Wikibooks:Staff lounge/Archive 36

User:Greyjasper

Want to get a second opinion on this user before I do anything rash. Aside from the fact that some of the language on the user page is questionable, it seems to be either some kind of advertisement or else some kind of homepage for a business, neither of which are really allowed. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

My issue would be with the "hosting" aspect of this I think. The language is a little "street" but not that offensive, the misunderstanding of what Wikibooks is about could be more serious? A "nice" message maybe? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:00, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

If there is one thing I seem to be out of these days, it's "nice" messages. I'll wait until I see more activity from this user before I send them anything too deliberate. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:04, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

2 peeps and a coondog? --SB_Johnny | ^talk 17:22, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Heads up

User:Atomicmadhog - worth keeping an eye on I think. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:35, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

request for import from WP

I requested an import of w:Drowning on WB:RFI so we can keep the how-tos. It brings a tear to my eye every time WP deletes those wonderful how-tos :'( I don't think there's a suitable book for that page yet, but it'll be good to have when one is started (← foreshadowing?) – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I already imported it for you, but I wasnt able to get the complete page history. I agree with you about the how-tos, they really don't belong on Wikipedia, but there isn't enough effort by wikipedians to move them here before being deleted. If only we could get the authors of the how-to pages to come here along with their content.... --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:06, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

What about adding a plug for WB in their "OMGDELETEHOWTOS!" template? I imagine we'd have to ask, but that seems reasonable to me. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:10, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

There actually already is a plug in w:Template:Howto Perhaps we can ask them to make the plug bigger and more informative? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:16, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Already did, but more than one voice might carry some more weight. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 01:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio

This has to be a copy & paste from somewhere but not got much time for now and would hate it to be forgotten - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:29, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm not finding anything obvious on Google about it, although I also don't have a lot of time for a thorough search. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:08, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

New "Toys"

Some info found today. Firstly we now have a local spam blacklist at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist which may well be useful. The other is very neat particularly when finding bot pages and is Special:DeletedContributions. I know folk tend to just delete such - my own view is that placing a block (a week for me if no valid contribs) acts as a marker & is quicker than placing a user page message but this will allow a review of previously deleted material. Longer blocks can then be placed on repeat offenders.

Hope it helps someone - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

I just tried Special:DeletedContributions/Robert Horning and got a bit of a treat. Yeah, that is an amazing tool that can even be used to spot rogue admins. Good one there! This may be something to add to the list of tools to scan through for prospective admins and vandals in terms of what kinds of content has already been deleted for those users. I know that sometimes when I run through RC patrols for some users, I end up with a blank page for user contributions only to discover another admin beat me to the punch and caught the user and reverted his edits or even deleted the spam out right.

In terms of spam blockers.... it would be fun to see what happens if we add *.wikipedia.org or *.wikibooks.org to the list. That isn't too nice for the new users (who often use external links because they don't understand the internal link system) but it would be a way to force internal links for stuff like this. (*Please note this is a joke!*) I hope I don't use that page, but it certainly is a useful tool. --Rob Horning 22:13, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Images from Barsathi

These images have apparently been haunting us for a long while. They're all without license info, and Barsathi has had plenty of warnings on his talk and user pages. Unfortunately, the account doesn't have an email, so we can't contact him. All these images are being used in Diagnostic Radiology, and deleting them would leave the book in tatters, which is (I suspect) why it hasn't been done yet, despite a "non-negotiable" warning from Wikibooks:WikiProject:Image Cleanup that they were to be deleted in Nov/06. I wonder if we're ready to see them go or not. I started in on the job, but then pulled up this guy's image contribs, and did a double-take. I restored the images I had already deleted (2 or 3) pending discussion here. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:56, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I've left a note on the talk page of a recent contributor to this book, Tdvorak, in case other contributors can lend a hand in sorting this out.

It would be a pity if we had to delete all of these images. I don't think it would do irreparable damage to the book, but the images definitely add to its usefulness. If these images can't be kept, then perhaps other contributors to the book can find suitable replacement images from the Wikibooks Commons or other sources. Webaware ^talk 03:19, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I am afraid I will not be much help with this problem. I have been editing the Radiation_Oncology textbook rather than the Diagnostic Radiology textbook, which are completely separate. I do agree that it would be a shame to remove them, as they are quite useful, but copyright issues are not to be trifled with.Tdvorak 03:34, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Oops, my apologies! I blame lack of caffeine, and will take immediate steps to remedy such. Webaware ^talk 04:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

What is frustrating here is that I don't see any reason (other than perhaps patient confidentiality issues) that copyright permission couldn't be granted for at least some of the images that I've seen him upload. I do see some problems in terms of damage to the book, as these images do seem to be integral in the method of presentation and some of the text explicitly describes some of the images as examples of the kinds of medical problems to look at. This is a key part of the book. Still, explicit permission from the medical clinic (and possibly the patients involved, but there may already be waivers on that issue for scholarly texts) may be required in order to use these images. I believe that this is something that requires some hard education on copyright principles and persuading the "owners" of these images to grant the copyright license.

Since I don't have checkuser status on any Wikimedia project, I'm curious if the checkuser rules permit doing a scan in this case to backtrack and source the IP address of this user for the purposes of trying to locate either this individual or the clinic he was working for. I know this is a long shot, but if this individual were a medical technician (or even an M.D.) at the clinic and used the IP address of that clinic, perhaps we could send a message requesting copyright permission directly from the clinic itself rather than trying to locate this user? If it turns out he was using an internet pub/bar instead or his home ISP, this approach would not really be worth trying to go any further. Just one more approach to try and solve the problem and keep these valuable images, particularly because of the volume of content (and the uniqueness of the images) would IMHO be worth while to follow through. --Rob Horning 06:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Honest answer - I'd be a little tempted to take a look. However, and with some relief, the answer is that the data won't be in the CU log as the contributions were quite a while ago. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Question: Was a decision made here? If we're going to delete them, it can be a little project of mine. If not then... ?? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:43, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

I am planning to start uploading some images into the Radiation_Oncology textbook that I am working on. As part of that, I need to educate myself on copyright issues dealing with medical images, patient permissions etc. It may be that some of images in the Diagnostic Radiology textbook might be salvageable. I probably won't get to it until September however, if it can wait that long. In terms of the user IP, I can see if I can find out where Barsathi was based; if some academic institution in the U.S., it probably wouldn't be too hard to contact their radiology department and ask for a permission Tdvorak 11:15, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I hate to have to play Mr. Copyright Hawk™ again, but we really shouldn't be messing around with this sort of thing. This user was around for a couple months, had a couple hundred contributions, was not welcomed or mentored by anyone, and then disappeared. It's absolutely a "shame on us" situation, but that's water under the bridge, and we should not presume to know the intentions, understanding of copyright, or anything else about a user that had no real interaction with other Wikibookians. Creating free textbooks is a noble goal, and we should never resort to cheating because we can only do our harm to our common passion when we do that. We need to Delete them, without prejudice (including our common wish to assume the user understood our mission and the meaning of the GDFL), and in a cool and businesslike manner. Sorry to poop on the picnic, but if we care about the credibility of our project, we need to act responsibly... even if it means damaging a book for lack of images. --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 18:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Johnny: copyright violations aren't just a violation of our local policy, they represent a violation of applicable copyright laws. These images have been tagged as copyvios, appropriate warnings have been sent to the appropriate places, and now it is time for us to act. I'm not sure what kind of decision needs to be made on that matter, but dragging our feet doesnt do anybody any good. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:27, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

They're not (necessarily) copyvios, they're just unlicensed images. Sadly, I don't think there's a decision to be made here: it's a "we gotta do what we gotta do" situation. We can't be sure whether or not they were intended for free use (here and elsewhere... free to us means free to everybody!), so we need to do the right thing and delete them. If the user ever shows up again, we can easily undelete (especially with the nifty new "view deleted edits" thingie). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 22:52, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I suppose the same hard line will be taken with the vastly more numerous unlicensed images in the FHSST Physics textbooks then? Webaware ^talk 23:09, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to say that any "hard lines" need to be taken. We should take all possible steps to try and solve the problem before we do any deletions. However, unlicensed images do pose a problem that we really can't ignore. It's like saying that vandals should be allowed to run rampant just because it would be a shame to block them. You give a few warnings, you try to do what you can to help, but when all that fails we have to delete them. I wouldn't say that anybody is in any hurry either, but we can't ignore it forever. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:13, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Given that Tdvorak has offered to look into this in September, I don't see that there should be any rush to delete the diagnostic radiology images until then. The FHSST Physics images, however, pose a much greater challenge as they really are vastly more numerous and could be seen as core to those books. In many instances, they could be replaced by something off Commons, or easily rebuilt from scratch. However, there is simply a large number of them. I don't even know if they are all from the same user (User:Riaan - no email registered, BTW), as I've only sampled a few here and there. Is there some way of tracking down the original uploader and getting them to license their images? Webaware ^talk 23:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Riaan is one of the people whom I had jumped head over heals trying to get in touch with. I had found the group's website who had worked on the FHSST book, asked who Riaan was, got an old email address (which I can't even find right now) and sent out a friedly email asking for some clarification. I never received a reply. I'll see if i can retrace my steps and find that email address again so somebody else can try.

If User:Tdvorak wants to look at the images, that's fine with me. What we can't do is put the issue off forever. I mean, if Tdvorak can't figure it out, we shouldn't just wait for the next person to come along and look at it. I want to give these images every benefit of the doubt, but eventually when all our leads have been exhausted we need to have the resolve to actually delete them. So long as people are willing to take that final step when the time comes, i'm in no hurry. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:23, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the overall sentiment of this thread. I suspect at the end of the day they will end up needing to be deleted. However, from a medical perspective, they are a nice collection of images, so it would be nice to salvage them. If I haven't made any headway by end of September, I propose they get deleted. Tdvorak 20:44, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

• ← reset tabs

OK, that settles it for me, then. If Tdvorak can't do anything to salvage these images, they get deleted. Please note, WK, that I'm also not in favour of dragging things out forever, but I do want to ensure we've had a crack at saving the images in a book before deleting them.

w.r.t. FHSST, let us know when you've exhausted your search for Riaan, and I'll make it a project to start replacing these images. As I mentioned above, many would be easy to replace with something from Commons or otherwise rebuilt in Inkscape or Visio (being more scientific than artistic, there won't be any problem with recreations). Webaware ^talk 00:44, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I did some more research on it, i'm going to post a message about it below. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:41, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I have looked a bit further into the Barsathi issue. There are 2 IP addresses that seem to be associated with edits that Barsathi did, 67.121.73.11 (AT&T) and 24.16.87.188 (Comcast). Unfortunately, they belong to ISPs (as opposed to being registered to a university, a hospital, or something I could contact about the images). I don't see a way to get any more info about the image origin, short of going to AT&T and/or Comcast and trying to find out who those IPs belonged to at the time of those edits. I am not sure that's a realistic endeavor, at least for me. So as far as I am concerned, those images are not easily salvageable. Sorry :( Tdvorak 02:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

I actually deleted them a long while ago. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 14:43, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Mike.lifeguard: My understanding was that I will look into it, and if I can't find any more, we delete them. It would have been nice if you had noted in this thread (which you started) that you deleted them already, and saved me the work of looking it this. Tdvorak 15:57, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

Hum

I am extremely suspicious about a new user created today. They already have an account here so the new one is odd and a message was left on my user page about an open proxy (which I acted on cross wiki - there was evidence to that effect anyway). I've mailed to user asking but could I ask that an eye be kept on this with CU if necessary (look in the log!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:14, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Thought more - blocked it, I'll apologise later! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Dealt with --Herby ^{talk thyme} 17:09, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Can you rename me?

Can I be renamed from Skunkmaster to Skunkmaster III? If you can do this, please contact me via my user page. Thanks.

Skunkmaster 04:06, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Local username blocklist

Anyone know anything about mw:Extension:Username Blacklist? Doesn't seem to be implemented here. I was advised of it during a rush of vandal account creations elsewhere and thought I would at least ask. Not sure it is relevant but (I understand a bugzilla req is needed) when/if we do need it, it would take a while to get. Views welcome, regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:53, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

It is installed here, in fact there is already some usernames blacklisted. --darklama 13:14, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - got a link so I can get an idea what it is like (I obviously didn't get the search right!). Is it regexp kind of list? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes its a regexp list. --darklama 13:27, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Local spam list

Webaware deleted a spam page & I thought I might as well see how the format works so I started our MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist off. Looking at the page he deleted quite a few sites were .cn ones - what are the odds of us wanting a link to any sites there? If folk agree I'll (or someone else) can just put that into the page - may save some work in future? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:20, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

However - I didn't get it right (I saved a page with one of the sites in) so someone brighter than me might take a look!? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I just tested this in my sandbox using the spamlink starting with D, and the blacklist appears to be working just fine. It only kicks in when you save a page edit, not during a preview. Webaware ^talk 10:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

OK it doesn't prevent saving as plain text but it does prevent a full link. I suggest that if we see any spam turn up it is probably worth adding it if we have the time. There has been a spate of uk radio station stuff around recently which I'll add when I next see it (back as a spam fighter again!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:49, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, it only looks for "http://" and what's in the blacklist. Fair enough, I'd say. Webaware ^talk 10:52, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this could help at all, but there's some similar expression work done here that could maybe be browsed for good ideas. The formatting styles are different of course but some of the most-commonly blocked sites (these are for ads, used with Adblock in Firefox specifically) could be added to our list. -withinfocus 12:47, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

strange users

A few new usernames have popped up, I'm going to CU them in a bit, but I want to get more thoughts on it:

• User:POLICE IN COPENHAGEN CHASING DRINK-DRIVERS AT 130 KMH
• User:This user account was created from an open proxy hell yeah
• User:PICK ME UP, I'M A DRUGS DEALER FROM NEBRASKA
• User:HELP ME, HELP ME, I'M MORBIDLY OBESE

And there are a few others. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Blocked the previous ones (Webaware's) and CU. The IP was used on Meta in the last week to attack me among others. I'll watch for the Ip in the log with interest! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:32, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, your name was brought up in this round of attacks too. I blocked all these current ones, along with the source IP for a week. I didn't check if it was an open proxy, the block may need to be revised if that is the case. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:35, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll do some research later! --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Cross wiki vandal source to some minor degree so far. If I were that way inclined I'd bet it will come up again but there is no info that it is an open proxy and no record on en wp which is odd. Thanks WK, regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and extended blocks on the two IP addresses, one was a http proxy and the other a tor proxy. --darklama 14:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• reset

Thanks Darklama - gone blocking - where did you get the info (email if that is better?) Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

CAT:SPEEDY

For some reason, the print version for blender 3D is listed as a candidate for speedy deletion, but I can't find a tag on the article (if I did, I'd delete it because there's no way that the PV is getting deleted unless there's a good reason for it). Am I missing something, is the server slow, or is there something more serious wrong? Mattb112885 (talk to me) 17:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

My first thought on the matter is that the blender print version transcludes a page that is being nominated for speedy. I'll skim through it and see if that's true. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I went into the page and made a small edit. This updated the cache, and the page is no longer in the deletion category. Large pages like print versions that transclude lots of other pages don't tend to recache very often. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Policy on the hoof - spam!

Err - just realised it might be an idea to share "my" policy on this!

As we have our own blacklist it seemed daft not to use it but maybe views on "how" we do it could be good! My own rule of thumb for ages as far as the bot/index pages are concerned is that it is quicker to block the IP for a week than place a tag. If you then find it has been blocked once before I then make it a month - it's simple anyway.

For the blacklist I take the view that we may as well save unnecessary deleting and editing by prevention so

1. New pages solely with links. Block for a week first and add the url to the blacklist.
2. Mass insertion of links (usually the porn spammers). Block for a week first and add the url to the blacklist.
3. Any other link insertions can happily be for discussion and should be - they are quite rare.

To add to that - if I come across the links on other wikis for the first two categories I have added & will add them to ours (& vice versa). I realise there is a cross wiki blacklist on meta but my experience of them has shown them as less than helpful and it may well be that some links are appropriate to some wikis - the fm radio one I've blacklisted has a "legitimate" page on en wp. However someone has created numerous spamm pages on other wikis with this link in - I do not see that we are likely to require the link and the very act of creating mass pages makes me sure that is was an attempt to spam wikis. Just my 0.02 and views welcome, cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:32, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

I guess I take a more hard-lined stance on this then you do, Herby. People who make accounts with the intention of spamming only shouldn't be blocked temporarily. Accounts that are created with the sole intention of spam or vandalism should be blocked forever. With IP's it's a separate matter, but an IP that is solely used for spam should be treated very harshly. The occasional link or two is fine, sometimes there really is no line between a relevant link and a link that can be constituted as "spam". A few isolated incidents is worthy of discussion, but mass-spam should be blocked and deleted. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:32, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry - I was referring to IPs on shorter initial blocks. Any form of abuse of Wikibooks by a registered user is always indef for me. In practice named spammers are quite rare. When I do find any I would block the underlying IP for a period anyway. This is really about either many links in one page or many pages with the same link in. Hope that is clearer. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:04, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Just to add to this I guess if anyone does add to the list then some sort of narrative about why might be useful in time to come of if the entry is challenged? Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:49, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

What, like "they SPAMed Wikibooks?" Perhaps just a comment with date listed, so that it's easy to clean out the old ones. Webaware ^talk 07:11, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

At least half of me agrees here. However - without question - the most persistently argumentative folk across wikis are those who have their links removed (never mind blacklisted)! The fm radio included has already been challenged on Meta. A warning, that's all --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I reckon that linkspam should be blacklisted. EL in general, no, but what is apparently linkspam, yes. Given that, what more is there to say in the commentary than that it was linkspam? If the spammer objects and can give good cause for adding their link to a module, then they are more than welcome to present a case for removing the link from the blacklist. Webaware ^talk 10:53, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure (& the blindingly obvious ones are just that) - of course the only problem is that we don't have any policy on, or definition of, external links the are acceptable/unacceptable (and I've just remembered something else I really must do that will take a lot of time because - if it starts - this argument is endless!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:03, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• ← reset tabs

I reckon that linkspam shares something with porn - you know it when you see it. Having identified something as linkspam, not just an EL, what more needs to be said when blacklisting it?

As for a policy on EL, good idea! Can you resurrect that proposal you had kicking around a while back, so that we can kick it around some more?

For the record, I'm in favour of sensibly using EL, and you could even say that I have an "inclusionist" approach to EL. Still, I think it would be good to set down some guidelines on EL so that we can prevent some modules and books turning into web directories. Webaware ^talk 03:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

User:Riaan and FHSST books

I've done some more research on the FHSST books. For those who don't know, none of the images in these books are properly tagged, so about 200 of them are being slated for deletion. Here is what I have learned:

1. These books are part of a collection being run by http://www.fhsst.org
2. The FHSST books are being actively updated from that website, and are not being maintained by that organization here on wikibooks.
3. User:Riaan appears to have been a previous contributor to the FHSST organization, but I can't really find any records of him being a current contributor there.
4. All the FHSST books are released under the GFDL. I assume that all images from these books are so released.
5. From what I have seen, the images in the books hosted here on Wikibooks are the same as those in FHSST books on other websites. If they are the same images, then the ones here fall under the same license (GFDL). I have not checked all images.

From these points, it seems safe to me to consider all these images as {{GFDL-presumed}}. If we do that, then we don't need to delete them. It seems as good a conclusion as any. What do other people think? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:46, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

So the books are being actively updated elsewhere and their wikified versions are not being maintained here? Why are we keeping these at all when there's another source that contains all these books' content and more? -withinfocus 19:13, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Abandoned by the original contributors, but still being read and lightly maintained, it appears. I'll make a start on retagging these images soon - help from others welcome! Webaware ^talk 23:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

To Withinfocus: It's never really been a policy here to delete things that are duplicated elsewhere or even to delete things that are better represented elsewhere. Just because somebody else is hosting a divergent fork of that material doesnt mean that it isn't worthwhile for us to keep it here.

To Webaware: I have a bot that could do all the retagging automatically, if I could get a list of all the images. If you think it would be easier, set me up with a list (or find a way to generate the list automatically) and I'll take care of the rest. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I can get a list using Special:Prefixindex, but need to check each one on the list, so... might as well do it manually anyway. Won't take long. Webaware ^talk 03:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Done, with a bit of help from darklama. I also did Image:Fhsst tasswitch.png, which was the only contribution by User:Den and is allegedly used on FHSST Physics Electronics:active circuit elements, but I think the page is broken and the image is too - perhaps someone else can check this out. Webaware ^talk 04:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I know that's not the practice but I think it should be a consideration in many circumstances. We're here to teach people things, not keep our own content just because. If there's a better source of information for what I want to know, I'd like to use that instead. If these books truly are forks and have different principles and goals I think it's quite appropriate to keep them here, but if it's just an old stale copy that people could still work on at the updated location then I wouldn't want to host the content here. I'm interested in offering the best services possible. -withinfocus 13:56, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

That certainly is a fair consideration, and i'm sorry if i dismissed it too quickly. If it was determined that the FHSST books are better represented elsewhere, maybe we could merge our FHSST books into some of the other science textbooks we have. We wouldnt need to delete anything, and our other books would benefit from the rapid influx of new materials. Of course, that's if we determine that these FHSST books are just stale old forks of other books. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Labeling them as FHSST might be the real problem since that is a dedicated project elsewhere. I definitely agree that other books could use this content, and if someone wanted to place these things inside generic books on physics and mathematics for instance I think those books would be greatly improved. I just don't want people wasting effort in the wrong places. -withinfocus 13:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Template:No license

Should this template be protected (and whatever it is that redirects to this template... Nld or something?)? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 17:18, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I protected them both, I can't really see a reason why most users would even want to modify these templates. Plus, considering the important roles they play (alerting admins about possible copyvios) I dont think people should really play with them anyway. I've protected them now, but if people think they shouldnt be protected we can unprotect them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:15, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks:Administrators' discussion index

Unless I've made a mess of it (perfectly possibly - I have elsewhere) admins and any others interested may care to place this page on their watch list. There is a sense in which it allows you to keep track of individual discussion on pages rather than merely see that the page has been edited since you last looked. It is running & working well on Commons & Meta and I found it very useful (it runs from the toolserver). This "index" can be a communal one and other than adding pages or tweaks that I may have missed I suggest it stays that way. However it is perfectly possible to create your own index of whatever sort you want (I have my own monitoring talk pages on Commons & will set up the same here). Let me know if anyone needs help/clarification (it will be blank until the next update anyway). Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:24, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be working ok - I notice dupes on the deletion page bit but something like that is happening with some Commons pages at present so it could be the toolserver (I'll ask Bryan if it persists). My "talk" one is working if folks want to see an example of customisation. If you see any pages that should be on there feel free to edit or let me know. Comments welcome - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Crosswiki help with smaller wikis

There are a couple of issues here. There is the Single Login one which one day will hopefully arrive and I guess it might be an idea to have your own user name on any likely Wikis (I did this for quite a few sometime ago).

However there is also the issue that we are well aware of here - the desirability of getting Checkuser rights for some people and the difficulty of getting 25 affirmative votes. It really has helped us to control the less pleasant form of vandalism here. I have been working with others (our "own" Az1568 & particularly Lar) to try and use vandalism information across small wikis to help protect them by sharing some information. Quite a few of my recent blocks are as a result of vadalism information on other Wikis together with the relevant CU info. The more projects that have the rights the more information that is available to all of us to control the vandalism.

While it is possible to ask stewards to carry out these checks where there are no local checkusers they are requently busy and there has been a backlog for a while now (I have a feeling that - because they are not involved in the particular wiki concerned - they do not see the trouble that is caused to local admins trying to block the vandals. As such two well established users on en wikiquote are seeking these rights at present supported by Larry & I as well as the community. If you were thinking of registering your username on Wikiquote anyway (or already have done) you may wish to look at their requests while you are there - it could well help us by discovering vandal IPs in advance of them getting here!

Thanks & regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:24, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Nasi Goring

Can some one please place a recipe for Nasi Goring an Indonesian fried rice dish in the cookbook section.

Regards

Steve

Do you have a recipe for it, or know where we can find one? I've never heard of this particular dish before, but if you have a recipe that we can use, we would love to have it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:35, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I've added it to Cookbook:Requested Recipes. WK, get thee to an Indonesian restaurant and order one (it's their version of fried rice, often served with a fried egg). Webaware ^talk 00:59, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Main Page

Hi,

I would like to propose a new design for the main page. Whilst I am generally happy with the main page as is, I feel that it doesn't quite focus on the actual work that we do here at wikibooks, I do not feel that it displays enough books. For this reason I have designed a layout that shows many more books, dealing with each more fairly by way of time whilst not extending the length of the page a great deal.

The page I have designed can be found here here.

Please take a look at my proposed design and let me know what you think.

Thanks Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 18:41, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it's an improvement, but I think it'd be even better if the left and right sections were reversed. IMHO --Jomegat 00:53, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

What is the distinction between the four books listed under their names and the six listed below? It all seems to be alphabetical and there seems to be a chance that a single book could be listed in both places. (In fact this was the case when I first looked at it.) -- xixtas ^talk 02:51, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

There isnt really any distinction between the four books and the other six, i completely agree with you there that the distinction is unneccesary. I have removed it. For the updated version see here. Is this any better? Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 16:47, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I like this redesign, in general. I think that the top section, including the discussion of what wikibooks is all about, and the list of departments, needs to be made smaller. We could do that by having only a "Browse" link that points to the WB:CCO, and then 5 links to the various department pages. I don't think we need a million links to the DDC and LOC systems, each bookshelf, wikilearn, wikiprofessional, etc because all these things are listed at WB:CCO. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:59, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, the bookshelves should remain listed on the main page, since it is the first page visitors see. I don't have a problem though with making it all more compact, so long as they remain listed. --darklama 17:31, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of how you feel about the bookshelves, I think you can agree that the Browse stuff (Dewey decimal system, etc) is not very useful for most people, at least not useful enough to be front page material -- Kowey 13:17, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

With the exception of the departments and categories link, I agree that the browser links can go. I think both the departments and categories link can be included on the front page in some other way. --darklama 13:56, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

It's either or, because the "departments" are just lists of bookshelves. We either need links to the departments (which I prefer) or links to the bookshelves, but we most certainly do not need any redundancy on an already-crowded main page. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:13, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

What we do here at Wikibooks is to create textbooks for people to read and study. The completed textbooks must take pride of place if readers are to be engaged. I would like to see a front page that has a brief intro at the top, a display of our best books next and the bookshelves at the bottom. RobinH 09:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with RobinH almost entirely. The books are of predominant importance: We should not be wasting a lot of space (at least not space at the top of the page) for the bookshelves because the books are more important then the shelves are. A very large link to Wikibooks:Browse, and more vignettes of books on the main page would serve us much better then a million links to all sorts of other pages first, and then a list of a few books second. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:14, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I disagree again. Moving those links to the bottom of the page, inconveniences anyone who doesn't want to read about the books, because they will have to scroll down first. I think the bookshelf links could be made rather small, so its not taking up too much space at the top or perhaps we could use some creative css styling. For example rollover menus, or copying from "My Preferences" in the monobook skin, use a tab interface, with a "welcome" tab and a tab for each bookshelf that would include a list of featured books from that bookshelf. --darklama 12:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

A tabbed interface is not a bad idea at all. On a related note, i've been trying to think of a way to make a very prominent "Welcome!" link for new users that will point to the necessary help and information pages. Having a tab for new users will allow us to give them all the information they need, right on the main page. Having a similar tab for organization will allow us to have more then just the bookshelves listed on the main page, especially once we start getting a number of other indexing pages made up and available. Darklama, if you want to set up a test prototype of this idea, we can probably discuss it more completely. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 12:37, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Anyone whose interested can take a look at this example for a general idea of a tabbed interface. I'm still working on what I want to put in each tab area, but this should at least work as a prototype of what I'm talking about. --darklama 01:37, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Thats quite impressive. It would answer any misgivings that I might have if the top level tab contained the featured books, with perhaps a line or two saying "welcome to wikibooks", "this is the free textbook site where anyone can contribute".RobinH 10:12, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

What about something like this: prototype. Using the code from Darklama i have put together this prototype. The colours are irrelevant and can be changed. What do we think about the layout and content, i have tried to address all of the issues raised here, removing the bookshelf lists to make way for a per department bookmark and featured book listings. Urbane (Talk) (Contributions) 11:14, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

I like that very much. However, I would like to propose a suggestion, and I would like to state up front that this isn't a criticism: Since only one "page" of featured books can be shown on the main page at a time it is a little counter-productive. For instance, in one click you can view the other book categories on the main page, but with a single click to the side-bar you could also view all the featured books at once at WB:FB. However, this idea might be a really good one to help us overhaul all the old "department pages". If, instead of the clumsy bookshelf templates (that I would like to delete anyway) the department pages contained links to all the shelves and also the featured book templates from those shelves? If the department pages were nicer, we could post much bigger links to the departments from the main page.

Either way, the new main page prototypes are looking very nice, all efforts are appreciated, and I certainly don't want to poo-poo any ideas just yet. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:48, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Adding an entire textbook to my personal watchlist

Is there currently a way to add an entire textbook module to my watchlist? I know I can add each and every page manually, but this can be time consuming for a large book with hundreds of pages. Now that there's a way to edit the raw list, is there perhaps some kind of wildcard notation that will allow a book (e.g. Foo) and all its subpages (e.g. Foo/Bar, Foo/Index, ... Foo/*) that exist now and in the future to be included on the watchlist? Brim 20:22, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

If the book's pages are all in one category, you can see recent changes on the whole category. It means keeping a link somewhere for looking at these recent changes, separately from just looking at your watchlist, however. e.g. Special:Recentchangeslinked/Category:Radiation Oncology. Webaware ^talk 01:20, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge there is no such wildcard for the new watchlist. Because of the way the link tables are stored in the database, I would be surprised if such a wildcard would even be possible. However, you could ask the developers for it at bugzilla if you think it should be added. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:29, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Uploading files

I have some .pdfs that I'm using as references. They were emailed to me and I can't find them on the interwebs. Can I upload them to WB and have a link to them in my sources section? – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 02:27, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Would they be suitable for Wikisource? -- xixtas ^talk 02:53, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

I suspect they're copywritten, actually. I'll just have to find the URL. Nevermind. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 03:15, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Blender Error

In blender tutorial noob to pro/make a model it refers to clicking on ctrl-x is this not a mistake?

Yes, this probably is an error. Luckily, this is a wiki, and you have the power to fix it. Just click the "edit this page" tab at the top, fix the error, and click "Save Page". It's the beautiful thing about wikis, everybody has the power to help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:19, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Muggles Guide

The Muggles guide has received almost 500 edits in the last 7 days. Many of these are from well meaning anonymous users. Some are of low quality although there has been less vandalism than expected. I expect the trend will continue for the next couple weeks. Anyone wanting to help keep an eye on things can click this link. Recent Changes to the Muggles Guide. --xixtas ^talk 01:45, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate anyone's help with this matter. I figure the book will be very popular for the next month or so and hope I can count on the normal RC patrollers to catch junk. If you have a question about any content additions or organizational edits, feel free to contact me on my talk page and I'll look into each request. Thanks. -withinfocus 02:58, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Furthermore, if anyone spots new pages in the namespace if they could please tell me. Things might get placed in the wrong areas or without the correct formatting and I'd like to fix them as soon as possible so that a good example is set for new users coming across the pages. Thanks a lot. -withinfocus 12:43, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

FaceBook Stype Apps In Wikipedia

I have been watching facebook and their new implementation of external applciation into the closed facebook community. I was wondering of Wikipedia was going to do something similar? The benefit to the particpants is to get access within the Wikipedia community to apps that may facilitate activities common to the community. They could also be entertaining in some way to the community. What do you think about this? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kevinfff (talk • contribs) .

In a word: unlikely. At least there is unlikely to be anything for all users. Groups of like-minded users may use additional tools, such as custom javascripts or something similar. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:36, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Board election results

To all interested parties:

Board election results are in, results can be seen at meta. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 16:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Question

Hi,

I read where storing students' work is important, of course. Can anyone advise the best method when using computer labs, not a classroom?

Thanks.

Katherine

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "storing students' work". What work, their contributions to Wikibooks? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 18:16, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair Use Images

I read an interesting blog post today about Fair Use, written by Stephen Bain. He is quick to point out that he is "not a lawyer", so I would take anything he says with a certain grain of salt. However, even if he is half right, he does raise some issues. The link is here.

It does raise the interesting point that a fair use image really can't get away just with a basic template that says "this is fair use". Instead, each individual image requires a specific rationale for why the image is being used, and why it is being considered as fair use. Without proper rationale, a "fair use" image here is basically just a copyvio that is hidden behind a template.

I dont want to excite anybody or anything, but the issue has come up several times before (mostly in discussing other issues) that many images here that are tagged as being fair use really don't qualify as such. I really have to question, out of all our "fair use" images, how many of them are properly attributed and rationalized? And for that matter, if we remove all the "fair use" images that don't really qualify, how many legitimate fair-use images do we have left? It's certainly something that is worth studying. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 00:14, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

This is actually something that the policy page addresses. I think we should enact this policy, before things get too far out of hand. I notice that Mattb112885 is already looking at this. Webaware ^talk 00:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm more in favor of rejecting that proposal and instead moving to have Wikibooks:Media accepted. Which IMO does a better job. --darklama 00:55, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Looks good, although not as explicit as the current fair use proposal. Either we need to be more explicit in the media proposal, or the fair use proposal is required also. Webaware ^talk 03:11, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

More explicit how? --darklama 17:39, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I had this in mind, where the Fair Use policy proposal details what sorts of images might qualify for inclusion (given that they meet the requirements stated in the Media policy proposal). Also, I like this bit giving examples of what definitely doesn't meet policy. The challenge, of course, is to not bloat the very nice, succinct Media policy proposal... Webaware ^talk 07:24, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

The media proposal is succinct, and has the added advantage that we won't need to also accept the Wikibooks:Image use policy, which is stagnant. I would accept either option. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't necessarily understand why you are hostile against nearly every sort of policy proposal that I've ever written, any additions I make to existing policies, and also insist on removing some aspects of a policy that have stood the test of time and are a key part of the policy. I have to point out that the very explicit points of what kinds of media are considered acceptable, as pointed out by Webaware, are critical for some people to really understand fair use. This isn't bloat, as I don't see the number of acceptable applications of fair use expanding substantially over the next few months or years. If this sort of policy is very vague about what kinds of content are acceptable or unacceptable, we get into the situation where some individuals will try to push fair-use right to the extreme limit... as is happening on Wikipedia. This is a curse that we currently don't have on Wikibooks... particularly when there are broad categories of images like modern art works which simply don't even appear on Wikibooks.

I should note here that I'm not against "merging" the two policies... as the media policy does have a slightly broader scope to it. Although this does get into the debate about general purpose policies that are all encompassing or much smaller scope policies that address one specific topic in a clear fashion. My experience is that people are less likely to modify broad policy doucments... mainly through intimidation. Particularly once the policy has become something that is officially sanctioned. This doesn't seem to be nearly so much of a problem for policies of smaller scope, as attitudes can change over time... allowing the "next generation" of users to add their own input into the process. --Rob Horning 12:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Rob, the more explicit the requirements for fair use, the better off we are, because people WILL try to bend the rules, and we can always amend the policy (it should be designed to be easily amendable) should an unexpected new rationale come up. Maybe we should make specific Fair Use templates and just put them on the list of license tags (though I know, fair use is not a license) instead of just the generic fair use tag. Just take the generic tag out, that way they would HAVE to justify their use by one of the biolerplate templates, and it would be very likely to be unacceptable if it didn't fit one of those categories. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 13:07, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Darklama has a particular pension for brevity, and I wouldn't take that to be some sort of direct offense against you, Rob. Darklama won't say in 10 words what can be said in 2, and he wont use 5 policy pages to say what can possibly be crammed into 1. I do think that the Media policy page does reproduce many of the major concepts of the fair use policy proposal, while at the same time incorporating the Wikibooks:Image use policy that has received absolutely zero attention from anybody. The idea that we would need to write an additional policy to cover non-image uploads (pdfs, audio/video, etc) almost boggles the mind. To that effect I think that a convergent policy about all media uploads is preferrable to the alternative. Now, whether we need to also integrate the Wikibooks:Fair use policy and Wikibooks:Copyrights is a different issue entirely, and I would prefer to keep the issues of media and copyrights separate. I do think that the fair use policy, once we decide on it, should be merged into the Wikibooks:Copyrights page, instead of being it's own page. That's just a small personal preference, however. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:22, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I rather agree with the idea of merging the Fair Use and Copyrights policies, as they are related. The Media policy is good as it stands, without taking the complexities of Fair Use and Copyrights into account - which is why I thought that they should either be merged or stay separate. I now think that Whiteknight has hit the nail on the head (which he has a penchant for, and may later see him awarded a pension), that the Image use and Media policies are one topic, and that the Fair Use and Copyrights policies are one topic. Webaware ^talk 14:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Whiteknigth has it right about me preferring to use less words to say the same thing. The idea of having to have a different policy for each type of upload, was what drove me to try create one general proposed policy to cover any kind of media that might be uploaded. I like the idea of covering fair use in the copyright policy. For example I think the part dealing with copying text as a form of fair use, makes sense in the copyright policy. I've added examples from the fair use proposal to the media proposal, but I don't really like results and think perhaps that might make more sense in the copyright policy as well. The copyright policy could link to the media proposal for further details. --darklama 15:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Is O.R. allowed in Wikibooks?

My images in the commons that I was using in a wikibook have been deleted by a group of Commons administrators that say that "not a single wikimedia project allows Original Research, and those images were Original Research". I do not deny that they were O.R., but we were using them in the Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter. I thought it was acceptable, since any book writen by someone may contain O.R., (given that a book is not an encyclopedia, one can express knowledge recently discovered by himself?). I have checked the wikibooks policy page and nothing there regarding O.R., can you enlighten me?

For e.g. I am writing a book in English to learn Kapampangan, which has never been done before, not even on paper. This is entirely Original Research from the editor's part (mostly my part), and Wikibooks was the ideal place for this collaborative work. I thought it was OK to put some O.R. there. And then I infered that other O.R. was also alright, unless we have specified which type of O.R. is allowed?

Please le me know the official O.R. policy for wikibooks. --Lgriot 13:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

The answer, in short, is "no". However, we do have plenty of exceptions and allowances when it comes to certain things. If I may ask, what were the images about? What about these images are considered to be OR? If the images are an integral part of the book, I would be inclined to say they are perfectly acceptable. Do me a favor: Upload a few of the images here and post a link to them so that we can check them out.

As to the Kapampangan book, that seems perfectly fine to me. You are teaching the material in a way that has never been done before (which is fine) but you aren't creating new subjects (which would be bad). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm a bit more inclined to say that original research does have some place here, but we need to make sure things don't go off the deep end. Anything with analysis takes a certain amount of opinion and personal insight and the Muggles' Guide has some analysis like this, however we make it quite balanced since this is a collaborative environment. The above-referenced images were obviously not easily-editable here (since they're images) and I personally might want to disagree with some of the assumptions made in those images. I think it's best to leave these deleted and work on what they represented in text form (already somewhat contained in the Guide's pages) which we can all improve upon. I think the concept of original research changes to something else once enough people become involved and we need to make sure collaboration can continue; the images did not promote this idea and stood off to the side as the "bad" original research in my mind. -withinfocus 17:29, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

If there's a discussion page about this on commons, please drop a link... some projects do indeed allow OR, but if I understand where you're going, this probably wouldn't qualify as valid OR on Wikiversity, either.

OTOH, as a commons admin who has dealt with this issue in the past, I should point out that "fan art" as an entire class is actually forbidden on commons, since they are considered derivative works (so if, for example, you made a drawing of some creature that's featured in a Harry Potter book, you would actually need J.K. Rawling to release it under a free licence, since the artwork is derivative on her creation). --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 19:30, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

On Whiteknight's request I have uploaded Image:HP Wizarding Schools possible locations.PNG. There was a text with it explaining the reasoning behing each coloured area, with quotations from the books, but that is now lost, since they didn't only delete the image, but also the whole history for the image and its description (at least I can't retrieve the history, maybe there is a way that I don't know), and I didn't keep a copy of my text, I had assumed that, whatever happened, the history would be preserved. As you can see, there is no denying that it is Original Research, but it is certainly not fan art. This is research in English literature, on one of the most influential book of our time. It helps visualising/understanding the books' classification of Europe's wizarding cultures. Some people may disagree with the assumptions, and then contact me to discuss a new version. Or even remove its links in the Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter and any other place where it may be referenced, but delete the original source file and apparently also its history, that is a bit overkill to me. I would never make someone's work totally unretrievable. SB_Johnny, the discussion is over, unfortunately, but here is the link to the votes: [1] --Lgriot 21:24, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

What you uploaded here really is an interesting concept. It's not pure speculation, especially not if you have quotes and evidence to back up your assertions. It does also encourage readers to think about the books, not only as a fantasy, but also as being grounded to some degree in the real world. Plus, drawing a map like this really helps to ensure that readers really think about the descriptions in the text, not just skim past them. I am inclined to say that images of this sort, if properly supported, should be allowed to stay. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:16, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your support. I'll try to rewrite the text and quotes + facts from the book that were backing my assumptions. If the authors of the the muggles' guide want this image in their book, or want a different version with less speculation, we can discuss and I can work on it. --Lgriot 22:34, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth (& with a Commons "hat" as well) this does not bother me. I looked at the content and the deletion discussion when I first saw this discussion and I'm not that sure I agree with the Commons decision. I see no real issues with these contributions - cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 08:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The page that image was used on is here. Please continue this image's discussion there if you can as this is now a content issue. I'm not wild about a non-easily-editable image being used on the page but if the research behind it is solid enough then I figure that's fine. -withinfocus 14:14, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

LaTeX convertor

I have created a small program which converts wiki markup into LaTeX. To use it, copy the code here into a text file titled Wiki2LaTeX.java, and run the following commands:

 cd "/path/to/Wiki2LaTeX.java"
 javac Wiki2LaTeX.java
 java Wiki2LaTeX --title="The Book's Title" --genall

--hagindaz 02:17, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't commented sooner. This looks like a great program, and I'm sorry that it hasn't generated more excitement. I'm going to take a better look at the code (because I dont know much about LaTeX), and hopefully I can start using this in my own projects. If I could figure out a way to do it in javascript... --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 14:31, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, maybe I should start writing reports in a wiki and use this to convert to a printable file ;). Of course I wont but I should, since I'm having to twist an awful lot of arms to get people to give me permission to install microsoft equation editor on the work computers... >_<. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 00:52, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Geometry for elementary school and Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education

These look good to me but they have received no extra nominations for a while to make them featured books - see Wikibooks: Featured books/Nominations. The Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education book is a vast group project that covers this field in depth. RobinH 16:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I've been interested in promoting these two books for a while now, but a combination of unretracted reservations and a lack of positive support has stopped me from doing it. At this point, if nobody else is going to vote on it, we could just be bold and promote them, assuming that all undefended criticisms are void. I would like to see some more activity on that page, but with so many nominations it is a little bit overwhelming sometimes. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:26, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I hope that raising the issue here might persuade one or two more people to take a look at them and vote at Wikibooks: Featured books/Nominations. If no-one adds a vote over the next couple of weeks I agree with your idea of being bold. RobinH 09:04, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Some issues really are just struck with complete voter apathy. We can say that nobody is objecting to the issue and so consensus would seem to dictate that in the absense of those objections the affirmative position carries the day. However, the system we have been using on that page is more based on discrete votes, and opponents (and people who are simply critical of all deviations from proceedure) will say that we also don't have a strong showing of support on which to make an affirmative action. These cases appear to be lose-lose, and it really will be up to the decision of the person who finally says "okay, this is enough". Two equally good courses of action, in my opinion, are to call these votes in favor of the affirmative (promote them to featured), or else to go into the book and actively improve all problems that were pointed out by the opponents. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 13:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

I just voted like a mad-man, hope others will follow. -withinfocus 16:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Alphabetical classification

I was wondering, in the "alphabetical categorization" pages, is it possible for the subcategories (for example Category:Alphabetical/C) to list their components in alphabetical order? I think they're in the order they were added to the categories right now, which somewhat defeats the purpose (though they ARE correctly organized by first letter). Regards. 76.192.5.108 14:20, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

It is possible, if a book is tagged with the correct identifier. Most books were only put in the major category according to the first letter of the title, not categorized according to the second letter (or additional letters) as well. We are working on it, the category pages that you see now are very recent creations and need alot of work. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 03:59, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the problem yesterday, soon after I read this. --darklama 12:58, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

my watchlist

I created my watchlist to be a redirect to Special:Watchlist. The point is that in firefox, I can type "wb my watchlist" to go directly to it. But it's not working. Help?? -Mike.lifeguard 06:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem is that the redirect goes to a Special: page. Anyone got the deets on this? -Mike.lifeguard 06:27, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Since you use Firefox, why not just bookmark the watchlist and set the key on the bookmark to "wb my watchlist" (or something shorter!) instead? It will work just as you intend, although only from the Firefox instance you create your bookmark on. Webaware ^talk 07:09, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Giving back to the community

I'm new to Wikibooks (or at least the editing side) I've read some of the books a while back, and thought that this was an awesome idea. So now I'm (hoping) to be giving back to the community. I have knowledge with the Gimp, Linux, Networking, and some other things too. I hope i can be of help to everyone. Jarod 00:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jarod, welcome to Wikibooks! I'm sure that the authors of the The GIMP book or any of the numerous linux books would be more than willing to accept your help. Go ahead and be bold, look around, and contribute what you know to the book of your choice, or start your own if you can't find one! Good luck, feel free to ask with any questions. Regards, Mattb112885 (talk to me) 01:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello. I am new here ^.^;;

Hi! ^.^;; It's great to be a part of the Wikiversity community. I'm 16 years old and have been wanting to independently study for a long time. I'm not to keen on visiting libraries, so the internet's the best resource for me. I recently saw an article on Digg mentioning different websites and methods of self-teaching.

I found that MIT has their courses listed online available for download. Although it doesn't come with all of the reading material, and of course not the supplies, it's a great place to start. I'm not qualified for what I plan to major (Mechanical Engineering), so I will be hanging around Algebra and making sure I understand all of the concepts before moving onto Calculus, then Physics I, Physics II (Going to take a while till I get to ME, eh?).

I'm a hobbyist programmer, with a few years experience in C, C++, and BASIC (heheh). I'll most-likely be writing computer programs to demonstrate math concepts learned here at Wikiversity. I prefer game development, but math + algorithsm = faster, smarter code. I feel at home in BASIC syntax, but I don't mind C at all, so if I ever have anything post-worthy, I'll probably demonstrate concepts in both languages.

I hope to be able to contribute as well as learn. Thanks!, Pritchard

PS: Feel free to edit my talk page at will. I'll be hanging around Algebra a lot. If you want help with anything, or have some resources that I can use, I don't mind any messages. TheAdventMaster 22:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Pritchard! The algebra pages need a lot of work, so it's good that you'll be around there. For future reference, sign all comments with four tildes (~~~~). Hoogli 22:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Right. I'll keep an eye out for the discussion pages and see what's missing as I go along. TheAdventMaster 22:56, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi

My name is Fred. I just got a nice welcome from Herbythyme, who said I should introduce myself. I have been editing at wikipaedia and commons for a while. I found the link to a book on botany, it works well with the existing articles wikipedia. I got what I was looking for, a basic overview. I also fixed a bit of code, I knew how because I had made the same mistake. Hope I can help, thanks for the great books, I have downloaded a couple. Thanks to all. Fred 16:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Fred, welcome to Wikibooks. It's good to hear that the efforts to add ELs from Wikipedia to Wikibooks have been useful to you, hopefully stories like our can convince people on Wikipedia not to delete them when we add them. Feel free to contribute wherever you feel comfortable and ask if you have any questions about differences in how we run things from Wikipedia or such things as that. Good luck! Mattb112885 (talk to me) 14:04, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Saluton

I'm pretty new to Wikibooks so I have a few questions. I have finished two e-books on Esperanto and I would like to upload them as .pdf files (.pdfs because there's a lot of formating which I don't want to get lost) to Wikibooks so if somebody could explain me, step by step, how to upload a .pdf file? I've been watching some help pages but I haven't gotten it all clearly so if somebody would be that kind...

Tnx --Vorkalloner 18:20, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi Vorkalloner. First, welcome to Wikibooks, and we're glad you're interested in the project. However, a couple potential problems with your proposition come to mind:

1. Would you also upload an editable version of the books? The purpose of Wikibooks in general is to write them in a format that anyone can edit.
2. Would you be willing to license the text under the GFDL which allows anyone to make any modifications they want and to do what they will with the content, including sell it (with some limitations, such as attribution)?

If the answer to these two is yes, then there would be no problem uploading the PDF version too, just use the Special:Upload tool like you would for a normal image, and then link to the PDF from the editable version. However, if the answer to these is no, Wikibooks is unfortunately probably not the appropriate place for your content. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 14:09, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

What is the best place for an informal bi-lingual or multi-lingual phrase book?

I would like to start an article or book on translating football (soccer) terminology from French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian & German into English. The contents would be aimed at football fans with some prior knowledge of the foreign language, or perhaps language students who are looking for more interesting things to talk about.

I suppose it could be seen as a specialised on-line phrase book. I think the phrases should be organised into topics like training, match commentaries, interviews etc. It is likely to include phrases that have already been used by other people in newspapers and TV and radio broadcasts, and it seems impractical to trace and quote all the sources for each and every sentence. Perhaps only the easily identifiable quotations would need to be credited?

The Wiktionary approach does not really appeal to me as the material would end up being too dispersed and unsuitable for printing out. Also, the translations wanted would be the ones used in the context of football, other meanings would be omitted.

It could include many colloquial and slang usages which would place it outside of a formal educational context. There is no intention to include offensive material though. To call it a text book might be a bit offputting to the intended audience.

I am not myself a language expert so I would like to encourage contributions from as large a number of people as possible including native speakers.

I suppose the main question is - Would this project be more appropriate as a Wikibook or a Wikipedia article? Your comments would be most appreciated! Peter R Runes 19:37, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I think it is, perhaps, on the fringe of what could be acceptable here, but I would definitely be willing to give it a chance. It is more suitable here then it would be on wikipedia, certainly. Books and materials on wikibooks need to be instructional, so instead of being merely a phrasebook, you could include some information about:

1. How to play soccer (football)
2. The history of the sport
3. Some commentary about sporting events and fans

If you can include all these types of information (even without goint into too much depth) and do it with a multi-lingual approach, that would make a perfect book. When you talk about understanding the sport, there is more to it then just the language of different countries. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:41, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I would certainly want to include a good deal of factual material about football, but the language learning element remains the major purpose of the book. To start with I intend to focus on French, with the other languages as parallel projects coming along later. I would like to avoid the limitations of trying to satisfy some predefined educational syllabus though, as that would be too restricting. If used in a classroom environment at all I expect it would be something where people are taking a class for pleasure as in adult education. If the material were organised into small chapters these might also be used as free-standing work sheets of extra material in more conventional lessons.

You said it may be "on the fringe of what is acceptable" in Wikibooks. It would be helpful if you could expand a bit on any aspects which you think may be a problem. Thanks again! Peter R Runes 18:24, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks really deals with material that is instructional, especially material that is geared towards a particular course of study. For instance, textbooks that are associated with classes. A multilingual phrasebook, which in it's simplest form would be simply a listing of phrases and translations, really isn't "instructional", and so that kind of project doesnt belong here. It's not just about presenting information, it's about actually teaching that information to the audience. That's why i'm saying that if you want to make a Wikibook, that you will need to include material that is instructional, and not just have a phrasebook. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 21:38, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Having just read the What Is Wikibooks page, I think what I want to do can probably be called an instructional guide. The material would be organised to be worked through in sequence, with the level of difficulty increasing as you progress and there would be exercises and suggestions for class activities. I am working on a preliminary book plan, which should be ready in a few weeks. When this is ready for comments, I will contact you again hopefully to get some feedback from writers of current foreign language Wikibooks. Peter R Runes 23:00, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Writing my first Wiki Book

Hi,

I am currently writing a book "A Managers Guide to Service Oriented Architecture" and I think it can be a WikiBook. I authore two other books in the last 7 years, but they were both published by conventional publishers. I think it would be cool to write a WikiBook.

If there are any guidelines on authoring WikiBooks, please feel to point me in the right direction.

Thanks and best regards Atul

What you are talking about certainly does sound like Wikibooks material. If you have authored other books before, then you should get up to speed here very quickly. Some of the basic guidelines we have here are: WB:WIW (describes the kinds of materials that we allow here), WB:NPOV (our neutral-point-of-view policy), and WB:OR (our prohibition on original research). There are lots of other things to read eventually, but these are the most important. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

New Contributing Author Intro - lmskiver

Hello All,

This is my first go at this... and I was compelled to become invovled after completing the last book in the Harry Potter series, where I would like to contribute more to the analyses and understanding of the big picture of series. This is due in part to my periodic obsession with the books (coinciding with their release dates, hmmm?), but most recently to the fantastic finale' of the series. No spoiling here... just profound admiration for an author that managed to take all of the themes and significant details of all of the books and weave such a beautiful tapestry.

On a more personal note, as a Christian, I also find the series fascinating... but not from the traditional critical and dismissive view. Rather, I recognize motifs that are opportunities to begin discussion of these beliefs in conjunction with the HP series. While obviously opposed to occult practices in real life, I liken Rowlings works to the famed Inklings that included J.R.R.Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, each of whom dealt with Christian themes in their works.

I acknowledge that it was probably not Rowling's direct attempt to write a series with any particular religion in view (No! Not even Wicca!). Still, I commend the author for recognizing that our core beleifs and outward behavior are significant in defining ourselves, and matter to others and the world around us.

Viewpoints aside... I am a both a High School Engineering & Science Instructor (Teacher sounds so banal)and a Graduate student at Michigan Technological University in the M.S. Applied Science Ed. program. My current subjects taught are Physics & Engineering.

So one might wonder where reading/writing comes in? The answer is a seed planted in my own education. In 12th grade, I had an Advanced Placement English Instructor who also taught at our local university. She ignited my love of reading and writing. Thus,as an Undergrad at Eastern Mich. Univ., I naturally incorporated an English Language & Literature minor with my science major, rather than the traditional math.

I've never had the opportunity to teach English since there is a shortage of teachers in my major areas. So, I must satisfy my enjoyment and desires for reading/writing as a hobby, which I am able to do via postings, discussion, and the occassional correction of information (this usually limited to commenting or changing pages that include "bad science"), which is to say writings that perpetuate myths, misunderstandings, or misinformation about science/engineering content.

While writing this, it just occured to me that it might also be fun to analyze the Science of Harry Potter. Perhaps in Mythbusters fashion... the floo network & port key travel... Busted? Confirmed? or Plausible?

Send comments or questions to lmskiver@hotmail.com

Hello lmskiver, welcome to wikibooks! Our own Harry Potter book is a very popular one, and all the extra help it can get (especially now that the last book has just been released) is always appreciated. We have lots of other subjects that need work too, among them are the English, Science, and Engineering bookshelves. We actually have a large number of engineers and scientists (or engineering and science students) here, but many of them choose not to write about the sciences. I can't blame them, who wants to think about science all night, after you've done science work all day? Anyway, help is always appreciated here, no matter what you want to write about. Don't hesitate to ask if you need anything. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:47, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Ubuntu (Linux) Guide

Hi; in the interest of full disclosure: I'm a new user here, pretty much completely new, to mediawiki as well; i'm still very much learning the controls in editing & etc.

Had a look for any ubuntu linux related material here & since i couldnt find anything, thought it might be a good idea to start a guidebook.

I know there is some linux material here, though some of it is getting rather dated (did anyone notive that you have "knowing knoppix" as a featured book & it appears to deal with version 3.3 (current version is 5.1+)?).

My reasoning is basically that ubuntu is a particularly popular linux distro these days, especially if u count all of its many derivatives, & it's particularly popular as a desktop OS & with less-experienced users (i probably fit into that last category: i'm not a total n00b @ linux, but at best i'm a semi-enlightened user; i have at this point some experience with both linux in general & ubuntu in particular, but nothing hard-core or bleeding edge); so it would be nice to have a good, free/gfdl, definitive guide; written in a friendly, accessible style & using all the avaiable resources in wiki & the ubuntu community. Something like "ubuntu for dummies" but gpfdl'ed & more comprehensive. I was thinking a 3-level approach; basic, intermediate, & advanced/expert; by subject & on interconnected pages maybe? the muggles guide to harry potter does something similar i think, tho much of the deeper material was as yet unwritten when i skimmed thru a part of the book..

In any case, i'm looking for anything helpful: advice, contributed material, people interested in working on it, etc.

unfortunately, the amount of time i have available for the project on an ongoing basids is somewhat limited, tho i should be around enough to keep tabs & connect with anyone else interested in working on it.

also: @ what point is it appropriate for the project to be listed in which places on wikibooks & elsewhere?

@ this point, it's just barely the beginning of a shell; hopefully soon it will be rather more...  :)

--Dr. know 09:22, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

ugh, it's 5:20 am here & i've no idea why the formatting isn't working right >< if anyone would like to fix the above ^ & maybe tell me what i did wrong(?), i would be most grateful...

--Dr. know 09:28, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi Dr. know, your formatting looks OK to me, don't stress it :). I think that an ubuntu guide would be a great addition; unfortunately any attempt at creating a guide to something that changes as fast as linux (or anything related to computers, for that matter) is in danger of getting somewhat outdated unless the people maintaining it are very active, but that doesn't mean that it isn't still useful; after all, I'm not sure how much of the stuff that's in the Knowing Knoppix book has actually changed, I'm sure at least some of the information in there is still valid, and anyone who knows something about the subject can feel free to update it (if it is hopelessly outdated, then it probably shouldn't be featured, but I don't know enough about the subject to make that call). I myself am planning on installing Ubuntu on my box before school starts. I think that your idea for a project would be a great addition to wikibooks.

As for advice, there are the links in the welcome template, and I would also encourage you to look at Whiteknight's New Book Guide to see some ideas for formatting and naming conventions and things of that sort. If you want to know how to do something specific, you are more than welcome to ask any of us who've been here a while (for example, [[text]] gives you a link to the book called "text", and [[text/chapter]] links to the "chapter" page in the "text" book.) Good luck! Once I learn something about Ubuntu myself I may be able to help writing, we'll see how time goes when school starts. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 16:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Free Citizens Moral Guide

I am a Computer Engineering PhD Student, at the top Engineering college in my country, Free Software project developer for over a decade, with an interest in History and Religion. I was raised a Roman Catholic and instructed in the Scientific Method, but feel we all need a moral compass to guide us in our modern life.

Rationale

I wish to write a self help guide using a collaborative effort. I aim to speak about how to live life in a modern world. I aim to collaboratively create an universal moral guide for all free thinking people in the modern world. Free thinking people of the free culture movement and others who think like us.

You can see a rough draft of some of my thoughts at my blog here: REFIT: Refitting our World. Bit by bit.

I believe a Wiki provides the best way to organically write such a document. I am thinking about dividing the guide in two parts: static and dynamic.

The static part would have personal thoughts, of me or others, signed with our name/alias, on the matter and be protected from changes from others to prevent vandalism and distortion of message. It would serve as a template to the collaborative effort.

The dynamic part would start with the static templates of our personal thoughts and then, collaboratively and in public, organically elaborate on then, to enhance the quality and global reach, converge to a compromise and optimum solution. Just like in Wikipedia.

I believe this effort is not dissimilar to efforts already in this site such as Developing A Universal Religion. But our organic approaches are different. I go for a bottom-up approach, that goes for top-down approach.

I request your thoughts on how I should proceed to achieve this.

Kind regards, VascoCosta 10:48, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

This project sounds very interesting. Keep in mind that the overarching aim must be to create a textbook. Your blog, though interesting, doesn't seem very structured or even focused on morality. The best way to start is probably to create an outline of the book's anticipated structure (chapters, sections, pages, headings) and then start writing - the outline will help you focus your thinking and writing. A bottom-up approach tends to stray, and may not end up fitting in well here. I'm not sure that we could protect your opinion sections, but they may have a place in your book. I may be interested in contributing, depending on what you come up with to start with. If you have other questions you can contact me directly on my talk page, or reply here and you may get responses from other Wikibookians as well. – Mike.lifeguard | ^talk 17:00, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the welcome

Well, I ended up on Wikibooks from a link on Wikiversity. I am mainly active on Wikinews and if there are useful contributions I can make on Wikibooks it'd likely be related to anything you have on journalism.

So, thanks for the welcome, but right now I can't see where I could be useful on this project. --Brianmc 11:56, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Well if you change your mind then we're more than willing to accept the help you would provide, and if not, then Wikinews and Wikiversity are noble causes as well, so best of luck to you in that :). Mattb112885 (talk to me) 01:33, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Need help starting a book

I have been going through the Wikibook reference material trying to figure our how to get started on a book on Bahai Education. This seems like as good a place to make a beginning. I have a 62 page, 11 chapter text, but need help. Any help would be appreciated. I am a novice at this. Rod 20:01, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Greetings from a Novice

Good morning to all. I am John Mark Rucio. I am currently 15 years old and I LOVE to contribute to Wikibooks and its sister projects. As a teen, my life is full of excitements. I especially am happy when I know that I had been a great help to other people. So, I spend my free time (and I have a lot of it) contributing articles to Wikipedia (and its sister projects). I am particularly interested in computers and in drafting. I also like algebra and a little chemistry. I hope I may be a big help to you guys. Thank you and more power to you all! 25member 01:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi 25member, welcome to Wikibooks! If you're into computers, drafting, or math, you've come to the right place, because we have a lot of books on those topics (well, computers and math we do, not so much drafting as far as I know, though such a book would be useful), but many don't have as much information as may be desired. Anything you could add to what's here would be a great help to both us and anyone who reads the content, or if you want to start your own book that's fine too! It sounds like you already know a lot about how wikis work, but if you have any questions about wikibooks in particular (it's a little different from Wikipedia due to a different project focus), please don't hesitate to ask. Regards. Mattb112885 (talk to me) 01:37, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Consolidated TOC

The book I'm working on now contains several chapters, each on a different wikipage. Wiki automatically produces a TOC at the top of each page, which I find quite useful.

But just as useful would be a detailed TOC for the entire book. I've compiled a chapter-level TOC at the top of the book, and that is not too difficult to maintain. But I have also tried to maintain a consolidated detailed TOC manually, by cutting and pasting from the TOCs generated at the top of each chapter page.

The more I work on the book, the more inconvenient it is to maintain that consolidated, detailed TOC. I find myself resisting editing changes that I'd really like to make because in the back of my mind I know I'll also have to update the consolidated TOC.

In addition, the numbering starts over again for each page, and you don't have hyperlinks to the actual material.

Is there any way to have the wiki software generate a consolidated TOC for all the pages of the book?

Thanks. --Lindsay 14:38, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, this problem will be fixed by the wikicode when you make a print version in any case (since all pages will be essentially on one page then).

(Why is this book in userspace still?) --SB_Johnny | ^PA! 21:49, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know what a print version is. How do you make one?

To answer your question, I'm a novice in the field I'm writing about, and I want some experienced people to vet what I've written before I place it in public. This is partially to save embarrassment, partially because I wouldn't want to mislead anyone, and mostly because I feel it would be arrogant to submit a book on a subject in which I'm a novice. Unfortunately, I can't wait until I'm an expert because by then I won't remember what seemed important to me back when I was a novice. So I'm taking my time preparing the initial version of the material, and when that draft is ready, I'll submit it to some friends for comments, which I'll use to make corrections. Once we've been through that process, I'll be ready to make it public and open it for merciless editing and redistribution at will. Hope that makes sense. --Lindsay 00:11, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Print versions are made by treating pages like templates, like this page I made in your userspace (you'll have to edit that page to get the trick of it, but there's a reason main-namespace pages are called "modules") :-).

As far as not wanting to put it out there until it's ready to "publish", I think you might be missing one of the great things about wikis: you can show the book to your friends and they can edit it themselves if they catch something, and someone with serious expertise might jump in and help too. Wikibooks are never really done, and aren't "really" published until they're printed out and distributed, or moved off wikibooks to a non-wiki website or even a CD (since as long as it's here, it's not a stable version). Reasearching your subject while writing about it is par for the course here.--SB_Johnny | ^PA! 00:30, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

First off, I've started several books on which I was a novice or worse. It's nothing to be ashamed of, if anything it's good that you are a visionary, an architect laying the ground work for future authors to build on.

Second, you don't want to try and micromanage your book too much. If you try to maintain a detailed TOC by hand, you are going to waste more and more effort on the TOC, and less effort on actually writing new content. I suggest (although this certainly isn't cannonical) that you only include the major chapters in your TOC, not all the million subheadings. Let the software automatically create the chapter TOCs on the chapter pages, so that you dont need to do the work yourself. Keep in mind that this just a wiki, not a printed book or anything. If you eventually want to go through and make a PDF version of your book or even find a way to have it printed, you can go through and put all the subheadings in your TOC.

Another way to look at it, is that all the ideas in one chapter should be related. If you want to have multiple entries in your TOC, you would likely be better off dividing those ideas into multiple chapters as well. If everything is inter-related enough, you shouldnt need to have multiple links to different parts of it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:16, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Whiteknight. I'll try to make the book public soon.

The reason for the consolidated TOC is that I advise readers, in How to use this book, to make decisions on how to proceed at any given time by using the TOC to review the list of training objectives. That may involve nearly daily reviews over a long period. Without a consolidated TOC, that's a lot of clicking every time they want to do a review. I know because I'm doing it myself as part of the training I'm doing with my dogs.

I appreciated the advice from SB_Johnny on using the template notation to build the print version. Then I wondered, how do you tell readers the Print Version exists? So I looked at a number of books under the Featured Books menu item and could not find any consistent way of building the print version page nor of informing readers that it exists. I suspect that occurs either because some of the authors are more skillful at using Wiki metadata than others, or because the available mechanisms have evolved and some of the Print Versions were written before the current mechanisms were available. Could you recommend a particular book for me to use as a model for building a Print Version page?

Thanks again! --Lindsay 16:12, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Print versions are one of those things are are frequently being refined. The quality of a print version can be partly due to the wiki-skill of the editor, but also in large part due to the tools and templates available. For instance, many of the templates that I use when I create a print version simply didnt exist a year ago. However, standardization is slowly moving forward. I've written automated scripts that can create a print version, so has User:Derbeth. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about. Whenever you want to create a print version, you can let me know and I can do it for you. If you want to get practice in doing it yourself, let me know and I can help you with that too. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

New Wikibook - Hemp Products

I've started a new wikibook that teaches methods, processes and equipment used to create the thousands of products derived from Hemp Hemp products.

I'd like help getting in on to the correct bookshelf and basically moving it forward within the parameters of Wikibook. I have invited a number of contributors and hope to see the effect of this soon.

Thank you.

cauri 11:33, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

For a book about how to create things from hemp, I would suggest the Wikibooks:How-tos bookshelf. That will be a good place to start, and if we need to move it later we can find a better place. What is the title of your new book? --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:26, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I did not find an apropriate place in the How to's so I have put it on the misc. bookshelf for now. Hemp products cauri 14:20, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I am newly active

I am interested in work on almost everything. --Laleena 17:31, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

"Almost everything"? Good, because that's what we need help with! Welcome to wikibooks, let us know what kinds of projects you want to work on so we can help point you in the right direction. Also, if you need any help, or if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:24, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm new!

And basically I've really been doing is editing the English in the Croatian books. xD I came on here because there was a link from Wikipedia in the Croatian Language section, so I took a look around and I really liked it. This site is great.

I don't know much of what to put here. I don't really have any questions. I'm pretty good with editing English though! I like doing it too, so it works.

Oh I do have one question. Is there anyone that's going to be working on the Croatian book?

--Mijanova 17:59, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Hello Mijanova, welcome to wikibooks! Many of our books, such as Croatian are relatively small. These books tend not to have any regular authors. So if you are going to be doing work on it, you might be the only one for a while. On one hand it's peaceful and it's good to be able to get a lot of work done without haveing to argue with other users. On the other hand, it can get a little lonely. Good luck with your project, and don't hesitate to ask if you have questions or if you just need some help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 22:22, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Another newcomer - Subprojects question

Howdy. Yes, I'm new as well. (Not to wikis so much as having a WikiBooks account, though I've contributed briefly and anonymously to a few books herein the past - still trying to get a handle on the culture at this specific wiki.)

Got drawn in by darklama during a #wikiversity discussion on the Middle School Extension project, which led to the creation of Wikibooks:Subprojects in a "be bold!" attempt to understand the way things work here. The IRC discussion is documented here on SLP and in links from that section, notably Talk:Middle School Extension. Pointers on where to go with this much appreciated! Mchua 21:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Physics Textbook

Just popped up today, and the introduction sounds more like a text on social aspects of energy rather than a textbook on physics. All links are currently aimed at the root level, not at sub-pages. Webaware ^talk 07:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the links, listed it on the new template, and tagged the book with all the necessary categories. There is already talk of a merger, so my work might have been in vain. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery

I am working on a text on the subject of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery; discussing all the what-is-and-nots I have invited other wikiusers to assist on this project as well as those I have solicited in participation for my offline project in advocacy for the recovery movement If you don't know what this is and want to know than maybe anything I have put online anywhere may be helpful to you; and I do hope it is. Also I have noticed that since my original rant online blogging, that many colleges and universities are now recognizing this recovery concept and that various courses such as Clinical Psychology, Abnormal Psychology and Deviant Behavior Psychology are now mentioning it in their ciriculum, and I would love to claim credit for this, though I can not. --Recoverypsychology 03:39, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Well regardless of the exact situation, it's always good to have experts in the field show up at our humble project. Are you starting your book here or somewhere else? We would love to help out, if you are doing it here on this server. Let us know what you need. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 02:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I am trying to create a wikibook, so far it is just a module. I will learn more about the wiki process as I go along; hopefully there will be more wikiusers to add in to it...outside of here (I have a link to my website on my userpage) I am working on a project, called the Council for Recovery Psychology...It starts with the idea that the current mental health concept is now focusing on recovery (instead of just pathology), it is based on my premise that if behavior is anything that an organism does, and abnormal psychology and courses on the subset of science in psychology are focused on symptomology or pathology; and the things that an organism (or a person with a psychiatric condition) does is regarded as behavior; than would not the recovery; normalization; and/or return to healthy productive living not also considered a behavior, than such a behavior should be studied as a behavioral science. So if I have not lost you, in what I am saying, I can then tell you about my textbook; Recovery Psychology...This would be, could be or will be my doctoral thesis depending on what life will unfold, I am conducting research for my paper Recovery as a Behavior Science: Academic Instructors Acknowledgement into the Emergence of the Recovery Movement which is an intensive gruelling and tedious review of literature, academic course syllabi, interviews with collegiate instructors and a survey for college students (social work, psychology etc.) and behavioral health/mental health workers...Plus I can add the ideals, concepts and assertions that I am making. There may be some personal opinionation or recovery advocate bias (being written from this prespective) in the Recovery Psychology text, and since I thought a recovery psychology wikibook would be great, here I am. However being that Recovery is so far only officially recognised as a philosophical movement, with the actual profession (or science) being that of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (a social work profession that I am employed in), I figure the wikibook I should start should be about PsyR and Recovery...the evidence I am pushing for (Aimed at the APA and other Expert Authorities) that Recovery is a science, and it should be a subscience of Psychology (the way Positive Psychology is just a repackage of CBT) is another fight altogether; but I feel my wiki-experince will assist as I both learn and teach. Sorry for rambling!--Recoverypsychology 03:39, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Multiple books, Single Topic

In case of a disagreement on a issue. Can multiple books be written around a single topic. I am new here so I am questioning. BalanceRestored 11:28, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

In general, I believe disagreement alone isn't suppose to be enough to create another book on a subject. Your suppose to use Wikibooks:Decision making to resolve disagreements, which consists basically of discussion and compromise. However multiple books on a subject are allowed, if the intended audience, scope, organization, methodology, etc. are different. Basically forking a book due to disagreement is discouraged, because it can fragment efforts instead of everyone working together on a single book. Discussion and compromise are suppose to help make books better. --darklama 13:11, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

In general, I would say that no you should not create two books just because of a disagreement among editors. According to our NPOV policy, a book should not be biased and all points of view should be presented in every book.

That said, however, I also want to point out that in some instances we do encourage people to write multiple books on a single topic. This typically happens when the books are written for a different target audience. Consider the books Algebra I in Simple English and Algebra. Both books are written about the same kinds of materials, but the presentation and the target audience are different.

It really depends on what the disagreements are about. In general, you need to show both sides of the story, but you can tell the story differently to different audiences. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 17:00, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

There isn't yet a decission on that topic on Wikibooks, the best approach is described on the draft for Wikibooks:Forking policy. I think its consensual that disagreement alone isn't suppose to be enough to create another book (there must some valid points from each part not to work on a single work together, this can be hard to quantify and qualify).

For more examples on multiple books around the same subject take a look also at C++, one thing to keep in mind is that the books will "probably" last more that the people working on them so future Wikibookians can select to merge them later, this makes me be more open to forks than most (this has lead to that policy, a forced merge and countless discussions and confusions), my view is that by enabling (not making it the "solution") will result in a non conflicted easy way out of disputes, it enables people to continue to provide content without being engaged/dragged into discussion of structure, format and scope. There are now, and sadly increasing, number of Wikibookians writing books under their own user space just as a way to avoid this kind of problem. --Panic 19:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)