Wikisource:Eighteenth Birthday

First party

Date: 24 November 2021

Time: 1:30 - 3:00 PM UTC / 7:00 - 8:30 PM IST (check your local time)

Moderator: SGill (WMF)

Where : Google Meet (For calendar invite: Write to sgill@wikimedia.org)

Notes: Etherpad link

Maryana's Listening Tour - Wikisource Birthday Celebrations 2021

Presentation: Slide-deck

Hashtag: #WikisourceBirthday

Agenda

Wikisource and the Two Centuries of Indian Print Project (2CIP) at the British Library - Tom Derrick

Film transcriptions on Wikisource - PseudoSkull

Study on Infrastructural Needs of Indian Language Wikisource Projects - Sneha (CIS-A2K)

Welcome & Intros - 10 mins
Presentations - 30 mins
- Wikisource <> Anatomy of Accessible Knowledge - NRodriguez (WMF)
- State of Wikisource - VIGNERON
- Film transcriptions on Wikisource - PseudoSkull
- Wikisource and the Two Centuries of Indian Print Project (2CIP) at the British Library - Tom Derrick
- Research on Indic Wikisource projects - Sneha (CIS-A2K)
Maryana’s Listening Tour - 40 mins
Questions & Feedback - 10 mins

Questions for Maryana's Listening Tour

What motivates you to contribute to Wikisource?

In 2017 I got introduced to Wikisource. We have rich literature in Telugu language.Many old copies of the great texts are getting lost. Now to keep the texts available to posterity, there is nothing greater than Wikisource. We are keeping the sources intact so that they will be a great resource for resourceful individuals for their projects and general enthusiasts at large. --Ramesam54 (talk) 14:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource in Neapolitan (created two years ago) is a way to maintain Neapolitan rich written literature alive. Even if the spoken language is alive and kicking, the written culture of Neapolitan is getting lost, since Italian (originally the dialect from Tuscany) is the language taught at school since the end of the 19th-century. Wikisource is one of the ways to keep the literary production of a rich culture alive. --Ruthven (talk) 09:24, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I feel fascinated by wikisource since it gives me both an opportunity to read carefully works that I never imagined to read, and to build useful tools using my limited programming skills. --Alex brollo (talk) 13:19, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I enjoy sharing my expertise as a proofreader and help build this immense virtual library in my native language, Hebrew. Of special interest to me is preserving books of historical and religious value, and making them easily accessible by the Hebrew-reading public.--Nahum (talk) 14:00, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see myself as a tiny part of a huge revolution shifting culture from paper to digital, and Wikisource is the best place to have it preserved, corrected and most of all kept available for free to posterity. - εΔ ω 14:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
There is a wealth of great literature in translation that is either not available online or else is not easy to find. I work to provide English translations of Greek and Sanskrit plays, although I also transcribe other works. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:48, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was introduced to Wikisource in 2020 in the middle of a pandemic and it coincided with my love to book, especially proofreading. But, the low literary level of my country and its low economic level makes me realize that my language and my country has been lacking of source for many years. This makes me fired up and motivated to add more public domain books about my language to Indonesian Wikisource. Agus Damanik (talk) 12:48, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I get to read old books, and to make some aspects of my history more avaliable to everyone. --Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We can show how to combine, link and enrich open (cultural) data with tools of the Wikversum (wikisource, wikidata, QS, structured data on Commons, Image Positions ...) plus citizen science (citizen data), crowd sourcing strategies (as a sort of R&D too). See: https://saxorum.hypotheses.org/tag/wikisource --Jeb (talk) 07:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I love books, and there is a little number of books in arabic in this space (Wiki), and i am a wikimidian hopes to find every think in same place with an integral space.--Nehaoua (talk) 23:34, 22 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Every community has a large amount of literary works that can be added to Wikisource. Especially, the old works that can not be easily found on the Internet. Wikisource gives a very good opportunity to us to makes these works can be found. And also, our community (Turkish) has a tradition of oral literature in our own folk literature. Wikisource is a chance to put down our oral literary works on paper and record these. Justinianus (talk) 08:56, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote a Bon article (between a Good Article and Featured Article on the English Wikipedia) on the French Wikipedia : w:fr:Robert Oppenheimer. I read that he enjoyed w:en:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Since I admire his work by many aspects, I tried to read the French version in full, but it was far from fully transcribed on the French Wikisource : only the first volume out of thirteen volumes. So I started in 2014 a long, very long journey into the Wikisource arcanas (how to create a book, create a table of contents, to transcribe non-latin letters, to export in many formats...). While there, I found an enjoyable community, full of dedicated and friendly editors. Many serious books still await to be fully transcribed (philosophy, physics, chemistry, biology, encyclopedias...) Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 13:42, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What makes the Wikisource community special?

They are Ambassadors of great past to the enlightenment of young and old. --Ramesam54 (talk) 14:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)-[reply]
You can see here Wikisorcerers answers to the same question for Wikisource Tenth Birthday: I feel this Community still as lovable to-day, in 2021, as they used to be then :-) --Zyephyrus (talk) 11:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is an almost flameproof community, quiet in discussions but active in implementation.
The opportunities to contribute are as numerous and diverse as the contents of the largest library. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:58, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We feel like we are torchbearers for equal access. I think that is very specialAgus Damanik (talk) 12:50, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No absurd discussions, just people trying to read and preserve, and helping each other very much. --Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Helpfulness, cooperativeness --Jeb (talk) 19:02, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource has mostly been built by community volunteers from scratch to what it is now today without any major development from WMF or affiliates in the past, which makes it very special to me. It was ignored like other sister projects but the community grew against all odds by themselves. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 05:32, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Usually, wiki-projects except Wikipedias don't have a broad community to contribute. Small amount of users prefer to be in there and giving their best for this project to uplift. I can feel that these users are warm about that. Justinianus (talk) 09:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Books are recorded experiences. If you get more experiences, progress is possible. This project is the foundation for all the wikimedia projects.--Info-farmer (talk) 12:10, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Small community, never saw a severe conflict, vandals from time to time. Cantons-de-l'Est (talk) 13:44, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What are the major challenges facing the movement/Wikisource going forward?

With the blowing hurricanes of social media, people's width increased but depth declined. Reading of great books of yore requires ingestion and deep digestion of the content and nuances. If the source is available, there may be one born to bring them into light, which is not possible if the source is extinct. --Ramesam54 (talk) 14:34, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
MediaWiki is not the best software for Wikisource and it needs constant adaptations and improvements. The integration with the other Wikimedia communities is not always so simple as it should be. - εΔ ω 14:42, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
First, the default search engine is not suitable for the types of rich textual searches required by academic institution or any other form of textual analysis. The WMF needs to sponsor the writing of a more appropriate search engine modeled on those already used by scholarly databases. Two, WS needs more accessibility features through an expanded visibility.js. Third, WS needs to find ways of bringing GLAM-U institutions on board. Languageseeker (talk) 15:04, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
There are five major challenges: (1) getting more libraries aware and involved in what we do, (2) acquiring quality scans of works, (3) training WS editors to proofread for accuracy of transcription from the printed text, rather than using a spellchecker, (4) updating the format of previously transcribed wikisource works as new technologies and templates become available, and (5) interfacing everything with wikidata. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:54, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of source and access to public domain book, especially literary source from my country. We have been lacking of fund to do and permission to access that from the ountry's government, especially library cause of the difficult policy Agus Damanik (talk) 12:54, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
We need more visibility! More hands! Engange with real communities, new people that could like to work with us but don't know we exist. --Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Structured Data on Wikisource --Jeb (talk) 19:02, 16 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of functional, consistent data modelling at Wikidata (and lack of interest in developing the models: c.f. all the models that are still "work in progress") Inductiveload (talk) 19:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of developer resources: I don't mean occasionally siccing Comm Tech on something, I mostly just mean the ongoing grind of incredibly slow and frustrating experience of getting bugs fixed or, even, when no bug is forthcoming and you learn PHP to fix it yourself, getting it applied. Case in point: 7 months of completely broken large-file uploads. Only time-strapped volunteers seem to be willing to take responsibility to own Wikisource issues and it shows. Also WS (and other sisters) needs are routinely ignored, de-prioritised, overlooked and minimized in favour of "it works for Wikipedia". Inductiveload (talk) 19:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Lack of regular institutional technical support to resolve long term bugs and add cool feature requests. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 05:34, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In my opionion, the main challenge is the lack of general interest and attention to Wikisource from: 1) general reading public of the Internet, and 2) from Wikimedia users (which's majority are the Wikipedia contributors) - potential participants and contributors of Wikisource. For example, let's compare involvement in the Wikipedia and the Wikisource for the English language: as for now, the English Wikipedia has (as I see on w:en:Special:Statistics) 125,307 active users, and 1,072 administrators, and compared to the English Wikisource (per en:Special:Statistics): 377 (only!) active users and 24 (only!) administrators. So, the ratio of Wikipedia to Wikisource is 125307/377 = 332 for users and 1072/24=44.66 for admins. For the Russian Wikipedia and Wikisource that is similar (11,278 active users in the Russian Wikipedia against 96 (!!) active users in the Russian Wikisource), and it seems to be the same thing for all (or many) other languages. The Wikisource deserves much more attention than it has now, thus this disproportion should be carefully examined and the reasons of it should be revealed and the problems, preventing the growth of Wikisource contribution, must be fixed. Maybe, some sort of propagandist campaign amongst Wikipedians - for the purpose of inviting them to Wikisource - should be undertaken? --Nigmont (talk) 02:40, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
A very small amount of users contribute to Wikisource, in our community (Turkish). We need a larger community to do what we need to. Increasing the visibility of Wikisource is the most important problem at this time. Justinianus (talk) 09:32, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Less adaptation of regional copyrights law, the existing WMF regulations are general not more specific. For example, we, Tamil community, contributing mostly CC0 licensed books. But wikisource converts it to cc-by-sa????!!!!. I think that reducing the legal status is unlawful. So, let us expand the legal rights. Specifc: Let us start a deep study to acquire USSR tranlated books. Give life to their books.(See [1], Begali books, and many more in many Indic languages.)--Info-farmer (talk) 12:22, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What are your questions to Maryana?

Will it be possible to establish Book Scanning Centers to scan and upload books to Wiki Commons at major cities by Wikisource ? --Ramesam54 (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
(this has already been asked to Community Tech) Wikisource is a typical project that can be improved by machines (basically it's a human OCR). However, in 2021, humans are still better than machines in reading and customize the layout of texts in different languages and from different centuries. Why do WMF doesn't use this rich resource to take an active role in the (technological) development of knowledge? It would just require involving academia in projects (e.g. improving automated text reading tools) that make use of WMF data (e.g. proofread texts from Wikisource), founding a driving research toward free knowledge applications. --Ruthven (talk) 09:45, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
How can WMF do more to promote WS on the broader web? A twitter bot? Advertisement? Contacting influential sites? Better integration with Wikipedia? Languageseeker (talk) 15:06, 13 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I think Wikisource has been lacking attention from the public and has been and there is only small people know of this website less than his sister project. What kind of way WMF will do to increase Wikisource's visibility to the public?Agus Damanik (talk) 13:00, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What are you planning to do with: 1) increase awareness and visibility of the "small sisters" of Wikipedia (aka us at Wikisource) 2) get Wikisource to be the #1 place for book scanning, digitalization and text preserving in the world. --Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What will be the WMF's strategy to resolve huge backlogs of technical issues and feature requests related to Wikisource? -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 05:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Wikisource's awareness and people's interest and commitment to this project is quite low compared to Wikipedia. Therefore, it is very important to increase the number of participants in this project. How can we do it to introduce people to Wikisource and get them involved in this project? What can be done in this direction, especially in the use of social media? Justinianus (talk) 09:40, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Like Commons:OTRS, our TamilNadu govermment frequently releasing books for public domain under the scheme of Nationlised books of TamilNadu. During my w:Wikipedian in residence, I uploaded 2297 books at Commons;(nearly 3.5 lakhs pages) with our community consensus. Suggestion : If WMF legal team approach our TamilNadu government, we can get more public domin books(nearly another 1000 books and also upcoming years) which are exception to India copy right law. If this organisational approach will yeild best results than a contributor's approash. Is it possible?--Info-farmer (talk) 12:04, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]