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Latest comment: 16 years ago by Derbeth in topic Wikibooks:Manual of Style is being constantly violated

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Welcome to the General reading room. On this page, Wikibookians are free to talk about the Wikibooks project, and all sorts of related subjects.

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Collections

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I noticed the new add-on to create collections. Those are indeed, great and I hope will be very useful. I did create a book using the tool but the "Create new chapter" button is not working. Could anyone help?-RavichandarMy coffee shop 16:41, 25 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

The "Create new chapters" button doesn't create a new page, or even add a page into the outline. It simply creates a chapter break between pages in the final PDF. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:10, 5 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Oh, ok. Thanks :-) -RavichandarMy coffee shop 12:18, 13 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

US History Editor

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

How Do I engage a Rogue Editor whom doesn't register and won't discuss why he's changing a book?

As you all might now I am in the midst of a big rewrite of the book "US History." Our reason for writing was to come much closer to college board requirements about what an AP history text would cover. Thus organization and a succinct narrative with no irrelevant tangants is important to us. I have had a 205 IP address repeatedably alter material, often including tangents and altering carefully thought out organization.

Now I am not possessive of this book. I welcome and REALLY want collaboration. But a book should be true to its purpose, should it not?? and that books' purpose is to succinctly cover college board material. I'm honestly not sure whether the user is a troll. I've assumed he isn't and haven't undone any changes and altered as little as possible. However today, he inserted the 'marco polo game' on the page about early explorers (if you check the logs you can see it). I'm pretty dense but doesn't that seem like a joke?

It would be nice if the 205 user who's been recently editing this book, reads this notice. if you are, PLEASE talk with me! It is courteous and normal to discuss any upcoming changes in a discussion page. I have done so with this project. you can also click on my name and leave me a note on my talk page.

Should I fail to get timely notice from this edior, WB community. What should I do? I've inserted a note to the editor on the page he's been altering. --JoliePA (talk) 13:38, 5 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

I'll take a look at the logs later tonight and see what's going on. Good work on the US History book, by the way! --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 19:15, 5 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

If there is a problem happening on a page it is best to provide a link to the page in this Reading Room so that other editors can have a look. RobinH (talk) 10:08, 13 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikibooks:Collections Preface

Latest comment: 16 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

I started working on this page today, which is going to be like a forward or preface that we can attach to our printed and published books to explain where the book comes from, who we are, and how to get involved. It's probably a little verbose (I have that tendency), so any help to make it shorter, better, more informative, etc would be appreciated.

There isn't an automatic way yet, but if you're going to be creating collections for print and distribution, a little page like this in the front as an explanation would be a big help. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 20:08, 5 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

We can't. Its barred on the license we use. Anyway some books already have a similar text or author/works and license attribution, a shorter version of what is drafted could be useful but the medium is different and printed versions will be most useful to readers not people interested in contributing. --Panic (talk) 23:52, 5 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
No, we definitely cant call this an invariant section. In fact, I don't even like the idea of requiring this page to be in all printed books, although I think it's a nice suggestion. The fact is that our books (at least initially) are going to be incomplete and occasionally incorrect when compared to traditional textbooks, and having a little bit of an explanation of this phenomina up front will help to keep readers from getting angry at us. It's better to be honest about our shortcomings, and invite new members to come help us fix them. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:05, 14 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
In how far should this text differ from {{Print version cover}} and {{Print version cover text}}? I wonder whether they should differ at all. --Martin Kraus (talk) 10:15, 26 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikibooks:Bots

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Wikibooks:Bots is now a policy. It was a pretty non-controversial proposal that mostly documented the things that we already do here now, so nothing changes because of this. This proposal purposefully errs on the side of being "too little", and we as a community can update it piecemeal as issues become apparent. There was a branch proposed and opened for voting, although it was more controversial and was raising some concerns. We can certainly continue discussion on the branch, and use points from it to update the new Bots policy as needed. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Stable Versions Extension

Latest comment: 16 years ago21 comments11 people in discussion

For those who haven't noticed, the Stable Versions extension has been installed tonight. The extension, which we discussed a while back, allows people to review each revision of a page and mark it's quality. Good revisions of the page will be shown by default to anonymous users, instead of the most recently edited version. This is generally going to help us by not showing things like vandalism to school students by default. The inability to protect children from this kind of vandalism is one of the biggest complaints about Wikibooks I've heard from teachers in the past. This extension should help to alleviate that.

This extension is very very configurable. We've selected one particular configuration, but there are a lot of options we could change over time. As you use this extension, take notes and generate some good feedback. As a community we can figure out what works and what doesn't work, and make the necessary changes over time to suit our style of work. In fact, if we decide later that we hate this extension, we could even have it removed (but I doubt that's going to happen!). --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 23:12, 14 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

I have had a play around with this tool but don't really understand the use of it. Wouldn't a vandal just review his own vandalism and say that it's top quality? The drop-down list gives options like 'accuracy', 'spelling and grammar', etc. but you can only choose one option. Maybe someone who understands it can write a nice guide at some point once any bugs have been ironed out.--ЗAНИA talk 00:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
No, they wouldn't have access to the interface. Help:Flagged revisions will be expanded as we get more experience with things. As well note that this configuration isn't final - we should make a point to review this in a month or so and decide whether any changes are needed.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 00:11, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

User Flags

In response to Xania's question above, the flaggedrevs extension comes with two new user flags: +editor and +reviewer. The exact uses of each are still being determined, but here is what we do know now:

  1. You can't review a page until you are a +editor or +reviewer. Bureaucrats can set these flags. Admins can also set both flags (We're probably going to need to add this to WB:RFA to select users who are trusted enough to get these.
  2. New page patrolling is affected by this extension. Patrollers cannot patrol pages in reviewable namespaces (main, wikijunior, cookbook, image, subject, template), which basically makes the patroller flag worthless I think. In place of simply marking a page "patrolled", our +editors and +reviewers can rate the page based on various criteria (spelling, grammar, structure, etc). This is more descriptive.
  3. We don't know yet what exactly the differences are between +editor and +reviewer. Darklama thinks (and we need to do a little testing) that +reviewers can mark pages higher then +editors can. So, a +editor can say that a page is at least good, while a +reviewer can say that a page is great, or something like that. If that's the case, +reviewers will probably be related to the featured books program, being able to mark books and pages which are of a quality worthy of being featured.

We're working on it, I'll post more info as I get it. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 01:30, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

I know I've been essentially absent from here for a few months but I am quite excited to see this installed and usable. The Muggles' Guide will love this. -withinfocus 03:40, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply


I've also been playing with the new tool, and confess that I don't particularly like that it substitutes the patrolling feature (that verifies only validity) to a quality rating system, even more if the poor or objectionable content is just left as un-reviewed. The patrol did serve its purpose and function, and conflicts of edits were made in a plain field were every Wikibookians could make changes as needed. In this case quality of the content will be rated (or at least stated on the review ), and so, to preserve equality, granting the new tool will need to be subjected to lower standards, so anyone can "review" content. Ultimately due to the structure of Wikibooks not every Wikibookian will be capable of reviewing every type of subject let alone share a similar aesthetic taste (this is not a problem within projects like Wikipedia).
How much does the new tools affect the footprint of the project on Wikimedia servers? (due to the stable versions, reviews, etc)
There is still a problem with the patrolled status of pages on the new restricted namespaces, they aren't being tagged as patrolled (even after review), and removed from the new page list (not big problem now since there aren't patrollers anymore), but they are never the less patrol logs and the infrastructure created around patrolling that will need rewrite.
Another problem is that even if reviews are logged there isn't the same infrastructure to check for un-reviewed pages...
At first inspection the usefulness of the new tools seems to be restricted only to reviewers being able to establish feature quality of pages (and this only directed to the future possibility to print featured works, this also has limitations since we aren't dealing with articles as Wikipedia does but with specific projects were asserting that the hole project has is pages in a feature state seem not to be available), any other benefits that would exist if the scope of the reviews could be restricted inside projects (for instance attributing the editor status to contributors with a set number of edits to it isn't possible at the moment) will be absent.
The new tools are new and more time should be given to test them out, but speaking of the use I will give them, it will be district from the patroller function, since there is no way to know what pages were patrolled, I will halt patrolling functions (except that vandalism is in evidence) to dedicate time to qualify and add reviews (stable versions) to the works I've been contributing so anonymous readers aren't given a warning about the probability that the content quality and validity hasn't been checked.
I think that it is of major importance to address the issue of how to verify the patrolled status of pages, even more than the makeshift solution to do quality checking that the tools permit (ultimately to be fair the tool has to be made accessible to all and that will also reduce any quality checking ability that they pretend to validate, possible solutions were advanced so to improve this effect, like DL advanced the idea to not base the quality status of a page on the last review but on the sum of average of all reviews made to it, but implantation will certainly not be kick if even possible).
I dread the backlog this will ultimately generate, if a solution to the patrol status isn't found and vandalism increases we should seriously rethink if this new setup is of any real benefit to us at this state. Without being restricted by projects and a real substitute to patrolling, I very skeptic about any benefit to the previous way of operating. --Panic (talk) 04:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Reviewed pages are not considered patrolled (and removed from the new page lists), so that is fixed, but due to the quality assurance needed, processing pages takes more time and requires a bit more work to be done. --Panic (talk) 02:56, 16 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
We have created another barrier for anonymous Wikibookians, considering that other than the main contributors, most productive edits comes from anonymous users, I think this is a big problem... --Panic (talk) 18:46, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

RC Changes

I assume that the new red exclamation points in the RC log (!) is related to the new review feature. Can anyone explain why some edits get one, and other's don't? I have been unable to detect a pattern. --Jomegat (talk) 04:22, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

It seems so, if you take in consideration the namespace there will be a pattern any page on the main namespace not reviewed seems to have the mark. (user and talk space aren't reviewable but seems to still being patrollable) --Panic (talk) 04:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
That derives from the patrolled edits which are the basis for the flagged revisions. A red exclamation mark means that that diff is not patrolled yet. -- heuler06 (talk) 12:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

For dummies like me...

Uh, how do you mark a page as reviewed/etc.? Also, do we need to separately add this to admins and 'crats, or does this "come with the package" for admin+ usergroups? --SB_Johnny | PA! 11:54, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

I had a hard time finding that too, but once I did, it was a plain as the nose on my face. The review buttons are at the bottom of the page, and I believe that's exactly where they belong. Presumably, a user will have reviewed the entire page before marking it as such. --Jomegat (talk) 12:52, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Yes, the intent is that you'll do a review with enough detail for whatever level you're flagging it. So if you only want to flag it at the lowest level for the three criteria that might only take you a minute. But for reviewing it up to the 3rd level, that would take longer. As well, it takes more trust, which is why the Featured level is restricted to admins and reviewers. (And yes, admins can flag to any level without adding other rights).
Also awesome for admins -- hit the protect tab, and then on the first line, click the link to change the page's stabilization. That's a great alternative to page protection (though not used terribly often in any case, it's still cool).  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 17:51, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
Hi, how can I become an "editor+"? I don't see any of those review buttons! Although I have a high number of edits here (about 2000) and am one of the main authors of a wikibook, I'm not as active as some months ago (probably that's the reason why I'm not promoted automatically to "editor+": "Editors are promoted automatically by the system according to a complex set of criteria"). How can I ask an admin for promotion? Thanks! —surueña 19:42, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
I imagine we'll set something up on WB:RFP shortly. For now, I'd say wait a bit. The automatic promotion isn't instantaneous, so you may yet be promoted by the software.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 19:44, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
OK, thanks. Has any editor been already promoted? —surueña 20:07, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
For what I understand only by hand (no automation yet, see User rights log), but the tool documentation seems to state that it will happen, probably some tweak to the config is still needed (you can take a look at it Wikibooks:FlaggedRevs Extension). --Panic (talk) 20:20, 15 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Effect on newcomers to wikibooks

Ever since this extension was first installed here, I've been worried about the possible effect on potential new members of the wikibookian community; but I've held off voicing my concerns because the facility was clearly very far from full deployment, and it seemed possible that my fears would be obviously groundless once the shape of full deployment became clear. Further hints at that shape haven't done anything to make me less worried, though, so I have a couple of specific questions about where all this is going.

  • If, say, a year from now with flaggedrevs fully deployed, a freshly registered wikibookian were to come to a neglected wikibook, would they be unable to make any of their edits appear on the primary copies of the book's pages since there would be no-one around to sight their edits?
  • If a registered user makes an edit that is neither sighted nor reverted, does it count toward the 100 edits after which (with some other conditions) that user automagically becomes an editor?

Pi zero (talk) 13:09, 23 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

With the settings requested for, I think all registered users see the latest unstable revision of a page, regardless of how new they are. Only anonymous users should be effected by the presence of a sighted revision. I don't think the 100 edit count considers whether their revisions were sighted or reverted, which should mean registered users can become editors without another editor being present to sight their revisions. In theory the settings picked should be as non intrusive as possible while requiring a bit of devotion to contributing to Wikibooks to become an editor automatic. --darklama 14:54, 23 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Self-review, and verifiability

I have two questions about the decision-making involved in reviewing articles (as my subject heading suggests). An associated meta-question is, are either or both of these discussed somewhere, and I just haven't seen it?

  • What, if any, are the ethical boundaries of an author reviewing their own work?
Is the fact that editors can't review beyond level 3 the extent of the community's (generic) reservations about the power to review?
  • What is required in practice to achieve page verifiability?
The paragraph about accuracy level 3 at Using Wikibooks is laudably nonprescriptive, but I admire less that I don't really don't know what substance it's asking for. Riffling through some Featured Books leaves me unsure how or even whether they address verifiability. Do the existing Featured Books meet the new standards? Latin? This quantum world? Is the means to verify the pages provided by the books as a whole, let alone by the pages themselves?

Pi zero (talk) 00:43, 5 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

C++ wikibook

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Comments on the C++ Programming wikibook have been moved to C++ Programming/Content#C++ wikibook. --DavidCary (talk) 21:35, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

User:WikimediaNotifier/notifications

Latest comment: 16 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Looks like we have a WMF newsbot here! If we have any news from this community, let's make sure it ends up on Meta so it can be syndicated to other wikis too. --Whiteknight (Page) (Talk) 16:39, 17 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Editors and Reviewers

Latest comment: 16 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I noticed that in Help:Article_validation it says:

"Administrators and Bureaucrats can set flags for people who want and need them. If you want to get editor or reviewer flags for yourself, or if you want to nominate another editor for them, post the request at WB:RFA. The community will discuss the request, and an admin or bureaucrat will act on it in a reasonable amount of time."

However, there is no section in WB:RFA that deals with these applications. I was tempted to add the appropriate sections but there is no help or policy section to describe the roles of editors and reviewers. If this new facility has been documented in Wikibooks could someone tell me where? RobinH (talk) 09:49, 20 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Those sections were added.  — Mike.lifeguard | talk 03:58, 27 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

yet more categories

Latest comment: 16 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I'm considering tagging all the Wikibooks in the Category: Programming languages and also Category: Application software with one of two category tags: either

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a better name I could give those two categories? Is there a better place to ask for help with this project? --DavidCary (talk) 06:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

What if it is OpenSource and Proprietary ? I think you are using mismatched qualifiers...
Personally I don't think you should tag the pages, just add the relevant information to the content. --Panic (talk) 06:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Reply
I don't think identifying programming books by whether they mention open source or proprietary software is particularly useful. Consider that most languages can use and can be used to make open source and proprietary software. Also the category Open Source in theory and typically in practice is reserved for a book. The category should be Category:Open source software. --darklama 13:44, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Reply

Wikibooks:Manual of Style is being constantly violated

Latest comment: 16 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Wikibooks:Manual of Style explains how "cover/title pages" should be organised and what is their relation to book table of contents. The rationale is quite obvious: you cannot have the table of contents on "Book/Contents" page, because this way all backlinks in chapters would lead reader not to the table of contents, but to some other page. As result, when user wants to jump from one to another chapter, they would need to click twice (first to reach the table of contents, then to reach the desired chapter).

And what is the reality? Let's look on some featured books: Spanish, European History, French, FHSST Physics. Plus some other good books: Russian, German, Italian. All are a clear violation of this rule. --Derbeth talk 12:13, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

First of all, the Manual of Style is a guideline rather than a policy. While it should be adhered to, it is not required (there would preferably be a good reason for this).
Secondly, the Manual of Style seems to have been made official in August 2006. The contents pages of all the books mentioned, except Spanish, are older than the guideline.
Thirdly, I couldn't find any discussion of this on the guideline coming into effect on the talk page. That event may not have gotten the publicity it deserved.
That said, I do agree with Derbeth and the guideline that including the contents on the main page is a good idea and would support anyone making the necessary changes. --Swift (talk) 14:40, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
Are there any really good examples around of elegant compliance with the contents-page guideline? I've just visited about a dozen featured books, thinking I might choose between, or even improvise from a synthesis of, several different approaches to compliance — and the only featured book I found that had a contents page at all was US History, which (though I've certainly no complaint with it as a book) didn't strike me as handling its title-and-contents pages particularly gracefully. Pi zero (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

I've made some changes to WB:MOS to try to address this problem to make it clear there are several styles and to make it clear its more of a guide than a requirement:

“ A page should be created with a short summery of the book's scope and intended audience, followed by the book's table of contents. A bulleted list is often used to list chapters of a book, but alternative structure layouts for the table of contents may also be used. This page, the title page or a combination of the two is often the main page of the book. If the table of contents isn't part of the first page of a book, the page created is usually named Book/Contents or Book/TOC where Book is the name of the book. See Control Systems, Spanish and Haskell for some examples. ”

--darklama 18:31, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

Since I don't remember voting for that guideline I've attempted to examine the community approval process but couldn't find one, nor have I seen a tag to indicate it was a proposed text, it was tagged as adopted by Whiteknight 23 August 2006, I've checked that page talk list and all Whiteknight's edits around that date, can anyone provide validation to this community guideline, I'm still a bit peeved on how the bot policy discussion process was shortcuted, if this is a similar case and someone is opposing the existence of the guideline, then it should be tagged as guideline proposal... --Panic (talk) 19:28, 6 December 2008 (UTC)Reply
I've just "demoted" it back to {{proposed}}. Please shout if you know of where this was discussed. --Swift (talk) 03:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

I think darklama got me wrong. What I think is that pages like Book/Contents or Book/TOC should be strictly prohibited. I'll repeat what I've written above: such pages lenghten the distance between book chapters from two to three clicks (normally: click on "< Book" backlink to get to the contents and then link to another chapter; with this defected design: click on the backlink to get to front page, click to link to the contents, click to the link to the chapter); what's worse, in such cases "Book" is a page containing large graphics which take long time to load so the readers suffer even more. I suggest writing explicitly in the manual of style that it is not allowed to place book table of contents on any subpage of the book; however it is allowed to place the front page as a subpage. --Derbeth talk 11:37, 7 December 2008 (UTC)Reply

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