Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2006

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Making proof reading easier[edit]

Mediawiki doesn't support proof reading. A first step to make it easier would be to preserve the line breaks. For that a soft hyphen is neccessary for line breaks within words. I think, the only way is to change Mediawiki and add a symbol that, used at the end of a line, isn't displayed and puts the word before and after the line together without an empty space. This could be "&shy ;" or a "-" (if the text should have one, it has to be uses twice "--") or something else. Or is there an other solution? --Jofi 00:15, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I reported it as Bug 4473. --Jofi 00:07, 4 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously nobody is interested in that. Why not? --Jofi 00:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't exactly understand the problem or what's being asked. To me everything seems to work just fine.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 00:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I try to explain it. If you have an original text like this:

Dies ist ein Beispieltext, der nur Test-
zwecken dient.

it is displayed in Wikisource like this:

Dies ist ein Beispieltext, der nur Test- zwecken dient.

Correct would be:

Dies ist ein Beispieltext, der nur Testzwecken dient. (without "-" and empty space)

So you have to change the text to have it correctly displayed. But then you don't have the original line breaks. If now somebody wants to proofread the text, it is much more difficult for him to find the correct line. This could be easily solved if:

Dies ist ein Beispieltext, der nur Test­     (or anything else instead of "shy")
zwecken dient.

would be possible and would result in:

Dies ist ein Beispieltext, der nur Test­zwecken dient.

You would have nice text in the article view and original line breaks in the edit view. --Jofi 21:59, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, got it. Thanks for clarifying.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 22:07, 1 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

partial protection of pages[edit]

The current page protection scheme is not satisfactory. One problem is that there is a good reason for never protecting pages, even if when they are complete and error-free : pages will always need to be updated, because we will keep inventing new formatting tricks, and we will keep adding interlanguage links.

I posted another bug, in order to have partial protections of pages: http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375

ThomasV 00:24, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

en.wikipedia already has something like that (w:en:Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy). I think this could also fit the wikisource needs. People who are active for a longer period of time mostly know what they are doing, but newbies often only "correct" the old typography to a newer one. --Jofi 01:45, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very good idea. It's much better than what we had been planning on doing, since this way allows anyone to edit formatting. The English WS had been talking about using templates and protecting those (which contain the text) so as to allow any user to edit the formatting. This way (if it becomes implemented) will be much better.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 16:43, 24 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I do not have much time to implement it now, this is why I posted this bug. however I guess it would not be too complicated to write, as long as no modification of the interface is made. If someone feels like doing it, please go for it. ThomasV 21:03, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

well, implemented. please vote for the bug. ThomasV 18:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
it was added to cvs yesterday. I do not know how long it will take until it is enabled here. ThomasV 07:40, 11 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I requested this extension to be enabled on wikisource. however, I was told that it is appropriate to organize a vote in order to show that there is consensus about it. the point is that it would modify protection policy; nobody seems to be willing to take responsibility for that. Vote page will be here: Wikisource:Vote on enabling the ProtectSection extension ThomasV 14:26, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

copyright templates[edit]

I hate them. All of them. In general, people who visit this site are looking for texts, and I am sure that in most case, they do not give a *** on the copyright status of these texts. The are looking for some information, or they want to enjoy some nice reading. They better not be disturbed by large templates that look like advertisement banners.

I once recommended that those templates be placed in the talk pages. Apparently my proposal did not convince many. Now, there would be another way to keep this information non-invasive: it is possible to modify the skin, so that a new tab for the copyright status is displayed if a copyright template is present in the page (and the template is not displayed). Users who click on this tab will be redirected to the template.

Check here for an example. This page uses a template (Copyright-ONU), and this results in a "license" tab (license is French for licence). How it works: I moved the existing template to the Wikisource: namespace. I then replaced the redirect page with an empty div that carries an id recognized by Monobook.js.

ThomasV 20:21, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! I'm glad to see someone else hates the copyright templates as much as I do. I really hate the PD templates the most. I'm going to bring this up on the English WS to see how many people would rather have a tab than have to place a template (which are the ugliest things) on each work.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 22:27, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

great. let hate unite us :-) ThomasV 22:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in for a seperate copyright/license tab. That makes much much more sense to me. Incidentally, "license" is english for "license". "Licence" is American English for "License". :) Cheers -- ChristianEdwardGruber 21:38, 16 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support a seperate copyright/license tab as well. It is now used at French Wikisource.--Jusjih 01:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

bilingual extension[edit]

the DoubleWiki extension was just enabled by Brion! you can see it in action in the French wikisource.

In order to use it on all wikis, sysops need to adapt their Monobook.js file. many thanks to all those who helped me getting this through.

ThomasV 20:16, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

here is a short description of how to use it. ThomasV 20:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note for people following an old link[edit]

Could an admin add a note to MediaWiki:Noarticletext, mentioning the language subdomains. I have so often clicked on links at Wikipedia and got this simple note. I know that it were outdated links and that the text now is in a subdomain, but most other people will think the article doesn't exist (anymore) and delete the link. --Jofi 00:08, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. However explainations could be improved. Yann 14:00, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps "other language subdomains", because some people might not know what a subdomain is? Unfortunately Google still displays the old pages, and often the ranking of the old, long deleted pages is higher than of the new ones in the subdomains. --Jofi 01:19, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There's a new discussion and a soon-to-come vote on the new logo of Wikisource. Please discuss it on the talk page, and discuss the seperate logos there. Datrio 14:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A Quick Survey of Languages[edit]

Out of curiousity, I did a quick survey of activity and progress on the various subdomains using RecentChanges and looking at Main Pages.

If I am not mistaken, there are currently 27 languages with Wikisource subdomains. Of those, I found only one that seems largely inactive, namely cy.wikisource.org. Besides cy.wikisource, there are just 2-3 others with only minimal recent activity (i.e. an average of just 1-2 edits per day), but all of those have nevertheless added significant content over the past few months and have useful Main Pages.

This means that nearly two dozen languages are flourishing, less than five months after the transfer. All of the larger languages (e.g. English, French, German) seem to have recovered completely from the move and done a great deal to revamp their infrastructures. Other languages have to have managed to do so to a large extent from scratch.

This is something very positive and wonderful. Would be good to get specific feedback from various languages. Dovi 19:39, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

de: It has completely recovered from the move, the only (and serious) problem are many external links that link to the old domain. Contributions at de vary very much, but really increased in comparison to before the move. Biggest problem at the moment: There is no community, people come, contribute their sources and are gone again. --Jofi 00:37, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Language comparisons by dump size[edit]

I took a look at the compressed database sizes (dumps from 22 Jan - 1 Feb). These are the file sizes of pages-articles.xml.bz2

 1 enwikisource 93.0 MB
 2 frwikisource 52.6 MB 
 3 arwikisource 23.2 MB
 4 eswikisource 17.4 MB
 5 dewikisource 14.1 MB
 6 lawikisource 13.1 MB
   sourceswiki  12.0 MB
 7 zhwikisource  9.4 MB
 8 rowikisource  8.2 MB
 9 itwikisource  7.8 MB
10 plwikisource  7.0 MB
11 elwikisource  6.1 MB
12 ruwikisource  5.9 MB
13 hrwikisource  4.3 MB
14 hewikisource  3.6 MB
15 ptwikisource  1.6 MB
16 nlwikisource  1.5 MB
17 jawikisource  1.2 MB
18 srwikisource  1.1 MB
19 dawikisource  783 KB
20 svwikisource  693 KB
21 kowikisource  649 KB
22 glwikisource  266 KB
23 idwikisource  265 KB
24 trwikisource  257 KB
25 fawikisource  168 KB
26 iswikisource  150 KB
27 cywikisource   66 KB

At the moment cy seems to be the only subdomain that has so little contributions, that it might be necessary to shut it down and merge with the international part again (see contribution above). Surprising results in comparison to the article statistics at Main Page: "ar" and "la" have much content, but little articles, the same at "el". The opposite with "hr": There are many articles with rather little content. --Jofi 00:26, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I neither support nor oppose merging inactive language subdomains back to multilingual Wikisource, but I hope that we make a written rule.--Jusjih 09:14, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unless it starts collecting spam, there is no need to do such a thing. And even then it would be locked, not "moved back." Plus, the cy.wikipedia has a reasonable amount of activity, so people who know the language will be looking at that Wikisource from time to time.

But the focus of my comments were not on cy.wikisource, rather on the two dozen wikis that seem to be doing not just well (which all of us had hoped would happen), but far better than I personally expected! This is a great thing, and thanks also to Jofi for his stats, which make it even clearer.

As far as community - on en.wikisource I think that has really happened, and quite nicely too, not just people "stopping by" to leave texts. At he.wikisource too, though of course the number of people is much smaller. What really seems to make it happen is working together on infrastucture - policies, templates, cleanup, Main Page and other central pages, categories and classification systems, and of course helping out others with questions and problems. In other words, it seems like the people who want to be librarians make up the steady community, which seems rather appropriate... Dovi 09:43, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly generally support language domains. But at "cy" there were no real contributions since December, 11th and the only real contributions have been made in the first 26 hours after the creation of the subdomain. The only admin is Brion VIBBER. I don't know if he really wants to maintain the domain, but the spam on one page kept unreverted for about 3 weeks. If the contributions to "cy" don't increase, there is no reason why we should keep the multilangual part of Wikisource. The activity of "cy" could be reached by almost any language subdomain, and there would be no argument to refuse any of the requests. --Jofi 23:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just a small point: when comparing database size, remember that non Latin alphabet languages (i.e. Arabic, Chinese, Indian languages, etc.) use much more space (x 2 ?) than Latin alphabet languages. Yann 10:42, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Latin alphabet languages get a much better compression rate. Bogdan 11:05, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the comparison is not very precise. But "la" does use Latin alphabet (what else ;-)) and "ar" has less than 800 counted articles. So it's still remarkable. --Jofi 23:32, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question[edit]

Hi there! I was setting up an account here to be of some help, but noticed it doesnt work for the language subdomains. Then I wonder, what is the point of starting an account here in the first place? Is the top-level just a shell for the lower levels? Why isnt it linked? I'll probably want to add stuff in English, and occasionally in Dutch; so what accounts should I create?

And, consequently, perhaps it might be worth it to streamline the accounts so that one single account works on different subdomains? Certainly it might be worth it to use signal more clearly that this is the top-level in the first place, as there is no visual difference whatsoever.

Cheers! 12:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi,
The old main WS is used to host documents in languages which do not have a subdomain. Regards, Yann 13:17, 27 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is linked. If you check the option remember me you can use the same account and password combination on most projects. For me it works here and on most Wikipedias except English, I happen to have a different name there, bc this one was taken :(

I am afraid you are not right. You can use the same user name and password in every project, but unless you create an account in every project, you cannot log in. The button remember me BTW is something quite else, it makes your log in automatically every time you visit the project. -jkb- 12:18, 2 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to the page for this image, its copyright has just been released to the Wikimedia Foundation. How can we verify that WMF actually has the copyright for this work? We might need to contact someone to get this finalized. But this opens up a number of possible works for our new logo if this is the case (such as the stylized version and other derivatives of the stylized iceberg).—Zhaladshar (Talk) 04:51, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The author has left the same message on his own page: see here. Since he was logged in when he wrote that, I guess we have a proof that it was him and not someone else. ThomasV 07:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe the copyright status of the image affects any stylized versions of the image - only versions that directly use the image itself (which is currently just the current logo). The stylized versions fall under whatever license their creators grant, irrespective of how the original image is licensed as they are not derivative works in the legal sense. (Note, ianal, but that is my understanding, anyway) --HappyDog 23:53, 13 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding was that if someone stylized the iceberg logo, that would be considered a derivative work, since they're taking the iceberg as a source of ideas and expanding on it to produce something new. As such they would have to obtain permission from the current copyright holder to create a stylized version. I'm not a lawyer, either, so I may have a wrong understanding, but that was how I understood it to be.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 14:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure. Taking your ideas from a source is different from using the image _as_ the source. A moot point in the current situation, but I'd be interested to know what the actual legal position would be if permission had not been granted. --HappyDog 00:59, 15 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

new subdomains[edit]

new subdomains were created :

  • yi.wikisource.org
  • sk.wikisource.org
  • cs.wikisource.org
  • ml.wikisource.org

congratulations and good luck! ThomasV 11:06, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank a lot, -jkb- 12:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

References[edit]

Cite.php: for references in the same page. You can read more here. Used at spanish wikisource in this article. --LadyInGrey 22:41, 1 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated/corrected the link ;) Aleator 16:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wikisource-I mailing list[edit]

I've noticed that most of our sister projects have a mailing list of their own yet we do not. I was wondering what people would think of having a mailing list for us to make discussions and whatnot on. It would probably be a much better method than relying on this Scriptorium (let's be realistic: very few discussions ever happen here anymore, since many contributors do not regularly check this site)--discussions stand a much better chance of not stalling and dying. Also, it would be a way to let people see what sorts of things are going on at WS. What are your thoughts?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support a mailing list. Previously, you, I, and other administrators could oversee all pages, so we could delete copyvios in any languages, but as more language subdomains break away from this multilingual site, a mailing list becomes even more important to co-ordinate things at Wikisource subdomains.--Jusjih 17:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. would be useful. ThomasV 20:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
support from me, -jkb- 09:14, 19 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The list has been created. For those interested, subscription information can be found here.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 18:30, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For those who may be interested in subscribing, the first mailing list discussion to begin concerns the creation of a Wikisource <format>-to-wikimarkup conversion script (see the archives). // Pathoschild 13:49, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Lets try and advertise this in the subdomains too. I put a message in the Spanish Cafe. Anyone that can translate various languages, please advertise this to people at those subdomains too. --BirgitteSB 18:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Policy pages[edit]

Since this wiki is still active, I think it would be good to add some documentation to it and give it a bit of a backbone. Recently, on the English sub-domain, we've written a lot of policies, and I think a few would be beneficial here. I think we should definitely port over the inclusion policy once it's been established and the deletion policy at the least so that we can have some official documents to point to should people ask.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 20:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Zhaladshar!!!!!!! Yes!!!!! First, I miss such pages here. Secondly, I think in the process of creating new language Wikisources they would be very usefull for the new ones. Now i mus search in all projects to find something on deletion, on blocking, is a xx.wikisource more close to xx.wikipedia or to wikisource.org, on copyright (in fact, there are some serious differences between the page here and the page on the en.wikisource) etc. I think we need it. Urgently. -jkb- 09:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The great work done on en.ws would be beneficial here. Yann 15:49, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hoping to porting over deletion, copyright, inclusion, administrator, and blocking policies to begin with. We can change them as we need to fit this sub-domain, and it would allow us to have an actual, hard copy policy to point to and allow newer sub-domains to have an established document to refer to/translate and adopt on their own project. That way, some of the growing pains can be avoided.
I'll also revamp many of the pages in our "Wikisource:" namespace which are so out of date that it's embarrassing. Once school lets out, I can dedicate much more time to this project. But I expect to have policies over here by the end of the week.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 16:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I am not like to promise I will help by writing some pages on this – 1. my english is ok but other speak better, 2. some of you are longer time here as me so you can judge the questions better, 3. I still have much to do with the new cs.wikisource. But if there is something I could help so i will do so.
As fitst I would like to mention that there are some differences on the use of the fair use licence:
So, what with fair use??? -jkb- 17:37, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fair use doesn't make sense here, as it usually means "part of a work" included in other related document, but we want to publish whole works independently. The exception may be book covers or photos of the author. Yann 18:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, one of the things the copyright policy will formalize is that (1) all texts must be public domain, GFDL, or GFDL-compatible. WS has been lax on this and it caused us some frustration and problems a little while ago; (2) it will prohibit fair use (I prefer in its entirety, but at least no fair use texts) to an extent we can decide upon later. For a site like WS, copyright should have been the first thing we nailed down, but it's pretty much turned into the very last thing. Ironic...—Zhaladshar (Talk) 21:11, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I support disallowing fair use that will not fit here. Is there any draft policy here to disallow non-commercial licenses as well? Fair use and non-commercial licenses are now disallowed at English Wikisource, but this policy has not been uniformly enforced at other subdomains, including Chinese Wikisource.--Jusjih 17:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright policy? Delete all Creative Commons works?[edit]

I recently wrote a very long email to wikisource-l to express desire for establishing consistency across subdomains: "Currently it seems that some licenses are valid on some subdomains but not others. (English Wikisource) requires all content to be compatible with the GNU Free Documentation License. However, maybe some other language subdomains do not have this policy?" In the same email, I went to explain that CC-BY and CC-BY-SA are free but not compatible with the GFDL.

The first reply was from Erik Moeller (Eloquence), who wrote: "Wikisource should instead follow similar principles as the Wikimedia Commons and allow any free content license to be used for added works." That said, I thought that someone high up in Wikimedia said that we must have GFDL-compatibility, which implies that Creative Commons works must leave Wikisource? --Kernigh 19:40, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Putting Hindi sources and Scriptorium out of Wikisource?[edit]

Isn't it time to move Hindi pages out of the main domain? Almost all pages found by "random page" in the main domain are in Hindi (and their number growing), and this does not help looking for other sources in more rare languages. Additionally the Hindi script URLs are much harder to work with, and the community Scriptorium gets in fact "polluted" by the inability to locate appropriate categories.

Most of the Scriptorium should also go to Meta-Wiki as it is already cross-project, and contains much more tools and management templates or help pages already written there for specific languages.

The main Wikisource sites hould just include the multilingual portal, and the initial sections for rare languages, properly organized into language categories, for easier transfer to another domain later when this content becomes significant. To ease this transition, a minimum set of international common (meta-)pages and templates should be created that will be transfered to the new domain translated later with the articles.

So the main wikisource should remain small and manageable. (note that new domain names could be created early as equivalents to the main site. This would make interwikis to Wikisource already working for those languages that still have not been transfered into a separate database.) 20:09, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi,
I did most of the work regarding Hindi and Sanskrit here. And most of the pages are Sanskrit, not Hindi. I am totally against separating languages unless there is a significant community to support a subdomain. In cases of Hindi and Sanskrit, I doubt that such a community exists, seeing the edits made upto now, and the number of editors on corresponding Wikipedia languages. And please, logging in and sign your comments. Yann 20:39, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with Yann. Unless there are a number of people who are willing to start up a new language Wikisource, a sub-domain should not be made.
The Scriptorium is not a place to locate language categories (I'm assuming you mean here to locate works written in a particular language). This is to discuss local issues on this wiki is sometimes used to coordinate between the different languages.
The current wiki is small and scaleable, and should remain entirely open for works of a particular language which will likely never get its own sub-domain. I see no reason why any of this should be ported over to Meta.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 21:42, 4 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this anonymous contributor that moving these pages out to a subdomain would clarify the situation here... ThomasV 08:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see a Hindi sub-domain as a project that will be all that active. It seems to be the case that inactive projects collect more vandalism than anything else. I seems safer to keep them here where a number of people watch the project than to move it to a new domain which might only be frequented by a very few people and only at irregular intervals. I would love to see a Hindi sub-domain, don't get me wrong, but I believe there should be support from people who will be active for it.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
sure. all I wanted to say is that there would be advantages to it. ThomasV 21:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


languages main pages[edit]

For those wikis that do not have a subdomain, I would like to proceed with a reorganization. Currently we have a set of main pages for each languages, and a set of categories. This has two drawbacks :

  1. it is redundant.
  2. it is difficult to locate a document, or to access the list, for someone who does not understand a language.

Since the number of pages in languages that are here is in general small, it would be possible to have the whole list of texts directly on their corresponding main page. So, I propose to use the category pages as the main pages. That is, move the content of each main page to the corresponding category page, where it would be used as a header. It would make it more direct to access the list of pages written in a given language. What do you guys think? ThomasV 13:21, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It is good, but someone must be able to identify which language an article belongs to.--Jusjih 15:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ok, I am starting to move a few of those, and to have a unified design.ThomasV 07:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Change Logos to SVG-Version[edit]

Hi there! There are SVG-Versions available for Image:Wikimedia without text-35px.png, Image:Wikibooks without text-35px.png, Image:Commons without text-35px.png and Image:Wikiquote without text-35px.png. Would be lovely if one of the admins could change those images in Template:Sisterprojects No Text and Main Page. The new logos are Image:Wikimedia-logo.svg, Image:Wikibooks-logo.svg, Image:Commons-logo.svg and Image:Wikiquote-logo.svg. Thank you very much! Regards, 217.225.124.149 20:46, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get what the big deal about the SVG versions are. What's wrong with the PNG ones?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think that there may be some browsers/systems which do not support SVG, so I would not change the logos. Yann 14:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Browsers without SVG support should not be a problem. The MediaWiki software should render the images as PNG. I know that there was a problem with transparency in PNG, but was not that fixed? I think the advantage of SVG is that scaled versions of scalable SVG graphics are more accurate than scaled verions of portable PNG graphics. 82.212.68.183 15:01, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Important change in the policy of de.wikisource[edit]

At de.wikisource there is a majority of those, who don't want to have texts without source or texts copied from other websites any longer (see here). So, if you contributed German texts in the last years, I strongly encourage you to add your source to the text. If you cannot do this or if you copied the text from another website and you want to keep your wikified version of it, then now is the right time to copy your text from de and to transfer ist elsewhere. It most likely will be deleted at de. --Jofi 21:24, 18 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why does the German Wikisource want to delete web sources? Does this mean that if a text (such as Kafka's The Metamorphosis were copied to de.wikisource from a website it will be deleted simply because it's an internet source?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I really do not understand what de.wikisource wants to do. Yann 14:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I can agree that the purpose of Wikisource is not to be a copy of Project good mountain or any other website. But works copied from other sites on the web can still be useful on Wikisource. So I see no reason to delete those works or to forbid copying more works. 82.212.68.183 14:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you forbid copying works from websites, the number of works the German Wikisource has will become virtually nil. How many people have access to old books and decent OCR material that they can scan in works and edit them? Such a process is extremely time consuming--just as much as transcribing them would be. I'm hoping that we are just not understanding what is happening (maybe they are forbidding a certain kind of web document?) and it's not an all out ban on web sources.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:17, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

At de.wikisource there are some projects that OCR works and edit them. And that is nice. But in fact you did understand correctly what is happening: Most likely anything else shall be deleted. Certainly that means, that thousands of pages will be deleted. In fact the whole process of transfering the texts from multilangual wikisource to de was unnecessary: Almost everything of those texts have no source or are copied from other websites. --Jofi 23:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious as to what is causing this change. How and why was this decided upon? It is an extremely dramatic change in policy, and I wonder about the ramifications. The biggest I'm concerned about (it's the only one I can think of right now; I'm sure I can come up with more later) is that user involvement in de.wikisource will drop dramatically. If all web-based contributions are excluded, most people who do not have decent OCR software or the rare books will be turned off of the project, because they've got no opportunity to be involved. Sure, some will stay, because they've got the required tools to allow them to be useful, but what about the newbies? Saying to them, "Oh, I'm sorry. We do not accept what you are uploading to our project. Please do not continue to add those works" would not put de.wikisource in a very good light and will cause growth in that project to all but halt. This is the reverse direction of what any Wikimedia project should want.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 00:15, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that it is entirely contrary with the rules of wikisource. For me, it is a nonsense. Marc 08:14, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

apparently this policy was "decided" in order to ensure quality of their texts. For that they proposed to remove all texts for which the source is unknown. In addition, some people proposed to remove texts that exist already elsewhere on the internet. I did not really understand the reason for that latter decision. I think that such a policy would terribly harm de.wikisource. I wonder if we can/should oppose that. ThomasV 10:19, 20 May 2006 (UTC) PS: why is the logo at de.wikisource different from other sites?[reply]
I'm a fan of opposing it. It goes entirely against the whole purpose of WS, and I imagine if this gets executed, there will be some bad light shone on Wikisource. I'm not against removing texts whose source is unknown. Many other sister projects have similar policies. But to entirely remove all texts that exist elsewhere on the web will hamstring the project. What about texts which a person scans in, but exist on a website somewhere? Are those not accepted?
To remove all web-based works completely overlooks the benefits that WS can give those texts. Sure, they exist on Gutenberg or Bartleby, but we can interlink them, add multimedia content (if it exists), and many other things which give those works value no other website has given it. I would rather not see this policy happen.
Was this policy ever voted upon? How many people supported it? Is there any course of action that can keep such a detrimental policy from taking effect?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 16:35, 20 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, i am a bit short of time and then when I have it I try do to something on cs.source... So it is the first time i hear about this nonsence. Sure, it must be clear that a text or a document from some webpages is free licensed and OK, but not this! If there is any chance to oppose it i support it. -jkb- 16:21, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Its not correct, what jofi here has written. Nobody wants delete tomorow thousands of pages in de-Wikisource. We are in a discussion process which sense have textes without any sources and which sense makes it to copy textes from any webpages to wikisource. And we have duscussed some solutions for it. Yes the radical solution is to delete all these textes and search original sources, like first editions or other historical important editions o a text. Another solution is, to find to all texts (you can imagine what work this is) a source (see above) and to compare these editions with the text in Wikisource. And also other solutions are discussed. But to say its clear the most active editors wants sometimes only texts with clear and good source in de-Wikisource. And copy&paste from any webpages is not good to reach this target.

That we want remove all Texts is not true, this is one of possible Solutions. And when we should delete these text, we want these texts back, based on clear sources and with high scientific Level. Short abstract: what jofi here says is not true an he is making panic without an base. Greetings --213.54.67.220 21:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC) s:de:Benutzer:Finanzer[reply]

Agree with Finanzer s:de:Benutzer:FrobenChristoph --84.60.205.115 22:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that the positions in the discussion are not as radical as it first seemed to me. But nevertheless I still encourage all people who added German texts to add their source to it. In my opinion it is still clear, that there is a majority supporting the deletion of some of the texts that have been added in the last years, if they don't fullfill some quality criterias. --Jofi 00:34, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think it is a good goal to be source for quality high level textes. One of criteria for a good text is to know where ist does come from. To achive this, there is a need for information about the source. There is no need for another haystack of nonvalidated information called ws. I think it is usefull to bring the ws to a higher level of quality, by retrieving these informations. If a text is nearly unavailable, it may be really usefull to keep it and state clearly that the source information is missing and searched for. If a text has an high availability in the net, there is no need to keep it without the source information, the best solution is to find the missing information and to add it, or as a last step delete it. To be just another mirror of low quality information may be the goal of other projects not of ws. sincerly --Joergens.mi 08:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree that texts should be sourced whenever possible. I am currently doing just that on fr.wikisource. However deleting a text already copied seems a solution a bit extrem to me. The source and validation can be added later. Yann 08:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is there any sense in a text, that is copied from somewhere in the net, wihout a source. Is it the full text, or is it an edited version. Which is the right bible (that has nothing to do with religion here, it is just a well known big example)? The Roman Catholic version, the Martin Luther version, the protestant version, the Anglican version.... When one of this chosen, for example catholic. The next question is before or after the 2. vatican synod. These are all bibles with a slightly differennt content. Hopefully you see without the citation of the source - where does it come from - the text is absolut useless. --Joergens.mi 09:06, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I will take another example. Say that somebody copied a text from a another website without giving the source (or not), for example a text of Goethe. If the orther site doesn't give itself the source, what would you do? The text should be verified with a paper version, but that will take time if it's a big work. Deleting the text doesn't improve the situation. Yann 10:18, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree that not only the licence but also the source must be clear. We need a high level quality. I am just hardly working to change it on cs.source. But the fact a document comes from internet can not be the criterium! In this case, what shall you do with the most old lithurgical texts and the most juristic ones? They are all PD, and i do not think, that somebody will scan or retype them, when you can find all on internet. Therefore if the first reports here are not true, it would be good, but probably there is a need of discussion on some principles like licence in wikisource etc. Zhaladzhar wanted to prepare something, i think. And i suggest, that such serious policies would be discussed also in other Wikisources as well. -jkb- 10:10, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]


  • The criteria isn´t it comes from the internet. The criteria is the source is missing. If someone does the work do digitise a book, he mormally has the source und will tell it. Most of the problems come from
  • "I found the book in the internet, it´s interessting, lets copy it to ws". This internet page dosn´t has any source information, so why should i provide one. "I´m a real big guy by copying this big book." .
  • Oh a real nice poem, i like it. Who is the author, I don´t know. Is it free, I don´t know. But there is a webspace container called ws, lets copy it. What´s about URV without a source?

--Joergens.mi 10:27, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@yann It must be verified. Mayby it is reprint with some amendments and a foreword. Are these copied wiht the text. If yes are the amendments and the foreword free or is it a URV because of the add ons. --Joergens.mi 10:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Joergens.mi, I understand what you mean. And I also have some texts on cs.source where I have to do something - as I said, the source is in my eyes as important as the licence. But: If somebody copied the Grundgesetz or the Declaration of the USA onto your de.wikisource without given the source so it is no reason to delete it. Both text are undoubtly PD, I must just compare it with a source and if it is the same, so I have the source or i copy it one time more if there are difference in the text. But this can be done later. In such cases I use a special template saying we know about the problem and we shall solve it. (And I think an URL is sifficient source in cases of some juristic sites which offer laws etc.). -jkb- 10:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@-jkb- What you said is ok, such an url may be an good entry to the source definition. but the problem ist in a lot of cases even this start is missing. Look here: http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Geier and these things are the problems. --Joergens.mi 11:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Der Geier... Sure, i know it, too, and you can see many texts like this also in Wikipedias... Here it is no great problem - everything is missing: no licence, no source, no author, no wiki to an article with explanation what it is etc. Either, I would try to find something by myself if I think it is important, or I would suggest to delete it indeed. In this case. But not if it were a law where I know at least, it is PD and i can use it for an article in Wikipedia. -jkb- 11:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • This are the things (Der Geier) we are talking about, nothing else. To make a usefull cleanup, by searching for articles of this type, and put them on a good base. If this is not possible, then and only then a deletion is intended. This is all we are argueing about at de.WS and we are at the beginning of that process not at the end. Even with the laws youre a talking about some information will be usefull, because there are changes from time to time, therefore the year of the issue or the version should be mentioned. --Joergens.mi 13:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This isn't nearly as drastic as it sounded at first glance (phew!). I actually think this is a noble effort. All texts should be sourced (author information, edition--make it as fleshed as possible) in order to help give WS a high quality of source texts and to make us more than just a copy and paste website.
However, I would like to suggest instead of mass deletion of unsourced texts, you simply place a template on the text like {{unsourced}} (or whatever the word would be in German). That way, editors who want to do a little bit of house cleaning will know that there are some texts that need to be worked on to be considered appropriate for WS. But just because there is no source right now does not mean the work should be deleted anytime soon. Each deletion need to be specific to the text in question--maybe one text is a very rare one (maybe a very old manuscript) that doesn't have any (or much) source information, and such information is quite hard to find. It should be kept, due to its nature, even though it doesn't have the requisite information on it. Of course, for more common texts, the source information won't be hard to find at all.
I think of unsourced texts as analogous to Wikipedia's "stub article." Unsourced texts are by no means complete, but deleting them is unwise as it prohibits further growth of that text. Just as a good Wikipedia article (in general) won't be written over night, nor should we expect a good source text to be so easy to add that we can add everything in one go. Sometimes searching will be necessary, sometimes it won't be fruitful at all, but if you keep it, you will allow others to also check that work, and maybe something will happen many months/years down the future.
-jkb-: I'll eventually get those documents over here. en.wikisource has been keeping me busy lately, and many of the policies I want to bring over have been getting changed slightly here and there. I want to bring a static text, not one that is getting changed every few weeks. I should be able to get them over here within a short time, though.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Don't hurry be happy (or was it don't worry be happy???), -jkb- 15:14, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We don´t hurry. I think we have statet clearly our intention. We are at the moment at the 'beginning of an discussion process how to improve the quality not at the end. The result will be some rules, how to proceed. --Joergens.mi 18:11, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Logo update[edit]

After one admin on the german wikisource had unilaterally changed the logo to a self made version but - rightly complained - that the old wikisource logo didn't even contain the project name, Zanimum was so friendly to create a clean redraw of the iceberg together with the project name and formally hand over the copyright to the Wikimedia Foundation. A version suitable for use as logo can be found here, bigger versions are uploaded on commons: Wikisource-newberg-de.png and Image:Wikisource-nt.png, EPS versions are available from Zanimum. It would be nice if the local project admins could update it. greetings,--Elian

I like this versoin alot. Can we try to achieve consensus to adopt this without a full contest? It is not very different from our current design and it appears that de.wikisource.org already has consensus on it. However I cannot read German, that needs to be confirmed.--BirgitteSB 23:19, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if there ever was a bigger discussion on this topic. The temporary logo at DE was supported by 3 people and opposed by none. The replace of the old logo was earlier supported by about 3 people and opposed by none. The "new" logo was already used at some Wikimedia pages as far as I know. The community at DE is not that big and most of them don't seem to be interested in a logo discussion that much. If nobody complains about the new logo, this can be called a consensus. --Jofi 00:50, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
it will not help wikisource if each subdomains starts to have its own logo. ThomasV 06:42, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
These methods are not really adapted. The logo concerns all subdomains of wikisource, and must be voted by all and not by only one . Marc 07:33, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please have a look at it. Actually it is the old iceberg logo. Just in a clean redrawn version. To date all subdomains – also the german – use the same logo. The subdomains never used the same file. And I agree to BirgitteSB: I also like the discussed version very much. --Frank Schulenburg 07:46, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No :
This is not the official logo ;
there was no vote. Marc 08:04, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The well-known iceberg is not the official logo? *puzzled* By the way: Do you actually know whether the file Image:Wikisource-logo.jpg (on Commons: "Original photo") is protected by trademark? --

On these page, you can see the exact form of the official logo : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo

if you want to change it, you could have the courtesy to make a vote. Marc 08:27, 22. Mai 2006 (UTC)

The Wikisource iceberg is a nice logo. I don't want to change it. --Frank Schulenburg 09:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There must be a vote in order to change the logo. In the meantime, I ask the german admins to revert back to the official logo. Those who want to change the logo should take part in the discussion here instead of taking unilateral actions. I wrote there that I am willing to organize a vote if the logo proposals are made before the vote, not during the vote. The reason is that I find it tricky to organize a vote when the set of options is not known. So far I received very little feedback on that. ThomasV 09:31, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree that there must be a vote before the official loge is changed. But secondly, It is not OK when somebody starts to change the logos in different Wikipedias - Zanimum did so at least twice in cs.wiki wothout consulting the people there. Next time we need a lear vote. -jkb- 09:59, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So far all the votes held about logos on wikisource yielded no results. On the other hand, there are several problems with the picture used as logo now:

  • copyright was never transfered to the Wikimedia Foundation, instead it was published under GFDL (this goes against our logo policy)
  • the image is a bitmap and as such not suitable for print in large versions.
  • it doesn't contain the project name

The new variant (it's not a totally different logo for which - I agree - a vote or a contest would be necessary) was created to solve these problems. As the designer of the promotion materials for the Wikimedia Foundation I was very happy that Zanimum provided this printable version. If you're not happy with this logo at all, you're free to organize a contest in the community and select another logo which also fullfills these conditions (copyright wikimedia, vector version, including project name), but the current thing confronts the wikimedia foundation and the promotion department with so many problems that it should be changed, now when there's finally a variant which solves these problems. --Elian

Elian, i do not say if I am happy with the logo or not, i even do not say if I am happy with the old one. But a logo is central for an identification. not only here, also on Wikipedias, Wikcionaries etc. If every server would start to make an own logo, it would be awful. And, these logos are to be found enywhere on main pages where there is an redirect to other projects. So, we nee it to be unified, somehow. And secondly, as i said above, every project can decide what it shall do. It is not possible, that somebody change the logo and then he changes it in other projects. Really, I do not argue against the new image. But agains the way it has been done. OK? -jkb- 12:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the unification, and the new version of the logo should be used on all wikisource projects without delay. Of course if people are unhappy with the logo, then as always, we should be open to a discussion of positive change, including a logo contest if that is warranted. The idea that logos have to be voted on is just mistaken, though.--Jimbo Wales 13:15, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it is for me good to hear here that we should unificate the logo (in the mean time there are some dozens of wikipedias and wikisources on the internet, and therefore we must show who we are). Just to explain the other point, to vote or not to vote (existentially not as bad as to be or not to be :-)): sure, i know the rule Voting is evil or so, but here in Wikisource we have some three hundreds of logos and since about 6 months we are preparing a voting (that never took part... I know). So we must now find a way to make all happy or "half happy" at least. But first condition indeed: all Wikisources of this Wikimedia project shoud have the same logo. -jkb- 15:12, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since the logo finding process lasts for almost 2 years and nobody knows when it ends, and because the current logo not even contains the name of the project, I would like to start a short vote to add "Wikisource" to the logo. I think this is absolutely necessary because otherwise people can't see where they are. I think it is no big deal to make such a change. --Jofi 16:08, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
it should be no big deal, right. And it was done already in a professional way. You're welcome to organize a new logo contest, but for the time being, I think the logo should just be changed to the one with project name. This gives us enough leeway to look for a new good logo while we're free of the problems of the old logo. --84.153.74.172 16:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
@ Jofi: Well, sure, this would be necessay. The only one problem is: some Wikisources do not call themselves Wikisource but the use this expression in their language or even they have something different. What shall we do with it?? Otherwise support for Jofi. -jkb- 16:20, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
They could adapt the image to add their text, as it is done in other Wikimedia project.

I know added this:

It is the same image as in the current logo, only the text "Wikisource" is added. Absolutely irrespective of the logo discussion I would like to have it used instead of the current one. I support replacing it by a better logo. --Jofi 21:36, 22 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

sorry Jofi, this solves the problem with the missing name, but it doesn't solve the copyright problems and the printing problems. --Elian
Elian I thought the copyrights had been transfered to WMF already. If they have not been then neither the current iceberg or the one Zanimum redrew would be acceptable, since the latter is a derivation of the former.--BirgitteSB 21:24, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe this has been said before. The current logo is licensed under the GFDL, transferring the copyright will not change that. But the copyright holder can authorise derivative works that are not GFDL-licensed. So if Zanimum got permission, he did not have to license his derivation under GFDL. So if everthing was done correctly that version is still acceptable as a logo. /82.212.68.183 22:21, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It´s a real curiosity.
  • There are several projekts (wikibooks) which added text to their logos, without any discussion.
  • Just such a text addition at de.WS gives a big discussion.
  • Some people defines a new logo. (personnally I don´t like it, but that doesn´t matters)
  • Other say it schould be adapted immediatily.
  • But here the old logo is still the logo, why hasn´t it changed here (as a good example) to the new form?

--Joergens.mi 10:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

following the above diktat by Jimbo Wales I uploaded Image:Wiki.png. I guess some developer has to set it up as logo now. ThomasV 07:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't it be better if the words Wikisource were included in the image, not out of it ? Is it too late to do that ? --Zephyrus 08:19, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

.

Something like this :

Word Wikisource inside logo

These images are all fairly ugly. If we're going to keep the iceberg logo, I'd prefer Zanimum's stylized version, or the version the English WS uses for its news page. I believe that Uwe Kils has given copyright of the current logo to the WMF, however.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I too prefer the version on the news page; the colors are better, and the shape has more style. but I do not think that we have the power to change a decision that comes from above us. Anyway, I am happy that we will not have to organize a vote, thanks to jimbo ThomasV 14:37, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I like Kcyclopedists' logo for WikisourceNews too. Could he make another one for Wikisource without news ? Can you do that, Kcyclopedist ? --Zephyrus 05:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I prefer the version on the news page,too. I don´t think it´s a goot idea to put wikisource in the center of the Logo. if you look at most of the examples, putting the text above or below is much smarter
    Wiki News logo
    Wiki News logo
    --Joergens.mi 15:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Not in the middle. First, some ones use the logo for other purposes too, where it could be disturbing. Secondly, I would suggest, we should have two sorts of an official logo: one with and one without the text (say for those Wikisources who would want to make another text). -jkb- 16:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
ThomasV: What decision is being made above our heads?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 02:31, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Z: I was referring to the request by Jimbo. Anyway, I am quite happy that the issue is solved now. ThomasV 06:04, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think I quite understood what Jimbo was saying. Is he saying we can all choose our own logo?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In contrary, he said he agrees with my suggestion to unificate all daomains, i.e. one logo for all wikisources. -jkb- 14:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Languages and categories[edit]

Some times I have some problems with the language of a text – I simply do not know: is it a document or is it some sort of vandalism?? The last exmple is Ein Tad. Undoubtly, it could be a language. In times the Czech Wikisource was here I started to use a category Czech (or Česky) for all pages as a main category, other categories were subcategories of this one. By the way, in the moment you decide to create a new domain, you have an advantage when moving your wikisource to the new one: a developer must have a look in this category and move everything he finds. I would suggest the same for all languages here, maybe this category should be in English (it is also possible to use the abbreviations like de, en, mt etc); and more over there could be a notice in the edit window, something like do not forget to give here your language code / category... -jkb- 09:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Most language categories here use the local name of the language. I think that makes sense, since persons looking for texts in a language will probably know at least so much of that language that they know the local name of that language.
Ein Tad can be deleted here since it is already present att the welsh subdomain.--82.212.68.183 09:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Done for Ein Tad. Yann 14:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ported over some policies from en.wikisource[edit]

Okay, I'm making good on my promise. I've now brought over an inclusion policy and a copyright policy. They can be located here:

I've made almost no changes to it (meaning non-existent templates are dead, many shortcut links are dead, etc.). I didn't want to make any changes until I brought it up here (maybe we will bring over the templates from en.ws, maybe get rid of them--it's all up to discussion). Read it, and say what you like, dislike, what should be changed (whether it relates to actual policy or presentation), or make the changes yourself.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 23:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I support both policies to be applied here based on English Wikisource. There are several works here with non-commercial licenses that will have to go. Based on [1], it seems that Angela has suggested that non-commercial licenses are to be disallowed at all Wikisource sites. When we have the policy officialized, I will nominate articles with non-commercial licenses for deletion.--Jusjih 14:10, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I have to read it once more but now I can say I'm like to support it (hmm, and then to translate it for cs.source... good job), -jkb- 15:54, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'll begin working with these to make them more Wikisource-general instead of English specific. That way, the transition to using them on other WS (should that happen) will be easier to do.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 14:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, what shall happen with the old draft Wikisource:Copyright which is still here? We should not have two different pages on copyright :-), -jkb- 09:50, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because the page was so out of date, we blanked it and redirected it to Wikisource:Copyright policy, which encompassed some elements from Wikisource:Copyright and many new elements which reflected better what a good copyright policy should be.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 14:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The old draft of Wikisource:Copyright is still there as of this writing of mine.--Jusjih 04:00, 14 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
On en.wikisource? It's a redirect over there. Here, it should probably be redirect to remove mention of fair use.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:19, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No, not at en.wikisource but at this multilingual site.--Jusjih 06:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have redirected Wikisource:Copyright to Wikisource:Copyright policy and moved the talk page, but I have not merged the history of two project pages.--Jusjih 03:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright question[edit]

I'm thinking of ading portions or all of the AASHO 1927 list of United States Numbered Highways - an excerpt is here. What if anything of this is copyrightable? Would I have to condense it into a simple list of cities, or would even that not be OK?

Background: the list was compiled by AASHO, a private organization forwed of members from all state highway departments. The individual towns listed along the route were chosen by AASHO, and a relocation away from one required AASHO approval. It was copyrighted and the copyright (at least for the 1929 edition) has been renewed:

CLNA: AMERICAN ASSN. OF STATE HIGHWAY OFFICIALS.
TITL: United States numbered highways, by W. C. Markham.
ODAT: 19Aug29; AA23426 RREG: American Assn. of State Highway Officials ; 24Jul57; R196400.

Hmmm... that also means that the 1927 edition (which has no mention of a "W. C. Markham") was not renewed, and so should be OK. I'm also interested in the bigger question though. --SPUI 00:12, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no copyright and if the text is only English you should put it at English Wikisource. /82.212.68.183 08:47, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

new subdomains[edit]

the following subdomains have been created:

I would like to ask those who use these subdomains to move content from here to there. In addition, pages have to be deleted on this site; otherwise there will be duplicate copies and chaos. For that reason, it would be great to have one person in charge per subdomain, who blanks the pages that have been moved, so that I can later delete them.

To do that, please replace the text on the pages that were moved with "[[Category:Moved to xx]]", where "xx" is the name of the subdomain the pages were moved to.

ThomasV 10:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, remember, if you want to keep the page histories, ask a developer (probably Brion) to do the page transfers.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:16, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please remember to check the copyright status of moved articles as well.--Jusjih 06:23, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why not not to transfer the pages from here to the new domains by transwiki? It has been activated, I made one or two trials today from cs.wiki to cs.source, and it it fully OK incl. the history. Sure, it must bve activated for each subdomain, i.e. somebody must get the access, and he must get also the access for transfers from here (normally, it is activated only for transfers from xx.wiki to ss.xource). But it should not be a problem, and we must then find a list here, what can be deleted. -jkb- 22:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- - - P.S. like Gububu does for the hu.source

Creating new subdomains[edit]

It was requested on IRC that we clearly list approved subdomains seperately from the ongoing or inactive disscusions. Also I was told that the procedure of filing a bug to create new subdomains is not good for the developers. I am on IRC regularly and can make direct requests to them if someone will leave a message on my talk page at en:User talk:BirgitteSB. I looked at Wikisource:Language domain requests and I think we could make a seperate section for approved domains and move the disscusions to it as they gain consensus. Does anyone else have ideas on how to make the page clearer? --BirgitteSB 23:13, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sysop for a while[edit]

Hi, some time ago a made a proposal in meta - m:Meta:Babel#Sysop for a while -, and today a tzried to start a new discussion on this topic. Everybody who would like to say something to it, please go there and make it. Thx, -jkb- 15:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Side-by-side alignment tags for translations?[edit]

Hi, all, I'm relatively new, so forgive me if this isn't the right forum for asking this question.

I've been transcribing some old texts onto the Latin and French wikisources, and then adding my translations at the English wikisource. Someone very nice at the Latin Wikisource started adding mysterious tags to my contributions, such as

  [[la:Confessio philosophi]]
  {{interwiki-info|la|(vo)}}

which BirgitteSB explained gives a side-by-side view of the original and translated texts. So cool!

I'm wondering, though, whether it's possible to introduce matching tags into the two texts to help them align better. It might be helpful for students if they could see paragraphs of the original and translated texts exactly opposite to one another. A good test case would be the dialog s:la:Confessio philosophi and s:en:Confessio philosophi. Thanks for your help! :) WillowW 08:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Willow,
For that, you need that the div class=text to be exactly at the same place on both documents, and of course, the paragraphs should match each other. Regards, Yann 09:27, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Yann, thanks for the suggestions! I added the

<div class=text>

at the beginning and

</div>

at the end of the text that should be aligned in both dialogs, but that doesn't seem to have helped. The paragraphs still don't line up in the two-column format; the text gradually gets out of sync starting from the beginning until the end, where there are huge gaps. The paragraph boundaries (2 carriage returns) in the two texts seem to be identical, although the lengths of each paragraph might differ somewhat. Could someone please look at the dialogs and see whether I'm doing something wrong? I really would like to have the dialog lines match up. Once we get these dialogs to work, I'll copy the solution over to my other translations. Thanks for all your trouble! :) Willow 19:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

PS. Am I allowed to make a user page here? I was going to, but it seemed to suggest that I shouldn't if I already have a page at other wikisources, which I do (en,fr,la,de). Thanks for any tips for a hopeless new-b! ;)

Willow, look at it now. I've tweaked the Latin side a bit and now it all meets up. It seems that you have to manually add line breaks (I'm initially thinking that the header templates are screwing things up). I need to look more into it, though. (Oh, and you can go ahead and create a user space--this is a fully operational wiki).—Zhaladshar (Talk) 22:17, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, Zhaladshar, for looking into it and trying to get it to work! Unfortunately, it still doesn't work for me; the two columns start off OK but get out of sync after a short while and get really bad at the end. :( Interestingly, going to the double-column format from the Latin side seems to give a slightly better alignment than going from the English page. I tried it in two different browsers (Mozilla and Firefox). The hermit-devil dialog near the end has single linespaces between the paragraphs; perhaps that might throw it off? I'm totally willing to go through the text, though, and put tags in if they'll help it align better. I appreciate all your help! Willow 00:29, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I am the "Someone" that add the interwikilink on en: but I was not logged in... :)
I see that Zhaladshar insert in the <br clear="all" />
Can you explane me how work this? I'm not an expert with the tags.
Thank you very much!
Please, make attention when you modify this template because is used by quite all the text in la.wikisource.
Hi! --Accurimbono 09:04, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have had the same problem at the same time. Here is another page which seems to have solved the problem :
I don't know why it works with Epictete and doesn't work with Horace, Epictete hadn't suppressed the title templates though.
Epictete
Horace
--Zephyrus 09:33, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
...And now Horace is correct but I can't achieve this, this, this, nor can I succeed with that… One of these alignments is correct : this one, but I can't see why. Where have I been wrong ? Thanks very much if somebody can help. --Zephyrus 10:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Side by side alignment (continued) : main pages same problem ?[edit]

Another gap here. Is there some 'div' that we ought to use to correct this gap, and would it be on the English page or on the French page ? --Zephyrus 04:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I am the author of this very imperfect piece of software. you can use tags to align paragraphs. The help is here : Wikisource:DoubleWiki Extension. ThomasV 10:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


This "very imperfect piece of software" is very useful and well thought even as it is ! But you know me, Thomas, you know that I am a not very gifted beginner, do you think I would be able to better it ? Should I try some experiments myself, or should I wait for others to do it ? --Zephyrus 11:41, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Hey, I got it to work! Check out s:en:Confessio philosophi and s:la:Confessio philosophi -- yeay, yeay, yeay! :D

It works for me too, here. Thank you ThomasV and WillowW ! --Zephyrus 13:45, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "div class=text" tags at the beginning and end didn't help, presumably because of the different title templates on the two different Wikisources. The "title" div tags worked great, although they seem to need a forward slash at the end, e.g.,

<div title="Beginning of text" />

Should the Help page be changed? There's no forward slash after "Wright brothers". Thanks again, ThomasV! Willow 11:20, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

hey. I did not put it in the help, because I thought it was obvious : a div must always be closed. not closing divs can cause really bad things. I usually use </div> to close my divs, but the slash is another good way to do it. feel free to improve the help. ThomasV 11:30, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think <div/> is valid HTML, but it is cleaned up and rendered as <div></div> by the MediaWiki software. /82.212.68.183 12:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Might be I did not understand it well, I am bad in programming. I wanted to install the bilingual feature in cs.source and i followed the guide in Wikisource:DoubleWiki Extension, but nothing happens - no double arrows, not bilingual... Did i forget to install something esle? (I copied just the script from fr.source, that's all). Thx, -jkb- 13:38, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

yes you did. addLoadEvent is missing, as well as the file header. ThomasV 13:47, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh gosh. And where is it? addLoadEvent is there, as I can see, and what is header? And where? We are now at the point that through our extremely growth we shall override de.source and en.source very soon :-), but such marginal problems... Can you help? -jkb- 17:06, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

it is not there. check carefully. ThomasV 18:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you want to use addLoadEvent you need a definition of that function in your script. It should be easier to use addOnloadHook (a function that is defined by the MediaWiki software). I think the script will work if you change "addLoadEvent(BilingualLink);" into "addOnloadHook(BilingualLink);". /EnDumEn 21:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

@ EnDumEn: thx, it works; @ ThomasV: well you were right, there was a space, but it was copy&paste from somewhere, so... anyway thx as well. -jkb- 12:11, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Did something happen with this utility?? It worked fine (see above), but this week something changed, there are no double extensions on the left column - it is away. -jkb- 11:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

please update your monobook.js from fr.ws ThomasV 11:50, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, so there is something new in the west... Do you think it will work with the addOnloadHook(BilingualLink) instead of addLoadEvent(BilingualLink) (see EnDummEn's advice above)?? Anyway, thx much, -jkb- 17:22, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Spoken Wikisource[edit]

The German branch of Wikisource has uploaded two audio files at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Spoken_Wikisource_German . If anyone would like to participate on building a library of audio files with spoken Wikisource texts under free licenses feel free to use the Commons category Spoken Wikisource and to share your thoughts on this topic with the German community at http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Gesprochene_Wikisource . Greetings from Germany! Wikisource-de-User FrobenChristoph --172.182.5.236 18:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I'd like to bring to everyone's attention a site which does a similar thing: LibriVox.org. All of their audio books are released immediately into the public domain. It might be worth going over and giving them a look.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:11, 24 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Frisian sources[edit]

Now that subdomains have been created, how do I reach the pages that are in the main domain, from elsewhere? ws:Main Page:Frysk does not get me to Main Page:Frysk for some reason, but at s:Main Page:Frysk the subdomain translation kicks in. Thus, using it from a fy: wiki you end up on the non-existent fy: subdomain, without a redirect back from http://fy.wikisource.org it seems. (I can't demonstrate this here; I always held s:xx:pagename to be a switch to xx subdomain, but apparently it, now, isn't.) So how do I link the main pages of the various Frisian projects? Or should we subdomain Wikiboarne for that? Aliter 22:01, 18 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[[oldwikisource:Foo]] ThomasV 22:07, 19 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. (Indeed, so much more elegant than ws:, wouldn't you agree? Not to mention that "old" is a misnover, here.)
And I see that, while the problem with things like w:fy: is that they link to the wrong computeradress, this is fixed by translating it to the correct wiki serverside on each request (the usual disadvantages), so I have the solution there as well.

My original problem is solved, then. Now I just have to find the Wikiboarne references in the Wikipedy to make them link to these fine new/old internal links. Aliter 19:26, 20 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some links to and from Wikisource are a bit complicated and/or strange, indeed; but see my page in cs.source cs:Nápověda:Odkazy#Odkazy v textu - although it is written in Czech you will understand the syntaxes for more examples. Good luck, -jkb- 11:01, 21 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was asked at Wikimania if I could help get the Wikisource description on Meta updated. I have failed to do this and it looks as though the projects have been moved to there own pages now. The new Wikisource page is lacking any general descriptions at the moment and I was hoping we could work on that here. Once the english desricpption is put up, it will be translated to main languages in use at Meta. So it is important that this description does not solely refelect en.WS. Also I think would be nice to really put some thought into this presentation of Wikisource. So does anyone has any thoughts on this?--BirgitteSB 19:37, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

why don't they use wikisource ? ThomasV 04:54, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, maybe they wanted something endorsed by the community. Maybe they heard rumors about the "slogan/description flap" and thought it had something to do with that page. If no one is interested in working on this I can reccomend using that. --71.81.70.212 12:58, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, what means endorsed... Obviously it is endorsed or something like that as nobody from the community protested against it. And, in fact, I cannot imagine that somebody would be able to create another text which would be quite different from this one. Sure, it can be made shorter if necessary, but Wikisource is good described there - my oppinion. -jkb- 13:32, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please tell me that those stats are automatically updated...It will suck to have to go through and manually update ALL the WS domains with new page/admin/user counts.
Birgitte: What all needs to be added to the Meta page? I'm willing to help, although my amount of free time right now is pretty dismal.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 17:03, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Basically the About Wikisource section. m:Wikipedia just covers the history other sister projects tell about their goals and mission. I don't know exactly what we should, but I would like it to be reflective of things all lang subdomains share. --BirgitteSB 22:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Middle Old English Wikisource[edit]

ang.wikisource.org (Middle English Wikisource) is a dead wiki for a dead language/english variation. The most frequent action is user creation. See the complete listing of all editions that this wiki has received up today in http://ang.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&limit=100&days=300.

According to ang:Special:Statistics, There are 11 total pages in the database. This includes "talk" pages, pages about Wicifruma, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 0 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

This is the full list of articles on Main namespace:

  1. ang:Brunanburh, copy-and-paste from en:Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader/The Battle of Brunanburh
  2. ang:Cnēorisbōc is copyvio? (see ang:Talk:Cnēorisbōc)
  3. ang:Dēor
  4. ang:Main Page redirects to ang:Hēafodsīde
  5. ang:Hēafodsīde is the Main page
  6. ang:Se Wīdfarend, copy-and-paste from ang:Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader/The Wanderer

English Wikisource maintain acceptance of texts in Middle English. See Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2005/10#Middle English (and Category:Middle English Fiction). Any reason to keep this wiki open? 555 19:39, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When you put this question so I could do the same on one dozen of other wikisources with 3 edits a months (=3 new users). Big problem. See also the discussion on cration of new wikisources. But I agree, I do. -jkb- 22:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
IMHO this subdomian should never have been created. The texts are welcome at en.WS. However I will point out the language in question is Old English or Anglo-Saxon not Middle English. --BirgitteSB 22:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Following Birgitte, please note that the very last wave of language domain creations simply created everything that had a request at the time, even things that did not meet the basic criterion spelled out on the page itself.
In general, this is not overly troubling, because if a wiki exists in a real language then someone can always come and get it moving, as has happened in many projects that were slow-to-start. But in this case it is a policy matter, and I think it would have been better not to have created it until there was some kind of community decision. Dovi 12:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To subdomain or not to subdomain :-)[edit]

(This is not Shakespeare, but -jkb-)

domain 30 days good 19.8. good 13.9. admins
yi 15 24 24 2
sk 2 71 71 2
cs ~2500 351 419 4
ml 30 19 19 1
ang 1 0 0 0
az 2 1 0 0
bg 41 57 63 5
bs >500 264 279 2
ca 30 50 52 1
et 53 52 52 1
fi >500 935 1458 3
fo 14 2 5 0
ht 1 0 1 0
hu >500 222 256 2
kn ? 110 142 2
lt 13 22 25 1
no 83 114 129 2
sl 12 13 14 0
te 10+490 107 429 1
th ?+460 1523 1524 1
uk 28 86 87 1
vi ~90 26 27 1
zh-m. ? 18 18 1

As a reaction on Scriptorium#Middle Old English Wikisource I decided to investigate a bit. In last time there were created 23 new subdomains: March 19th 2006 – 4 ones (the rop four in the table), June 15th 2006 – 19 ones. I made a short investigation how they are :-). Hereby I looked after the number of edits in last 30 days, number of articles August 19th, number of articles Sept 13th and number of sysops. See the table on the right side.

  • Number of edits in last 30 days (I visited RC pages): in some cases these edits are no real edits but e.g. the creation of new users. In three cases there are more than 500 edits but I am not logged and cannot see all; in two cases (te: and th:í there are nearly 500 edits, but 490 respectively 460 of them are made by a bot on one day or so. But: there are only 4 subdomains with more than 100 edits per month (+te: and th:).
  • Number of articles (total, good): it is a comparison between August 19th ([2]) and September 13th ([3]), where you can see the growth.
  • Sysops ([4]): I think it does not matter how many admins a subdomain has, but it DOES matter if there is no one. We have six subdomains without any admin (and 13 with one admin only). I wonder how they can work. To make a domain functionally there must be made hundreds of edits in locked namespace of MediaWiki, I still am not ready with this, every day there is something to translate or so.

Beside the fact that a subdomain without an admin cannot work properly, we cannot hope we shall have good connestions to the domain as there is nobody to contact; and, i think, ThomasV will agree, we have a lot of rubish here on wikisource.org: not deleted pages, chaotic structures, etc. I think, next time it must bee clear that for the creating of a new subdomain there must be clear conditions, e.g. one or more admins incl. a buraucrat (somebody, who is working here a bit for a longer time), a sufficient stuff of users, a sufficient stuff of pages here, etc. I am not sure what to do with the subdomains which exist virtually but do not exist in fact (are not working since months). To bring them back??? To ask somebody from the Wikipedia to start an action and bring some people to their Wikisource??? I am not sure. -jkb- 15:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO, now is time to impose some rules in creation of new domains (including in the current votes) and to turn wikisource.org as a really multilingual wiki (using some ideas from meta-wiki, commons and beta-wikiversity). Imposing to have at least 100 text-units and 3 active users here after one-two months of editions, for example. And proposing to close the current smallest Wikisources on meta:Proposals for closing projects (or some equivalent page to be created here) if after three-five months that wikis have less than 40 text units and two active users, moving back to here all of these texts. 555 17:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
-jkb-: First, thank you very much for this research. It really shines a light on the subdomains of WS, and puts in stone what many of us had been assuming for quite some time.
These are my suggestions for new rules concerning creating new subdomains:
  1. There must be at least one approved bureaucrat candidate. This way, all admin and bureaucratic functions can be dealt with right away.
  2. There must be a language category so that all the pages can be imported into the new subdomain (by either the admin or a developer)
(These are in addition to the rules we've already established on the language domain page.)
About the inactive domains we already have. I say we try to contact their respective sister projects and try to get some of them to become more active on the WS in their language. I mean, many of the currently inactive subdomains had a reasonably sized list of people who wanted its creation. If after a month (or whatever length of time we decide is good) nothing has happened, we request to have the subdomain turned off, and we will absorb all of its texts again.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 21:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. However my main concern is not inactive subdomains, but those subdomains for which a high number of pages remain here because they were not imported, or because they were not categorized (eg. thai, hungarian, catalan...). ThomasV 10:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is right. But I think it is only the other side of the same coin (=problem): if a subdomain is inactive means (mostly) that it was inactive here, too; that means, nobody prepared the pages for the new subdomain (list of files, or better language categories); and nobody took care off the pages that remeined here; that means, that the new subdomain doesn't work good in developing the new subdomain and doesn't work good in cooperating with the old one. Therefore, if we get new rules, and if we say there must be somebody whom we know and who is working here good for a certain time, so this person should get our support in preparing the transfer (categorizing...) and in geting a admin or bureaucrat in the new soubdomain. And we shall agree with the new subdomain only if the work here is done, otherwise NO. -jkb- 11:41, 16 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not to let this asleep I started New rules proposal to discuss this problem. -jkb- 10:05, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New requests[edit]

m:Requests_for_new_languages#Aragonese_Wikisource and m:Requests for new languages/Siberian wikisource: apparently someone missed the rules for create a new subdomain... 555 14:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aragonese WS - that is new for me; the other one: see Wikisource:Language domain requests#Domain requests (ru-sib.wikisource.org) and Talk:Main Page#How to add languages?, -jkb- 17:08, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Bots on Wikisources[edit]

Is it usual that on Wikisources bots are working like on Wikipedias, too, in the same way? Sure, I have about two bots from the cs.wiki in our cs.source, when i would need something so they can do it; but what is the experience when somebody ask to get the status of a bot - what can he do when he didn't work in any Wikisource beofre? (I mean, the structure of a Wikipedia is a bit different from that one here...). It was just a question. -jkb- 18:42, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

On the English WS we have a number of bots that do (I think -- I'm not too familiar with en:wp) the same thing as Wikipedia bots would. We've got bots that convert old templates to newer ones, categorize pages, (temporarily) delete pages, convert HTML markup to WikiML, etc. On en:ws, it's not too difficult to get a bot account, but the only ones who ask are people who are trusted (I think all bot operators right now are admins, but that's not a rule) so we know that whatever their bot does, it won't massively screw up the project.
If a person is asking for a bot account when he's new to WS, I'd say the best thing he can do is maintenance tasks (clean up double redirects) or maybe have the bot add pages from other sources on the internet (sometimes bots at WS port over texts from, say, Gutenberg to save the contributor some time).—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
We have also another kind of bot: see User:ThomasBot here, s:User:ThomasBot on en.wikisource, s:fr:Utilisateur:ThomasBot and s:fr:Utilisateur:YannBot on fr.wikisource. These can be used by other contributors for tasks like search and replace, deleting text with a regular expression, importing, spliting a book, etc. Yann 19:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thx to all, this was something what I was thinking, -jkb- 23:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alternate medias[edit]

Conversion of major/all works to downloadable format. e.g PDF

Logo for la.wikisource[edit]

The user Zanimum uploaded a new logo for latin wikisource with the latin name Vicifons instead of the english Wikisource.

Is it possible to use it as for zh.wikisource?

Thanks for your help! --Accurimbono 12:12, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

ask on bugzilla:. 555 20:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --Accurimbono 10:07, 14 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
the colors are changed. ThomasV 11:51, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

[edit]

Jimmy, on 22 May 2006, said "Of course if people are unhappy with the logo, then as always, we should be open to a discussion of positive change, including a logo contest if that is warranted" [5]. IMHO now is a good time to organize a small poll on the local Wikisources to keep the current modified version of the original logo or to try to organize a new logo contest. IMHO the current logo don't have nothing related to the Wikisource project. And, IMHO again, something like [[]] ([[scroll]]) may be a really good logo. 555 16:38, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

When a similar poll was done in the past, nothing became of the results because no one was prepared to take on organizing a global contest after the poll concluded. This is what led to the current situation. I would like to see at least three people from different languages volunteer to organize the next step before any local polls are started. Once we have these three organizers, they can agree on the wording of the poll. I suggest this be emailed to translators-l with a list of needed tranlations. Then we should give them a week to produce any translations before starting any polls. At that point we should start the polls and see what people think. --BirgitteSB 19:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for at least one tried to reply to me. If someone in some year of this century remember the current name of the project (Wikisource, not more Sourceberg to have a Iceberg on the logo) and need a help in this subject ask for me here. 555 19:40, 27 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to edit the English Wikisource's copyright policy[edit]

See on the English Wikisource. --Benn Newman 02:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion of proposed logos[edit]

Why were the proposed logos deleted? Even though the contest is over, they could still possibly used for something some day. (Or to make sense of the contest discussion.) --Benn Newman 19:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have a offline backup of all proposes, but none of them are a really good propose. But the current logo isn't a really good logo... 555 02:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question about new possible project[edit]

I've been active here in the Volapük wikisource (with a number of original texts and translations into Volapük). I'm now thinking about a new idea: I have several Bibles (usually the new testament) translated into South American Amerindian (mostly Cariban) languages (Tiriyó, Apalaí, Waiwai, Hixkaryana, Makushi, etc.). I'm thinking of scanning and OCR-ing these, so that I have text files that I can place here. My question is: if the areas are usually defined by language, I would need one main page per Amerindian language; but if all I have for each language is the Bible tranlation, then it would make more sense to have one main page with links to all these translations, one per language -- something like a portal for Amerindian Bible Translations. Is this a possible project here, or should projects always be based on language?

Hi,
I think you can have both... for the same price! ;o)
You can (and I think you should) have one main page for each different language, and one page listing all Bibles on all languages. Yann 21:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another (unrelated) question: the Volapük text collection has grown sufficiently that I felt it might be a good idea to have a separate vo.wikisource domain (similar to the vo.wikipedia, where I am also currently active). I've requested one such domain at Meta, but there seem to be no answers or changes. What should I do to enquire about the possibility of creating such a domain? --Smeira 21:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The only requirement for having a separate domain is to have a sufficient number of users. I don't think there should be a separate domain if you are the only user editing documents in Volapük. Another example here is Sanskrit language. There are more than 1,700 pages in Sanskrit, nearly all edited by me. There could be thousands more if all important texts in Sanskrit are published here. But I didn't request a separate domain, since there never was any other editor, except for a few edits, so I would have to maintain a subdomain all by myself. Yann 21:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Smeira. All of these translations are in Public domain (e.g. the translator died more than 70 years ago) or under a Free Content License (for all purposes, including commercial)? I know some Bible translations for South American Amerindian languages, but all is copyrighted =(. 555 02:55, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I'm OrbiliusMagister, sysop on it.Source. As far as S.Meira's contributions on it.wiki (and on Commons) are concerned I can testify his good faith, his mastery of Volapük and knowledge of Wiki* policies. My only concern is about Smeira being alone in this praiseworth enterprise. As long as his contributions are placed on active source projects, these will be seen and guarded and developed, can the same be said for a single wiki mainained by a single user? Maybe I'm too concerned, so calm me down. Excuse my awkward English...
Thanks for all the answers! Thanks OrbiliusMagister for your kind words! OK, it's better not to be the only guy adding Volapük texts in a Volapük domain (there's a lot I don't know about how to organize and protect things here -- as I'm quickly realizing now that I've been made sysop of the Volapük wikipedia). I had thought that new domains would depend on number of texts, but after your explanations I see the point. Unless other Volapük weirdos show up to help me, I'll stay here with the Volapük texts.
555, I see you're Brazilian (so am I; but I suppose writing in English is de rigueur here, so I won't use Portuguese). You ask an important question: I had assumed these Bible translations were all free, since the Bible is such a free-domain text; but you are right, some are not. A couple are (my Guaraní Bible explicitly states no copyright), but others are not. And, of course, they're all recent: all done the 1950's or 1960's. Still a couple of them are free and could be placed here.
From what Yann said, I see there's no need to classify things by language here. I think it wouldn't be a good idea to have one main page per language in this case, because, for most indigenous languages, the Bible translation is pretty much everything there is, and any new texts would of course not be in the public domain and thus not elligible for wikisource. So why create, say, a Hixkaryana language page that has basically only one text, without much chance of there being others in the foreseeable future? What use would it be? It seems better to create an Amerindian Languages page with links to every Bible translation. What do you think? Are there any other one-text main pages here? (I'm not going to start this soon, by the way, because there's still a lot of Volapük -- and other things -- to do; probably only next year.) --Smeira 23:08, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Answering one question, yes, I know there is another one-text main page: Occitan one. See you. Aleator 17:41, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Smeira, you can do either, one page by language, or one page for all Amerindian languages, as you like. Yann 19:04, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Closure propose[edit]

See meta:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Old English Wikisource. 555 23:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering if this would ever get proposed.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:26, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It is being voted on. When there is no real activity there, I support closing it and moving its contents to English Wikisource. Even though Classic Chinese Wikipedia is now open, Chinese Wikisource users have no strong desire to break Classic Chinese texts away into a separare subdomain.--Jusjih 14:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Subpage feature[edit]

I need subpage feature to organize pages I maintain in tr.wikisource.org
Could it be enabled please? thanks. 81.214.21.61 21:30, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand what you mean "subpage feature". Please be more specific.--Jusjih 14:37, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Link#Subpage_feature
I've learned that this is sth a developer can enable, and we're communicaating about it over the Bugzilla. Thanks.

Newer Volapük texts[edit]

Up until now I've been adding Volapük texts that were in the public domain by virtue of being old (more than 70 years of age). Now, some of the present-day Volapükists are interested in having texts from more recent publications also placed there. There have been new poems, stories, translations etc. published in more recent newsletters like "Sirkülapenäd" (which even has a little website here) and "Vög Volapüka". These are at most twenty, thirty years old, and often even less than ten years old. I suppose that they can still be placed here if the author/translator of every piece submits his/her permission, right? My question is how this should be done. Is there a template for a message officially placing texts in the public domain? To whom should the message be sent, and how do I connect it to the text itself? What's the official procedure? --Smeira 15:25, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Try to use the same model used at commons:Commons:OTRS: request for permission, foward it to permissions@wikimedia.org and ask to someone place a public note of receive of permission. 555 04:11, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

what happens on ar:source?[edit]

What happens on the arabian wikisource? They deleted over night some 200 pages, an there are no other activities. Do the two admins sleep? It is nice for the Czech Wikisource as it is now on the 20th place, but ... -jkb- 11:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC) - - - P.S. And I am not sure, if the image on their main page is published by them. -jkb- 11:48, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I edited also meta:Meta:Babel, and somebody seems to take care of it. OK. -jkb- 12:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple languages side-by-side[edit]

It sometimes useful to make two or more languages of the same text side by side, especially useful to those language learners. What's current policy? 222.130.198.181 09:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there is a common policy. I find bilingual editions the best, with the original version and the translation, one in each column or in separated blocks; useful for very little texts. If the text is large, i find preferable to link to the original version, so contents are not duplicated. Aleator 17:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No policy in this point but a feature, see archive here and archive here, -jkb- 13:59, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]