User:Whiteknight/New Book Guide/Content

Whiteknight's Book Guide

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Books Needing Content

The most common need among books on Wikibooks is the need for more content. More words, sentences, and paragraphs. Even a book that is great in every other way will be worthless if it doesn't have enough content. Keep in mind that there is a difference between books who need general content expansion and books that need specific content additions in specific places. Books that have large content volume but need more specific types of content probably need help with Accuracy instead. Books needing general content expansion typically fall into the stub or expand states. To fix a book whose biggest problem is a lack of content, there are several methods an author could employ:

Write Content

Almost seems silly to say it, but the most direct way to get more content in a book is to write it yourself. Write lots of content, just dump it out of your page onto the keyboard. Don't worry about formatting, organization, or style. Put content onto the page as quickly as you can and go back to fix it later.

Import from Wikipedia

Go to WB:RFI and request imports of related pages from Wikipedia. Dump the content into your book, but remember that it's going to take a lot of work to dewikify everything. Don't import more pages than you are able to dewikify in a reasonable amount of time, or they could get deleted.

Merge Related Books

If there are other books on the same topic, and they aren't doing so hot either, consider a merger. Mergers can be quick: Copy the text from one book to the other, and then delete the unneeded pages. Don't worry about integrating the text into the book at first, proper integration and narrative flow can be handled in one step later.

Improve Content

Here are some steps you can take to increase the amount of content in a book.

1. Find related books in similar condition and suggest a merger. Use {{mergeto}} and {{mergefrom}}, or just use {{merge}} if you don't have a preference.
2. Import related content from Wikipedia by making a request at WB:RFI
3. Write more content. Nothing fancy, just start dropping words from your head into the book.
4. Search Commons for related images, and post them in the book

What to Work on Next

After the book has sufficient volumes of content, here are some tasks to do next:

1. Improve the Style of the content by editing and revising
2. Improve the Accuracy of the content by adding discussion, examples, and clarification
3. Improve the Formatting of the content by using headings, lists and templates
4. Improve the Visuals of the book by adding more images, diagrams, and tables