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Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2007-10

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Image integrity

I've been cleaning out the CommonsTicker and I've made a few observations:

  • As expected, Commoners are updating our CIA Factbook images, thereby leaving our CIA Factbook pages with incorrect maps. To resolve this, the original image must be re-uploaded with a different name, and the image linked updated.
  • Also as expected, Commoners are updating our NSRW images, cropping them and rotating them without renaming them, disregarding the fact that they are original scans.
  • NOT as expected, our own editors are modifying scans of our own works, resulting in the original scans being lost in the history of images on Wikimedia Commons. The updated images take the place of the originals.

To me, this is a problem. In my mind, all images taken from books as scans should be faithfully reproduced in the Wikisource document, as scanned. If you want a better image, get a better scan. At the very least, if a modified image version must be used in a page, the original, unmodified version ought to be prominently linked in the image caption, or, failing that, on the image description page. In my opinion, modified images should never be uploaded on top of the original image.

Examples of this include Image:Harvard Stadium 1904.jpg. The image was rotated and cropped and the modified version was uploaded over the original image. I subsequently reverted, and uploaded the modified image to Image:Harvard Stadium 1904 cropped.jpg. Another example of a modified image replacing the original is Image:Captain cook illustration South Pole.jpg.

Currently on the CommonsTicker there are a few other ones on which I'd like feedback. Under August 16, Image:Toleration of the corset1056fig49.png is listed as having been modified. The original uploader changed the color of the lines in the drawing. I don't know what the original looked like, but assuming that the original upload best reflects the original scan and the modified version is meant to be helpful, which image should be used in the Wikisource document? I say the original, unquestionably.

This issue goes beyond the problem of hosting images on Commons, because it demonstrates that it doesn't matter where our images are hosted—people will still modify them, thereby compromising the integrity of Wikisource as a reference. We need to agree on a way to handle these modified images. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 00:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think we should create a template on Commons that is very clear that the image is used by Wikisource and any change that reduces the fidelity of the image will be considered vandalism. :-)
I agree with Jayvdb. Wikisource's exclusive images should be exclusive to us. :)Wikibrarian talk to me 09:26, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
See Commons:template:original. —Benn Newman (AMDG) 15:03, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
At the moment I put that template on images after someone uploads a modified version. Should we put that template on all images that we upload to commons? Or at least all images that are used in texts (thus excluding images used for author pages or on user pages)? --Spangineerwp (háblame) 20:17, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
I've tried to create a new template, commons:template:archival, for this specific case by making it more noticeable that this isn't just "an image kept for historical reasons" but an image that "should not be changed". 68.39.174.238 22:55, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that a different template is necessary (since Commons:template:original was created for our use), but I like some of the characteristics of yours. I think the graphic should definitely be changed, and I'll look over the wording too. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 14:58, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
It would be hard to control what happens to these images unless we host them directly on Wikisource. The integrity of the original pages is very important. At the same time it is also important to have editable images to go into the middle of texts. An illustration in the middle of a wiki-text does not require a scan of the whole page. If we are translating a text, we also want to be able to translate a map that accompanies the text. We may even want to link directly from various places on the map.
The question of changing the colour of lines in a drawing is an interesting one. If we are talking about a monochrome drawing it shouldn't matter. How my monitor resolves these colours may differ from the way your monitor does it. In other cases slight adjustments to the colours may help to improve contrast from the paper in the background, which is not always a pure white. I find maps in the 1911 EB very difficult to read; it was just the way maps were done then. We still need to maintain original copies, but we also need to have maps that are readable by the modern reader. Eclecticology 22:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
After getting an unwanted trim on an image, a discussion at commons produced this Commons:User:Christian Nurtsch/Scan draft. Can we develop it into notice about the image, conserving the original and suggesting a new version? I note there is one for obsolete images, but some of the scans I have used are included in the document. Cygnis insignis 13:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
I support tagging images this way when it makes sense to do so. What do we have to do to implement this? We seem to have 3 different but similar template versions as of now? I am an admin on commons if that is helpful. Did anyone raise this on the Commons Village Pump yet? ++Lar: t/c 10:24, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm an admin on commons also; this was discussed on the Village Pump in the past and Template:Original was created in response. We can make changes to it to reflect our needs. My point in raising this discussion was to find out what we think about images be modified slightly—what modifications should we allow, both in terms of archiving and general use. It seems that we agree that all archives need to be maintained unmodified (which is pretty easy to do—just watch CommonsTicker), but it's not clear how much leeway we should give ourselves when using images on our own pages. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 02:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Random Author

Special:Random/Author returns a random author. would it make sense to add the link below 'random page' in the navigation bar? ThomasV 18:56, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

  • I have no particular objection. It could create clutter in the navigation bar, but that's a fairly minor concern. Is there any way that "Random Work" could bring us to the front page of a work instead of Chapter 13? Eclecticology 20:09, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
This would be possible if booktitles had their own namespace, or if we had a 'chapter' namespace. ThomasV 12:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Other discussions

Obituaries

How are we organising obituaries? I am sure we have a lot of these, so I expected we would have a category Category:Obituaries or Wikisource:Obituaries. nada. They appear in all sorts of periodicals, e.g. The_New_York_Times/Mark_Twain and Astrophysical Journal/Volume 4/Carl Nicolaus Adalbert Krueger and there are many journals that consist entirely of obits. John Vandenberg 03:14, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

A category makes the most sense, until we're sure we have a dozen or more obits - then creating a Wikisource index would also be feasible. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Thomas Wyatt 06:12, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
We had about nine obits once found and categorised; I've brought that number up to 20 using NYT pre 1900 archives. John Vandenberg 15:53, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Toss the new obits on The New York Times plz. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Thomas Wyatt 17:44, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
This makes me wonder about the wisdom of the naming convention for these kinds of articles, particularly for the New York Times. I would be surprised if there were no other article in it titled "Mark Twain" during the previous 59 years that the NYT was published, or, for that matter, since. Using the publication name as the primary naming element would make more sense only if we anticipate having a fairly thorough inclusion policy about the publication rather than just scattered articles. A thorough inclusion of New York Times coverage even just between 1851 and 1922 would be a formidable task. Mark Twain (Obituary, New York Times) could be a better title in this case. Krueger presents a much smaller problem. Eclecticology 18:02, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Of the 20 obits we currently have, the naming conventions range from:
  • John Doe
  • John Doe's Obituary
  • Obituary for John Doe
  • John Doe - Obituary
  • Death of John Doe
  • Periodical Obituary of John Doe
  • Periodical/John Doe
  • Periodical/Obituary - John Doe
  • Periodical/Volume X - John Doe
Any ideas on how to clean this up a bit? Kaldari 22:51, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
Obviously "John Doe" is the worst naming convention, ideally I'd love to see them as either Periodical/Obituary John Doe or Periodical/Volume/Obituary of John Doe. Realistically, I think the first is more practical, we may one day have a dozen articles from "Winn's Firebrand" or "Bengali Obituary", but we're never going to have the complete volumes of every magazine ever printed. So "Winn's Firebrand/Obituary of John Doe" is good enough for me. I think the "Obituary" part of the title is important, to attract google hits for people looking specifically for an obituary on the person. btw, does San Francisco Call/1910/Mark Twain Called by Death count as an obit, or is that a newspaper article announcing his death? I can't really tell. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Thomas Wyatt 22:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that injecting "Obituary" into the page name of these articles is a good idea; it means the reader knows that it will be a little flowery, and a google title search will find them all. I expect that we can easily end up with thousands of obituaries in short order, as any pre-1923 person with biography on Wikipedia could bring in 1 or 2 obits at least. People like Mark Twain have hundreds, and I think it is a good idea to include them all.

I like including the real name of the article/obit/whatever as printed in the page name, so that it grabs the top slot if people are searching for it; it also means that one aspect of the page name is clearly defined. I like the form Title (Obituary, Periodical) as it is very much like a citation.

I am not so keen on forcing everything under the Periodical/Title form, but I wouldn't object to it if we make the `Periodical' page easy to build with a few templates.

Another idea which is slightly off topic is to rename the Author namespace to "Person", and include obituaries under the person like Person:Mark Twain/Obituary (Periodical). The reasoning for renaming Author is not simply for obits; there are a lot of times where the "Author" prefix isnt ideal:

  • Authors that have no English works; the Author page is full of translations that are not their own.
  • Translators
  • Non-literary works, such as sheet music & music composition, illustrators, editors, etc.
  • Politicians; they rarely really write their speeches (they are just performers!)

John Vandenberg 06:45, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

It is interesting to note that the "hundreds" of Mark Twain obituaries are mostly by anonymous people. The format Title (Obituary, Periodical) is a good place to start from, but it has to be done with the awareness that the title may not necessarily contain the name of the deceased. It could be something relatively generic like "Great person taken from us".
Putting the periodical name as the first element in a title is not always the best approach. Unless there are plans for the systematic treatment a periodical it may not even be a meaningful one. I have recently prepared and entered the contents for two issues of McClure's Magazine, but most of those articles have individual authors. Beginning with the periodical name in a title only seems to be preferred for general anonymous editorial material in default of any other option.
Creating a "Person:" namespace could open up a new series of problems. The "Author:" prefix (and later, namespace) was a very early construct intended to distinguish a person as subject of an article from a person as the writer of an article. In my own thinking at the time, "Author" was certainly intended to include any and all of the creative classes that you indicate, except perhaps the politicians. Perhaps another term might have been more appropriate, but nobody suggested it; remember too that at the time we also had to avoid conflicts with corresponding terms in other languages.
Headers do need to be fixed to allow for these variations of what authors are doing, but that is a different issue. Eclecticology 01:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Regarding the Person: namespace, I am only suggesting that we could rename the current Author: namespace so that it is less occupation specific. The Author prefix is already being "abused" by myself and others to record works about a person, or letters to a person. see Author:Henry Ford or the majority of the other persons on WS:CotW. This does cause a little problem with the PD templates that reside on author: pages; the author-PD template is not necessarily applicable to works listed about the author which are probably written by someone else. John Vandenberg 17:13, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Listing works about an "author" on an author page seems perfectly acceptable, though I would expect that the authors of the biographical works would have author pages of their own. Does the author-PD template need a slight modification to make it clear that it only applies to the author? Collections of letters to a person have as many authors as wrote letters. I have no suggestion for now about what to do for collections of works about a person who is not an author. Eclecticology 18:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I think it is a bad idea to inject "Obituary" into the title. We do just make up the titles on any works and should not start here. I agree with Sherurcij's titling. "Obituary" should be a category. Googles searches don't search titles alone so the pages will still be found and there will be Category:Obituary for people to look through. Although most readers for obituaries will likely come from wikipedia links rather than google searches.--BirgitteSB 13:40, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
    Are you sure you mean "do just make up"? The category will probably handle most cases. I tend to view "(Obituary)" as a kind of disambiguator that can be useful for a person like Mark Twain, whose obituaries are far more plentiful than the number of times that he died. This does have a relationships to your comments elsewhere about the titles of articles in periodicals. Eclecticology 19:06, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
    I hope that we can attract readers direct from search engines or, better yet, a site that people people come to directly in order to access information about notable people. We can build up a comprehensive biographical collection using obituaries, correspondence and books about people. For example, I ran into this 4 MB PDF obituary; it is 40 pages long, and will overshadow w:Francis Baily for a long time to come. John Vandenberg 23:19, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Oops I did mean don't. If these texts do have a name of their own (i.e. "Mark Twain called to Death") than that should still be the title whether it is standalone or not. If not we will need some standard of disambiguation, but we should apply that standard to ALL obituaries, only those were disambiguation is necessary. I do think we attract people from search engines already. However Obituaries are unlikely to be searched for compared to literary texts. People reading the obituaries are more likely to come from a link at another site then a search engine. --BirgitteSB 16:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Questions

1/1/2008?

{{CWMG-copyright}} says that it will be PD "in 2008". Does this mean that the template can be redirected to the appropriate one come January 1st? 68.39.174.238 17:48, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

A bot will replace it, though we'll need to recheck the date to make sure it's accurate. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:37:54, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
Wait. As M. Gandhi was killed on 30 January 1948, perhaps his private works will remain copyrighted in India through 31 December 2008. Right? Please check this before updating.--Jusjih 23:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Unless someone finds something that says that India does not have an end-of-the-year provision in its law I would agree with you.Eclecticology 00:25, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
Indian Copyright Act 1957 reads: "22. Except as otherwise hereinafter provided, copyright shall subsist in any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work (other than a photograph) published within the lifetime of the author until sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year next following the year in which the author dies." Based on this literary works copyrighted by M. Gandhi remain copyrighted in India through the end of 2008.--Jusjih 02:28, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
I added "1st January 2009", to be clear. Yann 09:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Heidi

The publication date given for this book on the author page (Author:Johanna Spyri) is for the original German verion. The version here is an uncredited English translation, and may still be under copyright. --EncycloPetey 01:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a well known works. Does it appear in Project Gutenberg or on some other easily accessible source? A quick comparison of one or two random sentences should be enough to verify the origin of the text. The situation seems similar to the situation with Swiss Family Robinson above. Eclecticology 02:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
It appears to be the Gutenberg copy, thankfully. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Christopher Marlowe 03:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The Cambridge History of American Literature

I have just noticed the section headings that have been added to this work. Early on I did work on a few of these, and made a point of omitting these headings. The original printed version of this work was not sectioned in this way. Some, but not all, of the headings did appear as flying heads. The sectioning appears to be Bartleby's effort, and may be protected by their copyrights. One might also argue that the result is simply not true to the original.

In some respects it might be better to section a work by page numbers. This would make it easier to build cross links between chapters, or between otherwise unrelated works when a text makes a reference to another work. There may still be problems when a work has multiple editions with different paginations, and standards would need to be developed for dealing with them. One of the great features of Wikipedia is the interlinking of articles, something which is very little developed on this project. Eclecticology 08:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

The Bartleby.com Terms of Use does imply they are believe they have created a new work and as they are incorporated, it is well worth avoiding any issues. Zhaladshar commented here that we are not using the same layout. Could you provide a diff to show what is being added ? Also do we have any images to see what the original looked like? John Vandenberg 13:05, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
It seems Bartleby did add some editorial structure to the Cambridge History. Here's a 1921 published version of Volume IV at Google Books. Look at the Mark Twain chapter. It doesn't have any of the divisions that Bartleby uses for its chapters. I guess it'd be worth locating all four volumes and changing what we have on WS to better match what was originally printed.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 18:39, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
I uploaded Volume 3 to commons:Image:The Cambridge History of American Literature 3.djvu. I couldn't find djvu files for the other volumes but this is a start.--BirgitteSB 19:25, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
Here is the index--BirgitteSB 19:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
I do have a full set of this work. Volume I, Chapter I, has the following flying heads on the right hand pages: "New-found-land", "Land Agents", "Indian Captivities", "Quakers", "Dr. Hamilton" and "Conclusion", but no section headings. Removing the headings should be easy, but we may want to add page numbers while we're at it for easier cross-reference from other works. I have been using the format "===p.000===" elsewhere. Is there a better way for using "#" in the wikilinks? If there are later editions of this work, is there a way to co-ordinate the pagination. Also, where there is a footnote to another chapter, that should be converted to a Wikilink. Eclecticology 00:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Titles of magazine articles

I was considering to add contents pages for McClure's Magazine, and that got me to looking at how we have been titling magazine articles. In retrospect it just seems unduly cumbersome. It may still be justifiable for anonymous articles, or for articles from the editorial staff of a magazine. Nevertheless, when an article has an identified author it would appear preferable to have the article title as the main heading. Anyone familiar with McClure's, or other literary magazines of the time, will know that they were the way that many famous books were serialized before they came out in a bound edition. Eclecticology 09:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. The subheadings give a context for the source, allowing the magazine to be read in an authentic manner. What we need is a mechanism for aggregating and/or linking through serials. Hesperian 11:17, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
What do you mean by "authentic manner"? The magazine articles are separate literary works that often have nothing to do with each other. They are in a magazine article because they are usually too short to merit being published by themselves. The magazine citation could easily be made a part of the header. Please explain your linking mechanism. Eclecticology 16:01, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
See Wikisource:Style guide#Page titles. The decision of whether a particular serial publication should use subpages or simply be a collection of links to standalone works is up to the editor. However, it should be all or nothing— subpages and standalone pages should not be intermingled, which makes organization difficult and navigation confusing. —{admin} Pathoschild 16:35:33, 02 October 2007 (UTC)
I have no problem with letting the editor decide, but when the works are treated as standalone a certain amount of "mixing" is inevitable if we want to include anonymous editorial material. These latter are often a fairly small portion of the magazine. Eclecticology 18:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
If an editor thinks any article merits a stand-alone treatment it is perfectly fine to do that. The same article can then be transcluded onto the appropriate sub-page allowing the magazine to be read in an authentic manner. Have your cake and eat it too.--BirgitteSB 13:50, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm still puzzled by the term "authentic manner". If I add an article as a stand-alone article and someone else wants to add a transclusion on a magazine sub-page that should not be a problem. The best way of handling these things often depends on the nature of the magazine itself. Eclecticology 18:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
"allowing the magazine to be read in an authentic manner" = the arrow to the right leads to the next article in the printed magazine and the left arrow leads to the previous article. Basically the text is transcluded and identical at both locations but the header and title change. Images could possibly differ as well in some cases.--BirgitteSB 16:32, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Maybe I'm just being obtuse, but you seem to be putting more emphasis on structure than content. Whether a periodical is current or archival can make a big difference in the way it's read. Reading the articles sequentially would be more characteristic of current publications. In archival holdings a person would strike me as more likely to go back and read only the episodes of a serialized novel. For such a serialized work the most useful previous and next links are to the other chapters of the book, even if they are in different issues of the magazine. Maybe I'm understanding transclusion differently - I tend to interpret the term as a successive nesting of templates. I can see the possibility of developing texts as templates, and plugging them into different headers, but that doesn't seem very intuitive. Is that in fact being done with anything. Eclecticology 18:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I am not putting more emphasis on structure than content. I am saying anyone willing to put work into content should please themselves as far as structure goes, since all the various structures can be accommodated. They are not mutually exclusive, so we can make everyone happy and there is no reason to argue over structure at all. Transclusion is not limited to templates. See Elegie II and Elegy II (1896) which are both transcluded at Elegy II Comparative text. That is basic transclusion which would suffice for magazine articles. There are also fancier varieties of transclusion for more complicated things. Whoever wants to work on the content: Pick your favorite structure! Whoever wishes to see it organized differently: Go for it! Got a third way of organization that is the greatest thing since sliced-bread: Go for that as well!--BirgitteSB 21:05, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Robinson Crusoe

I have 100 high-resolution full-page illustrations from an old copy of this work, in a zipped folder. I wonder if anybody is a big enough fan of this book (Sorry, I'm just...not) to actually crop/rotate/upload the images if I were to send? Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Christopher Marlowe 12:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Isn't there a tool on Commons to upload mass amounts at once? Also, ask around commons:COM:GL is they have a way or would want to do such a thing themselves (Crop/rotate). 68.39.174.238 21:30, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I am not a fan, but as it is PD-old, just go ahead to add. I do not know if there a tool on Commons to upload mass amounts at once.--Jusjih 03:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
I'd be able to do it; check your email. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 11:45, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

info

hi there my name is tony ,i just want 2 know mout kikboxing,like what is it,when did it started,and every single detail,i have 2 prepare 4 my assingment.so pls help me n pls mail me at, 'stonys@rediffmail.com' 

                                                     waiting 4 ur reply,
                                                       TONY.
Could you please translate your request into English? Eclecticology 18:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
See w:kickboxing. —{admin} Pathoschild 18:04:50, 02 October 2007 (UTC)

Are TIFFs Necessary?

There is a discussion on the wikitech mailing list about whether TIFFs should be allowed on commons. Does a rep from source need to weigh in? --Christian 19:42, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be nice. I have access to a tool that can do OCR on Tiffs but not on other formats so to use other formats I first have to convert back to TIFF. That might be lossy, so being able to get at the TIFF if it was the original format seems goodness to me. ++Lar: t/c 02:20, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
TIFF and JP2 support would be lovely as they are becoming the more common raw formats these days. Adding TIFF support could also allow us to use mw:Extension:Proofread Page on the EB1911 at User:Tim Starling/ScanSet TIFF demo. John Vandenberg 13:31, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
It's been suggested at Commons a few times. The response is that we are supposed to use PNG. —Benn Newman (AMDG) 13:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure that's a good overall answer. Do you, offhand, have a pointer to the most recent discussion? Thanks. ++Lar: t/c 20:49, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
commons:Commons:Village_pump/Archive/2006Dec#TIFF_files.3F was what I was thinking of. There may have been something more recently... —Benn Newman (AMDG) 23:02, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Converting to TIFF is not lossy; TIFF does not have any compression at all. PNG has non-lossy compression, saving bandwidth without losing quality (at the expense of computational resources). Since most users have powerful PCs and limited bandwidth, PNG is best for users; and since the computation is client-side, PNG is best for wikimedia servers too. Αναρχία 22:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Above is simply incorrect. TIFF is a container format that supports several forms of compression, some as part of the TIFF baseline, others as extensions. Compressors include none, RLL (not lossy), JPG/DCT (lossy) and LZW (not lossy). Any baseline form can be read by all readers. Writers must support at least one baseline form. The full TIFF spec should still be available on the adobe.com site.

T.S. Eliot french poems

Several of the poems in T.S. Eliot's Poems are in French. I can't seem to find any translations, so I was wondering if someone could do a translation for wikisource. The text can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1567. --Samael775 15:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Or more directly http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/tsepm11.txt We should also include the original French with it even if they are already on fr:wikisource. Having the two versions together is even more important for poetry full of double meanings, as is the case of these Eliot poems. I would suggest adding in the originals, and setting the page up for someone to start doing the translations. Having translation wanted categories could help. Eclecticology 21:53, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
The French should not at all be on en:ws. ThomasV wrote a script that, for pages in the main article namespace that have interwiki links, it is possible to view the English and French side-by-side by clicking on a double arrow next to the interwiki link. Unfortunately, as of right now, it can incorrectly display the side-by-side view and needs some more kinks worked out, but it's a good start for what it does and does not duplicate content and allows us to keep non-English content off this wiki.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:59, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
The double arrow does not appear in all the skins. Eclecticology 20:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Zhaladshar that we dont want the French version here, but there is some merit in what Eclecticology is suggesting, which I am guessing is that we highlight the fact that the original is in French. Perhaps in the header notes we could advise the reader that the original was in French, or explicitly link to the French version either using a new "original = fr" flag. Or, can we make one interwiki link bold ? Just thinking out loud, John Vandenberg 15:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
What makes this example so unusual is that this happens to be English literature in French. The language is French, but the underlying poetic sentiments are English. It was something that Eliot loved to exploit. In an article about Fredric Mistral [1] (p.33) there is a quote translated from Eliot's On Poetry and Poets, (Sorry, but I don't have a copy of the original English) where he expresses that learning a different language amounts to acquiring a supplementary personality. I especially looked at Le Directeur, where the references to The Thames and The Spectator are clearly English. I don't know whether I would understand all the allusions in the short poem to enable a fair translation, and a stand alone English translation without the original beside it would not represent this poet fairly. Similarly, stand alone translations of Robbie Burns would not do justice to Burns. Arguments that may be well suited to the prosaic are not as convincing for poetry. Eclecticology 20:18, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
I have created the poems on French Wikisource : fr:T. S. Eliot . You may link directly to the poems there... Enmerkar 17:06, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
Something sorta like Mr. Vandenberg's suggestion of highlighting the original text seems to be doable with Template:Interwiki-info, though not its explicit purpose. Since that exists though, certainly a more specific highlighting template could be made. Prosody 10:18, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Upshot of Change inclusion policy ?

Since this got archived, what was the upshot? no change? ++Lar: t/c 20:48, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Kaldari's last version in the discussion quoted and which he copied to the policy page:
Any written work (or transcript of original audio or visual content) published prior to 1923 may be included in WikiSource, so long as it is verifiable. Valid sources include uploaded scans and printed paper sources.
Version as since changed in the Official policy quoted:
Any written work (or transcript of original audio or visual content) published (or created but never published) prior to 1923 may be included in Wikisource, so long as it is verifiable. Valid sources include uploaded scans and printed paper sources.
Note that such works must still comply with the copyright policy (see specific public domain criteria for date criteria).
Res ipse loquitur. If people are going to treat something as "official policy", and strongly discourage any direct change without discussion, it is even less appropriate that an agreed version be changed in transit when it is not consistent with someone's POV. Whether Kaldari's version was agreed upon may still be debatable, but there was clearly no agreement on the subsequently changed version. Eclecticology 22:23, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
The subsequent edits were based on said discussion. There was no opposition to the "created and never published" clause, and indeed such works are routinely added by many established contributors. Adding that clause was the primary purpose of the discussion in the first place. I haven't seen any opposition to the brief copyright note, which is necessary to clarify that we don't accept all such works, only those that are also compatible with our copyright policy. Kaldari subsequently tweaked the changed text, which implies he doesn't have any particular objection to it either.
Are you concerned about minor tweaks without widescale discussion, or do you have a concern with the change itself? —{admin} Pathoschild 15:16:33, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Actually both, but I'll reserve further comments on the specific issue until Kaldari has had an opportunity to respond.
The more general issue comes down to, "What constitutes policy adoption or amendment?" Is there even a policy on policy adoption? ...in particular for those pages which are marked "Official policy". While I can accept certain minor changes without discussion, I would also apply a fairly strict definition to what is meant by minor changes: grammar, spelling, section order. Any substantive change would by definition not be minor. Lack of opposition alone does not imply consent when the number of participants is low. When a change appears in a policy any reasonably involved person should also be able to easily track where that change came from and feel confident that the change was within process. Going into more detail on the nature of policy and its adoption is obviously more than can be handled in this thread, and I would certainly be ready to begin a detailed study of these. From your technical expertise you know very well that some small changes can have profound effects on the results; that situation is no different when human structures are involved. Eclecticology 17:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Proofreadpage in Internet Explorer

Does the proofreadpage extension work in Internet Explorer? I have been using it in Netscape with no problems. But now I used IE and got no edit box when I tried to edit pages in the Page namespace. (Looking at pages works, I see the scanned page and the Wikisource page side by side.) /81.231.248.36 16:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

proofreadpage works in IE. if you still have that problem, please file a bug describing in detail the conditions under which it occurs. also, make sure you still had that problem after reloading the page. ThomasV 08:32, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Footer on {{header2}}

I'm using header2 on one of my texts I'm adding. Some of the pages are very short and it would look ridiculous to have a footer. Apparently there's a way to not have the footer, but no documentation exists on how to do this, or at least no documentation I can find. Could someone please answer my question? Thanks, Psychless 14:51, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Commented (but not answered, don't know the answer, just added some info) on Template_talk:Header#Header2_footer ++Lar: t/c 12:47, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

How Wikisource helps US legal professionals

http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4346892/ --Histo 16:05, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

That's an archived version. See http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2007/10/12/crowdsourcing-and-open-access/ for the original with links. Eclecticology 17:08, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
The report is an interesting document, but a quick review of its 370 pages easily lets us know about the size of the task. (Not to mention the pages that have been OCR'd sideways!) For a quick mental estimate: What would 1,000 reports of 100 pages each over 100 congresses give us? Some of the reports that I have seen relating to the Internal Revenue Code are much much longer. The difficulty remains in balancing the amount of work to be done with the number of volunteers willing to spend large amounts of time on tedious proofreading work. So far this thread has only mentioned the United States federal government. Need I remind you that other governments are no less diligent in the production of boring reports.
There is no doubt about the value of many of these documents in developing a public understanding of legal issues, but even if a local library maintains a full collection of these (assuming it has enough space to store them) finding the one that properly addresses your interest is a mind-boggling task.
One question we should be asking is, "How do we interest seniors in doing these tasks?" Many would feel much more useful sitting at a home computer proofreading books than watching one more rerun of Gerry Springer on the idiot box. Eclecticology 19:37, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I would definitely work on another house report, after this one is finished, if someone uploads the images. I've proofread the first ~80 pages of the House Report mentioned in the article, so I'm glad the end result will be used. I believe some website has house reports from the past five years online, so we should be working on older ones. Hopefully, as Wikisource becomes more valuable (i.e. having texts other free libraries don't), more people will join. Psychless 22:28, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Another source of potential contributors are the folks at Groklaw, who digitise and transcribe cases. Historically they have focused on the w:SCO Group cases, but as that is winding down due to bankruptcy, the site has been branching out into other cases involving freedom and the Internet. I have "copied" a few of their transcriptions here, such as DVD CCA v. McLaughlin, et al. TRO Opinion. I think this is one area where a "Portal" (similar to Wikipedia Portals) would be very valuable, as a community of people interested in uploading the same types of works will develop more quickly if we provide a location where they can also freely discuss those works. John Vandenberg 05:19, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

We may be part of a culture with a direct interest in this kind legal material, but we are still only talking about a very small corner of available information. Do the people doing the work for Groklaw do so on a volunteer basis, or are they paid? While I am and will remain a person who believes in the broadest possible range of inclusion, I can easily see the difficulties with having a huge assortment of disconnected material. Finding suitable material is not the problem, and even accepting the most restrictive interpretation of copyright law for the single sake of cutting down the corpus of such material will leave us with more work than we can ever dream of handling. In preparing the legal material we are much less in need of legal expertise than we are of people who can simply process and proofread text. Eclecticology 07:02, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
The majority of what is achieved on groklaw is done by people interested in the cases; they are volunteers. They rush to provide the PDFs of any new court document related to the case, then the transcriptions, while also discussing it. They do the work because they want to discuss it, and learn from it. The part that is lacking from their current workflow is that they dont also digitise the referenced case law, which is an aspect of Wikisource I think they would enjoy. They are law enthusiasts rather than experts. By supporting a community that focus on just law, the result is likely to be that any case which is often referenced in judges opinions will be digitised and cross referenced. John Vandenberg 13:07, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Fair enough. It's not just a matter of cross-referencing, but also of cross-linking. Does anyone here know anyone there so that discussions leading to a common position can be had? Eclecticology 15:24, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

New translations of works already in Wikisource

A student and i produced translations of Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates' Defense (aka Apology) and Crito (as well as the death scene from Phaedo). Currently, they're in pdf format but i would be happy to spend a few hours wrangling them into ascii. However, Wikisource already has translations of these works, from Jowett's 1891 edition. So my questions are: (i) Can our new translations be added, either in place of or as well as the existing Jowett? and (ii) How would i do this, given that there are existing translations? If you want to check out the translations, I have added the relevant links to the 'external sources' sections of the wikipedia pages for each dialogue. thanks for your help and apologies if these are dumb questions. Cathalwoods 04:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

So long as you and your student agree to release or licence your IP in the translation in accordance with the Copyright policy, your translation is welcome. Post your translation at a title something like Euthyphro (Woods and ???? translation), move Euthyphro to a new title such as Euthyphro (Jowett translation), and edit Euphyphro to say something like:
"Wikisource has two translations of Plato's Euthyphro: Euthyphro (Jowett translation), translated by Benjamin Jowett in 1871; and Euthyphro (Woods and ???? translation), translated by Cathal Woods and ???? in 2007."
Hesperian 06:48, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
P.S. If you do the first step of the above, I'm sure someone will be happy to do the rest for you. Hesperian 06:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for these comments and the offer of help. I've been gnoming a little bit on wikipedia, but am not too comfortable anything more than that. To wit: does "post your translation" amount to "create a new page/entry"? thanks Cathalwoods 20:17, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Yes, "post your translation" = "create a new page/entry"--BirgitteSB 20:53, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
In general I welcome original translations, especially of obscure works or ones for which the only extant translations are protected by copyrights. The problem here is that available public-domain translations exist already. How many "new" translations would be acceptable? What would be the purpose of having so many. GFDL wiki texts are and should be editable by anyone. No-one should have ownership of these texts. My inclination favours a three column solution with the original Greek on the left, the in-progress translation in the centre, and translation notes on the right. Eclecticology 07:24, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for these comments, both in the post i'm directly responding to, and in your comments of oct 16, 17:36. As i read it, you raise two questions. Q1: What is the pupose of >1 translations? Ans1: First, Jowett's translation is simply old, archaic in choice of word and style of phrasing. Second, Jowett's translation is extremely loose - he leaves out words, and sometimes whole clauses, all over the place. Our translation is in modern language, very literal, though highly readable (we hope!). (See the front matter in the omnibus version for more info on our principles of translation.) This brings us to your second point, Q2: Why not simply edit the existing (jowett) wikisource entry? Ans2: Well, every translation is an interpretation, and it's worth preserving Jowett's translation as a record of what passed for a good translation (and good English) in the 1870's (when he first published the translations - i believe 1891 is the third edition). Considered in this way, Jowett's translation is like the works of literature, and political speeches, on wikisource (which are not editable - though perhaps i have this wrong and they are non-editable for some other reason/s). It would have been a loss if we had simply deleted Jowett's translation and pasted in our own, and so we have not done that, but are looking to add a second translation. Indeed, I urge that the page containing Jowett's translation be made NON-editable - indeed, it seems somewhat confusing or meaningless to have written, at the top (e.g. of his Apology), that "This edition was translated by Benjamin Jowett in 1871." if in fact it is (or could be) the work of many hands. We did, however, think about additionally having freely editable translations, such as all wikisource and wikipedia pages are. I wrote to Ed Zalta (at the Stanford Encyclopedia (SEP)) to suggest exactly that - a project where both ancient-language (and modern-language texts - see jonathan bennett's fabulous site at earlymoderntexts.com) are worked upon, with something like the layout you suggest - three columns, of greek, english, and notes, respectively. SEP wasn't interested, because it would be duplicating some of the work at Perseus (PP), but the translations at PP are from the early Loeb series (1910s, typically) and many have the same problems as jowett, though not quite as severe. I think free, digital, modern translations would be something immensely valuable, and working on them as open-edit pages would mark a new era in collaborative translation. This project would be a much needed and extremely useful tool for the philosophical and classics communities (as well as to many other fields) (IF it could be made to work - there may not be enough skilled and willing people, and translation (of greek, at any rate) is so difficult because it is multiple valid interpretations might prevent consensus. But I'll put all this aside for the present.) Back to the question at hand: At the start of the summer we simply didn't have the time, the money, or the know-how, to establish some such project, and so we simply went ahead with traditional translations - that is, working by ourselves - and now, they are ready for folks to use. Right now, the CC license on the second page states non-editable, but we would be happy (i think) to have people work on these translations, using our 2007 translations as a base and, moreover, this can be the primary version of the text as presented to users of wikisource. But, (to repeat), I think it's also worth preserving a copy of the works, both 1871/1891 (whichever edition it actually is) and 2007, as historical documents. In sum, I guess i'm urging you all to consider translations both as fixed works (like literature) and as editable works in progress. For our part, we'll continue to think about simply giving them over to the community, and are open to arguments making the case that we should do so with ours, rather than just leaving the jowett for people to edit. all the best, Cathalwoods 21:38, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Fantastic! For a start I want to make it clear that I am not supporting any substantive to Jowett's or any other pre-existing translation. Things like adding hyperlinks to the text are fine as long as the integrity of Jewett's efforts are respected. If there are any other available translations we should, subject to the usual copyright restrictions, have those too. Copyrights do create a gap between what we can safely include, and versions which would give a more modern approach to the classics. There are strong arguments for including the type of work that you have done as completed dialogues. The fact that they are whole works gives greater weight to respecting the integrity of such works. My concern here is to avoid having 20 different incomplete translations of Book I of The Republic that have no chance of ever growing. There are still uncertainties about how some of these things might work out, but personally I think there is room for accommodation. Eclecticology 01:22, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Quick follow-up for purposes of clarification: Right now, Jowett's Apology (on wikisource) is editable (by which i mean, the word "edit" appears to the right hand side of the text, at the top) - and so anyone at all can (as you put it) violate the "integrity of Jowett's efforts" - while his Euthyphro and Crito are not. Is there a principled reason for this difference? Or perhaps the Euth and Crito are editable in some other way than via the "edit" word (so that, in fact, all three are violable)? Please enlighten. thanks, Cathalwoods 04:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
All of the works you mention can be edited, as far as I can see. Could you indicate which pages you are not able to edit?
Once a work is "complete", the edit button can be disabled, but if it is still enabled, the purpose is to allow improvements besides modifying the actual text. For example, although Apology (Plato) is "complete", just now I have made a change to link it to Author:Benjamin Jowett in the notes field of the header. This is a minor improvement. However if someone tried to change the text in a way that reduces the fidelity of the page (such as this change), someone else would restore the previous version. John Vandenberg 06:05, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
In the case of the Euthyphro someone began adding the pagination and subdivision references of Henri Estienne. This kind of editing is perfectly acceptable, though I wish the person had completed the job. Another correction that I noted was changing "dear" to "clear"; this fixed a common type of OCR error. You can always compare any two versions from the history page to check for vandalism. Eclecticology 06:45, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to you both - I was confused about different kinds of edits, I think. Let me see if I have this correct: all texts are editable in the sense of "editable" as "able to be altered" - adding links, pagination, OCR corrections - but not all texts are editable in the sense of "these are works whose text (= the words on the page) are in dispute" - if anyone tries to muck with the text, someone will revert the page. (I take it that most of WP is editable in the second sense, while most of WS is editable only in the first.) Let's call the two types "completed works" which are editable only in the first sense, and "works in progress" which are also editable in the second. (My apologies if these terms already have different meanings in the WS community.) So now the question becomes: if Woods & Pack 2007 were placed on wikisource, would it be as (a) a completed work and/or (b) as a work in progress? As i read the various commenters: I was intitially thinking of (a) but said i thought (a) and (b) might be okay. John V suggests (b) only. Hesperian suggests (a) only. Eclecticology initially was thinking of (b) only but latterly of (a) and (b). Birgitte suggests (b) only. Or something like that - it doesn't really matter if I've mis-read folks; the question to be answered is clear, (I hope!). Thanks again for helping me think this through. All the best, Cathalwoods 21:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Further translations are welcome. Although I think is a bad idea to disambiguate by translator. I would suggest the title Euthyphro (Wikisource translation) so people understand it is a collaborative work right away. The other translation should be disambiguated by date (i.e. Euthyphro (1891)). The date gives a reader a better information to choose an edition than a name and I also dislike giving a translator more prominent "billing" than the author. You can still give yourself credit in the notes section of the {{header}}. If this is all to confusing to you can work your translation at User:Cathalwoods/Euthyphro and when you are finished leave a note here or on my talk page and I would be happy to take care of the rest.--BirgitteSB 16:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Euthyphro (Wikisource translation) format. Allowing ownership of original Wikisource translations opens up a big can of worms where we could too easily end with a lot of incompatible partial translations, mostly of the first chapter of a wide range of works. A single editable translation with annotations relating to translation difficulties would strike me as preferable.
For pre-existing translations disambiguating by translator seems considerably more useful than by date. I agree that the translator should not appear as more prominent than the original author, but then neither should he appear any less prominent. For classical philosophical works in particular modern thinking is shaped more by the translator's efforts than by the original Greek or Latin. Why else would we end up with an English poem titled On First Looking into Chapman's Homer? Disambiguating by date is only helpful for determining the copyright status of a work, or maybe for prejudging language style. Disambiguating by translator is more informative because it helps to put that translation into a cultural context. If translation were a mere mechanical exercise what would be the point of giving translators their own copyrights? Eclecticology 17:36, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
The date does give you an idea what style of English to expect. It also gives a good idea about whether non-Western works will be tainted predjudice and certain sexual mores. The translator's name is generally meaningless. I don't see any cultural context behind these names, certainly there is not more cultural context for a name than a year. The few who are scholarly enough to know recognize the translator's name should know the time period they worked in as well and not be at a loss. Of course if the translation is a significant enough individual work to commonly be titled with the translator's name we would then use this. (i.e. Bible (Wycliffe)) But that is the exception. Maybe Chapman qualifies for this exception, I don't know who he is or how his translations are commonly titled. I do know what to expect from an 1891 translation because no matter who translated it, being published in 1891 has a definite context.--BirgitteSB 20:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
w:George Chapman's (1559-1634) verse translation of Homer was effectively immortalized by the Keats poem. Eclecticology 07:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

For a similar situation, see Tao Te Ching and Talk:Tao_Te_Ching_(Wikisource_translation)#Merge. I dont think that has been completely resolved yet, as their is another translation tucked away at Laozi / Lao-tzu (E. T. Tan's Modern Semantic Translation ); on the talk page of that translation, I have tried to indicate that it already has had many contributors.

I agree that we do not want to allow any ownership over the translation put on Wikisource beyond the history tab and {{textinfo}} on the talk page. In my opinion, people's name should only appear on translations if it was published, otherwise we will have people providing POV translations of poor quality and wikibattles trying to keep them neutral; we also possibly even open the door for people to claim a GFDL violation if their name is removed for any reason by trying to claim that "notes" or "author" are invariant fields.

The use of "Wikisource translation" to dab unpublished translations hosted on Wikisource is good. For properly published translations, I think it makes sense to dab by author surname, as those names will be immediately recognisable to the sort of people that are sitting at a search results page with two different translations wondering which one they want to click on. People who dont know which one they want will pick any one, and they will probably pick the one that Google likes most despite any postfix we add to lead them in the right direction. John Vandenberg 02:33, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Effectively yes. There are some tricky problems here, and we should avoid short-sighted solutions that over-simplify things. Eclecticology 07:20, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Bot approval request

I have been asked to bring w:WP:MTC to wikisource, Im not sure what kind of approval I need, Betacommand 10:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

The format here is rather precise. What works have you been asked to move, specifically? Can you move one page of one work, setting up the appropriate author, work, and page including the template invocations, so we can see if the bot is doing things correctly? Doing them incorrectly can cause a lot of cleanup work later (I should know, I gave some bad advice to someone and it's not all cleaned up yet!) ++Lar: t/c 12:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Its the same thing as MTC, only from wikisource to commons, instead of wikipedia. Betacommand 12:56, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
You use the passive voice, "have been asked". Would it not be better if the person who was asking you to do this were defending the request? The page you cite even asks the transferors to choose commons categories. Do you really expect a bot to do that? Eclecticology 17:00, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
What the bot does, is help move images to commons. It maintains the GDFL, upload and page histories and also moves the talkpages of the images. The bot is meant to be an assistant to humans. (It does the main difficult part of the transwiki). Humans approve and find a category that the image should be on commons, the bot then uploads the images to commons (Following all commons policies) and then tags it as moved to commons. Remember the bot does not tag images for the move users here select the said images, and the bot does the leg work and does the actual move. Betacommand 23:12, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
I have asked Betacommand to assisting migrating images from Wikisource to Commons. Our Wikisource:Image guidelines recommends images be initially uploaded onto the Commons, and only "Wikisource" specific images need be uploaded here. There have been a few good cases for images to be uploaded here, such as a Wikisource screenshot (inc. Wikimedia Foundation trademark and Windows decals that are copyright) which was/is displaying a rendering problem. But, for the most part we should be moving them to the central Commons infrastructure. Some examples include:
I have just now worked on patches to pywikipediabot to process a set of pages with a common prefix, and I intend to run User:JVbot over the images a few times to move them into the "move to commons" format required for Betacommands bot to pick them up. My processing of these will be primarily be assisted after I have verified the copyright status of each work the images are of. John Vandenberg 16:58, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Ah. I thought that the bot was being proposed to bring things TO here, not to move things FROM here. In that case I think the requirements are less stringent, "all" that is needed is that things be set up so that the images uploaded make it over to commons correctly and get categorised correctly and that they have sufficient information on them. Note that the bot request there is still in an unapproved state but I believe it eventually will be once the remaining wrinkles are ironed out. If the prepwork that John V refers to is done correctly this will go smoothly I would think. ++Lar: t/c 16:18, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Copy to Wikimedia Commons contains the first set (86 images) ready to be moved to commons using the w:WP:MTC process. John Vandenberg 07:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

those are moved. Lar check commons Ive addressed all the issues commons has asked for. also see {{commons conflict}} Betacommand 14:36, 20 October 2007 (UTC)


UBL

There were a few problems with our previously-hosted works by Osama bin Laden - I just want to doublecheck our policy on hosting public domain translations of his works. (I notice newmanbe deleted a work translated by the Pentagon, for example). Am I good to add PD translations? Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:William Gordon Stables 22:26, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I've restored the author page and Open Letter to King Fahd from bin Laden since it is a Pentagon translation, but have left the others deleted pending verification of free translations. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:William Gordon Stables 20:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
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