What are the biggest challenges for the project?

• Headbomb: Cleanup. That's a very tough cookie to crack, much more than on articles. First you inherit all the cleanup of the articles in your book, then have additional cleanup to do like removing certain navigational templates from articles. Then you have additional considerations. In articles, redirects are not very important; but they can greatly affect a book. A redirect from Endgame (album) to Endgame (Megadeth album) is no big deal since you end up where you intended, but if you have a redirect like Barney Calhoun to Characters of Half-Life in Book:Half-Life series, then the book will suffer from it. Likewise, links to disambiguation pages (such as Chell instead of Chell (Portal)) are another thing to watch for. This is very hard to catch manually, but luckily we have book reports from NoomBot to help us with that.

  Incidentally, books and book reports are wonderful tools for people who are interested in a particular topic, even for people who couldn't care less about books themselves. Every book comes with a watchlist of all their articles (see Recent Changes, on the bottom-right of the banner in Book:Canada), and with a book report of what goes one with the articles of the book themselves. I picked a book about my country, but this obviously applies to all kinds of books, such as one on someone's city, their favourite band or videogame series, or on serious and not-so-serious topics.

• Discographer: For me, it's the length of what a book is going to turn out to be. If I find an article on an individual with relatively few and light articles, and am interested in turning this into a book, then I'll go ahead and automatically do this. Easy peasy. Now, say for example, I wanted to create a book on Elvis Presley (which I really want to by the way), then that's really going to take a lot of studying, a lot of work, and a lot of time. This is the very matter that dis-interests me in creating such articles like that, as knowing they're going to be of enormous size. Doing these without getting any money for and on our own is a complete different matter.
• Sven Manguard: Book quality. Making books is easy. Sure it takes time, and as Discographer mentions, it takes research, but making books is a heck of a lot easier than making articles. Trust me, I've done both. However, as I alluded to in the question on what Wikipedia-Books are, books are only as good as the articles that go into them, and there are a whole lot of articles that are in need of improvement. Wikipedia-Books is a worthwhile endeavor, but I think it has yet to really take off because the amount of books that contain material of a high enough quality that people would spend money for them is relatively small. What I recommend is that people find something that they are interested in. If it dosen't have a book on it, they should make that book themselves. Then they should spend some time improving the articles that go into that book. There's something special about being able to hold the fruits of your own work in your hands, to be able to look at it and be proud of it, and the ability to show it to others and say, "This is what I did". Wikipedia books affords people the opportunity turn their passions into real, printed books. It's an opportunity that should not be passed up.

What are the most pressing needs for WikiProject Wikipedia-Books? How can a new contributor help today?

• Headbomb: Well, like all WikiProjects we can always use more people. More people equals better books, more books. But in terms of specifics, nearly all topics are under-represented in books. Start up the book creator (or create them manually), if you have ideas for 100 books, there's probably 98 of them that don't already exist, and the other 2 can always use extra attention. For those who don't feel like creating new stuff, pick random books, and check the talk page for the book reports.
• Discographer: Getting people involved is the most pressing need for Wikipedia-Books. We definitely could use all the help we can get, because with more people, that alone will give us more ideas, and with more ideas that will help turn this into something quite possibly amazing. The more the better!
• Sven Manguard: Think about your city, your country, your favorite band, your favorite show, your favorite genre of art, literature, or music, your favorite academic discipline, your favorite (insert your passion here), chances are that that topic is missing a book. Not many people remember Wikipedia in its infancy, when even the most basic of topics lacked coverage. Heck, most of the users here today weren't even around when most articles lacked coverage. Wikipedia-Books is one of the few spaces, possibly the only space, where coverage of even the most basic content is missing.

You can download book versions of The Signpost at Book:Wikipedia Signpost. Next week, we'll take to the skies. Until then, glide over to the archive.

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6 June 2011 (all comments)

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These comments are automatically transcluded from this article's talk page. To follow comments, add the page to your watchlist. If your comment has not appeared here, you can try purging the cache.

One more thing worth saying; I believe that WikiProjects can form very natural partnerships with Wikipedia-Books. WikiProjects can make and maintain books on their fields as part of their regular duties, and are best equip to improve the articles in those books. Just one person in even the largest of WikiProjects can ensure that the work of that project is represented in the Wikipedia-Books library. Sven Manguard Wha? 17:57, 5 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The editing process here didn't go off very smoothly, but now that the article is published, let's bury the hatchet.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
My comments went under significant editing, which I do/did not appreciate. For my answers as I intended them, see this version of the interview. It contains some typos and other minor mistakes, but at least it reflects the interview I did take. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 08:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply] Can you please point out where the significant editing occurred? Comparing both versions, most of it was quoted verbatim. Any editing was to make to story more reader-friendly, concise and to highlight points that would promote your project. – SMasters (talk) 14:31, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply] Things like this and this and this and many others. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply] I had hoped to keep the ugliness of this editorial process out of the public, but since it's already here, I might as well say my piece. My comments were also edited in a way in which I did not approve. Most prominently several questions were combined, which mixed separate trains of thought and muddled what I was trying to say. The comment I made at the top of this thread is one example. When the interview was set out, that was a freestanding question on WikiProject collaboration. When SMasters edited it, he stuck it onto another question. I moved it back down to the other comments section so I could separate the two different statements properly, and then he cut the other comments section entirely. Therefore the only way I could make what I consider a rather important point is by posting it here. I'm unhappy with how this interview turned out, and I place the blame firmly in the lap of the interviewer. Sven Manguard Wha? 18:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply] The first question, was put into prose to form the introduction. There is nothing unusual about this. The question about collaboration was about inter-WikiProject collaboration, not about personal collaboration. This is, after all, the WikiProject Report. As such, I decided to remove the question. However, there were one or two points which I thought were good, and worth mentioning. But as the question had been removed, I thought rather than waste these gems, I would use a literary device to add them to the end of other responses. Since there was unhappiness over this, I removed them. The final question was about anything else that one might like to add. I then added them to where I thought it was appropriate and made sense, and removed the question due to length considerations. I did not change any quotes (except to correct errors, and for clarity or brevity). I edited this piece in good faith, and meant well in terms of helping promote the cause of this WikiProject. The above statements imply that I have gone and changed what was said in the interview, which simply did not happen. – SMasters (talk) 23:57, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply] I'm collapsing this. As far as I am concerned, mistakes were made, but there was no malice. As the article is now live, there's really not that much else to be done. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

• Since adding it to the Suggestions was useless, I'd like to add a footnote to this full story about Wikipedia-Books. Last week I launched a coupon giveaway project on it.wp, thanks to PediaPress, aimed to collect 35 new community books based on featured and quality articles as a way to celebrate Wikipedia's 10th anniversary. It's a first on our project, that's why I thought it would be worth mentioning it again. You can read more on Wikilove's blog, on my blog (in Italian, but there's a button to Google-translate it), while the project itself is here, and on the talk page you can read a statement by PediaPress. --Elitre (talk) 09:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • If you're talking about this, you didn't give The Signpost a lot of time to react. It might make a good addition to next week's News and Notes. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:29, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, Erik Zachte recently started producing regular stats on sales of printed books through the book tool, available here (the CSV file includes per-country breakdown); WMF receives 10% of the revenue reported here. The book tool is part of our larger efforts to make Wikimedia content usable offline, with the principal motivations being 1) reaching people with no or limited connectivity, 2) allowing educational institutions to manage their own collections of educational content they want to use. See m:Offline Projects for more. :-) --Eloquence* 20:55, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]