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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.

Hello Wikimedians,

Apologies if this message is not in your language. Please help translate to your language.

The Reader Experience team will launch the Dark mode feature for anonymous users on all Wikimedia sites, including yours, on October 29, 2025.

Dark mode is an option that allows users to view pages in light-coloured text, and icons on a dark background. Once it is available for anonymous users, they can enable it when using various devices. More information on ways to enable it can be found on this page. Given many pages are still not compatible with dark mode this will be an opt-in feature and not automatically apply to pages.

Dark mode requires modifications to content pages and templates, and since our initial launch in July 2024, we have been working with communities and helping them prepare for dark mode. Before the rollout, it is essential that template authors and technical contributors test dark mode and read this page to learn how to make pages Dark mode-ready and address any compatibility issues found in templates.

We will fix most color compatibility issues only on the most-viewed pages on projects with over 5 million monthly page views. Technical contributors with an account should opt into dark mode currently using preferences or settings and test pages and seek help before the release to ensure everything complies before the enablement.

If you have any questions or need help, please contact the Reader Experience team for support.

Thank you!

UOzurumba (WMF) 02:08, 30 September 2025 (UTC)

Hello all,

The voting period for the 2025 Board of Trustees election is now open. Candidates are running for two (2) seats on the Board.

To check your voter eligibility, please visit the voter eligibility page.

Learn more about them by reading their application statements and watch their candidacy videos.

When you are ready, go to the SecurePoll voting page to vote.

The vote is open from October 8 at 00:00 UTC to October 22 at 23:59 UTC.

Best regards,

Abhishek Suryawanshi
Chair, Elections Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (discuss • contribs) 04:47, 9 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello. Please help pick a name for the new Abstract Wikipedia wiki project. This project will be a wiki that will enable users to combine functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata in order to generate natural language sentences in any supported languages. These sentences can then be used by any Wikipedia (or elsewhere).

There will be two rounds of voting, each followed by legal review of candidates, with votes beginning on 20 October and 17 November 2025. Our goal is to have a final project name selected on mid-December 2025. If you would like to participate, then please learn more and vote now at meta-wiki. Thank you!

-- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 11:42, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

I came here from a discussion on viwikibooks. An user there said:

Wikibooks is not an encyclopedia. However, you can certainly create a book that is an encyclopedia. I have discussed this with some English Wikibooks users, who agreed.

The mentioned discussion appears to be this one. I find the above to be a misleading, if not incorrect, interpretation of @Mbrickn and @MarcGarver's opinions. As I understand, they stated that:

• Wikibooks allows lexicons. For encyclopedias that are found on Wikibooks, there are presumably reasons as to why they cannot be transwikied to Wikipedia.
• Though the cited book (hu:Heraldikai lexikon) might be more encyclopedic in style than other books, its focus and tone are more comparable to those of historical books on the same topic (like s:A Complete Guide to Heraldry) than Wikipedia's generically-worded articles.
• Each content page on Wikibooks needs to be formulated as a book (or a part thereof), not as an article like on Wikipedia. Books consisting of articles and/or encyclopedic in nature might or might not be allowed.

As such, these books are allowed (content-wise):

• Bách khoa toàn thư Lịch sử (Encyclopedia of History)
• Bách khoa nhân vật lịch sử Việt Nam (Encyclopedia of historical figures of Vietnam)

But not:

• Các loài thực vật được mô tả (Described plants)
• Danh sách tiểu hành tinh (List of asteroids)

The viwikibooks discussion is about the project's scope and other founding principles. I would like to make as informed a choice as possible, so a detailed explanation would be very much appreciated. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh (discuss • contribs) 01:08, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

Wikibooks is for educational textbooks and each book is self-contained. Wikipedia is, in Wikibooks terms, a single book, with each article being equivalent to a chapter or page in the Wikbook book. My opinion is Wikibooks does not host single pages that are, in effect, an encyclopaedia entry. It can, however, host a book which is an encyclopaedia. In my opinion this would need to be focused on a subject with some logical connection between the chapters - like the examples you give - rather than being a general encyclopaedia with a random collection of stuff. On this basis, I would agree with your examples of what can and can't be included. MarcGarver (discuss • contribs) 07:30, 22 October 2025 (UTC)

@NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh I generally agree with MarcGarver's response above! I do think there needs to be interdependency between the chapters/pages of a book, and they should build on and complement each other. I also have my own personal opinions about what makes a book instructional and thus within Wikibooks scope, but that's not community consensus (just my own thoughts). Does this help? Or, did you have any other specific questions? Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 01:16, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's very helpful. Thanks. I take it this is a problem even the English Wikibooks doesn't have "hard" consensus on. The original 2002 proposal isn't clear on what counts as a textbook either:

[...] a textbook leads a person thru a subject, helping them prepare for an exam or some other practical application.

NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh (discuss • contribs) 02:05, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

Yes, from my perspective I don't think we have a "hard" consensus. Other people who have been around the project longer than I have might be able to call to mind more discussions on the topic; but, I do feel like the consensus definition here is loose. The idea you cited that "a textbook leads a person thru a subject, helping them prepare for an exam or some other practical application" does resonate with me personally and my general thought that instructional books should be tailored to engage the reader in some way rather than just presenting a summary of factual information. But, not everyone here shares this view; I think you would have to come to a consensus together on your project if you wanted to implement something like that. Cheers —Kittycataclysm (discuss • contribs) 17:14, 24 October 2025 (UTC)