Wikibooks:Reading room/Assistance

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Welcome to the Assistance reading room. We assist new Wikibookians and Wikibookians writing new books get off to a great start.

To facilitate ease of browsing and replying, please:

  1. Place your question at the bottom of the list;
  2. Title the question (by placing the title between equals signs thus: == title ==);
  3. Sign your name and date (by adding four tildes thus: ~~~~).

General References:


Newest Books:

[edit] Selection of articles for kids on elementary schools

I am preparing sets of wikipedia articles for the OLPC project. For example this will be selection of some 1000 articles for biology on elementary school Wikislice biology - we could work together. I need help to make these selections for all major school subjects List of planned selections (physics, chemistry, mathematics, geography etc.). Wikibooks project can easily use these selections when they are ready to make wikibooks for these subjects. The selection will on the 100$ laptop and all kids will use it at school.

If you are interested in cooperation please contact User_talk:Arael2 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 147.229.220.105 (talk • contribs) 14:06, September 8, 2007.

[edit] Hello

Hello, I'm Burk. I've had this account for a good while, but I haven't really done much with it yet. I'm a graduate student in Mathematics, so I tend to focus more on that. I also have a good amount of experience with programming in TeX and LaTeX, and will see if I can't help work on the TeX page (at least if I have enough time). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Burk (talk • contribs) 08:38, September 11, 2007.

[edit] A short introduction

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Hi, My name is Mark Botirius and I believe that one of the greatest attributes to the culture of the United States has been it's attitude toward learning and education which goes all the way back to the birth of our nation. "We are more thoroughly an enlightened people, with respect to our political interests, than perhaps any other under heaven. Every man among us reads, and is so easy in his circumstances as to have leisure for conversations of improvement and for acquiring information." Benjamin Franklin. He also said that "genius without education is like silver in the mine".

That's what makes the Wiki concept exceptional. It's like a universal public library. My only concern is whether the information found here is correct and accurate. Although I haven't seen any incorrect information I still wonder about the checks and balances. The scope and amount of information found here is vast and since anyone can edit (there must be literally millions who visit the site daily). How is it possible to keep up?

Regardless, I think it's an exceptional project and I would like to contribute if I can. I'm a good writer, but I have no clue on how the page formats work here and that makes it difficult to contribute. I've been playing the guitar for over 25 years and I've noticed that the information on music theory here is a great source for facts while at the same time offers little explanation. This would make it difficult for those with little or no music theory background to understand much of the information found here.

What I would like to do, if I can find the time, is write a book that is more explanation than information. Yes, the facts found in the book could, of course, already be found elsewhere on the Wiki website. However, the approach will be such that the reader will not only know the information but be able to explain the why behind it. It will be written in a form similar to that of a logical rationale which starts at a well defined and basic point and builds from there. Hopefully, others will like the approach and, through their contributions and edits, we create something that is less like a listing of facts and more conversational and explanatory. Something that concentrates more on principals than mechanics.

If anyone reads this, again, hello, and it's a pleasure to meet you.

[edit] rupee dollar relation

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hello i m navy I want to understand how and why changes occurs in the rupee dollar relationship.why the rupee appreciates and why deappreciates

see [Fiat money]

[edit] Mothers' Day

Originally asked in the administrative assistance reading room.

I am doing a project which requires me to ind Mother's Day Dates for the last 40 years. Can you help please. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Roylewis (talk • contribs) 04:40, March 1, 2008.

[edit] Beamer

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Hello. I have been using Wiki for a while now, but I am new to Wiki Books. I am trying to create a guide which will help those coming to southern California on how to drive, Correctly.

Beamer

[edit] Hello to Everyone

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My goal in joining Wikibooks is to begin building a foundation of open-source collaboration in my 9-year-old son, John.

Currently he is a third grader in a small-town Texas public school system. This year his class has begun writing reports and doing research on assigned topics, so the time seems right to introduce him to web ethics, group collaboration via online community, and the differences between proprietary and open source systems.

Currently he is enthralled with Ben Franklin, and is rather disgusted at the differences between the information he is taught in school as opposed to what he has discovered through Wikipedia. He is interested in producing his own age-appropriate article on Franklin correcting the errors in his textbook, while I hope he will gain the skills to follow through with the project management and be able to introduce Wikibooks to his teacher and class for future projects.

[edit] Introducing User:Jwwicks (Talk) 11:36, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

My name is John Wm. Wicks. I'm a computer/web programmer in the Sacramento, Ca area. You can contact me through SourceForge http://www.sf.net at no_spam!j_wicks@users.sourceforge.net

I'm currently going back to college to get a Bachelors Degree in CSIS at Sacramento City College and I hope to transfer to Sacramento State University in 2009.

[edit] circus act

Hi, my name is Franki.. I would like to know how I would get started in Saudi doing research? The years would have been around 1904.

[edit] Need help translating....

I would like to translate my childrens name in Devanagari. Does anyone know where I can get this done? Thanks. Jay Ortega (ortegapub4@yahoo.com)


[edit] Sahana disaster management tool for the City of New York

Hi Everyone, I am an employee of the City of New York in charge of an open source web application called Sahana that we are using to help manage our hurricane shelter system. My book will be a how-to instruction book for field users of the application. The code for the software is open source and is available free of charge. If anyone wants to help out, I plan on using the http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sahana as the book address.

Looking forward to great collaboration.

[edit] Leisure a new category

The Book Introductory Tourism belongs to the Travel and Leisure categoy. What would be the best category? Leisure? / Travel? / Leisure and entertainment?

[edit] New user interested to work on a book for Zope 3

This is Baiju M, I am experimenting with wikibooks to write a book on Zope 3. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Z00perep00z (talk • contribs) 08:45 14 August 2008 (UTC)

[edit] use of French accents on capital letters

I would like to know if it is correct to use French accents on capital letters at the beginning of a word or sentence, and whether they are used on capitals at the beginning of a name e.g. École des Hautes Études. Thanks

It is correct, however in practice they are often left out. Junesun (talk)

[edit] How to create sub-pages or sub-topics?

I am almost ready to start a book. But, I don't understand how to create sub pages. For example,

  1. If I start a book with a brief overview, and then link to major subtopics like "Introduction", how do I use *my* introduction and not someone else's?
  2. If others contribute to this book, adding further sub pages, how can it be assured that they create pages so that they are kept within this book's "namespace" (so to speak). So that someone doesn't create a sub-page that is a "book" instead of a sub-page (or topic) of this book?

I've looked at other books, and seen two possible ways.

  • This book[1] seems to "namespace" the subpages by naming convention:
:[[Software Engineers Handbook:Sectors:Finance|Finance]]
  • This book[2] uses a convention I don't understand:
| 2. [[/Booting/]]

What does the "/" characters do?

Thanks for any help. I've spent a lot of time reading the help materials and I barely understand more now than I did two days ago. Wiki stuff isn't clear to me. And it seems like the information is spread around in different places. It seems hard to tie it all together.

[1] Software Engineers Handbook [2] Puppy Linux

Thanks, Mark -- Az2008 (talk)

Take a look in the proposal Wikibooks:Manual of Style and the active discussion on its talk page Wikibooks talk:Manual of Style. --Panic (talk) 19:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I looked at it, and it describes the kind of structure I'm imagining (main page, sub pages with more detail). But, it doesn't say how to create those sub pages without them being "books" themselves. That's what I'm not understanding. I know how to create a book, and do formatting and linking. But, I don't understand how to create the sub-pages so that they are limited to my book. Or, does that just happen automatically?
Also, could you explain what the forward slashes do in the example sup-page link I provided above: [[/Booting/]]? I can't find any reference to to slashes like that, either formatting or linking.). Thanks for your time. I feel like I'm close to getting it. -- Az2008 (talk)
Update: I think I found what I'm looking for: naming conventions. This talks about specifying subpages as book_name/sup-page_name. I guess I just create the link, then follow the link and I'll be prompted to create the page(?). I guess it doesn't hurt to try it. -- Az2008 (talk)
Subpages work like a directory tree root/subdirectory in this case book/subpage ... --Panic (talk) 19:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I also found something about sub-pages at naming policy. This is an example of how information is spread around. I don't know why I found this (and the naming convention) all of a sudden. I've been looking at the help resources for 2 days. Nothing says how to create these pages. But, I guess it's a matter of creating the link, then following it.
I still don't understand the difference between the book:page:page convention (an example provided in my first post) and book/page/page. They both imply a hierarchy. The only thing I read was that using slashes causes wikibooks to maintain a hieararchy. But, I don't understand why it wouldn't with colons (when it seems to connote the same thing?).-- Az2008 (talk)
Please do sign your posts. The colon convention is for namespaces (like "CookBook:" "Wikijunior:" etc ) by common agreement (no strict consensus was reached), but practice has made it very difficult to change once a pattern was set. For Wikibooks use the slash convention this creates also a navigational aid. It doesn't seem too complicated... --Panic (talk) 20:40, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I think I have a better understanding now. -- Az2008 (talk) 21:05, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Just for the sakes of completeness. [[/Page/]] is a relative path that means the same as [[Book/Page|Page]] when added to a page named "Book". Every page in a book should include the name of the book followed by a slash before the page name in order to ensure its part of the right book and not the start of a new book or made part of another book. Wikibooks has not always required this convention, so that is why you might see some books still using a colon instead. --darklama 22:39, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That's helpful. It's becoming clearer. I appreciate the explanation. Az2008 (talk) 02:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hello I need some help...

I would like to start a wikibook i'am not sure yet on what can you help me with what are the basics to writing a wikibook i also will look around at other wikibooks to give me ideas. Thank you. --Squidking101 (talk) 04:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problem with Listen and Audio Templates

Just wanted to let the Admins know that there is a problem with the Audio and Listen templates on this site. The code is different than what is currently on Wikipedia. I did not want to just do a cut and paste, because I did not know if the problem is with just these two templates or whole bunch of templates need to get synchronized with the main Wikipedia site. Also, does anybody know if there is a version of the gallery code that allows for adding a sound file as well as an image and text? Basically I want to add a gallery of a bunch of images, and if the image has a sound file that goes with it (eg. image of a bear and a sound file of a bear growl) I want to place them nicely into the gallery setup. Thanks. Zzmonty (talk) 01:06, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikibooks doesn't normally synchronize templates with Wikipedia typically that I know of. Books are different from articles, so there are different needs here than from Wikipedia. I wouldn't call differences between templates here and on Wikipedia a problem in and of itself. What matters is whether the changes would be considered beneficial to the people who are using the templates.
I think you can add sound files to a gallery as you would an image and it will work, but I could be wrong. Another option is including the sound file as a link within the description. Would either of those be what your after? --darklama 02:56, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
No, I did try to add a sound file as I would an image file, actually below the image file with the text part. The problem is that I end up with a question mark icon that I do not want, and the image and sound icons don't line up. When I try to use the template, the visual aspect is now correct, but you can't play the sound. The one in Wikibooks prompts you to download something. The one in Wikipedia provides an interface to play the sound directly. The Templates just need to be updated. It has nothing to do with articles vs. books. It just has to do with an original design that was not perfect. It was updated on Wikipedia to be a better design, but that change was not moved over here. At some point today when I have time, I will try to just copy and paste the templates over to here. Hopefully, the fix will be that simple. I was just concerned that if there are problems with audio files, then the same problems also probably exist in video files. Zzmonty (talk) 11:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Copying from Wikipedia can break current uses of templates in unexpected ways. So I don't think its going to be that simple. There have already been several reverts to some templates due to undesired breakage from people trying to copy over from Wikipedia. Changes at a minimum need to be backwards compatible so that current uses don't break, otherwise someone is likely to revert since its less work than trying to fix every usage of a template. --darklama 19:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Rose: Queen Elizabeth
Rose: Queen Elizabeth
Well, updating templates is a bit of a problem. For example, I'm using the {{Listen}} template in a specific way which includes the graphical interface to play sound files. Thus, if the template itself is changed to do this, my specific usage of the template might break. Thus, it's not just a matter of updating templates, you also have to make sure that the updated template still works fine with all the ways it is used here at Wikibooks. Please keep this is in mind if you are really going to change templates such as {{Listen}}.
Regarding the original questions: you can get rid of the question mark with the option "noicon". My attempts to solve the problem (as far as I understand it) all have some disadvantages. I guess I'd prefer the one to the right. (See the wiki text of this page for details of how to generate the two solutions.)--Martin Kraus (talk) 12:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, since an IP has changed the implementation of {{Listen}} to Wikipedia's implementation, I checked several pages using this template and almost all of them seem to require adjustments to the new implementation. I suggest that we first discuss whether the implementation should be changed and if yes, we should make sure that all Wikibook pages using it are either adjusted or the reference is replaced by {{Listen old version}}. (Since I finally decided to no longer use {{Listen}} due to the obvious instability of its implementation, I no longer feel biased about this issue.) --Martin Kraus (talk) 15:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chemical Principles, the open-content edition

Hi, My name is Chuck Wight. I'm a chemistry professor at the University of Utah. I've had this account for a while, but I'm really just getting started on a General Chemistry textbook. I would like to use the text not only to teach chemistry in my classes, but also to have students contribute to the work as part of the assignments for the class. Typically, a project like this takes a huge amount of time to write 1000 pages or so of highly technical material, so my idea is to start with an out-of-print copy of an existing textbook and get permission to use it as the starting point for an open-content book that anyone can add to, update and edit. To my surprise, I found one written by Dickerson, Gray and Haight on the web site of the Caltech library at http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechBOOK:1979.001 The usage policy for the text at the Caltech site is astonishingly simple: "You are granted permission for individual, educational, research and non-commercial reproduction, distribution, display and performance of this work in any format." I wrote to the library and got further permission "to use the book as the starter material for an open source textbook". I selected wikibooks because it is the largest and best-known of the open-content books sites, and I think that the book will get lots of exposure here. So now I'm off to the races and I am trying to copy the text into the wikibooks pages as faithfully as I can, so that people can read, learn, and write in the project, but also so that the original authors of the text are acknowledged in an appropriate way. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Happy New Year! Wight (talk) 15:39, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately to be able to use it as a bases for a book here, you'll also need permission to use it for commercial and non-educational purposes as well. Wikibooks' uses the GFDL license and could in the future be moving towards a CC-BY-SA license. So you'll need to spell out that you need permission to use any copyleft license that allows people to use, modify and redistribute the work for any purpose whether for free or for profit, that they will get credit for their work, and that other people will need to be able to be credited for their changes to the work. If they cannot agree to those terms than it simply won't be able to be used here. If you can get them to agree to those terms, you can create an Authors page, a Forward page or such that mentions that the work is based on <name of the work> and is used with permission by <name of authors or whoever they want credit to go to>. You can ask how they wish to be credited while you at it. --darklama 17:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Forgotten my Password

Hi, I have forgotten my password after changing it recently. My login Username is 'Armchair'. Could an admin email a reminder to me? Use my usual confirmed email address. Thanks, Armchair, 1702 GMT, 6 Jan 2009.

If you go to the login page, there's a button to request a new password to be emailed to you Unusual? Quite TalkQu 17:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for the input Unusual? Quite, its fixed now. Armchair (talk) 15:34, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
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