Clindberg

{{welcome}}-- billinghurst (talk) 15:02, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Seal for the Panama Canal Commission

Hi Again,

Looking for "Seal for the Panama Canal Commission" (Executive Order 12304) - any ideas? George Orwell III (talk) 21:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Heh. No, and I really wanted to find that particular one. The library I found had the printed editions of Title 3 CFRs from 1936 through 1975, and then 1982 and up (after 1975, they were printed in annual volumes, rather than several years in one). That EO was in 1981, so I couldn't find it. I found the text in the Ronald Reagan volumes but it did not include the graphics. The library did not have a printer hooked up to their microfiche machine, so I didn't bother looking, but maybe I should at least do that to see what it looks like. I did find a library near where I normally live (though not at the moment) which did have a printer on their microfiche machine, so that may be an option when I get back there (I also cannot remember which printed 3 CFRs they had... wasn't as many, but maybe they had it). I did scan a version of that seal from a 1989 publication, but I would rather find the actual version printed with the EO, in case there were any differences (and also for 100% certainty on copyright issues). The basic design was the same as the seal for the Panama Canal Company (seen here), used from 1950 to 1979, with the inscriptions changed. There are some small differences in the one I scanned versus that one though (different drawing) so I'd like to see the EO original. The Canal Zone itself had a separate seal from 1905 to 1979; completely different design though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:42, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Dang it. Oh well.

Just a heads up... I started the process to get a bot to swap all the EO headers to Potus-eo here. Don't know how far I will get considering the out-of-the-norm parameters used but I figured its getting to be enough of a pain to warrant asking.

The other thing that I was hoping you might have some insight on is changing the Potus-eo header colors to reflect something more along the ones found in the Potus Seal or something. Oddly enough the "notes" bar is almost the same as the light blue in the shield and the citation bar is almost the same as the ring around the seal with the wording but I can't seem to find a suitable (dull) brown or "gold" that can replace that off-green the header currently shares with all the other headers on here. Ideas? George Orwell III (talk) 23:16, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Found another library :-) As for the colors... hrm. Does wikisource typically vary the colors on headers of different types of documents? It may be hard to do given that I'm sure header colors should probably be fairly neutral. I'm not sure there is a color traditionally associated with the presidency other than dark blue (due to the president's flag). I guess header colors have to be changed via altering the CSS definition? I don't see any parameters to the header template to do that. If most/all Wikisource entries use the same header colors, it may not be the best idea to change them. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Well I can't find it now but there is a page of proposed changes to the entire style of Wikisource and it's general templates/structure. I wanted to have something ready to go just in case it wasn't another drive-by proposal that typically just collects dust around here. I'll post back if and when I come across it again.

Great work on finding that Commission seal. You raised another NARA unresolved question with Executive Order 10237's issue date being April 26 or April 27. Half of the cross-referenced EO's have it one way and the rest use the latter date. I shot off an annonymous e-mail to NARA to see if I could get a quick resolution to which one is the correct date but all I got was the usual form reply. I'd much rather go with the actual CFR or FR Volume one you seem to be able to draw upon if you get around that way again. Thanks.

Is there any Public Law (or Act of ...) that you need transcribed for whatever it is you're doing? I hit the early Flag Code ones (re: Bellamy Salute removal, etc.) last week and the 1912 Panama Canal one but if they're others that could round out your project, just let me know and I'll see what I can do. George Orwell III (talk) 00:42, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Argh, forgot to reply :-) As for colors, if they ever change... eh, maybe try to find a goldish color for the main header area, and see if there can be some dark blue trim somehow. But if there is a wikisource-wide standard at any point, probably better to use that.

As for Executive Order 10237, the CFR compilation most definitely has April 27 as the date (I scanned the entire page with the graphic, so some scans like that one also got nearby EOs, which I was adding too). I did not go check the Federal Register microfilm though, which may be a good thing to do.

I'm currently (very slowly) writing an en-wiki article on the vice-presidential seal... which (along with the presidential seal and flag articles, which I updated somewhat recently) is mainly what got me to look up those EOs, which then moved to scanning all the graphics I could find since I had the opportunity. I have gathered some material on the Canal Zone seal so I may do an article there eventually (which is why I wanted that Commission seal). But, I'm not sure there is any particular law that would be useful; thanks for the offer though :-) At the moment it is kinda interesting to dig up old EOs which Google Books (or archive.org) have uncovered, as those don't exist on many other sites, so that is sort of an extended side project now I guess. The Panama Canal Act is kinda cool though, thanks for that -- since it is referenced by so many of the EOs I've been doing. (The same Google Books volumes also have Congressional acts relating to the Canal Zone for that year, but I haven't been doing those -- but the Google OCR is pretty darn good, and can make for easier editing afterwords). If you are interested in getting pretty full lists of EOs for some of the earlier presidents, the Monthly Catalog of U.S. Government Publications, many of which are on Archive.org, have a section on "President of the United States" for each month where they mention most or all the EOs, and starting early in 1909 also list the numbers. The best would be finding the CIS list of executive orders -- I think that is the most authoritative listing with numbers and should go back to Lincoln -- but I have not found the text online (nor in any nearby libraries). Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:05, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Template:PD-USGov

I disagree your claim that protection in other countries is highly speculative. Please see official statement http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#317 where I once put in, w:Copyright status of work by the U.S. government, and m:Mission about "around the world". If you insist to be USA-centric, would you dare to make a similar reversion to zh:Template:PD-USGov as well?--Jusjih (talk) 02:49, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

:-) This is not Commons -- this is English Wikisource, which I believe goes (solely) by U.S. copyright law; copyright status in other countries is not really relevant, and shouldn't be discussed on the tag itself on this project (and certainly shouldn't be 80% of the text in the tag, even if it is mentioned). A pointer somewhere else is enough, and it seems to me just having the text of "work of the United States Government" go somewhere which discusses the status in other countries is enough. Other wikisources would, of course, be much more interested when it comes to U.S. government works, but that is different than here, where it is irrelevant to the licensing, as the status within the United States is very clear and all that is required of the tag here.

Second, yes I think it is speculative, because I am not aware of a lawsuit or claim ever actually happening, and if so there is zero precedent. If a U.S. agency specifically claims such copyright, that may be a little more worrisome than the vast majority which doesn't -- but even then the situation is not clear. The question was actually brought up by the U.S. in 1977 with the Universal Copyright Convention; the results were muddled at best with many countries saying the UCC, despite "national treatment", did not require them to protect them due to the lack of protection in the U.S. You can see a summary of the proposal here, and a discussion of the ongoing process in the 1980 U.S. Copyright Office here (page 19). The actual submitted study is here. The final report was issued in 1981, and is here. It has a wide variety of opinions, with some countries saying the works should be protected and some saying they should not be (i.e. if not protected in the country of origin, they should not receive more protection elsewhere). I don't think there was a definitive resolution in the end. The 1982 Copyright Office annual report talks about the results here (page 15), and summarizes: In the final analysis, it appears clear that the extent to which U.S. Government agencies may exercise foreign copyrights in their works under the UCC can be determined only on a country-by-country basis. That was under the UCC, and a lot of the argumentation was about the specific wording involving "classes" of works, and if U.S. government works were their own "class" (which would not be protected) or just part of a larger "class" (which could). Since then, the U.S. has also agreed to the Berne Convention, which has different wording -- and so even some of what was decided before may no longer be valid, as the Berne Convention has the clause In any case, the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed; however, unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work. That talks about individual works, not classes, and it may be even harder for the U.S. to get enforceable copyrights overseas now. Granted, the discussions above are more about if protection is required; countries may choose to give it even if not required. But given that I don't think there have been any test cases, it is very hard to make any concrete guesses as to what might happen -- thus it is very, very speculative. Carl Lindberg (talk) 04:52, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Are TblRow stuff the same?

I have seen that you have created the subpages, and opened a couple, though cannot say that I have run a comparison. If the table rows are similar, or reasonably so, then maybe we can look to make a template, either as is, or with minor variations that could be alternate parameters. A little neater than lots of little subpages, especially as they turn up in some of our error checking. billinghurst sDrewth 16:12, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

They aren't the same... a couple are similar, but they are specific to the table in their own executive order (number of columns, which ones have borders, etc.). The most recent one I did was rather different. Basically, the amount of table markup needed made editing the actual text nearly impossible, so I did those as a last resort to retain sanity. Now that I'm done, we could just subst them and delete the templates, if they are causing other issues. Or, they could be moved to another namespace I guess. They are an aid to further editing, if someone wants to change the table format, but unless there is an easy way to avoid the error checking false positives they may not be worth it to keep. Not sure how easily they can be abstracted... but maybe they could be. They are rows for a table with vertical line borders, but no horizontal lines. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:29, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Usually they turn up on our header(less) check, so you can just quick add a header and wrap it inside a <noinclude>. If there is any context required, it can be added in the notes = field

That seems like an easy solution. I added them... does that work? Carl Lindberg (talk) 03:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

request

Hi Carl, and welcome. We tend to use Recent changes a lot here, so I've noticed you busily creating content; because of this I have a small request. I wonder if you would mind creating your user page, even redirecting here, (I would personally find that) to make the RC page a little quicker to check. Apologies for the distraction and if this seems petty. Regards, Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:23, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Very, very welcome! Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:31, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm.... :-) I've managed to avoid even that in 4 years on en-wiki... but maybe ;-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:28, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but that is a horrible nasty icky environment, not warm and loving like ours. You don't even need to have text, create a blank page (something to match my best blank look <g>) would allow us the first rundown with the eye searching for trouble. Thanks for your consideration. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

If you have been avoiding doing so, I don't see an urgent need; please ignore my request. As RC gets busier I can adapt to the extra red appearing, especially where it indicates another welcome contributor Cygnis insignis (talk) 13:19, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Eh, no biggie :-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 20:27, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Reaching Out

Hi again - hope all is well with you and yours...

Any ideas on how to convert THIS LIST to complete FDR's EOs? George Orwell III (talk) 23:23, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Hm, not easily. The top left has a "image/pdf/text" dropdown, which helps somewhat, but the numbers and dates are separate from the descriptions. The raw source looks like they break into lines, which mostly helps, although determining which is a multi-line EO title may be hard without manual intervention on every page. It looks awful in a web browser but the raw text seems workable, albeit requiring a lot of manual work. We also may want to wait on FDR until we get those eo-listing-page templates in place :-) We also may have to break his listing page up; he wrote too darn many. Maybe one page per term.

Agreed - I'm of the mindset right now not to touch anything new (or old in this case) until I've finished manually converting Carter, Reagan, the 2 Bushes and Clinton to a minimal Potus-EO header anyway. Somebody hit me with a tip in an email and was surprised to actually find a full EO listing (I think) from 1933 on was all. George Orwell III (talk) 23:52, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that is interesting, and helpful. Most of UMich's books were scanned by Google, but Google Books does not always provide access to the full text on their site. Didn't think to check UMich for anything like that, but sometimes it is worth a shot (though if possibly copyrighted, usually both are protected). That listing at least looks good for FDR's early EOs, up to when archives.gov starts their list. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Well that's easily over 1,000 EOs or so - definitely worth it. I bookmarked it for now. George Orwell III (talk) 00:11, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Executive Order 71

Nice job with Executive Order 71, I added this to Template:New texts. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 04:32, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Good vandal catch

That vandal just loves to do that page. Thanks for getting to it early. I have dealt with the vandal. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Delightful!

I've just found the most delightful corner of the wiki-universe that I didn't know existed - the executive orders you've been working on. Please accept my most sincere congratulations for work well done. I intent to spend some time pouring through them shortly. Bravo. Philippe (WMF) (talk) 05:14, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and enjoy I hope :-) User:George Orwell III has also been working on them pretty heavily. Wasn't sure if anyone else was noticing ;-) A lot of them are pretty dull, but ... many are interesting. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:15, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

What coolness?

Geeze C-man, what other cool stuff have you uploaded but isn't being fully exploited???  :-) George Orwell III (talk) 09:29, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Carl, If you have the time and is not too much trouble, would you please work your magic for properly uploading to Commons on Proclamation 94 (like you did for the Emancipation Proclamation). TIA. George Orwell III (talk) 20:43, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

File:LincolnProclamation24Sept1862Page1.jpg, File:LincolnProclamation24Sept1862Page2.jpg. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:06, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for that. Unfortunately, the format Nazis around here were more concerned with form than function so I won't be doing that again anytime soon. George Orwell III (talk) 02:11, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

... & hat-tip for catching the US Seal stuff too. George Orwell III (talk) 02:15, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Index:Copyright Act, 1956 (United Kingdom).djvu

I would guess that it is not a priority for you, however, in need of a readable and searchable copy, so have grabbed and starting to put in place Index:Copyright Act, 1956 (United Kingdom).djvu. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:56, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Executive orders

hello. where is the a scanned source for those pages ? could you please provide a link to the source ? thanks ThomasV (talk) 05:59, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The link is on the discussion page for each order. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:01, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

yes, I saw it for some of them, but going up to the main page and probing other subpages, I did not find a source. Is it the same book for all of them ?

please note that the google books link you provided cannot be accessed from non-US locations.

ThomasV (talk) 06:04, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

There are many different sources across every other era basically (this is why we are working to create one universal reference list & add Orders as we find them across the internet). Take a look at the bottom of each President's EO page for possible sources, see sources at bottom of the Project page or just ask if it is for a specific Order. George Orwell III (talk) 06:11, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The current series I'm doing is all the same book, yes (boring orders, mostly). I give the page number, and link directly to the page. Not sure there is anything which can be done about the link for non-U.S. locations; it is a public domain U.S. government work though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:15, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Does turning off Google's standard shell in favor of HTML mode change anything? George Orwell III (talk) 06:19, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

no, non-US IPs must use a proxy ThomasV (talk) 06:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

you should put the book on commons and move the text to the "Page" namespace. That way, your work can be trusted. ThomasV (talk) 06:22, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Possibly, but there are a large number of source books, and that is not the pattern which executive orders have been following (the books are not technically the absolute source for executive orders either; there are signed documents at the National Archives, but the actual original documents are barely ever made public though they are open to researchers I would assume). I have also added the text for orders where I went to a library and found the Federal Register text in a book or microfilm, which is not online, and won't have a link. The books should be available in libraries, so they should be verifiable that way -- online is not the only way ;-) Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:28, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

The post-1994 EOs could all be made to pull the corresponding Federal Register pages but the Bot request to swap out the standard header for the EO specific one went un-answered. Correcting everything that was batch uploaded from years ago manually takes along time but the auto-source feature works fine once in place. George Orwell III (talk) 06:35, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

A scanned source does not have to be the primary source. The purpose of publishing a scanned source is to make your work publicly verifiable, and trustable.

Without a scanned source, I have no reason whatsoever to trust you and to believe you are reproducing the text faithfully. Wikisource shoud not depend on each user being serious and trustable.

ThomasV (talk) 06:41, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

It is more work, and there are lots of EOs. Furthermore, the Page: namespace really wouldn't be all that appropriate for these, as the sources typically contain a large amount of other matter as well, which I have no interest in transcribing at all (often single executive orders are printed along with large amounts of other unrelated departmental documents). I can definitely understand the frustration at not being able to see the sources, but many users can, and I have named the books and pages, so they are completely verifiable (online is not the same thing as verifiable; there is nothing wrong with going to a library to verify stuff). Sometimes archive.org has their own copies of the books, or someone uploads the Google versions there -- you could look. They are not as easy to find though, so I prefer Google (which has far superior OCR as well). Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:53, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Please take a look at more recent order ( Executive Order 13540 ). Are you able to view the 2 pages linked in the citation bar just above light-blue notes section? George Orwell III (talk) 07:07, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Unfair block

Dear Clindberg – I have become fairly active on the Wikisource:Possible copyright violations ‎ discussion page in recent times. You are probably familiar with some of the issues I have raised there (including what is meant by an “Edict of Government”). On 2 May 2010 I made a number of edits. Most of these edits related to me “tagging, hiding and listing for discussion” works that were labeled as “Edicts of Government” (e.g. South African political speeches, a national anthem and other works). The same day Administrator Billinghurst blocked me. I cannot say precisely why – as he did not give precise reasons – but the general heading he gave was that “Okay, that is too rampant” (i.e. I was being too active in ““tagging, hiding and listing for discussion”).

I have disagreed with Billinghurst on a number of copyright points of late – basically, I would like the same standard to be applied to all works. The same high standard that is – even if that means that a lot of works need to be listed for discussion etc - but his approach is different. I think Billinghurst views me as ‘trouble’. In contrast, I think I have made a worthwhile contribution, prompting interesting discussions, greater clarity and the removal of some works. Indeed, the works I “tagged, hid and listed for discussion” on 2 May 2010 have led to interesting copyright discussions on the copyright violations discussion page. I would like Billinghurst to apologise for blocking me and somehow “expunge” my record.

I would appreciate any contribution you would like to make on my talk page where my block is being discussed. I am sending this message to all persons who have participated on the same copyright violation discussions as me. I do not know how else to generate further participation in the discussion concerning my block save direct messages – as I cannot list this matter (a personal one) on the copyright violations page. The discussion is at User talk:Formosa. Given my treatment, I admit to feeling a bit disheartened about my continuing involvement in the copyright violations project. Thanks. Formosa (talk) 12:57, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

---

I just realized you haven't realized that I'm more about moving the staus quo to include more governmental-ish works, yes even Sarah Palin's work as governor, than trying to save any dopey bill or speech in particular -- let alone such non-US government works in general. Thought you should know. — George Orwell III (talk) 18:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Potus-eo

Hi, hope this find you and yours well...

Don't know if you've caught the various nuances introduced with the implementation of "dynamic layouts" but to make a long story short, even a 2 line transclusion from a Title 3 CFR Compilation of an EO (see Executive Order 13252 using vector under dynamic layouts if possible) causes Potus-eo to "break".

Rather than tackling any eventual addition of a custom dynamic layout, I went back through our discussions and thought that some of the changes thrown about were probably best to address first. With the notion of "separating content from layout & formating" in mind, I looked to both the Federal Register's daily publication as well as the annual compilations for guidance. I concluded that their simple headings for EOs would be an easy way to make the signature date and possibly the FR page portions of the cite bar redundant & therefore could be "removed" from potus-eo without actually removing the parameters from the template (just redirecting how and where their output is displayed by default).

It was going well, mostly because we kept {{{title}}} relevant and re-used {{{section}}} for what amounts to the actual title for the EO (see revision history). I've been spinning my wheels on what I thought would be fairly easy to duplicate --- the signature date, the {{{year}}}, {{{month}}} & {{{day}}} parameters, to dispaly after the {{{title}}} so the output mirrors the current FR headings - like so...

• Executive Order 13252 of January 7, 2002

or {{{title}}} of {{{month}}} {{{day}}}, {{{year}}} in Potus-eo terms

I suspect I'm losing something due to what in the final revision will hopefully be the FR-page link rather than the simple "edit-section" link floated far right on the same line as the Executive Order 13252 of January 7, 2002 output portion is -- since most eos, well in at least the modern era that is, do not share a page with another eo. Each eo starts fresh at the top of its own FR page - even its just 3 lines long - so floating that FR-page number to the right of the heading that is always the first thing on that page just more sense than indenting the entire page just to have appear on the left side (as it would if the EO was transcluded from the Page: namespace).

When you get the time can you take a look and show me how to replicate your current signature date output thingy to also show as described above? Thanks in advance.

George Orwell III (talk) 02:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

A lot of this is going over my head.... I guess potus-eo has not kept up with the CSS styles in the header template? Yes, using templates to pass just the raw data should mean we can do what we need inside the template. Should be a way to make it work one way or another, even with a cite bar. One thing I tried once was to make potus-eo just forward to the header template, using a nasty hack in the "notes" section to create a cite bar. It did work, though it didn't look clean -- some unavoidable spaces which were ugly. But, if we go with an approach like that, then we guarantee we still work whenever the header template changes. Perhaps we can get a custom argument added to the header template which, when present, would add an extra table row to the header row, giving us our cite line while still looking OK. As for eliminating it entirely... hrm. I think it would be kinda hard, but maybe. The date could go in the title, and the president could be appended to the author I guess, but it will be hard to get the archives.gov link in there and also the cite information, unless we combine those in other areas. I typically don't like the float-right stuff, but maybe that can work, though with this new dynamic positioning, I'm not so sure. I still prefer the separate cite bar, though we could probably make it a little less verbose. Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:44, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

In short and although nobody has had the balls to come right out and say it definitively to the community-at-large yet, the issue at hand has with the "idea" that the Page: namespace is to, for a lack of better term, rule the main namspace. The focus will no longer be two-pronged and in harmony with one another; improvements are and will be based around transclusion of Pages: from an Index: to the mainspace over the current either method is OK schtick.

I don't think it has to do with Potus-eo not keeping up - all headers are subject to manipulation by dynamic layout (see my vector.js folder for an example of layout parameters and values - note there is a line controling headers and assume any and all header templates are to be included to the style dictated there) apparently. It's only because we didn't strictly follow the wiki-way of hacking the basic header template (as in the case of the {{Act of Congress}} template where the cite bar IS part of the "classic green" basic header template - but only to "move" previous and next with a 2nd notes thing between them; not like in Potus-eo where we've technically added in stuff [not to mention overridding one or two of the standard ones]) that display issues with transcluded EO came to light (if you don't see Display Options above your toolbox in the left side menu bar then you aren't going see what's happening. It only kicks in for me when I F5 or CTRL+F5 a bunch of times but that's a known issue for IE users at this point).

Now to the nutmeat of your above thoughts --> it feels like we are within sight of each others vision. First point, our current cite bar on the left is basically moving down the author parameter for where it normally is found leaving a default overide to a dummy author page in its place, enabling the rotation of such authors (i.e. each president's WS sub-pages) while adding auto linking back to a trusted external source for signaturee and sig date fidelity. On the right is the routine for first publication whenever applicable, the FR vol, date and page being the standard post 1936.

For the left portion - Logically we can move the potus and the auto link back to where it started or just move the potus back and then drop/move the auto-sig-link somewhere else. We can drop the signature date (or move the entire left line to far below as part of a notes/footer).

For the right side - a combination of the float right FR-page thing PLUS the simple header (all plain text and a thick line separator) found at the top of the any modern federal register page. It gives Vol., Vol. No., FR-D M Y and finally FR-Page too.

Now about your raw data experiment-- I was thinking along the same line & visualizing much the same as you. Retaining Template:Potus-eo is what I wanted to and the only thing I could find that does both is {{documentation}} in parrallel with via their sub-folders (see them here. Template:Potus-eo would draw upon a case-A set of actions from one sub folder and a case-B set of actions from another depending on which namespace is involved.

Although its still above my head right now I'm fairly certain we can get the raw data to display the old way when no transculsion is involved and something workable when there is transclusion and dynamic layout kicks in -- probably by using some sort of if-then switching with things like {{SUBJECTSPACE}}:{{SUBJECTPAGENAME}} instead of article names and hard sub-page paths.

I'll stop there and give you chance to absorb all that. George Orwell III (talk) 08:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I think I've fixed potus-eo; it was just a matter of making the "headertemplate" id encompass the entire header, and not just the first table. Executive Order 13252 seems to work fine now with the dynamic layout. That was a matter of not keeping up with the main header template. I would still like support for an extra table or table row between the main header area and the notes directly in the main header template; that would let us change the entire thing to be an invocation of header without using any custom HTML ourselves (the way the Acts of Congress template used to be, and could be again). The same argument could be used to make an {{Indexes}} section be in between the main header and notes and still look good, rather than choosing either on top of the header or making it an ugly div inside of the notes section. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes that seems to have fixed it- all three sections (main, cite and notes) are manipulated together by the dynamic layout settings.

The previous Acts of Congress basically used wiki code OF html to override one thing or the other with what ammounted to a 2nd {{{notes}}} section rather than using an obvious table open and close, wiki coded or otherwise. There would be no need for Potus-eo to have any semi-html-ish coding if everything had an id= and we put the formating in the main .css. I have no desire to go that route.

As for the last point; if the author of a work is an organization or entity such as Congress or Potus and not an idividual - nobody cares what you think apparently. I tried to get the Portal: thing going to supplement, not compete with, the Author: namspace and hoped Portal would become a valid substitute for |author= in the basic header template eventually. There is just not enough traffic on WS to get behind something, anything, like that. George Orwell III (talk) 16:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

No, dynamically positioning the header itself via CSS doesn't make much sense. The dynamic layout stuff seems like overkill to me; the existing choices seem odd (though it does let people experiment and come up with better ones). Layout 3 in particular seems geared to a completely different header style (the one on de-wikisource) and I can't fathom a reason for it existing here. But, whatever. For the header itself, I would prefer to re-use the header template itself as much as possible; that reduces work all-around. If we could get support in the main header template to add an additional table row (or table) in between the usual header part and notes, that would be perfect (for the potus-eo cite bar, for your Act of Congress header, and others). We would then not have to duplicate everything that the header template does, but just pass the additional information for use in another row. I don't mind having *some* HTML in potus-eo of course for its additional formatting; I just think it would be better to not duplicate {{header}}'s HTML if we can avoid it. It would also help with those check-for-missing-header scripts. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I like the idea of the subpages you are playing with. These really aren't part of the same "document" and doing it that way may make adding non-numbered EOs even harder than it is now. I'm not sure of the benefits you are trying for. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:26, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

meh Remember to think about what the current winds of change indicate: content should be separate from layout and format [so the individual can screw with that]. I don't like it but I'm a realist. My thinking is either the EO Project transcludes from some sub-page into the main EO article now or transclude the same from a Page: namespace with scanned EO content later. That sub-page in the first instance can always be deleted if the 2nd actually happens one day OR it can be used as "buffer" between Page: and Main: spaces for X, Y or Z as the need arises (mainly NOT to repeat the limits-of-publication formatting in the scans but something even an American idiot can follow).

All I'm saying is either we make the EO lists for each president (or by each year) not only useful reference lists but holders of the Potus-eo values that can be pulled for however we wish IF the need arises. I just thought the Documentation templates where a quick way to illustrate the principle -- not so much to follow as a strict example. George Orwell III (talk) 16:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. Templates actually are a reasonable way to separate content from layout. I think see where you are going, but I don't think putting text in a subpage and transcluding it in the main page buys anything at all in this case -- you would still be mostly doing the formatting of the text in the subpage. I can see the point in the Page: namespace, since that is set up for optimal editing with the original scans side-by-side, but that is not true of subpages -- we are just editing wiki text the same way there. I don't see a reason to force a parallel. Using subpages instead of the potus-eo-data template... interesting, but has issues since there can be multiple presidents in the same year, etc., so we often need to go down to the EO-number level to determine both with one parameter. I suppose we always have date as a second parameter, so that could be used in conjuction, but ... don't know. {{Documentation}} is a special case, since there is always one known subpage which is the one to be edited; no parameters are really needed. Several of those subpages (/layout, /en) are not used at all. Those look to be copies from the versions at commons, which separate the layout from the text in order to support multiple languages, which is not a concern here (and the result is that people often have no idea how to actually edit them; the structure is very complex). I don't see any real issues with the way we are doing things really. I can definitely understand transcluding from Page: namespaces when we have a good source hosted on-site, rather than relying on links to Google Books and the like, but... I can't see a reason for adding any complexity otherwise. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Heads up

Leaving a note for when you come around again...

Stephen has been generous enough to start pulling down some stuff from Hathi trust. Follow the list here. Open to suggestions on specifics re: how to proceede; layout, etc. — George Orwell III (talk) 01:29, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Earle as a Reformer (1948) copyright status

Hello! If you are willing and/or able, I would like to get a second opinion (at the suggestion of Geo. Orwell III—for my benefit) as to the copyright status of Thomas Earle as a Reformer (1948). More details are located on my Talk Page. Thanks for your time! Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:29, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Using the Stanford search page, I don't see it -- Bronner had one book on the founding of Pennsylvania renewed, but I don't see any others. HathiTrust will generally not make something fully visible unless they feel it is PD, so it looks fine to me. Carl Lindberg (talk) 23:00, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for checking on this for me! Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:02, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Posthumous copyright renewal question

I was wondering if you could help with a copyright renewal issue?

Back in 2010, you wrote "Howard died in 1936, so the publishers would not have had any renewal rights -- they never vested and reverted to Howard's estate, no matter what rights Howard gave them in his lifetime." (Wikisource:Possible copyright violations/Archives/2011-02#Author:Robert Ervin Howard). I've been meaning to ask about this for a while, but usually forget when I get near a keyboard. Would this reasonably cover all or most occasions where the author died before the renewal?

I'm not really sure what I need here but just a little information about this would be appreciated. A few of those deletions, and the recent deletion of The Rats in the Walls, could be restored based on this. I would probably also create a licence template (or possibly a talk-page template) to mark appropriate works. So, knowing what to write for the restorations and the template would help.

Speaking of help, I did remember this when I wrote Help:Copyright renewals, adding "If the original author died before the renewal year, the contract between them and the publisher ended. Therefore the publisher no longer owned the copyright and was not eligible to register a renewal" under Contributions to periodicals. Does that sound about right? - AdamBMorgan (talk) 17:29, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

There is a William Patry article on it here, with a link at the bottom to another article. Apparently the situation was mostly understood, that per the law, that if an author transferred their renewal rights during their lifetime, that right to renew only vested in the publisher if the author was still alive at the renewal period. Otherwise, renewal rights reverted to the estate or heirs, and I don't think the publisher (or whoever the original rights had been transferred to) had any standing to renew absent another transfer. Apparently that left ambiguous the exact date the right vested -- was it on the 27th anniversary of publication, which was the date that it became possible to renew works, or was it the date the renewal was actually filed, or did the author have to live to the 28th anniversary (i.e. the date the first term ended and the renewal term began). The articles were in response to the case of Roger Miller Music, Inc. v. Sony ATV Publishing, LLC, which apparently resolved that question to be the date the renewal was actually filed. That case had an additional complicated twist, since the renewal in question was made during the year that renewals became automatic -- from 1992 on (i.e. works first published 1964 or later), the question is merely which party owns the rights during the renewal period, not whether the renewal actually happened or not. There is another older, longer paper here which goes over the cases in more detail, and presents its own argument (obviously, that was written 10-15 years before that 2007 decision, and goes over the changes in the 1992 law which made renewal automatic, and the statute became a lot more clear). It may be possible though, even under those circumstances, for the publisher to actually file the renewal -- courts did try to find ways to preserve copyright if the heirs forgot to file, I think. The rights would still be owned by the heirs, but copyright may be preserved by the publisher actually filing a renewal, provided they did it in the name of the heirs/estate (and not in their name). So... a magazine filing a renewal on their own magazine in their own name would not serve to renew the contents, it looks like, if the rights did not vest. There is some discussion of that stuff here, but I don't know the court cases involved offhand. Courts did try to find ways to preserve copyright within the law as written, but the principle that the rights reverted to the authors' heirs or estate if they died before a registration was files is pretty set, I think. For other cases, the registration would have to at least be made in the name of the heirs to be valid, it looks like. Of course, it was possible that the author never assigned renewal rights in the first place, meaning the vesting question was void (the author retained renewal rights regardless even if they lived) but that will usually be impossible to answer without seeing the original contract, so we probably need to assume renewal rights were transferred in the case of valid renewals. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:23, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. That actually seems more straightforward than I expected. - ~~

Template limit

Hey,

Ran over the max Post-expand include size: while converting the FDR lists. I trimmed eolist-item a bit and the usage came down some but that's without even all the EO dates in place so it won't be enough to convert the last 4 years nevermind fill out all the missing data. Do you think its possible to move the bulk of the code dealing with the switches etc. to a template sub-page and leave just the basics as the main? The specialized usage is so infrequent that it doesn't make sense to run 5 possible expansion depths for every instance when 2 is all that should be needed max (for date conversion). -- George Orwell III (talk) 00:12, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I was worried about this, given how many orders FDR spit out. I tried a couple of tweaks to reduce sub-calls to the gap template, thinking those could be a problem, but they didn't affect things, not even a single byte. Which leads me to believe that only the result of the switch is counted for the post-expand size, and removing the switches won't help us at all. Which makes sense, as it is *post* expand size. Making them a sub-template might even hurt, actually. I'm not sure there is anything to do except reduce the size of the *generated* wikitext (i.e. HTML in this case). And as much as we try, I bet we hit the limits anyways. My thought a long time ago is that we would have to eventually split up the FDR page. We could perhaps have per-term pages for each president, so that no more than four years is on a single page (Wilson might be a close call, but that's probably the only dangerous one outside of FDR). Or, make an exception for more-than-two-term presidents to only have 8 years on a page ;-) Keeping this to an FDR-only thing. I'm not seeing any reasonable way out short of splitting the page at the moment. Carl Lindberg (talk) 00:56, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Unacceptable. What about moving all the styling to CSS? (not that I'm sure how to do that exactly) -- George Orwell III (talk) 01:37, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

That would work in theory, except that we can't define inline styles -- I think they have to be in MediaWiki.css or one of the other CSS files. And it seems a bit much to define a few styles for use on roughly 20 president EO pages (and they are harder to change if we want to alter appearance, of course). I squeezed a bit more HTML out; there is some room to grow, and maybe we can fit them in now. There are a few more tricks -- we could put text-align:left on the table element making it the default, and we could remove the two such declarations from each row. We could also use the align=center syntax on the TD element itself rather than CSS text-align, which also works and is fewer characters. So we could squeeze a bit more if we had to. I think there is now 700K of room on the FDR page; we might make it. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:00, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Another option would be to use HTML col tags in the header to define styles for the column; I have a habit of not using those as browser support used to be dodgy but these days that may be a very viable approach. Not sure how to mix that into wiki-table syntax though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Argh, mediawiki does not support those tags, even if using XHTML table syntax -- it will turn it into regular text. Carl Lindberg (talk) 02:18, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

MW doesn't support COL, COL headers, etc. so that's not an option. I'll be back later tonight to convert the last 3 years which are fairly small compared to the rest and we'll go from there I guess. CSS addition or modification is not an issue; it's just a matter of doing it neatly and inline with MW guidelines. -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:22, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

OK, after that, I now see we are at about 1.43 MB out of a limit of 2.0. We will get a lot closer once we add in the missing EOs (1935 is mostly lacking) and missing titles, but we might make it. We could possibly trim down the HTML for the fourth column if no value is supplied (don't need padding or nowrap values for that). Probably going to be touch-and-go at the end, but it does not seem imminent anymore. Carl Lindberg (talk) 06:16, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

More like 1.59 now - I just listed the missing EOs in 1934 with their sig. dates, so 1933 & 1934 are "complete" save for the actual subject titles for each EO. I'll get on doing the same for 1935 in maybe a day or two; will re-evalulate at that point I guess. -- George Orwell III (talk) 10:22, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Seems like we are at 1.68 with a full listing of EOs, but many many titles missing. (Pages and dates too, but those will be relatively small.) Gut feel is that we'll make it, but won't have much wiggle room. There might be a couple more tricks we can do to trim out a bit more space. I wouldn't do any CSS tricks just yet, I don't think. Carl Lindberg (talk) 22:49, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Copyright of work published in 1922 and copyrighted in 1923

Can you look at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Would like to add the Garnett translation of Dead Souls? I've got a renewal notice: "DEAD SOULS, by Nikolay Gogol; translated by Mrs. Edward Garnett [i. e., Constance Black Garnett] (The collected works of Nikolay Gogol, v. 1 and 2) © 23Apr23, (pub. abroad 7Nov22), A704400. R71938, 1Dec50, David Garnett (C)". And I don't know if it means it's still under copyright in the US.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:32, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Weird licensing question

Hello.
Sorry for posting off-topic, but can’t now remind of a better licensing expert than you. I need—for my works—such license that essentially is a free one, but contains a clause making hosting of my works on Wikimedia Commons impossible. Possibly, something like

“You may not use the work commercially until posted a notification of that use on (specified wiki page).”

or

“You may not publish a derivative work until posted a notification…”

Technically, the work may be licensed under a Commons-incompatible license (CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-ND) but supplied with a declaration permitting for any (otherwise forbidden) use on a formal condition which can be fulfilled very easily. What do you think of such a strategy – is it legally sound? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 11:13, 26 September 2019 (UTC)