Wikibooks:Good books

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Nominate a book Seen a wikibook you like? Click this link to nominate it as a featured book.	Related Pages
	Book List	Nominations	Criteria	Templates

This page contains useful information about the Wikibooks project While this is not a listing of rules or policies, it contains information about an important Wikibooks process, custom etc. This page should be helpful to our users; please let us know if it is not.

Contents 1 Featured Books 1.1 Criteria 1.2 Nominations and Templates 1.3 Discussions 1.4 Listing and Advertising

[edit] Featured Books

Books on Wikibooks which are exceptionally high quality and which may serve as a good example for other authors to follow may be labeled as a featured book and advertised prominently. Featured books are listed at Wikibooks:Featured books, they may be listed on the main page, and they may appear in other places as well. Books can be nominated to be featured by making a proper nomination at Wikibooks:Featured books/Nominations, and the community will accept the nomination with a vote. This page describes the process in more detail.

[edit] Criteria

To become featured, a book should be "good" in a general sense. There is no single precise definition as to what makes a good book, but there are some common ideas about what it takes to reach that level. Here are some of those ideas:

1. Conform to WB:WIW, WB:NPOV, and Wikibooks:Original research
2. Have a suitable definition (target audience, scope and style)
3. Consistently follow Wikibooks style rules and naming policy
4. Be complete and clear enough in its current state to effectively teach or learn from
5. Be properly categorized and listed on an appropriate bookshelf
6. Contain sufficient navigational aides and a Table of Contents
7. Not be a current candidate for speedy deletion, listed on WB:VFD or contain any copyright violations
8. Not contain any clean up or maintenance tags
9. Not be currently undergoing major reorganization, contain orphaned pages, contain too many red links, or host any unresolved disputes.

Books which have previously been listed, but no longer meet these criteria can be nominated to be removed from that list. This should be a fluid process, and it is not a big deal to remove an old book from the list if it does not meet the criteria. Books that are removed can be improved and renominated, without prejudice.

[edit] Nominations and Templates

• A book that has been nominated and is in the process of being voted upon can use the {{Featured book vote}} template.
• A book that has been voted to be featured may use the {{Featured book}} template.
• A book that has been nominated, voted on, and rejected should not be renominated for at least one month. Criticisms from previous nominations should be addressed before the book is nominated again.

[edit] Discussions

The discussions about whether a nominated book should be featured or not cannot be scripted. However, they do tend to follow some particular patterns. Here is some information about these discussions, how they proceed, and how to tell when a decision has been reached.

• Any Wikibookian, even brand new users, may nominate books or vote on nominations without restriction.
• There is no time limit to discussions, although discussions which are old and stale may be archived as appropriate.
• Votes can be made by writing "{{Support}}", "{{Oppose}}", "{{Neutral}}" or simply "{{Comment}}" followed by reasoning or explanations. The final resolution of the status is not made by a democratic majority, but instead on the strength and quality of the arguments.
• Books that win featured status based on these discussions will be placed in the list at Wikibooks:Featured books, and their {{Goodbook}} templates, if any, can be listed at Wikibooks:Featured books/Templates. Books with templates on that page will be eligible for rotation on the main page.
• The main page, and the templates used on the main page are typically protected against editing. If you need to add a book to the main page, you can ask an administrator for help.
• The person who nominates a book for inclusion or removal should not close the vote. Be patient, and somebody else will do it for you.
• Books can be nominated for removal if they need to be improved. Books that are removed and subsequently improved can be nominated for inclusion again without prejudice. Bad faith attempts to de-list a featured Wikibook may be deleted immediately.

[edit] Listing and Advertising

Once a book is found that meets these criteria, it can be added as appropriate to Wikibooks:Featured books. The {{Featured book}} template may be placed in the book, either on the main TOC page or on a talk page or in a separate page for awards and endorsements.

Any wikibookian can use the {{goodbook}} template to help advertise a book, especially a featured book, on the book's bookshelf. Featured books with a {{Goodbook}} template can be listed at Wikibooks:Featured books/Templates, and will be eligible for rotation on the main page. A {{Goodbook}} template requires both a suitable thumbnail image and a short description. The image should be 80px square at largest, or should easily scale down to that size. The description should be limited to only a sentence or two.

Book authors are encouraged, but not required, to create a reusable version of the goodbook template for their book. These templates should be created at "Template:Goodbook/<BOOKNAME>" where <BOOKNAME> is the full title of the book. The template can then be included in multiple pages by writing:

{{Goodbook/<BOOKNAME>}}

Authors should take care to format their templates in a similar manner as other books, so that they can be displayed on the main page. Templates which are not properly formatted might not be displayed.