Download Html book for offline viewing.

I usually use unix <wget> to download things like a wikibook, but I'm not sure it works here. Is there an easier way to download a book in HTML? - the instructions about XML are baffling to a non-developer. Thank you, TFJ

See if the book has a print version and do as save of the page that displays it (or use wget), there are then tools to unwikify the result. --Panic (talk) 05:09, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

How do I beak a page into several pages?

I want to turn each chapter in the book on Category Theory into a separate page. I can think of a couple of clumsy ways of doing this. Is there an efficient way to do it? SixWingedSeraph (talk) 00:58, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Well I don't know how efficient this is, but I have made links out of the titles of the individual chapters. So now the word "Introduction" now links to Category Theory/Introduction. Now all you have to do is open the red link in one window, click on the edit link in the other, then copy and paste. Just make sure if you do this, to mention in the edit summary that your copying this material from the Category Theory page. Including some sort of link in necessary for copyright reasons. Thenub314 (talk) 15:15, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Main Page

There have been some comments on phasing out bookshelves more fully by giving greater prominence to the subject pages by replacing the links to bookshelves on the main page with links to subject pages. You can read what was posted on Talk:Main Page a year ago in the reading room archives. Posting here will hopefully allow for concerns to be addressed and opinions heard, as well as giving the proposal greater visibility. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 22:07, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps not surprisingly, I do have some concerns about changing the main page. Of course I would like to customize the Mathematics subject page, but some ongoing debates about my ideas have stopped me momentarily (and perhaps permanently) . Overall I think it may be better to proceed to make changes and fix problems, this will give us some motivation to fix the problems.

Here are some of my thoughts.

1. From a user perspective the distinction between categories and subjects is blurred. I personally found it very confusing when I discovered the subject pages, and then discovered that clicking on the link that followed Subjects: a the bottom of a module did not take me to the subject page. As we make subjects more prominent I expect this confusion to be worse. I strongly recommend (as I mention periodically here) that we should either change that word to categories or link the actual subject pages. But I think changing the word to categories is more realistic.
2. I would like some way of seeing the preservation of the information about development stages, and hopefully to include it on some way in the subject page.
3. As was mentioned in the original discussion we should include subjects in the default search. If it is not there already, it should be there.
4. This discussion will not get the attention it deserves. For better or worse, a lot of people don't seem to keep up on the reading room. Would it be appropriate to include a message at each of the book shelves inviting people to express their opinion? Thenub314 (talk) 08:56, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the use of "Subject" at the bottom in reference to a book's or page's categories was intended to indicate that a book's categories should match up with actual subjects. This does not work when seen on subpages of a book. It's a setting in the Mediawiki namespace that could be changed.

I find it confusing as well. Sj (talk) 16:52, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Subjects appear to be in the default search now. I looked for "mathematics" when logged-out and Subject:Mathematics was the first result.

Past commenters in the archive did note that they were amenable to having different subject pages appear differently, so it would appear that you have the leeway to alter the mathematics subjects as you see fit. Since Subject:Mathematics is a top-level subject, it would be nice, in my opinion, if all the mathematics subjects had a consistent theme. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 21:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

If we make categories for each of the progress points, the subject pages can be broken down to pull books in sections with the ones that are in the subject's category and 100%, the subject's category and 75%, etc using DPL templates. But I don't know what to do about the books that are in the subject but not in a progress category. The list of all the books in the subject could be put below the ones with progress indicators. But then you'd have books that have been marked with a progress level listed twice: in the progress-indicated section and the progress-not-indicated section. The technicalities of generating a dynamic list that can reflect progress has to be worked out. Also, the progress indicators on the bookshelves may not be up to date, further complicating matters.

A site-wide message at the top of the wiki is also something that could be done to really get attention on an issue. Maybe people would be interested in a contest to redesign the main page at the same time, with people voting for their preferred version. That would seem more worthy of a site-wide message than the mere proposal to change some links. I suppose it would depend on how significant an issue must be before the creation of a notice is warranted. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 21:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

A site-wide message is now up to get input on this issue. The issue with Subject replacing Category on book pages has been fixed. Links on the main page have been reverted back to ones pointing to the bookshelves. I thought there was consensus on this from past discussion and could only take the lack of response as tacit approval. I never intended to delete bookshelves, but the mere changing of links has drawn ire. It resulted in an edit war over which pages would be the destination through the addition of redirects to subject pages to point to bookshelves and later a notice that subjects were not being maintained and a link to the bookshelves. This could have been prevented by fully protecting the pages, but then I would appear to be engaging in a one-man vendetta, which I did not take to be the case, given past discussion. This changeover was proposed in November 2007. Are subjects the future or were they just a nice idea in theory? I brought this issue back up and so I will not be the one to decide it. I leave it to the community. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 16:44, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

This is a good use of the site-wide notice. It might be good to have a wb: page about potential messages and how long they are scheduled to be up. Sj (talk)

I am not sure what you mean when you say that the issue of replacing Subject by Category on book pages has been fixed. I see it is fixed on the subpages of a book, just not the main page. I would advocate changing it on all of teh pages of the book. For example, when I look at the bottom for example on the bottom of the Algorithms book it displays "Subjects: Featured book | Books to be merged | Algorithms | Algorithms and data structures". The first two of which are not subjects in any sense of the word. Thenub314 (talk) 11:25, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Sorting

I had altered the templates the Subjects called in order to allow them to be sorted using the gadget in Special:Preferences titled "Sort HTML lists". If you check that box you'll see they all get sorted in alphabetical order. From what I've read this gadget is required in order to overcome a limitation imposed by the use of an older version of the Dynamic Page List extension. Featured books are displayed a second time in their own section on the right-hand side of the subject pages. I don't know if that is prominent enough for you or not. As for progress indicators, I've yet to see anyone come up with a workable solution from a technical and feasibility standpoint, should they actually need to be kept. The bookshelves won't be linked to from the main page should I undo my undo, and this is probably why the subjects have not evolved considerably—nobody cares because they're not linked to from the main page. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 19:52, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware that I have to change my user settings. Is it sufficient to display the featured book "French" in the right column on Subject:French language, which is a sub-subject of Subject:Languages of Europe, which is a sub-subject of Subject:Languages? Are you kidding? With respect to a workable solution: bookshelves. --Martin Kraus (talk) 10:42, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I know I'm late to the debate. (It started in 2007?? How did I miss it.) But I completely fail to see the advantages of subject pages over bookshelves. Compare Subject:Mathematics and Wikibooks:Mathematics_bookshelf. I just can't understand why the consensus is that the former is better than the latter. To being with, it doesn't have progress bars. It doesn't seem to sort books correctly; Why, for example, is Linear algebra considered a analysis book? Also, I don't think it is a good idea to place books into separate pages; it's just not a good browsing experience. What is worse, for some technical reasons I don't understand, I can't find a way to fix those problems. For example, how can I put progress bars? I'm for any "improvement" in organization of books. Being bold is ok; if you can see ways to fix problems or make improvement, you should go ahead. BUT we never allow anyone to be bold to engage in destruction. -- Taku (talk) 22:15, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Well said, Taku! I agree with every word. --Martin Kraus (talk) 07:51, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with every word. You're trying to compare the aesthetics of two pages, one that was made in only a few seconds compared to one that required lots of effort over lots of time to produce. The problem with the current bookshelf pages is that they need to be manually maintained, and so they are always out of date, misleading, or even incorrect. Progress indicators are fun looking colorful pictures, but their use is arbitrary and they mean inconsistent things. A reader looking at might assume that the book is complete and perfect, when that is never the case. Our books here are never "complete", and even a cursory overview of some of our best books will show that nothing in our entire collection has reached the "perfect" stage yet.

Bookshelves need to be manually maintained, and that's a stupid system for us to embrace. We have the software tools here to automate the process, to maintain links automatically, to organize things how we want them, and to keep things up to date and accurate without having to wait for the next editor to come in and perform a lot of rote "organizing" busy work. The time and effort of our volunteers is far too precious to expect them to be manually maintaining large lists of links to books, especially when the technical capabilities exist for those lists to be maintained automatically as part of the software. Subject pages aren't pretty or perfect now, but they offer us the potential for improved maintainability and extendability that bookshelves do not now and will never offer.

Control Systems is an inter-disciplinary engineering text that analyzes the effects and interactions of mathematical systems. This book is for third and fourth year undergraduates in an engineering program.

I will say that the current subject pages are still young. They are more prototype then final implementation and a lot of work is going to be needed to make things the way we want them. The benefit to subject pages is that they are flexible enough to do that. We aren't limited to a single bookshelf page that is displayed in one way for everybody, we can mix and match and show lists of books that we want to show. If you don't like the way one particular subject page looks, fix it. If you don't like how sub-subjects are arranged, rearrange them or even create a new subject page with lists the way you want them. Want to see featured books displayed more prominently higher in the subject hierarchy? We have templates for all our featured books, feel free to sprinkle them liberally all over the place. In fact. I'm going to put one right here for the hell of it.

The question here is "how do we organize our collection of almost 3000 books (and growing) in a way that is maintainable, extensible, easy to implement and easy to browse". And I guarantee you that the answer is not "do nothing and stick with the non-solution that we already have" or "sit on our hands because change is scary". When there is something that we do not like we do not refuse to fix it out of fear that things may get a little worse before they get better: we be bold and fix them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 11:37, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Let me ask a few naive questions. First about the "Sort HTML lists", does this effect any other html lists, or only the dynamic page lists? If it is only the dynamic page lists, is it an option that could be set by default? Also, if we are using an older version of the Dynamic page list extension, is it possible to update to a newer version that doesn't have these limitations?

The update to a newer version of the Dynamic page list extension was rejected recently (some months). Does "sortListInHTML" affect dynamic page lists? Does anyone know how to sort DPLs alphabetically? I doubt it. --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I will have to go back and read the discussion about that. I imagine there must have been stability concerns. Thenub314 (talk) 09:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

I was incorrect, it seems that it was just a bit too computationally expensive on the server. The discussion was here but reading through it makes one point clear. It should not be necessary to change any user settings to achieve alphabetically sorting. I am no expert in HTML so this is news to me, but apparently you simply need to place the list within a DIV and give it a sortListInHTMLi class to get the list sorted. Can't this be implemented directly on the subject pages? And there would be no need to bother users about their preferences. Perhaps their are compatibility issues I am not thinking of, I don't how it would work on older browsers etc. I think I misunderstood how this solution worked. Thenub314 (talk) 10:21, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyright violation

This userpage seems to be a copyright violation. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 08:39, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think so. First it is under a Project Gutenberg License. Second, concerning possible copyright, it is written before 1923. Arlen22 (talk) 12:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Really? Sorry. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 13:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Merge

I think Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/What is a Civilization? and Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Archeology should be merged into Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Introduction. What is the proper way to propose it? Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 07:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Add {{mergeto|Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Introduction}} to the top of "What is Civilization?" and "Archeology". Add {{mergefrom|Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/What is a Civilization?}} and {{mergefrom|Wikijunior:Ancient Civilizations/Archeology}} to the top of Introduction. --darklama 12:00, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

And if no one objects, and you do the merge yourself, don't forget to place the {{now merged}} tag onto the tops of "What is Civilization?" and "Archeology". Thenub314 (talk) 12:12, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 07:48, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Subject:Major Subjects

What do you think of renaming it to Wikibooks:Subjects? If you don't want to just write "{{keep}} ~~~~". If you have any other suggestions, post them here. Arlen22 (talk) 12:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it should stay in the Subject namespace so people searching the subject namespace can find it. So Subject:Subjects if anything. --darklama 12:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

How about Subject:Contents Arlen22 (talk) 02:22, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

A Wrong Picture ??

Organic Chemistry/Aromatics

For the picture

    I think it should be wrong but i don't know how to modify it.

The positive charge in the second 2 ortho attack structures should be on 2 meta-carbons and the C=C bonds should be correspondingly placed. (It is impossible that a carbon can have 5 covalent bonds!!)

You've got to upload it in the commons. You could ask for instructions there. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 05:26, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

I think we should introduce w:barnstars here. Wikipedia has a long history of such awards. They will be helpful in showing our gratitude and motivate us to keep working. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 05:31, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Barnstars are part of the community personality of Wikipedia. The vast size of Wikipedia both helps makes barnstars work and creates a real need for the sort of community cohesion that they build. The great uniformity of task on Wikipedia is also key in allowing barnstars to serve that function, and further heightens the individually oppressive and collectively community-decohering effect of the size.

Wikibooks is a much smaller place with a small-town atmosphere, and also lacks the extreme uniformity. The nature of the tasks here is inherently more diverse and free-form. Further, I think the community is largely subdivided into micro-communities, each concerned with a single book or small set of books, and another micro-community of folks who work on project-wide stuff. Although in some ways reminiscent of Wikipedia's WikiProjects, these micro-communities have more strongly disjoint jurisdictions. The diversity of Wikibooks tends to have natural cleavage between books.

All in all, I don't think the barnstars tradition (as such, anyway) would work here. --Pi zero (talk) 14:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Short Cut to Book

What do you guys think about having shortcuts to books? Here's why I want to do it. Next week I am going to an International Pathfinder Camporee in Oshkosh, WI, USA. There will be 33,000 Pathfinders there, all of whom are the target audience for my book, Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book. I was thinking I would like to print up a bunch of business cards promoting the book, but the URL for it is just huge:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Adventist_Youth_Honors_Answer_Book

I'm thinking a shortcut might serve the book a little better:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AYHonors

I can fit that on a business card, no problem. When I started working on this book nearly five years ago (it has been a long time!) I read the naming policy which stated something along the lines of "no abbreviations in the name." I dutifully followed the directive. But man - that sure makes for a long URL. I'm not looking to rename the book - just to make it easier to share with others. Thoughts? --Jomegat (talk) 03:26, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't have any objections to that. Aren't there redirects already in place for the Old Dominion University books? Plus, you've got all the WB: shortcuts as well. I've also noticed a certain user plugging their book via redirects to catch various search terms in the box at left. That policy would apply to the book and not redirects, in my opinion. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 03:44, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I did not anticipate any objections, so I went ahead and created the redirect. If there are objections, it can be deleted. Do you want to put the page in some category, or do we just leave it alone? --Jomegat (talk) 04:06, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The issue it that you can't guarantee redirects will survive and prevent them form being temporary redirected (since they will be not as strongly monitored) and IIRC someone had a good argument against book redirects (this was covered probably on a VFD, I hope I'm not referencing myself since on the top of my head as a practice I can see several points against it). Since you are putting that information in a business card a better alternative would be using the one of the freely available url shortcut tools (I've consistently made use of notlong.com , it puts the url fully under your control and you can even have statistics about it's use, that can be useful if you decide to repeat the idea you will have some metrics to support the concept, or even enable you, later on, to redirect it a more directed page on your userspace)... --Panic (talk) 05:09, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hi Panic. Thanks for suggesting notlong.com, but have one objection to using it. I really wanted Wikibooks.org as the domain in the URL. I think it's good for the project, and I think it's good for the book too. --Jomegat (talk) 13:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, I doubt this redirect will end up pointing at the wrong place but academically it is a good point. I am going to suggest/implement the following idea. Orphaned redirects that are not likely to be searched for are often deleted. A policy I support and I try to frequently tag unnecessary redirects. As part of this conversation we should link AYHonors, so if anyone checks the "What links here" for the redirect they will be pointed to this conversation and see the reason why this redirect exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thenub314 (discuss • contribs)

On putting the page in a category, I would say no. I've consistently removed categories from redirect pages, since they do not appear in any listings of uncategorized pages if they lack categories. They also distract from real pages in the category listing and deceive by making it appear that there are more books than there are. On orphaned redirects, while I don't seek them out, if I'm fixing the name casing of a book I'll delete them so that if any page is moved again, we don't end up with a double redirect. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:02, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly, as I'm moving orphans, I see I can no longer suppress redirects to avoid creating an orphaned redirect in the process of moving the page. It's nice to know group rights can be changed without notice or consent by the community. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 13:17, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Did this happen at the same time this try beta link appeared? Maybe in rolling out the version of the software that had this link someone made some accidental change. Either way we should file a bug report. Thenub314 (talk) 14:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do believe so. I don't think the developers make Wikibooks a high priority, though. Bug 20110. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:31, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

The bug has been fixed. It may be worth noting that it affected Wikipedia as well (which may have sped up the resolution time). -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:15, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Finding things

This started out as a prospective contribution to the "Is Wikibooks growing?" thread; but while that would have worked when that thread was near the bottom of the page and active, it wouldn't work so well now that it's far up on the page and inactive. Also, while some of this is very Big Picture, some of it is also pretty specific. So when I finally got it whipped into presentable shape, I decided to post it under a fresh thread.

During the great purge, when most of the physical card catalogs (in technologically advanced parts of the word, anyway) were destroyed, it was noted that good physical card catalogs contained valuable information that was not being captured by the electronic systems that replaced them. Electronic string searches are so clearly doing something that can't be done on masses of hardcopy, that in our excitement over these new abilities, we were apt to overlook what they can't do: they can't provide thoughtful insight into the semantic content of the text. You'd think that was obvious, except that evidently it wasn't. Anyway, the sort of thoughtful insight that was lost when the card catalogs were destroyed, is being recreated for Wikipedia in the form of disambiguation pages, hatnotes, and redirects. It's getting to the point where, when you enter a search on Wikipedia, if you get back a search page it's disappointing, because that requires you to do all the thinking, whereas a disambiguation page or the like would have taken care of some of the tedious meta-level thinking in advance.

But Wikibooks doesn't allow its customers to bypass the overhead of meta-level thinking: here, the alternatives to a string search — categories, bookshelves, subject pages — are all classification systems, less chaotic but not necessarily less effortful than deciding what to do with the results of a string search.

I'll put a pin in that for a moment, and explain why it may be a key issue in the future success of Wikibooks.

Potential contributors. As an alternative to the beguiling "stupid and lazy" model of typical potential contributors, suppose they are smart and distracted. People are a valuable resource for Wikimedia projects because they're smart (smartness being never more evident than when people are making "stupid" mistakes: computers don't make stupid mistakes, they make mindless mistakes). As for distracted, people have other things going on in their lives besides contributing for free to Wikimedia projects.

Recognizing that people have limited time for Wikimedia projects leads to a long tail model of project contributions. Long tails are what makes amazon.com and Netflix work: Of all the potential sales, a significant fraction of them are potential sales of items that have individually very little demand (obscure books, obscure movies). If there were even a small overhead expense to serving those low-demand items, then it wouldn't be economic to serve them at all; but if a way can be found to avoid attaching even a very small overhead to them, then the total area under that part of the curve (that is, the area under the long tail of the curve) could make all the difference in viability of the enterprise as a whole.

To apply the long tail mathematical model here, consider contributions to the project of a certain size. Individual items (points on the x axis) are particular potential contributors, and "demand" (height of the curve on the y axis) is how much effort they're willing to put into it. The first time someone comes to Wikibooks, they probably haven't already been convinced that it's worth a lot of effort to hunt for the right book; so if we want to hang on to them as they wander past us on the Internet, we need to make it really easy for them to find something that will interest them. Give them a search box such that no matter what they type in, they're likely to get back something coherent, at least akin to a WP disambiguation page. If we ask them to follow a treasure map through a classification system, some of them will do that, but the long-tail theory says that there are lots and lots of people out there who won't put in that much effort, yet who, if we had only managed to snag them on that first encounter, would have gotten more and more involved with the project over time. The loss to the project per person might be tiny, but if there were a million of them (or ten million (or a hundred million)), the cumulative loss to the project would be significant.

After we manage to hook them on that first encounter, they will hopefully have a higher opinion of the project, and will therefore subsequently be willing to invest a little more, so they become potential investors for a slightly larger purchase, such as making a small edit to a book. And so on. That's how Wikipedia picks up contributors: by making it really easy to get started, and then really easy to get a little more involved, and fairly easy to get a little more involved, and moderately straightforward to get a little more involved. At each stage in the process, you're dealing with people who have been convinced, by earlier stages, that it's worth investing just a little more than they had before. The base of the pyramid, that everything else is predicated on, is the potential users who come to the project for the first time with no prior experience of it. Even a very small burden placed on those first-time users could cut off a lot of the long tail. The long-term viability of the project can depend on how many keyclicks and mouse clicks — and neuron firings — it takes for the first-time user to find what they want.

Of course all these other things we've been discussing lately — bookshelves and subject pages, and categories, and FlaggedRevs, and what-not — are important parts of the elephant too. But they're further up the pyramid.

Keyword search. Okay, that brings me back to the pin I stuck in the question of how to find things.

First, what should the search facility look like? How about this: a dialog box that one can type a short description of a topic into, and expect to get back a well-targeted, convenient list of relevant books. (That's in contrast to the search box we now have at Wikibooks, which never gives back a well-targeted convenient list of relevant books: it either takes us directly to a book, or it gives us back a mechanically prioritized dump of search matches.)

• Should the result of a query always be a list of targets, or should it sometimes take you directly to a target page (book main page or book section page)? The potential difficulty in going directly to a target is that, unlike Wikipedia, we don't have hatnotes at the tops of our pages; so if there are other pages that are also related, that information won't be made readily available. I'll assume for how that a query result is always a list of targets.

• Should the targets resulting from a query be only book main pages, or should they include section pages as well?

• To be really useful, the list of targets returned by a query should be sorted, at least crudely, by completion — stubs clearly marked as such, for example, so that people aren't unpleasantly surprised when they click on the link and there's essentially nothing there; that would be a turn-off, and we want the first-time Wikibooks user's experience to be positive.

The second big question is, how should these query-result pages be generated?

• I submit that they cannot be directly generated by hand. Wikipedia generates disambiguation pages and redirects and hatnotes all by hand, but there the targets are essentially simple and static, and even creation of new articles largely follows predictable patterns. At Wikibooks our targets have much more complex structure — that being a large part of what differentiates a book from a set of articles — and contributors are apt to concentrate wholly on the content of individual books, so that overhead on remote pages (like bookshelves or subject pages) is apt to be underattended. And if we have trouble paying enough attention to bookshelves and subject pages, just imagine how much worse the problem would be if we had a hundred or a thousand times as many such pages to worry about; that's not gonna happen.

• The query-results have to reflect a process that had some thought put into it somewhere, so since that thought doesn't occur at the query-result itself, presumably that means the thought has to be distributed amongst the targets themselves. Academic papers routinely have a list of "keywords" after the abstract; perhaps we could use something similar. Very careful thought is needed in advance to just what kind of "keywords" we're going to put on the individual pages, because it would be a right mess to change our minds after distributed creation of these keyword lists is already underway.

• Part of figuring out what should be provided in the way of distributed "keyword" information, is figuring out what transformation should be performed on that information to automatically generate query-result pages.

• Separate from figuring out the transformation, is figuring out how to implement the transformation. I have a (sinking) feeling that javascript would be involved, at least initially, but since I've managed to avoid studying javascript to date, for now that's just a feeling. In any event, choosing the transformation is much more immediately important, because creating the distributed information depends on grokking the transformation rather than its implementation, and once the information is available it's always possible to try different implementations.

--Pi zero (talk) 17:55, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

ref and references tags

I was just fooling around replacing the {{ref}} templates with the <ref> tag in Adventist Youth Honors Answer Book/Recreation. I ran into a bit of trouble when I tried to add the citations to the bottom of the page by adding <references/>. Basically, I'm not seeing the citations. Are these tags supported at WB, or is that a WP-only thing? Did I do something wrong? If so, I sure can't see it (which is possible, since it's well past time I should be in bed). --Jomegat (talk) 04:36, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

I added a couple of "/ref" tags, but there is still another problem: "references/" does not seem to work after "DynamicPageList" ! Weird... - Erik Baas (talk) 08:57, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Those closing tags shouldn't have been added. They followed self-closed <ref name="blah" /> tags, similar to <br />, <hr />, and <img ... />. (Technically, none of the <br> tags on that page are closed.) -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys. All better now! --Jomegat (talk) 13:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello,

Since you all seem to understand what it all means, perhaps somebody would condider adding a description to the Editing_Wikitext book. It would benefit from superscript and subscript notes too, and any others that the more established crowd are familiar with.

Anonymouse.

Template:TopNav

I don't know if anyone else notices this, but the navigation links provided by this template seem to be overlapping the level one hr of page titles. I tested this in IE 8 and Firefox 3.5. It uses an id of "top-navigation" that I didn't see a listing for in MediaWiki:Common.css or its subpages. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Difference between 1999 and 1997 constitution in nigeria

Please tell me the difference between the 1999 and 1997 constitution in nigeria.

This page is where Wikibookians help each other solve problems encountered while contributing to books or otherwise taking part in the Wikibooks community. I'm sorry but it is not a place for general questions. --Swift (talk) 02:24, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Linking ideas

Hello--I'm a fairly experienced Wikipedia editor, just coming to Wikibooks. I was constructing my user page when I ran into the problem that I wanted to be able to link terms (such as behavioral economics) to their Wikipedia entries, and didn't know if there was a simple way to do so (rather than including an HTML link).

...but then, looking around I see that hyperlinks aren't the norm here at Wikibooks? Is the aim to produce books that would work best on paper? My bias is to include links to concepts which could use more elaboration than they'll get in the book text.

So, the question in my mind started as technical, but rapidly moved to design--what's the Wikibooks philosophy toward links? TDang (talk) 11:23, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

And Help:Editing#Links at least partially answers both of the above, with the technical (such as w:behavioral economics) and the norm, "be conservative in linking to pages outside the book (and especially so to pages outside Wikibooks)". If there's a place which argues the why of this standard, that would also be helpful to me. TDang (talk) 11:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You also may want to look at Help:Wikibooks for Wikimedians since you're coming from Wikipedia for some other differences in culture. Additional information on the culture of Wikibooks with relation to links can be found at Wikibooks:Dewikify, where the reasoning and process of removing links from articles imported from Wikipedia is discussed. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:16, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Those look very helpful. TDang (talk) 13:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Producing books that can be easily printed is important to some people, though that isn't the sole reason. A part of Wikibooks' philosophy is that books should be self-contained. If you think the definition of a term is important for understanding a book's subject, you should include the term's definition within the book. Some books have glossaries and link important terms to the book's glossary. Some books introduce the definition of an important terms the first time the term is used, and style the term with italic or bold. Basically adding material is encouraged, and using links to compensate for lack of material is discouraged. --darklama 13:33, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Darklama. I'm not sure I buy the reasoning. I've generally felt that the lack of hypertext in books is a concession to the technology rather than a design feature. However, I'm new here. I'll see how it all goes. TDang (talk) 20:26, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

When to RFI

Hello--I'm working on starting a new book and want to provide guidance to other new editors, as well as figuring things out myself. I figure sometimes we'd want to copy a large amount of material from a Wikipedia article, sometimes just a little. Sometimes we'd want to copy a lot, but not necessarily all into the same chapter of the book.

I'm wondering what guidelines there are for when to RFI, and when to copy & paste. Additionally, are there any special concerns on how to handle the material once it's in Wikibooks? If it's to be included in a chapter, but the chapter isn't primarily derivative of the Wikipedia page, how is that handled?

Thanks TDang (talk) 21:17, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

You can sporadically copy paste a phrase here and there without any attribution (this is valid for any work). From WIkimedia sources, the RFI is normally the preferred method, since it preserves the edit history and using it skips the otherwise requirement of having to state on the book that some content came from a external Wikimedia project. (Wikisource material should always be referenced directly). --Panic (talk) 23:39, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Panic, and also for the welcome note. I'm going follow up some more on this, since I'm feeling dense. So, if I wanted to include a little material from Wikipedia's information economics page, I would RFI, but the new thing wouldn't be part of my book, would it? Instead it would be a free-floating page here at Wikibooks? And then, as a free-floating page here at Wikibooks, any material could be copied from it without worrying about notices that some material came from Wikipedia...?

On the other hand, if even a little material came from Wikipedia, an notice about that would be required--would the notice have to be more detailed if using more material, or is it binary?

When you request a import, the source page is copied with it's edit history. You can then edit and move it into the book. It would then became part of your book, not a free-floating page (those exist, I have adopted some over the time, when those requesting the RFI doesn't complete the job, most free-floating pages resulting from abandoned RFI would be proper targets for s speedy deletion (if enough time has passed).

A notice isn't required if the edit history is kept (since attribution to the original editors would be present), it would emulate in loco edits. --Panic (talk) 00:41, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Oof, I was thinking this would be easy. I'm starting to think it's actually tricky. So, suppose I have a pre-existing chapter and I want to copy a chunk of material from a WP article into that chapter. So, I can't just RFI the article and use that as a starting point for the WB page. If I RFI the article, copy stuff from the WB version of the article to the WB chapter, then the article is deleted from WB, then the RFI was for naught. On the other hand, I could import the article into the book, but then it's like a legal vestigial organ, not something I really want in the book, just there to keep an edit history around. Is there a standard way to approach such a situation?

Can you point me to an example of the kind of attribution that's used if stuff is copied from WP without an RFI? (Thanks for your patience.) TDang (talk) 01:02, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

You do a RFI and then merge the content you wish to keep, ask an history merge to your chapter fallowed by a deletion of the imported page (not very complicated). (Admins have the possibility to do history merges of pages in the project, hence the necessity of the RFI). --Panic (talk) 01:07, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

C++ Programming/Authors has an attribution to Wikipedia and even other Wikibooks (since books are ultimately used in stand alone form). The Wikisource attribution is in regard to some source code that was deleted at Wikisource (not part of a previously published book) as I can't remember if a history merge was performed I left that one in. --Panic (talk) 01:10, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm getting closer to understanding. I had missed the possibility of a history merge. I think that this abstract talk will have to wait until I get a concrete issue to implement, and then the lightbulb may go off. Thanks again for all the explanation. TDang (talk) 02:58, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Glad I have helped. --Panic (talk) 03:19, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

$wgFlaggedRevsAutoReviewNew=false

I've moved this proposal to its own section at the bottom of the page (where it's more likely to be noticed) from the earlier section #FlaggedRevs Should Be Removed or Changed --Pi zero (talk) 12:44, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

My recommendation is to put $wgFlaggedRevsAutoReviewNew=false in LocalSettings.php. In the case of FEIA, there was a bulk quantity of paged created by an editor that get auto-sighted, which is not ideal for class projects where new users try to create pages; changing it this way won't affect experienced editors who can simply click on "Review this revision" without issue. I tested this on my own private wiki, and it feels much more suitable than the configuration on Wikibooks, and it's the only change that's required. Whether you want it checked or unchecked by default is another story, that can be put in the Stability preferences. --Sigma 7 (talk) 19:27, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Support Most pages at wikibooks go through a young phase where it's more convenient for them to have never been reviewed. So even if an Editor creating pages is aware that they can de-review pages after creation, it makes much more sense for the pages to start out unreviewed and require editor intervention to review them later. --Pi zero (talk) 21:22, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Support I agree it wold be better to not have pages autoreviewed. Thenub314 (talk) 16:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Support This would make it a lot easier for those with the editor flag to work on breaking single-page books into subpages without having to remember that they must de-review those new pages. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 18:59, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Support as a quick fix. I'm still waiting that the ones responsible for initiating the test trial of this features. Beyond some visual benefits (and seemingly reducing vandalism, can't make it an affirmation since I've reduced my patrol or page validating task to a minimum). I can at least confirm that the number of general edits is decreasing...

In any case we agreed for a test period and several Wikibookians have already expressed problems with the new features or they way they are implemented have a total disregard on Wikibooks particulars. --Panic (talk) 02:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

I'm willing to support a tweak of the settings but would prefer if we addressed first the issue of keeping the feature at all. Since the vote that enabled it stated a time limit for the experience, that as expressed before by many Wikibookians as it is, it is not at all a benefit to the project... --Panic (talk) 01:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

What is the process of getting this implemented? There appears to be consensus, with no objections. Unless we want to let this sit until it's archived and forgotten, like the section this was split from (see first comment). -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 21:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20034 --Sigma 7 (talk) 00:32, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

They've now implemented this request. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 02:25, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Random book

Where did this feature go??? Emesee (talk)

Top-left, right under donations and above the search box. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 23:17, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Positive Press at Slashdot

We're getting some positive (and much needed) press on Slashdot tonight. Chazz, was that you getting a "frist psot"? --Jomegat (talk) 04:10, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Creating a New Page Rather than a New Book

Hello all. I am new to Wikibooks (and relatively new to Wikipedia) and am working on the Historical Rhetorics book. I would like to create new pages in the book (so that the individual chapters listed on the main page appear as separate pages). When I created an internal link, I accidentally created a new book entitled Chapter Two: Plato's Relationship to Rhetoric rather than a new page in the Historical Rhetorics book. Thanks ahead of time for any help. Insignificantwrangler (talk) 17:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I added links to subpages of the book based on the chapters currently listed on the page. If you go to edit it you'll see the notation used. [[/Subpage Name/]] is the pattern. It is best not to include chapter numbering in the page title else you'll have to rename pages later if you reorder the chapters. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

See also Help:Editing#Links. --Swift (talk) 18:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks both Adrignola and Swift. I'll build off of your help.

Habla Español? Please help me with Physics with transforms

If you speak Spanish, please help me with the "Physics with transforms" book.

(Is this the right place to ask for such cross-language help? I'm hoping to at least get a better response than the request for help Karl Wick posted at Talk:Physics with transforms.)

I think I can help with the Spanish to English translation.

But I don't think my Spanish is quite good enough for the following. Please help.

• Please email Rodolfo Padilla and confirm that he really does want to give the contents of his book to Wikibooks. I don't want this to be a copyright infringement. I think there is a link at http://physicstransforms.tripod.com/ that takes you to a page with his email address. Does he want us to use that Spanish translation? Is there a better version somewhere else that we should use instead? Does he want us to start with the partial English translation on that web page? Or does he want us to do Spanish-to-English translation from scratch? Thank you for contributing!
• Please talk to the nice people at http://es.wikibooks.org/ and figure out the right way to get the original (Spanish) version of the book there.

Thank you very much. Muchas gracias. --DavidCary (talk) 19:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

HELP ME!!!

Whats the cold war please answer me people if you know to email me at ShawtyBad1rocketmail.com again ShawtyBad1rocketmail.com please please please love a concerned Student

Please read w:Cold War.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 20:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Or The Cold War --Sjlegg (talk) 11:36, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Common.js/Displaytitle.js

Jokes Free4Me is getting errors due to the "hasAttribute" portion of the above file. It apparently isn't supported in versions of Internet Explorer before 8.

I don't know JavaScript to determine how to resolve this. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:56, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

OK I may have fixed it for situations such as that. As I don't use IE, I need someone who does to confirm it. --darklama 16:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, it has indeed improved, but only partially: no longer "Object doesn't support this property or method" in line 12, now it's "'Node' is undefined" in line 37. -- Jokes Free4Me (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Fwiw, in IE6 the tab gets changed, but the title header doesn't. Probably not worth investigating, but i felt it could be stated. :-) -- 188.25.131.219 (talk) 00:46, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Vector skin (Wikibooks preferences) doesn't move

The Vector skin doesn't display an option to move pages... --Panic (talk) 07:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
The view menu has some clutter (options that shouldn't be there, duplicated or aren't well indicated). --Panic (talk) 07:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

The "Move" option is in the pull-down menu next to "View history". - Erik Baas (talk) 10:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes. It is now. Yesterday it didn't show as a pull-down (at least here) it was displayed on the side bar and it didn't include the move option, hence my second post. (I was testing the skin for the first time my favorite is still the classic, with the floating bar or the right). --Panic (talk) 19:44, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Creating a web application

This book looks nothing like a book; more like an article. Should it be transwikied? Kayau (talk) 05:00, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

An excellent question, and a tricky one. We certainly have many books that do not look like books. Also, some of the books that do look like books, do not seem to be textbooks to me. It is not quite appropriate for wikipedia, because the page plans to instruct you how do something. So it may very well fall under the "instructional guide" phrase of What is Wikibooks? article. But I would be curious to hear what other people think. Thenub314 (talk) 08:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

If anyone is interested in my opinion: Discussing this book is a waste of time. Even discussing it's deletion would be a waste of time. If someone wants to pick it up: great; otherwise: just ignore it. There is nothing more to say about this book. Go, write a book! --Martin Kraus (talk) 09:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion it needs to be broken down into steps and then written with easier to understand language for people just learning how to build a web application but don't know how. First I would write a chapter on how to use HTML codes and maybe an open source Web designer program (so that it is free and not tied down to one software company), then write a chapter on XML. Then write a chapter on using Javascript and web control forms. Then write a chapter on using Netbeans (because it is a free IDE from Sun to develop web code and other code in) and the PHP language with an Apache web server. Then one tying them all together. Then make a more advanced version of the book with LAMP Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or optionally without Linux if case the reader is using Windows or Mac OSX, etc) and more on how to build advanced web applications. Right now it has confusing words and shows code from a PHP application but has no introduction section and seems more like marketing speak for web technologies. Orion Blastar (talk) 02:33, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems to be stale (no content was added since 17 February 2008), adopt it and go ahead and do what you propose, you can even see if Web Development (stale since 12 February 2005) would benefit with a merge with this content. You can also reference JavaScript, PHP Programming and other existing content on Wikibooks... --Panic (talk) 04:18, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Some questions about Strategy Guides

The article Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks? clearly states that "Wikibooks is not for video game strategy guides". I was considering nominating the Minesweeper module for deletion because it seemed to me it aimed to be a strategy guide for a video game. Then I started to attempt to define for myself it it constitutes a "video game". Then I began to wonder why we are singling out one particular type of strategy guide. Is the page on How to solve the Rubik's Cube really any different than a page about a specific type of puzzle implemented on a computer? Should we really make a distinction that a physical model of game can be constructed (the Rubik's cube certainly exists has a computer game as well.) But this page simply seems to be a strategy guide.

I am not trying to raise points about specific pages, but curious to hear what people think about this wording. I am hoping someone can set my internal compass straight about why specifically do we disallow video game strategy guides as opposed instead of all strategy guides. Thenub314 (talk) 08:20, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't particularly like singling out strategy guides myself. The short version of the history I think is that it all started with some comments/observations made by Jimbo who seemed to be making a distinction between books like DOOM and books like Chess. He seemed to be urging books like DOOM were out of scope because he's never heard of any school that taught people how to play DOOM, while on the other hand schools often have a Chess Club. Jimbo even went as far as to rewrite "What is Wikibooks" to limit Wikibooks' scope to only textbooks, but it didn't quiet stick. Despite some disagreements over the whole thing, Jimbo did manage to influence Wikibooks to some extent, and eventually "Wikibooks is not for video game strategy guides" was added after a few years worth of consensus to delete such books repeatedly passed VFD.

I think one possible argument that would be used to make the distinction your wondering about is:

• Puzzles are often used as part of critical thinking exercises, in math challenges, in learning about Logic, etc.
• You can't take what is learned by following specific strategies to a specific game and apply it to real world problems.

In any case I think VFD is still the best way to deal with such books, because what qualifies is still not always clear.

If the criteria was broaden there is a risk of also inadvertently saying that books on Game Theory and related subjects aren't allowed either. --darklama 10:56, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

SVG images

I see Help:Images_and_other_uploaded_files#Supported_file_types.3B_miscellaneous|here something about SVG images which isn't entirely clear. Is it trying to say that I can't upload and show new SVG images?

Also, I'm trying to use an SVG here* and it's displaying odd. Pointers to control over the scaling of images would be appreciated.

* I know that looks like inappropriate use of the wiki--I'm doing it partly for learning and partly because I intend to de-personalize the material there and include it in the book. TDang (talk) 17:18, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

That help page is very much out of date. SVG files can be uploaded. When a SVG image used a scaled PNG image is created and used in its place because not all web browsers support SVG images. This is done by the software transparently without anyone having to do anything more. There are some bugs in the conversion process though. SVG is preferred because SVG is an open format and anyone can easily download and change SVG images, even with just a text editor if someone wanted to. --darklama 17:37, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I was wondering why it was telling me I couldn't use SVG when I clearly was already doing so. Any ideas on the scaling of the image. It looks correct here and ... um, now it looks right on the page. That's odd, but I guess for the moment it's not a problem. TDang (talk) 17:46, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

If you want to scale an image use [[File:Image.svg|64x64px]] where "64x64px" means 64 by 64 pixels. If a size isn't specified a default size is used which depends on your preferences. --darklama 18:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Excellent, thanks! TDang (talk) 19:51, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Problem with classic skin preferences

There seems to be a problem when moving pages with the "+" character if the selected skin is the classic skin (the second on the list) in the user preferences. --Panic (talk) 19:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Today, the edit action stopped working. What is going on ?!? --Panic (talk) 01:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit action is now working again. Move of pages that bear the "+" character is still impossible. --Panic (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Nostalgia also has an issue with the move page. Classic still has the same problem (probably because they are closely related). --Panic (talk) 02:52, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Display of R input in "Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R"

Hi, I'm seeing an "Invalid Language" error in all the Input parts of this book that use the R language. I notice that R is not in the list of permitted languages. Is this a setting on my (user) end or something that needs intervention on the part of the author to fix? I'm really looking forward to reading the book and it's a bit of a problem without the code samples.

Here's a link to a page where I am seeing problems: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Statistical_Analysis:_an_Introduction_using_R/R_basics

Thanks in Advance.Counti8 (talk) 20:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this. The page Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R/R/Syntax which is transcluded by the code template had been deleted. I've restored it and things seem to be working. Please let us know if there are still any problems here. --Swift (talk) 07:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't delete the page, but I agree with its original deletion reason of "no meaningful content". What's the point of {{:Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R/R/Syntax}} just to get "text"? Just write "text" in the pages! -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 03:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't create the page, but I suspect the point is the same as any other transcluded page: to be able to change content on several pages by changing a single page. The Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R book uses transcluded pages heavily. This page was used on over a dozen pages which were crippled after it was deleted. One can argue that it therefore qualifies as meaningful content.

There may be limited use (even none at all) in being able to change the syntax display options on the fly. On the other hand; it's a single page, there is no gain in deleting it and giving the author considerable leeway about how he contributes is good for the project. I suggest we focus our efforts on education, not enforcing rules that don't even exist. --Swift (talk) 08:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yep, agree with you (Swift) - and I was the bad guy who deleted it. There's no point in making things difficult. I'm pretty sure (although it was months ago) that I was doing a clean up of short pages and just didn't spot all the links to the page for some reason. I'm much more careful now, honest. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 09:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Problem with classic skin preferences

There seems to be a problem when moving pages with the "+" character if the selected skin is the classic skin (the second on the list) in the user preferences. --Panic (talk) 19:00, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Today, the edit action stopped working. What is going on ?!? --Panic (talk) 01:12, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit action is now working again. Move of pages that bear the "+" character is still impossible. --Panic (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Nostalgia also has an issue with the move page. Classic still has the same problem (probably because they are closely related). --Panic (talk) 02:52, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Display of R input in "Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R"

Hi, I'm seeing an "Invalid Language" error in all the Input parts of this book that use the R language. I notice that R is not in the list of permitted languages. Is this a setting on my (user) end or something that needs intervention on the part of the author to fix? I'm really looking forward to reading the book and it's a bit of a problem without the code samples.

Here's a link to a page where I am seeing problems: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Statistical_Analysis:_an_Introduction_using_R/R_basics

Thanks in Advance.Counti8 (talk) 20:38, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this. The page Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R/R/Syntax which is transcluded by the code template had been deleted. I've restored it and things seem to be working. Please let us know if there are still any problems here. --Swift (talk) 07:16, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't delete the page, but I agree with its original deletion reason of "no meaningful content". What's the point of {{:Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R/R/Syntax}} just to get "text"? Just write "text" in the pages! -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 03:32, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I didn't create the page, but I suspect the point is the same as any other transcluded page: to be able to change content on several pages by changing a single page. The Statistical Analysis: an Introduction using R book uses transcluded pages heavily. This page was used on over a dozen pages which were crippled after it was deleted. One can argue that it therefore qualifies as meaningful content.

There may be limited use (even none at all) in being able to change the syntax display options on the fly. On the other hand; it's a single page, there is no gain in deleting it and giving the author considerable leeway about how he contributes is good for the project. I suggest we focus our efforts on education, not enforcing rules that don't even exist. --Swift (talk) 08:16, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yep, agree with you (Swift) - and I was the bad guy who deleted it. There's no point in making things difficult. I'm pretty sure (although it was months ago) that I was doing a clean up of short pages and just didn't spot all the links to the page for some reason. I'm much more careful now, honest. Unusual? Quite ^TalkQu 09:07, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Undelete

What is the reverse of {{delete}}, I'd like to undelete some pages like Chess/Dragon Variation which are in use from wikipedia pages such as w:Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation. I could recreate them but it's a bit tedious so a speedy undelete would be nice. SunCreator (talk) 00:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Pages for which there was consensus to delete may only be undeleted following a similar discussion at Wikibooks:Votes for undeletion. Pages which have been speedily deleted by accident can be undeleted similarly by any administrator. It would be best if you posted a list of pages you want undeleted at Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance or contact an administrator directly. --Swift (talk) 00:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Yea, they have been speedy deleted . I will post up a list at [[Wikibooks:Reading room/Administrative Assistance SunCreator (talk)

How to Merge

How do I use the merge feature? I am in the following groups: Autoconfirmed users, Users. Thanks. Arlen22 (talk) 14:52, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You take the content from the source page and add it to the desired page yourself by copying and pasting and editing. This is not an automated task, as you must determine what content from both pages will survive the merging of the two. Once that is complete, you mark the page that should no longer exist following the merge with {{now merged|surviving page name here}}. At that point an administrator will merge the edit histories of the two pages so that the people who went through the trouble to add content to the page being deleted still get credit for their work. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:00, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Does history merge look through the new file and add the history for any text that might have been copied? Or how does it work? Arlen22 (talk) 15:24, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

It will intermix the two histories together without regard to how much or little or in fact what if anything was copied. If fifty edits were made before January 2006 and the new page was created March 2008, it will be clear which edits were for which page. If the two pages progressed in parallel during the same periods, the histories, when merged, overlap and interweave with one another. The merged history will show everyone who edited either of the two pages and the specific text they added at the time, whether or not that text they added remains in the final version. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 16:37, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

How do I request a history merge from wikipedia? Arlen22 (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

You make a request for import and just have the administrator doing it perform the history merge immediately with the page of your choice. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 19:20, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

General Question About Donating My Book

I'm an independent thinker who has a book on Amazon called "Common Sense II". I'd like to make it free to everybody but I don't want it edited -- OR -- if my book is edited, then I no longer want to be called its author (particularly if the changes are substantial). My book is a tough controversial strategy to prevent terrorism. But it looks like neither Wikibooks or Wikisource will be suitable. Any ideas of what to do? If so, my thanks in advance. Tomwsulcer (talk) 19:15, 21 August 2009 (UTC)Tomwsulcer

If you don't want it edited, then none of the WMF projects are the place for it. Not being labeled as the author of a substantially edited work would however make it appropriate for both Wikisource and Wikibooks. For Wikisource, you'll need to release the book into the public domain. For Wikibooks, you'll need to release the content (at least) under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL.

In either case, subsequent authors/contributors will be allowed to claim their fair authorship, but the works will not be published as though they were wholly yours. --Swift (talk) 02:38, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Wikisource seems the best fit for your goals. Wikisource is a library of static texts that have already been published elsewhere. You can still sign you work in both projects (but read the licenses carefully even if the version on Wikisource will remains static the licenses permit derivative works, I think that was the last point Swift was making, any of those licenses will not affect your ownership over the content only grant some rights to others, in use and distribution).

I think you can even submit it to both projects and add a licensing page to the Wikibook stating the original (static) source, this would enable it to continue to evolve here, if you disagree with it's evolution you can freely state that and remove yourself from the authors list. You have to license your work on either project as Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 and the GFDL (not as public domain as Swift said above, public domain is compatible with both licenses that was probably the reason for the confusion). --Panic (talk) 03:04, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't know the particulars but be careful. If the book is an already published "dead tree" then the company that published it often has some copyright over the text that would prevent you from releasing it into the public domain or publishing with another company without the first company's express written consent. Make sure to review your contract with the initial publisher. The one dead tree book I was involved with got caught in this terrible situation where the first publishing company decided books on that subject were not profitable to print, but unwilling to release the book so it could be published with another company. We were ultimately successful, but it was a pain. Thenub314 (talk) 07:48, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Swift, thank you Panic2k4, thank you Thenub314 -- I appreciate your comments. I uploaded my book to Wikisource. Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:33, 27 August 2009 (UTC)Tomwsulcer

Thank you for donating your work... --Panic (talk) 02:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

pressure sensitive material

Hi,

   May i know is there any material that senses pressure directly, with the property of water resistant......

Sorry, but this is not a general help desk. You can try searching for a topic here on Wikibooks or the wider Internet. Wikipedia also has a place for such questions, but you could also just ask a teacher if you are at school, or ask for help finding a conventional book in a local library. --Swift (talk) 18:27, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Pages in the wrong category?

Perhaps I am just confused, so forgive me if this turns out to be a waste of time. While examining some pages in Category:Queried pages, I noticed many pages displayed at the bottom of the page that they were in Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and not in Category:Queried pages. (See for example Cochlear implants). This makes sense, as the pages had been queried for more then seven days. But while the link at the bottom of the page directs you to Category:Candidates for speedy deletion, the page doesn't appear there. Instead it appears in Category:Queried pages, where in theory it shouldn't be. Even after purging the cache servers the pages, things didn't appear where I might have expected them to. Thenub314 (talk) 10:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

This same issue comes up when you change the category applied to a page with a template. The new category shows at the bottom of the page but the page still remains in the old category. The category you see on the above pages changes due to the parser functions code, but the page still remains in the queried pages category. If you null edit the page, only then does the category get changed. Theoretically this would be fixed every time the Special listings get refreshed, but for books I've moved where I didn't null edit all the pages to refresh the pages' categories, I have seen the old category show up in the wanted categories. This tells me the pages remained in the old category even after the cache refresh. This is a known issue, but pages I've seen on it state that it should fix itself given time. I'm not sure this is always the case. The one sure way to fix it is to null edit the page. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:19, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Good to know, I hadn't noticed that null edits don't show up in the edit history. I was mistakenly under the impression that this would case the page to end up back in queried pages for 7 more days. Good to know it is a known issue, hope it gets fixed someday.Thenub314 (talk) 10:19, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Wrongname

Is there a variation for {{Wrongname}} template ? Is it still necessary for the # character ?
I noted that the C Sharp Programming was renamed C# Programming. (I've attempted the same to the page and it doesn't work)
I was editing C++ Programming/Programming Languages/Comparisons/C Sharp and noticed that the template states "The title given to this book page is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is C#." (since it is a page not a book). Need some input on this before I attempt a page move or have to tackle the template. --Panic (talk) 02:56, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

C Sharp Programming is only at that title. You're looking at what's displayed at the top of the page with Template:Displaytitle. Click the link you made to C# Programming. It goes to C, a redirect to Subject:C programming language. This is because the "title#blah" convention in HTML goes to a named anchor "blah" on the page named "title". For instance, C Sharp Programming/Naming#Interfaces takes you to the Interfaces section of C_Sharp_Programming/Naming. # will never be a valid character in a URL as it has special meaning in a link. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 03:26, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Yup. Didn't verify, and assumed it was a redirect. (I didn't know about {{Displaytitle}} nor did I noticed it before, txs).

I've fixed the issue with the {{Wrongname}} template, it seems that was the last page using it, probably tagging the template for deletion would be the next step (since the other offers a simpler solution)... --Panic (talk) 03:44, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

Shortcut

Propose new shortcut to this page: WB:RR/G Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 02:53, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Support --Arlen22 (talk) 02:24, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Done Makes sense to me. --Pi zero (talk) 13:00, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Proposed additions

...with apologies if this is not the correct venue, the following:

(1) The creation/addition of a "Basic Math" text with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

(2) the addition of practice problems to all suitable texts; something I would be willing to collaberate on, but lack the technical know-how to initiate.

I would like my son to be able to learn math from addition to differential equations exclusively via wikibooks, but the very first steps of that process appear to be missing. Thanks for your thoughts. PCAndrew (talk) 15:50, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

By Basic Math, it sounds as if you're talking about what I would call Arithmetic. I think something along those lines might make an excellent addition to Wikijunior. "Wikijunior:Arithmetic"? (The one math volume now listed on the Wikijunior main page is Geometry for Elementary School, which oddly enough isn't even a Wikijunior book.) --Pi zero (talk) 17:37, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Hm. I may have spoken too soon. There is a very incomplete Wikijunior:Introduction to Mathematics. --Pi zero (talk) 17:46, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Translation of an exitsting Wikibook

I am planning, as far as time permits, to translate the German Wikibook to English for en.wikibooks. As I am one of the main contributors there should be no languague issues. However, I do not know how to copy the version history or at least the author's information (which is required by both the GFDL and the CC license) into the new book, since there have been other contributors by the time. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any helpful information on the Wikibooks help pages. Many thanks in advance!--SiriusB (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

When I copied a book written in Russian to the Russian Wikibooks, I also copied and pasted the page history log onto the talk page at the destination for the GFDL. You could also simply add a link to the version of the German page used which would satisfy the CC license. Either of those appear to satisfy the terms of use. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:38, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

geology of Indonesia

Moved from Wikibooks:Reading room/Feature requests

i have gone through the wonderful effort of "Geology of Indonesia". I cannot, however, understand the practice of refering to figure numbers when there are no referred figures and referring to authors when there is no list of references or bibliography. Is it because of insufficience of time or space or it has something to do with copyright?

A.S.Sinha (sinha_as@yahoo.com)

The Geology of Indonesia seems to be in an early stage of development. It is not a complete work. --Swift (talk) 19:36, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for new WikiBook - Magical Moments Around the World

Hi,

My name is Gal and I'm the founder and organizer of a global educational project called Magical Moments Around the World.

Magical Moments Around the World is a uniting of youth all over the world sharing their magical moments in a global online book for generations to come.. A global online book written by people for people. A testimonial to the great human spirit that connects us all. And just like the sun shines on us all it portrays a human spirit that's within us all.

In its essence the project aims to provide every child in the world the right to be aware that we are all connected and part of one big human family. This is done by writing magical moments in a global online book on an ongoing basis for generations to come. Students can also interact and upload videos, photos, drawings and other creative work using the collaboration center.

Showing youth that their personal magical moment is part of a human web that transcends borders, continents, race, religion and gender is of incredible human value. And promotes values such as compassion and tolerance. Currently youth from 14 countries have posted their magical moments and can be viewed on the magical moment website at

I wanted to ask if it would be possible to integrate the Magical Moment online book as a WikiBook, thus opening it up to the world - creating the biggest book humanity has ever known. And have it run, edited and translated into many different languages by volunteers.

I would be happy to elaborate and hope that we can all work together. For more information visit the website at:

Best wishes to all, Galk70 (talk) 21:01, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

If your organization has no problem releasing the content under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License then it sounds like just the kind of thing Wikibooks encourages. If you add the licensing information to the PDFs you've already created or the website where they are hosted, people can copy them straight over to Wikibooks. Or you can start a new book from scratch. Your goals are certainly in line with the environment here, as collaboration and editing by many people is encouraged at Wikibooks. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 21:13, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Dear Adrignola. Thanks for replying. I think Wikibooks is certainly inline with the Magical Moments online book in that it's written for the people by the people. I have several questions: 1. How would I go about setting up the book? 2. Where can I find volunteers to help in editing and translating to different languages? 3. How do I insure the book is kept clean of vandalism or hurtful remarks? Thanks in advance Galk70 (talk) 21:48, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

need help asap!!!

Hi members i really need help on facts about uranium like were its mined and stuff like that for my project plz get get back to me asap

Sorry, but this page is for discussing Wikibooks projects, not to request answers to various questions. You can try searching for a topic here on Wikibooks or the wider Internet. Wikipedia also has a place for such questions, but you could also just ask a teacher if you are at school, or ask for help finding a conventional book in a local library. --Swift (talk) 18:27, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Telescope Making and other orphans

The book Telescope Making is intriguing. It has interesting information presented in a charmingly informal, first-person tone. However, it could use copy-editing for syntax and easier reading, as well as better organization. And of course, it is incomplete, leaving the would-be telescope maker with a mirror and nothing to put it in. Before doing anything to this book I thought I should at least talk to the original author. Yeah, this is a wiki, anybody can edit anything, blah-di-blah, but that book is clearly the work of a single voice who might have a proprietorial interest, and deserves the courtesy of a nod.

Unfortunately, that person, user "Vorblesnak," has essentially disappeared from the intertubes. Googling reveals some activity by him in various fora (some of which included his real name and city of residence) but nothing recent, and the mail address vorblesnakpeak.org bounces as "user suspended." A website apparently set up by him can be seen as a Google cache but is apparently offline.

Is there a general policy or approach to dealing with orphan books or missing users? Or does the application of the Wiki Way mean that people come, people go, and books sit until someone works on them? Fernly —The preceding undated comment was added 20:53, 28 August 2009.

There isn't a policy or even a generalized approach besides the Wikibooks:Be bold guide. To avoid any issues, if you intend to do some major contributions, post a note in the book talk page, express your views and if anything can seem controversial (ie: merge content from/with other books) use any applicable tag and give it 7 days for an opposition to materialize if no one cares then you can do as you will (except deleting any useful content, see if it fits elsewere) in doubt tag any page for VFD and the rest of the community will give it's input. --Panic (talk) 23:41, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

What!? Can't a man take a sabbatical? I had hoped by leaving gaps in the text to get someone else to add to the book. I don't think anyone would argue that I am not the encyclopedia of telescope making. The book is finished, I just have not posted all the chapters. I really would like some other input but it does not look like the book will get done unless I finish it. Tis sad.

You think breaking it up into many small pages would help? I got no problem with that. If you would like to collaborate and clean it up I think that would be good. Are you going to contribute the missing chapters or do you want me to?

Sorry about the email address. I let the old one lapse and then got another when it was closed. You can reach me at ...

vorblesnakgmail.com

yes, yes, I know I posted my email. I'll survive.

David Davis Toledo, OR 97391—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.186.25.8 (talk • contribs) 04:04, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

;-) Sure one can. Good call, Fernly, that this Wikibookian might not have given up on his past contributions. I had a look at the book and it's super interesting. It would be a great asset to Wikibooks and the many people I imagine are interested in the topic. Happy editing. --Swift (talk) 08:22, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving a page

How should one go about renaming a book? Does moving the parent page move all subpages as well? Should I move each module seperately? Thanks, –blurpeace ^(talk) 13:08, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Non-admins have to move one page at a time. If there are many pages involved, it might make sense to ask an admin to do it for you, as they can move all the pages of a book at once.

What book did you have in mind to rename? --Pi zero (talk) 15:24, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Was thinking of having the book US Copyright Law renamed to United States Copyright Law. Remove the abbreviation for a more professional title. –blurpeace ^(talk) 23:48, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It would probably be best if you proposed that change into the book talk page. I notice also that you have ~21 edits on your log and haven't been editing that book. Undertaking such a huge change on your own would easily become controversial. --Panic (talk) 00:49, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Take a look in the Wikibooks:Manual of Style and its discussion page. --Panic (talk) 00:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'll propose it on the talk page. –blurpeace ^(talk) 01:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC)