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Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2007-02

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Announcements

IRC stalk words

If you're an administrator on the English Wikisource and use IRC, please consider stalking !admin@ensource. This 'stalk word' is part of a new standard drafted to make it easier to get prompt help in Wikimedia IRC channels. One example usage is a developer requesting that an English Wikisource administrator update the site notice if it needs to be updated. If you use it, you can optionally add your name to the temporary list of stalkers so the implementation can be measured.

There are instructions on how to stalk in various IRC clients at m:IRC stalkwords#How_to_stalk_words. If your client isn't listed, feel free to contact me or add it yourself. Thanks. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:50, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term

Please be aware that American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term means that even if a work has enter the public domain in its source country, it might remain legally copyrighted in the USA. This Meta link include a proposed petition to the United States Congressmembers to seek law changes that will benefit Wikimedia Commons and its sister projects. Please join the discussion, or even non-American users will be prevented from legally contributing their public domain sources here if still legally copyrighted in the USA.--Jusjih 08:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured text candidates need input

Featured texts
Date Text
2006
June Gettysburg Address
August Dulce et Decorum Est
September The Time Machine
October A Drink Problem
November Elegie II
December Come not, when I am dead
2007
January After Death
February Anthem for Doomed Youth
March —

There is no featured text scheduled for March 2007, as you can see in the table at right. Although there are three nominations, these cannot be promoted without some minimal input from the community. Please review the current nominations at Wikisource:Featured text candidates, and consider watching that page as well; you just need to comment once a month or so. You can see new nominations from your watchlist, and it is generally a low-traffic page.

For those unfamiliar with the process, a featured text is prominently displayed on the Main page each month for the benefit of visitors as an example of Wikisource's best and most complete works. The featured text box on the main page will default to an error message in five days if no new featured text is selected: "Wikisource is experiencing temporary difficulties with its featured text. Please report this problem on the Community discussion page." —{admin} Pathoschild 03:28:04, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. We now have featured texts scheduled until June (see schedule). —{admin} Pathoschild 20:09:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


Proposals

DynamicPageList

I'd like to have the DynamicPageList extension enabled on the English Wikisource. This extension lists pages in certain categories or namespaces with various criteria, and supports basic category intersection. The extension is currently enabled on the English Wiktionary; see the list of oldest unreferenced entries, for example. For more information, see m:Help:DPL.

There is a more powerful version, DynamicPageList2, but it doesn't seem to be uploaded and would take much longer to activate on Wikisource. DynamicPageList is already in SVN and need only be activated.

Some example uses:

—{admin} Pathoschild 05:53, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Feature request filed as Bug 8563: Activate DynamicPageList2 or DynamicPageList on en-Wikisource. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Categorization help page

Very few editors add works and author pages to the basic categories, so I put together User:Pathoschild/Help:Categorization to make this easier to do. Suggestions, feedback, and edits are welcome; what do you think? —{admin} Pathoschild 06:17, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

  • This would indeed be helpful. Correction: the box of examples under "Additional Categories" > "Subject" duplicates the list of countries. Probably a cut and paste error. --EncycloPetey 17:53, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
    Thanks; fixed. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:35, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Seems quite useful, good work and thanks! I know I was at a bit of a loss helping another user set up a new author author:Elizabeth Margaret Chandler... not sure she is categorised completely right yet. Where should suggestions for new categories be taken? I see some in the author primary occupation that could maybe stand to be added... ++Lar: t/c 17:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
    Thanks, and you're welcome. You can create any category you think is useful yourself; the help page will automatically update to include the new category. If someone else thinks it's not useful, they'll just nominate it for deletion. If you'd prefer discussion first, you can ask on this page under 'Questions'. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Welcomecreation

I just read a very interesting email [1], which amoung other things talked of how some wikis made use of the message given after a successful acount creation. I think we should update our message to inform people abut WS:WWI as the most commen newbie mistake is thinking we will host something that is actually outside our scope. Should we have a mini-WWI explantion or simply link to the full page with strond advice that they read it? Is there any other common newbie mistakes we should try to advise on in this space?--BirgitteSB 17:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

That would be a good place to put something like Template:Welcome, tweaked and expanded a bit to fit:
Welcome to Wikisource, $1. Your account has been created (you can now edit your preferences). Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.
—{admin} Pathoschild 19:06, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Created. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Authors by date

I propose we categorise every author by date of birth and death. This would make it easy for bots to find out-of-date license templates and update them; for example, changing {{PD-1923}} (US-only) to {{PD-old-70}} (many countries) to {{PD-old}} (worldwide). —{admin} Pathoschild 02:14, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I put together a set of templates to simplify such categories. The templates support BCE dates, recognize the different superscript conventions (1st, 2nd, et cetera), and accept any date. Usage is as simple at {{deaths by year|19|8|6}} for year categories, {{deaths by year|19|8}} for decade categories, and {{deaths by year|19}} for century categories. If all goes well, we should consider switching our works by date system (imported from Wikipedia) to the new templates. See some examples at Template:Categories by date, and a live experiment at Category:1873 deaths. —{admin} Pathoschild 09:07, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think this is a good idea. This is somewhere on my long list of things to do for the categorization system. And the templates look a very big help for working with the many different date systems we already have going, as well.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 18:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree wholeheartedly. Anything we can shove on the bots!--BirgitteSB 23:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
To simplify editing, these should be coded into the author template. Rather than add two more parameters, I'd like to rearrange the parameters again to eliminate the redundancy that accumulates with new features. Specifically, we should merge {{{name}}} and {{{defaultsort}}} into {{{firstname}}} and {{{lastname}}} (with an optional override for exceptions), and split {{{dates}}} into {{{birthyear}}} and {{{deathyear}}}. Does that sound workable? This will also make it easy to standardise date formatting. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:02:33, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. How easy will it be for a bot to go through and adjust the birth/death dates? Or will it be a human-intensive job?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
It should be relatively easy for Pathosbot. There are a few exceptions which will need me to glance at every edit (For example, "John Doe Jr." is sorted as "Doe, John, Jr." instead of "Doe Jr., John"), but otherwise no human editing is needed. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:02:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Pathosbot is creating the categories. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:02:08, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Questions

Server time

How could one set the server time (that shows in signatures, recent changes etc.) on a local wiki? --Rebel 21:41, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

See m:Help:Timezone. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
From what I can see they only provide instructions for cases when one has access to the installed files, which I do not. ro.ws needs its timezone set to EET. Any help regarding that? Thank you. --Rebel 06:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
You'll need to file a bug report. —{admin} Pathoschild 07:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Download the content

I want to download all the content and update it regularly. Is there any way.

Hello anonymous. download.wikimedia.org provides several options for doing so. —{admin} Pathoschild 06:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that but ultimately when I click [2] , it just opens the addresses(not links) of the wikipages in a page which I can do nothing with.

You want to download the database dump because the other options are for Wikipedia only. You don't need to download everything if you simply want to keep current versions. Read the data dump help before you decide what you download. To use all this stuff, I believe you need to download the MediaWiki software and set up your personal wiki.--GrafZahl 09:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. One more thing. I have just created my account at Wikisource and I created a page, a poem titled "Childhood--Markus Natten" because i do not how to display the author's name.There's another article titled "Childhood" by Leo Tolstoy, when I search 'childhood' in the box, it directly opens this 'childhood'.21stCenturyDRAGON 07:58, 16 December 2006 (UTC)21stCenturyDRAGON
You must enter the complete title "Childhood-- Markus Natten". Note that in order to be included in Wikisource, both text and translation must be in the public domain or GFDL-compatible. Please provide the necessary licencing information. Otherwise it will be deleted quickly.--GrafZahl 11:34, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
I have a question about downloading wikipedia/wiktionary content. I have been developing the Volapük wiktionary and wikipedia (with articles on the Volapük movement and Volapük supporters), and at some point it occurred to me that it would be good to be able to download the content in a way that could be used by some other program -- say, Word for Windows, or Access, or File Maker Pro -- rather than simply in wiki format. For instance, I might want to have an actual Access database with the same data from the Volapük wiktionary -- it's easier to do certain searches and perform certain tasks, etc. I have found ways of exporting and downloading pages, but they are always eventually in html or wiki-markup format. Is there a way of exporting content (pages) so that one of the programs I mentioned could open and use easily? --Smeira 00:04, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
Try asking in #mediawiki on the freenode IRC network, or the MediaWiki mailing list. —{admin} Pathoschild 20:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

FOIA documents

  • Are documents released from Freedom of Information Act requests from United States Federal government agencies an appropriate sort of thing to post up here? Once released in FOIA form, are these documents in the public domain? How would one go about uploading the documents? Thanks for the help, new to the wikisource project. I8source 12:12, 30 December 2006 (UTC).
If "released" means "published", and if they are directly from the Federal government (as opposed to some contractor), it should be OK copyright-wise. You have to check what we include for each document, especially the documentary sources guideline, but generally I'd say it should be OK. Please upload the documents as wiki markup (typed in or OCR'd). If you have scans, upload them to the commons first (please read our image use guidelines in that case) and use the ProofreadPage extension for side by side transcriptions.--GrafZahl 14:01, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't know if "released" means they were already published somewhere (perhaps in the "Federal Register? which I am still unfamiliar with), but what if it means the FOIA documents were mailed to an individual as part of a formal FOIA request? Once mailed to a United States citizen through an FOIA request and received by that citizen, does that mean that those documents were released into the public domain by that particular United States Federal agency? Thanks for the help. I8source 23:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC).
I've looked around found that we already have at least one FOIA text: CIA and Guatemala Assassination Proposals: CIA History Staff Analysis. There also was a copyright discussion on Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations/Archives/2006/11#Transcripts_from_Template:911, but in that particular case the works in question were probably not USGovt works. Have we ever come to a general conclusion about how to treat FOIA documents? My gut feeling tells me they are OK if they are indeed USGovt works, but if we are unsure about their legal status it might be worthwhile to ask a legal expert, given the importance of the FOIA as document source.--GrafZahl 16:51, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
  • In this particular instance I am aware of some documents obtained through FOIA that are definitely solely the work of a United States Federal agency that exist already on the net in PDF format - I thought it would be a good idea over time to transcribe them and add them to Wiksource. If you want to see the documents themselves to make sure it's alright to transcribe them and add them to here, they are located at [3], under "Labor Violations Investigations." They are the work of the United States Department of Labor as part of an official investigation, and released through FOIA. What do you think? I8source 01:17, 1 January 2007 (UTC).
Seems like the docs are OK copyright-wise. When you add them, please include sufficient editorial comments (use the "notes" parameter of the {{header}} template) stating the source of the documents and some text to place them in context (for example by adding links to the appropriate Wikipedia articles). Thank you.--GrafZahl 11:03, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the advice. I'll give it a go when I get a chance. I8source 15:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC).

What exactly should I submit here...?

Like I have written a project in Visual Basic.NET and that could be of help to fellow students...is that appropriate here...If not, then any other WIKI entity where such stuff would be utilized...looking forward to guidance...regards to all,Gopal--The world salutes the Rising Star...Try to be One 05:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello Gopal. Wikisource does not accept unpublished reference data such as source code. However, Wikibooks might be interested for its programming books; you can ask the Wikibooks community at b:Wikibooks:Staff lounge. :) —{admin} Pathoschild 05:24, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Category for user translations?

I can't find the category for user translations—I ran across Day of the Dead, and I feel like there should be a category for these. And maybe a link to it on Wikisource:Translations? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 05:05, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

I support a category for user translations. Even though we cannot submit our original contributions as articles here, we may make our own translations of other published original sources. User translations must be identified.--Jusjih 16:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Wow, I complete forgot we even had that page...I agree, though, categories to identify user translations should definitely be made. I propose Category:User translations for these works.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 16:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, I'd forgotten about the page as well, and had in fact put a bare minimum of effort into creating a Wikisource:Requested Translations, perhaps we should put a bit of renewed focus onto making WS:Translations a bit more useful, perhaps incorporating the same idea of requesting translations. Sherurcij (talk) (λεμα σαβαχθανει) 21:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
There is already a translation structure imported from en-Wikipedia at Wikisource:Babel and Category:User languages. Merging those with Wikisource:Translations would be a good start, and m:Translations might be useful too. —{admin} Pathoschild 00:27, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

UK legislation

I am an administrator on Wikibooks. I have a question which has probably been addressed a number of times already on Wikisource, but I can't immediately see the answer to it here. I should be grateful if someone would oblige.

United Kingdom legislation is published under Crown Copyright. Now there are different rules pertaining to text held under Crown Copyright depending on what its nature is (plus what jurisdiction you are under). Insofar as Crown Copyright pertains to UK legislation, there is a general waiver (reproduced here), which is subject only to a few caveats (see paragraph 12). As long as we comply with those caveats, which do not appear to me to contradict the GFDL (which requires the citation of sources anyway), the reproduction of UK legislatin should be ok. Indeed, it is often used free-of-charge by commercial publishers. Do Wikisourceans agree, and why?

Many thanks for any help Jguk 10:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Hello, Jguk,
Look at paragraph 12 of the link you provided. It lists the conditions that must be met if we are to use a work that is protected under Crown Copyright. These conditions put some restrictions on the ability to reuse the material that (to many of us a Wikisource) do not coincide with the WMF's philosophy of "free as in speech". A few of those restrictions (such as having to use only the most up-to-date copy of the legislation, or insuring that any translation is done very accurately) make it not as appealing to (and possibly even not compatible with) Wikisource's own philosophy of "free work." Sure, we can reproduce UK legislation, but the question that must be asked is: under those conditions, should we? As a policy, our answer to that question has been no.
I hope this helps; feel free to ask any other question you might have.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 17:03, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I'm not quite sure what you mean here. In terms of "free as in speech", surely that does not extend to misrepresenting what the law by means of changing words in the text of the statute and claiming that our revision is law? By making amended legislation (as opposed to "as enacted" legislation, which is freely available on opsi.gov.uk) freely available, we would be providing a service free-of-charge that can only be obtained expensively through subscription at present.

The reason I asked the question is that I would like to reproduce tax legislation at Wikibooks as part of the b:Taxation in the United Kingdom Wikibook: some things are just better exemplified by putting in the text of the statute. Someone else is trying to use the text of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as part of theirs. Now putting in the caveats under paragraph 12 of the link (and even protecting the page so it cannot be amended by non-admins) can be done quite easily. And the aim of us doing so (providing a learning resource about UK tax and UK Freedom of Information law, would be entirely consistent with WMF's philosophy. My question is, would WMF have a problem if we did that? If they did, I'd look at whether I could start a site containing amended UK legislation free of charge and linking from those books to that site. But I'd really rather not do so. Jguk 19:28, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

All works of the United States' general government are public domain, so that has nothing to do with this issue. UK legislation is not free. Not only because it limits derivative works, it is not even licensed. As stated in paragraph nine of the document you referenced, the works are not licensed, the copyright simply is not enforced. Unless something changes, works under Crown copyright are not welcome here. Though I'm not familiar with the copyright polices of the English Wikibooks, you could include parts of the law as fair use. --Benn Newman (AMDG) 23:29, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Translations

Hi. I've been looking around Wikisource trying to find the policies on original translations. I've become very confused. Are translations created on the wiki of other-language material allowed? For example, could I (with others) make a translation of Virgil's Aeneid, in contemporary prose, as the only free versions are a) in verse and b) in completely outdated. I've come to realise this is one area where I really could contribute to Wikimedia projects, and it would be wonderful if it were possible. Sam Korn 20:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we welcome user translations. For a relevant (not-quite) policy page, see Wikisource:Translations. As you might see in the subsection above, we're still working on setting up the structure for this, but there is consensus for creating user translations. So feel free to join the discussion on how we implement this. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 03:46, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

After adding text

I've added Ode to the Queen by William Topaz McGonagall, but I'm not sure whether I've done it all correctly. I tried to follow the instructions, but unfortunately the only instructions I found were "leave it to a more experienced user." So, what else should I have done? Did I make any mistakes? Please advise me. --Sopoforic 19:20, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I added one smal template but it looks good to me. Great work!--BirgitteSB 03:29, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Bot request

Would it be possible that the interwikibots check from time to time the dutch wikisource? 81.11.215.163 12:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC) wolvenraider

Copied to Wikisource:Bot requests#Dutch_Wikisource_interwiki.--GrafZahl 23:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Iraq Study Group Report pgs 1-57

I have converted the first 57 pdf pages of this into something that can be posted on wikisource. I have proofed the text. It still needs some format work on the table of contents, etc., (I don't do html very well). If posted it should probably be linked to the Iraq Study Group Report page.

So, the question is, is this public domain because its a government work or what? Here are the first several pages which contain the publisher's information. Note that Vintage Books never makes a claim that the work is copyrighted. Only that the "Maps © 2006 by Joyce Pendola" are copyright.

This segment (pgs 1-57) of the document may still reside in the Wikisource sandbox.

VINTAGE BOOKS

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION: DECEMBER 2006

All rights reserved.

The Authorized Edition of The Iraq Study Group Report is published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Maps © 2006 by Joyce Pendola

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

ISBN: 0-307-38656-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-307-38656-4

http://www.vintagebooks.com

A portion of the proceeds from the purchase of this book will be donated to the National Military Family Association, the only nonprofit organization that represents the families of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Commissioned Corps of the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, prepares spouses, children, and parents to better deal with the unique challenges of military life. The Association protects benefits vital to all families, including those of the deployed, wounded, and fallen. For more than 35 years, its staff and volunteers, comprised mostly of military family members, have built a reputation as the leading experts on military family issues. For more information, visit http://www.nmfa.org.

Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Jmcneill2 07:45, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

The copyright notice by Random House seems to suggest that they don't claim copyright on the text (only on their own intellectual property, which has nothing to do with the ISG). The USIP only says it "facilitated the work", otherwise I cannot find a legal basis for claiming that this is a U.S. Government work; still, maybe U.S. editors can find one, as nobody is blatently asserting copyright over it (the "All rights reserved" might only apply to the typographical arrangement). The other alternative is that copyright is held jointly by the members of the group (who didn't "work for hire"). Physchim62 14:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest that surprisingly the Iraq Study Group is not a government organisation. Random house doesn't own the work though, they just published the book. The Iraq Study group was form at the urging of congress but is not a congressional organization. they're all public servants but I think that they own their work. here is the report. nowhere is there a copyright notice but in the US works are automatically copyrighted to their authors. I believe that the ISG intended fully to make this work available but it is not technically Public Domain unless the group explicitly releases their rights. --Metal.lunchbox 21:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I started the article from a converted text from a large pdf file, for the purpose of including excerpts in the wiki article.
The report was funded by the w:United States Institute of Peace, a congressionally-funded organization, hence a work of the USGovt. Further, the PDF of the report as released had no such copyright info on it. Because this info wasnt included in the released PDF, and because its dissemination was intended for public reading, and because our usage here only facilitates further public reading (the PDF is a rather large file), we are within grounds to post it. Certainly its not a vio. -Stevertigo 21:00, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
sounds good to me. I originally had difficulty with the Institute of Peace website, figuring out exactly what they are. but seems clear enough now--Metal.lunchbox 22:15, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

What was the source of our current copy? It appears to be from Random House, which claims copyright. I suggest we replace it with the one from the United States Institute for Peace (which may or may not be copyrighted, as the Wikipedia article claims the organization strattles the line between govt agency and non-profit). I guess we need to contact them to find out of the USIP claims copyright on it. Let's keep it until then, but delete/replace bits from the Random House version. --Pmsyyz 01:16, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It isn't necessarily the case that as an organisation (Iraq Study Group) was funded (wholly or partly) by an organisation which is funded by the U.S.A. congress anything it produces can be considered as a work of the U.S.A. government. Funding is different from control and the U.S.A. funds a number of independent organisations whose reports are not PD but copyright to those organisations. Also I see that the ISG was "facilitated by USIP and supported by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Center for the Study of the Presidency(CSP), and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. " Bodies which are not U.S.A. governmental bodies (USIP is an "independent nonpartisan national institution", CSIS & the other 2 are independent think tanks). The ISG was appointed by the U.S.A. congress to produce their report but I don't know enough about U.S.A. law to say whether that means the congress owns the final report & holds copyright over it (& it can therefore be considered a U.S.A. governmental work & PD) or whether it is still owned by the authors. The fact that it was privately published by Random House rather than the U.S.A. Gov printers would seem to support the latter view but the situation seems sufficently confused that the best way to find out would be to ask the ISG what the copyright situation is. I'm happy to do this but won't be able to access my non-hotmail e-mail till the 8th. If anyone wants to ask in the meantime can you note it here so we're not bombarding them with multiple questions.
On the fact that it is a public report intended for public dissemination unfortunately that argument has been tried before (by me) in relation to political speeches & it wasn't successful. We don't consider the intention behind the production of a source to be relevant or to automatically make it PD. AllanHainey 17:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

League of Nations Documents

The Locarno Pact 1925. I have used Public Domain United Nations template. Does anyone know of a better template? Can anyone confirm this is public domain? John Cross 19:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

According to w:League_of_Nations#Demise_and_legacy, all property of the LoN was transferred to the UN. That should include the copyright to that treaty (if they ever held it). I'm not sure what to make of the conditions mentioned in the {{PD-UN}} template or which one should apply. We had an earlier version which assured PD status to documents published before 1989. How about that? On another avenue, Great Britain is one of the signatories. If the treaty text was published in the UK under Crown Copyright, it should be PD since 1976. Finally, the authors are not natural persons, and as of 1 January 1996 a publication plus 70 years term was expired, so {{PD-1996}} might apply.--GrafZahl 23:45, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed response. I will look into the options. John Cross 09:41, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Updates:

  • The document was published by the UK Government prior to 1925 in British Parliamentary Command Paper 2525. The UK Gov template states that the work was created by the UK Gov - so I am still not sure this is appropriate.
  • "7. The general rule for Official Records, United Nations documents and public information material is that these publications will be in the public domain. However, in exceptional circumstances, author departments may apply to the Publications Board to obtain copyright protection for such materials." See Administrative_Instruction_ST/AI/189/Add.9/Rev.2.

As the League of Nations records and documents are now UN documents and records, we can assume that League of Nations Documents are public domain. —unsigned comment by John Cross (talk) .

In my opinion, more than one copyright tag may be used when appropriate. Many works by the League of Nations may qualify for PD-UN. If so, we should amend the template.--Jusjih 14:47, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


I have created template:PD-LN for League of Nations documents. I am not at all sure if The Locarno Pact is one. John Cross 19:33, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Treaties are a tricky area of copyright law, but this one seems to be PD vitually everywhere (UK by expiration of copyright, France and Germany as law, US by non renewal, Belgium and Italy to be checked). The Locarno Pact appears to be a League of Nations document as well, under Art. 18 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. Physchim62 15:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I will translate template:PD-LN into Chinese and French like template:PD-UN when there are League of Nations works at Chinese and French Wikisource. Since property of the League of the Nations was transferred to the United Nations when the league dissolved in 1946, the copyright as intellectual property would also be transferred. Having checked ISO 3166-1, LN is unused. Our license templates currently use these ISO 3166-1 formal or reserved codes:
  1. US for the United States
  2. UK for the United Kingdom (ISO 3166-1 formally codes it GB but also reserves UK for it)
  3. CN for China
  4. MO for Macao
  5. TW for Taiwan--Jusjih 16:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource Portal (multilingual)

I did some work sorting out the Wikisource languages as represented on the Main Page Portal at wikisource.org today:

  • All currently extant language subdomains (a total of exactly 50) are now grouped on the main Wikisource portal by size.
  • All languages with local main pages at wikisource.org (but no current subdomain) are in a clear category and listed on the Main Page Portal in the order of their language codes. This took some detective work, but I think I have found them all (and if I have missed some they can easily be added).

Hopefully this will not only add some clarity to the ongoing language situation, but also make the webpage at wikisource.org a more appealing entrance for new visitors to Wikisource. Dovi 21:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

That looks really good, Dovi! It adds a lot of much needed clarity to that page. Thanks a lot!—Zhaladshar (Talk) 21:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
That's much better. So far Sanskirt is the only language still in multilingual Wikisource with more than 1000 articles without requests for a new subdomain. Shall we keep top 10 or increase that number such as to top 12? If no consensus to increase, I may want to stop checking Russian, Turkish, Latin, and Japanese articles, but I periodically check top ten and update.--Jusjih 16:37, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi. At this point, languages don't "move up" from 100 to 1000 to 10000 constantly, so there is not a great deal extra to check in the current format. The easiest way to check, by the way, is simply to glance at the list at m:Wikisource. As for top 10 or top 12, to me it seems we should use whatever number looks nicest around the logo...Dovi 19:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think keeping it at 10 would be best. 12 would seem to make it a little bunched up and crowded.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 20:08, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Then keep top 10, but how is m:Wikisource updated?--Jusjih 10:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Seems to be a script which interrogates each database for the number of pages (which is a simple code which I seem to have forgotten, will post when I can find it again). In any case, the external resource can produce a wikiformat reply, which is manually pasted into meta: otherwise there is an automated HTML page which is updated every six hours. Physchim62 11:20, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The code I mentioned is [[Special:Statistics|{{NUMBEROFARTICLES}}]] within each language domain. There are ways to get the info quicker, but I'm not an expert on these things, I just know that it's possible ;) Physchim62 16:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Help:Split texts

Since this help page is missing, I've made a stab at creating it, from what I know. Since I'm fairly new to WikiSource, would others look it over and edit as needed? Thanks! -- SatyrTN 03:13, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

+ tab

Is it possible to be rid of the + tab or else re-program it to add a new level 3 section to Questions? The current factoring of this is useful but that feature is working against us.--BirgitteSB 17:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

It may be best to refactor this into subpages, so people can add a section to the appropriate page. I don't think the tab can be easily reprogrammed, so I removed it for now. -Steve Sanbeg 21:13, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Question regarding math articles

Hi. I've got scans of a number of math articles published pre-1900 in the US (so out of copyright, as I understand it) that it'd be nice to be able to link to from wikipedia articles or such. However, Wikisource seems not to want PDFs/scanned text, and commons seems not to want text at all, AIUI. The problem is that it'd be very difficult (time-consuming) to manually format math articles. Is there any place that it'd be appropriate to upload scanned articles? If not, then is wikisource the appropriate place for transcribed math articles? I'd think so, but I'd like to be sure. --Sopoforic 03:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Commons is the correct place for scanned pages; the transcription belongs here. Here's how it was done with A Reduction in the number of the Primitive Propositions of Logic (should be close enough to mathematics). First, the scanned pages were uploaded to commons (first page: Image:Scan of "Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 19 (1917-1920)" (English, page 32).png, gallery page: commons:Scans of A Reduction in the number of the Primitive Propositions of Logic (English)). Check out WS:IUG for naming conventions, etc. Then the pages were transcribed in the Page namespace (first page: Page:Scan of "Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 19 (1917-1920)" (English, page 32).png), see Help:Side by side image view for proofreading for more information. Finally a transclusion template {{reduction page}} was created using the {{page}} template. The main page A Reduction in the number of the Primitive Propositions of Logic then calls the template once for each page.--GrafZahl 10:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Templates

Can we change the "improve and maintain", "Current and requested texts", "Get involved" and "Collaboration" on the community portal page to templates so that they can be used elsewhere? John G. 01:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Probably. --Benn Newman (AMDG) 02:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Where else would you have them used?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:06, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
There are no problems doing so if there is reason to; we already do it on the main page with Main categories, New texts, Featured text, and Sisterprojects. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
John G.'s user page looks like his a person who'd want to add them. 8) --Benn Newman (AMDG) 21:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea of templatizing these things. I found it a pain to figure how to get the old authors index from the old Main Page onto my userpage when it was replaced. Having these things in templates would make things easier in these situations and to make easy bookmarks of whatever you use most often. That said I have no desiire to fudge my way through making a bunch of tmplates. --BirgitteSB 03:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll templatize them if someone tells me how. I don't want to mess up anything... John G. 01:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
I templatized it (Template:PortalTemp), but I don't know how to stick it back into the page without getting everyone confused about where to edit. Suggestions? John G. 05:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource Navigation System

The wikisource navigation system needs quite a bit of work. Wikimedia has created a great start for the wikisource software but it falls short in the online library realm because it's doesn't use a practical system for navigating but rather uses the same navigation that may work great for encyclopedias but is not fit for libraries.

The first thing that need to be implemented is a search for author and title, along with the current general keyword search. Second, all the works linked in a category such as should include the author and the year and possible some dynamic way to sort so that when this project gets larger it will be easy to find books you want. Lastly, the header template should include more fields that can then be used for classification rather than including categories separately. I think there should be multiple headers created, one for the complete book/collection pages and another for chapter/section pages. As it stands, the chapter/section pages are pretty much treated like a complete book. Pbarnes 21:34, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Support. --Talkie Toaster 15:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Search by author and title is more or less possible. You can type the author name or title into the search bar and click 'go'; if they are on Wikisource, you will get the work or a list of works by the author. This is not ideal, but it's the best we can do with the current software. There is some work being done on category intersection that will greatly extend the category system and simplify categorization on Wikisource, which may help extend our search features.
The header is intentionally standardized. There is no need for a separate template for subpages because {{header}} is very flexible. Subpages use three extra fields that control navigation ('section', 'previous', and 'next') which can be omitted on top pages. There is also no need to add categorization to the header, since it can be easily done using the [[Category:]] syntax. One thing to keep in mind is that the template is currently used on 38049 pages. We must limit edits to the template to the strictest minimum, preferably no more than once or twice per year, since each edit will force every standard page to be uncached (which would burden the servers unnecessarily). Adding categories to the template would require frequent edits to expand or correct categorization. —{admin} Pathoschild 22:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Search for "Plato" results in:
  1. Plato: New Readings
  2. Plato; or, the Philosopher
  3. Representative Men/Plato: New Readings
Note the first two don't exist and it's not until the seventh result until there is actually a piece by Plato (The Republic). The page I should be directed to is Author: Plato. What there should be is an easily accessible search for only author pages, one for only book titles (excluding chapters and sections). Pbarnes 04:35, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

European Union Documents

Is it OK to post these?

The EU website states that: "Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, save where otherwise stated."

Template:Europa website

John Cross 20:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it is not. Projects such as Project Gutenberg only care about reproduction, but works at Wikisource have to allow derivatives. --Benn Newman (AMDG) 21:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
It's a tricky one. EU reports, no, for the reasons that Benn gives. Treaties, regulations and directives are a more difficult area: they are PD in some EU countries and of uncertain (read "probably copyrighted") status in others. As to where WS stands with relation to conflict of laws in the U.S. I simply don't know... Physchim62 15:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
The copyright notice does not say you can't make derivatives. It could be argued that the notice allows people to reproduce any part/parts of documents so long as the source is noted. John Cross 21:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
That is an iffy argument which you could possibly get away with, but I think your point is still moot. Again, reproduction is only part of it. What if I want to take, for example, some boilerplate text that the E. U. use on every report and adapt it for my own? While I might be able to reproduce the text exactly, I would not be able to change it for my needs. --Benn Newman (AMDG) 22:14, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
A more specific question: Is it OK to add the Maastricht Treaty (1992, forming the European Union). This very important document does not exist on Wikisource. And no, I don't mean the current, modified, version of the Treaty -- it's undergone several alterations and revisions since 1992. --EncycloPetey 06:28, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
This is why I asked the question in the first place! I had added the text to Treaty on European Union which is the formal name for the Maastricht Treaty. I have now added a redirect from Maastricht Treaty. John Cross 20:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Thank you very much for adding that document (asuming it is legally OK); it was much needed here. --EncycloPetey 22:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
The legality is OK according to Project Gutenburg which say the treaty is not copyrighted in the US http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/686.John Cross 22:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
As a law (the treaty is directly enforceable in national courts), this would be excluded from U.S. copyright and the copyright of most EU countries. Physchim62 13:29, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Works with Page Scans

Hello,

I have recently uploaded a work "History of the Ten Lost Tribes - Anglo-Israelism Examined" a refutation of the Anglo-Israeli religious theory to Wikisource. I am in the process of proofreading and marking it up as it is the direct result of OCR. I have posted the page-scans on Wikimedia Commons. I'd like to include the page scans of each chapter on that page. I'd prefer something like a thin right-hand column with one page on-top of another. It would also be nice if the scans only showed up in normal viewing/editing and anyone who printed it (using the print this page link) did not have the burden of tiny illegible scans being printed.

Would it perhaps be better to place the page scans at the bottom of the text in a gallery below the Endnotes for the section?

Also, for whatever reason, searching for 'Ten Lost Tribes' dose not show this work. Is there something I need to do to make this work more visible to the search engine?

Thanks,

—Wikijeff 23:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

You might be interested in ProofreadPage, see Help:Side by side image view for proofreading.--GrafZahl 16:01, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Guttenberg Project

I was wondering if the Guttenberg project wouldn't welcome exposure on Wikipedia. They currently have CDs of out of copyright books that you can download or have shipped to you. Could these books be posted to Wikisource?

KAR

I don't know, you'd have to ask them. :) A lot of what they have can be posted (nice and organised of course!) to Wikisource; some works, howver, cannot. They really only care about redistribution, so they have some works that are licensed under a Creative Commons no-derivative licese. For works that are public domain, they leave you guessing as to why. --Benn Newman (AMDG)

What is a peer-reviewed forum

I am translating Wikisource:What Wikisource includes to japanese.I do not understand "peer-reviewed forum" in Wikisource:What Wikisource includes#Acknowledging precedent exclusions and "editorial controls" in Wikisource:What Wikisource includes#Defining what is included? please teach me.--Forestfarmer 08:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

The first one might be a typo. Maybe it was "form" instead of "forum" that was meant all along? As for "editorial controls", this means one or more editors (who are not necessarily peers of the authors) are assigned to the work. They peruse it and may suggest changes; even impose conditions for publication. This way, the published work has a certain level of "quality", i.e. it meets certain standards which depend on the publisher.--GrafZahl 10:01, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I am thankful to you.but is peer-reviewed form(peer-reviewd work) a candidate for deletion?--Forestfarmer 11:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
No, quite to the contrary: a work does not belong to Wikisource, if it is not published in a verifiable, peer-reviewed form. If it is, it is welcome, provided that the remaining inclusion criteria are met.--GrafZahl 14:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
OK,I understood ! thank you very much.--Forestfarmer 14:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Untagged images linked from History of Edmeston, New York

I need help determining the copyright status of History of Edmeston, New York and its images:

I suggest you leave a message on Nonenmac's talk page and ask him. I would like to say they are PD, though I cannot prove it.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 20:50, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Other discussions

Wanted! Project ideas for possible grant

Hello Wikisource,

There is potential for the WMF to apply for grant money from the US National Endowment for the Humanities. We need to apply with a specific project in mind, and also a specific partner such as a library, museum or archive. They need a project that "explore[s] new ways to share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital resources". It seems very well suited to Wikisource, to me. Note that digitising existing collections is not enough. :) To read more about the grant and to post ideas, please see m:NEH Advancing Knowledge grant. Thanks! --commons:User:pfctdayelise 06:43, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

For more information, see the page on Meta.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 21:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Spam bot page

Sorry folks, can't find the templates but needs attention anyway - W/w/index.php is a spam bot page that has arrived on at least four Wiki's at the same time. IP is now blocked on two other Wiki's (by me on Wikibooks) as no valid edits have come from that IP and it is a repeat offender of this type of page - regards --Herby talk thyme 09:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The pointer to templates would be good too having found a couple of vandal pages - thanks --Herby talk thyme 13:08, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Category:Wikisource templates has most of them.--BirgitteSB 18:09, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

One of those days

You may consider an indef ban on User:Norman the Tank Engine appropriate. On Wikibooks earlier in the same charming way. Regards --Herby talk thyme 15:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

BTW if you want to run checkuser on the vandal I will happily confirm whether the same IP was used on WB (I am a checkuser there). --Herby talk thyme 16:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I have blocked him for local vandalism however we do not have any local checkusers. You would have to make a request on Meta for that.--BirgitteSB 18:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Link to next chapter should be at bottom!

I just discovered this book resource and it's wonderful. While reading Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the awkwardness of your system for advancing through chapters stands out. Shouldn't the link to the next chapter be at the bottom of the page instead of the top, or maybe both places? It's more natural and efficient to find the link at the end of the chapter rather than having to scroll back to the top.

Keep up the great work, Fred

Top-only or both places, but not bottom-only, I'd say. Actually, we do have {{footer}} on over four thousand pages with which it is at least possible to jump to the top quickly (but the Home key on your keyboard is probably even quicker). What we'd need is a way to specify navigation elements once and then have them in both places. That's possible, but it would be awkward for the editors to use (not to mention having to change a template that is used on thousands of pages).--GrafZahl 09:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Template for page breaks

I've just created a test template for marking page breaks and page numbers in documents where pagination is important. It's named Template:page break. It is implemented thus far only in History of the Church (1838). I'd appreciate any comments. --COGDEN 23:36, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Presumably if some source introduced these, there is no need for this... can you give an example where it's needed? The usage you gave, I'm not sure I see why you would want page breaks, they seem to be at arbitrary places, sometimes in mid sentence. Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 13:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I think COGDEN means that this is the pagination of the original manuscript (in the sense of the hand-written original), not of any published copy. --EncycloPetey 15:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
I find it useful for some works that cite pages of its own edition, and in the WS format would have no sense. With numbered pages, it makes sense. Aleator 17:05, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, in some cases it's important to designate the page divisions of the original source, so that the proper page in the original can be cited. --COGDEN 18:12, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree that some sort of template would be useful for certain texts, for example legal case reports and perhaps US statutes. A running page break template is available at Template:Page label, which give (p643) as a result. Physchim62 20:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

A possible correction

Greetings Wikisource:

On Sunday, Feb 4, 2007 I viewed a documentary on the Discovery Channel regarding the Iran Air IR655 disaster in 1988. After reading the Wikipedia account of this disaster, there are two points not identified in your text. I realize that you request confirmation and additional sources on all material.

1. The crew of the USS Vicennes in the CIC(Combat Informaiton Centre) mistakenly locked on to an aircraft believing it to be the Iranian F-14 and not the IR655.

2. IR 655 never did verbally nor technically acknowledge the Vicennes.

Thank you very much. Your comments would be greatly appreciated. Chilly —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Chilly (talk • contribs) 16:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikisource is not the right place for this suggestion. Probably the best place to take this would be to the talk page on Wikipedia that corresponds to the article you referenced. However television documentaries typically are not viewed as reliable sources, so you would want to find some other source for the information if possible. Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c 00:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Official lyrics of Advance Australia Fair are copyrighted

I just discovered from [4] that official lyrics of Advance Australia Fair are copyrighted. Non-commercial use does not require case-by-case permission, but commercial use require permission. I have added this to Wikipedia. If no one replies, I propose removing the official lyrics from the article while keeping Peter Dodds McCormick's original lyrics as he died in 1916.--Jusjih 15:50, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

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