Hello, SBA814, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are in the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page. John Vandenberg (chat) 04:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Kiryla Turauski edit

Are the works of this author in the public domain? John Vandenberg (chat) 04:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

what does that mean? --SBA814 04:42, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

To put it bluntly, we only accept poems from authors that have been dead for 70 years. Is this poem by the 12th century poet "Kiryla Turauski" mentioned at w:Belarusian culture? John Vandenberg (chat) 04:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Yes --SBA814 04:59, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

OK. This is the English project, which means all works in other languages must have an English translation in order to stay on this project. You are free to leave the
Wikisource also has a multilingual website, where languages without a large collection can be worked on until the collection and community is large enough to warrant its own project. I have copied this text there: oldwikisource:Unknown title (Turauski), so it can be among the others in the collection Беларуская collection. John Vandenberg (chat) 05:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

William F. Wertz edit

Please provide dates of publication, and birth and death dates. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:05, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Please, I will need to delete Ode To Joy unless you can demonstrate that the author has been dead for 70 years. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:31, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

how should i know i'am a novice. --SBA814 06:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

You need to know, uploading his poems may be illegal. Poetry is not free to copy until the author has been dead for 70 years. If you want to help and learn about all this, the best approach is to find a poet who has definitely been dead for 70 years, and look for their poetry. For example, Author:John Keats.
Or you can look for poetry that was published before 1923. For example, Author:William Butler Yeats is not quite 70 years dead, but he wrote many poems before 1923.
What sort of poems do you like? Maybe I can help you find an acceptable author whose works we are missing. For example, if you like war poetry, we are still missing many of the poems of Author:Gilbert Waterhouse and Author:Siegfried Sassoon. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:22, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

i like nature poems --72.87.57.201 07:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Try Author:William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Also, we have a very large set of poems by Author:Emily Dickinson, but we dont have any index of which ones were published in which years. You might find we are missing some. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply
I have deleted "Ode to Joy", which was written by Author:Friedrich Schiller; the English text is a modern translation: "My translation of Friedrich Schiller's `Ode to Joy' was published in The Wall Street Journal, Online, on May 6, 2003."[1]. John Vandenberg (chat) 03:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Drinking Alone Under The Moon edit

"Drinking Alone Under The Moon" appeared to be a recently published translation. See [2] and [3] John Vandenberg (chat) 07:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

From "Talk:Drinking Alone Under The Moon": why a translator its in english? --SBA814 08:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Author:Li Bai was Chinese, and wrote in Chinese. This is a translation, which is given a new copyright. As we do not know who is the translator, we dont know whether it is still copyright. So, I have deleted it.
Thankfully, here is another translation: Drinking Alone by Moonlight. That one was published before 1923, so it is free of all copyright restrictions. John Vandenberg (chat) 08:56, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

James L. Dickey edit

Hi, all of the works by Author:James L. Dickey are copyright to the author. Sadly, this means I had to delete The Heaven of Animals. I know this is really strange, but we are not like other websites which dont care about copyright. We try to ensure that everything on Wikisource is attributed, and is free of copyright restrictions. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:08, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

k--SBA814 09:12, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

Parting Drapes edit

Hi, from this and especially this, it looks very much as if Janet Buck is alive. We can only accept poetry by poets who have been dead for at least 70 years, or whose work was published before 1923, or who have released their poetry into the public domain (or under some kind of free licence that allows others to republish, sell, or adapt). Unless you can provide proof that Parting Drapes has been released under such a free licence by the poet, I'll have to delete it. Sorry. Perhaps you should restrict yourself to nineteenth-century poetry (or earlier) until you get a little more familiar with Wikisource. A work being available on the internet does not mean that it's in the public domain. Other websites may not take copyright seriously. We do. Thanks. Cowardly Lion 23:47, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

  Done Deleted. John Vandenberg (chat) 23:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Ode To A Naked Beauty edit

And I'm going to have to say the same thing about Ode To A Naked Beauty. Pablo Neruda died in 1973. That means that his works are still copyrighted, except for any that he published before 1923. And if they are English translations of works written in Spanish, the translation would also have to have been published before 1923, or else the translator would have to have died by the end of 1937. I'm afraid I'll have to deleted Ode To A Naked Beauty unless you can show that it's in the public domain. Cowardly Lion 23:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)Reply

  Done Deleted. John Vandenberg (chat) 23:09, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply