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Announcements

Newly prepared set of copyright licenses

After I have had successful uses on Chinese Wikisource, I would like to introduce a newly prepared set of copyright licenses that will not require manual updating because authors have died for longer periods:

{{PD-anon-1923}} is for anonymous and pseudonymous works published before 1923.
{{Pd/1923}} is for works with known authorship published before 1923. Entering {{Pd/1923|author's death year}} will automatically pick {{PD-old-50-1923}}, {{PD-old-60-1923}}, {{PD-old-70-1923}}, {{PD-old-75-1923}}, or {{PD-old-80-1923}} depending on how long an author has died. Once died for more than 100 years, {{PD-old}} will be automatically picked. zh:user:Wmrwiki made the code Pd/1923 but I have been unable to merge the function to {{PD-1923}}, so I would like to request any experienced users to try if a merger may be made.
{{PD-anon-1996}} is for anonymous and pseudonymous works public domain in the USA with the same reason as {{PD-1996}}. Entering {{Pd/1996|year when work was published}} will automatically pick {{PD-anon-60-1996}}, {{PD-anon-70-1996}}, or {{PD-anon-80-1996}} depending on how long an anonymous or pseudonymous work has been published.
{{Pd/1996}} is for works with known authorship public domain in the USA with the same reason as {{PD-1996}}. Entering {{Pd/1996|author's death year}} automatically pick {{PD-old-60-1996}}, {{PD-old-70-1996}}, {{PD-old-75-1996}}, or {{PD-old-80-1996}} depending on how long an author has died. Once died for more than 100 years, {{PD-old}} will be automatically picked. zh:user:Wmrwiki made the code Pd/1996 but I have been unable to merge the function to {{PD-1996}}, so I would like to request any experienced users to try if a merger may be made.

My prepared set of copyright licenses has several advantages:

Copyright licenses regarding how long ago authors died will be automatically updated.
Most linked-to categories include {{PD-1923}} and {{PD-old-70}}. Both have more than 1000 members but neither is useful to users who would like to use any of them in the USA and elsewhere before my introduction of the new copyright licenses.
Combined licenses show the copyright status in the USA where Wikisource is hosted, as well as other countries and areas, to better comply with the world provisions of the Wikimedia Foundation mission statement, while acknowledging the different national and regional copyright lengths.
Excessive double license templates to show US and non-US licenses will be reduced.

Any improvements to my new copyright licenses are welcome, but please do not just push to delete them. If a work is known to be published before 1923, 1996 templates are unneeded. If unsure of publication year but a work is eligible for 1996 templates, please use them. Accommodating author namespace, which does not exist on Chinese Wikisource yet, will be better. Once accommodating author namespaces, both 1923 and 1996 templates may be used as needed.--Jusjih (talk) 01:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The biggest problem is that these templates try to mash together US rules with the rules of unspecified other countries. (We would probably also be doing better to have separate templates for authors and works.) One needs to remember that US copyright law is more irregular than that of most countries. The templates also seem to make assumptions about the application of the rule of the shorter term in other countries by progressing the term of the copyright as we get further from the author's death. For Author:Stephen Leacock, who died in 1944, his works are in the public domain in Canada, and every other country that accepts the rule of the shorter term. A reference to countries with a term of life + 60 years is misleading. Have either of the only two countries affected rejected the rule of the shorter term? Eclecticology (talk) 20:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

All templates beginning with "Author-PD", i.e. Author-PD-1923, Author-PD-none, Author-PD-old, Author-PD-old-50, Author-PD-old-60, Author-PD-old-70 are now redirects. Some of them were separate templates, but have been redirected to detect whether they are used in main or author namespace. For the rule of the shorter term, India accepts it, but I am unsure of Venezuela. My thoughts are to better serve as many users around the world as possible. Conversely, Project Gutenburg does not even bother with copyright status outside the USA.--Jusjih (talk) 03:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

This is not working altogether correctly. On the page on the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Japan-Korea_Annexation_Treaty, you read at the bottom: "This work published before January 1, 1923 is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago." The document translated on the page was issued in August 1910. How can the author of a 99-year-old document have died at least 100 years ago? Gary Schwartz

There are many cases of posthumous publication. In this case, someone put the wrong copyright tag on the document; nothing preventing that.--Prosfilaes (talk) 15:04, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposals

Semi-protect for Canadian legislation

We currently host Canadian legislation (thank goodness) based on the {{Legislation-CAGov}} template which cites the Reproduction of Federal Law Order. This order requires that anybody hosting such a copy may do so only "provided due diligence is exercised in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced". To me, this suggests we much take an "extra" step to ensure this, and I suggest cascading semi-protect on these texts, allowing registered users to edit them, but rejecting attempts by anonymous IP addresses (the bulk of our vandalism) would help "satisfy" that requirement, and show that we actually "went the extra mile" to meet our obligations specific to the RFLO. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 07:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I recall cascading semi-protect was a short-lived bug; while it was around, it was technically possible for registered users to use that to semi-protect pages, but it was fixed, since that wasn't the intention. I'd think semi-protecting the page should be sufficient, or we could consider implementing flagged revisions, which should have a similar affect. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Hrm, I may have used the term "cascading" incorrectly then -- I was simply referring to embedding the semi-protect code into the template, not the {noinclude} part of {{Legislation-CAGov}} so that pages with that template will be automatically semi-protected. It seems easier than flagged revisions - though perhaps in the future they could work in tandem or replace each other. Right now though, I think a simple semi-protect would be a nice touch. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 22:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

You should probably consider the same protection for documents covered by {{UK-Crown-waiver}} since it has a similar requirement for accuracy (see point 12(b) under Guidance)--T. Mazzei (talk) 00:01, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

While I don't have any objections to the being polite and going the extra mile, I feel I should point out that {{PD-EdictGov}} also applies and does not require the protection. Jeepday (talk) 23:50, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

That's a good point, but I agree that if it just takes a little bit on our part (and doesn't result in any lost texts), then we should always try to be "accomodating" to foreign countries - both for the sake of people in Canada who upload Canadian legislation (and are not protected by its American PD-nature), and simply to show and gain experience in "dealing with issues arising in specific circumstances" in the hopes it'll help us in the future as well. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 01:15, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. How much vandalism has there been on these pages? This is more like a solution in search of a problem. Using Nostradamus to divine "due diligence" only generates further confusion on this concept. A Wiki should limit page protection to where it is absolutely essential. Flagged revisions would be acceptable. Eclecticology (talk) 09:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting the pages are more heavily vandalised than any other text, but that while we may decide the risk that Tom Sawyer will be vandalised, whether for ten minutes or ten days, resulting in 1-100 readers seeing the corrupted version, is "worth the risk" to us. However, that decision is not in our hands for Canadian/UK legislation, the Crown has already dictated that such vandalism occurring would basically invalidate our right to host the works -- so the suggestion is to show due diligence at preventing vandalism, even moreso than we do for regular texts. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 15:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Raising the matter of UK legislation only serves to obfuscate this discussion, which is about Canadian legislation. Where have the Canadian government or Canadian Courts made such dictates about vandalism? You clearly just made that up for the sake of winning an argument. The standard for "due diligence" is that of an ordinarily prudent person in the conduct of his own affairs; the kind of descent into paranoia that you propose is not a part of this. Eclecticology (talk) 19:44, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It may, in the future, behoove you to actually read the legislation being referenced, in this case I think it's quite clear that the phrase 'provided due diligence is exercised in ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced" implies that I did not "just make this up" - and I see no evidence to suggest this is any kind of "paranoia". If you insist on a court finding, perhaps this 2003 ruling that clarifies "due diligence" to mean " the accused to avoid liability by proving that he took all reasonable care...or if he took all reasonable steps to avoid the particular event." Clearly, adding a simple semi-protect to such legislation would be a step towards proving that the Wikimedia Foundation took reasonable steps to ensure the integrity, rather than simply saying "we did nothing to ensure the integrity, screw off". Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 21:12, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Your proposal goes well beyond reasonable care. Reasonable care does not require to generally anticipate willfully offensive behaviour such as vandalism, and even there the extent of the damage needs to be considered, as should the ability to recover from the damage. The case that you cite had to do with a broken pipe, and the court was merely ruling that the defence of due diligence was available; it did not rule whether that defence would be successful under the circumstances. The real damage caused by having a vandalized statute here is minimal because we still state that our version is not official. Also, where a statute has been vandalized we still have an archive of all past states of that page to allow for a quick recovery when required. Given all these other options, there is no need for this oppressive proposal. Eclecticology (talk) 22:37, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

"avoid the particular event", not "correct the particular event some hours, days or months after it happens". Semi-protect is a reasonable step to prevent vandalism, rather than correct it after-the-fact. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 23:28, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't we already apply diligence to all our texts? There is a policy regarding that at WS:PROTECT#Preservation of integrity. If we believe this text is accurate, then the policy allows them to be fully protected. If they aren't accurate, then I don't think protection would help, since anon edits can fix problems as well as introduce them. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 18:12, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Um, sorry to come into this discussion so late, but, in what way is the Reproduction of Federal Law Order a Free Content license? It clearly seems to grant no rights to create derivative works, which is required by the Free Content definition. Have I missed something here? JesseW (talk)`

There was formerly several discussions about whether or not to accept works covered under the waivers. Acts under the {{UK-Crown-waiver}} were at one time deleted, and it was suggested Canadian Acts be deleted as well. However, it has recently been discovered that these works are not copyrightable in the US under {{PD-EdictGov}}, and are "almost free" elsewhere under the waivers, and so the consensus now seems to be to keep them.--T. Mazzei (talk) 06:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

That makes sense; but it does mean we should clarify the PD status of Canadian laws in the US on the license template, and we certainly don't need to semi-protect them, as they are PD in the country the servers are located in. JesseW (talk) 21:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree the template should specify they are PD in the United States, but semi-protect is still necessary because the server location is largely irrelevant - since they are typically Canadian subjects who upload these works and could be held liable if the project can't prove that "due diligence" is taken to prevent (not correct) vandalism. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Bahá'u'lláh.} 22:02, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

As for the issue of "ensuring the accuracy of the materials reproduced" -- I wonder what effect our keeping of all the versions of a page has on that. As long as we don't delete the accurate versions of Canadian laws, we are "reproducing" accurate versions; and specific revisions can't be modified except by the developers, which is a status we certainly do protect with "due diligence". So the issue is not that accurate versions of the laws won't be available, from us, at any time -- it's that inaccurate versions (generally not produced by Canadian citizens) may also be available from us. And, since vandals can simply create new pages containing inaccurate versions of Canadian laws if we stop them from creating new revisions of existing pages, we're going to be making available inaccurate reproductions of Canadian laws (until we clean up the vandalism) whether we semi-protect or not. Protecting the pages won't achieve anything useful. JesseW (talk) 18:07, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

The aims of this project is to reproduce things as they are. Derivative works of statutory material are of no use to anybody, except perhaps for translations into other languages and that is not an en-wikisource problem. Due diligence to insure accuracy is completely consistent with what we do here. We really need to avoid doctrinaire interpretations of the Free Content definition. Eclecticology (talk) 18:54, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

While that makes sense in terms of our goals at En.Wikisource, it's certainly not what Wikimedia as a whole has stated as fundamental principles. If we do want to accept works whose licenses don't permit the creation of derivative works, we really ought to explicitly say that in Wikisource:Copyright. That's not being doctrinaire, that's being honest and clear. JesseW (talk) 21:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Anything but free content goes against Wikimedia policy, and I don't see this as a doctrinaire interpretation. Editability is fundamental to free content. As for derivative works, besides translations, which I'm not so quick to dismiss, there are simplifications, copying with adapations for all types of legal bodies, big and small, paraphrases, and anywhere you want to use part of the law and not worry about whether someone considers it "accurate".

Not that any of this has anything to do with the text under question, since that's clearly PD in the US.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:15, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikisource:Works & Images

Following on from comments below on WS:Works and my question on images I noticed in Wikisource:Image guidelines we say "Most images are not useful on Wikisource, since text is the primary purpose; images should not be added simply because they bear some indirect relevance to the subject." This would seem to rule out pretty much all the images on Wikisource:Works. I think that we should get rid of all - in particular the moving - images there but I wanted to raise it here first for comment as I appreciate some are likely to prefer the large number of images there. Personally I reckon they make the page too cluttered and in a lot of cases don't provide any real illumination as to what the link is to without reading the link itself. AllanHainey (talk) 16:13, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I very much agree. I did raise something like this in the last couple days on another thread, and was properly chastened for being off-topic. I find that whole page to be one big muddle, and the images there don't help when they spread the links out even more. The bigger difficulty is with our top level organization. What's really needed is a more systematic approach to our top level organization, and a more co-ordinated view of the way in which we employ the Wikisource: and Category: namespaces. This needs a far sighted approach that takes into account what this project can be and what it can include. Eclecticology (talk) 18:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Unlike Wikipedia, Wikisource lacks any "colour" - so the use of graphical depictions in our index headings help make us a little more txt-based - at least in my opinion. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 03:33, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Subpage formatting

I'm new to wikisource so forgive me if this has come up before. I like the idea of rooting a single work as a page and then its contents in subpages of that page, but I don't like how page titles are then displayed in Monobook and presumably other skins. It means we end up with page titles like this:

Treaty on European Union/Protocol on the convergence criteria referred to in Article 109j of the Treaty establishing the European Community

I think it would be much more aesthetic and useful if this displayed more like:

Treaty on European Union >

Protocol on the convergence criteria referred to in Article 109j of the Treaty establishing the European Community

(This would require a small change to the software which I could write myself and propose over at bugzilla.)

This way subpages would automatically build a tree and highlight the title of the relevant page. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 14:20, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to know what the implications of such a change to the software would mean to other unrelated pages, and what this would do to the way we link to the page. We would probably do better to encourage people to make page titles less verbose, thus "Treaty on European Union/Protocol on Article 109j". The header in the article could still show the full title. Eclecticology (talk) 17:41, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we change how pages are titled or how we link to other pages, just how we display the titles on pages. On the related point, I'm not sure we should really rename protocols. We're not meant to be re-writing them after all. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 19:05, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It looks like we don't have subpages enabled in the main space. That configuration change would add the links to parent pages, although it would still display the full title. Maybe it would then be sufficient to add {{DISPLAYTITLE:{{SUBPAGENAME}}}} to the header? Although that would still require a small software change, it would be fairly self contained. I think it would be ideal if we could set the display title of a page like Bible/Titus/1/1 to something like "Titus/1/1" or even better "Titus 1:1". -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 20:11, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The Bible pages are not really a problem, because no book of the Bible has a long-winded name; most are readily recognized by a single-word name. When we break many other publications down into chapter based sub-pages, we promote the use of page numbers only and actively discourage adding chapter titles. Our "page" titles need not be identical to what the original used, though our page should show the original title prominently near the beginning of the article itself. Our headers are not a part of the original article; they represent metadata that allow the article to interface with other material that we host. Disambiguation, and easily linked short titles are all a part of that interface. If a person is really interested in protocols to the E.U. Treaty we need to make the linkage as easy as possible. Eclecticology (talk) 22:31, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to make a specific point about EU protocols or "long winded" names. I never liked the way Wikipedia displayed subpages, but there it doesn't affect articles. A slash makes perfect sense with urls, but little with the titles displayed on pages. Compare:

United States Code/Title 35/Chapter 27/Section 267

with

United States Code » Title 35 » Chapter 27 » Section 267

'/' just looks too much like a terminal prompt. This is a standard way of displaying hierarchical lists. Open Directory do it this way. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 00:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I like it. Hesperian 00:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

I can see the point, and it does have aesthetic benefits. IIRC, I even think that I played with something of the sort in the days of old wikisource. Assuming that there is support for the idea, it would be unwise to proceed in a hurry without a thorough analysis of what the change might break. Our sub-page system is used extensively, so caution is advisable. Eclecticology (talk) 01:31, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Getting the software written and approved will probably take a while. There should be pleanty of time to figure out any name changes that need to be made. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 13:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This is one of those chicken or egg problems. Human nature being what it is, very few people would be inclined to work on this massive number of name changes without some prior assurance that the software change will be implemented. I'd like to see it debugged on a test wiki first. Eclecticology (talk) 17:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It would be good to see a mock up for complete pages where we have a complex subpage levels. The url will still display a 'slashed' hierarchy. My one concern is that I regularly used the copy and paste the displayed slashed hierarchy on a page to enable easy builds of page links, so that will mean that people will either retype (which is subject to errors) or copy and paste and then have to replace the ' >> ' with '/'. --billinghurst (talk) 11:05, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

One book that I have worked on in the past is The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Besides being a fine collection of stories, it is difficult to capture how each story fits into the broader scheme of the work. Eclecticology (talk) 17:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The first thing I think we could solve quite easily. A little bit of Javascript could add a menu beside the page edit links which would copy the full article name to the clipboard. Or if the clipboard is too difficult, a popup layer of the slashed page title.

The second is a bit trickier. The software needs to be changed first. Once this is done however we should be able to tinker around with how it displays on a test site. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 13:24, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It may make sense to consider this as three separate changes:
1. enable subpages in the main namespace. Currently, we name the pages as though this feature were enabled, but it's not; if it was, we'd already see the links to the parent pages, i.e. user:sanbeg/test/sub. This should be non-controversial.
  Curiously it was enabled for all subdomains recently. See oldwikisource:Wikisource:Scriptorium#enable subpages in main namespace on all subdomains. Actually it is already enabled here since long. I removed some "tweak" which prevent displaying that. Yann (talk) 23:51, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
2. relax the rules for DISPLAYNAME, which currently only allows alternate names if they'd normalize the same as the real name. We'd need to modify it to allow displaying only part of the name without the basename, and possibly use an alternate separator. This is more controversial, since it would allow a page to have a displayname that is the name of a different page, which isn't currently allowed, so there would need to be some agreement here & with the devs.
3. Modify the skin to place the hierarchy before the title (in monobook, that would'nt make much sense in, say, modern) and to allow replacing the pipe separator with something else. IMHO, this seems less important than 1 & 2 for the affect we want. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 17:40, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

- This sounds like a useful breakdown of the task.
  1. Disabling of subpages in the main namespace of Wikipedia was already being implemented when I first became involved in 2002, and I never did grasp why this was being done. I would like to see what happens if we turn this on, before going ahead with the other. It could seriously affect the way we work in other ways. It would be nice to see a more consistent use of the "previous" parameter in the Header so that it would only apply to a page of equal rank, and not to a page that is higher in the hierarchy.
  2. This is certainly consistent with my point above about names: Our page name need not be identical to the name that appears on the original work. The most important reason for the difference is to resolve ambiguities, but there are others.
  3. I'm less supportive of this one. Skin-specific changes may not work at all with other skins. This is something which those who have grown up knowing only monobook often fail to notice. Eclecticology (talk) 18:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

In the interests in stimulating the technical site of this debate, I have just created {{title path}}, which will display the subpage hierarchy, pretty much as illustrated above, for any mainspace page upon which it is placed. It works for subpages nested up to ten deep, and can easily be extended to more if necessary. If I could be bothered I'm sure I could extend it to other namespaces too.

To demonstrate, I have (temporarily) stuck it at the top of United States Code/Title 35/Chapter 27/Section 267. Check it out.

The significance of this is that we don't actually need to hack the software, and we don't need to enable subpages. Presumably all we need to do is relax the DISPLAYNAME rules to accept this. Alternatively, we might accept the DISPLAYNAME as is, and merely hack this into our standard header template.

Hesperian 23:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

It looks awfully big. I like the more modest display made visible by Yann's tweaks. That also addresses my concern about the "previous" parameter. It should now be safe to blank that parameter when the contents are at a higher level in the hierarchy.

It also makes me wonder how we might handle having articles that belong to more than one hierarchy. Eclecticology (talk) 08:31, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Well shrink it then. I don't think articles should belong to more than one hierarchy. Hesperian 10:09, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I've written a javascript demonstration of my proposal. (Not as difficult as I'd thought). if you add:

importScriptURI("/w/index.php?title=User:Blue-Haired_Lawyer/hierarchy.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript");

to your monobook.js (that User:[Your name here]/monobook.js for the unfamiliar) and it will display page titles in line with my first example above. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 11:42, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Any feedback? In the meantime we might consider enabling subpages in the main namespace. It would only require a small change to MediaWiki:Monobook.css. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 16:38, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that this had already been done. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 02:45, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

We've been discussing a similar issue, here: Talk:Oregon Constitution#Top level header. At first glance this proposal looks like a very good one, and like it would (at least partially) address our difficulty. However, I hesitate to speak with much certainty, as I'm still pretty new to how things are done on Wikisource. I'll try installing the sample code. -Pete (talk) 17:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Subpage formatting: some more examples

I've been using my javascript for a while now and as far a subpage naming problems go we'd have to rename short titles, for example those which are just numbers. The Bible is a decent example. An article which is now named "Bible/Titus/1/1" would display a rather unfortunate:

Bible » Titus » 1 »

1

however a rename to "Bible/Titus/Chapter 1/ Verse 1" results in a better: (hopefully we could get a bot to do this kind of thing)

Bible » Titus » Chapter 1 »

Verse 1

and with more flexible naming:

Bible » Titus » Chapter 1 »

Titus 1:1

Any thoughts? Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 01:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer to keep it all on one line. Hesperian 03:31, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

We already have had people working on Bible projects, and it would not be wise to start using bots for making changes there without having those people onside. Eclecticology (talk) 05:29, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I completely agree. I was just giving it as an example of how page titles might be written. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk)

The problem with every thing on a single is that on longer page titles instead of this:

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II » Volume I » Constantine » The Life of Constantine » Book II »

Chapter 23

we get this:

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II » Volume I » Constantine » The Life of Constantine » Book II » Chapter 23

Then again maybe it's not so bad. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 18:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

And when you consider that "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II" isn't even showing up in your examples ... :-) Eclecticology (talk) 20:06, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Upps... point proven. Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 02:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

If we relax the displayname rules to allow displaying any number of subpage components from the right side of the title on subpages, then we shouldn't need to rename anything; especially if we can use an alternate separator. It seems like this would be useful on any project that has subpages in article space, and wouldn't affect other projects. I think that would be preferable to using javascript, as long as we can push it through, although if it's complicated to implement, it may be worth checking on bugzilla or wikitech to see how others feel about it. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 23:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The main problem was displaying pages with '/' in the titles. Whatever the result we wouldn't have to rename anything. We could rename certain articles if it made sense to do so. Arguably it's better to have more self-explaintory pages name (ie "Page 2") instead of ("2"). Blue-Haired Lawyer (talk) 02:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Other discussions

{{similar}} template in Author: namespace

The {{similar}} template needs some tinkering to work successfully in the Author: namespace. I was hoping that someone could code some magic, so that the {{similar}} works like {{disambiguation}} and {{PD-old}} in putting in the alternate text for the appropriate namespace.

Example of now Author:John Brown (reverend) says

For works with similar titles, see Author:John Brown.

I was thinking that the Author text could say See authors with the same name. Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 06:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It now says "See authors with similar names." See your John Brown page for an example. (I accidentally made the edit as an IP, btw.) Psych less 00:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Questions

Line numbering

Do we have a template or something that adds line numbers every 5 lines to the left margin of a poem? An gr 08:41, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Hrm, we don't that I've ever seen - but it is a nice idea. You'd insert {{poem-numbers}} after the <poem> and before the </poem> tags I assume in theory? And perhaps accept a parameter of "5", "10" or "25" for example, so that it puts a marker only on every 5th, 10th or 25th line? Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Nikola Tesla‎.} 22:33, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Or indeed any integer, for people who are perverse enough to want to number every 7th line or something like that. I don't have the remotest idea how to make such a template, though. Does anyone else? An gr 18:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Latin wikisource has one, but it interferes with page number when page transclusion is used, so I don't much like the idea of importing it. Hesperian 03:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It should still be OK if it's used on non-transcluded pages. Eclecticology (talk) 05:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikilinks from articles

At the moment, our wikilink guidelines talk about linking to relative (in a work) or contextual pages (at WP/WIKT). We don't particularly talk about links from the main namespace to Author pages, or how we might be building refs/bibliography to people (articles).

From the body of an article, do people link to author pages? Do they link to author pages only if the link itself relates that person's writings?
If we link to a WP: article about a person who is an author, is there the means to find the pages that we link to from WS.

An example ... Charles Darwin. Do we link 100% to Author:Charles Darwin or 100% to w:Charles Darwin or does it depend on the context of what we are linking? Is there an easy way to find and collate all the WS links to w:Charles Darwin? Could this be something that we could build into an author header to easily generate?

-- billinghurst (talk) 11:57, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

What links here shows all the wikipedia links on wikipedia to any page so I would expect that there is the ability to extend it to show links from other wiki projects, though this is probably turned off by the developers.

As far as links from wikipedia goes there is already an automatic link at the bottom of the wikipedia page to the wikisource author page. If you mean links from wikipedia pages that just mention an author rather than the authors wikipedia page itself I wouldn't bother to link directly to wikisource author page. I'd say its better to link the wikipedia reference to the wikipedia page for that autor, which will automatically have a link to wikisource. If you're talking about a particular work referenced in a wikipedia article I'd link to the work itself here.

AllanHainey (talk) 17:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

An example of a page is Obit. BD Jackson. I have added light links for the people. Where I know that they are an author, then to author page, where unsure, to WP pages.

With the DNB project, most of what I am working on is biographical, so we are going to have lots of these sorts of link. Within the DNB we will have the ability to x-link to those who appear within volumes, sometimes we can link to Author pages too.

I suppose that I see that WS is building a whole lot of parallel data without an agreed or acknowledged means to link together, so for biographical items we may be considered a satellite of WP, without a specific locus of our own. -- billinghurst (talk) 22:47, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we try to leave it up to the person adding the wikilinks, personally I usually link to the WP article (I wouldn't like Afghanistan, but I'd probably link Transvaal - wouldn't link Mountain Lion, but would probably link "the scandal of 1874" to its appropriate wiki article). Authors, I tend to link to WP unless the text is speaking about "the works of Charles Darwin". When books are mentioned themselves, I almost always just put a link to the WS text (or a red-link if it doesn't exist yet). But I think many people vary from that "loose standard". As long as there are wikilinks (they're what make us better than PG, IA or Google), we're good :) Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 23:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, though my issues had been more on to where to link, rather than what to link. I feel that we lose something for our own site when we cannot capture our links off-site, especially with regard to authors. It would be nice to easily be able to identify sister wikilinks, primarily WP, where they link to our pages. If we have the link to the WP:Biography from the Author: header, is it possible what we capture and identify our links from elsewhere on the site? Therefore for Authors, you can find where on WS the author is mentioned. billinghurst (talk) 07:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with that. Personally, I would link to WS for authors or public domain works (that we have or might have), and to WP for other words. Yann (talk) 11:08, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

WP guidelines on links from WP to Wikisource

Can I ask this question the other way around? We're arguing over language at w:WP:Layout. How would you guys prefer we link from Wikipedia to Wikisource? Some editors of historical articles like to link directly to Wikisource from the text; some people prefer to link to the references section, then in the references section they'll give the historical reference, "as found at (link the Wikisource page)", and other people like to put Wikisource links in the External links section. Dank55 (talk) 02:18, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

(Personal do) Use Wikisource-author on WP if there is an WS:Author page, and I put it in preferentially External Links, if that does not exist, I put it in References. Premise is that I don't create a new section just for link. I will follow any guidance. If I have done a transcription and placed it on WS, then I will inline reference using relevant cite template, and put in the WS url. So:

General link to general page
Specific article use <ref> and cite to direct WS:page from the reflist. An issue is that the cite templates don't allow sister links, just full urls.

-- billinghurst (talk) 07:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

When a text mentions another text or an author, I always link to the Wikisource page for that text or author, irrespective of whether it exists or not. In my opinion, our job is to build a cross-linked repository of sources. The links are our raison d'etre. Hesperian 10:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

The difficulty that comes out of this question is that everyone works differently, and emphasizes different aspects of what needs to be done. Like Billinghusrt, I spend a lot of time on the DNB project, but very, very little of that time on making sure that WP has links back to WS. On the occasions when I do, my tendency would be to put simple in-line links in the form "WS:Article title|visible text"; others may do this differently. I may personally be irritated by contributors who add humongous numbers of page scans without ever proofreading anything, but I can't insist that they do more. Hesperian is absolutely right about our raison d'être, but, however desirable these links may be, and as long as contributors are making some kind of positive additions we cannot insist that they go very far out of contributory comfort zone. Someone who is comfortable with what he does is likely to be seriously inefficient when he goes very far from that zone; if we insist that he regularly do much more than that, his participation is likely to diminish. We can only insist on what is absolutely essential. Eclecticology (talk) 17:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

If a page on Wikisource hasn't been locked yet, does that mean no one has vouched for the accuracy of the text yet? Dank55 (talk) 03:16, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. It just means that the person doing the vouching didn't feel the need to lock the page. Locking completely discourages further beneficial changes such as linking to other pages or sister projects. Eclecticology (talk) 18:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

We're happy for people to link to Wikisource, but I've think we've got consensus that we don't want to do the linking in-line, as if Wikisource were the reference for the article text, both because Wikipedia articles should reflect the opinions of secondary sources, rather than the interpretations made by Wikipedians of the meaning and significance of primary sources, and also because wikis (including Wikipedia of course) are never treated as reliable sources. I'm asking around to see if everyone is okay with "Wikisource has original documents on..." once at the proper place in the article, with specifics in the External links. Dank55 (talk) 16:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Whether there is a consensus about linking in line is a matter of debate. The small number of people who have an orgasm about bullying through policy changes and calling it "consensus" appear to have an inflated idea about their own importance. If it seems appropriate to me to make an inline link to a Wikisource article from a Wikipedia article, that's damn well what I'm going to do. If some Wikipedia policy wonk takes objection to my doing that he can damn well do the work of moving the link to where he thinks it belongs.

Your interpretation of what Wikisource is about makes no sense at all. Some of our texts may be from primary sources, and some from secondary sources. They are NOT the interpretations by Wikisource editors of those sources. I'm sure that every Wikisourceror believes in the principle that our texts should accurately reflect the originals, even to the extent of repeating its spelling errors. Eclecticology (talk) 18:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

My "of" was ambivalent; sorry about that, I hope my rewording clears it up. What I said is right out of w:WP:PSTS, and if you'd like to make the argument to change that policy on Wikipedia, head over to w:WP:OR. In practice, at GAN and FAC, whether the primary documents are coming from Wikisource or from anywhere else, an article that relies chiefly on primary sources and the editor's description and interpretation of the meaning of the primary sources won't pass the review. Dank55 (talk) 00:06, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

What are GAN and FAC? Please explain your jargon. Eclecticology (talk) 07:59, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

w:WP:GAN and w:WP:FAC Dank55 (talk) 15:12, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Primary and secondary are irrelevant; the point is to avoid drawing original conclusions from the sources at your disposal. If you only have primary sources, then your article will be limited to stating what the primary sources say. You can't include analysis or interpretation of those sources unless you can draw such things from secondary sources.

So there's two separate issues here. 1. Is this source an appropriate citation for what I want to say? and 2. How should I lay out the citation? Please try not to conflate them. Whether or not to permit inline links to Wikisource documents is all about 2., and irrelevant to 1.

Personally, I prefer to provide a full citation in the usual way, but to link the title text in the citation to the Wikisource document (unless the title has a wikipedia article of its own); e.g. w:Banksia sessilis#cite_note-Fraser_1830-17. Hesperian 00:36, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Is that a fair representation of everyone's opinion? If so, I can ask around on Wikipedia to see if we can get agreement. Dank55 (talk) 01:47, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

No, that's my personal opinion. Clearly Eclecticology holds a different view. Hesperian 02:39, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that this is really two issues, and I would be happy to avoid the opaque muddle that Wikipedia's policy wallahs have made of the distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary sources. It wouldn't surprise me if some there supported the view that one could not cite the U.S. Constitution as a reference because it is a primary source. :-) Eclecticology (talk) 07:59, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) To me it sounds like there is so much blurring of the issue. I think the summation is

Where there is a citation that specific inline reference is required, and the citation and appears in the reference list, and points directly to the article in the namespace
Where there is collation or general reading, then use of the box "more information about ..." is appropriate. If WP provides guidance on placement of template for box, that is helpful.
Wikisource information that appears in the mainspace should be, or will be, considered a replica of the source, whether that source may be primary, secondary or tertiary information and that status doesn't change once it has been through multiple proofreading for veracity against the source.

Wikisource is what it is, we are just transcribers and presenters of information that has been prepared earlier. WPians can use and interpret the information the replica as if it was the P/S/T source of the original. -- billinghurst

From the Obit. BD Jackson page the links look fairly inconsistent, no offence Eclecticology, nothing inherently wrong with linking some to WS author pages & some to WP & some as redlinks but as time goes by and we get more authorpages and less redlinks (on WP as well as WS) it'll seem increasingly inconsistent and confusing & may need, at some point in the future, to be edited to ensure a consistent form of linking. Leaving aside redlinks (& assuming in time they'll all eventually be replaced with actual pages) I'd say that the simplest thing to do with authors is to link to a WS author page - which in turn contains links to WP,WC, etc - rather than linking to wikipedia. Even if we don't have any works by that author at the present time it could be used as a 'link page' until we can include their works too. Personally I've tended to link to wikipedia rather than wikisource but I think we need to consider what people are looking for in a link & whether we want to send them out of WS to WP each time & then hope there is a link back to the WS author page from WP.

As far as links to non-authors like events or places I would tend to link to WP & think this is the way to go. AllanHainey (talk) 14:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

How would I take offence when I didn't even participate in that article? :-)

I have no problems with redlinks, and I do believe that links in this project should be internal whenever there is a reasonable probability that we will have an article about that subject. This primarily applies to authors, but there are other circumstances. The link to Charles Darwin in the obituary cited is currently to Wikipedia, and it seems to me, at least, preferable to have it to our author page. The problem isn't limited to authors. A person working on the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica project should be linking to the other page in the 1911EB when such an article is referenced. A similar problem arose in the early days of Wiktionary. Having determined that the en:wiktionary would include all words in all languages, but with English definitions, we had to determine where to link everything in the translation list. The links best worked as internal ones. Thus where might translate as hvar in Danish, nerede in Turkish, and где in Russian, but best practice was to make the links to those words in en:wiktionary. The cross wiki links could then be added at the page for the foreign language word. This also made it easier to deal with unrelated words in separate languages which also happened to be homographs.

Premature drives toward consistency can be very short-sighted and ignore how potentially enormous Wikisource can become. For now, I would not fault anyone for making the wrong link. It's best to leave contributors to muddle through constructively. If better links can be made it's no big deal for someone to come through and change them later. Eclecticology (talk) 19:16, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

When I poked around Category:Works_by_type, looking especially at journals, books, magazines, instructional, and research categories, I found only secondary sources more than 70 years old (with expired copyright), and what I've heard (but I don't know) called "primary documents" by article reviewers. Granted Wikisource has great promise, but can someone point me to something currently in Wikisource in the nature of something published within the last 70 years by a major publishing house or in a peer-reviewed journal, for which copyright has been voluntarily surrendered? If not, how about something within the last 70 years in the nature of peer-reviewed commentary, or commentary on something by an acknowledged expert? Dank55 (talk) 00:42, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

This sounds like a trick question of some kind. I have some concerns about that category having become too much of a grab-bag, but that point is beyond this discussion. Being a primary or secondary source is not a big issue here. That has nothing to do with our criteria for inclusion. I am happy to leave the definition of an "acknowledged expert" to your own subjectivity. Eclecticology (talk) 01:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Dank55, I think most of the speeches by American government representatives & legislators would fall within what you're looking for. I don't know that they've had copyright surrendered but I understand that all U.S.A. government works, within which speeches fall, are considered as copyright free as a matter of course. We've certainly got pleanty of those from the last 70 years.

Eclecticology, I recognise the problem of 'pre-mature drives towards consistency' but I'm not sure in this case its necesarily pre-mature - and there are other problems with continuing lack of consistency -, of course I wouldn't criticise anyone from making the wrong link but that shouldn't stop us from setting out what we think the right way is & the way we want to see used in the future (partly the right links is a wikignoming issue too). Those who're bothered enough to read and use the policies would use them and help to keep the links in good order, while those who don't wouldn't do anything different whether there was a set standard or not. AllanHainey (talk) 18:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

My impression is that Dank55 is approaching the issue with Wikipedian preconceptions that Wikisourcerors have not made. They are bound to seem strange when someone tries to patch them in here. Beneficial as it may be for us to have links from Wikipedia back to this project, I admit that I do very little of it. When I do I will approach it from a more intuitive perspective that may not fit in with the most recent thinking on such matters; there are always plenty of people there who are more up-to-date on this kind of thing, and who can fix it more easily. Otherwise, when I add a text here within Wikisource parameters, it can be just as time consuming making the links fit in Wikipedia. I still try to be true to the underlying premise for "Transwiki": that those working on one project who see that something belongs on another cannot be expected to know the other project's rules and practices.

The best consistency is achieved by people following an established process because it's good, not because there is a rule somewhere saying that that is the only way to do things. Guidelines can describe a way of doing things that has largely worked well in the past; for a newbie they are a good place to start in the absence of any other reference point. For the more experienced person other or innovative techniques should be encouraged when those guidelines leave something to be desired. If nobody else adopts that innovation it will simply die a quiet death, and may eventually, after a long period of disuse just be deleted. Eclecticology (talk) 22:28, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Which takes us back to why and where I started the conversation. This wasn't meant to be about individuals' practices, and it wasn't about the rules, as we don't have any. I really would like us to discuss the principles. If we get the principles right, then rules/guidelines can be written and suggested, where the rules don't meet a scenario, people are able to measure against the principle. So let me make a start at this, and others can adapt and build. In Wikisource, to build we wikilink ... (outdent follows)

Main namespace

Internally link to works
Internally link to authors
Externally link to definitions, events, etc. (to sister projects) ¹

So?

Internally link to publications?
Specific mention of people, who are non-authors, though not major focus of a work.

1 Where sufficient works relating to a subject matter are collected, they are to be considered a collection at Wikisource:Works -- billinghurst (talk)

This seems like a good outline, but it seems as though this thread has made the whole question seem more complicated than it really is. I don't find Wikisource:Works to be very useful; it's all very higgledy-piggledy and unsystematic. The pretty images only add to the clutter. We have yet to find the happy middle ground between the pages in the Wikisource namespace and categories. Eclecticology (talk) 00:40, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The thread only gets more complicated when people put in extraneous matters and split/fray the thread, like whether we find WW useful. That is another thread, and can be tackled separately I would hope. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Point taken. :-( Eclecticology (talk) 05:50, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of links from WP to WS: shouldn't we systematically add links in WP authors and individual books pages to the text in WS? A template like "Original text on Wikisource" would do nicely for the book pages. For the author pages, I can see two possibilities:
-a WS icon next to the titles in the author's bibliography (that could be used on the individual book pages as well).
-a template, similar to the {edition} template, that would read "Texts available for this author on WS", and would lead to a list of the works on the discussion page.
Of course, this discussion might be better on WP?(De fideli (talk))

I may be misunderstanding, however, there are already some existing, eg. w:Template:Wikisource-author which is used at w:Aldous Huxley; w:Template:Wikisource and w:A Modest Proposal -- billinghurst (talk) 09:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Billinghurst. I had never seen it. Maybe cross-referencing could be made the special focus of a month? (De fideli (talk))

Putting a letter on the margin

Take a look at any page of Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (for example page 65), which i am proofreading.

Notice the letters numbering the paragraphs on the margins. In addition to numbering the paragraphs in the main flow of text with letters or numbers, all paragraphs are also consistently numbered on the margin and this is the main system of cross-referencing in this book. One of my most important goals in its proofreading is to make this cross-referencing convenient using hyperlinks, but also to preserve as much as possible the original display of this numbering.

Is there a convenient way to put a letter on the margin in the proofread text? --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:27, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't really know of a convenient way to do that. Using tables is the only method I can think of (and depending on how savvy you are with table syntax, that might be anywhere from simple to abhorrent).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Tables would definitely be suboptimal. Elsewhere on this page I asked about a way to put a poem's line numbers in the margin; now we have another reason to want to add a marginalia function. Over at de there's a template de:Vorlage:Seite Rand that puts page numbers in the margin. Perhaps some tech-savvy person (i.e. not me) can look at the code for that an adapt it so that line numbers and paragraph letters can be made to appear in the margin. If you also want it to be possible to link directly to these lettered subsections without them being headers, I believe (but am not positive) that {{anchor}} does that trick. An gr 10:39, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

About the only thing that springs to mind is Sidenotes. Have a look at {{Sidenotes begin}}, {{Sidenotes end}} which get used with {{Left sidenote}} or {{Right sidenote}}. Nothing automated, and you would need to put in your own numbering. One of the pages that I have done with this is Page:Fasti ecclesiae Anglicanae Vol.1 body of work.djvu/48 -- billinghurst (talk) 10:51, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Use of {{number}} (with div class="lefttext" or with sidenotes begin/end) will create anchored (linkable) text in the right margin of the text.--T. Mazzei (talk) 07:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks: {{number}} helped! --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 20:32, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Edmeston and Otsego County

Template:Ed Chron What is to be done with the numerous Edmeston meta-pages in the mainspace? The template on the right lists some of them. From a random sample I can't figure out what these pages are about. Some seem somewhat encyclopedic; others more like a collection of quotes and notes on primary sources. Clearly none are themselves published documents, and I don't think any of them qualify as Wikisource index pages. Sure, some do link to Wikisource documents, but there are typically only a few links sprinkled through a page full of other material. And some pages don't have any document links at all; for example History of Edmeston, New York/1800s is full of Wikipedia links and crosslinks within this Edmeston project, but not a single Wikisource link outside the walled garden. My first priority would be to get these pages out of the mainspace, but first we have to figure out whether, how and where we want them. Hesperian 12:59, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The Edmeston history pages exist in full over on Wikibooks. Mike.lifeguard transwiki'd them a while ago. I say we list the ones we have here on WS:DEL.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:14, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree. They probably should have been deleted near the time they were transwikied. One still has to do this carefully since there are some documentary pages within that complex. Eclecticology (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Please delete them with care because at least two of them have been deleted on Commons after they were transwiki from here. I restored them here. Yann (talk) 18:56, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, though I think that Zhaladshar and I had the transwiki to Wikibooks in mind. In any event, I always have been and continue to be critical of putting everything into Commons, and being victims of their rules ... but I'll save that fight for a more propitious time. Eclecticology (talk) 19:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that they even existed on Commons. But Ec was right: I'm only talking about WB, where they (and their history) exist in full at b:History of Edmeston, New York.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

There are valuable sources sprinkled in here. I was moving all of these to Wikisource:New York/Edmeston. I hit a wall trying to obtain more information about one of the sources, and need to return to it in order fix up the messy and incomplete migration. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:06, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Images

I'd appreciate some advice on how to show an image on a page, specifically Author:James Gilmour where we have an image on the wikipedia page, but not on WS. Is it necessary to upload it onto wikisource too (which seems to me to be an unecessary duplication of bytes) or is it possible to present the image on WS by linking to WP or WCommons? (that is taking it from WP and presenting it here) The latter seems the most economical but I can't work out how to do it. AllanHainey (talk) 15:52, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

The image on English WP should be moved to Commons, so that it can be used there and here. Yann (talk) 16:08, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but how do we use it once its on commons, is it the Image: prefix before the filename? AllanHainey (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Just as it is already used now. Once it is uploaded to Commons, it will appear on Author:James Gilmour. Yann (talk) 16:19, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Basically check the copyright on the WP image, and if PD then able to go to Commons. I find it easiest to use the tool [1]. Also using the {{nowcommons}} button will mean that an orderly tidy up will occur. I have undertaken over the image/file Gilmourjames.jpg. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:11, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks AllanHainey (talk) 16:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

English/US spelling

I'm a very rare visitor here, but just popped in to search for a copy of Great Expectations/Chapter IV. However, I notice it uses American spelling (parlor, favor etc) instead of English (parlour, favour). As this is a British work, should it not use the latter? I've had a search to see if Wikisource has an equivalent of Wikipedia's National varieties of English guidelines, but without success. Tivedshambo (talk) 23:11, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

There are no such guidelines; the spelling used in the text being transcribed should be kept. In practice, with works like Great Expectations many of them came from old etexts that were made with whatever book was at hand, in practice frequently an American edition that used American spelling. I believe this one came from Project Gutenberg; there is, of course, no source given which might give appropriate credit or verification of authenticity.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:32, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

That's true enough. I puzzled over this myself when I worked on Kipling's Kim, which I was proofreading against the American serial publication in McClure's. It uses American spellings. This has also been the case with a number of other short works by UK authors. The Project Gutenberg version is fine as a safe PD space-filler, but I think that in due course we should be able to relate each of these texts to a real paper copy. I would have preferred to work from the first UK serial publication, but that's not what I had available. In Kipling's case he also considerably edited his works when he republished them in book form. If you have an important version of the book, and you want to proofread our text in conformity with that, that would be great. A simple replacement of all the American spellings with UK spellings would not be acceptable. Eclecticology (talk) 05:16, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

When I first uploaded The Turn of the Screw, it was from a Project Gutenberg text that used American spelling. Then I found a djvu that used British spelling, so when I made the pages in Index:Two Magics.djvu I had to make sure to change all the spellings. In this case, it's hard to decide which variant is more "authentic" anyway; Henry James was an American expat living in Britain, and (as far as I know) the book was published in both countries simultaneously. An gr 11:26, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I think as an ideal we should aim to host the original version of a work, or the version utelising the same national spelling conventions as the author originally used. Of course this won't always be achieved as folk will upload whatever they have to hand, and may not know that a different spelling was initially used anyway, but I would say where an original - or as-author-intended-version - of a work becomes available we should seek to add it possibly replacing the existing latter altered-spelling version with it.

Considering the issue more generally I think we're likely to see a good number of these types of texts as, as far as I've seen, U.S.A. authored works published in the U.K. tend to retain U.S.A. spellings - at least a number of presently published works do, not sure about 70 year old+ copyright expired works - while I believe U.K. works are more frequently rendered into U.S.A. spellings when sold there (Also I've seen a number of copyright expired old speeches republished with American spelling conventions used where its almost impossible to find an original British spelling copy). As I'd expect a higher proportion of U.S.A. to U.K. based wikisourcerers I'd expect us to have a number of texts where this issue is relevant. That said, in the copyright expired texts with which we deal there may not've been as much 'translation' of the spellings as there is now with 'Microsoft American English' on spellcheckers. AllanHainey (talk) 16:47, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

When I proofread something I avoid using spellcheckers, and prefer using the more tedious visual comparison method. I had a bit of an edit war with former user Poetlister over Kipling's The Bell Buoy (comparison), where he (then in good-faith) argued in favour of the version in the "Definitive" edition of Kipling's works, and I argued in favour of the 1897 publication in McClure's Magazine. Kipling regularly revised his works for republication in book form, but both versions are as-author-intended. Unfortunately, I have not seen the Saturday Review version, published in the UK a month before the McClure's version. The old 30-day copyright rule in US law was an important factor in those days. We cannot host every version of every publication, and document all the typographical variants that were introduced into every new version of a popular work, or every extract that was put into an anthology. PG or anthology versions are fine as placeholders when we know that there are no copyright problems, but I'm honestly afraid that many of our colleagues just don't grasp the nature of this issue. Eclecticology (talk) 20:20, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

We can host every version of any publication that anyone is willing to put the work into doing so.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of the mantra: Wiki is not paper. Nevertheless, an ambition to host every version is highly impractical when we can't even get a single version that has been properly sourced and proofread. Eclecticology (talk) 08:44, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that for old enough works, the original spelling as a largely gratuitous barrier to understanding, and that for not-so-old works, it's largely irrelevant.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:13, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes yes, but I haven't had any success convincing the supporters of the long "s" of that. Eclecticology (talk) 08:44, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Allan Hainey wrote, "I think as an ideal we should aim to host the original version of a work, or the version utelising the same national spelling conventions as the author originally used", but my example of The Turn of the Screw shows even that isn't always possible. Without having the author's own manuscript, there's no knowing whether Henry James followed the spelling conventions of his birth country or his adopted country, and the work was published in both countries using both spellings simultaneously. That said, I know that works by American authors are published with British spelling in Britain, and vice versa - I've read Stephen King books that used British spelling, and I've read E. F. Benson books that used American spelling, and I find both highly distracting. An gr 08:24, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Sidebar

Can anyone tell me why "What links here" no longer appears in the sidebar for the Classic skin? I've always found that the most useful place; now I have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page to have it! Eclecticology (talk) 08:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Completely off-topic

Does anyone know the import of the "2 E—2" at the bottom of Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/437. I notice these constantly while transcribing, and have become intrigued to know why they are there. Hesperian 12:51, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what the proper name for them is, but they are used to identify the signatures of a book so that the binders can collate them in the proper order. They almost always appear on odd-numbered pages. Note that page 435 will be marked "2 E". Page 419, 16 pages before that, will be marked "2 D". The first "2" indicates that they are going through the alphabet the second time; other books might have it as "EE". The second "2" tells me that there are two quarto (4to) sheets folded together to form that signature. Eclecticology (talk) 19:12, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Much obliged! Hesperian 12:40, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Help need with the Dictionary of National Biography project

Hi guys,

We need some help to get a list together of replacement text for Dictionary of National Biography project. The link to text can be found here. We need this list so we can start putting up better quality scans. Everyone's help is appreciated. Thanks. --Mattwj2002 (talk) 07:54, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Middle English Texts - letters

To add Middle English texts properly one needs more letters than the 26 of modern English. Can we get those added to the sandbox letters?

The letters required are:

Ȝ, ȝ (w:yogh)
Þ, þ (w:thorn)
Ð, ð (w:eth)
Ƿ, ƿ(w:wynn)
Æ, æ (w:æsh)

Of those; æ, ð, þ can be found hidden in the "Ligatures and symbols" drop-down if not the main screen. Unavailable are ȝ and ƿ. They are all native English letters. ȝ and þ are amongst the most common letters in Middle English.

How do we get them all added?

Howard Alexander (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

It sounds as if you are wanting them in the EDITTOOLS section, so if you have a look at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2008-11#_Announcements there is the information needed to whom to approach. -- billinghurst (talk) 21:20, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I've added both upper- and lower-case yogh and wynn to the Edittools. They appear under Ligatures and Symbols.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:26, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Marvellous! Thank you. Howard Alexander (talk) 22:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

So now we have a Ȝ at our fingertips, but no £. Go figure. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." Hesperian 03:05, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Can I also ask for poem open and close tags for the standard suite. -- billinghurst (talk) 05:04, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course the squeaky wheel gets the grease; you can't expect people to know what you want if you don't tell them. And people using British-layout keyboards already have £ at their fingertips. I'll add £ and <poem> and </poem> tags, but the better place to ask is MediaWiki talk:Edittools. An gr 13:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Extraction of photos

When at Page: places, there are photos on some of the pages, and by the Side by Side instructions it says to use {{Use page image}} which then gives red text "This page consists of an image that needs to be cropped or cleaned up, and uploaded to Commons." Is there any process to get these done? Or do we need to learn for ourselves to crop? No one knows of some people who enjoy that side of the operations?

Beyond finding what links to that template, it seems that we don't have a ready means to clean up that space. Currently b/w 200 and 250 images linked. -- billinghurst (talk) 23:13, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

If you've got an interesting book with less than a hundred images needing to be cropped and uploaded, I don't mind wasting an hour or so of some lazy afternoon doing it. But randomly cropping 100 frontispiece floral decorations might get put on my backburner of "some day around 2012" as opposed to "next week" or something :) Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Nostradamus‎.} 23:28, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Photographs, of authors. Definitely NOT floral emblems (eww! at the thought) and hadn't realised they were tagged. Probably worth a category for such images. Many thx. -- billinghurst (talk) 02:42, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Category:Works needing image cleanup -- billinghurst (talk) 03:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Arrays by selective transclusion

I put into my user page this code:

* <section begin="1.1" />Frontespizio. <section end="1.1" /> <section begin="1.2" />Frontespizio<section end="1.2" /> <section begin="1.3" />Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli<section end="1.3" /> * <section begin="2.1" />Nota dell'editore.<section end="2.1" /> <section begin="2.2" />Nota<section end="2.2" /> <section begin="2.3" />Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli/Nota dell'editore<section end="2.3" /> * <section begin="3.1" />Narratione ai lettori.<section end="3.1" /> <section begin="3.2" />Narratione<section end="3.2" /> <section begin="3.3" />Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli/Narratione ai lettori<section end="3.3" />

That gives this output:

Frontespizio. Frontespizio Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli
Nota dell'editore. Nota Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli/Nota dell'editore
Narratione ai lettori. Narratione Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli/Narratione ai lettori

As you can guess, these codes (pointing into my user page):

{{#lst:User:Alex_brollo|1.2}}
{{#lst:User:Alex_brollo|3.3}}

give the second element of the first row, and the third element of the third row:

You guess that both indexes into the code can result from a parameter, or from an expression too.

I used this trick to a test aiming to build some interesting templates for testual versions of a proofred book: it:Trattato dell'imbrigliare, atteggiare e ferrare cavalli, see the code of any chapter following the main page. Please feel free to move this message otherwhere (into a "exoteric topics" talk page ;-) ) if needed. --Alex brollo (talk) 10:16, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Typesetting a list with ditto marks

At Page:Notes by the Way.djvu/67 I have used <poem> tag hoping that it would help to get around collapsing spaces around ditto marks' and in (eventually) finding guidance on the tag that it only works for linebreaks and leading spaces. Beyond adding lots of (ugly) non-breaking spaces or char #160 is there another suggested means to get the right typeset in this scenario?

As a request, can we also add some means to help send people to Help:Editing poetry for help in the use of <poem> tag. Trying to find it by searching is difficult. Thx. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:07, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

You could get exactly what you want by the use of a table:

Evans, John.
{|
|-
| Farren, || Elizabeth.
|-
| align="center" | "
| Henry.
|-
| align="center" | "
| William.
|}
Farren, Elizabeth.

or, if you don't care about preserving the alignment of given names, you could use

Evans, John.
Farren, Elizabeth.
<span style="margin-left:2em; margin-right:2em">"</span> Henry.
<span style="margin-left:2em; margin-right:2em">"</span> William.
Fawcett, John.

Hesperian 03:21, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Polytonic Greek

I don't know Greek and i would appreciate it if someone could check whether i copied the Greek letters and diacritics correctly in the beginning of this page:

Page:Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar (1910 Kautzsch-Cowley edition).djvu/88

Thanks. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 08:26, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but it appears you got them wrong. One thing to watch for in Greek diacritics is whether they are accents or breathing marks when the are on an initial vowel or the second vowel of an initial diphthong. Thus the straight diacritics on έ and ὲ; the curly ones on ἐand ἑ represent whether there is an "h" sound at the beginning of the word. All of the proclitics listed there appear to have aspirations indicated.

At the risk of seeming too critical about what is really your project, I do find a tendency to an excessive use of templates. A lot of the italics could be handled just as easily with simple wiki-markup, but their use does make sense when superscripted letters are involved.. Eclecticology (talk) 09:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I have fixed the Greek letters. --Zyephyrus (talk) 12:59, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Eclecticology, there's certainly no need to apologize about the Greek - i had a feeling that i got them wrong. Now let's see whether i got this straight: έ and ὲ are straight and ἐ and ἑ are curly, right?

As for the templates - it is possible that i overuse them a bit, and i am willing to hear detailed criticizm. I use templates for book titles, which may be over the top, but i think that i may use them in the future for cross-referencing. (Maybe i am too optimistic about that.) I hope to use {{GHGterm}} for preparing an index. The templates for Bible quotes, Hebrew passages and paragraph references are certainly needed. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Addition: after i saved the previous message, i noticed that έ and ὲ have different letter shapes. Is it OK? I used the Edittools for inserting them. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 17:57, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

You have the straight and curly right.

For all practical purposes the letter shapes should be considered identical. Modern Greek is far more parsimonious in its use of diacritics than its scholarly ancient counterpart. Only "έ" (with tonos) is from modern Greek and is represented as U+03AD. The polytonic counterpart U+1F73 "έ" (with oxia) should look different with the accent at a slightly different slope, but Unicode tends to view them as equivalent. While you are certainly free to consider these differences, I think that the benefit of that distinction may be more trouble than it's worth.

In the first paragraph of the passage cited above "Maqqēph" could have been done as easily using the edit tools without the template, and "seventeen" and "atonic" could have been espressed with standard wiki italicization. The Greek also could have been represented without the template. On the other hand the Hebrew, the particular way that biblical passages are represented, and the superscripted reprsentation of phonology almost beg for templates. I would still be disinclined to use the templates for book titles. The referencing purpose is a good one, but our approach to cross-referencing is seriously underdeveloped. There are likely a number of ways this could be done, but I am loath to predict how that will develop over the years to come. Ideally, your reference to the Merx book in German should be able to bring us directly to that work on de:Wikisource, but we are a long way from that. Eclecticology (talk) 21:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

You say Unicode "tends to view" U+03AD and U+1F73 as identical, but it's more than that. If you enter the character for U+1F73 (or any other Greek vowel letter with an oxia) into the edit window and click save, the MediaWiki software will automatically replace it with U+03AD (or the corresponding Greek vowel letter with a tonos). If you really want U+1F73 to appear, you have to enter it as έ (or έ) (and then hope that no bot or well-intentioned other use comes along and converts it to a character). An gr 10:58, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

One little trick with Greek fragments is: I don't read any Greek myself but in working on English texts with fragments of Greek in them, if the fragment is a quotation from a classical work and you can make out at least a few of the words clearly I've had pretty good luck simply Googling with whatever I've got, then cutting and pasting the whole phrase in Greek out of the original work itself that Google serves up. (Sometimes I even get hits on Greek Wikisource and can cut and paste already-wiki-marked-up text!) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 16:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

That can work....sometimes. But neither this, nor my recent exchange at Wikisource talk:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Style Manual is a matter of quoting from a classical source. The most common sort of fragment seems to relate to the Greek origin of ‎an English word. OCRed works containing these fragments do their best to manhandle these letters into their closest Roman equivalents. Eclecticology (talk) 18:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I didn't know about {{Greek missing}} and Category:Pages with missing Greek characters until this thread, but now that I do, I'm going to check the category regularly and add Greek text (I do read Greek) as I can. (I can't fix 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rhetoric because I can't see the original image at. If anyone can see the pagescans listed at Talk:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rhetoric and can make PNGs or something from them, I'll be glad to add the Greek.) An gr 22:21, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I finally got the images and have added the Greek to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rhetoric. An gr 21:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Er.. pardon. If some ancient Greek typing or proofreading is needed I'm avalaible. My grasp of ancient Greek typography (and lanaguage) is much better than my knowledge of English. Just drop a line on my it.source talk page and (without haste) I'll run here. - εΔ ω 00:01, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

FAL

I built {{FAL}} Based on {{GFDL}}, Could someone check my work, I don't think I got it exactly right. It is posted on Cold Fusion Hypothesis, and seems to be putting the article in Category:GFDL and I am not sure why. Jeepday (talk) 12:32, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

A null edit on the page on 'Cold Fusion' has cycled the templates. I don't know why it works, but it does. :-) -- billinghurst (talk) 12:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages - discussion

Hi. Jayvdb has created a person disambiguation for a work A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Forster, John. The question is do I then create another Disambig page for the name John Forster, or do I convert the existing page to be more generic (more than just the specific work). If the second, we could move the page and leave the redirects. The decision that we make likely has flow-on effects to other projects with biographical data (EB1911, DNB come to mind) Note: no author pages yet exist for either John Forster, though one of them mentions throughout WS. -- billinghurst (talk) 15:39, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I would strongly go for the more generic version using dates (rather than area of fame) as the disambiguator. Dates are less likely to generate new ambiguities in the future. Eclecticology (talk) 22:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Annotation of errors

(SPLIT and MOVED) "In reference to John Forster EB11 and DNB both list the one who died in 1876, but not the other, though they do have a John Foster with the same dates as the other. It looks as though there was a typo in the original; this is supported by the fact that he was not in proper alphabetical order. Eclecticology (talk) 22:47, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Good get Ec. I checked at Archive.org, and it is you suggested. In the book: no index, no ToC.

This then leads to what do we do with identified errors, especially where they have this sort of misleading consequence. I have double checked

Annotate the specific page; or
Move the page from Forster to Foster (with annotation), leaving text in our index page and specific page; or
Move page, annotate, edit text in index page of work, just leave the text in situ

Personal choice is the second. We leave the specific textual information as it is, and clarify all around with regard to facts. -- billinghurst (talk) 01:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm thinking of a hybrid between two and three. The index page is our own creation, so we have more flexibility there. We link here under the correct name, but with a note like "Forster in the original is a typo". The page itself should be titled with the proper name, but the text should show the original marked with a "(sic!)". DNB00 has 4 John Fosters and a John Leslie Foster. My 1906 Americana adds a John Gray Foster, a John Watson Foster and a John Wells Foster; WP has 22 assorted John Fosters. This is why naming pages sometimes needs a lot of forethought, and we need to be prepared for situations where different sources express the same name in different ways. Eclecticology (talk) 03:14, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Anchors, links & transcluded pages: what is the solution?

I have a work in Page: and in it there is a text ref that says (see Person A). I have put the anchor on the appropriate page, however, building the respective link within Page: and then when I transclude the page of text it is going to be problematic over in the main namespace.

In Page: I can build it to work in the main namespace (presuming that I know to which page it will be linking) or I can build the link to the Page namespace (again presuming that I know on which scan page it appears). I cannot see how I can build the anchor to work in both namespaces. About the only solution that I can see that will work is that there is some surgery to {{anchor}} so that it becomes namespace aware and allows for multiple parameters. I do hope that there is a simpler solution. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem is that you want to keep both namespaces separate; i.e. page links to page; mainspace links to mainspace. I don't see it that way. People in the mainspace (i.e. readers) should not be presented with links into the page space; but people in the page space (i.e. editors, proofers) may be presented with links into the main space. So just create your links so that they point at the mainspace anchor target. Hesperian 11:56, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I had been prepared to do that though it looks butt-ugly in Page.

The issue is that putting a relative link like [[../C/#anchor]] in the Page space is that it doesn't provide a wikilink, it shows it like <nowiki>. If we are happy with that, then okay with me. :-) -- billinghurst (talk) 13:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd be fine with it, but I'd also be fine with making a template that is namespace-sensitive and shows something different depending on the ns. That way the display and the link are as they should be in the main namespace, for people working in the Page: space they have easy internal linking, and it's not too technical (knowing the basics of how to use the Page: space would mean using the template is doable--we've already got Page-specific templates anyway). But I'll go either way, so long as all the linking is as in should be in the main namespace.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 18:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I always use absolute links in these circumstances. Hesperian 01:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

The alternative, of course, is to do without the ../ notation and type the full name of the mainspace entry in Page namespace. That way you get a proper link from the Page to the mainspace location, and in mainspace it doesn't hurt. An gr 21:33, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

The little edge of perfectionist in me would like to see {{anchor}} carry both properties and be namespace aware, then we can have win-win. If people only do one link, then it is to mainspace, and the public is unaffected. I am not doing the scripting, so I limit myself to expressing an opinion and indicating a preference. -- billinghurst (talk) 23:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to create something of the sort at Template:Self reference (may very well be brittle, I would appreciate if other people versed in template magic were to look it over to confirm its correctness). In doing so I've found something of an odd problem: relative links do not appear to work in the Page namespace. Prosody (talk) 12:05, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Apparently it doesn't recognize subpage link syntax in namespaces that don't have subpages. A link like [[{{NAMESPACE}}:C#anchor|]] should work everywhere, and you can use parser functions to remove the : where it's not needed if you call that from a template, to make it look a little neater without needed to specify anchor text. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 19:04, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

When does a template stop being experimental and usable?

I have been using some templates, as per our instructions, and found that they are still sited in Category:Experimental templates. Do we have a process for moving them out, or an expectation that the templates there can or cannot be used? Or is the category just more an indication that one should expect change when using the templates there? -- billinghurst (talk) 04:06, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

LOL. It's the usage that makes something more than experimental. I haven't looked at them in detail, but it wouldn't surprise me if many of them have just been forgotten. Try not to assume any prevailing excess of diligence about maintenance. :-) Eclecticology (talk) 08:48, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

There's no real official way of removing that category, short of simply being bold. Some of those templates are used so often that they probably can't be called experimental (e.g. {{Page}}) and many others are common maintenance templates (e.g., {{Use page image}} and {{Page contains image}}) that they can probably be moved out of experimental territory.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 18:04, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

We don't really disagree. I'm sure that we could also find many experimental templates that were just never marked as such. Sometimes the maintenance categories need maintenance themselves. Cautious boldness should be encouraged for both removing maintenance category tags, and even deleting abandoned experiments outright. When some of these are brought up for discussion, even if they haven't been used for a long time, defenders arise from the most unexpected places. Eclecticology (talk) 18:53, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The fact "defenders rise" to argue in favour of keeping "abandoned" templates is not a reason to "boldly" delete them without discussion, just to clarify. Nothing short of clear vandalism ("Greg is a poopy-head") should be deleted without discussion. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Bahá'u'lláh.} 18:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I would find it useful if these antagonistic by-plays between the two of you did not pepper every second conversation that took place. It is neither helpful nor enlightening. It also gets to the point where it is becoming a deterrent to asking a question. Maybe we can set up WS:Scriptorium/&#%^#$% and leave it to last man standing. -- billinghurst (talk) 02:46, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I think experimental would signify to the user that it may change and to the maintainer that they don't need to worry about breaking too much. We can never really expect maintenance categories to be 100% accurate; boldly removing a template from that cat would seem tantamount to saying that experimenting there will break things. Abandoned/failed experiments could probably be moved to category:deprecated templates -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 23:38, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes removing the cat just means that that template has gone into the mainstream. "Deprecated" suggests that it was at one time more broadly accepted than experimental. Under sane and reasonable circumstances, what's wrong with simply deleting the unused clutter? Eclecticology (talk) 01:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess the main problem is that there's no policy to allow that easily and consistently. Maybe we should start one; say, "An unused template maintained by a single editor which has not been edited in two months may be moved into that editor's user space, and the resulting redirect speedily deleted" seems consistent with current policy (cross-namespace redirects can already be speedily deleted) -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 20:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Two months is even shorter that what I would have suggested. :-) I would have waited at least six months. I would also take into account whether the editor has stayed with the project, or whether the template has since been adapted into something better. In the latter case it may be necessary to update the handful of applications before deleting the old template. Eclecticology (talk) 19:51, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Biographical info about a translator

Dear Librarians,

I need some information to put up some translations of Italian poems here on en.source: Let me explain.

Here I found some Carducci's poems translated by some M.W. Arms and published in 1908. By googling around I discovered that M.W. Arms i a nom de plume for Mary Arms Edmonds, but I couldn't find any information about her birth or death day. As a 20th century writer these data are critical. Can any American bibliophile discover when this mysterious lady bade farewell to mortal life? - εΔ ω 15:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

As an aside on a matter of English usage, I notice that you changed "bid" (in the past tense) to "bade". Some would prefer your change in these circumstances, while others would say that "bid" is correct in all circumstances. I would say that you were right with either word. Eclecticology (talk) 18:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your gentle words. I hate my mixing of poetical memories with puerile solecisms, but my approach to English language is comparable to that of a classical language... Thank you again. - εΔ ω 16:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The 1986 book "Neither Angel Nor Beast" preface says it's dedicated to the memory of "Mary Arms Edmonds 1881-1966", and makes it clear she is the translator M. W. Arms later in the preface. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Bahá'u'lláh.} 15:50, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

If I understand the rules en.Wikisource uses correctly, this data is moot. We can post it so long as it was published before 1923 and hence is in the public domain in the US.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:44, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I concur. Eclecticology (talk) 18:30, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind answers. In such an instance, here on en.source (on it.source we have many more problems with the mix of USA and Italian laws) does the more than 70 years from death of translator principle hold true or false? In which latter case I'll start transcribing... - εΔ ω 18:19, 12 January 2009 (UTC) Err.... maybe I'm a victim of the proverbial copyright paranoia, but I had very bad experiences before...

Unfortunately here on en.ws, we require that it also be Public Domain in the United States, which would mean that death+70 only works if her home country recognises that rule and the 70th year of her death was before 1996, which would require her to have died prior to 1926. However, any works published before 1923 are automatically Public Domain, no matter what country/translator/author is involved.Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Bahá'u'lláh.} 18:35, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That 70 year rule in US law applies only to US authors who died in 1976 or later. Eclecticology (talk) 18:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The simplest summary of US law is that anything published before 1923 is in the public domain, and that anything published after that is quite possibly copyrighted. Things published after 1922 that weren't filed and renewed by American formalities are the biggest case of death dates being important, as that's based on the copyright status in the home nation in 1996. (US copyright law is a baroque set of exceptions and grandfather clauses. I could perhaps strike the US and copyright from that statement.)--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Estimated death dates

I was going around cleaning up some of the licensing tags, and I came upon Author:Arthur Aikin Brodribb (born 1850). Naturally, we don't assume that the author of Beowulf is still running around out there, but do we need a rigid assumption on when people like this died? If we assume that he died by 100, that would allow us to put him in life+50 category. The oldest person documented lived to 122, the list of the 100 verified oldest people gives 113 as the bottom of that list (so roughly one in ten million people exceeds 110ish) and a modern government report gives him 25 years from the last known publication date (at 55) and says that 2.5% of those born will reach 100. I like somewhere between 100 and 115. 100 may be a little low for certainty, but it's nice and round and very probable; 115 should appear on lists of very old people and even without that is nigh certain. 115 would mean that anyone born in 1843 can be assumed to have died in 1958 and hence good to have a life+50 template added.

Author:Marian Edwardes is another point in question; if we start assuming, should we assume she was 20 when she first published? 15? 5? It doesn't help in this case; Google Books indicates she started publishing in 1901, (with an possible 1898 college publication) meaning it will be a long time before we can just assume she's clear in an life+50 environment. But if we assume that publications by preteens will be heavily marked and take 15 as our assumed earliest publication age, if we take 115 (100) as a death date, any books published 115(100)-15+50 = 150 (135) years ago can be assumed to be free in life+50 copyright regimes, even without further author information.

(Have I mentioned that publication based copyright lengths rock recently? Unfortunately, I don't see a change to that system, even if the copyright lengths were to be rolled back...)--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Sufficient biographical detail? For someone like Marian Edwardes, it would be useful if there were any biographical data known was added to the Notes section. My research skills for finding people in 19th and early 20th century is reasonable so base details of who, where, flourishing dates all help to isolate and tie a person down. Happy to do that research if people leave a note on my talk page. -- billinghurst (talk) 02:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Tracking down some of these may be next to impossible. For Edwardes, her translations seem to all pre-date 1923 so there should be no problem about copyright. In a more general situation I would be inclined to treat these people as effectively unidentified authors. Many illustrators, translators, etc. produced work for hire, and did not acquire copyrights. Even when the copyright was renewed it had to be done by the author or his descendants, and he would not have the right to renew the copyrights for these supplementary people. Eclecticology (talk) 06:00, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I cannot say that I have ever looked at the discussion/evidence base for published in the US which we need for the 1923 rule to apply and I would be happy for someone to point in the direction. -- billinghurst (talk) 06:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The article at w:United States copyright law#Duration of copyright gives as good an introduction as any. Eclecticology (talk) 09:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

It was not the copyright definition or duration to which my question was directed, it is relating to the act of publishing (which presumably is legislatively defined). If a book was printed and published in England in 1916 and there is no evidence that it was sold in the US, therefore not published in the US, then it would seem that only the 70 year duration post death rule would apply, and the 1923 rule would be hard to apply. Do we need evidence that the book was published in the US for us to make pre 1923 claim. -- billinghurst (talk) 10:53, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

"Publication" (the act) is defined in Section 101 and does not depend on national origin. Application by national origin is treated in 104(b), especially (1) and (2); this, in effect, allows the US rules to be applied no matter where a work was published. The years 1922 or 1923 are not themselves specified anywhere in the Act. They essentially are inferred from 304 which deals with copyrights already subsisting in 1978 when the US adopted a life + 70 regime. Again, this section makes no mention of national origin. Prior to that time copyright with renewal lasted for 56 years, and any work whose copyright was already expired did not have its copyright further extendeed. I hope this answers your question. Eclecticology (talk) 18:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Like Eclecticology, I would be inclined to treat these people as effectively unidentified authors. I think it is better to have "unknown date" that a template based on a wild guess which wouldn't mean anything. Any way I never met any author of that time who lived more that a 100 years, and the life expectation was more something like 60-70 years for people having an high standard of living, and much less for manual workers. Yann (talk) 12:04, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Two things: first, I was speaking purely for the life+n jurisdictions that we note on author pages, not the primary copyright consideration. Renewal is less than interesting, as some jurisdictions don't use the rule of the shorter term (Germany on American works, for one example) and even if the non-renewal applies, doesn't mean that other countries will consider the US the source nation.

Secondly, there are a lot of authors in Category: ? deaths. I'm all for adding in dates of death where available, but it's not trivial at best and an extensive research job at worst. I'm interesting in something that be quickly done to add the information contained in the life+50/70 templates to these authors. It could be done in a new template, but I think it would be redundant with the category; just add the latest possible death to Pd/1923 and go on.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:23, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

If we are looking to assign a presumed dead by date, then I would suggest that we use either 100 or 110 years as our cutoff from the year of birth. My gut feel from family history research is that the former period would be adequate on the balance of probability, the latter if we wish to be very conservative. Of all the author pages that I have built, I have come across zero authors who have lived beyond 100.

I wouldn't want to see another template have to be added, I would rather see some smarts built into the author template where it utilises the existing BD date fields and the absence of data. With all of that, when it is Author pages it is only ever indicative, it should be the Works that have something more definitive. -- billinghurst (talk) 05:29, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

So far the Pd/1923 template requires the death date be added in by hand anyway. If there are no objections, I'll add 110 to the birthdate and 95 (110 - 15) to the first publication date for the Pd/1923 template, with an appropriate note. For example Author:Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer would display a life+50 license that way. Actually, I tried it, and Pd/1923 says he died in 1958, which is inappropriate, so it would need a new template.--Prosfilaes (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Redundance & coherence into header templates

I learned most I know about wikisource here, and even if I'm presently working into it.source, I'm linked to this project by real friendship. While working into it.source, where things are really more complex that here, I built some tricks to simplify the building of textual pages from proofread procedure; it's a little complex to explain that stuff without a running example, so I implemented here the needed templates into my first work, The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses. Take a look to the code of first chapters; i.e. the code building Chapter 6 is simply:

{{The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses/Schema|8}}

.... list of translcuded pages ....

while the original code looked like that of Chapter 16:

{{header
 | title      = [[../]]
 | author     = John Solomon Rarey
 | translator = 
 | section    = Chapter 16
 | previous   = [[The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses/Chapter 15|Chapter 15]]
 | next       = [[The Modern Art of Taming Wild Horses/Chapter 17|Chapter 17]]
 | notes      = 
}}

.... list of translcuded pages ....

This result is obtained with two templates:

Tell me if you are interested about. The advantage is that all header data, and all chapter data, are written once, with a good low redundance/high coherence goal; if you have to fix a mistake, you can do it once and you'll will fix all. --Alex brollo (talk) 08:52, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

For python addicts: scripts to extract text from Internet Archive djvu.xml files

Here: User:Alex brollo/Python scripts you'll find some scripts I'm presently using to extract text from ...djvu.xml files listed into Internet Archive. I posted here such scripts "as they are", and as I use them in an interactive IDLE environment, that is my way to use Python and pybots; take a look and catch anything useful if you like. --Alex brollo (talk) 08:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Spelling corrections?

Is it appropriate to correct spelling, i.e, seperate --> separate?

EoGuy (talk) 03:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

We keep the original spelling from the book or article, as it was originally printed by the author. So often this means we leave the misspellings intact. In something like a speech however, where there wasn't "an author's typo", then we tend to correct them if other websites hosted them (or we transcribed them) with errors. So be careful, unless a book seems to be sloppily copied, chances are that the "mistake" is actually an accurate copy of the original publication. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Bahá'u'lláh.} 04:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

User:Sergei usurpation

I'd like to usurp User:Sergei with zero edits. My confirmation edit.--79.139.244.168 00:09, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

GPL ?

Say someone, if GPL text can be created here? For example, w:Debian reference is edited under GPL license, and my question can be here? Shooke (talk) 00:57, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia's article on the GFDL, GPL and GFDL are mutually incompatible; see "[debian-legal] Re: Proposed statement wrt GNU FDL" (April 2003) for more information. On the other hand, Wikipedia and Commons both have a {{GPL}} license tag. Initial conclusion: uncertain. —Pathoschild 19:25:29, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Two questions, two answers:

Do we accept GPL-licensed text? Yes, as long as it is also available under an acceptable license.
Do we accept GPL-only-licensed text? No.

Hesperian 00:29, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

As I understand it the GPL applies to software rather than text, and we long ago abandoned the inclusion of software. To the extent that it may still apply to text I think that we should avoid GPL-only material. Eclecticology (talk) 19:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

thanks for replies, i see Wikipedia's article on the GFDL, and is GPL and GFDL are incompatibles, thanks Shooke (talk) 23:32, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

IPA Support

Is there any chance that we could add an IPA template like the one on en: Wikipedia ? In response to a reader request we've recently added an IPA pronunciation guide for Address_to_a_Haggis but it doesn't show up correctly on some browsers. Since we have other Scots and dialect text which could benefit from a pronunciation guide for most of our readers, it would be best fixed by adding the IPA template. -- Derek Ross (talk) 15:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've created Template:IPA and added a definition for .IPA to MediaWiki:Common.css so it can be interpreted. [tɛst]. An gr 00:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

What a guy. Thanks! -- Derek Ross (talk) 03:56, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

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