Wikisource:Featured text candidates

From Wikisource

Jump to: navigation, search
←Featured texts Featured texts (candidates) archives (current)→
Shortcut:
WS:FTC
This page hosts nominations for featured text status in accordance with the Featured text guidelines. A featured text should exemplify Wikisource's very highest standards of accuracy. If you nominate a text, you will be expected to make a good-faith effort to address objections that are raised.

Any established user may nominate a text or vote (as long as it matches the criteria). Every month the nomination with the highest support ratio, weighted in favour of nominations with more numerous votes (equation forthcoming), will be chosen as featured text. All nominations with under 70% support after a week will be archived. The most promising nominations (up to 10) will be carried over to the next week, during which time established users may continue to place votes.


Featured texts
Date Text
2006
June Gettysburg Address
August Dulce et Decorum Est
September The Time Machine
October A Drink Problem
November Elegie II
December Come not, when I am dead
2007
January After Death
February Anthem for Doomed Youth
March Resignation letter (Roosevelt)
April Darkness
May Lights
June Arithmetic on the Frontier
July —
August Cole's Old English Masters. John Opie
September Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration
October —
November —
December —
2008
January The Black Cat
February Balade to Rosemounde
March The Times/The Late Mr. Charles Babbage, F.R.S.
April South Africa Act 1909
May United States patent X1

Contents

[edit] Information

[edit] Nominating a text

  1. Ensure that the text meets all the featured text criteria and style guidelines. Nominations that are flagged as not meeting the criteria will be unlisted after 24 hours, unless the criteria are met in that time.
  2. Note the nomination on the talk page by adding the template {{featured text candidate}}.
  3. Begin a discussion at the bottom of this page. Note your reason for nominating the text.

[edit] Discussion

  • If you believe an article meets all of the criteria, write Support followed by your reasons.
  • If you oppose a nomination, write Object followed by the reason for your objection. Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to "fix" the source of the objection, the objection may be ignored. This includes objections to an text's suitability for the Wikisource main page, unless such suitability can be fixed.
  • To withdraw an objection, strike it out (with <s>text</s>) rather than removing it.

[edit] Closing a nomination (administrators only)

  • Failed nominations
    1. Add a comment explaining why the nomination failed.
    2. Archive it.
  • Passed nominations
    1. Add it to {{Template:Featured text}} (inside the ParserFunction) and {{featured schedule}}.
    2. Place {{featured}} in the work's main page header notes.
    3. Place {{featured talk|August 2008}} at the top of the work's main talk page (changing the numbers to the appropriate date if not next month).
    4. Protect all the work's text pages.

[edit] Nominations

For older nominations, see the archives.

[edit] The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style ("Strunk & White") is an American English writing style guide. It is one of the most influential and best-known prescriptive treatments of English grammar and usage in the United States. It originally detailed eight elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition, "a few matters of form," and a list of commonly misused words and expressions. Updated editions of the paperback book are often required reading for American high school and college composition classes.— Excerpted from The Elements of Style on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Strunk wrote this edition in 1918; White only revised it and popularized it in 1957, after Strunk had died, but this "Strunk & White" (to coin a phrase) is in the public domain. It's #21 on Modern Library's list of "the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century". Unlike my previous hasty nominations, this one is certified Image:100%.svg 100%, having been proofread by multiple Wikisourcerors.

  • Support as nom. Quadell 23:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. Cowardly Lion 00:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, in spite of the lack of pagescans. This appears to be an independent transcription, which would be good to proof-read against; also ISBN 097522980X and ISBN 0486447987 are modern reprints which might be accessible online to double-check any formatting issues. I think it could do with some tweaking first. The preface that appears with most online copies is missing[1], as is the frontmatter[2]. It should use {{header2}}, and link the title of the work on each subpage to the index page. In the notes field of each page there is a set of quick links to the other pages; I think this should be centered and made more prominent, and also appear at the bottom of each page. Also, the text often refers to other rules; this edition has faults, but it does use hyperlinks to give the reader a link where the text refers to another rule, which I thought was useful. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is a classic of children's literature, focusing on three animal characters in a bucolic version of England. The book is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality and camaraderie. It can also be viewed as a commentary on class dynamics in British society.— Excerpted from The Wind in the Willows on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Complete? Check. Correctly formatted? Check. Proofread by multiple editors? Check. Public domain? Check, in both England and the U.S. A rollicking good read? Check and check again!

  • Support as nom. Quadell 23:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support. Cowardly Lion 00:52, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Support --Lookatthis 15:43, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Question: What was this proofread against, actually? Any hard copy (i.e., images) or just Gutenberg's version?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 02:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
    • For me, only the Gutenberg version, as I was unable to find a hardcopy online. I see that this was not proofed by Distributed Proofreaders (whom I trust), but only by the Gutenberg volunteer who scanned it in. That's unfortunate. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 03:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment: I have added LibriVox audio files to the chapters. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 16:36, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
  • Would it help if I scanned the pages from my copy of the book? Actually I have two copies of the book, one with illustrations by Arthur Rackham and one with illustrations by E. H. Shepard, but unfortunately neither author has been dead 70 years yet, so I'd have to cover up the illustrations from the scans anyway. Angr/Talk 16:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I have uploaded two DJVU files from archive.org: original 1908 and 1913 illustrated edition. Personally, I would prefer to see the 1908 edition transcribed, so we can say with assurance that our edition is the original. The 1913 illustrations could be added to the 1908 text, if they are clearly marked as from a later edition. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:33, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Also, w:Image:Wind in the willows.jpg says it is the first edition (1908), so it may be suitable to be moved to commons, but if that is a UK edition, it may be copyright still. It is a nice image; does anyone care enough to work out the copyright? my head hurts. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] John Brown's Speech to the Court at his Trial

This is certainly an important event in U.S. history, and the speech was included in "The World’s Famous Orations" as chosen by Author:William Jennings Bryan. It is in the public domain, and has been proofread by multiple editors. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 01:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

  • Support as nom. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 01:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
  • I would support this but I'm curious as to where the article name came from. Perhaps "John Brown's defense speech" is a bit less cumbersome... or is this a standard naming convention? --Midnightdreary 16:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Support contingent on pagescans; there are many books that include this speech, incl. this which should be {{PD-1923}}, and suitable for upload onto Wikisource even if it isnt suitable for Commons. John Vandenberg (chat) 17:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Morrill Act (1862)

An important document, which also is cataloged as one of the "100 milestone documents" on ourdocuments.gov. Is accompanied by the first and the third (and last) pages of the document, being of very high resolution. diego_pmc 08:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

  • Support as nominator diego_pmc 08:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • In order to be proof read, we need scans of all pages. If I understand correctly, one pagescan is missing? John Vandenberg (chat) 09:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
    Yes that's true, but the text is copy pasted from here. All except the title. Isn't OurDocs.gov reliable?diego_pmc 10:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
    We can assume that the text is intended to be faithful, but we cant be certain that they are faithful to those images (there may have been minor revisions prior to being enacted), and we cant be certain that we are not reproducing minor transcription errors, and we can be certain that formatting specifics have been lost in the process of converting it from a signed document to a web presentation. There is a (copyright?) image here that includes the three pages. That said, I've found page scans of Statutes at Large, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, which is good enough if we present our text as the official text, rather than as a transcription of the signed document. Also, there are two "Morrill Act", so this page probably needs to be renamed to make way for the second act by that name. John Vandenberg (chat) 11:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • For now I moved the page to Morrill Act (1862), and Morrill Act is a disambiguation page (though it only includes one doc). I'm looking for the other right now; if you know it, please add it to the disambiguation page. diego_pmc 11:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Yea, that is ok. We dont have any strict rules about the prev/next fields. John Vandenberg (chat) 17:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
this is a great reason why we require page scans; the ourdocuments.gov page contains "shall shall". John Vandenberg (chat) 01:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] George Washington's First State of the Union Address

I've just added an image of what is reported to be the only printing of the address. I think this should be scheduled to be featured to coincide with the next state of the union address. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ACLU v. NSA Opinion

This text was proposed in 2006, but according to the calculations used at the time it didnt have sufficient support to be promoted.

The issues raised last time have mostly been resolved, it has had numerous proof readers, is still current news with an appeal turned down in February 2008 (see w:ACLU v. NSA and w:NSA warrantless surveillance controversy for more general information).

We still have not had a judicial opinion featured yet; while they are not bed time stories, they are an important class of work being digitised on Wikisource and this is a good example that will be of interest to readers. John Vandenberg (chat) 04:04, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

  • Support I made some comments on the text's talk page that may serve to tighten up the scholarship one more time. I would do it myself but I'm not sure the changes I suggest are actually consistent with the style elements of Wikisource. At a point in the future when the Sixth Circuit's published opinion on this case is brought into Wikisource pages, then an ACLU v. NSA pre-page can be implemented that offers subsequent links to both Wikisource texts.Jmcneill2 05:32, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, I'm impressed by the context links. Theophobic 00:14, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, truly a masterpiece wrought by the hands of gods. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Wikisource:Confucianism 00:15, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Support Excellent candidate. I've added some proofreading nits and comments. Michael D. Sullivan 01:35, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Support, sure. Daniel (talk) 01:38, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Transcript of the 'friendly fire' incident video (28 March 2003)

This text was nominated in 2007, where a number of issues where raised. Many of the issues have been addressed, and if there are more to be addressed I think we can sort them out.

We havent featured an audio transcript yet, and this one has been verified by two people. John Vandenberg (chat) 05:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Flight 93 Cockpit Transcript

This is an important and interesting transcription that was submitted as government evidence; link to the PDF original is on the talk page. Ideally a djvu should be created from the PDF.

While we wouldnt want to have both this and Transcript of the 'friendly fire' incident video (28 March 2003) featured back-to-back, having two candidates means we can pick the best one, or we could feature both at times when they are most relevant, like on the anniversary of the events. John Vandenberg (chat) 05:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

A very popular book, meeting (and exceeding?) the style guidelines. The thing I haven't checked is the accuracy - I don't have the book, but it seems it was proofread. diego_pmc 08:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

  • This work has audio and illustrations. Also, there are many sets of pagescans on archive.org if someone wants to proofread it or migrate the text onto the pagescans. Do we know which edition we currently have? Do we know which edition the illustrations come from? John Vandenberg (chat) 10:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Are the illustrations actually by Carroll? For some reason I always thought they were by John Tenniel - but I could be mistaken, between Tenniel and Gustav Dore though, I think entire libraries could be filled. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Percival Lowell 22:53, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  • It seems the 1897 edition was used to proofread the text.[1] He also says that his copy used American style quoting, but he later changed that to British. Now, honestly I can't stand Americna style quoting, but since it's like that in the original, I think it's better we leave it that way. diego_pmc 06:25, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Surely we should get it to conform to a British edition published under Carroll's own scrutiny, because he was an incredibly meticulous proofreader.--Poetlister 22:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
  • I've listened to some random parts of the recordings and they don't fit perfectly with the text, in all places (only minor differences, but still). For example in chapter two, near the beginning the text says "I’m sure I sha’n’t be able!", and the recording says "I’m sure I sha’n’t be able to!". It's a pity though, the text is very pleasant to look at, very eye-catching, the book is very popular and most find it pleasant too, but unfortunately there still are a few problems. diego_pmc 19:50, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
    • The to is not in either edition I checked (Children's Edition 1927 (1974 reprint); the 1965 Collected Works ed. Roger Lancelyn Green).--Poetlister 22:10, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Religion of God

The Religion of God is considered as a very important book of Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi on spiritualism. Originally this book was written in urdu, however, translated by International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam in many languages including English, French, Hindi, Sindhi, Arabic etc. In this book Gohar Shahi revealed the path to attain Divine Love of God. I have checked in all the aspects and in my view this can be one of the Featured texts on wikisource.--Iamsaa 05:30, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

I dont see any evidence that this work is covered by the {{GFDL}} and the Wikipedia artice about the translator (International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam) has just recently been deleted at w:Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam. The deleted article did not mention "Religion of God".
This work was last discussed at Wikisource:Proposed_deletions/Archives/2007/09#The_Religion_of_God_and_Riaz_Ahmed_Gohar_Shahi, where it was deleted. I didn't notice this when I patrolled it being created.
Without clear evidence of being GFDL, it can not be featured. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
This books is a GFDL and it's been taged on its page as well. Moreover, International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam, which was founded by His Holiness Sayyedna Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi, has given permission for all material of ASI to be used however, attribution to the author is a condition. I think this book is one of the most important work of Gohar Shahi and has been translated into many languages. I think it should be considered as one of the featured text on Wikisource.--Iamsaa 10:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Being tagged as GFDL is not sufficient. We need the copyright holder to provide the Wikimedia Foundation with a clear statement that the work has been released under the terms of the GFDL. Email permissions@wikimedia.org to begin this discussion. Also, we need proof that the original work was published in urdu in print. Does it have an ISBN? John Vandenberg (chat) 10:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Let me tell you that it is not yet popular in Pakistan to secure an ISBN, however, here you can see the proof of this books, moreover, you can also see here another evidence that this book was printed. Further, if you want I can arrange an email from International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam to be sent to you regarding GFDL.--Iamsaa 10:40, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Good, now we are getting somewhere. this says "The first edition of the book was published in January 2000 in the United States with the joint cooperation of RAGS International, London, the American Sufi Institute, and the All-Faith Spiritual Movement Northern Ireland." Do you know what language that edition was written in ? Could you find out how many copies were printed? The copyright of the original is owned by the author, and it is only the author (or their estate) who can grant the work under free license. John Vandenberg (chat) 11:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
The name of this book is Deen-e-Illahi (in English The Religion of God), orignally it was printed in Urdu and the quantity of the book when printed for the first time was 50,000. The RAGS International, London, the American Sufi Institute, and the All-Faith Spiritual Movement Northern Ireland are the sub-branches of International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam for missionary activities abroad. International Spiritual Movement Anjuman Serfaroshan-e-Islam holds the rights for this book, which can be viewed here. I hope now you may consider this book as a feature text. Should you need any further information, please do not hesitate to ask.--Iamsaa 05:27, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A Description of a City Shower

This is a poem by Jonathan Swift, best known for his book, Gulliver's Travels. It provides rare insight into urban life in London at the time, and the economical, inustrial and social revolutions that were happening. The text has been proofread against three sites, and two books, on of which is linked to through Google Books. I believe it meets the style criterias, and it even has a relevant image to boot. Thanks. ---- Anonymous DissidentTalk 14:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Support. I've moved the text to Page:Cyclopaedia of English Literature 1844 Volume 1 page 548.djvu, which is recorded as the source on the talk page, so it should be identical.

It would be good to find a pagescan of the original, and it would also be good to accompany this text with other PD resources about this work. See for example the many works mentioned in this PDF. note that the PDF says "O Hehir notes that when the poem was first published in the Tatler, it was accompanied by a different and “slightly misleading headnote . . . ”" so the text may not be fully appreciated without the original headnote. John Vandenberg (chat) 04:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Just an aside: The link to the .djvu page seems to be obscuring the first line of text of A Description of a City Shower. -- Anonymous DissidentTalk 16:49, 28 May 2008
That is probably an undesirable side effect of {{Page}}, which has had a few changes lately. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Then we should fix it. Who knows how many pages it affects? ---- Anonymous DissidentTalk 07:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
It doesnt effect a lot of pages, yet. I have annotated a few more details about what it is supposed to do on the template page, and noted on the talk page that it doesnt do what it was doing a few weeks ago. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Following the virginia.edu link AD added to the talk, I see that they have a pagescan of the "first" page of this work in Tatler (p. 275), but only the tail end of the headnote is on this page. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
virginia.edu also has page 276 and 277 (and some Tatler No. 9: [3] [4], and more). John Vandenberg (chat) 07:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Early Settlers Along the Mississippi

This one of the articles that was distributed along with w:Birds of America. It is fully proofread and I don't believe there are other problems with the text. It is on the heavy-handed side with the links, which is something I have been mulling over. But we seem a bit hard up right now for a text and maybe having it on the main page will generate some feedback on the links. I think it is interesting perspective of when Missouri was the West and land became yours if you could survive on it a few years.--BirgitteSB 00:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Characters of a new Liliaceous Genus called Brodiaea

...or rather, Transactions of the Linnean Society of London/Volume 10/Characters of a new Liliaceous Genus called Brodiaea. This brief article is mildly significant to botanists because the plant genus Brodiaea was first described and named therein.

It was transcribed by me using the Proofreadpages extension; validated by Melburnian; and the plate extensively retouched by CarolSpears.

Botanical works tend to reference other authors and works quite extensively, which makes them eminently suitable for wikification. Here I have tried to ensure that this work properly links through to the works that it references. For example, on the first line of the article, the page number 263 links to An introduction to physiological and systematical botany/Chapter 19#263; and later, "... Mr. Salisbury's rule, given in the first paper of our 8th volume...".

This article does strike me as a little short for a featured text (not that I would know). I have given some thought to the question whether the unit for featured text purposes should be the individual paper or the entire 420-page volume, and it seems to me that putting the entire volume on the main page would be bizarre, because it is not and never was intended to be read cover to cover like a novel.

Hesperian 12:08, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] See also

Retrieved from "http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Featured_text_candidates"
Personal tools