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Welkom · أهلا و سهلا · Xoş gəlmişsiniz · Вiтаем · Добре дошъл · স্বাগতম · Degemer mat · Dobrodošli · Benvinguts · Ⲛⲟϥⲣⲓ · Croeso · Velkommen · Willkommen · Sıma xeyr Amey · Κκαλώς ήρθες · Welcome · Bonvenon · Bienvenidos · Tere tulemast · Ongietorri · خوش آمدید · Tervetuloa · Tervettulemaa · Bienvenue · Wolkom · Fáilte · भळु-औणु · સુસ્વાગત · ברוכים הבאים · स्वागतम · Dobro došli · Isten hozott · Aloha · Բարի գալուստ · Benvenite · Selamat datang · Nno̱ · Bonveno · Velkommin · Benvenuti · ᐊᕆᐅᙵᐃᐹ · ようこそ · fi'i · Sugeng rawuh · კეთილი იყოს შენი მობრძანება · Tikilluarit · 환영합니다 · Salve · Wil sha · Bonveni · Wilkóm · Laipni lūdzam · ဘာသာမန် · സ്വാഗതം · स्वागत आ · Merħba · မြန်မာဘာသာ · Velkommen · Welkom · Velkommen · Bonvenio · Planvengut · ਜੀ ਆਇਆਂ ਨੂੰ · Witajcie · Bem-vindo · Allinmi hamusqaykichik · Bun venit · Добро пожаловать · स्वागतम् · Buresboahtin · ආයුබෝවන් · Vitajte · Pozdravljeni · Pyereestpuáttim · Soo dhowow · Mirëserdhët · Добро дошли · Wilujeng sumping · Välkommen · Karibu · ꠀꠃꠇ꠆ꠇꠣ · స్వాగతం · Хуш омадед · ยินดีต้อนรับ · yI'el · Mabuhay · kama pona · Hoş geldiniz · Räxim itegez · Maeva · Benvenescu · Гажаса ӧтиськом · خۇش كەپسىز · خوش آمديد · Chào mừng đến · Benokömö · კუჩხი ბედინერი ჸოფედას თქვანი მოზოჯუა · װילקום · Angqcoux · 欢迎 · 歡迎 · (edit)

Template:Scriptorium-side

Post a comment / Einen neuen Kommentar schreiben / Écrire un nouveau commentaire / schrijf een nieuwe commentaar / 发表主题 / Inserisci un commento

This page is similar to Wikipedia:Village pump / Diese Seite ist vergleichbar mit Wikipedia:Forum / 这个页面类似于 / Questa pagina è simile al ar di Wikipedia.

Moved Discussions

Verschobene Diskussionen / Discussions déplacées / verschoven besprekingen / 移动的讨论 / Discussioni spostate

Language Domain Requests

see / vedi Language Domain Requests

Language Domain Proposal

Vorschlag für eigene Sprachdomänen / Proposition pour des domaines de langue / Overleg voor domeinen van de taal / Proposta per i domini per le lingue

see / siehe / voir / vedi Wikisource:Scriptorium/Language domain proposal

Various Older Topics

Verschiedene ältere Themen

Wikisource and Project Gutenberg to Wikisource:Wikisource and Project Gutenberg.
Name of this project to Wikisource:Votes
Copyright to Wikisource talk:Copyright
Cataloging to Wikisource talk:Index
Precursor discussions to meta:wikisource
Logo suggestion to Wikisource:Revising the "Sourceberg" logo
Discussions about individual involvement to the User talk: page
Discussions about a particular article to the article Talk: page

==================================================

Special:Booksources

The Special:Booksources page in Wikipedia(w:Special:Booksources) is much better than the one at Wikisource. How do I change this? JesseW 01:34, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The text can be changed at Wikisource:Book sources. Angela 21:57, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wonderful! Thank you Angela! JesseW 05:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Logo suggestion

See: Wikisource:Revising the "Sourceberg" logo

should be shown to people who are not familiar with the present logo. I am not sure it can easily be recognized as an iceberg (because an iceberg doesn't have a characteristic shape, and the perspective is unfamiliar) How about a logo that actually includes a source reference, somehow? Dbachmann 12:22, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Small

La fonction < small > ne marche pas. Caton 12:35, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

<small>

oui

< small > non

Il ne faut pas avoir des espaces dans l'instruction. Eclecticology 06:01, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Wikisource and Commons

It seems to me that Wikisource is made obsolete by Commons - it serves with the same function as the commons, but in only one medium - text. Surely it would be productive for both projects, and Wikimedia, for Commons to annex Wikisource. This would allow the userbase of both projects to expand - though I am not typically a contributor of Wikisource now, if I could upload documents to Commons, I no doubt would. Similarly, 'source users may not bother uploading images now, but if they could do so within the same project - they may well. It is also beneficial to the non-contributing user - far easier to find all kinds of media in one project than over several. In my opinion, the broader the Wikimedia projects the better.--OldakQuill 13:13, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I disagree. This project is about texts, while the Commons is about other multimedia material. Further developments could be in the area of making it easier to produce translations and annotations. Other possibilities are in developing bibliographies, linking to the Wiktionaries, or perhaps even producing concordances in some cases. Most of our texts are public domain, and any illustrations or other multimedia material are only incidental to what we do.

Why should having documents in the Commons make any difference to your ability to upload them. You can already do that. I'm not concerned about the user base; it will naturally expand in its own time anyway. To me the Commons is intended to serve the other projects. If it has material in other media that we can use I don't mind linking to them if it can be easily done. Having broader projects is not necessarily better; more narrowly defined projects can be more easily focused. Eclecticology 15:27, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

All of these suggested 'source featured may be fulfilled on Commons. Commons is not just a servant project, but also a standalone archival project. Focusing projects is not an issue - if users on Commons wish to only contribute to texts, they may do so. With a larger userbase there will be more of these specific users - as well as cross-users. --81.130.60.229 17:19, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The time is not yet right for merging the two projects. We need better filtering capabilities for Recent Changes, for example - quite a few people working on Wikisource will not care about Wikimedia Commons file uploads. Importantly, I would like to see the initiative for a merger to come from the Wikisource community, which I think it will.--Eloquence

My name is already in use

I suspect that my name is already in use by an older incarnation of myself -- lost or corrupted password. How to check whether it is indeed the case or not? Marc Girod

I have checked the page Special:Listusers and yes, User:Marc Girod has already been created. I tried the "mail me a new password" function at the login page for User:Marc Girod, but it appears that no e-mail is recorded for that user account, so I could not send you a new password, and I can do no further. You now have two options - you can try to contact a developer (perhaps at Non-development_tasks_for_developers, though I'm not 100% sure it's the right place) explaining your problem, a developer can probably help you, or you can create a new user account with a different name. If you had supplied an email adress, it would have been easier, as you could then have requested a new password to be sent to that adress. Nobody can see your email adress if you supplies it in your user preferences, and it is possible to disable emails from other users (this can also be set in your user preferences). Christian S 19:36, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I suspect I didn't create this account myself, but it was somehow imported from the Wikipedia base at an early stage. I did supply a mail address in my wikipedia account, but maybe not initially... I'll try your suggestion. Marc Girod temp 09:11, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Italian quotes

In Dante - Goettliche Komoedie:Hoelle 2.Gesang the Italian verse 15, written as

rispuose del magnanimo quell'ombra;<br/>

<<l'anima tua è da viltade offesa;</li> </nowiki>

but gives this:

<<S'i' ho ben la parola tua intesa,>>
rispuose del magnanimo quell'ombra;
<<l'anima tua è da viltade offesa;

In other words, the entire quotation of the first line is treated as a strike-through instruction for the other two. It would be good if we could avoid this problem while respecting the standards for Italian punctuation. Eclecticology 02:27, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

First, I would question why anyone is using '<li>' instead of '#'. Secondly, the quotes can be accomplished using '«' and '»'. This produces: « and ». —Mike 05:38, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It's not just treated as a strikethrough for the other two lines, it's treated as one for the rest of the page. This was not noticed previously because HTML Tidy was active and was fixing the broken HTML as best it could. -- Cyrius 02:30, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Should author pages really belong to wikisource?

Hello. I recently started to build indexes of french authors and books, using the automated indexation capabilities of wikimedia. My opinion is that automated indexing using categorization should be preferred to manual indexing, because it is less of a pain, it gives homogeneous results and it ensures nothing is forgotten. Some might disagree with that; indeed the site currently contains a lot of manual indexes. I am not trying to impose my views, both systems can obviously coexist in peace. So this post is NOT intended to start a debate over manual/automated indexing. My point is about something different but it is related to indexing: author pages.

I think it would be great to build indexes of authors, using categories: Ancient authors, French authors, authors of theater, authors of science-fiction, and so on. The same is true for books, of course; but a number of problems arise with author pages.

1 - Author pages are not localized, but they are written in the author's language. This is a problem, because when assigning categories, it will be necessary to assign categories in every language the author's texts are translated in. I guess the general answer to that problem is that author pages should be localized in the first place. For example, I should not need to be read in greek in order to find some text on Plato's page. This is somewhat related to the debate about localized subdomains.

2 - Author pages have prefixes like "Author:" or "Auteur:", that show up in the index. This makes the index look ugly.

3 - Author pages are redundant with the author pages that already exist in Wikipedia. This is the most important point. Some author pages in Wikisource even have a picture and a short bio. A user browsing an author in Wikipedia currently needs to go to the corresponding author page in Wikisource, before she can find the text she's looking for, which complicates the search: 2 clicks instead of possibly 1.

The solution I propose is to remove author pages from wikisource. Indeed, these pages gather information about authors, and it is the role of Wikipedia to gather information about famous people. The mission of Wikisource is to provide texts. I think this would solve points 1 and 2 (and 3, obviously):

1 - Author pages are localized in wikipedia, because wikipedia has language subdomains.

2 - Automated indexing of authors does already exist in wikipedia. Let us use it to index authors, instead of reinventing the wheel.

Instead of the current system, I propose the following: Author pages in wikipedia would link directly to wikisource when referring to a text. Pages in wikisource would link to their author's page in wikipedia, instead of the one in wikisource.

I know this is a big move. However I believe we should keep in mind what the mission of wikisource is, and that it is useless to redo some work that is already being done on wikipedia. The energy that is being spent here gathering information about authors would be better spent on wikipedia, where it would also receive more feedback.

--ThomasV 14:30, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I completely agree with you on point 1. I am strongly opposed to the fact that I need to know another language other than English to be able to read non-English authors, especially such pages as the Greek one; I can figure out the Romance and Germanic ones easily, but I would still prefer that every author page be in every language instead of just the one that is that author's nationality. This is why I'm supportive of sub-domains here (although I know all the arguments for and against this proposal, and I'm not debating the issue here).

In regards to point two, there's a simple way to get around that. For example, we'll take Rousseau's page. Currently in the category, it shows up as Auteur:Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If you want to remove the "Auteur:" look at the wiki-fied link [[Auteur:Jean-Jacques Rousseau]] and at the end of "Rousseau" add a "|" so that it looks like this: [[Auteur:Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Jean-Jacques Rousseau]]. Doing that will make it just the author's name.

And in regards to having the author pages, Wikisource needs to have an index of each author's works, too. While Wikisource can be closely tied to Wikipedia, if people come across Wikisource from another source and are looking for a text from a certain author, there needs to be an author page for that person to locate so that person can see what works by that author we currently have. About the Wikipedia links linking to the author page and not a work, I would say that I think Wikipedia should do both. In talking about a work, there should be a link to that work, but there should also be links to the author page itself so people can see what other works there are.

I have to disagree to your proposal to only have Wikisource link to the Wikipedia author and Wikipedia link straight to a Wikisource text. We do that now, in the biography section. We link right to that author's biography ON Wikipedia, and any user can go to any available biography because we link to every available translation on Wikipedia. In regards to typed biographies here, there really shouldn't be any, unless there is no information available on Wikipedia. Remember, Wikisource is also a stand-alone project, like Wikipedia, and so needs to have a sort of interface for people to use when they access this site. Doing away with author pages seems to me that it would make Wikisource only a "text-dump" and not a full-fledged project (although currently it seems that it is a text dump because there is very little that I see which differentiates us from Gutenberg).

I am very glad that you are doing so much work with the categories. Those have a potential to be very useful and important here, but as of right now are under-used. I'm glad that you've started working with them to index French authors. I will hopefully start doing that with German, English, etc. authors so that we can start grouping authors together under certain similar traits, which I believe will set us apart from Gutenberg; we have much more potential to categorize authors than they do.

Zhaladshar 17:18, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hmmmmm...After doing some research of my own, ThomasV is correct about the fact that in the Categories, there is "Author:", "Auteur:", etc., prefixed to the name of the actual author. And I thought this could be fixed by editing the category itself and and adding [[Auteur:Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Jean-Jacques Roussea]], but that is not possible. Is there a way to get around this issue? Because he's right: it is pretty ugly to look at. Zhaladshar 18:14, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think that Zhaladshar has adequately dealt with two of the issues about author pages. I would add that a link from Wikipedia will not show different colours to indicate whether we in fact have that text. Some of our auther pages, Author:Arthur Conan Doyle for example, can become an important bibliographical reference page with details that go beyond what we can expect to have on Wikipedia. The Author:George W. Bush page contains links to regular Saturday addresses that we could not possibly justify on Wikipedia in any language. To the extent that an author page contains biographical information other than links, that falls into very limited kinds of information, mostly years of birth and death and name variations.

The language of an author page is a more tricky issue. While I really don't object to the idea of having every author page in every language, that solution has serious co-ordination problems that are far more significant than any issues of disk space. Having a single author page for a person helps to insure that all the information is managed in a centralized way. It lets us know if we have the original version of the work, as well as what translations we do have in our database. The intent of putting these pages in the author's own language was to reduce the domination of English; in practical terms it does not require that anyone know much about the author's language. The only terms that are constant on these pages are the words for "author", "biography" and "works". Redirects can be created in any language to the actual page. If the Plate page (or that of a more obscure Greek author) has only Greek material, it suggest that we don't have any translations available. That just lets us know that there is work to be done.

Whether automated indexing is less of a pain is a matter of opinion. I suppose that to be successful it requires a set of very clearly defined categories, and that leaves a lot of room for debate. I don't do much with putting authors into genre or time based categories, but I don't object to it either. If I don't pigeon-hole an article into categories I'm sure someone else will come along to do it later. There are no restrictions about the number of categories that can be applied to a given article. I don't see where assigning categories in every language for which we have a translation would be a problem. Eclecticology 19:05, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

On Zhaladshar's most recent point the problem arises from the fact that the pipe trick works differently in categories than in other namespaces. In most situations it operates to show a substiutute title, but in categories it is used to put the category list in alphabetical order. Some kind of double pipe that does both could be a solution, but that may require a developer's help. Eclecticology 19:19, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Err ... what do you mean "Zhaladshar has adequately dealt with two of the issues"? He agrees with me on points 1 and 2. But agreeing with me on those points does not solve the problem at all. Concerning point 2, I understand that you recommend me to ask developpers to implement a new syntax, to pray that someone will be willing to do so, to wait for the next software release, and then to wait until the wikisource software has been upgraded... IMHO that problem would be better fixed by a change in namespace, because it results from a bad naming convention (and I guess that would be a developer's opinion too).

Concerning point 3, I agree with you that it can be useful to have a page listing all the works by a given author that are available on Wikisource (although such a listing could be generated automatically, by using a category). So I understand why this "author page" needs to be distinct from the one on wikipedia. However, in that case, I strongly support the idea of having localized pages. Indeed I do not read chinese. Second, I think that when a document in the database contains a link to his author, the average reader would be primarily interested in seeing the wikipedia entry about the author when following the link, rather than a list of his other works in the database. --ThomasV 22:22, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't know how sure I can be of that last statement. And I'm only talking from my own experience here. When I go to Bartelby or Gutenberg to find something to read, I look for works by author, seeing as I don't know everything my favorite authors have known. So I like the fact that there are "author" pages of a sort that show me everything there is to read by that author. I'm not really too concerned about the life of the author when I go searching for his works, which seems to be what you are implying here--that people would be concerned about a biography when all they want is an essay or poem. We also cannot expect every work on Wikisource to have a link on Wikipedia; some things like George Bush's radio addresses or Conan Doyle's works or Kipling's poetry are too numerous to be all linked over at Wikipedia. Like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia will probably only ever give a bibliography of an author's most major works. Wikisource can offer far more than that. And in regards to the fact that a person who reads a work here will want to know that author's biography, we do link to the exact biography on Wikipedia. All it takes is an extra two-second click to get to the author's main page and then to his biography. Zhaladshar 23:22, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

all right, I buy that. But my points 1 and 2 remain. I wish I was there when it came to voting about subdomains. --ThomasV 23:36, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Biography lists

Would anyone be opposed to changing the biography lists on the author pages from this:

By columns

This is shorter and doesn't require as much screen real estate. —Mike 06:54, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I see your point. The single column form looked much neater at the beginning, but some have gotten quite long. Would a multicolumn system be workable. See the translation sections in . Language names alone are short enough that we could accomodate several columns. Eclecticology 00:01, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

After looking at 's content, I think I like the multi-column system. What we currently use now I think if fine for authors who only have about 10 or less biographies on Wikipedia. Any more than that and a user is assaulted with an inordinate amount of white space. I like Mike's idea, too, but I think his method would really only work for some authors like Aristotle who have an enormous number of Wikipedia bios. Otherwise, the bio section would be very cramped and small, in my personal opinion. But I think the multi-columns would be our best bet since we maximize the amount space used in any given author's biographical section. Since I am not active on Wiktionary, I do not know how easy it is to add new languages to those columns, but from what it looks like to me it would be an arduous task to reorganize each column every time a new language is added. If we adopt it here, my only concern is that it would keep people from updating author pages just for the fact that it takes much more time to reorganize a column than to simply copy and paste a link to a very straightforward list like what we have now. (Not to mention, actually making tables using Wiki mark-up is an arduous task if you aren't familiar with it). Zhaladshar 00:57, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'll experiment with it. Five columns should do it. In the listing above "Bahasa Indonesia" is the longest item, so it can give a reference length. Reading by columns (rather than rows) should allow the changes to be more easily. Adding a new language shouldn't be a problem. The columns could easily put out of sync, but someone more familiar with the method can fix that quite easily later. Eclecticology 03:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The five column example is above. Colours are optional, but for this experiment they make the columns stand out. If people like this model I can still tinker with it to make it a little more usable. Eclecticology 03:40, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It works for me. —Mike 10:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Looks great to me, too. Go for it. Zhaladshar 12:53, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've copied the column format to the Author:George W. Bush page and added the languages that weren't there when that article was set up. How does it look in context? Eclecticology 10:53, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I like it. It's far more compact than having a straight up and down list. It'll take me some time to get used to seeing the new format since I am very used to the old one. Tell me, how long did it take for you to make those tables? And are we going to turn every page into this new format? I can't see why not, but just thought I'd ask anyway, since some authors only have three or four languages in their biography section.

I'm setting up something at Wikisource:Bio-template to be used for other tables based on this model. It didn't take me very long to do it because I was already familiar with the model at Wiktionary. As to when to use it, I would encourage it with ten or more languages, treat it as optional with five to nine, and not bother with four or fewer. Eclecticology 17:17, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Of course, this problem would not arise if author pages were localized... btw, do you really want to give a link to a chinese biography of an author if we have no chinese translation of his works? --ThomasV 20:08, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, at least for the principal author page for that person. Eclecticology 03:00, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

中文古典诗词评注计划

对中国古典诗词进行评注，可以参看野望 (王绩)以及日文的酔花間。甚至可以扩大范围，变成中国古代文献评注计划，包括所有古代文言文的诗词曲赋，小说论著等等。遵守NPOV，融汇各家对某一篇文章的评注，比如野望 (王绩)，可以添加各朝各代，古今中外对这首诗的评论、分析、注释、考证等。有人对此感兴趣吗？我们可以先讨论一下格式和写作方针的问题。--Shizhao 13:04, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A Challenge to Ec

I wrote the following on the German Main talk page, but I want to put it here for the general public:

“I think the whole bunch of you should also post a note to w:User talk:Jimbo Wales about how unfair this whole thing was: The policy is unfair, the very need for a vote was unfair, and the decision after the vote was most unfair (why vote in the first place if you are not going to abide by its results)? It was clear from the very beginning that the people voting to support domains were people for whom the present system is inadequate.”

Let us make the point absolutely clear:

We currently have 12 valid votes (logged in and on time) saying Yes to language subdomains. (I think even those who oppose will agree that we count our friend 80.133… who didn’t log in on principle but made hundreds of edits.)

We have 8 valid votes currently opposed.

If we count those who were anons or who voted late – then the majority in support is even bigger!

When the voting began, it was clear from the very beginning that those in support were people who would like to participate if they had a domain supporting their language. No one ever suggested (in the beginning) that their votes were less important than those who find the current project adequate. Not until Ec starting edit-counting in the middle of the vote. Why does the Wikimedia board bend over backwards for him after the fact?!

A vote should not have been needed in the first place – that was Tim Starling’s surprise decision, though we can all understand why he did it. But after a vote was then taken, why disregard it?

What this vote was really about is clear: Are potential monolingual contributors, who need language subcommunities, important to Wikisource or not? Those comfortable here now said no, but the potential contributors said yes. And then board then decided to listen to Ec after the fact and not to count the votes of potential contributors! This is a sham!

A challenge to Ec: Let people vote with their feet. Allowing subdomains doesn’t force the French, for instance, who seem rather comfortable here now, to move. But who are you to say that “potential” contributors who have expressed positive interest are not important without seeing what they can do?

Let’s set up a parallel wikimedia project “Wikitext” (unless someone can suggest a better name) complete with subdomains. Give people the open choice to use the current WS system (already running) or a blank new system with subdomains, and see what they do. Will they continue adding texts within the existing Wikisource setup? Or will they reproduce Wikisource languages on the new subdomains and choose to work there? If they do the first, then you have lost nothing, Ec. If they do the second then you will be forced to admit that potential monolingual contributors are worth something, and the board should count their votes. But if you are afraid of trying, then you are a sham. Dovi 05:15, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I wonder about Dovi's obsession with this issue. His last constructive edit (about the Mishnah) was in early September, and he has since seen fit to move his Mishnah project to Wikibooks. In the last two and a half months his contributions to Wikisource have been devoted exclusively to campaigning for his idea; this includes posting to the main talk pages of several languages to campaign for votes.

The little time I have had I have devoted to he.wikisource.org, instead of to the messed-up setup here. As for campaigning, except for my interactions with the German-speakers (plus Maio), who I once again reming you began looking for alternative on their own, the rest was people coming on their own.Dovi 13:48, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe that accounts for the high proportion of sockpuppets that participated in the vote. I can do no more than wonder what the outcome would have been if I had chosen to campaign so energetically. I really don't need a personal pissing match with Dovi; I very much prefer spending my time here looking for constructive solutions, and supporting the positive people. Eclecticology 09:47, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I am "pissed." You have a vote about something that should not have needed a vote in the first place, then you win but the board decides not to honor the vote for fear of upsetting Eclecticology. That's "constructive"? Your rejection of people who are looking for a place in Wikisource that is adequate to their needs is "constructive"?Dovi 13:48, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ec, you should acknowledge that there is a problem. Dovi is not an isolated case, most german users feel pissed off. Although I do not support their idea of a boycott, I think that you should admit that what is at stake is your degree of control over that organization. As I already mentioned to you, I believe that you should not try to impose the same monolithic system of organization to all languages, but rather favor diversity. Having language subdomains would probably allow them to have more freedom. --ThomasV 10:09, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I should add that you are wrong to believe that Dovi's contributions in the last 2.5 months have been exclusively devoted to campaining for his idea. Just check the logs of he.wikisource.org, and you will see how active he was in that subdomain. I guess he would be just as active in de.wikisource.org if that subdomain did exist. In addition, the he.wikisource.org subdomain is quite active in itself, there are more contributions there than there are to french pages in wikisource.org. To me, this clearly demonstrates that setting up a subdomain does encourage monolingual users to participate. --ThomasV 10:40, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks, Thomas, for stating what perhaps should be obvious in and of itself, but doing so in such a nice way so that the truth can speak for itself based on the evidence. If a small language like Hebrew is doing so nicely, what would happen in Spanish, German, where we already have interested participants?Dovi 13:48, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Why the passion?

Hi Thomas. At the Language Domain proposal, you wrote:

"Why is this debate so passionated? If we cannot reach an agreement on language subdomains, I think we should just wait. With more users, more opinions will be expressed. I believe, as Christan S mentioned earlier, that it is just a matter of time. In the meantime, there is no reason to have such a dispute. It would be more constructive to work on Wikisource as it is now, rather than to call for a boycott. --ThomasV 10:44, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)"

Look, we had a fairly civil debate where every single aspect of language-domains was discussed at length. No stone was left unturned, and there is little or nothing left to be said about the subject. Then there was a vote, and a lot of people wanted language domains, including people willing to take responsibility for German and Spanish. But a smaller group (!) wanted to deny them the option, and the board decided to give that group veto power. Fairness dictates that language domains are a basic right for anyone on a text-based Wikimedia project, but the Wikisource "community" (just 8 people!!) denied them that right, and the board blatantly took sides by supporting them. I guess that is the main reason for my current "passion."

I no longer think that it is "just a matter of time." No, it will not happen. The board has basically given Eclecticology a permanent veto in this matter. Even if more new people come and ask for domains, the fact of that veto will not change. With his absolute veto power, nothing will ever change until Ec finally admits, as you have asked him to, "that there is a problem here."

So there will never be change unless there is a very strong protest. That also accounts for my "passion." A boycott, I agree, cannot be effective in a wiki environment, and it also hurts the project when people have texts to contribute.

Compare the unwelcoming attitude here at Wikisource with the very open policy for the new Wikinews demo:

"The internationality of the Wikimedia foundation is one of our biggest strengths, and the Wikinews projects will build on this strength right from the start. Our first requirement is that Wikinews will be set up like Wikipedia, with a language domain for every Wikinews project: de.wikinews.org, en.wikinews.org, fr.wikinews.org, and so on. A Wikinews project in a language will be started under two conditions: a) that the language is accepted as one of the Wikimedia project languages, b) that there is at least one person who expresses an interest in working on that language edition…"

Now that is an attitude clearly telling people from all around the world that they are truly welcome from the start!

Wikimedia's goal is "making the sum of all human knowledge available to the world for free." I personally am convinced that it will really happen, too! The source-texts of the world’s languages and cultures are one of the most important parts of that great sum of knowledge, and can only be contributed by the very people who speak and write those languages. Unfortunately, the current Wikisource stands in the way of that goal.

Goodwill and Cooperation

Eclecticology: Open your closed fist into an open, outstretched, welcoming hand. Open the door here for people of many languages and cultures to come and contribute their historical texts on their own terms, even if their system or style is not the same as your own. When they come and ask to participate, do not condition their participation on their acceptance of anyone else’s way of doing things. Accept them on their own terms, and give them whatever support and language tools they ask for from the start, even if you yourself have not asked for those tools. Go ahead and give a true welcome to the great texts of all the world’s cultures at Wikisource. Dovi 04:53, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Declaration of Independence 50 times?

There is no need for personal attacks. What we need is a MediaWiki feature whereby different language interfaces could be used within a single wiki (it would all be a matter of user preferences and maybe page tags for anons). It would be absurd to have the exact same text in 50 different wikis of say the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Keeping one reference version and calling upon that via a template so that it could be annotated in whatever language you wish, would be a killer feature. --Maveric149 06:01, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh - nevermind. Somebody already did that. This whole thing is now moot. --Maveric149 06:46, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Maveric. Yes, the new interface is a cute tool, but unfortunately it does nothing at all about the true multilingual problems at WikiSource. The two real problems here are the PHP codes, and the lack of separate spaces for language subcommunities to grow, as found in all the other Wikimedia text projects. It’s not the interface that matters.

Who ever suggested uploading the American Declaration of Independence 50 times on 50 different sites in English? This is a basic misunderstanding of how domains work on text projects. The way a project like this one naturally develops is that someone submits a German translation of Declaration of Independence on de.wikisource.org, giving it an interwiki link to the English original on en.wikisource.org. No one here ever contemplated anything else.

In a normal community, when a very serious group of users comes along with a deep desire to use a tool which is readily available, which they definitely need, which works wonderfully elsewhere, and which will foster the value-system behind the project (in this case, real multilingualism), the natural reaction of a normal community is to say: “OK, if you really want and need it that badly, then go ahead” – even if they themselves don’t need or want it.

Here at WikiSource, exactly such a request was made by the German users and others, but the reaction to them was: I disagree, and I don’t care how badly all of you want or need it. Very unwiki-like. That unusual and inappropriate reaction is why it has gotten personal, though it shouldn’t have.

Texts, unlike images, are rarely language-neutral. They require a great deal of language-intensive work from teams of people, especially in languages other than English where you can’t just copy thousands of digital texts from Project Gutenberg. A text-project like this one needs language-specific domains and subcommunities. No other system is truly multilingual. Dovi 22:41, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

That still does not make sense to me and seems to go against the original purpose of this project (which is to have a single place where documents could be housed and maintained). Would we need to create different language domains to host Old English vs modern English versions of works by people like Chaucer? Would we also need a Middle English version of Wikisource to host the works of Shakespeare as he wrote them? Where does one draw the line on what should go where? -- Maveric149 23:42, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

All of your questions are good ones, but they could be asked the exact same way about Wikipedia. (In fact, they are asked!) Sometimes it is not exactly clear where to draw the line, but in most places the answer is clear, i.e. for living languages with rich literatures. The new language policy supports domains for all Wikipedia languages.

As for the orginal purpose of this project, that in itself was debated from the very beginning, as were language domains. You yourself wrote (way back when...) that the only reason for domains is comflicting filenames. That fits with your view of the project as a storehouse for texts, which is more or less equivalent to a storehouse for images. But most others feel (see the discussion and vote) that there are many other much more important reasons for domains, and that texts are not like images because creating and improving them is a language-intensive task. In most languages besides English, especially the smaller ones, they need language-intensive collaboration for typing, proofing, formatting, linking, indexing... For them, WikiSource becomes a workshop for texts. Dovi 23:55, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sheet music

Can somebody help with Adeste Fideles/Sheet ? Thanks in advance.

New logo?

Discussion moved to Wikisource talk:Logo

Vandalisme

Il y a eu plusieurs vandalismes sur la page principale et avec AF. Il faudrait vérifier la présentation de AF dans la page principale et savoir ce que signifie : "Dit is ook 'n demonstrasie van gemeenskapsekuriteit. (As jy "stront" aanvang, gaan iemand dit uitvee en regmaak. Probeer eerder iets sinvol skryf.)" Caton 13:01, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Je n'ai aucune idée ce que ça veut dire. Je l'ai demandé sur le "mailing list", et je l'enleverai s'il y a besoin. Malheureusement, les conneries se présentent trop souvent. J'ai protégé la page. Eclecticology 23:32, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

On m'a repondu. En anglais: ""This is also a demonstration of community-security (If you start to write shit, someone will delete it and correct it). Rather try to write something meaningful." Ou en français: "Voici une demonstration de scurité communautaire. (Si on commence par écrire la merde, quelqu'un l'éffacera et la corrigera). Mieux d'écrire quelque chose de significatif." Eclecticology 13:06, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Theater formatting

It would be great to standardize the formatting of theater plays. I have defined this example for a play in verses. It took me quite some time, but I guess that now that it's done it will be much easier to recycle the same format for other plays. I have no way to know if it is properly displayed with Internet Explorer, though (but okay, nobody should use IE). I also have no idea if the same formatting conventions apply to English and French theater. --ThomasV 14:16, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It looks good to me. I'm no expert on formatting conventions for plays (English of French), but plays I have read follow a pattern similar to this. The only thing I dislike (which is purely a preference thing) is the numbering. It seems too cluttered to have the numbering on the left side of the text, since that is where the character names are, also. But, again, that's just personal preference. Everything else looks great. Zhaladshar 15:28, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, the original numbering was right-aligned in the cell (but still on the left of the text), so it did not show up at the same place as the character names. --ThomasV 15:37, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just re-aligned the line numbers to the right --ThomasV 15:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It looks great, but just looking at the edit page shows that it's a lot of work. Can it be simplified? Is a single set of line numbers for the entire play typical French practice? Most English numbering re-starts the numbering again with each scene; that can be an advantage when we divide a play into several pages. It also prevents having an update in the early part of the play that puts the rest of the lines out of alignment. As to whether the numbers should be on the right or left of the text, I slightly prefer the right but can live with either. By all means carry on.

What would really be interesting would be if this could be adapted to something like what was done with the German/Italian text of some of the Divine Comedy. Eclecticology 22:47, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deathday Scan Parties

I've had an idea to give Wikisource more impact: How about organizing a "Deathday party", when the work of a famous writer enters the public domain? That would be 70 years after death (actually, it seems that texts enter public domain only on the 1st of January of the next year, but we could accomodate for 71 years, in order to have parties scattered throughout the year). At the deathday of a famous author, we would scan his/her texts and put them on Wikisource. Such events would be announced in the main page of the corresponding language, and we could also announce them on external sites/blogs. Another advantage is that it would underline the benefits of going into public domain, and the insane length of copyright terms. --ThomasV 17:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It sounds like a workable idea. You could still use 50 years for Canadian and Australian authors. EU law should not operate to give someone a longer copyright period than he has in his own country. I do normally agree with the end of year provision in copyright law; it helps to keep things simple.

The advantages of your idea are primarily promotional. Celebrating someones's death day can include an alert to those interested that they should have their material ready to go at the end of the year. In practical terms I can't see the copyright owners making too much fuss in that last year even if we are a few months early. If an affected party complains the material would still be in the database, ready to be undeleted at the end of the year. Go ahead; let's see what these parties look like. Eclecticology 22:33, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is definitely a great idea. I think we should make a coordination page listing the relevant authors, where contributors can assign themselves to a scan task (a complete work or some chapters of larger works) to avoid that two or more contributors waste their time by scanning the same text. In a promotional context we could also make scan parties in celebration of other events like the 200th birthday of an author. --Christian S 09:40, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

How about Wikisource:Scan parties? This should have a link from the main page for each language. Eclecticology 18:59, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikisource:Scan parties is fine with me, it was something like that I had in mind. It is a good neutral title that is open to celebrate works going into public domain as well as other events. I definitely like it better than "deathday scan parties" - "hey, an author died on this day, lets have a party" - that sounds a little morbid to me ;-) --Christian S 22:12, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree. The concept of scan parties is great. It will be a great promotional thing, because if we advertise right (such as on the other projects), many people could potentially hear about them and be curious as to what we do over here. It might be a great way of getting more people to become involved in Wikisource. Also, these parties will help us get large amounts of an author's works onto this project (especially in a short amount of time) because people will have time to get ready works they would like to contribute, as I think was mentioned earlier. And I like the idea of having scan parties to celebrate birthdays and other important dates, too. These sorts of things might help this project grow (because I still consider us fairly small). Zhaladshar 23:09, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, "deathday" has something morbid, we should find a more appealing name for those events. but just saying "scan parties" is a bit uninformative, it doesn't say what it is about. anyway, I have no better idea for the moment. --ThomasV 10:09, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Election result formatting

I have a question regarding the formatting of election data on Wikisource: What is it? As far as I can tell, there is no real set format for submitting the election results of numerous countries, for different types of elections, or for a breakdown of different constituencies. This, so far, is fairly problematic in regards to standardizing election results of the U.S. presidential election--I would like to move the results from the primaries and caucuses to better pages than simply New Hampshire or Iowa (both of which are redirects) or even Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries (which or course, are no better than the redirects, for they do not allow for different years to be added).

I know that Ec. has been working with another user for standardizing English election results, so I propose that we move that conversation here and work with it from there. I have some ideas regarding possible ways of doing it, such as a format like this:

[Year] [Country] [Election type] election results - [Local election result]: [Constituency]

An example would be

2004 United States presidential election results
2004 United States presidential election results - Primary result: New Hampshire
2004 United Kingdom general election results - Constituency: A

where we would only fill in the required information (i.e., not every bit would be required in the title if it would not be needed). These of course, are only my own thoughts; what do you guys think? Zhaladshar 01:36, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm glad to see that this issue is drawing attention. This is the hierarchy that I suggested for the UK elections:

1. Election results
- 2. Election results (UK)
  - 3. Election results (UK 2001)
    - 4. Election results (UK 2001 general)
      - 5. Election results (UK 2001 general) - Constituencies:I-J

The principal idea was based on a top down approach that could be adapted to results from any country. I begin with "Election results" (or possibly even simply "Elections" to reduce length) because that's the most important term in all this class of articles, and the chance of ambiguity with other subjects is less likely. Another advantage of using "Elections" alone might be that it is identical, or at least similar, in several languages. I dismissed the idea of beginning with the country name to avoid shuffling election results with other things that might be developed about the country. Similarly, years are better suited to being tools for disambiguation than for starting articles; I would suggest that years as the beginning be reserved for special instances only.

The next part of the title is a disambiguation process that identifies just what election we are talking about. Again these are orderred beginning with the broadest concept, most often the country, but it could be something broader still like the EU. Flexibility needs to be retained about the type of election, because of the varied possibilities that can arise here.

The final part of the title is only needed when the results are so voluminous that they shoudl be subdivided. A breakdown of the presidential primary by county for a small state like New Hampshire can likely be accomodated on a single page while the Texas results may need to be spread over several pages.

Scalability is an important feature. This kind of approach can be used for section titles within an article just as easily as for the article titles. I hope that I have adequately expressed my ideas on this. Eclecticology 04:31, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I see your points, and I pretty much agree. Starting with "Election results" would be best because it is the most important element; starting with anything else could be confused with other developments in that same country or other developments in a certain year. Although, one could argue that starting with a country's name would be preferable since it is something that did develop in that country, but I do think since the data falls under a different grouping--that of "Election data"--it would be nice to start with that instead.

However, I do disagree on shortening the name to simply "Elections." It would be nice to use just that word, but if that section begins to expand ultimately some languages won't have a word for it that sounds similar to "election." I think that for the sake of clarification and narrowing the topic a bit, it would be more beneficial to use "election results."

I've changed my heirarchy a bit to match something more like this:

Election results ([Year] [Country] [Election type]) - [Local election result]: [Constituency]

An example:

Election results (2001 United Kingdom general election) - Constituencies:I-J

Election results (2004 United States presidential election)

It's pretty much a condensed version of what you did for the UK election results. I just put the entire heirarchy into one, but I think it still has the same versatility as the other one. The only real change I did was switch the year and the country around, but this is simply a preferential thing--I think it reads a bit better like this--but it isn't that big of a deal. Zhaladshar 21:22, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks. I appreciate your being able to take a big-picture approach to this kind of issue. The main thing for me was to follow the [What it is (disambiguator) - sub-division] format. We can still retain flexibility within the disambiguator as long as we retain consistency for a particular election. Any future development will depend on the experiences that we will have with this. Eclecticology 22:56, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I accept your argument for not using "Elections" alone. What wasn't clear was whether you were suggesting "Election data" instead of "Election results". Either would be fine with me. Eclecticology 23:00, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh. Um...I'm not really too picky about either. If we are only adding material that pertains to outcomes of elections, I would prefer "Election results." If someone can think of other "data" we might add, it might be nice to use "Election data" and add the word "results" later on to disambiguate it from other forms of election data. Such as using

Election data (2001 United Kingdom general election results) - Constituencies:I-J

But I really don't know what other kinds of data we would be using, so using simply

Election results (2001 United Kingdom general election) - Constituencies:I-J

would keep the length of the name down a bit. Zhaladshar 00:38, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Logo selection procedure

The following multiple stage procedure is proposed as a means of definitively deciding on the Wikisource logo. All time periods suggested are approximate and may be varied by practical considerations.

The current informal voting page will be maintained until January 31, 2005 during which times anyone may vote or propose alternative logos in good faith.
When that period has expired a further week will be allowed for votes, but not for adding new designs or variations.
When that vote is closed all designs and variations which received no votes whatsoever will be eliminated.
Voting after this will require minimum qualifications; whether a person qualifies to vote will be evaluated separately at each stage.
The next votes over a period of not less than one week each will select a major variant for each design. No voting will take place at this time for proposals that do not have major variants. Voting in each family of variants will proceed independently until a single variant is supported by an absolute majority of those voting.
The final stage will select between proposals, all of which have been reduced to a single variant.
At each round of voting in this stage if a logo has an absolute majority of valid votes it will be declared the winner. Failing this, the logo with the least number of votes, and any other proposed logo receiving less than 10% of the total votes will be eliminated, and a new round will take place. Eclecticology 19:42, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Only just spotted this - here's some reactions:

I would suggest that a vote only be considered once we have established our criteria for the new logo. I added a suggested set of criteria to Wikisource:Logo which has not received any response yet. Without coming to at least a vague agreement of what 'problem' we are trying to 'solve' then a vote is somewhat meaningless as everyone will be using their own incompatible criteria rather than trying to find something that fulfils an agreed goal.
Once we know what we are looking for then I think your broad approach is suitable. I would suggest the first deadline is '1 month after we announce the contest' with the other dates being relative to this date also. By announce the contest, I mean announce it on meta, the mailing list and on Wikipedia as well.
I'm not sure whether I agree about the order of the last couple of stages. Would it not be better to make a broad decision about the logo and then to refine it, rather than refining a lot of logos and then picking the one we want? Ultimately, if the idea is good then there will be many refinements that could be made. (as an example, my Stack Of Books idea could use any colours, and the text could be in any style or font or colour, there could be more or fewer books in the stack, and so on. Is there any point in presenting a dozen variations when it is really the basic design that matters?)
For reference, have you looked at m:International_logo_vote, which was the vote for the Wikipedia logo? I wasn't involved in that, but it might be worth speaking to someone who was and finding out what the strengths/weaknesses of their process were.

--HappyDog 21:57, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm sorry, perhaps I should have responded to the list of criteria. I don't know if it's a valid excuse to say that they seemed like such obvious common-sense that no comment was necessary. :-) Your concerns about the criteria are well taken, but people tend to feel that the right to vote on anything is important. In practice they generally vote for what is sensible if those criteria are known, but you get negative reactions when you try to forbid some ideas that are just plain silly. One criterion that probably needs to be added is a willingness to assign copyrights to the Wikimedia Foundation.

One month, more or less, after the formal announcement should be fine. If the announcements can be made by the end of December, the end of January deadline should still be workable. Still, I would like to maintain some short term flexibility on the voting periods, as long as each subsequent vote last for a least a week. Wiki Quarto has asked for material about Wikisource, including about the logo vote. (See below.) I don't know what their intended "publication" date is, but if it's after the end of December the one month deadline for new submissions could be altered to suit circumstances. I would appreciate if you could do the publicity work that you suggested including writing up something on the logo vote for Wiki Quarto.

The order of the votes was based on my experience in observing the Wikipedia logo vote. There was confusion in people's minds over those that had multiple variants, and whether they were being voted on as separate proposals. I would prefer to avoid that by reducing the representations of each design to the one that has the best chance of winning. At the beginning of the following stage it should be made clear that each design may be varied to better conform with the criteria. (On the book-stack I would suggest, for example, that rather than a stack of rectangles each book show a slight curve such as one sees when looking at a hard-cover book form the top or bottom.) I would probably also add that adding the word, "Wikisource", is not a votable criterion at this stage. The adopted logo would include the two variants with and without the word at the bottom.

I was around for the vote that you mentioned, and was the one who then suggested the idea of a preliminary vote to reduce the huge number of candidates to a manageable number. What I have proposed here takes that idea one step furhter to ensure that the chosen design receives an absolute majority on the final vote.

One more point has to do with who can vote. At the current nomination phase it doesn't matter because we want as many candidate designs as we can get. It also doesn't matter in the first elimination phase; the principle here is that if not even a single unregistered user likes it there is no point going any further with that design. Beyond that stage the question of who can vote is very important, and we need usable rules before voting starts on that stage. No rules that vate should be changed while a vote is going on. Eclecticology 03:21, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Ec, and Happy New Year. Been off-line since before Christmas, so am only just getting a chance to respond - sorry about that. I'll happily write a bit of a blurb about the logo contest for Quarto and wherever else it's needed. I looked at the comment below and assuming that they mean the 17th January as the deadline, in which case I can get something done for then. However, I'm relatively new to this project and therefore probably only qualified to talk about the logo vote. If more needs to be added and it needs to be done as a single article then let me know how best to proceed.

As far as the method of voting is concerned, if you've had experience of the previous logo vote then I'll bow to that knowledge. We need to make sure that the procedure and deadlines are very clear though. Perhaps when the third stage of voting is reached and a single variant of each design has been picked we could include a link from each design to 'view other variants'. This would make it clear what you were voting for, but still allow people to see how it might be modified. I know that people without experience of graphic design can sometimes focus on the wrong elements (e.g. don't like it because they don't like the colour) and the variants might help to avoid this.

By the way - have you noticed that a bunch of logos have disappeared from the logo vote page? Any idea what's happened here?

--HappyDog 17:07, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Christmas project - need help to find links on wikisource

Hi, we are creating a Christmas related project that should make people aware of the co-operation between wikimedia projects. So I thought that it would be a good idea to insert also Christmas related links (poems, stories etc.) in any available language to the project. So if you know of any contents of Wikisource that is Christmas related, please let me know. I'll check back here during the next days - or just put a note on my talk-page. Thank you!!!! Ciao! -- SabineCretella 14:04, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Right now the only thing I can think of is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Zhaladshar 15:22, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here's a list of making of things Christmas-related as I find them/post them on Wikisource:

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
A Christmas Tree, by Charles Dickens
What Christmas Is as We Grow Older, by Charles Dickens
Christmas by Injunction, by O. Henry
The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry
A small series from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, by Washington Irving
A Kidnapped Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum
Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, by L. Frank Baum
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus
Ceremonies for Christmas, by Robert Herrick
Christmas-Eve, Another Ceremony, by Robert Herrick
A Christmas Letter, by Stephen Leacock
Hoodoo McFiggin's Christmas, by Stephen Leacock
Merry Christmas, by Stephen Leacock
The Errors of Santa Claus, by Stephen Leacock

Thank you so much! I added these links here: http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikizionario:Buon_Natale hopefully this sub-project is going to be translated and transferred to many other wiktionaries. It is thought to be a project to show how interproject links can help to show all the potentials of wikimedia. -- SabineCretella 10:15, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here are some Christmas carols I was able to find:

Great! Thank you! I added also these songs. It is very likely that I am going to add some carols/poems etc. I find that match with this theme. Hopefully I will find also things in other languages :-) -- SabineCretella 17:00, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please do! It wasn't until you asked for Christmas-related material that I noticed we just don't have much. So most of the non-carol works I've added myself, just so we could have something on here. Much more would be quite welcome! Zhaladshar 21:06, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Suggestions for transcription and cleaning up wikiproject

I have a couple of rare New Zealand-orientated books that are in the public domain, and would like to put them on Wikisource for the sake of preservation. However, I attempted transcribing one by hand and because it was such a long and tedious process, I only made it to page 3! So how, exactly, do most people do it? A guide would be very handy.

By the way, is there a wikiproject dedicated to cleaning up texts for the sake of readibility? I'm not talking about modifying the actual content, just making sure paragraphs are put in place where appropriate, and that it is divided into parts and chapters for a table of contents. Sounds like a good idea to me at least, since some of them are in a pretty bad stat ein this respect.

Cheers.

The easiest and shortest method for me is to scan and OCR the text before copying it into the Wiki. Of course be sure to weed out all the OCR mistakes before saving it. —Mike 05:13, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that OCR is the fastest and easiest way, if the text is latinised. But the OCR program that I have tried so far gives useless results when I try to scan texts in gothic script. The errors were so many that it was in fact faster to transcribe the text by hand than to correct all the errors. And yes, the process is tedious, but presently I have no better solution for texts in gothic script.

There is currently no cleaning up project (as far as I know), but please do go ahead and start one. I find that work just as important as adding new texts, as poor formatting, justly or unjustly, implies that the work has not been done properly, and that the text may not be trustworthy (if the contributor didn't care about formatting, did he/she then care about proofreading?). A good start would be to create a page like Wikisource:Texts needing formatting or Wikisource:Texts needing cleanup listing the relevant texts there as you stumple upon them, perhaps with a short note about what needs to be done, thereby bringing to the communitys attention that these texts needs cleaning up. --Christian S 20:17, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Try voice recognition software - it may be easier/faster than typing' Chee(rs), Melb. Aust

US Patents

I'm often running into the need to cite US patents as sources for various pages on the English Wikipedia; however, for various older patents the US online patent database offers them only as a series of TIFF images. If I convert them to a friendlier format, such as PDF or PS, would Wikisource be an appropriate place to deposit a dozen or so patents? (I believe as actual documents, US patents are in the public domain). Matt Crypto 20:32, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There should be no copyright problem with including patents. What we do about the titles we use should remain an open question until we have a few to work with. I don't know if everyone finds PDF to be a friendly format. I would be inclined to use plain text for the descriptions, and whatever other format we normally use for black and white drawings. Even there we will be able to review that after we have a few in the database. Eclecticology 12:28, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree that plain text would be preferable, but I don't have the means to do OCR at present. Would PDF be an acceptable half-way house? To most, it's a friendlier format than a series of TIFFs. Matt Crypto 13:30, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Copyrights of TV interviews

Does anyone know how copyright laws cover transcriptions of TV broadcasts? I was going through Wikisource and I found this: A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy. It was aired March 9, 1954 on CBS. Is this eligible for copyright protection (I'm leaning to "yes," but I just want it clarified)? And if someone could just tell me what the copyright laws regarding television broadcasts in general are, that would be great. Zhaladshar 21:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

According to http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#hlc, the copyright term could last anywhere from 1982-2049, depending on whether the copyright was renewed. CBS would hold the copyright to the original motion picture production, as well as the transcript of that production. The original broadcast itself would not be copyrighted, http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#pub, because it was a free (and intangible) display of the motion picture. I hope this makes it clearer! The folks to contact about the copyright status would be CBS. Clifflandis 02:29, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Revisiting categorisation

I strongly opposed using the LOC system in the first place, and I'm still strongly against it now. It's profoundly useless for anyone who isn't already familiar with it, which is likely to be a majority of our users - and our editors. Furthermore, the ad-hoc "Subject" space is ugly, and looks particularly bad in most skins (those that don't have the categories at the bottom). That said, it seems to me that there is an alternative, and it could well work to simply have two sets of categorisation running alongside each other.

We've now seen on Wikipedia that it's not uncommon for articles to have five or six categories, and in this way, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work to have a Wikipedia-style system and a LOC system here. Each article would just be in two (or four) categories. It'd be nice if, say, a UN resolution that I fixed up could be in a Liberia category, and a UN resolutions category, as well as the LOC for those who insist on using it. Thoughts? Ambivalenthysteria 10:27, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Welcome back, I'm glad to see you again. I see no problem in using both Wikipedia-style and LOC categories. In fact, the danish Wikipedia is already using both traditional word-based categories and DK5 categories (DK5 is the danish equivalent of LOC). There is still the problem with the language of the categories. I would suggest something like categorising in the language of the text, that will result in word-based categories with all texts on a subject in a given language, these categories can then be interlinked to corresponding categories in other languages and the LOC category, which can then function as a universal category that collects all texts in all languages on a given subject. How does that sound? --Christian S 13:04, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It looks like Christian was faster with his welcome back than I. :-)

This is consistent with what I have thought all along. In the early discussions on this I did propose that an article could be in multiple systems (not just two) as long there was a way of distinguishing which system was being used for a particular category. This explained the prefix "LC-" where the Library of Congress system was being used. Of course the addition of any further new category systems depends on there being someone willing to do the work of developing that system. User:ThomasV has added "fr:" to the beginning of articles to indicate that the article is in French.

I do admit that I have had second thoughts about the "subject" space. Even as I continue to support alternate category systems I've started to think that perhaps it might be simpler if category pages were themselves be included in the relevant LOC category.

I'm glad to see that you are reconsidering your participation in this project. I did find your departure, apparently over the issue of categories, to be abrupt. It would be nice to see the UN resolutions completed. :-) Useful as they may be, I still view categories as secondary to the primary text addition function of this project. I do still believe that an individual contributor has the option of adding or not adding categories to his efforts without being criticized for such a failure. Someone who is concerned about categories can always add one or more later. Eclecticology 13:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In this case, would you have any objections to my creating a set of categories along the lines of, say, Category:United Nations Security Council resolutions and Category:Liberia in the next couple of days? We could also link between the LOC and these fairly easily. Ambivalenthysteria 13:10, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Go right ahead and create the categories. I've never been a fan of the LOC categorization, but I do like the more Wikipedia-style categories. I think that right at this point they are completely under-utilized, and I would like to see them used more on this project (I'm planning on beginning creating categories, too, once I get off my lazy butt :-) ). I'm not sure how helpful a category for United Nations Security Council resolutions would be, since we already have a page dedicated solely to those, but please, still feel free to create what you want. Zhaladshar 18:40, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Go ahead:-) --Christian S 19:18, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikimedia Quarto

The second edition of the newsletter is underway, with an eye to finalizing draft content by the 17th. Please add yourself to the list of contributors if you are interested in any aspect of its production; we need more people in every department!

  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/Team

We seek someone who would like to write on Wikisource. A brief update is needed. Let others know how Wikisource has been going recently (Subdomain poll, new logo poll, resources, number of admins and so on).If you have an interet, please give a look on m:WQ/2/Todo. Thanks. --Aphaia 01:26, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Help needed to write Extension

In Wikisource:Scriptorium/Language domain requests, we seem to have reached an agreement on the idea of localizing author pages. However, it will be necessary to maintain a comprehensive list of all the localized pages referring to the same author, or of all the translations of a given text. In order to automate this process, I started to work on a wikimedia extension. This extension is now in CVS, and I hope we will be able to use it after the next release.

Part of job of this extension consists in translating lists of adjectives such as 'french', 'english', 'german' in different languages. The goal is to be able to automatically generate arrays such as: 'Diese Seite auf englisch | deutsch | spanisch' or 'This text in Italian | French | English'.

I completed the table for 8 languages: french, german, english, italian, spanish, portuguese, polish, danish (with the help of ChristianS). Anyone who feels like adding new languages to the table is welcome to do so. Russian, Greek or Chinese are not within my grasp. --ThomasV 13:36, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

More on author pages

I moved this discussion from ThomasV's talk page because I think it merits enough import to be put in a more open discussion, and because I have some things to respond to also, which would be better to post here for everyone to read and be a part of:

I've been carefully watching the progress on the author pages to see what develops, and a couple of concerns have already appeared that have me more strongly favouring a formal author namespace. We already have two separate entries for the French and English pages in the list of "A" authors. The possible problem there is that these index pages will grow much faster than they probably should. With Karl Marx if I go to the German page, take the link to the Wikisource:Authors-M page then try to link back to Marx from there, I end up at the English page.

I would still like to find some sort of relatively language neutral way of expressing "Author:" Eclecticology 19:43, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

sorry if I did not work very much on author pages after our discussion in the scriptorium... Zhaladshar and I thought it would worth waiting for more opinions to be expressed before changing everything, and I spent most of my time on the php extension. so I guess the current state should still be viewed as experimental...

Maybe a localized author page could link to two lists of authors: one that contains author pages written in the same language (like the Category:Fr:Auteurs for french), and one that is comprehensive, ie the full authors index. However, one issue will be how to organize this full index, especially when chinese/greek authors are in there. my opinion is that it will not be possible to mix different alphabets in this index, so it will have to be somehow localized. but I won't complain if it is in english, because monolingual french users will still have access to a french index.

concerning the namespace, I still believe the most neutral way of expressing "Author:Karl Marx" is to drop the prefix for the 'main' author page, just calling it Karl Marx. I think this will make things easier for editors of other wikipedia projects. Another possibility, which would fit well with the extension I'm working on, is to call it "Category:Karl Marx".

--ThomasV 10:47, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In regards to Eclecticology's first point (about the Karl Marx example), the only thing I can say is that those links will have to be changed manually. It's completely muddled up right now, but I think that once we come up with a naming convention for author pages, it won't be hard at all--it will just take some time. I think it would be best, though, to establish what this new convention would be very quickly, because like he said, author pages will keep coming, and the more we delay this the more we will have to change later on.

In regards to finding some way to neutrally denote a "main" author page, I think it would be nice to use something like "Scriptor:". It would parallel the name of our Scriptorium, and I can't see any language bias in using that--Latin is not a spoken language. And, Latin also has a long history of use, so that would also be a plus. I know ThomasV is a fan of just having the author's name ("Karl Marx", for example) as the main author page. I think this would be fine if we made them redirect pages and sent them to something like "Scriptor:Karl Marx," and use a disambiguation page if necessary (such as if "Karl Marx" were also a title of a work).

I do not have a problem with what ThomasV proposes, about localized author pages linking to both the localized author index and the comprehensive one. In fact, I think that would probably be best. As we've discussed about the new way author pages would be constructed, localized author pages would only contain works in that language (i.e. a French localized author page would only have French works, an English author page only English works, etc.), but we should still offer links back to a comprehensive author index which contains everything. ThomasV does bring up an interesting point about Chinese/Greek languages. On this master index, we would be (probably miserably) mixing numerous alphabets together. For this, I propose we use something like the Pinyin of a Chinese name (and similar Romanization of other languages) or use the Latin version of such names (such as Greek) in order to alphabetize the names. It's not ideal, I know, but for the master index, I can't see any way of doing it without having to make small concessions in favor of one language over another. Zhaladshar 16:15, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi,

I did not say that author pages should only link to works in one language. if the listed author did not write in the language of the page, it might be interesting to link to the original version of the text as well, which means 2 languages. What I think should be avoided is a list of lists, where for each listed work we would give a comprehensive list of translations. lists of lists tend to be long and difficult to read.

concerning the 'main' author page, I do not like the 'scriptor' option. I do not understand why we need a prefix in the first place. Ec seems to believe it will facilitate searches, but I do not understand why somebody would want to type "Author" in the search box. it is much simpler to look in the index. or did I miss something?

--ThomasV 17:03, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The "Scriptor" solution would satisfy my concern about not favoring any modern language. From the way that I understand ThomasV's point his concern is less between "scriptor" and "author" than it is about having a prefix at all. It's almost as if we are looking at the same book, but while I'm trying to find out what's in the book by looking at the Table of Contents he's trying to do it by looking at the Index. Both ways are useful, but they need to complement each other.

A number of localized author pages have appeared in the last few days in several languages. That's fine. The problem is that none of these new additions have a built in capacity to scale in such a way as to give a comprehensive view of the author, his works and whatever else may be available in the various Wiki projects. A suitable prefix enables that. I have considered the option of just having the author name without a prefix, and indicating the various localizations by using "/en" or "/fr" as the case may be, and putting a biographer's or other name in parentheses when the reference was to something about the author. That has its problems too. Authors' names themselves vary from one language to another. Also, if a personal name is used for the master author page the technique does not readily distinguish between an author and some other person who may never have written anything.

The concern for authors in other scripts remains, and perhaps I have not given it as much attention as I should. But I suspect that the transition to dealing withe that problem will be relatively easy once we have consensus over the Roman scripted languages. Standard romanizations can be used such as pinyin, and that still doesn't stop the localizations from following the standards of the language involved. Quite some time ago the question was raised about the "extra" letters in Danish, and it was not that big of a problem.

Another interesting point that was raised at some point is the demarcation between what belongs here and what belongs on Wikipedia. My view is that a certain amount of overlap is desirable. At this stage it seems better to be open ended on this while it gets resolved. If at some point in the future we decide that we have included a lot of material that properly belongs exclusively in Wikipedia deleting it will be very easy. I think that for now, none of us would have the stomach to include long biographical sketches about the authors. A few elementary details plus links to Wikipedia are adequate for our purposes; anything more could land us into the NPOV squabbles that are so frequent there. We are still able to consider Karl Marx as an author without having to debate the validity of Marxism. Eclecticology 20:36, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

err... I'm not sure to understand what you mean by "looking at the toc" vs "looking at the index". I also have difficulties to understand "to scale in such a way as to give a comprehensive view of the author"...

but since you agreed on writing localized author pages, my main concern has now disappeared. I consider naming conventions as something less important, and I do not want to impose my views on how to name 'main' author pages, also because I am not sure if these 'main' author pages are really needed. Maybe you could start building a few of those, so that we see what exactly you have in mind, how they are linked to other pages, how useful they are, etc. that way, we will be talking about something more concrete. --ThomasV 21:23, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps it's better if I don't expand my analogy. At this point that might just cause more confusion than it merits. :-)

I agree that something concrete would help. I'll work on a few with the "Scriptor:" prefix over the next few days -- (except when my wife wants me to spend sociable time away from the computer for Christmas!) - Best of the season to you all. Eclecticology 22:07, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If we're getting into localised prefixes and localised indexes, wouldn't it make sense to just go multilingual in the same way as Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews? If we keep dealing with this in this ad hoc manner, its just going to get messier the larger, and the more multilingual, we get. Ambivalenthysteria 22:46, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I was supporting language subdomains in the first place. however it seems that a majority expressed itself against this idea, so I guess we should move on. for more information on recent developments, check "Wikisource:Scriptorium/Language domain proposal" and "Wikisource:Scriptorium/Language domain requests" pages. --ThomasV 11:14, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think this is an abundantly stupid stance, and one that is going to cause serious problems down the track, but it doesn't affect what I'm trying to do at the moment, I'll drop it - for now. Ambivalenthysteria 12:43, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

what do you mean by 'stupid stance'? --ThomasV 13:47, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Ambi: This was perhaps the most heated debate from the time you were away. What you see in this section is some of the more detailed issues in a compromise. We were able to do this without help from the ArbCom. This proves that the wiki is working when enough people on both sides of the debate want it to work. At this point there are people on both sides of the issue committed to make it work, while respecting the concerns of the others. Ultimately it would also be nice to see multilingual representations of the UN resolutions, but I don't think anybody is in a hurry for that. Eclecticology 18:55, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia links

This is something that I've seen used to good effect on Wikinews, and I believe it could be particularly useful in some aspects here. I'm trying to use the UN Security Council Resolutions as a means of really building Wikisource up as a resource for documents in this area, but as part of this, I'd like to be able to link references to people and organisations to their respective Wikipedia articles. It'd be an encouragement for work to actually be done on those articles (which are often need cleanup or creation), and I think it'd improve the quality of the resource, by making background information accessible with a click. Any thoughts? Ambivalenthysteria 09:49, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absolutely. The problem, as usual, is the amount of work involved. I don't think that there would be any significant opposition to doing this, either with direct links or with footnotes. I do occasionally make such links, but I will be the first to admit that his own efforts are scarcely more than haphazard. Eclecticology 19:04, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

About "CJK Compatibility Ideographs"

I'm in trouble. Why does MediaWiki1.4b3 change CJK Compatibility Ideographs to CJK Unified Ideographs? see 狩獵免許稅徵收ニ關スル法律. 免 changed into 免. --Shin-改 04:11, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This question goes well beyond my abilities, so I've posted it to the Wikitech mailing list. Eclecticology 08:58, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you.--Shin-改 09:34, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Brion replied as follows on the mailing list. I can't say that I understand it. If you need further explanation, I suggest that you e-mail him directly. Eclecticology 20:37, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"MediaWiki normalizes input to Unicode Normalization Form C (canonical composition). Please feel free to double-check that it's working correctly (the normalization library is under includes/normal). -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

um...Thanks Ecleticology. I will e-mail him.--Shin-改 05:52, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Attribution / coyprights / correcting texts??

Hi all; I followed a link into Wikisource whilst working on Wikipedia. I ended up with a few questions.

A) how do you track source copyright? I don't see any clear notice on the original.

B) how do you track attribution? I don't see a clear author on the original text.

The text I was looking at was Sportpalast Speech and I found an important chunk missing. I've left an explanation of the problem on the talk page. As I explain there, I'm not sure how to go about the correction. Mozzerati 14:48, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi, Mozzerati. Here are some answers to your questions. In terms of tracking copyright of the original texts, that really isn't done here. Of course, for most of the texts added, it is clear that the works are in the public domain, so it is not nearly essential to note the source's copyright status (although it still might be beneficial to do so). But for many other works that are added, the question of copyright comes up quite regularly. The things that concern me the most are translations of texts--the Sportpalast Speech being one of them. Surely Goebbels delivered the speech in German and what we have is a translation. Either way, copyright protection might apply to the work. It really would be nice for copyright tags to be added to works on this site, but it currently does not happen.

In terms of attribution, texts (virtually all) have a link back to the author's page, making it quite clear who wrote the work. I'm not sure what you mean by no clear author noted on the original text; if you look at the meta section (the italicized portion) of the text, it clearly says Goebbels is the author. Of course, generally we have a link at the top of the page that says "<Author:AuthorName"--this is our general standard.

About correcting the speech, I would not do anything until its copyright status can be established. If it is a violation (which I believe it is), then correcting the text would be pointless as it would be deleted. Zhaladshar 01:30, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Author Pages Revisit

I was getting down to some routine cleanup duties when I ran into Novecento, a fairly clear copyvio of the contemporary Italian Autore:Alessandro Baricco. I considered deleting the author page as well, since we are not likely to legitimately include any of his work in the forseeable future, but then after a little more reflection decided against that based on the vision of Wikisource also being a bibliographic resource. To be able to work with it I had to restore a previous version. This would seem to violate an understanding about the author pages, but so far I have no plans to do this with any other page.

The problem with ThomasV's system is in that it is template rich, and the process is not very well documented. And if I, a person with nearly three years of experience in this family of projects, am having difficulty in navigating this, I can't imagine that it's going to be any easier for a non-technical newbie. I really would like to see our compromises work, but it seems that before that can happen we need to doucment how to write up these author pages and how to edit them in a way that will be clear and simple to everybody. Eclecticology 20:33, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that templates might be too difficult for some. I do not mean to enforce template use in any way. I just see it as an option. templates have the advantage that if you know how to use them, it reduces the amount of work. if you don't know how to use them, you should still have the right to participate. now regarding how the process is (or is not) documented, it seems to me that we have not decided yet how 'main' author pages should look like, and I remember that you proposed to write a few examples which we could then discuss... --ThomasV 14:41, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I will acknowledge that the use of templates on author pages might be tedious for many users here, especially those who are new to Wikisource or her sister projects and so would not be accustomed to the mark-up. Using templates might cause many people to drop the project--or at least refrain from making author pages--due to a seemingly complicated method of creating author pages. But, like ThomasV said, the templates are not meant to be the exclusive "right way" method of creating author pages; for those who do know how to use them, it simply cuts down on the time it takes to create them. It should also be noted that using these templates on author pages was designed to go with translating author pages into various other languages. Hence, the templates are language-specific. We never really talked about using them for the "Main" author page, though, and I would not like to see them used there (or at least the way the templates are currently laid out). But this is assuming that we will still translate author pages into various languages. If we do not, then the templates are most likely not even needed.

In terms of documenting the templates, I would like to get a hold of how we are going to tackle author pages now before I go to documenting. Maybe we will decide that templates are not the way to go and so documentation would not be needed for templates. But I think it would be beneficial for the community to have a couple other options than just templates, too, so that might be something we might want to do, also: get a couple other proposals before we begin writing up a documentation. Zhaladshar 15:02, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough comments, including the criticism that I should have done more about setting up something about the "main" author page. I've put up Scriptor:Karl Marx which starts from the author page as it was before the templates were introduced. I continue to see the "scriptor" page as broadly based, and including everything that we might want to include about the author in any language. Any localized pages should be able to be composed as a subset of the scriptor page.

For many authors, particularly those that are not likely to have much of their material translated, an author page that follows existing practice may be enough. U. S. presidents John Tyler and Rutherford Hayes are not likely to have a great demand for their translated speeches. Eclecticology 04:53, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Images

Bonjour,

Il semble que les images ne s'affichent plus ? (cf.La géométrie, par exemple). Caton 10:42, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Je confirme... --ThomasV 13:06, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I don't know French, but I would imagine Caton is asking the same thing I am: what's with all the images not working on Wikisource all of a sudden? I know that the images are still here on the server, but for some reason the links aren't working. Zhaladshar 01:53, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Oui, je ne sais à qui l'on doit s'adresser. Caton 09:58, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

je ne savais meme pas que ws: avait des propres images... Il serait peut-etre mieux de place les illustrations sur commons, et de les lier de la? I just wanted to upload some illustrations and I don't know how to do it now. If nobody knows what's going on, maybe we should inquire on meta somewhere? 130.60.142.62 15:25, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

File:CatsEyeNebula.jpg

En effet, les images de Wikicommons fonctionnent :

Caton 08:33, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

J'aimerais bien revoir ces images, un jour... Caton 22:50, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Could the person who caused images to disappear at least signal her(him)self? At this point we do not even know it it is a mistake, a dysfunction of the system, or something deliberately decided by some admin... I understand somebody might have decided that images should be in wikicommons instead of wikisource for organizational reasons, but if it is the case it would be good to notify us. Many books here contain images or figures, and I find it very sad that these images are gone. I am willing to believe it is a bug, since nobody claimed having done it. but it would be great to really know... --ThomasV 07:15, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

This happened before, last August. I raised the issue on the Wikitech mailing list, and received the following reply from Brion: "Should be fixed now. The symlinks were one subdirectory off, and files were being put in the wrong place." Eclecticology 23:51, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Grec ancien

Des pages en Grec ancien ont disparu. Caton 09:58, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

lesquelles? L'Iliade est toujours la. 130.60.142.62 15:22, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Par exemple Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους, qui donne bien un lien bleu dans la page Auteur:Platon, mais sans texte. Caton 15:35, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

De même : Περὶ φύσεως (Παρμενίδης), Ἀποσπάσματα, Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια. Caton 15:38, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

En fait, j'ai l'impression que des accents ont été modifiés, ou qu'il y a un problème à ce niveau. Caton 15:44, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

quoi? Ce texte n'existe pas, tout court. Nous avons Apologie de Socrate, mais point de Aπολογία Σωκράτους.

J'ai moi-même placé ce texte ici. Caton 22:48, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

~~ok, je crois alors que tu aies un problem avec le codepage unicode 'grec polytonique', voir en haut, tu as mis un '?' au lieu de "sp. lenis+Alpha".~~ Il faudrait chercher la liste de tes contributions pour retrouver le texte... 62.202.241.89 09:41, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

voir, par example, Ἐγχειρίδιον. Il faut bouger cette page. Les titres Επιστολή προς Μενοικέα, Κύριαι Δόξαι sont correctes, mais les textes sont foutus (plein de '?') (tous les commentaires anonymes qui précèdent sont les miens) Dbachmann 09:49, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC) edit: oublie, ces pages sont tout-a-fait bonnes. 130.60.142.62

External links on wikisource

Hi I am in contact with liberliber.it an Italian project, similar to the Guthenberg project. They offer the texts for download while here on wikisource these texts would be online. LiberLiber-downloads of course are for free (they publish non copyrighted works from Italian authors and translations of works from international authors). Would there be a problem to add a link to liberliber.it (direct link to the download page) at the end of a page telling people that a pdf or rtf or txt-version is online there for download? I feel this could be a great co-operation as it would complement both projects. Thank you for telling me if links are possible or not. -- SabineCretella 13:17, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think it is possible ; sometimes, I add links to a website (as Le Prince for exemple). (sorry if my english is bad) Caton 13:21, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no problem with this. Eclecticology 18:11, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Go right ahead. I've never heard of the site (although I don't go looking for Italian works, either :-) ), but it would be great if we could help complement that site and vice versa. Zhaladshar 19:43, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Languages and Subdomains

I know this has been discussed before, but I think it might be wise to revisit the issue, and at least give it some more consideration. We're now the only Wikimedia project which doesn't use language subdomains, and instead uses a tangled system of internal pages to get around that.

What really bothers me, however, is that the present system makes RecentChanges somewhat useless. If I click on RecentChanges on en.wikipedia, I know that I'm going to see fifty edits that I can at least read. Whereas on RecentChanges here, approximately 48 of the last 50 edits are in one of various other languages. It's the same with the last 500 edits - approximately 442 of them are in languages other than English. This makes it very hard to follow new developments in the one language that I do speak, and I imagine it's no different for speakers of other languages.

We already have at least the Germans specifically having requested their own language subdomain, and with the growth of Wikisource since the original decision was made, I really think that time has come. Ambivalenthysteria 22:36, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cependant, peut-on comparer Wikisource aux autres projets ? Je travaille avec des textes en grec, latin, anglais, allemand et français, et cela découle naturellement, à mon sens, de la nature de ce projet, qui porte sur des textes de différents domaines culturels, et ces textes n'ont aucune raison d'être séparés par des barrières linguistiques artificielles qui ne feront qu'alourdir le travail d'édition. Pour ma part, je n'ai aucun problème pour suivre les modifications récentes. Si c'est là le seul problème qui peut se poser, il serait préférable de trouver des solutions spécifiques pour Wikisource plutôt que de prendre modèle sur des projets différents. Caton 22:31, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

bonjour Caton. Je ne vois pas bien en quoi le fait d'avoir des sous-domaines t'empêcherait de travailler sur des textes en grec, latin, francais, anglais et allemand. Quant aux avantages, ils sont multiples et ont déjà été enumérés.

Dans ce cas, je suis prêt à changer mon avis, mais je voudrais savoir quels sont ces avantages. Caton 13:44, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

désolé de répondre si tard (la grippe...). A mon sens le principal avantage serait de permettre à plus de gens de participer: on n'imagine pas à quel point il est nécessaire de maîtriser l'anglais pour participer à wikisource. .. bien sûr il y aurait beaucoup d'autres avantages, comme par exemple la possibilité de choisir des noms de pages appropriés, sans risque de conflit avec une autre langue (pour les auteurs et certaines oeuvres), et la possibilité pour chaque sous-domaine de tester son propre modèle d'organisation, en s'inspirant des autres... Bon, de toutes facons j'ai déjà dit tout ca sur les pages consacrées à ce débat, c'est un peu inutile de se répéter ici... mais peut-être que tu pourrais mieux expliquer pourquoi tu penses que le fait d'avoir des sous-domaines créérait des "barrières linguistiques artificielles"... dans Wikipedia, le fait d'utiliser des sous-domaines permet de placer les traductions d'une page dans la barre de navigation; on pourrait faire la même chose ici pour les traductions d'un texte, ou pour les pages d'auteurs... à mon sens, ca ne crée pas de barrières.--ThomasV 22:28, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Je pensais simplement que Wikisource était un projet où l'on pouvait travailler ensemble dans plusieurs langues. Mais je vois que non, en lisant que certains des opposants tiennent beaucoup à leur langue, et semblent supposer qu'il n'y aurait aucun intérêt pour un lecteur à se trouver confrontré à une autre langue que la sienne. Je me demande donc si les sous-domaines ne contribueront pas à entretenir cette sorte de particularisme. D'ailleurs, quand je lis le pour, je ne vois aucun argument sérieux, et c'est aussi ce qui me pousse à être contre, en tout cas pour le moment. Caton 16:27, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ambi: not only the Germans have requested subdomain. I made a request for a french subdomain on the page setup by Dovi. However, Caton does not seem to agree on that, so I guess we should not have a french subdomain for now. In contrast, the contributors to the german wikisource are fairly united, and I think that there is no reason to deny them a subdomain.

One big issue is that the current setup refrains me from adding new texts, because I know that the process of moving them to the french subdomain, when it happens, will be a pain; I believe it is more sensible to wait until it happens. I guess that Eclecticology is aware of that too: he knows that the longer language subdomains are delayed, the higher the chances are that they never happen... I do not know how the current situation can be solved, but my feeling is that Eclecticology will never change his mind on that. So the change, if it occurs, will have to be imposed from above...

--ThomasV 08:17, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it might be worth raising the issue on meta, and advertising the vote broadly, on Village Pumps and mailing lists, and hooking up with those interested in language Wikisources for .de and others. Ec may be an important member of this project, but he doesn't have a veto over it's every direction. Ambivalenthysteria 08:40, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'll admit that at first I was not a fan of language subdomains. Now, I think my stance has changed--mostly because of what Ambivalenthysteria already said. When Wikisource was small, the majority of the edits were on the "English version" Wikisource. Now, however, it's grown drastically since then, and more and more edits are in "other language versions." This, of course, is by no means a bad thing, but since I do not know any other languages, being able to edit those pages is virtually non-existent. I would much rather prefer to only see English edits on the "Recent changes" page because it allows me to edit pages I can actually understand. As it currently stands, we have an author section in numerous languages (English, French, German, Italian...) and I think we should take that separation to its logical end and just start creating subdomains. Besides, I think Wikisource would grow even quicker if we did. Zhaladshar 16:29, 29 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup page?

Do we have one? In any case, Platt Amendment, Palestine Mandate, U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and 1951 Refugee Convention are in dire need of assistance, if anyone has some spare time. Ambivalenthysteria 23:52, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We don't have one, but I have nothing against anyone starting up something like Wikisource:Cleanup needed. Still, I can't but feel pessismistic about the process. The items that Ambi lists were all dropped off by the same person leaving foundlings on our doorstep. The content of the texts is certainly of a sort that we would accept, and there are no apparent copyright issues. Fixing some of these would require more work than going back and resubmitting the entire text. To what extent can we say, "This is cool stuff, but the presentation sucks. Unless it gets cleaned up in the next 90 days it may be out of here."? Comments? Eclecticology 29 Jan

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

I would like to work on The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli. Is is public domain? Or has some crazy person bought the rights to it. (published 1513, translated to english 1910) --Munchkinguy 16:42, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

1910 is public domain --ThomasV 17:06, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

lyricswiki

I went hunting and I just stumbled onto this cool site: www.lyricswiki.org it is just what the name says it is: a collection of lyrics. And we cannot have those lyrics here because, of course, it is a massive copyright infringement. however, they claim what they are doing is fair use, because it does not harm the artists who are selling those songs. I will be interested in following the evolution of this... are they going to get shut down? maybe I'll propose them to add a french subdomain, because for the moment they seem to only have texts in English. I also thought we could link to their site, but I did not find a "lyrics" section in the English wikisource. --ThomasV 07:07, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Their disclaimer page does ask people not to add copyright material. The fair use status is highly debatable, but if they are willing to accept that risk any problem is their own. An individual who wants to contribute to their site needs to be aware that at some point the whole site will be put off-line and his work will be lost. One significant lyric site is at http://ntl.matrix.com.br/pfilho/summer.html What helps to keep them alive is the fact that they are based in Brazil. The site at http://tinpan.fortunecity.com/blondie/313/ also has links to other site. There have been efforts to shut these down.

I don't object to linking to these sites as long as our users are told what the situation is. I'll look to see what might be a good place for such a link. Eclecticology 00:20, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

New language

I wanted to add a link to Asturian in the Main Page (ISO CODE "Ast"), but the main page is locked. The link is this: Antoxana:Asturianu

And the text the next:

Bienveníu a Wikisource. Esti sitiu ye un depósitu de testos orixinales escritos en cualesquier idioma y que seyan de dominiu públicu o tean espublizaos baxo la llicencia GFDL. Esti sitiu forma parte de la fundación Wikimedia y ye un proyeutu hermanu multillingüe del proyeutu Wikipedia pa crear una enciclopedia de conteníu llibre completa y exauta.

Thanks. Llull 22:30, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lista Wildsteina

The material on this list appears to be a list of alleged collaborators with the former regime in Poland. We have no business dealing in this kind of disgusting practice. Unless someone can find a convincing reason to keep it, I propose to begin deleting it all tomorrow. Eclecticology 08:31, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too sure what these pages contain. It's a list of some sort, but I don't know what kind of information it is conveying. I agree that if it is that bad of material then it should go--the quicker the better--but before it is deleted, could someone tell me why we would be getting rid of it? Zhaladshar 14:41, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I just read the talk page for Lista Wildsteina, so now I know why it's on the docket for deletion. I would agree with Ec that this is not something we should keep on Wikisource at all. It should be deleted as soon as possible. Zhaladshar 14:48, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Moved from now deleted Article talk page

Hi! I'm a Polish Wikipedia user. I have a big favor to ask you. Please remove all Lista Wildsteina subarticles (the ones I marked "remove!") - they are now empty - before they contained either one name or test edits by unregistered users. "Lista Wildsteina" is a hot subject in Poland these days - it's a list of people who used to collaborate with former secret service agencies or were their victims, that's why it provokes various unwanted reactions - it can't be exactly stated who was a secret agent and who was a victim. After it is published here, possibly by Ausir - a registered user - you should put a protection log on all its parts so that people won't modify it. Consider it, please. With regards, Selena von Eichendorf 12:32, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The above description leaves me very concerned about whether we should have this kind of material at all. My first impression is that it is a list of people who are alleged to have participated in certain kinds of wrongdoing. In the absence of further evidence I would consider this material a defamatory and libellous attack on the people listed. It is effectively a long series of personal attacks, and contrary to Wikimedia policy on that basis. The Wikimedia should have no role in the spreading of this kind of thing. I cannot comment at this time about what implications the material might carry under United States law.

Secondarily, there is no indication about who produced this list, and whether the author has released the material under GFDL. Eclecticology 07:31, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Personally, I agree with you. The list is causing lots of confusion, can't be verified in terms of who was actually a victim, and who collaborated with the secret services. However, the list is circulating in altered forms over the net and if it was published here, provided that it's not modified by unregistered IPs, it might serve as a reliable resource. But - it's up to you to decide. I'm a Polish Wikipedia sysop and I understand why you're hesitating, and I won't be surprised if you decide to delete the list from Wikisources. Maybe the best idea is to discuss the matter with Ausir, who just requested for Wikisource adminship and is "in charge" of loading the list here. On Polish Wikipedia we can't reach the agreement whether it's good or bad to have external links to the list or to load it on Wikisource. Anyway, the problem is that it should have been revealed long ago by the authorities, as it was eg. in Czech Republic... Sorry for the fuss. Bye, Selena von Eichendorf 09:24, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After the whole debate, I think maybe we should delete it after all (at least for now). Ausir 10:23, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

10,000

The article 北海道舊土人保護法 by User:Shin-改 to-day brought our total count to 10,000 pages. Eclecticology 21:53, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Organization of Wikisource

I find Wikisource very hard to navigate. For example, in the Texts link at the front of the English main page, I expected to be taken to a list that included the Charter of the United Nations. I'm not sure how to get there from the Texts link. Anomaly 16:31, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it might be hard to navigate the Wikisource:Texts page. One of us should probably reorganize that section of the site. To find the UN Charter, try Wikisource:Historical documents. It would contain a list of documents relating to the UN Charter and such. I'm not too sure what exactly you are looking for, but that might be a place to start. Zhaladshar 17:18, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The Wikisource:Texts page was put there a full year ago without so much as a single amendment since. I haven't yet traced the links from it, but my guess is that they are hopelessly out of date. Other techniques have since been developed for finding things, but saying that doesn't help newbies very much. Unless I discover something startlingly usefull in the links, I'm inclined to eliminate this path. Eclecticology 20:10, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

That probably isn't a bad idea. Wikisource:Fiction, Wikisource:Texts, Wikisource:Non-Fiction, and Wikisource:Poetry are horribly out of date. And with the number of texts/poetry/etc. we have and at the rate we are getting more, updating these pages will take a very long time. Not to mention keeping them up to date; it will be even worse than trying to keep the author pages current. Usually Wikisource:Authors or Wikisource:Historical documents work well, or the search function, if a person is trying to find a particular work. But we don't really have a decent method to allow users to actually browse documents on the site (I'm specifically referring to literary works like poetry or novels). As great as it would be to have something like that, we just could not keep everything up to date on these pages. Maybe eliminating those paths would help keep confusion down for new users since they would no longer be able to use an out of date page but will instead be browsing the author lists. Zhaladshar 21:30, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thank you. Is it possible to switch the positions of the "Index" and the "New texts" boxes? Also, instead of keeping these index pages up to date, it would make sense to have the equivalent of Categories in Wikipedia. Anomaly 07:09, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm indifferent about the order of these two. If we are to keep the "New texts" sect ion it would be nice if someone were to take on the task of maintaining it. Much of what is there now has been new for far too long. Before we do any switch though, let's wait until these indexes have been cleaned up so we can see what's left. Eclecticology 10:05, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good. I've started disassembling the Wikisource:Texts part of it while being careful to clear up cross-links, and avoiding turning articles into orphans. The best hope of maintaining subject listings may be through a thoughtful use of the category system. Eclecticology 00:32, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Admin request

User:Ausir has requested adminiship. Please comment at Wikisource:Administrator. Eclecticology 19:58, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

on what exactly shall we comment?--ThomasV 21:10, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

on whether you support or oppose this person's becoming an admin. Eclecticology 20:30, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Lectures audio de livres en creative commons: servez-vous!

Bonjour,

C'est la première fois que je poste un message ici, j'avais déjà écrit sur wikipédia et on m'a indiqué que wikisource serait plus approprié, j'espère que c'est bien le lieu pour ce type d'annonce. J'ai ouvert il y a peu le site http://incipitblog.free.fr (audioblog de lectures à voix haute) sur lequel nous avons commencé l'adaptation du livre de Florent Latrive "Du bon usage de la piraterie". Nous avons comme ambition de poursuivre la lecture d'oeuvres librement adaptables car sous license appropriée ou car issues du domaine public (les siècles passés étant une source inépuisable de chef-d'oeuvres libres de droits!). Je voulais en faire part à wikisource en proposant à tous de réutiliser autant que vous le souhaitez les lectures qui seront publiées sur IncipitBlog et d'autre part aussi car très souvent quand nous lisons un auteur nous faisons un lien direct vers l'article wikipédia correspondant, et que désormais nous lierons également vers wikisource qui sera une formidable source d'idées de lectures!

Cordialement, à bientôt! Liseur

C'est une idée assez interesante, surtout comme service aux aveugles. Ça prendrait tout simplement des gens qui veulent s'en occuper. Ailleurs, il y a déjà eu des discussion apropos d'un Wikipédia en signes pour les sourd-muets. Eclecticology 21:16, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Google et le défi de l’indexation

un article intéressant pour ceux qui contribuent à wikisource: http://www.internetactu.net/index.php?p=5810 --ThomasV 21:03, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Wikisource pourrait donc avoir un rôle à jouer dans la diffusion de textes français ? Caton 22:33, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

je pense que oui... si le projet se développe, il pourrait devenir une ressource majeure. actuellement, quand on tape un mot en francais dans Google, l'entrée sur fr.wikipedia apparaît en bonne place. C'est dû au fait que les scores de Google sont calculés en fonction du nombre de liens hypertexte qui pointent vers une page, et du texte placé dans ces liens. Wikisource pourrait aussi devenir une référence, puisque les robots comme Google y ont accès (par opposition à Gallica)--ThomasV 17:41, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Je posais cette question parce que je n'ai pas bien compris tous les enjeux exprimés dans cet article. Je me demandais si l'on pouvait sérieusement envisager de faire de Wikisource une ressource de premier ordre, ce qui est mon but, surtout en philosophie. Mais s'il y a des projets tel que celui de google, je me demandais si Wikisource ne risquait pas de devenir inutile. Caton 18:02, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

le propos de l'article est d'inviter Gallica à ouvrir ses contenus aux moteurs de recherche, afin qu'ils aient plus d'impact. Je ne pense pas que le projet de Google risque de rendre Wikisource inutile, car le travail d'organisation, de liens et de découpage fait ici ne pourra pas être automatisé.

A mon avis, il est possible de faire de Wikisource une ressource de premier ordre. J'y crois beaucoup plus que dans le cas de Wikipedia, car la qualité des articles sur Wikipedia dépend des contributeurs. Au contraire, il est possible sur Wikisource d'être 'objectif' dans la mesure où on ne cherche qu'à être fidèle au travail d'un auteur. C'est une différence importante, et je pense qu'il sera peut-être possible un jour de certifier les pages de wikisource comme étant "terminées et relues", et de les protéger du vandalisme.--ThomasV 18:15, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

J'ai l'impression que Jeanneney se plaint trop. Donné sa position avec la BNF ça ne me suprend pas que son article dans Le Monde ne considère pas la possibilité que Gallica aurait mal-choisi le format pdf. Ce que propose Google est un peu ambitieu, et je trouve difficile à croire qu'ils pourraient l'accomplir sans ignorer la correction des épreuves. Le projet de Google n'est pas le seul de son genre. Internet Archive s'est aussi trouvé des grands partenaires. (Voir http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA491156?display=NewsNews&industry=News&industryid=1986&verticalid=151 )

Wikisource peut toujours avoir un rôle dans ce millieu. Je suis d'accord qu'il faut devenir "une ressource de premier ordre" où il y a beaucoup plus que des sélections choisies au hazard. Ce genre de contributions sera bien entendu toujours là, et il ne faut pas empecher les gens qui le font. Mais il faut aussi considérer faire des collections de tous de textes d'un auteur, ou faire des liens-wiki entre un texte et ceux cités par l'auteur. Eclecticology 22:27, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Need help with a speech

Seeing that we have political speeches at Wikisource, I was thinking of adding a speech Jello Biafra gave to the Green Party in 2000 when he attempted to run for their candidate. However, I'm not sure whether or not his speech counts as being public domain. I'm sure he wouldn't be bothered by it being shared online (given his positive opinion towards sharing information), but I'd like a second opinion first. Everything2 has a copy of it at this link, so it might be ok, but I want to know if Wikisource is willing to accept it. If you can, please get back to me at my Wikipedia talk page, since I am at Wikipedia more often than Wikisource. -- LGagnon 08:01, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

General information and help system - RFE

I've some trouble when searching 1) what wikisource is. Yea, I was searching, around 30mins. But still no idea 2) what exactly is desired, 3) what shall not be on wikisource, 4) what's the relation to project gutenberg, etexts.org, wikibooks, ebook scene etc pp, 5) how to organize/split longer texts like (lyrical) books or charters. That's all I'd like to learn at the moment ;)

IMHO there shall be some very brief info like at [1] and some longer like "About Wikibooks" at [2]. Moreover, the help shall not only refer to editing text but some stuff like scanning, OCR, how to insert texts including all indices etc.
I guess everything what's neither a teaching book (-> wikibooks) nor an enceclopedia article (-> wikipedia). So lyrics, novels, charters, lists, FAQs, manuals,... are left. Do we want all that?
Manuals may not be that interesting.
We shall cooperate with them (have direct access to their databases) or copy those texts if license allows it. Why? Because some of them might lose the sponsor and thus become unavailable. Because their formatting is sometimes very nasty (only 60 lines per page - try to print/download this!) In case anyone is inside the ebook scene please inform them of this project - power points are simple linking, big audience + review mates, enough webspace, long term availability, hard facts reputation possible (how many scans and the like) and avoiding redundant scans.
Any best practices from wikibooks which work for other tings than books as well?

--80.140.106.164 00:02, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Front page

Can someone update the front page so it's more in line with the new wikipedia.org design? Currently it's very confusing. (I'd do it myself but it appears to be protected.)

it looks better indeed, go ahead. --ThomasV 07:00, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

however, I do not know how you will be able to sort the different entries. it would make sense to sort them according to the number of pages, like other wikimedia projects. but here, for a reason that is very impolite to question in the scriptorium, the only wikisource for which we know the number of pages is the hebrew wikisource. My guesstimate is that the english wikisource has more articles than the hebrew one, but I cannot be sure. :-) --ThomasV 07:09, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Funny think, but it's not so easy to know the number of He: articles either. 2-3 weeks ago there was a mass move of about 50 texts to new titles for technical reasons. Not deleting them, just moving them. But after the move took place, the total article number went down by 50 and since then has never gone back up. I don't know why... But actually there are well over 200 articles. Dovi 09:45, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I have no objection to changing the front page in a manner that reflects the design for the Wikipedia front page. I know that there was some voting going on about several possible designs, so I would wait until the dust settles about that before doing anything here. So please Thomas don't insinuate that there is anything more to our differences of opinion than what they are.

In fact I have never felt much attachment to all the introductory paragraphs on the front page; people have just felt the need to write them when they start a new language. I have also never felt the need to say "Welcome" in what are guessed to be the most frequent languages just before the links are repeated again with all the others in the next paragraph.

What do we want on the front page? The per langage count may still be a difficulty in the short run, but I suspect that solutions are available. Please note that any category page includes the statement, "There are xxx articles in this category." Eclecticology 02:24, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Resurrecting the logo vote

I was skimming through all of the topics in the Scriptorium, and one I came across was #Logo selection procedure. Maybe it is time to bring the Logo selection back into discussion so we can once and for all get the logo question decided. Zhaladshar 16:34, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

it would not hurt if somebody could make the rules a bit clearer. the page where all the votes are gathered seems quite anarchic. Who should vote? Many voters are no real contributors, and they could be sockpuppets. Some voters seem to use a right to 'oppose' to a logo, but this right has never been documented; how many different logos can I oppose to, and how is that going to be counted? --ThomasV 23:39, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

vandalism

Vandalism is increasingly becoming a problem; just for today, I had to revert 3 edits by 3 different IPs. Some occurences of vandalism are also difficult to detect, especially when they are not in your own language. And with the overall level of activity increasing, they tend to disappear from the radar quicker than ever. I wonder what we should do about that (besides having language subdomains, of course). One possibility would be to forbid anonymous edits, which would probably deter 90% of them. Another possibility, that was mentioned on the german page, could be to freeze pages once they have been reviewed and are believed to be error-free. This is actually the advantage of wikisource over other projects such as wikipedia: here it is possible to say objectively that a page done, at least with regard to its content. The drawback, of course, is that we won't be able to modify the layout of frozen pages... So maybe we should consider a way to protect the content without freezing the form, eg if we put the content in a frozen template... --ThomasV 20:45, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Interdire les i.p. ne semble pas une bonne idée. En revanche, je suis d'accord pour bloquer certaines pages, quand le texte a été certifié relu. Sinon, tu pourrais aussi devenir administrateur pour reverter plus facilement. Caton 20:58, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Restricting edits from anonymous IPs probably isn't the best way to go. Yes, it's not difficult at all (it takes two seconds) to create an account, an account should not be required to make changes to Wikisource (although non-account changes are scrutinized far greater than changes by logged-in users, for obvious reasons). I've been increasingly leaning toward freezing pages once it has been decided that they are "done." This is stemming from my own frustration with the United States Constitution. Vandalism is constantly happening on that page, and it would be nice if I didn't have to keep a look out for any entry on the Recent Changes page. But I still think that freezing pages would not likely happen, since it would mean that people could not freely edit any page--unless we can show that there is a lot of vandalism resulting from not freezing the pages. I wonder if there is another way we haven't thought of yet... Zhaladshar 15:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

as Caton says above, once a text has been proofread and is certified correct, it should be protected. Suggestions for layout changes etc. would then have to go to the talk page. Unlike Wikipedia, we are dealing with given texts that cannot be further improved once we got them correct. The constitution is a prime example. There is no reason to edit it, because the text is fixed, correct, and will not change. 130.60.142.65 16:24, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I can't log in!

I created a user account (User:Angr) but when I try to log in the page won't let me because it claims I have cookies disabled. But I don't have cookies disabled! How can I get the stupid thing to realize that? --217.88.123.109 17:09, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

About the sentence that 211.76.97.228 and 211.76.97.229 contributed

It is the sentence that 211.76.97.228 and 211.76.97.229 contributed, but will it be the sentence that there is in the world? --kahusi - (Talk) 15:11, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Database error

Aquinas' Treatise on Law that I contributed has an older version [Jan. 6, 2005] at the top of the history list which is three days older than the final version [Jan. 9, 2005]. Whom should I talk to to have this fixed? 64.154.26.251 21:38, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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-[http://sources.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikisource:Scriptorium&action=edit&section=new Post a comment / Einen neuen Kommentar schreiben / Écrire un nouveau commentaire / schrijf een nieuwe commentaar / 发表主题] / Inserisci un commento
+[http://sources.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikisource:Scriptorium&action=edit&section=new Post a comment / Einen neuen Kommentar schreiben / Écrire un nouveau commentaire / schrijf een nieuwe commentaar / 发表主题 / Inserisci un commento]
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Frieda (talk | contribs)