Wikisource:Scriptorium

Announcements

Voting is about to close

It is currently 10:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC) , voting closes at 23:59 UTC, so just hours after this post. If you want to vote, please do so. Additionally, there's been an on-going discussion about a recommendation for voting to be extended to give people more time, opinions welcome. --Alecmconroy (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposals

New Main Page format

I am proposing we change our main page to something like this:

Please see here

1. I think this better illustrates the way our site functions
2. A more dynamic look as new texts change, leaner.
3. Can help promote validating new proofread text, showcase older, but newly validated texts.
   1. Validated and Proofread texts use existing {{New texts/item}} template; image changed maybe weekly or daily depending on volume.
      1. Note: texts in example are not either newly validated or proofread, just placeholders.
   2. images in new texts to make the page more aesthetic.
4. Categories expanded, but condensed into the top.
5. Collaboration
   1. CotW, with no opposition to it being continued in the future if/when editor help has grown, has been inactive and should be removed from the main page.
   2. PotM is active, but I think it is mainly by regular editors who don't need to see it on the main page, and would be just as successful on a Collaboration page or something, and like the CotW,no prejudice towards use in the Main page in the future.
6. Condensed sister sites template.

Any modifications to what I have feel free to make and please let me know what you think; the main points of this proposal are to separate the new texts, and to remove the collaboration from it's own large cell, although they can exist as separate proposals if necessary :) - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:51, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I may be wrong here but from the bits and pieces I've read in passing to date, I don't believe there is much "room" to make such "changes" to the basic main_page layout irregardless of which foundation site is in question. I think the idea was to make at least that much uniform in appearance across all the sister-sites' opening main_pages. I believe that is also the reason why they have coded much of the html layout into shared CSS classes, ids, etc. — George Orwell III (talk) 22:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Every en Main page I've seen is different; Meta, Species, Books and Quote being in my opinion the most unique. They're all significantly different. - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for not being more clear -- and not meant to be insulting but to emphasize -- its not the content changes itself, it's about your editing practices and style approaches it seems.

Taking a closer look after putting my foot in my mouth once again first; you do seem to be following the existing premise and guide just fine. Yet, and this has been somewhat of a recurring theme with you, your layout looks like something bicycle-helmet wearing, keee-pads in the shower and most improved finger-painter 2002, 2003 & 2007, Corky came up with. Forgive the harsh comparision. I only wish to make it crystal clear to you that while you may "see" everything aligned and proportioned correctly in such cases; not everybody uses the same setup with the same browser, etc. as you use. Therefore, edits such as this example look far worse than it rightly deserves to... and that may be partly why some of your proposals are not intially recieved, for lack of a better term, "well" by some folks (see my 'foot-in-mouth' above for example & dbl-Sorry 'bout that.) — George Orwell III (talk) 22:41, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Ouch... no I'm kidding. What's most important to me is if you agree with the any or all concepts:

1. retiring (at least for the time being) the PotM and CotW from the main page
2. The separation of Validated and Proofread New texts and direct links to explanations.
3. Combination of the header and subjects (similar to Wikipedia's header)
4. Leaner sister project banner.

I'm not a developer, and I am quick to check on Chrome and IE and then figure everything is okay, but any changes to enhance usability and appearance I whole-heartily welcome. In my mind, we can at minimum remove the row with collaboration and categories, and without objection I think that should be done. - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm involved today in Wikisource to the degree I am because one day I wandered on to the main page of Wikisource (weary of the wiki-drama elsewhere) and saw that the POTM was Grove's Dictionary. If it had not been on the main page I wouldn't have looked any further for such a project and probably wouldn't have become engaged with the project.

I'm also of the "no surprises" philosophy and prefer the current sister project layout. I frequently use it to navigate a new window to Commons or WP. I'd be reluctant too, to see the information about the other Wikisource language projects go. The English versions of the Wikimedia projects are often the first that people come to and then learn of other language projects and can investigate to see if their language is on the list. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback Beeswaxcandle, regarding the language projects: are you talking about the links in the side bar for different languages, or the link to the old wikisource? The sister projects layout though, I don't understand what you mean by "no surprises;" this setup is already used by Wikibooks. I am totally glad that you're here; you're a great editor, but I still not convinced that PotM and CotW belong on the main page because of the chance that it grabbed you; I see a larger rotation of works both validated and proofread on the main page as having more potential in grabbing a passer-by. - Theornamentalist (talk) 10:12, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• In retrospect, I belive that separating these proposals might be better, as the arguement I've just made is not exclusive. Later in the day I will propose them individually. - Theornamentalist (talk) 11:50, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that maybe the first part should be a philosophical discussion rather than a jump straight to the singular proposal. I don't think that (m)any are against reviewing the front page for functionality, though I can guess that numbers are not in line with your thinking. Personally, I find it narrowly focused proposal based on your limited experience with us, rather than a holistic view of what the site has been doing, and achieving. This site is more than the main page, though the main page is the avenue that many will have into the site, however, it is not the only avenue that people will have. I would suggest that people follow links, and also come via their user page or their watchlist. Your statements about the PotM, I would argue are without research or evidence, further I believe that the evidence would demonstrate that not only does it bring in newbies each month, it also is a place that our low-end regulars come to contribute their little bit for the site each month. Your proposal ignores the projects which I would argue are one of the demonstrated means of collaboration on this site and the only means to undertake large tasks and a demonstrated success. I would also argue that the switch from our previous more dynamic welcome messages, to the more static messages have not been helpful for the site. So I am not against a more dynamic front page, I just think that the proposal can do with further research of the prior iterations of the front page, and a holistic approach of how the site works, and the avenues of travel. I would also say that John Vandenberg has introduced topic matter on a more push approach to visitation. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:22, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

You're right, I was likely guaranteeing no change by proposing too much at once, reinforced with poor development by yours truly. I did not use any figures to decide that the PotM would be successful if placed off of the main page and into a collaboration page; it was just an observation and a suggestion.

Here are my individual proposals:

Retiring CotW from the main page

• Support Dormant for many months. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Provisional support - in its current state, although I would prefer this to be reactivated or repurposed in some way. At the moment it is redundant and could make the project look inactive. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support. It should be restored only if active again.--Jusjih (talk) 14:54, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
•  Support Remains inactive for months at a time, and does does not get updated weekly as it's name points out. Should be removed from the main page until it becomes more active. --Angelprincess72 (talk) 18:33, 10 July 2011 (UTC)
• 'Oppose it is a good place for a current collaboration. However, it should be renamed to something like "Community Collaboration" or "Current Collaboration" to reflect the lack of concrete timescales. If there is no active community effort, it can rotate (slowly, on the order of days to weeks) the current WikiProjects to air them on the front page. We occasionally get good flurries of activity from CotW (WS:NARA is doing very nicely, with dozens of works added, converted and proofread), and it's a good way for users to try to recruit others into larger efforts that are otherwise hidden from view. Sometimes it falls flat and little gets added, but in general good work gets done. The only reason that it seems moribund is that if no-one cares to kick a new one off after the current one gets stale, it lies dormant. An auto-rotation of projects in off-periods will sort that out. Starting a CotW takes time and effort, and I'd prefer a slow turnover of "good" topics than a rapid turnover of any old subjects just to justify the name "of the Week". Inductiveload—talk/contribs 22:57, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

  I have changed the visual text that appears on the front page for COTW to be Community Collaboration. The landing page WS:CotW has not been changed, though I am happy to undertake that change of the community is comfortable with that name. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:18, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Retiring PotM from the main page

• Support - with no prejudice to place it back on if participation or new editor count drops - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - I think this is the best place for PotM, and any other "...of the month" projects for that matter. Its a good entry point, it gives people a clear "thing to do" and being on the front page probably boosts activity. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

For what it is worth, between 1300 and 1400 edits for the PotM this month, 24 contributors, eight of whom were new to the PotM and seven were new to English Wikisource. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:07, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

By the way, where do you find such statistics? Is it just through looking at the individual page histories? — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 07:02, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Separation of New texts into "New Validated Works" and "New Proofread Works"

• Support - with direct links to explanations might help promote scans in place of non-scan works. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Provisional support - I think it can work but I'm not sure about limiting it to validated and proofread. Will the proofread section include complete works that only have a red ribbon (which is the point at which I usually add new works myself)? If so, having a section for new works (red or yellow) and a section for absolutely complete works is OK. An objection might be that the validated list will mostly just be repeating the other box after some time delay. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

• Hmm, didn't think of that; I think that allowing for individual works within a publication that have been either proofread or validated to go on the main page is beneficial, as opposed to the entire publication; it is rewarding to see something worked-on on the main page, especially for new editors; might promote passer-by's to validate? I don't know; I guess the way we loosely define "new texts" now is fine; and I don't mind if the work appears on the main page twice; that means it's been validated :) Now if we saw large cases were works were quickly being moved from Pr. to Va., maybe we could refine the process then; but I still don't think that's a bad thing; just shows our sites activity. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:24, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Combination of Welcome message with categories

• Support - inline with sister sites; maximizes space. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - We already have works and authors up there. Adding genre, subject et al may look neater. AdamBMorgan (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Leaner sister project banner as seen in Wikibooks.

• Support - leaves Main page less cluttered. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
• I have no strong opinion either way. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 23:28, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Comment Personally I object to this occurring in this format. I object to every proposal of yours starting off as a popularity contest and straight in for a vote. As I indicated above about this a proposal that it should have proper consideration, looking at what are our objectives and traffic flow supported by data, etc. Not some half-arsed biased opinion without support of evidence. In this form I will certainly just say NO. On a previous occasion you took and implemented idea for which there had been a few comments, a small level of support, and where there had been negative comment, there was neither a consensus nor an more universal agreement by the community. I also did not like the way that you took my not vocally disagreeing with you, by asking for more information as a tacit approval. This is a facile approach and does not do justice to the main page, the site nor its holistic objectives. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

In an effort to trend with your described approach of our community in making decisions, I did not formally ask for votes when applying {{rt}}; I discussed it in our most public forum for 9 or more days with several editors, none of which showed disapproval; my exact words for your opinion on the matter where " not entirely convinced," which was used to illustrate that it did not receive a unanimous agreement, but was not controversial enough to illicit the type of reactions and edits done by Cygnis. However, the format you requested which I adhered to is clearly stil not enough; you've deemed the efforts of myself, AdamBMorgan, Propsody and George Orwell III on {{Rt}}, who, including you, were 100% of the input in the esteemed discussion, as being only a "small level of support." I ask you then, which approach should anyone take? You seem to dislike both ways, and it remains that I want to make changes to improve the site. This site happens to be a wiki, and I hold not just my opinion on a matter, but also my way of vocalizing it, just as important and correct as I do yours. I hope that you do not simply vote "NO" on my proposals (biased by virtue of them actually being mine), but feel free to; most of these proposals are non-controversial (the most being removing PotM from the main page, which I thought was extreme but wanted to see how other people felt)

Regarding the last approach and its subsequent disapproval by Cygnis, I still don't understand how you are more unimpressed with a good faith and harmless proposal, regardless of its format, and not with the editing habits Cygnis has shown which have gone ignored.

I am here to work together, and have only the best intentions for the website and every editor; I do not mean to offend in any proposal I make. - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey wait a second - I was all for recovering the space in which the proposed {{Rt}} icon was suppose appear (the same as the Featured and Locked icons originally did and, thanks to Adam, still do under dynamic layouts now too). My support for the project itself wasn't solidified by any measure one way or the other; where the icon icon appeared, if a consensus was ever reached on the proposal, really made no difference to me. Sorry if this was not made clear earlier. — George Orwell III (talk) 20:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

By and large I am not in favor of a redesign of the main page. I do, however, agree that the CotW should be removed until someone picked it up again. It was Sherurcij's pet project and completely died when he left. I'd be in favor of moving PotM to the top of the collaboration box and adding in the other spot a rotating list of currently active wikiprojects (like DNB00). That way we don't just have PotM hanging out all alone.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:23, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• I am likewise not in favour of a major shake-up. I think PotM is a very successful event, which routinely garners thousands of edits and often exceeds expectations and lands in a "bonus" validation round. CotW is arguably a misnomer, and "Current Collaboration" would be more apt, and can be moved on when people see fit or after a certain period of inactivity. I would also like to see the suggested validations that are currently found at WS:POTM displayed permanently on the front page, as they otherwise only get full exposure when the PotM has run out.
• At most, I'd support a rethink of the naming and template layouts, the fundamental ideas being more or less sound. The issue we have here is a relatively small number of active editors with their own agendas. This is the nature of WS, so we should look to be as "in tune" with the volatile editor attention base by not assuming a too-rapid turnover of these nice-to-have community projects which don't have priority to your average editor with his head in a specific book (myself included). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 20:51, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

As a relatively simple modification, what about moving the "Main categories" bullet points into the header (right of Index of Works and Index of Authors). Then split the Collaboration box in two, leaving POTM with an added list of suggestions in one box and a new improved Collaboration box where the categories used to be? I think Billinghurst was talking about changing the COTW box to automatically rotate on a weekly/monthly sequence; that should work. (It might need two suggestions in the COTW box to balance the size of the POTW box.) Even without the movement of Main categories, the COTW change sounds good. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 21:02, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I support this, funny how things can change that although I'm not active nor am I monitoring activity, I feel that the NARA CotW is useful on the main page. This isn't to say that I retract my opinion based on 7 months of Disney, but think that it would be neater and more inline with other wiki-sites. Categories at the bottom feels like content filler, and there's plenty of room up top. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:51, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Remove "Excerpt or Mixture" from the index Level of Progress options

As a very brief background, I initially wanted to add selections to the Level of Progress field; as works that are excerpts are getting marked as done, which has led to some confusion. As an index, they are done, but they are essentially indices that are incomplete. After speaking with Billinghurst some days ago, he changed my view on the matter, and I believe that it does not belong in the group "Level of Progress." However, I think that we need to create a separate field simply for keeping track of what the index is in relation to its original publication. I would also like to propose adding another field to classify works simply as "Complete publication," "Excerpt of publication," and "Mixture of publications" or something along those lines. - Theornamentalist (talk) 23:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that your 'confusion' point may exist but not sure the progress field is the root or cause behind it (have you ever looked at how many works have an excerpt or mixture status? Eleven total).

I'd think the limited choices in the Type field at the top is more of a misleading catalyst than any proofreading progress level. Maybe the volume field should not appear by default unless there are in fact other volumes, parts, sections, years, ongoing series/collections, etc. being provided or listed that do exist, and are pertinent, but unfortunately not included along with the particular scan in question for whatever reasons? This way, in selecting some yet-to-be-defined-new-choice-for-type, it becomes more clear that the Index is just an excerpt or a mixture(?) of some other body of work or works -- independent of its status regarding level of proofreading. George Orwell III (talk) 23:40, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I've seen those few, not highly used. Regarding the "Type" field, I'd agree. In fact, there are many times where I simply look at the options and think "none of the above;" that probably should be expanded too. As a larger proposal, I think the qualities which we seek yet lack can be fixed by:

1. Expanding Type field significantly.
2. Introduce Publication index:
   1. complete (example of publication as complete: Index:Jane Eyre.djvu)
   2. mixture (example of a mixture of published documents: Index:GeorgeTCoker.djvu
   3. excerpt (example of an excerpt: Index:TheHaunterOfTheRing.djvu)
3. Remove "Excerpt or Mixture" from Progress

I think that this can solve the issues we have; in the short term, I think we can remove #3, and maybe add #2, and discuss how to properly expand #1 to capture the variation of document type correctly. - Theornamentalist (talk) 00:35, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that removal of the choice "Excerpt or Mixture" from the Progress list should be done, that said, it is has not seemed largely problematic at this time. That said, there is some peculiarity to the page, so we should hasten slowly.

The Index: pages are something that needs the community's attention and discussion for "where to" from here. The Index: pages host data and ideally metadata that ties our works together in many places, they have the potential to be a data reservoir, and to better interconnect metadata. I suppose I have a preference for a root and branch discussion with the sky as the limit about what are the possibilities in this space. I would like to someone with librarian skills involved for the data that we should be collecting, and how we can best collect and present metadata. I would also like to see a programmer involved in how the data of an edition can be added at Commons, presumably in {{book}} or a successor if that is inadequate, the data collected for the Index: page, and then be available for wherever it could be (dynamically) used around the site. I have no expertise in this space, I just see the possibilities to make it the intersection of a whole set of data. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Not that I have any expertise in the area either but I've come to clearly understand a thing or two nevertheless in my limited readings to date. Neither the BibTex bibliography system nor the PDF DocInfo metadata standards are being followed to any degree or with much consideration when it comes to the embedded metadata keys normally found in .djvu and/or pdf files aligning to its like-parameter in the Commons template(s) (or approaches?) mentioned just above.

It would be a shame if we don't capitalize on any data that already comes embedded in the various file formats at [Commons] upload and even better if we can further refine info while the file is being hosted on WS due something as silly as parameter naming or syntax. Don't have a course to follow on this and don't have the skills & knowledge to address this either but I thought better to raise the point than let it fall through the cracks in an ignorant silence. George Orwell III (talk) 01:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I am going to try and clear the excerpt/mixture category. I also see the problem that an index listed as "Source file problem" is typically one which is missing pages, or, in essence, and (unintentional) excerpt. Another point of confusion. In loo of the complete overhaul and metadata, I think we can improve some things in the index for now. - Theornamentalist (talk) 14:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

After clearing the category, one which was primarily filled with works by one contributor who is somewhat inactive, I deleted the option from the drop down list in the Mediawiki page, as well as its navigation in the {{Index Progress}} template. - Theornamentalist (talk) 17:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, and this is where my lack of expertise fails me; I am still seeing it as an option for selection when editing an index. - Theornamentalist (talk) 18:58, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Import text size modifier from it.ws

Candalua (talk • contribs) recently posted about a new tool for version comparison. Upon viewing their demo, I noticed that they have a script for increasing font size to 200% and decreasing to 50%. As was noted by Candalua, this came as a desire to cater to children, where the default font size may be too small for them to read comfortably. I believe the use can be expanded for anyone who wishes to read less words per line, whether it is in fact a child, an elderly person, one with poor eyesight. This is to combat the idea that the casual reader can and will create an account and edit their js or css, or know how to increase font size in their browser or computer. It also allows for each computer user (as in a household with a mother who browses with a smaller font than that of her 8 year old son) to specify what size they want specifically on our site, without relying on the know-how of changing their settings. It does not affect our default bare-bones layout, is apparently friendly in multiple browsers (I've tried IE, firefox and chrome, will check opera later), and does not reduce clarity of text like using ctrl+ or ctrl- does in chrome, keeps our left navigation margin regular sized as does our top margin. At it.ws, they use a fixed margin for transclusion his script exact has clearance for the icons; here, however, this would overlap. What I am proposing is to list this option in our left navigation margin, under "Display options." This will give us
Display options
Layout 1
Smaller text
Larger text
Hide page links
To implement, all we would have to do to our header template is introduce <div class="textBody"> to surround the text we want to enlarge/reduce. I see no detriment to introducing this and it addresses concerns about line length and readability. I cannot account for all existing templates to work perfectly as text size is either increased or decreased, but I think these can be looked at if we see problems and made compatible if they actually arise. - Theornamentalist (talk) 13:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

beta preference for toolbar

Yet another thing that presents an obstacle to contributing here. Using the beta feature "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#preftab-3 will suppress the display of the [+] button. The options are to remove it, or emblazon it with a specific warning that it will interfere with one's ability to contribute to the Page: namespace. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:29, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I vote for "add a warning". Removing it entirely is probably the most sensible (removing any chance of confusion at the same time), but I would at least like the option of using it so I lean more towards the warning. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:57, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

To edit that text it is Mediawiki:wikieditor-toolbar-preference. We cannot remove it, and we cannot turn it off by default. We could even add link to more information — billinghurst sDrewth 23:55, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Actually we can, but it would require community consensus and a request on bugzilla:. On the other hand, the real problem is not caused by the enhanced toolbar itself, but by the Proofread Page extension, as explained on bug 28574.

In the other topic I added a link to an example of how to add back the toolbar buttons (screenshot). It works fine for zoom and for OCR, but the code is not functional for the remaining buttons because the ProofreadPage extension doesn't let us to access the functions pr_toggle_visibility() and pr_toggle_layout(), so I've just commented it out to avoid JS errors in the browser.

For now, I would go with a small waning pointing to some topic which mentions the bugzilla request about the problem, so that people can vote in the bug (maybe this helps it to get some attention, since it is open since april 2011). Helder 01:01, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

I asked about having the default turned off for Wikieditor if we get a consensus, and was basically told "no, it won't happen". — billinghurst sDrewth 12:36, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Humm.. =/ Helder 18:19, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I have added the standard text and amended by appending the text For Wikisource it is recommended that the enhanced editing toolbar is turned off to enable best use of our proofreading tools. in a smaller font, to the file indicated above. Suggestions for further helpful text welcomed.

I think it is good idea to put a link to Help:Proofread#Editing_pages in the text "proofreading tools". Helder 18:19, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Brion fixed the code of the Proofread Page extension ;-), so you can remove the warning now. Helder 22:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

File removed, so text is reverted. The fix is indeed functional, though it looks as through we are going to need to update the gadget that toggles the header open and closed. Probably also worth an email to the mailing list. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:33, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I assume that it is this fix that may have introduced a minor glitch into Proofread Page: until a few days ago, when in "zoom" mode, the mouse cursor changed to crosshairs, while "scroll" mode was the normal arrow. Now it is the arrow in both modes, which is an inconvenience.--T. Mazzei (talk) 06:55, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Help

• See Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help

Trouble with file from commons

I have uploaded on commons a djvu file. It looks fine over there, but here and on wp the file is registered as being 0x0 (not as empty, though), and trying to link it just gives a link, not the file. Am I the only one having this problem, and can someone tell me how to fix it? — Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 19:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a problem with the file. Do you want me to create the Index: for you? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind, apparently now it works. When I tried to create the index yesterday the pagelist did not work because the file was 0x0 pixels. I can take care of the index, thanks. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 06:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333: I had the same exact problem with an Index yesterday: File:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf. It is extremely weird, and I believe it's an issue on Commons' end. I was able to fix it in a few minutes, though. SnowyCinema (talk) 06:42, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

What did you do? Or did it just fix itself? Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 07:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333: So here's exactly what happened. I uploaded the file (revision 1) and it appeared as 0x0 just like you described, and the Index page's pagelist threw an error that I can't remember now. So, what I did was I uploaded another version of the same PDF, just directly taken from IA instead of modified by me in a certain way, and then uploaded that with chunk upload (revision 2). It initially seemed to be a working file, but then I deleted and recreated the Index again, to find out that this revision was now broken. So I reverted to the previous revision (revision 1) as revision 3, and somehow that worked.

TLDR: Revision 1 was broken and when I uploaded revision 2, that revision appeared to work at first. But then it reversed out of nowhere, to where revision 1 was working now and revision 2 magically broke in its place. . . . If this is confusing to you, it's exactly as confusing to me so don't worry. I have no idea what the issue was. ☹️ SnowyCinema (talk) 07:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

The error was "Invalid interval" (at least for me). What I think is that the file got broken during some sort of transfer from commons to here (since it was also broken on wp). On top of being 0 x 0 pixels, Invalid interval probably meant it was 0 pages long (even an empty pagelist got an error). The file was still registered as being 1.something MBs long (here, on commons, and wp). I do not think it was an issue with the file I uploaded, as on commons everything looked good. That's what I know. I also had a vague suspicion of it being linked to the server switch on wednesday, but it might have nothing to do with it. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 07:29, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Servers and backends and deployment are quite finicky, and there are a million mysterious things that can go wrong all of a sudden. It's hard to really say exactly what happened without talking to someone who has the keys so to speak. Our global multisite system is bound to be quite complex on the backend, I'll say that much... SnowyCinema (talk) 07:41, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@SnowyCinema It's just happened again with File:The Poems of Sir Thomas Wiat, volume 2.djvu. If this becomes a recurring problem, we should maybe ask about it to the commons people. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 09:58, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333:: Hi, I've "purge" the caches of the file in Commons and of the Index, and it seems to have fixed the issue. M-le-mot-dit (talk) 10:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

I tried purging the caches on thursday, and it didn't help. I guess this just fixes itself with time. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 13:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333@Beeswaxcandle@M-le-mot-dit@SnowyCinema I have experienced (and reported) the same issue. Although the problem sometimes seems to fix itself, I have a number of cases where it has not (>6 months, which I assume means never), and a number of cases where random pages in an otherwise functioning PDF are completely unreadable on WS. I've basically given up uploading PDF files (even though I have paid-for PDF editing software - Foxit) and default to DJVU. Converting PDF's to DJVU with 'Pdf 2 Djvu Converter' generally works OK. Chrisguise (talk) 13:17, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

I just had this same problem with Index:Florula Mortolensis.djvu, where the pagelist is broken and the file appears as 0x0 on WS (but works fine on commons. I used the IA upload tool.) Purging the caches didn't help, but hopefully it fixes itself, as it seems to. Cremastra (talk) 20:54, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

When I had the problem (here) I purged the cache on Commons first, then on Wikisource, and that seemed to work. Arcorann (talk) 08:16, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, after having the problem with Index:Poems Coolidge.djvu, clearing the cache on commons and then here fixed it. Maybe doing it in the other order doesn't work.

@Chrisguise: I'd be curious if you could try to do this on those indexes you mentioned that did not fix themselves, to see if that method works. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 19:12, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333@Arcorann@Beeswaxcandle@Cremastra@M-le-mot-ditI know I've seen something on here about how to purge Commons files (you add something to the address), but I can't find it. Could someone remind me please. Chrisguise (talk) 03:47, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I just use the "purge clock" gadget, but I think it would be with something like "commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=[page title]&action=purge" — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 07:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I hadn't previously delved around the gadgets section on Commons. Doing the two purges has fixed one of my problem files (a DJVU, unusually). I'll try it on a PDF. Chrisguise (talk) 08:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

@Chrisguise: In my case, I've first purge the Common file, then the Wikisource index.--M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:19, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, my first attempt with this approach worked. Need to dig out some more of my problem files to try. Chrisguise (talk) 08:22, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I looked around and the people in fr had the same issue, and found the same solution (there among others), purging on Commons. It's not sure, though, if it is also needed to purge here. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 14:39, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Proofreading Paragraph Problem.

Sometimes while proofreading, I finish a page where the lines are not joined, but then the last editing "line breaks" in a page create new paragraphs. I don't know why this should be- my usual workaround is just to have no line breaks on the source page for the last paragraph. But this looks messy and it is annoying. Is there some obvious reason that this happens that I can avoid in the future? @Mpaa, perhaps you know the answer, I know sometimes you prefer that lines not be joined, so you have likely run into this problem.

Example page. The last line should not be its own paragraph.

Sorry if 1. The question doesn't make sense or 2. There's an obvious solution. -- FPTI (talk) 06:33, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The {{nop}} template needs to be on its own line. Once you've done that, then the problem will go away. However, it is most preferable to remove line breaks within paragraphs as leaving them in is known to cause problems with transclusion. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, but I don't think that's it. Example page. This one has no { {nop}} but there's still a line break for that last line. @Mpaa? FPTI (talk) 07:59, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@FPTI@Beeswaxcandle I have experienced the same issue before. What seems to happen is that there are extra carriage returns in the text, which are not visible. If you turn on "Generate paragraph (pilcrow) markers, ¶, in the left margin of the Page: namespace to indicate HTML paragraph tag starts." in Preferences-Gadgets they can be seen. I had to log out and log back in to activate the gadget. I don't have this gadget activated normally but it shows what the problem is. After proofreading text I usually run a tool that cleans-up the OCR text, which removes these in-paragraph line breaks Chrisguise (talk) 09:53, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@FPTI I do not know what the problem is, but I am fine with it as it is transcluded correctly. As the problem is only in Page ns, it might be some glitch in ProofreadPage Extension. Mpaa (talk) 09:57, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

It is not specific of Page ns. In Page ns it happens only when in the footer there is some content inside a div block. The same can be reproduced in Main ns appending a div block to the last line, e.g. something like of course it was only a few seconds. I had leisure<div class="x">vv</div> Maybe it might be the parser that, when it finds the div block, insert a paragraph break at the beginning of the line ... who knows .... Mpaa (talk) 14:26, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. This is p-wrapping and a rather dumb regex-based (essentially) parser. The parser thinks that all text has to be wrapped in a p tag, so as it parses the wikitext it is looking for various triggers for when to add an opening p tag, and when it needs to add a closing p tag. The parser sees Page: namespace pages as a single blob of wikitext, with the header and footer merely marked as noinclude sections. When there is a div (i.e. what {{c}} spits out) in the footer the parser notices, and since div elements are not valid inside p elements it decides it has to close the currently open p. To do that it backtracks and guesses at where the paragraph it just closed should start, and decides it's at the first line break character it comes to (i.e. the one between the last and penultimate line). In other words, whenever you have anything in the footer that isn't permitted inside a p element, the parser will put the last text line into its own paragraph hanging loose at the end of the page.

The even better news is that the shiny new parser (known as Parsoid) has been designed to be bugwards compatible with the old parser, so it will blithely reproduce this bug in exactly the same way as the old grotty parser. Oh joy!

But the moral of the story is the same as the advice given by the old-timers from the beginning: always remove hard line breaks inside paragraphs! Xover (talk) 12:42, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! FPTI (talk) 07:21, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Actually over the time I tend to preserve new lines as printed. It makes Validation much easier. The page break is just a cosmetic issue in Page ns with no relevance when transcluded. Mpaa (talk) 16:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Hello, can you tell me what tool do you use for cleaning the OCR? The same issue is happening in every page to me. HendrikWBK (talk) 11:29, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

@HendrikWBK: For unwrapping hard-wrapped lines I use a custom user script. You can add mw.loader.load("//en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User:Xover/unwrap.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript"); // Backlink: [[User:Xover/unwrap.js]] to your common.js to try it out. It adds a link in the left sidebar (in Vector 2010) or to the tools menu (in Vector 2022) labelled "↲ Remove hard line breaks" that does what it says on the tin. This was a hacky little thing I threw together for my own use, so no warranties. The source is in User:Xover/unwrap.js if you want to check what it does. Xover (talk) 12:55, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, the issue is fixed. It also adds a link in the left bar in MonoBook HendrikWBK (talk) 13:18, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

font-feature-setting:'hist'

I am experimenting with using CSS for long-s instead of {{ls}}—essentially treating it as a glyph of s rather than as the separate character ſ. I've set up the CSS at Index:1644 Anabaptist Confession of Faith.djvu/styles.css but it doesn't seem to work (loading Page:1644 Anabaptist Confession of Faith.djvu/4 in Chrome on Windows, anyway).

Normally I would assume that it's not working because of some limitation in MediaWiki. However, I have used the exact same method for {{insular}}, and it seems to work fine there, so I am stumped. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 18:03, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: Fonts are hard. Xover (talk) 15:16, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Ha, thanks—so it was just that the Junicode documentation was wrong, I guess :D —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:50, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

DjVu file with blanked page

This is a bit of an odd case and I have no idea how to fix it. Page 155 (153 as numbered in the book) of File:The Salticidae (Spiders) of Panama.djvu appears to be blank. However, in the actual book it has text and in the file there is a text layer on that page that has the correct text correctly laid out. But for some reason the image for that page doesn't show the text. I was able to track down the physical book and scan the page in question, which is now at File:The Salticidae (Spiders) of Panama page 153.jpg. Is there any way to either integrate that file into the Index or repair the faulty DjVu file with it (preferably without losing the existing text later)? I have not been able to find any other scan of the book other than the one at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which is the source for our scan. Nosferattus (talk) 22:08, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Done. Another scan is available at Internet Archive identifier: bulletinofmuseum97harv. This type of help is usually posted there: Wikisource:Scan Lab. --M-le-mot-dit (talk) 11:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: pages 44 and 267 were also blank. Done --M-le-mot-dit (talk) 12:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

@M-le-mot-dit: Thank you!! Nosferattus (talk) 15:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Validation/Feedback Request

I've been working on Ginzburg's Legends of the Jews as my first Wikisource project. (And yes, I understand that it's a massive, probably foolhardy endeavor for a first project. But here I am.)

I've just finished with the first chapter of volume 1 and the corresponding endnotes in volume 5.

I'd really appreciate one or more experienced editors looking over what I've done so far and giving me constructive feedback. (And it seems reasonable to validate what I've done along the way.)

Is my error rate acceptable for a "proofread" text? Am I using the {{Authority reference}} template correctly? Am I inadvertently making more work for myself or others down the line? Heck, is there anything I'm doing straight-up wrong? Any feedback, positive or negative, is much appreciated. If I'm going to invest the time and effort to complete this project, I want it to be good, not just good enough. And I'd like to hew as best I can to Wikisource best-practices.

A few notes on what I've already done:

• The endnotes are chock-full of abbreviations, and I found that preserving the distinction between word spaces and sentence spaces there improved readability a fair bit. I've kept the sentence spaces to 0.5 em, so hopefully that won't bother ardent single-spacers too much.
  • I have not done the same in the main text, as it didn't seem necessary. But if that consistency is important, I can certainly do the wider spaces in the main text as well.
• There is a fair bit of German, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek in the endnotes. I've studied the first three languages formally and have confidence in my ability to edit/proofread the snippets of those languages. Hopefully, relatively few errors have slipped through. I am completely self-taught in Greek, however, and would certainly appreciate someone who has formally studied Ancient Greek to scrutinize those bits.
• Is it normal for endnotes to take quite a bit more effort than the main text?

Thank you for any help/feedback you can offer! - Dave314159 (talk) 19:39, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

A few things (though I haven't been around for that long and am not that experienced) :

• I saw while looking at a random page that you used {{SIC}} for an outdated spelling (marvellous). It is not for that, but only for typos. Outdated spelling and other things that seem wrong but intentional should be kept as they are.
• Section titles should not be using ='s and the like, because they make formatting as it is made on-wiki and that was not in the original text. For example, on Page:Ginzburg - The Legends of the Jews - Volume 1.djvu/49, it should only be centered and sc'd, as ='s put in in bold and that was not in the scan.
• Keeping formatting of titles includes line breaks and all, for pages like Page:Ginzburg - The Legends of the Jews - Volume 1.djvu/26.
• Rather than raw wikitable formatting, you have {{TOC row r}} to take care of the titles in TOCs (the formatting you did also did not display after the second |+).
• A maximum width is sometimes put in TOCs with |width=, although it is in no way an obligation, to make it more easy on large screens (It can become hard navigating a max-width ToC when the line number is far to the right). Example taken with random page : Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers

Apart from that, you're doing well, and you've already learned most important things. Keep going ! — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 20:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and : there's no problem starting with a large work, I did too, and anyway there are no constraints on time or on the quantity. Every page helps! — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 20:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

>I strongly recommend against using templates for TOCs. [No I don't. It's the dot-leaders that are actually bad. Table wikimarkup over TOC templates is just a weak general recommendation. But I'm an idiot that keeps dashing off messages when I don't have time to actually check what I'm writing and end up saying dumb stuff. --Xover (talk) 22:12, 4 April 2024 (UTC)] I generally recommend table wikimarkup over TOC templates. None of the ones we have are technically sound, and using raw wikimarkup for table gives you both more flexibility and more robust results. The main downside is the learning curve, but when you figure it out it can be reused across all works. But if you insist on using ToC templates, at least stay away from the ones that try to fake dot leaders. They're oh so tempting, but they are also oh so broken and will create problems.

Also, width is set on transclusion with dynamic layouts ("Layout 2" is a common constrained-width layout). Setting the width of the table directly is a bad practice and should be avoided, unless there is a really pressing need for it. Xover (talk) 20:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, so much for me. Could you just tell me, for the sake of curiosity, how the dot-leaders are broken? Maybe it should be put on the TOC templates page. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 06:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Web standards do not support dot-leaders natively (there's a proposal that's been floating around for ages, but no forward motion). That means we have to fake them using other mechanisms, and all those mechanisms end up being directly contrary to how the standards are supposed to work. The result is that the implementations we have are very ugly, hard to support, have many problems even when they seemingly work, and are very prone to break when things around them change or they are used in a different context.

For example, since there is no way to generate a dynamical-length line of dots one implementation spits out something like a hundred period characters and spaces and uses styling tricks to hide the overflow. That breaks on very wide screens (add more dots and spaces, and everyone pays the cost on every page load). The hiding uses a white background color, which breaks in dark mode and in ePub exports (can somewhat be worked around with ever more special-case styling). Hacking around web standards also leads to incredibly complex markup, which combines with stuff like the 100+ dot characters, and leads to those implementations outputting huge amounts of data that we pay for every single time those features are used. I posted a particularly egregious example in WS:S#Orley Farm Contents+Illustrations Lists.

Note that my harping on about this is in the vein of advocating that these templates be deprecated. They aren't actually deprecated, so nobody is going to chide you if you do use them and this all is strictly speaking just one contributor's opinion. But I intend to keep bringing this up every chance I get in the hope that the community will eventually get tired enough of it to deprecate them just to make me shut up already. Xover (talk) 09:25, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

I feel a but stupid asking this and there is probably an obvious answer, but how does the table markup you gave on that page (<tr> <td style="text-align:right;">I.</td> <td style="font-variant:small-caps;">—the commencement of the great orley farm case</td> <td style="text-align:right;">1 </td></tr> ) do dot-leaders? To me it seems it only does the alignment. Or is it intentional, are you saying we should just omit dot leaders? — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 10:29, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

The dots are drawn first, over the whole area; maybe the whole page. I know this because I tried to use it in the {{AuxTOC}} and changed the background color to Transparent, which exposed them. And then, the table elements have a background color to hide those dots.

The complicated templates, those using {{TOC begin}} are not as "bad" as the easier to use like {{Dotted TOC line}} and kin. The latter make a whole separate and different table for each entry (row). There is a category here, filled with indexes that use those (truly, much much much easier to use) templates where several of the pages just simply will not draw due to the heavy requirements upon the computers here. Unfortunately, my links to that discussion and category are elsewhere, so you will just have to take my word for it. They are worse than uncrunched pngs for processing time and *terrible* for small dedicated devices (like ereaders and maybe phones).

Being an avid and devout lover of the dotted tocs, I have been trying (and succeeding) to avoid them for Table of Contents use, but, the occasional small table found within works -- well, I indulge, feeling guilty like eating French Silk Pie for breakfast (which is technically scrambled eggs). But really, don't use the simple templates ever. And if you do -- Inductiveload has a script/tool which will convert the simple ones into complicated ones. My link for that is somewhere else also -- perhaps Mr. IDL will show up and drop it here.

The advice about manually making the tables is very good and the sooner started to learn the sooner learned. TOCs, while many are simple, several have a fineness and uniqueness of character which will improve anybody's skill level.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 11:01, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

(I'd never heard of {{dotted TOC line}} before this discussion)

And then what about the {{TOC row}}'s? They are less problematic, but how problematic are they? I have been using more or less only them since coming here.

Is there a guide about tables? I know how html tables work, but what else is there to learn? — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 12:04, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

The best guidance we have right now is slightly camouflaged inside Help:Page styles. The most flexible, powerful, and robust way we have of doing tables right now is table wikimarkup combined with formatting applied through per-work page styles (the "Styles" tab on Index: pages; the CSS there is automatically loaded on all associated pages in the Page: namespace and in mainspace when transcluded using PRP). We need to make that approach more user friendly and reusable (ready-to-use snippets that can be copied), and create better documentation, but apart from the learning curve I heartily recommend it.

And compared to general HTML tables we have some unique problems stemming from the fact that we don't write HTML directly; we write wikimarkup that gets parsed and rendered into HTML by MediaWiki, and which is presented inside the skin and site chrome, etc. Compared to your typical CMS we also do far more advanced formatting than, say, a journalist banging out a news story or whatever. And then there is the added complication for Wikisource that we have to split these already twice-abstracted tables across wikipages in the Page: namespace and make them work together when transcluded together. Put together this means tables are one of the most difficult areas for contributors to deal with (which is why the lure of TOC templates is so great: it seems obvious that there must be an easier way to do this). Xover (talk) 12:18, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

To come back to the point, how does CSS do dot-leaders? It's not mentioned on Help:Page styles, and they even appear to be voluntarily left out, as two of the three examples have dot leaders and they are not taken into account. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 12:27, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333: Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood. I am saying to simply not try to do dot-leaders, using any method, until web standards and web browsers actually support them natively. Everything else I write above is about tables and TOCs in general. Xover (talk) 13:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

The example omits the style sheet applied and other stuff. It's just meant to illustrate that the output from the templates is completely unreasonable. Xover (talk) 12:06, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dave314159 It seems the responses above are drifting a little off topic, when it comes to the original question, which I will do my best to stick to. That said, so it is on record, I favor TOC begin, TOC row etc. While I have avoided validating anything for the moment, accuracy wise, the proofreading is good, and a few tips follow.

If you are doing anything with either strange formatting, or strange references, I strongly recommend transcluding the work as you go. In your case, I am not sure the endnotes are working, except those endnotes that you have specifically set the |transclude= parameter for. Because the endnotes are in a different volume, you may be forced to always use |transclude=, and may have to add this to every endnote thus far... That said, I am by no means an expert in endnotes. My main 'experiences' were with The History of Witchcraft and Demonology, which ended up working out eventually, endnote wise, but is far from finished, even with help. But yes, endnotes take an annoying amount of time. Other than that, if you need help with transcluding, ask away, although you seem to have a reasonable grasp of things so far.

Also, your headings do not seem to conform to wikisource styles, as far as I am aware. For example, I believe ==={{sc|The First Things Created}}=== should just be {{c|{{sc|The First Things Created}}}}, and similarly {{c|I<br>{{uc|The Creation of the World}}}} instead of == I: {{uc|The Creation of the World}} ==. Note that I removed the colon ":", because it isn't there in the first place, but thought I should finish this response before doing anything else to the text.

I also believe that manually setting sentence spaces is against wikisource styles (as in, do not force a double space at the end of a sentence, even if the original text does). As you can see in the example for the wsp template, it is for poetry and the like. To save you the trouble, a bot request can probably remove all of these, when the time comes.

I haven't formally (or informally) studied ancient Greek, so can't really help there (or with Hebrew), but otherwise, good luck with the project, and happy proofreading.

Regards,

TeysaKarlov (talk) 03:52, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Good point about the manual spacing. I was also unsure about it. We in general do not preserve variable spaces; but in my quick scan it looked like they were here used to separate a headword from the rest of the paragraph. It is possible that this is an exception to the general rule. On the other hand, several of the cases did not appear to correspond with such use (extra-wide spaces at seemingly-random places within a paragraph?). But I didn't have time to look closer into it so I can't offer anything specific. Xover (talk) 07:19, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

double {{NOP}}?

Hi, please see my question at Template talk:Nop. Thanks, Hamaryns (talk) 19:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

You can place two empty lines ahead of the {{nop}}. We also have the {{dhr}} template to accomplish this. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:33, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Page moves, etc.

Over time I've made a number of requests for moves in support of fixing scans with missing pages, etc. These used to be dealt with promptly but more recently the response has been quite slow or they are still waiting (people are doubtless busy). I came across User:Inductiveload/Scripts/Page shifter.py recently. If someone can explain to me how to run this script where it is, or how to incorporate it and run it from my .js (if that's what's required), I'll happily do the fixes myself. Thanks, Chrisguise (talk) 13:47, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

@Chrisguise: If you have to ask I generally don't recommend you try to run this yourself. The script you link is a pywikibot script, and requires the technical chops to operate 1) in a *nix command-line environment, and 2) a big complex bot framework. It's not something you run on-wiki or in your browser, and it isn't really an interactive tool. Page moves due to updated source files in an existing index are especially challenging because there are so many factors you have to take into account to avoid messing stuff up.

Page moves and a few related tasks have indeed slowed to a relative crawl lately. Inductiveload isn't active any more, and I am too busy IRL to be able to pick up the slack (and usually my head is too fried to take on anything complicated), and we used to take care of the bulk of these. If you have any such tasks that are especially bad in blocking your progress then please feel free to try bugging me on my talk page and I'll try to prioritise them.

PS. If you want to make it require fewer brain cycles to run a page move request like that, specifying the necessary moves in the way the software expects (vs. what's logical for a human being) can help. The moves are specified as "page range to be moved" (123-345) and "offset" (+4, or -3, or...). And the destination page cannot exist, so when it's not a single unified shift you'll need to give these in batches with, typically, the last pages in the first batch: that way you make room for the later page moves. This way of thinking about it is really non-intuitive for humans, but it's what the computer requires, and it's often what takes the most time and effort when doing bulk page moves. Xover (talk) 14:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I was clearly led astray by the 'Anyone can run this script' comment on User:Inductiveload/Requests/Move pages or indexes; it sounds as if 'anyone (with a computer science degree) can run this script' would be nearer the mark. Chrisguise (talk) 14:41, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a bit more that than plain "anyone". Don't get me wrong, it's not rocket science, but the "computer geek" factor is pretty high. Xover (talk) 14:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Index page not displaying any pages

I recently created this index page - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Methods_of_Operating_the_Comptometer_(1895).djvu - which is just giving me an Error: Invalid interval rather than displaying any pages. The djvu file itself looks fine - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Methods_of_Operating_the_Comptometer_(1895).djvu

Any clues on what I should do to get the index page working? Qq1122qq (talk) 14:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

As always, posting about seems to have fixed the problem :). Looks like I was having the same problem as many of the people in an earlier discussion. In the same way as discussed there, I tried purging everything possible multiple times, and after about half an hour of nothing happening the pages suddenly appeared! Qq1122qq (talk) 14:05, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Had you also purged the file on Commons ? (For the sake of understanding if it actually fixes it) — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 16:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes - I purged and hard purged (not sure of the difference) everything I could, and crossed my fingers. I imagine there's some very slow running process buried somewhere which only runs intermittently. I've never had this issue with .PDF files so I wonder if it's a .DJVU only issue? Qq1122qq (talk) 18:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't think so, since Chrisguise reported that he had mostly had that problem with PDF's.

But had you purged it on commons, specifically? asking because there there is no easily accessible "purge" button like here, needs to be done through a gadget or some other things, and you could have missed it. Sorry for insisting, but it looked like we finally had a solution, and I want to be sure before abandoning it. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 08:31, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I purged on Commons, then purged in WS, and the page fixed itself. This has also fixed 3 more projects I've created in the last few days.

I was given the magic incantation to purge a file on Commons via someone helpful on Discord - if you want for example to purge File:Methods_of_Operating_the_Comptometer_(1895).djvu

then go to the URL https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=File:Methods_of_Operating_the_Comptometer_(1895).djvu&action=purge

and it will give you the option to purge the cache. Qq1122qq (talk) 23:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@Qq1122qq: If you go to the Gadgets section of your Preferences, down under the heading "Interface", you'll find a dedicated "Purge" Gadget that does just this for you (and which exists due to this kind of problem). I see the description talks about a purge "tab", but that's just a holdover from when Monobook was the default skin. It really appears in either the sidebar or the Tools menu, depending on which skin you're using. Xover (talk) 05:10, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

(side note: we're still talking in the "old discussion") — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 18:32, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Sorry about that - I find the threaded wiki-style comment pages like this one very hard to parse so I had no idea it was still a live discussion. Qq1122qq (talk) 18:43, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

No problem, and we are having a discussion about simplifying the structure at WS:S#Simplify_Scriptorium_page_structure, that ironically appears to have been lost in the flow too. — Alien333 (what I did & why I did it wrong) 09:20, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Help with getting clickable pages for Index:The Intense Mississippi Tornadoes of March 24, 2023

There is about 40-ish pages that I still need to upload for the document, but I can’t get the clickable pages to appear on the Index page and I keep seeing “Error: No such file” when I try to fix that. Can someone get the 40-pages red linked down there? WeatherWriter (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter: Why are you uploading this as individual image files? Proofread Page is designed to work with multi-page media formats like PDF and DjVu. Xover (talk) 16:28, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Because it isn’t a PDF document, but rather a StoryMap. NOAA is weird and doesn’t like to create standard PDF-style documents. WeatherWriter (talk) 16:48, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter: If you have the images and can throw them up on Google Drive or something I can probably make you a DjVu of them. Xover (talk) 18:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Invalid interval error on creation of Index:Yiddish Tales.djvu

Can someone please help to correct this linking error? I am unfamiliar with it. It is much appreciated. — ineuw (talk) 16:43, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

With my usual attentiveness, I noticed that others posted the same issue. I will wait for the solution. — ineuw (talk) 16:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

@Ineuw: It's an ongoing flakiness in MediaWiki and the integration between Commons and other projects. This file should be fixed now through black magic and dread incantations to the technology deities (or something to that effect). Xover (talk) 17:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

It displays correctly for me after a hard purge. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:24, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. After posting, I remembered that this is happening everywhere on the web. Systems and software are constantly being updated. I gained patience, understanding, and acceptance. In the meanwhile, I am sure to find something else to do. — ineuw (talk) 12:07, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Lo and behold, I posted before looking. — ineuw (talk) 12:14, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Unspaced page end for references

Hello all,

While transcluding Index:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (Vol 1 1904).djvu, there are a few places where a ref-follow has no text on the page where the reference tags are placed, e.g. Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (Vol 1 1904).djvu/62 and Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (Vol 1 1904).djvu/63. For the moment, so that the <ref></ref> tags on the former page are not empty, I have used noinclude within the ref tags, which leads to a space being included just before the first word in the reference text, once transcluded (see the last reference of Early Western Travels, 1748-1846/Volume 1/Croghan to the Governor of Pennsylvania for an example; and yes, I realise this space is not the end of the world, but it would be nice to remove). Thus, my question, how troublesome would it be to convert the {{upe}} template to something that would work in references (or to allow hws/hwe to have an empty first parameter), unless anyone has other simple suggestions for how to deal with this?

I also wasn't sure if I should modify it myself, but when looking through the help on footnotes, I read the following Other parts of the footnote should use the "follow" parameter with the same name. The position of this text does not matter to the footnote but adding it to the bottom of the page, where the footnote would normally be, is the most obvious position. Make sure that it is a part of the page that will be transcluded with the rest of the footnote: ie. not in the header or footer of the Page, not in

Other discussions

Exit Survey - why I quit

Welcome to Wikisource!

I've been here two weeks, in that time I've spent six hours a day on WS, and done 250 pages on Index:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu, as well as adding 21 other works by Author:Richard Francis Burton and Author:Isabel Burton, both of whom died more than a century ago.

Two users, billinghurst and Cygnis, have repeatedly told me to stop adding works unless I want to upload DJVUs and proofread thousands of pages - when I pointed out I was copying works over from Project Gutenberg and Archive.org, I get passive-aggressive responses about how I'm doing things wrong. Arabia, Egypt, India: A Narrative of Travel got deleted and moved to my userspace because it didn't have a DJVU file, same with Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society/Volume I, etc Something like Gamana-Gamanam, which I listed as "Published in the Athenaeum" and displays a date of July 15, 1879 gets tagged "no source", when I point out that it has a source...the tag gets aggressively slapped back on and I'm told to give a "SOURCE". I don't even know what they want, it is from the 1879 Athenaeum...similar to Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society/Volume II/An Episode from the Life of Sir Richard Burton, naturally I would assume the source to be "Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society's...Volume II? Which I listed...but I have added 21 books, letters and articles by the same two authors, both of whom died more than a century ago, and have been given nothing but grief for it, and being told to mind my own business and go proofread a DJVU of the Month instead because that would be more "useful" to the project.

As I quoted to Billinghurst when he came on my talk page to tell me that my work is "next to useless", despite the fact Author:Isabel Burton went from having zero works...to many works. But I responded to him, stating "I am not certain why you believe that your way represents "the" way, and my way is an aberration. I assume people come here to read the works of Marx, or Goethe, or Burton. And it is best if they can find those works collected here - even if they are *gasp* with pagenumbers strewn about, missing a semi-colon present in the original or OCRed...I would rather find ten letters written by Darwin to his mistress that are improperly formatted, than none. And the entire point of a Wiki is that, over time, things improve. Let's take a work like A glossary of words used in the neighbourhood of Sheffield; somebody added it five years ago and never quite finished it, but he made an excellent start, and sooner or later somebody will come along and decide it's worth ten minutes to complete the work. But if JeremyA had never started it, nobody would ever finish it - and that work would be one step closer to being lost, and never being readily available. Or we can take Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Tepic, it is not "backed up" by a DJVU, so I could passive-aggressively slap a "unknown source" tag on it just like people seem to enjoy slapping a "unknown source" code on something titled "June 1896 letter to the London Times"...the source should be bloody obvious from the title, but they see a chance to nitpick, so they take it. And it's a pity that The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus was added in a copy/paste format four years ago, but I notice a few months later somebody added a header to it, and after that, somebody fixed the capitalisation, after that somebody else still added the translator's name, last year somebody even started to clean up the formatting. And thankfully, anybody who searchs "The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus" will find a copy of it, hosted here on Wikisource...all because many years ago, we welcomed drive-by copy/pastes as "better than nothing", and over time, they have slowly been improved - and maybe 2011 is the year that work will be split into separate chapters to ease page-loading.".

So here is my exit survey, explaining my reasons for leaving the project. Hopefully you can glean something from it about "biting newbies" and perhaps welcoming people who try to help, and offer six hours a day to proofreading, correcting and adding texts to the site, instead of trying to force them to stop adding works. TheSkullOfRFBurton (talk) 22:42, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting reflections, obviously their opinion, though I do not agree with the substance of the accusations and do not support that the evidence when looked at in its entirety would lead to that conclusion, well not as the accusations that have been laid at my feet.

From a just now review, there seems to have been discussions at User_talk:Inductiveload about their dislike of the djvu system, which has followed with pasting of text form archive.org scans. This community has looked to NOT be a copy and paste environment and looked to present a balance of quality and quantity. We have a workspace, the Page: namespace, that fulfills the area where work can be undertaken to improve them, as we saw that works that were just pasted pretty much stayed that way and were never validated. If there are problems and solutions, then let us have the discussion, rather than just ignore the problems. —unsigned comment by Billinghurst (talk) 04:30, 3 April 2011.

Thanks for this feedback. Personally, I think Wikisource's primary asset is the ability to link directly to page images. If we don't have that, and are just copying text from elsewhere, why would a reader want to use our site instead of the one where the text came from?

That said, I don't think it is damaging to the project to copy and paste corrected text from gutenberg, etc. Uncorrected OCR text I don't see as particularly helpful. So I hope you'll reconsider and keep adding correct text. Even more, I hope that you'll help us make Wikisource better than other online libraries, by connecting text with pages of a djvu file. —Spangineer (háblame) 04:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

In answer to your question, they'll come if we develop a reputation for being an online, fully available and editable archive. After all, where else can you find it in such an easy to access format. And a printed book is just a click away! People will start saying "Is it on Wikisource?" "No, I just checked." "Strange...Well, I guess we might as well just forget it then." Of course, we might not want to get too overloaded with stuff like the advertisements of the New York Times and such like. Arlen22 (talk) 02:03, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

A prophecy from 2007:

"[M]ost of my earlier contributions had very poor provenance indeed, but over time I imposed higher standards on myself.... I wince when I see Project Gutenberg copy-paste jobs being posted, but if my experience is anything to go by, accepting works of poor provenance may be a price we have to pay to keep bringing newbs through the door."[1]

I still think this is the case. Hesperian 23:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I am a similar case; in 2008 I uploaded mostly 19th century English prose and poetry, without as much as a link to PG. Despite this, I did not receive any flack, and checking back to my first work here, another user came in and added source without my knowledge. Just over a year ago, I returned to add another work, and received a nice message regarding source information by Cygnis here; I think it will be tough to tell users to not add work without scans as long as we have a majority of works here without them. I did not see page links for nearly all the works I came across when using this site in the beginning and thought that there was absolutely no problem. That being said; I don't think there is an easy transition other than to keep going the way and the pace at which we're going and not bite anyone. - Theornamentalist 03:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

As a 2008 arrival too, I would say that most of the development occurred after that. 1) Development of the Page: ns (general improvements, text extraction, display means); 2) file size increases at Commons; 3) Gaining inertia, especially through broadening experience. While I prefer not to see PG texts, they are what they are and I have no squabble with them, they have been proofread twice, they usually have no provenance and they are hard to correct. I do have issues with the slap paste of an IA raw text with their intervening header components, with no further work, and then move onto the slap paste of the next raw text ... If there is the wish to build the bibliography based on raw scanned text then do so at the author namespace linking directly to the works at IA with a suitable describer. If it is solely on quantity of works, then we can all do that, and this place would like a giant boil on the arse of a mouse but it won't matter as Google will save us, cross references won't matter because you can just do a CTRL-F find. To me the quality of the product and its accessibility and navigation are also important, our point of differentiation is we can check the linked scans, we can wikilink, we can research and annotate, we can categorise, etc. I will agree with the general philosophy of don't bite newbies, however, some of these newbies are not newbies at all, and they simply do not like a differing opinion, or an a commentary of how the community here has been handling matters. There has to be an allowance for and acknowledgement of quality control, and people putting works onto the site should neither be surprised nor precious that works will have that process undertaken. That is where the biting should not take place in either direction. Differences of opinion are okay, but dummy spits are not.

Why not just tell everybody the eventual truth? Starting one day to come - all works not tied to a scan will be deleted. Period. We can tip-toe around this never-spoken-in-open-desired-goal all we like with one plauseable rationalization or the other, but this will only become more and more unethical the longer we wait to do so, imho. If that won't get folks to stop adding objectionable works here, I don't know what will. — George Orwell III (talk) 08:30, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Concur with George Orwell III, Exception being electronic publishing only does not scan well. JeepdaySock 10:50, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Send folks to DocsPal.com or some similar conversion site. They can play EPUB to HTML to PDF to DJVU and back all they like on those sites so they don't come bitchin' over here. If we're going lock out uploading PDFs as well creating books as PDF (which never made sense to me but that is for another day) someone else has to pick up the slack. — George Orwell III (talk) 18:12, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I disagree strongly with George Orwell III. What Wikisource includes are some unpublished works before 1923. Also every month Sherurcij used to solicit works for a particular author and the Wikisource community would bring in works from all over the Internet to help fill out that author's œuvres. I don't understand this mania for scans. Users can judge for themselves whether a work is reliable enough for their uses by the broadness of a work's use, who uploaded it, the library resource that provided it, etc. If a contributor here feels the work is important enough to receive a check for accuracy or validation, they are free to do so or mark down the text quality rating if necessary. How we can leap from that to that we need to carry out a prejudicial purge of all works that don't have a graphics file attached (for which there is no guarantee for reliability as seen by the .djvu files presented in the Scriptorium), no matter how reliable the website (like Project Gutenberg) or the user who contributed it (like a trusted Wikisource administrator or volunteer) is beyond my comprehension. ResScholar (talk) 06:22, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I'm more aligned with your view than you'd think without the Admin hat on and measured just by own personal preferences in a vacuum, but the general consensus the last I heard was that scanned works are the preferred type of work to be added as Wikisource moves forward. Take that in conjunction with what seems to be hush development and push implementation, primarily surrounding dynamic layouts, and its not hard to see where this is all headed. I can't say that I like it much either -- but that's also just my personal preference and subjective observations at work. I didn't think it was ethical to remain complicitly silent just because it happens to serve the consensus at the moment was all. -- 06:55, 28 May 2011 (UTC)George Orwell III (talk)

What to djvu?

Two questions; one specific one general.

• Specific Question I have just discovered (I love $5 a bag book sales) that I own a copy of Robin Hood by w:Henry Gilbert (1868–1937) illustrated by w:Frances Brundage (1854–1937) and published by w:Saalfield Publishing. My copy is undated, and there is no listed copyright, the original Gilbert work was published as "Robin Hood and the Men of the Greenwood" in 1912. I have just completed several hours research to write W:Henry Gilbert and am unable to define the copyright status (particularly of the images, the text is pre-1923) though I believe it is all public domain. So the question is do go through the process of DJVU on this work?

The work is {{PD-US-no-notice}}, while there is no date in the book. There is also no copyright notice and it had to have been printed in or before 1977 as the publisher (w:Saalfield Publishing) stopped publishing in 1977. JeepdaySock (talk) 16:01, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

If it was published before 1977 without a copyright notice then it is in the public domain. As far as I am aware, this covers the whole book including the pictures. I'd say scan and upload the book, it looks eligible. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

• General Question as highlighted in a recent discussion. The digital world is full of electronic scans in varied condition, copy and paste adding them to WS accomplishes nothing. In today's world scanners are everywhere; is it time to up date WS:WWI to limit to additions to djvu (or like) scans unless there is an original published release in electronic format?
• (did you see that smooth, side step around e published only)Jeepday (talk) 11:44, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

There are, of course, the famous problems with djvu doing wrong letters and such like, but I think that anything that is complete or has scans to complete it with should be here. eBooks, well, they're in their own little sphere. Arlen22 (talk) 02:08, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I think WS:WWI should be amended to put the focus on DjVu, although I would personally want some leeway for non-scan-backed works. Scans are important and will eventually become the only material on Wikisource but there is a lot even amongst the stuff I upload or maintain for which I have not yet found scans or scannable material. Allowing for off-line proofreading should be acceptable if not encouraged. (We will probably need an exception for transcriptions too, as they are technically original to Wikisource as written material.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:33, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Please let's not make it djvu's or nothing. There is still hope for some PDF incorporation here and there as needed and Londonjackbooks has just recently shown .jpg by .jpg Indexes still get the side by side thing done just as well too. George Orwell III (talk) 14:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Third Party Help with the editing of Cygnis insignis

Regarding the use of {{Referenced top}} among other things, after a discussion and subsequent project work, I felt a consensus had been reached between participating editors of myself, Prosody, AdamBMorgan, George Orwell III, and although not entirely convinced, Billinghurst. After nearly two weeks and many examples posted at WS:S, I non-controversially added {{Referenced top}} to the Template: space. I believe that at each step and to a great degree of transparency, myself and the others logged and discussed our progress in implementation. As part of the joint effort at Wikisource:WikiProject References to Wikisource, we have been going through works; along every step, user Cygnis insignis has been making efforts to undermine my editing; this has included:

• Removing links in the main space to portal space that they felt were unnecessary. see history

• I conceded after trying to discuss, but they pretty much disappeared.

• Removing PD tags & obvious portal links within the notes section see here, and here; I have not been rude to him and was largely ignored besides edit wars he insisted on continuing without discussion: (see here and here.

• Ignoring discussions and repeatedly removing with insufficient reasoning

• Removal of {{Rt}} template on a page that they were a part of contributing to.

• A second time, after their stated problem was resolved. See here, and here

I've left them several comments, which they refused to answer and in one case labeled "undone and unread."

If they wish not to speak to me, that's fine, but this is a collaborative project. As an editor, they are entitled to ignore collaborative efforts on my part, as an admin, this is wholly unacceptable. I don't want to cause problems and would rather simply move on, but it still stands that in place of discussion they would rather engage in an edit-war. I have tried to squelch any of it as it fell on the brink, and they have choose not to participate in any reasonable dialogue. I ask that for the time being and to move along with our established consensus through work and discussion, that {{Rt}} gets placed back in Tales (Poe)/The Fall of the House of Usher. However, I do not want to be in a war with this user anymore.

Stepping away from this situation, I want to say that Cygnis has been polite to me in the past, and I've seen the great work they've done. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:20, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Round two

With no reply by any other admin on the site, I am beginning to feel that this is being ignored. Unfortunately, the habits have not stopped. Cygnis recently and conveniently archived their talk page without answering either point I brought up. Rather than retype and re-explain the situation, I will repost what was on their talk page here:

Re-adding text quality and incomplete tags in text. [2] [3] [4]

Hey Cygnis,

With the texts in question having been validated using our current scan indices, is it really necessary to have an icon that refers to the previous way of proofreading? The scan could be different from the assumed previous non-scan version, so using it is misleading.

Also, the index for William Blake, a critical essay has been validated (no need for a 50% proofread icon) and is listed in its index as complete, which I assume is disregarding the non-validated advertisements. It was my understanding that advertisements were not required in validating a book, as is reflective in the index status, so why did you re-add the {{incomplete}} tag?

Why did you revert my edits then? - Theornamentalist (talk) 11:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Shelley, a poem, with other writings relating to Shelley, to which is added an essay on the poems of William Blake

Edit: [5]

Please do not revert my validation without specifying why you are doing so. It is both unnecessary and unhelpful. I see that you also reverted a validation of the page by Hesperian in the past; if you do so, update the progress in the index to reflect the status of the contents; don't leave it as done.

Edit: [6]

This series of edits does not make sense; if you saw an issue with the red links for the contents in the Table of Contents field, fix it! Please don't delete a works TOC from the TOC field.-Theornamentalist (talk) 10:01, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

In both cases, I made an edit, Cygnis undid it, I asked why, and received no response. In the second case, they went a step further.

I am bringing this up because Cygnis has just unvalidated a page that I validated a second time; this is the third time the page has been unvalidated. I also asked them to supply a reason; they have refused any discussion. On top of that, I recently corrected the TOC in the index to this work, only to have it undone twice without reason by Cygnis. This behavior is not acceptable for an administrator. I am asking any administrator to please step in and help; I do not want to, for a third time validate this page and add the TOC to the index, as I am not trying to have an edit war. Thank you. - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:55, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments on third party help request

I'm going to be unavailable for a few days, and don't have time to look at all of this, but I really can't see any rationale for Cygnis reverting this seemingly innocuous edit twice. Nor do I understand why he would revert this seemingly helpful edit. I agree that explanation would be helpful (Cygnis, please point me in the right direction if you've addressed this already). —Spangineer (háblame) 21:15, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I, too, am concerned about these reversions made without stated reasons and would ask that Cygnis explains why he has performed these actions, or pointed to existing or ongoing discussion (I can't see anything directly relevant at either User talk:Cygnis insignis or User talk:Theornamentalist). The following quote of Cygnis to Theornamentalist that Spangineer was pointed to at Cygnis' talk page doesn't really cut it for me:

"If you want to a sober discussion regarding content, what I have done and why, call back in a month or two. I made two short and simple comments on this, your responses have moved well beyond that.", which appears to mean the following one-liners:

• "More important than 'how' (the resolution of a technical problem is not consensus) is why." (regarding {{rt}}, see discussion above)
• "Facts should be added to wikipedia, if they are notable." (regarding addition of "Little Red Riding Hood" to Portal:Children's literature, not POV in my eyes, especially given that the author directly states children are the target audience.)

I don't consider this adequate explanation, and would welcome further elaboration. I believe Theornamentalist's questions here are valid, and deserve more explanation, especially as I see only good faith and constructive editing from him. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• At face value, it appear to be an inexplicable revert. It is not, but I am not willing to discuss matters—that have a wide-spread impact on the site—in a confrontational atmosphere. I am not willing to buy into an edit war, a trivial, and the most recent example, being a section heading "Round 2". As I said, "your responses have moved well beyond that", and they have. If, in a month or two, the person operating this account decides to be less reactive, pointy, impatient, and hostile, I am willing to discuss matters of content and scope. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 07:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Recent stuff

Rather than dealing with this alone, I want to bring attention to a recent disagreement between Cygnis and I. A couple days ago, I came across Charles von Hügel. Noting that it had many images, I went over to commons to make sure that they had been categorized properly. When arriving, I saw that all images from the text were located in the category Charles von Hügel. These images are not specifically about Charles von Hügel, so, in order to properly categorize them I created Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir) as a category. I then made this category a sub category of the person Charles von Hügel; now, these images are linked and organized directly under him, but were within their own category so people related like Elizabeth Farquharson would not appear directly in his category. This is standard organization done not solely at commons all of the time, but how works at wikisource are organized for isolation of the media. With the images and djvu correctly moved to the category for the book, I then added a sister link at the header of the main page of the work. Cygnis did not like any of this, claiming that I did it "so you could add it to the header of a work I poured effort into, that the community has agreed is complete." The whole conversation, in which he accuses me of many things, talks down to me, and manages to miss my reasoning and other examples given is found at the bottom here, beginning at the section Charles von Hügel. I ask that you read all of it. Immediately after my last comment, he reverted all my edits at commons back to list the djvu and images from the book Charles von Hügel back into the category Charles von Hügel.

If I have done something terribly wrong with this, please let me know. But I've seen countless times all over en.ws this organization; media from a work placed in its own category and then linked. I told Cygnis my reasons and why I think it is helpful both for viewers and for organization, but they refuse to bend. Please help us in resolving this, both here and at commons. - Theornamentalist (talk) 16:05, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Goodness, why don't you just keep away from CI? Between the two of you it is just pick pick pick. Everything that you want and Cygnis wants is not going to come about, you have to both accept that this is a shared site and that there will not be perfect. Most of the rest of us have learnt that each of us does something differently, not how we would do it, but it isn't wrong, it is just different. We get over it and move on. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:59, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

This priggish commentary is is helpful? Really snookums, your hypocrisy is galling … CYGNIS INSIGNIS 21:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't poke him for fun or to prove a point, I was just going about normal editing. Am I supposed to check page history for every work to see if Cygnis has edited it in order to avoid conflict? - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:21, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of being unhelpful: I can only speak for myself here, but personally, I would answer "Yes" to your question. For now, anyway. Just because this forum is impersonal and anonymous doesn't mean we can't personally take some seemingly unnecessary measures to avoid further conflict—just as we might similarly do were we co-workers at a shop. In the "real world" (never liked that phrase), those with a conflict would ideally talk things over privately face-to-face; if that were to fail, then they might take things out back, and may the better man win!... But we don't have that luxury here...We don't know one another here and nothing can be kept private. Sometimes when my kids argue, and they each have valid points, the issue just has to become one of, "Well, then, it is worth it to argue?"... Of course, we all have to follow official policy here. But we can also take some seemingly unnecessary measures as well when we don't (and perhaps won't) know another's bigger picture or motive. There's a big, wide, Wikisource world out there with lots to add and edit! We love it here (for various reasons) or we wouldn't be here (I am reminded of a minority few, however—who in the WS past have had more wicked motives here—after having just proofread the following: "No one had thought that a man would invest capital in a business that he might destroy it." But that is the exception, and not the rule)... As for me, I think I will lay off the Recent changes page for a while... It was initially helpful, but lately has all too often led me to follow the "wrong path." Not worth it! Getting back to the Source, Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:57, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback LJB, I do not target his pages, and in most cases I do try to avoid. It is tough though, for works that have many edits, where CI has edited one year ago or something so it may be on his watchlist, to avoid it completely. They do not respect this kind of line in the sand either; he will come in and make changes to things I've worked on without hesitation. When I question it, if I have a logical reason for doing so, he is offended, angered and short with me, or chooses not to respond. Below, I've noted some instances where he has does this, on top of works like Little Red Riding Hood and Human Immortality, where he has used what I've worked on as an example of what he feels the site should be. I want to note that within the last 500 edits, he has removed 4 portals from works, all of which I added in. The site is full of portal links in works, yet he chooses to only remove ones which I add. I've asked him to bring up his opinion here so we can reach a decision so the community can work uniformly (in order to avoid conflict in this matter, which is what I'm trying to achieve) but he has failed to do so at this point. - Theornamentalist (talk) 15:41, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm familiar with all of which you speak, due to my frequent visits of late over at Recent changes (which I am laying off of for now re: my above stated reasons). Lacking a sufficient answer or helpful insight, I can be of no help, and so will bow out now—selfishly hoping things work out... Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:09, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

I've given in several times to his whims in hope of some kind of harmony, latest one being his obsession with The Dead Man's Chest, which he insisted on editing against mine and Green Cardomom's editing. I sincerely tried to discuss this with him, but he refused to talk and did what he wanted anyway. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:26, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

• Ta for this edit: diff=2991705&oldid=2991611 CYGNIS INSIGNIS 21:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
• The message on the edit summary "If you do not want your writing to be edited and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." used to say something like, "If you want what you do to stay as it is, don't do it here". If you combine that with "If it ain't broke don't fix it", and billinghurst's message at 17:59, 24 June 2011 (UTC)... JeepdaySock (talk) 15:19, 28 June 2011 (UTC)
• The only thing most people like less than listening to other's squabbling, is being asked to pick a side in such squabbles. You are both of you wrong in failing to work together. Either of you could have made the collaboration work, if only you had made "collaboration with X" the primary goal of the situation. Anyone can be worked with if you are willing to support their choices. It takes at least two people, both of them unwilling to give over, for failure. Collaboration simply requires using the old improv trick, "Yes, and . . ." If either of you truly wants to resolve this, it is a simple four step program: 1) Never revert. 2) When reverted clarify exactly what improvement you were trying to make on the talk page and express your hope that someone else might find a less contraversial means to that same end. (with sincerity not snark) 3) Unwatch the page 4) Begin work on an entirely different page. Guaranteed to work after six months or a full refund will be issued--BirgitteSB 06:13, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Unvalidating pages

How am I supposed to deal with these kinds of edits? Reverting pages back into proofread status, even reintroducing errors? Is that the preferred way to edit? [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. I know for most, it appears to be some conflict between only us and it is easy to simply say "both of you knock it off," especially because CI does not do this to your edits. Imagine if it was your edits and your time spent and you can see why this is very frustrating. - Theornamentalist (talk) 12:06, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

In my experience the reverts look neither right nor helpful, and at face value would seem to be an inappropriate use of the revert function. If you believe that the edits are correct, then I would think that you could validate the works again. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:43, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for feedback Billinghurst. I revalidated them and he reverted them all again: [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. This doesn't make sense; a second person is necessary in our validation process. Other than being quite frankly, rude, this goes against our sites collaborative qualities, the proofreading system, and is an abuse of the rollback feature. - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:11, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep, and me too, and I was told that I was "skating on thin ice", which must mean that I am standing beside Cygnis. I too find the response unsatisfactory. I truly believe that there should be an explanation of what is wrong with the edits, or what is going on. If one of the other admins doesn't step up and determine the why for the possessiveness, then we are in for a problem. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:03, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Are you going to mention that you were using the opportunity to bully thorough your latest and greatest notion? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 16:11, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

That is really your interpretation? There was no such intent, and there definitely was no such claim. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Are you going to explain why you keep rolling back other people's good-faith edits? Angr 16:41, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Can someone please explain something? I tried to check the history of a few of these edits but couldn't see any differences between iterations. Without more information, it looks like an edit war over literally nothing. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Well said, one wonders what the profit is in doing so, and whether 'good faith' is involved. Are posters here aware, for a recent example, that one of the edit warriors here pursued a steward to elicit "private information". That I made a specific request to stop making general discussions personal to the same, and their response was to insist on it. That they ignored advice to find something else to do, and continued to stalk me and advance their forty-seventh notion for what everyone else should do. There are about 1.5 million books that could be transcribed, I am making a modest contribution toward that goal. If I don't stop, and cede to yet another demand to discuss their notions, then it is hammered through with a series of thousands of edits to the efforts of content contributors, three days later. Please carry on with unobjectionable contributions of content, as greater than 95% of my edits are. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 17:31, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, (but I'm sure a waste of time) stalk you? It's called recent changes, and I saw validation as something both of us, as editors, supported. And dude, your belief of this "stalking" I can only think you attribute to the recent events where you removed a portal link I added, as addressed in your talk page. Again, I conceded and it remains without a portal link. As far as your percentage of content edits, and as you've belittled my edits in the past, please show me how this makes your arguments worth any more than mine, or anyone elses for that matter. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:15, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Are posters here aware, for a recent example, that one of the edit warriors here pursued a steward to elicit "private information". Wait, what does Matanya coming here asking for help with a vandal have to do with anything? Not some heroic act, but the guy came asking for help in order to block a persistant vandal, so I helped. What are you trying to say? - Theornamentalist (talk) 17:39, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't see that any of the charges you mention above has anything to do with Theorn.'s edits to An Argosy of Fables or why you reverted them. It looks like you did it out of spite, because you're mad at him for reasons that have nothing to do with proofreading that work. Angr 17:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Of the 8 diffs Theornamentalist gave above, there is no difference at all in nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7. All that Cygnis reverted was Theornamentalist's marking of the pages as Validated. In no. 8, he additionally reverted Theorn.'s changing of font size; and in nos. 2 and 6, he additionally reverted Theornamentalist's corrections of typos as well as the changing of font size. That's why I would like Cygnis to explain why he's doing this. Angr 17:22, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that Cygnis feels that Theornamentalist stalks him and wastes his time; that he has made it clear to Theornamentalist, repeatedly, that he doesn't want to collaborate with Theornamentalist because it always ends up with him wasting his time in pointless conflict; that Cygnis believes that another pointless conflict was only just around the corner from these benign edits: if he allowed Theornamentalist to take on the validation of this work, then conflict was only twenty pages away; that Cygnis is at the point of flatly refusing to collaborate with Theornamentalist in any way; that in this case the only ways to refuse collaboration were to walk away from the work he had just started proofing, or aggressively reject Theornamentalist's overtures. He chose the latter. Hesperian 23:59, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I would like to address this right away; I have said that CI has continually made changes (that I've deemed controversial, i.e. The Dead Man's Chest; as controversial as something could be in such an otherwise uncontroversial site) by only removing portals that I've added, where CI may have had no history of editing. I feel stalked, like I am made an example of what he feels the site should be; has CI ever removed a portal from a page you worked on? Ever removed PD tags? Ever reinserted incomplete tags on complete works? Removed {{edition}} templates? Deleted works? He has endlessly done so to things I've worked on. Have I edited pages he has contributed? Yes, but without prejudice, and I assure you if you look over my history there is no pattern towards narrowly focusing on pages he feels are his, as absolutely silly as that reads typing in a wikimedia site. These are all direct edits on pages that he has either zero history or a distant history in. - Theornamentalist (talk) 00:09, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I would also appreciate an explanation of these edits. This is the latest in a long series of targeted reverts of Theornamentalist's work. I have previously asked CI what the reason is for this, only to be told that it is related to "discussion elsewhere" (which I could not find) and that he would not answer further. So, I am now requesting that CI states what his reasons are, plainly and without directing us elsewhere. In my mind, it is not Theo's responsibility to ensure any page he edits (in good faith, as it would seem, due to the innocuous edits being made) have never been edited by CI. Rather, it is CI's responsibility to explain what the matter is, and answer the question already asked of him: why are you reverting useful edits? It is disturbing to me to see two otherwise brilliant editors falling out of what seems to me to be literally nothing and damaging the project in the process. Revert wars help no-one, and with what I have in front of me, the onus is on CI to explain what is going on, as Theo has repeatedly requested explanation and has been snubbed every time. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:47, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I think I'll play devil's advocate here. I don't endorse Cygnis' use of the rollback tool, and many of the opinions expressed above are fair enough. But what has been overlooked in this discussion so far is that Theornamentalist knows full well that he is unwelcome in Cygnis' line of sight, yet he is continually getting in his face. You might think by now that Theornamentalist would know better than to see Cygnis proofing a new work on Recent Changes, and immediately jump in and start validating it. Why is that that Cygnis' name attracts Theornamentalist rather than warning him off? Cygnis refers to 'stalking' above; I don't endorse that either, but it isn't a total fantasy: there are behavioural elements here that are of concern. Hesperian 23:49, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Regardless of whether Theornamentalist was "stalking" User:Cygnis insignis, reverting constructive edits and page validations simply because you don't want to have any dealings with another user is childish, to say the least. There appears to be only two solutions here: Cygnis shall collaborate with Theornamentalist (at least to the bare minimum of ignoring positive contributions), or Theornamentalist is effectively barred from editing anything Cygnis has ever worked on. I know which seems more in the spirit of this site.--T. Mazzei (talk) 01:32, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Transclusion help

Could someone help me by transcluding page 19 of this index file for me?

I'll bite (I'm a slow typist though)... Actual page 19 or Index:Page 19? Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I did Index:Page 19... let me know if that's not the page you wanted... It helped to reference a Google Books version in "plain text" mode... copy/paste to the Index:Page and then proofread... Makes things easier... Someone else may want to tweak my font size/formatting... Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:15, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey Londonjackbooks, I wouldn't advise working on that anymore until some source information is provided. - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Right... I just found this here on WS already... Thought someone might be trying to merge the two. Either way, enough on my own plate! Thanks for the heads-up, Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:24, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yup... needs some clarification Commons:File:Volume 1 (Genesis to Deuteronomy).pdf

In response: That Google Books version you mentioned above is NOT the same text as this file. And I have added a description (author, source, etc.) to the Commons file - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Volume_1_(Genesis_to_Deuteronomy).pdf#Summary. - Tannertsf (talk) 23:10, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I know... That was evident when I started proofreading... But it was still much easier to correct the minor differences while proofreading than to type it all out from scratch! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 02:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Page 2 of that Index file also shows the source info. - Tannertsf (talk) 23:13, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I couldn't find the text on Google Books (which was you(?) listed as a "source" on page 1 & 2 of the Wikimedia .pdf file)—do you have a link to it?... But using the URL listed on the Wikimedia Page 2 image (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.html), I found a text link to the same work (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.txt) where it [also] reads: "Rights: Public domain. May be copied and distributed freely." You should probably add this to the source information. You might also ask for a second opinion ;) Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

:Hmm... only concern about the text vs. pdf versions on that website is that you have to log in to the site to download the pdf... Not so for the text version. Don't know if that matters? Since the pdf version doesn't explicitly state the same public domain rights as the text version...? Londonjackbooks (talk) I'll be quiet now and stop making a mess of things! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks. Play away, learn some more ropes. Chasing these down is good for all of us, and assists in the sharing of the knowledge. There is currently so much duplication of many bible components, and they are in a pretty bad way with many incomplete. Most have early origins at WS, and now are showing their age, without scans, some are pastes of scans of archive.org texts and are or should be tagged with {{OCR-errors}} and {{numbers}}. They are ugly. I would encourage looking for original source scans, as we see that the copies of copies is propagating errors, or giving works of poor provenance. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:29, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

@Billinghurst. Thanks! I needed that! :) Londonjackbooks she who will never be an administrator ;) 15:30, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Playing:findings

I went ahead and got a "free account" with that website, and it turns out that their PDF version IS copyrighted after all: "Rights: Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library Date Created: 2000-07-09" Page 2 of the Commons pdf file (see link above) differs with respect to rights... Might need to delete the info already transcribed to WS? Londonjackbooks she who will never be an administrator ;) 23:22, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Update: I found two other websites hosting the alleged "Public Domain" PDF versions of this work (the same version in question at Commons):

• Biblesnet.com: http://www.biblesnet.com/mhc1.pdf
• Biblestudyguide.org: http://www.biblestudyguide.org/ebooks/comment/mhc1.pdf

Their source, rights, etc. info reads:

About Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume I (Genesis to Deuteronomy)
by Matthew Henry
Title: Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume I (Genesis to Deuteronomy)
URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.html
Author(s): Henry, Matthew
Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Print Basis: 1706-1721
Source: Logos, Inc.
Rights: Public domain. May be copied and distributed freely.
Date Created: 2000-07-09
General Comments: Unabridged and carefully proofed.
Contributor(s): Ernie Stefanik (Editor)
CCEL Subjects: All; Bible; Classic
LC Call no: BS490.H4
LC Subjects: The Bible
Works about the Bible

The PDF version at the referenced www.ccel.org website (presumably the official website), http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.pdf however, lists the following source/rights info.:

About Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume I (Genesis to Deuteronomy)
by Matthew Henry
Title: Commentary on the Whole Bible Volume I (Genesis to Deuteronomy)
URL: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/henry/mhc1.html
Author(s): Henry, Matthew
Publisher: Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Description:Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible
is well-known and well-loved. His commentary is aimed primarily
at explanation and edification, as opposed to textual research.
Comprehensive, this commentary provides instruction and
encouragement throughout. Each volume of the commentary comes
with its own introduction, helpfully situating it for the reader.
Although written in an older style, Matthew Henry's Commentary
on the Whole Bible is worth studying and is useful for pastors,
theologians, and students of the Bible.
Tim Perrine
CCEL Staff Writer
Print Basis: 1706-1721
Source: Logos, Inc.
Rights: Copyright Christian Classics Ethereal Library
Date Created: 2000-07-09
General Comments: Unabridged and carefully proofed.
Contributor(s): Ernie Stefanik (Editor)
CCEL Subjects: All; Bible; Classic; Proofed;
LC Call no: BS490.H4
LC Subjects: The Bible
Works about the Bible

All information is the same EXCEPT for "Rights" and "Description"—which is not present in the "Public domain" versions... Perhaps the listed Staff Writer should be contacted via the website for clarification? I'll give it a shot tomorrow. If it turns out the piece IS copyrighted, how would I notify Commons? On the work's Talk page? Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

CCEL is hosting it online free, so I doubt its copyrighted. - Tannertsf (talk) 03:04, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

But their PDF version (which I had to log in to view) states otherwise... The above source/rights, etc. statement was copied straight from their version. So there would be question in my mind... Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:13, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The copyright on the text expired in the 18th century. Every new publication will have a copyright on the production on its production qualities, though the text will still remain out of copyright. So CCEL can copyright THAT pdf file; if they have added commentary or their own bits (ie. not stayed true to the original Henry text) they can claim copyright on their bits. My question and challenge is "Why are we taking text from CCEL? Especially why do want that text when we don't know its provenance? If we want to link to it from the author page, then link to it at CCEL. I can see 8 volumes of the work at archive.org → http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%28matthew%20henry%29%20exposition and if it is that valuable, then grab it and work on it. I am not convinced that we want to be, or should be just grabbing texts just because they are there. What becomes our point of difference, what comes of our quality texts. What is the purpose of the collection and collecting? What is our strength, and what are our features and our benefits? I would much prefer quality and relevance, and a point of difference. Being the biggest to me isn't 'it. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, and I personally am biased toward using original source texts... If the version at Commons is copyrighted (and I have emailed the CCEL website along with links to "supposed" online public domain versions of their rendering to see if they are legitimate or not), then it can/should be taken off of Commons (and substituted with one of the archive.org version, perhaps)... I'm just trying to establish the legitimacy of the Commons version for starters. It was uploaded by a user last November who contributed to Commons for a mere 4 days and then disappeared. If it is a legitimate PD version, Commons can either decide to keep it or delete it at their discretion, I suppose... And we can either choose to use it or ignore it! Either way, I won't be contributing to it any more myself as I am here for selfish reasons... I just thought I'd help out with a page (although I should have asked some questions first...), and now feel obligated to look after a matter that has my "fingerprints" on it! @Tannertsf:RE:"I doubt its copyrighted.": I just transcribed the following yesterday, and I think it applies here as well:

"It is elementary when the constitutionality of a statute is assailed, if the statute be reasonably susceptible of two interpretations, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, it is our plain duty to adopt that construction which will save the statute from constitutional infirmity. * * * The rule plainly must mean that where a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter..."

If the copyright status of a work here on WS is questioned, there can be no room for doubt, for it is a matter that would/could compromise the legitimacy/credibility of Wikisource itself... Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:59, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

One work won't compromise this site at all ... especially if it is a book like this that is by an author who, albeit wonderful, died more than 100 years ago. I'm interested in working on this version, NOT on the Archive one ... this has much better clarity. Its also for a class (im the teacher) where my students will log on and do their share of work on this with my account. That is why I uploaded it as a PDF, not a DJVU. They have to, for the assignment, type it onto the page. - Tannertsf (talk) 14:26, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll wait to hear from the CCEL website to see if the versions-in-question are in fact copyrighted or not. It would not have been difficult for someone to "doctor up" the Rights section of the original PDF and change the wording, and create a "new" PDF file, so we should make sure... As it is, the website states on their Copyright page:

"You may use the text version of any public domain book at the CCEL in any way you please, including republishing it. However, the XML and other versions derived from the XML (all non-text versions) are copyrighted. They may be used for non-profit personal, educational, and church purposes involving fewer than 25 copies of a book without further permission. However, you must contact us for permission to republish CCEL works or to use them commercially." (http://www.ccel.org/about/copyright.html)

One work can compromise a site, in my opinion... Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:41, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The PDF of CCEL sounds like it is copyright and should be deleted. Trivial I would agree, however, it neither meets Commons nor Wikisource's requirements of being in the public domain. Principle is principle, independent of the work, and fair use does NOT apply at either of these sites. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:02, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I still have yet to hear back from them, but as soon as I do (or don't!), I'll be sure to update on here... As for myself, I just purchased, via Amazon.com, a "Gale MOML (Making of Modern Law) print edition" of George H. Earle Jr.'s The Liberty to Trade as Buttressed by National Law (1909). It is one of those BiblioLife reproductions of public domain material (authentic reproductions of the original work)... I would love to put that work on here as well since you can't find it online yet (or at least I can't, or haven't yet), but I'm not sure if I can legally scan the images from the book to upload here. I have emailed BiblioLife Network to see if it is allowed... So I await two responses... Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

If it's a facsimile copy, you can scan the images no matter what the publisher says.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

If you are referring to the Earle text, it is! And now I am eager to do so, thanks! Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:13, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

One more question: How specific should I be when stating the source? Would "Scan of facsimile page from a public domain work entitled, The Liberty to Trade as Buttresses by National Law (1909) by George H. Earle, Jr." suffice? Or need I also mention the BiblioLife reproduction stage as well? The original source text was originally reproduced by the Harvard Law School Library, where the orig. text was/is housed... The BiblioLife reproduction also contains a typed signed letter from GHEJr to Prof. James Barr Ames of Harvard Law School, dated Jan 22, 1909 (letterhead of The Real Estate Trust Company of Philadelphia, of which Earle was then president)—is that letter "fair game" too? Sorry, turned out to be more than one question! I'm full of them! Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Billinghurst, I disagree strongly with your characterization of CCEL. CCEL has been around longer than Wikisource, proofreads its works, and provides a bibliographical source of every work. Any works derived from them should be regarded as at least 75% on the TextQuality scale. Some people are simply not more suspicious of a work simply because it hasn't been cleared through "Wikisource procedures", which an enterprising forger can circumvent anyway (this is what we are worried about, distorted text, isn't it?). People can judge for themselves by looking at the proofread scale together with the source as to whether they want to trust the validity of the work. One can witness the fine job User:Quadell did with the Ante-Nicene Fathers series if they want an example of their skilled work.

Not my intent to make any characterisation of CCEL's proofreading process. They are what they are. My comment was why bring it here when we can link to it directly where it is. What improvement is going to occur to the work here in an imported format? There are works brought here without reference to their provenance, such that they are uncited works, where there is a trust that has to be applied to the work, and when a challenge is made to the text, we have no real ability to correct or respond. Further, as we now have multiple copies of the same works, the issue of provenance is more important to us (year of printing, edition, country of publishing, ...) From my exploration other sites have one copy of a transcribed work, they do not have multiples. So my point became about what is WS's point of difference, nothing about disparaging other sites. — billinghurst sDrewth

And Billinghurst, I don't understand your appeal that we use Internet Archive text instead of CCEL's proofread copies. If someone here wants to go the extra mile to improve a text's accuracy, wouldn't it make more sense to match and split a CCEL text, so we have two text sources rather than two proofreaders working on one text source? That you are concerned about the possibility of text dumps from CCEL etc. suggests to me we should also be concerned about text dumps from Internet Archive as well, the kinds which never get proofread.

Yes, though again we have provenance issues. Read many of Cygnis's issues with the match and split process due to works of the wrong provenance being match, and noting that the match process is not an exact science. And yes, I do have concerns about text dumps straight from IA, and there is plenty of commentary from me about that process. In short, I don't like it when an OCR'd text from a scan is dumped into the main namespace, it has lead to many poor quality texts and no real ability, especially not an easy ability to improve their proofreading credibility. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:29, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I've said it to Cygnis Insignis before, but I'll say it again: I don't think the interest of Wikisource lies in "embalming" particular editions of text, but by hyperlinking texts that would benefit from it using texts validated through reliable means so that interested users can read and discuss them thoroughly, especially those time-proven to help us understand ourselves, our society and the world in which we live. ResScholar (talk) 05:33, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The skinny

From CCEL (I didn't write his full name... If confirmation is necessary, I can forward the email I received to an admin, etc.) Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:13, 29 April 2011 (UTC):

"...The vast majority of our books are scanned, OCR'd, and installed on our site. The fact that most of our books are in the public domain means that other sites may have used the same books to create their own legitimate copies.

Having said that, our files our copyrighted. The work that goes into OCRing, scanning, proofreading, converting to XML, etc. -- that work is all copyrighted by CCEL. And, unfortunately, we know that other organizations have used these files without permission.

I don't know if this answers your questions or not....

Blessings,

—K"

Well copyright does not apply for hard work, scanning, proofreading, <blah blah> as they are simply effort, not creative processes, and they can claim all they like, they are not supported by legislation. That said, they do own the copyright to a finished product where they have stylistically created a designed product, eg. the typesetting they apply. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:06, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

So should I give this project up? - Tannertsf (talk) 18:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If the project is based on CCEL's pdf, it is probably wiser; if it is the work, itself, no reason to do so. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

As mentioned (way) above in this section, the work itself (NOT the CCEL PDF version, but an un-Indexed version) has already been started here on WS at Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible... Only part of Genesis is complete; same with other Books of the Bible I browsed through... You might be able to do something with that? The main page's discussion page does use the CCEL website as a source, but if one uses the text version (non-copyrighted version) of the commentary from the CCEL site to perform transclusion, it shouldn't be a problem. Londonjackbooks (talk) 02:29, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The Sanctity of Marriage: Also, These Filthy Lifestyls

So I made discovery of something quite amusing/, in light of the marriage debate in so many countries, that from 1850-1875 it seems there was a huge debate about whether to allow men to marry the sister of their dead wife. There are probably a dozen books or more on the subject, on Archive.org in English alone and I listed them on my userpage (click below!). I wonder if somebody could help me create a new section on Portal:Marriage for these works and upload the books (I have tried and failed every time), then I am happy to proofread, categorise and format the pages. Movedcolor (talk) 21:08, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll be glad to upload them for you. Would you like me to transclude also? - Tannertsf (talk) 21:09, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Much thanks for your help so far! Movedcolor (talk) 01:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Also, I notice Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2007-12 says that there is an OCRBot running around; anyone know how to use him? I see neither an "OCR Button" nor does reading ThomasBot seem to suggest it is actively doing OCR? Movedcolor (talk) 01:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The button for OCRbot is gadgetised, and I cannot remember whether it is default ON or default OFF. Oh, and you probably need to stop using the enhanced toolbar. I am trying to get to understand the new toolbar code, though haven't got their yet. — billinghurst sDrewth 16:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the question might have been geared towards creating a hidden text layer using OCR for some of the recent uploads that don't currently have one - such as Index:Ourstandardsandtheirteachingsasbea.pdf maybe??? — George Orwell III (talk) 21:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Hehe, certainly a provocative and interesting little cache of documents, thankyou! MichelleG (talk) 06:19, 1 May 2011 (UTC).

Four of them are complete, the rest are underway :) Movedcolor (talk) 00:02, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Geneva Bible

Would someone help me find a scan of the Geneva Bible anywhere? I'm interested in working on what would be a MASSIVE project, but willing to do it. - Tannertsf (talk) 02:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

[Try this from AI] JamAKiska (talk) 00:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

OH MY! I'd be willing to try it, but it would be very tough to proofread...long s's and very small sidenotes. Might be good though if I have nothing to do. It would definitely need its own wikiproject. - Tannertsf (talk) 01:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Linebreaks and tables (of content)

When proofreading pages, it is common (and quite useful) to preserve the linebreaks from the printed page. This is fine because single linebreaks in wiki text are treated as white space, while double linebreaks separate paragraphs. But this is different in tables. The first linebreak inside a table cell causes a HTML paragraph separator (<p>) to be emitted. So, is there any way that preserving linebreaks can be combined with tables?

I'm talking about pages like this (1) and this (2), where a single table cell contains text that spans multiple lines. In both of these cases, I gave up on the linebreaks and replaced them with whitespace during proofreading. My current Swedish example (3) is a bit more extreme, and I really don't want to give up on the linebreaks. For the time being, I have put an extra linebreak at the beginning of each table cell, causing extra spacing between table rows.

Apparently, keeping the linebreaks inside a link (as in example 1) will tolerate linebreaks inside table code, as does wrapping the linebreaks inside HTML comments (which gets really ugly). Is there a smarter way? --LA2 (talk) 14:39, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

You could achieve it with html comments. <!-- (at the end of the line) and --> (at the beginning of the next). Alternatively you can use traditional table html that doesn't legacy of the wikicode. BUT with all the coding that goes into tables where people are trying to replicate the formatting, it seems that it just adds levels of complexity, and I believe that we should be trying to simplify that aspect of coding, especially with tables. Our more recent use of {{table style}} has, in my opinion, removed some of the formatting eye burden.

To note that linebreaks are not without their issues, considering hyphenation, wikicoding using single quotes, there application in references, not working in wikilinks, etc. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there a page that says this is always preferred? Because generally, I've been removing them. MichelleG (talk) 08:24, 11 May 2011 (UTC).

There is no such page, there is no such directive either way (it is preference). I remove them too for a host of reasons. The line breaks cause problems in other areas, especially with wikicode, links, refs +++. I find it easier to pull them, and I have less issues — billinghurst sDrewth 08:42, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

revert help

I know that this is good work, but my class needs to work on Index:Outlines of European History.djvu by themselves. Could someone revert the edits made so far? - Tannertsf (talk) 03:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't delete pages from the computer I'm using at the moment and I'm really not sure about the policy or etiquette about it anyway. For politeness' sake, it should probably need the permission of the editors involved. In the mean time, I've made your disclaimer a little more prominent. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Done AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:20, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Bot help/request

Could someone help me out or find a bot that could make all of the rest of the pages for the book (Index:List of residents 1.djvu) to look like this?—unsigned comment by Tannertsf (talk) .

Better place for this discussion is to Wikisource:Bot requests — billinghurst sDrewth 23:50, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Newspaper articles

Hey all,

The inclusion policy for Wikisource says that "[a]ny written work ... published (or created but never published) prior to 1923 may be included in Wikisource, so long as it is verifiable". I was just wondering whether this means all pre-1923 newspaper articles are thus eligible for inclusion, or if there are some special criteria for them, as I have PDF scans of some pre-1923 news articles (NYT and other papers) but The New York Times page doesn't list too many items.

Cheers, Fetchcomms (talk) 17:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it includes newspapers. Anything published on or before December 31, 1922 is in the public domain. (In some cases, newspapers printed after this date are also in the public domain but you would need to check individual cases.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Is there any special procedure for newspaper articles, then? My PDFs don't have the ability to select text, so I'm guessing they're purely images, and I'm not really experienced on creating Wikisource pages. Fetchcomms (talk) 02:50, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

How many pages of newspaper are we talking about, and what is the quality of the scan? Does it already have a text layer? If the scan quality is sufficient and we are talking about a significant number of pages then what we normally do is to upload the pdf to Internet Archive and they have a derivation process that converts it to a djvu, which we then take over to Commons. If it is a few articles, and you are happy to type, then we can take them in any [Commons] allowable image format, and we can work the files at this end to get them into play. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

ePub and other formats

Having just got an ebook reader, I'd like to download some books, but I'd prefer ePub format to PDF as it's more flexible. I'm surprised not to find a choice of output formats for books. Doing a bit of googling I see there is a Wikimedia extension called ePubExport so it can't be a huge job to provide it.

Are there plans, or is there a policy not to include it? Chris55 (talk) 19:23, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

.djvu is the preferred format here. I don't think there are any plans to bring ePub to the site. Not sure what our policies say, but I have a feeling we don't include those files. - Tannertsf (talk) 19:29, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

They are working on adding .epub and .mobi as options in the book tool. It might be a while before it's implemented (although while looking for more information on that I noticed you'd already posted this request on the meta book tool page as well, so you may get more information there). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I've sent some "e-friends" of mine to http://www.docspal.com for file format conversions. Its fairly limited but some have found combinations that have worked for them. -- 21:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for those responses. I'm puzzled by the emphasis on djvu as it's primarily a scanned format rather than a character form isn't it? That's even more constrained than postscript for output. Doesn't anyone use ebook readers?

Adam, the reason I posted here was that I didn't get any response on the other discussion pages. But I'm glad to hear there is some progress. Can I contribute? I'm not a Wikimedia expert but I can turn my hands to many things.

To the last contributor: the vital stage is getting a book output in some convertible format. Neither pdf nor djvu meet that need, though actually my Sony reader will "reflow" some PDFs but I doubt the effect is satisfactory. Chris55 (talk) 12:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Chris55. Our preference for djvu files is more related to how we wish to import our text/works/books, in that we have text on a page by page basis, and allow us to extract a text layer, and to proofread against the image. The text layer becomes liberated (extracted) from the scan once we create the page at Wikisource and that allows us transclude and present the text in a number of forms. The developers have yet to give us an epub and others forms to this point (as above) and we look forward to the days that the techno-literate catch up with our needs.

To note that due to the compression of djvu files, we don't recommend them for extracting the images and ideally we would use the jp2 files, or other quality scans. With regard to you contributing … YES YES YES … we will happily nail you to the floor with a nail gun once you have found somewhere comfortable to sit and play. As always, for newbies we recommend Wikisource:Proofread of the Month or one of the projects as a great place to start with support and example around you. What is your poison? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:56, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Well I thought I made it plain at the beginning of this section that I was talking about output not input. So evidently people can't read questions. I can well understand that it's uneconomic to store full page scans as PDFs or even jpgs - tho I've read the Help:DjVu files page and there seem to be more warnings than encouragement. It also seems that people in WikiSource are not thinking at all about how their product will be used. I did go to the Proofread of the Month but gave up after failing to find any guidance - the first page I tried proofing turned out to have been done already. I may go back. Appropriate help has never been a strong point of WikiX. (I know, I should provide it myself - but actually I don't know how to do at the moment!) Chris55 (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

• Chris55: Most of the volunteers here are involved only in adding and curating the database of content, not in the technical side of things. We welcome suggestions, but we cannot actually effect a technical upgrade without a lot of whining, moaning, wheedling, cajoling and threatening of various Wikimedia developers (who do not hang out locally), and whole ton of waiting. Most extensions are stuck in "review limbo", waiting for a dev to OK them for use on Wikimedia Foundation wikis (including Wikipedia and Wikisource). As a community, we are seriously lacking in output formats, and it is a recognised problem. However, there is nothing most of us can do about except file bugs and annoy devs, which some of us have been doing.
• If you would like to help, one thing you can do is research the matter and work out the best way to move forward. There is a lot of things you could find out through the wikimedia-tech mailing lists and IRC channels. You can also work on on-wiki systems for organising and curating a collection of generated files, however that would work. A good way to get to know the WS system (there is a lot to it under the surface, which can make it hard to get going) is to come and say hello in the IRC channel (#wikisource on freenode.net).
• Personally, though I do recognise the importance of improving our outputting options to reach a larger audience, I don't have must interest in ebooks, not having an ebook reader, so I am not well acquainted with the current situation. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 16:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I can understand why the techies don't hang round these parts, but I'm surprised there's no easier way of asking questions. I've looked at the mailing lists archives but they're not even searchable as far as I can see so there's no practical alternative to subscribing and asking questions that have probably been thoroughly explored previously. Techies aren't normally very approachable in such circumstances. But I'll see what I can do. Chris55 (talk) 11:42, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

• You can often find stuff in the mailing lists by using the "site:" prefix in Google searches. For example: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=epub%20site%3Awww.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech
• Mailing lists, IRC, forums and bug trackers are the "traditional" support mechanisms for open software efforts, where the main devs are often working on it part-time or as a hobby. The only major difference with wikis is that we trade the forums (fora?) for a wiki-style page, with the same kind of effect. The reason "techies" can be not very approachable is that they often have their own priorities (this is a hobby for most, remember) and so people can feel sidelined. Short of becoming a dev yourself or providing bounties on features you want, the best you can do is ask nicely and hope a kindly dev has time and care for it.
• We do have some semblance of effort towards providing ebook support, and some users (such as Billinghurst) know more about it and actively ask for dev involvement than others (such as myself). I hope we haven't come across as prickly: I'm just trying to address your questions the best I can. This is one of the things many users want, and progress on the technical side has been slow and, for some, I dare say frustrating. This is compounded by the use of a third-party book-generating extension, which doesn't work with our newer toys like the ProofreadPage extension.
• If you decide to get involved in WS (and I hope you do, new blood is always great) and especially the technical side, you will see that the system is not geared to fast progression for the smaller wikis (i.e. other than Wikipedia or Commons), or for "esoteric" functionality. We have around 330 active users at the moment, which is about 500 times fewer than en.Wikipedia, so I do understand the development focus on the big boys, from a numbers perspective. Cheers --Inductiveload—talk/contribs 00:54, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
I asked the question at the wikitech mailing list, and they pointed to a level of discussion where there has been some consideration (no link provided) to it being included in mw:Extension:Collection. On having a further look at this matter, I do see that someone has written mw:Extension:EPubExport which we may be able to get someone to comment upon from the developers' point of view. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:23, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

That's encouraging. If I understand it right, the facility exists in wikimedia to add an "export as ePub" link in the left hand column. So what is needed is to get the wikimedia maintainer for wikisource to add the appropriate mantras to the local settings file. How does one (a) get agreement for that (b) get it done? Chris55 (talk) 11:30, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Not quite that simple. Just because someone has created an extension for use with the mediawiki application does not mean that the powers that be at Wikimedia will allow the extension onto their servers. They look to make sure that extensions do not have security issues, and that the extensions are not unreasonable on available resources, eg. hogging cycles on servers if numbers of people look to use the tools. Then we have to know that it is functional for our intended use, etc. I have asked the question about how and where to have the extension considered and how to get it tested and it was indicated that to add it to bugzilla was a start, so I have logged it at bugzilla:29023, I have addressed it to one person with influence, and we will need to wait a week or so to see if there is interest. Anyone who has something to contribute in terms of functionality, ideas, or as a "vote" (for what they count) can do so at the link. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:00, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I expected that getting agreement would be the major part of the process. The point that Brian Vibber makes on bugzilla is quite valid: of the two methods of outputting, the book creator method is obviously the more important. But the method needs some adaptation for Wikisource. It seems odd that to download a book with say 14 chapters one needs to go through a construction process with 15 or 16 steps. At the very least every completed book should have an entry under Books/ yet there are currently less than 30 there. But having done that for one example, the system refused to produce a PDF for me saying it was overloaded; entirely justified: the process should be done at most once for every revision of a book. But there seems no provision for caching the output.

So if Wikisource is to be useful, some more thought needs to be put into how completed books are stored for download. I had hoped that it would be in the long run an alternative to Gutenberg or the Internet Book Archive but in its present form it wouldn't work. Chris55 (talk) 15:24, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi folks, if you're looking for a way to easy create ePub files, on it.wikisource we (mainly User:Alex brollo and me) are working on a tool that does it. This tool reads the index of contents that is usually present in a text's main page, builds the entire tree of chapters, gets every page of that text, gets images, styles, and what is needed, and finally packs everything up in an ePub which is also readable off-line. The idea is that you just click a single button in a ns0 page, and you get the epub with the complete text of all chapters, period. It's nearly finished, if you want to take a look, come to our place and we can show you some demos. See you soon! :-) Candalua (talk) 17:52, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

DNB content not showing

• http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ellis,_Henry_Walton_%28DNB00%29

although

• http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_17.djvu/288

Rich Farmbrough, 09:02 16 May 2011 (GMT)

Done - the fromsection and tosection were missing "Sir" from the middle of the link. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:10, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

What went wrong?

What went wrong? When I saved, these things were all right. Then it went crazy. This is what happened: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_50.djvu/313&curid=603150&diff=2876540&oldid=1804035&rcid=2814332 - Mackenziemrk (talk) 15:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

I fixed that example [22]. I think when the page was saved it tried to convert the old section tags to the newer one, <section begin=Saravia. Hadrian à/> to ##Saravia. Hadrian à##, but got muddled when the name of the section was the same as the first line of the text. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 16:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Another validation error on the DNB. http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page%3ADictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_48.djvu%2F270&action=historysubmit&diff=2885764&oldid=1977841 + one on EB1911 - http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_08.djvu/763 - Mackenziemrk (talk) 13:25, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

WS:ANN - status?

What's the latest on annotated works? Is the policy effectively dead? 76.117.247.55 01:15, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's dead per se, just dormant (or not completely agreed yet). I suspect this is mostly down to a lack of interest in policy approval rather than extreme resistance to the concept (it remains on WS:WWI). I'm still doing it and (getting it wrong) in places and I think others are too. I mostly just add wikilinks myself, and only recently realised that this counts as annotation and needs to be separated from the main copy. I'm not sure that wikilinking should count as annotation but I'm working on a template to account for this. These "added value" items, such as translation (and technically grangerisation may count too), are one of Wikisource's USPs. So, we should have documentation but this is lacking in a lot of other areas too. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:49, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't like the idea of wikilinks being considered annotations. In something like Gresham College they add significantly but are effectively invisible. IE. the text isn't changed at all to the reader. 76.117.247.55 03:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I like adding wikilinks now and again as well. Where is the best place to read about whether to add such things or not? The ones I want to add are links to the journals and scientists mentioned in 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sound, and also to the author as well. Also, there are references to other EB 1922 articles, and I presume it is OK to link to those, even if they are redlinks and not yet done? Carcharoth (talk) 17:09, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

The Style Guide specifically allows for the links you mention. See WS:Wikilinks. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:28, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I was going to link to the Wikipedia articles, but I think (from reading what you pointed me to), that is it better to see if a wikisource page exists first, and to then link to that, or link to a redlink. I will try and do that now. Carcharoth (talk) 18:25, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

History Periodicals

Does anyone know of any history periodicals or of more issues of this (http://www.archive.org/details/earlygermans0603howl) one? - Tannertsf (talk) 00:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

There appear to be a few more on the Internet Archive. For example, searching by publisher and looking for similar thumbnails and/or title seems to work: English Towns and Guilds (v2n1), The Period of Early Reformation in Germany (v2n6), Life of Saint Columban (v2n7), Period of the Later Reformation (v3n3), Ordeals, Compurgation, Excommunication, and Interdict (v4n4). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I hit save too soon! The periodical is called "Translations and Reprints from Original Sources of European History" published by "The University of Pennsylvannia". Using those as search terms, there are even more on the archive. Bound editions of volume 1, volume 2, volume 3, volume 4, volume 6 (I'm not sure what happened to volume 5). There's also the somewhat similar "Readings in Modern European History" in volume 1 and volume 2. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:20, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Much appreciation. Thank you. - Tannertsf (talk) 20:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Portal header

I just merged Portal:Religious texts and Portal:Religion and realised that we have parent portals/classifications on the left-side, so we really need to list child-portals on the right-hand side of the header. So that Portal:Christianity and Portal:Judaism have a place to fight, and then from Portal:Christianity it shows Portal:Anglicanism, &c. Anyone able to add that field to the header? I don't mind going around updating portals - it'll make navigation much nicer. StateOfAvon (talk) 01:18, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I've been listing child portals in the body so far. Putting a list inside the header will, in some cases, stretch the header badly (possibly filling all or most of the screen). Currently, Christian Denominations, Political Institutions and Public Administration of the United States, General Literature and Botany have the most children but this list is likely to increase over time. We could possibly create something like a Wikipedia infobox to sit outside the portal on the right but this might mess with the formatting of some portals (such as Portal:American Civil War or Portal:Science, the latter of which technically does this anyway). Still, such an infobox could contain the entire hierarchy (parent, children & gradchildren if applicable). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 09:24, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that child portals should be listed in the body along with directly-linked texts. In some cases you might want to make the portal links bold to stand out. In some cases I also link directly to one or two of the most significant works from the child portal; for example one might link directly to Bible from Portal:Religion, even though it is also linked from Portal:Christianity. - Htonl (talk) 11:19, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Slow page loading

Is it just me, or has the whole page loading process slowed down to a crawl? Makes editing very difficult for me. Mattisse (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

I also had a lot of speed problems in proofreading. It seems to me that the server handling the .djvu pages has slowed down considerably. Today, it seems a little better.— Ineuw talk 08:49, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

It has been terrible for weeks. Large pages in particular either will not save, or they will but you won't know it because the server won't serve you the results. Hesperian 04:29, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Same problem here. This is coming from someone with a limited understanding on web browsers, but here is the gist of my efforts to improve the loading and saving. Even though I use Windows XP SP3 with FF 4.0.1 and a standard high speed 5mb internet connection, this may help others. My above comment in this post (on the 19th) was made after removing all cookies (there were hundreds) and started fresh. This made a dramatic difference, but didn’t mention it because of wanting to see the subsequent days’ results. Now, after two days, again ended up with the same problem, so removed all unknown cookies, and again loading and saving speeded up to normal. I just don’t know how (and why) cookies affect the Wikipedia servers. I hope this helps.— Ineuw talk 11:56, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Humm. I don't know either why cookies would affect page loading but I will give it a try! Thanks, Mattisse (talk) 17:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

May 23 21:00 EST

Guess my idea is not entirely successful. For the past two days the server has slowed down to the point where I just gave up proofreading. Is anyone else with this problem? Is there a known issue with the server(s)?— Ineuw talk 01:00, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I am moving just fine, is your virus protection updated? JeepdaySock (talk) 10:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I find that an occasionally a page image will stall on loading. I just save the page, and then look to re-edit, and the second time it works okay. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:05, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for both posts. The virus protection settings were incorrect and now it’s much better. Also, I did occasionally save the page as billinghurst suggested, but refrain from doing it too often. Now, I don’t expect problems.— Ineuw talk 15:59, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you email me with details or what the problem is and how to fix it please, because I am still stalling horribly on big pages. Hesperian 05:48, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

This may have relevance … w:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2011-05-23/Technology_report — billinghurst sDrewth 11:34, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Captions?

How exactly do you add a caption to a picture? - Tannertsf (talk) 02:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Put a pipe (|) (shift-backslash) after the file extension and then type your text. 76.117.247.55 02:19, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Already tried that. Didn't work. - Tannertsf (talk) 02:22, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Solved/fixed. - Tannertsf (talk) 03:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

See w:Wikipedia:Picture tutorial and w:Wikipedia:Extended image syntax — billinghurst sDrewth 01:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

What the heck

I add works from Popular Science, like The Meaning of Easter Eggs or The Health of American Girls and now I see Ineuw and billinghurst are deleting my work and telling me to keep it on my userpage...why is this?

Is it normal for Category:Easter or Portal:Holidays to link to userpages? Why can I not add public domain works from the Popular Science project, proofread and uploaded properly? I have added thirty works from Popular Science, and now they are just being tagged for speedy deletion and moved to talkpages and for three days I have no answer from the people deleting them even though they keep deleting them...eight more were deleted this morning. I am starting to think that the small number of contributors I see on Recent Changes is not a sign of a strong positive environment, but of an elitist environment that alienates new members and shoves them aside!

This is beyond bad taste - all my hours of work are wasted for no reason, historical works are removed from their prominence and everything, and I promise I am not wasting more on this. StateOfAvon (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure. However, Popular Science Monthly articles tend to be subpages of Popular Science Monthly rather than standing alone. For example, Popular Science Monthly/Volume 71/September 1907/The Health of American Girls and (probably) Popular Science Monthly/Volume 33/May 1888/The Meaning of Easter Eggs. That should explain "American Girls". Maybe "Easter Eggs" was userfied because Volume 33 doesn't exist yet? (The category is empty.) Were the others deleted or moved? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 19:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that these should be subpages... but I disagree with moving them into userspace just because the volume skeleton doesn't exist yet. They are works and have as much right to reside in the mainspace as any other. Having them under the article title in the interim does no harm to our mission whatsoever; on the contrary, it is a better outcome. Hesperian 00:13, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I am going to revert for now. Discussion can continue here, and if the consensus is to userfy, then fine. But in the meantime, StateOfAvon is offended, and I think s/he has good grounds for that, and I don't want to let things stand as they are. Hesperian 00:17, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see why they should be userfied. I couldn't see anything "user-ish" about them when I looked. I was only guessing about the structure; it's the only thing I noticed that might be considered a problem. (If so, and if necessary, a quick-and-dirty volume skeleton can be created. With the wiki format anything can be amended and cleaned up later.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 01:23, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

What is this about me doing what??? I have neither deleted any of the works nor moved them. While patrolling I saw that three or four works were sitting at the root level and I asked Ineuw to move them to their appropriate place, and paid no further attention to the matter. I would agree that user subpages are not the preferred place to move main namespace works. Can I also note that while Ineuw can move pages, he cannot delete them, so if they are being deleted it is another administrator.

For the works themselves, and their location, there is good guidance at Wikisource:WikiProject Popular Science Monthly about how we are looking to develop the work and to display it, and using that guidance would be beneficial, so that we can have some consistency about the work and its presentation, rather than a hotchpotch. There is also the useful template {{PSM link}} that can be used from author pages to get works to their appropriate hierarchical subpages. We always encourage the creation of a redirect from the root level to the articles as appropriate. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

---

StateOfAvon please don’t blame anyone else but me for moving the paragraphs from the main namespace. I assumed that Wikisource does not permit individual paragraphs extracted from an article and published in the main namespace.

As for your paragraph selections, the complete process of proofreading a complete article creating the PSM main namespace, header etc. manually, is time consuming which I haven’t got, having to deal with numerous unexpected issues with other aspects of the PSM project, like images and uploading. This is in addition to my proofreading and harvesting PSM article titles here for the generation of the main namespace pages, which currently is at Volume 31.

Your earlier proofreading requests, prior to May 12, pointed out unrelated original publication layout issues which do not exist prior to Volume 50 and I am not ready to address them because it requires discussion here.

Some days ago, I posted an extensive reply on your talk page explaining all this. Perhaps this was done in a roundabout way and meaning-wise, we were like two ships passing in the night.

The decision to publish, or not, a partial article in the main namespace is really not up to me, and I acted on my own to save me time. Also, I noticed that you are doing OK, and in due time you’ll get accustomed to the Wikisource environment. Time, or rather the lack of it, is a major issue here, so a reply is not always forthcoming as expected. Please study past work as the model to be followed.

As for the PSM main namespace layout, this was decided upon some 18 months ago after an extensive discussion in the Scriptorium. You are not the first person with a similar issue. — Ineuw talk 03:54, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually I didn't realise that these are incomplete articles that StateOfAvon doesn't intend to complete. This fact makes userfying look much more sensible. Hesperian 04:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Hesperian it is one of those unclear definitions of incomplete articles, as it is a built components of contributions, so a section could be complete. One day we may consider to add an anchor, and redirect the page name to the newpage#anchor. Or maybe they could be considered standalone due to content and reference.<shrug> Either way I have created Category:PSM maintenance and poked the category on the pages so that they are not lost and can be maintained and reviewed in time. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:43, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

I apologise if I was needlessly brusque, but I hope you can understand my frustration at seeing works I create suddenly missing or denigrated. I do not think "The Meaning of Easter Eggs" can reasonably be considered to be "the same article" in Popular Science as "British North Borno", "Philosophy of Capital and Labor", "Pearls in the Red Sea", "Games of the Greek Islanders" and "Preparation for the End of the World", these all seem to be distinct, albeit short, articles on separate phenomena, with separate titles, on separate subjects. And it would be odd to go to Portal:Holidays#Easter and find yourself reading an article on pearls, Marxism or Greece (or more oddly, find yourself reading someone's userpage...) ...those articles have their own portals...to me it seems obvious - others may disagree - but I think we are best to not force others to conform to our personal preferences unless it is clearly disasterous to do otherwise. And I do not think it is disasterous to have me add The Meaning of Easter Eggs, Negroes Who Owned Slaves or The Health of American Girls as their own articles; since Popular Science seems to have originally published them as standalone works. StateOfAvon (talk) 22:42, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

We've all been there.<shrug> With presenting our works we do look to give justice to the overarching works not solely the snippets of content. One of the reasons for this is how these works were referenced contemporary to their publication and then in more modern times. We want to be able to prepare wiki cross-references in other works that point to the future place of the identified work. We have arrived at this point after multiple discussions, and one has to also consider how we disambiguate as that overlaps with this process. So yes we want clarity, and we have personal preferences, however, that should not mean that you can discard some of our learnings, and how we have learnt to do things.

To these smaller text articles that are part of a miscellany type there are other ways to display those rather than as standalone, and that is visible in other articles. We can create an anchor/subpart of the subpage that points to the page#anchor, links from a portal would point to the anchor and we would pipe the content to obscure the page, and the categorisation on the page will cover the broadness of the content. Creating the names at the top level is fine, though such should redirect to the PSM url.— billinghurst sDrewth 01:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

PSM lists each of them as a separate article in each issue's index, "British North Borno", "Philosophy of Capital and Labor", "Pearls in the Red Sea", "Games of the Greek Islanders" and "Preparation for the End of the World" all have their own entry on the "Index" page...the idea to group them together on Wikisource, when they weren't in the original publication, seems strange. But that does not offend me, it was the deletion and userfying that offended me. Now we are just arguing/debating style - and I recognise that you have a different view than me. StateOfAvon (talk) 01:13, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I was specifically not referring to complete articles in that text when referring to snippets. I was more referring to the some that I saw like Marriage of the Dead which is a snippet. The big articles are clearly distinct, have authors, get categorisation, listing in portals and author pages. They belong in the works hierarchy, and they get redirects from the top level. There is no argument about those. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:38, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Footnotes and multiple columns and sections

Would it be possible to get some help with 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sound? I created this page recently (please fix things if this was the wrong thing to do) after doing some initial work on this article from the 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica. I used a references template for the footnotes, multicol templates for the columns, and section markers to take only part of the last page (which overlapped with the entry on South Africa). However, when I tried to put the final page together, the footnotes are not appearing. Any idea what is going wrong here? I did manage to get the footnotes to appear briefly, but not in a very satisfactory manner, so possibly there is some conflict between the templates. Carcharoth (talk) 16:56, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I've fixed the missing footnotes. We need to add a references template to the mainpage when transcluding pages with footnotes. I chose to use {{smallrefs}}, which IIRC is consistent with the rest of the EB. At the same time I've removed the multicol templates. We try to avoid having readers have to scroll up and down to find the next bit of the text they are reading. We are fortunate in that we are not limited to particular sizes of paper and therefore we don't need to use the various printers' tricks for using as little as possible. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:16, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting that and thanks for removing those multicolumns (I sort of realised they were a bit unnecessary)! A couple more questions if I may. I was considering working on some more articles from that volume of the 1922 EB. (1) At what stage is it acceptable to add the link for the article to the index list for that volume? Only after validation? (2) Should I save the raw djvu text layer as a page on the first edit when creating the page, and only then make corrections to it (as opposed to making minor corrections before saving, as I had been doing)? (3) I used to know how proofreading and validation worked, but have forgotten. Where is the page explaining this? Help:Proofreading and Help:Page Status? Ah, that's what I was looking for. It's all coming back now, and as I never learnt too much in the first place, not much to unlearn, hopefully. Carcharoth (talk) 18:14, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

(1)Once the article has been transcluded to main-space then feel free to add it to the index list. It flags that the article is at least partly deal with - it also makes sure that the article is not an orphan. (2) It's up to you how you best work. Some proofreaders prefer to save the raw OCR from the djvu first, so that they can track their progress. Others prefer to start cleaning up immediately and then either save as not-proofread or even as proofread - depending on the complexity of the page. Remember, also, if you mess up a page, just ask a friendly admin to restore the OCR and you can start again.

I should also point you to WS:EB1911, which is the wikiproject for the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. This may give you some helpful hints and ideas on the 1922 supplement. Have fun, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

English texts in alternative alphabets

Hi, what is the official stance on English texts written in alternative alphabets? A quick search has shown that there was a brief discussion about "Androcles and the Lion" in the Shavian alphabet without any result. The reason I ask, in the 19th century and there were several attempts to reform English spelling, both in the US and Great Britain. In some cases this resulted in an extended Latin alphabet, in other cases entirely new alphabets such as Deseret were created. Personally I'm interested in texts printed in the English Phonotypic Alphabet, a precursor to the IPA. There are multiple journals printed in EPA over decades along with several books (eg. [23], [24]). Since the EPA is phonetic in nature, it offers clues to subtle differences in pronunciation 150 years ago, transliterating the text into regular English would mean we lose that information.

Now, besides technical issues, would this kind of project be welcome here? Oracle of Truth (talk) 18:05, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

By an amazing coincidence, I was in Utah last week and took a photo of some writing on a monument I couldn't make head or tail of. It might be in the Deseret alphabet! Or not. Sorry not to answer your question, but I couldn't resist commenting on this coincidence! Good luck with your project. Carcharoth (talk) 18:19, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Any text published before 1923 is fine here.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:14, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Our criteria is published or historical documents in and of the English language (broadly defined, rather than narrowly defined), of whichever century that it was written or variation of such. Our mission is alphabet independent. If it fits within the criteria at Wikisource:What Wikisource includes that then it fits here. If it is not in English and is in another language and still fits within the criteria of published document or historical document, then it probably would be hosted at oldwikisource: — billinghurst sDrewth 02:48, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I plan on starting with the child's primer as soon as the EPA is accepted into Unicode. Oracle of Truth (talk) 18:17, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Sidenotes overlapping/overwriting ... any css solution?

One of our issues with varying page width and sidenotes, is as we are not limited to a fixed width, is that we can run into issues that sidenotes close together will typographical overlap in the display, eg. Page:Historical Record of the Fifty-Sixth, Or the West Essex Regiment of Foot.djvu/21. Is there a css solution that we can use so that if two sidenotes try to occupy the same place, that the latter sidenotes can vertically displace downwards, rather than overlap/overwrite? — billinghurst sDrewth 02:37, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Until a solution is found, I've been resorting to the following by using breaks and non-breaking spaces (the latter which apparently don't render below using either <pre> or <code><nowiki>):

{{USStatSidenote|L|''Proviso.'' </br>Payments made with knowledge of rate determined. </br>''Post,'' p. 1634.}}

Now depending on the actual text body width rendered in a display, it may throw off the desired corresponding point of insertion, but not by much... Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Portal:1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up

We have had created Portal:1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up, which is based on a commercial product. What is the community's opinion on the creation of a portal for such a topic, or might it be more appropriate that this be a subpage to Portal:Children's literature. My thoughts would be that it would be a subpage, where the works would utilise the parent link in the portal parameter of the header. We could definitely categorise based on the list. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:39, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I think that since we are hosting only the portion of the list which is in the public domain (a list which is available on other websites) then there is no issue. Making it a subpage of Children's literature seems to be more properly organized. Regarding keeping this work as its own specific category, I have to object. I think that since there are many lists which could come into en.ws and a work may appear potentially on hundreds of these lists, we may end up with having, well, hundreds or categories per work. Therefore, I think going the route similar to Portal:Disney, in which Peter and Wendy is not under the Category:Disney, would be better functionally for the site. - Theornamentalist (talk) 13:59, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

You can also list the works that are not PD, we just can't host those works yet. I like the subpage of Portal:Children's literature. JeepdaySock (talk) 16:51, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't particularly like the idea of having a portal for this, it seems more Wikiproject territory; I'd be upset if The Jungle Book weren't listed at Portal:Children's literature because it was on a subpage...or if we had Portal:1001 Children's Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up , Portal:100 Greatest Children's Books Ever, Portal:10 Best Books for your Kids, etc. Movedcolor (talk) 18:56, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I did not think we were going to remove The Jungle Book from anything, I assumed we could link the work at multiple levels, and that the move to this Portal under Children's literature was purely organizational for the Portal, not the content. Actually, now that I think of it, I am leaning towards moving this portal as a subpage of Reference works and not Children's literature. - Theornamentalist (talk) 19:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree with a move to Reference works; eventually the Reference works portal may have a Literature Reference Works portal under it, and this portal could be a subpage of it. —Spangineer (háblame) 19:57, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I've just moved it to Bibliography & Library Science before I came here (I searched the LOC index and this entry came up, so I stole the call number). Feel free to move it again if preferred. AdamBMorgan (talk) 20:37, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with concept of the portal: "What does Wikisource have from this list of books my child should read?" However, for it to be effective in its use, it will have to mimic to some degree or other the structure of the publication - which is where we would be heading into tricky grounds. It's a shame we can't use a Wikisourcehas template on some of the listing sites and get round it all that way.

The eponymous category should be deleted. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:21, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

•  Delete CYGNIS INSIGNIS 19:43, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Category, portal, or both? - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:27, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Both. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 05:25, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

• Delete both, as I look into this more it appears to be a partial recreation of 2009 book which is a list of books that has been copyrighted. It may be most appropriate to move this discusion to Wikisource:Possible copyright violations. JeepdaySock (talk) 10:54, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - I've been runnning with the idea that without the illustrations, layout, critical commentary and summarizations, that simply listing the works of this book that are in the public domain may not infringe on any copyright. This may include removing any trace of the books formattting, maybe by simply listing the work alphabetically (and removing the current reading level style of organization). Can only a list of works, some which are PD and some which are not, be copyrighted? - Theornamentalist (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

  I am not sure that such a list is copyrightable as it is an opinion based on sweat of the brow, not intellectual property. That said, I would more think that it is for Wikisource:Proposed deletions though to the same end result. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:26, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

  I've been trying to Google for some information about this but the best resource I've found is Ask Metafilter. (I keep getting bibliographies of copyright rather than the opposite.) Originality, including the selection and arrangement of a limited list, might be a problem. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:38, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

  And copied to Wikisource:Proposed deletions. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:41, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to British Library Editathon Saturday 4th June

Wikimedia UK would like to invite you to an [Editathon at the British Library] in London on Saturday 4th June. The BL is being very helpful in terms of giving us access to both documents and expertise. Personally I would love to see this relationship being of use to Wikisource - do drop me a line if you'd like to explore things further. Regards, The Land (talk) 10:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I think it sounds interesting but I don't own a laptop (and I'm not carrying my desktop computer across London). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:23, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm - it would, of course, be possible to come along and take notes with pencil and paper; though I suspect a laptop is necessary to feel fully involved. I was in a similar position myself until recently, when I invested in one. The Land (talk) 12:43, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I currently have three laptops and may be amenable to letting people borrow one for the day. Or you could just help someone else. —Tom Morris (talk) 21:32, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Empty pages

I ran some analyses on a dump of the English Wikisource and found a bunch of pages that have no text in them:

• User:Amire80/Empty pages

These are mostly file description pages with no description, and what's worse - with no licenses. Where it is possible, they should be moved to Commons and properly licensed and where it isn't possible, they should be deleted. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I've copied this to Wikisource:Proposed deletions as well. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:47, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Making one of the layouts the default

I tried asking it a couple of times in the Scriptorium, for example here, but couldn't get an answer, so i'm trying again: Is there a way to make one of the layouts (1/2/3) the default for a book?

See Help talk:Layout. Thank you. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 15:58, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that such an option exists. If it does, it hasn't been announced as an option. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:44, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

There is no ready way to do this as far as I know. Copying the same layout settings to all 3 dynamic layout entries currently found in common.js to one's personal monobook.js or vector.js (dependng on which is in use) will accomplish this in spite of the lack of the ability to manually force or disable those "dynamic" settings. -- George Orwell III (talk) 18:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC).

Your perseverance has paid off :) Every time you asked about this I thought about it but didn't get around to doing it. This time I threw my hands up. I wrote a script to replace the layout selection process. With it, the layout can be selected as an argument to the link, as a page default, or as a user default. For a link, click 'Permanent link' and append to the end of the url '&style=' then 0, 1, or 2 for the first, second, or third style, respectively. For a page default, you can add <div id="Layout [1, 2, or 3]"></div> to the end of the page and save (this could be a template but I don't want to mess up the templatespace with what could end up being ephemeral garbage if no one is interested). I also changed the behavior of the user default from its previous per-work if you're on a subpage toggling to sitewide. To use this, go to Special:MyPage/vector.js (if you're using another skin put that name in lowercase instead of vector) and add to the end "importScript('User:Prosody/layoutchoice.js');" then follow the instructions that appear at the top of the page.

I hope I've done this correctly such that it would be easy to incorporate into the defaults if it meets general approval. Prosody (talk) 10:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Excellent! Thank you so much! Can you please make it work for all users and not just for those who put it in their private vector.js? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:16, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

On a semi-related note, maybe you could enlighten me on why the 'text-wrap' dynamic parameter has no id symbol, locking the left hand margin, currently (for illustrative purposes only) as...

self.ws_layouts['Layout 2'] = {
	'text-wrap':"position:relative;margin-left:3em;margin-right:3em;",

... when it "should be" (Note the addition of the # symbol)

self.ws_layouts['Layout 2'] = {
	'#text-wrap':"position:relative;margin-left:3em;margin-right:3em;",

... so that having a test template for experimentation of new dynamic layouts actually becomes possible and useful for all? -- George Orwell III (talk) 11:21, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

So far as I can tell from the edit history, it appears that ThomasV added the CSS sigils after he wrote the rules, and he may have missed text-wrap because at the time it was on the same line as the 'self.ws_layouts['Layout 2'] = {' bit. Prosody (talk) 11:41, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I just picked 'Layout 2' for illustrative purposes here - none of the current 3 have it. More importantly, its missing on the Mediawiki layout test-template making all that jazz about colored borders & backgrounds pretty much pointless and unuseful (at least that's the way it was for me). -- George Orwell III (talk) 11:51, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

... And since we're discussing the whole layout thing here: Is it possible to exclude the page header from the layout? Currently it's lumped with div id="text-wrap" and becomes narrow if the main content is narrow. The header should stay wide. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:15, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I've mentioned this before too. Need the header to load in the same div(s) as the proofreading progress color-bar does, or where the root-link can be found on a sub-page, for that to happen. I've already tried manipulating the '#headertemplate' dynamic-layout .js parameter to no avail. As long as the header template loads within the container instead of "before" it, it is subject to all sorts of unwanted re-sizing. I agree with Amir - this would make the life-dynamic around here a lot easier. -- George Orwell III (talk) 12:29, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘
Request help on making Layout 2 appear as the default on first-open for a large range of pages in an ongoing project (United States Statutes at Large). -- George Orwell III (talk) 11:42, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Announcing our new community liaison

I’m delighted to announce that the Wikimedia Foundation has engaged Maggie Dennis (User:Moonriddengirl) to serve as our first Community Liaison. The Community Liaison role is envisioned to be a rotating assignment, filled by a new Wikimedian each year, half year or quarter. One of Maggie’s responsibilities is to begin to lay out a process for how this rotating posting would work.

Maggie has been a contributor to the projects since 2007 and is an administrator on the English Wikipedia and an OTRS volunteer. She has over 100,000 edits, including edits to 40 of the language versions of our projects. Her broad experience and knowledge made her a natural fit for this role.

This role is a response to requests from community members who have sometimes felt they didn’t know who to ask about something or weren’t sure the right person to go through to bring up a suggestion or issue. Her initial thrust will be to create systems so that every contributor to the projects has a way to reach the Foundation if they wish and to make sure that the Foundation effectively connects the right resources with people who contact us. If you aren’t sure who to call, Maggie will help you. Obviously, most community members will never need this communications channel - they’re happy editing, doing the things that make the projects great - but we want to make it as easy as possible for people to communicate with the Foundation.

The job of the liaison will have two major parts. First are standard duties that every liaison will perform which may include maintaining a FAQ about what each department does, making sure that inquiries from email or mailing lists are brought to the attention of appropriate staff members, etc. However, we also want liaisons to be free to pursue unique projects suited to their particular skill sets. Maggie will develop such projects in the coming weeks.

Maggie will be on the projects as User:Mdennis (WMF) and can be reached at mdennis (at) wikimedia.org. Her initial appointment runs for six months. I look forward to working with Maggie in this new role!

Philippe (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Great news Philippe, and it was good to be able stir both of you in IRC the other evening (my time). I would suggest that Maggie's first task is to get Pathoschild (talk • contribs) to globally populate at her user/talk pages with some details. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Include pages (and possibly indexes and authors) in official article count

Hi, I've made a proposal to fix the article count on all Wikisources adding to it some pages which are currently not counted. You can read more about it (and possibly support it) at the general Scriptorium. Thank you, Nemo 21:16, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Nice category intersection gadget at frWS

Phe kindly showed me a new gadget at French Wikisource. It allows you to look for pages in the intersection of categories (for example "18th century authors" and "Playwrights").

You can see an implmentation of the gadget at http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Recherche_dans_les_cat%C3%A9gories. Note that you need to enable the gadget first. You do this through your preferences at frWS, on the "Gadgets" tab, at the bottom of the list.

The gadget JS is found at http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Gadget-IntersectionCategorie.js. It is built on top of the DynamicPageList extension, which was activated recently at Wikisource. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:45, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

"Help" - moved from Talk:Main Page

Author:Constantine i have put a lot of work on adding works since wikipedia didn't seem to have any letters by constantine the great which is terrible - we should all cooperate to make sure that we fill out his stuff. i have added a bunch this week, anyone else? Sonofcaleb Talk

Above moved from Talk:Main Page by Beeswaxcandle (talk) 01:52, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

It you like, we could make it our Collaboration of the "Week". It quiet now, so it shouldn't be contentious, and I would happily support the decision, if you are willing to accept that you may need to lead from the front. CotW can be pretty slow-moving. You can propose it at Wikisource talk:Collaboration of the Week. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:33, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

this is way too inactive i have nobody help and only somebody complain about my sources on a letter almost 2000 years old and i moved things to the talk page and the scriptorium and now on the new collaboration page you linked and it has been over a week and not one word so forget it. i added 9 works by Constantine and made links for about 40 of his letters if anybody else ever wants to bother but why bother? —unsigned comment by Sonofcaleb (talk) .

In a mid-size community, there are some things that take people's attention, and are of interest. This one doesn't seem to have done so. We have all spoken about works that we think would be of interest to others, and found that it hasn't been the case. Such is life.

With regard to sources, it is important to note the source of the work, so that when someone comes across it and either wants to use it or to validate the work that they can understand the veracity of the work. One shouldn't see it as a criticism for a worked to be sourced, it is akin to citing a work at the wikipedias, and should be accepted as good practice. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:20, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Page breaks in the middle of a paragraph

Take a look at Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar/2. Sketch of the History of the Hebrew Language.

Page 8 flows seamlessly into page 9, which flows seamlessly into page 10. In the scanned book these pages are broken in the middle of the paragraph, but it's not seen on the formatted page that presents the whole chapter and that is fine.

Page 10, however, doesn't flow seamlessly into page 11 - there's a visible paragraph break between them. I was trying to understand the difference between them and failed.

Does anyone understand what is happening here? Thanks --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:18, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

I've just experimented. At the end of page 10 there was a line-break after the section end tag. When I looked back at page 8 and 9, the line-break wasn't there. So I tried removing it on page 10 and the mid-paragraph page break has gone away. I don't know enough about LST to explain it, but ... Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:33, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I see your change and it makes perfect sense, but when i try to edit the page myself i don't see "<section end=par2 />" at all and instead of "<section begin=par2 />" i see "## par2 ##". How can i get back to seeing what the page really says when i edit? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:39, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

That's the "new" section syntax. I've turned it off for me as I prefer the "old" syntax. You can set it back in Gadgets. In the second section there's an option for using the "old" syntax. Cheers, Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:58, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:39, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Translation of PD-old

I have created Qing Dynasty Royal Decree of declaration of war against foreign powers which is a word by word translation of 对外宣战诏书(慈禧), which was issued in 21 June 1900. The translation is done by me, would it satisfied PD-old?Arilang1234 (talk) 11:24, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. The original is certainly {{PD-old}} (the Guangxu Emperor died in 1908, more than 100 years ago), but the translation is recently done, so it is still in copyright. Since it is done by you, you can release the copyright it under an appropriate license such as {{CC-BY-SA}} or {{PD-self}}. We use the following to denote a translation with different licenses for the original and translation (change as appropriate):

{{translation license
 | original    = {{PD-old}}
 | translation = {{PD-self}}
}}

Cheers, --Inductiveload—talk/contribs 12:35, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment.Arilang1234 (talk) 10:39, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Generally for a translation that is being translated locally, and not from a published source, we would use | translator = Wikisource and a more generic licence than PD-self. The reason being that as we replicate a published text, though with translations solely done here from a foreign language text, others can and are encouraged to edit as required. Generally we would be asking for CC-BY-SA. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Erik N. Kjellesvig-Waering

I'm new in US copyright law (german is much easier), so I have a little question about the works of Erik Norman Kjellesvig-Waering:

1. Eurypterids of the Devonian Holland Quarry shale of Ohio. Fieldiana, Geology, Vol. 14, No. 5 (1961) [25]
2. Pennsylvanian invertebrates of the Mazon Creek area, Illinois : Eurypterida. Fieldiana, Geology, Vol. 12, No. 6 (1963) [26]
3. A revision of the families and genera of the Stylonuracea (Eurypterida). Fieldiana, Geology, Vol. 14, No. 9 (1966) [27]
4. Scorpionida : the holotype of Mazonia woodiana Meek and Worthen, 1868. Fieldiana, Geology, Vol. 12, No. 11 (1969) [28]

I guess the first two are PD-US-no-renewal, because I can't find any record for the Fieldiana, Geology here (or any other Fieldiana). For the second two I can't find any (c) in the document, so they are PD-US-no-notice? --enomil (talk) 22:02, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

I am presuming that the journal is an American publication, and the works are first published in the US, if yes, then that is how I see the circumstances of their copyright status from the evidence produced. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The Fieldiana is the publication series of the Field Museum and the works are first published in it. I have also checked for entries of Kjellesvig-Waering here and here (if he had rewened for his own): no matches. So, they are okay for Commons and en.ws? --enomil (talk) 13:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Article title disambiguation

Through an article title error, I just learned about the Mainspace disambiguation pages. The PSM project alone has 161 multi part articles so far, and if I am assuming correctly, they should also be part of this category. However, this is a manually maintained list and thus it will never be up to date. Would it not be better to just add the category to the page, as manually maintained lists can never be up to date?— Ineuw talk 22:32, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

The individual parts of a multi-part PSM article do not need to be disambiguated from each other. But when distinct, unrelated PSM articles have the same title, they do need to be, and indeed they are. See, for example, Science and Religion, Technical Education, Spontaneous Generation, Sir Charles Lyell, and many others. Hesperian 23:54, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Also note that the whole point of Science and Religion is to aid the reader who types in "Science and Religion" to find the particular work they are looking for. In this case we have three such works, two of which are PSM articles. Dropping PSM maintenance pages into Category:Mainspace disambiguation pages will not aid the reader in any way. Hesperian 00:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I meant to add Category:Mainspace disambiguation pages in addition to "Science and religion" since I know that the subject is important.— Ineuw talk 00:44, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Index:Works Translated by William Whiston.djvu

A couple of questions dealing with the above index file (book):

1. Should we transclude this as a all-new version (to go along with the text already on here)?

or

2. Should we replace the text already on here with this new, proofread text (Its not proofread now but will be)?

or

3. Should we just use this as a backup for the text already on here?

Thanks for any input/consideration. - Tannertsf (talk) 15:41, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The text of Josephus' works that we already have is the Whiston translation, so I don't think a new version alongside of what we've got is required. The Antiquities of the Jews is a PG work and Against Apion is a CCEL work. So both of these have a low priority for replacement. There is no source given for The War of the Jews, but it was added at the same time as Against Apion by the same contributor, so I guess that its source is CCEL also. CCEL and PG works are proofread and validated in their systems, therefore I see no point in proofreading this djvu version unless there are major differences. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:55, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Replace image with TeX?

Hello, I am mostly active on Commons. I tagged this File with "Use TeX". The procedure is as follows: Someone proposes TeX code to display the formula. The use of the image is then replaced by the TeX code. When the file is unused it is deleted, hence media that can be displayed as "Text" is out of scope. My questions:

1. Is it appreciated to replace the image used on this page as well, or should it show the original scan? (Maybe Wikisource has other rules as Wikipedia.)
2. Can this file be deleted in case it is no longer used? It has "historic value". This could be considered by using this category. The file would (most likely) not be deleted then.

Thanks Jahobr (talk) 20:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

I've replaced the image where it is used on the page with TeX code. As far as I am concerned, where it is possible to replace formula images with TeX, it should always be done. About deleting the image, I don't know what the policy is at Commons. - Htonl (talk) 21:03, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

We don't need the image on Wikisource. The historical/source document aspect is covered by File:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu. If Commons wants to delete, it shouldn't be a problem for Wikisource (and even if it is, it can be recreated from the DjVu as necessary). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:18, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. So it is "business as usual". Jahobr (talk) 15:28, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Please don’t delete any of the images from the PSM galleries on the Commons even if they are not used. They serve as .djvu place markers as can be seen from their file name. The unfortunate fact is that Appleton’s Publishing reprinted more than one edition of the PSM volumes, and often the two editions of the same volume are NOT the same! Images in one may not appear in the other and vice versa. This helps me locate the better edition on Internet Archive where they scanned and posted more than one edition. Also, IA - when time and their resources permit - corrects their works and rescan books. Unfortunately they don’t remove the poor scans.

Regarding formulas - as far as I know, on Wikisource, one can either use the image, or TeX, as no one advised me otherwise, and in my opinion each has it’s advantages & disadvantages. With TeX, it’s the knowledge of TeX and the larger print size, with images it’s clarity of the reproduction. — Ineuw talk 22:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

If we have formulas in images over at Commons, then we should be labelling them with {{Use TeX}} there. Here we should encourage their conversion and one would think that they could easily be classified as problematic and either use the language marker template [[Template:Language characters](?), or create an alternative.

To push the process for dealing with TeX images at Commons, I have nominated it for deletion, so that the discussion can occur and have a resolution or an approach decided either way. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:44, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Author pages

(Move log); 16:47 . . Cygnis insignis (Talk | contribs) Author:William Matthew Flinders Petrie moved to Author:Flinders Petrie over redirect (according to en.wp., unambiguous refs)

Am I wrong in thinking that our author pages are supposed to be at the full name of the author? StateOfAvon (talk) 22:20, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I have moved it back. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not aware of any discussion of this 'rule', though I have often given reasons not to do it in my edit summaries. The response has been to ignore these rationales, carefully considered for individual author pages, and persist in to apply the 'rule' elsewhere until the momentum can be presented as a faux-policy and therefore a "janitorial" task. Authors often chose to style their name in a way that is different to the 'legal name', and author intent is a key guideline in determinations at this site, eg. it was a mystery why the page Author:Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis appeared on my watchlist until I realised it was an author who was very familiar to me. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 10:38, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• • This. We don't have an author page for Mark Twain. That is an absolute joke. Hesperian 10:59, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

AKA, Samuel Langhorne Clemens? Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:26, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

On second thought, it occurred to me that there might be humor(?) in your statement, and I am too obtuse to catch it...? Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:34, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Spelling

When you create a new Index page, the following text appears:

You are viewing an inexistent page

It would be better if the word "inexistent" were changed to "non-existent" or better yet the whole sentence changed to "You are viewing a page which does not exist". —Tom Morris (talk) 14:02, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I've changed it to simply "This page does not exist yet" (from the message's talk page, it's a bit of a contradiction to view a page that doesn't exist. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 20:31, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

US National Archives and Wikisource

Undiscovered gems...

...or significant

historical works.

Hi all. This summer, I am serving as the Wikipedian in Residence at the United States National Archives (see Signpost, see announcement). As part of this project, and despite the title, the National Archives is very interested in working with Wikisource in crowdsourcing human-checked transcriptions of documents. Moreover, it is interested in increasing the quality and quantity of pagescans available on Wikisource from the National Archives, which I am sure you will appreciate. :-) This is an incredible opportunity to work with one of the major institutions in our field with immense holdings. While I am a fan and a follower of Wikisource, I would love to enlist the help of some of you regular editors to help make this happen. I can spend all day adding pagescans of historical documents to Commons, but without a community effort they will simply languish untrancribed and unused. Basically, I would like to help you Wikisourcerors do what you already want to do. Perhaps we might want to create a project page along the lines of WS:PSM; I have made WP:NARA on Wikipedia for a similar purpose (please check it out and get involved if you are also Wikipedia-inclined).

To get the ball rolling, I thought the "100 Milestone Documents" would be an excellent place to start. These are documents from the National Archives' holdings that have been determined to be some of the most significant documents in American history (and most have international import). Yet, I see that most of them are missing or poorly represented on Wikisource, perhaps lacking images altogether and with text simply lifted from another source, and often with no indication of which actual version is being described. The Monroe Doctrine has some of these issues, for example. I would like to challenge the Wikisource community to complete these documents (and any others among the multitude available from the National Archives).

Most of the National Archives' digitized documents are provided on the web through their catalog in scaled-down versions that do not represent text well. If you are working on one of these documents I can get a high-quality scan, including the original TIFF, like I did with this document: File:Memorial of the Cherokees.tif (and with the Ansel Adams donation). Moreover, the National Archives would really like to form a collaboration, and will highlight and encourage this kind of activity in any way it can. New Wikisource work will be showcased on their sites, like [29] and [30] (see "Read more" section) and could likely be linked to from an "Online resources" field in the document's catalog record.

So, what I am really looking for is some help from you guys to (1) create some kind of local project infrastructure with a requests page and anything else that will help you identify and collaborate on texts, and, especially (2) help from everyone to publicize this effort and bring in all the volunteers that might be interested (surely not everyone watches the Scriptorium closely, for example!). I will be your conduit to the National Archives. ;-) Dominic (talk) 17:49, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm on board (and its about &*#$&@! time!). While your suggustion of 100 Milestone Documents might seem a reasonable place to start, I'd think you'd might do better by recruiting some of the regular WS help first by addressing the missing works in the already existing U.S. projects floating around. Please take a look at ...

• United States Statutes at Large (the missing volumes in transcription projects table)
• Wikisource:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases (we could use scans of the U.S. Reports to validate what we already have for example)
• Wikisource:WikiProject United States Executive Orders/Indexes, Portal:Executive Orders, for lists of Presidential EOs & Proclamations to see what's missing in general
• ... and I'm sure there will be more, those are just off the top of my head.

Thanks for your attention in advance and again, welcome to Wikisource -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:36, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

p.s. - can you please validate the U.S. Constitution while you're at it? -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:47, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

To be clear, I am hoping to spend my days aiding a real community effort around this, rather than doing a lot of transcribing or validating myself. So, it sounds like a requests page my be useful. In order to make them most efficient, it would really help if you could search http://arcweb.archives.gov/ and find a catalog record for the documents you'd like (i.e., an ARC Identifier number) and include it with any requests. At this point, the easiest material to get is the stuff that already has a scaled-down web version (look for the "digital media" icon in search results). Making those available just involves tracking down the drive where the files are stored and uploading them. Newly digitizing documents takes a lot of time and effort, so you might be waiting a while for any other material, though I can inquire. Dominic (talk) 20:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

If we could easily ascertian the ARC Identifier/MLR Numbers we would have done all that already. Nobody expects anybody to doing anything one way or the other around here but if you have access then it only makes sense for you just to do the leg work and locate the missing stuff. In light of having little progress on obtaining those works elsewhere for free, if you could just bump up the list of "things to digitize" over there, then that's helping Wikisource out too.

If we wanted 100 Bestest Documents we'd go to OurDocuments.gov and skip WikiSource altogether. There are enough copies of that kind of stuff floating around on the internet to insure they will still be around long after Washington D.C. falls into the sea. What we need are the archives held hostage by the boobs at GoogleBooks (who wouldn't know Public Domain if it pee'd on its leg) or the profiteers at LEXIS/NEXIS (who for a small fee of a kidney or two will let you access what should be in the Public Domain for free as well). If you can't at least put those wheels in motion then you might as well focus on advertising this project on Wikipedia to recruit people to host/transcribe the available works eventually on WikiSource. There just isn't enough independent dedicated user traffic currently on Wikisource to meet what I think you were hoping to do. What dedicated users that do lurk about on Wikisource are fairly tied down to their own existing topics and projects (though everybody is open to pitiching in whenever they can - your mileage may vary and to be clear - I don't speak for everyone on Wikisource either). -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:09, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

I am very realistic about what Wikisource can accomplish; I just want to make sure it's able to utilize the National Archives' offer of assistance to the fullest. You might have missed my point slightly. I am asking for the ARC Identifier because that's how I would look them up to get the scans, since they aren't always currently public. From the looks of it, I don't think Wikisource editors have been especially careful about including those citation numbers in the past, probably because it didn't seem very important. A "100 Milestone Documents" project was just a suggestion, and you're free not to not like it. And, realistically, while I will ask about as-of-yet-undigitized documents (please make a list of priorities!) there is probably not a high chance we will get them in the near-term unless there are any locals who want to come in to an actual National Archives and volunteer to scan. I will be reaching out to local amateur scanning groups, though, so that list of Wikisource priorities might interest them, too. Dominic (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• I would be glad to help out however I can, I know the project would love to have access to great scans. but we don't have a huge volunteer base to proofread as much as you can scan in during the summer. Our community project Wikisource:Proofread of the Month usually get through a single book a month. Perhaps involving Wikipedia groups that have an interest in the available works, that can be stored on Wikisource to support their projects on Wikipedia? JeepdaySock (talk) 10:53, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

I think this is a wonderful idea, and I'd love to help in whatever way I can (and how much my schedule this summer will allow). I'd pitch in to help with creating the infrastructure for the local project and the transcription. My question, Dominic, is how to navigate the OurDocuments.gov website. I can easily find the "100 Milestone Documents" and the "People's Vote" documents. But I can't find anything else that is a source text (and I'm sure they have a lot more), so I wouldn't even know what to put on the WikiProject page. In this regard, a website like Library of Congress is more appealing since it's much easier to find texts.

Of course, there is much value the National Archives which we could and should tap, and I'd love to help out. I think we just need a sense of what the National Archives has scanned and what's not listed on their website to help out more. And it would be nice to advertise on WP or COM, since we are pretty small and don't have the manpower for the sheer influx of documents that the National Archives could give.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 12:50, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the official record keeper of Federal Government and little else. The Library of Congress is more akin to a "real" library in the sense that it holds much more than just important or historical Federal documents. Its gone well beyond its primary function over the decades (a research arm for Congress) as well. Neither is particularly friendly to the Google enabled so good luck finding actual scans rather than reams and reams of microfilm - I hope you do better than I do.

Basically, there are only two ways to search NARA for possibly interesting WS-hostable stuff...

• Archival Research Catalog (ARC)
• Access to Archival Databases (AAD)

The ARC & MLR numbers drive everything so I'd make sure to get those on anything one may find online because names or titles really don't help in locating the hard copies to scan or that have been scanned. -- George Orwell III (talk) 13:22, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Zhaladshar, this is good information. I didn't mean to imply that OurDocuments.gov was anything like a catalog; it's just a side project of theirs. And yes, even that site only has limited images, which was kind of my point. Most documents are on the web in incomplete and poor versions, even though they have been scanned at some point. Right now, the easiest thing to do is to search for items which already have digital copies online. These will typically be scaled-down or incomplete, and often unusable, but I have access to the original high-resolution TIFFs. Dominic (talk) 14:39, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Right. Sites like OurDocuments.gov at one time use to (and probably still) do stupid things like provide only the first and last pages of a seven-page document. The missing 5 pages (along with the other 2) would usually turn up somewhere in the NARA site(s) if you knew where to look long enough. I gather the point being made now is in those instances where we know a scan exists (have a 1st and last page somewhere online) and there is no current way to ascertain where those missing 5 pages are on NARA (if at all), we can request the entire archive be (re)released/(re)listed so that we can upload and transcribe a complete work -- or something along those lines. -- George Orwell III (talk) 15:42, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

• I think a good think to do would be to set up WS:NARA, and have people willing to at least prepare index pages for the files you rescue, and link them to the appropriate portals and author pages with {{small scan link}}. That will give us a base to work on in future, and it is easy for people to jump in a do a page here and there. If they had to fetch a file, set up an index page and link all by themselves, you won't get the casual editors involved, or those with little WS experience. If people are going to come from WP, let's make it easy for them!
• My proposal is to set up WS:NARA as three lists:

1. List of works wanted (preferably with ARC IDs, etc)
2. List of works uploaded to Commons needing WS groundwork (Indexes, linking, etc)
3. List of works prepared for editing (i.e. no longer in the WS:NARA system).

• We could also arrange a Proofread of the Month to be proofreading a set of shorter documents rather than one big work. That can attract several thousand edits, many from newbies. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 00:11, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

• I have set up Wikisource:WikiProject NARA to co-ordinate the retrieval and preparation of works coming from NARA. Any users interested are encouraged to add their names and a brief statement of skills they would like to lend to the project. Hopefully we will attract some outsiders with this project, so it would be nice for them to get to know the team. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 03:56, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
  • That looks awesome. I really appreciate the work you did, Inductiveload. :-) Dominic (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
    • You're welcome! WS:NARA is now also CotW, replacing one that is from September(!). There is no "next" CotW planned, so it will last until someone gets an itch. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 04:14, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

• I think where Wikisource can really help you is with the set-up and support of these projects. We have learned the tricks of the trade and common pitfalls and can help you and your proofreaders beat the learning curve. What documents you want to focus on should be predicated by where you are getting the proofreaders interested. Whether they can be gathered from ranks of Wikipedians or through the connections of the NAR, what you can find that interests them would be the best guide for content. But you are putting the cart before the horse at this point. First you need to find the volunteer proofreaders, then with their help select content, then let us know what you will be focusing on and where the files are and we will bust out the structure so that your proofreaders don't notice there being a high bar to jumping into the project. We don't really get the traffic to supply you with proofreaders directly. I don't suggest you use a "Build it and they will come" approach--BirgitteSB 00:52, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Accessibility for the colour blind?

Based on a recent discussion on the Australian Wikimedia list, and some recent experience that I've had on nl.wikisource, I got to wondering just how accessible the proofreading process is for those with vision problems, especially colourblindness. If you go to a page in the page namespace over there (like this), where the required CSS is not active, it all looks like a bit of a mystery unless you actually know what's going on. Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone who can't simply fix the problem by having a stylesheet installed.

While the proofreading extension is fantastic, I think that the extensive use of colourcoding may make proofreading harder than it needs to be for the ~4% of the population who do suffer from some form of colourblindness. MichelleG (talk) 12:04, 11 June 2011 (UTC).

Are you referring to the four colours that show up for the page status radio button? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:33, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Looking at those, I notice they don't even have appear-on-hover tooltips to explain the meaning of those colours. I think we should at least have that. - Htonl (talk) 13:45, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Billinghurst for not making it clear, yes, that's what I'm referring to (as well as the colour coding on Index: pages). MichelleG (talk) 06:20, 12 June 2011 (UTC).

Confirming a duplication, and probably a cleanup required

I think that I am seeing some duplication of a work however, due to the size of the dupe and cleanup that is required, I am wanting others opinion.

• The History Of England From the Accession of James II/Volume I/Chapter V
• The History Of England From the Accession of James II/Chapter V

http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=The+History+Of+England+From+the+Accession+of+James+II&namespace=0

If there is someone willing to resolve the matter, then go for it, I am in the midst of other janitorial duties. — billinghurst sDrewth

I checked the texts and they are identical, and both branch from The History Of England From the Accession of James II main page, but with the following differences:

• One is annotated and seems to be complete, but the Volume structure is part of the same main page.
• The duplicate version to be deleted is unfinished text without annotations. The volumes are sub pages and the chapters are sub pages of the volumes. I directed these incomplete duplicates to my user page User:Ineuw#To_be_deleted by prefixing the main name space with User:Ineuw but was unable to unlink them from The History Of England From the Accession of James II. I hope this helps.— Ineuw talk 06:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Is There a Santa Claus edit

Does anyone else approve of Theornamentalist "modernizing" Is There a Santa Claus to remove a copy of the little girl's letter? ResScholar (talk) 06:35, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can see, he's not removing it, just transcluding in Page:Yes,Virginia,ThereIsASantaClausClipping.jpg instead. There seems to be a preference for transcluding in stuff from the page namespace these days, hence "modernising" :-). MichelleG (talk) 06:52, 12 June 2011 (UTC).

It was converted to a transclusion. I have readded the images, see if that helps. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Re:ResidentScholar: I apologize for the edits you found unnecessary; regarding what has been added back: I find including the original scan of the Newspaper article redundant and sort of working against the objective of transclusion, in that transcluding is supposed to exclude the original artifact. Of the girls original letter, that to me can be included as it has some quality which may not be easily captured by transclusion with the girls handwriting and such. I don't mind either there, but overall feel that the Sun clip is unnecessary. Won't personally remove it though again as its no big deal. Same with the inclusion of the note; I know it's a notes field, but was only personal preference to remove it. Finally, the {{similar}} link above the header, I feel should be in the notes field, and not above the header. Oh, and can someone validate it when they get a chance? - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:24, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

What if I were to tell you I found the edits producing the transclusion unnecessary? Wouldn't that render the apology you made for your edits insulting, by asking (after indicating it being an arbitrary item of your concern) someone to reconfirm acts for which you just apologized, and especially after embracing in your so-called apology for your edits, among other nullifications, the statement that you simply removed what you "overall feel...is unnecessary"?

And that just addresses your tone. The substance of your defense for denuding an article (calling it "moderniz[ing]"), in one edit, of its accretions that had been gathering since prior to the origination of English Wikisource, is that it happened in installments.

You just didn't consider the notes field first, where it says the editorial is "an indelible part of Christmas lore" (and probably ties for first as having the most memorable line from an American editorial with "Go west, young man!") so you didn't realize the document itself had historical significance that would interest Wikisource's readers (Actually you didn't say you didn't realize it; you said it didn't appeal to your "personal preference"—again, slighting historical significance by calling it an arbritrary item of your concern, instead of it being what is essential).

No you just happened to consider the newspaper itself first so you said "Gee, I'll transclude it—don't need the original here!" then "don't need the original of the original—modernizing away!" then the notes section, "Just describes what I removed! Why bother to read it?"

To me, this kind of reasoning resembles the Paula Poundstone Theory of Poptarts sooner than a valid defense for deleting the most significant items from our 125th most popular page on Wikisource. ResScholar (talk) 09:05, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I don't understand where you found any tone; I went over each point that seemed to be of conflict with what you reverted so you could understand why I edited the way I did. As for the notes field, something like what is present in the notes field I personally find to be more appropriate for Wikipedia, which we have a link for in the sister sites area. As for each "page," we typically have one item per page, and since the clip had both, that seemed the way to go. I see no reason for transcluding to do any harm to your page, but I guess I should be more careful in the future. As I said before "its no big deal," its a wiki, people make edits on "completed" pages all the time, that's the purpose of a wiki, the fact that you took such offense to it I find peculiar, but again, no big deal. Won't touch the page again. - Theornamentalist (talk) 15:28, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The issue about {{similar}} is that some of our header styles made it impossible to embed similar properly, and due to the early days of how things were implemented it was looking butt ugly. As is discussed at Template talk:header it would be good to see all that matter merged in a neat way into {{plain sister}} though it becomes an issue of size and display. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:08, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

What do you think of AdamBMorgan's latest proposal? - Theornamentalist (talk) 14:53, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

PD tag on individual pages?

A "duh" question from me: If Mainspace pages (which make up a whole text) are linked to (subpages of) a Mainspace Title, we don't need to place a tag on every page do we?—just on the Mainspace "title page"? Just checking! Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:35, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

When I asked this long ago, I was told that we assume that a license tag on a page is assumed by default to apply to its subpages, unless the subpage has its own tag. (So, yes, we don't need to tag every subpage.) - Htonl (talk) 15:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:52, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

An example of this can be where there is a modern foreword/commentary/preface/... etc. to an old text, alternatively where an old work is inserted into a more modern work, though generally we don't overly concern. Other examples are periodicals where the overarching work will have one licence, eg. {{PD-1923}} and the other parts can be licenced more accurately if desired. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Question about proposed policy page procedure

How do I resolve a dispute regarding the proposed policy Wikisource:Annotations. It's not a content dispute per se, rather the user (Cygnis insignis) is using strike-outs and unsigned opinions as part of the proposed policy, directly in the policies themselves. His opinions are fine, lets discuss them on the talk page, but not directly in the proposed policy page! That's what the discussion page is for. In 8 years of Wikipedia I've never seen anyone do this. I've tried multiple compromises, but the user is adamant about using strike outs and unsigned opinions as part of the proposed policy itself. So I need help with conflict resolution on this, as we are at the point of simply reverting one another and I don't want to be in a revert war. What should do? (I'm not that familiar with Wikisource). Thanks. Green Cardamom (talk) 15:46, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I've started a vote on point of procedure for proposed policy page, welcome any feedback. Green Cardamom (talk) 14:59, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

It is looking butt ugly and confusing as a document. One would think if a respectful position could not be achieved on how to progress then we would look to utilise recommended processes from other wiki spaces, eg. Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle . Generally we would keep our bold to sentence case as we try not to do the yelling here. ;-) I suspect that we need to pare it back to an agreed position, even if that is a long way back, and then progress from there through discussion, ideally on the talk page. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:15, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is the proposed "policy" page is not a policy at all, but an argument for why annotations should exist at Wikisource. It shouldn't do that, that's a separate discussion. As a proposed policy, it should provide rules and guidelines, under the assumption that Annotations are allowed. So maybe the thing to do is remove the rationales and leave a core set of rules/guidelines. Then the debate over the existence of Annotations can proceed in a more appropriate forum elsewhere. Green Cardamom (talk) 23:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Noob Question: Hidden header/footers?

I am curious how to see/edit headers and footers. Apparently I used to be smarter then I am now, because I manged to do this once, but it seems I have lost the art. Thenub314 (talk) 21:29, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

There should be an icon the looks like [+] over the scanned page image. Clicking that should make the header and footer visible or hidden. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:02, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Strangely I don't see it. I will try a different skin and see if it shows up then. Thenub314 (talk) 23:38, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I am feeling about as thick as a brick. But I really don't see it. Is there anyway I could have a bad setting? Thenub314 (talk) 05:34, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I can't see it either; apparently it is gone/broken.

Thenub314, go into the Gadgets tab of Special:Preferences, check "Show header and footer fields when editing in the Page namespace", and save. This will make headers and footers show by default.

Hesperian 05:54, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, make sure the Enhanced editing toolbar is turned off under the Editing tab of Preferences. It doesn't behave in the Page namespace. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:19, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Instructions at User:Billinghurst/HeaderToggle. To note that I tried to build new buttons for the WikiEditor, and I failed miserably, though not surprising seeing that I am not a hacker. Krinkle (talk • contribs) listened to my plaintive wails and has been building a better button maker, which has just become available for playtime. I am hoping that I can have something in place by the end of June. Taken long enough. :-/ 08:01, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks everyone! Thenub314 (talk) 20:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Good (bad!?) to know that these buttons stopped working here too and this isn't a problem just on Portuguese Wikisource. Helder 17:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The buttons for zoom and for getting the OCR can be added by means of this code (see this screenshot). I think the two remaining buttons (for toggling the visibility of the headers and the layout) can only be added if the problem mentioned on bugzilla:28574#c3 is solved. Helder 19:25, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Brion fixed the code of the Proofread Page extension ;-)

Now we just need some admin to fixing also the code which adds the OCR button (on oldwikisource:MediaWiki:OCR.js). Helder 22:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

User talk:page created on it.wikisource

I received an email showing that a user account (talk page) was created for Londonjackbooks (apparently by Xavier121; a quick scan of his contributions show a couple other familiar names from here that he created pages for as well) "over" at the Italian WS. I have not made any contributions to it; is it just that the WS sites are "connected"? can I expect similar user page creations from other WS sites? Just wondering... Londonjackbooks (talk) 12:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Did you visit it.ws at all? Some wikis which have programmes for welcoming new users seem to detect you as a new user even if you visit without editing. I presume that Xavier121 is involved in such a welcome programme. - Htonl (talk) 13:16, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, my only guess is that when I was looking around for Aquinas' "On Kingship" (De Regimini Principum) a while back, I think I remember getting a link to the it.ws site during that time... So, if I was logged in to WM at the time I was merely browsing, I can then be detected somehow? Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:32, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it seems that if you are logged in (with unified login) and you visit a wiki for the first time, your account is automatically created on that wiki; and user account creations are logged - here, for example, is the en.ws user creation log. - Htonl (talk) 14:14, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok. That makes sense. I shouldn't be so naïve anyway as to think that browsing of any sort can go "undetected"... Always curious as to the "how" of it all anyway, so thanks! Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:02, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, you can take comfort in the fact that no-one knows which pages you browsed - except, I suppose, the admins with access to the server logs. :) Actually, I wonder if they even keep logs of page views; it'd need a huge amount of storage. - Htonl (talk) 17:56, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

But it would be worth having privacy advocates request that WMF come up with a definitive policy on destroying those records since it's nobody's business if I read sappy love poetry into the morning hours. StateOfAvon (talk) 19:02, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

We have a privacy policy. This would seem to be a violation of it. I have raised this at Meta:Talk:Privacy policy. Hesperian 01:09, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

While Wikimedia probably can get visitor records, like any other website, it doesn't necessarily have to be linking that with a user name. The site software needs to detect you as a user in order to display the right links in the top left (userpage, talk, watchlist etc) as well as check for "you have messages" pop up messages. That is probably what it.ws is using as a basis for automatic messages. The page view records may well be a completely different system (although they quite possibly capture your IP number). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 21:56, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

For some clarity, there is no person who can identify which page any person has visited; what has triggered on the noted occasion is that a logged-in user has visited a new wiki and their account has been created on that wiki. The information is available to anyone in the local log file, and it is no different than looking at Special:RecentChanges where new accounts are noted as well as page edits, moves, etc. There is the logging of edits in the page history. @StateOfAvon: WMF is ultracautious about all aspects privacy and their logs, and I would think that they cull their log files regularly and I doubt that they associated page visits to an account name. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess it's similar to personal websites: some of which [poor grammar here, I think] you can view IP addresses of visitors to your site, as well as how many page visits they make, but not the exact page(s) each unique visitor has visited... No worries... Thanks all for the input, Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────┘
Hi! I'm OrbiliusMagister, bureaucrat at it.source. Let me explain something and ask for an "external" opinion about this topic:

On it.source no bots welcome users. RC show only self-registered users on their firs login, but we like the idea of welcoming also automatically created users, as they appear through special log pages. I always thought that a sing of wikilove, even if unsolicited, lets such users understand that they are both noticed and welcome. There's no particular purpose nor any kind of menace, but recently a user deleted his/her user talk in disappointment because he didn't want to be noticed... is it such a scary experience? Should we ignore automatically created accounts? I know that there is a different perception of privacy in different places, but what's the concern in welcoming anyone passing thorugh it.source? I'd like to read some more information about this topic. - εΔω 13:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Gday OrbiliusMagister. I too used to welcome all new users (from the local creation log) so that they could have some information about what we were about. Another admin did have an opinion that we should not be welcoming all people, and while I did not fully agree with their position, I listened to that and generally now only welcome those who edit. We should welcome people and my two basic premises are 1) newbies often are looking for somewhere to ask a newbie question, and the welcome script gives them basic info and a contact name; 2) some like being welcomed, and we like for them to join the conversations, and a welcome is the best and most efficient means. There will always be some who want to fly under the radar, and that should be okay, and if they blank a generic message (welcome) <shrug> so be it; if it was a specific message, eg. a "please don't", then probably not okay. (personal opinion only) — billinghurst sDrewth 00:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Request for a hold-off

I would like to request a hold-off on editing for Roman History (and all remaining 8 volumes) because of this fact. I am a teacher, and have inherited a class that works on typing in/proofreading works. Outlines of European History Part 1 was suspended for the class, but now that I see Dio's work on here, I want them to work on it. I promise this would be a completed task, and will be worked on every day. - Tannertsf (talk) 17:18, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

So, what is happening with Index:Outlines of European History.djvu? Has it been abandonned by your class? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:09, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. Yes. because until Roman History is done, they aren't working on it. No, because they will be back to it later. - Tannertsf (talk) 23:35, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Suggest that you put a note on the index page, eg. {{inuse}} or something from that category that is appropriate. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:44, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Annotations

Can we as a community please look at forming a consensus on whether or not we host user-generated annotations? There seems to be two points of view:

1. User-generated annotations add value and should fall within our mission.
2. We are librarians. We curate texts; we don't improve them. Adding our own annotations is akin to scrawling in the margins.

Position 1 is historically our policy. But over the last few years there has been a strong shift towards stringently validating works as they are, and many of us now consider unvalidable pages with user-generated content, such as The Annotated Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde/Story Of The Door, to be contrary to our mission.

My personal opinion is annotations are problematic and do not fit in here. If I had my way, novel works like The Annotated Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde would be moved to Wikibooks. Hesperian 02:38, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I disagree about blanking Wikisource:Annotations. Why blank it now after 6 years when finally its being discussed? It's useful to reference for the discussion. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

"Why blank it now after 6 years when finally its being discussed?" Because, as you know, there was an edit war over its content. Hesperian 04:16, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Edit war? Uh, ok... Anyway, still doesn't make sense to blank the page. Add a big header pointing to this discussion, leave the content for reference. Would that be an OK compromise? Green Cardamom (talk) 04:49, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Which version should be restored for reference? Hesperian 05:01, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't care. Your choice. If you prefer, restore to the anti-annotation version. The point is we need the page for reference, all the stuff is there either way, it's just in strikeout. Green Cardamom (talk) 17:02, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Questions

Are internal wikisource links included in the definition of annotations? I mean, if an author's name, publisher or work are in the text. Also, I know Cygnis dislikes portal linking, ie

"called religion in the strict sense; for Buddhism and Taoism have never had any connection with the State,"

but I find it useful. They also dislike my using of the word useful, and if responded, I anticipate the word useful to either appear in italics or apostrophes. :) - Theornamentalist (talk) 02:53, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I believe that internal wikilinks should be the only annotations permitted. Hesperian 04:17, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Is there a problem with offering our visitors a range of choices for every text? They can prefer to see a text without links first, then at another moment with such kind of links, then with such other kind of links, then see the nude text again; to see a kind of annotations, chosen, and being given a possibility to know where these annotations came from and who wrote them and when; for instance chosing between an old spelling and a modern one; then to have the possibility to come back easily to the nude original text again. Technically it is possible, see the options tried here. I don’t mean it would be necessary that we have them all, but we may offer choices to our reader instead of deciding ourselves what will be offered, don’t you think so? --Zyephyrus (talk) 00:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Question - Similar to simple.wikipedia.org, what about annotated.wikisource.org? Green Cardamom (talk) 03:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

If it was considered necessary for this type of thing, I would think that the braver(?) option would be to create an [annotated] namespace and tab (akin to wiktionary's citation namespace and tab) and that could be utilised in a similar functionality. The work belongs at Wikisource, and any annotation is additional to the work, so it is a matter of working out how initially, and if the annotation becomes more commentary, then I would think that then it might go to Wikibooks. I don't think that creating an extra property is the answer. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

How hard is it to add new namespaces like that? Especially attached the mainspace like a talk page? I remember something about handling metadata with such a page but I don't know if the idea went anywhere. I like the optional view approach, probably using javascript, but if we decide that we really need to separate original texts from the annotations, the namespace would be a good way to do it. (If so, getting metadata done at the same time might be helpful, or at least efficient.) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 01:05, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Community decision, after rationale discussion, and I don't know if there is any limitation to the number of namespaces. Personally I don't think that it is my favoured position as it is just another space to manage and try to explain to newbies. I too would like to see a "hide/show" functionality. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

• Some of what we want for final output may already exist, or be able to be used more broadly. Have a look at w:Help:Books/for_experts in reference to Category:Exclude in print. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:27, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Comments (annotations)

Wikibooks is not the answer, they do text and annotations differently there. Basically if you reject annotations here, there is no place in any MediaWiki project. The existing works will be deleted, and future annotation editors will have no available options open to them and will go elsewhere.

If the focus is on the librarians, the 1% elite of Wikisource, then of course get rid of annotations. If the focus is on readers and casual editors, the 99% majority, then it should be kept with a working policy. It's clear there has been a desire for annotations by many people over the years. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:08, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't mean that we are all librarians in a vocational sense. I mean that our role as Wikisourcerers is to be librarians, to curate and organise, but not to write new material.

I don't think it is at all clear that there has been a desire for annotations by many people over the years. As you point out, we've had an annotations policy for six years. In that time we've accrued, what, half a dozen annotated texts? What that says to me is that there is very little desire for or interest in annotations here.

Hesperian 04:14, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

More than six, if you were to look at how many documents contain "annotations" it's probably in the many thousands. Links to Wikipedia for example. One of the reasons there are not more full-fledged annotated works like J&Hyde is because 1) it takes a huge amount of effort and time and thus 2) Wikisource policy has always been wishy-washy, thus discouraging users from making the investment, given an uncertain future. If we had a real solid policy and welcoming attitude, it would encourage more users to take up annotating.

Basically what I see is the "librarian"-minded Wikisourcer doesn't want to be burdened worrying about Wikipedia-type material (original content by users) since it can't be verified using existing systems. I understand that, but this is a big sand box that no single person is responsible for or owns, there's room for multiple uses here. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, Wikibooks:Wikibooks:Annotated texts does not support your assertion that "Wikibooks is not the answer... If you reject annotations here, there is no place in any MediaWiki project." Hesperian 04:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

This is true. It does seem explicit, I had not read it in a while. I think the problem is they are looking for CliffNotes - that's basically what they do. Their policy page is vague, but look at the example annotated books, they don't seem to fit the model of annotating with full text and footnotes. I suspect they'll reject a transwiki. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

As I wrote on the Annotations talk page, Wikibooks' concept of an annotated work is slightly different from the approach used on Wikisource's annotations. Here, annotations consist of either wikilinks or additional footnotes in <ref> tags. Wikibooks annotations have additional sections and subpages examining elements such as characters and themes in the work. Additionally, several points on their policy page point towards a focus on classroom use ("if they are shown to be academic", "These are central classroom texts" etc). Wikisource's equivalent scope revolves around professionally published works, whether they are to be studied in a classroom or not. I think these differences, small though they may seem, are enough to provide a distinction between Wikisource annotations and Wikibooks annotations. What could qualify as a valid resource on one project could be the deleted at the other. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:39, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I think the difference is quantitative not qualitative. Wikisource is for clean originals. Wikibooks will host good solid annotated texts. Our annotated texts fall through the cracks not because they are qualitatively different but because they are half-baked. Hesperian 13:53, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Uh no, full-baked. A combination whole-text original + editorial footnotes and introductions. Good for you too :) It mirrors real-world practices in real books, like Oxford World's Classics or Penguin Classics, the policy page has examples of. Green Cardamom (talk) 17:01, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

   I hesitate to give my opinion here, due to my horrible lack of knowledge on WS, etc. policy/proposed policy... But if I may speak as a layman (which I am) here, I appreciate having easy access to wikilinked material; not so much when reading a fictional piece, but certainly when reading non-fiction—and the more technical the work, the more I appreciate the ready-reference. Law reference material comes to mind (since I have been dabbling in the genre lately)—with all the cross-referenced cases, terms, etc., wikilinks are very useful. If I was new to this site, and I came across the following unannotated reference, e.g.,—"United States vs. Knight, 156 U.S. 1. 1895"—and wanted to "dig deeper," true, I would merely plug it into a search engine and see what comes up. Sure enough, the WS article comes up at #8 in the results... But how much "better" is it to be able to "keep it in the family" first via annotation (we know original source texts are always the best place to start anyway, right?); and then if the reader wants to dig even deeper, they can.

   Thinking about the terms "qualitative" and "quantitative"—with regard to annotations: "Quality" to me here on WS means a nice, clean, faithful rendering of the original text (which, in the [my] opinion that I am trying to explain/establish—albeit not very well—can include well-chosen wikilinks). Hesperian (I think—correct me if I'm wrong) above refers to "quantity" as consisting of "good solid annotated texts" that aren't "half-baked"—like the sort you could find on Wikibooks. But "quantity" in my mind, and for our purposes, is irrelevant here on WS. In my opinion, annotation here on WS should consist of strict non-subjective internal-only wikilinking (perhaps an occasional sister-site link). The quantity would merely depend on the available material we have hosted here to wikilink to. I am a big fan of original source texts, and I look to WS for just that (it's like looking up lyrics to songs: better to consult songmeanings.net online? or the original CD booklet?) If I wanted commentary, I would happily go elsewhere. But here on WS, just "give me the facts!" Strict wikilinking can accomplish that without compromising the integrity of the works here. Any external links or additional facts can easily be placed on corresponding Talk:pages. I think the new text I recently uploaded illustrates pretty well what I am trying to get across... Enough from me, though, —Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:58, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

"But here on WS, just "give me the facts!"" Agreed. Keep in mind annotated texts don't replace or compete with Wikisource's vision. They just need a place to exist within the MediaWiki somewhere. It's not an either/or proposition. It's always been understood that a plain clean-text version always exists, and annotated versions are additional to, different versions clearly defined. It's really a no-starter to try and combine into a single document the plain text and annotated text, few people would go for that, for the reasons you mention. Green Cardamom (talk) 04:26, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - IMO, in order for the "Library" point (point 2) to be truly valid, in some sense we should be re-inserting the validated proofread text back into the file that was used to create the index of pages in the first place. The curator argument rings a bit hollow in the current absence of an easy way to (re)generate new (and corrected-text included) base files to supplant the file originally used in proofreading. I know there has been a bug-fix on this problem filed for sometime now but without an easy & reliable way for the reader/contributor to "carry off" an un-annotated work to further edit it as they may desire elsewhere (thus avoiding the scribbling in the margins in the process here), I do not see how we can fairly halt the practice of annotated versions, as controversial or contrary to current practices as they may be, on en.WS until that is resolved first. -- George Orwell III (talk) 07:31, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment - (Just to be clear, I support the hosting of annotations on Wikisource, this partly explains why.) Libraries and Librarians do produce some original material, usually based on or about their collections. The wiki-format is both one of Wikisource's strengths and one of our unique selling points. We are not the only online library of public domain works but we are the only one that can offer things like wikilinks to explain and support our works. The Wikisource mission could be considered "Collecting and preserving knowledge and literature for all" (where the sister projects disseminate knowledge in their own ways); this mission would be supported by having explanatory notes available either within or alongside the text to help readers understand the work. Additionally, we already do allow original, derivative works: we host original translations. Translations are novel works that involve an act of orginal creativity because languages do not map to each other exactly (backed up by the fact that translations may be copyrighted, requiring a Creative Commons licence here, and the basis of copyright is originality). While we don't have any at present, Simple Reader versions of our works could also be considered within our scope. Simple Reader versions of books exist with the language simplified (see also Simple English Wikipedia) and annotations added where necessary to explain certain points. Simple English should be acceptable here as a variant of the English language (just as, say, Anglo Saxon counts) and recreating a work in this dialect would be akin to a translation. Annotations are necessary to support this (as well as being an intermediary version of the same thing, helping readers who are not absolutely familiar with a topic or the English language). So, I think we should allow derivitive works on Wikisource as long as (1) they are marked as such in some way and (2) they are based on a non-derivative work already legitimately hosted on Wikisource. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 12:02, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
• Comment - I believe internal links should appear in the original version, i.e. Author, publisher, and other works, as well as internal portal links. There is no place that says we even have to act as a conventional library; these texts are PD, we can do whatever we want with them. So in this regard, I also support the existence of an annotated text option. However, I do not like our current system. I can't fathom the development behind such a thing, but I think the "neatest" way to separate these is simply offering an option under "Display options" which would alternate between the two similarly to how our layouts do. Default would be only internal links and non-annotated. Selecting "Annotations" would reveal sister-linked sites and whatever the hell else anyone decides to add in (in theory, not practice). Potential mess? Yes, but we're watching, and its obviously not a highly active endeavor; and the benefit is that our sister sites have a plethora of knowledge, making the ability to understand an archaic term or notable and illiterate 18th century english fisherman a click away.

  Is it possible to program this so that we can hide every sister link in its typical [[x:reader interest]], only allowing [[internal wikisource link]] in our works? - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:20, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• Again, no idea how to impliment, but I came across the javascript tool onClick; don't know if that helps. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:32, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

There would always be a clean text version. But I think whoever is doing the annotation project should have the freedom to use whichever annotation system on a per project basis. Just as Wikipedia offers multiple systems for footnotes. Green Cardamom (talk) 20:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I mean rather than create a separate page, to suppress annotations as it appears at default. I don't mind the added footnotes like in J&H and agree users should have the option for several systems. - Theornamentalist (talk) 20:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment At this point in time our annotation amount is a little like how long is a piece of string, so I find that the discussion useful at this time, though maybe not its circumstance. Some of Theornamentalist's comments give some background that I find food for thought. I am not in favour of plain jane works that do not have links, etc. Firstly, that is available from other sites so it is not our point of different, and we are librarians/stewards; though that is 21st librarians, not 19th century librarians. This is a library with coffee, talk, and multiple media. So we present the work as the author intended, though we give those people who wish to print or to download a clean version that option, or make even it the default option. So those things that I do (ie. that I find acceptable) are 1) try to provide the main links in the headers of the works, where possible 2) link to works and authors in the body of a work, especially being the case where the works have internal references themselves 3) for words that are misspelt and people may wish to correct {{SIC}}, 4) for words that are uncommon in current English, or archaic, a link to Wiktionary, and v.v. 5) for a major theme, significant assistance in understanding an article, I will consider a link to Wikipedia. 5) for errors in works, ie. where we have 20-20 historical hindsight, I will consider the use of {{user annotation}}, eg. The Times/1902/Obituary/Charles Kent 6) for certain works, I have also used some of the templates that utilise {{tooltip}}, eg. where there is continued use of Latin in the text, and its understanding is useful for reading the work, eg. expected contemporary knowledge of that time, is definitely not today. I feel that for a specific additional text annotation that there should be a clear benefit for that to occur, rather than its appearance as a feature.

  Where wouldn't I do annotations? Analytical interpretation of a work, especially where there is lots of this. Where the annotations detract from the author's intent, or overwhelm the author's work. If there is the call for such works, I am yet to be convinced that it is at WS, and one wonders if there was no WMF site, whether it should be enWB or enWS that should be first requested to adapt their position. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:34, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment It's starting to sound like everyone has a unique idea of what "annotation" means, there is no common definition. Maybe the first step is to define and name the "types" of annotation (intra-wiki-links, inter-wiki-links, ref tags w/ cites, ref tag with original analysis, transclusions, etc) by looking at existing examples on WS, and from comments in this thread. From that list of "types", it might be possible to build a more formal vote, with each type put up for vote. Once we know what types of annotation are allowed on WS (if any), then a policy can be built that deals with things such as when, where and how to annotate. As for existing annotated works that don't pass the vote, that would be a different process of either transwiki, cleanup to conform with new rules, or grandfathered in. Thoughts? Green Cardamom (talk) 21:21, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

• Sounds like a great idea; personally, other than linking directly to works, publishers and authors, I view everything else as an annotation. This even includes things such as {{SIC}}, but a list would be helpful to vote on. - Theornamentalist (talk) 23:42, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Probably because they are all annotations. Building the list is an excellent idea, as if we do look to means to nullify them in output, or other means, that gives us the ability to do some magic more easily. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:06, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I think there has always been consensus that a plain version of text should always be available through Wikisource. Consensus has been reached for the notes field in {{header}}. Consensus for some wikilinking of the text exists, but there is no consensus about which is the point where wikilinking should be disallowed nor if there is any such point at all. No consensus has ever been reached about any other methods of annotation to be encouraged, nor that any paticular method of annotation be enitrely disallowed so long as a plain version is available. In cases on no consensus, the field is open for experimentaion unitil the therorectical disscussions can left behind and consensus can be formed based on the examples produced by the experimentation. This example works; that example doesn't work. Discouraging experimentation only prolongs the period of no consensus. If we could reach consensus with theory alone; it would have happened already. The OP supposition that Wikisource should not host annotations on a purity basis is null, because we already do have consenusus for two forms of annotation. That line has already been crossed. Two further points; 1 "Because I have no interest in making nor reading X type of annotation" is not valid reasoning for holding that they do not belong here at all. 2 WS has eliminated entire types of works which once existed here and had no where else to go in the past. --BirgitteSB 13:44, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Identifying an annotation

I guess a simple yes or no with explanation if needed to identify what we should consider an annotation to be suppressed from the default preferred appearance of a work.

I more or less agree with Theornamentalist here, but before I add my name I'd like to see portal links considered, and I'd like to see a distinction between linking explicit cross-references in the work e.g. citations, "q.v.", "see Chapter 4", contents and index pages, etc; versus adding links when a work or author merely gets mentioned in passing. Hesperian 01:36, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Theornamentalist, thanks for the list. I was hoping to collaborate on a list of annotation types on a separate page, in the Wikisource:Annotations space, people need time and notification to contribute to the list. I don't think an informal Scriptorium vote is the way. This process should take weeks and involve many people, with broad notification of what's happening, there's no rush. I can tell you that some people at WMF (Wikimedia Foundation in San Fran) are aware of this issue and what's happening and are willing to help in any way we would like. Anyway, we still need to hear from others on what they think of this idea in general as a way forward in solving the annotation question at Wikisource. Green Cardamom (talk) 01:59, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I think that this part of the discussion would be better placed over at Wikisource talk:Annotations. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:16, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Ok I've created Wikisource:Annotations/types to begin collaborating in creating a list of the different types of annotations. This really is the key to the whole thing I think, thus why I believe a separate page is important for the list itself. From the list eventually can be derived a vote and a policy page, if it comes to that. Green Cardamom (talk) 02:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

• Wikisource:Annotations/types cites an example of "Footnotes containing revisions between different versions of a document" at Strivings of the Negro People/Annotated#cite note-1. This 'original research' turns out to be contradicted by a 1903 scan I just uploaded, and I was not able to resolve the confusion generated by the vague or multiple sources used to create the related pages. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 10:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

The source document is Strivings of the Negro People (1897). The footnotes then contain differences between the 1897 document and a 1903 later edition. Do you mean the footnotes are incorrect, that they don't reflect the differences between these two linked documents? Green Cardamom (talk) 02:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I made a note in the pre-existing section Talk:Strivings of the Negro People#Annotations, after uploading a scan of a 1903 edition, then marked The Souls of Black Folk as "no source" because the text did not match the source given on that talk page. The first idea [31] is probably the best one, I really no have idea what is going on; while I think this is typical of the annotations I have encountered, I thought it fair to note here this was probably not a good example.

I would proffer another example, but it is even worse. There was a user who 'discovered' that references to another work's page numbers were all incorrect, growing worse as the page number increased, so it was important to add notes on that. I suggested that the author was referring to a different edition and, unsurprisingly, heard no more about it. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 18:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Author page name rule requested

I've come across two authors for which I don’t know the page naming rules:

1. Author:G. Valbert which was the pen name for Victor Cherbuliez.
2. Author:M. Vénukoff where M. turns out to be Monsieur and his name is Mikhail Ivanovitch Veneioukov, a 19th century Russian explorer.

How does one name the pages for these, (and others like it in the future)?— Ineuw talk 09:24, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

1. Create a page for Cherbuliez and change Valbert to a redirect to that page. Put a note on the Cherbuliez page that he wrote using a nom-de-plume.
2. Roman orthography of Cyrillic family names is a mess with multiple published spellings for the same name (e.g. Tolstoy vs Tolstoi or Czar/Csar/Tzar/Tsar). In the end we have to pick one and make the others redirects. It is also important to include the patronymic when dealing with Cyrillic names. With the enWS preference for Author names being the full name, I would go for Mikhail Ivanovitch and choose one of the spellings of the family name based on frequency of use in the source texts. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Essentially, I always make a page for the actual name, and any other spelling variations or pen name become redirects with a note on the author page. Thanks. — Ineuw talk 10:12, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I revived a section above relating to this, "Author pages". CYGNIS INSIGNIS 13:21, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Sorry for being slow to see the revival, as I only now understood the connection to that section. Also, just saw Billinghurst’s name alignment of Author:M. Vénukoff. Thanks to you both.— Ineuw talk 21:17, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

PD-old

Adding function to {{PD-old}} see Template_talk:PD-US-no-renewal#PD-Old, please take a look and help check for issues. JeepdaySock (talk) 16:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

• More discussion leads to different approach. Template_talk:PD-US-no-renewal#Draft_template_usage_message. Jeepday (talk) 11:10, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Rendering of formulas

Hi. Comparing The Principle of Relativity and the Fundamental Equations of Mechanics with [32] (its source) I noticed that formulas are rendered much better in the latter. On WS they are blurry. Can someone explain why? I tried to change preferences on math rendering but with no visible effect. Does it depend on Skin (I use default)? Thanks --Mpaa (talk) 10:35, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

They look fine for me, just the same as wikilivres. If you have a zoom function in your browser, that can create blurriness in images if not set to 100%. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:46, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

you were right! Thanks. --Mpaa (talk) 15:03, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

19th century images displayed on websites

I posted this message two days ago on a Commons admin’s talk page, but it seems that he/she is not available, so I am re-posting it here. I found some public domain portrait photos on other websites and which I would like to copy and upload to the commons. They are all from the 19th century. Do I need some kind of permission from those sites for copying them, and how do I attribute them?

Here are some examples:
Captain George H. Clarke
WILLIAM FRANCIS ALLEN
Frank P. Crandon
— Ineuw talk 23:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

No permission needed; use the proper license and attribute them by listing their site as the source. That's all! - Theornamentalist (talk) 23:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.— Ineuw talk 00:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

British Library to release 250,000 out-of-copyright works

Checkout the news in this BBC article. About time too! I can't imagine what the benefit the British Library would have got if it had held on to 18th Century texts which would have simply been left to rot or fade away in their archive. They should have started a programme of releasing electronic versions of out-of-copyright works into the public domain years ago, and so should every other libary that holds out-of-copyright works. Better still, why not let allow readers themselves to scan and release the works into the public domain, and cut out the middleman (Google in this case): now that would truly be "giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time".----Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:10, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Great news. One can understand the reticence of BL with regard to the protection of the physical books, and even for the inconvenience of a process that involves scanning ¼M books when trying to do one's job, but reticence shouldn't be stubbornness. Let us hope for an improved scanning process from Google … no missing pages, no fingers or thumbs, better quality grey scale, and colour images to be in colour (perish the thought). — billinghurst sDrewth 22:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Publisher/publication name space

I've seen nearly an equal amount of publisher pages in Portal, Author, and Mainspace. Do we have an official way, or is this a grey area? - Theornamentalist (talk) 11:14, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Authors should be just people and mainspace should be just works. I moved all the publishers I could find out of authorspace into portalspace after previous discussions here. The only grey area of which I am aware is Author:Stratemeyer Syndicate, which is not technically one person but fits authorspace better than any other namespace. There are quite a lot of redirects from authorspace to portalspace (so that they can be used as authors in the header); these should all be tracked by Category:Non-author author pages. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 13:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I recall announcements and implementation, not much discussion. This is something of a grey area, if not actually offensive.—CYGNIS INSIGNIS 13:15, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

So, should something like The New York Times really be a portal, with each subsequent publication (ie, instead of :NYT/DATE, should it be :NYT DATE) as its own mainspace entry? This is opposed to the current subpage system. - Theornamentalist (talk) 14:17, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

(ec) :There are plenty of discussions, all through the place, put "publisher" into the above search box to see what we have here, however, the discussion at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2010-09#More about Author: namespace vs Portal: namespace is pretty comprehensive. IIRC There was also some discussions about this with regard to the rationalisation of the Wikisource: namespace and the subsequent invigoration of the Portal: ns. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:28, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I see the tangent in that discussion touting de.wikipedia's solution to an imaginary problem, not a consensus. Perhaps that acronym indicates where that happened, I'm having trouble correctly recalling what it means ... is it "In Internet Relay Chat"? And speaking of acronyms, why was this necessary. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 17:03, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Newspapers are a stranger beast. They are a publication in their own right (hence a work in main namespace), yet they could also be a portal, and that is often to how you are going to display the text. As we have articles, and it is less than likely that we are going to get full publications there was an attempt to add some naming structure, so the root pages have (sort of) evolved. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:32, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, I think organizationally in this case, it might be best to have each day as a publication reflected in the mainspace, or, not a subpage. Does our "works" counter count subpages? I kind of feel like it shouldn't, and that it is more conservative (and not bloated; 206,000? c'mon) because from my understanding of how libraries count works, it is by publication, ie, a physical copy being 1, and not based on how we arbitraily separate works. And with the Times being subpages, if counted this way, it will exclude anything as a subpage, so I believe that each belongs in the mainspace. But back to the first point: so all publishers go in Portal space? Maybe we can make that evident when someone is creating an author page for prevention. While I'm not crazy about using portals, and feel publishers deserve "Publisher:", it's no big deal, and I will fix the ones I've created under author: in the past. - Theornamentalist (talk) 16:21, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

• The Times should probably be a portal also if The New York Times will be a portal, JeepdaySock (talk) 16:00, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

new tool for version comparison

Hi everybody. I wrote a new tool for easy comparison of two versions of the same text, for example comparing the original text with its translation in another language, or comparing between two different translations but in the same language. You can see an example on it:Le odi di Orazio/Libro primo/XI: try clicking on one of the double arrows (⇔) on the left: the linked text is loaded in a column on the right, and the shortest of the two columns can be dragged up and down for easy line-by-line comparison.

This is somewhat similar to (and inspired by) the DoubleWiki extension, but tries to overcome some of its limitations, like the impossibility of linking to a page on the same wiki.

I've added it to the shared scripts, so that every subdomain can use it if they want. What do you think of it? Do you like it?

P.S. I've replied on an old discussion about epub export here, just in case it wasn't noticed :-) Candalua (talk) 20:56, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

OMG, I love your text size modifier! I was working on something like that a while ago, but to no avail. If the community approves, could you import that? That would be exceptionally useful to include for children works among other things. - Theornamentalist (talk) 21:08, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

I did it some time ago, precisely because a user complained about lack of "children-friendly" text size. The script is here: you'll need to modify your Header template, to have a <div class="textBody"> sourround the text you want to enlarge/reduce. The icons are placed just below the header, in some cases they appear over the text, because you use full-width visualization; so you will maybe want to move them somewhere else. By the way, the topic of this discussion was a bit different! :-) Candalua (talk) 09:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation and versions primer

Hi folks,

I've been doing a lot of cleanup of disambiguation and versions pages lately, most recently with the books of the bible, which are a terrible mess. It is clear that there is a lot of confusion around the purpose of disambiguation and versions pages, so I'd like to have a rant and clear it up a bit:

• Disambiguation pages are for listing works that share the same title. You shouldn't list works with distinct titles on a disambiguation page, even if they are versions of the same work, or commentary on the same subject.
• Versions pages are for listing different versions of essentially the same work, regardless of title or author. You shouldn't list completely distinct works on a versions page, even if they have the same title, or the same author, or the same subject, or even if they are analysis or commentary on the work that the versions page is for.

Case study: Song of Songs is a book of the bible also known as Song of Solomon, Canticle and Canticle of Canticles.

• Song of Songs (Bible) is a versions page that lists all the different versions of that book, regardless of what title the version uses. It does not include works like Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Canticle of Canticles, because this is a distinct work of commentary, not another version of the book.
• Song of Songs is a disambiguation page that points at the versions page and also a poem and a play of the same name.
• Song of Solomon is a disambiguation page that points at the versions page and also works of commentary such as Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)/Solomon, Song of
• Canticle is a disambiguation page that points at the versions page, an encyclopedia article on canticles, and a poem named Canticle
• Canticle of Canticles is a disambiguation page that points at the versions page and the work of commentary Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Canticle of Canticles.

The works of commentary Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)/Solomon, Song of and Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Canticle of Canticles are neither works with the same title, nor versions of the same work, so they should not be found together on a disambiguation page or a versions page. The only appropriate place to pull together all the various published commentary and analysis of Song of Songs, regardless of title, would be Portal:Song of Songs.

I hope this clears things up a bit. Hesperian 01:45, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Putting text to Help:Disambiguation which has been a page that I have been meaning to look to create for ages. Hesperian, you probably should have a rant about translations so that I can copy that text too. :-P — billinghurst sDrewth 02:07, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Translations are just a special case of versions. Hesperian 02:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I expanded the Wikisource:Style guide section on disambiguation to include versions and translations a week or so ago; there might be some stuff in there you could use too. Hesperian 02:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Have pasted the text with a jiggle. If it is considered that we should just redirect to the style page#anchor, then so be it. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:44, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd be more inclined to shift the underlying principles of disambigation etc onto your new page, and keep the style guide for details of page layout. Hesperian 03:38, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Closed out Transwiki:

It has been sitting there dormant, redundant and gathering dust. anyway, I have dealt with the remaining works sitting in the faux namespace, moved them into main ns, and created {{dated soft redirect}}s. Culled all the Talk:Transwiki... pages, and closed out Wikisource:Transwiki log. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:27, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

How does this affect Transwiki screening if at all? There are always EOs and Proclamations that they (Wikipedia) want to export to here that we already have for example. -- George Orwell III (talk) 17:47, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Do you mean at the other place? If yes, I look occasionally, but probably not enough, and there is no reliable alert process to know when new stuff is added. The Transwiki false space here has not had newly populated information, and nobody but admins could really use it, and we are better to Special:Import and put it into place, so no physical effect on this side of the divide. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:22, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Coder question

Is there anyway to add the functionality produced by

• self.proofreadpage_numbers_inline = true;

... so that it can be toggled on and off along with 'hide page links' in the display option menu? -- George Orwell III (talk) 17:39, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

One would think so, and can I suggest that maybe m:Tech would be a reasonable place to ask the question. They are more css/js/mediawiki and more time responsive, especially when patted in the right way. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:16, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Did that over on m:Tech & nothing yet. Still not sure how to mentally file your "patting" comment at any rate. :-|   George Orwell III (talk) 09:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Template-generated Dublin Core metadata

We are going on testing (both into it.source and vec.source) a very simple syntax to inject well-formed Dublin core metadata into html of our ns0 pages. The trick is, to add inside our versions of header templates something like this:

vec.source version:

<span class="metadata"><dc:title>{{{titolo|}}}</dc:title></span>
<span class="metadata"><dc:creator opt:role="aut">{{{autor|Anonimo}}}</dc:creator></span>
(..other..)

it.source version:

<span class="metadata"><dc:title>{{{Titolo|}}}</dc:title></span>
<span class="metadata"><dc:creator opt:role="aut">{{{{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{Progetto|}}}}}|diritto|Organismo emittente|Nome e cognome dell'autore}}|Anonimo}}}</dc:creator></span>

As you guess, data are managed in different ways and formats from header templates of vec.source and it.source, but they produce an identical Dublin Core code.

Obviously there's a span.metadata {display:none} directive into both Common.css files, so that such data are completely hidden; nevertheless they can be easily found and used parsing the html of the page by a js script or a bot script. This means, that good, well-formatted Dublin core metadata can be added into any ns0 wikisource page of any language, without any user work, without any extension, with a extremely low server load (almost nothing!), producing a shared, identical set of metadata from any wikisource project perfectly machine-usable; i.e. what's needed as a basic step to build good epub version of source works, but many other applications can be thought. --Alex brollo (talk) 06:25, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally with regard to metadata I am more interested in just the solution, and not the journey, the theory, just to have it happen, have a standard that I can apply without too much thinking. Previously I have seen Jayvdb talk about w:COinS metadata, and it would be great if we had the destination. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:14, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks billinghurst. Nevertheless I tried to apply the code here; so I cloned Template:Header into Template:Header/Sandbox, I added some code and I applied the clone of the template in The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses/Chapter 11.

This is the resulting html into the page (I only added some break line:

<p style="display: none;">
<span class="metadata"><dc:title><a href="/wiki/The_Modern_Art_of_Taming_Wild_Horses" title="The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses">The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses</a></dc:title></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:creator opt:role="aut">John Solomon Rarey</dc:creator></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:contributor oct:role="trl"></dc:contributor></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:date></dc:date></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:rights><a href="<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0" class="external free" rel="nofollow">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0</a>">CC BY-SA 3.0</a></dc:rights></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:identifier><a href="http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Modern_Art_of_Taming_Wild_Horses/Chapter_11&oldid=3027334" class="external free" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Modern_Art_of_Taming_Wild_Horses/Chapter_11&oldid=3027334</a></dc:identifier></span> 
<span class="metadata"><dc:revisiondatestamp>20110628134816</dc:revisiondatestamp></span></p>

I feel this is an interesting result. Consider that it is completely "transparent" for user and that metadata are potentially standardized among different source projects. The Dublin Core xml format could be very interesting when exporting texts. --Alex brollo (talk) 14:23, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I do like this. If it goes ahead, should the header be updated to include parameters for all of the Dublin Core elements (even if they aren't necessarily displayed)? Would that be unnecessary work? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:11, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Works at root level vs replicating part of a website? Are we a web library or a web archive? Is there a difference?

A user has brought over a subsection of a website that relates to an incident in history, in which they are the author is the investigator. The links have all been made relative to subsection (promoted to the root level). Our current thinking about layout and design has been to put all works at the top level as individual works, alternatively we have chapters/subparts where they have been subsidiary to the physical publication. A webpage is a different beast and needs our consideration, even to the point of how much of us is library, and other how much of us is archive? and how much is that different? — billinghurst sDrewth 22:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Fwiw... without a pointer or two to the work(s) in question and/or the generating website, it is sort of hard to conceptualize what it is you're looking to root out here exactly. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:39, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Korean Air Flight 801 investigation I hadn't wanted to concentrate on the specific example, as that can lead to judgment on the work, and had wanted to general view. That said, examples do help. In part it comes to our general discussion of what constitutes subpages, which is something that many have a (somewhat) common view, though we don't externalise but by example. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:43, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Well I don't see how any of it belongs in main namespace - the archived web pages are more navigation aids than actual "works" no? Most seem to link to dozens and dozens of actual PDFs that make up the accident report (a few of which have a version or two being updated).

If the notion is to recreate the web-site mearly to link a bunch of external archived-in-time-PDFs, peppered with HTML as needed to mirror the site as it once existed, I don't think I like en.WS being utilized "half-way" like that. If all those PDFs are to be converted, uploaded to commons, proofread and transcluded, then I can see the Web-pages as subpages to the Portal: allowing navigation of the mainspace, transcluded works.-- George Orwell III (talk) 07:31, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Some of the archived pages are navigational aids, and some of them are actual works (transcripts, witness lists and schedules, biographies of investigators, documents about investigative procedures, etc) - Those actual works already were in HTML.

For the ones in PDF, at a later point we could convert those into MediaWiki code and make them actual pages.

So the webpages which were merely navigational aids could become subpages of the portal, and webpages which contain substantial information (public hearing transcripts, biographies of investigators, pages about investigative procedures and hearing procedures) would be considered "documents"

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

As a note, I am trying to duplicate http://web.archive.org/web/20070108093549/http://www.ntsb.gov/events/kal801/ and its daughter pages into an archive on Wikisource WhisperToMe (talk) 02:52, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I also notice differences in two revisions in the same NTSB document:

• http://web.archive.org/web/19980208005816/http://www.ntsb.gov/Abt_NTSB/hearing.htm
• http://web.archive.org/web/20061207114357/http://ntsb.gov/Abt_NTSB/hearing.htm

What I have for it is at National Transportation Safety Board/Accident Investigation Hearings (representing the 1998 version)
Should I include both revisions? How should I handle the seal images in each? WhisperToMe (talk) 03:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I would also like to make an author page for the NTSB - I would need to put an author page for the agency in the English, Korean, Spanish, and French Wikisources (NTSB docs are in those four) WhisperToMe (talk) 06:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Non-author author pages are actually portals, which already exists: Portal:National Transportation Safety Board. At most the author page would be a redirect to this portal. Interwiki links between portals here and authors on other Wikisources should be OK, if that's the route you intend to take (you should be able to interwiki a redirect too but it would be a roundabout way of doing it). - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:28, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

I redirected Author:National Transportation Safety Board to the portal page, and I made portal pages on the Spanish, French, and Korean Wikipedias. On the Spanish and French ones I catgeorized the NTSB as an "author"

WhisperToMe (talk) 16:12, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

As a note, here are the "document" webpages (as opposed to "navigational" webpages) that I added:

General:

• National Transportation Safety Board/Robert Talcott Francis II (Korean version is considered to be one of the KAL801 documents, English one is not)
• National Transportation Safety Board/Investigative Process
• National Transportation Safety Board/Accident Investigation Hearings (Korean version is considered to be one of the KAL801 documents, English one is not)

KAL801:

• Hearing transcripts:
  • Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/March 24
  • Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/March 25
  • Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/March 26
• Portal:Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/KAL Flight 801 - Animation (while it links to the animation files, it also provides specific background info on each one)
• Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/Witnesses
• Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/Who (general recap of the people involved)
• Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/Bios
• Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/IIC
• Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/Docket

Also, Korean Air Flight 801 investigation/Exhibits, while mainly a directory, mentions which exhibits were presented in the March 1998 public hearings and which ones were produced afterwards WhisperToMe (talk) 16:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Reducing extension font size above header

No big deal, but after looking at a subpage of a subpage of a long-titled work, I wondered if we need to display it so prominently at the top of each page. I mean, the title and subsection are within the header and are linked back to their parent page underneath the top. Most of the time, especially in the case of disambiguation, the title in the mainspace is more reflective of our way of setting up the site, or lack of precision or inability to name something that doesn't have a published title. Anyway, I don't think it should be removed as it is necessary for navigation, but I think that it can be made much smaller, maybe even place it off to the right or something, or not. And then, in place of the newly gained area, increase the font size of the title within the header, or not.

As long as the largest displayed text isn't something like "Title of a book with a really long name: additional subtitle/Subsection A with some more detail/Preface" or "The book (Author, 1896)". These are real titles. - Theornamentalist (talk) 01:50, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Don't know if it can be done, but I'd love to see us give less prominence to the page title, and more prominence to the title of the work or section that the page is displaying. Hesperian 02:34, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I expect it will be in MediaWiki:Common.css somewhere but I wouldn't recommend editing that unnecessarily. On a specific page basis you can use magic words: {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:50%">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</span>}}. You can even use that to shrink the basename but keep the subpagename large, make parts italic and other stuff if you wanted. Wikipedia uses it to make film titles and species names appear in italics. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:45, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I tested out sort of removing it from view by making the extension smaller and the font white, although there is likely a much neater way of doing it. Compare:

1. Original
2. Reduction 40% normal
3. No text visible

I know we should have something there for navigation, but I really like how it looks without anything on top. Will settle for something else though if its cool; Adam, how come we shouldn't mess with it? - Theornamentalist (talk) 16:51, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

It's not that we should never mess with Common.css, just that it should be rarely and carefully done. Making a mistake on that page effects the entire project and risks causing a lot of damage (fixable damage but damage nonetheless). Regarding the title:-

Technical: {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="display:none">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</span>}} will just turn off the title entirely; the method I mentioned to just shrink the basepage name is: {{#ifeq:{{NAMESPACE}}||{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:50%">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}|{{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:50%">{{NAMESPACE}}:{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}}} (ifeq to deal with both mainspace and, for example, userspace).

Principle: I don't think it's appropriate for the other namespaces, but it might work for the main namespace (although I neither vote in favour nor against this proposal). If so, and if there is agreement, it could be easily implemented by adding the desired code to {{header}}. Some reasons why not might be that the title is a standard feature, not just on Wikisource, or even on the Wikisources in general, but throughout all Wikimedia projects; playing with that may confuse, disorientate or merely irritate both casual and experienced users. (For example, I can make may around other languages' projects thanks to this standardisation; I assume the opposite would be true of non-English speaking users trying to navigate en.ws.) With this is mind, I think it should at least remain visible and easily readable. If the header title is made larger, it will still be the most prominent text at the top of the page, leaving the automatic title for navigation and conformity. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 22:04, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I understand, definitely not something to just do without discussion. I think that shrinking it might be a simple and safe way to go. A simple argument for this is not only aesthetics, but that we have unusually long mainspace extensions in comparison with other wikimedia sites. - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:36, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

You may want to take a look on some alternatives used on Wikibooks projects:

• wikibooks:pt:MediaWiki:Gadget-Títulos simples.js
• function setupTitle() from wikibooks:es:MediaWiki:Common.js and wikibooks:fr:MediaWiki:Common.js

Helder 00:00, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Not a scripting expert here by any measure but those seem to alter the parameters of the same firstHeading and/or ContentSub .CSS class or id settings in question on the fly rather than making the changes to the Common files themselves as mentioned in passing somewhere above. Seems like overkill when it only seems to bother a handful of users as far as I can tell. Why not just make this a user enabled option via a Gadget or something if its all that annoying for some folks? -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:54, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, on Portuguese wikibooks the feature was added to a gadget (after this discussion) because it may not be wanted by everybody. You can see an example of what it changes on this image. If I understood correctly the code on es.wb, the users can define the variable "g_setuptitle" to avoid the execution of function setupTitle() (although it was not designed for that, but instead to avoid problems with b:fr:MediaWiki:Gadget-TitreDeluxe.js). Helder 11:50, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

PS: some related links to discussions on Wikibooks projects:

• b:es:Project:Café/Archivo/Julio - Septiembre 2008#Títulos más legibles con subpáginas
• b:en:Project:Reading_room/Proposals/2011/February#Redesign title format

Helder 12:55, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

After some thought, I have reduced my preference to one, though I will try to offer arguments against it.

Reducing the overall size to roughly 40%; just smaller than the font found in our header. This will give dominance to the actual title of the work, the section, and no other navigational or disambiguation related mainspace extensions. It still gives the editor the ability to locate the page for proper linking and such, but is more suited for the appearance to the reader of the work. However, as said earlier, this may cause confusion and is an unfamiliar look in the wiki-media sites. It is not as extreme as removing, but is enough to help fix our growing subvolume, subpage, subsection problem, of X/X/X/X. Not a problem? I know, its not end of the world, but it looks awful in my opinion when the extenstion wraps in even MY browser, and all the parentheses and dates and whatever just look silly. So overall, I say reduce the full extension to a size smaller than the header text. - Theornamentalist (talk) 16:06, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

40% is way way too small in my opinion — well for me on my displays — so I have set up a series of pages 90% - 50% (and note that these are extreme title pagename lengths).
90% → 80% → 70% → 60% → 50%
— billinghurst sDrewth 09:55, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

How to reference annotations at end of book

Is there any good way to handle references to annotations at the end of a book (as opposed to footnotes on the same page)? For a few works, I have created a template specific for that work. For an example, see {{Tkom}} which handles references to notes and chapters within The Kinematics of Machinery. But that was a few years ago. Has any better way been invented? It's awkward to design a new template for each work. It should be as easy as the <ref> tag. --LA2 (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

I have two approaches for endnotes, and it depends on the set out of the book. For A Compendium of Irish Biography for each authority I imported the relevant to the biography with {{IrishBio ref}} [which is based on another creation {{authority base}} which is set up for those who wish to do similar more easily]. For a more recent work English Law and the Renaissance, I simply used {{ref}} for the annotation, and used {{note}} for the respective endnotes. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:32, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Tamerlane and other poems (1884)/Author's Notes#6

Help with Objections to Woman Suffrage Answered

As part of Wikisource:WikiProject NARA, I had a crack at doing Index:Objections to Woman Suffrage Answered, page 1.tif but I can't get the image to display. I'm not totally sure what I'm doing, but I've transcribed the text as best I can. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:32, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

I made the same mistake; .tif files won't work on Page: - Theornamentalist (talk) 22:33, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Geeze - I get the notion this new access to NARA files is "too good to pass up" but there are limits to utilizing their High Quality images in every single instance possible. 18 megs for what amounts to 1 indexed page of nothing but plain text is a bit ridiculous anyway you slice it (imho). -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I would hate to see Dominic lose steam due to low levels of participation. Not that it's going bad, but it could always be better :) It is definitely cool that we have direct and exclusive access to these documents. - Theornamentalist (talk) 23:18, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

To be fair, it may be due to the complexity of Wikisource. I still have no idea where to point people to learn how to use all the templates and conventions on Wikisource. It was never going to be simple, but it doesn't have to be this complicated. —Tom Morris (talk) 09:12, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Help:Templates needs some love. If you see a way to improve the help pages once you work something out, it would be great if you can pass the knowledge on. Also, template documentation can often be improved greatly. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 04:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this why the tiff files are being converted to DjVu before OCR and proofreading? At least that is what understand Wikisource:WikiProject NARA/To prepare to imply. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:17, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

I didn't notice that myself at first; it's a shame we can't use the .tif files in Pagespace although I imagine it would take forever to load, just an extra step I wish I could step over :) - Theornamentalist (talk) 04:39, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Tom, I created this:Index:Objections to Woman Suffrage Answered.djvu and moved your text. - Theornamentalist (talk) 04:47, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Cheers! —Tom Morris (talk) 09:12, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Currently the TIFF files are essentially archive formats, not suitable for most uses, due to size and lack of rendering in the pagespace. However, WS does have a TIFF handler installed (the "PagedTiffHandler" extension). The pagespace can handle PDF files through the "PDF Handler" extension, so maybe it can be extended to use TIFFs as well. The whole TIFF doesn't have to be downloaded, you only get a (large) thumbnail, the size of which is set on the index pages. If we could use TIFFs directly, it would be nice. However, it's probably just as useful to do the JPG/DJVU conversion and then people have a more usable file available (generally 1-3MB instead of 30!). Having multipage TIFF support is no great help when a 4-page file exceeds the Commons file limit. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 04:52, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Call for image filter referendum

The Wikimedia Foundation, at the direction of the Board of Trustees, will be holding a vote to determine whether members of the community support the creation and usage of an opt-in personal image filter, which would allow readers to voluntarily screen particular types of images strictly for their own account.

Further details and educational materials will be available shortly. The referendum is scheduled for 12-27 August, 2011, and will be conducted on servers hosted by a neutral third party. Referendum details, officials, voting requirements, and supporting materials will be posted at m:Image filter referendum shortly.

For the coordinating committee,
Philippe (WMF)
Cbrown1023
Risker
Mardetanha
PeterSymonds
Robert Harris

Karl Max

Who is Karl Max? ResScholar (talk) 01:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of context, my best guess is it is a misspelling of Karl Marx. Hesperian 03:02, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, it kind of has a flashiness to it. Maybe it's another one of those "modernizations" we keep hearing about! ResScholar (talk) 04:42, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I am truly embarrassed. Trying to publicly deride me in place of fixing the typo is productive. - Theornamentalist (talk) 16:39, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

As far as you know, I could have just accepted your explanation. The comment's only deriding when one supposes your pretext of modernization was actually phony despite your protestations to the contrary. Are you now retracting your denial? ResScholar (talk) 07:51, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

I am talking about how you actually brought up a typo at Scriptorium. This seems unprecedented; would you care to explain how, in a collaborative, editable, continuous improval project, where you are in fact not just an established editor, but also an administrator, who is supposed to be setting examples, and conducting yourself with maturity and an assumed overall pursuit for integrity of the site, how you would not fix it, a typo which linked to the correct author, but instead decided to bring it here and then go on about your issues with how I edited a page that had nothing to do with the subject you brought up in the first place. That's how I know it was not about the typo, that's how it's obvious you would rather spend your time trying to deride me and complain about something in the past, and prefer to leave the site with an obvious error so you could use it as a platform in your crusade against "modernization." - Theornamentalist (talk) 11:03, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

DjVu or copy and paste

I have always been a strong supporter of DjVu files over copy and paste. It bring more editors and allows everyone to work together, plus it sorts out source and licensing issues, plus any typo errors and images. If a (public domain) DjVu book is available for a text that has been copied and pasted on Wikisource, should the DjVu version replace the copied and pasted version, or should it just be proofread and left alone? This would make the copy-and-pasted version the main version. --Angelprincess72 (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

It's my understanding that, as a general principle, works without DjVu should be replaced by works backed by DjVu where possible. If there is substantial difference between the versions then both should be kept, of course. - Htonl (talk) 19:13, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

"Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition."

This disclaimer doesn't help Users here much, or the end user. It is not possible to provide a full citation or know whether something can be accurately cited. The differences between their text and any published edition is significant, perhaps 5-20 per line, and whether these editorial differences are from later publications or the work or typos of a transcriber is very difficult to verify. Having a PG text, or another second-hand transcript, may be better than nothing, but preserving a duplication of those texts as {{versions}} is unhelpful. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 17:28, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Not proofread/proofread status

I realise this is something I should already know but can someone clarify what counts as "Not proofread" (red) and what counts as "Proofread" (yellow). I've always taken my first attempt at a page as red. However, I've noticed some people jumping straight to yellow, which would imply that red means the unmodified OCR text. Which one is correct? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 09:34, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I did the same thing to, for a month or so, but you can mark proofread as the initial reader. I use not proofread for text I am working on, and occasionally OCR. - Theornamentalist (talk) 10:17, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that if you've just skimmed the OCR text to look for glaring errors, then mark it as "not proofread"; if you've actually read and compared it carefully, then mark it as "proofread". - Htonl (talk) 12:27, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I've been wondering the same thing myself the last couple days... Price Fixing is still mostly red, although I typed it all "from scratch" and had listed it as a complete "New text" on the Main Page... Now I have the "permission" I need to quickly go through and turn those red boxes to yellow without having a conflicted conscience about doing so! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 04:30, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Help:Page Status and that clearly defines Proofread and Validated, so Not Proofread is anything prior to Proofread, ie. text added, not checked; or maybe not completely checked; or not confidently checked. Examples that I can think of are bot applied layer; page loaded and too hard; biographical work where one biography undertaken, but not whole page; or just text loaded for a myriad of reasons. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

What I like to count as Non Proofread is text that may just have been OCR extracted but not been completely proofread, so there may be typos, punctuation errors and misplacement of header. Another thing I like to count as Non Proofread is you are halfway through proofreading, but want to save the changes and finish off the page later. Proofread is where the text has been fully compared to the scanned page, and there are no differences. --Angelprincess72 (talk) 18:45, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

For me, "Proofread is where the text has been fully compared to the scanned page, and there are no differenes... that I'm aware of." - Theornamentalist (talk) 18:56, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

It might be useful if someone could link to Help:Page status in the red "Not proofread" banner (i.e., MediaWiki:Proofreadpage quality1 message). Dominic (talk) 22:00, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Tagging reviewed books

If you proofread an old journal that contains book reviews, it could be nice to indicate which book is being reviewed, e.g. by an LCCN (Library of Congress Call Number) or OCLC Worldcat identifier, so that library catalogs can make back links to these reviews. Do you know if this has been tried anywhere, in Wikisource or in other digitization projects?

For example, the page The American Journal of Sociology/Volume 1/Number 2/Reviews (from 1895) contains a review of The Evolution of Modern Capitalism by John A. Hobson. This book is 80158138 in Worldcat, and I can manually "add a review" there, but instead we could tag our page with {{review|oclc=80158138}} and hopefully make OCLC harvest those tags automatically. Or if OCLC won't do that, maybe we can work with OpenLibrary.org instead. (This particular book is currently not found in OpenLibrary, but that could change with time.)

Another issue is, if you would tag that review and OCLC or OpenLibrary would harvest the tag, how would they translate the page name "The American Journal of Sociology/Volume 1/Number 2/Reviews" into a pretty reference without the slashes? --LA2 (talk) 21:22, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Comment above amended at 22:01 and 22:04, 12 July 2011

What links here provides a list of all references to a work, eg The Evolution of Modern Capitalism Special:Whatlinkshere I presume the ability to add a review is for one 'added by anyone', rather than the contemporary published reviews, but all the incoming links would be a useful resource for composing such a thing. This is one of many emergent properties of local links in this library, they are potentially very powerful, though the value of this can be diluted where the reference is not made by a proper publication (as with this example). CYGNIS INSIGNIS 21:54, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

The subpages for each journal is usually organised in a predictable way, and resemble the conventions applied to other works, so making the reference 'pretty' would be very easy. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 22:33, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

There are similar reviews in Popular Science Monthly and on the few occasions that I have proofread those pages, I have wikilinked the works (to redlinks). I am not against a template that provides something akin to meta data, though would not think that linking to a work in the Worldcat is a priority. Do you see that there would be a possibility for error in such linking to WorldCat, wrong edition, wrong title, etc. If we were going to be doing that sort of linking, wouldn't we also be wanting to add similar metadata to the existing works either in a scheme as discussed above, or via the talk page of each work? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:57, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Maybe this idea raises more questions than we had before. It could be nice to explore it within a limited subject matter, such as (reviews of) books about Greenland. But you always run into the issue of what is a work (the same work, or two different ones). Is a review of a translation also a review of the original work? Is a review of the first edition also valid for the second edition? etc. Doesn't the library association have a "summer of cataloging", similar to Google's summer of code? --LA2 (talk) 23:14, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Can't touch this...

Can someone please take a look at the following and help me find the error of my ways? I botched a move, and don't want to make things even messier... [With hat in hands,] Londonjackbooks (talk) 05:59, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you neglected to move the djvu file associated with the index. Since it's on commons, you have to tag it and wait for someone with file move permissions to move it for you. Last time I had to do that there was I think a two day backlog. Prosody (talk) 06:04, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Can it not just be reverted or moved back (here on WS) without having to go through Commons (yet?) since my flawed move was only done here? Londonjackbooks (talk) 06:09, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

You can try making the WS page File:A Little Pretty Pocket-book.djvu redirect to File:A Little Prettly Pocket-book.djvu. Not sure if it will take. Prosody (talk) 06:14, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid to touch anything more... Kathleen tried to do a rollback, but said it "didn't work." I have just asked Spangineer for help, as he has helped me with Commons moves before, but I don't know if he's around... Londonjackbooks (talk) 06:26, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I have moved the source file on Commons. Regulars here who are also Commons admins include myself, Billinghurst, EVula, Jusjih, Spangineer and Yann. Hesperian 06:29, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I've just moved the Page namespace pages that had been proofread. I've run into this problem in the past also. Moving an Index doesn't take the Pages with it. (Maybe that's something we could ask for in a future software update.) Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:21, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

A while back someone proposed that index pages reside at the page namespace root page; i.e. we have all these pages like Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/338 but did it ever occur to you that the root page, Page:Diary of ten years.djvu, is a redlink and therefore available? If the index page resided there, and subpaging was turned on, and it were possible to move more than 100 subpages at a time, then you could move the index page with the "Move subpages" box checked, and all the pages would go with it. There is a certain elegance to this, but also some significant issues. There was opposition to it, and ThomasV, who maintains the ProofreadPage extension, declined to implement it. Hesperian 01:27, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Phew, Thanks! When I saw all the pages were blank(ed) after the Commons move, I worried that my initial move may have ended up removing someone else's hard work... Sorry, all... Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:27, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all for relocating this. Who knew a simple typo would cause so much trouble. Can I use the excuse of Adult Onset Dislexia?--T. Mazzei (talk) 22:56, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Could we get a bot to relocate all of the proofread pages to the new index?--T. Mazzei (talk) 23:02, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we can. Someone had a bot doing page moves, and was taking requests at Wikisource:Bot requests — billinghurst sDrewth 14:03, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

• While we're at it, a recently added .djvu has an extra space at the end we can do without. Can somebody with access over on Commons take care of it as well?

File:Reports of Cases DC Circuit Court 1840-1863 .djvu

George Orwell III (talk) 10:07, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

• • Done. Hesperian 10:48, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Just Click

Notice that the buttons for OCR and header are not visible. A while ago I figured out how to make the header stay visable, but what happened to the buttons, and why do I get instructions to click buttons I can't see? JeepdaySock (talk) 10:58, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

I know they "moved" header to be a preference, but I do agree that we need the buttons, or we need to take the instructions off. - Tannertsf (talk) 11:08, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Using the beta feature "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" at Special:Preferences#preftab-3 is not recommended, it will suppress the display of the [+] button. Using the OCR button is the answer to the wrong question. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:19, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

See also the topic Noob Question: Hidden header/footers? on this same page. Helder 16:41, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks this is the fix. JeepdaySock (talk) 11:00, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Also, make sure the Enhanced editing toolbar is turned off under the Editing tab of Preferences. It doesn't behave in the Page namespace. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:19, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

How do you make BIG tables (averaging 27 rows by 4 columns) without the enhanced editing toolbar? I just switched back to the regular toolbar and can't find a way. - Tannertsf (talk) 11:33, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Now it is possible to use the buttons also in the enhanced toolbar, because Brion fixed the code of the Proofread Page extension ;-). Helder 22:41, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

One can make tables with the Wikieditor toolbar? Wikicode w:Help:Table — billinghurst sDrewth 12:31, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

• OCR bot not running. So now I have the OCR button, but the Bot is not running "The OCR robot is not running. Please try again later." JeepdaySock (talk)

Indeed. Same problem here. Helder 18:19, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Umm. The OCR button hasn't done anything since the last MediaWiki update in February. I assumed it was deliberate and so haven't raised it as an issue. When it was working and I used it, it usually gave me junk or nothing. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:20, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

Yep, ThomasV either turned it off as part of his attempt at retirement, and nudging us to stop the dependence, or it failed, and it wouldn't seem he is turning it back on as part of his attempt …

If you have just the occasional page from a djvu to reOCR, you can right click it and save it, or do similar from the online version at archive.org and then upload to somewhere like http://www.freeocr.net/ or http://www.onlineocr.net/ which seem to do a nice job. I am hoping that if it is needed that someone would put their hand up for a such an account at Toolserver to run an OCR beast. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:04, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

How to read offline

Hi, Is it possible to save Wikisource books on my hard drive and read them offline? If so, what format would they be in? How do I do it? Thanks. —unsigned comment by 99.249.87.80 (talk) .

There's a section in the side bar called "print/export". If you expand this, you can save a page as a PDF with the "Download as PDF" link. If you want more than one page, you can use the book tool by clicking the "Create a book" link (also in PDF). Note that neither will work with proofread books (those that use Index and Page namespaces). This is a known bug as has been reported. Apart from PDF, you could save the page as HTML with your browser or copy and paste the contents of a page into a text editor and save in your prefered format. Those options give greater control but they aren't as useful. There is discussion elsewhere on this page about enabling downloads in ePub format but this is not possible at the moment. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:20, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

The collections tool bug is #21653 (and there's others too I think). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 01:33, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikisource/Wikipedia Game

We are developing an open-source online educational game to promote engagement with primary sources which we propose would involve (1) contributing quality primary sources to Wikisource, (2) contributing new articles in Wikipedia, and (3) creating links from Wikisource documents to relevant Wikipedia articles using the appropriate template. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Wikisource). We’d like to solicit your feedback to ensure that the game is in keeping with the spirit and practices of the Wikimedia community. Umbrellas000 (talk) 00:22, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

I would think that we would welcome greater two-way interaction between the sites. I know that I do like to bring to life and to make available old sources that support the notability of those who were notable in their time, but who do not get noticed now.

As a note, we have moved to putting main links to wikipedia and like communities through parameters in our article headers, eg. {{header}}, though ultimately they are from the underlying template {{plain sister}}. The variety and size of the presentation of the templates {{wikipedia}}, {{wikiquote}} etc. was becoming problematic. There is still some inline links through use of [[w:|]], [[q:|]] and the like. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:10, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. We will advise players to put any links to Wikipedia in the header. 128.138.65.190 20:21, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

This game is pretty much standard practice (I would have thought), but the distinction between an object and subject based path should be emphasised. A link from a wikisource document to wikipedia ought to be one-to-one, to an article about that work, eg. The Raven (Poe) (versions of the poem) links to w:The Raven (article about the same poem). Adding sources here and linking to them from wikipedia is the subjective path, and subject to the discretion and dissection of that community. If the transcript is scan based, the page number that appears at left can be linked with a "#", ie. [[s:Some work#page number]] or [[s:Some Work/Section#page number]] for works with sections arranged by /subpage CYGNIS INSIGNIS 21:19, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for drawing this distinction. We had envisioned creating subjective path links (i.e., links to Wikisource documents from within relevant Wikipedia articles). Umbrellas000 (talk) 22:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Links to Wikisource transcriptions in US National Archives catalog

It's great that Wikisource is transcribing historical documents held by institutions that don't have the resources to do that themselves, but wouldn't it be even better if the institutions actually tried to incorporate that content back into their own information on the documents and made it prominently available to their patrons? I am going to propose to my colleagues at the National Archives that we begin to link out to Wikisource transcriptions in the online catalog (for example, in the field where Pictopia is linked at [33]).

I can't make any promises right now because I don't know how much bureaucracy will be involved, but I do know that their two primary concerns are that the transcriptions to be linked to are properly vetted and that there is very little chance of link rot. It seems to me that Wikisource's existing validation process adequately addresses the first concern, but I created {{NARA linked}} for the second, in part because this is a wiki and pages are liable to be moved or altered somehow. We would also likely want to mark the linked transcriptions in any case; that's the only change I see needed to Wikisource's standard procedure. I would appreciate any feedback you have on this idea generally, or the talk page banner specifically. Dominic (talk) 14:50, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

For me this is a case where we do want to lock down documents against a move. We also need to consider whether there is or should be a level of edit protection for such works, though again as it is scans and transclusions, may be enough to just do the main namespace as a "no move, edit to autoconfirmed users". — billinghurst sDrewth 03:56, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Reusing signatures?

I've seen this done both ways when there's already a signature scan available at Commons, and can see the appeal of each. Signatures are by their nature pretty invariant. Also for major figures like US presidents it seems like Commons has a nice thing going on with a matching SVG and PNG pair, and it just seems icky to flood that with a billion Abraham Lincolns with the background not normalized to white. On the other hand it is an intrinsic part of the document, and perhaps shouldn't be substituted out for a generic equivalent. Anyone have arguments for or against? Prosody (talk) 21:00, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

• Personally I am not bothered either way. I would accept it as validated even with a typed signature, so any image is preferable. I think that it is up to the editor in question, but there should be some effort made to normalise the background and make the image presentable if a "generic" image is not used. If the signature is in some way unique or notable, then the actual signature from the document should be used, but if that person's signatures are all alike, then I don't see a big problem.
• However, I would like to make sure that people use the "alt" parameter of signature images so the text can be copied as you would expect, just as we do for illustrated drop-caps. The {{SigR}} template does this already, which is good. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I am with Inductiveload, it is the words that are important here not the physical representation of the signature, which is more towards the decorative. So with that in mind, to me it is project specific type question about whether it is the original scanned signature per work or a generic scan, they can talk about their needs and approach. I would think that if a scan or a signature is to be done then it should be to a standard format (file type; background white or transparent ...). Personal opinion is that unless there is something unique about a specific signature that relying on a good quality representation is sufficient. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:51, 20 July 2011 (UTC)