Wikibooks:Reading room/Assistance

Welcome to the Assistance reading room where Wikibookians help each other solve problems encountered while contributing to books or otherwise taking part in the Wikibooks community.

How do I improve my wikibook, or is it impossible to improve it?

I'm curious why my recent addition to Wikibooks was tagged for speedy deletion instead of engaging me in conversation on its talk page for collaboration of improvements?

I'm also curious how I may improve it? Or, is it beyond repair? Claiming it is nonsensical displays ignorance on the part of the person who is making that claim which is either due to that person not reading it through, or requiring a tutor to help them understand it. But, no one is offering to ask questions about specific statements or sections of the text to help me make improvements. So, I'm left with the impression that "speedy deletion" is a form of acceptable vandalism?

I'm been through this before. It merely takes two people to delete something. And that requirement has already been met. And none of my objections has been countered with anything other than vague claims of: "nonsensical rouge" and "This is original research of the most egregious kind trying to pretend that the laws of physics are a fantasy. It doesn't belong here."

I've added a warning (under the section, entitled: Synopsis), yet still have not heard from anyone in response.

WARNING — These criteria are intended to garner success under simulation and usually within the context of the Berkeley SPICE family of simulators (but not all the time; other simulators are, also, useful depending upon the situation). Although they are supported by standard mathematical criteria describing the conventional engineering of electrodynamic theory, they are not intended to qualify the physics behind these simulated strategies. That implication is left to the reader to vindicate, or not, through verifiable experience at your own risk of safety and success. User, beware.

And I've added a warning at the top of the page in the format of a preamble.

This Wikibook is not intended for anyone who lacks any background in basic electrical engineering, for it requires a familiarity with: Ohm's Law, Electrical Reactance, Complex Numbers, and their Polynomial Multiplication, basic electricity theory, and familiarity with electronic simulators. Without these skills, you'll be lost trying to understand whatever I have to say. You'll be perplexed anyway even with these skills since nothing you learned in school will have adequately prepared you for what is about to unfold...

There is no guarantee you will understand any of this. So, read through it -casually- once in a while without trying to understand. Repetition, with breaks in between, might help.

I'm assuming that they don't have to respond, because deletion is inevitable.

It doesn't look like it would be suitable over at Wikisource, but maybe it is suitable?Vinyasi (discuss • contribs) 15:41, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Deletion is not inevitable. I don't see a problem with the book but maybe the person who tagged it for deletion can share their thoughts.--Xania ^talk 04:29, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

I asked both of them...

MarcGarver

SHB2000 -- Vinyasi (discuss • contribs) 18:22, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

This one is impossible. Hoaxes are not allowed on Wikibooks. SHB2000 (discuss • contribs) 20:35, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

“This one is impossible. Hoaxes...” – Unloaded coils are well-known to exceed conventional expectations of their output. Just ask Jim Murray. {He was trained as a physicist, but switched to electrical engineering to make more money.} This expectation (of unloaded coils) is conceded by electrical engineers (according to Jim). But it took me until now to figure out how to load a coil, because using the standard technique (for loading motor coils) of adding resistance inline with the coil doesn't work (as SHB2000 remarks) since my circuits are not standard! -- Vinyasi (discuss • contribs) 05:35, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

Well said. Simulations only benefit those people who are willing and able to help themselves with serious study. To everyone else, it is mere entertainment (at best) or a hoax (at its worst). Involvement is the key-ingredient, normally missing among those people who have been duped by a hoax. Yet, involvement tips the scales of understanding in our favor since simulations are able to model the hoax using whatever parameters the hoax is based on to describe the virtual reality of the hoax.

To wit, ...

I spent $400 of my Social Security to purchase a rare copy of Joseph Newman's 8th edition of his book which he boasted would give the reader everything the reader needed to know to be able to build a successful replication of his device. I read various chapters describing the parameters of its inputs and outputs. On that advice, alone, I was able to deduce that Joseph Newman was a categorical liar since the leisurely speed (of its hand-cranked rotation imparted to his device) could not give overunity under simulation, namely: it could not achieve a gain of reversed current to travel backwards toward his battery pack to trickle charge his batteries (as they supplied the necessary high voltage to run his device). Only by increasing this simulation of ~30 RPMs of rotation to an incredible one million cycles per second would the prescribed effects materialize. I was flabbergasted. No one can achieve that rapid a rate of rotation among physical objects without breaking or jamming the axle of their machine. Yet, on the other hand, neither did I initially realize (until much later) that achieving that high a rate of vibration/rotation (call it what you will) is exactly one of several parameters I have since learned I can vary to achieve overunity in a simulated circuit, namely: capacitance, inductance, frequency, resistance, etc.

What I did not know, but was about to learn from an engineer, is that a noble gas (such as: helium) can vibrate and broadcast a rapidly vibrating electromagnetic frequency when subjected to a strong electrostatic charge. This satisfied my successful simulation!

I wanted to believe in Joseph Newman so much that I was appalled at his blatant lie. Yet, I posted my results on YouTube and elsewhere, nonetheless. Within a few weeks (or months), an electrical engineer got in touch with me and told me that he had given Joseph Newman a secret to build a better device that would become overunity (replacing the permanent magnets of his previous design with helium canisters wrapped with an open coil using PVC sewer pipe for its containment). Joseph used that new and improved model for all of his demonstrations and wowed the crowds with his ability to pump many gallons of water per minute while trickle charging his batteries at the same time that he was draining them of charge. This was a net gain of less than one ampere. If batteries could live forever, then this would have been a proverbial perpetual motion machine. Yet, they can't: especially since he was foolishly using non-rechargeable dry-cell batteries. In any event, this was quite a feat of human engineering! Yet, sadly, he kept the design for this new and improved model to himself sharing his earlier design (which never gives overunity) in his book and a similarly constructed working model for the Patent Office to examine. It's no wonder no one has replicated his efforts and he failed at obtaining a patent! What was he thinking?...Que sera, sera. I used LTSPICE for simulating his device. You may read about my discovery on Quora. Simulations have their limitations, but so does building stuff since there is no guarantee, whatsoever, that either method will succeed. Nor is there any guarantee that we'll understand what we've built or simulated (that's much harder). Seeing is not believing. It takes practice, lots and lots of practice, to learn all of the shortcomings of either methodology and plan to avoid its unique set of pitfalls so as to not be "duped" by those shortcomings. Ergo, "knowledge is different for different people" based on each person's unique perspective and experience.

• "...no longer logical to exclude books on video games that described strategy." -- reversal of an earlier decision to ban video strategy guides
• "...you can use video games as a primary source" -- allowance made for primary source
• "...A serious game or applied game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to video games used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, and politics.
• simulators provide an intelligent tutoring system for self-guided learning
• "...teachers would have to become more involved in the creation and application of research." -- Evidence-based education must avail itself of research to stay current in today's world and simulators provide an impetus for research. -- Vinyasi (discuss • contribs) 05:16, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

gallery

Hi. On the page about files there are examples like

<gallery>
File:Wiki.png
File:Wiki.png|Captioned
File:Wiki.png
File:Wiki.png|[[Help:Editing#Links|Links]] can be put in captions.
File:Wiki.png
File:Wiki.png|Full [[MediaWiki]]<br />''syntax'' may be used…
</gallery>

but "File" is not needed,

<gallery>
Wiki.png
Wiki.png|Captioned
Wiki.png
Wiki.png|[[Help:Editing#Links|Links]] can be put in captions.
Wiki.png
Wiki.png|Full [[MediaWiki]]<br />''syntax'' may be used…
</gallery>

is enough. Am I right ? should I change it ? Soul windsurfer (discuss • contribs) 20:01, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

@Soul windsurfer: Feel free to change it if you want, I don't think anyones gonna mind. ^{— L10nM4st3r} / _{ROAR at me!} 22:35, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Question about strategy guide map

I have spent the last few days dutifully expanding Pokémon Red and Blue. Soon I will reach the Fuchsia City Gym. This Gym contains a number of invisible walls that restrict the player’s movement. You can find a map of this area here. That file I just linked is the most immediate source I can find for this image. (Google can probably find a number of similar maps, but this one is already freely licensed.) I want to use this image while expanding Pokémon Red and Blue/Marsh Badge to explain this part of the game. I know we have imported a lot of content from StrategyWiki in the past. What should I do? I’ve never done this before, and I do not want to cause any copyright complaints. Trying to explain the map without showing it would be almost impossible.

(As an aside, the text in the book I linked was 100% original prose written by yours truly. I used the StrategyWiki guide for that game as reference, and took pains to not copy any text verbatim. I hope you like it.) SupremeUmanu (discuss • contribs) 17:52, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

How do I make a table float to the right side of the page?

By default these are inline. I have one in my Pokémon guide, and I want to move it. Thanks! SupremeUmanu (discuss • contribs) 17:58, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

After where it says class="wikitable", write style="float:right", as I put in a very simple test at the bottom of User:L10nM4st3r/sandbox. ^{— L10nM4st3r} / _{ROAR at me!} 22:32, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@SupremeUmanu: sorry I forgot to ping, see my comment above. For more styling tips, see User:L10nM4st3r/Wikihelp/Styling#Inline styles ^{— L10nM4st3r} / _{ROAR at me!} 22:33, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks so much! SupremeUmanu (discuss • contribs) 01:42, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Pending review request

Could someone with the required permissions review my pending change on LaTeX/Bibliography Management? Thanks! (Apologies if I'm too impatient; it has been two days since I made the edit, and I'm not sure how much time usually passes before a pending change is reviewed. I'm used to the faster editing pace of Wikipedia.) Biogeographist (discuss • contribs) 12:42, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

There is no need for edits to be reviewed - with the exception of Wikijunior the latest version of the page is what every reader sees. The waiting time for an edit review can be a year or more due to the size of the backlog (currently 140 days on average, see here). MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 13:50, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@MarcGarver: Thanks for the response, but the latest reviewed version of the page (from 14 October 2022) is what I see both when logged out and when logged in, not the latest version, so there is a need for edits to be reviewed! Biogeographist (discuss • contribs) 17:16, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

I struck my last comment because I just checked the page again and now the latest version is displayed, so it seems MarcGarver was right. But I swear that when I checked the page earlier today, only the latest reviewed version of the page was displayed before. Perhaps I was still seeing a cached version or I was hallucinating. Biogeographist (discuss • contribs) 21:53, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

Visual Editor ate my paragraph

I use the Visual Editor for all of my editing. The process of writing Pokémon Red and Blue has taken me to create a new page. I do this by first creating a redlink from the appropriate place in the Table of Contents, in this case the bottom of the “Appendices” section. However, somehow the Status template has somehow “eaten” that last paragraph. For some reason Visual Editor thinks the content of that paragraph is the content in one of the templates that is posted at the bottom of the page. (When I open the dialog box for it, It just calls the field ”wikitext” and names no specific template.) This text box is plain-text, uses wiki-markup, and has no scroll bar, and is therefore unsuitable for writing large parts of a book.

However, when I hit Edit Source, nothing looks amiss. The end-of-book templates are all separated from the last content paragraph. I have no idea why VisualEditor is thinking the way it does. I hope this isn’t a genuine bug in Visual Editor. I would appreciate it if someone more experienced than I try to root out this formatting issue in the book I am currently working hard on. SupremeUmanu (discuss • contribs) 16:28, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@SupremeUmanu I have also noticed this. I'm not sure if it's a new problem or if it's been around for a while and I only noticed it recently. Unfortunately I'm not sure what's going on. —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 17:57, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

This sort of problem is often due to Special:LintErrors but may be due to what the developers call a "complex transclusion" (which seems to be a problem with multiple templates sort of mixing together, so that they behave like one – think about the archive top/bottom templates).

If you're still seeing this problem, your best bet might be to ask for help at w:en:WP:VPT, to see if someone would please check the template for possible problems. They'll want to see a link to the exact revision of the page you were seeing the problem on. Whatamidoing (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on proposed wikibook addition: textile sciences & fiber arts

I'm a competent but still rather intermediate (less than 40 years' intensive experience) fiber artist and lifelong independent student of blended textile science and library/information science. I'm not doing any primary research, but instead following in the well-worn steps of the centuries of fiber arts practitioners who have come before me.

What does make me different is skill in facilitating co-learning groups that share information and experience, as even the newest beginner will very likely have experiences that can help the most experienced expert, and everything in between.

Textile sciences are HUGE globally, are an area with a LOT of funds being poured into academic research, and there are literally centuries of published material and a great deal of widely-accepted and virtually uncontested facts that can be shared, as well as a great deal of ever-growing communities globally of independent learners making use of established science to implement the science in both creative and practical ways to solve everyday life problems for themselves and share those things they learn with other everyday folks. Knowledge and resource sharing is literally an almost absolutely universal value for fiber artists of all kinds, and we are almost all drawn to learning communities, very commonly those learning communities actively bridge multiple cultural, country, and language boundaries. But even 30-year-old beat-up textile science textbooks usually cost well over $150 USD, sometimes even $300 or more for less outdated textbooks. That's what motivates me to invest volunteer time and energy to facilitate the collection and collaborative curation of shared knowledge that is freely available to anyone interested in searching for it.

So, I've been looking for a platform to host co-learning resources on many common topics in textile and fabric sciences, and was already of the firm belief that a virtual common library in wiki form (like the ones that I became familiar with in college studying library and information science) would be the most successful long-term place to host a digital sub-commons of this kind. There are more specialized knowledge-sharing bbs-like platforms (the online community Ravelry is the biggest one), but that and other sites available are so specialized that they do not make room for all textiles, including smart textiles, industrial textiles, textile reinforced building structures, medical textiles, mixed textile media, embroidery, costuming, fashion design, machine knitting, raw wool and other raw fiber processing, or nonwoven textiles such as felt, paper, and fiber fusion (facilitated with flexible adhesive mediums).

I've poked around and I'm having a bit of difficulty learning to navigate help resources. Eventually, I would like to branch out after helping grow a community of acquaintances with more technical knowledge to collaborate here on an expanding wiki textbook to include Wikiversity resources, but that is so far ahead of where I'm at.

Before that, I need to get stubs and the core contents started on, while simultaneously reaching out to people I know in various countries to ask them to contribute and offer to help them familiarize themselves with the Wikibooks culture and basic skills... and to do that, I clearly need to familiarize myself with those things first.

I'm very sorry I'm poor at communicating complex ideas in simpler ways, and I'm very grateful to anyone who took any time and energy to read any part of this request. Thank you very much for considering a reply of some kind.

1. Can anyone point me in the direction of video or audio resources (tone of voice and spoken English language content, at least) on becoming familiar with etiquette and culture here - history, what behaviors are welcome?
2. Can anyone suggest cohesive reference pages visually organizing the most commonly used technical skills here on Wikibooks (or just for wikimedia foundation projects in general? e.g. cheat sheets? YouTube videos? Boolean search term suggestions, commandline interfaces and regex operators?
3. Does anyone have any feedback or suggestions on the Textile and Fabric Sciences textbook proposal/nomination I'd like to get started on (if it's a good candidate for starting on Wikibooks? (I was a bit shocked to find that there was only a single result on Wikibooks related to all the searches I tried here on the topic: Hemp Products/Textiles & Fabrics - Wikibooks, open books for an open world. )

Grayautumnday (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Is this the same as Wikipedia

this is a lot like Wikipedia can someone please explain the difference Ducklan (discuss • contribs) 17:22, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Ducklan! No, Wikibooks is not the same as Wikipedia—Wikibooks has a different mission and serves a different purpose. For detailed information, you can see Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks?. Generally speaking, Wikibooks is for the creation of entire books with well-defined scope and aims. Wikibooks are very similar to other published books, with the added advantages of being a web-hosted medium. I would recommend reading through Wikibooks:Policies and guidelines before you continue editing so you get a general idea of the standards here. Reach out if you have any questions! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 17:31, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

Side-by-side paraphrase for a book in the public domain?

Hi!

I'd like to collaborate with some friends to make and 'publish' a paraphrased edition of John Henry Newman's Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. The original work is in the public domain, but the style of English is somewhat archaic and difficult to understand. For the ease of construction, I'd thought that we would work on the paraphrase in a two-column table. Is such a project as this within the scope of Wikibooks? :) JohnLittle1993 (discuss • contribs) 01:24, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes that would be in scope. Original source texts are out of scope, but an annotated text is allowed. MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 09:34, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Why does any page from here

even if it's protected, have the option to activate syntax highlighting (codemirror) while other wikis can only be activated if oneself is not blocked? 190.242.129.62 (discuss) 03:49, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

ping to @MarcGarver, It's been 2 weeks since I asked this question and nothing has been resolved, I want to know, why here any user can activate the CodeMirror option for any page regardless of whether it is protected or not? 190.242.129.62 (discuss) 15:32, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you link to a page that explains what the code mirror is? Ive never heard of it. Or at least, not that name. Syntax highlighting doesnt seem like a thing to stop people from using. ^{— L10nM4st3r} / _{ROAR at me!} 21:20, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

because of the global block imposed by Hasley, i have to use open proxies, see mw:Extension:CodeMirror and mw:Extension:SyntaxHighlight, when you click on "view source", several icons appear in the top left part of the source code box, including a marker, if you click there, certain characters change color, on the other hand if you do it in other wikis like Wikimedia or Wikipedia, that doesn't appear, how can this be possible? 108.181.71.43 (discuss) 02:04, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Creating African Literature Books

I want to ask if this idea fits into wikibooks. Kind Regards — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sylvesterchukwu04 (talk • contribs)

Yes, you could write a textbook about or guide to that topic, but you could not just include the original works. If you have original works of African literature that are freely-licensed, they would go to s:. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:49, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf Alright Thanks.I will be glad if you could explain better Sylvesterchukwu04 (discuss • contribs) 21:17, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@Sylvesterchukwu04: You can write a book about African literature here. That book could be a textbook intended for students who want to learn about African literature. You cannot upload pieces of fiction or poems or other pieces of literature here. Those belong at Wikisource, but only if they are allowed to be uploaded there. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:24, 1 August 2023 (UTC)