Interactive Graphs

I am translating "Basic Physics of Nuclear Medicine" into German. Thus I sometimes discuss with Kieran Maher (the author of the English version) , who proposed to include interactive graphs into the Wikibook. Where a graph is a plot of a mathematical function like f(x)=exp(g*x*x) and the proposed interactivity is to allow the user to select different real numbers for g. I got the idea to do this with Java script. There is a library under MIT license that can do the plotting.

http://svgkit.sourceforge.net/

And there is some possibility to add user supplied JavaScript to Mediawiki as explained on page linked below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:JavaScript

The desired user experience is that a user who never used wikibooks before opens the URL on Wikibook and immediately sees the graph embedded in the usual contend of the wikipage. Currently we are using Static SVG images embedded with the double square bracket and File: notation. And basically we would like to use some other notation to include an interactive graph and have it appear just the way the SVG appears in the text. Is this possible? --Dirk Hünniger (talk) 17:36, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Global sysops

I am wanting to find out for whether there is consensus to opt-in to this system. We currently have 13 administrators... 12 if Red4tribe doesn't respond at WB:RFP. Projects with ten or more don't get automatically opted in. Relevant links: most recent admins' actions and admin action frequency. No specific definition of consensus is given at the above page, so it's left to us to determine that. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 03:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any need for global sysops on Wikibooks. I voted against the auto opt-in concept. Do you have any idea if at present (even if we get to 9 active administrators) if we would get any problems with the pressing administrative functions ?

Users without the administrative flag do not really have a concept on how problematic the situation is, I know there is a lot of pending work to be done in general but have no concept on how the situation is on specific administrative functions.

One can always nominate from our ranks before the situation becomes an issue. If the problem is only on the numbers we could even rethink the activity limitation imposed to hold the flag. Another avenue is to re-nominate active but de-administated users. --Panic (talk) 08:20, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

There's no pressing need. I just thought I'd put this out there in case there was significant demand for it. Testing the waters, so to speak, to at least get it on record which way Wikibooks feels about it. I'd say the number of administrators accurately reflects the level of activity at the project as a whole. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The requirement on activity is already a year. Extending that period such that the list of admins grows with only six at the top active doesn't do us any good. As for active former admins, I can't think of any offhand, and if any were renominated, they would not face the level of scrutiny that a fresh nomination would. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 13:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm relaxed about it. I don't think there is a huge problem with the current number of admins, at worst we occasionally have a couple of hours when an admin isn't around and there's a bit of small scale vandalism. On the otherhand, I see no big deal with global sysops operating here if there is a problem. QU ^TalkQu 08:22, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh well, the one and only time I saw really ugly vandalism on Wikibooks was when it was right on the main Wikijunior page. As far as I remember, it was there for several hours. Every minute less would have been an improvement. Therefore, if global sysops could help to accelerate the removal of vandalism then do it. If you don't care that vandalism is online for some hours, then delete Wikijunior (or at least don't recommend that children read it). By the way, the vandalism warning on the main Wikijunior page was at the top of the page for a good reason. I guess whoever moved it to the bottom doesn't know the story why it was included. --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I have no problem enabling global sysops. Removing vandalism quickly is good. Blocking vandals quickly is good. That's what it's for. Let's do it. --Jomegat (talk) 15:12, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

I have no problems allowing GSs to use their tools here - they know it is only for handling vandalism and noncontroversial routine maintenance.  — mikelifeguard@enwikibooks:~$  17:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

If they are to use tools here, I would rather vandalism and noncontroversial maintenance actions be a requirement rather than assuming that is all they will do. Not being familiar with what Wikibooks is and is not, is the only problem I can think of with having global sysops using the tools locally. --darklama 19:58, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Mike is correct—I've quoted the relevant passage above. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 22:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Following Adrignola's request on Meta, global sysops have been enabled on this wiki. —Pathoschild 18:31:16, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Importing GNU book into Wikibooks?

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python v2nd Edition documentation is published on this website: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/index.html.

The book is famous for the fact that when you go to #python IRC channel for help, they will ask that you read it, if you are new to programming.

The book has the following Copyright Notice:

Copyright (C) Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey and Chris Meyers. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with Invariant Sections being Forward, Preface, and Contributor List, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

Copyright Notice URL: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/copyright.html

The book also lists GNU license on their website: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/fdl-1.3.html

The book also has a huge contributor list here: http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/python/english2e/contrib.html

My question is this, is Importing the text into Wikibooks okay?

The information that came close to my question is here:

from URL: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use

Importing text:

If you want to import text that you have found elsewhere or that you have co-authored with others, you can only do so if it is available under terms that are compatible with the CC-BY-SA license. You do not need to ensure or guarantee that the imported text is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. Furthermore, please note that you cannot import information which is available only under the GFDL. In other words, you may only import text that is (a) single-licensed under terms compatible with the CC-BY-SA license or (b) dual-licensed with the GFDL and another license with terms compatible with the CC-BY-SA license

If you import text under a compatible license which requires attribution, you must, in a reasonable fashion, credit the author(s). Where such credit is commonly given through page histories (such as Wikimedia-internal copying), it is sufficient to give attribution in the edit summary, which is recorded in the page history, when importing the text. Regardless of the license, the text you import may be rejected if the required attribution is deemed too intrusive.

--33rogers (talk) 12:35, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately Wikibooks cannot use this work. If all authors could agree to relicense the book under CC-BY-SA than the book could be imported here. If you want to pursue that course and if you can get them to agree to relicense, you should have them email Wikimedia's OTRS so that they can check, confirm and keep a record of the authors agreement to relicense. --darklama 13:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikijunior and vandalism

Oh well, the one and only time I saw really ugly vandalism on Wikibooks was when it was right on the main Wikijunior page. As far as I remember, it was there for several hours. Every minute less would have been an improvement. Therefore, if global sysops could help to accelerate the removal of vandalism then do it. If you don't care that vandalism is online for some hours, then delete Wikijunior (or at least don't recommend that children read it). By the way, the vandalism warning on the main Wikijunior page was at the top of the page for a good reason. I guess whoever moved it to the bottom doesn't know the story why it was included. --Martin Kraus (talk) 14:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

That's why we have Flagged Revisions. Only a logged in user choosing to see the latest draft version would have seen it. Having said that, the main WJ page should probably be protected like the Main page is. QU ^TalkQu 20:46, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes. An effort was made a while back to review all of Wikijunior, and I think we managed to get the whole thing done. Therefore, we have a pretty decent hedge against vandalism there. --Jomegat (talk) 23:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Is there really any good reason to fully protect the Wikijunior main page (which I see has now been done)? Seems like gratuitously making things harder, both for editors wanting to make changes and for the admins they have to petition for the changes. (To be clear for everyone on where I'm coming from here: I'm a non-admin who made the last several edits to the Wikijunior main page, and who also started the push to sight all the pages on Wikijunior.) --Pi zero (talk) 15:34, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I went over to look at it yesterday and it was protected months ago. I can't see it matters too much if it is semi rather than fully protected (speaking as the person who reviewed hundreds of the WJ pages too). QU ^TalkQu 17:07, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

I had briefly fully protected it, in making it "protected like the Main page is", but then restored the previous semi-protection after the above objection was made. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 17:16, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I think I have to disappoint some of you: there is not a lot of protection against vandalism on the Wikijunior page. I simply changed the content of the image at the top of the page this morning. Although everyone was able to undo my change, it took more than two hours until someone did so. (The small change I did yesterday was not noticed at all but that's probably just because it couldn't be identified as vandalism.) Note: this kind of vandalism was visible even for users who are not(!) logged in. And this is not a theoretical form of vandalism but it has happened with explicit graphics on the very same page before (and also for several hours). Thus, anyone who tries to play down the risks here should please remember that a) any chain is only as strong as its weakest link and b) that Wikijunior is supposed to be a site for children and therefore we should be particular careful here. I think it is extremely hard to avoid all vandalism and therefore we should be very honest about this point; otherwise the wikibooks community might be accused of exposing children to the risk of vandalism without proper warning. --Martin Kraus (talk) 11:04, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Did you test viewing it logged out? Because it's not just edits to the page that will trigger a notice stating that changes have been made that have to be reviewed. I've seen "Template/file changes need review" as well. It may be that the change to the image wouldn't have shown up until the page was sighted again. But maybe that only works for files uploaded locally and not those at Commons. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:35, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I am a first time visitor and frequent contributor at Commons. I think Martin Kraus have a very valid point about vandalism by image substitution. There are a few things one can do to protect against it. 1) Ask for protection or semiprotection of all the high-traffic images. I protected File:Wilcox.jpg, but there must be other good candidates. 2) someone can add all/some WikiJunior images to his/hers Commons watchlist and monitor them for unusual activities. --Jarekt (talk) 13:21, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Adrignola, yes, I tried viewing it when I was logged out and it was visible. I also tried it on a different machine where I wasn't logged on when I made the change. I noticed that there is some caching going on the various image pages (which I solved by reloading), but the Wikijunior page showed the update right away. --Martin Kraus (talk) 13:45, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

All Commons images on Wikijunior should be copied to Wikibooks, so they can be sighted here, bringing the visual component of Wikijunior within the editorial regulation of our flaggedrevs. --Pi zero (talk) 14:10, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm confused. You guys say wikibooks has flagged revisions, but I don't see any interface for it. Kaldari (talk) 16:07, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

We do have flagged revisions. Though I am not sure why your not seeing any interface for it. I certainly do, for example if you look at the history of a page the has at some point been sited, the entries of the flagged pages should be highlighted and it should say who sighted the page. For an example see Calculus/Volume. You cannot effect the flagged version until your account is promoted to an editor. Thenub314 (talk) 19:35, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

A question

Is is that no more wikijunior books can be proposed anymore? Because I haven't been here for a while so I don't know. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 08:15, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, I haven't been around in a while either... but I say propose away (or write away as the case may be). There is lots that could be added. Thenub314 (talk) 10:43, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I've only seen work done on existing books and was not aware there was a system that had to be followed to even start a new one. The protection is that Wikijunior has to be updated manually, so inappropriate or incomplete books don't get added there until they are acceptable/ready. I say you should be able to just start working on something and if it's good, it will speak for itself. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:34, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Can a featured book be delisted?

Geometry for Elementary School is not very good. First, it's not even complete. Secondly, some of the maths are too tough for kids. Thirdly, some of the later chapters are too short. And finally, the tone is inconsistent. Is there a way to nominate it for delisting? Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 10:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

You can list, and make your case on the Wikibooks:Featured books/Nominations page under the "Nominations for Removal" section. Thenub314 (talk) 11:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

And anyone reading this, please participate in the discussions if you are able. They can't come to a consensus either way without enough participation. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:20, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Requesting help.

not sure how to make a correct book of yet, what iam I missing? --Albertthefifth (talk) 19:28, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

The requested info was provided on the Welcome info on the User talk:Albertthefifth page. --Panic (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

thank you panic. --Albertthefifth (talk) 19:59, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Sit-up Ltd Channels System

Would it be OK to create a wikibook to explain how the individual Sit-up Ltd Channels; Bid TV, Price Drop TV and Speed Auction TV work such as:

• How the Auctions work
• How to buy products using

• Pre Bid (Prior to Auctions)
• Telephone (During Auctions)
• Online (Buy-Now and Web Bids (During Auctions))

Also pictures could be added to the articles to show how the on-screen graphics changed through time, along with these pictures would be descriptions of how the channel worked at that point in time. I will email Sit-up Ltd and ask for some information on there process so we can link to it in the book. Thanks Paul2387 (talk) 20:48, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Emailed contactus@sit-up.tv so should have some sources as soon as they email me back. Paul2387 (talk) 21:18, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Geometry for elementary school

I need:

• Assistance in inserting maths equations, and;
• Somebody to do all the illustrations.

Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 10:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I haven't read through it yet, but for equations, m:Help:Displaying a formula should be a helpful reference indeed. I also would suggest searching Commons to see if a diagram has already been made for a concept before taking the time to create a new one from scratch. Both of those should save you some time and effort. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:06, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I still find it tough. Can someone do the things at Geometry for Elementary School/Angles for me? Then I can follow the example when I do others. Thanks a lot. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 12:17, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I would be happy to help you out. In fact I had already added one diagram before you asked at ASA congruence section, though I could use some constructive criticism if you have any. What sort of help do you need when it comes to math equations? Also, what kind of work would you like me to do at Geometry for Elementary School/Angles? Thenub314 (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I would appreciate if you could help tweak the equation on the angles at a point section, so it looks more like the rest of the wikibooks equations. Again, thanks! Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 03:22, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Yet another nonsense image

File:Dog dislikes tests.jpg is another nonsense image. Delete it? Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 04:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Mathematics Fundamentals translation required

Some pages that aren't in English.Mathematics Fundamentals/Arithmetic/Operations/Roots, Mathematics Fundamentals/Arithmetic/Operations/Powers, Mathematics Fundamentals/Arithmetic/Operations/Integration... I've checked it seems they were created by an unregistered contributor. They should be removed if no one can translate them, take a look and see if you can help. --Panic (talk) 19:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

This book is an RfD in my opinion. This author has been contributing a lot lately (for example at Physics Handbook/Oscillation, and Arithmetics)). The MO is always similar a large part of the content is copy and pasted from other wikimedia projects without attribution and additional content is added. Unfortunately the author's poor grasp of English often makes even the titles of sections/books rather nonsensical. Also the original contributions are often indecipherable or mathematically incorrect.

I was tempted to delete this book immediately when I realized he was copying and pasting from vi:wikibooks and vi:wikipedia for copyright concerns but when I looked closely, it seemed he was he was copying and pasting articles he had written. I couldn't really think of a better argument for deleting this book other then "This is a very, very bad book... not all of which is in english and we have other books that cover the same topics much better." This struck me as weak reasoning, as in theory someone could improve the book. But I see the likelyhood as infinitesimal. I was also uncomfortable RfD'ing this book because I had just started an RfD on Arithmetics, and I didn't want to be the one to pick on the guy. His edits are clearly in good faith. (Though he hasn't heeded the warning about copying and pasting from his talk page... )

I am clearly off topic, but those are my thoughts about this book. Thenub314 (talk) 20:34, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I think we should ignore quality (which is always a matter of opinion) and base any actions on specific policy violations, if found. He does seem to gradually translate his pages into English, so that would only be a problem if they stayed in Vietnamese permanently. We could flag the pages as needing cleanup or translation as a warning to readers, regardless of the chance of anyone actually wanting to help out. Looking at the discussions his User talk pages, he appears rather uncommunicative, but "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". (As the older generation in my family say of their feckless offspring.) Recent Runes (talk) 22:28, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

I am a bit skeptical that the pages eventually will get turned into english. He usually copies from english pages, so there is not a long history to see if he will return and fix the non English content. Looking at his edit history he seems to work intensively for a few days on a given book and leave it, not to return. Though I could be wrong because I am only familiar with two of the IP's he typically uses. I think it appropriate to give some time to see if they get translated. But the question is, what is a reasonable length of time to wait?

As far as policy goes, he certainly has violated the copyright policy by copying and pasting. The question is, what to do about it? In principal one could try to find the sources he copied from, and if they are CC then place a link to then on the talk page explaining where they come from. (I have done this in the past with other books). My understanding is that this satisfies the CC license. If it is not CC I don't think we can allow copying and pasting any longer.

So, do we delete the whole book if we can verify several of the pages are plagiarized and the same author is responsible for the whole book? Do we just delete the pages we know for certain are copyright violations? Or do we do the hard work of trying to repair the copyright of the pages by placing links when appropriate? (Work I personally wouldn't be willing to do.) I think the first option is appropriate, since we can never be sure we traced all of the sources he copied from. These questions are meant to be for everyone, and is not directed at Recent Runes who I feel is correct. Thenub314 (talk) 09:30, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Here are my personal answers to these questions. If we keep the book around, (and I think we shouldn't) a month seems like more then enough time to see if any work on translating has begun. If it hasn't begun within a month, I think it never will.

I think what to do about copyright violations in cases where it is several pages of a book written by essentially one author needs to be handled on a case by case basis. In this case, I think we should delete the whole book. Finding the sources he copied from involves searching across multiple languages. Just because a page was only saved as an english version, doesn't mean it wasn't translated in a single go before saving. Thus, I trust none of the pages as authentic. Part of my thinking is that, if were translated into english in one shot, I would have no hope of finding the link to the original page and placing a link on the talk page.

Talking about this also makes me wonder if someone should take a look at his edit histories and look for other copyright violations. Thenub314 (talk) 09:28, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

PS. He was also warned at this page, and he seems to have a user page User:Quachtahnh which he doesn't use these days. Thenub314 (talk) 11:49, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Don't delete useful content copied without attribution from other Wikimedia projects. To fix it just create the missing attribution on that book with the sources you detected, if you seek to educate the editors you can place a note on the book's talkpage or on the talkpage of the guilty editor. --Panic (talk) 19:54, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Not deleting useful content is a good policy. These books don't seem to contain much useful content though. Accepting that poor quality alone would not be a sufficient justification to delete something, I think it justifies a lower level of engagement on our part in fixing the missing attributions. The originator should accept some responsibility here to get their books to comply with Wikibooks policies. Recent Runes (talk) 23:53, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I didn't make the post to rehash past discussions ( Transclusion of content between books (2009/January) - Copying material from other Wikibooks (2010/January) - copyvio tagging regarding Wikipedia (in particular) (2010/February) ). I was only calling attention to Thenub314 that deletion (destruction) is easy, especially if it is done by default. I'm all for educating contributors, but no one is forced to or able to require others to. Personally I don't think this issue of cross-pollination over Wikimedia content is extremely important (the degree of the problem and its implications to the projects wellbeing). I can extend further my rationals for you if you feel necessary, but ultimately we should limit out copyright enforcement tasks to situations that place the project at risk, the rest should fall to the copyright owners themselves, regarding Wikipedia content the owner is Wikimedia and the issue is only on the morality of the action and at times it is hard to determine if the editor is the same person.

One interesting point is that if we tweaked our policies or guidelines a bit to clearly force corrective action over deletion, we could even place notes about copy-paste on the source material talk page, that would probably bringing more editors here. --Panic (talk) 01:33, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Not likely with regards to your last comment; when a large portion of w:Na'vi language was forced over here by Wikipedia editors, I noted the movement of the content after the RFI here on that talk page in the hopes that it would attract some people here. Unfortunately the only editor now working on Na'vi is the one who added the content at Wikipedia that was moved here. There are cynical reasons as to why Wikibooks fails to attract editors from other projects, but I'll not rehash them. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 02:24, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

There is a few comments where I feel I need to express extreme disagreement with Panic's comments above. Our copyright enforcement should not be about protecting ourselves or the the project. It should be done to protect the rights the original contributors. Be they contributing to some Wikimedia project or otherwise. I would consider it a serious offense I suddenly found this book had a section copied straight from Spivak's Calculus without attribution, and I consider an absolutely equal offense if someone copies from any source including Wikimedia. I would personally be furious to find someone was copying text I had written without at least placing a link to the original. I do not have the time, spare effort, or resources to police the copyright of my own contributions, and I left to depend on the administrators and community of the other open projects to protect my rights, and I strongly feel we should do likewise here. Leaving it "to the copyright holders", in my opinion, isn't an option. I hope that we collectively as a group decide to act with a higher level of professionalism.

Since the update in license now placing a link is sufficient and we may, if we choose do this. In many cases I have, and I have not reached causally for a delete tab or a {{copyvio}}. But I would like to turn the question back to the book/contributor at hand. The fact is attempts have been made to educate this contributor that copy and pasting without attribution is not acceptable. The fact his he has been unresponsive and continues to cut and paste text, the question is what to do about it. We could take the time to examine each of the pages and determine which of the current pages written are copyright violations and fix them or delete them as appropriate. My point was that, in the current case, the copy and pastes come form various sources in various languages. The level of plagiarism is bad enough that I don't feel confident I could correctly fix all of the pages. Several may be copied but translated, so we cannot trust a text search. Shall we trust good faith? Maybe, maybe not.

On a somewhat cynical note, perhaps deleting a contributions is the best way to educate this contributor, since leaving messages on talk pages hasn't worked. But I do think I will look at the contributions more carefully and flag what I know to be copyright violations, to give myself and the discussion a better sense of the situation. Thenub314 (talk) 21:42, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

I gave up after a while - no response to the talk page, constant creation of "incorrectly" structured books, grammar and spelling so poor as to make much of the content nonsensical, those bits that could be understood were often technically incorrect. Finally, as many have said, a lot of the content is already here. Personally I don't think it is worth trying to clean it up because it in effect requires a complete replacement of the content. If pushed I'd say leave it and hope one day someone decides to tackle either a rewrite or merging the content. QU ^TalkQu 22:42, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok Thenub314 but the thing is that the copyright enforcement is already defined and the only obligation we have is regarding the legal matters and protecting the project from those issues "Never use materials that infringe the copyrights of others. This could create legal liabilities and seriously hurt Wikibooks.". This is a requirement (Wikimedia has always placed the burden on the contributor but not an obligation of the community, and provides a recourse for the copyright owners to act. Clearly on the violation of legal rights I agree with the common practice of being proactive but without being paranoiac, and I even question the need of the deletion of tagged copyvio content without a direct intervention of the copyright owner or a broader community discussion.

Regarding defending the moral rights of contributors (in instances that there isn't really a legal issue of attribution, this is most evident in content from Wikipedia), I'm with you until you promote deletion in place of doing the real corrective/educative work. I'm not covering any specific work, each copyright violation or disregard for attributing contributors will be unique and the motivations behind those actions can only be categorized as plagiarism if the contributor claims authorship of other people's work (this opens the door for legal action against the plagiarist). This is why I'm strongly opposed, but willing to let it be until I detect a major problem of having the copyvio tag imposing a deletion in 7 days (this was a recent addition to the tag and is not supported by policy even if it states it is)(this was found in error)), and as I have said in the past it has several problems, the most important one is about lack of visibility, discussion and not being logged or permit traceability on those deletions), only copyright owners have the right to exercise control over their work. (Consider the harm a cleaver vandal could do by a subtitle subversion of the perception of the acting admin using the copyvio tag or balance of benefits/costs in using the copyvio in an unspecified way like you just did (ie: Mathematics Fundamentals/Arithmetic/Coordinate Graphs no specific information is given and only the comment states "appears to be multiple sources."), as someone who has been targeted buy spurious copyvio accusation I strongly feel that this is not the way of going about it... --Panic (talk) 03:11, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Consider changing the copyvios to a RfD with the same basis but covering the complete work, and add the information you find relevant there, in the meanwhile I've sent an email to [Quach Trung Thanh] the presumed author of the Wikibook. --Panic (talk) 03:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

A few comments are in order. First, I must be missing something. I know we have both read the deletion policy. When I get to the sentence "The user who submitted the work has one week from this date [the insertion of the template] to prove that they had permission to post the work, otherwise it will be deleted." It seems to me that template and policy are in line. So I must have missed your point about the template.

Your incorrect about the legal issues. Copying and pasting form Wikipedia, or from another Wikibook, is a violation of the law. Perhaps it is not likely to ever lead to any action against wikimedia, but the license is fairly clear that you must attribute the original authors. Again though, I may have miss understood this parenthetical comment.

I don't think I have, in general, promoted deleting over "real corrective/educative work" As pointed out, others have on multiple occasions tried to educate this user to no effect. As I said above the {{copyvio}} tags were for the benefit of people following the discussion about this book, so they could easily see how much and what parts of the book had this issue. Its intention was not to lead to the lead to impending doom for those particular pages. I agree that, in this case, an RfD is more appropriate. But I do intend to leave the templates there.

As far as clever vandals go, they will easily cause problems if Administrators act without thinking. But the policy says a week, the tag says 7 days, I do not see a problem there. They tag also says the content may be deleted, not that it will be deleted. I apologize if my wording on that one edit was a bit vague. I certainly hope no one would delete the page just on that comment alone. That being said, given my other edits to that book make it is clear what the likely list of sources might include.

I agree we have no obligations. Anyone of us could stop editing at any moment, or only work on editing the parts of the project we enjoy doing or that we think are important. But any good editor for a dead tree text wouldn't allow a contributor to contribute material that violates someone's copyright. We are the editors and the contributors. As a contributor we have legal obligations not to violate copyright. Collectively as editors I hope we choose to act a bit more professionally then waiting until a copyright holder has a problem before we remove things we know to be copyright violations. Thenub314 (talk) 17:22, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────────────────────────┘
You maybe indeed. That is one innovation that hasn't as yet been strongly contested (requiring the changes to be approved again), see the talk page and my post regarding such changes, last time the policy has been gone by the community decision process (as per policy) the 7 days weren't there and IIRC discussion already included some opposition to something on that line. Besides that I see no major problem if people are careful on what they so tag for deletion (and that is why I make some noise when it is used as a substitute for speedy deletion).
Copy and pasting from Wikipedia may not be a violation of the law, it depends in how we look to the unsigned Wikibook (by policy all contributions on Wikipedia are owned by Wikimedia), being Wikibooks also owned by Wikimedia but since the Copyright policy is different (contributions aren't directly given to Wikimedia) but nevertheless any unsigned work may by default revert to Wikimedia control, this is one interesting aspect and is how the conversion from GFDL to CCASAL occurred. This is why I make the distinction in the legal requirements and the moral right contributors have of being acknowledged, and we seem to be in agreement on that they should.
You may not intended to be a deletionist but due to the inertia of the action (default being deletion) and since we are all volunteers it is very rare to see a copyvio being contested, especially in instances that it isn't really a problem, like on content from other Wikimedia project, where a simples addition of the attribution would solve the issue, and I do believe that given to much importance to the issue is what creates this new type of vandalism and can empower even grater havoc, consider what I said earlier and alternative disruption it can enable. Given enough time and activity a direct copy on a Wiki will easily cease to be a copy...
As for the task of editors being doing copyright prevention you are also incorrect, they do indeed prevent plagiarism but that isn't the same thing, copyright prevention is the problem of the legal department (rights can licensed, brought or carefully worked around). --Panic (talk) 18:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Again, I am still missing something. The version that was voted on says "If there was no permission to use this material then please leave this page to be deleted. Deletion will occur about one week from the time this template was added to the page." One week, 7 days... 6 of 1 half dozen of the other... (or should that be 7 of 1?) well, you get the idea.

Your comments about wikimedia control are interesting, but not so particularly relevant. Contributors are not representatives of wikimedia, and must obey the license when copying text from one part of wikimedia to another. (The terms of use is very clear about this.)

In cases when the contributions are valuable and it seems reasonable plausible to do so I go through and find the appropriate link and put it on the take page of the book to remove any copyright concerns. For this book, the pages are uploaded in a semi-translated state, with different sections coming form different pages. It is a lot of work to try to correct this. I, for one, don't think its an option to turning a blind eye to it because I am not the one who uploaded the pages and I am not the one who wrote the original content. This book looks to be plagiarism, because the author makes his name so clear and prevalent, despite taking the vast majority of the pages from elsewhere.

And with this particular book, and these particular tags that I added, you have my word that if the pages are deleted before an there is an RfD (or consensus is reached in some other way) then I will start an RfU, so we may complete our discussion. I wanted to show the scope of the problem with this book, not delete it page by page.

The question I hope to get clear in my mind is what should we do (if anything) with this book and possibly other contributions by this books contributor. Because this is a pattern of copying and pasting, he has been warned via talk page's at least twice. Thenub314 (talk) 19:34, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

When I make some affirmation I attempt to know what I defending (I can be mistaken but after someone opposes my view I do at least a minor research so I can admit my error or strengthen my position), since this is not the first time I'm bringing this issue to the community attention, I'm pretty sure I'm making valid affirmations, IIRC my last call for attention to this particular fact was on a RfD in a reply directed to Adrignola‎. In any case since we are going around in circles on this subject. Please give me links to where the 7 days was validated by the community decision process required for policy or guidelines adoption and I will drop the deletion issue, if the community has defined it should be so, even if I see if as a bad thing, I´ll move along to propose a change to that. On the other hand if you are indeed in error like I've stated please do at least strike out that affirmation above. Here is the change to the template (that gets propagated into the different policies texts), and here the change to Wikibooks:Deletion policy text and the adoption of the policy was in 2006.

I did not mean to cause offense, I respect your opinion and really feel I must be missing something. Most likely it will turn out to be something obvious. I certainly checked the 2006 version that was voted on, it states as the last sentence on the section on copyright that "The user who posted the suspected copyright violation has one week from this date to prove that they have permission to post the suspected content, otherwise it will be deleted." The date in question being the date the template given on this page was inserted. Now, for anyone glancing at this version of the page, it no longer displaces correctly because the tempalte contains the line

:<source URL or description of source>

and everything after that point gets swallowed up in an error message by the extension that highlights source code. So you have to edit the text to see this message. The template give there also says (in it's "To the poster" section) "If there was no permission to use this material then please leave this page to be deleted. Deletion will occur about one week from the time this template was added to the page." Community consensus was reached by the vote. Now I see that in 2007 the template got moved from being part of the policy page, to being in the template namespace, and the template differs in its wording today. But am I missing something about the 2006 version that invalidates it as community consensus (or in some other way)? Or am I simply misreading something? Thenub314 (talk) 14:09, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

No offense intended or taken, just a bit exacerbated since the discussion was running in circles and was not what I intended to get into from the start, as it is doesn't especially relates to the thread topic.

But now it has advanced with new facts, that I was not aware, and I presume you only now detected. Personally I only noticed the "deletion" issue because of the change made to the template in 2007 and since I'm in the project since 2004 I did look at the proposal and I would have made at the same comments if that was visible, I've been making them since I noted it. But even if you did clarify the point, putting us both in the right, you further muddle the issue.

Should we consider text that is not displayed in a proposal to the community a reasonable thing to consider dully approved ? The purpose of the policy and guidelines is not only to establish a common ground but to provide information, since the obfuscated information has an impact on the proceedings I'm strongly against considered it as reviewed by the community. Note that it was never visible since it was created in the edit of [31 July 2005] since no one corrected the display error in that intervening time (until the edit of 2007), it is highly doubtful that anyone was aware of it. Do you disagree ? --Panic (talk) 20:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

In effect I do disagree. But I disagree that there has been a problem since th 31 July 2005. Remember there are occasional updates to the mediawiki software, and sometimes the WMF passes these updates down to its projects. Checking with the developers it seems that work on the source highlighting routines only began on Jun 23 2005. I was not able to ascertain the exact date the WMF started using this extension. That being said, I have gathered the following evidence. By checking the Special:Version page in the wayback machine from the internet archive, we can see that as was added between Aug, 27 2006 and Nov 11, 2007. So the extension did not get added until after the vote. This is further supported by archives of the policy page both before (on Dec 22 2005) and after (on June 15 2006) the vote. These sections of the page display correctly. I would find it highly implausible that the policy would have passed without someone complaining that the template caused a large error message. At the time of the vote the page was clearly visible. In effect the problem with displaying that page is that we are looking at it with different software today then they were back then. I see no difficulty with the community consensus. Do you agree now that it was dully approved? Thenub314 (talk) 22:56, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for having gone to the trouble of further investigation, it further explains the case and I will trust your interpretation of that data more than my memory, considering what you exposed as exact and based on the dates we found I have been going after the discussions and found [this post from November 2005] (with the particular that Rob Horning seems to be talking about the legal time requirements for complying with a pull-down request), I do consider it dully approved. (I'll put a resume of this discussion on the talk page of the policy, point it to this thread), will correct any other comments I made regarding this issue and move along to work to alter the 7 days limitation (too narrow a time to permit to contact the presumed copyright authors by postal letter) and promote a change to require a grater visibility on the procedure. --Panic (talk) 00:49, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but contributors/editors aren't representatives of wikimedia in any fashion (legal or otherwise) unless Wikimedia so expresses (and to my knowledge it hasn't, ) at best we (community) are given functions, duties even some obligations to manage the projects, in this the Term of Use has no bearing it only establish general requirements for reutilization and participation (that is superseded further defined by in project policies) and why I'm still discussing this, because the template change did alter the text of two policies, and promotes deletion without direct control from the rest of community (a change to an obligatory RfD would be an improvement, even if RfD with copyvio allegations are themselves skewed for deletion at least it will make the process more visible and would reduce substantially the deletion of Wikipedia content).

I think you may have misread something I have written. If you check above you'll see you and I agree that contributors are not representatives of Wikimedia. I point this out because it seems a moot point whether I own the contributions I make, or Wikimedia does, the license the text is released under states we must attribute original the authors by at least giving a link. (Which this book has not). I pointed to the Terms of Use, because I thought it was particularly clarifying to the discussion. In the section on Importing text, it mentions specifically that the attribution requirement is satisfied if you give attribution in the edit summary on internal copies withing this site (and even a bit more generally). But attribution should be given to wikipedia articles, wikibook modules, etc. Thenub314 (talk) 14:25, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Sorry if I did but I fully agree with your above post and gladly recognize that you seem aware that Wikipedia attributions are distinct from our own and lets say Wikisource the closest project to ours.

Destruction is easy, doing things bad is also easier that doing things right. Basically, on one side of the issue, people are requiring others to go trough loops that they themselves are not willing to do (this can be seen from both sides but since we are all volunteers here, things are built in consecutive steps, errors are fixable by all). So what is it easier and most beneficial to our project, tagging a page for deletion/copyvio or placing the needed one line attribution to the source ? (disregarding any other lengthy voluntary intervention, like proceeding with a complete transwiki, engaging the user etc) --Panic (talk) 20:40, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

The only issue I see about the book is that a) my opinion is that a copyvio shouldn't be placed on individual pages but on the complete work b) my general opposition to the default deletion in 7 days c) the lack of visibility of the process in general. That was why I requested the change as is in a RfD if the presumed author doesn't defend his work and due to the quality and quantity of it I would agree to the deletion as I'm in full agreement with QuiteUnusual, in any case this discussion prompted me to take action and try to contact the Wikibookian myself, so even if we both don't come to an agreement that was positive and I hope the discussion was also informative to others. --Panic (talk) 21:39, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm having trouble following the flow of this discussion and what the current conclusions are. I had nothing to do with the existence of a 7 day/1 week rule for deleting works that are copyright violations. I'm only responsible for attempting to make it easier to tell when 7 days/1 week has past, for using templates directly on pages so that changes didn't have to be made in multiple places which was prone to human error, and probably for fixing the source problem when that extension became active here. Personally I think OTRS should be dealing with copyright problems like this and notify the community when a copyright has been authenticated and use of the copyright work has been proven to be illegitimate. Dealing with copyright issues by the community is prone to error since the community isn't a copyright expert, and IMO should be left up to people that are. --darklama 01:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, this discussion has gotten quite long and is a bit difficult to follow. Let me summarize in saying there isn't much in the way of conclusions, except in verifying the deletion policy was voted on and approved by the community, and it contained the 7 week rule for copyright violations. For what it is worth, after my careful examination of the edit history, I will vouch that what you say about your role is correct. And thanks for being the one who fixed the template in the first place. Thenub314 (talk) 08:51, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Template namespace subpages

I've filed bug 23317 to enable subpages for the template namespace. This would allow an up-link to the parent template for pages such as Template:Ombox/doc (to Template:Ombox). Compare that to w:Template:Ombox/doc and notice the small link to the parent template on Wikipedia. The primary rationale for this is for using the /doc documentation system more extensively to increase user-friendliness. Additionally, it allows for a template and all its subpages, such as /sandbox, /test, /core, /doc to be moved at once, similar to what admins would see when renaming a book at once. I believed this to not be controversial as it only increases functionality without affecting existing pages, but someone unknown to me has asked to show community consensus for this, so I put this out there for comment. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 15:23, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Support. I thought this was already the case. This can also be useful for book templates. --darklama 15:28, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Support. This makes sense to me. Thenub314 (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Support. --Panic (talk) 19:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Go ahead, good idea. QU ^TalkQu 20:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Kissing Wikbooks

I think that Wikibooks is a bit too complicated, especially in the area of image use. This may appear unfriendly and even hostile to newbies.

First, I have concerns about the use of the stop hand nuvola sign. It is used on closed RfD discussions, which I think is unnecessary and distracting. In my opinion, this sign should only be used when we are seriously warning someone, such as when issuing a final warning on vandalism. (That's the way it's done on Wikipedia.) Another use of this is as an editmessage to IP editors. This appears very unfriendly to IP newbies and may put off some good-faith IPs (though apparently none of the bad-faith IPs are warded off.) I propose replacing it with a friendlier image, such as the information icon.

Speaking of warnings, I think the vandalism warning is too bitey. Just look: A sign with an exclamation mark, with words in boldface, italics, and underlined, put on the centre. That's about the last things a newbie would like to see. We should be encourageing, NOT discourageing. If we just change it to a friendlier message, like w:Template:uw-vand, and save the discouraging ones for the final warnings, won't more good editors stay on Wikibooks?

Finally, I think it is simply unnecessary to use those small icons to show that you support, oppose, want to delete, want to keep, or have a neutral opinion about something. You probably have a template about this, you probably don't. Either way it makes the page look really big and might even take long to load in older browsers. I'm not saying that this is Wikibookians' intention, I'm just saying that by replacing this with simpler stuff, such as those used on the Chinese Wikipedia, or not using anything at all - like the English Wikipedia. On enwiki we simply add a bullet, type in boldface our opinion, do a bit more explanation, then sign. Nice, simple, and not as eye-catching as your pictures.

Anyway, this is only my opinion, and it is up to the community to decide whether to change. Thanks for taking your time to read this long message. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 10:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

For others' reference, I believe you're referring to Template:Test on the vandalism warning, which is used by the Twinkle warning script (doesn't work in Chrome, though...). I recently had updated MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning and it uses an information icon instead of the stop hand. I was thinking about importing warning templates from Wikipedia and adding the Twinkle gadget to facilitate their use, but they have so many it seemed like people would be overwhelmed if I were to do so. The explanation for the icons on opinions would be Template:Icon. If you notice up above, people simply used bold around their positions. The main reason you see it at requests for deletion is this page at the top. I suppose bolding would be as convenient but less flashy. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:55, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Aargh, I'm getting very confused. Wikibooks sure needs a little bit of KISSing. :) As I'm a Wikipedian, in my opinion importing uw-vand1, uw-vand2, uw-vand3, uw-vand4 and uw-vand4im would be enough, since there aren't too many vandalism types on Wikibooks. Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 13:20, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe some time ago people thought that using bold alone to summarize a position made quickly reviewing what people's positions are difficult since every use of bold blinds in with every other use of bold. Maybe differentiating by using different bold colors could also have improved this situation. Wikibooks use to have templates to give increasingly sterner warnings, but people seemed to feel that giving repeat warnings was overkill and people usually either blocked right away or gave only one warning before blocking. I think mass importing of Wikipedia templates is a bad idea because imported templates tend to go unused unless specifically requested or done so by an individual that plans to use the templates. --darklama 13:25, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

If you're referring to my recent activity, the majority of my imports have been to update and document existing templates. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:24, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Not specifically, but I had noticed your recent activity. I have no problems with documenting undocumented templates. I hope that most templates are either forks or are original and just happen to use the same name as templates used on other projects would be kept in mind though. Copying+pasting and importing to update templates should IMO be avoided. --darklama 14:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

One more thing the intention with the way MediaWiki:Anoneditwarning use to be was to make it stand out from other messages that appear at the top of pages because there was criticism that it was often overlooked by people that were logged out by accident. --darklama 13:29, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I am also of the opinion that wikipedia's warning templates are a bit out of place on this project. I could imagine having one nice warning and one stern warning. But I don't think there should be an order to which comes first and which comes second, that depends on the vandalism. If we make one of the templates a nice warning I suggest {{please stop}}, which has a nicer sounding template name then {{warn}}. But I am also happy to leave both as they are. Thenub314 (talk) 13:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

In practice I only use one warning before a block, so I have to agree that multiple warning templates would not be necessary. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:21, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. That's my practice too. I wouldn't mind seeing two types of warnings - a gentle one and a stern one. But I would not use one, then the other, then block. I would chose one or the other depending on the situation. And then if the warning is ignored, block. --Jomegat (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

On another wiki, I find that inexperienced users experimenting with wikimarkup tend to be fairly rare, and simply encountered users that should know that they are vandalizing. In the last 500 edits, there were 12 vandalism incidents: 2 were blanking, 5 were obvious vandalism, 4 were either borderline or plausible unless you knew what to look for, and only 1 was "test-saving" that had to go through a preview first. The only reason you need two levels is if users is somehow testing markup on a live page; otherwise, users should know better. Even so, there's formal systems in place here that can be used to appeal an unfair block, and informal systems in all sane wikis. --Sigma 7 (talk) 14:51, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

On the math articles I edit I have seen some "Please help!"/"This is confusing" or other exasperated comments directed at poorly written modules. It is fairly rare though. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a softly worded warning for these users. On the other hand it might be even better in these cases to write some comment by hand. I also use/like the model of warn once, block on repeats. Thenub314 (talk) 15:23, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The only caution I have on warn once/then block, is this: I won't block on the first save following a warning, assuming that the vandal won't have seen the warning until after the save. I roll that edit back. A second offence after a warning earns a block, because then I am sure the warning has been seen. --Jomegat (talk) 18:03, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Merging Pages

Could someone point me in the right direction for page and book merging policies?

Thanks --Thereen (talk) 07:51, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Help:Merging pages. There aren't any policies or guidelines specifically covering merges (there is a proposal on forks) but it shouldn't apply to your needs.

Be Bold if the tag was already present and no objection was raised if not tag the pages and wait at least 7 days for a reply to your merge proposal. On the merges try not to lose content (in doubt leave it on the original location) and start a RfD on it after the merge is finished, if you can't find a proper place for it and think it may have some usefulness.

In any case, before the original is deleted, an administrator will verify the work done and merge the edit histories after you have completed the job. --Panic (talk) 08:03, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know about the RFD suggestion; if the content is still there and just merged it's not really being deleted. You can label the source page with {{now merged|destination page}} to indicate a history merge is needed. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:09, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The RfD can be needed to resolve the situation I refereed. If not all content was used on the merge and the Wikibookian isn't sure it can't be used elsewhere (ie. has not the time to deal with anything else beyond the merge).

This puts the remaining content into a situation that the editor does like you say and puts a comment next to the {{now merged|destination page}} for the acting admin or initiates a RfD for a broader discussion (the best option in my view, and I've used it before), so other Wikibookians become aware the content may be deleted/is available for use (admin action is only required to perform the history merge and the deletion).

The admin can also turn the speedy resulting from the merged tag (into a RfD for similar reasons), I can only remember one instance this occurred and IIRC it was somewhat of an objection to the merge itself. In that case it really is problematic (since a decision process should have been completed) but reasonable as to provide greater visibility of the discussion and preserve content.

This runs in parallel with the problem of speedy deletions as result of the main editor request, it is normal, and part of the deletion policy, to delete the content but the optimal result to preserve useful content is to turn it into a RfD. I even have considered using the RfD, due to visibility and it being the forum to deal with to deletions of content, to validate some edit reversal I (and others) made on active books, where an book under the work of multiple editors gets a huge part of a page content removed/substituted, or even summarized. With the consideration needed to exclude the usefulness of attempting to contact directly the editor, sometimes I use the book's talkpage. --Panic (talk) 21:26, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The Haitian Creole page

I'm really happy that this page finally got made, but I'm very curious as to how you're going to aproach the language. 

Let's not forget that practically every creole word has 2 definitions. For example, the word for I or me can be written as "mwen" or "mouin". Bread can be written as: "pen" or "pin". While the actual sound the words produce don't change; you can see the difference in spelling and in grammar.

I'm not exactly sure on which structure came first, but from my understanding: the language

that is being taught to the people is the newer version that has been changed either for english speakers or by english speakers. In which case, the structure of the language itself changes. "Ouè" is changed to "Wè". Even small, insignificant words like "té" and "sé" have been changed to "te" and "se". It is far easier for an english speaker with no foreign language experience to make out the word the word "priye" than it would be to pronounce "prié"; "pote" than "pòté.

And since we're talking about grammar; it's important to remember that creole doesn't have 

any definitive marks when you shorten a pronoun. "M-ap rélé-l";"M'ap rélé'l";"M ap rélé l".

You probably already new this stuff and if you do i apologies; i just wanted people to be aware of this.

These are all fine questions, but much more suited for people editing the book. The most usual place for a discussion like this is the talk page for the book. I will copy your comments there, and you can watch for replies there. This room is more for general concerns, such as "How do I copy or merge two pages?" etc. Be please feel free to be Bold and edit the book, it sounds like your quite knowledgeable on the subject, and we could always use more good editors. Thenub314 (talk) 07:07, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Can we see the usage stats on our books?

I was just wondering if there was a way to see the traffic that went to our specific book pages. I don't need anything as detailed as the weblog provides, but an idea of the number of daily pages hit would be nice. Is this possible? Jdavies (talk) 17:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Here, Page hits per day for en.wikibooks, this should be what you need. --Panic (talk) 19:43, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

That page hasn't been updated since July 2009. Is there any alternative? --Martin Kraus (talk) 21:47, 28 April 2010 (UTC) 

Lol hadn't noticed the date, anyway the only other charts I'm aware of are these and the last time they had an update was in Jan 2010. --Panic (talk) 00:26, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikimania 2010

Wikimania 2010, this year's global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the globe, is accepting submissions for presentations, workshops, panels, and tutorials related to the Wikimedia projects or free content topics in general. The conference will be held from July 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, Poland. For more information, check the official Call for Participation. Cbrown1023 talk 22:22, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Coping with Male Pattern Baldness#Personal accounts

Coping with Male Pattern Baldness#Personal accounts. OR? Kayau David Copperfield MOBY DICK the great gatsby 12:03, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Books like this make me wonder if the project's scope is being too widely interpreted. That said, it probably violates WB:HOST and WB:BLOG, both of which specifically mention personal homepages/opinions. If you feel it should be deleted, these comments may be transferred to WB:RFD. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 12:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Secure server?

I notice that when I want to open a Wikibooks page, one of the servers that gets accessed is secure.wikimedia.org. This means that I cannot access Wikibooks from my computer at work, where secure servers in general are blocked. All other Wikimedia projects (except secure Wikipedia, of course) work; only Wikibooks doesn't. Why is this? Why can I not access the (non-secure) http://en.wikibooks.org/ server without going through a secure server to get there, but I can access non-secure Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Commons, Meta, etc.? Angr (talk) 09:33, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Potentially it may be the lines in Mediawiki:Common.css that were added to load styles for those browsing via the secure server (as opposed to just using it to log in). I'm surprised that someone would block a secure server, but I'd think that would just prevent the duplicate style sheets from loading. However, as far as I know, Wikibooks is the only one to load other style sheets in Common.css rather than having everything on one page. That wasn't always the case. Reversing that would be something could be done, though it might step on the toes of the person who decided to split things up in the first place. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

My employer blocks all secure servers, probably to prevent us from using private e-mail and buying things from eBay and Amazon while we're at work. But the result is that I can't even look up a recipe in the Wikibooks Cookbook. Angr (talk) 16:16, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Some changes have been made to the file to only pull the version local to the server you're on. Hopefully this solves the problem. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 19:21, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it does! Thanks for your help. Angr (talk) 06:17, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Dropimage fouled up

I note that the drop image template does not drop and is pegged fully open. Can some kind admin fix it? Thanks. 85.115.52.180 (talk) 12:23, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I fixed it myself; I have made it as a collapsible table in the way that another author suggested some time ago. It seems acceptable now though I think the link may still be a bit too far towards the center. Thanks and regards to all, Armchair (talk) 11:19, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

William Thornton

File:Thorton_book.pdf is a pdf of a biography of w:William Thornton by George W. Paulson MD, a retired gentleman I believe, who has released it to the community having found no publisher. I hope the Wikibooks community will be able to take this text and expand on it. If I have made errors in the licensing medatada on Commons please fix them, this book has been properly released by the author. JzG (talk) 13:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

What is Wikibooks states "as a general rule only instructional books are suitable for inclusion. Most types of books, both fiction and non-fiction, are not allowed on Wikibooks, unless they are instructional." I know of no biographical texts here at this time. I don't know that it's in scope of Wikisource either, at least looking at the types of materials they want published after 1923. Potentially if someone were to annotate it, it may fit in as an annotated text but the source would still remain at Commons. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:37, 20 April 2010 (UTC)