New logo

There is a new logo in the offing for Wikibooks. Please check out the link for details and maybe make your feelings known. It will feature in the next Gazette. If you didn't get the first one do sign up or ask someone to do it for you.

Check this out

I have a outline for a new Wikibook on the Middle East. Please provide feedback on what you think about this possible Wikibook. Here it is: User:Tannersf/The Middle East - outline

Policy Proposals

Two new policy proposals are reaching maturity, and motions have been started to make the proposals official policy here at Wikibooks. These proposals are located at:

• Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks/Unstable
• Wikibooks:Decision making/Unstable

All wikibookians are encouraged to read the text of the proposals, and voice their opinions on the respective talk pages.

Checkuser Nominations

Two users have been nominated on WB:RFA for Checkuser rights, Herbythyme (talk | email | contribs | logs) and SBJohnny (talk | email | contribs | logs). Both nominations were put forward by User:Herbythyme, because the tools are needed for controlling vandalism without unintentionally blocking good-faith contributors. The rules require there to be 25 votes in favour to grants these rights so everyone's vote really does count.

New Bureaucrat

User:Withinfocus has been promoted to the status of bureaucrat by User:Derbeth. This brings the number of currently active bureaucrats to three, along with User:Whiteknight. Bureaucrats are admins who can promote other admins.

What is Wikibooks?

A new draft version of the Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks policy is in the works. The new draft, found at Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks/Unstable contains a number of changes from the original policy, including better wording, more clarity, and a collection of new rules that have been accepted by the community in preceding months.

This policy (WIW, for short) is one of the most important policies on wikibooks, frequently serving as the "final word" in disputes. People who are interested in Wikibooks policy should consider reading over the new draft, and providing opinions/questions/comments/suggestions.

Wikibooks:Wikibooks gazette

The first installment of the wikibooks newsletter, "the wikibooks gazette" has been sent to over 60 active wikibookians. The list of active wikibookians (and simultaneously the subscription list for the newsletter) is located at Wikibooks:Active wikibookians. Users can add themselves to this list, or they can add other users who have been active. If users are no longer active, they can be removed from the list.

The first issue of the newsletter was distributed by User:The Staff, using a semi-automated bot program written by User:Whiteknight. User:The Staff currently does not have the bot flag, so all the newsletter deliveries are visible in the RC list.

Ownership Policy

In response to recent events, a new policy proposal, Wikibooks:Ownership has been drafted. This new policy discusses module ownership, and how people cannot exercise any sort of control over a module, simply by virtue of being an active contributor.

All wikibookians are encouraged to read this proposal, and give opinions about it on the associated talk page.

Policy Changes

Some old policy proposals have been dealt with in the last week:

• Wikibooks:Profanity was moved to {{policy}}. This policy restricts the use of inappropriate language, especially in page titles and usernames.
• Wikibooks:Semi-protection policy was moved to {{obsolete}}, because all the points in that policy are already covered by Wikibooks:Protected page.

Several other policy proposals have been nominated for change:

• Wikibooks:Dispute resolution has been nominated for rejection because it has been superseded by Wikibooks:Decision making.
• Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects has been nominated to become {{Policy}}.
• Wikibooks:Be bold Has been nominated to become {{policy}} because it is already a de facto staple of our project.

All wikibookians are encouraged to view these pages, and leave comments on the associated talk pages.

Votes for Deletion

At present there are quite a number of "open" Votes for Deletion. They cover a wide range of subjects and the consideration and voting of any editors is encouraged. This is an important process by which we try and maintain the high standards of Wikibooks. Please go and look and preferably vote here

Nominations

Two other users have also been nominated on WB:RFA, Withinfocus ( talk | email | contribs ) has been nominated for bureaucratship, and Xania ( talk | email | contribs ) received community approval and is now an administrator. Both nominations were put forward by User:Herbythyme.

New Administrators

Several new admins have recently been approved by the community:

• User:Swift
• User:Kellen
• User:Darklama
• User:Herbythyme
• User:Xania

All of these admins are active helpers who are valuable members of the wikibooks community. Also, a number of new templates have been created to add some color to the RFA process.

Page Edits Bot

User:Whiteknight has created a page-editing bot, User:Wknight8111, and has received community approval for the bot flag. The bot can perform tasks on multiple pages:

• Add categories to pages
• Add header/footer templates, and page navigation
• Convert HTML to Wiki markup
• Alter the text of pages in other ways

Ask User:Whiteknight if you would like the bot to help with your project.

Class Projects

Wikibooks is looking to improve the experience of the large class and group projects that use our server to collaboratively write texts. New class projects, especially the project leaders should read the Wikibooks:Guidelines for class projects page. Also, all new class projects (and even the active old projects) should list themselves on Wikibooks:List of class projects. This way, the Wikibooks community can get involved with these projects.

Notification of nominations for Bureaucrats

This is to notify the community that I have made two nominations for bureaucrats. It would be appreciated if you would express your views on the relevant section of WB:RFA#Nominations for bureaucratship. Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Transwiki and Special:Import

The Special:Import page has been activated by the developers so that we can easily import transwiki material from wikipedia. The importation process is cleaner then copy+paste, and it preserves the original page history.

Due to the effectiveness of this new policy, a new proposal has been drafted to govern it's use at:

• Wikibooks:Transwiki Rules

A motion has also been started to get the Transwiki: prefix turned into a full namespace.

Policy

The movement to improve Wikibooks' policy cannon is still in full swing, and a number of policy proposals have been decided upon recently.

1. Wikibooks:Decision making Official Guideline
2. Wikibooks:Administrators Official Policy
3. Wikibooks:Be civil Official Policy
4. Wikibooks:Talk page Rejected
5. Wikibooks:Title pages Rejected

Also, the community has been acting on a "Proposal of the week", in an attempt to act on some of the old proposals that have never been decided on.

Policy Templates

User:Swift has been busy reorganizing and redesigning the various templates and categories used with wikibook's policies. The templates used now are {{rejected}}, {{obsolete}}, {{proposed}}, {{policy}}, and {{guideline}}.

De-adminship votes

Due to the new text of Wikibooks:Administrators, several old administrators who have been absent for a year or more from the project have been nominated for de-adminship here. The first round of admins will be de-sysopped by 1 November

Book-wide search

New link appears in toolbox when browsing books. "Search this book" link leads to external Google search site allowing searching within the current book.

"Statistics per Wikibook" from 10 May 2006

Read it at http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/EN/Wikibooks_EN.htm

The largest five "books" were:

1. Programming (contains multiple books...)
2. Wikiversity (contains multiple books...)
3. False Friends of the Slavist
4. Wikibooks Pokédex (but we plan to move it off Wikibooks)
5. Radiation Oncology

Cookbook statistics are missing because that book now uses a separate namespace. As for the other books, much work remains to convert them to the current Wikibooks:Naming policy...

Wikibooks on deletion spree

We at Wikibooks are deleting a lot of content, especially old abandoned content that appears not to be part of a textbook. We are also building a list of books that we might want to remove from Wikibooks as we reconsider the scope of the project.

Help participate in this effort. Visit these pages:

• Wikibooks:Votes for deletion – several listings recently added
• Wikibooks:Books possibly in contravention with WIW

Wikisource abolishes reference material, source code

From Wikisource:News/2006-05-02/Recent vote ends excluding reference material: As another step towards developing Wikisource's infrastructure, a recent vote sought to amend the project's inclusion policy to exclude all reference material (such as tables of information or source code) from the Wikisource. The vote, begun on April 11 and ended on April 27, received 8 votes to exclude, 1 neutral vote, and no votes to include. ... Wikisource's roughly 200 pages of reference material will slowly be phased out over the following months.

Interestingly, the list of pages to delete includes Astronomical events, a collection of charts deleted from Wikibooks because there were duplicate copies at Wikibooks and Wikisource.

Local CheckUser status in doubt

Upon the Wikibooks:Requests for adminship page, an election for or against CheckUser statuses has continued for more than three months. Two candidates, Derbeth and Uncle G, have tried since 4 January 2006 to obtain the ability to check the Internet addresses of alleged sockpuppets and vandals. Derbeth currently has 18 votes for and 3 against. Uncle G has 14 votes for and 1 against. Though this looks good, the Wikimedia Foundation requires at least 25 affirmative votes.

Pathoschild describes the analogous problem in a news story from Wikisource News: "It is hoped that these will allow more rapid, efficient, and informed checks than is available from the generic Request for CheckUser information page on the Meta-Wiki. ... Despite prior assurances from steward Datrio, it seems likely that the 25-support rule will be strictly enforced over Wikisource's request." Wikisource is a sister project of Wikibooks, and Pathoschild and Zhaladshar are the local candidates there.

In addition, Uncle G has not actually edited Wikibooks since 3 February 2006 – more than two months ago.

However, broad support is forming around a proposal to allow wikis to borrow CheckUser users from other wikis. This proposal would allow the English-language editions of both Wikibooks and Wikisource to borrow two experienced CheckUsers from their sister project Wikipedia. This would require votes, but the 25-support rule would not apply.

However, the situation is set to deny CheckUser status to Derbeth, Uncle G, Pathoschild, and Zhaladshar, even though they all enjoy broad support. This has the potential to create bad feelings, accusations that the Wikimedia community favors Wikipedia, and questions from users who trust the local candidates. As mitigating factors, the process of borrowing CheckUsers is completely optional, and CheckUser is mostly about the Privacy policy, not about the content of local projects.

Potential consensus to remove computer and video game guides

Some users, including Wikimedia Foundation President, Jimbo Wales, have announced that Wikibooks has banned all computer and video game books. Actually, it has not happened yet. For now, these walkthroughs, references, and guides remain part of Wikibooks. This appears to be a continuation of the process requested by Jimbo last year (see the 13 November 2005 entry below).

However, a consensus most probably is forming. There is no consensus on how to actually move the guides, but one method would apply a policy change to stop the creation of new computer and video game books, then existing Wikibooks would move outside the Wikimedia Foundation. StrategyWiki, a MediaWiki under the GNU Free Documentation License, is particular well positioned to receive most or all of the guides: they already have a plan to import guides from Wikibooks.

A rumour has also spread that that the computer and video game guides violate the charter of the Wikimedia Foundation, but no one has actually cited the charter nor explained the violation.

Some users also suggest that how-to guides, books about sports and other games, and Puzzles will also be deleted.