Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2016-08

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Warning Please do not post any new comments on this page.
This is a discussion archive first created in , although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date.
See current discussion or the archives index.

Announcements

Beta: Create a VisualEditor plugin to integrate with Wikisource

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T48580

Coren has put a note into Phabricator about the next development stage of having VisualEditor integrate into Wikisource, initially in the standard namespaces, and following that into the Page: namespace. He says that there is usable mainspace editing with Visual Editor (including the transclusion tag, though we don't use it). This is currently working on a test server, and is scheduled for the deployment train Tueseday, Apr 5 (and deployed on group 1 that includes the Wikisources on Apr 6). Jdforrester is planning to turn the configuration switch on April 7 at which point, VisualEditor will become available as a beta feature on wikisource for all content namespaces except Page (that's the next part being worked upon).

Feedback is best straight into the Phabricator ticket. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:56, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

To be clear, while that note was exactly correct, it's probably more useful to note that VisualEditor will be made available in the beta features of every Wikisource on April 7. You can turn it on there at that time. Coren (talk) 14:15, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
it’s working well for article space, not enabled for page namespace yet. test it out and leave feedback. i added a Wikisource:VisualEditor redirect, since it was a redlink in the edit summaries. Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 01:22, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposals

Use sortable tables instead list items to list works

I was wondering, wouldn't it be better to use sortable tables instead of list items to list works in author pages and portals? This way works can be displayed either alphabetically or by year depending on what the user prefers. It's very difficult to find works when they are listed by year and sometimes it's nice to see in which order the works were written chronologically. So why not have both? Jpez (talk) 05:52, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

That works, but only if the list to be sorted does not have items listed under other items, and only as long as all copies of a work are published under the same title. It wouldn't work very well for the page Author:Aeschylus, because (1) The Oresteia has three sub-parts, (b) there are multiple translations of single works listed, (c) works such as his Χοηφόροι have been titled in English as both "Choephori" and "The Libation Bearers" and will not group together when sorting by title, (d) the different editions of translations by the same translator will have been published in different years, and certainly never in the same year as the original publication.
In any case, you can find a work on a page, if you know the title, by using your browser's "Find" function. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:30, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: Personally the way I would set up Author:Aeschylus page would be completely different. I would get rid of all the sub lists and only link to the main page of each work. Concerning The Orestia, I would link to The Orestia page and not list each work of the trilogy. I don't see the point in listing each and every translation of every work on the authors page when they are all individually listed on each works page anyway. For example it would look something like this.

Tragedies

Title Year
The Persians 472 BCE
Prometheus Bound 480–410 BCE
Seven against Thebes 467 BCE
The Suppliants 463 BCE
The Oresteia 458 BCE
—unsigned comment by Jpez (talk) .
@Jpez: That approach would eliminate all the benefits of being able to see (at a glance) whose translations of each play we have, how many we have, what state they are in, and when the translations were published. The sample table above hides all the information except the original date of performance, which is by far the least valuable piece of information concerning those plays. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:02, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: Well all that information would only be a click away, and if there are many works and translations the list of them can be overwhelming. I think it's like something you've done here Portal:Greek_language_and_literature with the ancient Greek drama portal. Instead of listing every work there you've created the portal and linked to that. Anyway I don't think this is a serious issue, it's just the way I would set up the page and a way tables might be implemented. Jpez (talk) 05:18, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
@Jpez: No, the information would not be a click away, and that's my point. Each bit of information would be a click away, but the user would have to click all of the links and remember what was on each page all at once to get the overall view currently available by putting it in a single place. The Portal:Ancient Greek drama is separate because the list is many screens long—in fact it is as long as all the other content on Greek language and literature put together—and insofar as it succeeds, it does so because it forms a coherent and separate whole within the corpus of Greek literature. The Portal itself is intended to be exhaustive, and is much longer than most Author pages.. But a Portal is likely not a good comparison, since each Portal has the freedom to include or exclude content, and to be structured in any way that is convenient. Our Authors pages need to follow a reasonably consistent format for the sake of our users. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:43, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
Having tables adds an element of complexity and isn't for every user. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:14, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: It does, but it can be made easier by using a template. Jpez (talk) 05:18, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I am very against the idea, as I think the tables look ugly and provide more problems than they solve. In fact I have been trying to get rid of tables in places, as for example Talk:Bible#Page formatting.
While I agree that the above example of Author:Aeschylus is a poor one, as translations should really be listed on the separate {{translations}} page, I can think of other examples of sub-item lists that are relevant. I often use them for works derived, adapted, exerpted, or originally contained in other works; for examples see Author:John Mason Neale, Author:Bernard of Cluny, Author:Katherine Hankey.
What about when you have several sections on a page? Would you put all poetry, prose, dramas, encyclopedia entries, letters, anthologies, etc. into a single table? Would we still have a different column scheme per section table? per page? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:26, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
@Beleg Tâl: For arguments sake, (since I see no one is too keen on implementing my brilliant idea :) I agree that they can look ugly (as the table on the bible page does in my opinion), but I think they could be made to look nice as well for example just getting rid of the borders makes it look a bit more presentable.
Title Year
The Persians 472 BCE
Prometheus Bound 480–410 BCE
Seven against Thebes 467 BCE
The Suppliants 463 BCE
The Oresteia 458 BCE
A few gaps, a bit of aligning etc and you could even make it look somewhat the same way as we are using now (which I like btw), the only difference being that it would be sortable. If I have time I might come up with something, (just for arguments sake). As for different sections etc, I would prefer to use different tables for each section, the setup would be the same as it now just sortable. Also lists can be used within tables if needed etc. Jpez (talk) 05:18, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
I like sortable tables instead list items to list works. In case of translations, more columns may be needed.--Jusjih (talk) 04:20, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Tables are used at Author:Jack London, but I must say I have always disliked it aesthetically (if ugliness is a valid argument against and not too subjective). Renders better than I thought on a smartphone (as two or three columns), but doesn't sort on the phone I used, so perhaps defeats the purpose in such cases? I do not think tables should be made policy, but users should feel free to use that method with a caveat: as Billinghurst noted, it "adds an element of complexity" and very well might keep a passer-by from contributing to the page. Bullets offer more flexibility. Keep it simple, in my opinion. Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:59, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Breaking down some heavily used categories

So many categories are heavily used. Some are just for maintaining works, thus no need to break down, but some others should be broken down, better by bots. For example, PD-old‏‎, and Author-PD-old‏‎‏‎ should better be broken down by era with new copyright licenses, like {{Ancient}}{{Medieval}}{{Renaissance}}. However, as some early modern works are still copyright-restricted, we should not have early modern copyright tag. My thought is modeled after how Chinese Wikisource breaks down PD-old‏‎, and Author-PD-old‏‎‏‎ by Chinese dynasties for Chinese works, but non-Chinese works are broken down by century.--Jusjih (talk) 22:45, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

The copyright tag's purpose is to indicate the public domain status (or not) of a work or a writer's works -- to determine hostability on English Wikisource, on servers in the United States, which operate under U.S. copyright law. I'm sure you know all this. So my point is that the copyright category has a specific purpose: legal categorization. There are other categories for year of publication, which may be used to create Ancient-Medieval-Renaissance-Early Modern labels or century groupings if useful. But those categories are unrelated to copyright status as used here. Outlier59 (talk) 02:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Our categorisation by year is open to clumping by name, though I am not sure that the science behind naming a period is that accurate or that helpful. Maybe someone could do a portal that links of to the periodic categorisations that already exist. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:03, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Other discussions

U.S. Supreme Court Style Manual!

The U.S. Supreme Court Style Manual, viewed by the justices as an internal document for helping law clerks and justices draft opinions in proper form, is going public for the first time, without the court's approval. What's a good way to ensure we get an OCR'd copy of this soon? Buy it and give it to the Internet Archive? They have the infrastructure to OCR it. {{PD-USGov}} applies, of course. --Elvey (talk) 00:54, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

We don't have a purchasing acquisition policy. If you think that there is value in getting it, and reproducing it (where compliant with scope) then it would be through a private purchase, or through a grant application to WMF. IA would indeed be the means to convert to OCR if necessary. Will it not be an electronic document anyway? — billinghurst sDrewth 01:07, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
WMDC has aa book grant program, apply if interested https://wikimediadc.org/wiki/Book_grants -- deadline tomorrow. Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 01:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
@Elvey: note deadline of 4 April — billinghurst sDrewth 03:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Cool. Done. --Elvey (talk) 04:02, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


Problem identified — long tables not wrapping over printed pages (pdf/epub/...)

When pages are exported/printed to EPUB/PDF long tables are no longer wrapping over numbers of pages, they seem to get stuck on one long page that expands off the bottom. This previously was not the case and I am unsure when it broke. Anyone got any ideas on what may be the issue, and or who we can harass to look at a fix? — billinghurst sDrewth 13:16, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Pages with <math> markup

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T130699

In Wikisource, under each user Preferences -> Appearance - Math section (at the bottom of the Apprearance page), please check that your Math setting is MathML with SVG or PNG fallback (recommended for modern browsers and accessibility tools). If you are viewing or editing Wikisource, the older PNG and LaTeX settings are currently generating some gibberish. Billinghurst has requested a fix through Phabricator. Until this is fixed, please check your user Preference settings for Math before editing pages with math. Outlier59 (talk) 02:20, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

English Translations of Puranas

I have got some English Translations of Hindu Puranas published by Motilal Banarsidass from West Bengal Public Library Network and they are under Public Domain. But the name of the authors are not mentioned. How can I add them to Wikisource? -Trinanjon (talk) 03:50, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

There are plenty of Puranas from this publisher available in the WB site. Not all are PD. It may be possible to identify the translator; e.g. J. L. Shastri was the translator of Siva Purana volumes. So can you provide the specific links of the books you are considering? Because there are 74 books in this series (1, 2), will be app. 100 volumes on completion. Hrishikes (talk) 06:34, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Is the Siva Purana by J.L. Shastri under PD? I will also be giving the links of the books such as Skanda Purana, Padma Purana, Garuda Purana, Varaha Purana, etc. -Trinanjon (talk) 09:16, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Published in 1950 (see here, 1st ed of vol 1 avl here, which shows date as 1970 on the book), so author was alive then; therefore not PD-India on URAA date. J. L. Shastri was one of the general editors for the whole series, so none of the lot is likely to be PD. Hrishikes (talk) 10:22, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

April PotM needed

We need a PotM for April up on the Main page. Input at Wikisource talk:Proofread of the Month#April 2016... Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:31, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and made a selection based on previous input. See Talk. Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:43, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-14

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can filter Special:Log in more detail. [1]
  • Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [2]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 6. It will be on all wikis from April 7 (calendar).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Most viewed books with chapters

During my recent exploration, I felt the need for books with most views on my Telugu Wikisource. I noticed similar requests for English wikisource ( #1) . Starting from the top 1000 pageviews data, I have written an 'R' script to aggregate the page views for all books with chapters(as indicated by use of '/' in main name space page title. I am happy to share the first results of the same at User:Arjunaraoc/201603TopViewsOfBookChapters. I found the top rank going to Constitution_of_India a bit surprising. Do share your feedback. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 11:27, 6 April 2016 (UTC)


Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 - duplicate legislation needs review and possibly merging

We have two copies of the same legislation, one supported by a scan, and the other a copy ... Special:PrefixIndex/Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013 Not certain if one is fro the HoR and the other the Senate or what. It would be useful for someone conversant with US legislation to have a look-see and work out which is better, whether they should be merged or what. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:10, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I think I’ve sorted them out. They are competing versions of the same unenacted U.S. federal legislation. The Senate version passed; the House version died in committee (at least in the 113th Congress; I did not check to see whether similar bills were introduced in subsequent Congresses). I’ve linked them to each other and indexed them both under Portal:United States Congress. Hope that is satisfactory. Tarmstro99 13:30, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Importing partial completed predominantly English text from Telugu wikisource

We have a predominantly English text about Telugu grammar partially proof read in Telugu Wikisource. Will English Wikisourcers be interested in importing it here and completing it? --Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:18, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

@Arjunaraoc: I presume you meant this link? If so it appears none of Charles Phillip Brown's works are currently on enWS. And in passing, why does it appear to be tagged PD-2013 when the flyleaf reads 1857? Is this either an accident or (as I don't at all read Telugu) some other concern? AuFCL (talk) 10:31, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
AuFCL, Yes. I updated the link now. Copyright tag was incorrect. As we have several books for which copyright was freed via Digital Library of India, many Telugu wikisourcers used PD-2013 for such books. I updated it now as PD-Old. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 23:52, 7 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arjunaraoc: Hi! Can you please explain how copyright was "freed" by DLI? DLI has plenty of copyrighted books, including those published in the 1990s, but how can copyright be deemed as freed by inclusion in DLI? Hrishikes (talk) 02:13, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Hrishikes, DLI had done an exercise of contacting authors and publishers to free the copyrights. In the earlier versions of DLI page, there used to be a section like search in copyright freed books. As they claim to be compliant to Indian copyright act, DLI being a government body, we are treating all DLI books as copyright freed. Hope that helps. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 04:57, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arjunaraoc: I don't think this is quite in order. If such were the case, DLI would have included a CC license or equivalent for every book, because the works are copyrighted as per Indian Copyright Act, but DLI can, of course, procure the copyrights and release them to PD under CC license. Have they done so? Can you point to any such documentation? Because, other Indic wikisources (I am active in Bengali), and even English Wikisource can also benefit if such is the case. DLI being a Govt body does not automatically make the books copyright-free. Best, Hrishikes (talk) 05:35, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arjunaraoc:, Can you please provide a link or any documentation as a proof to the statement where it has been declared that DLI have been given consent by the copyright-holders and the publishers of the books to release them under CC. DLI has so many books which are not under PD-India and unless there is a proof about their release of license, it will be considered as copyright violation, if I am not wrong. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 06:42, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Hrishikes,@Bodhisattwa Check this presentation at page 21 where in the copyrights were freed were mentioned. COmmons has not accepted our claim recently and deleted several books making us to uploaded them to the Telugu wikisource. There were some other presentations on the web about dealing with copyrights, which I am not able to locate now. Hope that helps. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:26, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
The presentation link cited in the previous remark may be dead. You may check the latest copyright policy of the DLI Copyright Policy of DLI as archived on wayback machine on April 8, 2016 and contact DLI for any more clarifications. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:43, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arjunaraoc: Could not check the 1st link (DLI site is down), but checked the second link, which is basically useless. In it, DLI claims that the works are copyright-free, and states that if copyright holders complained otherwise, then concerned books will be removed. No explanation as to how a book not covered by PD-India (like a book published in 1970) could be copyright-free. Only a vague claim, without specifics, never suffices; I can well understand why Commons did not accede to your claims. While adding books to Wikisource (whether directly or through Commons), one should check whether the book can be really deemed as PD as per 1st publucation year and author's death year. One should not go by any "claim" by a website, even if Govt-owned. DLI just claims that they are copyright law compliant, and then continues piling up copyrighted works by the hundreds. Without specific documentation of release under CC or the like, all books seemingly to be under copyright should be deemed as copyrighted. Hrishikes (talk) 10:58, 8 April 2016 (UTC)
@Arjunaraoc:, Thanks for the links, (the first link dont open though). The second link only shows a claim from DLI that all of their books are copyright-free. But there is no such proof that authors and publishers have given their consent to DLI to release their works under CC license. Furthermore, the link also says that, the copyright policy is as per the Indian CopyRight Act 1957, according to which books can be copyright-free after 60 years of the death of author or first publication whichever is later. So, it is self-contradictory itself to the claim. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 13:45, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

OCR not working?

Is the OCR button working for anyone?

This file Index:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu doesn't seem to have a text layer, but when I tried using OCR, my only result was the edit window turned grey. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:51, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

It worked for me but the result was awful, you'd be much better off typing it yourself than using the OCR produced. Maybe it would be better to upload it to archive.org and see if you get a better OCR. Jpez (talk) 08:23, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
The source of that file has a text layer, perhaps there was a problem with the upload wizard. Or maybe the uploader intended to use proofread text from elsewhere. I'm guessing that overwriting the file would fix things. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 08:55, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
OCR layer added. Hrishikes (talk) 14:00, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
Done --Thanks, everyone! --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:35, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Need an example linking to sections in main name space, transcluded from the page name space.

I am trying to link to sections in wikisource main namespace which were originally in page name space, but do not seem to get it work. Example on te.wikisource: te wikisource page with section tag #జలగం and the page containing the section is page which has section named ##జలగం##. Can some one give an example? --Arjunaraoc (talk) 06:48, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

@Arjunaraoc: I think I see what you are trying to do. Linkage requires the existence of either id= or name= on the element to which you wish the anchor to target. Unfortunately the <section> does not provide this service (as far as I know) so may I suggest augmenting:
<section begin="జలగం"/>{{p|fs150}}జలగం వెంగళరావు ముఖ్యమంత్రిత్వం</p>
—by substituting something like this instead:
<section begin="జలగం"/>{{p|fs150}}<span id="జలగం"/>జలగం</span> వెంగళరావు ముఖ్యమంత్రిత్వం</p>
—which then ought to expose the anchor point "జలగం" for linkage purposes as usual. AuFCL (talk) 07:23, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
  • @AuFCLI tried 
    <section begin="జలగం"/>{{p|fs150}}<span id="jalagam">జలగం వెంగళరావు ముఖ్యమంత్రిత్వం</span></p>
    after correcting a minor typo and using english name for id, as otherwise the link is not working. One more doubt, is it possible to see the sections after transclusion directly in wikipage?. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 09:10, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
    @Arjunaraoc: I think I might have misunderstood your requirements. Did you want to (A) construct a destination/landing point for a link (which is what I tried to describe above), (B) transclude a portion of a page into another page?

    In other words which is the relevant tag between "జలగం"/"jalagam" (case A), or "ఆత్మకథచివరిపేరా" (case B)? I think you may need to re-state the question. Please pardon me for confusing the issue. AuFCL (talk) 09:51, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

  • @AuFCL, Not at all. My requirement is (A). I thought doing (B),even if it is not ultimately used for transclusion, will also help accomplish (A), but looks like (A) needs special HTML code called <span>..</span>. In this specific case, I did not need a section transclusion requirement, so I dropped (B) and used your solution for (A) with slight change. Hope revised link the revised link makes it clear.The page is linked from Wikipedia --Arjunaraoc (talk) 10:22, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
  • My additional question about the need for seeing the anchors, is so that I do not need to visit page namespace, before making the link, if the transcluded pages already have anchors.--Arjunaraoc (talk) 10:25, 9 April 2016 (UTC)
O.K. A couple of points: there is nothing special about using <span> to carry the id= attribute; I only chose that as a fairly harmless HTML tag which would not disrupt the rest of the text. Unfortunately the {{p}} template does not make provision for specifying a name/id value; otherwise using its expansion:
<p class="pclass" style="font-size:150%;" id="jalagam">జలగం వెంగళరావు ముఖ్యమంత్రిత్వం</p>
—ought to work equally well. As far as I can tell the te-wikipedia page you specified appears correctly linked to the te-wikisource destination.
With regard to making the anchor-points visible, use of {{anchor}} or {{anchor+}} (both of which are present on teWS) might be what you were looking for, as they create a <span> automatically with the required attributes to establish the anchor point as well as those to provide minimal marking? For example, hovering your mouse cursor over the word "anchor" in this sentence should yield a pop-up identifying message. Maybe this is not obvious enough for your intended purpose? AuFCL (talk) 11:05, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

@Arjunaraoc:

Outlier59 (talk) 16:27, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit check request

Could someone check this edit[3] of mine? It was supposed to be a 1 char ocr fix but it shows up in the page history as deleting 117 characters. I compared the before and after versions of the page and see only the 1 char fix. So I don't know what's going on. Thanks. 50.0.121.79 20:53, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

It is ok, just don't care about the byte counter ... BTW, I have no idea why it is not accurate, probably something has changed internally.— Mpaa (talk) 21:01, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

Bradshaw anyone?

Found these when trying to find something:-

A 1906 and a 1944 edition:- https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Henry+Blacklock+%26+Co.%22

If someone is able to figure out the copyrights I' more than willing to attempt transcriptions. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:58, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

The REshapign of British Railways

There are now scans on archive.org [[4]], one small problem though, the digitising source has marked them as NC , which means that despite the document being an expired Crown copyright (3 years AGO!) , the scans can't be put on Commons, unless some wnats top have a very loud row with the University of Southampton. (sigh) 21:38, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I also found amongst the same collection, the Worboys and Anderson Reports ( which given my recent efforts on UK Traffic signs... I felt might be in scope here). Shame some archives apply NC :( ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:38, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-15

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The visual editor can generate wikicode with image options in your language. Examples of image options are "thumb" or "left". You can ask to change to options in your language in Phabricator. [5][6]
  • Wiktionaries and Wikisources can now use the visual editor. It is an opt-in beta feature. It still needs development to work better with these projects. [7][8]
  • ORES is using new models. Tools that use ORES' predictions can behave strangely. ORES also has a new API. [9]
  • The visual editor now supports classical Greek characters. [10]

Problems

  • There was a bug when you used keyboard arrows in templates in the visual editor. This has now been fixed. [11]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).
  • The wikipedia.org portal will get many small bug fixes and improvements. Most will be for the search box and suggested results that were added in March. [12]

Meetings

Future changes

  • Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [13]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:44, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Top 100 downloads using WSexport tool

I thought it useful to share the Top 100 downloads using wsexport tool for the month of March 2016. Note that this includes even download of ordinary pages apart from books. Let me know your feedback if any. --Arjunaraoc (talk) 05:25, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

That's really interesting. What's up with The_Problems_of_Philosophy having so many more hits than anything else? — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 10:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
I think it was Featured Text.. but the FT tag on its discussion page has it March 2015, not 2016. Outlier59 (talk) 11:15, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
There was no featured text for March, 2016. Due to a somewhat daffy implementation of the templates (they operate on months only without regards year) under these circumstances {{Featured text/March}} gets recycled—and as that has not been changed since 2015, The_Problems_of_Philosophy gets a re-airing. AuFCL (talk) 11:51, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
Ah, makes sense now. Thanks. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Penguin Classics (or any publisher)

I've been playing with Sparql and Wikidata, and have come up with a little script to make publisher lists like (for example) Portal:Penguin Classics. Is not very useful while there's hardly any data in Wikidata, but maybe one day... :-) I just wanted to see what sort of coverage we've got over that collection. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 10:47, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Archive.org not creating djvu?

I uploaded a pdf to archive.org a couple of days ago and it seems to have created various files but not the djvu, which was what I was wanting. Did I do something wrong or has something changed over there? Moondyne (talk) 02:36, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

yes, see also Wikisource:Scriptorium#Internet_Archive_no_longer_creates_DjVu-files.21. maybe we need to send them some t-shirts / beer. or build a tool to convert on upload. Slowking4 03:01, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Aha, that's a bit sad. Moondyne (talk) 04:37, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Per Wikisource:DjVu vs. PDF, I take it there's now no point in creating a djvu solely for WS. Yes? Moondyne (talk) 04:48, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
That's an interesting question. It sounds like you're right, PDFs should be the preferred format now. Certainly, there are more tools for working with them. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:54, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
What a good essay! PDFs are expensive in many ways,—time, cost, transparency and accessibility—I am not moved from my position that they suck. My prejudice was recently reinforced when, up until a couple of weeks ago, some bug caused them to render as garbage for this end-user. I get why archive.org are preferring EPUB and that format for readers, but for this site's purposes they are inferior; other online converters to djvu are reasonably successful. PDF should be welcome, but not preferred. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 11:34, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Fill pages with OCR from PDF

Hello everybody, is there a bot that can create Wiki pages with the contained OCR of the PDF page, e. g. de:Seite:Ludwig Bechstein - Thüringer Sagenbuch - Erster Band.pdf/19. Is that possible with a simple command using Pywikibot? Thank you in advance, --Aschroet (talk) 16:46, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

If you write your own script, you can use ProofreadPage()/IndexPage() as Page classes, they have several convenience methods.
Or you can use Page.preloadText() if you use the standard Page() class.
def preloadText(self):
        """
        The text returned by EditFormPreloadText.
        See API module "info".
        Application: on Wikisource wikis, text can be preloaded even if
        a page does not exist, if an Index page is present.
        """
If you want, I can write few lines of code for you. Or if you tell me the index, I can do it for you.— Mpaa (talk) 20:53, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
@Mpaa: with djvu going out of vogue with IA, it seems pertinent for pywikibot to look to having "pdftxt" script that replicates "djvutxt". Then we have the general purpose bot available through the WSes. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:41, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for the fast reply. Of course i would prefer the suggested pdftxt script, so that others could use it as well. --Aschroet (talk) 09:29, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
That is feasible, but I cannot say when. If you need something faster for a specific index, just let me know.— Mpaa (talk) 18:31, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
@Billinghurst:, @Aschroet: I made this script: wikisourcetext.py, who knows if it will be ever added to the library. But you can fetch it if you like it.— Mpaa (talk) 18:44, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Mpaa, for de:Index:Ludwig Bechstein - Thüringer Sagenbuch - Erster Band.pdf it would be nice. --Aschroet (talk) 18:39, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Done, hope no one got angry on de.wikisource, I forgot I have no bot rights there ...— Mpaa (talk) 20:10, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Footnote on page without marker in the text

Here's an oddball question: When proofreading Page:Craik_History_of_British_Commerce_Vol_2.djvu/183, I found a footnote which does not have a corresponding mark in the body of the text. (It is the first note on the page, to "British Merchant, i. 302.") I determined where (I think) the note should have been inserted (here is the source for that reference on Google Books), but I'm not sure if I should have done that. The location isn't in the source text, after all, even though the note is, and what the author references is data in a table...it seems pretty clear what he meant.

Thoughts? Should I mark the note with the SIC template and a transcriber's note? Leave it out entirely? Do something else?

I've used style="display:none;" for this in the past. I updated the page in question, I think it looks okay. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:48, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Comment: In my experience, sometimes small marks in the text (such as periods, tops of semi-colons, asterisks, and the like) fail to appear because of the quirks of ink printing. It isn't always possible to indicate how such a correction ought to be made. In this instance, I favor inserting the item as a normal footnote, and including a transcriber's note of explanation within the footnote. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
I always put them in the most logical place, leave them displayed and put a comment for the validator to explain what I've done. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
Yeah, I too add things like this in when its reasonably obvious where they should go. Depends on the work, though; books are more predictable than some other types of thing. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 00:45, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Requesting a GeoNotice for a local event in San Francisco

Hi all, we're launching a monthly series of WikiSalons in San Francisco. The event announcement is here: w:en:Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon, April 2016

Is there a Wikisource admin who would be willing to set up a Geonotice, so it would show up at the top of the watchlist for Wikisourcers in the San Francisco bay area? Here's an example of what would need to be done: w:en:Special:Diff/715314854 Just making an identical edit to the counterpart page here on Wikisource would do the trick. Thanks for any help -- and hoping to see some Wikisource folks at the WikiSalon! -Pete (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Note: I have learned this might be a more complex request than I realized. Some helpful discussion here, on Commons: commons:Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#Requesting_a_GeoNotice_for_a_local_event_in_San_Francisco -Pete (talk) 17:47, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Most Projects are not as large as Commons or Wikipedia. For Wikisource (and most other non-pedia projects) posting to the central community discussion page will reach everyone. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:50, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
Hi @EncycloPetey:, thanks. I'm not sure I believe this -- I think I did several years of Wikisource work before ever looking at the Scriptorium, and I have never checked it anywhere near as often as I look at my Watchlist. I don't know any way to test it, but I'd be rather surprised if the vast majority of users check the Scriptorium on a regular basis. But, if there is no established way of doing something like a Geonotice, I don't see any reason to insist on it...as I said above, I initially thought I was requesting something simple and routine, and am happy to retract the request if that's not the case. -Pete (talk) 05:07, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
I believe that all geonotices are coordinated through meta. I am not aware of any local controls, see m:Special:CentralNotice — billinghurst sDrewth 12:34, 19 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks @Billinghurst:, but I just checked...CentralNotice can't get more geographically granular than an entire country. So I guess Geonotice is the only tool that will do that, and if it's not currently set up here at Wikisource, it's not worth doing for this. Thanks for all the info though, this has been an informative discussion. -Pete (talk) 19:12, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Server switch 2016

The Wikimedia Foundation will be testing its newest data center in Dallas. This will make sure Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia wikis can stay online even after a disaster. To make sure everything is working, the Wikimedia Technology department needs to conduct a planned test. This test will show whether they can reliably switch from one data center to the other. It requires many teams to prepare for the test and to be available to fix any unexpected problems.

They will switch all traffic to the new data center on Tuesday, 19 April.
On Thursday, 21 April, they will switch back to the primary data center.

Unfortunately, because of some limitations in MediaWiki, all editing must stop during those two switches. We apologize for this disruption, and we are working to minimize it in the future.

You will be able to read, but not edit, all wikis for a short period of time.

  • You will not be able to edit for approximately 15 to 30 minutes on Tuesday, 19 April and Thursday, 21 April, starting at 14:00 UTC (15:00 BST, 16:00 CEST, 10:00 EDT, 07:00 PDT).

If you try to edit or save during these times, you will see an error message. We hope that no edits will be lost during these minutes, but we can't guarantee it. If you see the error message, then please wait until everything is back to normal. Then you should be able to save your edit. But, we recommend that you make a copy of your changes first, just in case.

Other effects:

  • Background jobs will be slower and some may be dropped.

Red links might not be updated as quickly as normal. If you create an article that is already linked somewhere else, the link will stay red longer than usual. Some long-running scripts will have to be stopped.

  • There will be a code freeze for the week of 18 April.

No non-essential code deployments will take place.

This test was originally planned to take place on March 22. April 19th and 21st are the new dates. You can read the schedule at wikitech.wikimedia.org. They will post any changes on that schedule. There will be more notifications about this. Please share this information with your community. /User:Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:08, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Big Birthdays

Well, we missed the chance to celebrate Charlotte Brontë's 200th birthday by featuring one of her works this month, and I don't see anyone else of that stature in literature with a birthday this year.

But 2017 will mark the 200th birthday of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (no, not that Tolstoy) as well as Henry David Thoreau. We still have time to prepare for those. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:20, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Proposal to globally ban WayneRay from Wikimedia

Per Wikimedia's Global bans policy, I'm alerting all communities in which WayneRay participated in that there's a proposal to globally ban his account from all of Wikimedia. Members of the Wikisource community are welcome in participate in the discussion. --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 14:48, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-16

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • You can filter Special:Log in more detail. You can filter different imports and new users. [14][15]
  • You can use Telnet to read Wikimedia wikis. [16]
  • MediaWiki wikis can handle bigger file uploads. The new limit is 4 GB. [17]

Changes this week

  • Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 19 April and 21 April. This will start at 14:00 UTC and last for 15 to 30 minutes. [18]
  • There is no new Mediawiki version this week. This is because of the data center test.

Meetings

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:40, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

Announce: Unique Devices data available on API

“ The analytics team is happy to announce that the Unique Devices data is now available to be queried programmatically via an API.

This means that getting the daily number of unique devices for English Wikipedia for the month of February 2016, for all sites (desktop and mobile) is as easy as launching this query

You can get started by taking a look at our docs at wikitech:Analytics/Unique Devices#Quick Start

If you are not familiar with the Unique Devices data the main thing you need to know is that is a good proxy metric to measure Unique Users, more info below.

Since 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation used comScore to report data about unique web visitors. In January 2016, however, we decided to stop reporting comScore numbers because of certain limitations in the methodology, these limitations translated into misreported mobile usage. We are now ready to replace comscore numbers with the Unique Devices Dataset. While unique devices does not equal unique visitors, it is a good proxy for that metric, meaning that a major increase in the number of unique devices is likely to come from an increase in distinct users. We understand that counting uniques raises fairly big privacy concerns and we use a very private conscious way to count unique devices, it does not include any cookie by which your browsing history can be tracked.

”

—NRuiz (WMF), wikitech-l

Not sure if anyone is wishing to play with that data, or the value of it, either way, it is there. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:11, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Without knowing the likelihood of someone using multiple devices, or the mean number of devices from which users access, the data is of little value. For example, I regularly use four devices to access Wikisource on any given day. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:35, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
Interesting, especially the split mobile/desktop.— Mpaa (talk) 21:02, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Catalog of Copyright Entries

i’ve started this long term project by uploading Index:1977 Books and Pamphlets July-Dec.djvu. as historical background, the US copyright office stopped digitizing its records from 1923 to 1977. The Hathi trust has a project to research each orphan work in that period to determine copyright status. they find about half the time works were not renewed making them public domain.[19] there around 100 volumes of 1600 pages, of book copyright records.

IAuploader does not work, it appears the files are too big (larger than 50MB less than 100MB). i use chunked uploads but it fails half the time. i will approach Hathi trust for comments if this helps their search. user:Mpaa would a bot filling pages be useful for these records? any thoughts would be appreciated. Slowking4♡₮₳₤₭ 00:35, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

@Slowking4:, do you need help?— Mpaa (talk) 17:49, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
@Mpaa:, i am untutored in the ways of bot page creation, "not proofread". these volumes would seem to be a good fit for that. Slowking4♡₮₳₤₭ 23:31, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
I am surprised that chunked upload is failing in your case. I have uploaded lots of books in recent times (upto yesterday) by this method, to both Commons and Bengali Wikisource, without any failure, even files more than 300 mb in size (e.g. this file of 392 mb). It works even when internet connection goes off (by power-cut) and I have to shift to another connection (by wi-fi). Irrespective of net connection problem, the upload continues, with in-between halts. IA upload also works for me, even for files more than 99 mb in size (e.g. this file). Hrishikes (talk) 01:27, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
i find it times out trying to knit chunks together. maybe you will have better luck, have a go at c:File:Catalog_of_Copyright_Entries_1977_Books_and_Pamphlets_Jan-June.djvu & [20]. Slowking4♡₮₳₤₭ 03:20, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
@Slowking4: The djvu file is corrupt. I'll look into it tonight. Hrishikes (talk) 10:49, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Done Index:Catalog of Copyright Entries 1977 Books and Pamphlets Jan-June.pdf. Hrishikes (talk) 09:49, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
great job, i fear the this IA corrupt file problem may be widespread, and a major hurdle along with file size. getting one year readable will make a good first step. thanks. Slowking4♡₮₳₤₭ 09:59, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
@Slowking4: Finally succeeded with djvu: Index:Catalog o‌f Copyright Entries 1977 Books and Pamphlets Jan-June.djvu. The djvu corruption was due to overcompression. Hrishikes (talk) 15:25, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
the text layer is much better for the jpg version i.e. Page:Catalog of Copyright Entries 1977 Books and Pamphlets Jan-June.pdf/11 versus Page:Catalog o‌f Copyright Entries 1977 Books and Pamphlets Jan-June.djvu/5. thoughts ? Slowking4♡₮₳₤₭ 22:52, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
@Slowking4: The text layer at IA was created from the high resolution jp2 version, whereas the djvu cum text layer was created by me locally from the pdf version. By the way, please arrange moving 1 to 2. Hrishikes (talk) 00:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
ok, the Index:1977 Books and Pamphlets July-Dec.djvu is ready for proofreading. we will need to copy over the better pdf or Gutenberg text layers. (but they are not complete). Slowking4 01:33, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
ok, user:Hrishikes. i’m finding that the IA text layer is better, so I am copy pasting from there. (the pdf version would then be redundant) see progress at Index:Catalog o‌f Copyright Entries 1977 Books and Pamphlets Jan-June.djvu. I may try some music volumes for the nice Penn librarian. Slowking4 ‽ T A L K 23:42, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-17

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Problems

  • Wikimedia tested a new data center last week. This meant that the wikis could be read but not edited for 45 minutes on April 19 and for 20 minutes on April 21. [21]
  • When the data center was tested, new edits were not shown in the recent changes log for 20 minutes. They are in the logs now. You can read more about how to find the edits.
  • Unread notifications were sometimes counted incorrectly. This has now been fixed. [22]

Changes this week

  • Wikimedia Commons will have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Commons. This will happen on April 26. [23]
  • It will be easier to choose if you want to watch files you have uploaded with the upload wizard. [24]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 27. It will be on all wikis from April 28 (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on April 26 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The "Save page" button when you edit will be called "Publish" instead. This is to help new editors understand what it does. It already works like this on some wikis. [25]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:02, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikisource sessions at Open Educational Resources conference

Hi all, the OER conference took place last week at the University of Edinburgh, with an audience of academics, librarians, learning technologists, and related staff, from many different countries. I gave two sessions relating to Wikisource: a short presentation to an audience of around 50, then a longer tour through the site in a computer room, to an audience of about 9 or 10. Twitter reaction was positive- the audience seem very appreciative of Wikisource and some voiced an interest in working with it further. I've collected the reactions here. I will stay in touch with those who have expressed an interest and see if we can get them to share some texts. MartinPoulter (talk) 14:59, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Index:O Douglas - Olivia in India.djvu

No file present. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:22, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

File needs to be undeleted at Commons and then moved to en WS. Billinghurst can do this, having admin rights at both ends. Hrishikes (talk) 17:13, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
Done — billinghurst sDrewth 07:06, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
Thanks :)ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:53, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

\mathop not functioning, asking for the replacement of Math extension by SimpleMathJax

I was trying to use the TeX/LaTeX \mathop operand and discovered that it didn't work. It seems to be because of the Math extension which will disappear soon or later and to be replaced. And in fact, I tested on our wikis (1.24.0) and it works with this new and simple SimpleMathJax extension (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SimpleMathJax). I tried to read the discussion at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T99369 and I can understand that some browsers couldn't display the new maths yet (how many can't?) but it looks very nice and I am willing to push the adoption of this new extension which is not adopted yet (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Version). The following code

<math>\mathop{\int\!\!\!\int\!\!\!\int}_{\Pi-\varpi} u(y){\partial a(y) \over \partial y_i}\,\mathrm{d} y_i</math>

should render as

but is rendering as:

--Nbrouard (talk) 08:45, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Further evidence regarding Author pages

Two days ago, I posted "A Lament for Adonis" in the New texts. This is our first work by the classical author Bion, and the first new text (translation) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that we've had in a long, long time. Below, you can see the view statistics for these three pages, in the same order I've linked to this in the preceeding text.

As I noted before. People are watching our New Texts list, and are visiting the Author pages in addition to the page for the new text. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:23, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

I don't want to depress your enthusiasm but please remember many "modern" browsers perform pre-caching; i.e. they will "follow" one or more links deep from the page you are viewing in anticipation that you may choose to follow one of those links. In other words many of these page views may merely have been the result of an automatic process which cannot be usefully distinguished from actual manual viewing. Just a thought (and of course hope this is only a misconception.) AuFCL (talk) 21:15, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
If that were happening here, I would expect the two author pages to have more nearly the same number of hits. From experience with previous listings, I've seen drops in the number of page views for a work and its author while the page was still in place at the top of the list, after the first two or three days there. So, I rather think that's not what we're seeing, or it's not so common as to produce a noticeable effect in the data. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Patching DjVu files

I know from recent discussion that the Internet Archive no longer generates DjVu files. But do we still have people here who can patch problems in DjVu files? Specifically, can duplicate pages be removed and missing pages inserted, without the need for IA's assistance? --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:48, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I can. Hrishikes (talk) 15:19, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Hrishikes:, I was already working on it, I have uploaded a fixed version (page 290 is still poor quality).— Mpaa (talk) 15:26, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
@Mpaa, @EncycloPetey: Page 290 corrected. Hrishikes (talk) 16:15, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
Done @Mpaa, @Hrishikes: Thanks for that. I guess the answer is "yes", then. :D --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:33, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

New POTM

Hi everybody, I have changed the POTM option to the work for May, as discussed in the relevant page. I don't know if the action was in order; if not, please revert. Hrishikes (talk) 05:34, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-18

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The visual editor now works when you use Internet Explorer 9. [26]

Problems

  • There was a security problem with the MobileFrontend extension. It showed information that had been oversighted. This has now been fixed. [27]

Changes this week

Meetings

Future changes

  • Pages could be added to new users' watchlists by default when they edit them. New users could also by default get email notifications when pages they watch are edited. This is discussed on Meta. [29]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:09, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

OCR gadget messes up the editing environment

Selection of the OCR gadget forces the page header above the toolbars, and suppresses the Proofread tool option of the advanced editing toolbar. PLEASE SEE THIS IMAGE. — Ineuw talk 20:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

PetScan: maintenance tool available for enWS

To bring to the attention of users, Petscan, a new rendition of previous toollabs tools (intersections, categories, ...) by Magnus Manske.

“ PetScan can generate lists of Wikipedia (and related projects) pages or Wikidata items that match certain criteria, such as all pages in a certain category, or all items with a certain property. PetScan can also combine some temporary lists (here called "sources") in various ways, to create a new one. ”

—m:Petscan

It would be interesting to hear what uses our contributors can get, or think that we should get from the tool. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I know nothing about PetScan or its applications except as revealed in recent discussions. However the link provided seems to lead nowhere. From the "list of tools" though, the correct PetScan link would appear instead to be //petscan.wmflabs.org/ whereas the above link expands to https://iw.toolforge.org/Petscan. Is there some kind of redirect missing or other kind of known breakage? AuFCL (talk) 10:51, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
There is no breakage. The URL for PetScan is https://petscan.wmflabs.org/ simple as that. It runs on its own virtual machine, so it doesn't conform to the pattern of the other, "shared infrastructure" tools. If you absolutely want a toollabs "internal" link, you can use toollabs:quick-intersection, which redirects to PetScan, but that seems quite pointless to me. --Magnus Manske (talk) 08:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Pollyanna, move to disambiguate or replace?

Hi. Our contributors have recently finished the transcription of Index:Pollyanna.djvu and we already have a Gutenberg version at Pollyanna. I am seeking opinion on whether I move the file and create a {{versions}} page, or whether we replace with the transcluded version in its place? — billinghurst sDrewth 02:10, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

IMO, replacement with scan-backed text is better than versioning. If the PG text was a significant and different edition, then that would be a different matter. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:34, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree, replace. My rule of thumb is, keep the Gutenberg version iff:
(a) it is possible to figure out what edition it is based upon. But note that Gutenberg boilerplate header text specifies "Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions.... Therefore, we do NOT keep these books in compliance with any particular paper edition, usually otherwise." So it will not usually be possible to identify an edition. Sometimes, however, the published information on the title page will be transcribed; or, intratextual evidence will allow it to be attributed to, say, the "magazine text", or the "American book text".
AND
(b) the Gutenberg edition differs in important ways from our sourced edition, so that it is worth continuing to host until we have a sourced version of that edition.
In this case, the Gutenberg Pollyanna fails (a).
Hesperian 02:40, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Beeswaxcandle and Hesperian. Replace it if there are no significant differences between the two. Jpez (talk) 06:19, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Until we have a firm statement and guidance in the deletion policy, I will seek the community's opinion where I come across these examples. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:15, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
Note that the Gutenberg boilerplate isn't true; very few of Project Gutenberg's etexts are created from multiple editions. If it went through Distributed Proofreaders (which will be credited in the book), I can probably find the edition information. I have access to a private archive with scans from the Distributed Proofreaders books; the PTB are concerned with displaying scans from other online sources that would not appreciate public display of their scans, and the remaining scans that could be displayed freely aren't separated out.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:16, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
@Prosfilaes: If we can attribute the work to an edition, I can resurrect the prior version, and disambiguate. Until we have a version, to which we attribute value, and DP/Gutenberg does not, I think that this is going to be a repeating issue. Solutions are better than repeated problems. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:10, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
DP does care. It is true that books like Pollyanna, which are early PG works, don't have edition information. Mind you, we're not really doing much better; Wikipedia claims that File:Pollyanna (Eleanor Porter book) first edition cover.jpg is the first edition cover, but that's not the cover of the edition we used; not only that, that cover says Boston and our title page says New York. This could have any number of differences from a true first edition that aren't noted on the title page or verso. We never act like the edition information matters to us; it's at Pollyanna, and that page says nothing about the edition besides reproducing the title page.
What are the differences between the Gutenberg copy and our copy? If we care about the versions, that's check number one. Once we know that, it may be easy to find a matching scan in Google Books or HathiTrust. If we don't care about the versions, which it doesn't seem we do for Pollyanna, it's convenient to have a random copy at hand to check against, but that doesn't mean we're reproducing an edition instead of a random copy.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:03, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
Going back to Hesperian, if the Gutenberg version has significant differences from the Wikisource version, it's worth looking into. It quite likely means there's multiple significant editions out there that we should support (and again, given Google Books, it shouldn't be that hard to find what edition the Gutenberg volume came from in most cases), or that the Wikisource edition is simply a bad edition that either shouldn't be supported or at least should be noted that it is an abridged, censored, or otherwise edited version that should not be taken as the (e.g.) Polyanna. If the Gutenberg edition is so abridged, censored, or otherwise edited, it seems polite to mention it upstream so someone can consider marking it and/or replacing it.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:44, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
I think it's best to make a "versions" page and keep the "unsourced" text—if the "unsourced" text has any sort of source information. It's possible that other websites that created ebooks and/or online texts will later provide specific source information, maybe even including page scans. Two examples I can think of are (1) The Jungle Book (authorama.com version), and (2) the Liberty Fund rendition of Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771), not uploaded here, but which I consulted during proofreading the book here on Wikisource [see Index talk:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu]. Another benefit of versions pages is that we might spot more publishing reprints here on Wikisource -- such as the 1910 Jungle Book using the same illustrations as the 1894 Jungle Book. Outlier59 (talk) 23:41, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

TOC template and "overuse"?

I am working on a dotted TOC template for Indian Medicinal Plants Part 1. It seems as if the current template is overused, but, if so, then what should I use for the rest of the TOC? Should I "break" the TOC into different parts? - Tannertsf (talk) 15:26, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Use {{TOCstyle}} , That should only need one template invocation per contents page... ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:20, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

pages tag without a self-closing slash

I've noticed a few instances of pages tags without self-closing slashes (i.e. <pages ...> as opposed to <pages ... />) which aren't turned into page transclusion by the parser. I can only assume that that worked at some point and now doesn't. Is there an easy way to find and correct all of these instances? Prosody (talk) 16:33, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Putting insource:/\<pages[^\/]*\>/ into the search box returns a bit more than what you ask for but nevertheless might be a useful start.

Although unusual practice surely the form <pages …></pages> is legal? For instance American History Told by Contemporaries/Volume 2/Chapter 33 seems to be working fine, and survives a purge operation. What have I missed, please? AuFCL (talk) 22:52, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't familiar with the practice of using an closing tag so I was unclear, sorry. It seems that works too. What doesn't work is a pages tag without self closing slash or closing tag. I've definitely seen it once here and once on multilingual Wikisource. Prosody (talk) 00:59, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I am fixing those cases as MpaaBot.— Mpaa (talk) 19:23, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Hope I fixed all cases "without self closing slash". Let me know if you happen to find more.— Mpaa (talk) 21:43, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
@Prosody: phabricator:T134957 noted. Not sure why I was notified of its creation so if that was of your doing thank you. I further note Danny_B's slightly dismissive closure message neither confirms nor denies the "correctness" of the <pages …></pages> form. Should these be changed also to the self-closing form "to play safe?" I am inclined to think so but obviously don't know for sure. AuFCL (talk) 09:03, 11 May 2016 (UTC)
When {{#tag:pages||index={{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}.djvu|from=|to=}}> is substituted, it turns into <pages index=".djvu" from= to= ></pages>. It is correct, and I don't see the value in the conversion of functional and legitimate code. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:06, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Finger-Prints for Everybody from the Literary Digest

I have a photographed two pages of the articel "Finger-Prints for Everybody" from the Lit. Dig. of July 19, 1919 (PD-1923). Is WS interested and, if so, how do I give you the image files? 104.229.143.192 17:00, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Do you have the whole article? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 07:45, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
HathiTrust has multiple scans available of the entire run of the Literary Digest up to 1922. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028103888;view=1up;seq=298 is a link to scans of this article.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:35, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
Hot damn! I guess I don't need to keep those! Thanx. 104.229.143.192 15:48, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Proposed WikiProject merger

Since I don't have a freaking clue how if at all these things are done here, I welcome input at Wikisource talk:WikiProject Bible#Proposed merger regarding a possible merger of the Bible and Bible dictionary WikiProjects. John Carter (talk) 17:31, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Rather than a straight merger, it might be better to consider the one a sub-project of the other. But most projects here are very fluid. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:47, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I was myself thinking of maybe keeping the main WikiProject Bible, with a task force/work group for Bible dictionaries, maybe later another task force for commentaries, etc. So, in general I agree with keeping the page, and material, but think that renaming it to be a subunit of the WikiProject Bible might be beneficial. John Carter (talk) 20:45, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
I would say that both are pretty well dead, so anything that invigorates them is worthwhile. A project is a loose collection of topic and people, so I personally don't think that it matters if the RFC isn't progressive. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:25, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-19

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Wikiversities now have better access to Wikidata. They can use data from any page on Wikidata on any page on Wikiversity. This happened on May 3. [30]
  • You can use Wikipedia GapFinder to find missing articles between languages. [31]
  • Users are invited to try Cross-wiki Notifications on all wikis. This is the last test session before the release by default, scheduled for May 12th at 23:00 UTC. [32][33]
  • You can use keyboard shortcuts to open the visual editor (meta+V) or the wikitext editor (meta+E) (on certain wikis, even if you have chosen a favorite editor). [34]
  • Uploading files bigger than 100 megabytes on Wikimedia Commons required to opt-in in your preferences. This is not necessary anymore. [35]
  • The UploadsLink extension is now available on Wikimedia Commons. [36]
  • Deleting a translation unit page didn't remove the corresponding content from the translation page. This is now solved. [37]
  • Translation suggestions based on Apertium are now available on Mediawiki.org. [38]

Problems

  • MediaWiki 1.27.0-wmf.23 has been rolled back from Wikimedia wikis, due to a performance issue. [39]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 10. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 11. It will be on all wikis from May 12 (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Today, in categories, a page titled "11" comes before "2". We plan to reorder that: "2" will come before "11". Please tell the developers if the change will cause problems. [40]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

23:22, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Proofreading works with some language the proofer doesn't know

Am I allowed to mark a page as proofread or validated if it contains some words of a language I don't know? See, for example, Page:Chinese Merry Tales (1909).djvu/27. Most of the work is English, and I can format it and check if the Chinese characters look about right, but I can't read them, and I can't read the tooltips. Tar-ba-gan is doing the Chinese. Outlier59 (talk) 00:13, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Newbie question - apostrophes and quote marks

Hi. I'm new around here; as a way of finding out about Wikisource I've enjoyed contributing to the current Proofread of the Month. However I'm confused about an aspect of style:

  1. Should apostropes be of this form: Hanuman’s or this form: Hanuman's? Does it depend on the usage of the text?
  2. Same question for quotation marks (single and double).

The style guide seems to encourage straight quotes, but in the PotM I've seen others leave in the curly quotes/apostrophes rendered by the OCR. At first I changed things to straight, but after observing others I have stopped doing so. Can someone please clear up my confusion? Thanks! BethNaught (talk) 20:30, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

You will get mixed opinions. Mine: in the style guide straight is preferred (I do too). Someone uses curly. Most important: consistency through the whole text.— Mpaa (talk) 21:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Would the Index talk: be the appropriate place to ask re this particular book? BethNaught (talk) 21:58, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, index page talk is the best place to ask. Curly quotes are not used all that often, as far as I've seen. OCR clean up converts curly quotes to straight quotes. Outlier59 (talk) 22:08, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you; I have asked at the Index talk: which to use. I have another question: I see that some validated pages use the {{hwe}} and {{hws}} templates, but others with hyphenated words over pages do not. Does this matter and do I need to worry about using these templates? BethNaught (talk) 22:16, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
You'll need to do something so that when the pages are transcluded into the work, the hyphens across pages do not show up. By far the easiest method is to use {{hws}} and {{hwe}}, as it is both easy to learn and easy for other new editors to interpret later. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:20, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Thank you. I think I've caught all the instances on pages I've edited now. BethNaught (talk) 22:35, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
I prefer ’ because we use ' for bolding and italics. BD2412 T 22:51, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps this is to be expected, but I feel like I'm getting decidedly mixed messages. I'm going with straight as per the reply on the index talk. BethNaught (talk) 07:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
@BethNaught: Straight is the guidance, and I believe that it was chosen (after a discussion) as the guidance as it is on the keyboard, so easy. Some works come to us with curly quotes, and rather than stamp our feet, or inexpertly change them with the risk of missing, we accept them as they are. So if you are doing them in a fresh work, then we prefer they are straight. If we are working collaboratively on a work, then we should do them as straight. Putting commentary on Index talk: pages is always helpful in explaining why you are doing something, especially where the explanation is differing from the style guide. To note that if you need to do italics with a single quote, you can utilise &apos; to get a straight apostrophe and not have the word converted to bolded. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:33, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Or <nowiki>'</nowiki>.--Prosfilaes (talk) 09:57, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
Or {{'}}.— Mpaa (talk) 19:39, 13 May 2016 (UTC)
i’m afraid my default spell checker changes my {{'}} into ’, and then snaps back for ''. very annoying, but not motivated to fix. Slowking4 03:11, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Hathitrust

Hi, Does anyone have an account on Hathitrust, to get some books? I'd like to get the following books. Thanks in advance, Yann (talk) 20:59, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

it’s working for me. is it a geo-lock? [41] do these links work for you?
they say they are digitized by google at Univ Michigan, maybe an upload to IA is in order. maybe you will need a VPN. Slowking4 03:07, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
No, I can't access that. BuB doesn't accept it either. Regards, Yann (talk) 14:23, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-20

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Some image thumbnails now load faster on mobile. They also take up less bandwidth. [42]

Problems

  • Last week's MediaWiki version was late on some wikis. [43]

Changes this week

  • Special:Notifications will have "mark as read" buttons for each day. The non-JavaScript version will get it this week. A JavaScript version will come later. [44]
  • Wikis can now locally decide what wikitext they want the signature button to produce. [45]
  • A one-time welcome message for users will now be shown in the wikitext editor. This will include existing users. [46]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 17. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 18. It will be on all wikis from May 19 (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Using self-closing tags like <div/> and <span/> to mean <div></div> and <span></span> will not work in the future. Templates and pages that use these tags should be fixed. When Phabricator ticket T134423 is fixed these tags will parse as <div> and <span> instead. This is normal in HTML5. [47]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:01, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

A new "Welcome" dialog

Hello everyone. This is a heads-up about a change which has just been announced in Tech News: Add the "welcome" dialog (with button to switch) to the wikitext editor.

In a nutshell, later this week this will provide a one-time "Welcome" message in the wikitext editor which explains that anyone can edit, and every improvement helps. The user can then start editing in the wikitext editor right away, or switch to the visual editor. (This is the equivalent of an already existing welcome message for visual editor users, which suggests the option to switch to the wikitext editor. If you have already seen this dialog in the visual editor, you will not see the new one in the wikitext editor.)

  • I want to make sure that, although users will see this dialog only once, they can read it in their language as much as possible. Please read the instructions if you can help with that.
  • I also want to underline that the dialog does not change in any way the current site-wide configuration of the visual editor. Nothing changes permanently for users who chose to hide the visual editor in their Preferences or for those who don't use it anyway, or for wikis where it's still a Beta Feature, or for wikis where certain groups of users don't get the visual editor tab, etc.
    • There is a slight chance that you see a few more questions than usual about the visual editor. Please refer people to the documentation or to the feedback page, and feel free to ping me if you have questions too!
  • Finally, I want to acknowledge that, while not everyone will see that dialog, many of you will; if you're reading this you are likely not the intended recipients of that one-time dialog, so you may be confused or annoyed by it—and if this is the case, I'm truly sorry about that. This message also avoids that you have to explain the same thing over and over again—just point to this section. Please feel free to cross-post this message at other venues on this wiki if you think it will help avoid that users feel caught by surprise by this change.

If you want to learn more, please see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T133800; if you have feedback or think you need to report a bug with the dialog, you can post in that task (or at mediawiki.org if you prefer).

Thanks for your attention and happy editing, Elitre (WMF) 16:50, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

How does a "Welcome to Wikipedia" message affect our project here at Wikisource? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:43, 16 May 2016 (UTC)
@Elitre (WMF): I'm seeing the same "Welcome to Wikipedia" message on your links here as EncycloPetey questioned. Can you clarify how this impacts Wikisource? Outlier59 (talk) 00:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
it’s the same old broadcast tl;dr when people complain (English Wikipedia drama). I keep getting confused trying to counsel newbies who have wikitext editor, but want VE, and have to find the small pencil (whatever that means). or pushing the "combined button", to get to wikitext. it affects you here, if you are experimenting with VE in article space. they keep thrashing the interface, maybe one day they will settle on something so we can train on it. Slowking4 01:46, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
EncycloPetey, Outlier59, the message will say "Welcome to Wikisource" here of course. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 05:50, 17 May 2016 (UTC) PS: Slightly OT, the hard work of adapting the visual editor to Wikisource is mainly led by volunteers User:Coren and User:Tpt who would certainly benefit from direct feedback about what's working and what you'd like to see improved. Thanks!
As a reminder—this wiki features a Single Edit Tab system; if you're not sure you know or remember how that works, you can read the guide (which details, among other things, how to switch between editors from the buttons on the toolbar); you can change your editing settings at any time, by the way. (I had also written a very quick intro to the visual editor, in case anyone is interested). Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
This doesn't look very applicable to what Wikisource does. Most of our valued content is transcluded from items in a different namespace, and changes must be compared in the edit window against the source document. This doesn't even seem to be enabled, so it doesn't apply to this project or to any Wikisource for that matter. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:12, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
So, how often will a user see the Welcome message from the visual editor? I've gotten it twice in the past 24 hours, but never had to experience it before. --EncycloPetey (talk) 09:22, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Six times now in 24 hours, and I do not see the message in my native language, but in whatever language is native to the project where I am editing. This message is a bad idea, and I wish there were some way to never see it on any project while logged in, instead of on every project and in every language every time I visit after every time I log in. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:32, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Desirability of manuscripts in Wikisource?

Hi, I'm in the process of talking to other people in the Harold B. Library (where I work as a Wikipedia coordinator) about making our transcriptions of works more accessible. Many of our transcriptions are of old personal journals. They're definitely in the public domain, I'm just not sure if transcriptions of manuscripts are within the scope of Wikisource--would they fall under original contributions? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:11, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Are these scans of handwritten originals, scsns of typed transcriptions/ editorial collations of journals, or typed up into a modern digital format (like Project Gutenburg works)? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:44, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
There are scans of the handwritten originals that we have in our special collections along with transcriptions made by student workers (which I'd need to adapt to Wikisource standards). I don't think Project Gutenberg would accept them, since they were never formally published, but I could be wrong. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:15, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
These definitly sound like they are in scope. Does the library also hold short works like correspondence and ephemera (see User:MartinPoulter's efforts for the latter :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:26, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
Yes, we have loads of letters and ephemera, but not much of it is scanned yet. Thanks for your information; I'll let my colleagues know that Wikisource is a potential place to put transcriptions of manuscript material. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:58, 17 May 2016 (UTC)
@Rachel Helps (BYU): when it comes to personal journals, it is not necessarily a direct yes, there is a bit of a notability or referential requirement. So if the person is notable to WS standards (an author) then YesY. If the journal is someone listed in WP/Wikt/Wikquote/.. then YesY as they have the requisite 'notability'. If the work itself is notable in that it is required as a citable reference at enWP, etc., then YesY. If it is old uncle Jim's scratchings about his trip to the town and he bought his chewing tobacco, then N. Sames goes for people's wills, we want the notable wills, or the will of notable people, but that of the cocky who shore sheep for Farmer Squire, no.

We definitely don't need formal publication, and that is explained in WS:WWI, and thanks for taking the time to ask. :-) — billinghurst sDrewth 07:09, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

yes, welcome here, although the Smithsonian transcription, and NARA citizen archivist have set up their own sites. they push their own volunteers with twitter, and other social media. unpublished manuscripts may have a 95 years term, so check license status. if you wanted to have an editathon / intro to wikicode, with a google hangout, i’d be happy to participate. Slowking4 17:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Unpublished manuscripts don't have a 95 years term. They have a life+70 term. Anonymous works are more hairy than in Europe; if I understand it right, they still have a life+70 term, but one can assume (with properly checking) that the author died at most 50 years from creation.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:19, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
I am going to assume that someone who works at an archival library would be able to contact any descendants who might stake a claim on a copyright and perhaps get them to indicate whether the heirs choose to enforce the copyright or not. John Carter (talk) 23:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
Generally Wikimedia insists on an explicit license, rather than an unenforced copyright.
Moreover, part of my frustration with copyright is that my grandfather died ten years ago, and I don't have a clue where my aunt's share in his copyright might have ended up. People move, change their names, die, leave stuff to random people, and pretty quickly it's very hard to tell who might hold copyright of some minor work.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:12, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
welcome, to the fun of orphan works. In the US, and this is a US library, it is "Works created before 1978 and first published after or in 1978 are protected for the earlier of 95 years from publication or registration for copyright or 120 years from creation (for anonymous or corporate works) or 70 years after death of the creator for known authors" hence, the setup of institutional transcription on their servers. as hathi trust found nothing finds the copyright holder like publishing. if commons won’t take the manuscripts, we should, as easy "fair use". Slowking4 12:48, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Tool "Cite this page"

Anyone noticed that Wikisource uses a Wikipedia "Cite this page" tool? Here's the opening blurb.... 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it appropriate to use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as a sole source for any information—citing an encyclopedia as an important reference in footnotes or bibliographies may result in censure or a failing grade. Wikipedia articles should be used for background information, as a reference for correct terminology and search terms, and as a starting point for further research....   As with any community-built reference, there is a possibility for error in Wikipedia's content—please check your facts against multiple sources and read our disclaimers for more information. [bold added]

How do we get this fixed? Outlier59 (talk) 21:43, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

We edit MediaWiki:Citethispage-content — billinghurst sDrewth 11:54, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! I'll see if I can re-word that. Outlier59 (talk) 13:43, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't have permission to change that. Outlier59 (talk) 13:48, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
Nope, and that page would only be changed by consensus. Suggestions can be made on its talk page. — billinghurst sDrewth 15:22, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
apparently User:George Orwell III decide to add this "important notice" without consensus, an interesting historical note [48]. Slowking4 12:37, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I wonder whether the function as a whole makes sense for Wikisource, and I suspect it is used very little even on Wikipedia. Possibly the best thing to do is to hide it from the toolbar.--Erasmo Barresi (talk) 20:35, 22 May 2016 (UTC)
Citing a "community-built", "tertiary source" encyclopedia such as Wikipedia is probably used very little because it's difficult to verify/trace to reliable primary sources. As long as Wikisource provides page scans to verify Wikisource texts against original publications, we're making progress here. It's not perfect, but it's progress. I say keep the citation option, but CORRECT it. As User:Slowking4 noticed, User:George Orwell III changed it. I say CORRECT this. Outlier59 (talk) 01:26, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
well, I do appreciate the attempt to educate the public about how to use sources, but no amount of tl;dr chastisement will work; it will require lots of one on one tutoring of the next generation. and the talk of Wikipedia is a tell, this warning is not applicable here, maybe the consensus is to fix their problem, or maybe we should blank it. an essay on what and how to use wikisource, with an executive summary might help. Slowking4 01:38, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Can you say that in plain English? Outlier59 (talk) 01:57, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
GOIII is currently unavailable due to one of life's lesser disasters and may not be able to respond for some time.

In the meantime how about this:

@Outlier59: what was the basis for you discovering this apparent fault? What was the application for which you needed to "cite" a page? If for curiosity or experimentation sakes alone then Erasmo Barresi's questioning of the existence of the link to the tool stands and I support removing that link. Surely only if there is a proven potential application for it is there any incentive to "fix" anything? AuFCL (talk) 02:06, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of removing the link. It seems to me to display the wrong data anyway, because when I click 'cite this page' I would expect to be given citation styles for the actual work (or part thereof) that I'm reading. For example, citing Against the Grain/Chapter I should give "Joris-Karl Huysmans" as the author and not "Wikisource contributors". It should also say what chapter this is. So yeah, I'm in favour of the simplification of the sidebar tool list. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 12:14, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
@Samwilson: That's something that needs to be decided at MediaWiki:Citethispage-content.
If Wikisource isn't providing any useful service by transcribing pages from raw OCR to accurate text versions, I agree the citation link should be removed altogether. Someone can simply cite the djvu page number from the Internet Archives file page scans without mentioning Wikisource.
This discussion belongs at MediaWiki:Citethispage-content. I suggest move this discussion there. That probably takes an Admin, but I don't know. Outlier59 (talk) 00:10, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-21

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Problems

  • Commons had problems with server lag. This meant that it took longer time for files to turn up in categories. [50]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 May. It will be on all wikis from 26 May (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on May 24 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • All HTTP access to Wikimedia sites and APIs will stop working. Some bots still use HTTP. They will need to use HTTPS instead. This will happen on June 12. [51]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:40, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

Recent IP additions of constitutions

A couple of related IP addresses have added these works

The works are unsourced and unformatted pastes from elsewhere. They are without licence, and will be translations from the original languages. While I have added headers and thrown tags upon them, we will need to catch the editor and have a chat about these matters, if we cannot resolve the matters then we may have to look to deletions of the work, probably as COPYVIO of the translations.

I have left a note on the talk page of one, though it seems the editor is on a dynamic IP address and we will need to try and catch them live to chat. If someone is able to catch them, please point them to this discussion or my initial prod at User talk:101.59.211.26. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:39, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

are they copied from here: https://www.constituteproject.org/ ?? appears to be NC https://www.constituteproject.org/content/terms?lang=en Slowking4 18:23, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Shakespeare

It seems one of our greater failures is to have a good set of Shakespeare; all our copies are unsourced. We could go back and crib from Gutenberg again; they now have a set of the Cambridge Shakespeare, which is about as modern as we can get, and backing scans are easy to get.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:41, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Why not get the oldest source texts we can get to work with? Primary texts add a lot to general knowledge.... Outlier59 (talk) 00:23, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I would say that, on the contrary, us working with the oldest copies of Shakespeare we can find does not add much to anyone. We are not where scholars go when they need to look up the First Folio, we are where students and average people go when they want to look up Shakespeare. Shakespeare, in particular, is bad for going to the oldest source texts, since there are several early texts that modern editions depend on for a best copy.
A good scholarly edition, where a scholar has accessed all the earliest sources available, and has notes and comparisons of the sources, is likely much more useful to our audience than the primary sources themselves.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:48, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
We have a facsimile copy of the First Folio (proofreading incomplete), but as it is an early 17th century work using spelling, typography, and poetical format of that period, it is a challenge to do. Also, it has been worked on by several different editors who held different views on style, over an extended period of time, so even the plays that have been proofread are a real mess right now. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:16, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
What's the link to that text? Outlier59 (talk) 04:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
Index:Shakespeare_-_First_Folio_Faithfully_Reproduced,_Methuen,_1910.djvu --T. Mazzei (talk) 05:24, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
I would suggest, we concentrate on a good edition for the general reader, the specialists are going elsewhere. - the institutions are transcribing on their own sites, i.e. http://collation.folger.edu/2014/02/uv-ij-and-transcribing-other-early-modern-textual-oddities/ Slowking4 02:12, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
If we can get the scans Prosfilaes mentions for Cambridge Shakespeare and crib from Gutenberg, I suppose that makes sense. At least it would give us scan-backed Shakespeare here. Outlier59 (talk) 16:55, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Stalled progress

I'm sorry, if I sound a little bit concerned, but sometimes it would be nice if the issues which are causing projects to become stalled were subject to a long-term solution. In respect of some of the above that aren't that developed, it may be better to just say they are too complex, and delete which would be regrettable. (NB for some reaon firefox didn't seem to save this part of my comments previously. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 21:49, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

More examples


There are others.... ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:25, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

The Euclid volume has the additional problem that, like most English translations of Euclid's Elements, it lacks several books from the original work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
the side note problem has stalled many US government documents. Slowking4 02:22, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't know the details for most of those works, but I edited Index:The Elements of Euclid for the Use of Schools and Colleges - 1872.djvu a few months ago. It's not really "stalled" -- more like "awaiting improvement." See the Index talk page. The namespace version doesn't look too bad using display option "Layout 2". I'll probably return to it at some point, but it's not a priority for me. I restored "proofread" status to many of the pages, so I can't validate. (By the way, EncycloPetey, there are more Euclid versions at The Elements of Euclid, including at least one with all original books. This version extracted the less-advanced sections for students.)
I'm not seeing Index talk pages for those other works, so I don't know the history of edit concerns or standards for them. My impression is that something like "do not use long s" can be established up front for a work on its talk page -- I did that for Index talk:Essay on the First Principles of Government 2nd Ed.djvu. I think at this point if someone wants to create a version with the long s, they need to create a separate version. It's been proofed.
If I were you, I'd try the same approach with sidenotes. Establish clear instructions on the Index discussion page, then do the proofing. If you find other editors ignore the Index discussion page, ask them to pay attention to it. If someone is intentionally ignoring the Index discussion page, revert their edits. But I think most things can be sorted out without reverting disruptive edits. Talk.
By the way, when I view most sidenotes, they look like crap in Page space, but fine in Mainspace. This might be my browser, my screen size, my screen resolution, my side-by-side horizontal editing preference in Wikisource... or whatever. Who knows? The technology is complex. I suggest setting standards for a work before proofing it (on the Index talk page), then move along. :) Outlier59 (talk) 23:58, 28 May 2016 (UTC)
I had at some point attempted an alternative side-notes method which eventually became {{sn-paragraph}} which displayed slightly more cleanly, but no-one seemed interested in making it compatible with the rest of the Wikisource, or porting it over to LUA so it could be extended, the current version being rather intricate markup (which is usually a bad thing). In addition the current version of the template requires that it leaves a large white-space margin, which isn't ideal for pages where there clearly aren't any sidenotes (in an otherwise sidenoted work). {{sn-paragrph}} attempted to add a parameter to cope with this, but this is what is making the template more intricate. It would be nice not to have to use "clever" (and largely bespoke soloutions) for things like this (and for spanned tables, lists etc) but this would require someone with expertise to actually fix and resolve many of the underlying issues, something which does not at present seem to be a priority.

The long term issues summarised :-

  • Mediawiki markup as such is not currently able to handle certain syntax like tables or lists which runs over transclusion breaks (like seperate pages) in an elegant manner.
  • There are some issues with how Mediawiki wraps
    and

    tags around things like sections. ( I will note here that trying to do multiple paragraph refs hits this issue as well, which makes it more complex to get particualr layout correct.
  • The current side-notes approach doesn't necessarily render elegantly whenn you have a number of mid-llength footnotes close together. For technical reasons, it was my understnading that it was span based, whereas the {{sn-paragraph}} version was DIV based (granted that owing to intracy it's effectively unreadable.)

Based on past experience I don't see anyone treating these as a high priority, such that works only need to broken ONCE, rather than a slow and tedious process of 'breaks' by revision (and by "clever" work-arounds that utilise particular quirks.) This doesn't exactly encourage the transcription of more complex works here. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:02, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

And in respect of Index:Public General Statutes 1896.djvu it's currently using side-notes. However whilst checking up on something, the web versions of legislation at legislation.gov.uk doesn't use side-titles as they appear in print. So I might reconsider how to do these in future given that what's nominally the offical site puts them in as headings! I appreciate that Wikisource is aiming for source fidelity, but in this instance it might be more practical to use a modfied layout out of practicality, given that cl-act-paragraph might be too clever for it's own good. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 14:25, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
well, I periodically try to work with the federal register folks at NARA (they have a publishing model, not a API model, and don't work to digitize the heritage material), but the old pdf’s are hard - see also United States Statutes at Large. i’m afraid I’ve moved on to other lost causes, such as Catalog of Copyright Entries. but some consensus to abandon sidenotes / templates to make sidenote proofreading easier, would be greatly appreciated. these are the kind of thorny thickets, no other transcription site will even try. Slowking4 ‽ T A L K 18:24, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Compare - http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/59-60/14/contents/enacted with it's equivalent at Wikisource :). If even the official site isn't concerned with as original sidetitles. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:38, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
For us the word of the author is king and shouldn't be changed, the formatting is the work of the compositor, and it guides our attempts to reproduce in a web (paging down) environment, no longer a page flipping forward.

Formatting in many mediums doesn't work with texts, or takes complex formatting, or it takes specialised software that where its purpose is graphical layout. So our purpose is to reproduce the text, with an eye to formatting, we are not blindly replicating a facsimile of the work (we are working to the web). There will be occasions where we step outside the strictures of a work, and our guidance, and where we can explain why it is the case, and the community does not have issues with the plan, it has been acceptable in our history. I would prefer that we erred on the side of the simpler rather than the overly complex as it makes it easier to proofread, and I feel it is ultimately more resilient (and/or fixable). What we do always wish to retain is aspects of an edition, and that includes chapters and pages as while these are composition aspects, they are also clear reference points. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-22

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • There is now a standard way to get the target of a redirect page from a Lua module. [52]

Problems

  • A new way to handle rollback was introduced. It broke some tools and scripts and was reverted. This will be re-planned after review. [53][54]
  • CentralNotice didn't work in some older browsers. This has now been fixed. [55]

Changes this week

  • When you edit a file or category page with the visual editor the rest of the page will be shown in its normal place. [56]
  • The Translate extension will get an edit summary field. [57]
  • A change to the <charinsert> feature could break some user scripts. Contact Bawolff if the "click to insert special characters" links in the edit window break on your wiki. [58][59]
  • Elasticsearch will be upgraded on Wikimedia wikis this week. This should not affect you, but if you have problems with the search function this is probably the reason. [60]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 June. It will be on all wikis from 2 June (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 31 May at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

16:18, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Tool for transfer to IA

Somewhere in recent months, a user here pointed to an on-line tool that would automate transfer of a google.books work to the Internet Archive.

I foolishly did not bookmark or save that information, and now have need of it. Can anyone help? --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:28, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

http://tools.wmflabs.org/ia-upload/ maybe?— Mpaa (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
No, that's a useful tool, but it uploads from IA to Commons. I'm looking for a page with the set of tools that upload to the Archive from Hathi, Google Books, etc. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:47, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
toollabs:bub/ note that it fails without the trailing forward slash — billinghurst sDrewth 00:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks. Thanks the one I was looking for. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:50, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

main namespace page link position needs adjustment

Uploaded this image to show the issue. This occurs below all article headers except the TOC page. Also, this only shows up in Firefox, any version, any OS, but not in Chrome/Chromium.— Ineuw talk 18:47, 30 May 2016 (UTC)

Put in an extra hard return at the top of your work. It has been happening for ages, and I just move on. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:23, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
I can't. It shows up ~8,800 8,099 times in PSM. Wouldn't it make more sense to add a hard return at the end of the template? — Ineuw talk 01:54, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
An observation (without satisfactory conclusion) for what it is worth. Having noted that the <div> which seems not to be fully occupying its space allocation is id="headerContainer", and that just happens to be one of the traditional control points of Display Options, I made up a test layout by copying the official "Layout 1" and modifying #headerContainer to add a 10px bottom margin viz.:
self.ws_layouts = {
	'ITest': {
		'#pageContainer':'',
		'#regionContainer':'',
		'#columnContainer':'',
		'.sidenote-right':'float:right; margin:0.5em; padding:3px; border:solid 1px gray; max-width:9em; text-indent:0em; text-align:left;',
		'.sidenote-left':'float:left; margin:0.5em; padding:3px; border:solid 1px gray; max-width:9em; text-indent:0em; text-align:left;',
		'.mw-editsection':'',
		'#headerContainer':'margin-bottom:10px;'
	}
};
Now selecting new Layout "ITest" the page number link is always clear of the header block. I am sure there must be a cleverer way of doing this but it might just prompt a few thoughts? AuFCL (talk) 02:25, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
There is the capability for a test layout, and from memory there is the option in your gadgets. So users can test by putting code into their common.css to test. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:33, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Here is an alternate approach: within mediawiki:PageNumbers.js the styling of <div id= "ct-pagenumbers" is presently hard-coded as style= "position:absolute; top:0; left:0;"> (currently line 328) If top:5px; were substituted in that line then the first page number link is rendered just clear of the bottom rule of headerContainer above, and the page-hover-highlighting remains correctly positioned. AuFCL (talk) 09:42, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for all your efforts. Before reading the info above, I also copied the template to find the source and came to the quick conclusion that wasting our time on it at this time is not worth it. This post will serve as a reminder of items need to be addressed at a later time. That's all. — Ineuw talk 17:10, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata and Wikisource

Hello everyone. I'm here to ask you a few questions regarding the integration of en.source with Wikidata: it's my understanding that en.source is one of the first WS which connected both author and books to WD items. Is it true? How did you arrange for the "work-edition" issue? Other Wikisources would like to connect with Wikidata too and it would be very important for us to understand how you did it. Aubrey (talk) 15:32, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

It's my understanding that this is how it works:
  • Disambiguation pages that are {{versions}} pages (for English works or translations into English) and {{translations}} pages (for works not in English) are considered to be the work itself and are linked to the Wikidata items for that work. As an example, consider Bible (d:Q1845), a collection of religious books in Hebrew and Greek, and Authorized King James Version (d:Q623398), one of many translations of that collection into English.
  • Regular texts in mainspace are considered editions of the work and are not the work itself. These usually do not get an item on Wikidata, but this depends on Wikidata's rules for notability. To continue the example above, there are three editions of the Authorized King James Version on English Wikisource; the 1769 Oxford Standard edition is located at Bible (King James) and is linked to d:Q20155177 which represents that specific edition only.
You will notice that the property "edition or translation of" (d:Property:P629) and "edition(s)" (d:Property:P747) used to connect all these Wikidata items. Also notice that d:Q20155177 (Bible (King James)) does not link to any other language Wikisource, because it is an English edition only; it does not link to a Wikipedia article, because the 1769 Oxford Standard edition isn't notable enough for its own article, etc. Similarly d:Q623398 (Authorized King James Version) would not link to any other Wikisources because it is specifically an English translation.
—Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:37, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
To expand a bit: What Beleg Tal has said is largely true. However, for works that have only one edition, or are unlikely to have editions, these are considered to be the work itself and linked accordingly. But when a work has editions or versions, or when the work is a translation from another language, then it must have a separate data item for each edition, and a "Versions" (disambiguation) page is linked to the main item on Wikidata. Have a look at Wikidata item Q3320792] "Agamemnon" for an example. The Greek text (the original) is linked into the data item, but the English, French, and Italian translations are listed as "editions or translations", and the English Wikisource page listed there lists the English translations, instead of being a translation itself. Eventually, the Greek will have to move to "versions" as well, because there are multiple edited Greek texts, but that will happen later.
We are still very early in the process of adding the works (books, journals, encyclopedias, etc.) to Wikidata, because there is a lot of cleanup that has to be done to fit our works into the Wikidata structure. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
> "However, for works that have only one edition, or are unlikely to have editions, these are considered to be the work itself and linked accordingly."
Interestingly, last I looked into it, this was explicitly not the case; see for example this discussion I had with a Wikidata admin when I tried to merge the single edition of a Swedish work with the main work page. Has there been a change of heart on the part of our Wikidata friends? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:13, 31 May 2016 (UTC)
The edition/translation policies are applied inconsistently, depending upon the person enacting any change. There is much room for improvement. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:49, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Aubrey. It is a complex mix, and every time I try to write it up it just becomes a PITA in which I lose patience with it, and go back to transcribing. The short plain vanilla version is

  1. every published transcription is an edition, and should have a WD entry for the edition
  2. there is a project page at WD that shows the components to add for an edition

if you hack away at that level you cannot go far wrong. I will always do the edition component as that is the link to my transcription from WD to here, and it generates the link from here to WD, and is pure.

The components about blending/melding/hierarchical linking can follow. Complexities abound (aka it becomes butt ugly) …

  • articles in journals, newspapers, etc.
  • wikisource-generated translations
  • disambiguations / versions / translations
  • speeches/addresses (primary) that become published (secondary), and then may then have editions (tertiary) and are translated (quaternary)

etc. So I just keep it simple based on an edition, and then let the other interconnectivity sort itself out. If the "work" level exists, I will connect to it, and sometimes I will create the "work" level, often I simply won't bother. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:27, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your responses. It's kinda reassuring to understand that, indipendently, many of us think about this the very same way. My plan for Italian Wikisource is doing what billinghurst does: working with just the editions' while figuring out the meta-level. On it.source, though, we use a similar template for {{versions}}, but in a dedicated namespace, Opera (means Work).
We are trying to revive the discussion on the d:Wikidata talk:WikiProject Books, if you're interested.
My next question to you is: have you done the first importing by bot? did you import all all the statements for the basic metadata? Aubrey (talk) 16:48, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
@Aubrey: A bot was run through in the early days pretty much on the conditions that were expressed at WD relating to the import, which is predominantly main namespace and at the root level, not subpages, which was good for chaptered work, though less than useful for articled works. Now it is all manual. I just do them as I create a work, and as part of maintenance I will occasionally add them. Whereas with authors I am more thorough adding those at WD, though it takes time. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:53, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

My understanding is that much of the Author information was taken by bot. There was also some kind of bot import of many of our main namespace works, but not a complete one and there have been many problems spotted. I tend to work on items by hand, but then I'm doing a lot of cleanup at both ends, primarily in a small and highly specialized set of works (ancient Greek drama).

A few challenges I've come across in Greek drama, which would make a bot difficult or impossible:

(1) Data items require a unique label and description. You cannot duplicate them from item to item. So when you have multiple translations of the same play, a bot would be almost worthless because you get duplicates and have to make decisions about how to label the works, editions, and translations so that they can be easily distinguished. Do a search in the window at Wikidata for "Agamemnon" to see the problem.
(2) Some of the translations are anonymous, which makes adding the information to wikidata a challenge.
(3) Some works that were added in Wikisource's early days are missing basic information about the edition, and this must be tracked down.
(4) Translations don't have an "author" in the same way that works do. So the primary data item gets the Author information for the original, but translations get a Translator, and the Author is (correctly) assumed to be the same as that of the work's primary page. Wikidata does not want information duplicated on edition pages when the information appears on the primary data item.
(5) Matching a translation with its original can be a challenge, because there has to be a page for the original, and this isn't always the case. Even for the small set of surviving Greek drama, I had to create several data items for the original plays. They didn't have Wikipedia articles, and didn't exist at the Greek Wikisource.
(6) If you have, say, a French translation of Οἰδίπους Τύραννος, what label does it get in the various languages? Clearly if the French title of a French translation is Œdipe roi, then that is the French label, but should that be the English label too, as it is the title of the edition? My opinion is still unsettled over this issue, in part because of (1) above.
(7) Many translations of plays are included as part of a larger collected volume, which means the subpages containing each play have to have data items, and these must be matched up with the data item for the collected volume, as well as with the original work. When the translations are published as part of a series, and each volume was published in a different year, you then have a data item for the overall title, data items for each volume, data items for each play, etc. And if the multi-volume set has been printed in more edition, each edition of each work, and volume, and play, gets a data item. This becomes a headache.

These are just the issues that come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are others that I've encountered but am just not calling to mind right now. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:04, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again.
I encourage you to don't worry too much about the issues of Wikidata: it's important to try it and to share the experience :-) One thing, for example, which I'm really excited about is the possibility of linking documents to each other: for example, I used the property "cites" to link the Roe v. Wade item (this) to other US Supreme Court decisions... If we do this sistematically, we can easily export the citation graph of all the documents! In it.wikisource, we have 2 specific templates for citations (one for citing authors, one for citing texts), so we don't just use wikilinks. Aubrey (talk) 14:03, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

If you are interested, this is the query to find all the SCOTUS decisions that have both an item on Wikidata and the text on Wikisource. Aubrey (talk) 20:32, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
PS: from the category, we can see that thousands of decisions are still missing from Wikidata... Aubrey (talk) 20:54, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikisource Showcase at the University of Edinburgh for Repo-Fringe on 2nd August

Hi, Just wanted to reach out and say that myself and Histropedia's Navino Evans will be running a Wikidata & Wikisource Showcase event at Edinburgh University's Repo-Fringe event on 2nd August (roughly an hour on each project). We are looking to run practical demonstrations so any tips to running these successfully which would be simple, stimulating & effective then let me know or indeed any latest developments on Wikisource that I could mention during the event. If you are local to Edinburgh and would like to volunteer to be involved on the day then you'd be more than welcome as the room will hold up to 64 attendees so we could use all the support we can get on the day to make sure our attendees are well supported during the practical demos. Any thoughts on this then do let me know. I'd really like people to feel excited & engaged about working with Wikisource after the session. Stinglehammer (talk) 10:58, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Algiers Accords?

I would like to add the Algiers Accords (see w:Algiers Accords), a 1981 treaty between the U.S. and Iran propounded as a government document by Algeria. Algerian law generally provides that "works of the state lawfully made available to the public can be freely used for non-commercial purposes subject to respect for the integrity of the work and the indication of the source". I would assume that this applies to this treaty. Is it safe to include? BD2412 T 18:57, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

We are bound by US copyright, not so much Algerian. One could propose that such a work would be covered by {{PD-GovEdict}} or as US government officials were involved that it is clearly {{PD-USGov}} — billinghurst sDrewth 03:18, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
I can go with {{PD-GovEdict}}. The way I see it, there are multiple routes by which to claim that it is PD, rather than routes by which to claim that it is subject to copyright. BD2412 T 18:47, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Deletion at Commons

This deletion has broken the associated Index page here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:01, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

ok, started the DRV. the EU copyright discussion has not occurred yet. [61] Slowking4 ‽ T A L K 01:51, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
At Commons I have (boldly) undeleted the work and created the requisite copyright template for this and any future works of European Union law. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:14, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

Londonjackbooks featured on the Wikimedia Blog

Hi all, I wanted to point you at this remarkable blog post by Londonjackbooks with you all: "Why I proofread poetry at Wikisource." Please share where you can! I'd like to get her story out to the world. :-) Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 07:12, 3 June 2016 (UTC) Done. I shared also on the international wikisource mailing list (in which you are all invited to join, of course) Aubrey (talk) 08:23, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

It's also been posted to the Wikisource facebook page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:44, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
To note that the blog was noted in w:Wikipedia:Signpost and there has been positive feedback to LBJ. Congrats! — billinghurst sDrewth 01:32, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks, Billinghurst. A somewhat dry blog post in my opinion—despite my mother's praises ;) —but if it succeeds in pointing others to WS works and Mrs. Coates' poetry, then I am content. I am awaiting your contribution to the blog... Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:49, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Template:Center does not center-align <math>

I tried to center-align equations on [62], but the overall result looks ugly. Can someone help me fix it? Thanks. --Siddhant (talk) 09:32, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

I've switched the format to a table. How does it look to you now? --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:45, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Look great! Thanks. A couple of questions:
  • Why was {{c}} not working? Was i doing something wrong or is it broken on <math>?
  • Earlier I had not needed to explicitly put parens around the equation numbers in using {{EquationRef}}. Why now? --Siddhant (talk) 18:00, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
The {{center}} template does put things in the center, but it will not arrange columns nor specify a particular width across the page. And because you were using obsolete templates designed for a table of contents, each line was spread across the entire page from left to right.
The parentheses were added by the table of contents template, not by {{EquationRef}}, so when I removed the bracketing contents templates, the parentheses needed to be added. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Entries number as sidenotes: which template to use?

In A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, each entry has a sidenote with the entry number. In some pages, these sidenotes have been proofread as {{LR sidenote}} (for example page 21), on others, these sidenotes have been proofread as {{right sidenote}} (for example page 32). Which is the best way? Or maybe another way entirely? Is there a consensus? I see that {{LR sidenote}} is marked as experimental, but was not modified since 2010. What is the result of the experiment? Is it actively used in other works? Koxinga (talk) 07:09, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

{{LR sidenote}} when it's on the left side of the page and {{right sidenote}} when it's on the right side of the page is usually the way to go.
The issue is that in the main namespace, unless you're using a non-default dynamic layout (on the left sidebar, see "Layout 1" under "Display options", if you click it it will cycle through dynamic layouts, and you can set a default layout other than the default default layout for a work using {{Default layout}}), left sidenotes look pretty bad. In the printed book, there are appropriate sized margins, with the default WS layout, there aren't. With no margins, left sidenotes push the main text around while right sidenotes just cause lines to reflow earlier. And in the typical use case the printed book uses left sidenotes on the left facing page and right sidenotes on the right facing page, so there isn't any semantic difference between the two. Using {{LR sidenote}} and {{right sidenote}} keeps the same layout in the page namespace but turns it into right sidenotes when it's transcluded into main. Prosody (talk) 01:32, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, more broadly than that, in the printed book left sidenotes on left facing pages and right sidenotes on right facing pages makes a consistent reading experience, the notes are on the outside margin. To a Wikisource reader, they see the content on one page, so the notes should consistently somewhere, rather than alternating for reasons that wouldn't be clear to them from the Wikisource version. Right side is preferable to be that somewhere, for the reason described above. Prosody (talk) 01:38, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
OK, thank you for the detailed explanations. Koxinga (talk) 03:24, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-23

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes this week

  • The history page can tell you if a page on your watchlist was updated since you last visited it. This now works the same way in Vector as in other skins. The change broke local designs on some wikis. This will be fixed this week. [65]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 June. It will be on all wikis from 9 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:51, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

PING COMMUNITY that our phabricator request for the MathML to be the default for us has been achieved, though by a WMF-wide migration to the setting. Noting that change is the default, and if you have a setting then it may be that you should make the change through your Special:Preferences. @Physikerwelt: thanks for your work with this! — billinghurst sDrewth 06:42, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Authentication changes

Wikimedia has announced that with the Stage 2 code rollout this week that there is a change being made to the authentication process (mw:Manual:SessionManager and AuthManager). They don't envisage any issues, though note that it is possible that things will occur. The change will have no visible aspect as it is all backend changes. They recommend pinging eitherm:User:Tgr (WMF) or m:User:BJorsch (WMF) with any issues, or contact them via IRC at Tgr or Anomie respectively. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:43, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Wikiradio

Hi all, as you all know, that we have Wikiradio with us, which transmits real-time audio service via the Internet as synchronized set of tracks. I just added English Spoken Wikisource as one of the station of the radio. Please feel free to add new audio files to this station. Thanks -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 12:40, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

I assume you aware of the v:Wiki Campus Radio page on Wikiveristy? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:38, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Interesting concept, though one could quibble that it is not Wikisource, instead files that are Commons. There are numbers of components that would need to be worked upon to make me say that it was Wikisource-related, and that would need the ability for sensible curatorial aspects. We have a couple of thousand files linked to pages and the radio would need to play nicer to give good functionality. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Clashing sidenotes

What's the recommended approach for when a text has a right sidenote and left sidenote at the same point in the text, so that when transcluded they appear on top of each other? See halfway down Page:The_Anti-Apartheid_(United_Nations_Convention)_Act_1981.djvu/2 and its transclusion in The Anti-Apartheid (United Nations Convention) Act 1981. Thanks in advance for any help, MartinPoulter (talk) 22:12, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

The template {{outside RL}} shouldn't be used here, use {{outside R}} instead. As you note, when it is transcribed it becomes a left sidenote. This is good for the situation where on pages on the left side left sidenotes are used and on page on the right side right sidenotes are used, so when you transclude them they go on the same side rather that alternating with each page of the dead-tree text. If left and right sidenotes are used on the same page, you probably want to capture that formatting. {{outside R}} produces a right sidenote on the page namespace and in the main namespace. Prosody (talk) 22:25, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks! MartinPoulter (talk) 11:32, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
@MartinPoulter: "Outside RL" was created as a pair for "Outside L" so that when transcluded it went to the left, rather than have he sawtooth effect. The reason for left outdent is that the right margin is a beast to manage as we have a floating right margin, and trying to manage a sidenote on the right in all presentation forms, including mobile was just ugly. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:06, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-24

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

Changes this week

  • You can filter user contributions to hide minor edits. [71]
  • It will be easier to edit galleries with the visual editor. [72]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 June. It will be on all wikis from 16 June (calendar).

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

18:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

New International Encyclopaedia ambiguous link

There is an entry "Czelakowsky" in the New International Encyclopaedia on page 726, which directs the reader to the entry Celakovsky. However, there are two people of this name in the encyclopedia with their own entries: Čelakovský, František Ladislav and Čelakovský, Ladislav. How should it be solved? Should it be linked to a disambiguation page The New International Encyclopædia/Čelakovský or The New International Encyclopædia/Celakovsky, which would provide links to these two articles? Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 20:28, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: It is a tricky one as we end up trying to relate a indicative place of a page of a book, compared to discreet pages of wiki. We don't have specific guidance, though there are examples in other works. In something like DNB we have put in specific links where they can only have one landing page, and left them as standard text where they are generic, and generally the references belong to article lines that are not transcluded, so it becomes irrelevant. So you can either leave it plain text, without a link, or possibly you could just link to the work/article-name reference and then create a redirect from that reference to the first work of that spelling. <shrug> — billinghurst sDrewth 06:58, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
And what about linking to the content page The New International Encyclopædia/Volume IV Cairo - Classification of Ships and here the reader would find both Čelakovský articles? Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:01, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
That sounds quite possible, and you could add an anchor on the page, so that requires those steps to be undertaken at that time, rather than blind linking, or knowledge of the work. Here we are looking at a reasonable, practicable, reproducible, and manageable approach. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:48, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
OK, the anchor sounds good, thanks for the advice. Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:16, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment: When to use /VOLUME N/ subpages or continue with flat naming

I would like to hear the communities' opinions about the two ways to set out a volumed book work as we have a choice in our presented form of either maintaining the volume structure, or having them as a continuance. The examples of the two in action are:

  1. maintaining volume structure in the displayed structure eg.
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/Volume 1/Geography
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/Volume 1/History (etc.) …
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/Volume 2/Topography ; OR
  2. flatter structure that treats the work as a continuance, and not mentions volumes in the main namespace nomenclature
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/Geography
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/History (etc.) …
    • The Victoria History of the County of Buckinghamshire/Topography

Neither way is right or wrong, and there are both positive and negative consequences of both ways, eg.

  • relative linking
  • blank ribbon sections / hierarchical levels
  • not reflecting original work
  • tidier flow in web form
  • page naming length
  • automated/piped naming
  • references / citations
  • (please add your examples)

So some of the consequences will be relative to the work, maybe with the numbers of volumes contributing, etc. Sooooo I suppose I am trying to build up the list of thinking/consideration points that will enable a user to look at the book form, and think about a presentation form, and to look at the factors to work out what is better for that work.

To note that there are examples of both scenarios through our space, with my ugliest example of a complex structure being Ante-Nicene Fathers, review Special:PrefixIndex/Ante-Nicene Fathers. With an example of a modified structure being My Life in Two Hemispheres which is a conversion of two volumes with an intertwined Book structure

Clearly we have a volumed works that are serials and they work best produced in a volumed format/nomeclature, especially as they have reproducing components that run through issues or volumes.

My personal preference is to ignore the volumes in cases of books, though know that community preference/consensus will and should outweigh the personal. Anyway, I invite your opinions. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:46, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

I am inclined to think there are at least two classes of "volume":
  1. Where a continuous work has been subdivided into separate books for publication purposes (maybe the writing took place over an extended period; or perhaps the sheer size of each volume became excessive?) These works are characterised by the next level subdivision being continuous between volumes. I tend towards flattening the structure in this case but do not insist upon it.
  2. Where the "next level" subdivisions (typically chapters) duplicate names or chapter numbers of an earlier volume I consider a three (or however many)-level structure is unavoidable.
    To note that My Life... is one an example as you described, which is why I put it there as example of what is possible. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:17, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
    And I have a minor problem with the "faithfulness" of that reassembly. For example My Life in Two Hemispheres/Chapter 9 results in the clash between the "wiki" title being "My Life in Two Hemispheres/Chapter 9", the {{header}} section name being "Chapter 9 (Book 2, Chapter 3)", and yet the transcluded text promptly commences "Chapter III". I would argue this sort of collision makes us not look like we know what we are doing… AuFCL (talk) 05:38, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
In short, assemble the work (in your head—so to speak) and react according to the limitations thus found. AuFCL (talk) 03:27, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
I concur with this, although your second class I would describe as any works where the volumes are clearly meant to be a series rather than one contiguous work. Among the works that I am picking away at: A Dictionary of Hymnology is an example of the former, and The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament is an example of the latter. Furthermore, I would do the same even if there were not separate volumes: a single-volume anthology with several books divided into chapters would also get a three-level title. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2016 (UTC)


I always include all levels. I think that is best. However, despite perhaps arguing against my own position, I offer as further food for thought the situation where the division into physical volumes does not align with the division into logical books. For example, observe the horrible nested layout of The Princess Casamassima (3 volumes, London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1886):
  • Volume 1
    • Book 1
    • Book 2 (first four chapters only)
  • Volume 2
    • Book 2 (continued)
    • Book 3
    • Book 4 (first four chapters only)
  • Volume 3
    • Book 4 (continued)
    • Book 5
What a mess. And yet, it is a faithful mess — the mess exists in the physical edition, and we're faithfully reproducing it. Hesperian 04:23, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Be fair. It is Henry James after all. Nobody expects anything better from him! AuFCL (talk) 05:38, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

There is another level of mess, even superceding Henry James! Consider the volumes display in Index:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 1).djvu. Two volumes of text, five volumes of plates, all in continuation. Naturally, the plates transcluded separately will be meaningless. So the relevant plates have to be transcluded with corresponding text, as in Indian Medicinal Plants/Natural Order Ranunculaceæ. The problem does not end there. Sometimes, plates belonging to different natural orders are printed on the same page, side-by-side, adding a different level of transclusion difficulty. Overall, this work is an extreme case of volume layer problem. Hrishikes (talk) 06:15, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Just to note that I'm gradually reducing the Ante-Nicene Fathers display complexity at least one level as I proofread the first edition under Ante-Nicene Christian Library. The ANF was put in by a bot and there are some strange paginations in places.

My thoughts on the wider issue is that we need to make reading the works sensible for the end-user. In the Music Dictionary there is an article split between Volume 3 and 4. I'm not going to transclude the two parts on to separate pages, but will put them on the same page. Hrishikes approach to the Indian Flora is a sensible one. For the Antarctic Voyage Flora we started in a PotM a couple of years back, I've done it differently and transcluded the volume of images separately, but done wikilinks on the plate mentions in the text volume. In the end I don't think there is a single right way to do the transclusion for all works. Each work needs to be evaluated on it needs to best represent it as a work in the mainspace. Dictionaries need different treatment to floras, to novels, to encyclopaedias, to journals, to diaries &c. Is the page numbering continuous between volumes? Do volumes contain multiple works? Are some works interspersed over several volumes? It comes back to "how will it work best for the reader?" We represent the original structure in our Index namespace. We don't necessarily have to do the same in the mainspace.

Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:44, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Of general curiosity: are you proposing to update or amend WS:VOL which is currently categorised as proposed wikisource policy/draft guideline as a result of (any) conclusions reached here? AuFCL (talk) 08:21, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
(I don't even remember that draft.) I would think that each of these discussions typically enables us to update/refine guidance and working examples. The draft guidance, as it stands, captures a point of view at that time, based on some examples of work, though not all types of work. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:07, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
And your response pretty much sums up my reason for asking. Old not-quite guidelines hanging around simply end up confusing newcomers, and end up pitting some of the old-timers against one another too especially if the two sides of the argument are taking different policy/guidelines as true. If WS:VOL is truly obsolete then please lets delete it and start again? AuFCL (talk) 04:40, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
I would prefer adding the volume in the main namespace link as I think it helps navigating to the source and also in ordering of the chapters. As for transclusion I think that would be best left to the people working on each individual work, since each individual work is different in nature and some work better being kept as separate volumes and others would work better being joined. This can be discussed between the users on each works talk page. Jpez (talk) 05:55, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

The Cathedral and the licensing issues it creates

I'm wondering if The Cathedral and the Bazaar can be added to Wikisource. It was published under the Open Publication License v2. Does anyone know whether it is compatible with CC-BY-SA 3.0? NMaia (talk) 16:07, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/ says "be aware that I have sold O'Reilly the exclusive commercial printing rights." I can't find the exact license used on the work, which is problematic because the Open Publication License has non-free options.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:05, 18 June 2016 (UTC)
Further to what Prosfilaes said, the detail in the licence will be pertinent …
“ The Open Publication License replaced in 1999 the previous Open Content License from 1998. Both the two licenses differ substantially: The Open Publication License is not a share-alike license while the Open Content License is and the Open Publication License can optionally restrict the distribution of derivative works or to restrict the commercial distribution of paper copies of the work or derivatives of the work, whereas the Open Content License forbade copying for profit altogether. ”

—w:Open Publication License

as such the licence will depend on the conditions stated in the book, as with Creative Commons there is a variety of restrictions that can be in play. As Prosfilaes cites the commercial printing restrictions, I think that the answer is probably not hostable. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:58, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
I managed to download a copy, but the exact conditions were not stated. But yes, I suppose it's unlikely to be hostable given what we know. NMaia (talk) 02:10, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
appears to be registered in 2001 [73]. (not permalink at loc?) Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 01:54, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-25

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • Notifications were not always marked as read when you followed a link from an email notification. This will now happen. [74]

Changes this week

  • The list of other languages an article is available in will be shorter on small Wikipedias and non-Wikipedia projects. This is to make it easier to find the most relevant languages for each user. You will still be able to see the other languages. [75][76]
  • Alerts (the red badge) will not be automatically marked as read when you open the Notifications popup. [77]
  • When you get several thanks you can see them as one notification. This is instead of one notification for each thanks. [78]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 June. It will be on all wikis from 23 June (calendar).

Meetings

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:14, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Possible "portal" links on content pages

This is, basically, just me trying to figure out ways to increase visibility through search engines. Again. But I was wondering whether there might be some sort of way to add a "portal" line at the bottom of the page similar to the extant "category" line, listing portals relevant to a particular article, or, alternately, links to the relevant portals under the existing category lines. I realize that there might be a great deal of question as to how many portals to link to for any given page, and that is something that would have to be dealt with, and the multiplication of portals might become difficult to maintain, but it might be of some use. John Carter (talk) 20:22, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

There is a portal parameter in the header template; see Adeste Fideles as an example linking to three portals. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:42, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, what Beleg Tâl has said. I routinely add Portal:Ancient Greek drama to the header of every disambiguation page for translations of an ancient Greek play, and also to the page of each author who was a playwright in classical Athens. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:11, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
@John Carter: {{header}} something like portal = Ancient Greek drama and, from memory, it can be used in any of namespace header templates (main, portal, author, ...) — billinghurst sDrewth 23:46, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

FT nominations needed

We've been running low on nominations for Featured Text in the latter part of each year for several years now. And while I'd be fine with having Queen Mab featured for a second time in August, I really don't want to see The Yellow Wall Paper featured for the fourth year running this September. I've got a possible selection coming together for November, but otherwise we don't yet have any strong candidates for FT for the remainder of the year. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:17, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Just added a bunch that I've been working on. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:38, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
I was myself thinking about the FT process. Because I was thinking maybe one featured text per month might not be particularly impressive to first-time viewers of the main page. Is there any sort of process out there to determine which "verified" works are good enough to meet FTC requirements, and, I suppose, although this probably will create more trouble than it is worth, particularly considering that right now there aren't enough featured text candidates, and particularly if there were any sort of clear-cut way to determine whether something met FTC standards, might there be any way to alternate the selection of featured texts more frequently, even if that meant using, for instance, short stories, or really long articles in journals or encyclopedias, or similar works? John Carter (talk) 23:56, 20 June 2016 (UTC)
No, no such process exists. Not infrequently, the works nominated for FT that are validated still require substantial cleanup. "Validated" means that at least two people have gone through the work and done stuff. It is not always a strong indication of the quality of the finished product. FT can mean a short story, an article, a play, etc.; it does not have to have been published as a book. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:45, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@John Carter: What was an early FT, is still listed as a FT, though would not meet our current standards to get that rating, the bar has moved, so it becomes a little trickier. So, it is one of our projects that sits on the front page, and that rotates (hopefully). We could look to another process that rotates previous FT texts, or validated works, if it was activity that we are investigating. We have relied on {{new texts}} for our front page activity. To note that we don't do sufficient with FT currently, no tweets, no highlighting at other sites, or such promotions. <shrug> We are so transcription-focused!!! — billinghurst sDrewth 12:56, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
I've tried to get our new FTs posted to the Wikisource facebook page, but still don't know who has control of that, and haven't gotten a response when I've tried to contact them through facebook. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:42, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Given that the bar has been raised, maybe it wouldn't be out of line to change the criteria for one or another aspects? I acknowledge and am happy that validation is not in and of itself sufficient for inclusion on the front page, but, maybe, to the extent that admins here have extra priviliges, and that I am almost certainly not a candidate for adminship here, given my own shortcomings, but maybe some sort of user right for the purpose of selection of FA candidates might be useful?
Also, FWIW, I can and am in the long-drawn-out process of creating lists of material which is in the public domain but is still counted as a source in the text or bibliographies of recent encyclopedia articles at w:Category:WikiProject libraries. If anyone thinks that there are particular topic areas which might reasonably benefit from such a list, please feel free to let me know. Also, I guess, I can go through a recent book I've acquired listing the 12,000 or so "essential: works for a middle school/junior high school library. I don't imagine a lot of them would be PD, but there might be enough to provide some sort of start in that area. John Carter (talk) 19:37, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Creating another kind of user isn't necessary. Anyone can nominate, anyone can comment, and anyone can help tidy up nominations that need it. The only bit requiring admin tools is dropping the selection into the Main page templates, and that isn't the need at this time. We're short on works that have been nominated, and short on nominations that have had their remaining issues cleaned up. Anyone—anyone—can assist in these things. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:00, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Proofread tools gone from edit menu

This conversation was moved to Scriptorium/Help

English translation of Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic

I hope this is the right place. I was reading the English article version of "Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" and found that the only text available on Wikisource was in Russian. I found an English translation from an online archive project hosted by Michigan State University. I don't know how to add things to Wikisource so perhaps someone here can. Coinmanj (talk) 04:10, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Don't forget the mailing list

At the Wikisource session yesterday morning at Wikimania it seemed like there were a lot of people interested in Wikisource who are not subscribed to the mailing list. So I'd like to just invite anyone who wants to to head over to https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l and sign up to this relatively-low-volume list in order to stay up to date with things that might be going on in the wider Wikisource community (beyond just English Wikisource). Thanks! — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 09:13, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

How to archive old posts from the Scriptorium?

Can't complain because I should know how to do this, but there are posts here from April. — Ineuw talk 18:43, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Sanbeg runs his bot through at the beginning of each month and it will archive posts that have not been touched for that past month. It looks as though the beginning of June run was missed, so let us see how things work at the beginning of July. [Always feel comfortable copying a stuck section to the archives, it will never break things.] — billinghurst sDrewth 22:04, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks — Ineuw talk 18:24, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Troubles with {{iwpage}}

Hi. First of all, sorry for asking about a problem going on in another Wikisource, but we have few regular users in the Portuguese version of Wikisource, and even less users that are intimate with {{iwpage}}. Basically, it works well here, but not here. Anyone knows why and how one would fix it? Thanks. NMaia (talk) 23:02, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't look like the template works properly when transcluded. It uses the PAGENAME magic word to find what to import from the other language wiki, so when it's transcluded it's not looking for the page namespace page but the main namespace page, which isn't what it should be doing. Try using the {{iwpages}} template instead, which makes you specify some more information about the page you're getting from the other language wiki but uses that information rather than guessing wrong. You should be able to just copy it from English Wikisource to Portuguese Wikisource, the Javascript stuff that actually does the work is already there. Prosody (talk) 05:49, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Done Thanks! That did it :) NMaia (talk) 01:34, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-26

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • The ORES service has now moved to a new location. This should make it easier to use ORES. The ORES review service is now available as a beta feature on Wikidata and Persian Wikipedia. ORES is an artificial intelligence system for Wikimedia wikis to help editors. [79]
  • The order of wikis in collapsed cross-wiki notifications was different than when the list was expanded. This is now fixed. [80]
  • A new category for tracking pages with math errors was added: Category:Pages with math errors. [81]

Problems

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 June. It will be on all wikis from 30 June (calendar).
  • The way to mark notifications as read or unread will be changed to be more clear. [84]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 28 June at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The Collaboration team at the Wikimedia Foundation will look at developing better tools for edit review. This is because research suggests we scare away newcomers who want to help. [85]
  • An e-mail from the Editing Department explains the technical work that is planned and being researched for the future. Items include better wikitext and visual editing, prompts for edits, language improvements, annotations, and meta-data separation. [86]
  • The sorting of Notifications into the two fly-out menus is going to change on July 5 to 7. Bundled notifications should be easier to explore and mark as read individually. [87][88][89]
  • From 29 June git.wikimedia.org (running Gitblit) will redirect all requests to Phabricator. The vast majority of requests should be correctly redirected. [90]
  • Catalan and Polish Wikipedias will have Wikidata descriptions added to articles in the mobile view by default. This is currently a beta option for the mobile versions. This might come to other wikis later. [91]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:42, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Index:Agreement concerning migration of Filipino labor for employment in British North Borneo.pdf

Anyone care to move this? It's been sitting in Rebinding since the end of May. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

That is a pretty crap way to go about moving critical. Not certain that the move of the file was necessary, and it should have been coordinated by one of the admins here who also has admin rights at Commons, eg. Hesperian, Yann, myself or others. Moving of that number of pages in that manner is painful.
PS. to community. I don't like the rebinding page being separated, it has no current value. It should either be part of WS:AN or it is part of this page. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:09, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
No objections to merge, given that it was me that started the subpage. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:16, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
I also support merging rebinding into the Scriptorium —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:55, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Press Release

Dear All,

I am presently working on a sister project and i need to upload a couple of press releases via Wikicommon to Wikisource. can someone explain what i need to look out for before loading the document on Wikisource.Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 20:48, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

@Olaniyan Olushola: Wikisource just allows us to make copies of the document. Upload it to Commons and we can make an index here and help you. Let us know when it has been uploaded. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:54, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
@Koavf: thank you for this information.Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 08:18, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
@Koavf: further to my earlier question, i need to know what are the criteria that a press release must meet before being uploaded to WikisourceOlaniyan Olushola (talk) 11:41, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Our guidelines are listed at WS:What Wikisource includes. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:55, 29 June 2016 (UTC)


Visual Editor now in article space

visual editor is now a beta feature for article space editing. check it out and leave feedback. here is the fabricator task https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T48580 -- Slowking4♡RAN's revenge 16:28, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

visual editor is now a beta feature for page space editing. get your comments in. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 13:40, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Connecting SCOTUS documents on Wikisource (and then, Wikidata)

Dear all, at the end of May, a small conference was host in Berlin, called meta:WikiCite 2016. The core topic of the conference was "citations", meaning Wikipedia references, and how to manage those data in a structured way. Ideally, in the next years, we'll have Wikidata (or another project) full of items representing bibliographic records, articles, books and documents.
During the conference, and as a fundamental step in the roadmap, we created d:property:P2860, a property dedicated to citations between documents. If document A cites document B, than we can use that property. Of course, this property is perfect also for Wikisource, to illustrate citations between texts.
A great example are Category:United States Supreme Court decisions, which are

  • already on Wikisource
  • already on Wikidata with their own item
  • most of them have wikilinks to other SCOTUS decisions.

I'd love to use the corpus of SCOTUS decisions as a testbed for this kind of property. It would be amazing to generate a "citation graph" of all documents connecting to each other... Moreover, it would be amazing to use Wikisource, setting an important precedent and show the reaso of the world the potentiality of this project ;-).
I started gathering data and I think this can be done quite smoothly. I'm writing to you, before writing to all other people in the dedicated mailing-list (please, join, you're welcome), because I think the Wikisource community should be involved in this. One part of the work is extract citations from the page: meaning, for example, that we need a list of all the SCOTUS decisions cited by Caldwell's Case. Luckily, the API allow us to do that, but then we'd need to "clean" the data. Also, it would be fantastic to be sure to have all the relevant wikilinks in place (many decisions have not wikilinks, even though they cite other decisions). Also, I'm not sure that a simple wikilink is the best strategy: in it.source we have a proper template to handle citations, and maybe you could use it too. Maybe a bot could parse the SCOTUS decisions and insert wikilinks or templates?
I will probably start a page on Meta to coordinate this effort, you're welcome to help :-) Aubrey (talk) 13:24, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

Also: here you can find a document with:
  • WIKIDATA ITEM
  • TITLE
  • URL on WIKISOURCE
  • QUERY URL for getting the wikilinks inside the page

Aubrey (talk) 13:37, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

There is Wikisource:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases, so @Slaporte: and maybe @Tarmstro99: — billinghurst sDrewth 15:53, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
This project looks fantastic! I'll sign up. stephen (talk) 01:42, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Zines?

Does Wikisource accept zines or fanzines? I have not been able to find a category for those kinds of works, which I'm sure a part of them are licensed under free Creative Commons licenses. Is there any particular reason there doesn't seem to be zines included in this library? NMaia (talk) 15:47, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Why We’re Not Digitizing Zines; Zine Librarians Code of Ethics: Use; but if you have done the copyright search, go for it. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 16:09, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@NMaia: Zines are very underground and usually unprofessional so the copyright issues are the biggest obstacles but this library would definitely be enhanced with some! Do you have any in mind? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:07, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@Koavf: Not particularly, and an initial web search for "Creative Commons zines" wasn't very fruitful. But I might look into this in the near future :) NMaia (talk) 21:49, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
@NMaia: our criteria is WS:WWI, so clearly we need the copyright issue, then we have the nub of the question of being peer-reviewed production. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:31, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
It might be worth pointing out for comparison that many university libraries have zine and other similar media collections. It would be a case by case thing but in principal I think there's a good argument for this kind of media having historical interest. Prosody (talk) 23:54, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
Importance I definitely think they are important and especially so at documenting certain subcultures and scenes. The problem is just the licensing--not a lot of thought was put into it in the first place. We need to reach out directly to the creators and owners. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@Koavf, @Prosody: Today I accidentally bumped into this zine. What do you think, is it hostable? NMaia (talk) 03:45, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@NMaia: It already is! If you want to work on it, that is fantastic. If you need help, let me know. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:48, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@Koavf: Well, this will be pretty challenging, so I welcome your help for proofreading it :) NMaia (talk) 03:50, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
@NMaia: The best course of action would be to email me in a week--my free-est day is Wednesday. Thanks! —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:53, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

@NMaia: http://www.openculture.com/2016/07/legendary-west-coast-punk-music-zines.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:20, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

@Koavf: neato petito! Would you like to work on those? I have a pretty big plate right now at the Portuguese Wikisource and some work here as well. NMaia (talk) 02:20, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Duplicate book

Hi, I found Index:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu from 'random transcription', and did a fair amount of work on it before realizing that it's a duplicate copy.... the same source file has already been transcribed as Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (which is the full title). It's rather broken, as the first index page I linked shows the work as not having been worked on, while it's completely transcribed and proofread under the second one. If someone could fix this (I'm assuming the correct way would be to make the pages under 'Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911)' either go away or be redirects) that would be nice. Thanks in advance. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 17:29, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Actually, looking closer, I guess it's not that simple... the 'existing' copy was apparently imported by a bot, instead of being transcribed here, and the pages aren't transclusions... see the source and history of Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Abercius, bp. of Hierapolis. Not quite sure, now, what to do, unless the 'correct' answer is to go ahead and transcribe them, and then transclude them onto the existing pages... 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 17:34, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
If the source is the same, I would go for this last option.— Mpaa (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Might I point out Talk:Dictionary_of_Christian_Biography_and_Literature_to_the_End_of_the_Sixth_Century#Structure_change. This is an incomplete match-and-split exercise apparently still in progress (though after this amount of time presumably stalled. A quick survey indicates none of the substantive editors have been active here since 2013.) AuFCL (talk) 22:34, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: Thanks. The text on the 'source' pages appears, indeed, to have been patched together from the non-transcluded 'articles' (including a few cases where an article was pasted into the same page twice), and the 'source material' is pretty obviously identical to the djvu. Really, most of what the part I've looked at so far needs is some formatting and double-checking of the greek transcriptions (there are a lot of diacritical marks), and then to be transcluded back over... it's not, by any means, 'raw ocr'. After my moment of 'oh crap, it's already done', I'm intending to keep running through the pages (in the page namespace) and then transclude the individual articles back into the main namespace 'article' pages, using something like the DNB as a model... though that {{DCBL}} header template is meh, as it does not allow you to add the individual contributor for each article like the DNB one does. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 23:17, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Usage of {{DCBL}} is currently exclusive to this work so is safely modifiable without conflict. If you need help please just ask. AuFCL (talk) 23:46, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: (nods) It's dependent on {{Collective work header}}, which (a bit oddly, tbh) doesn't support the 'contributor' field like {{header}} does.... since {{collective work header}} itself depends on {{header}}, it would probably make more sense (imo at least) to alter them both to pass the field through. I know how to do it, and could do so, but I'm not being 'me' for a while, and I doubt an IP can edit them. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 00:16, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: Not protected, actually... please double-check diff and diff, if you don't mind. Thanks. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 00:26, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
All three(!) changes look reasonable to me. More to the point they work too. I have slight misgivings about the nesting depth but that is not of your design. AuFCL (talk) 01:03, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Having finally gotten around to looking at some of your detail edits I have to admit some of the Greek diacritic issues are well beyond my limited abilities (though in general please note this work uses Latin phi (ϕ) not modern Greek phi (φ).) May I recommend consulting with either Beeswaxcandle or EncycloPetey, both of whom are likely to be far more confident in this area?

Oh, and please be aware that {{small-caps}} (a.k.a. {{sc}}) is only effective upon content containing lowercase. AuFCL (talk) 01:45, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the Greek is above my head... I'm mainly just catching a few where a character or diacritic was 'obviously' missing, it really does need a scan by someone who has more knowledge of Greek (this was a 'random transcription', lol), and I don't think I've changed a phi, though I likely missed fixing some (and thank you for pointing that out, I'll keep an eye on it...it was not an issue I was looking for). As far as the smallcaps, I was aware... the unedited text has most of them all in capitals, if I left one that way it's because I simply missed it. Because I'm editing as an IP, I'm not actually marking any as 'proofread' anyhow (I can't) so they will, hopefully, eventually, get further passes. I do intend to go ahead and transclude them, but they will be a step up from what is already in mainspace, so... it's not going to be any worse, lol. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 02:41, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: In a Greek text, the difference between "Latin" phi and "Greek" phi is a matter of typeface. Just like the difference between the lowercase Roman "a" that has a short curved ascending top versus the one that is a round letter without a "hat" of any kind. Always use the phi from the Greek character set of Unicode within a Greek text. The "Latin" phi is (I assume) intended only for mathematical use, such as in three dimensional angle measures for astronomy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:28, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey: I was somewhat dreading tracking down again (let me face it: made merely in passing) a chance observation; but in (for example) Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/25: "Africanus, Julius (Ἀφρικανός)" certainly does not resemble the scanned "Africanus, Julius (Ἀϕρικανός)", and if you cannot see the difference then any intent for wikisource to represent the "text as actually presented in the scanned image" is clearly a comprehensive farce—quite aside from my primary unrelated concern, which was the representation of breath diacritics not simply representable by direct Unicode. AuFCL (talk) 05:40, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: I really don't know what you're talking about for that page. The Greek text you've directed me to has the correct breathing mark and the correct sequence of letters. If you are seeing a difference between the printed text and the proofread text, you can always use a different font in your browser. As I say, the difference you are perceiving between the two is purely a matter of the choice of typeface, just as we don't worry in English about the two typographical variants of lowercase "a", or the two typographical variants of lowercase "g". Letters have different apparent forms in different fonts that are not in any way meaningful for coding the text. --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:56, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
This is correct. Unicode has separate code points for a and ɑ, but the latter is for IPA and the former is the letter of the alphabet. Using ɑ in transcription to match the scan would be incorrect. For the same reason, many Greek letters have alternate versions (β/ϐ; γ/Ɣ; δ/𝛿; ε/ϵ; κτλ.) The one in the regular Greek alphabet range is correct in most cases. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:34, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
I have (finally) re-tracked down the page wherein the real issue lies: Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/43, and that is with the representation of (?)lower-case upsilon (Ὓ) within the (self-evidently wrong) fragment "Ἀμφιγοχίῳ Βασίλειος", not representable through simple Unicode, though presumably might be through the use of some combining-character which I hope somebody may be able to provide. AuFCL (talk) 06:23, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm not seeing an upsilon in either the scan or the proofread text. Nor do I understand what you mean by "self-evidently wrong fragment". The scan and the proofread text match. If you believe there is some sort of error here, you will have to explain in more precise detail what the error is. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:02, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Ἀμφιγοχίῳ should be Ἀμφιλοχίῳ, but it looks like a γ in the scan as it is transcribed. It could be a mistake (which I have seen many in the scans we work on, especially in older texts) or maybe a typographical character which we're not aware of for λ. Also from what I can tell φ and ϕ are interchangable and I can't see a reason not to use φ if you want your formatting to remain faithful to the original scan. Google sees no difference and firefox doesn't either if you perform a find (ctrl F) using any of the two. Jpez (talk) 18:17, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
My guess is that the gamma in place of lambda is a mistake, but it is not clear whether the mistake occurred in the printed text, or is an error in the Greek text referred to. It does not look like a variant of lambda. As far as φ and ϕ, please refer to w:phi; the two are not interchangeable. The latter is intended solely for mathematical notation. Yes, internet searches will work either way, but that is to allow for errors. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:03, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: Only realized much later, when starting to transclude the "A"'s, that the smallcaps uses you were probably talking about were where I had used {{sc|A.D.}} instead of {{sc|a.d.}}. I didn't catch until now that they were not rendering correctly, and am fixing them as I go back through transcluding the first section (the A's) into mainspace. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:2031:6A59:D3C1:38B1 05:05, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

(this is the same IP editor, I'm not 'static') Could someone please move Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Anastasius II, bp. of Rome to Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Anastasius II., bp. of Rome, in order to make it's title consistent with that of other articles from the same work? The 'standard' naming of the article pages (which, tbh, is itself not something I'm entirely happy with, as it is not 'identical' with the naming used in the work) has a '.' after the roman numerals in such names.

Unfortunately, the method used for actually 'naming' articles in the original work is not unambiguious... there are, for example, multiple articles 'titled' "Alexander" that are only discriminated between by the text following the title ('of Byzantium', 'of Alexandria'), and cases where one article refers to another only by the 'ambigious' part of the title, and you have to attempt to figure out which it is referring to by reading the articles. It's more checking of this kind of thing, and verifying that I've correctly identified the contributors, that this work needs as 'proofreading' more than actually checking the text itself, which is quite clean. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:2031:6A59:D3C1:38B1 05:59, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Pages not part of text

Hesperian thought "maybe we can get this fixed". I have brought this up previously (see related discussion), but no removal was made. To recap, DJVU pages 293 to 296 (labeled as "ERR") in this Index are not part of the original text. The Tintern Abbey image/caption is the frontispiece to an edition of A Walk Through Wales (1798) as per an IA version. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 01:58, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Personally: not going there again. Opinion already expressed. AuFCL (talk) 02:28, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Pretty much looking for a removal this time. Londonjackbooks (talk) 02:37, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
Unfortunately (having messed with them in the past) actually 'editing' a djvu is non-trivial. Probably the easiest answer is to poke the Internet Archive, have them fix their source file, and then re-upload their fixed version at Commons. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:C0EE:C65F:5D42:C37F 03:01, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
IA no longer generates djvu files. Although we might get their copy fixed, it will not solve the problem in our djvu. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:06, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
It's easy to get rid of the pages and reupload to commons. All the proofread pages after ERR will have to be moved back a couple of digits though. Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/297 to 293, Poems by William Wordsworth (1815) Volume 1.djvu/298 to 294 etc.. Jpez (talk) 18:47, 28 June 2016 (UTC)
call me simple, but why can’t you just skip the ERR pages in the index? there is no content on them, and the toc is good without them. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 13:28, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
Label them with empty, eg. 293to296=empty and renumber pages as necessary. It is just working space. — billinghurst sDrewth
That's exactly how it was before I interfered and pushed it back to problematic as a faulty file. If consensus is to leave it broken, since there's a trivial workaround, then just revert me. Hesperian 01:28, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
At present Help:Index pages says not to use this solution (in the green box) as it is an unacceptable practice. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:19, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Fixed.— Mpaa (talk) 16:35, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for that. Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:32, 2 July 2016 (UTC)


Template:hyphenated word start and italics

I just fixed some unwanted bolding issues at The Strange Voyage and Adventures of Domingo Gonsales, to the World in the Moon by removing italics around two calls to Template:hws. However, those individual pages no longer are technically correct in their individual display, since the italics are now missing there. I suppose I could fix it with some noincludes wrapping double-apostrophes, but I'm wondering whether some option like having a named parameter "italics" in the template would be a better fix (in which case I'd need someone to wave the magic wand). Or I might be looking to reinvent the wheel. Opinions? Wnt (talk) 11:21, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Done. But what was the problem with the original edit anyway? Hws is a no-value template and its contents do not get transcluded (only hwe does). So if the product of hws looks good on the page namespace, that should suffice. Hrishikes (talk) 12:32, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
Oh, OK! I wasn't sure what all was being done with the stuff inside the template, so I was afraid to mess with it. Wnt (talk) 12:38, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
@Hrishikes: I've changed the documentation to hopefully make it clearer in case, um, some idiot doesn't read all the way down to the bottom... Wnt (talk) 12:46, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

Minor bug in the main namespace header template

Assuming that the footer is part of the Template:Header, then there must be something wrong with it. The footer is missing the green background. For me, this is so with any main namespace page. It's minor, and just curious if others have the same issue. — Ineuw talk 21:36, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

It's been fine for me. I'm not having that problem. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:47, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
I am seeing no issue (Firefox, monobook) — billinghurst sDrewth 00:25, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
@Ineuw: In point of detail only parts of {{header}} are copied by MediaWiki:DisplayFooter.js to construct the footer—so I would be looking for some kind of javascript error. Please check your browser console for error logs. The green-ish colour is being drawn indirectly via CSS class="footertemplate" (which is created by the DisplayFooter script above) so presumably that is not happening correctly. AuFCL (talk) 00:27, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Will do, thanks /missing signature/
@AuFCL: Before I create a bug report, please see this screen capture File:Missing footer color - console output.jpg
Went a step further and checked the page in Google Chrome debug console. The footer has the background color, found the "footertemplate" reference but didn't see the CSS details yet. — Ineuw talk 04:48, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
@Ineuw: Just going back to Firefox, regrettably the screen capture cuts off the very line I was referring to (at the top.) For your reference the (working) section looks like:
<div class="printfooter">…</div>
<div class="footertemplate ws-noexport noprint" id="footertemplate" style="margin-top:1em; clear:both;">
  <div style="width:100%; padding-left:0px; padding-right:0px; background-color:transparent;">
    <div style="text-align:left; float:left; max-width:40%;">
      <span id="footerprevious">←<a href="/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_26" title="">Volume 26</a></span>
    </div>
    <div style="text-align:right; float:right; max-width:40%;">
      <span id="footernext">
        <a href="/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_27/May_1885/Can_Man_Be_Modified_by_Selection%3F" title="">Can Man Be Modified by Selection?</a>→
      </span>
    </div>
    <div style="text-align:center; margin-left:25%; margin-right:25%;">
      <a href="#top">Return to the top of the page.</a>
    </div>
  </div>
  <div style="clear:both;"></div>
</div>
<div id="catlinks" class="catlinks" data-mw="interface">…</div>
I've chopped a bit out (marked …) of the context <div>s. In any case it was the error log I thought might be a bit more informative (try control-shift-J on Firefox.) AuFCL (talk) 06:07, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
@AuFCL: My console output is identical and includes the first line in of the above snippet. However, I don't know how you got that snippet copied. I tried, but being more than a bit ignorant, (and more than a bit tired), all I managed to copy finally is the log contents of [control-shift-J], and pasted it in User:Ineuw/Sandbox4. In any case don't waste your time. My recent experience with bugs, reports, and Maniphest tells me that sooner or later it will show up elsewhere, just as my previous bug did. :-). — Ineuw talk 07:10, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
@Ineuw: Just an irrational feeling that this has something to do with either your version of Firefox (you have 48.0; I have 47.0 and the latter works O.K.) or some extension utility one of us has (or has not.) Something is generating (for example) Expected 'none', URL, or filter function but found 'alpha('. Error in parsing value for 'filter'. Declaration dropped.Our_Recent_Debts_to_Vivisection but not for me. Whatever is triggering that error is likely to be the tripping point. Apart from that I am all out of ideas. AuFCL (talk) 08:01, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks to all for the help. While the problem seems minor, it's nearly impossible to locate the problem because both Firefox and Chrome have the same problem, but I don't believe it's Wikisource. The steps taken to find the source is too long to list here, so it's best to give up, because time is becoming too valuable to waste on this. Thanks again. — Ineuw talk 18:17, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • A daily email summary of notifications could be sent even when there were no notifications from the wiki. Now no email will be sent if there is no activity. [92]

Changes this week

  • The "⧼citoid-citefromidtool-title⧽" button in the visual editor's toolbar will move into the "Insert" menu except for Wikipedias, Wikibookses and Wikiversities. This is to make it less prominent on wikis that don't use it as much. [93]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 July. It will be on all wikis from 7 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can take part in the next office hour for Wikidata on IRC on July 8 at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:45, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Page move

Please move Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Barsumas,Syrian archimandrite to Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Barsumas, Syrian archimandrite... it's missing a space. Thanks. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:8D04:B964:B11B:2FF4 03:51, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Done, I hope rightly. Charles Matthews (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
@Charles Matthews: Indeed, thanks. 2602:304:CEEB:4D60:8D04:B964:B11B:2FF4 04:14, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Open call for Project Grants

Greetings! The Project Grants program is accepting proposals from July 1st to August 2nd to fund new tools, research, offline outreach (including editathon series, workshops, etc), online organizing (including contests), and other experiments that enhance the work of Wikimedia volunteers. Whether you need a small or large amount of funds, Project Grants can support you and your team’s project development time in addition to project expenses such as materials, travel, and rental space.

Also accepting candidates to join the Project Grants Committee through July 15.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) 15:21, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

hyphenated word across multiple pages

While proofing Cassell's History of England, I came across a hyphenated word at the end of a page, and with a picture only page in between. Would hws/hwe work, or do I have to jiggy with it? - Tannertsf (talk) 21:37, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Do you mean Pages 72–74? If so, that is fine to use hws/hwe on. It is pretty robust under transclusion (after all that it its intended purpose) and will have the effect (after transclusion in this example) of moving "consequence" entirely after the plate. AuFCL (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you very much! That is the intended use, so this will work well. - Tannertsf (talk) 22:13, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

Are all works here in the public domain?

There are a few old Mark Twain books here on wikisource that are available in both english and spanish which I would like to combine to create bilingual editions for sale via CreateSpace or Lulu.

CreateSpace, at least, always requires the name of the translator and year of translation, presumably to make sure that not just the original, but also the translation occurred long enough in the past to be in the public domain.

For these works, though, I have not been able to ascertain who the translator was or when they performed the translation. I have actually made a couple of changes to the translation myself (changed "MountBlanc" to "Mount Blanc" and a couple of things of that ilk).

So my question is: Is the fact that the translation is available in wikisource in and of itself evidence that the work is in the public domain or otherwise "fair game" for the use described above? —unsigned comment by 12.163.72.42 (talk) .

Works on Wikisource are free content: some of them are public domain, but others have various free licenses such as CC-SA or GFDL. The license should be listed at the bottom of the work's front page. All of them should be usable for the purpose you mention, at least in the USA. That being said, some works fly under the radar which are actually copyrighted; if you have concerns about a specific work, you can bring it up at WS:Copyright discussions. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
In addition. Any work at English Wikisource in our main namespace will have been published in English either as the original language (and free content) or as a published translation from the original language (original and translation both free content). If we have translated a work it will appear in our Translation namespace (free content in original, and all our contributions to translate being free). We cannot provide exacting comment on the licensing used at Spanish Wikisource, though it should be similar. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:03, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

Author pages, templates are all messed up. . . . ?

I may have missed any discussions, about the author namespace pages but on my screen the template is messed up, regardless of the author's page, not just PSM. Don't know what others are seeing, I will post a screen capture. — Ineuw talk 03:01, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

This is how authors' pages look to me File:Ellis Paxson Oberholzer.jpg. Is it the same for others as well?? — Ineuw talk 03:17, 9 July 2016 (UTC) ---> Author:Ellis Paxson Oberholzer

Author pages are displaying fine for me. @Ineuw: some links would be helpful rather than a general non-specific statement. Further, with your proliferation of these sorts of (false) issues, it would be really useful for you to report that you have checked these logged out (quickest way to rule in or out personal settings), or even in an alternate account without all your gadgets and common.js modifications, also to note that these can be skins issues, or browser issues, so checking such prior to reporting and what you have checked, means that we don't need to rush around like headless chickens chasing ghosts. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:20, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
@Ineuw: As an administrator it would be worthwhile you updating yourself on the components of author pages and to note that elements are now provided from Wikidata, not manually entered, and are not required in the header, filled or empty. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:26, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
You are right on both points, and am aware of my limited technical contribution, but if I spend time to learn (and do) site management, I will never complete the project I am working on. I also realize that this may not sit well with the community, but I also noticed that there are admins here who prefer to focus on, and challenged by problem solving more than by proofreading, and I thought to take advantage of that (respectfully ).
As for the Authors' page display problem, it is definitely related to my account login. When not logged in, the page looks fine. When logged in I get this. This applies to all author pages, not just PSM contributors.
This is not the only display issue I have when logging in, but the other issue is too minor to bother anyone with it.
Tested both my accounts, (Ineuw and IneuwPublic) by removing all cookies and logins from the browsers, as well as removing the common.js and .css contents, but the login results were the same with both accounts. Personally, I suspect that it may be the global login, but I can't disconnect from that. Ineuw has 98 and IneuwPublic has 19 global accounts.
I won't create a bug report until I come across issues which interfere with my proofreading. — Ineuw talk 13:53, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
As it is a display issue, it sounds like an issue related to .css. I would suggest that you comment your local .css so they are inactive, and let any cache issues resolve themselves, and see if a fix occurs. Also check if you have formatting at m:special:mypage/global.css. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:50, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: Unfortunately, it is not a display issue but another bug in the wiki software again working with Firefox. It is not a problem in Google Chrome. The global .css and .js are empty - so far never used it. Saved the contents and then deleted the all my .js and .css files. This includes any empty file existed under any skin I previously used. Now I will check the error console and will post another bug with all the required info (learned from my last bug report). — Ineuw talk 22:50, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Additional comment: removed {{authority control}} to see what happens, but the display still contains wikidata?. — Ineuw talk 23:03, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Wikidata entry is controlled from the other end from the left sidebar, and controlled at our end though plain sister template, and is no different between header and author templates. Authority control template is a local template, that similarly just receives data from another site. Note that I am not having issues with Firefox, (any of four independent installs on four different devices) and at this point no one else is speaking about Firefox issues, so it is not solely mediawiki and firefox issues. You may have a local cache issue, or a local installation issue. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:39, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
The problems were resolved. The "Site: General utilities needed by the templates and portals of this wiki project." was not checked. I didn't even know about its existence and thus its importance which makes me ask, why does this even appears as a gadget if it's so important??? — Ineuw talk 04:26, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Working with an archive

Hi,

I have been in contact with the City Archive of Umeå. They are about to start improving Wikipedia with information and sources from their collections.

The idea is that they will add the information to Wikipedia, as part of their workflow, when they already have digged out some relevant information that has been requested by e.g. a researcher, journalist or citizen.

During our last meeting they were curious to know more about how we look at archival material on Wikisource. There was a few questions raised that I would love some inputs on:

  1. Do we want a scan of every document that is used as a source on Wikipedia? If so, is it enough with a scan of the specific page in question - and not the entire body of text (something they can hardly commit to)?
  2. When it is hand written documents, would you demand a transcription of the document from the archieve (as OCR might not work at all). This is a tedious work and would mean that much fewer documents would be added - if any.
  3. Has there been a cooperation with an archieve providing source material before? If so, is there any information about it somewhere that you could point me to?

I have posted about this also on sv.wikisource, but I would love as much inputs as possible.

Kind regards, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 11:23, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Wikisource typically would like "complete" works, i.e a 'letter' ,' journal issues' etc. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
@John Andersson (WMSE): We can only talk about our process at English Wikisource, as each Wikisource will have variations on exactly what they include. Our criteria are expressed at WS:WWI, though I cannot see a link to svWS's thoughts.

For how I would express an opinion at enWS, you are discussing historical documents, not published works. We would always be looking for having a transcription for the item in its entirety rather than a snippet, though we do accept that we may not show the entire work transcribed, though we present a part available in the concept of the entire work, eg. Historical_document/part_A.

1. Yes we do desire every document referenced is available at Wikisource, however, desire does not equal reality. Scans become authoritative, and can have usable transcripts, be they local or in a book. You can have a look at the Wikisource:WikiProject NARA and talk to Dominic (talk • contribs) about what he was able to achieve when a Wikipedian in residence at NARA.
2.We would ask for the scan to be at Commons, and no requirement for a transcript, though they are helpful. We would hope that svWS would have their native language transcript organised through proofreading Index:/Page:; and eventually a translation here at enWS in our Index:/Page: being transcluded into our Translation: namespace, all based on the same File: (frWS, deWS, … can all do their own translations and presentations in their wikis) Hoping that you see the benefit of the structure. This schema also gets crowdsourced transcriptions and translations of historical documents, which is what Dominic was looking to garnish from the image uploads of NARA.
3. Yes, answered above. Has it been hugely successful, not yet, the thing once dry up is done, it is always available. Admins tidy up and add components that users work upon through time. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:44, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for your thoughts and insights, billinghurst! I will keep them in mind in future communication with the archieve. Best, John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 08:18, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

How to handle notes at the end of book

In this index, Index:The Mythology of All Races Vol 1 (Greek and Roman).djvu, the notes are at the end of the book. What is the way I should format/set up these? - Tannertsf (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2016 (UTC)

You could always do this with a relative {{anchor}} link in the Index section. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:52, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
@Tannertsf: Are they references that are used through the work? Specifically numbered? Or are they more general? If you need to refer to them individually, you can do anchors as suggested. If you need to pull them more specially, you can do what I have painfully set up in {{IrishBio ref}}. It is more general, then you can just have a recurring note for each chapter that just points to the Index section, and lets them onwardly refer. In (long) indexes in general, there is always value in anchors for A, B, C, ... Z and adding something like {{compactTOCalpha}} or some of the other TOC templates. Numbers of options available, it all depends on how it works through the work, and how the end notes are configured. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:57, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
They are numbered and used throughout the whole work and then put in a 'Notes' section at the end of the book. For the anchor point though, how do I actually use it? This is something new to me in my 5 years of WS :) - Tannertsf (talk) 12:09, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
There are options for you on how you wish to present the works, and you can use reasoned argument. 1) Reproduce solely as is, and just refer people to the endnotes from the notes section, this would leave the reference points somewhat unfunctioning. Benefits, it is easy, and won't break. 2) You can put section markers around each section and transclude the respective notes section to the end of each chapter. This would be somewhat similar to how we have added DNB errata to the DNB articles. Benefits, puts the notes with the chapter, provides flow, not too complex, just wrapping larger sections, some that spa pages. Negatives, still not clean use of refs, and the source links on a page are hosed. 3) Set up sections per reference as done at Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/614, then call them in situ using customised Template:Authority reference so they become actual references that will transclude as proper references, that can be end notes using a {{smallrefs}}. Benefits, it looks neat and all works in a wiki. Negatives, it differs somewhat from the book layout, and has increased complexity (thogh not overly burdensom) and requires formatting notes section section first. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:54, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
Use anchors by: (1) Place an {{anchor}} template at the start of an item in the End Notes to create an "anchor" for a link. The anchor only requires a name or number as a parameter, to make the link target unique. (2) Then use normal wikilinks to point to the note. So if you have a note on "Mythology/Index" that has {{anchor|5}}, then a wikilink might look like <sup>[[Mythology/Index#5|5]]</sup>. But there is more than one way to do this. The key part is creating an anchor point to serve as the target of the link. --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:34, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice! I'll tinker with these ways and see what comes out of it. - Tannertsf (talk) 13:37, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Also see Help:Footnotes and endnotes. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:15, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-28

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

  • A new image scaler fixed a number of bugs for showing SVG files. Some new problems turned up. [94][95][96]
  • Notifications are grouped by types. They are now counted by number of notifications and not by unread groups. That change may increase the number of notifications displayed. The earlier way of counting was often incorrect. Unread notifications will also be displayed first. [97][98][99]
  • Special:Notifications now has a maximum width for the notifications list on desktop computers. This allows long titles and descriptions to be cut properly. Notifications are now also better parsed. [100][101][102]

Problems

  • On 5 July Wikimedia Commons had problems and could not be edited for 20 minutes. For a short while after that the recent changes log and some gadgets were not working properly. It affected administrative actions on other projects too. [103]
  • Users who have multiple unread notifications can mark them as read by visiting Special:Notifications page on their wiki.

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 July. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 July. It will be on all wikis from 14 July (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 12 July at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:14, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

List formatting for accessibility and sensible HTML

I've had a rather frustrating conversation with User:EncycloPetey today, about this reversion. The list formatting he's reverted to does not produce the "one list of five items" that he thought it does; it produces five separate lists, each of which contain two items (a main item and a subitem that is also an association list), and which are interspersed with two other items (one <pre>formatted paragraph and one double definition list (:: – that thing about "use colons to indent your talk page replies" is a case of w:en:Lies to children. There is no simple indentation code in either wikitext or in HTML). In other words, it's a complete mess, and the HTML is both non-compliant with the relevant standards and bloated to boot.

My request: Is there anyone here who understands HTML lists and would like to help work out a decent solution here? I'd like the list formatting to not be broken in HTML terms. I'd be happiest if we could do this while keeping the pretty appearance and without filling the page with a bunch of <div>s.

(If you don't know anything about HTML, but you're interested, then that's great, too, but you might want to read w:en:WP:LISTGAP or other sources to get an idea of the most common issues first.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Please refer to the conversation on my user page: User talk:EncycloPetey#Do you understand what you did? As I pointed out there, the text in question that is generating all this concern is part of a draft guideline for proofreaders, and the fact that colons are used to indent paragraphs for readability. That guideline concerns norms for proofreading text from scans. Any persons who are unable to cope with the simple bullets and indenting in the guideline will certainly not be able to make use of the edit window to correct OCR gibberish against image file scans. This is a waste of time to solve a problem that does not actually exist. Our time would be better spent producing content instead of building windmills to tilt at. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:51, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
It's not a question of people being "unable to cope with". People who are affected (beyond the slight performance costs of needlessly bloated HTML file sizes) will be quite familiar with the need to "cope with" broken HTML. But there is no good reason to require "coping" when we could instead have "fixing". You intend that to be a single list of five bullet points; there's no good reason for it to be five separate lists.
Also, the same problems and the same solutions are relevant to reading Wikisource texts, not just help pages. If this is how we're formatting documents in the mainspace, then we're screwing up and failing our readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:02, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Interesting points. Fortunately in the main namespace we generally utilise simpler inline formatting that replicates the work, usually straight paragraph text. That said there are examples where we fiddle-faddle with wikitext and code to present a look outside of the pureness of html. This is predominantly due to the inadequacies of wikitext/html compared to freedom of paper formatting. Similarly our use of tables can have issue, especially where we have continuing tables over multiple pages.

From my viewpoint, while I understand the point of view of WhatamIdoing, it isn't my priority for fixing wikitext/html conundrum for formatting on the page that she demonstrated, there are bigger things that I would like to see fixed

  • sidenotes
  • column formatting in tables (bloat central!)
  • ability to properly and progressively indent works with sequential numbering that flows over transcluded pages (thought that may be somewhat related)
  • dotted tables with their really ugly code bloat, and transclusion limit blowers

and so on. These clearly visually and bloatily affect our users, and we have tried for extended periods to get assistance. The long term (ab)use of colon (dt/dd) formatting through the wikis now haunts us through the wiki, though general here it is in Wikisource: ns. and some in Help: ns.

To the specific example, the protagonists compare a level of ugliness over a level visual cleanliness; code bloat v. code cleanliness They say have contra-opinions on whether that someone who reads the page with a lesser browser should be catered for when that lesser browser will not be able to undertake the tasks of the page. The talk then skews to the same impact in the main ns, though that is a leap of faith, though probably with elements of truth, rather than a demonstrated fact. In short, it was quickly turned into a pissing competition of opposition, rather than trying to agree on what they did, and resolve what they did not.

I know that we would like some solutions to our problems, and I know that we try to keep it simple. The end game here is generally people want to transclude, and want the simplest formatting that enables a work to flow like the original. The politics of html interests few of us, most of us just want an easy solution, and we will go with what is easy and sustainable. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:06, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I made the instructions into a definition list. Is that acceptable? --Erasmo Barresi (talk) 09:26, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
With a tweak to make a paragraph break visible. However, the loss of bullet points means that the items lose their visual impact. I am not in favor of this change. --EncycloPetey (talk) 11:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
I like this change. It looks good, is well structured, and uses semantically correct markup? Well done! (Also, thanks for showing me the existence of ; (text) : (text) to do definition lists; I didn't know you could do that!) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 11:41, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
as much as i like aesthetic arguments, i agree with @Billinghurst: - we have some other formatting problems that are progress stoppers - preventing texts getting done; we might want to fix those, before spending energy on those formatting issues that are not. Slowking4 ‽ RAN's revenge 14:46, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
EncycloPetey, if you want the "visual impact" of a bullet point, then we could add a dingbat (as a small inline image) at the start of each line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
That would shift the text line to the right, reducing the hanging indent. We would then need something to increase the indent of the subordinate text. This issue then becomes more complicated than it is worth. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:43, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
Billinghurst, I think that the problem with columns inside tables would be addressed by phab:T95739, about which my realistic recommendation is not to hold your breath.
Depending upon what exactly is happening with the lists over transcluded pages, then it might be possible to fix that by specifying the correct list number at the top of each transcluded section, i.e., # <li value="100">The 100th item in a multi-page list</li> (all following numbered list items use normal formatting). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 13 July 2016 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: Thanks for the numbering cheat, that is valuable and not one that I have seen utilised before, and far better than my using <ol><li> then with or without a start parameter in the header component. Re complex formatting, I was more referring to the cheats that I used for the look at Copyright Act, 1956 (United Kingdom)/Part 6, which is more problematic, as it describes the above and more relates to a live scenario. Re columns, I was more thinking of older discussions like phab:T2986. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:52, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Self-closing HTML tags being now being tagged for future obsolescence maintenance

Some amongst us may have noticed the recent introduction and gradual population of Category:Pages using invalid self-closed HTML tags. After a bit of searching I have identified a phabricator ticket (subsequently turns out it has already been referred to in local talk page discussions.) However my initial concern is that {{anchor}} utilises one of the deprecated structures and this response explicitly states there is no alternate solution. Has anybody got any good ideas how to properly address this situation? AuFCL (talk) 21:41, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a misunderstanding. Self-closing HTML tags are NOT being tagged for obsolescence, INVALID self-closing HTML tags are being flagged for MAINTENANCE. It looks like people are putting TEMPLATES inside HTML tags. Beleg Tâl did it here: diff. I brought this up on BT's talk page. BT's reply was incomprehensible to me. Outlier59 (talk) 02:09, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Read the ticket in detail. It is fairly confused but not all tags are deprecated. If I read the code changes to Sanitizer.php correctly (that is a big ask!) these tags are explicitly excluded (i.e. will continue to work as before: <br />, <wbr />, <hr />, <meta /> and <link />. The list is slightly mad as it includes tags which users cannot enter anyway!
@Outlier59: I restored the struck-out portion of the heading as my current understanding is that this is but Phase 1—in the longer term flagged tags such as <span/> (yes, it is used!) may stop working altogether.

The change you indicated is not relevant apart from the fact it is probably the first edit to that page since the changed rules came into play. The real problem line is right at the top of Wikisource:Administrators and has been there for a very long time: <span class="interwiki-oldws" id="ar1" title="Wikisource:Administrators" style="display:none;"/> AuFCL (talk) 06:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

Equal sign template is meant to be used in that way, i.e., to prevent the equal sign to be interpreted as code. That is not a matter of self-closing tag. Except possibly the nowiki tag (when self-closing), most other self closing tags are being deprecated, that is why they are being marked as obsolete by putting them in that category. Mentioned in the phabricator ticket: Use of self-closing tags like <div/> and <span/> to mean <div></div> and <span></span> is being deprecated. Existing uses of these tags in templates and pages should be fixed as appropriate. Once phab:T134423 is resolved, these tags will parse as <div> and <span> instead, as per HTML5 semantics. The Anchor template uses the self-closing span tag, so it will be affected. Another big problem will be the self-closing break tag, used in poems. Hrishikes (talk) 02:28, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
At least with the self-closing break tag ( <br /> ), I presume that <br> will be available, and that a global search-and-replace will correct that issue. However, we'll have a real problem across several projects if <ref /> does not function. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:40, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
One of the reasons that we have and utilise the templates is that they can be readily updated, and at least we have an opportunity to template those pages that have done it raw. FWIW {{anchor}} may even do well to be converted into a module by some clever person, otherwise it should not be overly complicated to make it have an opening and closing span. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:28, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
According to the ticket an opening and closing span is going to fail as well, and when queried upon this precise issue:
“ Got it (although it does say above that <span class="foo"></span> would be stripped). Are there any void tags that can be used instead of <span id="foo"></span> to create anchors?

Nope.

 ”

—ssastry, in response to Wikitiki89, ticket T134423 fragment

—which is right back where I came in asking for suggestions. AuFCL (talk) 06:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Returning to EncycloPetey's concern regarding <ref/> another fragment of the the same ticket states that registered extension tags (i.e. things like pages, ref, section etc.) will have no concerns. AuFCL (talk) 06:11, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
There is the statement ... No, Tidy won't strip tags with attributes. <span id="foo"></span> vs. <span></span>. The former is left behind and latter will be stripped. so seems that there is some hope. Otherwise we use a span and wrap it in some non-displaying character. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:01, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Updated {{anchor}} as it seems to be the issue predominately, and its issues crowd out other issues. We will see what it looks like in several hours after the systems purges itself. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:16, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
I have updated the description in phab:T134423 and hopefully it is clearer and eliminates any confusion around what is invalid and what is not. Note that <span id='...'></span> can be used for creating anchors if you wish. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

WMF announcement: Stripping Question Marks From Wiki Searches

“ Stripping Question Marks From Wiki Searches

Do you ask questions on Wikipedia? Would you like better results?

Summary: Because the large majority of question marks are used to ask questions by users unfamiliar with bash-style wildcards, the default behavior for CirrusSearch will now be to ignore question marks (replacing them with a space). Escaping them with a backslash (\?) will preserve their wildcard meaning. Regular expressions in insource: will not be affected and should not be escaped. This option can be modified on a per-wiki basis if needed (see $wgCirrusSearchStripQuestionMarks).


When people ask how old is tom cruise? on Wikipedia they almost certainly don't expect the question mark in cruise? to match an additional letter. They aren't looking for the words cruised, cruiser, or cruises—but that's what they get, and it keeps them from finding the information they are really after.

Search on Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects) includes a lot of features that most users don't know about. Most require special keywords, and some even require specialized knowledge, such as familiarity with regular expressions. It's pretty difficult to invoke these special features by accident.

But search also supports two particular bash-style wildcards without any special syntax: * will match any number of characters, and ? will match exactly one. Asterisks do come up from time to time, but people use question marks all the time—because they like to ask questions!

A recent review of query-string features called out quotes and question marks as the two largest-impact predictors of unsuccessful queries on Wikipedia. In a follow-up survey of queries with question marks in six of the top ten Wikipedias (by search volume), most question marks are being used to ask questions (the other four of the top 10 were not reviewed). In all ten of the top ten, stripping final question marks dramatically decreased the number of ?-final queries that got either no results, or very few results (i.e., less than 3). The improvement was around 10-45% for ?-final queries, depending on the wiki. The overall impact is much more modest (less than 0.5%) because queries with question marks are not terribly common.

As a result of this analysis, we've implemented a change to search which will by default replace question marks with spaces (to preserve the word boundaries they intend in queries like how?why?). This setting can be changed on a per-wiki basis, and other options include (i) only stripping question marks at a clear word boundary (such as before a space), (ii) only stripping question marks at the end of the query, and (iii) leaving the question marks alone.

For the rarer users who do use question marks as a one-letter wildcard, when question mark stripping is enabled, question marks can be escaped with a backslash (e.g., wiki\?edia) to preserve their original wildcard meaning. Power searchers who use insource: won't need to do anything special; queries withinsource: will not be modified.

Here's a screenshot of the former question mark behavior, where it is treated as a wildcard. Note that "living?" only matches the name "Livings", leading to two very unsatisfactory results.

Here's a screenshot of the new question mark behavior, where it is ignored. Now the question and part of the answer can be seen in the snippet for the very first result, and all of the top three results seem relevant.

”

—Trey Jones , Discovery-L mailing list

Retrieved from "https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2016-08&oldid=14019722"