Help:Multilingual Wikisource

The Multilingual Wikisource (mul.ws or OldWikisource) is a sister project to the English Wikisource. Some content that may be inappropriate here is appropriate there, so users at this site will sometimes need help there.

What is Multlingual Wikisource?

Originally, all Wikisource texts were hosted at https://wikisource.org/ and there were no language subdomains (such as en.wikisource.org for English-language texts). In 2004, the community decided to split individual languages into different projects, as was done with sister projects such as Wikipedia and Wikiquote. Since then, the main page at wikisource.org has continued as its own wiki that hosts four kinds of material:

• Works in languages with editor communities that are not large enough to sustain themselves yet, but which could in the future have their own project. This makes mul.ws similar to Incubator.
• Works which are themselves in multiple languages. Unlike most Wikimedia Foundation wikis, at mul.ws, it's acceptable to have a single work that is in multiple languages or have a disambiguation page that leads to several versions of a work in multiple languages hosted on one wiki.
• Works in languages where the corpus of all written works is too small to justify its own wiki. For instance, some dead languages have important source material that is worth preserving, but the entire body of work that we have in that language is so small that a separate wiki would be easily completed and would not need to have an ongoing editor community.
• Works which are in languages that do have their own subdomains, but have decided to not host a given work for some reason. Wikisource editions in other languages may have additional restrictions on what they host (e.g. they will only host material in the public domain of its country of origin and not just the United States, which is where the Wikimedia Foundation is based). In such cases, mul.ws will continue to host material in any language, even if a subdomain exists for it.

What is the relationship between these projects?

Occasionally, text transcriptions begin here that are more appropriate for mul.ws and they may be proposed for deletion locally. In such cases, they can be imported to mul.ws. To do so, please make a request at the Scriptorium. If you have any cross-wiki issues such as vandalism or copyright violations that require an admin's intervention and you want to write an admin directly, you may find a list of them here.

Note that most discussions and documentation at mul.ws are in English.