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Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2009-08

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Announcements

Wikisource:Autopatrolled

Created the page Wikisource:Autopatrolled based upon earlier discussions in this forum, when the account was set up. The functionality seems to be working well, and collating our guidance material seemed worthwhile. Not sure whether we need to go more formal, or to better link the information. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)


Wikisource:Administrators#Eliyak

This RFA needs more some more attention. As a rule of thumb, I haven't been closing RFAs with less than five responses. There is a proposal below to codify this practice that could also use more attention.--BirgitteSB 19:24, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

AWB users

Any Wikisourcers who use and AWB: the development version of AWB, which won't be fully released for a while, should make sure that the djvu isn't loaded when you edit a Page: namespace page, hopefully allowing a faster rate of knots. If you're technically minded, you can grab an SVN version and compile it yourself, or just ask me and I get get an unstable release online for you. Jarry1250 (talk) 13:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposals

Keeping Template:new texts fresh

Why don't we aim to add at least one, or even two, a day to Template:New texts? It gives the main page a sense of constant freshness, and it represents a healthy display of our new content. I'd be happy to oversee this, but assistance would be appreciated, since I only edit five or six days in a week (usually). —Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:26, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. Cirt (talk) 12:45, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
It might be useful to start making a backup list of texts, to keep a constant flow and so it's not always the person creating the new text adding the item. I'd feel more comfortable at times adding the items to a list rather than adding them to the page itself.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:07, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Either way sounds fine. Cirt (talk) 16:19, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to amend Wikisource:Restricted access policy

Occasionally we hit a time when many editors are busy with holidays and participation during the week an RFA is run is not what it normally is. I would like to see the restricted access policy, under the "Consensus" heading, amended as follows.

The vote will he held for at least one week, but will continue until there are at least seven firm opinions cast. Although any user is welcome to discuss the nomination, only established editors may cast a vote with weight.

I don't wish this proposal to be applied to any nominations taking place this month. But if there is consensus for this change, or some other variation, by the end of the month, I would expect to start applying it to nominations made in August and beyond.

This amendment would not make any difference in most RFAs, but it would do a lot to ease my mind in granting the flag on the odd occasion.--BirgitteSB 18:50, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

No objection, except to note that the only effect of the proposed phrase will be to prevent 'crats from acting on a vote before this condition is met. I am not aware of any reason why it is necessary to impose this condition: has a 'crat acted precipitately in such a situation in the past? Also, if a newb self-nominates for admin on their first day here, and receives a pile-on of six opposes in the first hour, ought it to be a policy violation to draw a timely and discrete end to the discussion? Hesperian 02:01, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I think that Hesperian has a point. Perhaps it would be better worded as such:
The vote will he held for at least one week, but may continue for longer to gain more opinion, at the bureaucrats's discretion. Although any user is welcome to discuss the nomination, only established editors may cast a vote with weight.
Which means that a vote can be kept open longer if the closing 'crat feels that it is necessary to garner more consensus, and also, a vote can be closed early if it is clearly going to fail. Jude (talk) 05:32, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Either of the above tweaks to the wording would be fine. This seems to me a clarifying of what I see as already considerable discretionary latitude. If Birgitte's wording is used, a user with a SNOW-fail request could simply get a friendly poke to withdraw (if they don't, we learn something;). In no circumstances should a 'crat grant rights if they do not feel there is an adequate consensus to do so. If an RfA is getting light attention, a "further input requested" note would be appropriate. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:38, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
JM's points are where I was going to take the discussion. As similar as a Vote of Confidence gets brought to this forum, I would think that similar areas where a bureaucrat wants the attention of the community, like this matter, would be able to be brought here as an announcement. A bureaucrat most definitely be able to reserve and preserve their judgement that the will of the community has been truly represented. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:24, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
With votes of confidence, it is often inattention and a note will often fix it immediately. In this case it is more often a large-scale absence from the project entirely. I like Jude's proposal as well. I understand that it seems unnecessary to codify that 'crat will just refrain from closing the nomination. But I imagine many candidates have read the policy as it is and have strong expectations when the seven-day date comes due. I have held nominations open longer and always feel for the candidate. I didn't mean to this to address a past problem but rather to set expectations more realistically.--BirgitteSB 19:20, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I would agree with all of the above. A little off topic, but what is the criteria for "established editors" voting? What if they have never edited here? - Josette (talk) 21:49, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
Are you suggesting that we need to have specific criteria? While I would agree that the term is a little nebulous, we also know that it is to prevent blow-ins from coming in and voting to get a candidate across the line. If push comes to shove, I would have said that established editors would be admins, auto-patrolled, on whitelist, and those with extensive edits (???no.). Never edited does NOT equal either editor or established. As indicated I do prefer a little license, and if it becomes that close, then it is a worry anyway. -- billinghurst (talk) 04:11, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
Other wikis have had problems and had to set some kind of criteria. I don't think there is a problem here now, but it is something to think about. - Josette (talk) 05:36, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Subprotection

If technically possible an addition that allows for protecting a title and all its subpages can be useful to Wikisources. --Obayd (talk) 23:38, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the basis of the question. Would you be able to give an example? -- billinghurst (talk) 03:58, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
By this protection The Time Machine and all subpages are protected, for example. --Obayd (talk) 13:38, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
When I look at the identified work without logging in, it would seem to be protected at both its top level and at its subpage level. You are not seeing such? If so, what are you seeing? -- billinghurst (talk) 14:14, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
My wrong example. I mean something similar to how sysops can move a page and its subpages: protect a work including its subpages by one click, not protecting each page manually. I know about bot protection but this feature could be useful. --Obayd (talk) 17:00, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
I can't see why The Time Machine would be protected in the first place. It's from Project Gutenberg and based on an otherwise unidentified source. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 22:11, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't know the dark inner secrets of protection, however, we have a very light protection policy in place, and for us it seems to have worked well (so far). As an admin, it isn't that hard to add protection, and there are tools around to make it a bit quicker. For the amount that we use it, a tool for that compared to having a better search engine, I know where I would like the time spent. -- billinghurst (talk) 09:33, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Other discussions

Template:Author and the name parameter

At Template talk:Author#Chinese names it states to use the name = parameter to override names for Chinese names. Problem is that it is not currently functioning, and the one example that we link to, doesn't use it anyway and has a separate workaround. Would someone who knows the script please review and advise the appropriate course of action, so that the style guide be updated. Examples:

Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 05:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

If putting the full correct name under the "last name" parameter works, then the separate "name" parameter may be superfluous. Of course continuing to use "last name" and "first name" shows a certain cultural bias; using "surname" and "given names" could relieve some of that. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 23:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
(Political correctness pushed aside) Simple courtesy and cultural regard for "last/family name" ('family' my nomenclature preference) and "first/given/personal names" should be the measure, not "that it works". Presumably the separation works best for some future meta data needs. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:52, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
The template does rather assume western name-order. Crafting a successor version of the template looks rather messy but would entail some sort of order argument and a mapping of old argument names to order-neutral ones. Ping the author? nb: I've tweaked the above author pages to use the currently recommended format; for the time being, at least. Not sure I'm seeing the whole picture, here; point me at a script? Cheers, Jack Merridew 09:48, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Questions

Orig. author should be credited, I believe, not default "Wikisource contributors"

PERSONAL COMMENT ABOUT CITE PAGE linked to Dewey's Democracy and Education book.

This page is recommended citing style - but really should be CREDITING original author JOHN DEWEY on the Democracy and Education CITING RECOMMENDATION PAGE - even though the work is now in public domain, it has NOT been rewritten by contemporary "Wikisource contributors or editors" - public domain only means that permission is no longer required, not that suddenly we're all authors of work we've never written! It is like taking a Hemingway story and attributing it to "Wikisource contributors" - give me a break!

The actual page/book DOES list Dewey and DOES show his 1916 publication date. I believe the CITATION RECOMMENDATIONS page should also attribute original authors in the citation.

Would you check with your lawyers on this one? This is not a copyright violation, but an author attribution violation, I believe. Just putting it in public domain DOESN'T CHANGE who wrote the original material that has been REPRINTED, not REWRITTEN here.

Thanks. Andrea

There's no obligation under US law to attribute works to their authors; with rare exceptions, US law doesn't support moral rights of authorship. Also, demanding we check with our lawyers can be interpreted as a legal threat, and as per w:Wikipedia:Legal_threats, legal threats don't make for a good working atmosphere and are strongly discouraged. In general, I would agree that we should be crediting the original author, but unfortunately, I don't know where you're referring to, which you haven't linked to or clearly identified. Linking to the page will give us context so we can fix the problem or explain why we don't agree that it is a problem.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:33, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
For the record, Wikipedia's policy on legal threats is purely for the English Wikipedia. While the theory and spirit of it applies here, we do not block anyone or prevent them from editing for making legal threats, at least yet. Jude (talk) 07:28, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
There is no reason to jump to the hasty conclusion that a series of confused newbie comments contain any legal threat whatsoever. Treating the comments as legal threats would leave the impression that this is a very unfriendly place. Legal threats indeed do not make for a "good working atmosphere," but then neither does recklessly imputing those threats to others. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
I presume that Andrea is referring to Special:Cite&page=Democracy_and_Education&id=1062543 from the Cite this page link at Democracy and Education
Bibliographic details for "Democracy and Education"
   * Page name: Democracy and Education
   * Author: Wikisource contributors
   * Publisher: Wikisource, The Free Library.
   * Date of last revision: 20 April 2009 19:51 UTC
   * Date retrieved: 24 June 2009 00:52 UTC
   * Permanent link: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Democracy_and_Education&oldid=1062543
   * Page Version ID: 1062543 
Please remember to check your manual of style, standards guide or instructor's guidelines for the
exact syntax to suit your needs.
I don't know enough (umm, any) of the history around the output on the cite pages. -- billinghurst (talk) 00:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I see this as a serious ethical issue: it is not appropriate for us to be claiming authorship over documents authored by others. This is a big enough deal for me to boldly edit MediaWiki:Cite text, which I have just done. Unfortunately there is no way to pass an |author= argument to the Cite extension, so I cannot do any better than to purge the false attributions. Perhaps someone can come up with a better idea. Hesperian 01:11, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Before becoming overwhelmed by ethical apoplexy it is worth noting that the cite text page was written in a single edit more than two years ago. No-one else has edited until you did. No other pages link to it, and it has never previously been discussed at all. It is indeed absolutely wrong to say that Wikisource contributors are the authors of someone else's work, just as it is wrong to say that Wikisource is the publisher. Since we are trying to accurately reproduce an old work the publisher should appear as the same company that published the work in 1916. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
A link to it is on the sidebar of every page. The publisher is always the people that printed the physical (or in this case electronic) copy at hand, not the original publisher. In this case, even if we haven't added footnotes or wikilinks, even if we've copied the format closely (unlike, say, the DNB, which is no longer linear text broken into pages and volumes), we've still retypeset the text and introduced our own typos into the volume.--Prosfilaes (talk) 16:34, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Whether there is a link in the sidebar depends on the skin being used. The publisher and the printer are not always synonymous. Major publishers serve as a kind of general contractor, and often farm out printing in a sub-contract. Calling Wikisource a publisher, instead of an ISP, implies editorial control. It's a difference that could have legal consequences. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 22:06, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
We certainly aren't an ISP, and while the physical printing is frequently out-sourced, I've never heard a company that reprinted other publisher's books without their permission dismissed as simply a printer, particularly when they're retypesetting the text, adding opening summaries, and adding footnotes. And Wikisource has editorial control over what we reprint, and several of the oldest and most respected publishers in the world also publish books in which the body of the text is a verbatim reprint of an older text that the publisher has chosen not to exercise editorial control over. As a matter of fact, we are publishers, no matter what we call ourselves.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:32, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
Actually, Wikisource is not even a legal entity of any kind. Because of that alone it is incapable of exercising editorial control over anything. What passes for editorial control is scarcely more than a group of individuals working in various degrees of collaboration. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 05:33, 26 June 2009 (UTC)
Publisher removed too. Hesperian 23:18, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

At least in the short term, I think it's a good idea to purge the obviously incorrect information. But it doesn't look like it was designed to work with what we're trying to do. Since there's apparently no way to put correct information, and nobody seems to be paying much attention to it anyway, maybe we should just disable the extension altogether. -Steve Sanbeg (talk) 22:35, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

More on proofreading

Should texts added to the New Texts section be proofread before being added? One such recent contribution by User:Brother Officer was being encouraged by myself and User:Billinghurst until a brief inspection by me revealed it had a typo. I just assumed such texts should be proofread to help maintain a professional appearance for Wikisource. Brother Officer went ahead and added it. A second brief inspection by myself revealed another typo, so the question is probably not moot. And I've noted typos in new texts before. What do you folks think? —Stop me before I nag again—ResScholar (talk) 03:18, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Update: User:Prosfilaes must have taken my nagging to heart, for he just pitched in and corrected some grammar errors on the Scientology-related work currently in the New Texts section that I hadn't even noticed! ResScholar (talk) 04:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Full-screen width for images

Can anyone suggest a way to get a high-resolution image to fit to the horizontal width of the browser? The page that made me wonder is Page:The_City_of_the_Saints.djvu/6. In the original, the image was vertical in the book. I rotated the image and would like it to be as wide as possible when it displays. --Mkoyle (talk) 05:43, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

  • It isn't possible. And large images are irritating to people on low bandwidth connections or narrow screens. I highly recommend you honour users' default thumb size preferences by inserting the image as [[Image:Sketch of Salt Lake 1860.jpg|center|frameless]] —unsigned comment by Hesperian (talk) .    Duh. Hesperian 13:27, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
    • Anything is possible with the appropriate majik; seen my new w:User:Jack Merridew? There are concerns with low bandwidth users and we would certainly not offer it at 3,460 × 2,294 pixels. We could do something, at an intermediate res, along the lines of w:Template:Wide image. Cheers, Jack Merridew 15:19, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
      • My reason for not just making the picture 900px wide was concern about lower resolution displays. For now, I made the image 350px wide. I haven't been on dialup in ages. Would that really take that long to load if it is alone on a page (doubtless the page image would take much, much longer)... I'm just wondering if 350 is a problem.
Anyway, the thumbnail size default of 120px is so small, you can't even tell what the image is. After looking at Hesperian's comment, I wonder if there couldn't be a counterpart to 'thumbnail' which would allow users to select the maximum-size they would want for a 'full-page' image, with options like 100,200,300,500,700,and 1000px. The maximum thumbnail size of 300 is still rather small and most viewers will probably never modify the default. I suspect that something like that would require a feature request. Is this something worth pursuing (does it interest anyone else?) or shall I stick with choosing a fixed width smaller than I would like and bigger than a dialup person would probably want? --Mkoyle (talk) 17:04, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
That's your personal default; you can set it to whatever you want in your "my preferences" page. Probably what is of most importance is the default default; i.e. the default for logged out users. I'm pretty sure it is 180px. Hesperian 23:10, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
The thumbed images on the page Curtis's Botanical Magazine/Volume 73/4275, which are two or three times the original page width, are linked to 50 MB of png data. The user can select some or all of this by clicking on it. I tried to place them in context, they are even smaller in their gallery elsewhere. Cygnis insignis (talk) 18:18, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
  • I noticed that you used 350px. That seems reasonable to me as I normally limit images to 300-400px if they are not embedded in text. It is still big enough that a reader can see whether they want to get a closer look. As mentioned before, they can then click on the image to blow it up larger. —Mike 01:50, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
  • For most cases, using the usual image sizing mechanisms will suffice. I has just occurred to me that we could setup two sizes; one for page-space and another (larger) for main-space. It could be a template invoked from where you would hard-code the "350px" -- {{FOOpx|350|600}}. This is not a good time for me to look into this as I'm busy off-wiki this week. Cheers, Jack Merridew 03:05, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

law categories

Hi. I contribute in Persian wikisource. I was looking for the types of laws in order to categories the types of law text we have there, but I couldn't find any useful thing here. Could anyone help me with this?

LaTeX

Hi guys. Just quickly want to know whether there has ever been any discussions regarding wikisource and LaTeX? From going through help and FAQ it didn't seem so. Just thought I might mention that PDF and the quality of books could be greatly increased if a proper typesetting language were to be used. my 2 cents. --A is A, not B or C (talk) 01:51, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

It's allowed, if that's what your question intends. There is a link to set it up at the top of the edit box. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 07:00, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for replying Eclecticology. I guess I should clarify; Can an entire document be written and rendered with LaTeX? From a quick browse through some texts on wikisource it appears their layout and rendering to pdf is quite unappealing. Wikibooks achieve much better quality; I'm quite new to wikis so don't know whether that's because they use a different wikitext language or something else. Though even there much better quality (.ie professional) could be achieved by using LaTeX. I understand that there needs to be a trade-off with usability though.
I'm trying to organize a collaborative translation of a book and looking into different options. The wiki approach is very appealing due to its openness. I also think it already has a very well established and respected community. Many people already come here looking for, or sharing, information. I find that very valuable. Though if I'll have to do typesetting of the final work separately that would certainly be a major drawback. Something like ScribTeX has all the technical aspects I'd like; but lacks the community and general well standing of the WMF. The ease of access to anybody that wants provided by the WMF is important to me. Is there some way I can reach a compromise with my technical requirements? Any suggestions would be very welcome. --A is A, not B or C (talk) 01:29, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Before there can be a compromise there needs to be a difference of opinion to compromise about; I don't yet see what it is. If Wikibooks already achieves better quality you may be talking about something that is already allowed here; please provide a link to the Wikibooks page that you are using as an example, and that can easily be clarified.

I know nothing about ScribTeX, but if it has any encumbering patents its use would be strongly discouraged. All the Wikimedia Foundation projects use Media Wiki software, and any rendering into pdf comes after the fact. The trade off is not just with usability, but also with editability. In the case of a new translation that means recognizing that others may propose and apply improvements to the translation. A good place to start would be by providing the text in its original language. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 23:23, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

GLAM -Challenge

On August 6 & 7 Wikimedia Australia is hosting GLAM-Wiki at the Australian War Memorial supported by the

In lead up to the event some of the GLAM institutions(Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) have donated items to be given away, Wikimedia Australia has organised the GLAM Challenge which will run from 13th July until 23:59UTC on the 19th July. This is open to all registered editors in any Wikimedia project, you dont need to be in Australia to win as prizes will be posted to anywhere in the world. Nominate yourself by the 13th July, see GLAM Challenge for more details. Gnangarra (talk) 12:11, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

m with macron

On Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/134 there is an m with a macron (basically as a rendition of 'mm') anyone know of a way to recreate the symbol? -- billinghurst (talk) 02:30, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Tough one, there doesn't appear to be a "Latin Small Letter M With Macron" in Unicode. The Right Way to replicate such a thing would be m + combining macron, thus m̄. It isn't certain that it will come out correctly in all environments though (e.g. here in Firefox 3.5 on Windows XP the macron is a bit right of center). An alternative which looks a bit better IMO, though hackish, would be to use the overline template, thus m. Prosody (talk) 02:49, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Overline looks better than nothing. Thanks. billinghurst (talk)
It also depends on the fonts being used. On my Mac it appears correctly in the edit box, but it does not display correctly in the content. —Mike 20:43, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you want a compendium of churn rates?

I am trying to get wider dissemination of what I believe is a very useful resource to people who care about churn rates. When I linked to the blog from the Wikipedia article "Churn rate", the link was removed on grounds of conflict of interest and non-notability and non-expertise -- even though the blog post is cited in a published article in a respected journal. So, let me get to the point. If Wikisource were to want this content of mine, I'll hand it over, if you think this step would then enable a link from the Wikipedia article on churn rate, which gets about 9,000 page views per month. The point is to get this resource in the hands of people who want it, while it would still be properly attributed to me. More discussion here. I'm looking forward to the response(s) here. -- MyWikiBiz (talk) 14:13, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

We only include texts that have been previously published per the inclusion policy. So while the article that cites your blog would be acceptable the blog post itself is not.--BirgitteSB 14:46, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The Hunting of the Snark

Would anyone care to help me with this? I'm finding rather a lot of typos and general mistakes, comparing it to my printing. It also appears to have had Americanisation applied to it - flavor for flavour, meager for meagre, etc. I'd happily scan mine, if it'd help. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The linked page does not appear to have been proofread at all, so ordinarily I would say "Yes, correct those errors to conform to an identified source." Simply changing the Americanised version, because the author happened to be English is not enough; you would need to identify the version that you used for your text. The illustrations in the hosted version add a further complication. If your source lacks the same illustrations it should be treated as completely different, and the basis of a whole new wiki page. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 20:43, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Issues at Commons - who can assist

One of our editors sent me the following via email

“ We have a problem that involves our images over on Wikicommons. For a long time, when I placed an image over on Wikicommons, I added as much information as I could about the image until I was told to stop because they didn't want more than just the basic information for their input form. Now, the images we have over there are slowly showing up on a list for deletion for exactly the opposite reason, that they aren't willing to accept just the basic information including the Copyright Statement. This is strange since most of the images over on Wikicommons are used only on other Wikimedia sites, or else outside of Wikimedia altogether, with Wikicommons only being a common storage location. I think we may have to start our own image collection as a way to get out from under their thumb. What do you think? ”

Trying to resolve it here, where an image is supposedly out of copyright, doesn't seem the right direction to take. Who is available or the right person to assist resolve this issue at the Commons end? Thx -- billinghurst (talk) 03:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

This turn of events was perfectly predictable. I sensed as much as far back as when Erik was promoting housing everything in the Commons Empire at the time that Commons was a startup. I support putting more emphasis on Wikisource's own image collection, just as much now as I have from day one. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 07:16, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Everyone involved has acted in good faith. The sensible approach is to ask for a period of grace, in which to determine the current requirements for compliance in discussion with Commons admins, and the extent of the issue. With any luck a trickle of deletion requests can be headed off and some schedule put in place. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
Definitely agree here Charles, and cannot say that my choice would be another repository of images. One would hope that admins at Commons would be more clueful and wholistic in their response to akin projects when taking action. For one project to start shaping policy in the backwards direction with a single focus seems anachronistic and antagonistic to the universal goals. All that said, what is our cross-wiki communication means? Is the communication individual to forum, or is there a better interwiki comms methodology with Commons? I was hoping that someone here had a raised level of credibility at Commons to start the discussion. -- billinghurst (talk) 08:29, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
User:Cirt, for example, is an admin here and at Commons. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:06, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
I am too, so let me know if I can be of service. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 13:10, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Found a Commons admin, and I was directed to raise the issue there. It is at Commons:Commons:Village_pump#Issue_raised_at_Wikisource_about_image_tagging -- billinghurst (talk) 10:56, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

If the images in question are not an obvious copyright violation they are unlikely to be deleted rapidly. It would probably be helpful to cite specific examples of problematic deletions requests so we can get an overall feeling for what is needed. --commons:User:Tony Wills
I will get the editor who raised the issues with me to do so. Thx billinghurst (talk)

New Mark Twain Story

In the current issue of The Strand Magazine there is a previously unpublished story by Mark Twain. "The Undertaker's Tale." There is a claim of copyright 2001 by the Mark Twain Foundation. The problem is that everyone seems to ignore that new works from authors who have been dead for more than 70 years are in the public domain. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 07:51, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

You're right. Upload it if you want. In the US they have no copyright-- that boat sailed on 12/31/2002. US Copyright Law 3:303 and 3:302(a) say exactly that. --Mkoyle (talk) 21:53, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
  • Clearly a La Times story isn't the best basis for determining the original date of publication of a text, but if the explanation of the story claims within the pages of The Strand Magazine claims to have been 'never before published' I believe we can take them at their word and consider copyright expired. --Mkoyle (talk) 03:07, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Copyright of Canadian political speeches

I plan to type out some televised speeches made by Canadian Prime Ministers in the last few decades. Does anyone know what would be the copyright status of the text of those speeches and whether they would be allowed to be posted here? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 18:27, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

Works must be in non-ephemeral form to qualify for copyright, and extemporaneous speech doesn't count. It's sort of weird that if you and I were sitting in a room talking over this, it could be recorded and reproduced without copyright considerations, but because I'm typing this, I and my heirs will have copyright in it for the next 170 years. In any case, as long as the Prime Ministers wrote out their speeches before hand, I can see no reason they wouldn't get the full 50 years of Crown Copyright, though no more. And I suspect they did in fact write out their speeches before hand.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:04, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
I see, that's a bit odd. Would the copyright be owned by the Office of the Prime Minister or would it be owned by the specific speech writer who actually penned it? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 23:55, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
The speech writer would usually be an employee doing his job, so the copyright would reside with his employer.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:44, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. One last question: do things that are copyrighted to the "Office of the Prime Minister" get transfered to the Office of the new Prime Minister after an election or do you have to track down retired people? --Arctic.gnome (talk) 03:18, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
Doesn't crown copyright mean that the copyright is held by the Crown? Angr 08:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
The Office of the PM would hold the authority to grant exceptions, on behalf of the Crown. Basically the Executive Government, headed by the Governor-General, will hold the Crown Copyright, but it will be executed by the Government of the day. Truth is that the public servants manage it, and the Minister or Head of Department signs it off, depending on the delegation schedule. -- billinghurst (talk) 10:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Strategic Planning

The Wikimedia Foundation has begun a year long phase of strategic planning. During this time of planning, members of the community have the opportunity to propose ideas, ask questions, and help to chart the future of the Foundation. In order to create as centralized an area as possible for these discussions, the Strategy Wiki has been launched. This wiki will provide an overview of the strategic planning process and ways to get involved, including just a few questions that everyone can answer. All ideas are welcome, and everyone is invited to participate.

Please take a few moments to check out the strategy wiki. It is being translated into as many languages as possible now; feel free to leave your messages in your native language and we will have them translated (but, in case of any doubt, let us know what language it is, if not english!).

All proposals for the Wikimedia Foundation may be left in any language as well.

Please, take the time to join in this exciting process. The importance of your participation can not be overstated.

--Philippe

(please cross-post widely and forgive those who do)

The vector graphics Wikisource logo should be cleaned - at the very least the right side oval shaped white patch (very light blue/grey) should be removed as it currently makes the shape of the undersea iceberg unclear. Alternatively the entire undersea section of the iceberg should be turned into a darker blue than the top section of the iceberg. I understand that the vector graphics logo is based on the original raster image (<=2006), but the reasons behind making this change should be considered higher priority than the desire to maintain the integrity of this representation (Eg I did not recognise the logo as an iceberg upon first glance). Cheers, Richard Baxter —unsigned comment by 161.72.36.188 (talk) .

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