Wikipedia talk:Books/Archive

Saving bug?
My book just got saved to Category:Books instead of Category:Wikipedia:Books. Calliopejen1 (talk) 20:26, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Name?
What is with the hideous „Wikipedia-Book“ name (with the weird quotation (?) marks)? Why not just make it: "Wikipedia-Book"? --Ali'i 21:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * N.B. It appears at the top of Books and in Template:Saved book (which means it appears at the top of every book that is made). Can we change this? --Ali'i 21:36, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, apparantly being done. Mahalo and thanks! --Ali'i 21:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of books
A discussion about new speedy deletion criteria for books is going on at WT:CSD. Your input is appreciated. MER-C 04:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Rename or something...
Right now, WP:BOOKS takes you to WikiProject Books, and WP:Books to Books. I am hatting, but this is a nasty avoidable confusion.--Cerejota (talk) 06:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Wikipedia-Books
There is a discussion on creating a "Wikiproject Wikipedia-Books" at WikiProject_Council/Proposals. I think this would be a worthwhile effort to have, as it would allow a centralized environment to develop community consensus around the Wikipedia-Books. Yes I created it ;)--Cerejota (talk) 08:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Needs detailed explination
I'm confused. What does this feature do, and how does it work? It seems to simply be a feature that creates lists of articles from Wikipedia that have a common subject. If so, why does it need such a complicated GUI at Special:Book? This also begs the question of why this is useful for Wikipedia as an encylopedia, we already have categories and "see also" sections in articles that list related subjects together. --Nezek (talk) 09:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to disable book creation from Special:Book in project space
Currently, all users can create books, in project space and in their userspace, through Special:Book. I propose to disable book creation in project space. The purpose of it seems to create and maintain "community" books, with featured books, etc. But this system can easily be abused, see here, several attack pages, spam pages and nonsense pages have been created like this. Although this also happens with books stored in userspace, what is the purpose of developing and maintaining community books, how does it help to build an encyclopedia, and what is the service for the reader ? Some example books for readers created and maintained by the community is a good thing, we can create them manually or move them from userspace, but keeping the system open will necessarily lead to uncontrollable abuse and waste of resources. Cenarium (talk) 14:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * First of all, the ability to store books is limited to signed in users. Visitors to the site won't be able to store books. I agree that it is easy to create a book and currently some nonsense test books have been and will be created. But 90% of them have only one article. Detecting and deleting such books can easily be done by a bot. Abuse can be handled without much distraction once guidelines and rules for valid books are established. I do not conclude that this feature will "necessarily lead to uncontrollable abuse". This wasn't the case in the German Wikipedia and it won't pose an unsolvable problem here.
 * Regarding the purpose: This tool helps to build and maintain specialized encyclopedias. I think many visitors are happy if they can download existing collections of related articles on a topic. The ability to easily create and maintain good collections could even bring new users to the community (those who otherwise don't feel as if there is anything to left to do for them in wp).

--He!ko (talk) 17:17, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I meant registered users. But why allowing to save them in project space ? Books that are entirely user-created are made for userspace. Those in project space should be thoroughly checked as they are given as examples to readers (as I suggested below, created and maintained by wikiprojects). If they are interested, readers can check Category:Wikipedia:Books and subcategories for more books, although they won't be of the same quality.Cenarium (talk) 17:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * As with articles of course books will be started by a single user. Storing in the project space indicates that the user wants others to collaborate on the book (or wasn't aware of his action ;) Two proposals:
 * The tool could be changed in a way that makes it impossible to store books if they contain less than X articles - this would reduce the issues with test books
 * The stored-book template could be changed to show a message like "You stored this book in the project space, please read the guidelines for community books (short version following). If this happened by accident please consider to move it to your user space (clickable link) ..." --He!ko (talk)
 * For example, wikiprojects could create one or a few books on their subject, and then put them in project space. This way, they would be checked for quality, we could organize them by subject, etc. This would be a service to readers, while letting any user creating books in project space make them unclassifiable and uncontrollable. But I think that a hundred or so would be largely enough and investing too much time and energy in this would be useless in the long run. Thoughts ? Cenarium (talk) 17:03, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Why limit this to a few hundred if there are thousands of major topics covered in WP? Why limit their creation to wikiprojects? Creating books is probably easier than writing articles and a (no spam/test) book can hardly be worse than the included articles. Why prematurely regulate and limit the creativity of the community? Classification and control is possible as there is a bot which automatically creates a bookshelf. This makes all books accessible by title or keywords.
 * I think the community needs some time to catch up with the new feature. And then there will be poor books and excellent ones. There will be requests to delete, to improve or merge books. There will be discussions. I am convinced that the known mechanisms will work for books as they work for articles. And if it really doesn't work we still can pull the plug then. --He!ko (talk) 17:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The creativity of the community is not limited, as users can create books in userspace. But excessively investing in book creation and maintenance would distract from more important goals. Maybe we shouldn't impose a limit, but letting community books in the hands of Wikiprojects will assure a minimal quality and oversight, while letting any user create books in project space will decrease the quality and expose visitors to inappropriate pages. Cenarium (talk) 17:54, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Limiting books to user space may limit creativity as they are isolated and won't get inspiring input from the community. There may be many users who don't feel skilled enough to write and improve articles but would happily create and maintain good books. So there might be no problem with resources drawn away from the important goals. The quality of books will be directly affected by yet to establish guidelines and rules. These can be modified if necessary and if everything fails, storing books can still be disabled. --He!ko (talk) 18:20, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Yes, we may do this kind of things. If we decide to let it available in project space, another possibility would be to restrict storing in project space to autoconfirmed users, as new users will likely be unaware of the guidelines and make test books, we could just remove the option to store in project space for them. I still think that involving wikiprojects would increase the quality and control of books. We could also give a link to a guideline in Special:Books for storing in project space. The template could have an option "confirmed=yes" when in non-user space, and users would add this option after reviewing the book (using a tracking hidden category for example). The community books would be primarily presented to readers, while userspace books would be presented more succinctly, something like "For more books, you may you may visit user-generated books at Category:Wikipedia:Books.", or more user-appealing. We could use subpages of Books to present and organize community books, but I think user books should be left out of this and only be organized by categories, as they contain not only more inappropriate or test books, but also more personal ones like travel itineraries. It would be nice that a bot reports unusual books (with text, only one page, etc), so that they are reviewed and either removed from categories or considered for deletion if they are really inappropriate. Creating a wikiproject as suggested there would allow to organize this. Cenarium (talk) 19:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. --He!ko (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we should allow them in their own bookspace, like "Books:". I have proposed a WikiProject to handle the Wikipedia-Books here: WikiProject_Council/Proposals. We need to centralize and coordinate these efforts...--Cerejota (talk) 19:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Using a namespace like Book: or Collection: is a good idea, it would be invaluable from a maintenance and administrative point of view. We could use specific system messages and patrol new books through Special:NewPages. You could propose it to VPR and if there is consensus, we could ask developers to create it. Cenarium (talk) 20:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
 * +1 He!ko (talk) 20:16, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The "Book:" namespace has now been added to the English Wikipedia. See section "Book" and "Book talk" space below for more on that.
 * --David Göthberg (talk) 19:06, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Pages related to this discussion

 * Currently discussion of this tool is scattered (please add others if you notice them):
 * AN
 * Wikipedia_talk:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion plus next post ...
 * WikiProject_Council/Proposals

--He!ko (talk) 20:16, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Limit book creation in WP space to autoconfirmed users
After I studied my deletion log I came to a conclusion that only autoconfirmed users should be allowed to create books in the project space. Indeed all books that I deleted as G2 were created by non-autoconfirmed users. This may be more practical than completely disabling this function. Ruslik (talk) 20:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable, I'll open a ticket for that. --He!ko (talk) 20:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
 * This is implemented in this changeset and should be contained in the next update of the extension made by Brion. Jbeigel (talk) 16:50, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Encouraging newcommers to contribute
As books are visible to newcomers and readers, we may use this to draw their attention on how to contribute, through: Special:Book, Template:Saved book (see discussion page), by linking to Introduction or similar. Cenarium (talk) 03:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Pages about Wikipedia Books
The pages for and discussion of this feature appear to be scattered. (not to be confused with the above "Pages related to this discussion") As I got lost looking for them all, I made this list but I'm not sure it is complete. 84user (talk) 10:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia talk:Books - this discussion page
 * WikiProject Council/Proposals
 * Help:Books - the help page for beginners
 * Help:Books/for experts - help for experts
 * Books - lists books created by the community (currently empty)
 * Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Books/ - the list of community books (not empty)
 * Category:Wikipedia:Books - category where all books seem to end up
 * Help talk:Books - discusses content of the Help:Books page, and links to:
 * Help:Books/Frequently Asked Questions and
 * Help:Books/Feedback
 * Thank you He!ko, that navigation template is helpful, so I added it to the top of Help talk:Books and to this page (and added more links above).84user (talk) 12:51, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Nav book tool --He!ko (talk) 10:49, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Questions
So I have two questions - is it possible to generate a table of contents in the written PDF (this ticket suggestions not), and is it possible to generate a cover page? Raul654 (talk) 19:25, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Both not yet, but these are highly ranked on the wishlist. --He!ko (talk) 15:06, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Bot generated bookshelf
I let a bot create an example bookshelf based on the list of community books with more than five articles. This bot could also create a (hidden) bookshelf based on all user space books, if one wants to use this tool for some supervision. Two notes: I hope this tool can help to organize, review and promote good community books. Let me know your thoughts --He!ko (talk) 15:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The appearance of the bookshelf's pages can be customized by editing the used templates
 * Keywords of a book are automatically generated using the most frequent categories of the included articles. The idea behind this is to use these categories to make books easier accessible without actually adding books to categories (so these don't get cluttered with books).


 * The books on Featured Articles, FPC terminology and other special books that may be created, should not be added to the main bookshelf, the FA books should have a special place and Wikipedia-oriented books could have a specific bookshelf. It could either use an exception page for books to except like the FA book, and a tracking category for Wikipedia-related books. If we use a special namespace for books, the bot will also have to be updated. Cenarium (talk) 16:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I would delete the FA book as I don't see any use in such a book. The articles share nothing in regards to content but rather a common feature that is well represented by the shared category. The FPC book needed some improvements as it was not working as intended. Instead of moving books to other locations these could also be linked. I imaging a (to be created) good book like "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" to be linked from the Quantum Mechanics article, etc. Linking could also be used for above books.
 * The bot can be adjusted to whatever we want it to do. Share your ideas... --He!ko (talk) 19:46, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The bot needs work. There are more than 24 community books as of this post. Not all books are showing up in either list as well. I believe the problem is that some books are under subcategories.--88wolfmaster (talk) 21:45, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

my book?
Why isn't my book appearing on this bookshelf? Kingturtle (talk) 15:27, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Because it is in your user space. Ruslik (talk) 16:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Section breaks
Is there a way to insert a page break between articles? Also, is is possible to generate a table of contents and an index for the book? Pergamino (talk) 16:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I am getting errors when generating books. Where can I report these errors? Pergamino (talk) 17:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * See Help:Books/for experts for some tips on how to create a TOC. RichardF (talk) 11:13, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Pergamino (talk) 14:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Books, portals and topical templates
I find the new Books feature quite interesting. They're like portals and topical templates in many ways.

It seems like books should be folded into portals when applicable, and portals can be useful when selecting content to create books. One simple way to hook books into portals is through categories. I added a little info to the current Wikipedia:Books category subcategories to help that out. For example, Category:Wikipedia:Books on the United States now has a handy "β" piped name when it is placed in Category:United States. That allows it to show up at the bottom of the Portal:United States "Categories" box because it uses the automatic " " tag.

Portal-worthy books also could be listed in "Topics" boxes or, some day, "Featured content" boxes. Books has a "Featured Books" section, but it's empty and I have no idea how something would make that list. Some time down the road, a few portals might even add a "Selected books" box, but I expect those will be few and far between.

I tried out the Special:Book tool and was quite impressed. It was easy to use and powerful! (Am I in the right place?! ;-) Anyway, I tried making a series of books based on a topical template. I thought it went very smoothly. The template supplied the organized, quality content outline, and the "create a book" tools made it a snap. I just added some extra intro, placeholder, and category stuff and they were done. For this example, I used Template:PU to create the Purdue University book series.

Well, those are some of my initial thoughts on books, portals and topical templates. What do you all think? :-) RichardF (talk) 23:22, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

GDFL attribution after mergers and interwiki translations
There is currently a discussion about attribution at Village pump (policy). I wondered how this effects wikibooks? Agathoclea (talk) 08:53, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Templates
I've created a Wikipedia-Books link template to make it easier to link to books. Tothwolf (talk) 10:33, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I've also created a Wikipedia-Books template similar in style to Commons, Sisterlinks, etc. Tothwolf (talk) 11:48, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Book cleanup
A quick look through Category:Wikipedia:Books shows that the vast majority of books being created are either tests or misunderstandings of the book system. (For instance, a lot of books include nothing but index pages like Main Page, Portal:Contents, and random project-space pages; contain only one article; or consist of attempts to write an article.) What I'm wondering is: Zetawoof(&zeta;) 02:09, 28 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Can any of these be speedily deleted from userspace? Which ones? I've already tagged a few obvious cases with speedy tags, but there are a ton of obvious tests that I've left untouched for the moment.
 * Can they be prodded? My understanding is that prod isn't allowed in userspace; however, as books are automatically created in userspace by default, is this an exception?
 * If not, is it acceptable to remove Category:Wikipedia:Books from these books or replace it with another template, in order to keep the contents of the category useful? Right now, the category is only really useful for finding examples of how books aren't supposed to be used.


 * I can't really answer all your questions, but as I understand it, there isn't a CSD for "test" books. The proper venue previously mentioned for obvious test pages/books in userspace was WP:MFD. Tothwolf (talk) 02:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Given the number of these test books in existence, taking all of them to MFD is rather impractical. A quick run through api.php suggests that, of the 2143 pages which currently transclude Template:Saved book, around 20% of them (403 pages) link to one or more of Main Page, Upload, Help:Books, Introduction, and Portal:Contents. Not all of these are necessarily tests, but most of them are (as none of these pages are appropriate for a printed book). Zetawoof(&zeta;) 03:39, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I've assembled a list of obviously "bad" books (books which contain no links to articles) at User:Zetawoof/BadBooks. I've removed a few obvious exceptions, such as Books/The Missing Manual and the subpages of User:BookSpace. There are a total of a little under 800 pages listed there. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 07:10, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

The name of this
I think just calling them books or "Wikipedia Books" just sounds a bit weird, may also cause some confusion with Wikibooks too. And in addition, the main page here doesn't really specifically talk about what this is exactly for. If we call it anything, maybe we should call them "Collections" instead or something. ViperSnake151 Talk  23:16, 6 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Changing the user-visible name to "Collections" would be a huge step forward in combating the common new-user misconception that the Books feature can be used to write a book. It'd probably require developer intervention, though. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 23:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Related discussions
There is an ongoing debate/proposal to disable the Books interface here.

There is also discussion on WT:CSD on CSD criteria for books here.

--Tothwolf (talk) 02:04, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

PDFs not working
Does anyone know why the "PDF Version" button from the toolbox doesn't work. Whenever I ask for the PDF version of an article it gives me an error saying that "The POST request to http://pdf1.wikimedia.org:8080/mw-serve/ failed (Empty reply from server)". Is this just for me or does the error occur for everyone? Do you know when it might be solved? Thanks! Diego_pmc Talk 14:58, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Request Comment
I have extend a bookmark script to make it easier (for me) to browse the pages that have been included in a book (or collection?) Is there any interest in this sort of thing? Any comments on it. See User:Parkerdr/popupBookmarks, Thanks - Dave; Parkerdr (talk) 19:37, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Templates for deletion nomination of Template:Wikipedia-Books
Template:Wikipedia-Books has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --RL0919 (talk) 02:52, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Refactoring the Bookshelf
This page transcludes a bookshelf which lists all community books. The current bookshelf consists of a set of static bot generated pages that aimed to allow for an easier navigation of the community books. When the current version of the bookshelf was developed (or the software that generates it) each community book was in the same default category. Now that folks started to move books to categories based on the outline of knowledge things have changed.

The question is whether we need a bookshelf at all, as most books can now be discovered by navigating the category tree.

In my opinion the category tree is not really suited to visitors of Wikipedia who deserve to get a more appealing and better understandable presentation of the Wikipedia-Books.

A bot generated bookshelf could offer some benefits when it comes to browsing the list of community books. The character of books can not easily be described by their title and category, which are the only information available when navigating the category tree. Books carry more useful metadata:
 * Subtitle
 * Editor
 * Creation & modification date
 * Number of articles
 * Description
 * Cover image (to be available soon)
 * Related books (e.g. "Data Structures II", "Data Structures III")

Further a bookshelf could highlight "featured" books (e.g. Michael Jackson) (once we have the guidelines to identify and tag them).

It could also solve the problem, that the books per category ratio is very low. Often there are only few or sometimes none books in a category but rather only in subcategories.

Proposed implementation
Assume a branch of the category tree looks like this:

Arts (2) Literature (0) Critical Theory (1) Arts People (0) William Shakespeare (1) Leonardo da Vinci (1) Performing Arts (2) Music (1)

*Numbers in brackets being the number books that are direct members of the category

The bookshelf page "Arts" should then feature the following information:
 * Title: "Wikipedia-Books on Arts"
 * Total number of books in the related category and the sub-tree
 * Linked list of sub-shelfs (with their number of books)
 * Linked path to this shelf (e.g. Bookshelf > Arts )
 * List of books in the related category

As there are only two books in this shelf (or none in case of the shelf "Literature") it should pull in books from (close) subcategories and display them in a second list.

Books should be sorted A-Z. If there are featured books in either this shelf or sub-shelfs these could be highlighted and been displayed separately at the top.

Each book should be listed with the following information: An upcoming feature which allows to add images to books will give the bookshelf a much more appealing look. Template:Saved book needs to be extended to carry information about editor(s), description and the cover image.
 * Cover image (to to come soon)
 * Title
 * Subtitle
 * Editor(s)
 * Description
 * Number of articles
 * Related books (if any)

As the bookshelf is targeted at visitors of Wikipedia we could also think about mechanisms to only have "good" books (or rather not the "bad" ones) in the catalog. Either of these could be tagged using a certain template which would be recognized by the bot who creates the bookshelf. My opinion is that, once we have some guidelines and rules for community books, "maintenance templates" should be assigned to not conforming books. But this is another topic we need to work on.

Comments?

--He!ko (talk) 10:18, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I don't think that the category tree is useful when trying to locate books, and that a set of bookshelf pages would be more useful. I am also wondering if "target audience" would be useful. And/or some tags for "overview", "in-depth", or "for dummies"; things that would distinguish between books that appear to be the same based on title.  Parkerdr (talk) 19:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Agreed that it's not a good system right now. I'll take care of the overhaul if you don't mind (I'll post the details here before going to WP:BOTREQ. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:24, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Alright, how about this?
Alright, I've done a few overhauls. I've set up a bookshelf in a different location to not mess up the current shelf until this one is ready to go "live".

See for examples of what I feel we should move towards.
 * Books/Bookshelf/Community books
 * Books/Bookshelf/User books
 * Books/Bookshelf/Community books/Title/A1

Presentation logic is that there are two types of books, community books and user books. We want alphabetically sorted lists based on three main things: Author, book title, keyword. So the pages would be located at Wikipedia:Books/Bookshelf/(Community|User) books/(Author|Title|Keyword)/(#|A|B|...|Y|Z|Others) + page number (the pipe symbol | means or).

The template relevant to a bot is Bookshelf/Item, which is based on (and backwards compatible with, for the moment) the current "template". The image/cover and so on can be easily implemented by modifying Bookshelf/Item.

Any page in the "community" bookshelf should have at the top, while those in the "user" bookshelf should have  (respect this capitalization scheme, otherwise this will cause problems).

Bots can generated them by going through the relevant categories. Also for keywords, I noticed that most are tagged by cleanup categories. You should exclude Category:Wikipedia cleanup and its subcategories from the categories considered.

Feedback? Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:34, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I am confused. I see the cleanup categories in the keyword data, but I have no idea how they got there since the WPBooks category nor the bookshelf page uses those categories... Is it from the WP article of the same name?  Also, I am listed under author under many, because I was doing some category editing (starting with the A* book pages).  I don't consider myself as author or really contributor to the book page content.  I also don't know what the answer is either.  Parkerdr (talk) 15:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently these keywords are generated from the category of the articles themselves. I'm talking with the devs right now, and it doesn't look like they'll survive the redesign of the bookshelf. Instead, it looks like "hard" categories would be used instead. I'll have more details later. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

General structure/Bot work
Alright so, what a bot should do (in step) is this:


 * Retrieve relevant data
 * Sort by Community books / User books {1}
 * Sort Level 1 by Title / Author /Keyword {2}
 * Sort Level 2 by # / A / ... / Z / Others {3}

Then the bot needs to upload things at pages like Books/Bookshelf/Community books/Title/A1. To be specific, the page structure is
 * Wikipedia:Books/Bookshelf/{1} books/{2}/{3}{#}

where {1}, {2}, and {3} are the stuff in green above, and where {#} is page number. I suggest 50 entries per page, therefore if there are 107 community books with a title starting with A, there would be three pages: .../Community books/Title/A1, .../Community books/Title/A2, .../Community books/Title/A3.

Now the final level pages (.../Community books/Title/A1) should be written as:

(For example )

and should be updated daily if possible. If books were removed, say that dropping from 107 community books with a title starting with A to 95, thus rendering .../Community/Title/A3 useless, tag it with

I'll take care of the other pages manually. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:44, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

New books alert
See Bot requests/Archive 32. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to delete a Wikipedia Book?
Looking over these, I've already found too many that are ways to perpetrate a fringe POV without creating a category. How do we get rid of such stuff? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:27, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Well right now WP:MfD would probably be the best place for that, although in the future I think it would be best to have a specific "Books for Discussion" board. I would prefer to fix the POV issues than delete the books, but if some are non-redeemable, then they should either be deleted or moved to userspace. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:22, 2 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Any particular examples, out of curiosity? (And thanks for the reminder - I'm rerunning my book list generator (fresh output will be at User:Zetawoof/BadBooks shortly). Zetawoof(&zeta;) 07:27, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Update completed. Zetawoof(&zeta;) 07:58, 2 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Wow, thanks! Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 08:49, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetical?
Why do É and Ć appear after Z? Also: what order is used if other accented/diacriticed letters are added (as they will be eventually)? Eg Â È Ṝ Ž Ŗ Ů Æ Ø Ħ etc. Does É come before or after È? --Jubilee♫ clipman 18:45, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * That's a limitation of the Wikipedia software. I'll check if there's a way to specify a sortkey. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 20:39, 10 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks --Jubilee♫ clipman 21:22, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

Creating books
Thought I'd have a go at creating one of these books, and I'm thinking there may be an issue with the book creator tool (or perhaps it was just me). I started adding pages to my book, but somehow the tool appeared to turn itself off halfway through and I lost what I was doing. So I started again, got all my pages and then tried to save, but forgot to add a title and lost my work again -- not sure if that was intentional or not, but perhaps a propmt would be a good idea? Anyhow, I got there in the end. :) PC78 (talk) 13:02, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * ...the tool appeared to turn itself off halfway through and I lost what I was doing - I had the same issue. Possibly a bug?  Also, on your second attempt ...forgot to add a title and lost my work again... might also be a bug.  I feel there should be a pop up saying You need to add a title or some such (or perhaps there is, but it never displayed).  --Jubilee♫ clipman  16:54, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Categorisation
Are all books supposed to be in as well as a more specific subcategory? PC78 (talk) 13:29, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that's added automatically when you use the tool? --Jubilee♫ clipman  16:56, 11 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Right now the categorization doesn't make much sense (that one is automatically added). Apparently some bot is supposed to do something about it sometimes in the future, but I don't have much more details than that. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:33, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"Book" and "Book talk" space
BIG NEWS: The new "Book:" and "Book talk:" namespaces were added yesterday to the English Wikipedia and are now fully up and running.

Here is the bugzilla bug about the adding of the new namespaces: 21958. And the discussions that led to the adding of those namespaces: Village pump (proposals) (will later be moved to /Archive 56 or so), and Village pump (proposals)/Archive 45, and the discussion "Proposal to disable book creation from Special:Book in project space" above that started it all.

As I understand it the idea is that books should now be added under the "Book:" namespace, instead of under Books. And old books should be moved to the new namespace. But I don't know anything about Wikipedia books, I just wanted to inform you guys about the new namespaces. The "Book:" namespace is all yours! This Contribution was made by User:Davidgothberg at 19:02, 30 December 2009 (Inserted by 95.117.219.160 (talk) 11:56, 25 January 2010 (UTC))

Bookshelf by Category ?
Hey, just found this, and thought it's quite neat! A thought that came to me: Wouldn't it be nice to have the Bookshelf sorted by category as well as Alphabet? I would have found that a good bit more convenient. Though I guess the problem is maintanance, really... (You don't have Dynamic Page lists (DPLs) arround here, do you ? Sean Heron (talk) 12:00, 25 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Well there's Category:Wikipedia:Books, but it's not been updated for a while (bot is down). It could be manually updated however, if you're willing to do it.Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 14:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Book-problem bot
I've made a request for a bot to go through books and find problems with them. Please comment at the link given above. Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:37, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't this page include an introduction?
Shouldn't this page include at least a short introduction telling the user what Wikipedia-Books are and what purpose they serve? Neither this page (Books) nor Special:Book, Help:Books or Help:Books/Frequently Asked Questions contain an explanation of the feature or what it is for. This Signpost article does explain a bit, but is practically impossible to find. --Paul_012 (talk) 05:52, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't be a bad idea to write one. Feel free to write one yourself. Don't worry about getting it 100% right the first time around, at worse it'll be a stepping stone to the final thing. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. I have added an Overview section, based on the template text that appears at the top of community book pages. Feel free to change or expand. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Why the box?
Why place the main body of text in a box? Potentially, the box might fall off the edge of narrow screens; also, even on my super-wide screen, the text in the box is difficult to read as I have to crane my neck all the way over to the right to read it! --Jubilee♫ clipman 00:49, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect licensing of content from Wikisource
I created this book on Wikisource. However, I notice to issues. First, the contents page lists the pages from WS as articles. Secondly, as you may be aware, often content available at Wikisource is in the public domain (as in the case with the content in this book). However, the pdf and PressPedia rendering of the book licenses it under a CC-BY-SA. I think this should be rectified (although no law is being broken).--Forty two (talk) 06:08, 24 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I filed a ticket for this issue. See top right corner. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:35, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposal for presenting links to books
I have posted a proposal at the village pump on how books (and portals and interWikis) are displayed in an article. Please comment there. –  VisionHolder « talk » 19:22, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Photos and sound- Creative Commons and copyright issues
I spend 50% of my wiki time editing biographies of musicians, but the other 50% of the time searching for photographs of them when do not have an appropriate photo to provide a visual display of the subject. This involves finding the photo, emailing to ask the photographer if it is their work, and see if they are interested in allowing us to post their photos on the Wikipedias, and then teaching nearly every one of them about the use of Creative Commons licenses, so they are willing to relinquish their copyright to the photos. With the exception of free images, we only accept the most minimal two of the six Creative Commons licenses, which means, at best, their only reward for this is to display their name and the photostream or location back to where the photo was found. To my knowledge, I have uploaded and placed more photographs of musicians (around 1,500 -mostly uploaded manually & individually) than any other editor with the possible exception of User:Magnus Manske and his upload bots. Nearly all of the names of my uploaded pics can be found by clicking a link from my userpage.

Question: is has been difficult over the last years to justify our policy in Wikimedia Commons whereby the photographer can not choose the "non commercial" version of a Creative Commons license. I usually mention the cost of the servers that run our Wikis, for example. But with the advent of Wiki Books, how can we protect the attribution and link to the photos, (and what about sound bites)? Some of the pro-photographers have had book deals offered for their photos, and I've coaxed the pictures from them instead- most of the early Rolling Stones pics are examples of this. I can't imagine what I'll have to say to all of them if the photos turn up in Wikibooks, since this concept wasn't initially presented to them. As a Wikignome, I've never even glanced at the Village pump, and this is the first time I've ever spoken anywhere aside from talk pages. Thank you. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Could really use some help on book articles at Requests for feedback
Greetings, as of the last month or so I'm the main guy holding down the fort at Requests for feedback, and I could really use some additional help. RfF has been an outstanding experience in providing editing help to new editors who really want help and, in the majority of cases, are quick to incorporate feedback and really add to the value of their articles. Probably at least every other day we have a request for review of an article about a book, or which a surprising number actually do meet WP:Notability (books), so some more specialised book help could really help out the noob editors, and leave us with fewer discouraging unanswered requests.

RfF doesn't require any fixed time commitment, and many feedbacks can be knocked out in literally five minutes or less, so even dropping by once or twice a week for five minutes would aid considerably in answering as many requests as possible, and consequently both encouraging new editors (who may become long-term serious editors) as well as maintaining high Wikipedia standards.

If anyone is willing to step up and drop by even a few times a week for just a few minutes, I would be profoundly grateful, as that would allow me to answer more requests for topics I specialise in (history, art, religion). Thanks! MatthewVanitas (talk) 20:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Great for developers, unusable by users
Hey! As an old-time contributor (though on an incredibly long wikibreak), I am VERY enthusiastic seeing this new Wiki project. Very very good initiative. However, I do notice that it is not really consumer friendly yet. I'd love to browse books in a non-alphabetical way, for example, books on physics. Or political science. Or Military History, or whatever. There seem to be a whopping 1800 titles already (differing quality probably, but incredible number anyway!), but they are hardly accessible for any user. Perhaps an improvement of the landing page is in order? Greets, The Minister of War (talk) 07:38, 23 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You can browse Category:Wikipedia books like that if you want, although several books are uncategorized and the category tree not the most robust one (however, see WP:BOLD). There's also Category:Book-Class articles which has better organization, but categorizes the talk pages instead. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 09:08, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Is the Book extension enable in all languages?
I am currently working with Translators without Borders to create a basic health care book in as many languages as possible as see here Book:Health care. Is this ability available in all languages? -- Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:16, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Answered here. --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikiproject Foresight proposed
Dear WikiProject Books members, User:John_b_cassel and myself have started a proposal for a WikiProject on Foresight and Futures! Please come and take a look on the WikiProject Council proposals page if this sounds interesting to you! We appreciate any tips and help! Zhanli2012 (talk) 01:59, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Books across wiki
Over in WikiBooks, I've created a book on Security + certification. Several of the pages link to Wikipedia articles, which I would like to include. Is this possible yet? Encycloshave (talk) 14:45, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

wikipedia books vs wikibooks???
I just found out about this project, but I cannot understand... Is this a twin project of the whole wikibooks?? -- XonqNopp Tk 11:33, 30 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Not quite. Books are just collections of Wikipedia articles; whereas Wikibooks is a sister project which provides open-content textbooks (in the same way that Wikipedia provides open-content encyclopedic articles). Nor is it Wikisource. benzband  ( talk ) 07:57, 9 July 2012 (UTC)

References/notes/extraneous sections as end-notes?
Would it be possible, in a similar vein to how the licensing notes all show up at the end, to include the notes/references/external links at the end, too? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guohuade (talk • contribs) 21:30, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Any plan to use a better-looking font and formatting?
Linux Libertine (which works for math and chemistry too) and hyphenated justified text come to mind. Also check the iReader layout. It is a pleasure to read.

Any workgroup working on that?-- David Latapie (✒ | @) — www 21:28, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia Books using other languages and other Wikimedia Projects
Hi

I've been playing around with Wikipedia Books and seeing what's possible, I would like to do a few things and they don't seem to be working, any help would be greatly appreciated:

1. It doesn't seem to compile articles from other language Wikipedias

2. I would like to include pages from other Wikimedia projects e.g Wikiversity as potentially a way to give people access to more information through Wikipedia Zero, is this possible?

Cheers

Mrjohncummings (talk) 16:28, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

redirects in Book space
Per a recent request of mine at WP:AFC/R, I was wondering why redirects are not supported/done in Book-space? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 20:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Note: There are [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&search=%23REDIRECT&fulltext=Search&ns108=1&redirs=1&profile=advanced 11]. ~ Amory ( u  •  t  •  c ) 04:50, 3 April 2013 (UTC)