User talk:Cygnis insignis

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Create a new topic here or restore an old one from the archives above. Cygnis insignis (talk) 16:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Treatise on Human Acts (part 1)

Dear Cygnis,

To answer your questions about the text (since I am the only one working on it): Aquinas described a double hierarchy of the texts in the "Treatise on Human Acts (part 1)" section of the work. So I made headers for both hierarchies.

Also, I am drawing from a source that is already transcribed; it only needs to be wikified. I find this work similar to the hierarchical statutes on Wikisource, and like those, I don't think page scans are necessary. I intended this work with educational aims given priority over concerns about producing an exact archival copy.

I'm interested in anything further you have to say about navigational difficulties, but I'm having difficulty myself in understanding what you think they are.

I used to think that Project Gutenberg didn't like acknowledgements if you didn't follow their license. Has that changed? ResScholar (talk) 09:15, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

One problem is that we can do no more with it than wikify it, the veracity is as good as we get and we cando nothing to improve it.

Transcribed elsewhere is one of the issues. The current practice is scan based transcription: I believe the reasons for this have been outlined and discussed elsewhere, it is the current consensus that to do otherwise is deprecated. The source of the transcript is relevant; I would think that was self-evident.

I'm not especially familiar with the text, but as I said, the plain title and subpage arrangement are currently confusing - it seems another user had other ideas and that needs to be split or merged. There is no link to a parent page, or versions, so navigation is somewhat confounded; you presumably want someone to be able to access what you have done. Cygnis insignis (talk) 09:30, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Cygnis, it's already proofread by Distributed Proofreaders.

I designed this Wikisource version of the Summa as a treatise-based edition. The treatises are meant to be able to stand alone. No treatise-based edition exists elsewhere on the internet. I want to encourage readers to master each treatise as a unit. As for a parent page, that can be added when the work is more finished. Right now no major sections of the work are complete. For now there is a tabular description of the major section that is in the process of being completed on the Aquinas author page.

You didn't answer my question about whether Project Gutenberg wishes to be attributed as a source. Instead you practically accused me of saying the source of the transcript was irrelevant!

Also, you say it needs to be split or merged? In other words going in exactly opposite directions are equally good, as long it is away from the present way? Actually, it seems to me that merging will complicate the table of contents even further, promoting the "confusion" you say you experience, and splitting will remove the ability of the reader to rapidly go to subordinate parts of the treatise and back to the table of contents because of the time taken in page loading. Don't you think this is liable to cause the reader to lose his/her bearings?

The benefits of hosting it on Wikisource is the use of Wikilinks to the authors described in the text, many of which are already found on Wikisource. In good time those authors' texts should be linked to by the references found in the Summa. ResScholar (talk) 10:05, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I would like to add that plain titles are used by other great authors like An Essay concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, or Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume, or A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George Berkeley. ResScholar (talk) 10:10, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

I mean no offence, I assumed you prefer direct comments from what I have gleaned from discussion elsewhere. I'm certainly not accusing you of anything other than being an established contributor.

I know that now, having asked the question, a link to the source has always been a requirement; whether that was followed or not. Were it not a PG text, there would be a question mark over its quality, items of unknown provenance are frequently deleted for many reasons - not only scholarship. The problem remains that some of it is not, I don't suppose you want that laying around to confuse readers; if you want someone else to sort that out then ask. The quality of PG transcript is okay to good, but there is no easy way of verifying or improving that. Do you disagree with current practices at wikisource, a practice now adopted by PG? Did you object to its implementation? This page is not the place to challenge the consensus on what we now consider to be standard practice, but you can reasonably state that you have no wish to conform to that standard and I will understand your resistance. If you need help getting started I am happy to do that.

I strongly suggest you follow the arrangement of whatever edition you are recreating, this is important for users following a reference, or concordance, or whatever, and allows us to link through an actual author's or editors arrangement - it saves everybody a lot of trouble. What their attribution requirements are is irrelevant, so is what you think I'm accusing of you of; I suggest tht is an impolite approach to what are merely observations. A user would want to know where it from if the transcription is not our own, that information is a basic requirement of contributions. The other version is from an online site, whether they adapted PGtext is not clear and it is similarly next to useless as an authoritative text.

That is correct, they are either different version or they aren't. I don't follow why this would make it worse, but this may strongly relate to the point I make about following an actual publication and avoiding creating a meta-text version. The situation is as you found it, the solution is to do it properly and use that to replace the various or incomplete attempts.

I agree, very strongly, linking to and from implicit references is one of the most valuable, yet under-utilised, ways of improving our works. Cygnis insignis (talk) 10:57, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

[EC] Cool, then we're on the same page regarding that. Cygnis insignis (talk) 10:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I think I understand you to say that by "split or merged" you mean restored to the original format.

As for merging, I assure you, the London Burns Oates and Washbourne edition, contained both (Part 1) and (Part 2) for the Treatise on Human Acts and (Part 1) and (Part 2a) and (Part 2b) for the Treatise on Habits as logical divisions in the table of contents, echoing Thomas Aquinas' own descriptions of his divisions within the text. I filled in the infobox for Treatise on Human Acts (part 1) which has a link to the London edition at the Internet Archive so you may look for yourself if you wish. I split the Treatises into parts because they would have been simply too big to load quickly and to navigate well using the scroll bar, especially with computers with smaller memories. Treatise on Human Acts would have been 877 kilobytes, and Treatise on Habits would have been 986 kilobytes. The CCEL version has that problem in presenting the entire work on one page. And I believe those treatise parts have less than seven major divisions; more than seven is difficult for the human memory, I've read somewhere.

You mention parts of the work that are not PG text. The Wikisource Summa Theologica text was in fact begun by me before the Project Gutenberg text was completed, so yes, I used a different, but fairly reliable, source for Treatise on Law and parts of Treatise on Habits (part 1-2a). The name of the transcribing company I don't have available at the moment, but it used the Folio Corp. text presentation software, to present the first American edition.

But I think you are talking about division links and commentary. What I actually did was to add line spacing to Aquinas' own navigational aid descriptions, then sometimes placing them in headers in the places the descriptions mentioned, and linked the descriptions to those headers. Out of roughly 3 megabytes of text, I added my own four or five word descriptive header once, in a single case where Aquinas and the Dominican Fathers failed to supply one. I also added question numbers to the portions of the text Aquinas described. In all these cases I added square brackets around the supplementary descriptions that I added, if they occured inside the text or the table of contents. Otherwise they were clearly marked as navigational links, and not an intergral part of the text. ResScholar (talk) 07:03, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure you know what is going on, I'm not familiar with his work - I tried to read him when I was younger, then decided to leave to later in life. Thanks to you, I won't have to lug it home from the library. I'll try to take breakdown what I see as problems, one piece at a time:

• I go to the page Summa Theologiae (spelling?) and I see an array of subpages, eg. Summa Theologiae/First Part/1.1/Q1. They do not seem to lead to your work. Cygnis insignis (talk) 07:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
  • I didn't have anything to do with the origination of Summa Theologiae. Someone went to the trouble of adding all the names of the treatises in the work to a menu of different parts, but only added one or two articles (an article being a sub-part of a single question). At the time, I had added one-and-a-half or two treatises, so I added redirects to my versions of the treatises hoping that individual would respond to the collaboration, and so his work wouldn't seem so lonely. That was two years ago, so it might be time to adapt his table of contents to the four divided Treatise sections and one whole treatise I originated (All five belong right now in his "Part I of the Second Part section").
    • I am trying to emphasise that that arrangement is interfering with access to you more complete work.
• I'm not questioning the size of any page, just their arrangement.
  • To me it's fairly depressing to have a bunch of red links on a large page that you know has taken five years already, and at the rate they were added will take another ten to remove all the red links. It's more comforting to me right now to picture it as three complete treatises than one three-fourths incomplete Summa.
    • "Many hands ..." another advantage of side-by-side. Allow the scan to be placed against it and I promise to help bring it to completion. I imagine those who sat typing transcripts would be fairly depressed to discover that ocr with 99.7% accuracy was just around the corner.
• Linking IA is not the optimum solution, the standard is to make it available locally. If you had experience with creating, checking and reading a large work, you would appreciate the advantages. An immediate advantage is that anyone can assist you, a little or a lot, to complete a verifiable text. *PG have been found to be imperfect, I have found significant errors. Copying transcripts from elsewhere, when it is possible to get a scan, is now deprecated at this site - for very good reasons.
  • I'm interested in producing a text as readable as possible for educational use. 1915 or 1274 standards won't always assist that goal. For instance, like Euclid's repetition of the purpose of each demonstration (his Q.E.D.s). Aquinas offers an attention summoning device before each article (We now proceed to the first article, We now proceed to the second article.) In the age of the electronic printing press, large type seems to do the job Aquinas seemed to intend by his introductions. And likewise many texts of Euclid don't contain his repetition of the purpose. Also, the introductory "apparent truth" ("It seems that etc.") is not separated from the first objection. Does the original Latin manuscript have it the same way? Regardless, it doesn't seem to me the best way, and later editions of the Summa allow the separation of the "apparent truth" from the first objection. Another standard is the gratuitous use of italics for quotations in the 1915 era version. I would like to see italics used in bible verse quotations, but not in every quotation. To me, the PG version with no italics in quotations is the lesser of the two evils of too many and not enough. These are "arrangement" questions too, in case that's what you meant, but I think the style should serve the comprehension of the reader, and should be allowed to vary when it doesn't somehow contradict the message of the writer.
  • I don't distrust Distributed Proofreaders as much as you do. But if doing transcriptions becomes necessary and is compatible with the kinds of adjustments I mentioned, I'd be willing to do it that way. On the other hand, I have no wish to "embalm" a particular edition of a work just to preserve it for its own sake, but would rather adapt the text according to what modern technological applications afford.
    • I appreciate and read many PG texts, I know the quality because I have corrected numerous errors or, more to the point, made a faithful type transcript from whatever the final editor decided to produce. Their current practice is the same as ours, verifiable transcriptions.
• You always have the option to say, "I can't be bothered that", but you should be aware that transcription that is scan based would automatically replace one that is not. Cygnis insignis (talk) 07:29, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
  • I hope you mean "as a preferred version" or "by correcting the other version". That's fine, but a smart admin here named BirgitteSB once told Eclecticology, in roughly these words, "the great thing about Wikisource is that if you disagree about the presentation of a particular edition of a work, you're free to go and produce that edition your own way yourself." ResScholar (talk) 10:14, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
    • The notion that we can produce a new edition is fallacious, and it is not within the scope of a library to do that. If some pseudonymous user wants to produce an 'edition' for some sort of pedagogical purpose, and an actual publication is lacking, it should reviewed and published at wikibooks. This is especially true if it incorporates later scholarship. I could, no doubt, produce a comment from some previously active user to support my position, if not one of the many reactionary and inconsistent comments of that particular user, though I miss seeing both of them active in discussion and contributions. Despite past practices, most of which are unacceptable, producing a meta-text is a bad idea. This is one of the valid criticisms of the site, and one we and PG have moved away from. There is a greater number of people who reckon they know better than those who are legitimately published, opening the door to that has brought the site into disrepute. Do we want every armchair theologian producing a text based on what they reckon the author was saying. The quality of any translation is a matter for the other place, we should only show what was given. Consider this analogy, and the value of attributable scholarship: people used to put what they reckon into wikipedia articles, could I now argue there that I don't need to cite my sources on that basis? Do what you like is the rule, but why avoid the consensus on the current standard. I would not bother attempting to merge a PG text, especially if changed here, to an authentic and clean text. Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:19, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
      • If this is true, then I feel that Wikisource has drifted. The distinguishing mark of Wiki software is its intelligent use of Wikilinks to other sources, or other parts of the work. That in itself is a pedagogical aim, literally leading the reader to places where they can learn more as the ancient Greek pedagogue led children to school. I have not been producing a text according to theological presuppositions, nor would I encourage it in others. I have also not been producing a text according to later scholarship, although I think it helpful to point out that scholarly opinions may differ within a range when relating to semantically indifferent stylistic concerns. I have been producing a text to exploit wikilinks in the greatest way possible for the text, and that purpose is not served, for example, when the reader is dissolving his/her attention searching for the point of the particular article (when it's not separated from the first objection) and lacking an anchor for his/her eye's line of sight to attach to, having arrived from a reference in a different textual environment. Even with using italics in non-bible quotations there is kind of cluttering that isn't present with the slight semantic clues provided by bible references when a reader simultaneously considers that Aquinas regarded the bible as having elevated authority. Not that I have insisted on this standard as can be plainly seen from the present text. Which leaves the introductions "we now proceed to the first article we now proceed to the second article". I can only say, again, this is semantically indifferent with varying opinions, mine being that it is a redundancy that obstructs focus on the text when wikilinks are frequently used.
      • This question may be moot. Project Gutenberg uses the first American Benzinger Brothers edition, while the one at Internet Archive uses a Burns, Oates and Washbourne edition. But even if it weren't nobody would have to merge this hypothetical clean text with my text; they could match it with the Project Gutenberg text using a bot, and if there were any differences, I could make changes here, since I used it. And this is also assuming a validated text HERE is a clean text. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we make mistakes too, and comparing this text with a free, independent transcript seems like a wise move. ResScholar (talk) 10:38, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
        • I'm afraid I could not explained myself very well, because I strongly agree that explicit, unambiguous references in the text should be linked, even redlinked. I disagree that is would ever be a pedagogical exercise, the author gives a proper citation to another chapter or work, the editor makes a ToC, the indexer to a mentions of a subject in the work - I just make those prexisting 'links' hot. This always existed conceptually, wiki-software just makes that more convenient and the open site increases that potential. My position is exemplified by my work on 'deep linking' texts, and not just footnotes or the list of references, where an author quotes another I link to an anchor in the second work and the reader can see the actual context. All we are doing is providing a link when the reader would have had to stand and go to another part of a physical library. If wikisource is drifting, it is away from things the psuedo-scholarship of linking a reader from a word or phrase to an unreliable, unstable document like wikipedia or wiktionary. Linking from those sites to wikisource is, on the other hand, very appropriate. I think they assume that the internal links of those documents are just as valuable outside of them, but unless a faithful and verifiable (scan based) document is made available here then the sources of articles, quotes, and dictionary entries are pointless. Take a simple example, there was a slight squabble at the article "In Flanders Fields", when I arrived at it, on whether the last word of the first line was "blow" or "grow". Someone could have has grabbed whatever PG said, another could provide an authorised version off their bookshelf and typed that in - it would be never ending because they are both right. The earlier solution was to create a meta-text, a new edition, that incorporated both solutions; scans allowed me to objectively provide the actual editions here and cite the actual and a source there. The sceptics are satisfied and the trolls deprived of contentious and petty edit-war.
        • It is moot, they are different editions and a proper citation requires that distinction. The point probably doesn't apply here, for reasons you have explained, but the final editors of that distributed proofreading were producing new editions and ignoring things like page numbers. I once assumed that PG texts were accurate, I now know that is not the case. The first PG text I converted to scans was missing about one third of its commas, significant formatting, page numbering and whole bunch of stuff that someone didn't think worth including. I include everything the publisher thought necessary, I can't be deciding to override that or on what the purpose of the text will be. PG's role was to make enormous amount of text as accessible as possible, and they accomplished this reasonably well. They produced readable texts, but the authenticity was an unknown until it is compared. They made some major stuffups. The last one I did had me had gagging at what was done to an author's tales, robbing the reader of a punchline in one example and removing the key to a code in another. I reckon the proofreaders would have been aware of the significance, the compiler [editor] of their work could not have read them properly. The sad truth is you should not rely on their texts to be authentic, I used text editors to do comparisons and damage has been done. Given the accuracy of ocr, and the difficulty of detecting human error, automatically moving those texts to side-by-side is not a good idea, it is much quicker to use the text layer.
          • I make mistakes all the time, but I also provide the means for others to easily improve or correct the text. Others can also judge whether they are just that, if someone changes a text how do we decide whose right without verification from a physical library or flipping through a scan at another site.. The text at PG may be that edition, with or without editorial input, and that will almost certainly become available as scan. The scan at IA, unless its an elaborate forgery, is a photofacsimile that we can use for a type-facsimile, - it is that edition. If you are not sold on how much local scans have improved the site already, then I suppose you have not tried. I don't know what I can do other than swamp you with examples of where this had improved the catalogue, provided an easily verifiable text, and allowed RC monitors to protect documents they nothing about. My favourite "wise admin" here made the point a while back that his earlier contributions, valuable as they were at the time, now looked like crud compared to these later developments. Cygnis insignis (talk) 16:59, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

• I took a minute to search for the equivalent of Gutenbergs's text, this one is a reprint of the Benzinger edition. They have many versions, not as easily found as we try to make them, but if you fiddle with search terms and add "site:archive.org" after them, you can use google to search the site. Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:07, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Talk:St_Kitts_and_Nevis_Declaration

Please see and comment! thanks! --V0nNemizez (talk) 19:26, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison

Thank you. Daytrivia (talk) 02:06, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Just curious about how to get the footnote to show here [1] it shows up here [2] Thanks again. Daytrivia (talk) 02:16, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Grimm's Correction

Hi Cygnis

I am totally new to this, if I am managing to correct something unusually, it's more by luck than judgement.

When I proofread I am using the following path to correct the text http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Grimm%27s_Household_Tales,_vol.1.djvu. Can you let me know if I am doing things incorrectly? I can't seem to be able to find a comprehensive manual on how to proofread, I keep reading bits here and there on the wikisource site, I am learning things as I go along, so appreciate any help. Battlecatz (talk) 11:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Ligature templates

Hi Cygnis—I notice on Page:Tanglewood tales (1921).djvu/18 that in several cases you use the actual ligature character (Æ) and in others the template ligature ({{oe}}). It seems to me that we should be consistent, so that if the template is changed, either none or all of the work is affected. Do you have a preference? —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 21:19, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, it depends whether my paw is on the keyboard or the mouse. I thought it was a convenience thing, but if there is a reason to be consistent I'll try to do that. The change would be how it displays in main, or the coding for the character? Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I remember I've been avoiding thinking about it. How do browsers handle æ and Æ preferences, does the user have the option at their end? Is it likely that cannot be rendered in some circumstance, is there a demand for ae AE to replace these sort of ligatures? I suppose I should use the template until I know otherwise. Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:43, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of browser preferences being able to handle this. I think the goal is that someday that mediawiki will be able to handle user preferences, in which case we'd want to use templates. The other thing is that if someday we decide we should handle ligatures like we handle ſ vs. s (i.e., with Template:Long s), then inconsistency would be a mess (until a bot cleaned it up). Personally I'm used to the actual ligatures, but perhaps change is good in this case... —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 21:50, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, to make things simple for myself, I've decided that referring to those characters as ligatures is POV and I'm not in a position to judge :-) I would tend to lump this with the fashion for anglicising ü as ue, rather than how s was printed - I suspect that the æ and œ are likely to be rendered and accepted by most. Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:22, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Spangineer, you can give up waiting for Mediawiki to be about to handle user preferences on this; it is impossible, because there is no way for Mediawiki to know to expand "Æ" to "AE" in "ÆSTIVATION", and to "Ae" in "Æstivation". Hesperian 23:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Wouldn't using {{Ae}} and {{AE}} work? Of course, we'd have to figure out how to differentiate {{ae}} from {{Ae}}. In any case, it should be a matter of setting up templates for one-to-one replacements, even if that means more than two-letter templates. In my opinion, not worth the effort, but the user who built Template:Ligature Latin ae lowercase and all the others seems to think that this is a viable direction to go ("... to support functionality for automatically turning on and off the display of ligatures.")

If the purpose of these is just convenience, then we need to update the template descriptions and should probably have a bot periodically subst all uses of the templates. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 00:03, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

{{Ae}} and {{ae}} are inevitably the same template, because of title normalisation. Personally I think they are just for convenience, and it would be good for a bot to substitute them. But others might see them as hedging our bets: putting off indefinitely the vexatious question of whether we want to preserve or expand our ligatures. (but, as I say, expanding doesn't work anyhow). Hesperian 01:22, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Portals

Sorry to be a nuisance! I'm looking at your edit summary and I want to make sure I understand what you're saying:

sorry, I'm currently opposed to linking *from* documents to Portals, not an text ref, linking *to* seems to have merit with these tales, but wikipedia is really the place for subjects and should at least back a portal

I think you're saying three things (let me know if I'm missing something here):

1. You don't like putting links to portals on ws works
2. You prefer putting links to Wikipedia on ws works
3. Portals should have a link to an appropriate article on Wikipedia

Re (1), is your opinion dependent at all on how well developed the portal is? What if Theseus were an author—would you be ok with a link to the Author namespace in that case? For (2), why not use w:Theseus in this case? And with (3) I agree; Portal:Theseus has a link to wp in the header. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 22:07, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry for attempting to stuff my opinion on these concepts into an edit summary.

1. Maybe in the notes, of the header, the site created content.
2. If there is a one-to-one relationship to the text, a link back to wikipedia is desirable, along with any other sisters (again, in the notes). Exception: If there are several versions, which has one wikipedia article on the text, then the sisters should be at the versions page.
3. I guess, I was mildly enthusiastic about the BM portal, more so about creating texts that turned up there.

The approach you are taking seems to be a subject index, that is a long established though somewhat contentious approach for libraries. This is a lot of work and maybe the move to the new namespace will invigorate that. I do see some big problems that could emerge, especially as the other interpretations seem more wayward, and probably redundant.

Libraries needed subject indexes, so it was thought, but they didn't have a wikipedia right next door. That is our advantage and could also be this idea's pitfall. I don't think it too pessimistic to point out that both are open environs, people adding [subjective] information to the other place are expected to provides sources and are subject to peer review by a large community of people focused on just that. The focus here can perfectly complement that part of wikimedia by not interfering, commenting, subjectively arranging, and revising those sources. The big sister is also where users will seek information on a subject.

The question here, I think, is

• what can a Portal provide that cannot be done at wikipedia?
• How do we avoid gathering content that is better placed there, or fugitive content finding a place here?

So, what is the answer to improving access to content here. I reckon it is improving that place, and maybe wikibooks, and giving the user better search options here. In other words, the way most people use libraries,

• they already know the title,
• they are referred from one text to another,
• they are browsing
• they ask for help

All this can be enhanced by a digital library by a page of search results, a combination of terms that is defined by the user, not by creating a static page on a subject. This is how people use the net, and I already see the site produce results for refined searches on goggle. The reader asks a question, they go to wikipedia, the reader seeks a text and they look in the mainspace here; they would not usually be told by a librarian what to read, rather how to find things in the catalogue. This is quite proper, its not their role.

A simple example of my conception of the issue: a proposal was put forward that the author category be completely upmerged(!), and that a search refined by initials letters replace the existing structures. The present structure requires a lot of maintenance, and duplication at the indices (which require arbitrary decisions about bolding). The whole business is a time-sink, and actually makes finding an author more difficult. Someone got blocked for attempting to maintain it, unfortunately that got more interest than the elegant and no-effort solution that someone suggested. Even with the shaky search function we have, this is still a better way to find works on the site than pages and cats. Your portals would not make me blink twice, they are unobjectionable, other stuff that turns up in notes and wikisource:pages has made me very wary. A good answer, but it becomes an answer to the wrong questions. Providing the potential to repurpose an original document with 'links' the author didn't literally make is not something we should even consider.

• Your quite clear proposal has already been diluted by vague and wild interpretations of what this might for, and no one can rightly tell them otherwise. If someone does something foolish, we can't ask for a reliable resource because that is what we try to be. Moreover, a link to a source from wikipedia would be editorially reinforced by a link back - a circular reference. If the link is removed at the other end, the incorrect connection is retained here - this is worse. If we have a source that establishes a connection between texts, we don't need to create a new document. If wikipedia cites a document, the document should not have an internal link back to wikipedia or any other POV. We have published POV, there is a big difference. People arrive from wikipedia and get the idea is the same sort of thing, a sort of appendix without the constraints; they view what exists as a grey and barren landscape that is a virgin territory for subjective linking. This is, for numerous reason, pointless and dangerous. Our meta pages have always attempted to make up for short-comings here or there, the primary focus here should be to get more published texts, lots and lots more. Cygnis insignis (talk) 00:05, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I typed a long response but I'm getting bogged down (and you keep changing your post! :-p). The short version of my response is that I agree that if we had multi-criteria search (in which one of the options was LOC or dewey numbers), portal pages would be much less useful and I for one wouldn't spend my time on them. I also agree that POV can creep in on portals and in linking within the text of our works. I still think, however, that there is value in portal pages (at least until we have better search), since they make it possible for readers to access works that they would not be exposed to through Wikipedia (since Wikipedia biases its sources for post-1923 works). And I don't like the idea of our readers being pushed out of our library every time they want background on a subject, especially when that background is available in public domain sources (with page images!)

That said, I don't think I understand your opinions on what specifically should be linked and what shouldn't. You mention our links being dependent on whether WP links are in place, but I'm not sure why that needs to be the case. So do you mind if we work with examples? Here's a list of potential link combinations:

1. Link WP articles to works (i.e., w:Federalist Papers --> The Federalist Papers)
2. Link WP articles to authors (i.e., w:William Shakespeare --> Author:William Shakespeare)
3. Link WP articles to non-author people (i.e., w:Theseus --> Portal:Theseus)
4. Link WP articles to subjects (i.e., w:American Civil War --> Portal:American Civil War)
   1. For 1-4, this would most often be done in the "External links" section of article.
5. Link WP articles to references (i.e., w:Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions --> Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions)
   1. This is done in the references or notes sections of articles.
6. Do the exact reverse of cases 1-4 above in the notes section of our works (i.e. The Federalist Papers --> w:Federalist Papers)
7. Put a link to relevant WP article(s) in the notes section of our works, regardless of whether or not they are referenced in the WP article (Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions --> w:Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions)
8. Put a link to relevant portal(s) in the notes section of our works, regardless of whether or not they are listed on the portal (Contemporary Opinion of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions --> Portal:Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions)
9. Put links in our works to specifically mentioned other works (Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 --> United States Statutes at Large/Volume 1/5th Congress/2nd Session/Chapter 74)
10. Put links in our works to indirectly mentioned other works (i.e., "Patrick Henry said '___' in a speech" and linking "speech" to the speech in which Henry said the quoted words)
11. Put links in our works to relevant Wikipedia articles (The Federalist Papers/No. 18 --> w:Amphictyonic League)
12. Put links in our works to relevant Author pages (The Federalist Papers/No. 18 --> Author:Mestrius Plutarchus)
13. Put links in our works to relevant Portal pages (Page:Works of John C. Calhoun, v1.djvu/367 --> Portal:States' rights)

Feel free to add examples if I'm missing some.

In my opinion, 1-9 are not controversial: the notes section is the place for metacontent, and it's helpful for readers. Personally, I think 10-13 are useful, but agree that there is the opportunity for POV abuse (especially with 11 and 13). Are we on the same page (at least for 1-9)? —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 02:06, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Very sorry for the conflicted edits, I've been thinking about this for years and started drafting an essay on my position. I'll take some time to consider your response, because I place a high value [on] your opinion in most matters. Cygnis insignis (talk) 02:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC) [clarify, strike inaccurate] 06:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks: I respect your opinion too, and hope that in the end we will understand each other's views better, and each find methods that the other doesn't find too terribly egregious. =) —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 02:20, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

[Interim reply] It's subtle points that I bury in my cant, but I have sought approaches that greatly simplify matters for contributors, and improve the possibilities between the sister sites. This may seem like I'm largely stating the obvious, but I hope to a simple formulation.

1. No prob.
2. bio to our author index, fine
3. mythical, subjective
4. subjective, disputable, limited to what we have, so arbitrary or unevenly selective (to somebody). BM portal currently gives undue weight to Garnett
5. Probably, but I have seen that constrained there. If verifiable, in the notes: I've deep-linked quotes and so on.
6. 1 & 2 are unobjectionable, 3 and 4 if they exist.
7. An editorial decision means no.
8. Same thing, with advantage of local, but disadvantages above.
9. Absolutely. The most under-valued and unrealised potential of this site, over any other I am aware of! A thing that made me a devotee, I do more linking here than I did at the other place. Hooray for internal links, and for the author's references to other authors. Nothing subjective, no editorial decision, no intervention or interpretation. This is okay.
10. If it is unquestionably a reference to a work, or an author's works, it's fine with me.
11. in the text no, barrels of monkeys, pandora's box, cans o' wyrms
12. Usually, I see that as a cross-namespace link, but works by author is well within scope.
13. You linked conscription from a quote of an unnamed author in Goldman's essay on pacifism (or something) a while back. The portals were something I could largely ignore until that point, that was a game changer. The Wikisource:ns connection from Mermaids to Swift was harmless, I kinda regretted removing it (twice); if the link had been from Swift's text in mainspace I would be more concerned.

• The POV abuse is just an aspect of what can be considered as a conceptual problem, or a matter of 'scope', in essence anything 'subjective' is a POV; I use these terms to distinguish the treatment of an object, not as depreciation. An encyclopaedia [encyclopædia:] like wikipedia is a document that contains page/article titles referring to 'works' like:
• w:Federalist Papers. This article's subject is a work, and there should be a wikimedia link to and from the document here. Facts regarding the document are subjectively given there, an edition is represented here . Simple, however
• w:The Raven (poem), an FA page at the other place and one page here, ... it's one thing. Like many pages here it was fixed to an undefined source, or struggled to be a meta-text arrangement of whatever people felt like adding. Presenting the poem in the article is questionable and longer texts would certainly be beyond their scope. One of the reasons the sisters sprang up, and worth considering when regarding past and future developments. Poe's Raven has one article there, with many related facts and links to related subjects. It has one version page here now, with objective links to many things with that title. It's not one thing, a fact that has widespread implications. Our single version of many texts are novelties, or incomplete, or unverifiable. This is easily fixable, but not when I have to push the editorial, subjective, and unsourced works aside ...
• w:American Civil War. An article on a subject, quite a complex one, that would have lots of incoming links here. What does the unpublished and uncitable Portal:American Civil War provide to a reader that is beyond the highly flexible and peer-reviewed scope of the wikipedia community to provide. Or will it duplicate things there?
• Wikipedia is, from the POV of a library, just another document. Wikisource is not an appendix to that document, despite the intimate elationship, it is a library. It is a digital library, able to wikilink explicit references in documents to other documents. A library contains documents, and makes them accessible ... hopefully without discretion. I could point out that it is not conventionally published, though widely-read, unreliable, but improvable, and noisy; with that we can quietly help by providing a large catalogue to link-to.

Put another way, how would you describe the type of subject material in our Portal:ns, without using that word. Is it a bibliography? A reading list? A subject index, with a tiered structure, running out in parallel to wikipedia. I confess I never use Portals, never really the seen the point at en.wikipedia, though I tried to update one for a while. There happens to be a link to one at WS:PD, ponder on whether we should keep that?

—phew! Cygnis insignis (talk) 06:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks—this is helpful. Let me start with your opinions on #s 7 & 8. You don't like links to Wikipedia or Portals in the header notes section of pages. What about quoting Wikipedia, as many of our works do? Or a simple note describing the work (like the one at Alien and Sedition Acts? It seems to me that if you oppose links because of the potential for POV, then you'd oppose any note at all. Why wouldn't it be clear to a reader that the notes section is separate from the work? And how would a work's annotated version (such as what you support here) be accessed?

I've given some thought to the idea of building these pages in Wikipedia as bibliography pages. But I don't think it would work; for just one example, see w:American Civil War bibliography. There it's pretty clear from just the first few sentences that anything we have to offer would be scrapped, because it's not new enough. Without Portal:American Civil War, and incoming links from relevant WS works (even just in the notes sections), no one finds Acton's essay on the subject, or any of the other public domain books we have to offer, without specifically looking for Acton himself or wading through mountains of search results.

Also, in my mind, Portal:American Civil War is citable to precisely the same extent as w:American Civil War—that is, not at all. Wikipedia is not a reliable source; it attempts to summarize and quote reliable sources. Both WS portals and Wikipedia provide a gateway to reliable sources; the difference is that Wikipedia is biased against public domain works (and therefore requires readers to use google books or a brick-and-mortar library), and WS portals are biased toward public domain works.

As for #4, and the general concern that portals won't be NPOV because they reflect only what we have and what people think belongs in them—this is a potential problem, I agree. At some point in the future, if portals become popular, we will need to set some guidelines. I have a couple thoughts: first, if a controversial subject has more works on one side than on the other, someone who cares can add more works to make it balance. And there should always be a neutral description and link to Wikipedia (and other reference sources, such as EB, CE, and NSRW, if available) in each portal. Thus I see the POV problem as relatively small and something that self-corrects, and thus outweighed by the advantage of having an easy to use access point for readers from Wikipedia and from our works. Second, I suppose that even with a "include everything" policy, organization or other aspects of the page might become battlegrounds. I don't really have an answer for that, other than saying that Wikipedia deals with the same issues and it works out for them. Wikipedia has a good system in place for what gets included, but the emphasis of an article, and how many words are spent on each aspect, is a matter of consensus. Same thing would be true here.

Something I just thought of—what's your opinion of using categories like Category:American Civil War or Category:Conscription? Aren't these just as prone to POV?

I'd say that portals can be all the things you mention. They're reading lists, in the sense that they include material that is freely available on Wikisource. They're subject indices, in the sense that they group works that are related to each other. They are bibliographies, in the sense that they provide an access point to someone beginning research of a subject (and that's exactly what someone is doing when they click the "Wikisource has source documents related to:" link on Wikipedia, or a "For more documents on this subject, see [[Portal:___]]" in the notes section of our works). —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:00, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Page:A Treatise on Geology, volume 1.djvu/47

Yes, even after double validation it can remains error, or words which look like weird. I found easier to retrieve the position of the line in the image when keeping the line breaks, you only need to look the cursor position in the page to get approximately where the line is, and read the first words around this position in the image, especially useful for long text like page in double column format. Phe (talk) 10:50, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

If you prefer it, I'll leave it that way if I do anymore. I find it harder to proof than collapsed paragraphs; it creates more screens to scroll through, not to mention the fiddly formatting. Try switching between vertical and horizontal modes for different texts, you might find it is quicker. Or continue with what works for you. Regards, Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:34, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

I undid a couple and revalidated, then remembered that I made a couple of minor fixes. Sorry if I fouled anything, hard to get a clean diff, revert away if it is a problem. Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:58, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

If the removing of line break is already done, no need to undo them, in doubt feel free to revert to your first validated state. Anyway thanks for these validations! Phe (talk) 12:17, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Conan Doyle sources

The sources for all CD short stories I added are clearly identified in notes section of header template. I will upload original scans to wiki-commons once I have time. I am aware of the option to have scans and transcripts side by side but how-to-do-it is written in a very unclear way. If you could hellp - that would be great. Here is one, for example: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Brown_Hand.djvu

I agree, they are almost useless, I doubt anyone could make it more confusing if they tried.

I'll create the index for the work, ask me when you reach a hurdle: Index:The Brown Hand.djvu Cygnis insignis (talk) 10:54, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I found and solved one of those, the text layer was missing and the scan was incomplete. I uploaded and created Index:The Strand magazine - No 101 (May 1899).djvu, you should probably arrange for the deletion of the other file at commons. Cygnis insignis (talk)

Thanks! Will delete the other file!

I think I figured out how to do it! Here it is: Index:Captain of the Polestar.djvu Captain Nemo (talk) 02:42, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Anon talk page

• diff "Please don't mess around with articles.--Longfellow (talk) 20:41, 4 July 2010 (UTC) "
• Your recent comment at an ip's talk indicated a problem, but not what that was. The four contribs were left unchanged, and appear well intentioned: the template invited users to try and fix the page. Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:08, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I was most puzzled by your message. Altering "2" to "100" was obviously wrong. It seemed to me that this IP was making unconstructive edits then immediately reverting them, not a damaging thing to do but not helpful. I note that you did not sign your welcome; was that intentional?--Longfellow (talk) 18:00, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

No, why do you ask? Cygnis insignis (talk) 18:11, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

To quote 'Enry 'Iggins

I've got it. I think that after a lot of farnarkling that I have a better schema for marginal notes that allows for a free right margin Copyright Act, 1956 (United Kingdom)/Part 1. While it still needs a little tweaking, and the documentation, the setup when used with indented page, the value used in the DIV wrapper to create the left margin for the marginal note is the same as use to create the marginal note in the body. Would welcome your comments. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:12, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

I have been meaning to comment on the progress, it was very interesting to watch the solution emerging. I did some line numbering with the same display trick in Page and main, but I had float-center and didn't need to solve this problem. I nearly posted during discussion to say I saw justified use of justification, so I'm glad to hear you got the regular format working. I believe this will often be used side-by-side with other docs, two windows on the screen can make text look weird, worse when justified, but I do this all the time. I have an application for it ... somewhere, I'll show you the result when I'm done.

In short, I'm very impressed - the third time in a month you managed to do that! Cheers mate, Cygnis insignis (talk) 18:03, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Zygoballus electus

Thanks for the feedback concerning The Salticidae (Spiders) of Panama/Zygoballus electus. I think all the points you raised are helpful. I don't have much experience on WikiSource, so I'm probably dong lots of things wrong :P To answer your first question, I'm copying the text directly from the book. I don't have a scanner, and the book is quite old and delicate so I don't have a good way of scanning it at the moment. How to I indicate this method of transcription in the article? Is there a template for that? I suppose I should at least get the title page scanned so that I can prove it was published without a copyright notice (as many scientific works were at the time). I'm planning on transcribing a lot more material from this book and will be creating a parent page some time soon. Kaldari (talk) 17:33, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Ta,

I know it, and most of the time use it:) Where did I miss it? Captain Nemo (talk) 04:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Oops! Those are quite good, btw. I am reading and validating them slowly. Captain Nemo (talk) 05:02, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

A Biographical Sketch of an Infant

Hi, I did. (Mind, Vol. 2, No. 7 (July., 1877), pp. 285-294). I placed it at the top, it was published in the journal Mind in 1877. 23:19, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

I got it through the academic journal search JSTOR. Unless you have a subscription you can't access the actual document, but it was scanned into digital document by Oxford University Press. How do I reference this?

Romanes lectures

I wanted to thank you for going through and validating some of the Romanes lectures I proofread. It's always nice to see some of the small works you add make it to validated status. :)

I noticed you changed the style on some of the actual pages themselves. I know I've been gone for a month and a half, so did I miss a discussion where we are moving towards "indented-page" or is that just personal preference? Either way, I don't care, I just don't want to use "prose" if everyone has decided to use the other.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:31, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

No worries, I enjoyed them both -

My position is there is no consensus to apply a style preference to the text, here or at the sisters; indented page is needed to clear the page-scan links at left. To clarify: If I'm doing poems the class is not needed at all, so I don't add one. Opinions on what the widths, and the inclusion of justification, varies from User to User - and they are all right!! If there is a page full of text a reader can set that how they like, if a reader wants it another way there is any number of controlling that - but not if we impose one preference. Not everyone agrees, some suppose that reader doesn't know how modify their display and we should apply width and justification:; alt least, that is the only reason given than some like it. Readers know I think, reading a lot on a landscape screen requires adjustements. I personally dislike justification on the screen, I want a choice, and narrowing the width means I have to keep 'paging-down' - I keep losing the next line with both. I understood prose was imposed to make nice the display of poetry and fragmentary writing, we have found better ways of doing that now. These are some reasons to avoidit , there is little proffered to support their use; there is some discussion at [[Talk:Mediawiki:Common.css]] - deciding would require a vote, avoiding it makes it simple for everyone to get on with it. It wouldn't fly as a practice at WP, with good reason, and I see no reason to present it differently here.

This is the short version, 'cos I like ya :-) Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:00, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Letters of James Henry Carleton

I'm surprised that you have placed Letters of James Henry Carleton in Category:Texts without a source when the source is plainly set out as "notes = Page 56-57, Navajo Roundup: Selected Correspondence of Kit Carson's expedition Against the Navajo, 1863-1865 by Lawrence C. Kelly, Pruett Publishing Company (1970), hardcover, 192 pages, ISBN 0871080427" Perhaps there is some other way to reference the source? Fred Bauder (talk) 23:32, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

By the way, I will copy the entire letter, and other letters, into the article. I just didn't want to miss happy hour... Fred Bauder (talk) 23:32, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Westmorland

• Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/572
• Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/571

Wikisource talk:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica#Westmorland. The pages are close to completed but they need a second pair of eyes to look over them as there are bound to be a few things I have missed. Also they need the article division templates put around the articles so that they will display properly. -- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 02:16, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

I used this version for my reading as the one on the right of the page is not as clear.-- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Please see User talk:Philip Baird Shearer#second look. I think that is what one does next. -- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:48, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Um

I just discovered that I have unwitting entered into an... edit war?[3] What's going on there? Do you still want these reverted even though I removed the blanks from the transclusion list? Do you want that reverted too? Hesperian 02:48, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I should claim a prize for participation in the greatest edit war over 'nothing' :-) If I recall correctly, I was going to amuse the user with the petty rationale, but the discussion veered off. I deliberately left it proofread as blank because I was waiting for a second opinion on whether Tamerlane_and_other_poems_(1884)#cite_note-0 was significant to his facsimile. I later decided it wasn't. Cygnis insignis (talk) 03:01, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I see. A situation where the collation of blank pages might actually be important enough to preserve! Trust you to notice... and then consider the implications. ;-) Hesperian 03:08, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

Indian Fairy Tales

Started to validate notes and references. There are quite a few wikilinks to add, correct, redirect, etc. So maybe once you have time you could go over validated pages again and doublecheck? Cheers. Captain Nemo (talk) 07:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll continue to do that, my watchlist has been filled your validations and fixes. Linking refs in pages like those is an interesting exercise, I try to tidy up the targets so I don't need to keep fixing deeplinks. The rest of the series is mostly proofread, but not live, you can probably guess what the name of the ref will be, eg. "More English Fairytales/The Black Swan of Trespass".

Your other contribs have been great for building the links, those Grimm tales will have lots of references. I've also been linking to de:wikisource, which has a mind-blowing set of Grimm editions. If you see a better way to do something, let me know in the edit summary or note it here; I would be very interested to hear your comments and ideas. I usually show what I mean by editing a page, so let me know if you don't use your watchlist. Cygnis insignis (talk) 10:49, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Finished! and there are other editors at work on ODD, i see, so it will be done soon. What's next?:)

On Grimms: German links is great idea (though my G. is below rudimentary). Also, would be good if we coordinated on the uniform look of (i)the running header and (ii)tale pages. Let me know what how do you think them should look. Also, what's your thoughts on overall structure of Grimms' Tales? It's quite messy now. How about this: The main page is "Grimms' Household Tales" and all individual tales are at "Grimms' Household Tales/tale's name". Though it was published in two volumes I don't think it's neccesarily good thing to split it here. Shall we discuss it somewhere?Captain Nemo (talk) 01:18, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Nice one. Transcripts of the work are available elsewhere, but I'm pretty confident ours is the best.

Getting the look is matter of preserving significant formatting, I think, put up an example of what you have in mind on the talk. I may have been lazy with some of the page headers, I'll have a look at that. Creating a deeper structure for this work is probably unnecessary, though I think the volume's number and title pages should be available. The structure of this title is complicated by the existence of other translations here. The variations of the title should target a page that leads to what we have, I suppose the talk of that page can be used to consolidate and expand these. Cygnis insignis (talk) 04:06, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Not going for deep structure was my initial thought as weel, but then I noticed that while working on the second volume you've created subpages: [4] and that put me in doubt:) So, how about the following. No deep structure at all. Every tale is just at the page with its title, say "Cinderella". When disambig is necessary, it becomes "Cinderella (Grimm)", when further disambig is needed it becomes "Cinderella (Grimm/Hunt)". That is Tale(Author/Translator). And the original page becomes disambig page? The details of the edition are then available via header and transclusion. That also allows some room for variation in titles with different translators.Captain Nemo (talk) 05:44, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

running header-wise:) here is what i've been doing: {{rh|{{sc|Tale}} 7.]|THE GOOD BARGAIN.|31}} Captain Nemo (talk) 05:49, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy to dispose of the smaller formatting, it does mess with smallcaps. cygnis insignis 10:41, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

I tried adopting that approach, but it creates more problems that it solves. That text is a section, p.56—7, of a work with the title Grimm's Household Tales, vol. 2. 1884 London: George Bell and Sons. Grimm's tale #98 is a title, and like How sweet I roam'd from field to field it is a title given given to 'sections' of many works; it is not the title of the source of those transcripts. The german site has a disambiguating and subjective title for their numerous editions, subpaging provides a more objective system of diambiguation. The convenience of relative linking to an authoritative title is shown by the consequence of moving Indian Fairy Tales, I could move all the subpages with one click! Having to rename and rejig several works, with numerous sections that are claiming their own title (albeit disambiguated) is a nightmare - esp given the various treatments as subject. This also requires reiterating the info on the source throughout the notes of every section of the work. Consider how the title is referred to in that work's notes, the citation is the information centralised at the parent page - almost all of this is given in the text of the original title page. I believe the sustainable practice is to present and arrange the transcripts by the objective circumstances of the source, to 'know' and add nothing more. Cygnis insignis (talk) 07:19, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I'm almost convinced:) A few thing still to agree upon 1) title. IMHO, should be Grimm's Household Tales rather than Household Tales (as it is now) but without volume and tale numbers; thus a tale whould be, for example, Grimm's Household Tales/Riddle. 2) there was smth else, but I dont recall it now:)Captain Nemo (talk) 11:23, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Was it that each volume has notes, these would be separated naming or subpaging the volume number. The options would be:

1. Grimm's Household Tales/Notes
2. Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 1/Notes
3. Grimm's Household Tales/Volume 1/Notes

This doesn't account for ambiguity with other translations. I think we already need the parentheses, Grimm's Household Tales (tr. Hunt) has been proposed as a style.

• Sorry if this isn't helping, I'm trying to discover a SOP for these situations. If you think you have a way of doing it, be bold and nominate pages for merge or deletion. We'll try and model it to see what emerges. cygnis insignis 10:37, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Categories

Hy Cygnis, can you tell me what is wrong with how I categorized an Encyclopedia Britannica page? [5]

Also, since I'm here -- the other day I asked a question at WP:Britannica, do you think I'll ever get an answer there, or is it better to use the Scriptorium (or somewhere else) for stuff like that? Thanks! -Pete (talk) 15:46, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

dropinitial not working

Hi Cygnis insignis, In order to read the first line of the page [6] I had to change the "dropinitial" to "largeinitial" here [7]. I played with it a dab but couldn't figure out why the dropinitial was not working correctly. Wanted to let you know, perhaps you can get it to work properly. Daytrivia (talk) 13:42, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

It works for me, do you see a problem at any other page? eg. this page Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:24, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Nothing else but I see your work but [8] Daytrivia (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

? Would you prefer the large initial ... Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:34, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, at least for now. Thanks. Daytrivia (talk) 14:44, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Done, put it back when you are finished please. The work is an important biographical resource on the poet, interesting if you have read a bit about him. Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:51, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks much. I'll put it back when finished. Daytrivia (talk) 15:35, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

FWIW it functions fine for me in the earlier revisions. — billinghurst sDrewth 17:26, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much Cygnis insignis. I reverted it back to your last. I still cannot read the first line as it seems to be superimposed perhaps it is my browser. Anyway, thanks again. Daytrivia (talk) 19:01, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you using some version of Internet Explorer? Cygnis insignis (talk) 04:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I am at work now and on the Reference Desk. Everything looks outstanding from here. I use IE 8 at home on Win 7. Thanks. Daytrivia (talk) 20:11, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

And now for something completely different:)

Run into an interesting problem! What am I supposed to do if footnote starts on page x and ends on page x+1??? here's example: [9] Would really appreciate any help with this!!!Captain Nemo (talk) 11:28, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I applied the solution, the display [10] involves transcluding the section "text" for the Pages that contain 'overflow'. I had a minor part in developing this solution, so I may be bias, but I've never found a problem with it - it is reasonably stable here. The whole text will spill out from the start of the footnote. I believe that this contains the most complex combination of refs, with trick formatting and footnotes running over 3 pages. Page 3 of your work starts another, I can apply it later if I've failed to explain how it is done. Cygnis insignis (talk) 12:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Muchos gracias! Captain Nemo (talk) 00:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you lurk the mailing list? Thomas has been working on a patch for this. On the first page you simply name the ref:

<ref name="foo">Footnote text before overflow.</ref>

and on subsequent pages you put that name in a 'follow' parameter:

<ref follow="foo">Footnote overflow.</ref>

No need to section out the page text from the overflow; no need to manually style the overflow; no need for any of that includeonly crap. How cool is that! Can't wait for it to be rolled out! Hesperian 00:03, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

Div class of prose rather than float centre

Re this revert: the reason I made the change was to fix the page numbers/links, which fly off to the left hand side of the page (underneath the sidebar) using the float centre template but not with <div class="prose">. I'm far from attached to this solution, but it is a problem that needs to be resolved, so I've undone your revert for now. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:20, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

What is causing it is a mystery, there have been a number of recent changes that may afect this: the page should not need a div class?! The prose class currently throws the Page links away from the edge of the page, indented page is unaffected and produces the same result. cygnis insignis 09:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Page:English Fairy Tales.djvu/125 - what about font size?

Hi,

What about the font sizes on this page Page: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:English_Fairy_Tales.djvu/125? None of the alternatives that I know about seem to do the job! Another editor (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. How do you upload images and put them in the text? What is to be done about images? Another editor (talk) 21:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

:-) use {{x-smaller}} and so on. A tale in More English renders it another way, 'extract'.

I hope you find what you need at Adding images, the online viewer is linked from any image I reproduce: enter the page number near top right. Good fun when you know how, the silhouette image of 3 bears might be a good start. cygnis insignis 22:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I know how to upload an image once I have it. But how do I extract the image from the text? Another editor (talk) 22:10, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Cool, a couple of steps to get to that bit: Go to IA.org's online viewer for a jpeg, eg. p. 96, open it in a image program and convert it as described. I have named the images by page, copy the code [[File:Page 85 illustration in English Fairy Tales.png|frameless|center|alt=]] and plonk that into the page. cygnis insignis 22:19, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

But how do you extract the image from the image plus text? Maybe this is just over my head. Another editor (talk) 22:34, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It 's intuitive, only simple when you have done it before :(

I think you mean, 'how do I get rid of the text?' You make a 'selection'. Click at one corner and create a rectangular frame over the part that is illustration, the command will say something like "crop". Fiddle around and you will get it. Then convert it to greyscale, (grayscale) and 'adjust the white point".

Or just ask me, I'm happy to do it. cygnis insignis 22:49, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Well, for example, on the "English Fairytales" pages, I avoid proofing the ones that have images, since I don't know what to do with them. Another editor (talk) 22:52, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

It's tricky, I mark them problematic so I can find them easily. You could mark as proofread and add the following code: {{use page image}}. You seem to enjoy proofreading, that is the single best way to contribute. Cheers, cygnis insignis 23:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the tip. I do enjoy proofreading. I'm glad its a contribution! Another editor (talk) 23:12, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Me too! Btw, lots of the tales have shortish articles at wikipedia - I've been linking those too. Let me know if you want to start a new book, I'll set it up. cygnis insignis 23:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "staring a new book" means. I see that there is another format that eventually the pages go into. It involves something about trancluding, which I don't fully understand. I see what you are doing by linking, though I didn't know it was to wikipedia. Another editor (talk) 23:26, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

If there is anything else you are interested in, a favourite book or subject, I can get a scan and you can do that too. I like Jacobs and Batten, so I found the scans and brought them here. An example of a link to a sister site, wikipedia, is in the header's notes over at this 'main-space' page English Fairy Tales/The Cauld Lad of Hilton. I will try to get the tales you validate as main pages, where the reader can find them. Cheers, 23:38, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

outer div

I had that discussion the other day as I had problems with sidenotes. I just added a <div class="indented-page"> around the existing div and it worked fine. Yes, it means extra, though it turns out to be easy if you still want the page numbering to occur on the left edge. Note I had left the existing div in place. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:59, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

anchors with parentheses

Hi Cygnis

perhaps this is what you are looking for : Old Deccan Days/Rama and Luxman; or, the Learned Owl#.2856.29

ThomasV (talk) 06:34, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that was solved, thanks. The character didn't display in main for a short time, even when I cleared my cache. This works for me, and was how I implemented it: Old Deccan Days/Rama and Luxman; or, the Learned Owl#(56) cygnis insignis 06:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

what do you think?

What do you think about using <poem>, as it removed the need for using all the <br />s in poetry? (Also, it allows easy formatting of the lines.) Regards, Another editor (talk) 12:52, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I used it, wrestled with it for ages, I discovered how to wrangle it and produce a reasonable result. Then it was improved, the background code changed and broke what i had done on a lot of pages. So I continued on, it happened again, breaking even more pages. Twice bitten! The code is apparently some spooky work-around, the templates and break I use do what they say, and what they are intended for.

I suspect that poem was adopted because it allowed new users to fake the formatting, centring or even right alignment with a series of leading spaces. Allowing users to easily create content was desirable, but users want to do things once, not go back and fix what was an unstable solution. It is better to use a principled, compliant approach that allows others to reproduce or improve what I do.

You noticed that a quote mark was outside of the left edge of the block, I replaced that with another solution; documentation and code for that becomes readily available, and probably portable. I doubt that poem tag would do everything I have managed without it, what
does, and how it behaves, is self evident and widely understood. cygnis insignis 13:26, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand how frustrating it is when formatting breaks! Where is all this documented? I am learning by copying what I see done, through trial and error. I see that there is not uniformity in the solutions editors come up with. Is there a place where the commonly accepted use of html and css is set forth? Are there rules? Thanks, Another editor (talk) 13:43, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

When you preview a page, a list of the templates used in the page will appear toward the bottom. A template resides in the 'Template namespace', eg. Template:Float right, and they should have documentation. We have also some guidelines, like WS:Style, and other pages linked from Help:Contents. I adopt practices, then replace them with better ones when I find them; that would be the only rule. Was something breaking for you here, or elsewhere, happy to help if I can. cygnis insignis 14:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I probably will be asking you some questions. Another editor (talk) 19:55, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

No worries, use your watchlist so I can demonstrate a solution. The templates you have seen would be amongst the most frequently used, some templates wrap around a block of text, Template:Center, Template:Smaller block etc., others change parts of the text, {{smaller}}, {{smallcaps}}. Once you have a suite of these, you can proof as fast as you read. I enjoy sharing what I read and enjoyed, showing others how to do the same is also a good thing. Cheers, cygnis insignis 20:19, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

My watchlist is made up overwhelmingly with pages that I have edited. Is there a more helpful way of organizing a watchhlist, so that I can pick up on the things you suggest? Another editor (talk) 01:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

You must have checked the preference to watch what you edit, you should also tick "Hide my edits from the watchlist". The list will only show the changes you didn't make, there are also buttons on thate page to temporarily show and hide whatever. cygnis insignis 16:10, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! What bulked it up is the pages I create are added to the watchlist. Another editor (talk) 14:06, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Great news that you were creating new pages. You probably want that, but usually not to have them appear on your watchlist. The number of pages on these can be very large, but these are quite manageable when you play around. cygnis insignis 05:44, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

How do I download a scanned file?

Hi,

I found a scanned file I would like to put on Wikisource. It is here. How to I manage to do this? Thanks, Another editor (talk) 21:44, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

If the guidance at Help:Adding images and so on is not providing answers, let me know where it needs clarifying and I will try to fix it. Get the djvu from "All Files: HTTP" on that page and upload to commons, as File:In the roar of the sea.djvu or similar, then create a page here: Index:In the roar of the sea.djvu. A form will appear when you do, add what you know then watch what I do. cygnis insignis 05:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I went to "all Files: HTTP" which gave me this. I downloaded the last zip file scandata.zip and but that gave me a bunch of files that looked like xml files and some unreadable files. There was nothing I recognize as a scanned version of the book or than could up load. I downloaded inroarofsea00baririch.djvu, but I don’t have a program that can open it and apparently I would have to buy one, a professional version of something, according to the directions. Should I try to upload it without opening it? What is the next step? Should I try to download another one of those versions of the file to have better luck? Another editor (talk) 14:29, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Also, I have only uploaded images in the past. None of the directions explain how to upload a djvu file (like how to choose the right license, as all the options apply to images and do not refer to a PD for a book). I will need more explanation on how to do choose the right licensing options. Another editor (talk) 14:36, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I think I did it!! See: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Inroarofsea00baririch.djvu Another editor (talk) 15:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I have made a mess of things. I could only access a few of the scanned pages, so I moved the djvu to other names, but that didn't work and now I cannot access the original file, Index:In the roar of the sea.djvu (as I moved it to a dysfunctional name) or any other, at all. I have ruined the whole thing, Another editor (talk) 23:34, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Looks like you figured some things out as you went. No need to open the djvu file, just download from archive.org and upload to commons. When uploading, however, you need to put in the name you want to use (don't just use the file name from internet archive). To change the name now that it's there, you need to move the file on commons (not Wikisource). Once you do that, you will need to move all the pages you created on Wikisource to the new title. For now, I recreated the index page that you had lost after attempting to move the index page, so you can now see the proofed pages at Index:Inroarofsea00baririch.djvu. Feel free to keep working on the file at its current name; if you want to move it you can ask for help if you like, but no worries, all of this is easy to clean up if you make a mistake. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 02:34, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much! I think I will do no more moving for the time being. Perhaps I should not proof any more pages, if they will need to be moved individually after a name change, unless it doesn’t matter what the name of the file is on the Commons. Does it matter? Another editor (talk) 15:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I moved everything to Index:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu, including all the djvu pages. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 18:10, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Headers

Saw your edit to Help:Editing Wikisource. What are your thoughts on these examples:

• Works like That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen and Brazilian and United States Slavery Compared—many short chapters. It seems to me like it's best handled with headers and an auto-TOC.
• All works with references:
  • I assume you would prefer that the "Notes" header be removed from The History of Fiat Money and Currency Inflation in New England from 1620 to 1789?
  • Also, (based on our prior discussion about annotations, etc.) am I correct in assuming that you don't like the references as on A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government/II, the division of which requires headers or something similar?

In general I'm beginning to see the advantages of fewer headers in the main and page namespaces, but these examples keep me from being ready to get rid of them entirely. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 20:57, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

"That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen" is not the title, its the title of the text found at p. 49-118 of Essays on Political Economy. I think the title page and toc of the source should be included, what the publisher provided is able to be linked; I've never found a reason to otherwise. What we 'know' about the text is irrelevant here, we merely present the text and don't presuppose how it will be used or what might be 'useful'. This library is a source, the sisters should and will link to it, reuse it, explain it, decorate it, and repurpose it. When users get to the sites documents they have arrived at a primary source, the delightful thing is they can use it however they like and leave the source as is. The value of a library is that it doesn't change or add to its published works. Moving beyond the scope of a library greatly increases the complexity, new users should be directed to the primary purpose - adding texts to the catalogue. Can you see a problem with my approach with the transcription, arrangement, and linking of my contributions. I try to reduce the unnecessary decision making, the erroneous corrections, the splitting and duplication of vaguely defined acquisitions and 'adding value' by however that is conceived. There are millions of books and most are inherently useful, adding them to the catalogue is the priority; what wikimedia does with them is handled elsewhere, N, RS, V, peer review; why have that lot here too?!? If there a better way to present a book, maintain text integrity, simplify and increase contributions, gain serious and sober interest, and give the site a reputation for text integrity, then I have tried to implement it. I think my later efforts are the way to go, with no trace the contributor, others may look at it and see the potential for "useful" linking and rearrangement, and no doubt disagree on their ideas for that, but I'm confident the reader will get want they want and expect from a library. cygnis insignis 12:25, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Read that three times and you may glean what I see makes things simple, or noisy, complex, and unproductive, here is the short version from the page in question "By the nature of Wikisource, original texts should not be changed, ..." cygnis insignis 12:29, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at what I did to Essays on Political Economy and Essays on Political Economy/That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen. It seems somewhat more difficult to navigate now (since there's no TOC on the subpage), but the simplicity is nice. Is this structure and layout in line with your preference? —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:16, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

I think that would satisfy anybody's preference, the editor noted the pages numbers to the parts of the essay in the toc (which you linked:). The [notable] link you created in the notes is about the text, it is immediately clear that it is wikimedia content. I've linked to anchors at content here from wikipedia, and used left-to-right navigation in the notes for subsections. Another advantage to bundling this type of user created content is that it can be merged, massaged, and improved. DYK, btw, that you can link wikipedia by adding | wikipedia = to the header. If a user has something to add about the text, related discussion or media from a secondary source, the link to wikipedia or commons is there for them to improve. The header, indexing, site architecture and the rest of wikimedia is 'under construction' and subject to fashions and ad hoc arrangements, we make do and cross our fingers. The clean text is everything below the header, and it is much simpler if that part of the page only becomes closer to its source. As far as the content goes, some careful proofreading and it is job done - one can start on working on one of the redlinks the last book created. cygnis insignis 17:17, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Related to this discussion: would you prefer to see Kelo v. New London at United States Reports/545/Kelo v. New London, since that is the work we are using as a source?

Pardon the intrusion - There has been a recent return to the effort to reign in USSC cases and the related Reporters over on its WikiProject pages. Although the namespace & other naming issues have been ongoing, the rule of style currently is to stick to the case party names (Kelo v. New London). Visit the Project discussion page for the specifics. George Orwell III (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

That's fine; the question is meant to be conceptual. I'll get involved in discussion there should I want to advocate any changes. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 22:24, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

What about situations in which the source text does not treat the text the way modern readers do? The most authoritative source for the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 is Elliot, but in his book he puts the resolutions of 1798 and 1799 in one "chapter", with merely a blank line separating them. Should we not make a concession to modern readers and give each set of resolutions its own page?

Thanks for your patience; I'm coming to agree with you more, but I'm still not entirely convinced... —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 21:22, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I was convinced by what could be applied as a practical, appropriate, and scalable solution to our texts. I used to think the header was inflexible, and led to confusion, but I eventually realised I had been looking at things inside-out. I reckon that others will agree when they see how it greatly simplifies matters, not by my trying to convince anybody that this is no different to texts with the meta-title The Raven.

The first example is not p. 469 et seq. of Kelo v. New London, that is a section of a work. The 'authority' of the publication is a moot point, we display and attribute text verbatim, but they are certain to be a more reliable 'author' than "Wikisource:". The work has its own arrangement, I expect that regular users of these documents are familiar with this and would use it in a citation.

• The front matter of that volume should be included, we must assume the publisher included it for good reasons, it would negate the need to replace it with our 'wikified' arrangement.
• The page has a subpage, with targeted links, but doesn't link the title of the source, which has a separate set of subpages for the volumes.
• The subpage arrangement for the original title links to the cases, but the reader needs to go to the work namespaces to find a way back to that. They don't contain the prefatory content the publisher of the source thought to include.
• More new content needed creation, eg. the nav template for the "opinions", because the header has been re-purposed to the new titles and packaging. If we are repackaging the content, because the original is somehow inadequate, then the library in which it was found (Wikisource) becomes part of the citation.

Apparently this required the creation of a cross namespace link to a new Wikisource:page to gather all this, and the rest above, I don't see a requirement for this. Creating new titles, and wrangling new content in headers and templates, solves problems that need not have emerged. Or problems that are already managed by the (single!) article of that name in our encyclopædia ... that place has used the title for a topic or subject, we have legacy issue as wikipedia editors attempt to edit and adapt the architecture of an online encyclopædia to an online library. The latter usually contains the former in its 'reference section', and its 'architecture' is primarily indexed by actual titles and authors of the acquisitions, the 'objects' in their catalogue.

• Wikipedia has one article for a text, wikisource may have one or many publications with a text of that title. cygnis insignis 07:14, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Limiting the number of daily edits

Hi Cygnis, I am replacing the article titles of PSM with a template, and this will generate a lot of daily edits. Please feel free to let me know the daily limit of edits you, or any administrator wishes to deal with, and I will organize my work accordingly, as I also have a lot of images to clean and upload to the commons. There is an average of 77 article titles per volume (*24 volumes). I hope this helps. - Ineuw (talk) 19:38, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

If it is just a mechanical and standard replacement why waste your personal time, add it to Wikisource:Bot requests and have a more beneficial use of time. 02:50, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Another advantage of billinghurst's suggestion is that the contributions can be hidden. cygnis insignis 03:54, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately they are not just standard replacements. I am enclosing the titles in the {{PSMTitle}} template, and fix a lot of minor omissions from my early work which is not up to proofreading standard. In any case, thanks for the advice. - Ineuw (talk) 03:21, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

You seem to have misunderstood a comment I made, I thought you should get a second opinion before making a series of edits. I would ask someone to look at an example before rolling out a change, to save myself the trouble of redoing something hundreds of times, perhaps you don't mind doing that or having it pointed out after it is done.

The images I have seen look great, and commons and wikipedia will be benefiting from these too; I've already used one in a biographical article. This is an enormous set of volumes, if your efforts toward improving them didn't appear on recent changes I would wonder where you were :-) cygnis insignis 03:54, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you want my opinion on how PSMTitle should be used? cygnis insignis 03:58, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments as they are very encouraging. I most definitely need help with the {{PSMTitle}} and please feel free to change which I will gladly follow as good advice. As you can tell by the number of saves - I was struggling with various concepts but am very flexible about how it should really look. - Ineuw (talk) 16:13, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it looks great, although the result will vary under different circumstances. Serif fonts, with fine adjustments to weight and height may conflict with reader's own preference settings. In essence there are two moderately important qualities of the format, those indicating the heading's 'level', it is centred and larger or smaller. The more important priority is the information provided by the text, that is what we generally concentrate on. Readers prefer an error-free, simply formatted, clean text, they don't want an imitation of the scan that is one click away. You could try to convince the community that readers will think this is very important, again, before you go ahead apply that to volumes of unproofread text. You could add the standard templates by using subst: in a template with a similar design to your creation. Geting the code tuned is not really my field. Not getting distracted by matters of low or no value is the best advice I can give, I don't always follow it. cygnis insignis 16:54, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again. Personally, I prefer sans-serif Arial, because serif text is not as clear (yet), and the font related dimensions are different. To be honest, I am less than satisfied with the Times Roman, (but then it could also be my monitor). I created the template to standardize my work while learning the intricacies of HTML/CSS/Wiki. I didn't think anyone would care, since I had no clue if others are interested in the PSM project. Again, I just don't want my continuous re-edits to take away others' time since I learned not to assume that others can devote as much time to their commitments as I am doing now. - Ineuw (talk) 18:25, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Most sans-serif works well on most displays, some are very good for mixed font-sizing, and it is perhaps easier to read with longer texts. I see all sorts of interesting stuff turn up in PSM, I have done a little proof-reading and linking when a related text turns up in searches. The cross referencing to other works might need its own project, that will be huge :-) You have definitely given everything a flying start, others will come and help, but these things take a while to get momentum. cygnis insignis 18:39, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much!

Thank you for fixing Page:In the Roar of the Sea.djvu/159! Another editor (talk) 19:16, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

No problem, pardon me sticking my nose in. Let spangineer know it is resolved :-) cygnis insignis 19:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

A present:)

Index:Grimm's Fairy Tales.djvu -> Edwardes and Taylor translation, I'm also on a lookout for a good version of Taylor translation.

Nice one, the illustrations are not too bad either ... I will need the source to get the jpegs. I think I will create the versions pages and lump everything there, I was also thinking of creating a table or index to link all the direct translations of their work. I have never done anything like it, but I have seen it done at Author pages. We could redirect every permutation of the title (not their other works) to a disambiguation page - on steroids! That would be a nice complement to the elaborate arrangements at the German sister, I'm very impressed by the simple and thorough job done there. cygnis insignis 15:25, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is the source: http://www.archive.org/details/grimmshouseholdt00grim

The plan sounds goood!! I'll try to help.Captain Nemo (talk) 00:44, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, for a reason I sometimes note on the file: everything I have got from "scanner-nicole-deyo" is the highest quality available. I wonder if she knows she has fan :-) cygnis insignis 08:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed the escalation of Jacobs-mania:) I hope to retaliate soon with a version Taylor translation.

On emphasising originals for translated works: here is a very modest solution, have a look at interwikies.

Nearly finished the whole set of books, this one has some versions of tales also found in the Grimm's collection.

I never 'see' the interwikis, the 'interlanguage' links, I have to look for them - I suppose people know they are there. I think it proper to make them more prominent, but that label can do the job if can also point to master versions page. cygnis insignis 12:12, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Here is smth else of interest. Cheers,Captain Nemo (talk) 05:01, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I should have done that instead. Can you go to your browser history and add the source at Commons, adding image only takes a few moments when it is there. cygnis insignis 07:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Done. Captain Nemo (talk) 08:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I knew it was NYPL, I'm President of the scanner-nicole-deyo Appreciation Society. cygnis insignis 08:14, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Cindy's version in Lang _IS_ Welsh translation. Cheers, Captain Nemo (talk) 07:52, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

No, its English. cygnis insignis 07:57, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

:) Captain Nemo (talk) 08:05, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

In his intro to BFB (http://www.archive.org/details/bluefairybook00langiala) Lang says that his Cindy is from "the Old English version of the XVIII century". It seems that that is Welsh source as well. Captain Nemo (talk) 00:51, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Re: S. B-G

I had never heard of this author before but I find certain of his writings unexpectedly intriguing. I don’t have any goal such as gathering all his writings together, but I get pulled into some of them and can’t stop! Another editor (talk) 16:30, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for your interesting edits into pages of Horses and roads. I'm studying the new templates and tricks, and I'm listing them into User:Alex brollo/Templates and tricks to learn; one by one, they will be discussed, and probably most of them robbed, into it.source. ;-)

In the meantime, Horses and roads has already been quoted in specialized web forums, and will be read and studied into lots of countries! It's an unbeliavable book for "horse addicts"! --Alex brollo (talk) 14:15, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought it made a good example, you can find some more at User:Cygnis insignis/contributions. Some of these have internal links, using the headings and page numbers in the 'table of contents' and index. Have a look at Indian Fairy Tales (Jacobs)/Notes and References for anchors and links to the rest of the book, and other pages on wikisource.

That is good news :-) I thought it was quite interesting, I have noticed that pages are quoted elsewhere. They also turn up on google searches very quickly. cygnis insignis 14:45, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

yes, when searching by Google "Pumice foot horse" (then I discovered that "pumice foot" is an old alias for laminitis), I've been astonished to find Index:Horses and roads.djvu as the fourth Google entry.... :-)

Abour anchor templates: I didn't find something similar to it:Template:§. It's mostly interesting, but it needs a row of css code to show all its power. Can I introduce here a slightly modified version of such template into Category:Experimental templates so that any interested fellow can take a look and have a try? Obviuosly, I'll add the css code too, to allow a test adding it into personal vector.css, and I'll test it adding that core into mine own vector.css.

Feel free to tell me if I'm wasting too much your time and patience. ;-) --Alex brollo (talk) 10:07, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

That's so cool, there is a lot of treasure for other sites here: wikipedia and wiktionary could give that definition and point directly to a citation. I think this is an important point, google makes our text immediately available and people can use it elsewhere - with a link here. Books like this are a good choice for this reason, unusual words and phrases and historical insights are preserved, can be found, and then re-used. Wikipedia is missing a lot of facts like your example.

That sounds fine to me, I will have a look at it later. Once you have a working example, put a quick note on the scriptorium. All ideas on templates are useful, but it takes a lot of time before the best way to do it. There is a handful of templates needed to do most things here, and it is easy to 'over-think' when finding new solutions. Someone made the point that a link from Page to mainspace would be handy, but adding a link is not the likely to be efficient. There are hundreds of Pages in a book, someone might need the link. The first user would be adding a template for the second proof-reader, to remove one click. The button "what link here" is available from a click or keystroke, modifying this to redirect to the transclusion is likely to be the solution.

You're fine, I'm interested in what you have to say :-) You will get an opinion that is based on a lot of thought about the project, some of my views are quite firm because some approaches can waste other people's time. If it helps get more books, more quickly, I'm very interested in helping. Post your messages here as often as you like. Cheers, cygnis insignis 11:24, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:§ is running. I added some doc, underlining the need of a little bit of additive css code. Take into consideration that such css (if it runs into Common.css) allows to highlight InvisibleAnchors linked from anywhere of the web; obviuosly, from any other wiki project too. Presently the template is running into it.source, la.source and ru.source (yes, we have a Russian user into it.source, deep in mathematics...). --Alex brollo (talk) 12:03, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

About my experimantal templates

1. I posted a note into Scriptorium about Template:Anchor2 (please rename it if you like!).
2. about Ns0: far from being built as a link from NsPage to Ns0, it's thought to be a tool to collect into one place only (nsPage) ALL the data needed to build Ns0 version or anything other you can imagine from the proofread text. If you think about, you'll note that presently the data about structure and content of a book are splitted into two different places: nsIndex+nsPage, the text; ns0, the structure. This is the deep reaso why it's so difficult to run the Book tool on proofread books. By Ns0 (take into consideration, it comes from layman tries of one user only so far... ) ALL data are put into one place only. You can guess that I've some (primitive! far from professional!) database experience; database-oriented fellows hate splitting of data here and there and hate redundancy too.  ;-) . The link shown by Ns0 is merely a trick to use a little bit of the data contained by the template. To proof that Ns0 data are all what's needed to build Ns0 version consider that:
   1. Ns0 contains the name of final page and the title of a chapter;
   2. a third implicit data is, the number of the page containing it;
   3. a fourth implicit data is, the position of the template into the page and its relationships with the text and any other Ns0 template into the page, and this can be treated by an algorithm to find precisely the need and the position of any needed section tag; when section tags are added, the fourth data is, the relationship between Ns0 and section tags;
   4. by former relationships, an algorithm can get all the params of pages tag (index, from, to, fromsection, tosection) and can "know" the name and address of previous, and next, chapter... t.i. such algorithm can write the Ns0 subpage in an automatic way. Then Ns0 templates can be deleted (they are redundant), and if you like you can move, rename and so on subpages in ns0.... then a reverse algorithm can add Ns0 templates again into nsPage, since simply main namespace data and Ns0 template data are exactly the same in a different format. --Alex brollo (talk) 13:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I strongly agree that any redundancy and splitting of the crucial, real world data is not good. This is not limited to en.ws, scans sometimes have this data ready for the templates at Commons upload, citations at wikipedia etc., and the four namespaces here: 'Main', Author, Index and Page indexing. This is possible, of course, but this is not how templates are used here. The forms and templates here currently allow control of information from elsewhere, but require knowledge of scripting to reduce duplication of author, title, page numbers and so on. Some of this is possible with <pages, it should autofill a header when a subpage is created; billinghurst uses it I think, might ask him about how to use that.

I understand why you want it in the transcript now, and agree that would be a good thing for fragmented pages. However, I don't think dividing works into the smallest possible section is a good thing. This would surely be working against exporting the text, in 'books' or other means. I can explain my position more if you want to hear it, though I see how it solves the 'problem' of how to improve en.ws page statistics ;-)

Thanks for the thoughtful message, I'll let you know if I see some related discussion emerge. cygnis insignis 14:49, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

:-) You'll find it forsure, since all the Ns0 idea comes from a talk I read here, somewhere, I remember that ThomasV was defending the js which creates chapter code, but the problem was the need of "numbered", standard names for chapters. That has been my starting point: I'd like the freedom to use explicit chapter names, as similar to original title as possible,and to avoid that automation is obrained through a "reduction of degrees of freedom". Ns0 supports any complex, multi-level structure for chapter names. I already tested it into some poetry, complex books, where there's an obvious need of many small chapters grouped into collections and multiple "books" into the same book (I was working on it:Indice:Poesie (Carducci).djvu when Ineuw catched me as a spider cathces a fly into his net....). Take a look to the big, even if partial, summary of that Index page: ::I can build/refresh it simply writing:

 print sommario(listaNs0("Indice:Poesie (Carducci).djvu"))

into the beloved Idle interface of my bot, Alebot. As you can imagine, listaNs0() lists data from pages containing Ns0 template, and sommario() builds the list of links coming from that data and from some data of Index page. --Alex brollo (talk) 20:58, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

About Template:Anchor2. One of my questions on the opportunity of "finely split" chapters was a nonsense one, since I found that tect of chapters is unique, and the list of topics under the title is merely something like "a sorted list of contents". But I see an opportunity to put at work Template:§, linking those titles to their target into the text. Let me think a little bit (there are some transclusion related issues....)--Alex brollo (talk) 21:19, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I think what I did at here is right, it is harmless or helpful and a lot less bother than splitting it up further. The context of the poems is important there, so is the title page and original table of contents. cygnis insignis 22:03, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

And this all sounds very promising, cheers for getting involved. cygnis insignis 22:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I need my beloved {{tl:Pt}}!

Thinking and thinking, this is the conclusion: I need my Template:Pt. I'm going to introduce it as "Experimental template". It simply displays into NsPage param 1, while transcludes param 2. It's like a simpler, and much more generalyzed, version of {{Hws}} but doesn't add hyphen. So, I can write a double link for that issue previously mentioned, running both into Page and into Ns0, using our Pt. --Alex brollo (talk) 14:36, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm a little lost, that template solves many different problem (if they are in fact problems). I will take some time to process what you are proposing, but I should assert my position on one aspect of this. Labouring to make the Page:namespace able to navigate elsewhere is inverted. The purpose, and what actually happens, is that the ocr is proofread by two users - the end! The namespace may be visited for verification, or some improvement in the future. The Index and Page namespaces serve the main page, ns0, enhancements, compromises, and namespace dependent templates are useless when the page is done. Two people spend about 120 seconds at each of the hundreds of pages in an Index, any additional keystrokes or distraction from its primary purpose is probably unwarranted. The links should serve the reader, the author's references, and not be modified for something that probably wont be used - or accessed another way. If the scheme involves making more high quality transcript available for readers, it is a good thing. If it requires a User to add functions that other Users already have, reducing two clicks to one with a <0.5% chance they use it, then the question may be wrong. The link path should be through main space, or not in the transcript, it causes distraction and confusion. You might consider {{djvu page link}} with this in mind, it tries to make a link out real world data to arbitrary and inconsequential data: the page number in citations is forced to the numbering of the scan. Once it is done we don't need to know what that was, once an Index is done we have all the information in a neat arrangement. This is used in a table of contents to link the first page of chapter - only. Only we (Users) need to know the offset in numbering, and this is well arranged by the Index; not deferring to the real page number only adds confusion, whatever the merits of allowing the user to access a small number of other ns:Page targets instead of referring to ns:Index - where that same information appears!

If you are avoiding a similar situation, or unnecessarily adding even one click to the proofreading process, your proposals will get my strong backing. cygnis insignis 15:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I vaguely understand your points; I too am going to consider Index and Pages as "THE" central point of books and the core of wikisource, but I do this in a confuse, uncertain way.

Just to let you try what is coming from Pt (here called {{ShowTransclude}}) and {{§}}, take a look to Page:Horses and roads.djvu/26, where I added internal links between the subtitles of Chapter 2 and InvisibleAnchors into the text. The probem was, to build links running both into nsPage and into its transclusion. They run, nor they take you back again into nsPage if you use them from a transcluded link. I discovered (but it has been much more a matter of luck than a matter of "intelligent design"), that they run too into this test page:User:Alex brollo/Viewer test.

As you see,I consider that here I'm spending a pleasant holiday, but I presume that it is an holiday too for my it.source friends: sometimes they got tired trying to follow me.... :-P --Alex brollo (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you understand my point, probably because we think about the same sorts of things. Examples do make things easier to talk about, and what you have to say is very interesting. It is enough that you get the ideas out there, and good that we don't rush to implement them all. My primary focus is to make things easier or people to contribute some of the millions of books in the world, new templates need to be pretty amazing to compensate for the complexity they add. What you discussing is not new, just tricky, I expect 'background solutions' in the software will resolve many problems we struggle to overcome with elaborate templates and thousands of edits. Keep me updated on what you have, and I will take some time to consider it soon. Nice chatting with you :-) cygnis insignis 17:47, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it is a pleasure for me too. My work on is going to an end in some days; is has been so surprising that a book printed in has so a modern content. Is is really a pity that no one of us barefooters could met ; some of us was so foolish to presume that no book about exist before late 1990. ;-)

Data to build the former example message (there's a trick, you'll find it as soon as you edit it...) are well hidden into the invisible section "Another data container" of User:Alex brollo/Data... something like true variables, but well hidden into their container. And no js is needed to use them. Just another joke, as Viewer test. As I told you,I'm spending some holidays here, and they are fastly going to their end.... --Alex brollo (talk) 23:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Index quiz solved

Going on to consider Horses and roads an experimental work, I have a good template to link analytical links and anchors. The same template will give back any metadata of the work calling it individually "by name". --Alex brollo (talk) 22:23, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll have a good look a bit later, thanks for letting me know. cygnis insignis 22:42, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

There's only one test link running so far: link to page 1 under "Springs", at Page:Horses and roads.djvu/245, and into its transclusion (done just to test it it runs) into Horses and roads/Index. I've to add many data into {{HAR/Data}}, I only added one. --Alex brollo (talk) 23:05, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Yep, I saw that one. cygnis insignis 23:08, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for feedback

Hi,

If you see me doing something wrong (or less than satisfactory) please feel free to let me know. I am still operating in a trial and error mode for many things. So feedback is appreciated! Another editor (talk) 19:06, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I think you are doing good stuff, the validation is especially appreciated. If you look at my file descriptions, I give the link to the website. You can get a jpeg image there, djvu is not a good source for illustrations. See Help:Adding images, which i hope does what it says. My conversions are adequate, someone showed me up the other day with a sharper image than my own :-) this is why providing a link is good, so others can improve on what we do. Watch what you edit, I try to explain what I'm doing in the summary. cygnis insignis 19:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

You can follow what I do at Commons too, if you need to, I use a unique login across the sisters. I'm usually here though, as you have probably noticed :-) cygnis insignis 19:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I read the Help:Adding images but it is not too helpful. I’m not good at understanding directions, not understanding the jargon etc.:) I can’t find the other sources for images. The online versions of books have the same quality of images as the djvu versions, in my (limited) experience. Where do you give the link to the web site? (I followed one link on an image you uploaded to Commons - trying to figure out how you did it - and the link was an error message and did not lead to the image. So I was confused. Could you be more specific on how to get images other than the djve? Another editor (talk) 19:42, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/481 - nicely done! Another editor (talk) 20:01, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to improve it, or encourage others to fix it by making a mess of it. The online version of the jpegs is very definitely better, djvu is for text.

1. Go to this link: devonshirecharac00bariuoft
2. You will see a link at left, at the top of a list of links, it says "Read Online" and is linked here.
3. Click the single page icon, not the two page view.
4. Click zoom to "100%".
5. Right click and save it.

That is as plain as I can make it, I'm not good at following or giving instructions it seems. cygnis insignis 20:05, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that is very helpful. I hadn’t figured all of that out about the online versions. One last question: how to you get it to go to the right page number for an image buried in the text? Another editor (talk) 20:22, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Two ways: find the small box next to "Page:" then type the real page number. If the page is not numbered, use the djvu numbering Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/481 … 481 (- 1) gets typed as n480. cygnis insignis 20:45, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I’ve tried that. I must be punching the wrong button after I type in the page number. It just ignores my number and replaces it with the next page number. Can you give exact step by step information on how to do that? (Sorry to be so dumb; the page number thing has frustrated me for a long time.) Sorry! Another editor (talk) 20:51, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

It will do things like that for a couple reasons. 1. type and hit enter, or 2. use the scroll. Your browser may cause problems, check it is updated, using firefox is the solution to most problems. cygnis insignis 21:01, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I use firefox and it just update to the newest accepted version. Maybe doing images just isn’t my thing. Another editor (talk) 21:09, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

makeref

G'day,

Feeling proud enough of my new makeref() function to share the love: When I'm proofing and come across a footnote citation, I don't like to have to scroll down to the bottom of both image and text, find and proof the footnote text, and move it up into the citation position, before moving on with proofing. Instead I just dump a <ref></ref> where the citation belongs, and continue proofing. When I get to the bottom of the page, I proof the footnote text and then move the footnotes one by one to where they are cited. With makeref(), I don't have to manually move them. I just highlight the footnote text, click the function button, and it moves the text inside the first <ref></ref> on the page. Works with multiple footnotes too. It is cool. :-) And there's an overflow version too.

Hesperian 13:32, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Brilliant, I do it the same way up to that point. Anything frequently used, that requires keystrokes and moving the cursor, is deserving of a script or button. The wise thing for me to so would be to make those keystrokes too, and dump the useless stuff in standard buttons and 'suite'. Does it invoke the footer ref changes? cygnis insignis 14:21, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, keyboard invokation would be cool... I'll have a think about that.... No, I've kept that separate. Hesperian 23:46, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

That was easy. I just dumped a copy of Pathoschild's regexTool function into my js page, renamed it "regexToolWithShortcut", and added the ability to specify an accesskey on the anchor.[11] <shift>-<alt>-c now invokes my cleanup function. I suppose for you it would be <ctrl>-c, which might be problematic. The big challenge in all this will be defining sensible, memorable shortcuts that don't mask other functionality; e.g. would like to use "h" for header, but that's already mapped to the history page link. Hesperian 00:03, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

The situation is complicated on this OS, for reasons I have never understood; safari uses control-option-[key], all others use control-c -l -h -r and so on. Control-y is easy to remember, it's a question … cygnis insignis 00:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Coates' Mine and Thine (1904)

Bit confused about this page: Index:Mine and Thine, Coates, 1904.jpg (see the page's Revision history). The pages attributed to it are from a different text of Mrs. Coates' which I have already completed as an Index page: Index:Florence Earle Coates Poems (1898); and I have already started developing an Index of Mine and Thine here: Index:Florence Earle Coates Mine and Thine (1904) (I just need to upload the page images before I transfer the text from the Mainspace)... Can we just delete Index:Mine and Thine, Coates, 1904.jpg? [I undoubtedly somehow contributed to the confusion!?...] Thanks! Londonjackbooks (talk) 05:13, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Ignore the indexes, or mark as used or not to your own taste. Get the main pages sorted first, we can dispose of the what is not needed when you are done. cygnis insignis 16:07, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Question that I can get no answer to

In the Index, what is an easy way of figuring out the numbers of a given section, so as to put the section together? It seems like neither the page numbers nor the djvu numbers are relevant and the only way to get the right numbers is to scroll through pages, which is arduous and confusing, to determine the limits of a given section. Thanks, Another editor (talk) 15:54, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I answered you at billinghursts page. Don't get discouraged, and focus on less confusing things. cygnis insignis 16:04, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

It gets boring just proofreading. It is not challenging enough if I don’t get more involved and learn. But it seems impossible to progress. Another editor (talk) 20:02, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I'll direct you to the thread above, I did my best to explain how to add an image, your response was; "Maybe doing images just isn’t my thing." You have requested explanations on things, then explanations of explanations, from several users. I don't think anyone can do more than they have. If you want to learn how to do more than you are, then read the answers you have been given. cygnis insignis 20:57, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Your explanation for adding images didn’t work. I downloaded several, according to your directions, and they were not good. The extra size on old book scans makes no difference and merely accentuates the flaws; is not work the effort. A useless endeavour. An editor must see some positive result, or it is not worth the humongous trouble involved for no positive outcome. I think Wikisource is for the very few. I forecast that most editors will not find it sufficiently rewarding. It is easy to criticize the newbie as inadequate. The answers give to my questions are not sufficient. They assume a lot of knowledge of the technical sort. Or else they merely repeat the obvious. I humbly suggest that Wikisource work on being more helpful to newbies. I for one am no longer going to endlessly proofread articles so the technicians can do all that really interesting work. I feel like a grunge. Sorry! But if you are honest in wanting feedback, that is it. (I know it is billinghursts that claims he wants feedback, but he doesn’t seem to really want it.) I think Wikisource is doomed to the one hundred active users, and will never attract more because of it’s anti newbie attitude of "It’s the newbie’s fault." Well, goodbye. Another editor (talk) 22:09, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Further, it is not a good practice to delete a person’s question at Wikisource:Scriptorium. That kind of behavior would never be tolerated at Wikipedia, a generally much more uncivil place. Please do not be rude to newbies. You may think you are superior, but we are all human. Why don’t you become an admin at Wikipedia where you may be more suited? Just a suggestion. Another editor (talk) 22:18, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I expect to get a paycut for my inadequacies, but I'll note what you say Matisse, etc., "An editor must see some positive result, or it is not worth the humongous trouble involved for no positive outcome." cygnis insignis 22:24, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for you kind answer. You have outed me which is not considered a nice thing to do. John Vandenberg has been advising me from the beginning and advised me on my new name. But, thanks to you, I am gone. Bye. I hope you are kinder to others who come here for the first time on the advice of the checkuser John Vandenberg. I have been a major contributor to all sites I have worked one. But you have driven me away from Wikisource. Thanks for you efforts. You have gone against the advice that John Vandenberg, my mentor. Thanks again. I am sure Wikisource is better off with out me, thanks to you efforts. Another editor (talk) 23:52, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Index:Mine and Thine, Coates, 1904.jpg

has been blanked and a speedy delete request placed on the talk page. Can I let you handle this please? Hesperian 23:25, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, meant to give you a heads up before you got in. I'm still pondering what to do. cygnis insignis 23:31, 14 September 2010 (UTC)