of the early polls I'd like to see performed include reflections on the "Erik Moeller Ideas", such as renaming projects, spinning off projects, etc., which were for a time very much on our minds. Could I ask you folks to help get this going? --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 17:11, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a Wikiversity account nor am I interested in having one, so here's a few survey ideas:

1. How to define "appropriate" content for the project and use of Transwiki
2. Defining article / page stability (can relate to the new MediaWiki "freeze" extension)
3. How Wikipedia policies and practices influence other projects
4. Featuring prominent works
5. Editorial or review boards

-withinfocus 01:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

unsubtle advertising found

Hi I found on Geographic Information Systems, what is tantamount to advertising by ESRI over the other software suppliers - I am new to this, and a neutral government worker just trying to do my bit to help out. What should I do? - just edit the page to get rid of the bias?

Thanks guys.Kriswarry 19:20, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Yup. If a link looks like spam, just remove it. If they re-ad the link after you remove it, please bring it up on WB:AN. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 19:36, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

New member and assistance (+approval) with substitutions page

Hello, I'm new to Wikibooks aldough I've been working with improving Wikipedia for quite some time. The reason why I joined is because I would like to share some of my Indian/Chinese, ... recipes in Wikibooks, so they are available for anyone and because I would like to make it easier for people to become vegetarian and enjoy more tasty (Indian, ...) food. Reason for this is mostly out of environmental considerations however, and not the "decrease in suffering for animals".

To accomplish this, there is an article which needs editing. On the Cookbook:Substitutions, there are a few more veg(etari)an (non cow milk) substitutes that need to be added (for yogurt, cheese, ...). See the Cookbook talk:Substitutions -article for more info.

Also, it may be helpful for everyone to implement guidelines in recipe-article on how the recipe can be made veg(etari)an; if the recipe can be easily made vegetarian that is. See my example with Cookbook:Churri.

Thanks,

KVDP 17:21, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

We certainly can discuss vegitarian-style food substitutions, although it really would be a wise idea to avoid discussing moral issues at all. This isnt because prevention of suffering of animals is not a noble cause, but because we need to maintain a neutral point of view. What might be the best idea would be to create a substitution template that could include information about common food substitutions. This way, we could include this template on all pages that contain food that can be substituted. Welcome to Wikibooks! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi KVDP. The Cookbook is actually one of our most active subprojects, so you might want to bounce ideas around by posting on Cookbook talk:Table of Contents. I know for certain that there are a number of vegetarian contributors, including User:Kellen. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 21:19, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello

Hi,

I'm Ricky. Started to sort out some of the chess pages. Started with this http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/1._e4/1...e5/2._Nf3/2...Nc6/3._Bc4/3...Nf6/4._Ng5/4...d5/5._exd5

Found it difficult not to make mistakes. The URL format for the chess position seem to be difficult to take to standard, one space or one dot out and you've a different URL. Maybe the standard don't matter or perhaps it would change? —Preceding unsigned comment added by E5ricky (discuss • contribs)

Hello Ricky! Welcome to Wikibooks! I've been watching some of your edits, and I would say you are a very quick learner. You are correct that some of the conventions and techniques are very difficult to master. Once you learn the patterns, it's typically easier to make fewer mistakes, but it can take a while to learn all the patterns. The best advice that I can give you is to click the "Show preview" button to view your changes before you save your edits. This way you can check yourself to makesure your links point to the correct place, and that your formatting looks the way you intend it to look. Once you are convinced that your changes are good, you can save. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:42, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the welcome Whiteknight - Ricky

Chess Opening Theory uses a highly complex and esoteric naming structure. I'd also suggest that you find ask the active contributor(s) to the book to ask about how the structure works, and for help in using it. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:44, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Yea, highly complex and esoteric naming structure....and also one that isn't always followed. Example link http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Opening_theory_in_chess/ECO_index No space after White's first move on the links in this page yet, that is not consistence with the spaces in Chess Opening Theory - Ricky

Just learnt how to add my signature E5ricky 12:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

HI guys

--Sksudhirin 10:50, 15 October 2007 (UTC)HI this is sudhir from india

I have now started Srimad Bhagwat Geeta. You can edit . This shall help me to understand more Srimad Bhagwat Geeta. Kindly read for detailslink title.You can comment or edit after searching Srimad Bhagwat Geeta from search column.Jaipaldatta 16:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Renaming the staff lounges

I think the name "staff lounge" can give the wrong impress that discussion held is for staff only, can be confused with the administration notice board and can be a bit intimidating. I propose the staff lounges be renamed to use a Wikibooks:Reading_room prefix to order to give Wikibooks a more friendly atmosphere. In addition I'm proposing the following names:

• Wikibooks:Staff lounge → Wikibooks:Reading_room
• Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Chat → Wikibooks:Reading_room/General
• Wikibooks:Staff lounge/New → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Assistance
• Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Project Chat → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Projects
• Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Technical Chat → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Technical_Assistance
• Wikibooks:Administrators' noticeboard → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Administrative_Assistance
• Wikibooks:Requests for Import → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Administrative_Assistance
• Wikibooks:Vandalism in Progress → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Administrative_Assistance
• Wikibooks:Bulletin board → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Bulletin_Board
• Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Suggestions
• Wikibooks:Votes for deletion → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Deletion_Nominations
• Wikibooks:Featured books → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Featured_Books
• Wikibooks:Requests for adminship → Wikibooks:Reading_room/Volunteer

A few rationals:

• Wikibooks:Requests for adminship doesn't reflect the fact its for more then adminship and for making requests.
• Wikibooks:Votes for deletion doesn't reflect the fact that its more about discussion then simply voting or the fact there all nominations.
• Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines/Vote is hardly used, and again isn't just about voting. This could be expanded to included proposals like this one, suggests and other related things that have come up more frequently.
• Wikibooks:Requests for Import, Wikibooks:Vandalism in Progress and Wikibooks:Administrators' noticeboard should be merged and use a friendly name.

Good idea? Bad idea? Thoughts? --darklama 01:55, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand the idea that staff lounge as a title conveys but what is the idea behind using reading room, what are we reading on the reading room to whom is it directed, what is done on the reading room besides reading...

Other more direct to the subject new names would be Forums or Discussion Areas.

A better and safer change would be to use the plural, like you used on the thread topic, move from staff lounge to staff lounges and use more or less your proposed structure, this would also be safer for older text referencing the old and single lounge...

Also a change shouldn't the Vandalism in Progress be directed for the administrators (even if open for general participation, the target audience should be administrators that have the power to take action on the subject), the same for the Requests for Import, if they are moved to subpages. --Panic 02:08, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

A reading room is a place where people go to read books and since Wikibooks is all about books, I think it makes more sense than staff lounge(s). In a bookstore or library, a reading room might have a desk for getting assistance and box for putting suggestions in. A book club might have different reading rooms for different interests. The idea is that there is a connection between books and a reading room, as a place for meeting to read and to share an interesting in reading. Reading rooms are for everyone who has an interesting in books, which is what this project is about in the general sense. As for VIP and RFI, if you look closer at the proposal I'm already suggesting a merger with the general page directed at administrators. --darklama 02:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not oppose the changes. I will have to update the watchlist again but you will be committing to a huge task... Another concept, why not use the Wikibooks talk: space it is odd to have a discussion page available to the discussion page and it would look nicer and probably help searches. --Panic 01:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

It would free the project page for highlights/archiving links and provide a on topic place to put other static and general information. --Panic 01:49, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I like this in general, but would not support the move of RFA, VFD, featured books nominations, or voting for policies. I think those deserve separate areas and don't have much to do with this "reading room" concept. We make decisions on these pages and they're not just general discussion like the others group on. We could make a "situation room" (that's a joke name, more CNN than Wikibooks) and group these decision pages together somehow. I would really like that, but I don't want normal users thinking those four pages are for chit-chat; the pages need to be more focused on getting things done. The policy vote page could be refactored and all four pages made to look more consistent. -withinfocus 03:12, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm generally with Withinfocus about this. Renaming the discussion areas to "Reading Room" is likely a better description for what the pages are for. It's also a very idiosyncratic way to keep everybody thinking about "books". I do also think that RFA, and Featured Books should not be renamed, VIP and RFI should be merged to the Administrators Noticeboard, not the reading room.

You do realize that a large amount of information pages and templates refer to the "staff lounge", and many of them are going to need to be renamed. The existing shortcuts are going to be redirected to the new locations, and new redirects are going to need to be created to point to the new pages (IE a redirect to WB:SLC isnt as appropriate as WB:RR would be). I'm not against this, but it is a big task. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

We make decisions and discussion things all the time here and on the other sub-pages too, not just chit-chat. Also RFA, VFD, FBA and VFP involves more then voting, some level of discussion is involved. I think if the description on the top of each page makes it clear what each reading room is for that there won't be any confusion. Why not give it a try? If it causes a problem as you fear, we can divide them into there own "situation room" as you've suggested. I'm not suggesting they become more chit-chatty, just made part of the same system. Featured books wouldn't be renamed really, just be made a subpage of the reading room. I am suggesting that VIP and RFI be merged into the Administrators' Noticeboard, but I'm also suggesting that the Administrators' Noticeboard be renamed Administrative Assistance and be a subpage of the reading room. I'd be willing to be responsible for fixing everything since I'm the one suggesting the change, and coming up with new shortcuts. --darklama 01:00, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Apparently I didn't hit save yesterday when I made some comments :(

1. Reading room is great - I think it'll be a nice reminder of what WB is
2. RFI and VIP being merged into WB:AN is a great idea. WB:AN being part of the reading room is ok. Renaming it to Administrative Assistance will probably make it more welcoming, and we'll get more requests, which is (probably) a good thing
3. RFA and VFD should be kept separate - perhaps an umbrella "situation room" (but not that!) could be created to group pages of that nature. The new name for VFD is fine, but calling RFA "Volunteer" makes it sound like you can just say "HEY! I'm gonna help you guys with this" when really it's not something you can just volunteer for. I'd call it something like "Requests for additional tools" (which is long) or leave as is.
4. moving /vote to /suggestions is probably not great - it should probably go into the "situation room" umbrella, and not be named "suggestions" I'd suggest /Policy Development or somesuch
5. Featured books should definitely be in the reading room– Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Being more welcoming and related to books is the point of the suggesting these name changes. I think I'll be doing this in the next few days, since it seems to be mostly agreed to, leaving out what hasn't been agreed to yet. Ya I have to admit I was having some trouble coming up with a better name than "Volunteer" and was not exactly liking that name too much myself, could see the problems with that name and was having trouble coming up with a better name. Actually anyone can volunteer, just nobody is guaranteed to be accepted. How about "Volunteer Assistance", "Offer Assistance", "Aide Wikibooks", "Nominations", or (not serious, just random brainstorming) "Join the Cabal"?

I'm suggesting that Vote not only be renamed, but be changed to include any proposals and suggestions, in addition to voting on policies and guidelines. Such as pretty much any proposal which requires us to make a bugzilla request, which still requires discussion and a decision be reached. How about "Proposals", since you don't like "Suggestions"? --darklama 03:29, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

A word of warning: make sure to leave out anything "controversial" pending further discussion. The spirit of what's proposed is a go, I'd say, as are most of the details. Stick with WB:RFA, at least for now - I see no need to change it. That describes the page well enough (the only problem is that you also request bot flags, checkuser and bcat tools there). Turning Vote into a more general place for policy proposals and discussion is great - we lack a useful, central place for that purpose. Instead of just "Proposals", try "Policy Proposals" for additional clarity.

If you need help, I don't mind. I will also be double-checking to make sure that old redirects point to new locations. ie: WB:AN should still point to "Administrative Assistance" (at least till we kick our habits). – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 03:46, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Sigh, I guess your still not getting the change I'm trying to suggest for the vote page. I don't want it to be limited to policy proposals any more which is why I didn't suggest "Policy Proposals". Also I'm not going to do anything "controversial". I did say I wouldn't do anything which hasn't been agreed to. --darklama 03:55, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

(Reset) Sorry, you're right that I didn't understand what you wanted to do with that page. Why wouldn't we have a page for policy proposals (etc.) and have things that are not policy but still require discussion (like bugzilla requests and such) take place somewhere else, such as /Technical Assistance or /General (depending on how technical a matter it is). Those seem like suitable places. I suppose it wouldn't make much difference in the end. go for it.

I also didn't mean to imply that you'd go off the deep end with this restructuring. I just meant that unless you want ...someone biting your head off, you might take it slow. I suppose I shouldn't harbour such thought though... – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 04:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Also, archiving may become an issue. The staff lounge was (apparently) one page back in the day, and was split. Now the subpages are archived together. But WB:AN and WB:BB have their own archives. What happens when all that gets mushed together? It doesn't matter so long as archives are kept, and it's clear what's happening to archived material. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 04:14, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm suggesting that the /Proposals page would still include policy proposals too, just expanded to include proposals which don't require policies too. I'm thinking it would be much easier to keep any kind of proposal in a central location than trying to decide which page a non-policy proposal should go in and would make it easier for people to see what alls being proposed much easier. --darklama 13:38, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I slept on the idea last night, and i've become more amenable to it, I think. A centralized discussion area that encompasses all of our most common community discussions is really a good idea, i think. The problem that I see is in some of the grey areas, where pages aren't really discussion pages. Consider the various Featured books pages, only the "nominations" page is a discussion page, the rest are staging areas for listing featured books. If we merged in the nominations page to the reading room discussion area, we would either (a) have to break up the various featured books pages, or try to merge all of them into the discussion area even though most of them are not themselves discussion pages.

An idea that may be more immediately beneficial to organization here is to use a tool such as User:BryanBot to keep an updated ticker of recent discussions on all discussion pages, and include that ticker into the staff lounge/reading room.

I would say that right now we can rename the staff lounge to "reading room", and possibly merge the WB:AN into this mix as well. Some other pages, such as RFA, VFD, and FBN we should probably hold off on, for now. Once the staff lounge pages are renamed and the necessary links are updated, we can start making more changes incrementally. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Well for featured books, an idea that comes to mind would be to merge the templates page with the main feature books page, and to hold the nominations on the talk page. However I agree, I'll work on updating what we have right now as the "staff lounge" to "reading room". I've already taken a few steps and am going to be doing some more in preparation for the changes and than I'll proceed to move the staff lounge. Once thats done I'll discuss the rest of my proposed changes some more in an attempt to convince that those changes will be beneficial as well. --darklama 14:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Even after all this discussion, I'm still sticking with what I requested. Voting matters should simply be separate. -withinfocus 18:51, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia and Wiktionary

Shouldn't wikipedia and wiktionary be considered a wikibook?--Arceus fan 20:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

<grin>... we've joked about that from time to time. They are, in a sense, but both projects are far too big to be a subproject of this one (in fact there was some discussion not so long ago about renaming the Wikibooks project as "Wikipedia Textbooks"). The scope of Wikibooks gives us the potential for becoming far larger than either of those projects, but individual Wikibooks require a bit more specific knowledge of the editors, rather than the general knowledge and common sense involved in editing Wiktionary or Wikipedia. Most of our regular contributor have real expertise, and are in many cases quite capable to write books entirely on their own, but choose to write here because they believe in the value of free textbooks. People like that are a bit more of a "rare find", if you know what I mean. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 21:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Aaaargh

Whole collection of new pages currently. Mostly looks like "training" stuff, mostly looks like project stuff. Naming etc could do with attention, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I'm tagging pages with the necessary message templates now, but i dont have time till this evening to actually clean any of it up. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:10, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Hello from New Contributor Wishing to do some Work on Australain History text

G'day

Just discovered Wikibooks, brand new to Wiki editing, just created a WikiBook user page, and very keen to start editing, making contributions to the largely empty Australian history text already listed within WikiBooks.

From my usepage you will see that my particular experience is in Aboriginal Australian history and anthropology, particularly for Queensland (State), and the north of Queensland at that!! While I will seek to be impartial in making entries under existing Chapters .. I expect there will be some bias in the range of entries (and references) I am most able to include.

I hope and expect there will be other contributors to this Wikitext (doesn't seem to have been terribly active?) .. particularly given recent pre-election announcement by Australia's prime-mininister that Australian history is now/proposed to be a mandatory subject for year 9 and 10 high school students etc

As a new contributor, any advice, assistance, support, and/or feedback in this first endeavour will be appreciated, with thanks

Bruceanthro 06:50, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Welcome to Wikibooks Bruceanthro! Austrailian history is a subject where we don't currently have a lot of information, so anything you add would be great! Let us know what kinds of help you need, and we will do our best to help you along. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:03, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this welcome, and thanks for the offer of assistance. I've started making some very preliminary entries on Australian History/Queensland, proposing a themed chronology in decades .. which I hope to first see filled, then rewritten as narrative!? I'm not certain if it is proper practice to attempt to contribute to Wikibook in this fashion??? Bruceanthro 14:31, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

There isn't a single "proper practice", and we leave a lot of the implementation details up to the individual authors. However you think is the best way to present the information should be fine, and creativity is definitely appreciated. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:34, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

I just wanted to thank Mike.lifeguard for welcoming me to Wikibooks. I'm a long-time Wikipedian and have made only a few edits to Wikibooks and am interested in improving the computer science texts. --Dinomite 18:02, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Computer science texts? We certainly have a lot of those, and some of them need a lot of help. Good luck on all your work here, let us know if you need any help. As a former wikipedian, you might be most interested in Wikibooks:Wikibooks for Wikipedians, a primer that is designed to get cross-wiki editors off to a fast start. (by the way, when you read that primer, let us know if anything in it needs to be improved or updated). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:08, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Local Categories

If I create a category in a book say XQuery/Service and tag a page XQuery/RSS feed with that category, the page is indexed under X as will all pages in the XQuery book.

How do I create book-specific categories?

ChrisWallace 09:13, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I recommend having all the pages of your book added to a category like Category:XQuery (book), which will simply list all the pages. The "front page" (ie the top of the hierarchy) then gets put into multiple categories (probably using the {{Subject}} template) such as {{Subject|Computing|Software Applications|Things Mike doesn't really know where to categorize them|and so on}}. That way, you can easily keep track of your modules, and the Subject:Computing (for example) page shows only the book title. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:38, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

starting point for a newbe

Hi. I'm using a mediawiki installation for some time- using templates from wikipedia. How might I approach wrapping all my articles into a book? Can this be done after the fact or do I need to use unique wikibooks templates to structure my data from the start? If this is the case, can you please point me to a starting point regarding wikibooks templates?

Thanks very much for any help! Gargamel573 14:11, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

I think you may be misunderstanding what Wikibooks is for. Textbooks are not collections of Wikipedia articles - they need to be planned out from the start with a specific audience; they must be educational (and so on). As for restructuring your wiki, it would all be done with page moves. A book is really a hierarchy of modules; have a look at WB:NP for info on our naming policy, which uses subpages. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 15:45, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

No, you don't need to structure your data from the start -- MediaWiki makes it fairly easy to collect content, and then organize it later.

If you're asking "Hey, I have a bunch of pages, and I want to make it easy to print them into a paper book", you might want to check out

• How do I print a wikibook?
• Help:Print versions
• Using Wikibooks/The Wikibooks Reader/Printing A Wikibook

Does that answer your question? --DavidCary 19:52, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Watch list for an entire book

Shouldn't there be a feature that allows you to put an entire book under a watchlist all at once. Adding all the pages, if one wants to become a key editor of a book, is tedious and also it won't add the red links. Cheers--Shahab 07:51, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed E5ricky 21:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you can add redlinks to your watchlist just like existing pages. If you click "Related Changes" from the book's table of contents, it should give to a good picture of what has changed in the book. Currently the only way to watch every page is to add them all to your watchlist, or use Related Changes. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 21:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately as far as I know there is no way to do this except to add each one manually. However, here's something you can do:

1. Find a listing of links to all of the modules in the book (for example, in the table of contents).
2. Go to "edit this page"
3. Copy all the links
4. Click "my watchlist"
5. Click "Edit raw watchlist"
6. Paste the links
7. Remove the [[ and ]] tags and all the stuff that wasn't a link before (eg remove headers)
8. Save the watchlist.

Its still tedious but I don't think it's as bad as clicking "watch this page" at every module... Mattb112885 (talk to me) 21:23, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Can I submit a howto procedure here?

Is a howto procedure a valid subject for a wikibook? I already started one with the title "popdisk". As I'm new to wikibooks, I copied the howto from my own personal wiki. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Grepdog (talk • contribs) 00:31, October 20, 2007.

As long as the content is licensed under the GFDL (since it is your own content, you can license it however you like) and it is within project scope, it is permitted. Popdisk is fine content, but I'm going to recommend that you merge it into another textbook, since it doesn't really constitute a textbook on it's own - it is a single page. I'm not sure what larger books would be good candidates; perhaps someone more active in the computer areas would be able to suggest something. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 21:19, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Geoff Adding to Guitar/Metal

Hi, just wanted to say I'm working on Guitar/Metal, since I play metal guitar and noticed it had gotten deleted. Pretty sad what the last person to edit it wrote, so I'm working on it now. So far, all the content added to it has been done by me; sometimes I'm lazy and don't sign in. MetalGeoff 18:52, 21 October 2007 (UTC) !

Hello MetalGeoff, welcome to wikibooks! the guitar book is a good one, but still needs a lot of help. Any contributions will always be appreciated. Not signing in is no big deal, but it will expose your IP address in the edit history. Some people are very careful about privacy, so that kind of thing is a concern. If you don't care so much, then it isnt an issue. Anyway, welcome! and let us know if you need any help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Growling/Screaming

Hello!

I wanted to say that I've started an book/page, whatever you call it, here on wikibooks as a guide on how to scream or growl. I don't mean how to go "grrr" or "ahhh!"; I mean a guide to screaming in heavy metal music. I noticed there was no article like it on wikibooks, and I was hoping people would be willing to contribute. Thanks. --MetalGeoff 22:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)!

Growling/Screaming

This is actually a very interesting topic. I look forward to seeing what you write. It should, however, get merged into a book on vocal music techniques. I'm not sure what's available as a recipient, but this can't stand on it's own as a textbook. I'll see if I can find something suitable. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a small book Singing that might be suitable. Music Theory/Metal might be a good place for it as well. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree with mike, this isn't enough to be a book by itself, but it could fit nicely into the Singing book, or into the Music Theory one. It's an interesting topic, and I am waiting to see how it turns out. Let me know if you need any help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:15, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi everyone!

I'm new to wikibooks ;)

I'm using a local installation of mediawiki for my research notes. I got to know about wikibooks and now I am keen to use the book templates in my local installation of mediawiki. This will hopefully grant me the option to publish some of my notes as a book more easily.

Can you point me in the right direction as to what templates I should look into? What makes a book as opposed to a mediawiki article?

Thanks in advance for any help and for your time

--Gargamel573 11:00, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

A book generally contains a number of "pages" (we call them "pages", not "articles" here), with a table of contents, and a specific reading order. Compare this to Wikipedia, where each article stands by itself, and there is no specific order to read things in. A lot of our templates are located at WB:TM, but this is only a small sampling of them. We have all sorts of other templates as well that never get properly documented. If you want more information about this site in general, along with some information about our templates and our book-writing ideas, you should check out Using Wikibooks, a book that we are writing specifically to answer questions like this. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask here and we will be glad to help you. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I will check out those resources :) --Gargamel573 22:37, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

New wiki new book

Hi guys. i am User:Aalali new to wikibook, but i have some experiences with wikipedia. My interest is medicine, neurosurgery, neurosciences and arabic and islamic histories. My plan in wikibook to create the first Neurosurgery wikibook. have a look at it here Neurosurgery —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aalali (discuss • contribs) 03:25, October 27, 2007

Welcome to Wikibooks! If you need help with the neuroanatomy parts of this text, I might be able to help (I study neuroscience) - let me know if you do. If you need anything else, don't hesitate to ask here, or on my talk page. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 03:46, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks Community

I've started creating this book today, as a sort of guidebook for visitors and new users to this project. The idea is to try and put into writing some of our norms and practices that may not be obvious to newcomers, without the hassle of trying to prescribe things in a policy or guideline document. I'm going to try and include some history information, as well as some information about past events (important or precident-setting VfDs, for instance), and other stuff. Basically, I want it to be a description of the way the project operates on a daily basis, so that new users can acclimate themselves more quickly.

If other users have something to add about this, it would be a big help. I'm going to try and work on it more today and tonight, but dont know how much time i'm going to have for the next week or so. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:WikiProject History

I've started the History WikiProject. I thought I'd expand WikiProject History on Wikipedia into Wikibooks--Phoenix-wiki 22:19, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Hiding "Donate to Wikimedia" message

With previous donation campaigns it was possible to hide the annoying "give us money" message. This time you can only shrink the message. Anyone know how to get rid of it? Xania ^talk 20:50, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Can't be done. The sitenotice is set by the foundation now, and is no longer under the control of local projects. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 21:14, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

To be technically correct, the sitenotice is still under control of the individual projects. What is out of the individual projects control is the forced replacement of the sitenotice during fundraising, which is controlled by the foundation. --darklama 22:14, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, you can hide it by adding this to your .css:

table.fundraiser-box {display : none; }

This will hide the big box - not the shrunken version. If, after you add this to you .css and then purge your browser's cache and you can still see the shrunken version, click see more, which will display the fundraiser (big version). Only it won't display because of that line. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 23:06, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Combinatorics book?

Hi. I'm a new user and I would like to revitalize the seemingly empty Combinatorics page. I have the math to do this, but where should I start? Tips would be appreciated. Someperson 00:51, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes when you come across a book this empty, it's best to start at the beginning! Seriously, this book doesnt really contain any content, so I would suggest that the first thing you do is make a plan. The plan can be as simple as an outline, like the one that is currently posted. If you like the existing outline, run with that, but if you don't, feel free to make any changes that you see fit. You have the power and the authority to make any changes that you deem necessary.

Another good tip is to check out other books that you like, and see how they are arranged. Many times, you can copy the details from another book, and get off to a running start. Using Wikibooks has a section called The Wikibooks Writer that contains some information about writing books. I have also written a personal guide on the topic at User:Whiteknight/New Book Guide. If you do read either of these books, I would appreciate feedback so that I can work to make them better. If you have any other questions, or if you need any help, please let me know. I would be happy to help in any way that I can. Good luck! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:58, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Definition

looking for a definition and meaning of stripend.....thanks —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Justapacking (talk • contribs) 16:02, October 25, 2007.

Possibly a misspelling of wiktionary:stipend? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:25, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Logo Update

There have been some updates on the logo selection process. Here are a few:

1. I've proposed some rules for the process (needs discussion)
2. I've started a process to select an official Wikijunior logo. This will be done at the same time as the Wikibooks logo process.

I really want a lot of people to get involved in this process. Very few people have been commenting so far (although the few have been very important). If people choose not to get involved in the selection process, I don't want to hear people complain that Wikibookians weren't involved in it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:43, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

• Why does it have to be so complicated? Someone just post up the previous suggested logos and let people vote for one of them. Simple as that. No silly drawn-out rounds of voting and long discussions before voting even takes places. Just vote. I've had enough of how Wikimedia decisions seem to be made. Why is it all so complicated? Xania ^talk 23:00, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

  People were pretty unhappy about how things were done last time, mostly because too few wikibookians were involved in the process from the beginning. Many people would even say that the selected logos from the final round were void because they werent selected by wikibookians. The idea behind the multiple voting rounds is to give the artists plenty of opportunity to revise and improve their ideas as the process moves forward. The wiki way is not to expect perfection from the first draft. I'm also trying to be careful to cover all possible mishaps, so that when we get a curveball, the whole process doesnt shut itself down like last time. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:04, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

  But that doesn't preclude providing a page where potential logos can be shown, does it? A lot of people, like me, are frustrated by the preliminary papwerwork and would like to look at the pretty pictures. Presumably either the posting page or its discussion page could be used to discuss the drawbacks of each of the proposed logos before the artists spend a lot of time finalizing designs that wouldn't be accepted. Selden 16:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

  Oh no! We are certainly going to have places where the logos can be displayed and discussed. That's also the reason for giving multiple voting rounds, so that artists can perfect their work according to comments and discussion. In fact, it's likely that some artists will submit multiple logos, or that groups of people will do the same. You're right though that we need to start looking at pretty pictures. As soon as we finalize the procedure, I'm going to start calling for submissions. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:20, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Bottom bracket problems

Help,

I am having a problem with my bottom bracket. I have re-installed it several times now and it keeps loosening itself up after about 20-30 miles. I have an aluminum frame, isis drive BB and corbon cranks. This latest time i re-installed it i actualy used teflon tape to try and solve the problem but it has done the same thing.

Can anyone help?

try Bicycles/Maintenance and Repair ...Selden 16:41, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

MiszaBot Automatic Archiving

As some people probably noticed, User:MiszaBot automatically archived discussions in the various reading rooms that were older then 28 days. The bot will run regularly (probably daily), and archive any discussion thread older then 28 days.

A question comes up about how we want to do the archives, however. We have been archiving all discussions (except for the AN discussions and bulletin board posts) to Wikibooks:Reading room/Archives. posts from all discussion rooms were archived to the same pages. Do we want to continue doing this? I think a better alternative would be to archive each page separately. For instance, this page could be archived to "Wikibooks:Reading room/Technical Assistance/Archives/YEAR/MONTH". It would be easier on the bot, and it would also help to keep the archives more organized.

This may be one of those things that ultimately doesnt matter either way, but I would still like to hear a few opinions about it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:49, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

The archives are a mess already (past restructuring etc), so I'd say we should try to be more organized, and have archives for each one separately. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 21:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Is MiszaBot archiving all the pages now? They're kinda long, aren't they? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 18:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I feel that archiving is mostly a waste since we have history, but I prefer specific page archives like you described for the more important pages that people may actually look at archives for whatever reason. The new users page and the like that have little to no historical value should not be archived. -withinfocus 21:33, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

You can still use my bot for that. Just specify an empty parameter as the archive page and the threads will end up in /dev/null. Миша13 21:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)