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Archive 1Archive 2

Known problems

As of January 26, 2009, the pages in this online, editable version are known to have the following problems:


  • Primitive templates: The templates for notes, sidebars, etc. (all of which begin "WTTM-", as in Template:WTTM-note) are more-or-less placeholders, awaiting someone who can do things such as centering and enlarging the headings for these, changing the coloring so they are more distinct from regular text, etc.
  • Out-of-date information: The content is current only as of early January 2008. That includes both text and images (screenshots). Much in Wikipedia has changed since then.
  • Errors in publication: The printed version had a number of (minor) errors. (See, for example, the publisher's errata page.)
  • Incomplete conversion: The book was converted from XML to wikitext; the conversion script, while good, was (and probably could not be) 100% complete and accurate. Known problems include:
    • Non-linked chapters: Sometimes a specific chapter is mentioned in the text without being wikilinked.
    • Non-standard apostrophes and quotation marks: While mostly a matter of aesthetics, some apostrophes are the slanted kind, and some quotation marks are "smart quotes" or otherwise non-standard.
    • Links to specific sections are red. All references in the text to pages in the book (as in, "see page 123") have been converted wikilinks, but the conversion software was not sophisticated enough to know what the correct section would be. (These red links appear in the wikitext as [[Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Name of Part of the Book/Name of the Chapter#Section heading|the section about xx]].)
    • Incorrect chapter numbers in wikilinks: Internal links to chapters work correctly in that they link to the correctly named chapter. However, the chapter number is as likely as not incorrect. Corrected manually.
    • Links to User pages: Text that began "User:", which should have been converted to a wikilink, was not. (Text that began "Wikipedia:", "Help:", and "Portal:", by comparison, was converted to wikilinks.) Corrected manually.
    • Mentions of "page xx". Wikipedia pages do not have page numbers, unlike a book. The conversion script was supposed to change mentions of page numbers into links to sections (see next item), but did not do so for all of these, so "page xx" (or similar) can still be found in the wikitext. Corrected manually.
  • Greyscale images: Most images are color. Those that are greyscale are cases where the color figure needed to be created from multiple color images. Those color images have been uploaded but (so far) not combined.
  • Figures sometimes do not align well with the text: Many chapters in the book are rich with illustrations; on a wide computer screen, this can result in figures not being located close to the text that mentions them. (Chapter 13 and Appendix B are good examples of this; see all the images at the bottom of each.) The solution is for the reader to narrow the browser window, manually. (It may be useful to put a standard note on the top of each chapter to explain that if this problem is seen, how it can be fixed.)—Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs)

Other problems noted later:

Duplication of existing help

This content duplicates a lot of existing help already here. For example, there is overlap between Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Building a Stronger Encyclopedia/Categorizing Articles and Help:Category which is bound to confuse users (i.e. searches find help in two places) and require extra work by editors to keep two completely separate Help: articles up to date. --DavidBiesack (talk) 15:05, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

If you're not familiar with it, I invite you to look at the Editor's index to Wikipedia. For example, for the topic of categories, you'll find three guidelines, a help page, a FAQ, a naming convention, and two essays - and that's just for the topic in general; there are more pages that cover problems with categories. Is there duplication among these? Sure. Is anyone interested enough to eliminate that (assuming that some duplication is bad, which is arguable)? No.
More to the point, consider this: I wrote the book because Wikipedia documentation generally is not in the form of step-by-step instruction on how to do things. Standard documentation isn't written that way, and shouldn't be, because that would be too wordy for the more experienced editors.
So, regarding, which is bound to confuse users (i.e. searches find help in two places), if you really, really believe that, then I suggest that you push for a massive consolidation of help and Wikipedia guidelines and naming conventions and essays and other documentation (not only for categories, but for all other topics), because when someone does a search, all of those pages should now show up. (Good luck!)
As for, and require extra work by editors to keep two completely separate Help: articles up to date, that's true - but the Help:Category page is technically focused (it's a copy of mw:Help:Category, and is not specific to the English Wikipedia), whereas the "Categorizing Articles" help page (chapter) covers things in guidelines and/or which are general community norms. So sure, we can eliminate duplication by eliminating one of these, but since one is a copy of a Meta page that is maintained in order for all the language versions of Wikipedia to have something to refer to (and to translate), and focuses on technical stuff only, while the other is less technical, much broader, and written for beginners, in a step-by-step mode, which one would you eliminate? And does technical information about categories really change so much, from month to month, that it's a lot of work to keep these both current? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 14:48, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
Eliminating the duplication in Wikipedia's instructions would not only be difficult to do in terms of the editing work, it would be even more difficult in terms of building consensus among the various groups of editors who each tend to emphasize one overlapping page or another. If all the groups of editors who wrote all those different pages about categories wanted to write the same thing in exactly the same way, that's what they would have done. Instead, each group probably likes the page they wrote, and getting them all to agree on one canonical page would probably be hopeless. As John points out, the various instruction pages tend to present information in ways that make it more usable by particular audiences, such as users with varying levels of experience, or users who are trying to apply a given feature to a particular kind of problem. There is almost certainly not one single way which is the "best" way to describe, say, categories on Wikipedia - or if there is one best way, I doubt any human knows what that is. It may seem unfortunate that as Wikipedians codify more and more of their existing procedural knowledge, the volume of written instructions grows monotonically, but Wikipedia did not get to be the world's fifth most popular Web property by being simple. The four properties ahead of us (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and AOL) are also internally complex. Anyone who takes a job with one of them will undoubtedly discover lots of overlapping instructions as they learn about the inner workings of those organizations. Overlapping instructions are probably unavoidable in any large organization. On Wikipedia we have a relatively flat hierarchy, so everyone is free to write any additional instructions they need - check out the many tutorials and summaries floating around in userspace. Finally, redundancy of design is fundamental to Wikipedia. We have multiple citation systems, multiple navigation methods, we let anyone customize their skin or signature, we have multiple ways to communicate with other users, etc. There's more than one way to do just about everything here. Wikipedia is not nearly as simple as we could make it, but people want complexity. Wikipedia gives it to us, and that's why we are here. --Teratornis (talk) 20:58, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Move to Wikibooks?

Shouldn't this be on Wikibooks? Mike Peel (talk) 20:39, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course it should. I'm planning on importing it soonish, but anyone who wants to do it for me is welcome!  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 22:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
Looking at b:Using Wikibooks/What Is Wikibooks#Inclusion Criteria, it's certainly true that W:TMM meets the criteria of being "instructional non-fiction". But it's not at all clear that it meets the general intent of Wikibooks - that is, it is (at least loosely) a textbook.
Other things to consider:
  • Is the Wikibooks community or the Wikipedia community more likely to put time and effort into improving this content?
  • Is someone looking for information on how to edit Wikipedia (that's the target audience) more likely to look for it at Wikibooks or at Wikipedia?
  • Keeping this at en.wikipedia.org will make it easier to find relevant information when doing a search on the Help: namespace.
  • Keeping this at en.wikipedia.org will make it easier to be linked to from various Wikipedia pages.
In short, I'm not at all sure that this is as clearcut a decision as it might seem to be. Moreover, the agreement between O'Reilly Media and the Wikimedia Foundation was that this would be at Wikipedia. Since it's a GFDL document, anyone is welcome to copy it, of course - but not to remove it from this site without a lot more discussion among a lot of other people. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:46, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
I can say with some confidence that this work fits in Wikibooks' inclusion policy. If the document is GFDL (which it had better be if it's here!) then why would an agreement between the publisher and WMF be relevant? Similarly, whether Wikipedia wants to keep a copy is rather immaterial to whether Wikibooks has a copy. I'd certainly argue that Wikibooks makes an sensible home for documentation on Wikipedia (and Wikibooks, and MediaWiki and...)  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 06:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm confused now. It clearly belongs on wikibooks - it's a book, it's non-fiction, and it's educational. It's a textbook for how to use wikipedia. To answer your points:
  • Well, both. The Wikibooks community has experience with writing books. Wikipedians have experience with wikipedia. Those two communities overlap.
  • They're more likely to go buy the physical book, or google for it. Alternatively, they'll look at the help pages, and there should be links to the book from those ("for an alternative explanation, see the missing manual").
  • This is a fair point.
  • Ever heard of interwiki links?
I'm puzzled as to why the WMF would make an agreement for something to be on _wikipedia_ rather than a _wikimedia project_, so can I say [citation needed]? I note that getting a lot more people involved in the discussion would effectively be getting publicity for the book.
Don't get me wrong - I think it's great that you've written the book, even better that you've released it under a free license, and absolutely brilliant that it's available on wikipedia. But surely, since you've written the book on the subject, you should know the above? Mike Peel (talk) 09:40, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
I've started a thread on this on foundation-l: see [1] and following posts. I invited them to come here to comment, but it seems they didn't listen to that bit... Mike Peel (talk) 10:32, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
It was confirmed[2] in the thread that there was no such agreement and that it was up to the community to decide. That said, the author clearly feels strongly about this issue and I tend to agree that "the help section of en.wp seems to be a pretty logical place". Perhaps it needs to be better adapted for this task and integrated with the existing content (while the wikibooks version could retain its current form). -- samj inout 11:59, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Just for the sake of the discussion... there is little doubt that this does not belong to Wikipedia. Does it belong to Wikibooks: imho, yes, completely. Notice that recently, a book of similar goals than this one was written in French (by Guillom and I). This book was first published under GFDL and we transferred it entirely to Wikibooks where it may be found here: http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikipédia. There was never any comment saying that it should not be on wikibooks, quite the opposite. It was welcomed there. I also does not see why the strong feelings of an author would make a difference and impact inclusion policy of the entire project. Anthere (talk) 13:39, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm open to having it either a Wikibooks or Wikipedia (yes, I've heard of interwiki links - note that I actually used one, in my first comment above, via the "b:" prefix). My concern is perhaps over form versus substance: documentation at Wikipedia tends to be maintained by a lot of people, while (my sense is that) at Wikibooks, a given book tends to be worked on by relatively few editors. It should be clearly understood that the book needs a lot of updating, now and in the future. To offer a short list: image updating at the Commons has completely changed since January 2008; history pages are now significantly different; search is better (and different); the Wikipedia community is discussing Flagged Revisions; the Wikimedia Foundation has a million-dollar grant to improve the MediaWiki interface for both readers and editors; and there are more modest changes that are made every month.
If Wikibook editors are available and willing to do this, or if enough Wikipedia editors cross the boundary (so to speak) and start editing this as a Wikibook, then sure, no problem. But if this becomes a Wikibook and languishes (in terms of editing), then most of the value of having it as a wiki is going to be lost. (And no, there isn't any guarantee if it stays in the Help namespace, that bunches of editors will rush in to update and improve it.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:14, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
There's no reason Wikipedians can't edit on Wikibooks. Of course that might result in the unacceptable: people realizing that enwiki isn't the only wiki WMF operates, or worse yet actually participating on some of those projects! Note the sarcasm.  — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 01:52, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I could see Wikibooks having a use for this, yes, but I can also see this being better updated for the new user (assumed target audience) on its home wiki over a foreign one. Is there a reason Wikibooks can't take a copy and leave one here for 'pedins to edit? Those looking for help on Wikipedia, which I'd assume would be mostly new users, aren't going to look for that help on another project. §hep • Talk 02:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure I like the idea of removing it complete from en.wp. I agree with Stepshep in that it seems reasonable for Wikibooks to take a copy, and leave a copy here. –Juliancolton Tropical Cyclone 02:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
One more for leaving it here. I'm likely to edit it here, and likely to never see it again if it moves to Wikibooks. If it is here it can be integrated; if there, it will be much more separated. IAR for utility's sake. -- Quiddity (talk) 04:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Taking a copy to Wikibooks as a book, and having a copy here integrated into the existing help sections, sounds like a reasonable plan. I was worried about having two separate help sections here, one in traditional form and one in book form. Mike Peel (talk) 10:30, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

We could do as some help pages do (between meta and here): have a master on Wikibooks, and a page that is automatically updated here? That sounds like a reasonable choice. -- lucasbfr talk 11:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
Is that technically possible? §hep • Talk 01:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

(undent) Let me try to summarize the pros and cons of moving the book to Wikibooks:

  • Pro:
    • Better compliance with the letter of our law governing what type of content should go where.
    • May possibly motivate some editors from the overwhelmingly popular English Wikipedia to spend some time on the comparatively less popular Wikibooks.
  • Neutral:
    • Moving the book to Wikibooks makes it only slightly harder to link from the English Wikipedia via an interwiki link.
  • Con:
    • Interwiki links are not as ergonomically desirable as local wikilinks. The main disadvantage: a broken interwiki link looks the same as a valid link. There is no red link mechanism as with local wikilinks to alert the editor or reader of a broken link.
      • The What links here mechanism only works with local wikilinks. We have no similarly convenient way to see who is linking from Wikipedia to a book on Wikibooks.
    • Opportunity cost: the time we spend moving the book (or arguing about moving the book) is time we cannot spend on something else - for example, improving the book as it now stands (it needs: updating, shortcut links, custom search links, just for starters, and all these improvements must wait until we settle this argument).
    • Whether the book should have gone first to Wikibooks, the fact is it went first to the English Wikipedia. This required some work. Changing a course, once set, requires more work. There are things on Wikipedia that we might do differently if we were starting over from scratch, but once they are in place, it's often easier to work with the way things are.
    • WP:IAR: rather than blindly following the rules, we should ask whether the rules in a particular situation advance the goal of the Foundation, which is to make the sum of human knowledge freely available to everyone. Does moving the book to Wikibooks increase its availability to the people who need it?
    • Since the overwhelming majority of the book's audience will be searching from the English Wikipedia, the book is a more convenient search target if it is on the English Wikipedia, and the book is simpler to edit by the people best equipped to edit it.
    • Who is being harmed by having the book in its present location?
    • The purpose of the book is to solve a problem on Wikipedia: the relative lack of suitable documentation on Wikipedia for new users. The purpose of the book is not to address some perceived imbalance between the number of editors on Wikipedia vs. Wikibooks. As long as Wikibooks is growing, then it should eventually reach whatever level of participation it "needs." We let people decide for themselves where they want to edit. If more people choose to edit on Wikipedia, we respect their choice and don't try to pressure them over to another project. Wikipedia's growth may eventually level off of its own accord, for example when every article is a featured article, and virtually all of the sufficiently notable topics have articles. (This might seem impossible to imagine today, but I think we will get there, because our tools are bound to improve, speeding up progress.) Until Wikipedia is "finished", there is no harm in Wikipedia getting "ahead" of another project. Instead of competing with Wikipedia for users that Wikipedia attracted, Wikibooks should get better at attracting its own new users. I.e., make the pie bigger.

--Teratornis (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the edits to date, what has struck me is that the number that have been done by bots. It's easy to forget the extent of the routine maintenance that is done by these accounts, and also easy to forget about the automated tools that many editors use in Wikipedia to do mass fixes of minor problems. Those bots don't run on Wikibooks. Those editors don't use their automated tools at Wikibooks. And they won't, because they are content-specific - for example, a template used for the AfD process. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:28, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that's another good point. I should have thought of that because lately I've been editing on Commons, and I've noticed it has a more frontier-like feel than the highly developed English Wikipedia. Going to a smaller wiki means leaving behind considerable infrastructure. Various features I've taken for granted on the English Wikipedia are not yet on Commons (many bots, templates, documentation of huge numbers of special cases, the Editor's index - but I'm working on an editor's index for Commons now, and incidentally it's turning out to be a lot smaller than the corresponding index here), which poses the problem of deciding whether to confront the labor cost and possible political cost of porting features over there. Maybe the features are not on Commons because someone specifically does not want them there - I won't know until I gain a lot more experience. It might not just be an issue of nobody having done it yet. Of course, the less-developed wikis won't become more developed until someone goes there and develops them, but if I just want to get a job done, I take the path of least resistance, which means choosing the wiki that has all the goodies in place and ready to use. For example, I'm writing my notes about my adventures on Commons on my Wikipedia user subpages, because on Wikipedia I can take advantage of several useful templates that are not on Commons yet (such as {{Google custom}} which I can use to document the various searches I am doing to find information on Commons). The analogy is to consider what it meant to go from London in the year 1700 to the American colonies - that meant leaving behind many conveniences of civilization, and having to rebuild them all from scratch. I can see that Wikipedia's development tends to stimulate more development, in a rich-get-richer kind of cycle, while the smaller wikis could tend to get squeezed out, but that's a much larger problem than I know how to solve. Maybe people will think of more efficient ways to port features from Wikipedia onto other MediaWiki wikis. --Teratornis (talk) 00:56, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Licensing problem and images problem

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-January/049534.html --Histo (talk) 16:01, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

For the record, the text for the licensing of the book (GFDL) was done per what I was told were the directions of a lawyer at O'Reilly Media. Even if a mistake was made by the lawyer, the intent of the O'Reilly press release should make it clear that the intent - of both the publisher and me, the, the author - was to add this content to en.wikipedia.org in such a way that it could be freely edited and redistributed. [If someone would be kind enough to point specifically out what change(s) is/are needed, I'd be willing to go back to O'Reilly and see if we can sort this out.]
Also, following the above thread, there is now a known problem with some of the images being watermarked. An editor was kind of enough to point that out directly to me (via my user talk page), and we're discussing how to resolve the problem. [That watermarked images ended up at Commons was totally inadvertent; the watermarking was done by O'Reilly, I assume, to prevent copying of electronic versions, and I was unaware that there was any of this.] -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
With this being GFDL content that came for outside of a Wiki will the licensing be able to be changed to CC-BY-SA, if that is how Wikipedia goes? Zginder 2009-01-31T20:10Z (UTC)
My understanding is that this content, once added to Wikipedia (as it has been), is absolutely no different than (say) the comment that you just typed. (In other words, as best I understand the transition, yes.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:36, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunately, that's not how it works for content that was first published on a site other than a wiki. That can only be relicensed to CC-BY-SA if it was added before November 1 last year. Stifle (talk) 12:00, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
For more about the specific date, see Wikipedia:Transition to CC-BY-SA. --Teratornis (talk) 01:03, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Now under review at Wikipedia:Non-free content review. PleaseStand (talk) 00:22, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Templates

I noticed on the page about referencing that templates at linked with <nowiki> tags. I was wondering if there was a purpose of not using {{tl}} or one of its variants, that way the reader can see the template and its documentation with a signle click. There might be a reason for not linking them though, so I came here. :D Thanks, §hep • Talk 02:44, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No good reason not to link all but one of them; I've done so (thanks for catching the problem). This is just part of the incomplete conversion mentioned above. (But one of the apparent templates is really a web link, so I added an invisible comment that it should be left alone.)
I'm sure there are other cases of this in other chapters, so I've added this problem to the list of known issues, above. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
I think I got them all, I tried not to do double linking if I could find them though, I wasn't sure if lniking more than one instance would be too much.§hep • Talk 03:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with linking all templates, regardless of duplication. (I don't see this as being comparable to the policy of avoiding multiple links in articles; those are distracting, since they invite readers to go off on a tangent.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:52, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
I'll be sure to go get the rest then, I didn't want to go overkill with linking on my own whims. §hep • Talk 00:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I think I got all of them. §hep • Talk 02:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Categorization of pages

Also, what do you think about subcategorizing this under Category:Wikipedia help into Category:The Missing Manual or something similar, that way it's easier to sort all of the pages? §hep • Talk 03:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea, but would suggest something like Category:Chapters of The Missing Manual. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:52, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Sure, sure. That sounds like a better way to sort a "book". :) §hep • Talk 00:31, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Shortcuts

I would like to add a shortcut link to at least the contents page so I and other editors can easily link to it from places like talk pages and the Help desk. The most obvious (to me) shortcut is already taken: WP:MISSING. WP:MANUAL is also taken.

Instead of acting unilaterally I would like to:

  • See what other interested editors think.
  • Determine whether this work is actually going to stay on Wikipedia, or move to Wikibooks. (I don't really have a dog in that fight, just so long as the book is easy to link to, wherever it ends up.)

Thanks. --Teratornis (talk) 20:34, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

MISSMAN isn't half bad. §hep • Talk 03:42, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Or H:MANUAL §hep • Talk 23:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
It would be nice to have shortcuts for each chapter page, since it is awkward to copy and paste enormous links like this one to the Help desk:
Also it would be nice to put the shortcuts in parentheses after the chapter names on the contents page, for faster copying and pasting when answering Help desk questions. Shortcuts can have the pseudo-subpage format of H:TMM/C etc., so they will all show up with Special:PrefixIndex/H:TMM. --Teratornis (talk) 00:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
A similar shortcut is under discussion for deletion here:
Editors with an interest in preserving the H:TMM shortcut and the H: pseudo-namespace may wish to weigh in on that discussion. --Teratornis (talk) 00:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
The result of that discussion was "keep", so the H:TMM shortcut should be safe. We also have the H: prefix in WP:SHORT#List of prefixes now. --Teratornis (talk) 00:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Want to creat a list at HT:TMM and decide there, or keep it here? §hepTalk 01:00, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Search box?

What do you guys think about adding something like: 

<center>
{| style="background:transparent; width:50%; border:2px ridge #CAE1FF;"
|-
! colspan="2" style="background-color:#eefdee; font-size:125%" |
<inputbox>
bgcolor=transparent
type=fulltext
prefix=Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual
break=yes
width=60
searchbuttonlabel={{H:TMM/Button}}
</inputbox>
|-
| colspan=2 style="vertical-align: top; background-color: #22b722;"|
|}</center>

onto the main page for simplified searching? It produces:


?? §hepTalk 23:05, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I suggest adding it to the contents page and to the {{Wikipedia-The Missing Manual - TOC}} template. But make the searchbuttonlabel something meaningful. --Teratornis (talk) 00:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
Any suggestions for text? "Search" sounded kind of generic, but that might be the best route. §hepTalk 23:48, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
It would be great to have a prominent search feature on each page. For text, perhaps Search W:TMM Help pages ? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:35, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm not sure about using a shortcut...that might end up confusing new users. *Search the manual, the text, the pages, the index* I don't know, I don't have that creative gene. Maybe it skips a generation? §hepTalk 01:05, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
"Search this book" might be good. Or "Search the manual" (following the lettercase conventions in WP:NAME). I don't think the caption text is too critical. It's more critical to keep the caption text easy to change. Instead of hard-coding many instances of the search box, wrap the search box in a template so we only have to update one copy if we later decide to change the caption text. For something similar, see User:ClueBot III/ArchiveThis and User:ClueBot III/Archive Box, for example on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names). That box says "Search archives" which seems understandable enough, in the context of talk pages where it appears. --Teratornis (talk) 01:12, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
Like that? §hepTalk 01:14, 1 March 2009 (UTC)
"Search the manual" - yes, I like that. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:39, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you want to float it right on the front page, maybe across from the top 5 or so titles? §hepTalk 19:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Collaboration suggestion

I would like to suggest that we form a collaboration to work on improvement of these pages. The tasks could include updating the pages to better reflect the current Wikipedia practices and tech, fixing broken syntax, and adding some information that isn't covered in the original book. John Broughton would be our informal "commissioner" to assist us in keeping the general tone and style as originally intended. Any thoughts? --Ipatrol (talk) 23:01, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I want to avoid any suggestion of ownership, but yes, I'd be happy to help with copyediting.
Perhaps one way to approach this, if there are at least three or four interested editors, would be to pick a chapter to improve, fix it up, then write an article for the Signpost that is a brief summary of the chapter, including links to section headings. That way, editors interested in learning more about a particular editing topic could jump right to what interested them. And of course such Signpost articles would help other editors find this resource, more generally. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:27, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
The group ACID is up and running again, I'll see if I can get them to bent their rules a little for this, then we should be able to start working. After that, we could set up a subpage of this talkpage to work on this set.--Ipatrol (talk) 02:34, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Sounds worth trying. If that doesn't work, we can try something else. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Ha! Noob gold!

I only wish I knew about this when I started out...ResMar 03:47, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Can you think of a reason why you didn't? Maybe we need to make this manual more accessible, ie. link to it more prominently, make sure new users find it early and learn from it. How do you think you could have found this page earlier? -- Ϫ 13:26, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
When I randomly posted a help notice on Talk:Main Page, I was told that there were too many rules for it to all be in one place. Well, apparently not. The page does need updating at this point, though. ResMar 03:27, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
If you want them all in one place, you need the WP:Editor's index to Wikipedia (warning, large page). That also needs continual updating, as do all our documentation indices. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 17:32, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

What's up with the wikilinks?

There are a lot of wikilinks that point to Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Name of Part of the Book/Name of the Chapter#Section heading and say the section about xx. I'm pretty sure they're not supposed to be like that... I've gone ahead and fixed a couple of the links, pointing them to what I think are the right sections/book parts/chapters, but there are still a bunch left. --- cymru lass (hit me up)⁄(background check) 18:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

See the top thread on this page for explanation (Search for "xx"). Basically, in the book they pointed to a page number - they all need to be manually fixed for the web format.
I fixed some a few weeks ago, and keep meaning to get back to do more. Every little bit helps, if you're so inclined. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:19, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

New Contributors

Be prepared for many new contributors, with all the ups and downs that this entails:

  • plenty of stubs and broken code
  • NPOV and Original Research violations
  • temporary increase in ragequit vandalism
  • unnecessary "citation needed" markups
  • possibly some good editing (after a while)

TheLastWordSword --208.83.126.102 (talk) 17:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

See Eternal September. We're used to it ;) -- Quiddity (talk) 19:46, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

next page links?

I've just been reading through this manual (super helpful, by the way!), and I was thinking how it would be helpful if there was a link to the next page at the bottom of each page. I know it's not typical Wikipedia style, but this is meant to be read straight through like a book, right? Thoughts? Spock of Vulcan (talk) 05:30, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. And on that note, I wonder why this wasn't started in Wikibooks: in the first place? Looks like someone began to put How Wikipedia Works there too. -- Ϫ 12:04, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Regarding "next page" links: Could we just add a copy of {{Wikipedia-The Missing Manual - TOC}} at the bottom of each chapter? If that is even less-appropriate, then a "next page" link would indeed be helpful.
Regarding location, this was discussed above at #Move to Wikibooks?. HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 19:47, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Oooh that template is a tad big to be placing at the bottom of that many pages. A small "next page" link is ideal I think. And if only I had the patience to read through that tldr "Move to Wikibooks" discussion I wouldn't be asking if maybe someone could just summarize what the outcome was? ;P -- Ϫ 20:37, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
My biased summation: (1) The book is far more likely to be worked on, and updated, if it is here (by editors and bots). (2) It's less confusing for non-expert readers (the target audience) to have it on the same site (eg. where the search box will take them to relevant pages).
At the thread above, there's a longer summation of various aspects, under the "(undent)". HTH. -- Quiddity (talk) 21:52, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move. None of the options discussed below enjoys consensus support, so the page can stay here for now. - GTBacchus(talk) 02:36, 12 June 2011 (UTC)


Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual → Wikipedia:The Missing Manual – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC) Currently, namespace indicated by the page title is confusing - especially to new users, who find such things quite puzzling enough without this. ie "Help:" or "Wikipedia:" - shouldn't have both. I'm not particularly bothered which it goes in, but most of us would 'think' of this as WP:TMM and guess it'd be in Wikipedia: - also, whilst in an ideal world such things would live in HELP: namespace, they currently do not - and most comparable helpful pages are indeed in Wikipedia: namespace. Note, page is move-protected, but as far as I can see has never been moved.  Chzz  ►  19:15, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

  • Support. Much neater, more intuitive, less confusing to newbies. Not every help page absolutely must be in Help: namespace. -- œ™ 01:42, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose If it's in Wikipedia namespace, it wouldn't be missing :). The title is "Wikipedia: The Missing Manual", even if moved it needs to keep that, since "Wikipedia:" is not a namespace descriptor, it's part of the title. Aside from that, why isn't this at Wikibooks or Wikisource? This belongs in Help namespace, rather than Wikipedia namespace if kept on Wikipedia. 65.94.45.160 (talk) 04:50, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose; it would have to be Wikipedia:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, which is just as confusing. And the press release from O'Reilly says it'll be in the Help: namespace. Unfortunately, this is one of those topics that spans the domains of both the Help: namepsace and the Wikipedia: namespace; since we have to pick one, it might as well be Help:. People who search for Wikipedia: The Missing Manual are directed via hatnote to the correct location. Powers T 12:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
Commenting on the above two oppose rationales - Wikipedia: The Missing Manual is a physical book, and that's fine. However, this page - one of our guidance pages - does not need the 'Wikipedia' clarification, any more than 'Helpdesk' needs to be called 'Wikipedia Helpdesk'. Whilst the page of course contains material from the book, it is also a page that anyone can edit - and one such edit can be to change the title. We can still mention that there is a physical book which contains some of the same material; but 'keeping the name because there is a book with that name' is an unconvincing argument.  Chzz  ►  21:35, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
I suppose in a sense, we shouldn't title this the same as the book (since these are editable pages, which will diverge from the book text over time). So "Help:The Missing Manual" would perhaps be better.--Kotniski (talk) 10:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Support. Or Help:The Missing Manual is acceptable. But the current title is unhelpful. Remember, the purpose of all help, project and other non-article namespaces is purely to support the article namespace. Elegance here may be a nice hobby, but it should be unwelcome if it's at the expense of function. Andrewa (talk) 10:43, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Single page version available

It would be useful to have a single page version of this book (for printing). Netol (talk) 10:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about fitting 512 pages onto a single page. Guoguo12 (Talk)  16:28, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

ePub version

It would be useful to have an ePub version of this book Netol (talk) 10:01, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Renaming revisited

Looking at the above move discussion, though there wasn't unanimity on what the title should be, it seems there was no opposition and some significant support for changing it to Help: Wikipedia – The Missing Manual (i.e. just avoiding the two colons). Would anyone actually object to that change?--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Now that the manual is here, why should we call it "missing"? -- John of Reading (talk) 15:45, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Original page numbers

I'm slowly going through and correcting the 'section about xx' links. Occasionally, I am also finding bits that mention a page number (e.g. 'page 43' or such like). I'm finding it useful to know which chapters are on which pages in the original book for fixing such links. I figured others might find this useful too, so here you are:

Table of Contents – pages v-ix
The Missing Credits – pages xi-xiv
Introduction – pages xv-xxi

Part I: Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles

Chapter 1: Editing for the First Time – pages 3-24
Chapter 2: Documenting Your Sources – pages 25-44
Chapter 3: Setting Up Your Account and Personal Workspace – pages 45-60
Chapter 4: Creating a New Article – pages 61-80
Chapter 5: Who Did What: Page Histories and Reverting – pages 81-98
Chapter 6: Monitoring Changes – pages 99-120
Chapter 7: Dealing with Vandalism and Spam – pages 121-139

Part II: Collaborating with Other Editors

Chapter 8: Communicating with Your Fellow Editors – pages 143-164
Chapter 9: WikiProjects and Other Group Efforts – pages 165-178
Chapter 10: Resolving Content Disputes – pages 179-194
Chapter 11: Handling Incivility and Personal Attacks – pages 195-212
Chapter 12: Lending Other Editors a Hand – pages 213-229

Part III: Formatting and Illustrating Articles

Chapter 13: Article Sections and Tables of Contents – pages 233-252
Chapter 14: Creating Lists and Tables – pages 253-270
Chapter 15: Adding Images – pages 271-291

Part IV: Building a Stronger Encyclopedia

Chapter 16: Getting Readers to the Right Article: Naming, Redirects, and Disambiguation – pages 295-322
Chapter 17: Categorizing Articles – pages 323-338
Chapter 18: Better Articles: A Systematic Approach – pages 339-358
Chapter 19: Deleting Existing Articles – pages 359-379

Part V: Customizing Wikipedia

Chapter 20: Customizing with Preferences – pages 383-400
Chapter 21: Easier Editing with JavaScript – pages 401-410

Part VI: Appendices

Appendix A: A Tour of the Wikipedia Page – pages 413-426
Appendix B: Reader’s Guide to Wikipedia – pages 427-446
Appendix C: Learning More – pages 447-456
Index – pages 457-479

A more detailed table of contents, including the page numbers of each section, can be found on Google Books. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Can't print Intro section

When I try to print the Intro section, my printer hangs up with a message "no pages specified". I tried it multiple times and got the same result. However I can print all other chapters of the book fine. The problem appears to be after page 4 (the page with Figure 0-1) because the printer will never print past page 4. Don't know if you want this info but I thought you might appreciate knowing there's a bug on page 5. :) N,N-dimethylpeptokryptamide (talk) 21:21, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

The problem is unlikely to be in the page, as a web page cannot control the printing capabilities of your computer (other than providing the content to be printed, of course). Perhaps your web browser has problems printing pages containing embedded videos? Try some other pages containing videos (e.g. Wikipedia:Videos contains three embedded videos). The gurus at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Computing might be able to help you better. If you decide to post there, it would help if you mentioned which web browser, operating system and printer you are using. (BTW, Figure 0-1 appears on page 2 for me when printing to A4 paper.) – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 20:46, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Editnotice for chapter 4

I've proposed adding an editnotice to Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Editing, Creating, and Maintaining Articles/Creating a New Article. I invite everyone to join the discussion. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 21:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Mistake in technical solutions for long TOCs

Hi. In the [technical solutions for long TOCs, it is encouraged to use semicolons as pseudo-headings. This is depreciated, and is in contradiction with the current MOS. Per Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries semicolon markup for definition lists should be studiously avoided for anything but the simplest lists. We should use solely Template:TOC limit to fix long TOC issues.

Regarding accessibility, screen readers and other machines cannot make any use of pseudo-headings. Thus it is preventing blind users to navigate the page properly.

I'm going to fix this mistake. Any comments are welcome. Dodoïste (talk) 01:00, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I support your edit. I did feel uneasy about the use of semicolons for pseudo-headings, as the markup was never meant for this, and also due to the accessibility issues. (Furthermore, anything you put in Special:MyPage/common.css to format headings doesn't affect these fake headings.) I previously thought I was alone in this view since so many articles were using these pseudo-headings. It's nice to see that the MoS agrees with me.
However, I think Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility#Headings is a better link, as it covers all headings rather than just headings in definition lists. I've modified the chapter accordingly. Also, since this text is targeted at new Wikipedia editors, I've reworded it slightly with a sentence explaining how semicolons have been abused in the past, and a plea for editors to change these pseudo-headings where they find them. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 15:39, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for having clarified my edit. I'm not a native speaker, thus my sentences can be hard to understand or need some copy editing.
As for the reason I did not link to the more relevant MOS accessibility guideline, it is because I wrote it myself yesterday. It would have felt like I was promoting a guideline that has not gained approval yet. Since you added the link yourself, it's all fine.
In practice, it has been so self-evident to me that pseudo-headings were deprecated, I was not sure if it was necessary to add it to this guideline. Us members of the accessibility project have been fixing this deprecated practice for years now, along with several developers. I'm glad to see from your comment that the situation was not clear about pseudo-headings, and that this guideline will be useful. Cheers, Dodoïste (talk) 19:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

"The Missing Manual" is a trademark

It's a registered trademark of O'Reilly Media. Unless they've given permission, I think it's somewhat misleading and inappropriate to use it here (as with e.g. For Dummies), as it was no doubt chosen by somebody because of familiarity with those books. 86.159.192.146 (talk) 23:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

A good point. O'Reilly's http://missingmanuals.com/ does indeed claim it is registered. Meters (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
See Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/About this Book. This book was published by O'Reilly, and "The content has been released by the publisher, O'Reilly Media/Pogue Press, and by the author, John Broughton, under the standard Wikipedia free content license." —Quiddity (talk) 03:41, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Meters (talk) 19:46, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
Ooh, interesting. Thanks for the explanation. 86.159.192.146 (talk) 22:47, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

PDF

One of my trainees wants to read about Wikiepdia on his e-reader. Is there a PDF version of this manual, or something similar? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:03, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Go to Book:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual and use one of the download options. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:12, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Many thanks. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:16, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Capitalize only the first word of article titles and section titles!

Every single article and section title in this manual uses incorrect capitalization and thereby helps causes widespread problems! See Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual/Building_a_Stronger_Encyclopedia/Getting_Readers_to_the_Right_Article:_Naming,_Redirects,_and_Disambiguation#Common_Naming_Mistakes --Espoo (talk) 07:43, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

Good observation. I've got a bit of time and a sense of goodwill towards the wiki today. I'll address it. --Kevjonesin (talk) 15:21, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
I've modified the "Contents overview" template and moved* the linked page titles to match. I've not (yet?) modified the subsection headings within those articles.
* With the exception of Reader’s G(g)uide to Wikipedia which is on a 'title blacklist' for some as yet unknown reason.

"Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Appendixes/Reader’s Guide to Wikipedia" cannot be moved to "Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Appendixes/Reader’s guide to Wikipedia", because the title "Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Appendixes/Reader’s guide to Wikipedia" is on the title blacklist. If you feel that this move is valid, please consider requesting the move first."

I'll likely request such a move. Though it seems a bit of bother for a single letter "g". Meh, we'll see.
--Kevjonesin (talk) 17:11, 31 March 2015 (UTC)
Move request was made and the move implemented. Been working through within the articles via the outline links. Have made it through 'Part I, Chapter 3' so far. May (eventually) go back and correct link targets on both the pages and outline template to bypass the redirects left after the title moves. --Kevjonesin (talk) 23:39, 2 April 2015 (UTC)
Updated the Template:Wikipedia-The Missing Manual - Contents targets, as per above. --Kevjonesin (talk) 21:47, 3 April 2015 (UTC)
Finished adapting caps usage throughout 'Part I' articles. --Kevjonesin (talk) 13:05, 9 April 2015 (UTC)
Adapted caps usage throughout 'Part II' articles. --Kevjonesin (talk) 00:27, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Through 'Part IV'. --Kevjonesin (talk) 23:46, 10 April 2015 (UTC)
Through 'Part VI'. Finished adjusting caps usage in visible section headings. --Kevjonesin (talk) 16:05, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
@Espoo: --Kevjonesin (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --Espoo (talk) 19:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Greay 

Mirzanomanitaly (talk) 05:40, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
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