Wikisource talk:Community collaboration

From Wikisource
(Redirected from Wikisource talk:CotW)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The behind the scenes choosing of potential collaborations - please exercise some restraint and demonstrate common sense. If an author really only wrote two books, or has few public domain texts - it might be better for you to focus on the improvement yourself, rather than tying up a handful of members for a week.

Please include reasons why you believe this author deserves special attention, perhaps wiki-linking to important works by the author. Providing a few potential sources of online text grabs wouldn't hurt your chances either.

Works will be listed to the growing list of waiting Collaborations, assuming that one or two other people support the addition of the author, and there are no complaints from others about the notability, texts or otherwise of the author.

You may consider using Category:Authors with no works as a springboard for ideas.

Schedule[edit]

Tentative Schedule
subject to change

Eminent Women Series (2017 Oct-2018 Apr)
The Sikh Religion (2018 May-2019 Jan)
Leaves of Grass (1860) (2019 Jan-2020 Oct)
Afr-Amer. biographies (2020 Nov-??)
George Sand (??)

Next collaboration[edit]

Interest seems to be greatest for The Sikh Religion, so unless there are objections, I'll put that up to start in May 2018. People interested in continuing to work on the Eminent Women series can certainly continue to do so, it just won't be advertised on the Main Page. I think 10 months is long enough for a single Comm Collab like that. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:06, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As the last work put in the template was completed in December, I've put Eminent Women back in for March. Which buys time to make a call on what the next should be. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:19, 5 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Probably flawed idea[edit]

I think most of the people who consider coming here to edit come from wikipedia. Over there, you can generally take something from nonexistent to a high standard of quality on just a few days, and make substantive improvements to a finished product on your own in hours or less. It is rather harder to do the same thing here. Maybe one way we might be able to be seen as more appealing to that somewhat ADD crowd might be to make a future collaboration be a combination of full books and shorter works, like encyclopedia and journal articles and other shorter works, possibly all relating to a single sort of broad topic. It might be useful if we could maybe get the main page to feature more works, maybe something along the lines of a wikipedia portal, which could feature poems or essays or articles as well as full books, possibly with all of them relating to a specific topic. Like maybe a particular writer. Of course, that would involve a lot more work on main page maintenance, and that might be problematic, but it might be possible to preselect some texts in advance, like I did with some of the content of some wikipedia portals, and maybe set up a rotation which could have new items included by having the next higher number. That would be a hell of a lot of work, but it might get more people involved. John Carter (talk) 18:58, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We tried that. It worked well once (see Thoreau), but has failed miserably other times we tried it (see King Edw. VII). Any collaborations depend on people staying active in them, and even over there, most of the collaborations that happened years ago have disappeared, except in very small, highly specialized communities with active membership.
I question your assertion about how most people come here, and about making substantive improvements there, but not here, but that's a separate discussion. I'm also not sure whether you're talking about Featured works, or the Monthly collaboration, or this Community collaboration. I'm also not sure why a change would be needed. Our current collaboration has been very successful. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:17, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals[edit]

Wikipedia promotion[edit]

Wikipedia loves talk tags! So, I have tagged the James Cook talk page, and suggested something similar be added to the Australia Portal (see w:Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Australia#Wikisource_advertising) in the hope to promote Wikisource collaboration on Wikipedia. Any objections to this? John Vandenberg 05:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think this is a great idea! Advertising like this might help us get more sources for our current collaborations as well as maybe lure some Wikipedians to stay around for a while as well.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 05:57, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent idea! Might also be a good idea to just add a note to the talk page pointing at it, in case people scroll past templates without reading them, just saying "It's the COTW, we'd appreciate if you could help us find and add texts" or somesuch. Sherurcij Collaboration of the Week: Author:Captain Cook 06:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's been picked up and placed on the Australia noticeboard. John Vandenberg 06:03, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Frederick Douglass and African-American biographies[edit]

This February (2018) will mark the 200th birthday of the American author, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. We currently have a selection of encyclopedia articles about him, and a single biography (unsourced and oddly formatted). We have a fair selection of Douglass' works, but none of them are backed by a scan.

So, two questions:

(1) Would it be worthwhile as a community to track down the earliest sources as scans and format the content for a CC?
(2) Should we instead celebrate Douglass' 200th birthday by adding biographies of 19th-century African Americans? We are sorely lacking in that content area.

And a follow-up:

(3) If we choose option (2), should we worry about timing this effort to coincide with Douglass' 200th birthday?

--EncycloPetey (talk) 23:30, 2 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Individual biographies to find / consider:
(collected from earlier discussion in the Scriptorium)

  1. w:Charles Ball (transcription project)
  2. William Grimes' autobiography (available for online reading)
  3. James Mars @ Hathi trust
  4. G. W. Offley @ Hathi trust
  5. James L. Smith @ IA
  6. Venture Smith @ Hathi trust


 Support for either of those. What if we do Douglass' works for his 200th birthday and then do the other bios as a separate collaboration later on? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 11:41, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We could split the two ideas certainly. My concern regarding Douglass is that we wouldn't really be adding new content, just raising the level of quality by adding sources. Do you think we'd get sufficient participation for that to make it worthwhile? --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:57, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I propose doing some biography work early, so that he can be the featured text(s) in February and then use that momentum to kick off the biographies collaboration. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:50, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Beeswaxcandle: To clarify, you propose a sequence of Edward VII > Frederick Douglass > Afr-Amer. biographies > "Famous Women", with the switch from Douglass to other biographies happening at the start of February? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:51, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@EncycloPetey: I'm more thinking that we put Douglass into PotM for September (and complete any validations needed in November). We can then put him in FT for February. With respect to the flow of CC, Edward VII > Famous Women > Afr-Amer. biography (from Feb.). If we get enough of the Famous Women series done, we could looking at making the series FT for March to sync with WP. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:39, 3 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We've done a lot of biographies and autobiographies lately, so I'm beginning to feel we might hold off on this option until we've spent time doing other sorts of collaborations first. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:06, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sikhism[edit]

Looking at Portal:Sikhism and Category:Sikhism we have almost nothing on the world's fifth largest religion. Is there community interest in adding texts, and do we have members with enough knowledge and drive to locate suitable texts for inclusion? If we can assemble a better list of works at the Portal, with links to quality scans at IA, then this looks like a good subject area to tackle. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:11, 3 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I could be interested in this, though I know nothing about Sikhism and Sikh texts. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 03:38, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Beleg Tâl: I know little myself, but did find some scans of histories, which are linked at the Portal. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:41, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@EncycloPetey: I've started a small list at User:Beleg Tâl/Sandbox/Sikh. It looks like The Sikh Religion is the most important English work on the subject. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:12, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Given that it is six volumes long, we might select just that one work for the Community Collab. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:18, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:43, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I've had a chance to look through some of this and am very disappointed by the poor quality of the scans. The images in particular would be almost worthless. Unless we can find better scans, I'm not sure it's worth proceeding with The Sikh Religion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:03, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The scans look fine to me, though I only sampled a few pages. The Img page on vol 1 and vol 6 both look sufficient for our purposes. Are there examples of problems, such as worthless images, that would make these scans unusable? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 11:05, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think the scans are sufficient, readable, and the images no better or worse than other projects—unless I have overlooked something. I would be willing to help out some, time permitting. Londonjackbooks (talk) 11:55, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The new scans are much better than the ones proposed before. I think this 6-volume work will go up next month unless someone objects. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Karl Marx[edit]

2018 is the 200th birthday of Author:Karl Marx, whose writings became hugely influential in 20th century philosophy and politics. Yet we are missing many of his well-known works, and those we do have are cut-and-paste from other websites.

Three questions: (a) Is there enough community interest in transcribing his works? (b) If not, would we want to try a short run in the hopes of attracting newcomers to help? (c) Are there enough available scans to support transcription? I had trouble locating scans even through IA. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:16, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support this as a community collab, but I'm not likely to contribute as his works don't interest me. If there are a couple of very short works, I could probably take care of those. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 03:37, 4 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Banned books[edit]

Looking a long time into the future here, but maybe in conjunction with Banned Books Week in September, we might see if we could add a few more banned or challenged works in the PD here and make them a collaboration. Maybe. There are books listing those works which have been banned or challenged somewhere that I could consult if anyone thought the idea a good one. John Carter (talk) 20:42, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's an interesting idea, but we've always lacked a suitable list from which to pick. More often, we've selected just one such work for PotM. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:47, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to get together a list. I forgotten initially about the Vatican's index, but if I can get a listing of everything in it and books challenged elsewhere I think it might well wind up really, really long. John Carter (talk) 22:14, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
One could potentially tackle this by choosing an existing list (preferably one that we could host directly, such as the Vatican index), and then collect works on that index. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:43, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I contacted the National Library of Norway which has a searchable database of 50,000 entries in several languages for their list of PD English works. If anyone wanted to contact the WMF and see if it might have interest in taking this on across languages and publicizing an at least theoretical attempt to do this, that might draw more interest and activity here.John Carter (talk) 16:20, 26 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]


George Sand[edit]

I've noted before (elsewhere) that we have nothing at all by George Sand. We don't have any of her novels, nor a biography. In fact our coverage of French literature in general is very poor, but we have to start somewhere.

We have other proposals above, but most of them need more work to become feasible, and I'd want to hold off on doing yet more biographies, injecting a variety into the Community Collab. We've also had our current collaboration for six months now, so it feels like it's time to push on. People can still work on the Eminent Women Series, but I think we ought to change our front page advertising at this point. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:37, 26 March 2018 (UTC).[reply]

Walt Whitman's 200th birthday is May 2019. It would be nice to feature Leaves of Grass that month, but we have only a cut-and-paste copy. Also, Leaves of Grass went through many editions, and it is unclear which edition we have of the six to nine that were published in Whitman's lifetime. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:34, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Our copy is from Gutenberg, and is compiled from multiple paper editions. Do we have a spare slot in WS:POTM to get a good copy? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 02:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
PotM is already filling up with lots of things. I thought we might consider doing multiple editions as the Comm. Collab., since the editions published in Whitman's own lifetime vary widely: only 12 poems in the first edition but 400 in the last edition of his lifetime. Our "Gutenberg copy" has about 40 poems, so I don't know which edition the Gutenberg actually comes from, and it may be a Frankenstein edition pulled from multiple sources. In any case, the fact that there are such widely differing editions, and thus poems appearing in multiple editions, will necessitate the creation and editing of many versions pages for the individual poems. That's not something I'd put into a regular PotM as it can be very confusing to new editors. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:22, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
 Support Wow, that's a lot of variance, I can see why a collab would be a good idea. I also just found that our copy differs significantly from the Gutenberg text named in the textinfo template, so your guess is as good as mine. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 02:32, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment One of my many current projects is Index:Leaves of Grass (1882).djvu, the 1882 edition. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:37, 14 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think we'll go with the 1860 edition then, which is the oldest edition with a scan in IA. @Beeswaxcandle:, once this is up and running, your assistance and occasional oversight would be welcome. And if you think the 1882 edition you're working on can be finished and validated by early April, it would be wonderful to Feature it in May for Whitman's 200th birthday. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:40, 27 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It seems odd to have "Proofread of the Month" on the front page, and "Community Collaboration which is…a proofread!"; perhaps making it Authorpage specific, or maintenance-specific or something? Lemuritus (talk) 00:55, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Community collab is for longer-term projects that could not be completed in a single month. Leaves of Grass is a complicated work with lots of formatting. We've been at it several months and are roughly halfway through. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Recent (?) Collaborations[edit]

Under section Recent Collaborations I just checked the last six links titled "see the improvements!" e.g. Carl Jung. Each one pointed to diffs from 2009. Each of these six subjects had changes more recent in 2018 or 2019. This may be discouraging to the potential contributor, as it makes the project look moribund. Shenme (talk) 19:42, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The improvements that were made in relation to the Community collaboration date from that time. More recent work was not done in conjunction with the Comm. Collab. efforts. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:17, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A neat little text from England that would be a good start for community collab![edit]

[1]

Eltomas2003 (talk) 19:34, 2 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Spooner was a major figure in the development of libertarianism in the United States, and his works are lacking in representation on Wikisource. He wrote a number of shorter works (as listed on his author page), in addition to a few longer works, so efforts to proofread both of those could occur at the same time. (I mainly work on WS:PotM, so I don’t know what would be the most appropriate type of selection, but I felt that this would not be a bad place to start.) TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:57, 9 November 2020 (UTC).[reply]

Hong Kong Commercial Law[edit]

I propose Hong Kong commercial law to be an upcoming community collaboration, including the following texts:

The nomination reasons are listed below:

  1. Of all adopted collaboration projects, none of them are about law. Law-related projects therefore deserve more attention.
  2. Hong Kong is one of a major financial and commercial hub throughout the world (also refer to Nylonkong). As a result, its commercial law is significant enough in a worldwide scale.
  3. All of the ordinances listed exceed 100 pages, while the Companies Ordinance even have a huge page number of 1428 pages (You know something's wrong when the table of contents occupies 79 pages... And in printed version, 3 separate volume). As a result, the indices are barely impossible to be done by a single person, and may require more manpower.

Please advise if more information should be answered.廣九直通車 (talk) 03:32, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]