Talk:The Wreck of the Steamer "Stella"

Source discussion (2022)

Speedy deletion contested: original by Languageseeker, with claim “out of scope - secondary transcription.” However, there is no evidence that this is a secondary transcription. A secondary transcription is a transcription made at another site and then imported here, from my understanding of the closed proposal. This work is marked as “no source”; thus, it is not evident that it originated from an illegal source. For the record, I oppose the deletion. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:58, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm interpreting the policy as including "no source" as being "secondary transcriptions" by default. Languageseeker (talk) 23:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

There is no evidence that this is a secondary transcription. If there is no source, then it cannot be a secondary transcription, and if it is a secondary transcription, then it has a source. The two cases are inherently mutually exclusive. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:42, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey What is to stop users from source washing by simply omitting the secondary source? Languageseeker (talk) 05:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be good to communicate to contributors clearly what we expect them to do, if what we want them to do is to provide a source we should explicitly communicate that to them. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:07, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

I did reach out to the user and offer to find them a scan. Part of the rationale for this policy is to stop further unsourced/secondary transcriptions. Languageseeker (talk) 20:35, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

You mean: how can you police the honesty of contributors? That's an entirely separate issue, and not relevant for this deletion discussion. --EncycloPetey (talk)

It’s about making a presumption that no source = secondary transcription as the most likely scenario. The other works that the user posted are from a secondary source. Languageseeker (talk) 20:35, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

This almost certainly was copied from one of the many secondary transcriptions online, which are probably copying each other and I hazard likely eventually back to Yet More Poetic Gems, which is a British 1980 compilation and therefore copyrighted (the compilation, probably not the poem). It would be a lot better if the original source could be found, probably in some periodical, but if it can't be, a "naked" text is the best we can have, though there would always be an open question over whether it was modified in the 1980 edition (with a small but non-zero risk of creative input: cf. the posthumous "improvement" of Charles Bukowski's work). So it could be an exception to the second hand text thing based on lack of public domain source. Any ideas where the original was published, anyone? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:41, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia, the poem was first published in 1962 in More Poetic Gems. Languageseeker (talk) 21:54, 17 February 2022 (UTC)–

That can't be right, it sounds like it was likely first published in some local Dundee paper around the time of the event. That Wikipedia list looks like someone has just transcribed the TOCs of the collections at the IA. For example, apparently the one about Gilfillan was published in the Dundee Weekly News, not in a 1962 collection, 60 years after McGonagall's death. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 22:14, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

This begets the question of how much work do we need to do to hunt down the original publication. If the uploader transcribed the poem from an original publication, they should be able to easily list it. Otherwise, I'm inclined to presume that they simply copied it from an online source. Languageseeker (talk) 22:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@User:Shāntián Tàiláng Can you solve the mystery and tell us the source of this poem? Languageseeker (talk) 22:31, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Worldcat says that the poem was originally published in 1899. But I haven't been able to find an instance of the original publication. DoublePendulumAttractor (talk) 03:05, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

@Languageseeker, @DoublePendulumAttractor: You might want to note that "Lines in Praise of Tommy Atkins" was also published in More Poetic Gems (1962).
I really don't have any access to print media (although I surely wish I did), and searching Google Books doesn't yield anything with "Preview available", but I do know that several other poems have been published posthumously; that might have been the case with these two poems. Just giving you some advice. Shāntián Tàiláng (talk) 16:28, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

@User:Shāntián Tàiláng Thank you. This source would make it a secondary transcription and out-of-scope. Languageseeker (talk) 02:51, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

 Keep It rather seems to me that this poem will not be easy to scan-back due to lack of unambiguously copyright-free physical copies. While any one poem is clearly in the PD, the actual book Yet More Poetic Gems is not because copyright subsists in the collection itself, so we can't host a scan of that book.

Thus, I suggest that this poem should be permitted, since it's unreasonable to expect someone to use a scan if no-one can find a scan. If a scan comes along in future, probably due to digitisation of some local Dundee broadsheet, this "unsourced edition" (in that it's not clearly tied to a physical edition, though it likely is YMPGs) can be replaced with a suitably backed copy. In the mean time, we have {{unsourced}} and {{second-hand}} to make it's provenance, or lack thereof, clear.

This is, IMO, an appropriate time to invoke a WS:WWI#Consensus exception due to the unusual lack of any hostable scan for the work.

If scans were available, I would expect those to be used instead for all the usual reasons. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 19:25, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

apparantly there is a broadsheet floating out there [1]; [2] - but it might be hard to find to scan. when you delete it you make it harder to find. (maybe you should contact the Univ Edin. group at WMUK --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 17:19, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

National Library of Scotland has a print copy dated 1899 [3]. Therefore in scope (as are any other of McGonagall's poems being nominated). As we have NLS people involved here talk to their liaison contact @LilacRoses: and see if they can help. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:55, 3 March 2022 (UTC)