Wikisource:Featured text candidates
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Information[edit]
Nominating a text[edit]
- Ensure that the text meets all the featured text criteria and style guidelines. Nominations that are flagged as not meeting the criteria will be unlisted after 24 hours, unless the criteria are met in that time.
- Please ensure that "download option" from the sidebar produces a full work
- Note the nomination on the talk page by adding the template {{featured text candidate}}.
- Begin a discussion at the bottom of this page. Note your reason for nominating the text.
- See also
Discussion[edit]
- If you believe an article meets all of the criteria, write Support followed by your reasons.
- If you oppose a nomination, write Object followed by the reason for your objection. Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to "fix" the source of the objection, the objection may be ignored. This includes objections to an text's suitability for the Wikisource main page, unless such suitability can be fixed.
- To withdraw an objection, strike it out (with <s>text</s>) rather than removing it.
Closing a nomination (administrators only)[edit]
- Failed nominations
- Add a comment explaining why the nomination failed.
- Archive it.
- Place {{featured text not passed|year|title}} at the top of the work's main talk page (adding the year and heading of the archived discussion).
- Passed nominations
- Add a comment noting the selection.
- Archive it.
- Add the work to {{Featured text}} (inside the respective month) and {{featured schedule}}.
- Place {{featured}} on top of the work's main page {{header}} template.
- Place {{featured talk|November 2023}} at the top of the work's main talk page (changing the numbers to the appropriate date if not next month).
- Protect all the work's main namespace pages.
- Indicate the work's featured status on its associated data item at Wikidata.
Nominations[edit]
For older nominations, see the archives.
A well-known book by New Zealander Georgina Burne Hetley, with color illustrations by the author. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:11, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- Probably not eligible (unfortunately) because I had to access a print copy in the rare books room at the library and write out the lacunae on a few pages and then type them into the Pages. WMIII was happy to validate based on that, but they are non-verifiable without access to a print copy. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:08, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- That's a shame, as this is a seminal work and beautifully illustrated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:12, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, just confirmed print pages 2 & 4 from the Preface remain problematic. Should we be able to find another scan and swap those two in, then this would be good to go. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:18, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- IA has: (external scan) which looks like a clean scan. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:06, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, just confirmed print pages 2 & 4 from the Preface remain problematic. Should we be able to find another scan and swap those two in, then this would be good to go. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:18, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
- That's a shame, as this is a seminal work and beautifully illustrated. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:12, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
Comment - Beautiful book, but it's unfortunate that the images are blown out. Compare Page:Native Flowers of New Zealand.djvu/81 with the original. The background drawings aren't even visible. Kaldari (talk) 01:05, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
- No problems with someone updating the images. Just upload new versions over the old ones rather than under new file names. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:58, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Comment I'd be happy to work on the images, but I don't want to interfere with anybody else's efforts. Is anybody else already working on this? -Pete (talk) 19:45, 30 January 2020 (UTC)
Oppose - Since the illustrations are the main feature of this book, they need to be fixed up before the work is featured. Nosferattus (talk) 16:27, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
I am nominating this work as it is an interesting view following San Francisco's earthquake in 1906. Thanks, Thatoneweirdwikier (talk) 13:57, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
- Comment "Interesting view" is not worthy of featuring an item. There is no special significance in the work that I can see; it is not among the best offerings at Wikisource. The speech seems to be a bit of a ramble, and the publication provides no context. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:22, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
- Comment (Caveats: I am new to the FT process, and primarily interested in learning about it. Along with @Thatoneweirdwikier: I'm one of the primary editors who worked on this text.)
- @EncycloPetey: I'm curious about your comment. It seems to me that the significance of whether something is an "interesting view" is not covered by any of the FT criteria. Am I correct in understanding that this is where subjective judgment comes in? Seems sensible enough if so, but if I'd be interested to learn what are the proper criteria for determining what texts are worth featuring, in your view. I'll comment that as a student of U.S. west coast history in this period, and as a former resident of San Francisco, I found Bancroft's view in this piece quite striking, and I am glad to have encountered it. I found a brief contemporaneous review which summarizes the thesis. -Pete (talk) 21:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
- It is the result of previous discussions. A featured text is considered "the best of what Wikisource has to offer". For example, we had Jane Eyre nominated for FT, but it was not featured because the nominated edition was a later, unremarkable edition, neither the first edition nor the authoritative one, nor a richly illustrated one. Jane Eyre as a novel was considered worth featuring, but not that edition, on the basis of unremarkability. The proposed pair of speeches are not remarkable in any way, and do not showcase what Wikisource has to offer. I lived in the Bay Area for a long time, and I know who Bancroft is, but beyond that very local interest, there is no anniversary to mark, nor lasting historical impact of the work, nor anything to recommend them for featuring. It certainly ought to be listed in a Portal somewhere, but I don't see it as a featurable text. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you -- very helpful. -Pete (talk) 22:44, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
- I would still argue it meets the criteria. When I wrote 'interesting view', I assumed that the fact it met the criteria was a given. Hopefully that clears it up. Thanks, Thatone
weirdwikier Say hi 06:04, 31 January 2020 (UTC) - @Thatoneweirdwikier: If I'm understanding correctly, nobody has argued that it does not meet the criteria; but the criteria here on Wikisource, I think, are a minimum qualification, not a reason to promote. Unlike English Wikipedia and probably some other sites, "featured" status is not something obtained in the abstract, but something that indicates an item has been selected to be featured on the front page for a month. So, note that [[ping|EncycloPetey}} merely commented, but did not vote against; I think they are (tacitly) acknowledging that the criteria have been met, but skeptical about whether this item is worthy of featuring on the front page (in relation to other works, which may have more topical interest etc.) Of course, please correct me if I'm wrong. I do think this could use some more spelling out in the text introducing "Featured texts", which would help newcomers like us form more realistic expectations; I'm happy to work on that, but I'd like to be sure I understand it well before I start making suggestions. -Pete (talk) 17:34, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
- Indeed. Meeting the criteria (item 1) is considered prerequisite to nomination, not a reason for being featured (item 4) in and of itself. The process description should be clarified and updated to current norms. I will try a draft when I have the time to spend doing so. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:27, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
- It is the result of previous discussions. A featured text is considered "the best of what Wikisource has to offer". For example, we had Jane Eyre nominated for FT, but it was not featured because the nominated edition was a later, unremarkable edition, neither the first edition nor the authoritative one, nor a richly illustrated one. Jane Eyre as a novel was considered worth featuring, but not that edition, on the basis of unremarkability. The proposed pair of speeches are not remarkable in any way, and do not showcase what Wikisource has to offer. I lived in the Bay Area for a long time, and I know who Bancroft is, but beyond that very local interest, there is no anniversary to mark, nor lasting historical impact of the work, nor anything to recommend them for featuring. It certainly ought to be listed in a Portal somewhere, but I don't see it as a featurable text. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:14, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
- @EncycloPetey: I'm curious about your comment. It seems to me that the significance of whether something is an "interesting view" is not covered by any of the FT criteria. Am I correct in understanding that this is where subjective judgment comes in? Seems sensible enough if so, but if I'd be interested to learn what are the proper criteria for determining what texts are worth featuring, in your view. I'll comment that as a student of U.S. west coast history in this period, and as a former resident of San Francisco, I found Bancroft's view in this piece quite striking, and I am glad to have encountered it. I found a brief contemporaneous review which summarizes the thesis. -Pete (talk) 21:41, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
- Oppose - Per EncycloPetey. Not a remarkable or significant work. Someone still needs to revise the featured text criteria to clarify what we consider worthy of featuring. Nosferattus (talk) 16:38, 7 June 2023 (UTC)
Nominating to feature in July 2020 to coincide with the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan. The author William George Aston was a leading British scholar of Japanese, the first translator of Nihongi into English, and a diplomat in Japan. His survey of Japanese Literature might even be the first such volume published in English, though I cannot find a definitive statement to that effect. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:49, 15 February 2020 (UTC)
Alexander Pushkin is considered "the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature". I nominate his book of Poems translated by Ivan Panin. This would be only the second work we've featured by a Russian author (the previous one was the nonfiction The Russian School of Painting, featured in in 2015). --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:31, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
Support. It seems well proofread, I have checked 10 random pages from various parts of the book and found no problem. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:32, 6 April 2020 (UTC)- Support.Worthy author, and in 20 randomly selected pages I found only one error. BethNaught (talk) 19:31, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
- Support checked several pages and seems good
Style fulfills all applicable style guidelines (and the format is quite loyal to the original one), well-proofread, scanned from the official gazette, and also inflicted significant importance/controversy worldwide.廣九直通車 (talk) 04:41, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
- Comment What is the reason for nomination? You say "inflicted significant importance/controversy worldwide", but I have not heard of this act. Could you elaborate? --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:47, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
- @EncycloPetey:See this. Due to alleged unfairness to Muslim refugees, the enactment of this act inflicts mass protests around India, some turned violent. Should have some plenty Google search results.廣九直通車 (talk) 07:17, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
- Part of the nomination process is to provide a summary reason for the nomination. This helps both with voting and for the person who has to write the blurb for the main page. Telling commenters to look elsewhere or search the web is not a reason for nomination. The nominator should give their reasons why they think the nomination should be featured. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:24, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
- @EncycloPetey:See this. Due to alleged unfairness to Muslim refugees, the enactment of this act inflicts mass protests around India, some turned violent. Should have some plenty Google search results.廣九直通車 (talk) 07:17, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
- Updated explanation:"Section 2 of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019, allows 'any person belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian community from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan, who entered into India on or before the 31st day of December, 2014' become refugees, while implicitly excluding Muslim refugees. Such treatment leads to criticism of religious discrimination and international concern, and later fueled a prolonged series of protests among India, some turned violent." I'm new to FTC, and so I need to describe why the information of the text should be featured?廣九直通車 (talk) 02:56, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- Yes. You are nominating this work to be Featured. This means you should present your reasons for nominating it, and not ask people to figure out those reasons for for themselves. Why do you think this work deserves to be Featured for a month on the Main page? --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- See the bolded reasons above. Nominated for significant local social and international importance.廣九直通車 (talk) 04:08, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- It might or might not be enough to warrant Featuring. What I see is that there were some protests in India over this, and people of Indian descent protested elsewhere as well. Responses to nomination may take weeks or even months. We won't know until people begin voicing their opinions about the nomination. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:17, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- See the bolded reasons above. Nominated for significant local social and international importance.廣九直通車 (talk) 04:08, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- Yes. You are nominating this work to be Featured. This means you should present your reasons for nominating it, and not ask people to figure out those reasons for for themselves. Why do you think this work deserves to be Featured for a month on the Main page? --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- Comment I'd lean towards support, as it's certainly a document with uncommonly strong links to real and current events (we have lots of works that relate to historical events, but not a lot from the modern world, disregarding the drama from the US). However, I think since it's a fairly small work, the associated documents of this one (including the associated NRC documents) should be added before this capstone is featured. From a skim of the enWP articles, perhaps Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003 and the other amendments back to Citizenship Act, 1955, Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, 2003, The Foreigners Act, 1946, etc? Hopefully there might also be some court ruling or something non-legislative to mix it up a little bit. And then perhaps have a section of Portal:Law of India or a sub-portal or something to tie it together thematically? Without some kind of librarianship, I don't find simple replication of short documents that are already publicly available electronically (http://egazette.nic.in and https://indiacode.nic.in) particularly thrilling.
- Also, I'm a little wary of featuring a text that uses sidenotes that don't work on mobile browsers and don't work if the user is using Layout 1 (though it's defaulted to Layout 2, users can turn of defaulting). But I know sidenotes are an everlasting pain in the backside, so maybe it's just tough. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 15:33, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
- OK, I'll then be working on Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2003, thanks.廣九直通車 (talk) 13:57, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
- @Inductiveload:And also Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2015. Proofreading is appreciated.廣九直通車 (talk) 13:29, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
The Labyrinth is one of the most important and influential works of Johan Amos Comenius. In November we are going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his death, and so I am nominating this work for November 2020. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment The text uses the {{Greek}} template to display quotations from Ancient Greek, which is polytonic, but the template is explicitly designed for modern monotonic Greek. The {{polytonic}} template should be used. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:45, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- Ah, I did not know it, thanks for explanation, I will remember it. Now it should be OK. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:38, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- Support --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:02, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
- This is clearly the kind of text worthy of Featured status! I have done my usual approach of flitting over the text checking for errors, and I've found 28: [1]. However I can't say for sure how many pages I checked.
Given that I'm still finding errors I'll sayBethNaught (talk) 19:12, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
Neutral for now.- Move to Support, after fixing some more errors I think this text is in a better place. BethNaught (talk) 15:53, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
- Move to
As the mini-constitution of Hong Kong, it is often argued that the Basic Law is currently facing increasing violation of its contents by the Chinese Central Government. Given that 2020 is the 30th anniversary of the enactment of the law, all criteria have been made, and Hong Kong is currently embroiled in the political crisis about the Hong Kong Liaison Office, it is nominated that the text to be a featured text.
- Note: In April 2020, the Hong Kong Liaison Office (中聯辦), a office of the Central Government, has claimed that it has the authority to oversee Hong Kong internal affairs and is not bounded by Article 22 of the Basic Law, which prohibits Mainland Chinese authorities"(interfering) in the affairs which the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region administers on its own in accordance with this Law."廣九直通車 (talk) 07:23, 23 April 2020 (UTC)
- Comment why is the "Get involved Get to know the Basic Law" logo not included on the back cover Serprinss (talk) 05:25, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's much-beloved and hugely influential epic poem about the expulsion of the Acadians; this is a transcription of the first edition. As far as I can tell, there aren't any particular upcoming anniversaries to schedule this for, and we haven't featured and long-form poetry since November 2017. BethNaught (talk) 19:46, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
- Support Well done, I checked 10 random pages and did not find any typos or other errors to be corrected. As there are curly quotes used in the transcription, I just suggest to replace also straight apostrophes by curly ones to make it more consistent. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:13, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
- Support for November 2023. Azertus (talk) 16:45, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
- I've started a page to work on the blurb for the Main Page. Azertus (talk) 18:21, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
I am nominating Tagore’s work Nationalism. It is transcribed from original scans and has been fully proofread. This work is relevant especially today with a rise of Nationalism in India and many countries around the world. If featured next month, it would coincide with India’s independence day on 15 August. I am happy to make improvements to the work wherever necessary. —Prtksxna (talk) 09:09, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
- Support I checked around 10 random pages and everything looks perfect to me. Only 1 page was not validated and I have done that. I completely agree with Prtksxna (talk • contribs)'s rationale behind selecting this book as next month's featured text. On another note: The text in itself is complete, however the index contains some advertisements and we might want to do something about them which could be as simple as mentioning on the talk page that they haven't been transcluded or can actually be included in the text since they are about other works of Tagore. Check this for more info: Wikisource:What_Wikisource_includes#Advertising --Satdeep Gill (talk) 12:42, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
- Comment In order to feature a work, it needs to have a blurb to accompany it on the Main Page. What is the history or circumstances specific to the creation of this work as opposed to the many others on the subject? What influence or legacy come from this work? I am not familiar enough with Tagore or his works to draft a blurb with any competence. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:50, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
- Comment Also, this work has many minor transcriptions issues that will need to be corrected. There should not be spaces around em-dashes. That is instead of spacing — like this; there should be no spacing—like this. This will require a careful check against Wikisource:Style Guide for any other similar issues before it can be featured. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:52, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
- What other issues have you noticed? FWIW I've looked at a few pages. The quality of the proofreading seems pretty good, except for the spaced emdashes you mentioned, and the inconsistent use of both straight and curly quotes. BethNaught (talk) 22:43, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks for pointing these out. I've tried to correct the dashes and quotes at most places. —Prtksxna (talk) 04:25, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
I notice on the talk page, after getting a welcome link from an ad in another work, the proposal that this be an FT. An admittedly quick perusal sees no problem with that, so is there a reason not to? Cygnis insignis (talk) 14:40, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
- Cygnis insignis: This proposal has already been made here. I agree with either recommendation. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:02, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
- Oh yes, it's right there, cheers :/ I will read through it, maybe skim some bits, but doubt there is anything reason not to support its promotion. Cygnis insignis (talk) 15:14, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
De-featuring The Time Machine (Heinemann text)[edit]
The work was featured in 2011 as one of the first featured texts, without being scanbacked. Now the scanbacking process has started, but the work is still far from being fully proofread and validated. I believe that the work should be defeatured and after the proofreading and validation processes are finished it can be renominated. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:50, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
- It was actually featured in 2006 before on-Wiki proofreading was available and was done to the high standards of the time (including two pairs of eyes). While it wouldn't achieve featured status today, it is still fine. Defeaturing it now would remove the historicity of what the Community did back then. By all means get it fully scan-backed, but let's not play with history. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:56, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Beeswaxcandle: In general terms I agree with that reasoning. But, what is the purpose of the Featured Text process? Is it to bestow an award on the contributors for their hard work, or is it to highlight to visitors and readers our very best texts? English Wikipedia has struggled with this question over the years, but has landed squarely on the "Featured Article" being a quality check designed to produce and highlight the very best articles on the project to their Main Page visitors. And in order for that to work, it means old Featured Articles have to be re-reviewed and de-featured when they no longer meet current standards (either because standards were raised, or because constant drive-by edits have deteriorated the article). The dynamics on Wikisource are slightly different, but for non-scan-backed works in particular the entropy issue remains; and the underlying "What is the purpose of the Featured process?" question is the same.I've always considered it to be about the content and about our readers, rather than about our on-project contributors, primarily. The way I read Jan, that's their starting assumption too. Xover (talk) 08:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
- That is exactly how I have meant it. The status of a featured article is meant to inform our readers about the quality of transcription of an important work. It should be kept only there where we can guarantee the quality, which is not possible without the finished validation process. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:22, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
- @Beeswaxcandle: In general terms I agree with that reasoning. But, what is the purpose of the Featured Text process? Is it to bestow an award on the contributors for their hard work, or is it to highlight to visitors and readers our very best texts? English Wikipedia has struggled with this question over the years, but has landed squarely on the "Featured Article" being a quality check designed to produce and highlight the very best articles on the project to their Main Page visitors. And in order for that to work, it means old Featured Articles have to be re-reviewed and de-featured when they no longer meet current standards (either because standards were raised, or because constant drive-by edits have deteriorated the article). The dynamics on Wikisource are slightly different, but for non-scan-backed works in particular the entropy issue remains; and the underlying "What is the purpose of the Featured process?" question is the same.I've always considered it to be about the content and about our readers, rather than about our on-project contributors, primarily. The way I read Jan, that's their starting assumption too. Xover (talk) 08:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
- Semi- Support Featured status implies it is the best Wikisource has to offer now, not had to offer in 2006. The archives of WS:FT will record the history, the current status should be the current status.
- On an operational level, ideally, the work would be scan-backed and validated first and then the text replaced seamlessly in mainspace, and then re-reviewed to ensure it's still FT-quality. But I can see that's not what has actually happened, which I don't think is a very tidy way to do it. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 09:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
- So, you support removing Featured status because of procedural quibbles? And not because of some actual problem in the text? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:24, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
Once I've finished the short story collection I'm working on, I can validate the remaining pages. Once that's done, others can have a look, and we can see if this copy meets standards to retain Featured status. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
FT should use the proper punctuation, i.e. ‘ ’ and “ ”, not ' and ". I will have a look at this one. Yann (talk) 21:44, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
- @Yann: Either form of quotes is acceptable by current Style Guide, as long as the choice is applied consistently throughout. The work has already had extensive proofreading. If the proofreading used straight quotes, then that's the style chosen for that work; if the proofreading used curly quotes, then that's the style chosen for the work. A quick check shows that the prior proofreaders used straight quotes, so that choice should be consistently applied throughout the work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:58, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
- Well, I will oppose any FT using straight quotes. The punctuation should match the original print, and when the print uses curly quotes, proofreading should not use straight quotes. This is as important as respective the original spelling. Yann (talk) 11:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- That would be imposing a requirement that has never been required before, and isn't required by the Style Guide either. We've never required things like font style, typeface, or paragraph indentation to match, as they are artifices of the printing process, and not inherent to the work. You can suggest implementing your idea, but curly quotes is not now, and has never been, a requirement for Featured status. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- Punctuation is not an “artifice of the printing process”. It is an essential part of a work, like spelling, language style, grammar, etc. For the same reason, if a text uses italic or small capitals, it should be faithfully transcribed. Yann (talk) 18:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- The presence of punctuation is part of the work, but the printing style of punctuation is not. The symbols
all represent "A" and "a", but we do not bother to distinguish between the different font faces in transcription. We even make serifs on/off a user option. Likewise the print style of quotation marks is an artifice of the printing process. As I say, requiring curly quotes has never been a requirement of FT. If you wish to propose it as a requirement, that should probably happen as a discussion of its own in the Scriptorium. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:15, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- While I personally strongly prefer curly quotes, current Wikisource guidelines admit both of them, and for works which are being proofread by many contributors with different preferences (e. g. Encyclopaedia Britannica), straight quotes are recommended to avoid endless disputes, see Wikisource:Style guide#Formatting. I also do not think that this issue is worth of fights and accept the right of the first or of the main contributor to decide. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- I don't understand that typographic mistakes are kept, but curly quotes are not. Yann (talk) 20:40, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- @Yann: This is partly historic, partly pragmatic. Historically straight quotes ("dumb quotes") were mandated for much the same reasons enWP mandates them: they were hard for many people to input, and computers were bad about any non-ASCII characters. It is only very recently, after a long discussion, that we opened up for allowing curly quotes. And because some of the historic issues still have relevance, and because some contributors have strong preferences for the status quo, the change came with the added provisio that curly quotes are only permitted and not mandated. And it is a requirement that for any given text this use should be consistent: either curly quotes or straight quotes, but no mixing both types. Which in turn leads to the guidance that for large texts, where many people are expected to collaborate, it is better to standardise on straight quotes to avoid inconsistency.Personally I was iffy about permitting curly quotes because it takes quite a bit to use these correctly, but presuming their use is allowed at all I tend to agree with you that we should then reproduce the quotes that were used in the original work. But far from everyone agrees with this, and it's not an issue I consider important enough to try to change people's minds on. Do feel free to propose it at WS:S if you like, of course, but my gut feeling is that there won't be support for that.In any case, that's the background for why it's not a criteria for Featured Texts, and hence why any objections on that basis to a FT nomination is likely to be accorded little weight. It's not an issue of someone's personal preference or a very (too) local consensus: it was a community-wide discussion and a policy change, so it's binding until a new policy is made. Xover (talk) 08:11, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
- I don't understand that typographic mistakes are kept, but curly quotes are not. Yann (talk) 20:40, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- While I personally strongly prefer curly quotes, current Wikisource guidelines admit both of them, and for works which are being proofread by many contributors with different preferences (e. g. Encyclopaedia Britannica), straight quotes are recommended to avoid endless disputes, see Wikisource:Style guide#Formatting. I also do not think that this issue is worth of fights and accept the right of the first or of the main contributor to decide. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- The presence of punctuation is part of the work, but the printing style of punctuation is not. The symbols
- Punctuation is not an “artifice of the printing process”. It is an essential part of a work, like spelling, language style, grammar, etc. For the same reason, if a text uses italic or small capitals, it should be faithfully transcribed. Yann (talk) 18:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- That would be imposing a requirement that has never been required before, and isn't required by the Style Guide either. We've never required things like font style, typeface, or paragraph indentation to match, as they are artifices of the printing process, and not inherent to the work. You can suggest implementing your idea, but curly quotes is not now, and has never been, a requirement for Featured status. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:51, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
- Well, I will oppose any FT using straight quotes. The punctuation should match the original print, and when the print uses curly quotes, proofreading should not use straight quotes. This is as important as respective the original spelling. Yann (talk) 11:30, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Looking more carefully, the biggest issue I see is that pages 66 and 67 are from another edition. And without a full set of pages from the correct edition, this can't be said to be the best Wikisource can offer. Can we find someone with access to the correct edition, who can supply images of the two pages? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:49, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
Keep It was featured and represents the works that we featured at the time. Please respect the choices of the community at that time. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- The badge shows readers what we all (not only previous contributors) are proud of. Defeaturing should not be understood as a sign of disrespect to previous contributors, it means that now our quality standards are higher and so we want to replace the items in our show window which are not representative enough. What is more, the works like this one can be brought to higher standards during the de-featuring process. Thus they would keep the badge and their quality would be improved at the same time. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:37, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Keep The full work has been double-checked, and all pages validated except two. Those two pages are marked as "problematic", but not through lack of proofreading. Those two pages are missing from the scan source, and were patched with pages of some other edition and proofread. If someone can patch those two pages into the scan, from the correct edition, the work will be complete. But I would not de-feature this work simply for a defect in the scan. In the 40 or so pages that I validated myself, I found one comma that should have been a period, some ellipses that were not set by template, and a few missing {{nop}} at the ends of chapters, but that's all. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:22, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
- While I do appreciate that the work has been proofread and validated, I am slightly hesitant about the two problematic pages: if the work were nominated now, it would quite probably not pass because of that. Most of the pages I have checked seemed well proofread (I just fixed italics in the Contents), with the exception of Page:The Time Machine (H. G. Wells, William Heinemann, 1895).djvu/6, which has some major formatting issues (centering, italics) and should not have been validated in this state. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:32, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
- Note that scan page 6 is an advertisement, and not part of the work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:21, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
De-featuring Wikipedia is pushing the boundaries of scholarly practice but the gender gap must be addressed[edit]
There has been practice that featured articles should be not only well proofread, but the original text also should have some undisputable qualitites. However, the quality of this article is very poor. It is an example of very bad journalism and bad work with sources, not offering any real evidence for its bombastic statements. As such it should not be promoted, because it does very bad service to the Wikigap movement. One example: My attention was caught by the statement that topics typically associated with femininity are actively deleted in Wikipedia. But instead of proofs, statistics etc., the readers are presented only with allegation that an article about Kate Middleton's wedding dress was deleted. Because the text (contrary to expectations) did not give the precise rationale behind this deletion, so I went to the linked source, where I found a link to the deletion discussion in WP, and found out that the result was speedy keep.
"Every edit on Wikipedia is political" is another apparent non-sense, given the large number of absolutely apolitical edits, not speaking about edits of purely technical nature, correcting typos etc.
I was also searching for the source of this text and failed to find it anywhere, so it has probably (rightly) disappeared from the Internet, with the exception of Wikisource.
While Wikigap movement is very important and needed, this text in fact undermines its efforts. For these reasons I nominate it to be de-featured. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:09, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- agreed Languageseeker (talk) 00:27, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- This article is a joke. It looks little more than self-published, and thus out of scope, but that’s another discussion. This is not a discussion of Wikipedia but some dime-a-dozen “journalistic” hit piece by a no-name political hack. (The reference to the dress was through a Slate article, which correctly noted that it was nominated for deletion but ultimately kept. It seems the author is also illiterate.) The initial nomination seems to have been made primarily in response to an event which happened nearly a decade ago and which is no longer relevant. I agree that it should be de-featured. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- Comment I expect one reason the article was nominated was the recent death of the author, just months before it was featured. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:26, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- I am very sorry to hear that. No matter how much I dislike this particular text, below I was explained how good person she was. In Czech we have a proverb saying that the best ones leave first… --Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:44, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- Support de-featuring, but only because for me the scale starts at Shakespeare and Tolstoy, and as literature this blog post is so far into the other end of the scale that it would need some truly massive significance to qualify. It's not intended to be more than a blog post.BUT! I knew Anne. I worked with her on several articles in my area of interest (Shakespeare), and reviewed several of the articles she wrote in her areas of interest (e.g. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley). She was an extremely competent editor and researcher, a wonderful collaborator, and I miss her dearly! If this particular piece by her provokes you to such a degree that its being featured here seems an actual outrage, then I think you need to go have a nice long look at your biases and triggers.The text is a blog post—that the blog is hosted by the London School of Economics is just fluff—in which Anne is speaking to other academics in the humanities, primarily, trying to convince them that they should not avoid and ignore Wikipedia; and in particular that female academics should not shun Wikipedia because it exacerbates the systemic bias that inevitably follows from a monoculture. She is also writing at a time when attention to and awareness about this problem was barely starting to happen. WikiProject Countering systemic bias had not yet started its Gender gap task force and Women in Red was still two years away.It is wrong, I think, for us to feature this text because it is a blog post, and because its social and cultural impact is not, currently, established to be sufficient to overcome that starting handicap. It was, perhaps, not so wrong for us to have featured it back then as a homage and because in the narrow blinders of the wikiverse it was a fairly significant piece of writing. It is a blog post, hastily written (between her IRL academic work and her massive contributions on-wiki, this blog post was a side project of a side project), and intended as a mild polemical aimed at other female academics.Awadewit was the most non-threatening and inoffensive kind of feminist Wikipedia editor, quietly chipping away at articles in the literature area of particular interest to gender equality and encouraging women and, in partcular, female academics, to participate rather than flee the then very locker-room-y boys' club that Wikipedia was (and still is, with some important changes). Her academic writing (on Wikipedia) was impeccable, and she thrived while their Featured Article criteria still demanded "brilliant prose" (they decided to do away with good prose on Wikipedia a decade or so ago, and nobody even seems to have noticed the absurdity).What we lost when she died is hard to quantify. I lost a treasured collaborator, a skilled writer and copy-editor, a knowledgable and careful scholar and fellow traveller, and a wonderful human being. I lost a big part of what made contributing to Wikipedia worthwhile. I miss her. --Xover (talk) 09:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for explaining the background. I do believe that the author was a good person, and you may notice that I did not use any ad hominem arguments when criticising the article. It just happens that even the best authors from time to time produce poor texts, and had I been active on Wikisource in that time, I would oppose it the same way I do now. Strong statements need to be supported with strong evidence, while there is almost none here, and some of the arguments presented are simply false, because the author did not check the sources she was writing about. I take Wikigap movement seriously, some time ago I also had some lectures on Wikipedia during a Wikigap event in Czechia and I have always supported all activities fighting with various biases, but careless bombastic statements detached from reality make more harm to the movement than good. While I agree that Wikipedia is full of biases which need to be fought, I am always triggered when I see somebody is trying to reach good by presenting false arguments and distoring reality so that it looked even worse than it is, because in this way they do very bad service to the cause.
And yes, I did expect that somebody will suggest that my criticism of this article is caused by my own biases, no matter how far from truth such accusation is.--Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:31, 1 May 2023 (UTC)- @Jan.Kamenicek: Criticism is fine, particularly constructive criticism; and as you can see I support the proposal to de-feature it (it shouldn't have been featured to begin with, except if we did so purely as a homage). I very specifically limited my comment there to those who are "[provoked] … to such a degree that its being featured here seems an actual outrage". Xover (talk) 13:25, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for explaining the background. I do believe that the author was a good person, and you may notice that I did not use any ad hominem arguments when criticising the article. It just happens that even the best authors from time to time produce poor texts, and had I been active on Wikisource in that time, I would oppose it the same way I do now. Strong statements need to be supported with strong evidence, while there is almost none here, and some of the arguments presented are simply false, because the author did not check the sources she was writing about. I take Wikigap movement seriously, some time ago I also had some lectures on Wikipedia during a Wikigap event in Czechia and I have always supported all activities fighting with various biases, but careless bombastic statements detached from reality make more harm to the movement than good. While I agree that Wikipedia is full of biases which need to be fought, I am always triggered when I see somebody is trying to reach good by presenting false arguments and distoring reality so that it looked even worse than it is, because in this way they do very bad service to the cause.
Keep I don't agree with the premise of the argument. Featured is featured, and one cannot unscramble the egg. Simply the community did make the collective decision via the appropriate process to feature this article. It was of its time, and of the people who made that choice and it got there for being of its time and of the author themself. BUT IT WAS THERE. You can have commentary about why future FT works should have a higher or different standard, you can make your commentary on the talk page about why you don't think that it should have been, but please do not change our history because you disagree with the decision of the time. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:06, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- I understand the point but disagree. Scrambled eggs of insuficient quality can be thrown to the bin and featured articles can be defeatured. I understand the list of featured articles as a show window of our project, in which we present the best of our contents to the passers-by, and the contents of the show window can be not only added but also replaced any time. Readers who happen to go through the list know nothing about its history, they perceive only the presence, and may not understand why we consider some lower quality texts to be our best works. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:23, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
Fixing the links of previous FTs[edit]
Would the stewards of this process please look at finding the original versions of the above two works, and changing the links to those original FTs, they both seem to be versions pages. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:15, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
- @Billinghurst: Based the comments of BirgitteSB at https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Featured_text_candidates&oldid=258742#Elegie_II and their edits in the history of https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Poems_(Donne)/Elegie_II&action=history, I think we can assume it's Poems (Donne)/Elegie II.
- As for the Gettysburg Address, it looks like all 6 versions were featured, since they were all on 1 page back then. Azertus (talk) 22:15, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
Little Elephant's Christmas (1938) for December 2023[edit]
A fully validated children's book, with a mixture of beautiful images and cute, family-friendly story.
Featured text activity has been so empty in recent years, that we reuse old ones most months. We need a plethora more works in there. Make things interesting, and give readers an extra reason to come check out the main page every month... PseudoSkull (talk) 02:43, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
- Support I'd love to see this process restarted. Maybe this process stalled because of (too?) high standards? A "Text of the month" or "Page/extract of the month" might be easier to keep up-to-date...
- If I understand it correctly, French Wikisource, for example, seems to only have 0-100% works and validated works, the latter of which seem to correspond with our featured texts. As long as they are technically complete and follow the style guides, it might be easier to select interesting texts to "feature" on the main page, without involving too many value judgements on the actual content of the texts. Azertus (talk) 16:44, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
- To decrease cognitive load on the admins closing, can we start work on a blurb already? I haven't read it, so the summary is a little bare... Azertus (talk) 17:05, 3 September 2023 (UTC)
- Support Seems well polished and no obvious errors. Nosferattus (talk) 15:21, 5 September 2023 (UTC)