Wikibooks talk:Reading room/Bulletin Board

The latest bulletin is a year old. Perhaps this page should be discontinued? At least it should not be linked from the main wikibooks page Juliusross 04:52, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

There are a number of "current news" items that could potentially go up here, but for somebody willing to volunteer to keep this page up to date. Indeed, Wikibooks has been in the news quite a bit lately from a number of different places. In particular, the French newspaper Liberation just did a major article on Wikijunior and Wikibooks.... surprisingly talking quite a bit about the English Wikibooks in addition to the French port of the project. The numbers are a little off because they claim a total of 12,000 titles, when in fact that is the module count. Title count on Wikibooks is in the range of a few hundred, but it is still impressive when you think about it.

Ideally, this should be updated. For now, this is historical information about the origins of Wikibooks and some early press coverage. I don't see a reason to delete this page, but perhaps a disclaimer that this is heavily out of date and that we need a volunteer to add updated news regarding Wikibooks. The 10,000th Wikibook module went by with little fanfare except for a brief mention at meta and the Staff Lounge. As far as linking from the main page is concerned, I don't see too much problem with that but perhaps it could be moved to the Community Portal page instead? That is another page which is in dire need of updating as well. --Rob Horning 07:03, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Are there any good places within the community to get some news (e.g. the 10,000 module). Like is the Mailing list a good place?

Also is this page not better named as "News" then? I thought it would be a kind of forum Juliusross 13:28, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

I personally wouldn't object to this page being renamed "news" instead of Bulletin Board. Wikipedia has a "news" section, and Quarto is the overall Wikimedia "news" publication (and of course there is Wikinews for general news as well). We just havn't been too organized in this regard. Surprisingly, Google News is perhaps the best bet right now to find out what people outside of this project are saying about us. The mailing list is a joke and mainly a bunch of early contributors to Wikibooks. It is, however, a good way to get quick communication to the Wikimedia Foundation board regarding Wikibooks activities. Staff Lounge is a much better forum for general communications within Wikibooks, but even that doesn't always get monitored. Better than most places, however. If you are willing to "volunteer" and turn this into a general news area about current happenings with Wikibooks, I would like to encourage you to do that. Some exciting things are happening with Wikibooks, and it would be nice to be able to point out major accomplishments when they occur. I just don't have the time to do all the organization I know it will take to rework this page. --Rob Horning 16:28, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Without promising too much I will try and make the page a little more current, and perhaps even rename it when I figure how to. I have high hopes for wikibooks and do not like seeing it look like it is dormant. Juliusross 23:41, 25 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the effort so far. You are correct, we need to keep pages like this fresh. One of the problems with Wikibooks is that most contributors here tend to hunker down and work on their little pet Wikibook, which takes quite a bit of time to flesh out. In contrast, Wikipedia can typically get a major article completed quickly, not only because those articles are shorter but there are usually more contributors willing to help. After adding a half dozen articles, many people are willing to branch out and work on "website infrastructure" like links between pages and content organization. The process of doing that here on Wikibooks, like just about everything else, tends to take quite a bit longer to happen. --Rob Horning 15:21, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Dead?

Does any one watch this page? I posted some practical news here and don't even know if anyone reads them...

Tip for everyone: you can post here everything that has project-wide meaning: request for adminship, new CSS class, change in important template etc. --Derbeth ^talk 07:39, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm watching this page... mainly for vandalism. Still, it would be nice to add a little bit more "news". I don't have the time to keep this current, but it would be nice to make some project-wide happenings put here as a brief note of what is going on. It looks like more is happening off the Staff Lounge page more and more, so this might become a useful place to keep a quick eye on what is happening on Wikibooks before you discover that decisions have been made without you. The community portal page needs similar work. --Rob Horning 21:27, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

We've been trying hard to resurrect this page, and hopefully people will be adding more news to it as time goes on. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

How does this page differ from other pages like the Staff Room, Admins' Noticeboard, etc.? I'm watching this page also but I don't know why. Xania ^talk 08:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Staff Lounge is an active discussion forum. Bulletin board is more of a 1-line or 2-line summary of an important event. I didn't know this page existed for a while, but now I watch it. --Dragontamer 15:41, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Xania probably doesnt need to watch it, because he's already involved in all the discussions. The bulletin board is just a place to share news to users, and if you already know all the news, you don't need to watch it. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I was going to ask 'but how do people find this page?' but then I noticed that it's linked from the sidebar. Maybe it should be called 'Wikibooks News' or something that calls out for people to read it. 'Bulletin board' just suggests it's some kind of forum and so won't be visited by many users. Xania ^talk 20:25, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps we should rename the link to be "Bulletin board|Wikibooks News", or something like that, but I dont think we should rename this page entirely. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 20:45, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

RSS feed

It'd be really nice to have an RSS feed for this. We could easily have a RC bot check for additions to the project page and upload data to be added to an existing rss and atom file. I could create the php backend, except that I know little about protecting the files from hijackers, so probably not. I doubt the rcbot would be too difficult to create. Who has an always-on server (at their home, I assume) they're willing to host it on? Since it would only be text, anyone one of the major editors getting a free hosting service would probably be sufficient. Cheers, Iamunknown 18:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't currently an always-on server, but I have been planning to create one sometime soon. I have a server machine (PII, Redhat linux, Apache), but it isn't connected. What I need to do is boot up my server, update all the old software, register a domain name, and set up some bot software to run on it. But you are right, some kind of feed for the bulletin board would be nice. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 19:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Mediawiki has an RSS feed for every page. Go to "history" and it appears in toolbox. The one for this (talk) page is here... lol. The one for this page itself is here --Dragontamer 22:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Regardless, I dont think this page changes nearly enough to warrant a different RSS feed. It would be a very boring feed indeed. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 00:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Creation of a math formulas page

I think that it would be a great asset for anyone in the math field if there was a site where a majority of the formulas could be found. This was suggested by the people at wikipedia. from: trd89 @ wikipedia March 2, 2007

Isn't that already the function of w:Table of integrals, w:Table of derivatives, et. al.? --Iamunknown 06:16, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The Calculus book contains a few pages with such lists, and there is another similar work at Engineering Tables, which serves as a shared "appendix" for a number of other books on the engineering bookshelf. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 23:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Needed?

The old discussion is being reincarnated. Is this page really necessary? Yes, I visit it and it's on my watch list but is it really necessary? There are so many pages for general discussion - assistance, Bulletin Board, Technical, General discussion, Project discussion, etc. Given that this is a small wiki do we need so many?--ЗAНИA ^talk 00:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Also given what I've just said, was it wise for me to even bother posting my comment here?--ЗAНИA ^talk 00:56, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It's on my WL too, but I don't think anyone ever comes here (well... how would I know?) It's certainly not serving its intended purpose, and as you note, other pages seem to be filling that role just fine. --Jomegat (talk) 01:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

News postings ought to have a place on the main page, if anywhere, for visibility, but there's not enough involvement to discuss redesigning it. We're still doing better than Wikiversity:News, but there's not enough activity to justify this page. If not deleted entirely, I suggest that this page and User:WikimediaNotifier/notifications be removed from Wikibooks:Reading room/Navigation and this page be removed from the navigation at left, to put the focus on pages that more of the community is actively watching, if not actively involved in. This page in particular is the first link in the navigation under the community heading and creates the terrible impression that this wiki is dead.

For that matter, Wikibooks:Wikibooks in the media linked from the unimpressive Wikibooks:Community Portal hasn't been updated since 2007 either. Let's clean up the cobwebs and get rid of these. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 14:52, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

This isn't intended to be a discussion page, rather news about Wikibooks that Wikibookians consider to be of importance so that people who have been gone awhile have a place to turn to learn what importance things have happened. This includes things like when a proposal becomes a policy, if new extensions become enabled, etc. --darklama 16:20, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm putting the indexes on the reading room root instead. This page can go back to being stagnant. -- Adrignola ^{talk contribs} 16:29, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

starting a new book

ok, how do i do it?Ldecola (discuss • contribs) 22:50, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

See if something already exists and if not start a new page in the Wikibooks main namespace. For instance MyBook (you can also use your userspace for drafting your concept first and then move the page). --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:26, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Chazz has also replied to the question of your talk page and I have posted the welcome information that may be relevant for you. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 23:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

RfC notice

Thanks to Uncle G for informing people about the Internet Defense League RfC. Just a quick remark that it is not true that "Unfortunately, the Foundation representatives only directly notified that part of the community that is on the English Wikipedia" - this was posted on Wikimedia-l (formerly Foundation-l), quite the usual venue for such issues, and on the "Wikimedia Forum" on Meta. (Also, I am wondering whether an unsigned announcement is the right place for opinionated personal remarks of that kind.) Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (discuss • contribs) 15:19, 29 June 2012 (UTC)