Wikisource talk:Scriptorium

Archival

This page is long. It should be archived fairly soon...

J.Steinbock

Archived (By Dovi) -- J.Steinbock

Aaahhhh where's the archive? Shouldn't there be a link here? Wjhonson 18:44, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Good question! Hmmmm... ah, found it (well, found them -- this page has apparently been archived many times):

The archives are here.

NCdave 07:54, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

TOC

Why is there no table of contents on the Scriptorium? I think a TOC would make it a lot easier to navigate and would help people who are new to the Scriptorium figure out what is where. At Wiktionary's Beer Parlour and Tea Room there are TOCs. There is also a TOC at the Wikibooks Staff Lounge. Therefore, I suggest that we add a table of contents to the Scriptorium. --Think Fast 05:44, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand. There is a table of contents on the Scriptorium.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:52, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I see the list of recent proposals, but that doesn't give the list of current proposals, announcements, discussions, etc. --Think Fast 02:07, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you have not checked the box in preferences to automatically show TOCs. Can you see the TOC on other pages (Wikisource:Proposed deletions does also have one)? If not, then go to the Misc tab in your preferences and check the show TOC option. 82.212.68.183 09:25, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Look right below the template on the Scriptorium. There's a list of recent/current proposals, announcements, questions, and other discussions.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 03:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

It was my preferences. I checked the box and now I can see it. Thanks for your help. --Think Fast 21:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposals

I love the recent proposals summary, but I think we need to have all recently archived proposals listed there. It will give everyone a chance to know what is settled or not and prompt them to speak up if they feel the assesment of consensus is wrong. The status could be expanded to include "Moved to Talk:Foo" for proposals that are not neccesaarliy implemented but not no consensus either. The rethink categories disscusion for example. Also the anglic languages. Anything that should not end up in this box should be moved out of the "Proposals" section while the discussion is still "live" (i.e. the annoucment of policy change at de.WS). Does anyone object to these ideas?--BirgitteSB 13:25, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The proposals box currently lists discussions that have reached a consensus leading to some action. Many of the proposals, such as the tag-based category system, simply question whether a particular concept would be useful. A future discussion concerning the implementation of that concept, with consensus measurable by a poll, would be listed in the box. // [admin] Pathoschild (^talk/_map) 06:14, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes but I wonder if it would be better to move disscusions where there is interest shown but nothing exactly decided. We are currently losing track of these threades. For example the Category disscusion could be copied to Talk:Category:Categories or Talk:WS:IGD and a note put in the archive and the box that disscusion would be continued there. Currently when it will be brought up again it will be completely sepereated from previous discussion. Of course when the moved discussion come to a final proposal it should be mentioned in the Scriptorium, but probably more like Dovi did with the Labled Section Tranclusion. --BirgitteSB 13:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Overview

Can someone give a very breif plain english overveiw about what this is about? Im a low level wikipedia member, and I understand most of the articles to a degree there, but I still dont understand exactly what it is and isnt we are supposed to put here. Is it stories already published? Personal works? Thanks 220.253.29.132 12:07, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, please see our inclusion policy for the kinds of texts we include.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 17:50, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Plagiarized Wikipedia article for inclusion in Wikisource?

Moved to Wikisource:Scriptorium. —{admin} Pathoschild 02:52:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Archiving error?

My comment removed here was less than a week old.--Pharos 04:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Feel free to move it back; it's in the August archive. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:15:13, 06 August 2007 (UTC)

By the way, your announcement is cited in the upcoming edition of Wikisource News. —{admin} Pathoschild 15:28:16, 07 August 2007 (UTC)

<a name=...> labels within wikisource articles?

Is there a way to put <a name=label> HTML labels into a Wikisource article? I can't figure out how to add the HTML labels to the Wikisource article. I want to do that so that I can link to the individual paragraphs in a Wikisource text from elsewhere. But I can't figure out how. NCdave 08:21, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Try {{section|section_name|visible text}} (see code), which creates an anchor named "section_name". If there's no associated text, just {{section|section_name}} will also work. —{admin} Pathoschild 14:34:15, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! I've done so. —NCdave 10:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I have been using <div id="whatever"> and <span id="whatever"> for this. It that deprecated? Hesperian 12:34, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

No, that's essentially what {{section}} does. —{admin} Pathoschild 17:27:30, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

The {{section|section_name}} syntax is working fine for me. I used it in George Washington's Farewell Address so that I could make an outline of it elsewhere, with clickable paragraph number hotlinks. NCdave 20:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Template on Scriptorium

We need help!

Texts requiring scans

Die Liebe und die Befehrung

Books requiring illustrations

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Five Children and It

The Railway Children

The Story of the Amulet

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Texts requiring transcription

Czolgosz letter #1^image

Czolgosz letter #2^image

A discussion came up on PD about the possibility of trying to remove our "short term requests" off the "Requests for Assistance" and "Requested texts" pages and adding a carefully monitored template at the top of the Scriptorium, running down the right side. Not only will a lot more people then be shown what works we desire (or need wikifying/subsectioning/whatever), but each person who sees it is also a lot more likely to take the ten minutes to remove something from the template as "completed" than they would be to go remove an article from the same tucked-away corner of WS where people ask for the Star Wars scripts. This isn't really a question "Is this template good?" but "How could we make this template better?" Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Alfred Nobel} 20:13, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Archive?

We're looking at over a hundred topics here -- with the newer discussions on the bottom of the page. Rather unwieldy. Any chance someone can fix this? Outlier59 (talk) 01:27, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

I buzzed @Sanbeg: to see if he could get his bot active, though I was unsuccessful. You can manually archive pages if you choose. It isn't something that where we can readily get a bot to undertake selective archiving from section (nothing out of the box), so if we are going to have a bot it going to be something we are going to need to carefully pick through our needs. Wikisource-bot cannot selectively archive from within major sections and then we have a somewhat different archive structure. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:58, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Has the use of Flow ever been discussed for the Scriptorium? I'm pretty sure it can be enabled on a page-by-page basis, and so could just be used on this one page. It's already installed here. Sam Wilson 07:52, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

@Samwilson: can you request local sandbox and feedback pages for us to try out the Flow Extension before we talk about converting the Scriptorium? I've looked a bit at the documentation (half-understanding it, at best). I think we need a "UUID" for a sandbox in Special:Flow. Or maybe we need to request first that Extension Flow be activated as a Beta feature? Outlier59 (talk) 13:52, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Please, no. Flow has many problems, but for one thing I don't think the Announcements/Proposals/Bots/Help/Repairs/Other structure would be supported by Flow. BethNaught (talk) 14:01, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

@BethNaught: The separate types of discussion could each have their own Flow 'board' (i.e. page, as is currently the case with Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help for instance). What other troubles do you see with Flow? I've found it mostly pretty positive when I've used it. There's a good introduction at mw:Help:Flow/Quick tour. @Outlier59: we can submit a request to have Flow turned on for a test page here (e.g. Wikisource:Scriptorium/Flow), but we need to come to consensus here first so that we can point to this discussion when we make the request. (By the way, the Special:Flow page is for viewing actual flow posts and boards; here is some info.)

As I type this text, wedged in the posts below and above, I feel like a better UI for discussion would be welcome! Previewing alone is pretty annoying (finding one's place again in the text), let alone having to do your own threading. But I'm keen to hear other views!

—Sam Wilson 04:19, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

@Samwilson: There are many issues with Flow, examples of which I shall list until I can draw together the theme:

1. Leading on from my former point, Flow does not support subtopics. This prevents one from meaningfully demarcating a subtopic without putting it into a separate topic, and because the two options for ordering of posts on a Flow board are "recently active" and "newest", such subtopics would get detached. As for subpages, do you want to split the Scriptorium into six parts? You couldn't have a useful main Scriptorium page, displaying everything, if you did that, because Flow boards cannot be transcluded.
2. Similarly, reordering posts is not possible because the threading of replies is rigidly enforced. Hence it is not possible to split out subthreads into separate sections (I know this is regularly done on English Wikipedia).
3. As you probably know, each topic on a Flow board is stored on a separate page. When the board is deleted, I don't know what happens to the topic pages, but certainly when looking at the deleted history of w:en:Wikipedia:Article request workshop, which was a Flow board, you can see only the board header but not any of the topics. This might just be a bug, but it's a pretty critical one... What would happen when, say, a work and therefore its talk page is deleted? What happens on undeletion???
4. While the developers attempted to reproduce familiar moderation actions (RevDel, suppression) they really messed it up. Per mw:Extension:Flow/Moderation, posts can be suppressed, but with regard to their history, it's all or nothing - if any revision of a post needs to be suppressed, its whole history must be. Worst case scenario: a malefactor forces the blanking of discussions by inserting suppressible material into each post therein – such material cannot be just reverted and suppressed like in wikitext.
5. Flow does not have paginated archives. Therefore the only way to find an old thread is to search for it on the board. For old discussions, the infinite scroll design makes this problematic. A proper search function should be on its way, but the fact that it's taken so long shows how half-baked Flow is.
6. Here's a bonus: Flow cannot currently handle redirects properly (phab:T135538).
7. WMF is refusing to allow custom signatures in Flow.

So my theme is that the Flow developers made a chatboard. It just about functions as a chatboard, but it throws away all the flexibility of wikitext and has some crucial feature gaps that impact its stability and security as a candidate for long-term use. In my opinion, we shouldn't get rid of wikitext, which is well-tested and stable and feature-rich (though it may have a couple of annoyances) in favour of Flow, which looks attractive but is immature and has real structural problems. Moreover, enabling it just on Scriptorium would be undesirable because then people would need to know 3 editing systems to edit here (standard wikitext, ProofreadPage and Flow), 4 if you count VE which is slowly being enabled here. BethNaught (talk) 08:27, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks BethNaught for putting this together. I shared most (was not aware of all) of the misgivings referred to above but felt unqualified to express a firm position independently. To sum up: Flow has not (yet) demonstrated unshakeable maturity and should not at this point be considered—certainly not on the strength of an issue so weak as archiving issues alone.

Don't forget I am a proponent of delaying inappropriate premature archiving anyway, and so probably have even less of a reason to argue this way than most. AuFCL (talk) 08:34, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

User:BethNaught you can also check out flow talk on wikidata as a beta feature, if you want a test drive. no reason we should not do it here. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 02:20, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

You can also ask fr.wikisource community which have enabled Flow on some pages. they may have some good feedback for you. Trizek (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

enwiki has at least one archive bot that should be within reason to modify for this purpose. It's made to archive article talk pages, but that is essentially what the Scriptorium is, so that should not be an insurmountable hurtle. And with the sheer volume and variety of jobs for the bot on enwiki, persuading the operator to tackle Wikisource should be possible. Try Lowercase sigmabot III operated by Σ. --Xover (talk) 06:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Xover. Σ and I discussed something a while back and I will have to remember where that was and what was the outcome. I think that there was a bit of a solution and I put it into the HARD basket at the time, and did the easier job of running Wikisource-bot for standard archiving. I had just kept hoping that @Sanbeg: would reappear and press his configured buttons. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:30, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Topics on the Scriptorium are now over 120. While I understand some things need discussion to come to long-term solutions, would anyone like to do something PRACTICAL and SHORT-TERM to slim-down the Scriptorium so that it doesn't make visitors and newby editors vow to avoid all contact with Wikisource? Outlier59 (talk) 02:42, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Outlier59: at this stage the only solution for the current archiving schema is to manually archive the section where the current criteria would be for discussions that have not had additions up to the end of June 2016.

Oh, sorry about that. It's been a hectic summer, and that completely slipped my mind. I've always been on the fence about whether I should let this run someplace fully auto, but since there have occasionally been small changes to the page format, and until now I haven't been AWOL for too long I've just been running it manually. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 03:42, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

The means to use Scriptorium — straight discussion list, or subsections; is current WS:S suitably functional?

Above there is a conversation about the archiving of the project page, and the difficulties that we have with archiving which is somewhat contingent on the division of the page. We know that a specialised means to archive the page is required for the current page structure. There was also comment about whether the conversations should utilise the FLOW discussion model. If we take the conversation back to basics ...

In 2016

• is the current page structure for Scriptorium appropriate for our needs? (rather than meet our needs of five years ago); or
• do we wish to have structured sections to which we can add components? These shrink or stretch over time; or
• or are we better to have a flatter structure? then look to have some decent descriptive labels per discussion (even if added retrospectively) that allow navigation of ideas, and just have discussion proceed down the page; or
• are we better to look to have mw:flow and have that function? As such learn differently to discuss and navigate; though we would also need to know on what we are missing out.

— billinghurst sDrewth 04:35, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Shouldn't this be on the main Scriptorium page to ensure maximum visibility to the community at large, and the subset that it affects directly (those who participate on the Scriptorium)? --Xover (talk) 08:22, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Anyone who watches the page should see the conversation here. The talk page is traditionally where we talk about the pages themselves, rather than on the page where we talk about the community. We can move it, or we can point here. I mind not. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:28, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

I quite like English Wiktionary's model of having a bunch of separate discussion pages (Information desk, Tea room, Etymology scriptorium, Beer parlour, and Grease pit) that each have a broad topic and that share a navigation bar across the top. It seems to make more sense, and I'd think it clearer for newcomers, than the current multiple-top-level discussion areas in the Scriptorium. (In fact, personally I treat the Scriptorium as just a single place, and pretty much only ever post new threads at the very bottom; does anyone else find that?)

@BethNaught has raised some really good points above about the problems with Flow. Some of these can be fixed (searching, aggregating threads from multiple boards, revision-hiding), some are by design (enforced signatures, no re-ordering, no subtopics). For me, one of the biggest annoyances about the Scriptorium is that one must watch the whole thing and can't just subscribe to particular threads, or even tags (now that'd be cool; task T94798). Also, I don't really find that subtopics (i.e. the use of H3 or lower headings within a topic) are very easy to follow at all, especially when people are updating more than a couple of the different branches of discussion.

A couple of other points: it'd be nice to be able to mark discussions as 'resolved' sometimes; archive pages are fine once they exist, but until a thread has been moved to it's archive page, there's no way to link to it in a permanent fashion; and lastly, being able to read previous posts in a thread while writing one's reply, without having to read them in wikitext, would be great!

—Sam Wilson 02:39, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that a segregation of topics is very helpful. Whether that is done with separate pages or sectioning is a different question; it doesn't make sense to me to split up what is already a low-traffic page in terms of edits, but there's no particular reason not to split it if it makes our lives easier in other ways.

Responding to @Samwilson, there are several templates we could just import from English Wikipedia which we could use to mark discussions as resolved, such as w:en:Template:Resolved and w:en:Template:Archive top, w:en:Template:Archive bottom. I'm surprised Wikisource doesn't already have at least the first. His second point is harder; one of enwiki's archive bots automatically changes section links to certain pages into archive links when the section is archived – could something like that be done for Scriptorium? His last point seems more of a minor inconvenience, since you can just read and edit in separate tabs, although this would be fiddly on mobile.

As regards Flow, I personally very much dislike the whole idea on a wiki-philosophical basis, and although I admit there is scope for reasonable disagreement, I do not think it is responsible to deploy it with so many bugs and in a state of architectural immaturity. At the very least, the shortcomings in revision hiding ought to be regarded as a blocker. BethNaught (talk) 08:40, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

To the attention of the Administrator

Please remove the issue on the Impermanence of Sexual Phenotypes posted in Project Page for it is no longer in Wikipedia's Phenotypic Plasticity. Thanks a lot. There is no need in talking about it.110.54.251.176 05:33, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

No need, questions are okay, and it is a record of a conversation. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:30, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. —unsigned comment by 110.54.249.11 (talk) .