Wikisource:Scriptorium

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User:333Bot

(See also #Thinking of an anti-linkrot bot.)

For non-scan backed works, sometimes the original webpage disappears and we lose the source. This task would archive automatically sources in new mainspace/talk pages at the wayback machine, and add {{wml}}.

To avoid archiving vandalism, it would only do this on pages older than a week. (It won't search beyond the 2000th created page.)

It uses pywikibot on toolforge. Source's at User:Alien333/test#Link archiving.

The idea would be to run this daily. Test edits: [1] and [2]. — Alien  3
3 3 08:59, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

As nearly two weeks have passed without objections, I activated this task per WS:BOT. — Alien  3
3 3 13:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The run is over. Before launching the cronjob I will change the code to prevent it from archiving links in mainspace works' content (there are few valid reasons for extlinks in works; but there are some). — Alien  3
3 3 14:48, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

User:333Bot 2

(See also #Seeking feedback on bot task to tag untagged deletion nominations for details and discussion.)

Works proposed for deletion at WS:PD or WS:PDWS:CV should be accordingly tagged. Occasionally, people forget to tag them. This task would locate these and tag them.

It uses pywikibot on toolforge. The code's at User:Alien333/test#Nomination_tagging. It would run daily. — Alien  3
3 3 14:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

WS:PD or WS:PD ? Aren't they the same ? -- Beardo (talk) 18:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. Got mixed up. Meant PD and CV. — Alien  3
3 3 20:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Repairs (and moves)

Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

Robur the Conqueror

Please move Robur the Conqueror to Robur the Conqueror (Project Gutenberg).--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:01, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

(A side note: I saw you did it yourself; for cases like these do say that we have a different edition; I was reluctant to move because I did not know of the need to disambiguate.) — Alien  3
3 3 13:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Master of the World

Please move Master of the World to The Master of the World (Gutenberg)--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:10, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

Done to The Master of the World (Project Gutenberg), as that's the usual titling scheme for these works. I left a temporary redirect at Master of the World. — Alien  3
3 3 14:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Index:Rope & Faggot.pdf

I want to use the Internet Archive scan instead of the Google Books one, but in doing so the pages are now misaligned because the latter scan has two extra pages in the front. So I wonder if every page starting with index page 7 could be shifted left 2 pages. Thanks, prospectprospekt (talk) 05:52, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes it's possible. Just to be sure, this would also mean deletion of /5 and /6. Is that intended? Thanks. — Alien  3
3 3 06:34, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is intended. prospectprospekt (talk) 12:48, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Done. — Alien  3
3 3 14:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Other discussions

The Orphan of the Rhine

We have (at least some of) all of the “horrid” novels, except one: The Orphan of the Rhine. I have just obtained scans of all four volumes, and (with Alien333’s help in splitting three of the volumes) they are now available at Author:Eleanor Sleath, if anyone would be interested in proofreading them. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 Hi, I've done quite a lot on some of the 'Horrid' novels (currently, working on 'Clermont' and 'The Italian', albeit slowly). Could you obtain volumes 1, 2 and 4 of 'Horrid Mysteries'; currently only volume 3 is publically available as a scan. If so, I think that would complete the set. I believe the volumes are in the nineteenth century equivalent of EEBO and ECCO. Thanks, Chrisguise (talk) 08:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm much better at manipulating scans than finding one. Hathi has V.1 limited-search only, if someone knows how to bypass their restrictions; Can't help you further though. (I don't even know what EEBO and ECCO are.) — Alien  3
3 3 09:50, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea.EEBO is Early English Books Online, a database of scans of (every?) book printed in English up to 1700. ECCO is Eighteenth Century Collections Online, a database which contains scans of books published between 1700 to 1800. I don't know how comprehensive it is. There's also one covering the nineteen century. I have access to the first two (also most(?)/all(?) of the content of EEBO is on IA) but not the last one. Chrisguise (talk) 10:02, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea. The version on Hathi is a modern one. The version that's partially transcribed is the first edition.

I don't have anything other than general access to Hathi. I've occasionally resorted to downloading individual page images and reconstructing books, which is a bit easier these days since they appear to have removed the restriction on page downloads. It used to be the case that you got 15-20 pages and then had to wait about half an hour to download the next batch. Chrisguise (talk) 10:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

• Chrisguise: My scans were actually from a collection of Gothic novels in the collection of the University of Virginia, which were saved in microfilm form c. 2002. I’ve had poor luck in finding EEBO stuff on IA; it’s great that you have access to the other two, though. When I was downloading a 170-odd page book the other day, I was only rate-limited once (and that might have been incidental), so it really is a big improvement. UVA does seem to have that reel of microfilm in their collection, so I’ll see if they’re willing to send it to me. (It’s in their off-site storage, though, so that might be annoying.) TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:54, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

  @Alien333 @TE(æ)A,ea.There's something odd happening here. I have just created the index page for volume 1 using what I thought was a file called 'Orphan of the Rhine v1.pdf' on Commons. To assist setting up the page list, I downloaded a copy, which contains 272 single pages. However, when I saved the index page Index:Orphan of the Rhine v1.pdf, it is linked to a file - with the same name - on Wikisource, which consists of 140 double pages. I would suggest that the Wikisource version needs to be deleted. Chrisguise (talk) 06:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

  Done. Probably there are a few others out there that should be deleted. — Alien  3
  3 3 06:07, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

  @Alien333 @TE(æ)A,ea. Thanks both. I've set up the index pages for the three files. There was a minor issue with the volume 1 file (two duplicate pages) which I've fixed. Chrisguise (talk) 22:43, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

• Chrisguise: I have scanned, and Alien333 has split, volumes 1, 2, and 4 of Horrid Mysteries.

Magazines, Newspapers and other works with many volumes

I have recently made some Main space and mostly red link pages for magazines. I did this because I want to put links for first publications at those first publications. The New Review is an example of this.

Problems with this include that some of the magazines and certainly the newspapers have a lot of volumes.

Meanwhile, there are articles that are already living within these Volume/Number spaces. Like All-Story Weekly/Volume 98/Number 3/Fires Rekindled.

There is a solution for this in use at The New York Sun which also accepts redirects. The problem with this is that it divides by year and not by volume, and it requires that human editing not happen. I divided Radio News by both year and volume. By Year, it can be navigated through the sidebar and by volume because that is how it is. A few of the magazines are issued with its volumes also evenly divided by year, but not that many of them.

What I have done at The New Review is nice because if a source exists, it can be pointed at. What is going on at The New York Sun is nice because buried links are no longer buried.

I bring this up here and now because I am wanting to tear Famous Fantastic Mysteries out of its AuxTOC so I can paste a link or two; and maybe I could be doing something else that would be better to get that link there. Like, maybe a {{tl:Header volume}} that scoops up links like {{Header periodical}} but also accepts human edits (like above or below where it works) and is not dependent upon the year.

I also had an idea for a "future link" property at wikidata. Maybe the official name could be "Wikisource volume link". It is useless if the link will be "Book title/Chapter 3" but for "Amazing Stories/Volume 2/Number 5/War of the Worlds" or "Amazing Stories/Volume 2/Number 5/The War of the Worlds" or "Amazing Stories/Volume 02/Number 05/The War of the Worlds" as you can see, it would be very useful.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 10:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

There seem to be a couple of issues raised here.

Linking to other editions of serialised works within periodicals

Following a discussion following your edit to The Strand Magazine, I understand you'd like it to become a norm to link to a generic edition of something like The Time Machine in any periodical which included The Time Machine in it, even if the work in the periodical is a different edition with, for example, different illustrations and different spelling. I don't in general agree with this. We do not currently *have* The New Review's version of The Time Machine, and this should be made clear if you do link to it from The New Review's contents page.

As a different example, [issue 52 onwards] of The Strand Magazine serialises The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. These, as far as I am concerned, should *definitely not* be just linked to the already existing work The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard. Instead, *once the Strand Magazine version of this work has been proofread and transcluded*, we can use a disambiguation page to direct readers to the different versions. The Strand Magazine/Volume 9/Issue 52 <--how to make a link to what should probably be a "Number"

The New York Sun

I'm not sure what you are trying to highlight by showing the page for The New York Sun. If you'd like an example of a newspaper with a lot more proofread articles then I'd be interested to know your thoughts on The New York Times.

The New York Sun is an example here because all that needs to happen is that an article be written under the namespace and it shows up on that page, automatically, and it works by year. Personally, I dislike the limited functionality as it cannot be edited by hand. This (here at Scriptorium) was to be about functionality first. The New York Times has pretty good functionality; and maybe the magazines are going to be different because of that year as a divider issue.

The 'look and feel' of periodicals

I see from your recent contributions that you have been doing a lot of work recently altering the contents pages of moribund periodicals to match your preferred look and feel. More consistency can be a good idea, although I'm not sure I particularly like the style you are using which leads to pages that are not friendly to the end user. The point of the main space is to provide a view to *the reader* - someone who is looking to read material, and I don't see the point of filling up every contents page with a wall of red links or to content which is not on this site. Qq1122qq (talk) 16:05, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Hands down, in my opinion, The Strand Magazine looks great! It is beautiful. It is, in my experience, not functional. I want to note the Volume and Number that first publications appear. There are many who think that the first publication of these works was the first book and that is so often not the case in the years of works in which we work.

Is there a discussion about "look and feel" of the Volumed works here that I missed that caused you to rework The Strand?

I only added the navigation by year to the way almost all of the other magazines are here. I was just improving the functionality. They looked fine while being functional, to me; in my opinion. Functionality should be first.

Navigation through the volumes by year is great! While The Strand Magazine has its volumes nicely tucked between year changes, many, (many, many) magazines, journals don't, Putting the navigation into <h2> puts the year into the navigation that by default appears in the left "navigation" column. So, if I am looking for the volume that contains April 1904, I need only select 1904 from the "navigation column" and then find which volume contains the April number and I can also easily look at its djvu to see if it is actually in there (it could be an unverified paste error that me or someone else made). So, truly, the work does not have to be transcluded to be useful/functional here; especially if it has been uploaded already.

Finding it online and pasting the link to the work? If the djvu is not present here, then verifications can be made online or acquired and uploaded and maybe just the one article the person is interested in proofread. It is how all of the other magazines here work and have been, at least in my experience, functional.

Also, what the heck is the "feel" of it. Does the "feel" have anything to do with functionality? Do we worry of that here?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:53, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@RaboKarbakian

There is definitely scope for improving the way that the index/contents pages of The Strand Magazine look. When I came back to work on it three years or so ago I tried to keep it looking like the work that had already been done (which at that stage was just a couple of issues of the first volume).

I currently like the look of Weird Tales, which organises the material by year, and then shows all the issues within that. This would also make it easier to mix fully formatted tables of contents (which we have for the first 5 years), and links to the occasional articles which people have proofread from later issues. This seems to fit the way with your ideas, as well.

One thing that indexing by year loses is the ability to download a whole issue of a periodical, but I don't know how many people use this facility (unlike PG, where downloading a whole 'issue' of something is the main way that people interact with their content).

The way the Tables of Contents are formatted is how they actually do look in the printed Strand Magazines, but these were almost always removed when put into the bound volumes we use for proofreading, so there is a reason for the AuxTOC tables of contents to look the way they do. It does take some effort to make the TOCs look the way they do, though, including making sure that all of the authors and illustrators are correctly linked. One of the projects on my 'to do' list is to extend the current complete TOCs to Volume 20, which will cover the first 10 years of The Strand Magazine (and the late-Victorian, early Edwardian period which is what I'm most interested in anyway!).

On other websites people have put quite a lot of effort into recording the TOCs of The Strand Magazine (and other periodicals). The main resource that I have used in the past is [The FictionMags Index], an incredible resource and one well worth a browse if you're interested in periodical literature. Qq1122qq (talk) 10:36, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree. It might be be useful and even helpful if the main index for a multi-volume work like a periodical was organized by date but the articles should definitely be organized by volume and issue as they were labelled in the published issues. If the root main page index is date oriented it would probably be useful to also have a volume and issue overview somewhere as well. @Qq1122qq: I agree, Galactic Central is a really useful and amazing piece of work. I keep meaning to request a Wikidata property for their magazine identifiers (I do not think the FMI, GFI and other magazine genre index identifiers would be good though), e.g., Galactic Central magazine ID: ALLSTORYMAGAZINE1905, STRANDMAGAZINE1891, etc. —Uzume (talk) 19:55, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

FYI I have now updated The Strand Magazine to the look I was talking about earlier. The main contents page is now year based, with complete contents to 1895, and all of the currently transcluded articles linked beyond that to the appropriate issue. This should provide a good framework to people to add any articles or stories that they transclude in the future. Qq1122qq (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Template - {{Five hundred thousand strokes for freedom : a series of anti-slavery tracts, of which half a million are now first issued by the friends of the Negro TOC}}

I am not clear why this template exists. It seems just for the table of contents of that one book. Surely that can be included in the actual book ? -- Beardo (talk) 23:38, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

 Delete - I'm guessing that the editor intends to transclude the TOC on every subpage of the work, but that's not how we generally do things here. Since the editor is not an experienced enWS editor, perhaps it would be advisable to not only delete this template, but also help clean up the transcription project's other issues. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 16:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@OAnick pinging the original editor to participate in the discussion if they wish to do so —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 16:49, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

 Delete and subst:, etc. as needed. Looks beautiful, but no need to be a standalone piece of content. If necessary, just copy and paste it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:48, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Done: Replaced by Auxilliary ToC and deleted. However, the text also looks 1) poorly transcribed, resembling just raw OCR, and 2) abandoned, so if it is not improved in some reasonable time, it should be nominated at Proposed deletions too. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Another user had brought in a scan-backed copy and started, but they seem to have run out of steam. I will have a go at doing the preface, so that can be replaced with a scan-backed version, at least. -- Beardo (talk) 05:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I have moved it to a shorter page name. The punctuation didn't match the original anyway. -- Beardo (talk) 05:41, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Work period start/end, floruit and living authors

If an author's date of death is unknown but the "floruit" property is filled in on Wikidata, the date appears in our header, and the author is not categorized as a "living author." However, if the Wikidata item includes more precise "work period (start)" and "work period (end)" values instead of "floruit," the dates do not appear in the header, and the author remains categorized as living. For example, Author:Mordach Mackenzie was active in the 18th century but is still listed as a living author. This issue can be resolved by adding the "floruit" property to Wikidata in addition to the "work period" values. However, that feels redundant and arguably undesirable, since the "work period" data is more precise than "floruit." Could something be done so that the "work period" data:

1. Is displayed in the header, taking precedence over "floruit" if both are present, and
2. Is used for categorization in the same way "floruit" currently is?

Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:58, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

 Support, I've brought this up before and I hope it can be fixed this time —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 16:41, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I am having a problem with "floruit" implying still living. Unknown is unknown; at least, I think this is true.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:17, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

"Floruit" does not imply that. If a floruit date of 1860 is added (for example) then the author is not categorized as still living. The reason Mordach Mackenzie is auto-categorized as "still living" is because he does not have a floruit date assigned to him. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:44, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

 Support, At first I was thinking that the solution would involve adding start/end dates to "floruit" in Wikidata, but that's not where the problem is. As Jan suggests having the Author template pick up and use the work period labels would be advantageous. The one question I would have is how would it work if only "work period (start)" or "work period (end)" existed. I'd guess it could be shown as "1860–?" or "?–1924" ... —Tcr25 (talk) 21:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

So what would be the rule? work period (start) or (end) before 1900? — Alien  3
3 3 06:43, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah, that's already defined. — Alien  3
3 3 07:12, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

To all: I made this. Example output here. — Alien  3
3 3 07:20, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

(There are complications I hadn't thought of, so in the end this isn't fully ready.) — Alien  3
3 3 07:36, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333: Thanks so much for taking care of this. Would it be possible to give the "work period" values priority over "floruit" if all are filled? Example: Author:William Duthie. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:33, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah, I did that, but then I had to move some code around and it doesn't anymore. gimme a sec. — Alien  3
3 3 08:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Do we want to always take priority, even if we have only half a work period? E.g. is (for example) fl. ?-1924 better than fl. 1910? — Alien  3
3 3 08:41, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

I think so. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Done. There we go. Including for when one of the two is missing. — Alien  3
3 3 08:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

William Duthie does not seem affected, there is still (fl. 1860), instead of expected (fl. 1852–1870). --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

You misread the order of my comments: first I posted about being done, and after I saw your message about overriding. Still working on it. — Alien  3
3 3 08:53, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

There you go. — Alien  3
3 3 09:03, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I am sorry for the confusion. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:06, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

One more thought: Sometimes it may happen that only one of the birth/death dates is unknown + work period values are filled, which may lead to confusing outputs. I suggest the following:

data filled	current outcome	suggested outcome
birth date=1430, death date=1480	(1430–1480)	(1430–1480)
birth and death unknown, work period (start)=1430, work period (end)=1480	(fl. 1430–1480)	(fl. 1430–1480)
birth unknown, work period (start)=1430, death=1480	(fl. 1430 – 1480)	(fl. 1430–d. 1480)
birth=1430, work period (end)=1480, death unknown	(1430 – fl. 1480)	(b. 1430–fl. 1480)

It can be seen from the table that the current outcomes in the second and third row are confusing, which would be solved by the suggested change. The change suggested in the fourth row is not really necessary, it is just for the sake of consistency. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:25, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, long story, but the current outcome is actually, respectively: (1430–1480), (fl. 1430–1480), (–1480), and (1430–). The idea is to not mix fl dates and regular dates (we only use work period if we've got neither birth nor death). — Alien  3
3 3 11:29, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

OK, I am not really against that, but the current results are those which I have written in the table, so the transclusion of the work period values should be disabled in such cases. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

There's something you didn't specify in your data: in your tests, it's the "floruit" and not the "work period" that appeared. I just retried, and with b. 1000, fl. 1860, work period start 1852, work period end 1870, it's 1000-fl. 1860 that shows up, and not 1000-fl. 1870 (as your table implies). So it's floruit mixing with certain dates, not work period mixing with certain dates. It's another issue.

That being said, adding b. and d. for birth and death when the other uses floruit shouldn't be too difficult, and I agree it's useful. — Alien  3
3 3 12:02, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, you are right, only after you wrote it I realized that it is the floruit value and not work period values that interferes. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:17, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Done (adding b. and d. to certain value when other is floruit.) — Alien  3
3 3 12:23, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

Embedded headline

See: The Des Moines Register/1910/Hahnen - Ransburg Wedding a Pretty Home Affair. Is there any way to mimic this imbedded headline? RAN (talk) 19:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I tried something by floating it left. What do you think of this? — Alien  3
3 3 19:33, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

That does it, thanks. I would love if there was more of a gap between the headline and the text, but that will take some more experimentation. --RAN (talk) 21:24, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Simplified it a bit by using {{float left}} with |style=width: 0; to do the wrapping. -ei (talk) 22:10, 25 April 2025 (UTC)

Author:Nayib Bukele

This author page provides no license, and the only work listed is Secretary Rubio’s Meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. That work appears to be about a meeting between Rubio and Bukele, but was the text actually written by them (like the work header claims)? Because it doesn't even contain any quotes of either, so I'm skeptical of this authorial attribution. Altogether, this is a confusing situation to me. In any case, especially given recent big-news political events surrounding Bukele, I imagine there's some kind of work somewhere by him that we could consider freely-licensed, but I'm just not sure what to do with the author page now. Any ideas? Pinging Jaredscribe who created the pages. SnowyCinema (talk) 22:26, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't see that Rubio or Bukele should be listed as authors of that item - they are subjects and I have moved it to "works about". I would think there must be some official works by him - though perhaps not in English. -- Beardo (talk) 02:23, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

If there are no works by him, then he is not an Author and would not merit an Author page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:12, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

How do I proofread a png?

I uploaded File:Lewiston Evening Journal 7 Aug 1886.png; how do I go about transcribing it for Wikisource and bonus points if you help me out with the file creation/linking/etc - I don't mind typing it out by hand to transcribe it, but where to put it? Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 01:22, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

There is no single method of storing and transcribing periodicals like newspapers here, but a common way to do it is something like Lewiston Evening Journal/1886/August/7/Twenty-two Deer Island Fishing Boats Seized. If the rest of the issue ends up being scanned and transcribed, it could be put into one long work at Lewiston Evening Journal/1886/August/7 or something, but if it's just this one story, that would be sufficient. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:29, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I hadn't even thought ahead to that point, I was thinking more along the lines of "Can I create an Index:XYZ.jpg or does it only work for pdf/djvu? Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 01:33, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

You can 1000% create Index:Example.svg, sure. I don't think the OCR is smart enough to read a PNG, but it could be! And the benefit of making an index for just a one-page PNG with minimal text is that at least there's a way to measure if it's validated or not. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:41, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

(OCR does work for JPGs/PNGs.) — Alien  3
3 3 06:40, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

• The best OCR software is available to all users for free at: https://ocr.wmcloud.org/ for jpgs and pngs and gifs. The OCR software used by Newspapers.com is terrible and makes many errors, it scrambles lines. omits periods, and can't handle columns of text. Also to get the date to sort properly in the index a news article title needs to be numerical with place holder leading zeros: Lewiston Evening Journal/1886/August/7/Twenty-two Deer Island Fishing Boats Seized to Lewiston Evening Journal/1886/08/07/Twenty-two Deer Island Fishing Boats Seized. Some paper titles have just the year. See: The Bergen Record. Some have the year and month and day. See: The_New_York_Times/1934. This is generally determined by whoever started adding news articles first. Whether the newspaper name use "The" is based on what Wikidata used: "The New York Times" versus "New York Times". --RAN (talk) 16:16, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Anchors containing only numbers.

I recently created a tracking category Category:Anchor_which_is_numeric, which is currently tracking about a 1000 entires where an id= is purely digits.

This creates conflicts with the numbering used by the page numbering script, meaning that ideally such ID should not necessarily be placed directly on Page: content, where it could create potential conflicts.

This is a low priority, but migration in specifc Index ( s1, p1, n1 ID's have been approaches used elsewhere), would greatly assist, and would help improve things here, by slowly removing the source of conflicted ID's, which aids the adoption of the new parser.

(The other source of Duplicate ID's are duplicated numberings in a pagelist, suggesting sections of work might need to be in seperate Pages on transclusion, but that's a longer discussion.). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:47, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Numeric anchors will only create a potential conflict is the numerical anchor is within the range of the number of pages. If a volume has 300 pages, but uses numerical anchors over 1000, then there is no conflict.

But there is also the second half of the problem. If the anchors are changed, then any links to those anchors must also be changed, or we are simply breaking links. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:10, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be easier to solve by having the software that generates the page anchors be something other than just pure numbers? Perhaps $p<pagenum> or something. —Uzume (talk) 20:10, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

A request for a link#identifer checker..

Currently it is possible to check for red-links (or Special:WantedPages.)

However it is not possible to identify Wiki links of the form foor#bar where the page 'foo' portion is valid but the section identifier 'id' portion is not.

It would be desirable to have a 'broken' links report, which generates a tabular report giving the Link containing page, Target page, and the identifier which has not been located in the target page.

Ideally this report should be focused on the Page and Main namespaces initially.

More complicated would be to determine for a Main namspace page, which specifc Page transcluded was responsible for generating the link which could not be resolved. Desirable but not essential. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:45, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

R. C. Bednar and Čapek

I have found some information that there is a translation of Karel Čapek's play The Robber (Loupežník), made by R. C. Bednar as their master's thesis in the State University of Iowa in 1931. A copy is allegedly available in the New York Public Library, so I am just asking in case somebody has easy access there. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:34, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Wikifunctions is now integrated with Dagbani Wikipedia since April 15. It is the first project that will be able to call functions from Wikifunctions and integrate them in articles. A function is something that takes one or more inputs and transforms them into a desired output, such as adding up two numbers, converting miles into metres, calculating how much time has passed since an event, or declining a word into a case. Wikifunctions will allow users to do that through a simple call of a stable and global function, rather than via a local template. [3]
• A new type of lint error has been created: Empty headings (documentation). The Linter extension's purpose is to identify wikitext patterns that must or can be fixed in pages and provide some guidance about what the problems are with those patterns and how to fix them. [4]
• View all 37 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Following its publication on HuggingFace, the "Structured Contents" dataset, developed by Wikimedia Enterprise, is now also available on Kaggle. This Beta initiative is focused on making Wikimedia data more machine-readable for high-volume reusers. They are releasing this beta version in a location that open dataset communities already use, in order to seek feedback, to help improve the product for a future wider release. You can read more about the overall Structured Contents project, and about the first release that's freely usable.
• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings and events

• The Editing and Machine Learning Teams invite interested volunteers to a video meeting to discuss Peacock check, which is the latest Edit check that will detect "peacock" or "overly-promotional" or "non-neutral" language whilst an editor is typing. Editors who work with newcomers, or help to fix this kind of writing, or are interested in how we use artificial intelligence in our projects are encouraged to attend. The meeting will be on April 28, 2025 at 18:00–19:00 UTC and hosted on Zoom.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 21:00, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

PDF/djvu text layer

1. if a pdf on commons contains a text layer, how to efficiently extract that and put into wikisource? (to save time from doing ocr.)
2. how to check whether commons pdf contains text layer?
3. how to check several pdf in a category, which of them might have text layer?

RoyZuo (talk) 17:44, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

For (1), I'm not sure what you're asking. We want to have each page proofread from an Index. That way, each page can be verified side-by-side against the pages of the source scan. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:46, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

RoyZuo:

1. An Index page starts the method by which we can view the text layer that is contained with the djvu or pdf. You can make this page by using [[Index:Name of file.ext]] See File:Taming Liquid Hydrogen The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket.pdf which made Index:Taming Liquid Hydrogen The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket.pdf (something Petey is working on) by simply changing the ":File" to "Index". You can click on any of the red page links there to see the text layer on the left and the page image on the right.
2. Number 1 of my answer should show this.
3. Check using the instructions in Number 1 and if you don't see the text layer or don't like it, put {{sdelete}} in the pages box of the form to have it deleted, although, it can be checked without saving. Simply click on any of the pages while "previewing" the Index and don't save the page you are peeking at either.

Most of the files at the commons have the text layer; the OCR button is for when the occasional page of ocr is missing or if it is really bad ocr. djvu are preferred here so if there is a djvu in your options, please give this good consideration.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:42, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Thx a lot for the example! I didnt know if a text layer exists it's auto loaded. I've never worked with a file with text layer.😂 RoyZuo (talk) 20:48, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

Database report request..

A list of links to IA scans , which are linked to from Wikisource, but for which a scan has not yet been uploaded onto Wikimedia Commons (licensing permitting).

The goal is to have a list, that can be batched into semi-automated IA-upload actions, by a second tool.

Fae was doing this in 2020-21, to some extent but the effort stalled when they left Commons. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:52, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

1935 US Newspaper?

Wanted to add (another) Lewiston Evening Journal article, but this one is 1935,anyone able to point me to the Commons license I'd use? Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 11:40, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

It may be not free at all.

It depends on renewals, but given that this newspaper ran until '89, and even then only merged with another newspaper, likelihood of renewal seems high to me. — Alien  3
3 3 13:01, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Looking at https://www.newspapers.com/image/828923887/ it seems that in 1935 the newspaper was being published without a copyright notice, so c:Template:PD-US-no notice should apply. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:35, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, got it up at Page:Lewiston Evening Journal 3 Jul 1935.png now; I appreciate just learning last week that we can Index: for jpg/PNG not just PDF - I assume that's the standard way to handle these things is with an Index? Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 14:59, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes. I have just standardized the way of its transclusion, see [5]. The previous way did not show the link to the page in the left margin. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:47, 24 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, problem is I can never remember <page = ! setup=a page-list="11-3" from:26> or whatever, whereas it's easy to throw up ((, lol. Similarly, is there a reason when you populate with a header or subheader template it doesn't use subst to auto-fill name/author/etc?

• {{PD-US-not renewed}} would apply to pre-1964 articles. You can check the Wikidata entry wikidata:Q100306558 and if there is no "Online Books" entry for it, there were no renewals. We added "Online Books" for all newspapers and magazines that renewed. Some newspapers and magazines have "Online Books" entries that say "no renewal" so you have to click through to check. See for instance https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/cinfo/time where you can see that Time magazine started renewing issues in 1934. --RAN (talk) 17:00, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Help information on Index pages?

Hello all,

I am curious to hear what people think about putting key help information on index pages. Just four or five lines, mentioning in particular when to use nop, when to include/remove line breaks, how hyphenated words connect, and what to put in the header/footer, would be about all. I specifically feel this information is warranted on index pages (in addition to its current locations), thanks to the "new" experience had with correcting Index:The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923–1924.djvu. I am not sure what it is about Jan's MC nomination that lead to so many new contributors helping with this index specifically (more to my mind than any index I can remember in the MC), but it makes me think that providing immediate key information to new users, without them having to navigate anywhere else, would be useful. Thoughts welcome.

Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 00:11, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Where would it be put? As in where on the screen? Wondering about the technical means.

Perhaps it would be better to change MediaWiki:Newarticletext. This is what appears when someone edits in page namespace.

I think a link to WS:SG is a good, succint explanation of how stuff is generally done.

Or perhaps Help:Beginner's guide to typography? As the other doesn't describe header/footers. — Alien  3
3 3 21:17, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean "putting key help information on index pages"? Do you mean making proofreading tips appear on Index pages, or creating some page about Index pages, or what? We already have a Help page about basic proofreading linked from the Main page section concerning the Monthly Challenge, and we include it in the {{welcome}}. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:23, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 For location on the screen, I was thinking either just underneath the "Transclusion Index not transcluded or unreviewed" text, or where a Table of Contents would appear (top right). While I agree that Wikisource:Style guide is a good explanation, it is still a great deal longer than what I had in mind. I was thinking just the bare minimum so that the pages would transclude correctly. Also, for those editors that don't want space on the index page taken up, then there could perhaps be a setting in preferences that disables the help text.

@EncycloPetey "Do you mean making proofreading tips appear on Index pages" - yes, this is what I meant. My concern was that links to help pages aren't always "in your face" enough to ensure that they are seen.

Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 22:13, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Adding basic instructions to every Index page adds visual noise for everyone who already knows the basics. And it does nothing to direct people to Index pages. We already have Help pages that we send to people, who do not read them, and the main Help page is already available on the left menu of every page on the site. I am opposed to adding general information to every Index page on the site. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:52, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey Adding basic instructions to every Index page adds visual noise for everyone who already knows the basics. - As above, there could be a setting in preferences that disables the help text. Or, the help messages could only visible to users with less than X number of edits. I feel like there would be reasonable solutions if this is your greatest concern. My main concern (at present) is if you or other more experienced users see these new user edits as a problem (or sorts), and how best to help.

And it does nothing to direct people to Index pages. - Again, my concern is what new users do once they start proofreading (from an Index), especially as they may have no idea that they are doing anything incorrectly, and so continue to proofread in such a manner (unless someone messages them on their talk page), or equally, if new users emulate other incorrect edits. And sure, I accept that if new users aren't all that concerned that they are doing things incorrectly, then all the help messages in the world won't make much difference.

Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 00:30, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Let's be pragmatic here. Instead of adding the information to every Index (with or without an option to turn it off), create a template that can be dropped into the TOC field (or the begining of the Pages field) and put it on works that are being done through the MC (and possibly PotM). As a part of indicating that the Index has been completed, the template is removed. RC patrolling should still be happening with the {{Welcome}} template put on every new (non-vandal) contributor's Talk: page, and gentle nudges on what we expect to reinforce the enWS ethos. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:42, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333, @Beeswaxcandle, @EncycloPetey Thanks all for your comments. I have drafted a template at Template:New Editor Checklist. It was slightly longer than I had in mind, but for now, it is close enough to be open to any feedback. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 21:15, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Re: "If there are any hyphens at the end of each line, please delete them." This is too broad. In poetry and drama, but also in some prose, there are em-dashes at the ends of lines, and our newest editors will often not know about the different kinds of dashes. Placing this item first in the list also assigns top importance to this, but it isn't the top priority among items on the list. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey Thanks for the feedback. List reordered, and added something about different dashes. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:29, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Special chars: small long s: ſ (U17f): where is it?

Hi all,

Looking at the editor, in the "Special characters" dialogue, I am finding it very hard to see where small long s / ſ / U 17f is located.

Is it there and I am not seeing it? Or is it missing (and do I need to raise a ticket)? JimKillock (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

There is the template {{long s}} -- Beardo (talk) 20:02, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Or the shortcuts {{s}} or {{ls}}. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:13, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

(Note that this template is configurable, and shows ſ or s depending on user preferences. For consistency, within a single work, try to use either all-{{ls}}, or all-ſ.) — Alien  3
3 3 21:09, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks all - I am simply keeping ſ on my clipboard and pasting in, such is its frequency. But it would still be handy to know it is in the special characters pallete, especially in the "recently used" section, so I don't have to find it and copy it from another page for example.

Is it actually missing from the "Special characters" tables? Your replies seem to imply it may be? JimKillock (talk) 08:12, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

You can add the character to the User section of the table by adding a small bit of code to your common.js. Copy lines 5 to 10 from mine and then adjust the list of characters to those you wish to use, keeping a space between. However, don't be surprised if a validator changes them to the {{ls}} template, as that is our preferred house style for the reasons given at the template documentation. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:49, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. Yes I can see the point of the template entirely, that said it is probably too late for me to switch in this text as I am most of the way through it. JimKillock (talk) 10:58, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Where is the "User section of the table" btw? It does not seem to be in the list of characters for me, nor do they appear under "recently used". I switched browsers and logged in again to ensure there are not cacheing issues. JimKillock (talk) 11:13, 27 April 2025 (UTC)

Umm, at the bottom of the edit window with the rest of the character sets in the picker. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks - I had not noticed these before, I had always used the "Special characters" menu at the top of the editor so was looking for it there! JimKillock (talk) 08:54, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• Event organizers who host collaborative activities on multiple wikis, including Bengali, Japanese, and Korean Wikipedias, will have access to the CampaignEvents extension this week. Also, admins in the Wikipedia where the extension is enabled will automatically be granted the event organizer right soon. They won't have to manually grant themselves the right before they can manage events as requested by a community.
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• The release of the next major version of Codex, the design system for Wikimedia, is scheduled for 29 April 2025. Technical editors will have access to the release by the week of 5 May 2025. This update will include a number of breaking changes and minor visual changes. Instructions on handling the breaking and visual changes are documented on this page. Pre-release testing is reported in T386298, with post-release issues tracked in T392379 and T392390.
• Users of Wiki Replicas will notice that the database views of ipblocks, ipblocks_ipindex, and ipblocks_compat are now deprecated. Users can query the block and block_target new views that mirror the new tables in the production database instead. The deprecated views will be removed entirely from Wiki Replicas in June, 2025.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The latest quarterly Language and Internationalization Newsletter is now available. This edition includes an overview of the improved Content Translation Dashboard Tool, support for new languages, highlights from the Wiki Loves Ramadan campaign, results from the Language Onboarding Experiment, an analysis of topic diversity in articles, and information on upcoming community meetings and events.

Meetings and events

• The Let's Connect Learning Clinic will take place on April 29 at 14:30 UTC. This edition will focus on "Understanding and Navigating Conflict in Wikimedia Projects". You can register now to attend.
• The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon, which brings the global technical community together to connect, brainstorm, and hack existing projects, will take place from May 2 to 4th, 2025, at Istanbul, Turkey.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 19:31, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Vote on proposed modifications to the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter closes on 1 May 2025 at 23:59 UTC (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community in your language, as appropriate, so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C --

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 03:41, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Partial transcription

Given a commons pdf that is a compilation of pd material, but in addition it contains say 10 pages of copyrighted material (e.g. the foreword by the editors).

Can I do a partial transcription of the file, and then have it or revisions of it deleted on commons?

What happens if I transcribe a pdf that has 90 pages, and then I upload a 80 page version and have the 90 page revision deleted? Do the Page and Index pages get out of sync and have problems? RoyZuo (talk) 11:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

RoyZuo: See if {{redact}} will work. The fact that there are redacted pages is at least as useful as the other text so, removing pages from the file is perhaps not the best option. I say perhaps as I have no experience with this.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:23, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd just redact all the copyrighted material from the document before you upload it to commons. ToxicPea (talk) 12:24, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

+1. — Alien  3
3 3 14:01, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Surely Commons shouldn't have the copyright material there anyway ? So as others say, best to get that right first. -- Beardo (talk) 18:03, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Using Template:Default layout

To clear it up, what are good reasons to use this template? I just realised that it's been used quite widely on a variety of works for what seems to me to be no particular reason.

Someone can disable default layouts with their settings, but then it also disables the cases where it's pretty much needed (thinking of the sidenotes in legal texts, that essentially need layout 4). And so, except if users keep switching every time they come to a work that needs a certain layout, or to a work that has a layout they don't like for no strong reason, they have to either abandon the necessary defaults; or use all defaults. Thus, it looks to me like in the end, except if the user changes their settings often, {{default layout}} does forcefully overrides user preferences, which doesn't seem like a good idea, when there is not sufficient cause.

I'm thinking of works like Nature in a City Yard. This is a normal book that has default layout 2 on all subpages. — Alien  3
3 3 16:00, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Pinging @Tcr25 as the creator of that work. Perhaps you could help explain the reasoning. — Alien  3
3 3 16:02, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

My understanding was it sets the initial default display, but doesn't hinder or affect someone switching to a different display if they prefer. I tend to put default 2 as the default because I find it more readable and accessible than default 1. —Tcr25 (talk) 16:16, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Because I do a lot of dramatic works, I frequently use Layout 2. This layout is desirable when: (1) The table of contents would otherwise be far too wide to wide to visually connect the listed chapters / sections with their page numbers, or when the contents include paragraph summaries. (2) For poetry and dramatic works; especially for poetry with line numbers; and for dramatic works because the script is much harder to read or perform when the spoken dialogue runs across wide screens or when stage directions are aligned to the right. (3) For scientific works or archaeological articles with many left- and right-aligned images set into every page. Without a layout restriction, the images jumble together when transcluded to Mainspace. But for a prose work, without any of the issues listed above, I do not apply a layout. For novels, short stories, or technical prose without illustrations or formulas, I see no reason to force a specific layout. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:18, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed the uses for 1) 2) and 3), and I agree on the use for that. I was wondering for plain prose subpages, specifically. — Alien  3
3 3 17:29, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

I loathe it in all circumstances, including those ennumerated by EP, and avoid working on books where it has been set. I don't want to be continually switching layouts to the normal one. If I notice that someone has added it on a work that I've done, it gets reverted as "uglification". Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:18, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Contra-Props

This article was published in a British magazine in 1941; the author died in 1946. Would this be still in copyright ? Or PD ?

(This was the subject of a previous query here which got archived without being answered - Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2019-09#1941_UK_publication) -- Beardo (talk) 22:51, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Looks copyrighted to me. — Alien  3
3 3 07:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Unless there's some reason they count as a US work, all UK works were restored by the URAA. The few exceptions are either Crown Copyright or were published by authors who died before 1926.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:26, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

OK - I have put it as apparant copyright violation - Wikisource:Copyright discussions#Contra-Props -- Beardo (talk) 15:41, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Index:Writings of Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson

This seems to be two separate documents.

The first page is also at Index:Letter to Clara Marshall from Halle T. Dillon page 1.jpg which is taken from Commons. I don't know if the second page is there.

The other two pages are a different document which seems to be incomplete. I am not clear of the source of that. -- Beardo (talk) 22:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Why do the rules have varying thickness, despite using the same template?

Why do the rules have varying thickness, despite using the same template? It seems to depend on what text is before or after it. See: The Bergen Record/1935/Teaneck Driver Held In Bogota On 3 Charges. RAN (talk) 17:28, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

You mean the three under the headings ? They look the same to me. -- Beardo (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Likewise, I see no difference. It may be your browser. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:06, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks! It must be my browser, when I view at 125% they are of different thicknesses, but you are right at 100% they are the same. --RAN (talk) 20:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

Manual indexing of news articles versus Automatic indexing of news articles

I want to convert Brooklyn Eagle to an automatic-index instead of the hand-curated index. The hand curated index looks pretty, but is always missing articles. We can have The Brooklyn Eagle as the pretty one. See how it is done at Jersey Journal, scroll to the bottom and there is a link to the pretty hand-curated list, missing many articles. This is similar to how Commons does it, you have automatic index at Category:Foo, and hand curated one as Foo, that is always missing entries. RAN (talk) 17:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)

More automated curation of Periodicals and Newspapers on this site in the future would in general be a good thing - there's a lot of good work being done across a lot of these works but the process of creating the main-space pages for them can get very tedious and repetitive. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose had to write janky programs to semi-automate their individual workflows for some of these works.

Your idea of a distinction between The Somewhere Argus and Somewhere Argus is interesting (and as I'm not a big user of wikimedia, not something I've particularly noticed on that site), but it doesn't seem particularly intuitive to me that one should be a raw list and another a curated view (or which way round those should be, and it seems quite a big departure from how work is generally presented here. Is it done anywhere else on this site? In the past I've seen a lot of resistance to the same work being included in different main-space pages.

In terms of a curated view, that may be better done by creating a Portal for that work. For example, when I worked through the July-Dec 1914 volumes of Punch, I created a summary of all of the books reviewed in that volume which I put here: Portal:Punch/Reviewed Books, that wouldn't really have been appropriate to put in the main page.

Alternatively, what's stopping you from having a list of highlights and the automatic index linked from the same page? That's effectively what The New York Times does - some of the issues are highlighted (those for which enough work has been done for them to have a complete contents page) but for the rest, there are year-based automatic lists using the {{header periodical}} template. Qq1122qq (talk) 09:56, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

• You are right, "Portal:Brooklyn Eagle" would be best for the hand curated ones, we should standardize on that, and migrate older ones to that format. Currently there are six styles of indexes for magazines and newspapers. There were at least ten different styles before I tried to standardized them. I eliminated the ones that were experimental one-of-a-kind ones. --RAN (talk) 19:25, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Mainspacing an index

Anyone want to help me mainspace Index:Journal of proceedings of the eleventh annual session of the Worthy Grand Lodge, of the Order of British Templars, of New Brunswick.pdf? Not sure titles/issues/etc - Canadiana.ca has 8 of the 13 annual reports; this is #11. Fundy Isles Historian - J (talk) 05:22, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Changes to template:sisterprojects

Noting that I just:

• added Wikifunctions; as that's a Wikimedia project like the others already listed;
• added MediaWiki, as it's also a WMF-hosted community project;
• removed foundationwiki, as that is not editable and not a community project.

(Addition of f: requested by @Koavf.)

I think these changes are uncontroversial, but as one of them was previously declined 2 years ago, I'm announcing here so that there are no surprises, and for any possible discussion of these changes to be centralised. — Alien  3
3 3 06:56, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, seems reasonable. It would probably also be nice to have actual text like "Wikispecies<br />free species directory", but at least actually linking all the sister projects is a good start. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

Is possible to add txt files on Wikisource?

I need to upload complete works in Tibetan (in .txt format) to Wikisource, but I currently lack the technical skills to do so beyond adding basic transcription text. Could you kindly guide me through the process in a simple and clear step-by-step manner? through Wikimedia common or any other methods? TaDhondup (talk) 03:43, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

If you mean to English Wikisource, then I would like to point out that English Wikisource hosts only previously published works written in English. Unfortunately, it seems there is no Tibetan Wikisource, so Tibetan texts might be hosted in the multilingual Wikisource, see e. g. mul:Category:Tibetan. I do not know much about mul: processes, but usually it is recommended to upload files to Commons, and then proofread it. The text of the document has to be in public domain or released under some accepted free licence, see Help:Licensing compatibility. Accepted textual formats of the uploaded files are .pdf and .djvu per c:Commons:File_types#Textual formats. Pinging also Jusjih, who is the mul.ws admin and might be able to give more advice. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:01, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your advices and I got a solution to so. Appreciate lots TaDhondup (talk) 03:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-19

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The Wikimedia Foundation has shared the latest draft update to their annual plan for next year (July 2025–June 2026). This includes an executive summary (also on Diff), details about the three main goals (Infrastructure, Volunteer Support, and Effectiveness), global trends, and the budget and financial model. Feedback and questions are welcome on the talk page until the end of May.

Updates for editors

• For wikis that have the CampaignEvents extension enabled, two new feature improvements have been released:
  • Admins can now choose which namespaces are permitted for Event Registration via Community Configuration (documentation). The default setup is for event registration to be permitted in the Event namespace, but other namespaces (such as the project namespace or WikiProject namespace) can now be added. With this change, communities like WikiProjects can now more easily use Event Registration for their collaborative activities.
  • Editors can now transclude the Collaboration List on a wiki page (documentation). The Collaboration List is an automated list of events and WikiProjects on the wikis, accessed via Special:AllEvents (example). Now, the Collaboration List can be added to all sorts of wiki pages, such as: a wiki mainpage, a WikiProject page, an affiliate page, an event page, or even a user page.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers who use the moment library in gadgets and user scripts should revise their code to use alternatives like the Intl library or the new mediawiki.DateFormatter library. The moment library has been deprecated and will begin to log messages in the developer console. You can see a global search for current uses, and ask related questions in this Phabricator task.
• Developers who maintain a tool that queries the Wikidata term store tables (wbt_*) need to update their code to connect to a separate database cluster. These tables are being split into a separate database cluster. Tools that query those tables via the wiki replicas must be adapted to connect to the new cluster instead. Documentation and related links are available. [6]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The latest Chart Project newsletter is available. It includes updates on preparing to expand the deployment to additional wikis as soon as this week (starting May 6) and scaling up over the following weeks, plus exploring filtering and transforming source data.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:14, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

QuickSurveys

Apparently some new “feature” has been forced upon us again. These are annoying pop-up boxes which really mess up the formatting, especially if whatever text at the top of the page is centered (as it often is). Can this be disabled by default for everyone? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:32, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Dropped a task (phab:T393436) to ask them to not barge into the content like this, but I don't have much hope.

And no, this extension and its parameters are a wmf thing, so we can't really do anything on our own. — Alien  3
3 3 08:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I have no clue what you're talking about. Can you tell me the steps to reproduce this issue? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 11:49, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I can see it on any page that I open (and it is very disturbing), so if you do not, you might have it disabled in your preferences. See also the screenshots uploaded to the above linked phabricator task. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

I don't. I'm trying to figure out which settings the original person has to see why he sees it, but if you're seeing it also, that is odd to me. I'm not sure why anyone is seeing this. I'm not. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 12:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

In the preferences under the "User profile" tab there is a section "QuickSurvey extension" where the surveys can be set as hidden. Currently logged out users also do not see it, but if this feature stays, we can imo expect it will be used to display messages (e.g. pleas for funding) to them as well. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

These things are highly targetable and targeted, see mw:Extension:QuickSurveys. Probably you aren't counted as an active patroller here (and this precise survey is about patrolling tools). — Alien  3
3 3 12:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Just an example of what I am seeing: [7] --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

• Another awful example: Charter Granted by Queen Elizabeth to the East India Company. This time, the pop-up is within the delete template. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:59, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  Well, it just barges into the first thing it finds. They don't appear to be actively paying attention to tasks, and I don't expect them to pay attention to user feedback either, so this probably won't be fixed for a good while. My two cents are go disable it in your settings.

  At least we've got the comfort most users don't see it.... But of course they make whatever surveys they want targeting whoever they want, so it's not that unlikely that this will become a problem for everyone in the near future.

  Aaaahh, deploying breaking changes with no discussion, no warning, no community opt-out, and without listening to feedback. Becoming a habit, isn't it? — Alien  3
  3 3 17:43, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  It's showing up for me too. Once I disable it on one project, then I get it on another. Those of us who regularly visit multiple projects are going to be the most annoyed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:50, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  Did you check the global settings? Perhaps there you can opt-out for all projects. — Alien  3
  3 3 18:56, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  I don't even have the option of using the same skin globally. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:28, 11 May 2025 (UTC)

  That's weird. So like, when you go here, you don't see a "Skin", a checkbox on whether to make it a default setting, and radio buttons with the options? — Alien  3
  3 3 05:20, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

We will be enabling the new Charts extension on your wiki soon!

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hi all! We have good news to share regarding the ongoing problem with graphs and charts affecting all wikis that use them.

As you probably know, the old Graph extension was disabled in 2023 due to security reasons. We’ve worked in these two years to find a solution that could replace the old extension, and provide a safer and better solution to users who wanted to showcase graphs and charts in their articles. We therefore developed the Charts extension, which will be replacing the old Graph extension and potentially also the EasyTimeline extension.

After successfully deploying the extension on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedia, as well as on MediaWiki.org, as part of a pilot phase, we are now happy to announce that we are moving forward with the next phase of deployment, which will also include your wiki.

The deployment will happen in batches, and will start from May 6. Please, consult our page on MediaWiki.org to discover when the new Charts extension will be deployed on your wiki. You can also consult the documentation about the extension on MediaWiki.org.

If you have questions, need clarifications, or just want to express your opinion about it, please refer to the project’s talk page on Mediawiki.org, or ping me directly under this thread. If you encounter issues using Charts once it gets enabled on your wiki, please report it on the talk page or at Phabricator.

Thank you in advance! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Page styles are not automatically applied in the Main namespace

Help:Page styles#Where the CSS is applied says that Index page styles are applied "On the transcluding page when pages are transcluded using the <page/> [sic] tag", but this is not happening in practice. I noticed this when using the page styles to target the .references class, which works for Page:What's the Difference?.pdf/3 but not for What's the Difference?. prospectprospekt (talk) 21:36, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

The style is applied; the issue is that the "automatic" references, when no reflist is included, appear outside of the content (.mw-parser-output); and templatestyles is limited to inside .mw-parser-output.

So adding {{reflist}} should do the trick. — Alien  3
3 3 05:49, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Placing {{reflist}} on the very last page works. Going forward, I will do this instead of placing it in the Main namespace to make transclusion easier. prospectprospekt (talk) 14:55, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion about page styles is interesting, but in this specific case is there any advantage to styling {{reflist}} instead of just using {{smallrefs}} in the main page? Qq1122qq (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Not really, it's just a matter of style. IMO, it's better to put as much as can be put inside the Page namespace, and we shouldn't treat references differently compared to, say, sizing templates. prospectprospekt (talk) 22:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

WS-EXport broke?

Apologies for raising as people probably already know, it seems that WS Export is hanging (tested on LA and EN). Others reporting the same at Phabricator. JimKillock (talk) 16:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

Do you mean using the Download button ? I have had problems with that - I thought that it was just my poor internet connection - but find that if I try several times, eventually it works. -- Beardo (talk) 15:10, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Aside from the slowness, it actually breaks every once in a while and needs to be restarted; due to scrapers. — Alien  3
3 3 16:52, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Index:Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West.djvu not loading properly

I've added an index through (what I thought was) the normal process, but it isn't correctly loading the pages and says "Error:Invalid Interval." I haven't done this in a while, so maybe I forgot something, but wanted to ask because I'm lost. Packer1028 (talk) 02:29, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Purged and should be fixed. MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:38, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

(This is a known issue with file caching.) — Alien  3
3 3 05:19, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you! Packer1028 (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2025 (UTC)

Second pair of eyes for unclear letter

At Page:Poems Hornblower.djvu/110, the last letter of Draw with their very breath—the poisonous faith is not super clear. I think I see the beginning of the arch of an h going right from the vertical bar after the t, but I'd appreciate if someone could give a quick look and confirm or not. (Compare also the faith from The world's cold faith, a few lines above.) Thanks, — Alien  3
3 3 20:51, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

I think your assessment is good. "poisonous faith" works with "inglorious views" and the soul straying from a "diviner walk".--RaboKarbakian (talk) 21:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

I agree; scans of different copies of the same book show the same misprinting (BL, Bod), but the start of the arch of the 'h' is just visible in all. --Yodin^T 19:40, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The "Get shortened URL" link on the sidebar now includes a QR code. Wikimedia site users can now use it by scanning or downloading it to quickly share and access shared content from Wikimedia sites, conveniently.

Updates for editors

• The Wikimedia Foundation is working on a system called Edge Uniques, which will enable A/B testing, help protect against distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS attacks), and make it easier to understand how many visitors the Wikimedia sites have. This is to help more efficiently build tools which help readers, and make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for. Tech News has previously written about this. The deployment will be gradual. Some might see the Edge Uniques cookie the week of 19 May. You can discuss this on the talk page.
• Starting May 19, 2025, Event organisers in wikis with the CampaignEvents extension enabled can use Event Registration in the project namespace (e.g., Wikipedia namespace, Wikidata namespace). With this change, communities don't need admins to use the feature. However, wikis that don't want this change can remove and add the permitted namespaces at Special:CommunityConfiguration/CampaignEvents.
• The Wikipedia project now has a Wikipedia in Nupe (w:nup:). This is a language primarily spoken in the North Central region of Nigeria. Speakers of this language are invited to contribute to new Wikipedia.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Developers can now access pre-parsed Dutch Wikipedia, amongst others (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese) through the Structured Contents snapshots (beta). The content includes parsed Wikipedia abstracts, descriptions, main images, infoboxes, article sections, and references.
• The /page/data-parsoid REST API endpoint is no longer in use and will be deprecated. It is scheduled to be turned off on June 7, 2025.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• The IPv6 support is a newly introduced Cloud virtual network that significantly boosts Wikimedia platforms' scalability, security, and readiness for the future. If you are a technical contributor eager to learn more, check out this blog post for an in-depth look at the journey to IPv6.

Meetings and events

• The 2nd edition of 2025 of Afrika Baraza, a virtual platform for African Wikimedians to connect, will take place on May 15 at 17:00 UTC. This edition will focus on discussions regarding Wikimedia Annual planning and progress.
• The MENA Connect Community Call, a virtual meeting for MENA Wikimedians to connect, will take place on May 17 at 17:00 UTC. You can register now to attend.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:37, 12 May 2025 (UTC)

FYI: Wikisource: Preserving the Past for the Future

https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/05/13/wikisource-preserving-the-past-for-the-future/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

• Who is Nanteza Divine Gabriella? I don’t recognize the name. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:11, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

• User:DivineGaby SnowyCinema (talk) 20:53, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Call for Candidates for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C)

The results of voting on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is available on Meta-wiki.

You may now submit your candidacy to serve on the U4C through 29 May 2025 at 12:00 UTC. Information about eligibility, process, and the timeline are on Meta-wiki. Voting on candidates will open on 1 June 2025 and run for two weeks, closing on 15 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

If you have any questions, you can ask on the discussion page for the election. -- in cooperation with the U4C,

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 15 May 2025 (UTC)

Billingual template with Welsh Parliament Acts

The formatting problems that @Penguin1737 complained about in Welsh Elections (Coronavirus) Act 2021 could be fixed by using the {{Bilingual}} template, however this creates its own formatting problems which I have shown at Wikisource:Sandbox. Additionally, the page numbers don't match up because the page numbers go up every second page due to the welsh version of a page using the same page number as the corresponding english version. Does anyone know how to fix this.

Additionally, could someone make a version of the Bilingual template that could be more useful for longer works such as Index:Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023 (ASC 2023-3 kp).pdf so whoever ends up working on that doesn't have to use the template over 200 times in one page. ToxicPea (talk) 02:33, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Not sure about the code for this, but would it be possible to transclude multiple pages at once like Template:Side by side using the <pages> syntax, but reset the display each page so that the first lines of each page line up? I'm sure there's some struggle with that preserving the indents using colons like appears when using Template:Bilingual... Penguin1737 (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

The current practice for bitexts like this, is to transclude the English here, and the alternate pages at the Wikisource for the other language. The two can then be linked to each other in the notes section of the header. There are some exceptions here, and you can see an example at Modern Czech Poetry/October sonnet. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)