Wikipedia talk:Books

Currency of this page
The facts presented in this page are current. The page has been updated to reflect current functionality. Adding a "historical" template to imply that it does not is wholly false and mistaken. Please present your evidence for obsolete statements in this page here. Thank you. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:00, 25 March 2020 (UTC) [edited for mistaken remark 12:53, 25 March 2020 (UTC)]


 * What?/ Revision as of 09:31, March 18, 2020 (edit) (undo) 37.121.224.58. frame|center|Fig. 1: First click on the "Create a book" link in the left margin. (Maybe you have to open the "Print/export" box first.)-- Moxy 🍁 10:50, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Not quite: this by me restored everything that was needed and was the last edit before yours. But OK I did not directly delete the history template, just selectively left it off the restore, so I apologise for my over-reaction and have edited that out of my post. Turning to the image you quote, that is not used here. I presume you mean its use at Help:Books; Yes, that does need some revision to reflect the current state. The create a book option is still present in Template:Nav book tool which is used on the help page and widely linked from other templates. Also, if you go to any page in the Book namespace you will see that various options available in the Book Creator tool are still functioning. It does not help that all Book: pages now bear the same templated untruth about their inactivity, but that only a privileged user can remove the mistake from the template. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:53, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

It's still possible to create books. Only, Wikimedia Foundation has decided to make it harder. Special:Book still exists and works perfectly well as it always did, as long as you use PediaPress' mwlib and not Wikimedia Foundation's broken services. Nemo 16:00, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes you can still create a book but it has to be very very small for PediaPress to work....90 percent of our books dont work because of size thus one of the many reasons why the namespace was put to the side for now.-- Moxy 🍁 17:05, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I've tried a few books on Category:Wikipedia books (community books), like Book:Animals (which ends up being 1200 pages), and I have troubles finding any that fails: can you make an example? mwlib was retired not because it had a high failure rate but because some WMF engineers did not like the way it was installed on the servers, see also wikitech-ambassadors/2014-September/000955.html. It's not like the successors ever had a better success rate on the English Wikipedia. Nemo 18:49, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Our PDF system is back up and running for sometime now. For me Book:Canada simply timesout..as does Book:Australia. As the RFC  mentioned it is simply embarrassing to have something that doesn't work on every page.....or that sends people to a pay site for free information. The real question here should be does it help our readers to send them to a for-profit third-party site that asks for money when we have a free option here that is not limited.-- Moxy 🍁 21:28, 25 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify that? We have had page PDF back for many months now, but what book PDF are you referring to? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 02:25, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * I mean the one page rendering capability. We don't have a book rendering service here anymore...nor should we link to a third party that also does not work for many books. This is all outline at the RFC link you removed all over. Sure your doing right by our readers by removing a link that explains the limitations and the community discussion? -- Moxy 🍁 02:38, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, so if I may now ask, you wrote; "Our [page] PDF system is back up and running for sometime now. For me Book:Canada simply timesout..". Do you mean that you are feeding whole books, like Book:Canada, to it, or just the standalone Book:Canada page? Can you see the problem I have with your remark, yet? 07:17, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Book: Canada timesout after 2 hours Drive....all outlined in the RFC village pump link you removed.-- Moxy 🍁 07:32, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, so you pulled the book via a third-party service, MediaWiki2Latext, but did not at first make that clear. The service has worked well enough in the past for me and for other users. I just tried it with a book it has compiled before, Book:Aircraft wing configurations, and the large book server was busy. The regular server took it but appears not to be making progress. There are lots of reasons a service can go down temporarily. Have you contacted the maintainer via the details given on the input form? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 13:01, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * exactly...why would we lead our readers to this monstrosity in a waste of time.-- Moxy 🍁 23:49, 26 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Then just remove that one link. Nemo 07:14, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * The service is hosted by the WMF and we have a habit of linking to our sibling services. However I cannot speak for them, why don't you ask them why they can be bothered to host a "monstrosity in a waste of time"? &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:11, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Also, Book:Canada works perfectly well with what Special:Book links, i.e. PediaPress. I very much appreciate mediawiki2latex.wmflabs.org and its developer, but it's a third party service of which the project doesn't take responsibility because it's not in the MediaWiki configuration of the English Wikipedia, so its status doesn't determine whether this page is superseded. Nemo 13:34, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Wikipedia books
Template:Wikipedia books has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:22, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

Deletion of book template
Village_pump_(proposals)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § The future of the Book namespace
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § The future of the Book namespace. --Trialpears (talk) 18:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Blanket deletion seems suboptimal
Removing an unneeded namespace seems fine, but I'd like to see any book pages with more than 2 KB of text or 20 edits restored at their subpage here. Wiki is not paper, and there's no reason to delete educational work by contributors. – SJ + 01:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Examples: Antennas, ABBA, Angel, Apple Inc., Aretha, &c. – SJ +  01:10, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * You can currently request that any book be restored for in essence any reason and I would be happy to restore the list above if you want. I'm reluctant to do restorations of a large proportion of books without further discussion though since that seems counter to the RfC decision. I still remain quite meh about that part of the decision, there's essentially no value in the books, but there's just as little reason to delete them after the namespace is gone. --Trialpears (talk) 01:54, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Some of these are lovely. Bach! Please undelete that one to start, I'll see if I can find a top-list.  It's nice to have an example to point to that everyone can see, and it had so many contributors over time.  – SJ +  05:39, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Bach is back! --Trialpears (talk) 12:07, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

A request from the creator of the Book Creator
Hi all, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T339263 in case you can help there. Appreciate your attention! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Reopen page since the concept of a "Wikipedia Book" does still exist
Whether a Wikipedia Book was created using the Book Tool or not, this page needs to be reopened immediately even if the namespace was removed or if the tool is not working. The more general concept of a Wikipedia Book still exists. ModernDaySlavery (talk) 11:58, 21 October 2023 (UTC)