Wikibooks:Reading room/General

Welcome to the General reading room. On this page, Wikibookians are free to talk about the Wikibooks project in general. For proposals for improving Wikibooks, see the Proposals reading room.

Correspondence between John Belton and the Continental Congress

Hello. s:Correspondence between John Belton and the Continental Congress is probably going to be deleted from Wikisource as out of scope, would Wikibooks be interested in its import? -- Jan.Kamenicek (discuss • contribs) 19:27, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek Thank you for checking! We do not host source texts, so it doesn't look like this would be in scope at Wikibooks. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 21:55, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Upcoming deployment of CampaignEvents extension to Wikibooks

Hello everyone,

We are writing to inform you that the CampaignEvents extension will be deployed to all Wikibooks projects during the week of 23 March 2026. This follows last year’s broader rollout across Wikimedia projects. We realized that Wikibooks was not included at the time, and we’re now addressing that to ensure consistency across all communities.

The CampaignEvents extension provides tools to support event and campaign organization on-wiki, including features like on-wiki event registration and collaboration lists(global event list).

We welcome any questions, feedback, or concerns you may have. We are also happy to support anyone interested in trying out the tools. Apologies if this message is not in your preferred language. If you’re able to help translate it for your community, please feel free to do so.

Udehb-WMF (discuss) 18:22, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Regarding the project's FlaggedRevs extension

Hello, everyone. I want to discuss with the community about the use of this project's FlaggedRevs (flagged revisions) extension, which was deployed many years ago (and configured recently).

Many unreviewed edits, and edit quality options

According to Special:PendingChanges, there are almost 4000 unreviewed edits (per the standard FlaggedRevs configuration). In addition, on the edit review interface when evaluating a diff, there are three radio buttons that determine the quality of the edit (minimal, average, good). Do we have to utilize these buttons if the quality of the edit or the book matters, according to WB:REVIEW? This proposal is to whether discontinue the edit rating buttons or not.

One way to reduce such a large amount of unreviewed edits is to set the following to true:

• wgFlaggedRevsProtection (pending changes protection, to be used on Wikijunior pages; this might negate the need to show the stable version by default)
• (optional) wgSimpleFlaggedRevsUI (simpler, icon-based UI on the edit review interface)

We should also include the following configuration (partially based from English Wikipedia), if this proposal passes:

elseif ( $wgDBname == 'enwikibooks' ) {
		// Limited to the main, Cookbook, and Wikijunior namespaces (T408110)
		$wgFlaggedRevsNamespaces = [ NS_MAIN, 102, 110 ];
		# We have only one tag with one level
		$wgFlaggedRevsTags = [ 'status' => [ 'levels' => 1 ] ];
		# Restrict autoconfirmed to flagging semi-protected
		$wgFlaggedRevsTagsRestrictions = [
			'status' => [ 'review' => 1, 'autoreview' => 1 ],
		];
		# Restriction levels for auto-review/review rights
		$wgFlaggedRevsRestrictionLevels = [ 'autoreview' ];
		# Remove 'validate' from reviewers
		$wgGroupPermissions['reviewer']['validate'] = false;
		# Group permissions for sysops
		$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['review'] = true;
		$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['stablesettings'] = true;
		# Allow sysops to add and remove the 'reviewer' group
		$wgAddGroups['sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
		$wgRemoveGroups['sysop'][] = 'reviewer';
		# Remove the 'editor' user group
		unset( $wgGroupPermissions['editor'] );
	}

Inactive reviewers

After conducting an audit of over 1000 reviewers, most, if not many of them are completely inactive.

User group changes for reviewers

The reviewer user group is known to the software as editor, which might sound misleading (the actual /qqq definition is "Editors"). To fix that, we might have to consider switching to reviewer and unset editor.

I am also not sure whether administrators should have the validate user right, since reviewer has it on by default (but it is currently disabled). On the above configuration I proposed, administrators (and users in the reviewer user group) would no longer have validate.

Page patrolling

Currently, only administrators can mark new pages as patrolled (patrol) by using the MediaWiki page patrol software, but clicking on "Accept revision" (via FlaggedRevs) would also mark the page as patrolled, in question. I believe that using FlaggedRevs to patrol new pages is redundant, given that we might not want to use one or the other.

If we are considering on switching to pending changes, we should also allow reviewers to mark new pages as patrolled, as they are trusted to have the autopatrol right in addition to administrators and autoreviewed users.

Thoughts? Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 04:05, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree on replacing editor with reviewer to avoid confusion. Reviewers don't need to have patrol permissions as a reviewed page would be patrolled as well. I don't think people will use it much as a page or edit being reviewed already means that it has been checked by someone else. kingofnuthin (talk) 16:00, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

When I said that reviewers would have patrol, they can review new pages that other users created, but not any new pages they create themselves. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 18:16, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

How can that be the case if they have autopatrol? kingofnuthin (talk) 18:26, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

I will give you an example. On the English Wikiquote, there are two user groups that have autopatrol: autopatrollers and patrollers. Autopatrollers have their page creations marked as patrolled by the software, while patrollers (whilst also having their page creations marked as patrolled) can mark new pages as patrolled (in addition to administrators). Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 18:39, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

But what is the point of giving reviewers patrol if we are already using FlaggedRevs? I think that we won't need patrol because we already have reviewing, and patrol only seems to be a confirmation that the page is up to policy from what I have seen, so giving them reviewers to mark pages as patrolled seems pointless to me when we already have FlaggedRevs. kingofnuthin (talk) 19:06, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

I understand, but my proposal was to convert FlaggedRevs into a protection-like mechanism which would be used alongside page protection; it might turn off FlaggedRevs's ability to patrol new pages for reviewers, hence why I suggested this above. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 23:30, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

@Kingofnuthin I will summarize what you said from above:

• You agree about the reviewer user group to be moved from editor to reviewer to avoid confusion (technically).
• However, you probably disagree about allowing reviewers to patrol new pages and having their page creations automatically marked as patrolled, because FlaggedRevs can do all of this, and $wgUseNPPatrol might seem to be redundant.

A compromise about your disagreement is that we might have to consider removing autopatrol and/or patrol from our existing user groups, similar to phab:T423461.

I started this because in addition to that, one of my concerns was the extreme backlog of unreviewed edits and pages [4000!]. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 20:31, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

I may be missing some things here, so let me know if I haven't answered any points here:

1. I don't think we currently need to have the review status indicate the quality of the edit (i.e. minimal, average, good). I don't think this is used at all anymore.
2. I think it makes sense to reassign the reviewer user group to editor. I always like clarity in language.
3. Are you saying that pages marked as reviewed are currently also classed as patrolled? If that's the case, I think we should not have reviewed pages automatically classed as patrolled, and we should keep reviewing and patrolling separate.

I'll note that honestly don't know much about patrolling, since I've never engaged with it—I have only ever referenced the reviewing system. If there is a significant functional difference, I would love to know it. Cheers! —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 03:00, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

When someone clicks "Accept revision" on an unreviewed page, it is listed under Special:Log/review; if an admin marks a page as patrolled with "Mark this page as patrolled", it will show up under Special:Log/patrol, which is not really logged much compared to the former log (review). Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 03:12, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

I agree to your thoughts about the editor group and edit quality ratings, but I don't understand what this proposal changes for FlaggedRevs, since I don't have much technical knowledge. Can you explain what the proposal changes here, how are we going to convert FlaggedRevs into a "protection-like mechanism"? kingofnuthin (talk) 17:24, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

The proposal of changing FlaggedRevs into a protection-like feature (pending changes) is when an editor (unregistered/one not holding autoreviewer, reviewer, or administrator permissions) makes an edit, but their edit will be hidden from the public until it is approved by a reviewer or an administrator, and it will solely apply to Wikijunior pages. The configuration above is similar to what English Wikipedia uses.

::I think it makes sense to reassign the reviewer user group to editor.

@Kittycataclysm: I believe you might have misunderstood. What I meant is that (editor) will be changed to (reviewer) to avoid confusion, but I plan to remove editor from all inactive reviewers, then do the same for recently active reviewers. However, given that there are a lot of reviewers, a script will possibly do all the work (under Maintenance script or similar). Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 23:29, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Gotcha! I can't currently foresee an issue with this —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 01:09, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Re FlaggedRevs generally: The Mediawiki page of the extension says it is not being maintained and not recommended for production use. We should consider whether we need this extension at all.

What is the actual policy justification for having FlaggedRevs?

Help:Tracking_changes#Reviewing_pages says it's "our primary counter-vandalism tool". I don't know if it is that: it doesn't prevent vandalism or reduce exposure to vandalism (as with stable versions). The "counter-vandalism" bit comes from human editors looking at the edits, identifying vandalism, and reverting. FlaggedRevs isn't necessary for that. Maybe it makes it a little easier to spot edits in recent changes from new editors that may need a little more help (wikicode etc, not just spam), but can that be achieved just with the patrolled edits functionality?

If we still want something like FlaggedRevs, as an anti-vandalism tool or for draft control, then Mediawiki has a list of alternatives that may be more suited and better maintained.

Re minimal/average/good specifically: I agree that we don't need the three categories. I thought I read somewhere that these were intended to show the quality of the REVIEW not of the page? That is, a "minimal" review is "I checked there was no obvious vandalism" and a "good" review was "I've thoroughly fact-checked everything". JCrue (discuss • contribs) 11:34, 5 April 2026 (UTC)

This was enabled back in 2008, which resulted in Wikibooks:New page patrol currently being obsolete. To be honest, I would keep FlaggedRevs, but I was proposing to change it to pending changes protection, similar to how Wikipedia utilizes it. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 21:04, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Pinging @JJPMaster: and @Kittycataclysm: for additional input. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) —Preceding undated comment added 22:29, 22 March 2026.

Global ban for Faster than Thunder

• Faster than Thunder

Hello, this message is to notify that Faster than Thunder has been nominated for a global ban at m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Faster than Thunder. You are receiving this notification as required per the global ban policy as they have made at least 1 edit on this wiki. Thanks, --SHB2000 (discuss • contribs) 01:52, 22 March 2026 (UTC)

Upcoming Wikimedia Café meetup regarding the the 2026-2027 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan

↠Pine (✉) 05:23, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

Regarding copyright of recipes found on online cooking forums

What is the copyright situation regarding cooking recipes found on online recipe books with recipes made by other people? I ask this because I want to add/translate recipes from 下厨房 (xià chúfáng) for Chinese recipes, and while I was intending to add the original writer of the recipe with the translation I still want to ask for clarification.

Fukukitaru (discuss • contribs) 19:06, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Recipes are in principle not copyright-able, as they are just facts. When someone includes descriptive text or anything that elaborates on the basic ingredients and steps, that is copyright-able. I am not a lawyer or legal scholar and cannot give legal advice. See (e.g.) https://www.copyrightlaws.com/copyright-protection-recipes/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:16, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

In that case, would simplifying ingredients and methods to where they are simple yet can still be understood be sufficient for said recipes? Fukukitaru (discuss • contribs) 19:23, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Yes, you can add a recipe here as long as the instructions and text are not too overlapping with the copyrighted original. As the linked page says, the ideas behind the ingredient list and steps to prepare a given food item are not currently copyrightable, but the way you write the ideas may be copyrightable. You should also cite where you took the recipe from so we can trace its origins. I personally recommend only adding recipes that you have successfully made so we don't become a massive repository of potentially low-quality or untested recipes—I only add recipes once I have made them successfully. Let me know if you have any more questions about the Cookbook! Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

To build up on this, if you want to understand what is copyright-able and what is not, the "idea versus expression" distinction. You cannot own the idea of "Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl commit suicide" but you can copyright a specific version of Romeo and Juliet with your own innovative ideas. And, for that matter, this is context-specific, but if you can understand the distinction, it can help with future questions about "could this be protected by copyright?", which can be a subtle one. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:50, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

To further build up on this, there's something called the merger doctrine (see Baker v. Selden). This is why you can't copyright drawings of structural formulas. This doctrine means that if there's only one or a handful of ways to express an idea, then any such expression cannot be copyrighted, since copyrighting that expression would essentially be copyrighting the idea itself. This comes in a lot with recipes. I very likely can't copyright this list (from Cookbook:Cornmeal Pancakes (Arepa):

• 2.4 cups corn flour
• 1.2 tsp salt
• 0.6 cup grated white cheese
• 2.4 cups cool water

Since there's essentially only one way to express the idea of that combination of ingredients. However, if I say:

• 2.4 cups corn flour: for this, I strongly recommend Harina P.A.N., because my grandma always used to make me arepas from that stuff every day, and it was delicious.

That is copyrightable. At that point, I cease to merely be expressing the idea of a food item with those four ingredients, and add a minimum degree of creativity. JJP_Master (she/they) 02:02, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

And to build on all that, even if individual pieces of information are in the public domain (or are fair use), the arrangement of them can be copyrighted. This is why even if Bartlett's Quotations only had public domain material, the act of selectively editing and positioning them thematically for the user's benefit could constitute a sufficiently original work. So we could copy the material from a bunch of recipes, but could run a foul of copyright issues if we arranged and sorted them in some kind of manner that replicated someone else's original work. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:28, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Style Guidelines for Advanced Points

Is there a general style guideline to refer the reader to advanced information, while the main text gives the short-answer version? For example, how would I specify that in practical applications, A is true, but if you use the theory you see that A is not quite true, or has caveats, or similar?-- Iain marcuson (discuss • contribs) 17:50, 22 April 2026 (UTC)

Request: Help adding Objective Projection writing guide (filter blocked)

Hello,

I am Levent Bulut (ORCID: 0009-0007-7500-2261), author of the Objective Projection methodology. I am trying to contribute a practical writing guide to Wikibooks under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Book title: "Objective Projection: Why the Brain Never Forgets Some Stories"

The automated filter blocked my edits due to external links and content volume. I have already created the page with the introduction and contents, but could not add the chapters.

The Turkish version of the same book is already live on Wikibooks: https://tr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Nesnel_%C4%B0zd%C3%BC%C5%9F%C3%BCm:_Beyin_Neden_Baz%C4%B1_Hikayeleri_Unutmuyor%3F

This is not a new theory — it is an instructional guide teaching a published methodology documented in DOI-registered publications: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18689179

Open license declaration on my site: https://leventbulut.com/acik-lisans-bildirimi-wikibooks/

All content is my own work, written for Wikibooks, under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Could an experienced editor help add the remaining chapters, or whitelist my account so the filter does not block future edits?

Thank you. Levent Bulut | leventbulut.com LeventBulut (discuss • contribs) 21:28, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

@LeventBulut This happened because you added too much content when creating the book. Also, when reporting false positives from an edit filter, please report on Wikibooks:Edit filter/False positives. Thank you. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 01:03, 25 April 2026 (UTC)

Request for comment (global AI policy)

A request for comment is currently being held to decide on a global AI policy. Thank you! MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 00:57, 26 April 2026 (UTC)