Testwiki:Reading room/Archives/2011/December

Hello

Can someone please explain me the difference between wikibooks and wikiversisty (I mean they have the same thing!!!) --190.60.93.218 (discuss) 16:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikiversity is a project for conducting original research. Wikibooks is for writing textbooks useful in a classroom setting, and containing verifiable information (rather than original research). --Jomegat (discuss • contribs) 16:49, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Tables within templates

Hi, I'm building a template to hold answers to the questions on the A-level_Computing/AQA wikibook, but when I try to place a table into an answer it gives me nothing but a curly bracket. Any idea how I can fix this? Take a look at the issue with the last two questions here and the template here. Thanks Pluke (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The problem is with how wiki code is parsed. MediaWiki thinks you want to pass '{| class' as a parameter/argument name to CPTAnswer with '="wikitable"' and everything else that follows as the value for that parameter/argument. You need to explicitly call the parameter by its name for it to parse it the way you want, which in this case is 1. {{CPTAnswer|1={| class="wikitable". --darklama 18:10, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the help Darklama, I'm still having at little trouble with it, see below: Pluke (discuss • contribs) 09:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The other technique one sometimes has to resort to, is to use {{!}} instead of | throughout the table that's being passed as a parameter. Here I find, by trial and error, that you have to do both things at once in order to make it come out right.

--Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

In other words, passing tables as template parameters/arguments can be difficult to do and maintain. --darklama 14:14, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, it works! But you're right passing tables as parameters is not to be recommended Pluke (discuss • contribs) 15:26, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Relationship between this and other WMF projects

I just read some faqs and the welcome and I did not find the answer to my question. How I imagine this project to work is that someone can take content from another WMF project, like Wikipedia, put it here in another form where it would be more static or at least not edited like a Wikipedia article would be, and then distribute this collection of media in book form as a collection of Wikipedia articles (or Commons pictures, etc) which are edited so as to be more readable as books or class learning materials.

Is that what typically happens here? What is the source of most of the content for most of these books? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I think most books are written from scratch with the occasional external work with a compatible license adapted as a starting point. The source of most of the content for most of these books is the people whose name you see in the history. Books aren't static, just take more time and effort to write. --darklama 18:20, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Collection or Print Version?

Hi,

I'm putting the finishing touches to my AQA A-Level Computing Unit 2 text book. I'm trying to get it in a format that can be printed and or distributed as a pdf. It seems that I have two choices, making a collection or making a print version, but I'm unsure on which way to go. The print version seems to be better at displaying pictures and formatting, but the collection seems quicker to make and includes copyright details for each picture automatically. Any suggestions?

• Print version
• Collection

Pluke (discuss • contribs) 17:27, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

A collection can be turned into a PDF and printed or even ordered as a physical book. Additionally, it won't face a maximum on the amount of pages you can transclude like you'd see in a single-page print version. Those factors put collections up front as the superior platform in my mind. Print versions predate the advent of the collection extension's functionality. Help:Collections is also a page you should take a look at. – Adrignola discuss 15:09, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I like how collections work, but running into some serious issues with rendering: [[1]] Pluke (discuss • contribs) 22:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Printing with collections got slightly better over the years but you still have to invest a lot of time in reformatting if you want to have a reasonable result for a nontrivial layout. Personally, I decided that it's not worth the effort since I had invested a lot of time to make sure that the on-screen and print versions are rendered reasonably. --Martin Kraus (discuss • contribs) 10:07, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I also share that same opinion, as a concept Collections are great but fall short due to the lack of enabling better formating of the content. Print version worked better but since the limitation of transclusions, larger books got into trouble (the one I contribute I've sidestepped the issue by including a by chapter version). Most often editors chose to do a snap shot PDF of the work / reformat it offline and upload it to commons, the remaining issue is that they aren't dynamically updated and often miss the information that they do not reflect changes made to the work.

There was also some offsite tools that permitted the generation of better PDFs but most seems to have died... --Panic (discuss • contribs) 12:40, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Incomplete description

I'm looking for information on the ordering of personal pronouns in French. I thought I had found what I needed, but it omits some important cases, including the one I need. I have described the problem on the discussion page there; but I can find no more appropriate place than here to raise the issue to general awareness.

--Thnidu (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I have been able to answer your question on the relevant discussion page which is the best place for this specialised subject. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 21:49, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

RecentChangesCamp 2012

Just a reminder RecentChangesCamp 2012 is coming up soon! :D Please consider attending. :) It is a great opportunity to network with your fellow Wikinewsies contributors. :) Invite all your wiki friends. :) You may be eligible to apply for a a WMF Participation grant or a WM AU grant if you're from Australia or New Zealand. If you're considering coming from over seas and you're female, you may also be interested in the ADA Camp, which could help better justify the last minute trip to Australia. :D We'd love to see you at RecentChangesCamp. :D --LauraHale (discuss • contribs) 10:09, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

PDF rendering problems

Hi,

There is multiple PDF rendering problems about element layout, and other. Sometimes the pages can be corrected for a better PDF rendering, and sometimes there is no solution.

I opened bugzilla:32212 because I think we must have correct PDF rendering without editing any page (or very rarely). Otherwise this make PDF rendering unreliable and we have an additionnal amount of work to get correct rendering.

If you have an account and think this problem is important, you can vote for bugzilla:32212 or/and add new comments about the PDF rendering problems you have.

--DavidL (discuss • contribs) 14:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

The documents in PDF format, I've noticed, aren't safe for my laptop. They hang the system. I suggest making the PDF documents available in other formats too because I resist reading important wikibooks due to PDF problem.Shaily Hooda (discuss • contribs) 16:34, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Shaily Hooda, I'm not sure if the problem you mention is only due to the pdf files from wikibooks. I've also noticed problems on my computer with other pdf files, sometimes I even have to force the program to stop. I suspect something with adobe reader isn't right. Perditax (discuss • contribs) 20:25, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Not only on Wikibooks

Many completed books can be found on Wikisource. William Maury Morris II (discuss • contribs) 04:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

They are different. Wikisource is for copies of source material (e.g., copyright free historical documents), Wikibooks is for the creation of new textbook material QU ^TalkQu 08:37, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean regarding, "Wikibooks is for the creation of new textbook material"? People here just write books from their imagination? Are they books of fact or fiction or a blend of both fact and fiction? William Maury Morris II (discuss • contribs) 22:18, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I know wikisource well and have worked on many books including this month's "Featured Text" -- Mexico as it was and is. But I did not know about the specific differences there as opposed to differences here. I have not explored this area but you have my curiosity now even though I still have 2 books on wikisource to finish.William Maury Morris II (discuss • contribs) 22:18, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

You will also find good free books (public domain) at the Project Gutenberg site (including textbooks). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 13:53, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I corrected the spelling above about "fee" books. I have been on Internet for two decades now. I was on it before there were web pages and browsers. After the requirement of everything being in plain text (ascii) and later learning to create web pages by hand using HTML. I have one book in plain vanilla text (ascii) that I placed on Internet 19 years ago that is still in that same location. The title is, "Recollections of a Virginian in the Mexican, Indian, and Civil Wars - by Major General Dabney Herndon Maury. William Maury Morris II (discuss • contribs) 22:18, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Open Call for 2012 Wikimedia Fellowship Applicants

• Do you want to help attract new contributors to Wikimedia projects?
• Do you want to improve retention of our existing editors?
• Do you want to strengthen our community by diversifying its base and increasing the overall number of excellent participants around the world?

The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking Community Fellows and project ideas for the Community Fellowship Program. A Fellowship is a temporary position at the Wikimedia Foundation in order to work on a specific project or set of projects. Submissions for 2012 are encouraged to focus on the theme of improving editor retention and increasing participation in Wikimedia projects. If interested, please submit a project idea or apply to be a fellow by January 15, 2012. Please visit https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Fellowships for more information.

Thanks!

--Siko Bouterse, Head of Community Fellowships, Wikimedia Foundation 12:55, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Incorporating Wikitravel content

Wikitravel has some excellent phrasebooks available under the Creative Commons 3.0, however as things stand they explicitly do not allow their content to be distributed under the GPDL.[2]. To start out my first lesson in Georgian, I used information from Wikitravel, Wiktionary, and Google translate, however common words and phrases are not copyrightable. So the questions are:

1. As a legal matter, are collections of common phrases copyrightable?
2. As an ethical matter, can I copy these phrasebooks wholesale, and then break them down as I confirm with my other two sources and convert then into lessons and appendices? (Obviously providing attribution, in the edit summary and talk page, even if they're not copyrightable.) Or do I have to build them up myself phrase-by-phrase?

Thanks,
--Quintucket (discuss • contribs) 15:53, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

In http://wikitravel.org/shared/Copyleft they define "All written contributions to Wikitravel are and must be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC-by-SA 3.0) or a compatible license (e.g., Public Domain, CC-by-SA any, dual CC-by-SA/GDFL any, etc.). Consequently, all redistributed and derivative works of Wikitravel text must also be licensed as CC-by-SA 3.0", by their admission GDFL is compatible (not really, but that is their problem, you can point that out to them. We also would as well assume their contributors have agreed to the concepts defended there). As explained in w:Wikipedia:Comparison of_GFDL and_CC-BY-SA or w:GNU Free Documentation License#Compatibility with Creative Commons licensing terms and the now seemingly outdated http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Interoperability between _Creative Commons licenses and GFDL, clearly states that the 2 licences are not compatible with each other, but as stated in the last one "CC-by is one-way-compatible with GFDL - meaning that CC-by content can be used in GFDL work, by not vice-versa." Of course this means that the GFDL is more restrictive than the CC-by and changing a CC-by to a GFDL would constitute a relicensing to a more restricted license, something that should only be done by the copyright holders (but no one has made any issue over that).

In what concerns Wikibooks I see no problem in using the content here, since Wikibooks uses a dual license that includes CC-by-SA 3.0 and the GFDL, you should however remember to give the necessary acknowledgments to the specific authors of the articles (see the bottom of the Wikitravel page and the attribution requirements of the CC-by-SA 3.0, you probably do not need to use all those listed). As to avoid any confusion and without any cost to you you can make clear that the specific work that uses the content is licensed under the CC-by-SA 3.0 (it will continue to be dual licensed on Workbooks, in the aggregation of all books, but in a stand alone form, for instance when printed it would be only CC-by-SA 3.0, this also avoids the necessity to include a copy of the GFDL as required by that license).

Collections tend to be copyrightable. For instance Wikipedia articles alone (most of them, not all, since some go beyond being a simple encyclopedic articles) are not copyrightable and only the aggregate/collection Wikipedia is. The same is true for instance for cookbooks. Note also that words can be trademarked and phrases if extensive enough can be themselves copyrightable. Copyright Protection is not available for names, titles, or short phrases.

I think this answers your questions, note that I am not a lawyer, even if I claim to understand licensing issues well. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

The magicJack wikibook seems to be a company promotional tool - should it be allowed?

I stumbled across this

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MagicJack/Support_Resources/FAQ

I find the MagicJack wikibook reads like a FAQ and advertisment for the company that sells the product. Though I didn't click all the links in the article - some of the links led directly to their site which offered a free 30 day trial or sent me to various other pages on their site which ironically included their "official" FAQs. The MagicJack wikibook offers nothing educational in a general sense and seems to be getting a bit of free advertising on what is one of the top ten most visited sites in the world.

Is this what we want Wikibooks to be about? A place where the liberal and open editing policy allows a commercial business to gain free exposure.

A lot of the edits are from unregistered accounts and therefore only shows the ip addresses. Unless there are fanatical MagicJack product users who are in fear of being discovered as such; which I very much doubt; then I imagine it is the company itself creating and editing the book.

I don't want to post a deletion request however I would like an administrator to investigate. It's a Wikibook solely concerned about one commercial product (a product with no educational value) with numerous links to the official site.

Sluffs (discuss • contribs) 02:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

That issue has already been raised previously by myself and if I remember correctly another Wikibookian, taking in account the recent discussion we had at the request for deletion, this project my indeed be proper to be tagged. It does not constitute an educational resource (we recently deleted a Makersfair book on the same grounds). I would support the deletion, not because it mentions a commercial product or it can be a promotional tool, but because it does not seem formated to teach anything, we historically attempt to not support FAQs on Wikibooks even if they are allowed that does not constitute a textbook as required Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks?, they are seen as stubs. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 03:11, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Latex's math in wikibooks

Hi, I founded new book about fusion physics Nuclear Fusion Physics and Technology. I think about definition-theorem-proof scheme, which will require a lot of math. I am very familiar with latex math and I also have a lot of material written in latex.

1) Is a conversion between wikibooks syntax and latex syntax possible (I am interested mainly in math) ? Or I have to rewrite everything manually?

2) If it is possible, is there a program for it?

3) If it is not, is better write the whole book in latex or in wikibook?

4) It seems to me that wiki has easier contribution but worse format possibilities, is it so? Template:Unsigned

I am not an expert on the subject, but the following Wikipedia page looks relevant to your questions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula. Recent Runes (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)