Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2022-02

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January Monthly Challenge

Gather round everyone to hear the tale of the January 2022 Monthly Challenge. All-records were shattered with an astonishing 7257 pages proofread or validated. The Monthly Challenge contributed 4385 of the of the 18169 pages proofread (24%) and 2517 of the 4581 pages validated 4581 (55%). I would like to honor the top three achievements in no particular order

In addition to these, the Monthly Challenge made a significant dent in the top works of 1926:

Of note, the Monthly Challenge also finished the following works:

and many more. I cannot express enough my gratitude to all who contributed to making this Monthly Challenge such a success. Thank you!

This month, we introduce

  • Lolly Willowes about a woman who becomes a witch to escape societal oppression.
  • Mrs. Spring Fragrance - One of the first books published by a Chinese-American. It condemns anti-Asian racism in the US.
  • Our Nig - The first novel published by an African-American.
  • Exposition and Protest in which John Calhoun first advocated for secession from the United States.
  • Fire!! - A landmark publication from the Harlem Renaissance, especially notably for its LGBT content.
  • The Clansman that helped bring about a revival of the KKK in the US.
  • Bleak House that satirized the British legal system.
  • North and South that criticized the brutality of the Industrial Revolution.
  • New Grub Street about life as writer in the late nineteenth century.
  • Sister Carrie widely considered one of the greatest American urban novels about a woman trying to make it in the big city by becoming a mistress to rich men.
  • The Struggle for Empire a pioneering word of science fiction involving aliens, spaceships, and interplanetary warfare.
  • Japan: Its History, Arts and Literature (Volume 1) - A groundbreaking text on Japanese art.
  • The Worm Ouroboros a high fantasy novel about a war between Demons and Witchlanders.
  • Up From Slavery which is Booker T. Washington's autobiographical story about his rise from slavery to co-found the Tuskegee Institute.

I'm also making a special plea for these three texts that failed the last Monthly Challenge and have been given a special one-month plea extension.

  • The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf sought to bring literary criticism outside of the Ivory Tower into the ordinary home.
  • This Side of Paradise brought attention to the Jazz Age and became a cultural sensation.
  • Tess of the D'Urbervilles challenged the sexual mores of Victorian Britain with a woman fighting for her rights and the rights of others.

It's a cold February outside, so gather around the cozy fire with a hot cup of tea/coffee/cocoa and enjoy the reading. All the fun starts here. Languageseeker (talk) 04:32, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

@Languageseeker: Please note that the Hamlet you've picked is a part of The Yale Shakespeare and needs to maintain consistency with the rest of the series. It is also a technically complex work to proofread and transcribe, so it will need rather close watching to make sure it doesn't just generate more work to clean it up afterwards. I've done a few of the Yale Shakespeare editions, and despite being of a more technical bent than your average contributor and used to working on Shakespeare, I find them very challenging and often have to refer to the already completed editions for reference on how to do a particular thing. As a general rule of thumb, I think these works would be better as validation projects than proofreading projects in the MC (and the same holds for any other technically complex works that are a part of a greater series, collection, or project). Xover (talk) 07:15, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover I've removed Hamlet from the MC because of strong objections from you and @EncycloPetey. I carefully picked Hamlet because it seemed an ideal candidate to train users in the complex format used in the Yale Shakespeare, but I can see your perspective. Languageseeker (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for putting The Man in the Brown Suit into the Monthly challenge!

Thanks so much for putting The Man in the Brown Suit into the monthly challenge! It is a big help to me. SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 04:59, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Lua error on the monthly challenge page

The current Monthly Challenge displays an error on the main page which reads:

Lua error in Module:Monthly_Challenge_year_summary/month at line 75: attempt to index local 'e' (a nil value).

I'm not quite sure who to notify for this, but I thought somebody might like to know. Perhaps @Inductiveload? (Sorry if this isn't proper etiquette—I'm not sure where to submit bug reports.) Shells-shells (talk) 05:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

It occurs to me now that perhaps I ought to have put this on the Monthly Challenge talk page. Shells-shells (talk) 05:40, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
@Shells-shells: It was a month-rollover problem so it would probably have resolved itself tomorrow, but I've added some armour plating to prevent big red Lua errors showing up there. This page is better watched so posting here is probably best; and since Inductiveload is the evil genius behind all the technical parts of the MC, pinging them should be entirely appropriate (though not guaranteed to get any particular response: even evil geniuses have to earn a living). Xover (talk) 09:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you for fixing the problem and replying so promptly :D Shells-shells (talk) 09:49, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

ws:featured text candidates

can an adminstrator have a look at current ws:featured text candidates? it looks like their is probably at least one suitable for listing. it would be good to finaly have a new featured text Serprinss (talk) 06:21, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 5

Hi all! I'm a facilitator with the Movement Strategy and Governance. In front of you is the latest and redesigned issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News, formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News. The shortened version below has some direct links, which those of you who prefer skipping straight to the content may find convenient. The MSG team is inviting feedback about the newsletter's past, present, and future at m:Talk:Movement_Strategy_and_Governance/Newsletter. --BPipal (WMF) (talk) 11:37, 1 February 2022 (UTC)


More languages • Please help translate to your language

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 5, January 2022Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the fifth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News (formerly known as Universal Code of Conduct News)! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly or bi-weekly to subscribers. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive these updates.

  • Call for Feedback about the Board elections - We invite you to give your feedback on the upcoming WMF Board of Trustees election. This call for feedback went live on 10th January 2022 and will be concluded on 16th February 2022. (continue reading)
  • Universal Code of Conduct Ratification - In 2021, the WMF asked communities about how to enforce the Universal Code of Conduct policy text. The revised draft of the enforcement guidelines should be ready for community vote in March. (continue reading)
  • Movement Strategy Implementation Grants - As we continue to review several interesting proposals, we encourage and welcome more proposals and ideas that target a specific initiative from the Movement Strategy recommendations. (continue reading)
  • The New Direction for the Newsletter - As the UCoC Newsletter transitions into MSG Newsletter, join the facilitation team in envisioning and deciding on the new directions for this newsletter. (continue reading)
  • Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about MSG on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

Ordered list issue?

At Investigation into alleged gatherings on government premises during Covid restrictions: Update, I started {{Ordered list}} on page 7, and closed it on page 8, but that doesn't seem to have made it through to the mainspace page? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:39, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

this may be a template code error. you might try <noinclude></noinclude> see also Help:Page_breaks#Lists_across_page_breaks. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:30, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, noinclude didn't work with the template, but after switching to HTML code it now works. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 09:09, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Mike Peel: Inline model templates—{{templatename|content}}—do not work across page boundaries the way you tried to do it (with the ending braces in the footer). To do that you usually need to use a template that has a {{templatename/s}} and {{templatename/e}} variant. With {{ordered list}} you can also sometimes fake the effect you're after by making separate lists on the two pages, but setting the starting number for the second list to whatever its number would have been in a single list order. But that's not a particularly nice way to do it (for several reasons). Since {{ordered list}} doesn't currently have a /s and /e variant your solution of using raw HTML is probably the best approach short term, and then we should make sure to make a /s+/e variant of it so future users won't have the same trouble you had. Xover (talk) 15:05, 2 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover: See also {{*!/s}} {{*!/spage}} {{*!/c}} {{*!/e}} . ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:17, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Away for a week

I am going to be away on business for the next week or thereabouts. I expect everyone to be on their best behavior while I'm gone, and please try to finish putting this project together by the time I get back. Cheers! BD2412 T 07:00, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I am back early, and must therefore excuse the lack of completion of the project. BD2412 T 21:38, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Technically complex Japanese w:kanbun kundoku pages: leave effort to Japanese Wikisource?

Beginning at Page:Sonshi (Calthrop, 1905).pdf/100 and ending at Page:Sonshi (Calthrop, 1905).pdf/72.

It is a Literary Chinese text, annotated heavily according to Japanese tradition. Japanese Wikisource barely has templates for a visually satisfactory transcription, let alone English Wikisource. (ja:ヘルプ:訓読漢文) This seems like something that should be handled over there.

(@Oryang7:) Fish bowl (talk) 05:52, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

It does seem that WS:JA has skipped trying to do vertical text. While current browsers are getting closer to being able, it doesn't yet seem the right time for vertical. I'm repeatedly seeing vertical texts instead done there as LTR texts: (example).
They implement additional markings in several different ways?
  • Generalized ruby {{ruby|阿媽港|アマアカウ}} and works here 阿媽港 (アマアカウ)
  • Looks like ruby text {{soe|ヲ}}   {{soe|スルコト}}
  • more specialized inline markings {{下}}   {{レ}}
Using the {{ruby}} template available here, some of your text works okay:
孫子曰 (ク)。兵 (ナル)者 (ハ)
However, the ruby at JA works more like your text looks regarding alignment of ruby chars.
Occasionally your text uses small inline chars that WS:JA has shortcuts for, like {{二}} which simply does {{sub|㆓}} to get 以㆓. In other words, simple Unicode chars. However, again, it doesn't exactly match the scan in appearance. example
So.... much of this _could_ be done here, once vertical is given up. But I think the standard answer _here_ is that it should be done _there_, especially since they (JA) do have all the doodads needed. Shenme (talk) 05:41, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-06

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

  • English Wikipedia recently set up a gadget for dark mode. You can enable it there, or request help from an interface administrator to set it up on your wiki (instructions and screenshot).
  • Category counts are sometimes wrong. They will now be completely recounted at the beginning of every month. [1]

Problems

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 February. It will be on all wikis from 10 February (calendar).

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

21:15, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

PDF vs DjVu

Hi, I uploaded to Commons all PDF versions of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi up to volume 65. Volumes which are not in the public domain in USA will be deleted, and undeleted in the respective year. Now I wonder if I should create DjVu files? In fact, this whole collection was already proofread, so it could be quite fast to add the layout and to validate the pages. Can it be down with PDF files? Would DjVu files add any benefit to PDF ones? Thanks, Yann (talk) 21:21, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

It can be done using PDF files, but PDFs can have technical problems when proofreading on Wikisource that DjVu files do not have. I always prefer DjVu to avoid the technical headaches associated with proofreading from PDFs. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:02, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
@Yann: There's a bunch of reasons to prefer DjVu that have to do with the ability to manipulate them and internal (technical) properties of the file format. But for on-wiki concerns it mainly boils down to OCR quality: for various reasons the OCR text you actually get in the on-wiki text editor is usually much poorer for PDF files than for DjVu files, even if the exact same OCR text was added to both files. If there is truly no need for that OCR text (you say they're "already proofread") then having DjVu files would not make much of a difference.
But I'm not seeing any proofread text to speak of on The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, so I'm unsure what text you're referring to (it's not an off-wiki transcription?); and it is always good to have files we can manipulate at need (add missing pages, redact any individual page or part of page that is copyrighted, etc.). So maybe a succinct summary is: if you already have PDF, or you need PDF regardless, and you can get away with it then stick with PDF; otherwise it's preferable to use DjVu.
It's not a requirement, and we can usually make things work regardless of format, but there's a reason our backlogs for files needing repair or missing OCR layers have mostly PDF files in them. Having PDFs in addition is good, because it's a much more accessible format for those that just want to download and look at the scan, but my recommendation is to prefer DjVu whenever possible. Xover (talk) 08:28, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey, @Xover: Thanks for your messages. Yes, it is an off-wiki proofread text. The OCR text is either copied from the PDFs, or redone from the scans. The idea is to do a MATCH & SPLIT. So I will create DjVu files. Thanks, Yann (talk) 12:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
@Yann: If it's an off-wiki text it isn't actually "proofread", because that implies it's been checked against a scan of a specific edition. And the differences (whether from a different edition or from simple transcription mistakes) can be both subtle and pervasive. Under those circumstances it will be good to have the best quality OCR you can get to compare the text to, because then the diff will highlight any missing commas, double quotation marks entered as two single marks, c/e or i/t substitutions, and so forth. M&S is really best for texts that have actually been proofread (including formatting) on-wiki, but just not using the Proofread Page system (we have a lot of texts that predate it still). For off-wiki texts it can be a poorer (harder, more time-consuming) starting point than just using the raw OCR. It can also work really well, of course, if it's high-quality transcription from the exact same edition, but based on experience we generally recommend against match&splitting off-wiki texts these days (lessons learned the hard way).
In other words, it's probably best if you start slow and triple check the results before going all in on that approach. Phe-bot (deliberately) creates pages as "Not proofread", so if you go over and Proofread the test pages you can request someone to also Validate them. That should give you a pretty good idea of whether these texts are likely to cause a lot of hard to detect problems or not. Xover (talk) 13:07, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover: There is only one edition. So yes, it was proofread against the scans of this edition. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:08, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
One specific advantage I've found with DJVU, which might bear mentioning (though maybe not relevant here): There are good command line tools for DJVU for doing things like extracting and re-inserting metadata, and extracting and inserting individual pages. I have not found equivalent tools for PDF (though I have found a good GUI tool for Linux for rearranging pages in PDFs, called pdfarranger). But command line tools permit a good deal of flexibility. -Pete (talk) 20:18, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Project Tsundoku on French Wikisource

Hi everyone !

I would like to draw your attention to a “new” project on the French Wikisource : a French-language bibliography on Japan !

The project started a few months ago when I started writing my thesis in art history. Needing to consult several books from the 19th and 20th centuries on Japan, I saw in Wikisource an excellent way to share my readings, but also to facilitate the work of researchers/amateurs (and at the same time, mine!).

After some adjustments, the project is now operational. I therefore encourage all Japan enthusiastic Wikisourcers who understand French to come and contribute to this project ! If you have any questions/comments, please do not hesitate to leave a message (in French or English) on the discussion page of the project. It will be my pleasure to discuss with you.

Looking forward to meeting you on the Tsundoku project ! -- Guillaumelandry (talk) 11:21, 2 February 2022 (EST)

@Guillaumelandry Thank you for running this amazing project. I'm always interested in adding more East Asian text. Do you have any recommendation for English texts? Languageseeker (talk) 14:09, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Leadership Development Task Force: Call for Feedback Announcement

Hi all.
The Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation is supporting the creation of a global, community-driven Leadership Development Task Force. The purpose of the task force is to advise leadership development work.

The team is looking for feedback about the responsibilities of the Leadership Development Task Force.
This Meta page shares the proposal for a Leadership Development Task Force and how you can help.
Feedback on the proposal will be collected from 7 to 25 February 2022.

--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Movement Strategy and Governance

Page Move for West 192

Please move the pages from Index:First Folio (West 192) to Index:First Folio (West 192).pdf. The original index was created when the upload bug prevented large PDFs. Languageseeker (talk) 05:43, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for creating the Monthly Challenge

I noticed a day ago that The Secret Garden was now finished after its time in the Monthly Challenge. I don't think this would have been accomplished this efficiently if it had never been in the Monthly Challenge. This is just a reminder that the Monthly Challenge is a big help to texts that are featured in it, even if they aren't 100% by the end. SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 19:27, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@SurprisedMewtwoFace Your words mean so much to me. I'm eternally grateful to this community for all the amazing work that it does. It's amazing and humbling to watch it grow. :) Languageseeker (talk) 06:30, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Quick validator

Is there a script or gadget that will let me mark a page as "validated", without having to edit and save, separately? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:36, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Such a gadget is undesirable. We already have a history of well-meaning persons rushing through and marking pages as "validated" without spotting major errors. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:23, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I desire such a gadget; ergo such a gadget is desirable. RSI is not desirable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:48, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I understand that you desire the gadget, which means that it is desired, but that does not make it desirable. The two terms are not equivalent. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:16, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
User:Inductiveload/maintain can do this, though its obviously pretty rare that you can use it directly, though it can be useful if you have fixed issues using the replace function or otherwise proofread without changing the status. Or, again rarely, if you have a perfect page. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 22:39, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll give that a try. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:48, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I just installed that, but I do not see the "Maintenance link in the side bar" referred to on the documentation page even after hard purging my user script page, and the page I'm about to validate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:58, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
Look it I typoed the loader name. It's User:Inductiveload/maintain/load.js. Sorry! Inductiveload—talk/contribs 23:01, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
No worries; working now. Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:06, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Historic musical notation in Score extension

I've started a discussion on enabling some historic musical notation, unsurprisingly used in a lot of public-domain music, on Mediawiki. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music theory#\include "gregorian.ly" and Phab: task T301624. Comments, criticisms, and additions from anyone reading this are very welcome. HLHJ (talk) 22:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Index:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu

Starting at Page:Famous Fantastic Mysteries (1951-03).djvu/4 until the end, please move the text by +88. - ei (talk) 22:08, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Done Mpaa (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

The Island of Doctor Moreau

Please move The Island of Doctor Moreau to The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) to make way for a versions page. Languageseeker (talk) 23:22, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Done along with dozens of subpages without redirects. Please check them along with d:Q52363681 that was just moved.--Jusjih (talk) 00:48, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-07

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

  • Purging a category page with fewer than 5,000 members will now recount it completely. This will allow editors to fix incorrect counts when it is wrong. [2]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 February. It will be on all wikis from 17 February (calendar).
  • Advanced item In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function has been updated so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [3]

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

19:18, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

All the Published Works of the Brontë Sisters are now Scan-Backed

Thanks to all the hardworking contributors to Wikisource and the Monthly Challenge all the published works of the Brontë Sisters are now scan-backed against original editions with today's completion of The Professor. I invite you to check out the works of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë. Languageseeker (talk) 02:36, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

14c Red Book of Hergest (Jesus College Oxford's Ms 111)

Hi all. Jesus College Oxford recently released the whole of the Red Book of Hergest, and I've uploaded it to Commons here. There's a possibility that the transcription (XML documents processed into HTML), made by Cardiff University may also be placed on an open licence. If this were to happen, I would need to guarantee them that the transcription's symbols, letters and fonts would also be replicated on WS. Transcription details:

Any help in this Wikimedia UK project would really be appreciated!

A few questions:

  1. I see that CSS embedded web fonts for Middle-Welsh V ‘ỽ’, and Middle-Welsh Ll ‘ỻ’ are embedded on WS. Wonderful! Are there any fonts colours we are unable to reproduce?
  2. There are >850 pages, is this too big to cope with? There are a couple of us on cy-ws who could help on regular basis.
  3. Is there a similar project (with similar age manuscripts) on WS?

Many thanks and best regards! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

@Llywelyn2000 I've recently begun doing some work with manuscripts on enWS and created a help page to describe some of the templates that I've created to enable the proofreading of Manuscripts Help:Manuscripts. My own thinking is that the Proofreader Page view should be more literal to the manuscript page, while the transcluded text should be more readable. The TEI file won't be directly importable into WS, but I don't see why you can't copy and paste it into WS and then use that as a base for proofreading. Languageseeker (talk) 20:57, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Many thanks Languageseeker! You have been busy! You've answered my question, but I think we've a long way to go! For example a tool to import from html to wikicode would be good, keeping true to the original style, size and color of fonts etc. I'll get back to CU. Diolch / thanks! Llywelyn2000 (talk) 10:13, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Automatically Change to Title Case when using header=1 option

When you transclude a text using the magic header option, the previous/next links are formatted exactly as the TOC. However, many TOCs use upper-case characters. Would it be possible to automatically change the previous/next links to use title case instead? This would save quite a bit of time when transcluding. Languageseeker (talk) 02:52, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

How would the software know which words to capitalize and which to not capitalize? Even if we had a list of words not to capitalize (the, a, of, etc.), I have found that the rules for capitalizing words like its, his, from, etc. vary by publisher and sometimes from title to title within the same work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:05, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
should not be too hard to create template:Titlecase just like Template:Uppercase. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 04:19, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
As EncycloPetey has pointed out, it is not just hard but impossible because the rules for title case are inconsistent. And that's just in English; when you bring in the 100+ languages used on Wikisource it'll be… It is also undesirable to force such behaviour on every user of the feature. It puts the control in the software and overrides whatever was in the original work. Which is a rather key point: if you think of the next/prev links in the header as an interactive and contextual version of the original table of contents, replicating all upper case chapter names is the actual correct behaviour.
All that being said, I am sure there is scope for improving this functionality in various ways. For example, one could imagine various ways to let the user choose how it should behave. In the immediate example one could imagine something like a transform-toclinks=titlecase parameter. And in a more pie-in-the-sky perspective we could decouple the physical toc and our virtual toc for a work, so the two need not be identical. A work's toc is often inconsistent, contains entries for content not actually present in the book, or lacks entries for content that's there; and often also necessitates splitting into wikipages in a way that does not match the toc structure. In other words, it's not necessarily all that well suited for our needs. Instead, we could turn the "Contents" field in the Index into some sort of structured storage (JSON or whatever) and have a special editor for it that lets you create and (re)arrange a "logical table of contents" with arbitrary structure and labels, bootstrapped from the structure/links/labels in the proofread toc, and use that as the input for the header template (and other niceties: a dropdown in the Mediawiki header with the full toc navigation maybe?). This would also solve the problem of linking a chapter number and chapter title when formatting forces them to be in separate table cells (or dropping them from the header if they don't make sense for a given work). And it would make it practically possible to make them style-able from per-work CSS, or under the control of the header template (which is a lot easier for the enWS community to hack than PRP itself).
It'd be a rather large project, though, and I am not at all certain the benefits are worth it. Automatic headers is a convenience feature for when a work is structured enough to permit it; and the safety valve is doing it manually, in which case you get full control of these aspects. There are both more lower-hanging fruit and more pressing problems to solve than this, and we don't exactly have a surfeit of development resources. Xover (talk) 07:33, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
forcing people to cut/paste to external tools like https://titlecaseconverter.com/ is a little like forcing people to use xl2table tool https://magnustools.toolforge.org/tab2wiki.php . --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:55, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
I can see that development constraints are a real constraint. I don't think that we necessarily need to follow the "proper capitalization," but so many TOC have all caps that are a bit jarring to look at. Languageseeker (talk) 05:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
There is no need to cut'n'paste. There are browser plug-ins for both Windows and other systems (TitleCase in Firefox, for example). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Versions in Portals

What is the community consensus on version is Portals, such as Portal:Science fiction. My own opinion is that it should be one work, one entry to reduce clutter. However, others might think that we should list all the works in the Portal namespace. Is there any consensus on this issue? Languageseeker (talk) 05:27, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

We've been through this discussion before. Portals are the one namespace that is highly adaptive and flexible, and I would rather not have lots of little rules governing Portals. Whether specific editions are listed should be flexible with the needs or benefits in a given use in a given Portal, not governed by abstract rulings. There are Portals that exist precisely in order to list the different editions/translations because doing so in a versions page would be far more complicated. Portal:Odes of Pindar collects together all the various translations of the surviving Epinikia of Pindar. Forcing these listings to be scattered over dozens of individual pages would not serve anyone. That is part of the reason they are listed this way. There are also no uniform or consistent titles, and no universally accepted numbering system. So choosing a title for the versions page of one ode would be arbitrary and require dozens of redirects to cover the possible other names. And if you look at the Isthmian Odes you'll notice that there are two separate numbering systems, because for this group of odes, different authors split and number them differently. If we imposed a "rule" forbidding the listing of versions, this Portal (and others like it) would not be possible. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:43, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: To my knowledge there is no consensus to regulate portals at that level of detail. In particular, we're currently using portals as a bit of a safety-valve that lets us be stricter in other namespaces. We will probably have to rethink that at some point, possibly soon, due to issues created by Wikidata and interwiki links (cf. the proposal regarding author dabs in mainspace), but as per now the rules for portal scoping are essentially "contributor judgement" and case-by-case consensus. There are consensus rules about portals, but not that regulate stuff like this (so far as I know). (They're also spread around discussion archives, which is why I'm being a bit vague and hand-wavy) Xover (talk) 07:21, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Outdated info in Monthly Challenge tips?

The Tips section on the Monthly Challenge page advises users that If a word is divided across two pages: proofread the part on the first page as {{hws|text|complete word}} and the part on the second page as {{hwe|text|complete word}}. For example, {{hws|hel|hello}} and {{hwe|lo|hello}} will yield hello when transcluded. However, this appears to no longer be necessary, based on the notice in the {{hwe}} documentation page and at H:HYPHEN. Would whoever runs the Monthly Challenge edit the page to reflect that? Shells-shells (talk) 21:44, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Shells-shells Done. Thanks for spotting this. Languageseeker (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Text gets more and more indented

Hello. Feel free to move this to a better discussion venue if one exists.

On Hobson-Jobson/D, as well as other subpages of the same work, the text starts out normal and then occupies a smaller and smaller region on the right side of the screen. There must be something wrong with templates or stylesheets here.

I assume this can be fixed, but I do not know how. 70.172.194.25 19:40, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

It's probably from using {{Left margin|2em}}example text instead of {{Left margin|2em|example text}}. 70.172.194.25 19:43, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
It is the repeated application of that template that keeps indenting the text. At no point does the coding tell the formatting to "stop" the indent or start over. This can be corrected by using {{Left margin/s}} to start an indented section and {{Left margin/e}} at the end of the section to start fresh. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
  • The pages did work, but some user vandalized the pages, removing all of the closing tags—should be blocked. I have reverted all of the page-breaking changes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:44, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you for fixing it! Looks like the user was not exactly a vandal, just a malfunctioning automaton. 70.172.194.25 01:46, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Ah, I see; this specific one seems to malfunction more than most. For fixing it, I just copied the version from before the bot ran, and pasted over to make a new version (which is called “rollback” if you’re an admin). Thanks for pointing it out, though! TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    @TE(æ)A,ea.: This kind of sniping at another contributor is not acceptable. Please retract it. Xover (talk) 07:13, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Xover: I did not know it was a bot; I would not have used “vandal[]” if I had. However, the bot’s results are comparable to vandalism, and I believe the bot needs to be more closely watched in the future. The bot policy requires approval for mass changes; and bots are supposed to be regularly confirmed, but that idea seems to have been abandoned several years ago. I feel like this situation would not have happened, had the bot policy been more strictly followed. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:34, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
@TE(æ)A,ea.: People make mistakes and bots make mistakes. Sometimes things get overlooked. This is not "comparable to vandalism" because vandalism is when someone deliberately and knowingly breaks things for the purpose of getting a laugh out of it, or for vengeance on someone else perhaps. No comment on the bot policy, but regardless of it please don't assign bad faith to a clearly good-faith editor. PseudoSkull (talk) 15:17, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
@TE(æ)A,ea.: A bot's operator is responsible for its edits, which means you are here calling its operator a vandal. If you have an issue with someone's edits, whether manual or automated, your first recourse should always be to bring the issue up with them directly (i.e. on their talk page). Xover (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
on other projects bots get blocked, and operators get excoriated for lesser offenses. but i do hope we would just file an error report, at user talk. obscure code getting broken on non-scan backed pages is going to be a continuing problem.--Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 16:45, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
My understanding was that {{div end}} could also be used to close out a single parameter {{left margin}}. However, if you are doing a lot of simmilar {[tl|left-margin}} in a single work, then maybe also considered writing some Indexstyles and using {{class block}} instead. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:43, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
yeah, it is unclear that reverting the bot is a permanent fix, so alternate templates would be a good idea. there is also the index to improve the work, so the templates are in page space. Index:Hobson-Jobson a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive.djvu. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 23:49, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
Another affected page: Useful Knowledge: Animals. Search I used to find it: [4] (everything else was a false positive). 70.172.194.25 01:47, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
and here would be the index to migrate to scan backed, if any are interested - Index:Useful knowledge - Animals.djvu --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 04:01, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Is there a better solution to using {{di}} with images?

Currently, the use of {{dropinitial}} with an image involves manually setting the image size in pixels and (optionally) setting the margins so that it lines up with the text block. In my view, this is rather unsatisfactory; it results in images not necessarily being displayed consistently across devices, both in size and in alignment with the text, because the pixel value and the font settings don't necessarily have any relation to each other. However, drop initials in real-life texts are typically aligned in some way with the actual text content: picking examples at random from the first few pages of Category:Dropinitials with image, see Page:An Essay on Virgil's Æneid.djvu/67, Page:BibleKJV1611-010.pdf/51, Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/235; also Page:The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).djvu/47 and Page:The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926).djvu/48.

In short, is there any way to make images properly aligned with lines of text (hopefully with some options, too—align to baseline, midline, etc.) in a way that remains accurate when viewed on different devices? While I don't know anything significant about CSS, I've seen some examples of aligning text with images using flexboxes which seem like they might work in this context. Would anyone with expertise be willing to weigh in? Shells-shells (talk) 07:37, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

@Shells-shells {{di}} isn't perfect by a long way, but it's trying quite hard to do a three-way balance between:
  • The software can't ask for an image in terms of "em" (which is kinda-sorta connected to line spacings, but not the only thing affecting it), it can only ask for pixel values. Moreover, it cannot know, when the page is rendered, how big an em will be. In a browser, it's usually 16, Mediawiki CSS reduces it to 14 often and users can override it manually too. On an ereader, it could be anything and possibly 40 or more depending on the screen DPI and users settings.
  • CSS that works in a browser and in things like poems (see H:PXWIDTH for examples).
  • CSS that still works in (most) ereaders
Notably, flex-box will almost certainly not work in the third case, so do be aware that a sensible fallback will be needed there.
However, it's certainly true that the margins of the DI templates are "bad", because they apply to an inner div, after the font-size is applied. This means your "0.1em" in the template is actually more like "0.3em" in terms of the main text content's size. I am generally hoping to clean that up, but it's going to need a bit of care to avoid smashing the place up too much in the process.
Also, if you have any smart ideas, please do let me know, because the current implementation is very much not smart! One thing we might be able to do is allow the container to set the image size in terms of "em". But then we probably need to up-res the image so it can scale without pixelating in some cases (and we still need to give the thumbnail server a px value to work with). So, again, it's not trivial. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 22:08, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

Remember to Participate in the UCoC Conversations and Ratification Vote!

You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
More languages • Please help translate to your language

Hello everyone,

A vote in SecurePoll from 7 to 21 March 2022 is scheduled as part of the ratification process for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement guidelines. Eligible voters are invited to answer a poll question and share comments. Read voter information and eligibility details. During the poll, voters will be asked if they support the enforcement of the Universal Code of Conduct based on the proposed guidelines.

The Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) provides a baseline of acceptable behavior for the entire movement. The revised enforcement guidelines were published 24 January 2022 as a proposed way to apply the policy across the movement. A Wikimedia Foundation Board statement calls for a ratification process where eligible voters will have an opportunity to support or oppose the adoption of the UCoC Enforcement guidelines in a vote. Wikimedians are invited to translate and share important information. For more information about the UCoC, please see the project page and frequently asked questions on Meta-wiki.

There are events scheduled to learn more and discuss:

You can comment on Meta-wiki talk pages in any language. You may also contact either team by email: msg(_AT_)wikimedia.org or ucocproject(_AT_)wikimedia.org

Sincerely,
--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 12:36, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Looking for John Benson Rose

I am looking for a date of death for John Benson Rose [5] who was publishing translations from Latin in 1870's London. I have not been able to find dates of birth or death. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:22, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

It's actually John Benson Coles Rose who according to Men-at-the-Bar/Rose, John Benson Coles was born 1808 and I see mention dying around Feb. 1874. He had had a famous daughter Emily Marion Rose. Ed. actually Nov. 1873: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rose-19849. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:57, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:21, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

The Professor: a Tale

Please move The Professor: a Tale to The Professor (First Edition) Languageseeker (talk) 17:29, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

@Languageseeker: Is there really no better dab then "First Edition" for this? Is the year it was published not sufficiently unique? Xover (talk) 06:35, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover The year is insufficent because there is also the Tauchnitz edition and Harper & Brothers editions published in the same year. This is the only edition set from the manuscript of Charlotte Brontë, see [=year%3A%221857%22] and [6]. For a lot of these big names, I'm following the naming convention established in the Clarendon editions. Languageseeker (talk) 12:13, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: The common dab for situations such as this is "(year, publisher)". Xover (talk) 06:18, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover Is it possible to name it The Professor (First Edition) or is that strictly forbidden? Languageseeker (talk) 12:34, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: It is not explicitly forbidden anywhere that I'm familiar with (we don't tend to write guidance at that level of specificity), but it is decidedly non-standard and I am disinclined to do so. Xover (talk) 13:17, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover Ok. I just fail to see how The Professor (1857, Smith, Elder & Co.) is a better name, especially since you can situations such as North and South (1855, Chapman and Hall, First Edition) and North and South (1855, Chapman and Hall, Second Edition). Also with this dab, what do you do about serials? North and South (1854—1855, Household Worlds). Seems to me as if this dab can get pretty ugly very quickly. Would we also say Hamlet (1623, Iſaac Iaggard, and Ed. Blount) instead of Hamlet (First Folio)? Languageseeker (talk) 14:12, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: There's no perfect dab scheme, and there will always be cases when the lesser of two evils must be picked. In particular, once you get to three-component dabs you'll find there's a much greater appetite for picking a pragmatic solution. The problem with your proposed dab scheme is that it over-emphasises the first edition. I know this is an attribute of primary concern to you, to the point you've actually title-cased the phrase first edition in your dab, but it is simply not a significant distinguishing factor in this context (making the wikipage page name unique). Xover (talk) 15:06, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover I'm not trying to be pedantic for the mere sake of my own personal predilections. This edition is called the first edition in the scholarship on the Brontë sisters. It's sort of a standard name in the field. In the spirit of compromise, could we make this The Professor (1857, Smith, Elder & Co.) and then have The Professor (First Edition) redirect to it? Languageseeker (talk) 15:26, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: Redirects are cheap, so have as many as you want (well, within reason of course, but…). Doing… Xover (talk) 18:47, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Languageseeker: Done Please check that I didn't mess anything up. Xover (talk) 19:27, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover Looks good! Thanks. Languageseeker (talk) 11:49, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica and {{EB1911 fine print/s}} use

There are multiple instances of the template {{EB1911 fine print/s}} (and {{EB1911 Fine Print/s}}) that do not have a carriage return right after them, causing formatting problems. So a carriage return needs to be inserted where it is missing. i.e. {{EB1911 fine print/s}} (and {{EB1911 Fine Print/s}}) need to be on a line by themselves with no other text on the same line. Also, {{EB1911 fine print/e}} and {{EB1911 Fine Print/e}} need to be on a line by themselves with no text beforehand. Can this please be fixed by a robot? Thanks — DivermanAU (talk) 00:12, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Doing… Xover (talk) 06:20, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
@Xover: - thank you very much. DivermanAU (talk) 20:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Done There was somewhere between 6k and 9k pages affected by this (6k /s and 3k /e, so actual number depends on how often they were on the same page and how often they were separate), so it's possible that there were some edge cases in there that broke when we added the newlines. Xover (talk) 08:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

 Comment Not clear to me if there is a real formatting problem or not. Anyhow, the doc page of the template shows an example without newline. If that is really wrong, it should be amended.Mpaa (talk) 12:04, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

I've amended the example in the template documentation. It is necessary, otherwise a line break in the text will be rendered as a paragraph break. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:05, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Index:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu

Please delete Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/826 and Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/827 and move up all sequential pages in the scan. They're malformed duplicates of pages that already exist in the scan. Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/53 and Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/52 are also duplicates. DoublePendulumAttractor (talk) 21:13, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Sections of TOC not exporting

In Beeton's Christmas Annual/A Study in Scarlet, the TOC entries Part I and Part II are not being exported. Can someone take a look? Languageseeker (talk) 11:54, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

They're not in the TOC tables, which set the ws-summary class (IMO automatically setting this class on these templates is confusing for this reason). Wrap it all in a {{export TOC}}. See Help:Preparing_for_export#Listing_pages_for_export more details. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:47, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
@Inductiveload So would you just place this in from of the regular TOC? I tried that on Page:Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887.pdf/17 and it didn't seem to change anything. Languageseeker (talk) 14:00, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Yes, just like that. It's working for me, so maybe you needed to purge something or bypass the exporter cache (nocache=1 in the URL). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 18:36, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Symbols from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, page 99

Does anyone have images they can insert that can be used for The Case of Charles Dexter Ward page 99? I tried using a symbol from Gutenberg Australia's version but it really doesn't work well. SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 20:09, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

You've used the right symbols, see w:Astrological_symbols#Miscellaneous symbols, but the way they display will be affected by the choice of font. The en.WP page has image versions in their table that you can use, if you wish. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks so much for your help! Sorry, I just haven't used these symbols very much. SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 20:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-08

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

  • Special:Nuke will now provide the standard deletion reasons (editable at MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown) to use when mass-deleting pages. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [7]
  • At Wikipedias, all new accounts now get the Growth features by default when creating an account. Communities are encouraged to update their help resources. Previously, only 80% of new accounts would get the Growth features. A few Wikipedias remain unaffected by this change. [8]
  • You can now prevent specific images that are used in a page from appearing in other locations, such as within PagePreviews or Search results. This is done with the markup class=notpageimage. For example, [[File:Example.png|class=notpageimage]]. [9]
  • There has been a change to the HTML of Special:Contributions, Special:MergeHistory, and History pages, to support the grouping of changes by date in the mobile skin. While unlikely, this may affect gadgets and user scripts. A list of all the HTML changes is on Phabricator.

Events

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 February. It will be on all wikis from 24 February (calendar).

Future changes

  • The software to play videos and audio files on pages will change soon on all wikis. The old player will be removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [10][11]
  • Toolforge's underlying operating system is being updated. If you maintain any tools there, there are two options for migrating your tools into the new system. There are details, deadlines, and instructions on Wikitech. [12]
  • Administrators will soon have the option to delete/undelete the associated "talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option will also be available. This was a request from the 2021 Wishlist Survey.

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

19:12, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folklore is extended till 15th March

Please help translate to your language

Greetings from Wiki Loves Folklore International Team,

We are pleased to inform you that Wiki Loves Folklore an international photographic contest on Wikimedia Commons has been extended till the 15th of March 2022. The scope of the contest is focused on folk culture of different regions on categories, such as, but not limited to, folk festivals, folk dances, folk music, folk activities, etc.

We would like to have your immense participation in the photographic contest to document your local Folk culture on Wikipedia. You can also help with the translation of project pages and share a word in your local language.

Best wishes,

International Team
Wiki Loves Folklore

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:50, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

I am not able to add source containing .xyz domain name some one help

hi i am not not able to add source containing .xyz domain name some one help

Mrs. Dalloway sections

The book Mrs. Dalloway has no sections or chapters. However, during a transclusion a user decided to add sections. Are these sections valid? Languageseeker (talk) 02:49, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Are you asking whether the previous reply someone gave you on this subject is truthful? Yes. Most editions have regions of more whitespace at specific locations within the text when the location or thought stream changes significantly. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:58, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey I'm asking if these gaps are equivalent to chapters. In other words, should this text be transcluded on one page or spit across multiple chapters. Languageseeker (talk) 03:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
That is like asking whether an audio recording of the book has to be all one track or can be split into individual tracks. Both methods are reasonable, there is not one "right" way to do it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
i really like the "the author’s intent is stream of consciousness", therefore no sections allowed. does the same reasoning apply to Ulysses (1922)? you realize publishers have trashed author’s intent for ages? and disappointed you edit warred rather than gained consensus. you can always transclude an alternate "no sections" version. can’t wait until you get to On the Road. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 16:32, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
@EncycloPetey @TE(æ)A,ea. @Slowking4 Thank you for the information and clarification. I know see that sections are appropriate. However, maybe creating a single page version might also be appropriate. Languageseeker (talk) 18:30, 23 February 2022 (UTC)
i admire the aesthetics. just pity the poor reader with bandwidth, and memory issues. we have a norm of creation table of contents for works without, to minimize size. cheers.--Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 22:21, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Index page change

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T277267

Was some major change implemented in the past 24 hours (or so) that changed the basic look of Index: pages? I am not a fan of the change. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

The Index page used to be easy to read, because proofreading status was color-coded and dominated the region of page listings. Now the information is swamped by whitespace, which carries no information about proofreading status, making it more difficult to interpret the information displayed on the page. It is like breaking a bar graph into hundreds of colored dots, obscuring any patterns. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:31, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: It's a side-effect of T277267. The spacing issue has already been reported and they're working on a fix. --Xover (talk) 20:30, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks! --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:12, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Is Wikisource blocked in China?

Does anyone know if enWS is blocked in China? Languageseeker (talk) 00:38, 18 February 2022 (UTC)

Coming soon

Several improvements around templates

Hello, from March 9, several improvements around templates will become available on your wiki:

All these changes are part of the “Templates” project by WMDE Technical Wishes. We hope they will help you in your work, and we would love to hear your feedback on the talk pages of these projects.

- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 12:38, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-09

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

  • When searching for edits by change tags, e.g. in page history or user contributions, there is now a dropdown list of possible tags. This was a request in the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. [13]
  • Mentors using the Growth Mentor dashboard will now see newcomers assigned to them who have made at least one edit, up to 200 edits. Previously, all newcomers assigned to the mentor were visible on the dashboard, even ones without any edit or ones who made hundred of edits. Mentors can still change these values using the filters on their dashboard. Also, the last choice of filters will now be saved. [14][15]
  • The user group oversight was renamed suppress. This is for technical reasons. You may need to update any local references to the old name, e.g. gadgets, links to Special:Listusers, or uses of NUMBERINGROUP.

Problems

  • The recent change to the HTML of tracking changes pages caused some problems for screenreaders. This is being fixed. [16]

Changes later this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 March. It will be on all wikis from 3 March (calendar).

Future changes

  • Working with templates will become easier. Several improvements are planned for March 9 on most wikis and on March 16 on English Wikipedia. The improvements include: Bracket matching, syntax highlighting colors, finding and inserting templates, and related visual editor features.
  • If you are a template developer or an interface administrator, and you are intentionally overriding or using the default CSS styles of user feedback boxes (the classes: successbox, messagebox, errorbox, warningbox), please note that these classes and associated CSS will soon be removed from MediaWiki core. This is to prevent problems when the same class-names are also used on a wiki. Please let us know by commenting at phab:T300314 if you think you might be affected.

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

22:59, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

post edit saved message

hey, can someone enable the "HidePostEdit" gadget in editing preferences. the lingering popup is annoying. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 03:55, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Seeing a popup for every The page was created! and Your edit was saved! is hugely distracting while trying to proofread. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:51, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
it does illustrate how the mediawiki devs are wikipedia centric, and migrating towards mobile "features". and how they repeatedly do not build in opt out. they would do better to add features to a new skin, and then we could opt out by using an old skin. (kicking the can down the road when skins get unsupported) --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 23:18, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
user script here [17] but we should not have to paste custom css --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 15:55, 1 March 2022 (UTC)

De-amending WS:WWI

A recent proposal amended WS:WWI, to add a qualifier prohibiting works not originating in scans. I think this policy ill-advised. As being without scope is grounds for speedy-deletion, all works without scan are liable for speedy-deletion; I think, at the very least, that such works should have a full discussion at WS:PD. I believe that this prohibiting qualifier should be entirely eliminated, as antithetical to the course and structure of English Wikisource at it has existed, and exists currently. This policy will lead to a decrease in the number of works added to the project, which is directly against the intent of the project. In the alternative, the qualifier should be qualified by a requirement that the user proposing deletion show affirmatively that the work cannot be scan-backed, and that the work if of such quality or completeness that it detracts from the quality of the project. In the alternative, the first paragraph (here) should be deleted, and the second paragraph, which recommends scan-backing, kept alone, so that scan-backing is not a requirement. (People involved in prior discussion: Languageseeker, EncycloPetey, Inductiveload, Cygnis insignis.) TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:15, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  • Further note: Apparently, “second-hand transcriptions” is to be understood to mean any work without a source. This is even more problematic than the policy as actually written. My objections to the policy as written apply to this interpretation to a greater extent. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:21, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
  • Strong  Oppose. First, I'm against such proposals to undo a vote that recently finished. The proposal was posted for all to see for quite a long time. Second, the policy exists to allow us to gradually work through the backlog of unsourced or secondary transcriptions that exist in various forms on this site. Unsourced and secondary transcriptions raise questions of quality and authenticity that simply cannot be resolved. Third, the policy already allows for exceptions with community consensus. If you feel that a particular secondary transcription qualifies for such an exemption, I'd be happy to read that proposal. Languageseeker (talk) 23:40, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
    • Languageseeker: A few responses. My primary motivation in making this counter-proposal was my belief that the previous discussion was not sufficiently borne-out for a proposal which would effect many thousands of works; this proposal is, in my mind, more a continuation of the old proposal. To be sure, I would have strongly objected to the previous proposal if I knew this would be the result. You claim that the policy’s effects would be “gradual”; but the policy does not state this, and any number of old works, which happen to lack scans, could be nominated for speedy deletion. Your claim, that secondary transcriptions “raise questions of quality and authenticity that simply cannot be resolved,” is essentially unprovable. Such a claim may be valid for some works without scans, but would have to be balanced against the facts of any one work. A lack of immediate source, or that source being a secondary transcription, does not categorically introduce “questions of quality and authenticity,” and certainly not “questions … that simply cannot be resolved.” The supposed exemption raises another problem: it puts the burden on a third party seeking the retention of the work. This, I believe, creates an unsustainable model. I believe that, as normal, the burden of convincing and proof for deletion should lie with the person nominating a work for deletion. The project thrives on the addition of new works; existing works should not be removed generally, except for good cause as an exception. Forcing those who add works, or who defend existing works (whether added by themselves or others), to work to justify the inclusion of such works, rather than forcing those who want works removed, to justify the removal of such works, goes against the very nature of the project, and will, assuming the policy-based justification of the new qualification stands and is taken to its logical conclusion, result in the removal of many useful works, without incentivising the creation of new works. As you have recently shown, nominating many works for deletion (even through the more thoughtful proposed-deletions process) leads to non-productive “discussions” which do not deal, to any great extent, with the work(s) at hand. This problem will only be exacerbated if speedy deletions are allowed for the vast class of works the new qualification encompasses. If a work is not copyrighted and in English, it is presumed to be suitable for inclusion on English Wikisource. There are a few exceptions, but they cover specific, limited classes of works on the grounds of the content of those works. However, the newly-introduced qualification covers a general and very broad class of works, not on the grounds of content, but on the grounds of technical status—one that out-of-project visitors will often not care about. This greatly limits the viability and usefulness of the project, and for that reason I seek to remove the qualification. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:10, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
      • @TE(æ)A,ea. The amendment specifically states that this is for new works only. Any old work is safe. I've seen numerous problems of non-scan backed texts missing parts. The Case of Charles Dexter Ward/Chapter I was missing part 3. South Carolina Exposition and Protest was missing nearly the entire text prior to me marking it as imcomplete. At what point are we simply just passing work on to future users? How many works do we already have that have no scan and are not finished? How many unsourced works remain unfinished? Yes, many scan-backed works are unfinished, but they can be finished. The policy does not apply to users who prefer to proofread outside of PP extension. It only applies to work that are copied from another website that is not the original place of publication. I spend quite a significant amount of time on this site trying to incentive new users either through running the MC or trying to figure out which version of a particular work should be proofread. You speak of all the users who come to the site wanting to add secondary transcriptions of various quality, what about all the users who spend hours carefully proofreading and formatting text? They contribute far more time and effort than those who copy-and-paste. They make the site grow. Languageseeker (talk) 02:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
        • Languageseeker: I originally understood that this was only intended to apply to new works; however, your statements in this discussion led me to believe that it would be applied generally. Yes, a number of old works without scans are missing parts. Such incompleteness would be grounds for deletion, in my view, if such a work were newly added. However, these problems are work-specific; they are not inherent in all works without scans. This is the reason for my opposition to the general classification of the original proposal and qualification. Works without scans can also be finished. Works may be proofread outside of the ProofreadPage extension, as you have stated; however, as the plan is currently written (according to your interpretation) such works would be subject to speedy deletion, as all works without a source are to be considered as being illegal “secondary transcriptions.” Your reference to other users is besides the point: this discussion is not about the Monthly Challenge, but about the changes to inclusion rules. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:56, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
          • @TE(æ)A,ea. Let me try to clarify with some scenarious:
          • Worked posted prior to 28 Dec 2021 -> still included
          • Worked published online and copied to Wikisource -> still included
          • Worked proofread outside of ProofreadPage and source provides the necessary reference -> still included For a good example of an in-scope, non-scan backed text, see The Red Book Magazine/Volume 1/Number 6/The Deliverance of Pima Jim.
          • Worked copied from Project Gutenberg or another website and posted after 28 Dec 2021 -> out of scope. If there is no source, then the user can choose to post the necessary reference and it will be in scope provided that it is not posted from a website. Languageseeker (talk) 03:14, 17 February 2022 (UTC)


The proposed deletion that TE(æ)A,ea. links to above is a nice case study of why this amendment is such a terrible idea. A relatively new user (in contributions if not so much in time) has pasted a poem, which we didn't previously have, and which is in scope. The contribution is clearly a good faith attempt to improve the site, and I think the site has been improved. We could help this user to understand how they can contribute in higher value ways, but instead we are going to summarily delete their work. This is cultural poison. Hesperian 01:03, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

@Hesperian I did reach out to the user on their talk page to offer them to find a scan and help them learn how to proofread it. Languageseeker (talk) 02:28, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
Please let us not confuse scan and source. The ask isn't for them to provide a scan at this point, but a source and we should be very clear that if they provide a source we could fill out the header and save it from deletion. MarkLSteadman (talk) 23:15, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
Thankyou, point taken. Hesperian 00:18, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
i do not believe you have a consensus to delete non scan back works. instead of wasting time deleting works, how about spending time proofreading? put on a maintenance tag "missing source" or "missing scan" and people can work the backlog; delete it and they cannot.
shifting the burden of providing scans upon the uploader is an insidious practice. it bites good faith newbies, and impedes quality improvement by scraping low quality work. it’s not paper, and we do not have a server limitation on low quality work, rather we have an attention limitation that you are diverting by management by drama. we need to pivot those dumping non scan backed to proofreading, when you delete their work, then you make pivoting harder. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 17:15, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

A Call for Texts by Ukrainian Authors

During the March Monthly Challenge, I want to run a few texts by Ukrainian authors. If you know any such texts with scans available, can you please post them below. Languageseeker (talk) 20:57, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

@Languageseeker: A few translated works by important Ukrainian authors:
Overall it is a little difficult to locate public-domain translations of much of the body of Ukrainian literature (or perhaps I have just missed some sources). If anyone else could help out, that would be lovely. Shells-shells (talk) 23:16, 28 February 2022 (UTC)
@Shells-shells Thank you for this amazing list. Languageseeker (talk) 20:54, 5 March 2022 (UTC)

Adding Wikisource links to Wikipedia infoboxes

At Wikipedia the template {{infobox book}}, used widely for most articles on written works, has the parameters wikisource and native_wikisource for providing a link to a copy here. These parameters (one added by User:billinghurst, interestingly enough) have existed since 2012 and 2013, respectively, yet only 830 articles use them—and of those only 100 link to foreign-language Wikisources (tracked here and here). A user at the Teahouse kindly provided two searches to find infoboxes which could have those parameters filled: [18] and [19]. The former tries to find all articles with the template which 1) lack the wikisource parameter and 2) have a pub_date of 1926 or earlier; the latter tries to limit the search to foreign-language works. While this is a pretty rough search, I think it forms a good starting point, and I hope some others would find it worthwhile to help link these pages. I've done a handful so far, but there are plenty more to trawl through.

P.S. I know that the various {{wikisource}} templates exist, but these typically end up buried at the very bottom in the External Links section—hardly noticeable even when one knows what to look for, and (probably) almost invisible to the majority of users. I think adding these parameters to the infobox would be worthwhile in boosting the visibility of Wikisource in general, as well as helpful to many Wikipedia readers who might not otherwise realize that a digitized text exists.

P.P.S. This was apparently one of the last tasks at Wikipedia:Wikiproject Wikisource before it went defunct in 2014. Shells-shells (talk) 05:30, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

  • Shells-shells: I have gone through some of them, although the lists are not perfect. I have traditionally used {{src}} (especially because of the spotty coverage of the book template), but I’ll focus more on the infobox in the future. Also, there is a problem sometimes with native_wikisource conflicting with other parts of the template: could you look into that? It happened on some of the works for which I found a copy on a non-English Wikisource. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 17:21, 27 February 2022 (UTC)
    @TE(æ)A,ea.: Thank you for so promptly replying and implementing the suggestion :) I think the issue you mention (if you are talking about the native_wikisource link showing up improperly) arises when title_orig is marked with {{lang}}, which somehow causes the link to be improperly generated; for example, see w:Special:Diff/1074309169/1074339152. I have raised the issue in the infobox talk page, so it will hopefully be addressed soon. Shells-shells (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

 Comment WS is bound by the rules of WPs to how we link and the indication is that they wished for ELs. And to note that our editions are not directly alignable with their works on books as per d:WD:Books. Also to note that many of our works do not have WP articles, and some have many. Also look to WS: sister interwikis, references in articles, etc. So it not highly pertinent to just focus on WP infoboxes. For instance look at the links through something like their w:template:cite Q. We more and more wish to have linking automagically appear through interwikis through book => VERSIONS PAGE or book => EDITION data in WD, rather than manually try to manage such works. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:12, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

yeah, we really need a migration plan for bibliographic metadata towards Cite Q. maybe w:Template:Infobox book/wikidata would be part of that, and migrating the custom infobox data towards the wikidata one. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 16:43, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
@Billinghurst: I agree that ideally all these sites should be unified through references to Wikidata, but there are plenty of rocks on the road which will take significant effort and time to clear away. As far as I can tell, the issues of data modelling on WD are still being hashed out for many major topics, which is one short-term problem facing its widespread use; also, WD statements often (if not almost always) lack references to external sources, which seems to be a major sticking point for integrating it into (en)Wikipedia. The only real consensus on WP appears to be that it should not be linked to in article text, and it maybe/kinda/sorta can be used in infoboxes or tables, subject to limitations. There is not currently a great deal of cross-site integration, and I'm not sure how this situation would change significantly unless WP's attitude to WD warms up, or WD's use of external referencing greatly increases. In the meantime, I think that unstructured additions of the abovementioned kind still hold value in improving the encyclopedia.
P.S. According to the MOS, enWP does allow inline links to Wikisource and Wiktionary. Shells-shells (talk) 22:28, 7 March 2022 (UTC)
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