User talk:Adrignola/2010/11

Request for Guidance to Update GeSHi to Version 1.0.8.6 or Greater

I'm having difficulty finding an article that explains how to request updates to features on the wiki. What I'm wanting to request is to add the Clojure syntax highlighting capabilities to the GeSHi plugin that is currently used on the wiki.

While Clojure is similar in syntax to both Common Lisp and Scheme (all Lisp-1 languages), the Lisp tag has differing keywords — such as car/cdr vs first/second — and the Scheme tag, while doing a better job, isn't providing clear identification of the different parts of the source code. On the GeSHi demo, they show Clojure as a supported language, but I've noticed that it is not in the list of available languages here.

I see that Wikibooks is running GeSHi 1.0.8.4 currently, and that Clojure was added in version 1.0.8.6 and has been maintained as part of the toolkit up to the most recent version of 1.0.8.9. It looks like an update of GeSHi would be needed to fulfill my request, but I'm not certain if this is a viable option.

Any guidance/advice on how to make this request is appreciated.

Mies (talk) 15:47, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

A request would need to be filed at Bugzilla as a Wikimedia site feature request for any extensions that we want installed. However, I thought the GeSHi extension was one of the standard ones installed for every Wikimedia wiki and that the developers would update it as part of their normal duties. If you check the venerable Wikipedia, you'll see that they are also still on 1.0.8.4. It might take a bug report to spur them on, however. – Adrignola talk 22:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that kinda came at me by surprise. I didn't realize that the plugins here were directly chained to the Monolith. I guess I'll file the bug make due with what the server currently has. Thanks for the guidance! Mies (talk) 00:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

WebMonitor

I'm afraid I haven't used WikiBooks before, so please forgive me if I'm going about this the wrong way, but we've finally received usable permission via OTRS for this book, so would it be possible for you to undelete it?

We've also received permission for GFI WebMonitor and GFI EventsManager, so I was hoping you could tell me (or direct me to someone who might know) if the procedure here is the same as on Wikipedia of placing {{ConfirmationOTRS}} on the talk page? VernoWhitney (talk) 14:38, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

GFI WebMonitor is a recreation of WebMonitor by the same person so the tag need only be placed on GFI WebMonitor and GFI EventsManager. The OTRS templates work the same as we imported them for your use. Thanks for your help. – Adrignola talk 14:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Great, thanks! VernoWhitney (talk) 14:41, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Final Class

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/More_C%2B%2B_Idioms/Final_Class don't know where to write this, but this code does compile fine on VS 2008. My opinion is, that is not necessary, simply make the base dtor private. and thats it

Your comment has been moved to Talk:More C++ Idioms/Final Class. – Adrignola talk 13:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank You

Thank you, Adrignola, for all the good work you have done and are doing on the book I submitted. David David Hockey (talk) 12:48, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Handbook of Percentage Increase and Percentage Decrease: Formulae Application Approach

Please upload my book entitled "Handbook of Percentage Increase and Percentage Decrease: Formula Application Approach" on WikiBooks. Thank you, ChaudharyImranSarwar

This page could be seen as a data dump, with no formatting applied to it, making it very hard to read. If this is work you've published, you need to provide permission for it under our site license. Finally, the page is not what I would call a book. It looks like it has a small enough scope that it could be merged into a more expansive book already present. – Adrignola talk 12:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikibooks: vs Help:

I believe there has never been a general consensus on what the scope of the Help: namespace should be limited to. I've seen some of your move comments which suggests you believe the Help: namespace should be limited to generic help that applies to only the MediaWiki software. Since there has never been a consensus, many pages have moved back and forth over the years between the Wikibooks: and Help: namespaces.

I disagree with your assessment of what the Wikibooks: and Help: namespace should or shouldn't consist of. I think the Wikibooks: namespace should be limited to describing official and proposed processes, guidelines, and policies. I think the Help: namespace should include what people new to Wikibooks, the Wikimedia projects, and to the MediaWiki software need to learn to understand how to use and contribute to Wikibooks to the fullest.

I believe attempting to separate help will only serve to confuse users and require them to know to look in multiple locations to find everything they need to know. I doubt most people will know they need to look in multiple locations to find the help they need. I think moving help to the Wikibooks namespace will only mislead people into the false believe that they are expected to do as the pages say, rather than only intended to educate them.

I think attempting to differentiating between where Mediawiki, Wikimedia, and Wikibooks begin or end is also futile. There should be a need for only one page to define terms for example. The glossary has a lot of terms that cannot be clearly separated as being Wikibooks, Wikimedia, or MediaWiki specific. A lot of the terms moved to the Wikibooks namespace aren't even specific to specific wiki software. "Admin", "AGF", "archive", "ban", "blanking", "block", etc. to give examples.

I hope you can agree that there is a need to be more careful before moving things in and out of the Wikibooks: and Help: namespaces. On the plus side I do agree that a lot of books that use to be in the Help: namespace didn't really belong there and removing their redirects at this point makes sense. --darklama 11:31, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

You are correct in that I was seeing the project namespace as being for pages describing the project. Regarding the misleading people to believe they must do as a page says, I've been very careful to add {{useful}} to any non-policy/guideline pages in the Wikibooks namespace. I've been hesitant to do more, such as importing content and history from Wikipedia help pages, for fear that you'd swoop in and complain that I have muddied the histories and destroyed the local flavor. At one point the help pages were imported from Meta until for some reason people decided against it and now they are outdated and ignored. I see hints that people wanted to use books like Using Wikibooks entirely for newcomers and get rid of the help namespace as well. With no consensus, I can agree that an assessment of the help and Wikibooks namespaces is needed and a rejuvenation plan developed so that I can know how to proceed in making things better. – Adrignola talk 13:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been working on the help namespace on and off again in an attempt to rejuvenate it without any attempt at a consensus in the past because most people don't seem to be interested in the help namespace long term. I've been trying to treat the help namespace as more or less like a single book in the same way as the cookbook is treated as a single book. Part of that process has been trying to get rid of some of the subpages that act as a table of content for some pages in favor of Help:Contents being the only page for that. I've also been wanting to get rid of some of the duplicate pages, which you've done too and I'm thankful for that. However you have also created duplicate pages in the process by attempting to split related content up, some of which I think I had previous merged together.

I would love more community interest and involvement in improving the Help namespace and in deciding where to go. However usually it boils down to just one other person at time besides myself who is interested. I'm not interested in importing more help as you guessed, not just because of messing up Wikibooks' history though. A lot of help on other projects are in need of improvement too, and seemed to be more designed by insiders for insiders than for new users who have no background in collaborative editing or editing any wiki.

I have no problems with people preferring Using Wikibooks over the help pages and I might of contributed a bit to encouraging the use of that book over the help pages as well. However Using Wikibooks has a narrower focus, than what I think the Help namespace should have. Using Wikibooks is specific to helping people get up to speed on using Wikibooks specifically. I prefer to compare what I think the Help pages should be with how the Cookbook is all encompassing of recipes, techniques, and how to use various cooking equipment, in that the Help pages should be all encompassing in explaining the mediawiki interface, the wikimedia culture, techniques, and everything a new user needs to know in order to know how to participate, and tips incorporated throughout that explain how and when Wikibooks differs from the mainstream. --darklama 14:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I had notice you add {{useful}} to pages in the Wikibooks namespace. However from discussions I have seen from time to time, I often wonder if people even notice the messages at the top. Lets face it a lot of pages have some kind of template box at the top. If your just reading, like I sometimes do, you completely overlook whats at the top of pages and go for the content. So even if a page is intended to only be useful, people might overlook that fact. --darklama 14:55, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, looking at how Wikipedia arranges its namespaces,

• "The Help namespace ... contain[s] information intended to help use Wikipedia or its software. Some of these pages are intended for readers of the encyclopedia; others are intended for editors, whether beginning or advanced."
• "The ... Wikipedia namespace ... consist[s] of pages with information or discussion about Wikipedia."

--Pi zero (talk) 19:02, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

In avoiding duplication/splitting, we could probably move Wikibooks:Glossary over the contents of Help:Glossary since the former has everything contained in the latter. It's certainly confusing what should be where, but pages like Redirect and Wikibooks:Redirect, Help:Minor edit and Wikibooks:Minor edits, and Help:Categories and Wikibooks:Categories for me provide the best example of how a distinction could be made. For those pages, the help namespace page describes the "what" and "how" and the project namespace page provides the "when" and "where". – Adrignola talk 19:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I support moving Wikibooks:Glossary over Help:Glossary. I think Wikibooks:Redirect should be deleted because it outdated at best and at worse it isn't anywhere close to what we actually do and what Wikibooks policy says to do. Looking at the edit history suggests others thought it was already outdated back in 2005. I'd merge both Minor edits pages and leave that in the Help namespace. I'd leave the two Category pages alone, because the one in the Wikibooks namespace actually was intended to define when and where categories should be used on Wikibooks in the form of a proposed policy. --darklama 22:26, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I think how Wikipedia arranges its namespace is what I have in mind, depending on what is meant by information. Policies, processes, guidelines, and community functions are the type of pages I have in mind when I read pages with information. Yes I meant to include community discussions too in what goes in the Wikibooks namespace. --darklama 22:26, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

First Aid/Mental Health Emergency

Thanks, re it's Orphan status, I wasn't sure where to link it in the Book structure... Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:53, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

There are several templates on the book's main page that you can edit to place a link to the page. I've added a link to it in Template:FAFooter10. You should update the status as it is expanded. – Adrignola talk 20:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Data Mining Algorithms In R Help

I am writing an article about R packages that are related to data mining. I observed that you are changing the original path that I created. Can you explain how can I move all the content I wrote in old path to the new path you created without writing everything again?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.164.9.176 (talk) 19:46, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe I moved some pages to comply with Wikibooks:Naming policy some time ago. Since you are not logged in with an account that is four days old you have to request assistance in moving pages. If you can detail for me how you would like things structured I can move one or even a group of pages all at once to match. – Adrignola talk 20:10, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete subpages

Try adding importScript("User:Darklama/subpages.js‎‎"); to your user skin and let me know if it works for you or not, or if you have any problems when using it. Its my attempt to replace the gadget you deleted whereby it lists the subpages of a page below the deletion form. --darklama 01:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort, but it does not appear to be working for me. – Adrignola talk 01:36, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

You may have to do a hard reload or purge your browser cache before any changes to your vector.js page are seen. --darklama 01:39, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

After a complete clear of my history and cache, logging out and logging back in, it still does not work for me in Firefox. In Internet Explorer, it doesn't show anything extra initially when I visit a deletion page for a page with subpages. If I then refresh the deletion page, I get a list of subpages. If I go back and then click the deletion link again, the subpages are not shown again, until I refresh. Very odd, but there you go. – Adrignola talk 01:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that until you mentioned it. I've made a change which hopefully delays the generation of subpages until after the page has fully loaded. Seems to work for me in Firefox, but than it was working for me in Firefox when I refreshed the deletion page before. --darklama 02:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I found the cause of the problem. The gadget "warn using Twinkle" defined at MediaWiki:Gadget-twinklewarn.js is conflicting somehow and causing the subpages to not appear. If I disable the gadget the subpages appear immediately, even in Firefox. – Adrignola talk 03:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting. I wonder how long it will take for one of us to figure out why that Gadget is conflicting. --darklama 03:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

If it's a contest, you will win since you're able to write JavaScript from scratch. – Adrignola talk 04:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Not a contest. Well looks like the problem might be because twinkle modifies the standard Array type which isn't playing nice with others. Should work now whether you have the twinkle gadget enabled or not now. --darklama 11:41, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

┌──────────────────────────┘
It does indeed work now. Great job! Seems like it ought to be part of the site JavaScript even since it's so unobtrusive. – Adrignola talk 13:30, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Well the idea was to eventually make it a Gadget to replace the one you deleted. BTW Today I thought of an idea for a new gadget though I might want to make it site-wide for even unregistered users to use. I was thinking of listing books on pages in the Subject namespace only and instead adding a little icon next to each book indicating whether it is a featured book (like a star), the development status icon, and whether the book has a print version (print icon), etc. What do you think? --darklama 14:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Good news then since I made your code into a replacement gadget. As for your gadget idea, to be honest, I didn't think such a thing would be possible with JavaScript. That would be nice since it would remove the ability of authors to try to game the system and get better advertising for a book on the right-hand side just by creating a print version/PDF version. It would also allow the books to be alphabetically ordered for the subject as a whole rather than just for each development group (I won't deny the current template is a hack). But I'm very incredulous that it can be done. I hope you can prove me wrong. :) – Adrignola talk 14:34, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Key to doing it. --darklama 15:24, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Sharpe's Devil

I've started a new wiki on fiction and I remembered about this book. I thought I could certainly use the page. Would it be OK if you undelete it so that I can import it, then you can redelete it later, or undelete it, export it, and send the file to me, then redelete it? (I prefer the latter. :P) Thanks. [[::User:Kayau|Kayau]] ([[::User talk:Kayau|talk]] · [[::Special:Emailuser/Kayau|email]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Kayau|contribs]] · logs · count) 15:01, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Done. Exported it via Special:Export and sent it to you. – Adrignola talk 15:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! [[::User:Kayau|Kayau]] ([[::User talk:Kayau|talk]] · [[::Special:Emailuser/Kayau|email]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Kayau|contribs]] · logs · count) 01:23, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Again Help needed

hi, It is not working this code in {{int:dot-separator}} si.wb output will be like <dot-separator>. it should  · . Why & how to fix this? බිඟුවා (talk) 07:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep. Now it is working. :) Thanx බිඟුවා (talk) 02:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Subjects/books

Well I have managed to use javascript to place icons next to books listed. You can see it in action if you add:

importStylesheet("User:Darklama/vector.css");
importScript("User:Darklama/subjects.js");

to your skin and than goto User:Darklama/Subject. Don't forget to purge your browser cache. --darklama 23:01, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The CSS/JS don't work through the import. Substituting your code, I got it to work. I don't really care for the changing of the book title colors or sizes as it reminds me of MySpace. Icons alone would be decent; maybe fading of the 0% ones would be okay as well. Is it possible to get it to work for current subject pages too? – Adrignola talk 00:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I noticed you tried to add importStylesheet() to your skin's css file. Both should of been added to your js skin file. If id="booklinks" were added to some html element within {{subject page}} than yes it would work for current subject pages too. I was going for something that looked a bit like a tag cloud with the styling, but haven't quiet pulled it off, I kinda guessed the current styling would be considered ugly since I thought it did too. --darklama 00:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Added id="booklinks" to {{subject page}} and it works. We should probably not fade out titles because that could be bad for people with vision impairment. At the least you can now view the effects on another type of page. – Adrignola talk 01:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed a problem based on an assumption I made that doesn't hold true when viewing the current layout of subject pages. I also changed the styling so its not all over the place. I would like to turn this proof of concept into an extension at some point, so javascript isn't required to see this and so it will be more efficient, if people like this enhancement. However I think this could probably benefit from community involvement and feedback first. --darklama 16:21, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

"+ja"?

wikimi-dhiann has been adding templates to pages all through WB containing ja:Wikibooks and some Kanji characters. Are you aware of this, and do you have any idea what it's doing? It doesn't seem to have any visible effect... Chazz (talk) 18:04, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, I know they aren't a common sight here, but that user is adding interwikis pointing to pages at Japanese Wikibooks that are similar in nature to the ones we have here. It adds a link to the "in other languages" section of the navigation at left, which might be collapsed for you. – Adrignola talk 18:35, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah. So it does. Thank you for the explanation. Chazz (talk) 22:42, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

What do you think about EDL_325_Instructional_Technology?

Do you think this book is about anything? It just looks like some kind of class sandbox to me. Recent Runes (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not about anything. It is indeed a sandbox and I planned to delete it, if not now, at least by the time it looks like the classes are done working on the three books corresponding to the three teams listed on that page (Integrating Technology In K12, Technology Integration In K12 Education, and Tidbits in Tech: Integration in Education). I'm glad people at universities are making use of Wikibooks but I'm sad that nobody's really interfacing with the community. You might have noticed the Lentis and Human Sexuality and Gender books created from scratch recently and the additions to Structural Biochemistry. Those were all class projects from what I have seen (but nobody made told us ahead of time to allow us to do any facilitating). – Adrignola talk 19:39, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess the tutors are often pushed for time. I remember being thanked once for pointing out our guidelines, but otherwise most of them do seem a bit standoffish. Recent Runes (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

A small irony

I thought you might notice the irony in the following situation that I find myself in. Due to a last minute scheduling change it looks like I will be teaching Linear Algebra in the winter. But because the change is last minute I don't get much say over which textbook is used as they are being bought by the campus book store now. At the very least I can still refer to our book as a resource. Thenub314 (talk) 02:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

So, if you did have a say, would you be able to make a textbook here actual course material, with the bookstore purchasing copies of a collection from PediaPress? That would be an interesting situation and would warrant promoting to the Foundation as an important event. – Adrignola talk 03:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Most probably, but I haven't seen the syllabus they would like me to cover yet. If they were looking for a more applied course, it would definitely not be the book. But as long as there was some reason it didn't fit then I would have used it. But I probably wouldn't have gone through pedia press. Most book stores have facilities for printing and spiral binding books for themselves if they are able to. This would have seemed the more sensible solution to me. For the printing I probably would have used Hefferon's original PDF. As it stands I will just include the link in my syllabus pointing out the students can find the book here. Thenub314 (talk) 01:43, 28 November 2010 (UTC)epl