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Archive 1Archive 2

What to do?

Meh. Unsure of what I should do right now. How about a userbox for the group? Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 13:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

go ahead!!!--Cerejota (talk) 13:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Alright then, I'll get to working on it soon. Any ideas? Papercutbiology♫ (talk) 14:08, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

There are images in the commons.--Cerejota (talk) 20:58, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Books and categories

Should books in user space be added to categories? There are already 20 subcategories of Category:Wikipedia:Books. IMHO categories don't offer a nice listing of books. The planned bookshelf was intended to fix this. When developing the bookshelf I chose to use automatically extracted keywords over categories to add an additional structuring. Further users started to change the default category Wikipedia:Books to something else. This is bad, as the software uses this category to identify a book and show the "load book" link in the sidebar. There is a related question on the feedback page. --He!ko (talk) 14:42, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe Category:Wikipedia:Books should be used only for community books. And using subcategories in it would be very useful. It is nice that you try to create a tool to automatically extract keywords, but I doubt that it can keep up with human maintained categories in long-term. May be can have both of ways to search for books. To recognize the book your tool can also check for "saved_book" template. For user created book I wouldn't add a category at all, or may be have a special sub-category for it, like "User books". I expect than many user will want to customize community books. For example, remove some sections, or join two books together etc. Putting all user books into Category:Wikipedia:Books will bloat it sooner or later. Andreas Kaufmann (talk) 08:35, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Well, I think there should be a seperate category for books in the userspace. If using Wikipedia-Books catches on (which it should) we will probably have to start categories for different topics - eg. Art, Sport, Nationality etc. DeMoN2009 09:40, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
Yes I agree, that user maintained categories are superior to bot created keywords and I welcome that subcategories are created. The software should reflect this (community) dynamic. I am not sure whether users can be detained from assigning WP:Books/Subcategories to their books. But this might even offer some chances, as books are discovered by other users who might propose to move good books to the community space. If visitors to the site primarily use the bot generated bookshelf there wont be a larger problem with user books in those categories. --He!ko (talk) 20:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Books ←→ portals ← categories ← books ← topical templates

I find the new Wikipedia: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 "<categorytree>United States</categorytree>" tag.

Portal-worthy books also could be listed in "Topics" boxes or, some day, "Featured content" boxes. Wikipedia: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.

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, categories and topical templates. What do you all think? :-) RichardF (talk) 00:45, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It is a good feature, but books in portals? It does sound like a great idea, but how? Are you going to link to the book or quote from it or describe it or what? Just wanted to know. OnHoliday 07:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Hi, Alistairjh. I expect books will be highlighted in portals a number of ways, depending on the the design of a portal and how much good book content is available on that portal's topic. I have two types of examples so far. As a "Categories" box example, Portal:United States/Categories shows Category:Wikipedia:Books on the United States at the bottom of the category tree. Any portals that use a category tree won't have to do anything new if a book subcategory exists. Other portals would have to manually add the books category. As a "Topics" box example, Portal:Education/Topical templates has a new addition of a book under the applicable heading. That example also shows how a book series can be displayed in a portal only with the main book, while the complete series can be displayed at the corresponding article's "See also" section, Purdue University#See also in this case. A Featured book can be placed in a portal's "Featured contents" box using the same style as in a "Topics" box. A quote is a quote. They come from articles so books have nothing to add to a "Selected quotes" box. Good quotes should already be there. A "Selected books" box would need at least 10 entries to meet the Featured portals minimum for a rotating contents box. Perhaps these entries would include an individual or series collection of Table(s) of Contents with an intro and a good image. So, that looks like plenty of possibilities to me. Any others? :-) RichardF (talk) 12:45, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Unfortunatly I have no more ideas, but your proposals seem very good and I support your idea. OnHoliday 21:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The main and supporting articles book content style

One easily definable style of book, in terms of the content it contains, is to include the main article and all supporting articles that are referenced as major expansions of selected sections. Supporting article links typically are included at the top of a section using templates such as {{Main}}, {{See also}} and {{See}}. Books using this content style offer a comprehensive coverage of the main article, usually within a reasonable number of pages. Examples of this book style include Wikipedia:Books/Cat and Wikipedia:Books/Dog. RichardF (talk) 15:23, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

A linked table of contents in the pdf version of a book

A table of contents can be added to the pdf version of a book by including it as a subpage. This pdf table of contents also can include links to the applicable articles in the book by including wikilinks in the table of contents subpage. However, piped wikilinks produce links to the Wikipedia url of the article, rather than the applicable section of the book. This issue can be bypassed by using an unlinked version of the article name intended for the book, with or without being followed by a simple wikilink to the actual article name. If the book includes an "Introduction" or similar subpages, then the toc subpage simply can remove any wikilinks for them. An example of a alternate article name link might look like this: 

:Dog coat ([[Coat (dog)]])

Examples of this book toc style include Wikipedia:Books/Cat/Table of contents and Wikipedia:Books/Dog/Table of contents. RichardF (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

TOCs are now automatically added to PDFS. --He!ko (talk) 14:18, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

A book template

Template:Book can be used to create a basic main article and supporting articles book. The template also creates links to start subpages for a table of contents and introduction plus a books category based on the main article. RichardF (talk) 02:16, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Categorizing books based on the Outline of knowledge

I started categorizing Wikipedia Books based on the Wikipedia Outline of knowledge. The outline provides a well-organized classification system for readers while also offering ample flexibility for editors. On the category page, I suggest to editors that, "If you want guidance categorizing a book or subcategory, please refer to that outline." Hopefully, this will allow us to build a new Wikipedia resource library without unnecessarily creating another contents classification system. :-) RichardF (talk) 01:40, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

What are you going to do with books in user space, which were created obviously only to try out the book tool? If they are categorized as well, then it will be very difficult to find books with some real content. Actually, I believe that only community books should be categorized. Books from the user space shouldn't have any categories. Andreas Kaufmann (talk) 08:29, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
Good point, Andreas. I personally have plans to only categorize books under Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Books/ into the substantive subcategories. The automatically generated list of all "User:Username/Books/" under Category:Wikipedia:Books is just a stream-of-consciousness from Userspace on top of the more serious Wikipedia:Books collection. I expect the main subcategogy classification system has a chance to be useful if it stays restricted to Wikipedia:Books, at least for the most part.
To address this issue from the start, I created a new subcategory called User page Books. Anything from the user namespace that gets classified can go here. I'll go through what's already classified and move them to the Userspace area and create corresponding subcategories when applicable. That should head off messing up the Wikipedia:Books subcategories. RichardF (talk) 14:07, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
(Anybody out there) I started on cleaning Category:Wikipedia:Books, removing duplicate categories (e.g. WP:Books/Arts being in both Cat:WP:Books and Cat:WP:Books on art) - is there a reason why the dup categories were left that way? Parkerdr (talk) 16:17, 22 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) 02:53, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

As it took me a while to find that discussion, it is here. --Bduke (Discussion) 08:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposal: Refactoring the Bookshelf

I proposed to refactor the bookshelf here. --He!ko (talk) 10:22, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Text-only PDF?

Is there any way to be able to create text-only pdf files of books? Eg., with little formatting (but still some, and info about chapters etc., which you'll lose if you just convert the document to .txt in a pdf reader). I would like to read wikipedia books on my portable media device, which has a small screen unfit for the pdf's generated by the standard pdf generator (which is good for printing on paper). Ran4 (talk) 22:33, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

New books alert

See Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 32#New books alert. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:42, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Signpost article

Following the creation of the new Book-Class, I wrote this to be featured in an upcoming Signpost edition. Feedback is welcome. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:48, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Book namespace

Someone proposed the creation of a Book namespace at the village pump. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Namespace for books. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

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: bugzilla:21958. And the discussions that led to the adding of those namespaces: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Namespace for books (will later be moved to /Archive 56 or so) and Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 45#Namespace for books.
As I understand it the idea is that books should now be added under the "Book:" namespace, instead of under Wikipedia: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 in this WikiProject about the new namespaces. The "Book:" namespace is all yours!
--David Göthberg (talk) 18:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
Can we have an explanation about how the new namespace is being used, or could be used? All I've noticed so far have been the redirects.--Kleinzach 07:40, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
Well basically the Book namespace is where community books should be located from now on. Aka books should now be at Book:Title instead of Wikipedia:Books/Title. If you're focusing on creating books, then there's no big change for you (simply a different location for your books). But it greatly simplifies technical stuff. For example many magicwords will recognize the book namespace. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 23:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
It seems that while the 'books' are in a different space, the talk pages with the project banners remain the same. Is that right? --Kleinzach 00:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
They should all have been moved to 'Book talk:Title'. Other than that, they are the same as before. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:07, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
In that case all the project banners should be removed, right? --Kleinzach 04:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Uh...no? Why would you want to remove the banners? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 04:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
I thought banners belong in Wikipedia space, no? We don't put project banners in article space, WikiSource etc do we? --Kleinzach 05:05, 5 January 2010 (UTC)
Banners belong in any talk spaces. Talk:, Template talk:, Category talk:, Wikipedia talk:, Portal talk:, File talk:, and since the new namespace, Book talk:. Wikisource is a completely different website. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 05:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Congratulations/Four technical questions

Congratulations. An exciting new development for Wikipedia — useful right now and offering great potential! I just hope it won't turn into another layer of bureaucracy. (The proposal to give this its own 'space' may help avoid that fate.) This project may well eclipse Wikipedia:Version 1.0 with its ponderous, complex assessment system. Anyway, I have four technical questions:

1. Is it possible to substitute a more orthodox/legible book face for Times New Roman? TNR isn't really a book font, it's a newspaper typeface. Enyclopedia-friendly serif fonts that are robust (i.e. with good readability) include Plantin, Century Schoolbook, and (a bit narrower) Palatino (and their clones).
2. Is there a way of removing navigation boxes from the pdfs? For example these appear in Wikipedia:Books/Richard Wagner, centred at the beginning of each of the opera title articles.
3. Is it possible to remove interwiki links from the pdfs? These appear rather randomly (e.g. Wikipedia:Books/Richard Wagner).
4. Is it possible to print wide tables 'landscape'? It seems the default is to remove table lines and 'print' 'portrait' but some of these tables would look better spread out wide (see List of works for the stage by Wagner (Wikipedia:Books/Richard Wagner).

Thanks, and please answer at your convenience. There's no hurry! Best. --Kleinzach 11:15, 10 December 2009 (UTC)

1. Well it's definitely possible in theory, and I'm not a big fan of TNR myself. However switching fonts does mean inviting typography and layout problems. It's something to think about. (I'm pretty sure the printed books don't use TNR).
2. If you want to remove a navbox, just add Category:Exclude in print to the navbox (like this).
3. Interwiki links are automatically stripped from the articles. I guess they added new ones. I'll go through the book and see which interwiki links have been missed.
Apparently the latest release of the renderer is missing interwiki recognition. See ticket 754.
4. That's a known issue. We're working on it. Although I note the tables in List of works for the stage by Wagner are weirdly rendered. The tables lines should be present and then aren't. (this was caused by this). See ticket 755.
Hope that answers. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:07, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, thanks. That does answer nos. 2, 3 and 4. I'd be interested to learn more about the font question in due course. --Kleinzach 09:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
About #2 (excluding navboxes from print via Category:Exclude in print): most navboxes for composers' operas like Template:Wagner operas use the Template:Composer navbox in turn. Would the addition of Category:Exclude in print to the latter have the desired effect on all the other templates where it us used? -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:00, 11 December 2009 (UTC)
If it's not between <noinclude> tags, that trick should work. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 18:14, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Sorting book subcategories by β

This recommended on the CatWP:books page will result in the books subcats being listed on the last page of the category. Some categories run to many pages. Is that what is wanted? Rich Farmbrough, 09:50, 15 December 2009 (UTC).

Uh what? Since when? Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 15:38, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

See User talk:Mr.Z-man#Popular pages and Wikipedia-Books for the request. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 02:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Separation of namespaces

Within Wikipedia there should be a separation between content and administration. This is usually done fairly well (with a few exceptions) and the different namespaces are used to acheive this separation. There is a lake of the content and admin seperation with the Wikikepedia Books. An example is Category:Wikipedia:Books. The title itself is a source of confusion. Is it part of Wikipedia namespace which is used for admin? Or is it for Wikipedia books? It contains many user pages which should not stray over to WP content categories. The more aptly named Category:Wikipedia Books is full of book talk pages.

Using the categories as an illustration the hierarchy should be as follows:

Category:Contents → Category:Wikipedia books → Category:Wikipedia [topic here] books
  • Note the use of lower case for "books"
  • There should be no user books in Category:Wikipedia books. They should remain in User or Wikipedia namespace
  • A colon should not be used in category titles. It is confusing.
-- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:11, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
The current category setup is a complete mess. For now the 'final categories', if they may be called that are:
'Derelict categories' are:
  • Category:Wikipedia Books has been deprecated earlier this week-end, and replaced by Category:Wikipedia-Books articles. The categories are being updated (it takes a few days).
  • Category:Wikipedia:Books will be emptied once the software has been updated to create pages at Book:Title rather than Wikipedia:Books/Title, which should be early this week. It's subcategories are populated by an inactive bot if I recall correctly, so I don't know what will happen to them. (They will at the very least be renamed to something like Category:Wikipedia books on "topic" and Category:User books on "topic".)
And there are other categories which I haven't yet looked at. It should be much, MUCH, cleaner by next week. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah. You are on to it. Great. Note that I have put Template:Wikipedia-Books up for renaming. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Redundant categories?

It seems one of Category:Wikipedia books (user books) and Category:Wikipedia:User page Books is redundant. The better name would be Category:Wikipedia User books. Both current categories have redundant words in the titles. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:24, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

See above. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia books (community books)

What is Category:Wikipedia books (community books) user for? -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 00:29, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

See above. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:31, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:10, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Recent changes

{{saved book}} now has a link to the recent changes of the articles of a book. This is very useful to check if there was any vandalism. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 22:09, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Book structure

There is a ticket for this issue.

In the print world, different books have different structures. Novels may have simple chapter breaks, but textbooks can have multiple and varying levels of sections and subsections.

What exactly is possible here? I've been looking at Wikipedia:Books/Frédéric Chopin. I've summarized the present structure and an alternative (preferred) one on the Chopin book talk page, see here. Ideas? Comments? Thanks. (Perhaps we can keep the discussion here to give it more exposure.) --Kleinzach 09:34, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Headbomb answered on the example page:"For now this is not possible. Maybe in the future. I'll make a feature request." --Kleinzach 01:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
On consideration, the implication is that we need to use multiple books to create a more complex structure. In other words we need one book for 'Part 1' (in this case the biography), one book for 'Part 2' (in this case musical compositions) and one book for 'Appendices' etc. So what we have are not really 'books', so much as 'booklets'. Comments? --Kleinzach 01:12, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
It would be nice to have a structure that could define these booklets as part of something else. You might have a booklet on, say, the operas of John Adams. This booklet could be linked as a section of several books: one on Adams himself, one on American opera, another on Musical minimalism and post-minimalism, another on late twentieth and early twenty-first century opera. Then, when he writes another opera and we create an article on it, just the one place needs to be changed and all these other books are updated. In this case there happens to be a category for operas by Adams, but I can imagine there being cases where there may not be a handy category.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:58, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
Yes, that's the way I imagine it would work. Numbering sections and sub-sections (as in research papers etc.) might also be possible, e.g. 5.1 for the first section in chapter 5, and 5.1.3 for the third subsection in section 5.1 etc. (Of course, the developers need to be aware of these considerations. Unfortunately, as ever, they seem rather reluctant to remember the reader and think like publishers!) --Kleinzach 01:39, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that the ticket is still active. We're debating how exactly to implement this. I've recently made a suggestion on how to implement subchapters, so feel free to comment. See http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/ticket/756#comment:5. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:23, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Hierarchical sections are needed

Hello,

Some topics covered in WP, for example, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, have a lot of relevant articles and the "book" you can create is quite substantial. However, a book of this size really needs hierarchical sections in order to be well organized. At the very least, we need a "Life" section and a "Works" section -- as many real-life musical biographies have. And multiple section levels would be even more useful.

Would some software person affiliated with this project be willing to take this on?

Thanks very much, Opus33 (talk) 20:40, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

See #Book structure.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 21:32, 10 January 2010 (UTC)
I'd appreciate it if you could explain where we are with this now. --Kleinzach 23:28, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Above request "thirded". --Jubilee♫clipman 06:41, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The ticket is still active (see #Book structure above). I've made a suggestion on how to implement subchapters etc... See http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/ticket/756#comment:5. Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 00:22, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Zetawoof's Booklist just updated.

Click link to see what it's about and help clean up things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

New deletion process for books proposed for adoption

See Wikipedia:Proposed deletion (books), shortcut WP:BPROD. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:00, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

More important: should deletion discussions of books be done by WP:AfD, WP:MfD, or a new WP:BfD - Wikipedia:Books for discussion? B.Wind (talk) 19:52, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Speaking of which, there might be a few new Categories for speedy deletions for books - as some (like R3) state "recently created", a CSD B1 might be for books that have been empty for at least six months (or some other reasonable time). Currently I don't see a category that would apply for two empty books that were deprodded due not having WP:PROD cover them. B.Wind (talk) 20:01, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Definitely not AfD, in my opinion, since the criteria by which to judge books are quite different from those by which to judge articles. A specialized "BfD" discussion venue would address that issue, but I don't think that there is a need for it yet. There were five Book-related MfDs in January and only three in February, and the majority were completely uncontroversial and could have been handled through a PROD process. A CSD might be a good idea ... would you apply it only to pages in the Book namespace or to all books, regardless of namespace? -- Black Falcon (talk) 23:18, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
From what little I know about this, it seems that since there is now a separate Book: space, with policies and guidelines unique to it, it would seem to me that the process should be specifically pointed toward it (clearly there would have to be a CSD B1 as posited above, which would have a very different time frame than for other CSDs already in place; what other aspects that are unique to WP:Book must be considered? I'm not sure if any of the A# series could be duplicated in a CSD B# series, but the G# series could still apply). Based on the above, it would seem that until something more formal is put into place, this would have to be handled by WP:MfD, but I'll have to defer to those who work far more closely to this than I do. B.Wind (talk) 23:57, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
Well a CSD B1 could be made for test books in the book namespace, but it is common practice to simply userfy these books (aka move them to User:Foobar/Books/Title). IMO that's a more productive approach and I don't think we actually need a CSD for these at the moment, considering this happens only once or twice a month if at all. For test books in the user namespace, it's much trickier because we typically allow users to toy around with "crap" pages in their userspace. So I don't think it is reasonable to have a speedy deletion criteria for those either. So PROD seems to be the only thing that has the right balance between speed and process to deal with the vast majority of these. For the rest (inferior duplicates, innapropriate books, etc..) there's MfD, which so far worked very well.
So in a nutshell the solutions would be Userfy (non-harmful books), PROD (test books, or otherwise useless books), and MfD (problem books). Or at least, this is what makes the most sense to me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I also suggest mentioning this (WP:BPROD and {{book-prod}}) near the top of WP:PROD as I was unaware of this until after I deprodded two books before seeing this particular proposal. B.Wind (talk) 00:02, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the thing is I proposed BPROD about a day or two ago, and it's in the process of becoming accepted (or perhaps rejected, who knows). The two books prods you've seen were tests of the process, see Wikipedia_talk:Proposed_deletion_(books)#An_experiment. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:29, 13 March 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 {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 16:39, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering if it might be prudent for the bot to note when a book has no internal organization, such as what I added at Book:Pokemon… (also considering h3s and such). Does the internal organization make a difference when downloading the book? --Izno (talk) 19:20, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
Well there's no way to tell if the lack of organization is problematic. For instance books like Book:Invincible class battlecruisers are perfectly fine, even though they lack a chapter structure. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:08, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
No sure way, but an indicator that could be used would be the number of links without some type of separation. While Book:Pokémon wasn't a completely disorganized mess, there was nothing explicit; I did think of such a case as you presented, and wasn't sure how to deal with it at the time of suggestion… --Izno (talk) 23:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-03-22/Wikipedia-Books

I wrote a signpost article on the new BPROD process. Some of you might be interested in it. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:53, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot requests#Deliver cleanup message to affected WikiProjects

I've made a BOTREQ on behalf of the project, which should help us with the cleanup of books. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:51, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Introduction subpages

I noticed that many Books have introductions (e.g., Book:Abstraction/Introduction) that are subpages of the main Book page. Why is this? Why is the single-sentence note placed on a subpage of the main Book page rather than on the Book page directly? –Black Falcon (talk) 08:18, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Ping. -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:30, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
It's basically a preface to the book, explaining what the scope of the book is. It's in a subpage for a technical reason: only linked articles are printed, the rest is ignored (see Help:Books/for experts). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:22, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

The bot and the problems it found

Book:Igor Stravinsky - First, thank you Headbomb for correcting the titles to use piped links. At least, I assume that was the problem the bot was asking us to correct going by the "parenthesis" edit summary; however, the bot simply said it had found problems and never said what they were (it told me to look in the talk page but there was no explanation). Also, the header says "Picture Needed" but doesn't explain how or where to add the picture. What do I do? Cheers --Jubilee♫clipman 08:12, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I have figured this out now: cover=[image]. Also, title=[title] is useful... The problems were not listed because they had been resolved, unlike at Book:Johann Sebastian Bach where the problems are listed in a banner on the talk page. So, NP now! Thanks --Jubilee♫clipman 04:21, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I was busy in the last few days and haven't much time to reply. The {{saved book}} template documentation should contain every explanation you need about images and titles and whatnots. Good to know the problems were resolved in the Stravinsky book. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
I found a book with an image and clicked edit... However, the more (blindingly) obvious approach would have been better! Re the image I chose: I wasn't sure if using the image the appears as the first image in the book, anyway, was such a great idea. I also preferred that scribbly thing by a bloke from Spain :) OTOH, a photo of Stravinsky makes more sense, I guess. Cheers --Jubilee♫clipman 05:28, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Your call on that image. I think the photo makes more sense and looks better but that's just me (other pics could provably be used if you don't want to use the same as the first one in the book). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:55, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
Not that important, at the moment, I guess. As long as the book gets an image—as opposed to a giant plus-sign!—when printed out I don't care much either way. Cheers --Jubilee♫clipman 06:13, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Wikipedia:Books

Category:Wikipedia:Books, which is under the purview of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. -- Black Falcon (talk) 00:21, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Example in {{saved book}}

Any way of avoiding the (initially) comical statement "This Wikipedia book is not located in the correct namespace. Please move it to either Book:Saved book or User:Username/Books/Saved book" that appears in that example? I could move the template, but... -Jubilee♫clipman 05:35, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Alright I hacked a cheap fix. Should be better now. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
That makes more sense. Thanks --Jubilee♫clipman 02:42, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Wikipedia-Books to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 02:37, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Unable to export books in PDF format

Whenever I render a Book in PDF format, the render is successful, but when I attempt to download and open it on my computer, it says that the file is corrupted. I have tried in both Chrome and Firefox, and with both Adobe and another PDF program. Is anyone else having this problem, or am I doing something wrong?--Danaman5 (talk) 05:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, I just solved the problem: I was trying to export while in the Vector skin. If we are going to make Vector the default in just a few weeks time, we might want to fix that.--Danaman5 (talk) 05:39, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:08, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Draft MoS for Wikipedia-Books (Located at WP:MOSBOOKS)

I wrote this so Wikipedia books can become a bit more streamlined and have a more standardized feel. It's probably a bit drafty, but the core elements should be there. Feedback would be welcome and appreciated. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:36, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Your MoS is pretty good, though I have only glanced at it so far: I'll read it thoroughly and get back to you later. On a side note, I have questioned the "boxification" of WP:Books over at its talk page --Jubilee♫clipman 00:53, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Review of a user-created book

Hi there. Could anyone please see if User:Buggie111/Books/The Atlanta Campaign is ready for the Book: space? I'd like to know if it it's ready to be sent out. Cheers, Buggie111 (talk) 21:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

At first glance it looks fine, but I'm no expert on the subject. Concerning the chapter named "Commanders", I think you meant "Union Commanders". WikiProject Military History if you need feedback on the content of the book. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:33, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
Also, in one place you have a parenthesis in the title of the article. These should be avoided when possible, I would suggest renaming Union (American Civil War) to something like "The Union" or "Union", since the context makes it obvious. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:39, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

wildbot=yes paramater added twice

The bot added wildbot=yes to a book where it was already [1], this caused it to remove one instance but not the other [2]. If may have happened several times so books could indicate problems identified by wildbot which are in fact already fixed. Possible fix: change wildbot=yes to add a temporary tracking temporary at a time where the number of books with problems is low. Cenarium (talk) 16:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Or, there could be an AWB run to clean these cases. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:32, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Alright, I cleaned up the cases where |wildbot=yes was present even though there weren't any problems with the books. Cleaning the cases where |wildbot=yes is present twice is beyond my abilities however. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:15, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
Actually, I found a way. There shouldn't be any more duplication of |wilbot=yes now. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:28, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Doubling of thumbnailed files in a list

There is a ticket for this issue.

The markup in List of furry conventions seems to break the PDF converter. Try generating Book:Furry fandom - several of the thumbnails appear twice, replacing ones which should be there but are not. GreenReaper (talk) 01:07, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've filed a bug report, see the link in the red box. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:37, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Special:Book

There is a ticket for this issue.

An update and a question:

I updated MediaWiki:Coll-bookscategory per Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 30#Category:Wikipedia:Books so that new books are categorized in Category:Wikipedia books instead of Category:Wikipedia:Books. I am currently drafting the nomination to rename the subcategories, and will post a link to it once it goes live.

I noticed that community books are still created with the Wikipedia:Books/ prefix. Should we not update this to Book: to save the step of moving new books to the proper namespace? If we should, then does anyone know which MediaWiki page is involved? Thanks, -- Black Falcon (talk) 18:10, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

As I mentionned in the CfD, things will be updated, but it won't happen overnight. That ticket is a bit out of date though. Last I heard the code was ready, there just hasn't been anyone on Wikipedia's side to update things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Fair enough. Right now, I'm mainly trying to make everything ready for a follow-up nomination of the subcategories, and the prefix is something I just happened to notice. Thanks for the link to the ticket and the website. Having glanced through some of the other tickets, I see many intriguing ideas. -- Black Falcon (talk) 19:01, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed restructuring of Category:Wikipedia books

I have proposed a restructuring of Category:Wikipedia books here. I have also separately nominated Category:Wikipedia:Other Books (link to discussion) and Category:Wikipedia:Books for Testing Purposes (link to discussion) for merging and renaming, respectively. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 04:17, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks?

Why is this separate from the Wikibooks sister project? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.181.254.202 (talk) 01:42, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks is concerned with writting books from scratch. Wikipedia books are collections of Wikipedia articles, which are arranged into a book. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_April_27#Wikipedia_books

Following the horrible chaos of April 7, I've resubmitted things for discussion. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:15, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Updating the appearance of {{Wikipedia-Books}}

See Template_talk:Wikipedia-Books#Final_look? for the discussion. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:53, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Book location fixed!

There is a ticket for this issue.
This issue is resolved.

Finally, community books will be created at Book:Title rather than at Wikipedia:Books/Title. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:19, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Great! I'm glad to see that this has been fixed.
By the way, there are currently 769 redirects of the type Wikipedia:Books/{PAGENAME} (see Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Books/). In light of the fact that the Book namespace is still relatively unknown to many readers and editors and there is still confusion regarding the namespace and the function of Wikipedia-Books (see e.g., #Wikibooks?), would it be a good idea to delete these redirects eventually—perhaps in a few weeks or months? The majority of incoming links to these redirects appear to be from subpages of Wikipedia:Bookshelf, so it would require only about 70 edits with AWB to update those links. -- Black Falcon (talk) 23:32, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Yes the bookshelf should definitely be updated, if you wanna do it, go right ahead. Personally, I don't think any of the existing redirects are worth keeping. Some people did object to deletion last time, being concerned about incoming external links, but IMO that could be solved by placing the current location of the book in the deletion summary. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
I noticed while checking the page histories that there is a bot approved to update the Bookshelf (BücherBot), so I asked its operator, User talk:He!ko, if this is something his bot could do as part of a general update. If it is not, then I will do it (some manual checking is required to identify cases where a book has been renamed to a different title, e.g. Wikipedia:Books/Rock Steady is now Book:No Doubt discography). -- Black Falcon (talk) 16:42, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Creating my first book

I have been looking over the book pages, including this project, and I'm still a little too shaky to confidently create my first book. I was wondering if someone could talk me through it, either here or on my talk page.

I do not want anyone to create the book(s) for me—I want to do it so that I can get a feel for it. I'll be working off of a topic list, a large set of articles I am actively re-writing and hope to eventually bring up to GT or FT within the coming years. I guess my biggest question is how to break it all up. Should I just create one large "lemur book", or should I also create several smaller "sub-books" such as "mouse lemur book", "subfossil lemur book", etc.? With topics, its easier because you can create subtopics (as I've already done). With books, I'm a bit more confused.

Again, a helpful walk-through would be greatly appreciated. Once we work out the organizational detail, I'll go in and create the book(s). I may then go on to create books for all of WP:PRIMATE. – VisionHolder « talk » 23:30, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Well there really is a lot of flexibility on what you can do. The main issue is to decide what the scope of the book should be. Do you want a "general book" which would contain only the things common to all species of Lemurs? Do you want books detailing individual genii (genuses?) such as Book:Oryzomys? Do you want a book which is a comprehensive list of everything related to Lemur?
Personally, I for a "comprehensive" book, I would have a general structure of

Lemurs

  • Overview
    • [All general topics on lemurs, basically Lemur plus the "see also" and "main" links found in the article]
  • Families of lemur
    • [All families of lemurs]
  • Genii of lemur
    • [All genii of lemurs]
  • Species of lemur
    • [All species of lemurs]
  • Miscellany
    • [Topics related to individual families/genii/species]

Or you could divide this into several books ("Lemurs" [general topics + all families], then books on individual families, then books on individual genii, etc...). Or you could do both; one "Complete Guide" (Example Book:Korn, although this is for a band, rather than species), an introduction book, plus books on individual families, genii (Book:Oryzomys), etc...

I hope that helps. If you're unsure, just give it a shot in your userspace, and ask people here and at WP:ANIMALS and WP:BIOLOGY for feedback on how things look. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and helpful tips. I'll probably take your suggestion and create the "Complete guide" (or some subtitle I haven't decided upon yet) first, then later create books around families, genera, etc. If I use the outline you provided for the main book, then do I create multiple links to pages species that are the only species within their genus (monotypic)? For example, the genus Lemur is monotypic, containing only the Ring-tailed Lemur, therefore Lemur (genus) redirects to Ring-tailed Lemur. There are also a couple of other examples of such monotypic genera: Greater Bamboo Lemur (Prolemur) and Hairy-eared Dwarf Lemur (Allocebus). Under genera, should I list the genus as [[Ring-tailed Lemur|Lemur]], and then list the species again under "Species of lemur"? If I don't list the genus, then it would give the impression that the genus doesn't exist.
Also, is nesting an option? If I list all species under one heading, it would be hard for anyone to find the one they're looking for without searching. (There are currently 100+ species known.) I guess I could stop at the genera level for the main book, then create a species book broken into chapters based on genera. Your thoughts? – VisionHolder « talk » 22:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Well my suggestion assumed that the genus article was seperated from the species article. This situation with redirects does complicate things. You could do something like :Ring-tailed Lemur → see "Lemur (genus)", or the opposite :Lemur (genus) → see "Ring-tailed Lemur". Stopping at the genera-level for the general book would also dodge the issue. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Within WP:Tree of Life, this will be a common problem. Likewise, there are cases where entire families are monotypic, and possibly higher in the taxonomic tree. It might be worthwhile to come up with some guidelines for this kind of stuff. When I'm finished with the Lemurs book, I'll post back and see what people think. From what I can tell, it will be either "the first" or "one of the first books" above the genus level within WP:Tree of Life. (Note: Book:Cats doesn't count since it only discusses the Domestic Cat and it's immediate relatives... which to me suggests a possible need for a rename.) – VisionHolder « talk » 23:38, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Btw, thanks for helping create the talk page, but I can get that in the future. First, I was setting up WP:PRIMATE to use the book class. I was going to come back.  ;-) I'll be ready to discuss the book shortly. Feel free to place any comments you might have either here, on its talk page, or on my talk page. – VisionHolder « talk » 00:19, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm now looking at creating the other books. Here are some books I've considered:
  1. one for each lemur family – problem here is that one family (Daubentoniidae) is monogeneric and therefore be very small
  2. one for each lemur genus – though several are monotypic genera; maybe just for large genera, but with what species number cut-off?
  3. lemur species book – complete species list broken into sections by genus
The subfossil lemur book will wait until I finish writing the article, of course. Otherwise any thoughts? – VisionHolder « talk » 02:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

{{saved book}} can now be used to warn people about bugs.

See this example. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Pardon my ignorance, but how do we report bugs? For instance, I know that {{Cladogram}} and {{Clade}} don't display properly, but are used extensively in biology articles. {{Double image stack}} is another one. If the answer is obvious and I missed it somewhere, I apologize. – VisionHolder « talk » 23:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Reporting them on this very page is a good idea, I guess, so the code-savvy members here can sort them out if they are simple. Wikipedia talk:Article alerts/Bugs is the main place though, AFAIK --Jubilee♫clipman 23:16, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Article alerts/Bugs is to report bugs in the Article alerts, it has nothing to do with bugs found in books. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:30, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Oh wait... that's for bugs in the bug reports... [3] in fact --Jubilee♫clipman 23:22, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Well usually Help:Books/Feedback is the place to go, as well as code.pediapress.com (Active tickets, Create a ticket). However, neither pages warns people before hand that there's an issue with a book they are about to download/order. If this is confusing, then just use |bug=, and I'll take care of creating tickets if need be. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:23, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Ah! So not Bugzilla (or Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), for that matter)? |bug= makes sense, though. Thanks, Headbomb, I ofter wondered about this too actually --Jubilee♫clipman 23:28, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! For simplicity, I've just listed the bugs using |bug= on Book:Lemurs. – VisionHolder « talk » 14:11, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

The {{Hide in print}} template that was used on the Lemur article did not work properly, and after failing to find a fix, I was forced to revert. For some reason, the template does not hide entire tables. Also, I re-added the bug for #tag:ref because this appears to be a separate error, which can be seen on the rendering of the final table from Lemur evolutionary history. The other referencing problem appears to be a problem with using {{Reflist}} with LDR. – VisionHolder « talk » 21:21, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

I fixed the first part by shoving the part in a template, and excluding the template from print, and created ticket#834 for the reflist problem, and ticket #836 for the #tag:ref. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:11, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Signpost article: Wikipedia Books Launched Worldwide +100 coupons for free books

Something I wrote for the Signpost. Read for details. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 11:59, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Redundant template use

A lot of Wikipedia books are tagged with the template {{WBOOKS}}, it says: "This is a Wikipedia Book, a collection of articles which can be downloaded electronically or ordered in print. Wikipedia Books are maintained by the Wikipedia Community, particularly WikiProject Wikipedia-Books. Wikipedia Books also be tagged by the banners of any relevant Wikiprojects (with |class=book).".

Considering that all pages in the book namespace are books, doesn't that make this use redundant? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not see any difference between that and templating articles as articles, and categories as categories etc. The template it self is also tagged with the same template, this on the other hand makes sense, because the page is a part of WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, "This template is within the scope of WikiProject Wikipedia-Books a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Wikipedia:Books.". But most books are not, they are just books. Secondly, the book namespace is, simply amazing, big ups. jonkerz♠ 22:39, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

I was not 100% correct, for example, there are disambig pages too, but the question is still the same. jonkerz♠ 22:46, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

The reasons are mostly that it's very convenient to do so. Tagging all books allow us to get notified of deletion discussion, proposal for moves, etc... through things like Article alerts and we can also monitor discussions through the mass watchlist. Tagging them all also guarantees that books are at least monitored by one project, and can facilitates bot-work. There are other minor reasons too, such as it provides statistics on how many true books there are (getting a page count from the bookspace would be misleading since there are dabs and redirects), etc...
Does that answer your question? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:18, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
It makes sense, sorry, I was just surprised to see a template stating that the books were books ;) jonkerz♠ 00:39, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Question

Why are we cluttering navigation boxes with links to every individual Wiki-Book page for every individual article under that topic? These are not new or separate pages. They are pages that reflect a PDF version of one already listed. It seems to me that this would be better served as individual links on those respective pages, like how we link to Wikiquote, or Wikicommons for a specific topic. Otherwise, you're talking about countless links on a nav box. I mean, let's take The Simpsons for example. There are 20 odd seasons, 400 episodes (most with their own pages)--see Template:The Simpsons--and if we're linking to everything that's a crap load of stuff on the nav box. Even the template itself for The Simpsons had to scale back the stuff that was linked (they don't even link the episodes anymore). Also, just to point out, there has apparently been some major disagreement over the linking in the nav box, as multiple communities appear to be against it (at least at face value, based on the various reverting going on...myself included for one of those topics).  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:19, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

BTW, it might be good to note that the "Print/Export" box to the left of every page includes a link to a PDF or Book version of that topic.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:29, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree. They are just PDF versions of articles, not separate articles themselves. There is no point in having them in the navigation boxes. Ωphois 15:31, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Those reverts were mostly due to books being mostly redlinks at the time of addition, or because I made a mistake (and inadvertently remove an existing row). There are two main ways to link to books. The first is to place {{Wikipedia-Books}} in the See also (as prescribed by WP:LAYOUT) or External links sections of articles strongly connected to the book (such as the episodes of a season, for the book on the season, or the songs of an album, for a book on the album), or to use navboxes. People by far prefer navboxes, since it's less intrusive, and I'm inclined to agree with them. This is not clutter. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:31, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Where is this "people prefer nav boxes"? Why do you need a link at all when one already exists?  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:43, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
But no links exist! That's the whole point of linking the books on the navboxes, to de-orphan them. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:50, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
To the left of the article. There is a section titled "Print/Export". There, you will find the links. You can create a book there, or view a PDF file of the page you're looking at. Thus, we don't need a link in the nav box doing the exact same thing.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 16:39, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but that's completely unrelated to existing books. That's for creating new books, not to find existing ones, much less ones related to the article a user is browsing. The equivalent for articles is the Article wizard. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:42, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, but you're assuming that we need a book for every type of scenario. We don't. Again, no reason to clutter a nav box with needless links to PDFs of pages already linked.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 16:53, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
Agreed with Bignole. Keeping nav boxes concise is hard enough, without the addition of books. How much use will it be to most people, really? And as Ophois says, they're not linking to new material or anything different to the articles already linked Tphi (talk) 19:11, 6 May 2010 (UTC)
You all seem to be coming from WP:TV or a related project, so I'll create an RfC on how to best link these books tomorrow on the project's talk page. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:31, 7 May 2010 (UTC)
Allow me to chime in with the consensus that they don't belong in navboxen. Jclemens (talk) 14:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

What should be "booked"?

Personally, I tend to think that most every subject which has an article in the Macropedia section of Encyclopedia Britannica at least might be best served by the presence of a "book" here. Are there any efforts being made to see what topics would most benefit from the existence of such longer articles? John Carter (talk) 21:32, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

MfD nominations of a few Books

There are some book-related nominations at WP:MFD on the ground that there are insufficient articles in the books. Thoughts from those working with the Book namespace would be useful. BencherliteTalk 20:00, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Quality guidelines

It seems to me that the one thing which might be standing in the way of development here is the lack of guidelines for what makes a good and featured book. Has anyone proposed any? For what little it might be worth, here are at least a few ideas which occur to me:

  • 1) I think it would make sense to include the required peer review, as per the existing WP:FT criteria.
  • 2) Personally, I think that a book would be best served by including at least all the information, in whatever phrasing, of at least all the articles which are "first-level" subarticles of the main article. In several cases, the book may well benefit from having content from other articles, like biographies of persons directly relevant to the subject, included as well, and probably at least some content from some of the "second-level" subarticles.
  • 3) Except for books dealing with topics which are relevant only to a short historical period, like video game series for example, I tend to think that in many cases a book may well benefit from having a "History" section which is longer than most other sections, particularly if the topic has existed and "changable" for more than a hundred years.
  • 4) I personally think that a featured/good book nominee should also be structured in such a way that it isn't just a collection of articles, but rather a separate entity. Some of the included content from "second-level" subarticles mentioned above, for instance, would probably best fit in the sections devoted to the main topic of that subarticle. Also, I don't really like the idea of seeing a main page which is, effectively, a short summary and then links to other articles. Also, I don't like the idea of giving redundant barnstars, if all that is being done is copying material elsewhere.
  • 5) I definitely think, with all the above taken into account, having some sort of FB review process similar to the extant FA process would be the best final step to take for a FB candidate. A structure similar to the Good Series process could probably work for Good Book candidates.
  • 6) Lastly, I think having three assessment classes of "books", Book, Good Book, and Featured Book, might be enough.

A separate question, regarding how in-depth a given book should be, is also a relevant one. The above proposal is more or less based on the assumption that they would be, in general, comparatively short and focused. Other proposals would apply under other circumstances.
In any event, I think that, like in most other cases, the finer details will only be able to be worked out through trial and error. In this case, that would mean having some books created, and seeing what if any quality problems become apparent in the books based on existing high-quality article content. This would mean, basically, asking people to turn some of the existing featured series into books. Would that make sense to the rest of you? John Carter (talk) 19:54, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

BTW, I'll try to give you a reply to this over the week-end. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:02, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Book:Internet t

Feedback would be welcomed to decide what to do with that one. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:53, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Maybe some help determining priorities?

It seems to me that one of the bigger problems this effort might face might be determining which, if any, books are of greater importance. So, for instance, a book on Winston Churchill, which I personally am certain is well worth creating, would in a lot of ways be similar to a book on the United Kingdom in WWII, although I think the former would include if anything more information than the latter. So, in a case like this, which book should we work on producing, realizing it is work to produce any such book?

I know some of us might be familiar with the old book Cultural Literacy, which indicated which subjects were of central importance for individuals to understand our culture. Maybe making some sort of survey, like the writers of that book did, of various teachers/academics at all levels in as wide a variety of specialties as possible might help some of us determine which books to make a priority. Alternately, if we could get the group who helped determine the articles for the Wikipedia CD release, or some similar group, to maybe give us a list of topics which they think would be most important to have in the comparatively inexpensive editions we would make, that might be a useful help as well.

Basically, at this point, we could easily make books on virtually any topic imaginable. Unfortunately, a lot of books created in that way may never actually be printed more than once, if that. It would be very useful to maybe get some input which could be used to help guide the process along. John Carter (talk) 00:25, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

That's a good remark. Personally, I think individual WikiProjects ought to decide which topic they should prioritize. Perhaps we could compare vital/core articles with our books and see if we're under-representing a particular area or which core topics are we missing books on? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 00:30, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
I could live with that idea, actually. I could myself start discussions in the various religion projects about which books to make priorities, and in some of the national/regional projects as well. Let me make a note to the WikiProject Council to see how we could go about having some sort of widely seen vote or something on what should be gathered in books. John Carter (talk) 20:32, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Book Report Bot

I've made a bot request for a bot to generate "book reports". That is it would crawl the book's articles and make suggestion on how to improve the content of the book. See Wikipedia:Bot_requests#BookReportBot for details, as well as for comments and feedback on the idea. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Help:Books/PediaPress PDF rendering

I've sent a message to most of you in the last week, but newcomers would also be interested in this, so I'm posting the link here as well. Basically, this would allow to get access to the PediaPress renderer, which allows you to see/review books as they would be printed (minus covers). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 12:50, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Personal vs community books

Is there a process for moving a book I made in my namespace over to the community books? Sorry if this is answered elsewhere. --Padraic 14:29, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Just move it like you would any other page (User:Padraic/Books/Foobar --> Book:Foobar) (see WP:MOVE). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:05, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

New category for project members

Hi all. Feel free to join Category:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books participants. Eventually, it will also be built into a userbox. That's on my list of things to do in the near future. Sven Manguard Wha? 05:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Removal of /introduction pages (example Book:Anthropology/Introduction)

These messages are ugly and in some cases outdated. They do not contribute to the books themselves in any way, IMO. I have yet to see one that did not just say "Note. This book is based on the Wikipedia category, "article name." The supporting articles are those referenced as major expansions of selected sections."

I think that they should go, both the subpages themselves and the notices on the book space.

Thoughts? Sven Manguard Wha? 19:52, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

They are leftovers of a few books which were automatically generated. People thought it would be nice to say/explain how these books were made when the books were very new to Wikipedia. I agree these are now largely redundant and useless and could be removed and deleted without any harm. Let's wait a few days to see if people object, then let's take them to MfD. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
Right. It's been a week. I don't quite think anyone actually watches this, and if they do, they certainly haven't demonstrated that they particularly care. One more ring up on the IRC to be sure and then I'm going to get start with the subpage removals. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:33, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
Per request to restate what I said on IRC on this page... "They're ugly and ew, make them go away".  IShadowed  ✰  05:27, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Non-free images and the Book namespace

Please be aware that WP:NFCC #9 prohibits the use of non-free images outside of the main article namespace. No special exclusion for the book namespace exists. Periodically, I have found non-free images on books, for example Book:System Shock, from which I removed [4] the file File:SHODAN hires.jpg. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 15:15, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Then that policy needs to be changed, as I don't see any real difference between an article and the page of a book - do you? --kingboyk (talk) 20:14, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
Same rationale as the main page. Fair use images cannot be claimed there. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Feedback on PediaPress printed book

I finally received my printed copy of Book:Equality Laws of the World and it looks great overall (and the recipient of the gift really likes it). I'm not sure if this is the right place, but I have some feedback:

  1. Throughout the book, wherever a word appears in quotation marks, both the beginning and the end of the word are marked with the closing quotation mark. Is there any way to fix this (or force straight quotation marks)?
  2. The "external links" sections are pretty silly to have in a printed book. Is there any way we could create the option to cut these out en masse?
  3. Stretching infoboxes to maximum horizontal fit doesn't look particularly nice. Is there a way they could be only half of the page, as with the web version of Wikipedia articles?
  4. By the end of my book, the foonote numbers are 4 digits long. This is visually distracting and doesn't seem particularly professional. Could we have footnote numbers reset with each article or chapter?

Again, I am very happy with the book (the photos in particular look great) and am excited by the possibilities of the project. --Padraic 19:06, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Book:Mystery up for deletion. Input from those who are familiar with the Book project please

β

I am new to the Books WikiProject, but I have one question that I couldn't find answered here, on the help page, or the FAQ. Why are books categorized under their subject's category by the letter beta? For example, Book:Avril Lavigne is listed on the Avril Lavigne category alphabetically in the β section (instead of just "B"). Same with Category:Aerosmith. If I were to create a new book, should I also file it under β or is this for certain books only? – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 19:42, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

It appears that these letters are used to separate articles from things in other namespaces. β is used for books, τ for templates, ƒ for files, ect. It's an organizational trick. I wouldn't worry about it, as most categories don't do this, in my experience. You can still do it if you want to but as far as I know, there's nothing that says you have to. Sven Manguard Wha? 21:01, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
Ah... and the Aerosmith example even has the τ section, which I hadn't even noticed. You cleared things up nicely. Thank you so much for your reply! – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 21:09, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 55#Book report bot, take two

I've made a bot request so every book gets detailed reports of the quality of the articles in them. Hopefully this will help people identify articles which should be improved in a particular topic, and drive article improvements! Everyone should probably take a look at this, the bot request is probably clearer than this little comment of mine. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, to that I say "☺" Sven Manguard Wha? 04:41, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
BRFA filed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/NoomBot 2. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:21, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Books/Wikibooks Confusion

Thought I'd note a discussion at Wikibooks for others to read. b:Wikibooks:Reading room/Assistance#Disappearance of Private WikiBook Adrignola (talk) 14:08, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Random books?

I made this in the summer of last year, but never really done anything with it. It could be added below the "Random article" in the navigation sidebar.

What's the feeling on this? Should I bring it to the village pump for a full RfC or is just unwanted? Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 06:00, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The second of the three is a useful tool and fun toy, but I don't think that it would be suitable for the navagation sidebar. Books are just not at that point yet. I'd stick the tool up at the top of the wikiproject navigation section (with all the tabs) though, for sure.
As to the top of the tree tabs, non-community books really are not our business to meddle with. I am going to use it sometime soon to see if any non-community books might warrant being made into community books, but that tool is certainly not something that I'd put anywhere else, as the community has very little control over them, and can't insure that those books are organized, useful, etc.
Books is in it's infant stages. Hopefully over the next few weeks we can make some other improvements, but right now I think the main priority should be getting Books up to as good a shape as possible. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:20, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Not sure I'm following you... What do user books have to do with this? As for books being "ready", well they are about as "ready" as our articles currently are (WP:NOTFINISHED and all that jazz). Best way to improve books is to get more people reading them, at least IMO. Although waiting a bit for the book report bot (mentioned above) to kick in might be a good idea however, as I'll send a notice to all WikiProjects about the cleanup reports for their books (see User:Headbomb/Sandbox4 for the general idea). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 07:42, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, that wasn't too coherent. What I'm saying is that we should wait for the featured process to be drafted and for the bot to be online before we launch a publicity drive. I'd remove the Book score section from the template for the moment as well (leaving the article score in though.) Sven Manguard Wha? 21:45, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
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