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The current Proofread of the Month is The Tower  (1928) by William Butler Yeats. Last month completed: Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope The next scheduled collaboration will begin in May.

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-- Cirt (talk) 04:35, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Wikiproject Law

Yes, I was thinking the same thing myself. I would like to contribute to this. Does Wikisource have its own Wikiprojects? - Legalskeptic (talk) 12:07, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Great! There are some wikiprojects here (such as Portal:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, Portal:WikiProject United States Executive Orders, and Portal:WikiProject UK Law). I am going to start adding federal statutes, and I saw you were adding New Jersey statutes. Rather than starting a wikiproject for each area of the law, it might be a good idea to group all these legal resources together. We will probably share some templates and formatting. It would also be useful to make a giant checklist for federal and state law available on wikisource. I am drafting the project here. stephen (talk) 15:11, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

I'll help out with the draft. I agree that a unifying Wikiproject is best. Other projects can be considered sub-projects of the main legal Wikiproject. Regarding federal statutes, I've been adding some of those by way of the United States Code. Legalskeptic (talk) 15:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

P.S., I made a {{User WikiProject Law}} template so we can rep the project on our user pages. Legalskeptic (talk) 16:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks for pointing that out. stephen (talk) 21:02, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

F--k it, we'll do it live! - LegalSkeptic (talk) 23:05, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hello all. While I'm of like mind in addressing this area to make it a better reference source for use across across all the other Wikis, my time on WS so far has shown me that it's harder to get the ball rolling and accepted than you'd think it would be. At any rate, put me down as interested but kind of oppose unifying anything under one umbrella just yet.

The other thing that may not have been clear is the whole "Portal:List of Acts of the United States Congresses" layout thing was a poor approach to cataloging the laws passed every session. The ultimate goal should have been more like what developed later, the United States Statutes at Large project, that transcludes the individual Acts out to their own page(s). Unfortunately, "Acts of Congress" was the way Federal Statutes was started before I got "here" so that's what we're stuck with "fixing" eventually too. George Orwell III (talk) 00:13, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Glad to hear your input. I agree, the List of Acts of the United States Congresses is not exactly the best approach. I will take a closer look at your approach in the United States Statutes at Large. I think that's a good example how Wikisource:WikiProject Law can help--it will give a place to us standardize formatting and show other users how/where they can get involved. If you are interested in getting in touch, I am typically around #wikisource when I am working. Cheers, stephen (talk) 01:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Heaven sent?

I'd support your BOT request in a heartbeat if I was an Admin for more than a week!!!! I will add my 2 cents whenever the opportunity arises though.

If I may, you seem to know alot about this stuff - would you mind taking a peek at Wikisource:Bot_requests#Swapping_header_templates and tell me if my months old request/proposal is within your realm and such ??? Any feedback is appreciated. George Orwell III (talk) 00:32, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, glad to have your support! Your template swap request looks manageable--I will leave more details on the request page. Also, congrats on becoming an admin! Cheers, stephen (talk) 06:01, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Hi, I've reviewed the bots contribs at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Bot_flag_request_for_BenchBot.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:04, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion(s)

Hello again... While trying to help contribute to Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912), I've noticed that you're using }}Left Sidenote{{ for the pages containing left-sided notes. This produces a zig-zag or zipper effect of alternating left then right side notes when the all pages are transluded out into a single article. If I may suggest -- I've been using {{LR sidenote}} for these index pages with left-sided notes instead; producing the same intended effect inside the Page: namespace, but automatically swaps the notes to the right side upon transclusion with no problems at all. Prost. George Orwell III (talk) 20:17, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Cool, I think I understand. I read WS:STYLE and the Formatting conventions in H:Side, but I still have a few nagging questions (e.g., is there a template for indenting a paragraph? Do I preserve line-breaks in sidenotes?). Do you know if there are any style guides that I am missing? stephen (talk) 20:57, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Well if there are more styleguides that pertain to Law and similar or related works, I sure haven't come across them!!!

In general, I've quietly observed many of the other regulars around here & followed the progress in their various works and have come to realize that the "best" basic premise (or rule of thumb) is to keep the stylistic formatting to the minimum within the Page: namespace while remaining as "true" as possible to the original in the scans. The finished transcluded article is where layout and format should become reader friendly and as functional as needed. In other words, making hundreds or thousands of paragraphs indented within the Page: namespace is counter-productive and time consuming considering that one single containing <div> class can indent every paragraph for you when all the Pages are trunscluded into that single finished article. Same goes for large swaths of indented sections or sub-sections under a paragraph typically found in legalish works -- its better to address this in the transclusion rather than trying to get things to line up from one Page to the next. However, simple things (bold text, small-caps or italics) should be made within the Page: namespace just as they are found in the original scanned djvu or pdf files. It also helps to keep in mind that publications from the pre-1923 era are subject to symptoms of the old-school printing press and publication methods of the time --> Keeping those symptoms in today's digital HTML document era isn't neccessarily the best way to untilize these works every time either.

Now some may say that preserving line breaks in something such as side-notes as they appeared originally some 80+ odd years ago in the fixed medium such as the printed paper-page as they where published on and now scanned from is paramount. I consider it a symptom of publication (something that had the publisher enjoyed having an automatic line-wrapping smart printing press would not care so much about today so neither do I).

Hope that helps & feel free to reach out anytime when in doubt. George Orwell III (talk) 21:54, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

BenchBot importing

Hi! Most of the imports look good, but I have seen some things that aren't working correctly, such as this one. Just a heads up. :-) Inductiveload—talk/contribs 01:09, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that elsewhere too but I think its been fixed by LegalSkeptic already. Other than the usual "problems" in formatting found over at archives.org it seems to run pretty well. You might want to narrow down the souce URL on the talk pages to a bit more specific (ex. for cases in Vol. 493, point to their table of 493 = http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/US/493/ ) George Orwell III (talk) 01:46, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Inductiveload--fixed the processing error that was causing the extra text in the second concurrences of cases. I also changed the talk page infobox's link to the volume table on bulk.resource.org. I wish they didn't have crazy names for the html files, otherwise I would link directly to the file. stephen (talk) 07:02, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

I have found on some cases for volume 492 that the versus is not filling in at the bottom as you can see.

United States Supreme Court

492 U.S. 33

v.

Wabbit98 talk 4 August 2010

Hmm... I must have been adjusting the casename function when I imported vol 492, since I don't see that issue elsewhere. I fixed those cases by adding party1 = and party2 = in the {{CaseCaption}}. I will keep my eye out for that problem on other cases. stephen (talk) 15:04, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Is BenchBot still working? I know it might seem like a stupid question but when I look at the user contributions (that is how I update the front page for the Supreme Court) I have not seen any updates since August 4th. I am going to catch up to it at some point, probably have to split off the pages soon. Wabbit98 talk 11:08pm (PST), 16 August 2010

Yup, I just stopped running while I tweaked some code. Should be back to serious business soon. stephen (talk) 06:58, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Question about how it determines when a written opinion is just a Concurring or when it is Concurring-Dissenting in part? Wabbit98 talk, 11:38pm(pst), 24 August 2010

Currently, it doesn't detect a concurrence-dissent. If the opinion looks like a concurrence or dissent, it will be put on that page. If the opinion looks like neither a concurrence or dissent, it will be put at the end of the opinion of the court. We will need to manually move a concurrence-dissent to the proper page. If you happen to notice phrases (in the syllabus, such as "Justice ___ concurring in part and dissenting in part," or phrases at the start of the opinion), those will be useful to update BenchBot to detect concurrence-dissents. Even if you just collect a list of cases with concurrence-dissents, that would be helpful. stephen (talk) 14:50, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Quick question, are you still importing all the cases by volume to the case name list that you created? It is currently at volume 154. I know I have been busy getting the Taney court all worked out, and now back to listing the cases on each Chief Justice page before I tackle the Chase court opinions en masse. Wabbit98 talk, 3:17pm (PST), 23 February 2011

I uploaded all the recent volumes to the case list. I was just looking at your work at the Portal:Supreme Court of the United States. Those are some hefty lists! Cheers, stephen (talk) 07:24, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Wheaton

Hi,

I see the speedy delete and took care of the redirects but the speedy version has notes the "good" copy doesn't - can you make sure that we're not dumping worthy content in this cleaning process? Thanx George Orwell III (talk) 22:28, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

The old page here is from openjurist. I'm not sure where Wheaton v. Peters is from, but it appears to be missing a good chunk of the text that is in the openjurist version. I will investigate... stephen (talk) 23:15, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Kewl. I took the sdelete down for now. Touchback with what you find. Fwiw... I'm not opposed to dumping the other one and renaming yours if that's the better route in the end here. George Orwell III (talk) 23:39, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

United States Reports Volume 27

Just saw this in |Sellers v. Dialogue it says it is in volume 27, yet when I click on the highlighted 27 it takes to the list of cases in volume 27 and it is all weird, the case is not listed at all and no dates and what few dates there are, are all over the place. Actually it is under the full name, but a lack of dates will hurt. It seems to be that way for all the cases under the full names of the persons so it is acting like they have not been added at all though BenchBot as just added the pages Wabbit98 talk 12:01am (PST), 6 August 2010

Someone else built the lists of names in United States Reports. Unfortunately, they are not very consistent: sometimes it includes "et al." (see 90 U.S. 119 in vol 90), but most of the time it doesn't; sometimes it includes initials in the name, sometimes it just includes the full name, sometimes it just includes the last name; etc. I wrote up this guide so we can determine how a case should ideally be named. The rules for the ideal name are a little too complicated for me to automatically apply, so I am going to have to manually fix the names in United States Reports.

If you want to figure out if BenchBot has added a case (for example, Sellers v. Dialogue), then type in the citation (for example, 27 U.S. 1), and it will take you to the case. BenchBot always creates a redirect from the citation to the case. The citation is almost always unique and consistent. Volume 26, for example, is entirely uploaded, although the index needs to be updated by checking the citation (26 U.S. 1, 26 U.S. 18 . . . 26 U.S. 686). I have a list of name->citation pairs that I can upload, if you want. Eventually, I was going to have BenchBot run back over all the indexes in the United States Reports and fix all the links. If we could fix the links before hand (Vol 28, Vol 29 . . .) then BenchBot could run much quicker. stephen (talk) 15:45, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

From what I have seen so far it seems Volume 27, my bad it goes way beyond volume 27 at least through volume 35; BenchBot will be adding cases but they will not correspond with the names in the United States Reports you are going to need help if you are going to do this manually. Maybe found a way to change it back it is not perfect but it might work enough to make it work, it seems someone made a major edit that made the case names this way just undo it and it reverts back to its original. Wabbit98 talk 16:20, 6 August 2010

<ref> vs {{ref}}

Gday. Generally in the Page: namespace with the types of works with their footnotes per page eg. Page:Elizabethan People.djvu/259 we will utilise a <ref>, as that will put the reference in the footnote on that page, as per the work, then when we transclude to the main namespace, we will add a <references> or similar to the chapter/work to collect the footnotes.

Use of {{ref}}/{{tl|note} is a lot rarer, and usually only encountered where the individual notes are collated as endnotes, such that the refs are almost that leap of faith that the table of references is coming. Then when transcluded the series of pages will display and present fine (presuming that the number is all okay. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:16, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, good to know. I used {{ref}} so I could stay faithful to the source and use * and other funny characters as the foot note markers, but I understand why it's better to use <ref>. Thanks for giving me a heads up. Cheers, stephen (talk) 14:58, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

re: WP:LAW

Thank you for giving me the opportunity I made a {{User WikiProject Law}} template, with regards Chipmunkes (talk) 17:42, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Hot for Code

Dude, your recent works towards getting the U.S. Code Project back on track has got me Jones'in for a fix already!!. One minor suggestion (if possible) is to wikify any citations mentioning the Public Law No. to the inter-wikilinks used on WS.

Pub. L. 107–213   should be converted to   [[Public Law 107-213|Pub. L. 107–213]]   for example.

Take care to watch for irreguarities concerning the dash between the Congress (107th) and the assigned number upon enactment (213). We use the simple short dash ( - ) between the two values here on WS but GPO & FDSys primarily uses the mid-sized [really a minus sign] dash ( − ). I've also seen the em dash ( — ) incorrectly applied for use in this matter on a few of the GPO Public Law reproductions but I haven't seen it reproduced by the FDSys group so far. Either way, if this auto-conversion is at all possible & worthwhile to incorporate into the importation process its something you'll need to consider in whatever it is you do in that coding stuff.

I got bored so went a playin'... Template:USC-header

Couldn't find a short enough title with all the sub-divisions for testing purposes. I had to "restore" the universal header parameter {{{title}}} by moving the U.S.C. title number to {{{title-number}}} instead, created {{{sect}}} and {{{sect-name}}} to avoid the same problem by corrupting universal-header parameter {{{section}}}. Don't know where you were going with {{{cite}}}, {{{revision}}}, {{{level}}} or {{{current}}} so I just guessed on where to put them for now if at all.

Again - this looks to be a BIG winner. Congrats. George Orwell III (talk) 14:50, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Awesome!!! I noticed you were working on that, thanks! I will modify the output to match your adjustments. Cheers, stephen (talk) 16:40, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Spilitting up pages on Supreme Court front page

I think it is time to starting spilitting up the front page as we have talked briefly. It is getting impossible to add cases under each Chief Justice, crashing my browser. At least the John Marhsall and William Rehnquist parts to make it more managable. Wabbit98 talk, 12:06am(PST), 22 August 2010

I split out the Marshall court. Is that how we decided it should be done? I want to be sure we are clear that these are decisions under the Marshall Court, not decisions authored by Justice Marshall. stephen (talk) 15:26, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I like it like that. Goes to seperate page that lists the cases decided during his term as Chief Justice and not just the ones authored by him. Wabbit98 talk, 11:16pm (PST). 26 August 2010

Heads up

Just noticed some changes made by an anon IP account to 2 of your pages - thought you should know if it wasn't you not logged in or something. George Orwell III (talk) 20:07, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

That was not me, but it just look like minor edits to the javascript. Thanks for the heads up! stephen (talk) 06:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Supreme Court Opinions

Just a quick question I am noticing all of these cases have only the Opinion of the Court. Were they all decided 9-0 and no dissenting opinions? When did dissents and concurrences start to come into usage? Wabbit98 talk, 11:40pm (PST), 17 September 2010

Dissents were not common in early cases, but they became more common over time. You will see more dissents after Volume 312. Here is a chart with data from Henderson, From Seriatim to Consensus and Back Again: A Theory of Dissent, 2007 Sup. Ct. Rev. 283 (2007):

Chief Justice	Dates of Service	No. of Cases	Percent of Opinions with a Dissent
Marshall	1801-35	1,187	4
Taney	1836-63	1,708	9
Chase	1864-73	1,109	9
Waite	1874-87	2,642	6
Fuller	1888-1909	4,688	7
White	1910-20	2,541	5
Taft	1921-29	1,708	7
Hughes	1930-40	2,050	9
Stone	1941-45	704	27
Vinson	1946-52	723	48
Warren	1953-68	1,772	50
Burger	1969-85	2,755	59
Rehnquist	1986-2005	2,131	56
Roberts	2005-present	104 (as of 2007)	47 (as of 2007)

Cheers, stephen (talk) 09:05, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Slaporte, it seems BenchBot has not been adding cases recently, is there a reason for that? Wabbit98 talk, 8:18am (PST), 1 November 2010

I have been working on school (and some updates). I will start running again this week! Cheers, stephen (talk) 15:30, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Slaporte, looking at the Case Name list we seem to be missing volumes 124 and 126. Wabbit98, 11:20pm (PST), 4 March 2011

The "telephone cases" make up Vol. 126 ( 126 U.S. 1 thru 126 U.S. 584 ) in it's entirety - there are no other opinions in this volume. Don't know what the story is with Vol 124 but I do see a case listing on the U.S. Reporter page. United States Reports/Volume 124 — George Orwell III (talk) 08:03, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I was waiting to verify volume 126. I just uploaded the volume 124 case name list. stephen (talk) 08:40, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

US Supreme Court name list

Thanks for that list, my main concern is that disambiguation; if you could figure that out I would use it right away adding the years would take me no time at all. Or if I knew which ones needed to be disambiguated I could go in and do it myself can't be that many per a volume. Wabbit98 talk 11:21pm (PST), 22 September 2010

When BenchBot comes across a case name that is in use already (same volume), it will typically create the 3 citation redirects to that case but not the syllabus or the opinion pages for that attempted re-use of the existing case name. These are the cases that need disambiguation (on top of the missing content). They will pop-up a day or 2, maybe 3, after creation on the broken redirect list. I already did the latest batch that came up today because they were easy and the cases were short... but I have worked-around about a &frac12 dozen(?) cases already that needed pages created in order to prevent the 3 citation redirects from being deleted as was the case before I noticed it was starting to be a regular thing. I haven't disambiguated any of them because, as it stands now, most don't have any opinions, etc.

Anyway you can look at that list every time it is refreshed and work backwards to get the cases needing disambiguation. The other thing for cross volume re-use of a case name is when you see the see US Reporter volume & page in the case name - its a dead giveaway that similar case names exist in other volumes. George Orwell III (talk) 08:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Is this only an issue for duplicate names in the same volume? I will keep my eye on Special:BrokenRedirects, and I can add the missing opinions once I figure out which ones are missing. Thanks! stephen (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Can't say for certain it is limited to just duplicate case names within a single volume - I may have seen this occur across multiple volumes within the same single run of BenchBot ranging the usual 3 or 4 volumes it does in one shot -- but don't hold me to that. George Orwell III (talk) 16:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The case name list now checks for disambiguation. It takes an extra few seconds to load because it has to query Wikisource for each case. stephen (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Well checking for disambiguation hasn't solved much it seems; see the latest broken redirect list for some of the skipped cases (though the one with Milwaukee is spelled wrong just about everywhere so we can't be faulted for that one technically).

I've moved, re-named and created disambiguation pages using the base case names for all three already - just need the missing case content at this point. George Orwell III (talk) 00:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The issue was duplicate case names in the same volume: United States v. Knight's Administrator (66 U.S. 227) and United States v. Knight's Administrator (66 U.S. 488); Gelpcke v. City of Dubuque (68 U.S. 175) and Gelpcke v. City of Dubuque (68 U.S. 220); Milwaukie and Minnesota Railroad Company and Fleming v. Soutter (69 U.S. 440) and Milwaukie and Minnesota Railroad Company and Fileming v. Soutter (69 U.S. 510); Lee County v. Rogers (74 U.S. 188) and Lee County v. Rogers (74 U.S. 175). I will work on a fix, and manually add those cases in the mean time. On a side note, I think Milwaukie and Minnesota Railroad Company is the proper name of the party in 69 U.S. 440 and 69 U.S. 510, even if the spelling is funky. You can verify against these sources: 69 U.S. 440 and 69 U.S. 510. I am not sure if Fileming in 69 U.S. 510 is a typo of Fleming, like in 69 U.S. 440. Westlaw has the same typo, Lexis doesn't. I will have to verify with a printed copy of the U.S. Reporter. Who would have guessed that case names were such an adventure. stephen (talk) 04:22, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

ITS MILWAUKEE verified already with 17 L.Ed. 860 & 900. Its Fleming not Fileming as well. George Orwell III (talk) 04:49, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess that depends on your politics! We can go with the L.Ed.'s spelling, but I'm surprised that it's otherwise on Westlaw. stephen (talk) 04:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I guess you can add a 4rth redirect with the out-of-date spelling (I'm too ashamed to do it) George Orwell III (talk) 04:57, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Getting a jump on the next batch, I discovered United States v. Smith (18 U.S. 153) was skipped and pointed to United States v. Smith (499 U.S. 160), before I disambiguted them on United States v. Smith. Any chance of getting 18 U.S. 153 up? I' wondering if it was skipped for size now that I think about it.... George Orwell III (talk) 06:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I fixed the import up some more - seems like alot of the 3rd party sites all imported the same mixed up content. On a related note - do you thing these disambiguation pages need their own category or something maybe? Ideas? George Orwell III (talk) 21:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Great work cleaning up that case! The text we are importing is imperfect, so 18 U.S. 153 is a good example how Wikisource can improve the quality of material beyond what is already available from other sites. I think it's a good idea to put case name disambig pages in a category. How about Category:Case disambiguation pages?

Well since I started locating and then comparing the Lawyer's Edition scans over on Hathi Trust to what Archive.org, OpenJurist, etc. etc. have been hosting - a good chunk of this stuff is all over the place (not in contextual order) or flat out incomplete.

The only thing about applying a Category to the disambiguation pages is that I rather they be a single sub-category (or a 'folder') of Category:Mainspace disambiguation pages rather than just lumped in with the rest of the disambig pages of every shape or type. I think the only way to do that is to make our own {{disambiguation}} template unless somebody knows how to get that same sub-categorization effect using a "command line" or some special syntax under the standard template. George Orwell III (talk) 22:47, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

I made Category:Case disambiguation pages a subcategory of Category:Mainspace disambiguation pages, and added a category parameter to {{disambiguation}} so we can specify which category to use. This should do the trick: {{Disambiguation | category = [[Category:Case disambiguation pages]]}}. stephen (talk) 01:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Perfect solution - keeps things under the same category minus the typical duplication of individual pages. Thanks. I propose that this tid-bit be added as a standard in the style/naming guide or whatever we are calling it nowadays. George Orwell III (talk) 01:26, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Roger Taney

Do you know what volume Roger Taney got through? I know he died in 1864, so does that mean he got through volume 69? I know he at least got through volume 68. Also how often are you adding cases to the case name list? Wabbit98 talk 11:51pm(PST), 28 September 2010

I just found this list of dates for vols. 2-107 (PDF), which looks great. If Taney was Chief Justice from March 15, 1836 – October 12, 1864, then he goes through vol. 68. It looks like vol. 69 begins with cases decided in 1865. So far, I'm uploading the names from each volume as BenchBot finishes adding, so 3 or 4 go up every few days. stephen (talk) 07:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

The same question about Salmon P. Chase. He left in May 1873, the next guy does not start until 1874 according to wikipedia. But that pdf list you posted show cases in the latter half of 1873 before he takes over, so through what volume for Salmon P. Chase? Would it be easier for us (or me) to establish through which volume they go through? Wabbit98 talk, 11:50pm (PST), 1 October 2010

That's a good question. I would list cases until March 4, 1874 under the Chase Court, which means the Waite Court begins somewhere around Volume 85. The cases are not all chronological by decision date, so Volume 85 and 86 have a mix of cases from the Chase and Waite courts. stephen (talk) 06:54, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I guess the question what should I do, just add all the cases until March 1874 under Chase and then switch over to Waite? It would be difficult to split up the volumes by individual cases. Unless I hear different I am going to go by the month and year and whatever the majority it is for that volume will go to that Chief Justice. Wabbit98 talk 12:23am (PST), 3 October 2010

According to Wikipeida their was no Chief Justice from the time Chase died until Waite became Chief Justice since Grant left it empty. So we do include those decisions as part of the Chase court, the Waite court or orphan them on the front page. If they are 1873 I would say in the Chase court since Waite did not start until the beginning of 1874. Wabbit98 talk 11:31pm (PST), 3 October 2010

Would like to know what you would like to do with those cases after Chase but before Waite. I am thinking of just including them as part of the Chase court, until the beginning of 1874 and then go over to Waite. Wabbit98 talk, 12:28pm (PST), 5 October 2010

I say include them under the Chase court. stephen (talk) 19:30, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

69 U.S. 481

It seems there is another article already called Andromeda and it is not a court case like a poem or something. The link from the Chase court does not go to the case but instead to that other Wikisource article. Wabbit98 talk, 11:36pm (PST), 4 October 2010

Fixed -- its Andromeda v. United States. To find errant case names - use the citation instead {69 U.S. 481) and that should redirect you to the case name currently in use. George Orwell III (talk) 10:22, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

The Fossat or Quicksilver Mine Case

Could you please take a look at this it seems their is a dissent to this case and it is at the bottom of the Opinion of the Court page. I believe it starts after Mr. Justice CLIFFORD dissenting. How is BenchBot checking to see if their are dissents since it would time consuming to check every case by hand? Wabbit98 talk 11:46pm (PST), 4 October 2010

As far as I can tell -- its not. I don't think that can be detected until later volumes where Archive.org has a standard layout BenchBot can recognize. I haven't seen this happen too often but it's not like I haven't split and added one or two myself (United States v. Smith (18 U.S. 153)/Dissent Livingston for example) either. George Orwell III (talk) 10:17, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, George Orwell III is correct. It's possible it will detect a dissent in an early volume, but it's much better at detecting dissents in the later volumes. If it doesn't detect the dissent, then the text is added to the end of the Opinion of the Court. Thanks for pointing out the missed dissents, it will help me update the script. stephen (talk) 15:19, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Where are we listing cases that got skipped for whatever reason and need a bot re-run again? (just un-tangled Gibbons v. Ogden w/a disambig) George Orwell III (talk) 09:47, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I would say under the section US Supreme Court Name List or start a new section. Isn't there a page just to list BenchBot issues like that though? Wabbit98 talk 8:33am (PST), 7 October 2010

You can list pages needing attention in a new section on User:BenchBot/log. stephen (talk) 17:13, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Two Old Books

As I understand djvu is used to retrieve text and pictures from images. If this is the case, I already have the text and pictures extracted and also translated (English - Spanish) as I would like to have both versions available. Also have bibliographical information (from the book) on J.F. Bransford) which perhaps can also be added.

I understand I need to convert the text to “plain Text” and I can do this with MS word, the bit on the pictures conversion is more difficult, as I do not seem to have any of the software mentioned and the terminology is foreign to me (formats and so on.)

So, if you can provide a few clues on the specific things I need to do with the text and pictures, I will get busy. Thank you. --Raúl Gutiérrez (talk) 16:00, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

First, did you translate the text from Spanish to English yourself? The Spanish text will go on the Spanish language Wikisource.

Second, ideally you can add both the scan of the source text and the plain text version. Uploading the original scans will allow users to proofread and verify the text through the ProofreadPage extension. What type of files are the scans of the source text? Common file types include TIFF, JPEG, and PDF. For many file types, you can use Any2DjVu to convert your scans to DJVU. Once you have a DJVU file, you can upload it to commons and begin adding the text to Wikisource. Cheers, stephen (talk) 17:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Reaching Out

Hi again,

How hard would it be to create a list of all the parameters and their values currently found in in existing EO headers? I'm looking to generate a list of what we have already before adding what we have missing to eventually be used in normalizing the Executive order Author: Sub-Pages for all the Presidents. I'm hoping each EO would have an output-line something like...

{{{title}}}, {{{eo}}}, {{{month}}}, {{{day}}}, {{{year}}}, {{{section}}}, {{{fr-page}}}, {{{fr-vol}}}, {{{fr-month}}}, {{{fr-day}}}, {{{fr-year}}}

...but any listing parameter value, or 'parameter = value', order would do. George Orwell III (talk) 05:30, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello! You want a comma-separated list of all the values from each transclusion of {{Potus-eo}}? If you want to know which Executive Orders are missing which parameters, I can set {{Potus-eo}} to build those categories, if you need. Cheers, stephen (talk) 06:14, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Not exactly - every EO should have all the appropriate parameters in it's header (admitedly some other contributors couldn't be bothered with uniformity and now it seems I will pay for it) There are 2 basic classes of EO; pre- and post-Federal Register.

Pre (#1 to #7315) "should" have this set of parameters (+ {{{notes}}} which I don't want or need):

{{{title}}}, {{{eo}}}, {{{month}}}, {{{day}}}, {{{year}}}, {{{section}}}, {{{cite}}}

and Post (#7316 to #13557) "should" have this set of parameters (as before):

{{{title}}}, {{{eo}}}, {{{month}}}, {{{day}}}, {{{year}}}, {{{section}}}, {{{fr-page}}}, {{{fr-vol}}}, {{{fr-month}}}, {{{fr-day}}}, {{{fr-year}}}

I eventually envisioned using the list to recycle the values as needed whenever they come up in some other manner or subject area -- the first being the standardizing of each Author:President's sub-page list of EOs. I'd envisioned making tables out of the list like we have for Bush now. This would mean taking the list and populating the coresponding list-item-row for each EO in the table. The list-item being the EO number and the row being something like this [1]

right now we have something like that mostly in the Pre-FR class using some templates {{Eolist2-item}} that use those values but have to manually input them. Lumping the year moth and day together made any of those lists unusable elsewhere so we stopped applying it. All I'm trying to do is generate a master-list with the pure parameter values to start getting rid of the 3 or 4 different ways EOs are listed now while still being able to build other lists in the future if and when the need arises. George Orwell III (talk) 06:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I wrote this script to gather the data from each transclusion of {{Potus-eo}} via api. The question is, how do you want the data delivered? I can output the data however it is most useful, such as formatting for a template similar to {{Eolist2-item}}. The above demo shows: title || eo || month || day || year || section || fr-page || fr-vol || fr-month || fr-day || fr-year || cite. Two notes: (1) it runs rather slow, which is why it is limited to 100 queries per page. (2) I don't really understand why it lists them in that order, but it is the same order as Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Potus-eo. stephen (talk) 08:54, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

That's a great start -- but now I think the 2 classes & omitted Parameters become a probmlem for me. The 2 classes can be overcome with some sort of if-then line dependent on {{{eo}}} being greater than or less than 7316 easily enough, but what happens when one of the parameters, {{{title}}} most likely, gets skipped? I'd actually prefer 'named' parameters now that I think about it

{{eolist-begin}}
{{eolist2-item|title=Executive Order 13123|eo=13123|year=1999|month=03|day=19|section=Greening the Government Through Efficient Energy Management|fr-vol=64|fr-page=30851|fr-year=1999|fr-month=06|fr-day=8|cite=}}
{{eolist2-item|title=Executive Order 13124|eo=13124|year=1999|month=06|day=4|section=Amending the Civil Service Rules Relating to Federal Employees with Psychiatric Disabilities|fr-vol=64|fr-page=31103|fr-year=1999|fr-month=06|fr-day=9|cite=}}
{{eolist-end}}

|-id="13123" style="vertical-align:top" | id="excord" style="text-align:center" | 13123 | id="sgdate" style="text-align:center" nowrap | Mar. 19, 1999 | id="exctit" | Greening the Government Through Efficient Energy Management | id="FRvpg" | 30851, 64, 06 8, 1999, |-id="13124" style="vertical-align:top" | id="excord" style="text-align:center" | 13124 | id="sgdate" style="text-align:center" nowrap | Jun. 4, 1999 | id="exctit" | Amending the Civil Service Rules Relating to Federal Employees with Psychiatric Disabilities | id="FRvpg" | 31103, 64, 06 9, 1999,

I can see already the date display is going to be problem. George Orwell III (talk) 10:59, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Updated to output info in {{eolist2-item}} with named parameters. The api is not as fast during the day, so occasionally it will be "Unable to connect to Executive Order" if it takes over 20s to respond. Perhaps it will return more during low-traffic times. Hope that is helpful! Cheers, stephen (talk) 16:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Studying

I should probably take a break too... maybe next week. Where do you go to law school? I'm a 3L at Rutgers-Camden. - LegalSkeptic (talk) 21:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm a 3L at UC Hastings. Glad to know there is another law student around WS—I'm surprised there are not more. stephen (talk) 01:26, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Good luck with your exams and come back soon (I am not a law student). Wabbit98 talk 8:26pm(PST), 17 November 2010

Links to case reporters

Hey stephen, I was wondering what you think about replacing the Open Jurist links on case reporter volumes with internal links. I started a discussion on the Wikiproject page. - LegalSkeptic (talk) 01:50, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea! stephen (talk) 07:43, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

to continue that discussion here for a moment in hopes that you might have some free time to look into something sort of project related

I don't know if you some free-time to spare or not but if you do, would you mind taking a look at this "tool" for me?

It would be great if you could determine/evaluate what use it might be to the EO project and finally securing the scans most desired and long unavailable for eventual upload to WS. The Trust has TONS of exclusive stuff including mucho court reports of every era and type — George Orwell III (talk) 04:39, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

EO project

Coincidentally, I just started running HathiHelper to grab some of the sources that Yann requested. It looks like Hathi has bwshare penalizing IPs that make too many requests per second. I periodically got a 503 error, so I added a 4s throttle and haven't had any problems. You said that you were having issues with Hathi—let me know if I can help! Cheers, stephen (talk) 05:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Issues is an understatement <grumble>

Look - if you are able to DL entire works - some nearly 1000 pages long; then of course I could use your help!!!!!

The absolute most important stuff (to me at least) to dL and convert to djvu for upload here are the Title 3 CFR Compilations ASAP before access conditions are changed by them again (ongoing saga) We have a whole section linked to trust works HERE already.

Just tell me what your time window to do this is and any limits on size, etc and I'll pick the best one to hit first. TIA. — George Orwell III (talk)

Ok, I did a test run on the compilation of EOs from 1978. I didn't have any trouble downloading the tiffs/text from HT—it took about 2hrs for 434 pages. It took me a little longer to convert everything to djvu, run ocr, and upload the files. I'm not very familiar with djvulibre or imagemagick. If I uploaded a zip of the images, text, and metadata that I downloaded from HT, would you be interested in handling the rest (converting to djvu, ocr, upload to WS)? I can run downloads anytime, so just tell me what you want me to get next. Cheers, stephen (talk) 09:07, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Like I could do any of that. Thanks for the laugh - I'm gonna try and get some rest now that my mood is a little better.

I guess I'll come back to this once I figure out or find somebody to give me a hand on all that - just hold off for now (but if you must find time to kill 1939 or earlier is the stuff thats barely, if at all, in the "public domain" by GoogleBooks _I'll sit on whatever you grab for as long as it takes). — George Orwell III (talk) 10:14, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

I just uploaded the 1943 compilation. I also downloaded 1938 and 1949, but the djvu file for 1938 is currently too large to upload to commons. If you want to experiment with the raw tiff/text for 1938, I uploaded it here. I will keep track of the documents I download from Hathi and put on Commons at User:Slaporte/log. Feel free to edit/add to that list, and I will adjust my download queue. Cheers, stephen (talk) 00:49, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

How big are we talking with these files? Is there a logical place to split them or subdivide them if we need to break? — billinghurst sDrewth 01:53, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Not positive about Stephen's results but the ones I experimented and came up with before giving up on the whole thing, ran anywhere from 111 to 180 Mb. These are pretty much all laid out the same and follow a

Front matter -- Proclamations -- Executive Orders -- Other Docs -- Tables of previous 3 -- Back Matter.

scheme, so there are a few options. My preference is to keep everything before the Back Matter start as one piece; followed by keeping everything before the Table list start as one piece and so as allowable. — — George Orwell III (talk) 02:29, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Compilation 1938 is 1450 pages and 111.1MB, and it is the largest I have seen so far. I tried splitting at the tables, but it was still too large. I split it at Reciprocal Tariff Letters: File:EOCompilation1938_first.djvu and File:EOCompilation1938_second.djvu. George, is that workable? Cheers, stephen (talk) 04:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Well after spining my wheels for an hour or two I have come to realize something isn't quite right with 1938 the first. Besides the Trust's scan itself duplicating scan page numbers 158 (djvu 172) & 159 (djvu 173) again in djvu pages 174 & 175 before returning to normal in scan page number 160 (djvu 176), something to do with first djvu page itself and its resolution of 1 × 1 causes the thumbnails normally displayed in both edit-view and view-view modes in the Page: namspace not to appear at all; they go to all black instead. I finally verified this (eventually) when I stopped chasing ghosts here and took a closer look at the File History on Commons. Sure enough, the dimensions info box there also gives: 1×1, 1,298 pages (96.2 MB). The thumbnails appearing in the "built-in" gallery-page-image viewer look and work just fine though so the "problem" is only in the Page: namespace. I tried forcing a resolution for at least edit-mode in the new parameter for that at the bottom of the Index: page to no avail.

I'm hoping this is why there also no OCR coming back upon clicking OCR button but I can't see the two issues being related or dependent (e-mailed my cousin - says that PDF of the 1450 pages I alluded to earlier is 212MB and has most, if not all, of the "hidden-text" which I'm guessing is what becomes the OCR layer present in it too). Have any suggestions on what I should do to rectify one problem or the other if not both? — George Orwell III (talk) 06:01, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't really know enough about djvu or djvulibre to diagnose the problem with 1938 first. There is some error generating jpg thumbs. Right now my workflow is to convert jp2 to jpg, tiff and jpg to pbm, pbm to djvu, and then bundle into multipage djvu. I noticed that you made an index for 1943, and those thumbs seem to work in the page namespace. I went through the same process on 1938 and 1943, so I'm unsure why 1938 doesn't work. Cheers, stephen (talk) 07:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

...but it does "work" and so does its thumnails once you manually overwrite the 1px it is pulling from the top djvu page/info in the FILE: namespace with some other valid pixel amount - like 600px for example — George Orwell III (talk) 08:14, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Good eye. I removed the first page, and the thumbnails show up in the page namespace. I also removed the duplicate pages (174 and 175). stephen (talk) 08:56, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Cool. Thanks! Removing the 2 duplicate pages puts us on the way to being more accurate already - I guess now its up to me to make it better than Hathi's. One quick question before I let you go for the night. Is whatever it is you're doing removing the "gray" GoogleBooks/University of Michigan watermark at the bottom of each page or is that how the images are stored on Hathi and they add that watermark before the viewer's rendering displaying each page is finished? — George Orwell III (talk) 09:42, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

They are giving me the pages without a watermark—I didn't remove it. stephen (talk) 07:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I haven't figured out how to add text to the djvu's hidden layer, so the files do not have a text layer yet. Is Hathi's text preferable to just running it through OCR (e.g. any2djvu or tesseract)? Is it worthwhile to try to sync the text of EOs you already have on WS to the pages in these compilations? I will look for a guide on adding a text layer when I have a chance to tinker with it, and I can upload the Hathi text layer somewhere if that is helpful for you. Also, it is relatively simple to remove pages from the djvu, so I can take care of that when we get the other big issue solved. Cheers, stephen (talk) 07:34, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Haithi's hidden PDF text is what the stupid OCR layer would give you here anyway as far as I know. The text of the EOs we have for 1936 to 1979 are few and far in between at best. What we have access to (listed a little higher up from the Hathi table) is plain text from SGML files at the same archive as the USSC project gets its case opinions from (1948 on up to 1980 something). That method is pointless, not to mentioned doomed for deletion from WS, now that we can get page scans of the original, hopefully with some sort of text layer to work from instead, Plus both scans and text from 1929 to 1948 which are missing from the public domain for the most part anyway. — George Orwell III (talk) 08:21, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Holy crap - you've dL'd all of 1939 to 1989 already? Many thanks! I humbly ask for you to address the list just above the tables on the EO project page in the same Hathi external link section when you have the time. These are most of the EOs not found in the missing pre-1936 & the 1936-to-1938 cumulative supps., the 1450 page 1938-to-1943 Book 1 compilation and the 1943-to-1948 compilations. — George Orwell III (talk) 06:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

No problem. I added the GPO documents to my to do list. Cheers, stephen (talk) 07:56, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Need another edit removing some pages for the 1988 djvu. Scan page numbers 404 (djvu 418) & 405 (djvu 419) are repeated again in djvu pages 420 & 421 before returning to normal in scan page number 406 (djvu 422). I'm hoping that is what is preventing me from adding a proper OCR text layer like I was able to do with the 1989 djvu file so far. — George Orwell III (talk) 05:08, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Removed the duplicate pages, 420 and 421, from EOCompilation1988. stephen (talk) 07:40, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, but that didn't let it go through and finish adding a text layer either so 1988 is still not resolved. After a dozen or so tries, I've given up on the online-tool for adding a layer to that one for now (I think there are too many charts in a row in the middle of that volume that are rotated 90 degrees from the regular text that is causing it).

Moving on - and I hate to ask for this - but no matter what I've tried I cannot get 1938 to both accept an OCR layer and come in under the max 100Mb Commons upload limit. 108.2, 106.8, 106.2, 104.5 - always over the limit. I tried stripping all colors, lower DPI, etc. No luck or too fadded/smudged to be of any use. So what I need is a split after Proclamations rather than executive orders and merge executive orders back into the 2nd 1938 djvu. This should leave enough slack in both the First and Second Djvu's to easily add an OCR text layer to both. — George Orwell III (talk) 19:51, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I split 1938 after the Proclamations, at page 334. The files are 51MB/80MB, so there should be plenty of room for the OCR layer. I also removed the duplicate pages in File:Title 3 CFR 1979 Compilation.djvu. Cheers, stephen (talk) 09:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

1979 is fixed but somehow you managed to double all of Psrt I 1938's content and re-insert redundant djvu pages 173 & 174 to boot. Just drop it if it's too complicated. — George Orwell III (talk) 12:57, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Perseus? Other stuff?

Hey I see you are still working away over here, yay! So two questions, got any gsoc-like things in your mind for this year, and what do you think about the perseus stuff, do you have time/desire to look at it? p.s. I am not anything like local this year so that's something to keep in mind. :-D -- ArielGlenn (talk) 09:55, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Hey! I am definitely interested in working on Perseus stuff! Any update on the status of the license? Cheers, stephen (talk) 07:03, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

2,500,000th English Wikisource edit!

Dear Slaporte,

On March 12, 2011, 07:26 (UTC) your bot User:BenchBot added a series of new pages concerning the Supreme Court to Wikisource. It has been determined that one of those edits (probably Magruder vs. Supplee) was the 2,500,000 English Wikisource edit! In honor of this Wikisource milestone you have been awarded a print copy of Wikipedia which will be mailed to you immediately! Congratulations and enjoy your free gift!

Sincerely,
ResidentScholar,
Administrator, Wikisource
ResScholar (talk) 08:06, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Just kidding, please don't sue me. But it really did make the 2,500,000th edit. ResScholar (talk) 08:09, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your work with BenchBot (talk • contribs). I've given you a Barnstar, over at your en.wikipedia talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 18:25, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations

Just saw the announcement from Kelly Fay. Neat! Enjoy. Do we get special favours? — billinghurst sDrewth 02:05, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It's a great team to work with. No special favors, but I am pestering James to get a Wikisource shirt in the shop... Cheers, stephen (talk) 21:34, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations#The_Diary_of_Jack_the_Ripper

I would be interested in an opinion. To me it sounds like someone trying it on for profit reasons, not with valid legal claim. If we put the work back, the process would be for the person to lodge a request for a takedown notice? — billinghurst sDrewth 06:01, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

BenchBot and the word Jr. in authors

Hiho. I have just been pointed to Walker v. City of Birmingham where BenchBot is thinking that Jr. is a separate author, and asked whether it was known and whether it had been done in other places. I gave my very best clueless smile and said that I would ask. Tada I am asking. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:14, 22 November 2014 (UTC)