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.

Copyright rules about adding a book that will later be commercialized

Hello

Thank you for your work. My names is Tomas, a math instructor, and I just want to make sure I understand the copyright rules for wikibooks. My partners and I are writing an ODEs (ordinary diffential equations) math textbook aimed for commercial use.

However, I feel bad that there is no ODEs wikibook, so I started adding content to: Ordinary Differential Equations

Do you think it is possible to keep adding content and later on publish our textbook? The plan is to add a lot of the foundational material in the wikibook and the more exotic stuff in the textbook.

According to Wikibooks:Requesting copyright permission

"The main legal issue that is important to explain to potential contributors: they would be agreeing that their material can be used freely by Wikibooks AND its downstream users, and that such use might include commercial use, for which the contributor is not entitled to royalties or compensation. "

we are allowed to use wikibook content for commercial use as long as we make a reference of the Wikibook authors.

Is that correct or did we miss something? Thank you and have a great day, Tomas — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkojar (talk • contribs) 01:54, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Please let me know, if I should post this elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 02:00, 26 September 2018 (talk • contribs) Tkojar (UTC)

@Tkojar: This is a perfectly good place to ask... --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:21, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

You are correct. There are many books that have been published this way. For example, this one QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 10:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Can you give me examples of textbooks that started as wikibooks and got published by major companies such as Pearson or Springer? So I am guessing there are no or few wikibooks that got published by such companies, but maybe they accepted rewrites and enhanced versions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tkojar (talk • contribs)

I don't have any such examples, although they may exist. I think it is likely a question of degree - I see many books that incorporate material from Commons or Wikipedia (e.g., a diagram or paragraph of text) with a citation using "by Wikipedia authors" (which is not sufficient). You have to question whether a major company would publish a book where all the content was already freely available under a copyleft license. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 14:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Improving the Puzzle Wikibooks Styles

Hi all ,

I am newcomer and I have a proposal to be made

I love Puzzles (and hence my username and I see that the Wikibooks for Puzzles is somehow lacking of contents.) I have read the guide for a while and create this account .

I have see the puzzle and think of why not the answer are put on same pages: Puzzles/Non-scientific puzzles/Boy and Girl

After searching quite a while, I found out that there are a template for hiding text: Template:Hidden

As you can see my sandbox, this is my suggestion for improvements. User:Miss Puzzle/sandbox

Hopefully, my improvement are accepted and I can contribute for many years to comeMiss Puzzle (discuss • contribs) 06:09, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Aside: Wiki notation for a "wikilink", a link to a page on the wiki, is double square-brackets around the name of the page within the wiki. I've edited your above text (pardon) to demonstrate. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:05, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

@Miss Puzzle: The issue you are raising (so it seems to me) is one of interactive wiki pages. Fwiw, I can offer some general thoughts about interactive wiki pages. Wiki markup is, originally, about creating hypertext documents: a collection of pages, each containing formatted text, and some words are clickable links to other pages within the collection. That's all. It's basically static. But puzzles are one of a number of purposes for which one may wish for something a bit more dynamic. There are three ways that puzzles have been traditionally handled on wikis, and a fourth way they might be handled, based on something I've been working on.

• It's more-or-less possible to handle puzzles using just ordinary wiki hypertext. You have a question, and either a link to the solution, or links to possible answers. Here's a favorite page of mine (worth a smile, anyway) that uses this technique, though it's not on a wiki: [1].
• One might set up a page with the answer to a problem in hidden text. This has the drawback that when a page loads slowly, hidden text may be temporarily visible while the page is loading, which annoyingly shows the answer before the user has had a chance to try to solve the problem on their own.
• There is a "quiz" wiki extension, which we have installed on wikibooks. I'm not personally enamoured of the quiz extension, as it seems complicated and brittle to me, but it does exist. See Help:Quizzes.

It has seemed to me that what wikis need, in general but it does apply to the particular case of quizzes/puzzles, is a truly general sort of page interactivity that can be specified as part of wiki markup. I've created such a thing; it takes the form of a small set of templates for adding input fields of various kinds to a page, and buttons that can be clicked to send the input somewhere. The next step is to learn how to wield this tool effectively. See Help:Dialog.

It should be possible, using dialog, to create quizzes/puzzles that aren't just multiple-choice, but can take more general kinds of input. I've come to believe that interacting with another human being is what people would really like to be able to do on a wiki, and I've wondered if dialog could be used to facilitate that; a core challenge needing addressed for that is, how to ensure there's someone else to interact with. But even without another person, a much wider range of possibilities opens up with dialog-driven quizzes. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you Pi Zero, I think I may cleanup the Puzzles pages a bit but I think I may implement the hidden text for now (shown in my sandbox) as I think that, we don't need to have too many pages of question and answers, which I think may lead to difficulties of cleaning up the pages later on. Also, I may add some rebuses (hieroglyphic puzzles) of my own in the near future. Thanks for your kind input. Miss Puzzle (discuss • contribs) 16:43, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Cateogry, project or?

I have started a book VCE Physics. VCE stands for Victorian Certificate of Education which encompasses curricula for a variety of subjects, including physics. There seem to be some other VCE books already started (e.g. VCE Chemistry and VCE Specialist Mathematics). So I thought it would be suitable to create a "Category" called VCE to encompass them. But then I read the advice about Categories and thought the VCE Category would be better as a "project". But going to projects, this seems to be all about Class Projects in seeming contradication to the advice on the categories page which indicates a project would be good to encompass books on related curricula. I'm confused! Please provide advice!

In a related question about categories etc. I've also added a subject category tag of "physics" to the bottom of the VCE Physics main page. But it is not showing up. It is just showing the Subject : Book : VCE Book (I created a "book"). I am not even sure what the purpose of the "Book" is. Surely the main page I created was the "book"... why was I directed by the Categories advice to create a book category?... what is it used for?... how does it relate to the book and/or subjects and/or projects!

I want to do the right thing. I'm academically astute (teach at a university), IT savvy (program in multiple languages etc.) so I am inclined to think the system, at least in relation to the current existing explanations, is objectively unclear... but maybe it will all become clear when someone provides just a little explanation?

Please provide further explainattion of the logic of category, book, project etc. (and, preferably, include advice relating to my situation) it is unclear, to me, from the existing documentation.

--Theo Hughes (discuss • contribs) 05:08, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

OK, so I found the help info I should really have been reading (Wikibooks/Shelves, Categories, and Classifications), and looked at what other books did, and now things are starting to make sense . However, I'm now not sure about the relevance of the Categories help page which initially led me astray... does it need updating?... or how is it now relevant?... is it an old thing that was replaced by books and shelves etc?

--Theo Hughes (discuss • contribs) 21:50, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

@Theo Hughes: Well, we're really still in the midst of converting from the older subject pages to the new shelves. Which is itself the most recent step in a multi-stage infrastructure upgrade I've been working on for some time now. There's some history at Wikibooks Stacks/History. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:29, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks, its starting to make sense now. And the fact that I have come to wikibooks in the middle of a transition explains the slightly confusing documentation. I will attempt to organise things as per the new shelves etc. At the moment I'm now just playing around with the best format for TOC for the book I started. I started playing with templates... then realised what I was trying wasn't quite correct. I'm playing around with having a complete book TOC in a collapsible column etc Navbox that will automagically (template parameters based on page names sort of thing) have the current "topic" uncollapsed. Not sure if this is still what I want, but I'd like to get the navigation somewhat sorted before going to far with content, and then making it difficult for myself to rearrange - though I intend not to spend too much time fiddling with this as I do want to get onto content... ooops forgot the sig, here it is --Theo Hughes (discuss • contribs) 05:42, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Renaming "Medical Suction Machines"

I'm thinking to generalize the coverage of Medical Suction Machines to Medical Machines. How can the renaming be accomplished? Suppose I create a new book named Medical Machines. Then can Medical Suction Machines be moved into it as Medical Machines/Suction Machines? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 18:20, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope: Yes, an admin can do that for you. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:24, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

What if I create the new book, add the content from Med. Suction Machines and then request deletion of that? The expanded book wouldn't have the creation date and history of the older book but that would be a minor loss. Does any policy apply here? Is one method preferable? Otherwise I'll just begin the new book. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 05:13, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

I'd rather save the history. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 13:11, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

> Yes, an admin can do that for you.

What is the procedure? Just state the request here. Please move Medical Suction Machines to Medical Machines. Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 22:38, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope: Um. I'm hesitating, here. It seems as if that much material about just one kind of machine wouldn't belong in the book-main-page of a book about all kinds of medical machines; cf. {{split}}. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:57, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

OK, now there is a book, Medical Machines containing a heading/link "Suction Machines and Aspirators" which I visualize being connected to the existing book. Under that heading are subheadings for the existing sections in the existing book. There are also headings for a few other classes of machine I want to include. It's similar to the structure of This Quantum World. How is that? Thanks, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

I moved the pre-existing page. There's plenty of neatifying to do, of course, but it's a start. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 05:11, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. A little elementary tidying done. Plenty of work ahead, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 20:06, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Experienced Wikipedia editor wanting to get started on Wikibooks

I am an experienced editor on the English Wikipedia (12 years, 45,000 edits) who is thinking about getting involved in Wikibooks. Obviously I need to learn any differences in how things are done here.

I am working on a book on the topic of running diagnostics on various scientific and graphing calculators. Everything I write I release to the world under a CC0 license.

Would Wikibooks be an appropriate place to put my work? Are there any tutorials, help pages or examples I should know about? Do I need to put it in a specific place? --Guy Macon (discuss • contribs) 05:41, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Welcome! :-)  You might read Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks? for a start, then the book Using Wikibooks. (It occurs to me that Using Wikibooks may not be up-to-date with our recent replacement of Subject pages by the Wikibooks Stacks, but that's just one detail.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:16, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks! My only remaining question is whether a book on running diagnostics on various scientific and graphing calculators belongs in Shelf:Computer hardware, somewhere in Department:Mathematics, or some other place. Is there a place where there are discussions on where a book belongs? --Guy Macon (discuss • contribs) 17:20, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: Computer hardware sounds like a good place. The goal is for people to be able to find the book, after all. Looking through the hierarchy under Department:Mathematics, I didn't off-hand see a place where it would likely be looked for. (If you do think of a second place that would be useful to list it, listing on two shelves is generally considered reasonable.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 21:46, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Page information in mobile view

Hi, is there any direct way to reach page information when viewing a page in mobile view? Of course desktop view can activated; then the "Page information" link in the left margin is available. There should be a more direct path. Thanks, PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 16:27, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

@PeterEasthope: You could activate "Page information" in desktop view and then switch back to mobile. I don't think there is a more direct way, however. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 08:40, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Leaderboard, ... PeterEasthope (discuss • contribs) 18:05, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Creating a book as a compilation of truncated Wikipedia pages

Hi, I am hoping to create some re-compile (and cut down) the content from existing Wikipedia pages to create an open educational resource (OER) for a course I teach. I've created two example pages: User:Cameronpiercy/Social_Loafing and User:Cameronpiercy/Nonverbal. I am a novice Wikipedia editor and have never used Wikibooks. The first question I have is (1) is it okay to create a Wikibook in this manner? The second question is (2) all of the links broke when I copied the page, is there an easy way to restore existing links to Wikipedia pages? As I read here Using_Wikibooks/Wikipedian_Primer I'm thinking Wikibooks may not be the best venue for this type of "mashup." Any advice? Cameronpiercy (discuss • contribs) 19:52, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

This is not Wikipedia, and one of the differences is that we do not have lots of wikilinks that link to other books or to Wikipedia. You are strongly advised not to "repair" the links to Wikipedia but instead remove them. If you are copying material from Wikipedia you must observe the license requirements. That means you must link (in the edit summary) back to the permanent URL from where you copied it or, preferably, request the material is imported to Wikibooks at WB:RFI which enables the edit history to be maintained. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 15:28, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

How to import an existing book?

I want to import this book: https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/criminalinvestigation/ ...in order to rewrite it to conform to US law. The existing book can be downloaded in a number of formats: EPUB Digital PDF Print PDF MOBI XHTML Pressbooks XML WordPress XML OpenDocument

What is the best/easiest way to import the book? I tried to paste in the XHTML, but this gave me an error message for entering too many links at once.Verklempt (discuss • contribs) 21:35, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

I see that book is licensed under Creative Commons 4.0. I've heard some perplexing things about importing CC 4.0 material to projects that (like this one) are under CC 3.0. Anyone know more? QuiteUnusual? --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 22:06, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we can accept 4.0 into 3.0, the licenses are incompatible with each other, according to WMF legal too. I think the only way is to ask for dual licensing which means releasing text under CC 3.0 and 4.0 concurrently.--Cohaf (discuss • contribs) 04:03, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

That checks with what I'd heard (alas): that individual projects within the sisterhood have considered going to 4.0, which they could because 4.0 subsumes 3.0, but then their 4.0 materials couldn't be imported to projects that were still using 3.0. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 10:18, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

text color

Hi. How cena add change text color in wikibooks. I can do it in table but not in the normal text. TIA --Adam majewski (discuss • contribs) 14:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

@Adam majewski: {{Color}}. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:18, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

thx. --Adam majewski (discuss • contribs) 18:22, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

@Adam majewski: Nice. I highly recommend against using "green means good, red means bad" since it is impossible to distinguish for someone with red–green colorblindness. At the very least, please also use another marker (e.g. italics or a different font) to make the distinction clear. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:31, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Renaming "GCSE Computer Science"

I have updated the content of GCSE Computer Science to the newer syllabuses and so would like rename the book as GCSE Computer Science(9-1) to indicate the current nature of the book. The assistance of an admin would be much appreciated. Johnkn63 (discuss • contribs) 08:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Johnkn63: Would that be GCSE Computer Science(9-1) or GCSE Computer Science (9-1)? The difference being a space before the left-parenthesis. I would have thought the latter, with the space. Wouldn't want to rename the whole book and then discover the name wasn't quite right and have to do it all again! --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:22, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Good point, with a space GCSE Computer Science (9-1) would be best. Thank you!Johnkn63 (discuss • contribs) 04:26, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

"9 - 1" is just a grading scale. I would keep the name as it is and make a note on the front page that it refers to the current version of the book. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 14:50, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Leaderboard: This was my initial thought. However have subsequently become aware the differences are more than just the grading scale, and more importantly that for many of the target audience, students of the exam, such a difference in title is significant. Johnkn63 (discuss • contribs) 04:55, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

@Johnkn63: Yes, but what would be the issue with noting the change in the title page? After all, if this is V2, and five years later, another change is effected, then you'll have to change the names all over again... (or alternatively keep the link the same but change the display name?) Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 03:02, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Moving the pages in Wikijunior:How Things are Made

Hi ,I accidentally create some pages without great foresight as I want to group the item lists according to their category

Need to move the following pages from:

• Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Ceramic Tiles to Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Ceramic/Ceramic Tiles

     Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Ceramic/Ceramic Tiles

• Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Ceramic Wares to Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Ceramic/Ceramic Wares

     Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Ceramic/Ceramic Wares

• Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Paper things/Newspaper to Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Wood/Newspaper

     Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Wood/Newspaper

• Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Paper things/Paper to Wikijunior:How Things are Made/Wood/Paper

     Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Wood/Paper

- By Wikijunior contributor, Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 06:47, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

If anyone does this, I'd urge you to consider "... Are ..." for the title. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:06, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Ahh.. You meant changing from How Things are Made to How Things Are Made ? AM I correct Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 07:20, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Correct. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:56, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Pi zero: ,just in case you missed this - Pinged by: Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 07:44, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@Encik Tekateki: I'll try to do it in the next few minutes; which means things may be moving around. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:27, 25 August 2019 (UTC) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:27, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@Encik Tekateki: I've moved the book, and I've moved those four subpages within it. You'll need to fix/rearrange some links between pages. I noticed {{BookCat}} was missing from a bunch of the pages, probably because it had been omitted from the page-template; so I added it to all the existing pages and to the template. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:55, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

@Pi zero: Nice Pi zero, thanks a lot for your help !

P.S: Also delete this Wikijunior:How Things Are Made/Paper things, you miss this during the transfer. Thanks once again. @Pi zero:

Always grateful --Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 15:20, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Did a history merge on that one. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:54, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

Rollback

Hi, does anyone know why I can't use rollback sometimes? 大诺史 (Talk/留言/토론/Discussion) 12:21, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

We can't rollback the page creator to nothing. JackPotte (discuss • contribs) 12:30, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Not about the IP, just sometimes I run into the problem when trying to revert random vandalism in a structured page. 大诺史 (Talk/留言/토론/Discussion) 12:57, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

User:大诺史, I had the same problem. I think its because our accounts are rate limited on rollback, as we don't have the "noratelimit" right.

See mw:Manual:$wgRateLimits, default is 10 rollbacks over a 60 second period for confirmed users. So any faster than a rollback every six seconds can be rejected. I suspect that en.wb has the default value.

See also Special:ListGroupRights for which groups have the"noratelimit" right, not included in the reviewer group. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 13:23, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Can someone change the limit as it will be easier to use mass rollback instead of rejecting/undoing their changes individually. 大诺史 (Talk/留言/토론/Discussion) 13:28, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I don't know too much about it, so take what I say with a pinch of salt. But to alter the ratelimit you would have to edit the LocalSettings.php file for en.wb, see mw:Manual:LocalSettings.php for an explanation. I don't think this can be done on the web interface, so would have to be done by a WMF sys admin. Quite how you would go about requesting this is not something I know.

I think it makes sense for reviewers to have a ratelimit applied for rollback, otherwise there could be abuse and a very large cleanup in the hands on a rogue editor with a scripted bot. But I would like the reviewer rollback ratelimit set to something lower (e.g. 1 rollback per 1 second), as otherwise it can be a pain for reviewers to do mass rollback when needed.

@QuiteUnusual:, @Pi zero:, @Leaderboard:, @JackPotte: in case they have an additional input on this matter. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 16:55, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I believe it is, yes, the sort of thing for which we'd get a community consensus to change the site configuration. It's quite rare for us to tamper with that.

(This difficulty with rollback was invisible to me, apparently because as an admin, looking at the above, I'm exempt.) --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 17:23, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Nothing much to add to the comments above. Yes it has to be modified by a developer and to do so would require a community discussion and approval followed by a phabricator request. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 20:36, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Wasn't aware of this issue. If the limit is indeed the issue I'd be happy for it to be raised, but I somehow doubt that's actually the problem - I would have thought that it's high enough. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 01:07, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

@Mrjulesd, Pi zero, QuiteUnusual, Leaderboard, JackPotte:. I've created a proposal at WB:PROPOSALS#Raising rollback limit, do check it out. 大诺史 (Talk/留言/토론/Discussion) 06:55, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Boston, etc

I want to create books on Boston, like info whatnot. Also other books. How? GazaOaku (discuss • contribs) 13:53, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi GazaOaku, Welcome to Wikibooks. I suggest you read it here first ( See Wikibooks FAQ ) before you start to create a book . Encik Tekateki (discuss • contribs) 15:02, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi @GazaOaku:. Books about a place would probably be better suited to out sister project Wikivoyage. Leaderboard (discuss • contribs) 01:09, 6 October 2019 (UTC)