![]() | You can create and edit a Wikipedia book design using the Book Creator and upload it to an external rendering service:
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How to report issues | How to escalate issues |
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There is a central page at meta.wikimedia.org gathering all major issues with this extension. Issues that can't be solved and are not yet covered on the page at meta should be added there. For obvious bugs the issue tracker is the preferred place to directly issue and check tickets. At IRC #pediapress some immediate support might be available. |
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This page has archives. Sections older than 30 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 12 sections are present. |
Wikipedia clearly warns new editors that the Book Creator does not support large books with more than 500 pages. However, an alternative option is to fork a book just prior to the 500 page limit, by saving it under a unique title (or revision), prior to proceeding to adding more pages and subsequent topics, although later saves of the book may fail. Again, as already indicated, this method is highly likely to error out for many users and is not recommended. This is not a problem with technology, it is a problem with editorship.
For instance, most users cannot plan their book out in advance, such that each saved volume contains 500 or fewer pages (give or take), because most books grow in an utterly random fashion similar to the Bell Curve of a pile of dung dripping from a cave ceiling, but with a tail that skews to the right. In other words, book size (as number of pages) grows non-linearly as a function of numerous random variables, including the grow of semantic topics included in the book. Perhaps the correlation closest to a linear relationship is the growth RATE in pages, against the growth rate of topical scope, although this would be difficult to operationalize. Thus, central topics fill more pages added, in early-stage book growth, with topical scope widening at a fast rate, then narrowing again at a slower rate (of pages added per change in scope). Additionally, more fringe topics tend to fill in gaps between central topics, at a nearly steady rate per click throughout the process of book creation, but represent very nearly the only added pages, near the final stages of book creation.
It is significant to note here that most users [whether planned or not] alphabetically organize their books, as a last step before saving them, although almost half of all books do not get saved permanently, and another smaller percentage of books never even get saved. This is theorized to represent compensation for lack of organization of the book. However, a much better method for compensating for lack of organization, is to actually organize the book, which might require segmentation into more manageable chapters and volumes first. Thus, for a typical non-linear, poorly planned, and unpredictable 'non-central growth' model and given the likelihood that few pages will be deleted from most created books, either as drafts or in a final pruning or quality control stage, editors can save lower quality final works as multiple volumes instead of higher quality single volumes, and still retain the option of future refinement, without any immediate compromise in total pages included.
The best approach to content splitting (for the average editor) is to save a work-in-progress multiple times (under 2 titles), and then delete pages from each volume accordingly, prior to adding pages to each volume. By such a method therefore, a multi-volume book might grow indefinitely through iterative splits. For example, at 500 pages, one could save one's book with the title "Big:Volume 1", and then immediately save exactly the same book again as "Big:Volume 2" (still, with exactly the same 500 pages). Next, the user would delete pages 250-500 from Volume 1, and delete pages 1-250 of Volume 2. Then the user could proceed (once again) with the task of randomly surfing and "filling in" their book with accidentally discovered candidate pages for each of the two volumes (technically, now two separate books), via the navigation patterns of click-through behavior documented by web analytic research. Of course, an even superior method (albeit unlikely) would simply be to plan one's editorial work out in advance, in terms of topical coverage, order, audience, goals, etc., and use an iterative PAGE-DELETION methodology with at least two drafts, thus excluding less critical pages and creating a final piece of higher value.
(I'm sorry if this should be reported elsewhere but I couldn't find this information neither in FAQ nor in Help pages). I'd like to include Wikipedia pages from different languages to single book, but it seems that Book creator is always initialized independently for each language and pages are added independently as well - does it mean that there is no way to combine such pages? Maybe it's worth to include the answer to the FAQ. Thanks.
I recently discovered the Book tool a few days ago, and after I enabled it, the interface tool appeared above all of the articles. However, due to time constraints, I elected to save creating a book for later. Now, I went back to try to create a book, and the interface box no longer appears above articles. I am still able to add links directly to the book when I mouse over them, but without the interface box, I am unable to look at, organize, or purchase any book I make. Is this an issue that other people are having, and if so, how can I fix it? Jionunez (talk) 00:53, 23 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
@Jionunez and PrimeHunter: I had the same problem, and I (finally) stumbled upon this thread. The solution worked for me too! Seriously, though. They should make it way easier than how it is now, or if not, at least make it easy to find this info. It was very frustrating to hunt for info. It is a serious issue in my opinion.--Mr. Guye (talk) 02:11, 1 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Is there no way to create a button somewhere on top of the page for unhiding the Book Creator Interface instead of it disappearing completely when we click on "Hide" button? Simply clicking on the "Unhide" button would save a whole lot of time that we spend (Half of the whole day in my case, before I found this thread) on trying to get it back. I wouldn't have dared to hide it at all if I knew how not easy it is to see it again.--HakimBalogun (talk) 14:43, 24 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
As an experiment, I created a book about Lecrae, and the content part turned out fine. However, anything in a wikitable, such as his filmography, discography, and awards, will not render at all, leaving many sections blank. Is this a known issue?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 06:18, 24 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Every time I go to WP to open my books, I have trouble trying to find back the books I created. I would expect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Axd/Books to return me that list. Instead, I have to open a book, then look for the Save link, from which I deduce that I can find my list at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PrefixIndex&prefix=User:Axd/Books/ This is so annoying... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Axd (talk • contribs) 09:33, 7 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
{{list subpages}}
(note the curly brackets) before saving to create it. This will list them all. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:36, 7 May 2017 (UTC)Replyseems to work, thanks alex (talk) 13:48, 7 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I sort of have an issue with the very concept of a print Wikipedia book. A Wikipedia article is a living document, it has its history and goes through edits, and quite frankly that's what separates Wikipedia from other 'official' encyclopedias. Much good material is rejected, but at least it sort of lives on in the history. A book on the other hand is not living, it is a dead document, a snapshot of a particular moment in time, and does not carry its history with it. I realize Wikimedia tries to be a jack of all trades, but I find support of books regressive and going against everything Wikipedia exists for. Not to mention, poor trees. Doseiai2 (talk) 06:21, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
While creating PDF books for articles which contain code blocks (such as Shunting-yard algorithm and Operator-precedence parser), the code blocks get rendered as normal paragraphs, with all the lines running through. While this may not necessarily be a problem for C-style languages which have well-defined statement termination characters, it really is a problem for other languages (and even pseudo-code as is quite common on many Wikipedia pages).
One thing I realised in addition was that the code blocks render correctly when a page is saved as a single-column PDF but the same error I described above appears when changed to a two-column PDF format. This leads me to believe that the same renderer being used for two-column PDFs is being used for the books as well.
Alex Essilfie (talk) 10:49, 27 June 2017 (UTC)Reply
Every time I hover my mouse over a link, anywhere in Wikipedia, an annoying and very intrusive tab opens up saying "add link to book" or whatnot. I want that to go away. Forever. How do I do that? Do I need to delete my book just to do that? I hope not, but I'll do that just to make it fuck off disappear. --Pericles of AthensTalk 17:59, 1 August 2017 (UTC)Reply
This page Help:Books/FAQ claims that:
"What happened to OpenDocument Text and openZIM export?
These options are no longer available."
But this page Help:Books/for experts still refers to OpenDocument.
"The most efficient way to identify problems is to go on the individual articles of your book and view the article as a PDF (click "Download as PDF" in the "print/export" box on the left hand side of your screen, towards the bottom). Preview the page, and if something doesn't look right, chances are there's a problem. While the printed books and OpenDocument version will differ from the PDF version, they share a lot of similarities. If something looks weird in the PDF version, chances are it will also look weird in the printed book or OpenDocument version."
So I am asking. Is OpenDocument still a valid option or should it be removed from that help page? ויקיטכני (talk) 13:59, 2 May 2018 (UTC)Reply
Three days in a row I try to order the book Clássicos do Fluminense Football Club (Wikipedia in Portuguese), in PediaPress, and at the end of the loading attempt a message "Some error occurred when your collection of articles was prepared and sent." If it is not possible to solve this problem with Wikipedia resources, it may be worth hiring an external expert, since Wikipedia is losing money because I imagine that it is happening in all cases of shopping attempts.
For years the option of downloading books in PDF is having problems.
Att, Alexandre M. B. Berwanger (talk) 21:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC)Reply
I want to delete my NASA Moon to Mars book, which is unintentionally copied to Book:NASA Moon to Mars. --Soumyabrata (talk • subpages) 16:57, 9 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
{{db-author}}
on the one you don't want. That's simpler that the "Articles for deletion" process. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:25, 9 December 2019 (UTC)Reply
I started the Book:State highways in Georgia (U.S. state) page in September, but the book reports on the talk page have never been generated. What can be done to get this started? Thank you. Morriswa (Charlotte Allison) (talk) 16:54, 30 December 2019 (UTC)Reply