text:
Talk:Principality

 * Before I begin any major edits to this page, I wanted to post the original stub text here for future reference. If I should fail to reincorporate specific information from this stub, by all means please don't hesitate to add it back in. --Gerald Farinas 19:56, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * A principality is a land ruled by a prince. It is distinguished from a kingdom, often by being of modest size, sometimes by lacking full sovereignty. The German term Fürstentum is usually rendered in English as principality. Liechtenstein, Andorra, and Monaco are European principalities and present-day states. By contrast, the principalities of Wales in the UK and Asturias in Spain, are not states today, although the independent mediaeval Welsh state was nonetheless referred to as the principality. In both cases, the heir to the country's throne is titular prince of the principality. Sometimes the notion of a land as a principality is due to historical reasons: Catalonia, for instances, even when it was a sovereign state extending from Barcelona to Athens, was known as a principality, although its ruler was titled king (of the Kingdom of Aragón extended as the Aragonese Empire). It was a curious case where the ruling power had a nominal inferior degree to that of the ruled territory. In the history of Russia the term "principality", and sometimes duchy, is used for render the Russian term knyazhestvo, a land ruled by a knyaz.

Other uses section not right?
Where is verification of "A lunchtime conversational topic, which requires research and confirmation by a Lizbrarian." and definition of lizbrarian?

Nationalism?
"Characteristic of nationalism is the preference for loyalty to the people instead of loyalty to monarchs." I am tempted to say this is somewhat incorrect. Lichtensteiners remain fiercely loyal to their Prince, this is best shown in the fact that they oted for constitutional amendments giving him more power. Though it is in a different context: "nationalism" in the UK is defined as loyalty to the monarch, the opposite of how it is described here. Faie enough the UK is a full Kingdom and not a Principality but the point is valid; that in these hereditary pincipalities, the nationalist-inclined people are more pro-monarch than anti-monarch.

If we are taking a vote...
I agree that the line "A lunchtime conversational topic, which requires research and confirmation by a Lizbrarian." seems not to be in the spirit of "Encyclopedic Content", or at the very least needs a citation, but I'm still new and am too chicken to just edit it myself. NipokNek 18:54, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

In the spirit of WP:BOLD I am removing this line. NipokNek 07:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

So what is to be done with the "Principality of Sealand"?
Hello Gerald. I see that you have avoided all mention of what I consider and what the UK and USA governments consider to be a load of rubbish, namely the claims that a sunken Royal Navy barge on Rough Sands is or ever could be a "principality". There is so much working against this absurd idea. Roy Bates got the idea in a pub. He has no legal authority and most of the time there is but a lone caretaker sitting on the superstructure of the barge. The UK has never given up claims to its barge which is still marked by UK Ministry of Defence buoys. The UK claims the sand under and around the barge. The only question is whether Bates gained squatter's rights to the barge itself under English law. That seems to be the consensus. However, that would make his barge subject to eminent domain and other laws if the UK wanted to rid itself of this sunken vessel. What it is not and never has been is a principality. But since you are writing about this topic perhaps you would care to wade in since the "Principality of Sealand" page is also linked to this one for explanation of the word "principality"! MPLX/MH 21:51, 14 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Portuguese Principalities
Anyone has some information about the Portuguese Principalities? Can't remember ever seen them mentioned in my history books, at least in continental Portugal.

deleted text
I have deleted the following text from this article, as it is highly biased, has little relevance to the topic of the article, and seems to have no real purpose other than promoting the personal opinion of MPLX, the person who wrote it. It should be noted that MPLX has peppered Wikipedia with half a dozen other articles that also seem to exist just to promote his strong personal opinion concerning Sealand, and they are all as equally unbalanced, and unsupported by documentation as this contribution is.--Centauri 03:50, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Footnote
In recent years a number of individuals have engaged in the fantasy game of giving themselves titles by declaring ordinary property subject to the sovereignty of existing laws to be real property. Most often this game has been played out in mass media forums as entertainment. The Internet has also been used for this purpose and the word micronation has been invented to describe this practice. Sometimes these ideas are a cover for more sinister activities which are usually dealt with quietly under the existing laws of the countries to which these people are subject to. Sometimes they attract followers who are far-flung from the actual area of interest. One such micronation was invented by Roy Bates of Essex, England. He is a citizen of the United Kingdom who threw existing squatters off a former Royal Navy sea barge and declared that the UK government property was henceforth his own principality of Sealand. The British government have curtailed any and all violations of their laws so that this micronation only exists on the Internet or within the actual confines of the former Royal Navy barge. Another micronation having less notoriety was claimed by Leonard George Casley of Australia. He called his entity the "Hutt River Province". None of these entities have any standing in law.

artical deletion
I admit I should have stated in my artical on unreconized principalities that sealand and hutt river were contriversal. I only intended to say they claim they are principalities and would like my contribution reinstated under the title "legal-loop-hole principalities" or "fantasy principalities". I would also like to mention a principality in Italy known as Seborga, which is technecly a free principality. thank you for your time.

Rewriting the opening definition, etc
It would go far to disentangle this article if it were rewritten to open with definitions of "principality" drawn from classic authorities, with some direct quotes, and then to build from there, giving instances and examples that illustrate general principles. Profuse additions of favourite principalities might be discouraged except as illustrative examples. Some exceptions to general rules would follow, towards the end. --Wetman 19:40, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Principality of Wales
The current lead suggests (to me) that Wales is a sovereign state ruled by a Prince. While this was once true, Wales is no longer a sovereign state (being part of the United Kingdom), and the Prince of Wales is a title that is not held by the monarch. Could this lead be rephrased to represent this? Ansbaradigeidfran (talk) 22:38, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Deleted incorrect sentence from lead and added text in later paragraph to clarify position. Ghmyrtle (talk) 16:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I have deleted the following sentence: "Wales still remains the largest principality in the world." from section 2.1 Development) as it appears to give inconsistent information to the reliably sourced information contained in the previous section.  DDStretch    (talk)  11:33, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks - it's only been there 21 months!! Ghmyrtle (talk) 11:45, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem. The same anon IP editor added the same information to Wales just prior to the addition here on 13 April 2007], and there were related changes, which could do with being checked to make sure no remaining problems persist.  DDStretch    (talk)  11:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Its like sorting out spider webs tracking down all the articles you need tomonitor! -- Snowded   TALK  16:12, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Åland?
I may be overlooking something, but can somebody explain to me why Åland is mentioned in the See also-chapter? I cannot find any reference in the article, nor in Åland and its related pages that this is (or has been) a principality. 12:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Brynnar (talk • contribs)
 * I've done some research on Åland, but I didn't find any reliable source anywehere that these islands have been a principality. I removed it from the list. 15:32, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I also tried, but got bound up with other matters, and so didn't complete it. So, I think you did the right thing.  DDStretch    (talk)  15:36, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Principality of Hutt River
Greetings

The Principality of Hutt River has recently celebrated its 45th anniversary and has been established according to international law including the Montevideo Protocols (1933). The principality of Hutt River under sovereign Prince Leonard has a territory of 75klms, o border, population. a government and the ability to interact with other governments. Principality is an ancient and ongoing form of government - as Plato observed in 'The Republic', a benevolent monarchy is the best form of government.

TKS — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.129.96.233 (talk) 00:58, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Origin of the term
There are other articles on wikipedia on Princeps and Principate noting their significance in the development of the concept of a principality. Edits mentioning this here have been undone, with in my opinion, little valid reason leaving a lack of cohesion on the platform. The keystone of any contradiction/ confusion arising from the concept of a Prince being the ultimate sovereign even in a system that includes lesser 'Kings' stems from the existing statement that a Prince is of lesser rank to a King? If the Prince is the monarch of a sovereign state he is of the ultimate rank. Similarly what is a 'small monarchy'? A small Royal Family? A small government? What relevance is that? Finally the concept that a Principality may be ruled over by someone with the title of Count, Magrave or Lord directly contradicts the (accurate) opening definition.

'''The term principality is also sometimes used generically for any small monarchy, especially for small sovereign states ruled by a monarch of a lesser rank than a king, such as a Fürst (usually translated in English as "prince"), as in Liechtenstein, or a Grand Duke. No sovereign duchy currently exists, but Luxembourg is a surviving example of a sovereign grand duchy. Historically there have been sovereign principalities with many styles of ruler, such as Countship, Margraviate and even Lordship, especially within the Holy Roman Empire. '''

Similarly the following line: "While the preceding definition would seem to fit a princely state perfectly, the European historical tradition is to reserve that word for native monarchies in colonial countries, and to apply "principality" to the Western monarchies" Is very poorly drafted, princely state is not a 'word' and should be capitalised as a proper noun, also describing the commentary of the preceding paragraphs as a 'definition' is disingenuous. If any individual member perceives themself as the owner of this page then by all means, sort it out yourself. But I would suggest that these paragraphs need removing/ rewriting and the Princeps and Princepate be included somewhere within this article as critical to the subject matter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gar P Young (talk • contribs) 15:35, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

 * All of that reads like an essay. If you want to propose a change then draft something - with references and without synthesis - and propose it here -Snowded TALK 17:50, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

 * Then I propose deleting both of the aforementioned paragraphs completely as they are poorly written, contradictory, incoherent and without a single reference and apparently of little to no relevance to the article's subject matter.

 * Also I suggest that discussing etymology or indeed the field of social history without using some degree of interpretative reasoning is obviously impossible. If it's otherwise then the majority of this article needs to go? : — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gar P Young (talk • contribs) 19:08, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

 * Please read the links in gthe welcome note on your talk page and them comeback here with proposals that conform with policy And remember to sign your posts-Snowded TALK 20:20, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

So you may choose to revert edits made in good faith on the basis of syntax(in opposition to Wikipedia's guidelines which states that you should have attempted to reword it) But now you reference BRD? Explain further what hoops you would like me to jump through in order to remove 2 cumbersome paragraphs from this page? Be bold and just do it? So that you may revert it and that I may discuss 'these paragraphs are nonsense can we remove them?' Because that seems to pretty much be where we already are. What is the aim of your activities on this site? Is it not to improve articles? You have also reverted my edits on another page on a matter that has been discussed by multiple members on the talk page for which you haven't contributed? I'm still happy to work with you here to make this right. Perhaps someone as experienced as yourself should be a little more constructive and willing to help rather than hinder newcomers (that's also in the guidance by the way). If... Veracity is truly what we're both here for? Gar P Young (talk) 00:22, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

 * I've placed a welcome notice on your page which gives you lots of guidence on how to edit wikipedia and I have spelt it out in more detail on the Flint question. In the main it seems to me that you are writing essays here rather than reflecting sources. If you views were published in a reliable source, then we could reflect them.  It is not 'hindering' you to ask you to conform with Wikipedia policy -Snowded TALK 06:50, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Sometimes principality is a synonym to duchy
See Talk:Grand_Duchy_of_Moscow. Has any scholar ever defined the difference? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:24, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Why not a kingdom?
This is probably going to sound goofy, but it's a genuine question. I hope I can word it decently. I've always wondered why a monarch who has no one ranking above him stops at "prince" or "grand duke" without continuing right on to "king." If it's a matter of the size of the realm, history includes many tiny kingdoms, most of which have more recently been incorporated into larger states. Heck... I've been told that some of the kingdoms mentioned in the Old Testament were comparable to US counties. Anyhow... my question is Why, a thousand years ago, did the Grand Duke of Fenwick NOT say "I'm the top! I'm King of Fenwick!"? What kept the egos in check? PurpleChez (talk) 15:51, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

 * From what I read, it depends on wheather it is recognised by neighbouring nations. Like, I guess, a King isn't going to accept the Prince of some small princedom declaring theirself equal to him. Read this if you want a clearer answer:https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52754/why-did-the-person-in-charge-of-a-principality-not-just-declare-themself-king Topeka-GuyWiki (talk) 13:33, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Principality


text:
Arinna

Arinna was the major cult center of the Hittite sun-goddess known as dUTU URUArinna or "Sun-Goddess of Arinna", who is also sometimes identified as Arinniti or as Wuru(n)šemu. Arinna was located near Hattusa, the Hittite capital.

The Sun-Goddess of Arinna is the most important one of three important solar deities of the Hittite pantheon, besides dUTU nepisas 'the sun of the sky' and dUTU taknas 'the sun of the earth'.

She was considered to be the chief deity in some sources, in place of her husband. Her consort was the Storm-God; they and their children were all derived from the former Hattic pantheon.

The goddess was also perceived to be a paramount chthonic or earth goddess. She becomes largely syncretised with the Hurrian goddess Hebat, as the Hittite Storm-God was with Teshub.

In the late 14th century BC, King Mursili II was particularly devoted to the Sun-Goddess of Arinna.

Karaşehir Hüyük has been suggested as the site of Arinna.

Literature

 * Hans G. Güterbock, An Addition to the Prayer of Muršili to the Sungoddess and Its Implications, Anatolian Studies (1980).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Arinna


text:
User talk:Kiktajm

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title: User talk:Kiktajm


text:
Talk:Intercrural sex

Image
What does the new image have to do with the topic? Is there any evidence that intercrural sex is meant to be inferred to be taking place? --Strait 23:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

 * It is more than simply an inference, the penis can be seen (slightly), the two were lovers, and the positions of their bodies (Zephyrus seems to be thrusting, and his waist is lower than that of Hyacinthus) all establish that it is taking place. Given that it is, the relevence seems self-explanatory.--Oreo Priest 06:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Since the old picture was missing, I posted a more recent picture of a common Intercrural Sex position. Should be helpful. BlueSkies27 (talk) 18:24, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

 * The picture was deleted. Here's the source image, just for future reference-- http://www.menshealth.com/sex-position-playbook/sites/default/files/spp/sex-position-Spoon_0.jpg And here is another alternate possibility-- http://www.mh.co.za/sites/mh.co.za/files/imagecache/slideshow_content/flatiron.jpg BlueSkies27 (talk) 23:08, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Misc
Is there any quantitative evidence that this is mainly a gay practice? Plenty of heteros do this, especially when one or both partners is sexually inexperienced.

 * I don't know that there is - I'm gonna change that. --Blackcats 10:03, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

 * It's a fairly universal practice and I was just thinking about how this article was far too focused on the gay community. - 67.166.139.181 16:08, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

--

User 68.117.211.92 - I think it's still important to include reasons as to why people might choose this form of sex as opposed to another. I'm going to add back in the part which you removed about that. If people still think it doesn't belong, then we can talk about it more here... --Blackcats 05:55, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think you've made it all fit together well. The only problem I have is with the term "full" penetration, while I understand that for heterosexuals (obviously) femoral sex is a natural precursor to "full" penetrative vaginal sex, for men anal penetration isn't neccesarily an, I dunno, "inevitability" in the same way, the anatomy is just different. Its not the full or partial expression just two different expressions. So I'm removing the word full.

dry fuck?

Dry humping or Dry fucking is different from Leg sex, but it could be used as an external link. I don't know how to work this in there with a citation, but this is a great way to avoid STDs. Nina Odell 21:30, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

"In 1987 the Shere Hite report on female sexuality found that some adult women reported being able to achieve orgasm through stimulation of the clitoris by the penis, including via intercrural contact.[4]" REALLY, we needed the Shere Hite report to tell us this? Is that really the first time that "women being able to achieve orgasm through stimulation of the penis" is considered news? Changed to "In 1987 the Shere Hite report on female sexuality found that some adult women reported being able to achieve orgasm via intercrural contact to stimulate the clitoris".

Intercrural and circumcision
My spouse learned intercrural from an earlier bisexual partner, and taught it to me as a form of foreplay. Intercrural has all the safe sex and pregnancy avoidance advantages of the handjob, while giving some pleasure to the woman as well. The woman could possibly come to orgasm while doing intercrural, by fingering her clit.

Although I had read much about sexual practices by the time I met my spouse, I had never encountered intercrural. Nor was it talked about in the bawdy world of my youth, which very frequently joked about dildos, oral, anal, mutual masturbation, and more. I have concluded that intercrural is not well known among North American straights. I will now propose an explanation. The entry says that among Calcutta men who engager in homosexual acts, 88% of Hindus admit to intercrurial, but only 40% of Moslems, figures I do not wish to question. Keep in mind that intercrurial is not seriously taboo in any religion except medieval Christianity. Hence Hindus and Moslems are about equally likely to admit to the practice. Recall that Hindus are uncircumcised, while Moslems and most adult Americans are circumcised. Therefore, the propensity to engage in intercrurial sex is correlated with the absence of the foreskin. Intercrurial is easy and fun for an uncircumcised man, but requires ample lubrication when the man is circumcised. It should be noted that intercrural tends to put too much tension on the frenulum compared to vaginal intercourse.

To my surprise, my spouse derives some pleasure from intercrural. I am also surprised it is not more widely known among teenagers as a form of safe sex that is less embarrassing and degrading for women than fellatio. Again, Americans are the chattiest people in the world about sexual practices, and educated American men usually lack a foreskin. The proportion of American teens who are uncircumcised has risen of late. I predict that intercrural will soon become part of popular culture. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 202.36.179.65 (talk) 18:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC).

Penetration
Just how could this be penetrative sex? (question asked by anonymous reader)

 * answer:

The male "penetrates" the gap between his partner's thighs. Ok, it's a stretch. 76.243.129.217 (talk) 16:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Do Not Merge Sumata with Intercrural Sex
Sumata and intercrural sex are obviously two different activities -- intercrural is strictly "male places penis between partner's thighs and thrusts" which simulates intercourse. It involves legs and thrusting. Sumata is more a form of frottage by the female on the male, using different body parts. Lap dancing versus thigh humping. Sumata is not simulated intercourse. If you muddy the difference between Sumata and Intercrural Sex, then you might as well throw in titty fucking (mammary intercourse) and hand jobs into the same article. Probably throw in that thing foot fetishists have done to them too... foot jobs? Could probably thrown in tribadism too. And armpit humping.

Alternatively, one could argue that the purity of the Intercrural Sex article should not be sullied with oddball practices like Sumata and armpit humping. Intercrural Sex (male humping partner's thigh gap) is clearly of historical and demographic significance. I mean, come on... Abe Lincoln or Shaka Zulu humping their bed partner's closed thighs (male or female) is completely different from either of them getting a serious lap dance at a hot strip club (Tropical Lei in LA comes to mind). 76.243.129.217 (talk) 16:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

And while we're on the topic, how does this article rate a "rated as low-importance on the importance scale" for sexuality?? We're talkin' Abe Lincoln, Oscar Wilde, and Shaka Zulu here, as well as stunning numbers like 40-88% of males in a particular demographic doin' it this way! And somebody's gone to a lot of trouble with the references too. And how 'bout those historical links to Oxford, Princeton, Plato, and the Medieval Christian Church! 76.243.129.217 (talk) 16:21, 19 March 2008 (UTC) I agree that the articles should not be merged; because the contexts and cultural connotations are completely different. Evren Güldoğan (talk) 14:21, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

diamerizein
Where does the term 'diamerizein' come from?--Slowlikemolasses (talk) 21:34, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Huh?
Abraham Lincoln? Seriously? I think more sources are needed to assert that a U.S. President dry humped another guy.

As sex columnist Dan Savage says, "Other scholars insist that Lincoln is way too old, way too dead, and way too presidential to have been gay. Unless we're prepared to exhume Lincoln and test his thighs for DNA, we may never know the truth." Newjerseyliz (talk) 17:27, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

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Thighjob
"Thighjob" describes the same sex act and is better known than "intercrural sex". (see Google Trends: [thighjob ] [intercrural sex ] [intercrural ])

It should be mentioned as a slang synonym in the opening sentence, but I can't find a way to work it in naturally without making a run-on sentence. 1. It ought to be stated that it is a slang term, 2. ideally some clarity of tone should be achieved, and 3. the opening sentence is already quite full with other basic details.

I don't think I have the writing skill to make it sound natural. The fellatio page brings some ideas to mind. Maybe I'm just immature, but I think "thighjob" on its own could sound dissonant from the academic tone of the paragraph, and crass. Fellatio contains the term "blowjob" as you might expect, but they also went so far as to include a couple others, like "sucking off". I think that breaks the ice in a way, right? But there are not that slang terms for a thighjob. It's not really a commonly discussed sex act, so I worry some readers might react to the word with stigma.

To be clear, I believe Wiki is not firstly academic in tone, though: the 5 Pillars page states that Wiki's tone should be impartial. I'm likely biased, and overthinking, so this is why I'm here. I hope one of you bold talk page readers might try the edit in my stead.

Cronack1 (talk) 16:00, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Intercrural sex


text:
Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation

The Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation, or APOLLO, is a project at the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. It is an extension and advancement of previous Lunar Laser Ranging experiments, which use retroreflectors on the Moon to track changes in lunar orbital distance and motion.

Using telescopes on Earth, the reflectors on the Moon, and accurate timing of laser pulses, scientists were able to measure and predict the orbit of the Moon to a precision of a few centimeters by the early 2000s. This precision provides the best known test of many aspects of our theories of gravity. APOLLO improves this precision even further, measuring the distance between the Moon and Earth to within a few millimeters. Using this information, scientists will be able to further test various aspects of gravity, such as: determining whether the Earth and the Moon react the same to gravity despite their different compositions, investigating the predictions of Einstein with respect to the energy content of the Earth and the Moon and how they react to gravity, and evaluating whether general relativity correctly predicts the motion of the Moon.

The APOLLO collaboration built their apparatus on the 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point in southern New Mexico. By using a large telescope at a site with good atmospheric seeing, the APOLLO collaboration gets much stronger reflections than any existing facilities. APOLLO records approximately one returned laser photon per pulse, as opposed to the roughly 0.01 photon-per-pulse average experienced by previous LLR facilities. The stronger return signal from APOLLO translates to much more accurate measurements.

History and motivation
High precision Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) started soon after the Apollo 11 astronauts left the first retroreflector on the Moon. Additional reflectors were left by the Apollo 14 and Apollo 15 astronauts, and two French-built reflector arrays were placed on the Moon by the Soviet Luna 17 (Lunokhod 1) and Luna 21 (Lunokhod 2) lunar rover missions. Over the years since, many groups and experiments have used this technique to study the behavior of the Earth–Moon system, investigating gravitational and other effects.

For the first few years of the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, the distance between the observatory and the reflectors could be measured to an accuracy of about $25 cm$. Improved techniques and equipment lead to accuracies of $12 cm$ until about 1984. Then McDonald Observatory built a special purpose system (MLRS) just for ranging, and achieved accuracies of roughly $3 cm$ in the mid-to-late 1980s. In the early 1990s a French LLR system at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (OCA) started operation, with similar precision.

The McDonald and OCA stations are collecting data that is about as good as possible, given the number of photons that they collect back from the reflectors. Although minor improvements are possible, getting significantly better data requires a larger telescope and a better site. This is the basic goal of the APOLLO collaboration.

The APOLLO laser has been operational since October 2005, and routinely achieves millimeter-level range accuracy between the Earth and the Moon.

Science goals
The goal of APOLLO is to push LLR into the millimeter range precision, which then translates directly into an order-of-magnitude improvement in the determination of fundamental physics parameters. Specifically, assuming improvements of a factor of ten over prior measurements, APOLLO will test:
 * the Weak Equivalence Principle (WEP) to a part in $$,
 * the Strong Equivalence Principle (SEP) to a few parts in $$,
 * de Sitter relativistic precession to a few parts in $$, and
 * the time variation of the gravitational constant G to a part in $$ per year.

Tests of the Equivalence Principles
The Weak Equivalence Principle says that all objects fall the same way in a gravity field, no matter what they are made of. The Earth and the Moon have very different compositions—for example, the Earth has a large iron core, but the Moon does not. Furthermore, both are in orbit around the Sun, meaning that they are both falling towards the Sun at all times, even as they revolve around each other. If the Earth and the Moon were affected differently by the gravity of the Sun, this would directly affect the orbit of the Moon around the Earth. As closely as scientists can measure, the orbit of the Moon is just as predicted from assuming that gravity acts the same on each — to within 1 part in, the Earth and the Moon fall towards the Sun in exactly the same way, despite their different compositions. APOLLO will lead to even tighter limits.

The Strong Equivalence Principle, according to Albert Einstein's general relativity, predicts that the mass of any object consists of two parts – the mass of the atoms themselves, plus the mass of the energy that holds the object together. The question is whether the energy portion of mass contributes to measured gravity of the object, or to the inertia. In general relativity, the self-energy affects both the gravitational field and inertia, and does so equally.

Other modern theories, such as string theory, quintessence, and various forms of quantum gravity, almost all predict a violation of the Strong Equivalence Principle at some level. Additionally, many puzzling experimental results, such as galaxy rotation curves that imply the existence of dark matter or supernova observations that imply the existence of dark energy, could also potentially be explained by alternative theories of gravity (see, for example, MOND). Therefore, experimentalists believe it is important to make the most precise measurements of gravity possible, looking for any possible anomalies or confirming Einstein's predictions.

Precise ranging to the Moon can test the SEP since the Earth and the Moon have a different fraction of their mass in the energy component. Precision measurements are needed since this component is very small – if mE is the self energy of the Earth — the energy needed to spread the atoms of the Earth out to infinity against the attraction of gravity — then the mass of the Earth is by about mE/c = $4.6$ of the Earth’s total mass. The self energy of the Moon is smaller yet, about $2$ of its mass. (The contribution for any object of laboratory size is negligible, about, so only measurements of planet-sized or bigger objects would allow this effect to be measured.)

If the Moon revolved around only the Earth, there would be no way to tell what fraction of the Moon's or the Earth's gravity was caused by each form of mass, since only the total can be measured. However, the orbit of the Moon is also strongly affected by the gravity of the Sun – in essence, Earth and Moon are in free fall around the Sun. If the energy portion of mass behaves differently from the conventional portion, then the Earth and the Moon will fall differently toward the Sun, and the orbit of the Moon around the Earth will be affected. For example, suppose the energy part of the mass does affect gravity, but does not affect inertia. Then: From our perspective on Earth, this would appear as a displacement, or polarization, of the lunar orbit away from the Sun with an amplitude of 13 meters. If the violation went the other way, with the self energy possessing inertial mass but not gravitational mass, the lunar orbit would appear to be polarized toward the Sun by the same amplitude. The calculation of the amplitude is complicated,  but a crude estimate may be derived by multiplying the Earth’s orbital radius of $1.5 m$ by the $4.6$ contribution to the Earth’s mass from the self-energy to yield 75 meters.

The signature of an EP violation is very simple, depending only on the distance of the Moon from the Sun. This repeats about every 29.5 days, somewhat longer than the time the Moon takes to go around the Earth once, which is 27.3 days. (This difference arises since the Earth moves along its orbit as the Moon goes around, so the Moon has to make a little more than one orbit to get back to the same position relative to the Sun.) This makes EP particularly easy to measure, since many confounding effects such as tides or weather will not repeat at 29.5-day intervals. Unfortunately, there is one effect – radiation pressure acting on the orbit of the Moon – that does repeat each 29.5 days. Fortunately, it is small, less than 4 mm, and fairly easy to model, which allows it to be subtracted out.

Finally, even if the experiments show no effect, there is a tiny theoretical loophole. The measurements show the sum of the WEP and SEP violations. If the experiments show no effect, the most natural explanation is that neither WEP or SEP are violated. But it is conceptually possible that both are violated, and by equal and opposite amounts. This would be an incredible coincidence since WEP and SEP depend on very different and arbitrary properties – the exact composition of the Earth and the Moon, and their self-energies. But this unlikely case cannot be completely ruled out until either other solar system bodies are measured to similar precision, or laboratory experiments reduce the bounds on WEP violations alone.

Variations in the gravitational constant
Existing ranging experiments can measure the constancy of the gravitational constant, G, to about one part in $$ per year. The expansion rate of the universe is approximately one part in $$ per year. So if G scaled with the size or expansion of the universe, existing experiments would already have seen this variation. This result can also be viewed as experimental verification of the theoretical result that gravitationally bound systems do not partake in the general expansion of the universe. APOLLO will place much tighter bounds on any such variations.

Other tests
At this level of accuracy, general relativity is needed to predict the orbit of the Moon. Current tests measure geodetic precession to a 0.35% level of precision, gravitomagnetism at the 0.1% level, and checks whether gravity behaves as 1/r as expected. APOLLO will improve on all these measurements.

Principles of operation
APOLLO is based on measuring the time-of-flight of a short-pulse laser reflected from a distant target—in this case the retroreflector arrays on the Moon. Each burst of light lasts 100 picoseconds (ps). One millimeter in range corresponds to only 6.7 ps of round-trip travel time. However, the retroreflectors on the Moon introduce more than one millimeter of error themselves. They are not usually at an exact right angle to the incoming beam, so the different corner cubes of the retroreflectors are at different distances from the transmitter. This is because the Moon, although it keeps one face to the Earth, does not do so exactly—it wobbles from side to side and up and down, by as much as 10° in magnitude. (See libration.) These librations occur since the Moon rotates at constant speed, but has an elliptical and inclined orbit. This effect may seem small, but it is not only measurable, it forms the largest unknown in finding the range, since there is no way to tell which corner cube reflected each photon. The biggest array, the $0.6 m2$ Apollo 15 reflector, can have a corner-to-corner range spread of ≈ 1.2 sin (10°) m, or 210 mm, or about 1.4 ns of round-trip time. The root-mean-square (RMS) range spread is then about 400 ps. To determine the distance to the reflector to 1 mm precision, or 7 ps, by averaging, the measurement needs at least (400/7)2 ≈ 3000 photons. This explains why a much larger system is needed to improve the existing measurements—the pre-APOLLO 2 cm RMS range precision required only about 10 photons, even at the worst-case orientation of the retroreflector array.

APOLLO attacks this problem by using both a bigger telescope and better astronomical seeing. Both are considerably improved over existing systems. Compared to McDonald Observatory ranging station, the Apache Point telescope has a factor of 20 greater light-collecting area. There is also a big gain from better seeing—the APO site and telescope combined can often achieve one arcsecond seeing, compared to the ≈5 arcseconds typical for the previous McDonald Lunar Ranging Station (MLRS). The better seeing helps two ways—it both increases the laser beam intensity on the Moon and reduces the lunar background, since a smaller receiver field-of-view may be used, gathering light from a smaller spot on the Moon. Both effects scale as the inverse square of the seeing, so that the signal-to-noise ratio of the lunar return is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the seeing. APOLLO should therefore gain about 20 (from the bigger telescope) × 25 (for better seeing) = 500 × in return signal strength over MLRS, and additional factor of 25 in signal-to-noise (from fewer stray photons interfering with the desired ones). Likewise APOLLO should get a signal about 50 times stronger than the OCA LLR facility, which has a 1.5 m telescope and seeing of about 3 arcsec.

The increased optical gain brings some problems due to the possibility of getting more than one returned photon per pulse. The most novel component of the APOLLO system is the integrated array of Single-Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs) used in the detector. This technology is needed to deal with multiple photon returns within each pulse. Most single photon detectors suffer from "dead time": they cannot detect a photon if it arrives soon after another. This means that if more than one photon comes back in a single pulse, a conventional single-photon detector would only record the arrival time of the first photon. However, the important quantity is the centroid of the time of all returned photons (assuming the pulse and reflectors are symmetrical), so any system that can return multiple photons per pulse must record the arrival times of each photon. In APOLLO, the incoming photons are spread over an array of independent detectors, which reduces the chance that two or more photons hit any one of the detectors.

Modeling station locations
Any laser ranging station, APOLLO included, measures the transit time, and hence the distance, from the telescope to the reflector(s). But for lunar ranging science, what is really wanted is the distance between the center of mass of the Earth and the center of mass of the Moon. To do this, the positions of the telescope, and the reflectors, must be known to comparable precision (a few mm). Since both the telescope and the reflectors are stationary structures, it might seem they could be precisely measured, and then their position would be known thereafter. This assumption is not too bad for the Moon, which is a quiet environment. But for the Earth, the stations move quite a bit on this scale:
 * The Earth's polar axis moves and the Earth's rotation is irregular. The polar axis moves due to various causes, some predictable (the Moon exerts a torque on Earth's tidal bulge) and some variable (rocks are rebounding from the last ice age, weather). Weather also affects the Earth's rotation, by moving large masses of water around. These effects, important to many other science projects as well, even have their own agency to keep track of them—the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.
 * The stations move due to tides. The Moon, since it is tidally locked to the Earth, has relatively small and repeatable tides of about 10 cm. The solid Earth has larger tides, oscillating about 35 cm peak-to-peak, every 12 hours.
 * The Earth's crust changes in response to long term fluctuations such as post-glacial rebound and loading caused by sediment transport.
 * The Earth's short-term weather can also affect the location of the telescope, primarily vertically. Various weather effects can load local regions of the Earth's crust, depressing the crust by a few millimeters. These effects come from the atmosphere (high pressure systems press on the Earth's surface), and the ocean (water piles up on the coast depressing the crust). Ground water fluctuations, caused by rain, can also affect the telescope location.
 * The pressure of sunlight pushes the Moon's orbit slightly off center. This is a small effect, about 3.65 mm, but it is particularly important since it mimics the effect of an EP violation.
 * Even continental drift must be compensated for.

In addition, the Earth's atmosphere causes an additional delay, since the speed of light is slightly slower through the atmosphere. This amounts to about 1.6 meters when looking straight up at Apache Point. This delay is also affected by weather, primarily atmospheric pressure, which determines just how much air there is above the site.

Since many of these effects are weather-related, and also affect the more common satellite laser ranging, ranging stations traditionally include weather stations, measuring local temperature, pressure, and relative humidity. APOLLO will measure all these, plus measure local gravity very precisely, using a precision gravimeter. This instrument is capable of sensing vertical displacements as small as 0.1 mm, by measuring the change in gravity as the observatory moves closer to or farther from the Earth's center.

Using all these measurements, scientists try to model and predict the exact location of the telescope, and the delays through the atmosphere, so they can compensate for them. The tides are fairly predictable, and the Earth's rotation is measured by the IERS and can be accounted for. Atmospheric delay is fairly well understood, and is dominated by the pressure measurement alone. Early models had uncertainties in the 5–10 mm range for reasonable elevation angles, though more recent efforts have produced a model claiming 3 mm accuracy down to 10 degrees above the horizon, and sub-millimeter performance above 20–30° elevation. The weather is perhaps the biggest error source. Atmospheric loading is estimated from the barometric pressure at the telescope and the average pressure within a $1,000 km$ radius. Ocean loading has been handled strictly by empirical models, and ground water has been largely ignored. APOLLO will probably require improvements in all these models to reach the full accuracy of the measurements.

Discoveries
In April 2010, the APOLLO team announced that, with the aid of photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, they had found the long-lost Lunokhod 1 rover and had received returns from its laser retroreflector. By the fall of 2010, the location of the rover had been trilaterated (using range measurements from different points in the Earth's rotation and the Moon's libration) to about a centimeter. The location near the limb of the moon, combined with the ability to range the rover even when it is in sunlight, promises to be particularly useful for determining aspects of the Earth-Moon system.

The APOLLO collaboration has discovered that the optical efficiency of the lunar reflectors decreases at full moon. This effect was not present in measurements from the early 1970s, was visible but not strong in the 1980s, and is now quite significant; the signal is about 10-fold less during a full moon. The cause was suspected to be due to dust on the arrays, leading to temperature gradients, distorting the returned beam. Measurements during the total lunar eclipse of December 2010 confirmed thermal effects as the cause. The sudden cut off and restoration of the light allowed thermal time constants of the effect to be observed.

Status
APOLLO has been up and working to various degrees since October 2005, with science-quality data beginning April 2006. By mid-2011, the status was:
 * All 5 reflectors (three Apollo and two Lunokhod) ranged routinely.
 * As many as 12 photons in a single pulse (limited by detector – might have been more).
 * Sustained rate of about 3 photons per pulse over several minutes. This is about 65 times more photons detected than previous efforts.
 * As many as 50,000 return photons detected in a single lunation (during 5 hours total operation).

As of mid-2011, the range precision (per session) was believed to be about $1.8 mm$ per reflector, while the orbit of the Moon is being determined to roughly the 15 mm level. The gap between the measurements and the theory could be due to systematic errors in the ranging, insufficient modeling of various conventional effects that become important at this level, or limitations of our theory of gravity. Although it is possible that this discrepancy is due to new physics, the primary suspect is insufficient modeling, since this is known to be both complex and difficult.

To enable APOLLO to improve beyond the part per trillion measurement accuracy level, in 2016 it added a cesium atomic clock and improved calibration system. With the new system in place, the possible accuracy can be increased to better than 2 mm.

The new system has confirmed the accuracy of previous measurements. It revealed that the previous estimate of 10 ps of error (corresponding to 1.5 mm of distance uncertainty) attributed to APOLLO's GPS-synchronized oven-controlled crystal oscillator was too low; the true figure was closer to 20 ps (3 mm). However, careful record-keeping allowed the old data to be reanalyzed in light of the new understanding of the clock's variations and most of the accuracy recovered.

By confirming the accuracy of previous measurements, and making new even more accurate measurements, the still unresolved $15 mm$ discrepancy between theory and experiment is now placed more firmly on the theoretical models.

The collaboration
APOLLO is collaboration between: University of California, San Diego (Tom Murphy Principal investigator), University of Washington, Harvard, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lincoln Laboratory, Northwest Analysis, Apache Point Observatory, and Humboldt State.


text:
Talk:Wikibooks

What Should I do with the book I wrote?
A couple of ten years ago, I wrote a book, Codeword Dictionary. No need to ask, it was a real book, they paid me, I did not pay them. They would have singles that would interfeer.

Anyway, I have the copyright and was wondering what I should do with it, now that the Dead Tree edition is out of print and will probably not inspire a second edition.

The book was a dictionary of military operations names. I have used the files to work on the 'pedia's List of operations and projects (military and non-military) page, but we are talking thousands of entries here.

So what should I do? My options include:
 * Nothing
 * Make about a thousand entries to the page mentioned above.
 * Enter the whole thing as a WikiBook.
 * paying for it to be reprinted and give it away.

Your thoughts, please.PaulinSaudi 11:58, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)]]

 * If you want to include it there, Wikibooks sounds like the most reasonable place to me. In the format you describe, it sounds more like a complete reference work than an encyclopedia article, so it would be appropriate for Wikibooks. As a complete text, it's probably beyond the scope of Wikipedia itself, though of course pieces of individual information can be added to individual articles as you've been doing. --Michael Snow 15:48, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * If you put it in Wikibooks, perhaps others can pull out the parts that are useful into individual Wikipedia entries, saving you the work. I might do a few.   – Quadell (talk) (quiz)   16:08, Sep 16, 2004 (UTC)

 * Another option might be to put it all into user subpages. Wikibooks seems an uncomfortable match to me, and Wikisource is out according to their current policy. I think you're doing the right thing raising it here for discussion. It's an excellent offer, and might also be a significant precedent.
 * How do you feel about breaking it into sensible 32k chunks and putting them all up as user subpages? Wikilinks to these from articles would be inappropriate, but wikilinks from talk pages would make the material available to other Wikipedia editors. It seems to me that's exactly the sort of thing the user namespace is here for.
 * That's my best initial thought. But interested in other views. Andrewa 16:19, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)
 * I am unclear on what breaking it into userspace article entails. Can you point me to an example? Would a person looking at The War in Italy still find a link to Operation Soandso? We could chop it into a million little bits, each entry is a stand-alone. Still, giving it to WikiBook seems to be the low-work option. I am leaving in a few days for vacation. I will do nothing until Ramadan, when I return. PaulinSaudi 16:58, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)]]

 * I assume it's alphabetical, so the first thing would probably be to break it into 27 or 28 pages, one for each initial letter, plus one for an index and one for non-alphabetic initial characters if needed. This is just to get the page size down. You might want then to break some of the larger pages down further, say BAA-BON and BOO-BZZ instead of B, for example, if this split cuts it roughly in half. That's where the index becomes important. This shouldn't be too much work.

 * So far as the War in Italy goes, at least the more prominent operations and perhaps even all of them would be mentioned, bolded, in the text of a larger article, and these could have redirects or disambiguations pointing to them. This is a lot of work obviously, but putting the material in the user namespace means that other editors can do some of it. Andrewa 12:12, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It would be good to see it, then we could see whether having thousands of articles on it would be good. My gut feeling is that yes, it could be. Intrigue 18:44, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Independently of whatever you may decide to do vis-a-vis Wikibooks, have you considered giving it to Project Gutenberg? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 18:52, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I agree it's a generous offer, and thank you. One concern I have is whether it might be a little too generous. Even though you have the copyright, and could presumably prevent the publisher from re-issuing the book without cutting a deal with you, the contract might give the publisher some rights. At a minimum, it might restrain you from taking any action that kills the market for a possible reprint, by giving the same text away for free. Before you elect any of the options discussed here, you should probably speak with your publisher and/or your lawyer. JamesMLane 01:39, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I would suggest you enter the whole thing as a wikibook anyway it seems as we have the same challenge. 'Nickimash' (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Something I'd like to add...
I'd like to add something along these lines:

Development Style

 * The development of a wikibook is closer to the development of an open source software project than it is to the creation of a wikipedia encyclopedia article. An encyclopedic article by nature has a neutral point of view, an agreed upon style, and requires less centralized coordination. A textbook, on the other hand, takes a specific instructive point of view: while verified facts remain facts, how to teach a specific subject can be done in a wide variety of styles. Because an entire textbook is a much larger undertaking than a single article, coordination among a small, dedicated team of authors is typically required. (A reference book that covers a variety of mostly-independent material, on the other hand, would be more condusive to a wikipedia development style.)

 * The challenges of wikibook development, therefore, are similar to the challenges of open source software development. What sometimes occurs in open source software is that a new software project is proposed with an enthusiastic team of volunteers determining the scope of the project, but not enough coding is done and thus the project can struggle for months without progress. Other times, there can be developers ready to code for a project, but the project itself suffers from a lack of leadership and thus the developers aren't used as effectively as they could have been. In contrast, a wikipedia article can be thought of as a message board, where hundreds of people can post and add on to it. But instead of having threaded messages, the artifact is a single entry that represents the consensus view.

 * Given these differences in development, it is not surprising to see that wikibooks face challenges that the wikipedia itself does not.

MShonle 20:15, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC) (Upon agreement to this idea, I'll post it to the article.)

 * I can certainly see good points from this comment. I however wonder this kind of the comment is appropriate to wikiepdia, an encyclopedia. Like in movie articles, we don't generally put reviews, at most a phrase like "the movie has received bad reviews." or something. I am thinking maybe we can have an article like development style or something where we discuss the difference between wiki or open sources. Because what you are getting at, in my opinion, appears more interesting to those who are interested in various development styles in general like Eric Raymond's cathedral and the bazaar. just my 2 cents. -- Taku 02:22, Dec 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * I can work on making it more NPOV, but it certainly doesn't sound like a review. (The last sentence I can do without, as perhaps that's what you take issue with?) MShonle 06:11, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * No, this is not NPOV issue at all. The problem is that the point above is not directly about wikibook. For example, I think it would make little sense for those who don't know about wikipedia or open source projects before. Put in another way, wikibooks poses some different challenges, thus we would be needing some different approach than wikipedia. That is relevant to us, but it is not clearly if it is so to the general public. Again, I would like to see this issue discussed somewhere, and, I am just saying, maybe not here. I propose to create an article about development sytle because in this way, the readers don't need to be familiar with the development sytles in wikipedia, open source and any other. Also those who are interested in the development style don't need to come to this article. What do you think? -- Taku 18:08, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

 * Were I to change the title of the header to "Wikibook Development Style" you'd realize it was quite related to wikibooks, and therefore meaningful and helpful for the wikipedia entry on wikibooks? I could include links so that a person could "get" it easier, but I think your concern is a little overblown. My main concern is that people will visit the wikibooks site and get confused by how different it is from the wikipedia. The development style is one of the most important differences. MShonle 05:39, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * Isn't that the exact point: people may get confused when they get to wikibook? We need to carefully identity who is the audience of this article or more generaly any article here. Needless to say, any article in wikipedia is written for the general public. For example, a wikipedia entry reads like it is talking about someone else. It gives strange feelings because you are reading about wikipedia in wikipedia! Also, please notice I have never said what you wrote is not meaningful nor helpful for people who are interested in wikibooks. In other words, forget about the connection between wikibook and wikipedia, which is factual and relevant to us and many people but is irrelevant to an encyclopedic article. If your concern is to clean up the confusions for those contributing or visiting both wikipedia and wikibooks, then you should put a clarification to wikipedia and wikibooks sites, not wikipedia articles. Think of some analogy. A Japanese person differs from an American person in a number of ways and I am sure many people are interested in the differences. We however don't put remaks on such differences in an article like Japanese people. Hope you understand I am only talking about the context, not your remak per se. -- Taku 06:28, Dec 29, 2004 (UTC)

About non technical books
I'm new here so please pardon me if it is a faq (which however I didn't find on the FAQ). What about writing non-technical books, like fantasy, spy stories, SciFi and so on? Anyone can seed a story and then collaboratively some great book can build up. Also, some automatized engine for the creation of e-books formats can be very interesting.
 * See A Million Penguins. Wiki Fiction writing doesn't work. occono (talk) 14:08, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

What relation does Wikibooks have to Wikipedia?
What guidelines if any are there for keeping Wikibooks and Wikipedia in sync? For example, I see that Wikibooks has a nascent section on Calculus, but Wikipedia has a much more developed set of articles for most any area of mathematics. In contributing to the Wikibooks section, should I simply link from Wikibooks articles to Wikipedia ones, or copy-paste content? Thanks for your advice.
 * I assume it is far too late, but let's hope others may read the old threads. To use Wikipedia content (or content from a few other WMF projects), request an import at b:WB:RFI. An administrator will import the article(s) with (usually) full edit histories in compliance with the GFDL. – Mike.lifeguard  | talk 02:40, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikibooks vs. wikipedia - wikiversity - wikisource - wiktionary...
This may appear as a dumb, misplaced or even indecent question to wikibooks contributors, but believe me I'm far from hostile to this project. The question: why a separate wikibooks? Basic as this question is, I didn't find a real answer anywhere on wikibooks or wikipedia.

I see a certain difference beween the "books" "encyclopedia" and "dictionary" projects, however these seem gradual rather than essential. When I want to inform myself on a topic, I don't care about these distinctions. Definition, description, etymology, related matters, manuals: I don't see why I would one but not the others. Then, why does one have to look in 3 different projects?

More general remark: wouldn't it be easier to pool resources and assign labels, categories, keywords and file properties to each item for easy retrieval?

--Igor 12:18, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

 * What are the specific differences between Wikibooks and Wikiversity? Forgive me for not signing in, my monobook is messing with IE and preventing me from writing this in Wikiversity. Dessydes

 * Wikibooks is intended for things that are not encylopedic, but instructional. e.g. wikipedia will tell you what something is, wikibooks will tell you how to do it. Wikiversity is supposed to be managed courses utilizing wikibooks (or similar materials) to teach specific subjects. Kellen T 06:55, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

You ask a very good question! And one that I think the article should shed more light on... If you work on contributing to WP, you will soon learn that there is some rule somewhere against almost anything that you want to contribute. For example, "sources". There are no sources listed for over 90% of current WP content! And "WP is not a how-to". You could study the subject of "what WP is not" (officially) for a good list of all the reasons we need other places to build good, useful information resources. Don't know how much better things are over at Wikibooks; I'm about to try to find out.

Template:advert
I am a contributor to English Wikibooks. (I do not edit the Wikipedia much.) I have added the advert tag to this article about Wikibooks.

This article only seems to promote Wikibooks. It includes no negative comments about Wikibooks, despite the low quality of some of our projects. Wikibooks:Wikibooks:Staff lounge links to information that might help improve this article.

Instead of editing this article, I will let other users (preferably those external to Wikibooks) improve this article. --Kernigh 22:15, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

 * No, I'm pretty sure that's all wrong. There is nothing to describe about wikibooks besides what is on this page. Only citable referencable opinions can be presented on wikipedia, and there is probably only very obscure media coverage of the fledgeling wikibooks project. As such, there can be neither negative nor positive commentary here. A definition of the project is all we can expect. That said, can we remove that tag? Lotusduck 02:04, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Okay, I'm not the anonymous user that removed the advert tag, but I think that I justified him or her. It's a wikimedia project. Wikimedia is a reasonable source for all the facts here: What it should be, and that it exists. Criticism of it would be true and fair, but inappropriate because wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought, even if those thoughts are true. So if I criticised wikibooks for being incomplete or anything like that, I would be pushing forward my own ideas. If I wanted to make this article ballanced, I would have to source some not self published article or book saying something about wikibooks, which is very very unlikely just by the nature of how tiny and underworked and unknown wikibooks is. Now, this may be a good time to ignore all rules and throw in a comment that wikibooks is less worked through than wikipedia and largely incomplete, but just because someone hasn't broken the rules to make this article better doesn't mean it's an advertisement. The article is as informative as it can be while strictly following guidelines, I'm removing the tag. Lotusduck 18:42, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

The current article does a better job of presenting facts than the version that I originally tagged. You might be correct: I know of and, but almost no one has information on the quality (good or bad) of textbooks from Wikibooks. --Kernigh 03:42, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Merge in wikijunior ?
Someone prodded the other article. How about merging the content here. Doesn't seem to meet WP:WEB otherwise. Megapixie 01:45, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
 * This is IMHO a silly rule for Wikipedia to begin with, although in this regard I guess you can delete the Wikibooks article, as well as Wikinews and Wiktionary on the same grounds. This is all that more important because Wikijunior is really using Wikibooks as an incubator site, and essentially acting as an independent Wikimedia project with its own user base and seperate set of rules over content development that are largely independent of Wikibooks.
 * I see very little reason to merge this article other than some nebulous justification to cull references to all Wikimedia projects for lack of notability. Wikijunior does fit the justification as being something more than merely another Wikiproject, and is especially notable for being the first major Wikimedia Foundation project that was initiated by outside effort (the Beck Foundation) rather than coming from an idea by Wikimedia users.  This of course does show some of the tension that exists right now between Wikijunior content developers and fundraising that is happening on behalf of Wikijunior, and something that is missing from the Wikijunior article.  --Robert Horning 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Page doesn't work in Internet Explorer
Page doesn't work in Internet Explorer.

I think this is because the SVG image at the top of the page. I'll let someone who knows what they are doing fix this.

Thanks, Kelly

 * Works for me in both IE and firefox. Kellen T 23:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Can a tutur reaserch Nicolesonio (talk) 05:16, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Errors
1. StrategyWiki has given up on its relicense attempt. and

2. No mention is made of my wiki WikiKnowledge

Books moved to WikiKnowledge:
 * 1) Sonic 2
 * 2) Sonic 3
 * 3) Mega Man
 * 4) Eggerland
 * 5) The entire Wikibooks Pokédex
 * 6) Fighting game moves
 * 7) GTA: LCS
 * 8) Super Monkey Ball
 * 9) Sonic R

I even got some of the VB classic book after one Wikibooks user left the project. Gerard Foley 21:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

b:Wikibooks:Wikibooks for wikipedians
Wikibooks is working on a new effort to create pages and programs to help welcome wikipedians to the wikibooks project. The current welcome page (a bit of a draft at the moment) is at b:Wikibooks:Wikibooks for wikipedians. I would like to put a link to this page in a wikibooks-specific high-traffic area here on wikipedia, to try and produce interest in that project. Should I put such a link on this page, or is there a more appropriate place to put such a link? --User:Wknight8111 (WB:Whiteknight) 02:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

What are Wikistudy and Wikiprofessional
I`d happy to know wat are them--Tigru 03:40, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

 * This is a pet project of one of the admins on Wikibooks, b:User:Jguk, who tried to reorganize some of the content on Wikibooks into different themes. In addition to the above ideas, he also added Wikiversity and Wikijunior into the mix, even though Wikiversity has since spun off into a completely seperate Wikimedia sister-project.  I'm still not completely sure the direction he wanted to go with this effort.  --Robert Horning 19:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Lots of Wiki-referencing!
A lot of the statements here are linked to Wikimedia-related stuff! There are very few outside sources for any of this. I don't know if Wikimedia stuff is fine to link to as a source, but I'm just pointing out it happens in this article a loooot. I don't know anyhting about it though so I can't fix it myself. :-( Miltopia 10:42, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

 * Keep in mind that the "original" source material for most of this is by definition going to come from within Wikimedia websites. Of course there aren't going to be external references for this material except as a purely secondary (and highly biased) source of information.  Most of the references are to discussion or talk pages, that would also be inappropriate to modify or change and would be considered grounds for administrative action (like blocking accounts) if it were to be modifed.

 * This is something that is going to take some serious research to try and resolve in terms of producing a NPOV Wikipedia article about some of the issues involved, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be using Wikimedia-related content here. This is clearly not a case of one article quoting another article in an ad-nausium circle, but original material being generated by participants of the Wikibook project and its relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees.

 * In short, this is an invalid comment in terms of this article as the only reliable sources of information that could be possible used for citations for this article would be from Wikimedia derived websites. I frankly wouldn't trust something written about Wikibooks that was in the popular press, particularly for those things that are about internal policy disputes and project directions where a much more reliable primary source would be the talk pages where the discussion actually took place (or the Textbook-l mailing list, for example).  --Robert Horning 18:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

New Wikibooks logo
Hi all, whatever happened with the logo renewal could be added to this article. It seems to me that the Finnish Wikibooks is the only one to use it thus far? –Zinjixmaggir 12:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

good NPOV
Nice job on the NPOV of this article. It doesn't dodge the issues, and doesn't seem tainted by pro-wiki ideological bias at all.--75.83.140.254 19:47, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

 * Are there any articles that are tainted with pro-wiki ideological bias? – Qxz 21:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Weasel Words?
Under the criticisms section, the phrase "some argue" is used as an argument against Wikibooks.--ॐJesucristo301 (talk) 00:35, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Please incorporate this text into the article
{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;font-size:88%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;" ! style="background-color: #00B7EB;" | Sister Projects Interview: Wikibooks
 * style="text-align:center;" |
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white;" |
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white;" |
 * style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white;" |

What is Wikibooks? What are its goals and objectives?

 * Wikibooks is an effort to collaboratively write open-content textbooks. There’s often some confusion due to the name, but Wikibooks is for textbooks, not books in general.

 * The project started 10 July 2003 after requests from Karl Wick. As we all know, Wikipedia is not for instructional material. Karl had been working on collating articles on organic chemistry into a format that people could learn from. Of course, there was a VFD, and the book was deleted. That spawned the Wikibooks project, which Jimbo has hailed as “the next big thing in education” and is generally regarded as being a much bigger project than Wikipedia. It’ll probably take 20 years or more to flourish where Wikipedia has flourished in a much shorter time.

 * In terms of history of Wikibooks, there have been a few major changes over the project’s lifespan. Wikiversity (interview) used to be a project within Wikibooks. Wikiversity wasn’t seen as a textbook, and therefore not suitable for inclusion in Wikibooks, so a VFD and proposal resulted in Wikiversity being split off. Wikibooks is still home to two major subprojects. The Wikijunior project is for kids’ books, in an effort to write age-appropriate non-fiction books for kids up to age 12. The second project is our cookbook.

 * Another major development was the formalization of the exclusion of strategy guides (aka game guides). This was always the intent, but was insufficiently and unequally enforced. The rationale is that textbooks are inherently academic. If you take a course in university, there will never be a walkthrough as required reading, so we don’t allow such things at Wikibooks. We do however allow textbooks about video games. If you’re taking video game design, then of course you’ll need that sort of textbook. The line is sometimes hard to draw, but the distinction is between a walkthrough and an academic examination.

Describe what activities do the editors in Wikibooks do most.

 * Wikibooks editors, called ‘’Wikibookians’’, tend to work on their own project. Writing a textbook is a much more ambitious endeavor than writing an encyclopedia article for example, so people who are successful in doing so tend to be very driven, but focus their work exclusively on one book or one subject area. Since textbooks are instructional it is not enough to simply present information as you would in Wikipedia – the writing style and the overall structure must be coherent from an instructional point of view. Readers need to be able to learn from a Wikibook, so structure, organization and tone are very important. From this point of view, it’s much more important to know your subject matter thoroughly. Many of our editors are educators of various kinds. Of course, Wikibooks is no more a meritocracy than Wikipedia, but it is much more difficult to write a textbook well if you don’t know much about the subject compared to writing an encyclopedia article on a subject you’re not familiar with.

 * Wikibooks has all the same maintenance tasks as Wikipedia does, but let’s focus on the differences. As you can imagine, cataloguing our books is a major challenge. Until recently we used static lists to keep track of our books. Needless to say, this method isn’t scalable, so we’ve now harnessed an extension called Dynamic Page List which allows us to dynamically list items in a category. We’ve created a new Subject: namespace for these catalogue pages. We also catalogue books by various other methods (Dewey Decimal, Library of Congress & Alphabetical), but these methods are becoming less and less important. Subject:Engineering is a great example of this new method. Exploring around in the Subject: namespace is always a great way to find books you’re looking for but can’t necessarily find in other ways. Maintaining these pages is as easy as ensuring that new books are properly categorized, which we did in the past anyways.

What are some of the tasks done by administrators?

 * Again, most administrator tasks are consistent across all wikis. One task which will not be familiar to most Wikipedians is importing. At Wikibooks, administrators may import pages from other projects with a full edit history (barring technical errors of course). Content is often imported by request – someone starting a new text will often want to use Wikipedia articles as seed material. Importing in this manner allows us to comply with the GFDL instead of the much more cumbersome copy-paste method.

 * There are sometimes irritating situations with this, and I’ll focus on Wikipedia here, though it’s not the only example. Wikipedians will often want to move content to Wikibooks after an AFD, but nobody bothers to check whether it’s suitable for inclusion. Wikipedia has an inclusion policy, and few would be thrilled with people from other wikis dumping their unwanted content in Wikipedia. Likewise, Wikibooks is not a place to dump unwanted pages. It’s not hard to determine what’s acceptable – we’re a very friendly folk, so just ask :)

 * Helping new contributors is actually one of the main tasks at Wikibooks. The bar is a little higher for beginners because we’re writing textbooks not encyclopedia articles, so we try to focus very much on making our processes easy to follow, and the regulars are very available to help out new contributors. If you can’t figure something out, there’s a very active helpful community ready to help you out. In the past, I’ve had many emails using an amazing array of adjectives to describe how much more welcoming the Wikibooks project is to new contributors, and how helpful the community is. This is especially true of class projects. Wikibooks is sometimes used as a teaching tool, especially in universities. This results in a big influx of new contributors who need to be “herded” in the right directions. The professor often doesn’t know any better how things work than the students to, so it falls to the community to help them along. And we’ve had many projects like this which have been highly successful. One such project was the Social and Cultural Foundations of American Education which is a recurring class project out of Old Dominion University.

If I want to become an active editor, what should be my first step (other than signing up)?

 * We try to keep the bar to entry as low as possible. Most people will find that Wikibooks is a much more laid-back environment for contributing than Wikipedia. We’re a very tight-knit group of contributors, and we tend to work very well together.

 * If you’re interested in writing a text, first see if there’s something you can add to or re-work. Just like there should be one article per topic in Wikipedia, there should be one text per subject in Wikibooks. Only when scope or audience is significantly different should there be more than one text on a subject. If there is a pre-existing book, then get crackin!

 * If not, then you’ll want to start off with a detailed outline of the structure of the book. You want to detail the scope of the book, and the overall picture of what you’ll be teaching. Once that’s complete, then start filling in content. Many new authors at Wikibooks make what I consider to be a mistake: they dive right in with contributing content with no clear idea of what the text should look like in the future. “Scope creep” is common, and can be easily avoided by planning what you want to do ahead of time.

Does the project have any plans to promote itself or recruit more members?

 * Contributors are the number one thing Wikibooks needs to succeed. Wherever I can, I try to talk up Wikibooks, and I know other regulars do too. Beyond that I’m not aware of any organized large-scale efforts to get new authors to come to Wikibooks. User:Whiteknight has given several talks on Wikibooks, which are certainly helpful. We need more press to gain the scale Wikipedia has. This is something that Wikibooks should be dealing with as a community, and I don’t think we’ve done enough in the past.

 * For any Wikipedians involved in a WikiProject, you may well be interested in coming over to see whether we have texts that you can contribute to, or if there’s a gap in coverage you can help to fill.

 * Recently there have been a number of book donations – authors of books have decided to release their book into the wild and add it to our collection. Getting the book converted to wikitext is often a major hurdle, but it’s great to have a book added all in one go. While this increases the number of books we host, it doesn’t usually add more contributors. Content is great, but without the people to back it up, that’s all it is.

What are some difficulties that Wikibooks faced?

 * The major difficulty that I see for Wikibooks is getting new contributors. The only thing that will make us successful is more people to maintain the wiki, but more importantly contribute content. Many contributors come and write a single book, then leave. We need people to come and stay. Even if you’re not going to contribute another entire textbook, there is always editing to be done. Slow, steady and long-term work in a variety of areas is preferable to contributing only one book and leaving.

 * To do this, we need to become more recognizable. One way is by choosing a new logo for our project. The discussion about our new logo isn’t restricted to Wikibookians – anyone can come help improve the options and help us decide what to pick.

 * Another ongoing set of issues is technical. MediaWiki was written for Wikipedia, so it’s unsurprising that the software isn’t ideal for writing textbooks. We have many wishes for software features, but there’s been little progress in getting anything major done. My hope is that the Foundation may hire another developer which would allow some additional time to go into developing features for the non-Wikipedia wikis (Wikibooks is not the only project that feels ignored). I should be clear that the fault doesn’t lie with the developers – they’re doing excellent work. In recent months we’ve seen fruition of efforts on SUL and FlaggedRevs. Global blocking seems to be coming along shortly; same for rev_deleted; and global groups are potentially in the near future. It’s just that none of these developments are helpful for Wikibooks to overcome some problems in using software designed for a slightly different purpose.

How can I recognize the best works of Wikibooks?

 * Wikibooks has Featured Books just like you find Featured Articles at Wikipedia. We’ve divided the books by subject on Featured Books, and there’s a corresponding subject page at Subject:Featured books. These books must meet certain criteria and are discussed thoroughly before being marked as featured. We’re excited to get Stable versions enabled to assist this process.

 * I'm not sure whether my interview is considered a reliable source. — Mike.lifeguard | @en.wb 19:44, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Paper from sustainable sources ?
as of March 2010 there appears to be no information on the type of paper used to manufacture physical Wikibooks. FSC promotes sustainable wood production. 79.75.31.167 (talk) 16:30, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikijunior
Seems there was afd consensus to merge the former Wikijunior article into this one. However, as can be seen from the link, there is much content that got left behind. -- œ ™ 09:21, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Which tends to happen with mergers and deletions. Why should this be a surprise?  --14:56, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

 * It shouldn't happen, especially if the old article is much more informative. If the AfD consensus was to merge then there should be a proper merge that takes into account all relevant content. -- œ ™ 00:03, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

 * That almost never happens during a merger from my experience with any article. Information is almost always lost.... which is one reason why I usually complain about deletions in the first place.  Yes, a "proper merge" should bring in all of the relevant information, but that almost never happens in practice and is one of the shortcomings of mergers and deletions in general.  --Robert Horning (talk)

 * True indeed. I chalk it up to laziness and apathy amongst most users. Seems AfD closers couldn't be bothered performing merges on articles dealing with subjects they don't care about. Myself, although I'll be the first to admit I'm a procrastinating lazy-ass, when I do take the time to do a merge I make an effort to preserve as much non-redundant content as possible, and comply with all the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licensing requirements. And the subject of the article is usually irrelevant to me. My agenda is improvement of Wikipedia, not a certain subject ON Wikipedia. -- œ ™ 11:38, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Off task
This page is for improvements on the Wikibooks article, not the project. 64.92.53.159 (talk) 23:54, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Wikibooks