User:SnowyCinema/On My Distaste of Using Headers and Footers in the Page Namespace

I don't replicate, and refuse to replicate, headers and footers in transcriptions. By headers and footers I mean things like this:

• 
  Header
• 
  Footer

Here's why:

The technical limitations of print

When printers used headers and footers to display chapter names and page numbers, it was purely a technical measure. And, if the books were not distributed in paper or page-by-page format, the headers would've been completely left out, as they are currently in Wikisource transclusions, Gutenberg transcriptions, and most other HTML representations of books today.

Similarly, Wikisource has a tradition of leaving out elements of the text that were only in place because of the technical limitations of paper. We want the transcription to stay true to the text, in terms of meaning and presentation, but technical aspects that would've been different if their technology was different should not be respected, especially if it leads to further headache during the transcription process. We want it to look fluid in browsers, not facsimile to ages-old technical restrictions. Some examples of this, that are very similar to the header and footer issue, are:

• Excluding non-semantic line breaks, most notably line breaks due to the printers (obviously and unavoidably) running out of space on the page
• Using the MediaWiki based reference system, rather than using asterisks and crosses etc. to represent references on the pages
• Using higher quality versions of an image than what appeared on print

And, since I view the page headers and footers as merely technical measures on the part of the printers, that they wouldn't have needed or used if they weren't working with paper, this is part of my justification for leaving them out.

The uselessness of replicating them

I see the biggest value, ultimately, in the transclusion of the work. This is what readers are supposed to see first and foremost. That's where the book is actually supposed to be read. The page namespace pages are essentially workspace pages, and beyond that, are only there to give evidence to readers and editors of the content from the scan, and nothing more.

So in my view, doing anything that only serves the content of the page namespace, and doesn't serve the transclusions whatsoever, is a wasted effort.

It's not worth the extra effort and maintenance

We already have quite a huge amount of things we have to do to process and maintain our transcriptions, with a vast amount of very careful and meticulous data entry involved all throughout the various facets of the site needed. To add this additional element to this already huge amount of tasks needed for a perfect transcription, where it only serves to satisfy the integrity of the page namespace and nothing more, is a waste of energy in my view.

Yes, they are fairly tedious and there have been some measures put in place to automate the page headers and footers, but to what end? The way that each work handles its headers and footers in the first place varies significantly depending on the printer and the publisher and the time period, and the exceptions to the rules make for harder maintenance. I can write code that deals with these, and I have before, but it just adds an extra layer of supervision and maintenance to my transcription process.

The more maintenance and supervision I have to do for a single work, the longer it takes to finish. And if this element of the work is completely useless to begin with, it's not worth the extra layer of effort. Keep it as simple and straightforward as possible.

It makes transcription ultimately slower

Wikisource already has an ocean of works that need to be transcribed, but the amount of work to get there for each individual one of these millions of works is astronomical as it is. To add even a few mere seconds to the proofreading of each page, if you account for this discrepancy, is huge. You could get a percentage more works completed per month if you just didn't even worry about the headers and footers at all.

And even if it's automated to some degree, as mentioned above, (and many proofreaders don't even rely on this automation to begin with), the maintenance of that automation is not worth it. But that point has already been explored, so let's move on.

The actual information it provides is minimal

These headers provides the chapter and the page number, or the work and the page number, sometimes not even that. It depends on recto or verso which you get: a chapter name or the work name. These things, especially the second one, are very easy to determine by other means, including just looking over at the page image next to you for the information...

It's also not even included on every page in all works, for example if the page begins a chapter or is a plate. So it's not the most consistently useful thing in the world anyway...

If you actually want to oppose this

It means that you only care about rules. There's no way my adversaries could actually gather that much meaning and usage from these page headers... It's something that brings readers and editors alike extremely low amounts of value if any, and to suggest that I "am in the wrong for not including these during proofreading" suggests an obsession with absolute authority and meaningless instructions for editors, rather than respect for the works themselves. If enforcing this really is necessary, then prove it through evidence of its usefulness, which I have not seen.

But...

I do think that page headers and footers, at least in terms of where they just name page numbers and chapter names, or the name of the work, should actually just be removed from Wikisource. But, for the purposes of the works I transcribe, I never include them anymore, for the various reasons I've stated above.

If you are validating my works and want to add them yourself, feel free. I won't stop you. I would ask you here if it's worth all the energy, and propose that maybe that energy and time might be better spent actually proofreading real content, though... But it is your choice at the end of the day.