Wikisource:Changing the main page

Currently the main page shows the top ten Wikisource subdomains per article count. Some members of the community have manifested worries if that is the most adequate way to sort projects.

This page lists the pros and cons on some options. Edit it only if you have new options to propose or if you have additional pros and cons reasonings. Your comments, questions etc. see please the talk page. For the vote page, see /Vote.

"Article" count

Pros:
- Automatic update within the wiki.
Cons:
- Some subdomains have custom namespaces showing information about Author, Portals etc, some subdomains don't have and hosts those pages on the main namespace. The subdomains with no custom namespaces potentially can have more "article" pages than the ones with custom namespaces.
- Is so easy to inflate the "article" count:
  - splitting large works on more than one "article" page; all Wikisources does it. A book with 30 chapters will result in at least 31 "articles". 30 books with 30 chapters will result on at least 930 "articles";
  - following the page breaks of modern editions of public domain works (the Spanish Wikisource does it on some works). A book with 300 pages will result in at least 301 "articles". 30 books containing 300 pages will result in 9030 "articles";
  - with mass bot addtions of content (the Portuguese Wikisource is importing a public domain dictionary with more than 100-200k entries, one entry per "article");

Number of words ^[1]

Pros:
- In theory, it may really reflect the content of a Wikisource : but are the figures good, and could the number of words of "Proofread" pages be added ? Enmerkar 18:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)reply
Cons:
- The length and number of words used per equivalent sentence is not invariant between languages.

ProofreadPage Statistics - All pages

Pros:
- Readers can know how many scans they will find, but they must be told that scans are images, not texts.
Cons:
- Is so easy to inflate the ProofreadPage namespace using a bot to extract text from .djvu files (like the ones provided by the Internet Archive).
- Not all documents are get from scanned printed books. Not all projects use built-in proofread extension for most of documents.
- Readers cannot know whether they will find readable texts or undecipherable texts.
- Uncorrected pages that can't be read ought not to be taken into account since they failed to achieve their purpose.

ProofreadPage Statistics - Proofread pages

Pros:
- Reflect real work of contributors.
Cons:
- RTL bug; lack of OCR in many languages; plenty of other kinds of quality work not counted.
- As above: Not all documents are get from scanned printed books. Not all projects use built-in proofread extension for most of documents. Therefore don't reflect the real work of contributors.

ProofreadPage Statistics - Validated pages

Pros:
- Reflect real work of contributors.
Cons:
- As above: RTL bug; lack of OCR in many languages; plenty of other kinds of quality work not counted.
- As above: Not all documents are get from scanned printed books. Not all projects use built-in proofread extension for most of documents. Therefore don't reflect the real work of contributors.

Page views

Pros:
- simple, objective
- already used at wikipedia
- does not depend on the particularities of each language (such as word size, compactness, etc)
- does not depend on the technical tools used or not used by subdomains (ProofreadPage)
- the results are much more stable than with any measure based on counting content
Cons:
- I wonder if the stats are really accurate. It surprises me that French language has more page views than English. Yann 18:34, 11 March 2009 (UTC)reply
  - accurateness of this page is definitely is not an argument against the use of page views ThomasV 20:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)reply
- Does not necessarily represent community and content for smaller languages.

MB's in the database

Pros:
- Can be simply found in [1] (or measured as size of DB dump)
Cons:
- Includes all (old) revisions of all pages, incl. talk pages etc.

Total size of articles

Eventually not only in main namespace, but in specified namespaces as Author or Page also.

Pros:
- Size of all important content.
Cons:
- How to simply find it?
- If the value of a domain is measured by its megabytes only, texts will be any texts without any discrimination. Accumulating old phone books will suffice to fill the library!

Activity

(??? how to measure it???)

Pros:
Cons:
- Our visitors might be more interested in knowing what they wil find in the library than knowing how much effort has been given to build it.

Complex criteria

Top ten Wikisources on Main Page would be selected combinating more ranks to one final rank. For each particular measure separate rank would be made, then from 0 to 10 points would be given to projects (1st place = 10 points, 11th and next places = 0 points). Finally, points would be summarized to final rank and first ten projects would be placed around the Wikisource logo on main page. If two or more projects in final rank would have the same sum of points, then one of statistics (or higher number of 1st, 2nd... places as in Formula 1) could be deciding.

This calculation would be performed 2–4 times in year. Particular measures could be:

article count,
average size of article (this rank effectively lowers influence of massive storing of very short articles as Portuguese Wikisource now does),
one of proofread statistics,
number of active (or very active) users, e.g. in last year,
page views.

Pros:
- Includes not only size (due to article count), but also quality (due to proofread statistics), activity (due to number of active users) and significancy (due to page views).
Cons:
- Gives weight to things that have zero or close to zero value at some wikis: Proofread page, page views.
- "Significance" is not a real "pro" because a highly significant collection of literature for a small language will still have far fewer views that an insignificant collection for a large language.

Moderately complex criteria

Top ten Wikisources on Main Page would be selected combinating more ranks to one final rank. For each particular measure separate rank would be made, then from 0 to 10 points would be given to projects (1st place = 10 points, 11th and next places = 0 points). Finally, points would be summarized to final rank and first ten projects would be placed around the Wikisource logo on main page. If two or more projects in final rank would have the same sum of points, then one of statistics (or higher number of 1st, 2nd... places as in Formula 1) could be deciding.