User talk:Arlo Barnes

(welcomed by Xover, thanks)

Proofreading works on Wikisource

Hi Arlo. Thanks for volunteering to look at Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes!

I have left the standard new user welcome message above since it contains useful links to policy and help pages here. I'll also give a quick sketch of how Wikisource proofreading works below, but since I don't know how familiar you are with the project, I'll apologise in advance if I'm telling you stuff you already know.

Relative to most WMF wikis, the most crucial difference is our use of mw:Extension:ProofreadPage to tie together the different components of a work and the extensive use of different namespaces: the scanned file (usually DjVu or PDF) of the original in the File: namespace; the wikicode for each page of the original work in the Page: namespace; the index for the work in the Index: namespace; and the actual user-visible presentation of it in the main namespace (the unprefixed main namespace where, e.g., Wikipedia keeps its articles).

The process and relationship between the components is roughly:

• A scan of a work is uploaded (like all other media files).
• An index is created with the same filename as the scanned file, but in the Index: namespace.
  • The index contains some bibliographic metadata, but primarily exists to give the ProofreadPage extension a mapping between the File: and the pages in the Page: namespace, and to provide a mapping between the physical pages of the PDF or DjVu file and the "logical" page numbers of the work (think of a book where the first chapter is "Page 1", but where the actual first page of the PDF is the cover, or title page, etc.)
  • ProofreadPage uses the filename to infer that the Index: page relates to the file in the File: namespace (it assumes "Index:TheGreatNovel.pdf" relates to "File:TheGreatNovel.pdf").
• Based on the Index: the ProofreadPage extension creates (initially empty/redlinked) virtual pages in Page: namespace for every physical page in the DjVu or PDF.
  • These wiki pages is where you put the wikimarkup needed to roughly recreate on-wiki the text of the original page.
  • If the original DjVu or PDF file contains a OCR text layer, ProofreadPage helps you out by extracting that OCR text and putting it into the edit field for an empty page.
  • For the above example, these pages will live at Page:TheGreatNovel.pdf/1, Page:TheGreatNovel.pdf/2, etc.
• Once all the pages have been transcribed (what we call "Proofreading"), we transclude those pages together onto a page in mainspace for presentation.
  • This uses the special <pages …> tag provided by the ProofreadPage extension for some extra functionality, but it is conceptually the same as a template transclusion.

It sounds a bit complicated and involved, but the community here is good at helping with the fiddly bits, so the actual big job for any work is usually just the proofreading (transcribing and formatting).

In this particular case, there is already an uploaded a scan at File:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu, and its attendant index file at Index:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu. So the big job here is going through it page by page and putting in the wikicode and text. Pages with text you have already cleaned up can simply be copied from Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes, and for the remaining pages you just format the OCR text with wikimarkup and formatting templates (like {{c}} for centered text, {{larger}} or {{x-larger}} for larger text, and so forth). Feel free to {{ping}} me or ask at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help if you run into trouble.

I would recommend skipping complicated pages like title pages and pages with chapter headings etc. for now, and focus on the pages that mainly contain prose text. There are usually very few of those special pages relative to the whole work, but you can end up spending an inordinate amount of time on figuring out how to do them; so unless you feel a page is relatively straightforward it's better to skip it for now or ask the community for help.

I've done the first few pages of the first part just so you have an example to look at, and transcluded them onto Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes/Part 1. The big red links towards the end will be replaced by the page content as you create those pages.

In any case, good luck; and please do not hesitate to ask if you need assistance! --Xover (talk) 09:01, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for the warm welcome, explanations, and links to resources. The pages you have done look handsome indeed! I suppose to avoid the fiddly tasks like you mention, I will work chapter by chapter back to front. Arlo Barnes (talk) 18:04, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

Alright, there's the 'Closing Scene' section done save images and independent review. @Xover: say, how long would you consider the deletion process to continue until it comes to a head? Arlo Barnes (talk) 02:16, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The minimum time for such discussions is two weeks; but as a community we tend to be very inclusionist, so as long as someone is actually working on this I don't imagine anyone will be in a hurry to delete it. I don't think there's any reason to feel there is any kind of short-term deadline looming for this. --Xover (talk) 05:54, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

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Are you still planning to work on this? --Xover (talk) 19:01, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I've just been a bit busy lately IRL, but I'll get back to it this week. Arlo Barnes (talk) 00:09, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I'm sure you realise by know I was wrong about that. Truth is, it disturbed me to read about Rhodes from his own perspective, so I stopped. Arlo Barnes (talk) 06:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with Rhodes, so I can't guess what it was in particular that disturbed you, but reading historical works tends to have that effect. The contemporary British authors writing about events in India are a particular source of horror in that regard. For example, did you know that Rudyard Kipling wrote a history book for elementary school children, with so much casual racism and gleeful colonialism that it's not until your second reading you even realise it is also wildly misogynistic? And don't even get me started on his military poetry… You need to actively cultivate a level of clinical detachment to work on these texts, or you will get either depressed or infuriated (or probably both).

I tend to work mostly on Early Modern English literature (think: Shakespeare) where the worst you're likely to run into is some stereotyping of people from Ireland, and a lot of pompous windbags with serious classist blinders. They're a lot easier to snigger at, since their particular attitudes aren't so much linked directly to genocides and the enslavement of entire peoples.

In any case, yes, proofreading these works is quite a lot of effort, and unless it is a work in which you have a particular interest, this kind of thing can quickly become draining and suck all the joy out of contributing. Fiction is usually much safer and easier to enjoy despite its whatever flaws. Xover (talk) 12:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

To the degree you're interested: The Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes (1902) is now complete and on the front page. Xover (talk) 09:51, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

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Thank you, I appreciate the heads-up! Arlo Barnes (talk) 09:55, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

The Naked Ladies' Bar source

Hi there! I noticed that you created The Naked Ladies' Bar, and I was wondering what your source for it is. If you're translating it yourself based on Le Bar aux femmes nues, I'd recommend taking a look at WS:Translations#Wikisource original translations, and I'd also recommend doing a scan-backed translation using File:René Le Coeur Le bar aux femmes nues, 1925.djvu. Index:La bella durmiente del bosque.djvu is an example of how this works. If you're using someone else's translation, it'd be great if you could add it to the work. Either way, I'm happy to answer any questions you might have! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 02:29, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

@CalendulaAsteraceae: Thanks for the recommendations, I needed them (didn't even know about the Translation: namespace). Using the index system is a good idea, I didn't know it could be used in that way; then it would match the way it was originally done on French Wikisource, which is indeed the original I'm working from (yes, it's the former of your two guesses that is correct; I'm not aware of a prior translation, free or otherwise). Arlo Barnes (talk) 06:20, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

You're welcome, and good skill with the translation! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 06:22, 23 January 2022 (UTC)