Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2015-07

by James B. Morrow

Please do not post any new comments on this page. This is a discussion archive first created in July 2015, although the comments contained were likely posted before and after this date. See current discussion or the archives index.

Announcements

An interesting article about font history

An article from the London Review of Books. — Ineuw talk 04:24, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I always liked the style of Fraktur and its related fonts. However after reading the above article I am now confused as to whether that makes me a pawn of the Jews; the anti-semetic pro-nazi propagandists or maybe something even worse? Damn all politics for attempting to interfere with personal aesthetics. AuFCL (talk) 08:16, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

ווהו תהא פעק קנוז Hebrew transliteration for "Who the f**k knows" — Ineuw talk 18:17, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposals

Move the authority control template to the bottom-most position

I think it's reasonable to move the {{authority control}} information to the bottom-most position (where the license templates are located) for its being not a part of the book content, so it shouldn't be located within the {{header}} bars and should not change its size when one changes the page layout.--Nonexyst ^(talk) 19:41, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

The AC bar should have been doing that in the mainspace along with the copyright license banners for some time now but in trying to match the recent changes made to the Navbox LUA module (the module invoked by the AC template) on Wikipedia, it seems that I inadvertently stopped that behavior in the process. It should be restored now - please verify; thanks. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I verified, all seems to be fine. --Nonexyst ^(talk) 23:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

BOT approval requests

request for bot flag on account SHSPbot

• SHSPbot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log · SUL)

I have been working with user Maury on developing a script to automate cleaning up the Southern Historical Society Papers (volumes 9-52) with help from users Mpaa and Beeswaxcandle. I've had pretty good luck on Vols. 35-37 just running the script under my id, but Mpaa has suggested that I should create a bot request. If I understand the procedure correctly, I've created a new id, SHSPbot, and I am now placing my request for the bot flag here.

Here's what the bot does: read the djvu file for the corresponding SHSP volume, identify and analyse the main text of the volume (ignore TOC and Index), then create wikitext that has correctly formatted running headers, article titles, sub-titles, and other minor formatting such as right-justified signatures. In addition it removes superfluous line-breaks and unhyphenates all hyphenated words, including words split across pages using the hws/hwe tags (this was the initial purpose of the bot). It usually correctly identifies hyphenated phrases and leaves those alone. LBNL, using the pywikibot module it uploads the corrected text to the wikisource server. This bot will only be used on the Southern Historical Society Papers volumes, although I hope that one day the script may be usable on other djvu-sourced wiki texts.

The SHSP series has suffered a lull in activity in part due to the length of the series and the amount of time it takes to correct the formatting and spelling of each page. There is spell-checking (with enchant) but all proposed spell-checks are displayed to the user for review and correction before the changes are applied, and a SHSP-specific dictionary is being built and expanded with each volume added to take into account the peculiarities of spelling from that era and region. The bot operates one page at a time and is launched from my PC, using a range of pages a for loop (e.g., for i in range(16,65)). Currently, pywikibot seems to default to a 9-second sleep interval (roughly 6 pages per minute) when running under my id. I try not to upload more than 60 corrected pages at a time.

There have been no major misadventures to date (I had to revert about 30 pages in an early run, "power tools are dangerous!", but nothing so drastic since then). I am coordinating with user Maury and setting the page ranges to avoid overwriting any pages that have already been proofread or validated. If additional information is needed, please comment here or on my talk page, where progress on the script has been discussed. Thanks for any assistance or feedback, Dictioneer (talk) 20:16, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

• I hope that any fully automated edits are saved with "Not proofread" status? Hesperian
  • Hesperian: Every page gets proofread and validated by human eyes just like all other books here. Is that fully automated? Those SHSP volumes have been sitting untouched for years. We also do not have "52 volumes" here. —Maury (talk) 01:46, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
    • If the bot runs through and creates a batch of pages with text that has not been reviewed by a human prior to saving, then that is "fully automated", and those edits should be saved with "Not proofread" status. If, on the other hand, a human reviews each proposed edit before it is saved, then that is not "fully automated" and I have no problem with edits being saved with "proofread" status... and I also do not see a need for a bot flag. Hesperian 02:31, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I suggested the request for a bot flag due to the large number of pages involved, so recent changes would be clean. But if it does not matter to others, it is fine with me as well.— Mpaa (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• • • If I understand Hesperian's question, when I pull up the page in wikisource after the bot has run, it's message is "This page needs to be proofread." I go through the page and mark it proofread. With the script automating the formatting, my proofread time goes from around 4 minutes to under 1 minute, so it saves me hours over the course of a single volume. Sorry about overestimating the size of SHSP, Maury, I was just going by what I thought I saw on the main index page, I now see that only Vols. 1-40 are tagged 'transcription project' and I believe Vols. 1-9 are already done. This series is far more useful as a searchable set of proofread volumes than as a casual browsing resource, so I hope that the bot request can be approved.Dictioneer (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

If I understood Hesperian's comment, it is OK also to save the page directly as "Proofread" as long as you (a human ... :-) ) have reviewed the page you are going to save. I.e. you have reviewed the page offline in the file you're going to upload. If you choose to do so, you should be careful to set the correct status code and user in the page header text.

If you use pywikibot/pagefromfile.py, you can choose upload interval with flag -pt:n (where n is secs). For the summary, please use "/* Not Proofread */ some text" (or "/* Proofread */") so it gets the proper section header marking. — Mpaa (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

There are 52 volumes of the Southern Historical Society's Papers but we do not have them all on Wikisource. —Maury (talk) 02:59, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

• • • I hadn't known until these comments that you could change a page's status with a bot, although it makes sense when you and Hesperian say so, Mpaa! :) I'm at least half-human (but is the other half Klingon, or Vulcan?) so I think I could mark the page proofread (I'll have a look where you've pointed me and see if the procedure/flag makes sense) and also double-check with Maury to see if he's OK with that (he's been the validator thus far). If I've read the policy correctly, I'd still like SHSPbot to get the bot flag, so I'm hoping none of this discussion negates that. Thanks for the input and have a good weekend! Dictioneer (talk) 16:48, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

"If I understood Hesperian's comment,".... - Oh, I guess didn't. *I* am the only human here. All others are aliases, bots, and scripts running wikisource. Techs & aliases are taking over the world and already have Wikisource. All Wiki-Sourceres are gone to dust except me. I am reminded of a human, "John Carter", fighting off the machines (Terminators) in his futuristic world but we humans are losing the world of humans to technology using aliases. I am the only human I know of here. —Maury (talk) 16:58, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@Dictioneer: To clarify … the bot will not be amending any existing proofread status, and if it is creating a page (using the djvu stipping part of pywiki) that it will be allocating the not-proofread status? — billinghurst sDrewth 08:54, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

You are correct: the script does not and has not ever even by accident changed the status of a modified page to "proofread" (I didn't realize that was possible until this discussion). If subsequent volumes go well, I can imagine coming here in the future and asking for that permission, but for now all it does is upload an updated text page, and it only selects for pages that are below "proofread" status. Hope this answers your inquiry, Dictioneer (talk) 00:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

 Support For the running of trials and then making the assessment. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:16, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Other discussions

New Gadget

For those of you using the Vector skin, you might to try out a new gadget Sidebar Flat-list (mid-way down the Interface section). It takes the group of sidebar menus on the left and makes them series of collapsible flat-lists along the top instead. Please report any problems & feedback welcomed. -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:24, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

• I'm using this and it's a keeper for me. It's nice to have more space to the left when editing or reading. On one of my computers which has a more square screen the three menus get cluttered and because of lack of space 'Language' goes on top of my user name is not selectable. On my laptop which has a wider screen everything is fine. Jpez (talk) 10:32, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

There's not much I can do about that - the damn Language portlet is structurally different at the core compared to the other groupings. If I had it my way, it would not be part of the flat-list but in the attempt to keep it "simple", that's the way it works out for some layouts. Suggestions welcome. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

• Nice! That area was a mess but now it is clean allowing more room for editing. Looks like the garbage was taken out. :0) Thanks George Orwell III, in haste for grocery shopping, —Maury (talk) 16:22, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Glad you like it (& hope it works for you headache free:) -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:48, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

• Not bad! I like it, though of course I wish it loaded before the sidebar to avoid the hiccup. The Haz _talk 03:56, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I wish I knew how to resolve that too (though its not all that bad imho)!!

The standard, un-collapsed sidebar of "portals" (bullet lists with the bullet hidden) are part of the Vector skin itself. And Vector is relentless; it is determined to render the sidebar and load all the damn .css & caching that normally comes with it no matter what I tried (you'll note that even with the flat-list gadget enabled, the sidebar is still remains 'King' on your User: preferences and similar Special: pages). The best I could do was let it do its thing and then disassociate the lists from all that 'built-in routine' afterward (thus the occasional twitchiness depending on what you are doing/clicking).

Again, suggestions welcome! -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:28, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

By not bad, I meant it's good. ;-) And yes, I understand that it's not possible. The "Language" choice in the "header" is now cut off by the gear icon, but it's also not something I care about. I'm still trying it out. I had some tools in the sidebar I used, but not regularly. The biggest difference I noticed is that the editing screen is larger so the scan image is larger, leading to having to scroll down farther to save the page. (Interestingly, the edit box is shorter than the preview pane.) I'll probably end up sticking with it. At this point I don't miss the sidebar and I really like the cleaner look. The Haz _talk 04:46, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

That damn Language menu wasn't part of the original SideBar so of course its slightly different than the grand-fathered ones. I'm not sure what you mean by the 'Language [heading] being cut-off by the gear icon' however. Its always been to the right of the heading (Language) and all I did was try to mirror that in the associated css. Please throw up a pic if you have the time. If not; no worries. -- George Orwell III (talk) 05:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It does this for me as well, and it seems to only be on pages that don't have any links to other languages. If there are links, it says "In other languages", but if there are no links it says "Langua". Here is a picture. (Firefox 37, Chrome 41; Windows 7 x64; works fine in IE 11)—Beleg Tâl (talk) 12:26, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Image The Haz _talk 12:27, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to AuFCL, an adjustment to the .css has been applied and should resolve that heading-icon overlap. Please let me know if it did the trick for you folks too. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:24, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Great for me. Thanks! The Haz _talk 22:27, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

works for me in firefox & chrome, chapeau. (love the sidebar disappearing hiccup);-> Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 01:04, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────┘
This is what mine looks like using firefox and Linux. I'm not bothered by it though.

I Just noticed it's only on the main pages, Scriptorium, Main page, Community portal etc. Jpez (talk) 04:54, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

AFAICT, something like that has/had to do with the Vector typography refresh, certain monitor/screen DPI's and your browser's 'window width' behavior. In case you haven't discovered it yet; if you manually shrink your browser's window width, it will should eventually trigger the point where the Vector skin has some sort of boundary where the main margins shrinks by .5em (or so) all around. Unfortunately, that is where the skin determines the gadget's line of menus (should) jump to its 'reserve' (a .css padding trick) and fit right in between the personal menus it just encroached upon on the right and the top of the vector tabs & search box beneath it. Normally -- one would think -- as soon as the left content begins to overlap the right content, the overflow attribute and whatever it is set to would determine the point where the gadget line on the left can no longer co-exist with the personal menu on the right. I can't figure out how to get around that oddity or if it is even possible given the skin's design. Of course, I would love the trigger to be when the gear icon on the left touches the user icon on the right so the overflow setting could kick in and "move" the gadget line out of the other line's space. If anybody knows any better or how to rectify this, please speak up:)

On top of that, if you're stuck with a display screen optimally rendering/set at ~768 to ~860 DPI (approx.), you are more likely to see stuff like that being the @media rules in the core wiki software is now primarily geared for over ~968 DPI view-screens under standard desktop view (I don't exactly know what the "story" is with this under Mobile Mode). -- George Orwell III (talk) 06:03, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I know what the problem is (but I don't currently have any good ideas how to fix it.)

Please bear with me; the following is likely to be boring to those in the know; and pretty incomprehensible to anybody else. I am only listing it all out in hopes it might ring somebody's bells.

All of the page "editing header" (from "WikiSource" down to the "Search" box) lies within an HTML DIV with id "mw-head". The "mw-head" <div> further encapsulates four subordinate <div>s respectively with ids:

"p-panel"

from "Navigation" to the "language-gear" icon

"p-personal"

from "User-id" to "Log out"

"left-navigation"

from "Page-type" to "Talk"

"right-navigation"

from "Read" to "Search" box

In an ideal world these four inner <div>s lie at the four outer corners of "mw-head" but when the screen-width is too narrow for them to do so the effect Jpez observed results.

As of this moment I do not understand the logic which lays them out and assume the fault lies somewhere therein. AuFCL (talk) 06:31, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

In short, the "logic" gets hosed because of the Wikisource logo. Look to reveal the currently hidden div#mw-page-base & div#mw-head-base and you'll start to see how "odd" the layout really is. In short, the first 10 or 11 ems of the left hand side "should" be part of left-navigation at some point in the original design but the proper accounting for those 10/11 ems (e.g. be a true child of some layout-logical parent element) never seems to take place. The same is basically also true when it comes to the footer area (div#footer) but with an extra spoiler; a H2 meant (I guess) to serve as the 'heading' of the entire sidebar of "navigation" menus resides down there instead of where one would think it should go -- up top; between the bottom of the logo and the first menu (navigation) itself -- George Orwell III (talk) 07:00, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Apart from dazedly agreeing I cannot offer much. div#mw-head-base just /looks/ wrong but my brain has really shut down about two steps before this. My feeling is that one or the other of these two hidden divs /possibly/ ought to be expunged from the DOM altogether but all my experiments to date have really dire side effects and are not really worth pursuing. AuFCL (talk) 07:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I can save you some time; don't bother tinkering with stuff like those two as they are too embedded in the skin itself. The problem -- the way I see it -- "starts & ends" with the div holding the logo stuff; it not only being completely unique compared to the divs that come after it but it also happens to be the first sub-division of the sidebar in the skin by design. Just delete or hide div#mw-navigation (with no gadget applied) and you'll see the expected "snap left" of the main body recovering that initial 10/11 ems on the left does not happen -- not without further manual manipulation/intervention. Even that could easily be overcome if the logo and it's div containment (the reason for the 10/11ems) was factored out of the equation so to speak.

Conversion of all the sidebar menus into a single horizontal flat-list was not all that hard to do once the div dealing with the logo was pruned from the rest first. So unless there is a way to make that logo div fall inline (without the need for any "pruning") as the left most (1st) flat-list menu while retaining the originally intended logo-like links & properties found in the skin, I wouldn't begin to speculate where or how to address these lingering quirks in the final-rendering/expected-behavior; that would be the true waste of time here imo.

Of course, User:s can whack the logo and recover the space for use by the gadget on their own via their own customizations of the "base" css but for me, I know if I don't resolve this "the right way" (if at all), things will just get worse later on down the development road somehow. -- George Orwell III (talk) 08:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘

UPDATE (fwiw): Even though the above discussion(s) re: the "Overlapping of menus across the top" issue began to tapered off & eventually went quiet a good time ago, I've been "quietly" trying to find an acceptable solution in that time regardless to no avail. No matter which approach I thought to try, the Vector skin itself and/or the Wiki Mark-up always managed to make a mockery of my attempts.

The "best" that I could come up with is an option on a per-User basis to augment the Sidebar-to-FlatList Gadget with additional modifications that simply amount to replacing the current default naming &/or labeling used by the Personal menu bar along the top-right with something "shorter". Preferences becomes Prefs; Contributions becomes Contribs; even changing Log out to LogOut recovers the width of a space.

You can use the following "as is" or just as a guide to come up with your own...

/* Based on  Compact Vector Tabs
 * by w:User:Edokter/CompactTabs.js
 */
$( document ).ready( function() {
	$( 'a', '#ca-special' ).text( 'Special' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-nstab-user' ).text( 'User' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-talk' ).text( 'Talk' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-addsection' ).text( 'Add' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-viewsource' ).text( 'Source' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-history' ).text( 'History' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-unprotect' ).text( 'Unprotect' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-edit' ).text( 'Edit' );
	$( 'a', '#ca-view-foreign' ).text( 'Commons' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-userpage' ).text( 'Home' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-mytalk' ).text( 'Talk' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-mysandbox' ).text( 'Sandbox' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-preferences' ).text( 'Prefs' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-betafeatures' ).text( 'Beta' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-watchlist' ).text( 'Watched' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-mycontris' ).text( 'Contribs' );
	$( 'a', '#pt-logout' ).text( 'LogOut' );
} );

I kept the ones that deal with Vector Tab & Vector Menu labeling ( #ca-... ) in with the ones dealing with the Personal bar ( #pt-... ) just in case -- use what you want and leave out what you don't. I recommend you copy & paste the above from edit mode (everything between the source tags) to your local vector.js file, change or remove as you wish and then save it -- any problems just reach out under this section or leave a note on my talk page. -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:35, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

It uncluttered everything for me. Thanks George! Jpez (talk) 03:44, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

So one more minor flaw, albeit one I personally don't care about, is how it interacts with Book Creator. Now, I think we all know that Book Creator doesn't work correctly to begin with (formatting, etc.), so I'm not sure anyone even uses it, but the Book Creator can't be enabled/disabled with this gadget enabled. If you turn the gadget off and then enable Book Creator, you can turn the gadget back on and use it. Then Book Creator can't be disabled until this gadget is disabled again. I just wanted to throw that out there. The Haz _talk 14:49, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused... with this flat sidebar gadget enabled, I have a Download/print menu available when viewing a mainspace work. Within it are 3 options...

• Create a book
• Download as PDF
• Printable version

Are you saying the 1st option is not what you want or is not working? I know there is also a BookMaker gadget but I can't tell any difference between the one I have automatically and the one I get with the Bookmaker Gadget enabled except the choice in the same menu above goes from 1st to 3rd. Please clarify further. -- George Orwell III (talk) 18:38, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

The first option, Create a book. It's there, but when I click Start book creator, it stays disabled. If I turn off the flat sidebar I can then enable it. If I then turn flat sidebar back on, everything works as expected... except now I can't disable it. If I turn off flat sidebar again I can now disable it. The buttons are all there, but they just don't actually enable or disable the tool when the flat sidebar gadget is enabled. I hope that clears it up. The Haz _talk 18:58, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I follow you now... yet I am unable to reproduce this behavior. I can enable, add pages, delete pages and disable the Book Maker tool all just fine with the Flat-SideBar gadget enabled (Win 8.1 & IE 11). Can others please check for this behavior & report back?

Without more to go on, I can only guess it is some User Pref or enabled Gadget that is causing this "interference" -- you can try the typical troubleshooting steps along those lines if you wish until more feedback develops. -- George Orwell III (talk) 19:34, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like it's just my setup then. Thanks for checking. I'll look into it sometime. Like I said, it's not a big deal to me so if it works for everyone else then I'm in no rush. ;-) The Haz _talk 19:59, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Sister Project Links in En-Wiki Navigational Boxes

Hi All, there is a RFC on a topic of interest of this community at w:en:Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates#RFC: Should Sister Project links be included in Navboxes?. Please join the conversation, and help us figure out the role of links to other Wikimedia Projects in English Wikipedia Navboxes, Sadads (talk) 14:24, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Is there a newly introduced feature?

The first entry of this page beginning with "Arkansas. Annual Re" is highlighted and a note appears. I don't know if others see this, and why is that there. I took a screenshot File:Highlighted index entry in volume 35.jpg.— Ineuw talk 19:44, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Issue resolved.— Ineuw talk 20:09, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Pywikibot compat will no longer be supported - Please migrate to pywikibot core

Sorry for English, I hope someone translates this.
Pywikibot (then "Pywikipediabot") was started back in 2002. In 2007 a new branch (formerly known as "rewrite", now called "core") was started from scratch using the MediaWiki API. The developers of Pywikibot have decided to stop supporting the compat version of Pywikibot due to bad performance and architectural errors that make it hard to update, compared to core. If you are using pywikibot compat it is likely your code will break due to upcoming MediaWiki API changes (e.g. T101524). It is highly recommended you migrate to the core framework. There is a migration guide, and please contact us if you have any problem.

There is an upcoming MediaWiki API breaking change that compat will not be updated for. If your bot's name is in this list, your bot will most likely break.

Thank you,
The Pywikibot development team, 19:30, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

@Phe, @Mpaa, @John Vandenberg: can one of you .py gurus look into this? I checked the linked list above and Phe-bot is listed. If I'm not mistaken, isn't that the bot for match & split? -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Bot running on toollabs are already converted to use core, including match&split. — Phe 23:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Mpaa has a rewrite of djvutext.py being reviewed (should be merged before the end of the month), and patrol.py has been rewritten for core (but it depends on mwlib, which is a bit nasty and we intend to remove that dependency soon).
If anyone has Wikisource scripts using compat, email me or come on #wikisource or #pywikibot - we'll help you convert them. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:24, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Work by Wodehouse

It is stated in Author:Pelham Grenville Wodehouse page under section Jeeves and Wooster that Joy in the Morning is copyright-renewed in US upto 2041. Not sure about what to do, I have added a link to the 1920 edition. Is it addable here? Hrishikes (talk) 06:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

There was no 1920 edition as the book wasn't written at that point. Richard Usborne in Wodehouse at Work to the End (Penguin, 1976) lists Joy in Morning as 1947 and published by Herbert Jenkins, which matches that given in w:P. G. Wodehouse bibliography. It looks the copy you have linked to has a misprint for the date. As a result, we must wait for 2041 before hosting the work here. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:59, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, but what about Right Ho, Jeeves? The author page and Wikipedia declares it as a 1934 book. I have given three links to two separate versions, both of which state that the original version is of 1922. Is that a printing mistake too? The PG copy here also mentions 1922. Hrishikes (talk) 15:56, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

First edition of this was published 5 October 1934. The Title page should have MCMXXXIV on it (see [1] for more details). Note that this is in Roman numerals, but the copies you link to have the year in Arabic numerals. This is looking to me like someone has faked the scans to justify uploading them before the legal date. So, no we can't host this either. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 03:39, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

What about the Gutenberg version linked above? Moreover, the copies I linked at author page are not 1st edition; one is 1978 reprint of 1922 edition; the other is 1957 autographed edition, both mention 1922 as original date. Actual reprint/publication year has not been concealed; therefore no question of faking. Moreover, the copies are from different libraries located in different states. Hrishikes (talk) 03:50, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what's going on there, what I do know is that the first Jeeves novel Thank You, Jeeves was published in 1934. Therefore none of these other Jeeves novels can possibly be any earlier. We can't host Right Ho, Jeeves because it's not out of copyright in the UK (first place of publication) and it wasn't published in the US until 15 October 1934 (under the title Brinkley Manor). To host here, you will need to contact the publishers (currently Random House) and see what they say. In the meantime, I will remove the file and index.

To forestall any other questions, the only Jeeves book actually published before 1923 is the 1919 short-story collection My Man Jeeves. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for addition in Authority Control

I propose addition of the following libraries in the authority control for books.

1. Digital Library of India (status here). This can be added by the string http://dli.gov.in/cgi-bin/DBscripts/allmetainfo.cgi?barcode=XXXX and the similar string in mirror site http://www.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/DBscripts/allmetainfo.cgi?barcode=XXXX, by filling up the barcode for the work. Many PD books in many languages and published in India and abroad are available here.
2. West Bengal Public Library Network: Has huge number of books, mainly in Bengali and English, collected from various libraries in the state of West Bengal. Can be added by string http://dspace.wbpublibnet.gov.in:8080/jspui/handle/10689/XXX by filling up the value for XXX. Hrishikes (talk) 07:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

As we have a local handling but also pull data from WD, we should consider an approach that includes WD as well.— Mpaa (talk) 09:08, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I am wondering whether it may be more purposeful to have them at Wikidata alone. We should be strategic with our addition of authority control components as there will be a tipping point where populated lists become noise. If there was a means to customise them for the audience that would be useful. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The next course of action is unclear to me, whether I need to propose the same at Wikidata or whatever other course. Anyway, both of these sites are very good sources for English books published anywhere in the world before India's independence and purchased by any Indian library of the British era. These two sites can be very helpful for getting old English books. I have added many books here, mostly from Internet Archive because of coloured scans; but whenever the work I want is not available in IA, I turn to DLI and usually I am not disappointed. When ShakespeareFan00 points out missing or corrupt pages in files uploaded by me, I am usually able to provide the relevant page from DLI. These sites can be helpful to other users too, if they would try these. From this perspective, I had made the proposal. Hrishikes (talk) 16:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

If they aren't already Authority Control properties on Wikidata, then yes, I suggest you propose them there first at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control. The Haz _talk 20:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Right. The AC template was primarily thought of as the means to display [Wiki]data locally on Wikisource with a secondary function of storing any additional locally added info to eventually be scooped up by a BOT on their end every so often. This intent was a bit muddled in the beginning because we had far superior information stored locally even prior to the ability of Wikidata to import it. We remained faithful to that data until the blind BOT importation fever had broke.

Now that more and more cycles of adding, importing and verifying data among the various wiki projects has taken place, the emphasis should return to the original intent with the main focus on adding new authorities formally first on Wikidata and, once that has taken place, modify our local template to display it if it exists on WD accordingly. The secondary ability to add info here locally in hopes it will get imported by WD will still exist but should not usurp the primary goal of maintaining a single repository of [Wiki]data imho. -- George Orwell III (talk) 20:43, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Quotation marks at the beginning of each line?

Sometimes in older works when text is quoted each line that is in the quotation begins with quotation marks. Here is a small example where the Latin is quoted Page:Cynegetica.djvu/46 but sometimes you can find as much as a whole page with each line beginning with quotation marks. Is it possible to replicate this with a template or should we just ignore this and just add the start end quotes. Personally I would like to be able to replicate it. Jpez (talk) 05:48, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I ignore it. It was stylistic for a time, and therefore aligns with other stylistic components of typography that we don't try to reproduce. I put a start and end quote. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:19, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

AuFCL had a go at a template a while back, but had to give up. The practicalities of making this work with the huge variety of window and screen widths that are out there were just too messy. If the quote is in a separate paragraph I sometimes use blockquote tags (not in this case). Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:34, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

That takes me back a bit. If I recall correctly about the best "simple" solution I could come up with was along the lines of

<blockquote style="border-left:double;padding-left:0.5em;">{{lorem ipsum}}</blockquote>

—should anybody wish to continue the experiment. For reference the above displays thus:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

AuFCL (talk) 22:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Here, try this on for size:

"
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"
"
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"
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

—Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:11, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Wow now that's pretty cool Beleg Tâl. Any chance this can be done without the indent since any time I've seen it, it was always in line with the other text. Also most of the times the quote doesn't start on a new line, and it ends somewher in the last line. A rough example

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, "sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore
" et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation
" ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute
" irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse" cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Jpez (talk) 17:17, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Not to detract from Beleg Tâl's solution but there are at least two failure modes need to be addressed for a truly generalised solution, and neither is particularly easy:

1. Jpez' inline case described above (this is the one I originally gave up upon, as I recall), and
2. if the quoted text includes an internal paragraph break or other formatting which disturbs the even line-spacing upon which the leftmost absolute div depends. (Of course restarting this block every time quoted line-spacing changes is an acceptable approach in the worst case.)

AuFCL (talk) 08:27, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Plus, it's not a stylistic or grammatical choice made by the writer, but a house style for that specific publisher. If there are any editions by other publishers those marks are likely not there. To improve readability, especially on e-readers, I second billinghurst's comment and suggest not using this style. The Haz _talk 13:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

For what it’s worth, Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders ignore it… Zoeannl (talk) 05:25, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Special Characters in Toolbar for edits

Why are the boxes mis-sized? Did some CSS coding prove to now be incompatible? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:46, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Resolved. See my talk page. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:50, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

mw.wikibase.entity:getBestStatements -> Module:Authority control

I see that Wikidata has now developed getBestStatements which allows for the highest ranked, rather than the lowest numbered value to be selected, this is something that we should look to implement into Module:Authority control. Not sure if there is any other WD pulls that would work with this get statement. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:24, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Other than setting rank manually after two(?) or more entities per property exist, I don't believe rank is determined by the highest/lowest number selected/detected but by simple 'first-entered is first-listed is first-ranked'. I assumed that was why hundreds and hundreds of first-ranked VIAF entries were initially set to the GND's dummy "place-holder" ids a la overzealous .de BOT importations rather than the manually entered/vetted VIAF ids of en.wikipedia/en.wikisource. Those ids got the top spot simply because they were added to WikiData before we were scraped for our entries - resulting in most of the tracked-category VIAF id mismatches we have (or had?) with WikiData to date. And I think this new entity can only affect the locally displayed VIAF ids unless there other properties/entities with the same mismatched-to-ranking issue that I'm unaware of.

Still, I don't know if it is even worth adding something like this just yet imho. For example, unless the VIAF entries that we show (or have locally?) are different than what WD list(s) have been vetted -- and any valid "duplicates" subsequently ranked -- there is little point in pulling a Preferred id when its "wrong" to begin with. Only time & attention can improve the authenticity and accuracy of the data stored in WikiData's repositories and discovering such inconsistency is key to that end. The addition of getBestStatements would hinder not help with that goal the way I see it although I'd withdraw these objections to implementing it if that is the majority consensus ultimately reached here. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@George Orwell III: Thanks for putting my thoughts into words for me. I don't think this extension does what we're looking for. The Haz _talk 00:21, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-24

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 9. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from June 10. It will be on all Wikipedias from June 11 (calendar). [2] [3]
• If you use the Monobook skin, the buttons and other controls now look more the same in VisualEditor and other tools. [4]
• When you edit links and other items in VisualEditor, you now need to apply your change before closing the tool. [5]
• The title of dialogs is now easier to see when it is near long buttons. [6]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 9 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Language team. The meeting will be on June 10 at 14:30 (UTC). [7]

Future changes

• If you have a bot, you may need to fix it. The default continuation mode of the API for action=query will change at the end of June. [8]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:21, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Index:Principleofrelat00eins.djvu

Querying the inclusion of this on the basis of it being a translation, I wasn't sure the originals had expired. Also one of the translators was still alive in 1974. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:46, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

It's PD in the United States based on the publication date alone. Nonetheless, if one of the translators was alive in 1977, it would likely still be under copyright in India so shouldn't be hosted at Commons. It seems that the File it tagged correctly. The Haz _talk 22:06, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Items from this work are already separately present here, listed in the author pages of the translators. So I have added the source file. By the way, which one of the translators was still alive in 1977, may I know? Because this is news to me. Hrishikes (talk) 00:18, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

OK I checked - 1974 for - Author:Satyendra Nath Bose (Amended above) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:01, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Suppose he is still alive today, so what? Hrishikes (talk) 08:10, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

That would make the translation under copyright in India, so the file would have to stay at enWS. The Haz _talk 12:21, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Should a title end in a period

Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume I/IRENAEUS/Against Heresies: Book III/Chapter III. end in a period. Should it? —BoBoMisiu (talk) 02:31, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

No, it is not the usual way. Perhaps if it was an abbreviation, but not in this case. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:47, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The pages for the Ante-Nicene Fathers were set up some years ago as copies from another website and they all have this problem. I'm gradually working through them and fixing things like this as I proofread scans. I'm currently dealing with Clement of Alexandria and Irenæus is next on the list. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:35, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Associated Press renewals

Did the Associated Press routinely renew their pre-1964 copyrights? I do not see them listed. For instance I can find the renewal notice for a New York Times version of a story but there in nothing listed in the same year in the renewal book for anything by the Associated Press. Has anyone else done any searching of read about renewals? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:55, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

i don’t believe they did; see also [9]; i.e. [10]. however, as we see with the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo, people do not believe you can prove a negative. non-renewed works are seen to be too hard; even Hathi trust has difficulty. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 19:50, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

We can always remove them if we find a renewal notice, I just don't think the AP thought they had anything that would be worth copyrighting since they would not be published again. I help with the Library of Congress project at Flickr Commons on adding context to the Bain image collection. Of the 15,215 images processed so far, I think I found less than a dozen images marked "Copyright Bain" where they thought the image was important enough that it might be at risk of an unauthorized reproduction by a newspaper, usually a presidential portrait. When they saw the Iwo Jima image they knew they had something that would be worth reprinting, so I concede that they might have filed a notice, even if I have not seen one. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 02:33, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

it tended to be corporate culture, when you have the negative, before digital reproduction, that is real copyright. baseball digest only started renewing after a certain date; time magazine was consistent. for the photo of flag raising, researchers at national archives found no renewal, but that did not sway votes with a "precautionary principle" at commons. if they filed a renewal and no one can find it, did it exist? Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 02:18, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Corbis also claims a copyright on copies from the various collections that it has, that the Library of Congress has released into the public domain. If I remember correctly there was a statement on the LOC website about the Corbis claim. I can see from images that I buy on eBay that large numbers of distribution copies end up in various newspaper archives. Corbis has been a vacuum cleaner sucking up collections, and I think it is good, that at least they get preserved. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 00:55, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

app for iPad for Wikisource?

There is an app (application) for Wikipedia. I cannot find one for Wikisource. Can anyone here assist me in this? I like to see our books in new formats (for me) and have them read to me. Seeking an app for iPad. —Maury (talk) 04:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I think Google Chrome still does; Mercury might as well. (Both are free browsers for iOS.) The Haz _talk 16:12, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Hazmat2 —Maury (talk) 19:26, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

What is the rationale for not allowing categories for the subject of an article?

What is the rationale for not allowing categories for the subject of an article? If I am reading one article, I want to read others on that topic, so why do we delete them? If I am reading The Washington Post/Mark Twain's exclusive publisher tells what the humorist is paid and I want to read other articles about Mark Twain, I cannot. Here we have The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Clemens, Samuel Langhorne with the awesome category "75%" so we can see all the articles that are 75% complete. The one useful category for the reader Category:Mark Twain is absent. Someone wrote "Eponymous categories are not used here", but why? Why give the reader the useless category and delete the useful one? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:03, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

See Help:Categorization for the four types of categories we use here. The Portal namespace is used for topics (see Help:Portals). However, the body of literature hosted by enWS by and about Schneider is not significant enough to create a Portal for him yet and the list you are making on his Author page is sufficient. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:51, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I already know we do not do it, but WHY do we not do it. What is stopping us from doing something useful other than "we don't do it". Why do we display useless categories like "75%" that a reader will get no use from. I cannot imagine a reader saying "let me see what else I can read that is 75% complete". Why don't we have "Subject:Mark Twain" as well as "Author:Mark Twain". --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 06:05, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Because we have Author:Mark Twain, there is no need to reduplicate that list umpteen other ways. One suffices. And an Author page is much, much easier to organize for a user than a Category, and also much easier to maintain. --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

They are also more informative and contain information that is not readily able to be done through categories. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:36, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem with Author pages is that they're not very machine-readable. I guess one day all WS metadata will live in Wikidata, but until that happens I'd love a way to, for example, find all fiction by a particular author. So I think author categories would be really great. It wouldn't be hard to add to the {{header}} template, either — so actually maintenance would be easier than the manual Author pages.

I do realise that we're supposed to only categorise works by type, subject/genre, date, and licence — but it's not really that strict in reality. For example, we also have works by award, movement, series, country, etc. And on the flip side, the Authors' categories don't only include author pages. It's all a bit messy. (This discussion is relevant.) — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 06:36, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

@Samwilson: presumably we now can bring in machine readable data from WD. What data were you wanting assigned to works and authors? Presumably we are having it hidden. Noting that we do have machine readable information in the author and header templates, though it may be old-school machine-readable. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:36, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: The most basic thing is to be able to get a list of works by any particular author. It isn't too hard to pull that out while traversing the Works category hierarchy, but that seems a bit long-winded. :) I am quite probably missing something obvious! — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 08:37, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

The answer to why lies in the fundamentals of why Wikisource exists. Our primary purpose is to provide reliable sources to Wikipedia. We do this by ensuring that accurate transcriptions of published source matter are hosted within Wikimedia. The 75% category is part of an old set of maintenance categories that pre-date the proofreadpage extension. As we replace the old pages with page scans, that set of categories will gradually decrease in size until they can be quietly deleted. The categories of works by award, movement, series & country need to be converted to Portals. The whole project is a work in progress. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:15, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

• You are just defending the status quo without seeing how someone from the outside, coming in as a reader, sees the flaws, and what is needed to be useful to the reader. None of what I have suggested diminishes the goal of "[providing] reliable sources to Wikipedia". Linking related texts by subject and by author does not require me to go to an author page or a portal. Especially since you already told me that the subject I am working on isn't worthy of a portal. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:51, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Good point about the 75% category (and related). They'll go at some point. I have to disagree with you on the primary purpose of WS though! Sorry. :) It might've been true when we started, but surely now WS is aiming at being "a free library of source texts"? We're a library. (Libraries have all sorts of finding aids.) Wikipedia linkages are important, but they're not the main game. I think of WS as being more like a better-designed Project Gutenberg (i.e. we retain scans, and edit histories). Maybe it's just me! :-) — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 08:30, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Why not just wiki-link to the authors page in the header using the title, for example

This is what wiki is all about isn't it. Or you can link from the main article if you want where his name is mentioned and you're led to his author page where you can find out whatever Mark Twain wrote or was written about him (whatever we have added here that is). Jpez (talk) 12:40, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

The established way of associating another person/author with a work is to utilize the Plain Sister template's parameters as so....

...and I don't believe the generation of all the other possible parameters is something we've done until recently (maybe changes @ wikidata or the PlainSis lua module?). Nevertheless, that is the way we associate other individuals to a work. -- George Orwell III (talk) 21:56, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

You assume everyone is an author. We have related texts on people who are NOT authors here at WikiSource, where Subject:Joe Foo would link them. The same arguments are always made at Wikipedia. We have lists so let us delete the redundant category, or we have a category so let us delete the redundant lists. Is the trick to just pretend everyone is an author as a workaround, Author:Joe Foo for a subject? The current method does not allow us to link articles by subject who are not authors. Is the workaround to create Portal:Joe Foo for people who are not authors but are the subject of multiple entries? Does Beeswaxcandle decide who gets a Portal and who doesn't. It seems a lot easier to just have eponymous categories. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

No. I didn't assume anything; I went along with the Twain example provided before mine is all. If the individual is not an author -- or simply does not have an author page here yet -- one can point to any other related site (including Wikipedia)

... the same way.

Again, we are not Wikipedia. We have a different mission than Wikipedia. Our Categorization is not subject driven but work driven (in general) as a result. A portal might be applicable but the person in question probably needs to be "extraordinary" in some established or unquestionable way; portals help classify and collect topics generally. Plus when all else fails; the notes field or the talk-page's {{textinfo}} template can usually accommodate any such oddities or nuances as needed.

Just who is this person you're thinking of with dozens and dozens of if not hundreds of works about them anyway? -- George Orwell III (talk) 02:23, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

• Again you are just defending the status quo "... we are not Wikipedia. We have a different mission than Wikipedia" instead of saying, if you think it would be helpful, let us experiment with it, and see if other people find it useful too. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:36, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Damn straight I'm defending what I believe to be in the best interest for Wikisource. Go ahead and make a formal Rfc containing the proposal(s) for the desired change(s) in current practice and/or policy and see what happens if you can't accept what was meant to be time-saving, friendly-advice. -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Why does someone need to be "extraordinary", Do we need more server space? Is there some incentive for keeping the number of portals to a minimum? You wrote: "this person you're thinking of with dozens and dozens of if not hundreds of works about them". So the problem is we have a minimum number of entries on a subject to make them worth linking. Can I ask what that magic number is? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:42, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

The same reason(s) why couldn't/wouldn't answer my request for the individual in question in the first place is the exact reason we try to avoid dabbling in such folly. One man's hero is another man's goat - allowing one so-called individual in the Portal: namespace opens the door to adding ANY individual in the Portal: namespace; and history has shown us THAT repository eventually competes with Wikipedia rather than compliment/support it. That's why the bar is so high & so inflexible on this point. -- George Orwell III (talk) 04:12, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Have you actually read Help:Portals? In particular the section on when to create a new portal. You are obviously interested in aviators. Why not create Portal:Aviators? Then list the works you are creating as subsections by particular aviator. If, later on, it needs splitting in some way because it has become to big then it could be done by country or by era. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:23, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

i don’t know why you want to use a broken system like categories to do any function. why don’t you brainstorm a good way to search or link by author and then suggest it. could you link to a wikidata / VIAF entry? Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 02:21, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

For the record, I would 100% support establishing category trees for works by the subject covered. Categories do a fine job of that on many other projects, and even given the different purpose served by this project, the benefits of such a categorization scheme would likely outweigh the harms of implementing it. BD2412 T 15:15, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes. Even if the category system is 'broken', and Wikidata is the way to go (although no one seems quite sure of the best approach there), categories are what we've got now. Look at Commons, for instance! Subject categories are a huge part of that project; they don't seem to be moving to Wikidata. And if categories are borken for subject classification, why do we not consider them broken for genre classification as well? Is it that different (ontologically speaking)? I say bring on the subject categories!

— Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 03:26, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Comments. Commons and Wikidata: I think the project to put Commons on a Wikibase footing was given lower priority (by the WMF) than the SPARQL endpoint for Wikidata, which is now in beta. That puts the boot on the other foot, really, in that the SPARQL tool will presumably be able to do heavier lifting than the existing Magnus Manske tool, when it comes to queries. It is not there yet. As I mentioned below, Wikidata and Wikisource mainspace pages (rather than Author: pages) now do have an accepted relationship, though some hammering out of details might still occur. Basically any text in mainspace here can have a metadata page on Wikidata.

This is not to argue against an effort here, on categories, given enough consensus. But some consideration of where and what to emphasise, for projects involving hundreds of thousands of edits, is only sensible. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• What do you suggest to tie together articles on Subject:Joe Foo who is not Author:Foo? Beeswaxcandle says the subjects only get Portal:Foo if they are extraordinary. I do not know how to determine that objectively, unless you choose a minimum number of articles to tie together. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

i see you are echoing the request of user:cirt. i would not be adverse to a "template:subject" modeled on template:author. you could then combine a search result (with some curation) and link to VIAF / wikidata there. such organization doesn't do anything for me, but it isn’t paper. but please proceed based on consensus. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 23:34, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata handles this type of issue, which is a relatively new development over there. I have been arguing the case over there, and the situation in terms of Wikidata protocols now is satisfactory, at least to me. It is an example of Wikidata queries substituting for categories, and I think this is the future, as others have said. Such a query asking for all items with "Mark Twain" as "main subject" is easy enough to write, and can be run on an existing tool.

I think the situation warrants documentation here, with the discussion of existing ways of using categories and portals. I recall similar debates five or six years ago, when portals were turned to. Leveraging Wikidata now can only help. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-25

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Users have created more than 5000 articles with the new translation tool. [11]
• Editing a page is now faster. This is because some statistics about edit filters were removed. [12]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from 17 June. It will be on all Wikipedias from 18 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 16 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join a meeting with the Wikidata team. It will be on June 19 at 16:00 (UTC). [13]

Future changes

• Developers are working on a new tool to get and send newsletters. If you read or write a newsletter, share your ideas about it. [14]
• If you use Pywikibot, soon you won't be able to use compat anymore. [15] [16] [17]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

HTTPS

Hi everyone.

Over the last few years, the Wikimedia Foundation has been working towards enabling HTTPS by default for all users, including unregistered ones, for better privacy and security for both readers and editors. This has taken a long time, as there were different aspects to take into account. Our servers haven't been ready to handle it. The Wikimedia Foundation has had to balance sometimes conflicting goals.

Forced HTTPS has just been implemented on all Wikimedia projects. Some of you might already be aware of this, as a few Wikipedia language versions were converted to HTTPS last week and the then affected communities were notified.

Most of Wikimedia editors shouldn't be affected at all. If you edit as registered user, you've probably already had to log in through HTTPS. We'll keep an eye on this to make sure everything is working as it should. Do get in touch with us if you have any problems after this change or contact me if you have any other questions.

/Johan (WMF)

22:00, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Renewal by proxy

If the New York Times files a renewal notice for 1940 would that cover the text that they do not own, such as the Associated Press articles, or does the Associated Press have to file their own renewal notice? It seems it does not cover material that they are not the author of. Anyone come to a different conclusion? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

My understanding (which may be wrong) is that you'd need a renewal for the AP item and the NY Times edition it was re-used in.

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 00:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Your understanding is correct. News outlets pay for licensed use of wire articles, so ownership and copyright still reside with the wire agencies. The Haz _talk 20:55, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Subject:Joe Foo

Well, the experiment Subject:Susannah Lattin was deleted by Beeswax so lets have a vote about experimenting with Subject:Joe Foo to complement Subject:Firstname Lastname for people who have articles about them who are not authors. Can someone restore Subject:Susannah Lattin so we can see what the experiment looks like. We have Portal:Firstname Lastname but Beeswax argues that only exceptional people get to have portals. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:26, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

To clarify, what you are asking people to discuss here is the creation of a new namespace called the Subject: namespace. This would run alongside the existing Author: namespaces. Editors making comments need to think through how such a namespace would interact with the other namespaces we have. In particular, how would an Author who is also a Subject be treated? How would a Subject who is a part of a Portal be managed? If a Subject is not the principal focus of a work, but is mentioned in the context of another Subject, should that work be listed on the Subject's page? How significant a mention is enough to cause the work to be listed? How will replicating the related Wikipedia article(s) be prevented? Should pages in the Index: namespace be listed? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• Looks like User:Billinghurst decides who gets a portal and who doesn't and Portal:Susannah Lattin has been deleted too. It appears that a group of people do not want the ability to link together articles on a common subject who are not authors, and do not even want to experiment with the concept. I am a newcomer and that flaw is obvious to me. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 13:56, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

  You are not a newcomer, and this discussion has been had with you previously. In fact you said above that it was explained to you. We do allow subject groupings through portal namespace, just not on a matter such as that. The portal namespace is aligned with LoC classifications. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:55, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

  Why not on a matter such as that? We have a collection of works on a subject, and a contributor wants to add a category or portal to cover that subject, why should we block that? I don't know or care whether it should be a portal or category, but you've opposed both.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Support

• Support As, instigator. We need a way to tie together articles that have a common subject and are NOT authors themselves. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:26, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
• support meh, i could do without the lede, when there is a wikipedia article. it would be nice to float as an experiment. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 03:43, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
• Support rename. The "Portal" namespace is largely a misnomer. Our author namespace is for author portals, and our portal namespace is for subject portals. I believe we only started using "Portal" for our subject namespace because it was already there. A rename of the portal namespace to "Subject" would improve the site. Hesperian 00:33, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
  • To expand with some history: "Portal" literally means "entry point". The namespace originated with Wikipedia, where a portal is a topic-specific entry point into the encyclopedia: an alternative to the main page with its own dynamic material like "Did you know", "On this date" and "Featured article". Because Mediawiki is Wikipedia-focussed, the portal namespace became a default namespace for all sites, and we got it for free when Wikisource was first set up. Back then there was no clear process for fiddling with the default namespaces. Thus, when we decided we needed a namespace for subject pages, we took the easy way out and simply used the Portal namespace, which we had no other use for, even though we knew perfectly well that our subject pages are not portals. In short, the fact that our subject page namespace is named "Portal:" rather than "Subject:" is an unfortunate historical accident. It is time we fixed that. Hesperian 00:53, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

  I don't see that the proposal was for a rename, but for an additional namespace. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:57, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

  Proposal aside, a rename is just not an option. The structure of our Portal namespace is based upon the Library of Congress Classification system as a means to an end that efficiently incorporates notions such as Subject:, Topic:, Object:, Institution:, Organization:, and the like into an established hierarchy (thanks again to Adam B. Morgan). So please drop any ideas of a rename and stick with discussing the original proposal of adding a new namespace labeled Subject:.

  Besides, if the rest of the planet has Portal as namespace-number 100 why on earth would we want to be the single odd man out by relabeling ns-100 to Subject:? To make life miserable for the Wikidata people for starters maybe? -- George Orwell III (talk) 13:55, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

  Also, there are two different definitions of "Subject" being used here. Subject, as proposed, only relates to people who are not authors and therefore will never have an author page. Subject, as used by Hesperian, means topic as defined in the LoC classification. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:18, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

  Ah, I see; as such, I do not support. Hesperian 00:56, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

  I'd support a portal to subject rename since basically thats what portals are here. Subject is a more suitable description. Still I think there should be some control over the pages that are subjects/portals because as I mentioned below this could get out of control and a subject could be created for anything and everything, for example Joe Foo could be a heading in the subject:Foo family page if he was mentioned in a few texts. If then Joe Foo was an exceptional man and he was mentioned in many texts in history of course he would deserve his own subject pages and probably many sub subject pages about him. Someone has to be in charge of regulating this so it won't get out of hand, and this is the job of the administrators. I don't see what all the fuss is about really, I think if Joe Foo is a heading in the subject:Foo family with three texts about him we've got him covered. Or else someone might add a subject:Joe foo's toenail page because it was mentioned once in one of these texts. This is silly of course except if Joe Foo's toenail was an exceptional toenail and many people wrote about it. —unsigned comment by Jpez (talk) 21 June 2015.

• Support having something - I don't know if a "subject" space is the way to do it, or a categorization scheme, or another space, but it should be possible to organize works to some degree by the subject covered. BD2412 T 20:54, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose I'm not familiar with the subject matter concerned with Susannah Lattin but I think a better option would be to add her name to a portal with the subject matter concerning her rather than directly link to a page about her. This way we don't need to create endless pages about everone and everything and I think it would be an easier way for people that don't know about her to learn about her. This way if someone wanted to find works about her they would also find them in the portal via search. —unsigned comment by Jpez (talk) .

Excuse me, but what exactly is the problem? Beeswaxcandle only moved Subject:Susannah Lattin to User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )/Susannah Lattin2 but nothing appears to be deleted, does it? The example still stands. 127·0·0·2 (talk) 02:57, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I love your indignant "Excuse me". User space is not the same as Wikisource space. User space can be deleted at any time and it is not indexed the same way, nor is it searched by default the way mainspace is. We need a permanent way to tie together documents on a common subject who is not an author. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:18, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I see no rationale provided to why we would want a Subject ns: and how that would benefit the project, or would be within the scope of the project. We have a portal ns: to cover our needs. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:53, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

The Portal:Susannah Lattin was also deleted BY YOU, because Portals are reserved for exceptional people only, and there is no firm rule on who is exceptional and who isn't, so a small group of people with deletion rights decide who gets a portal.

The exceptions come when what we host about that notable person overwhelms an appropriate parent Portal and splitting that portal by person is the best way to manage the portal's subheadings. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Can you rephrase that in simple English. I read it three times and still do not understand it. I think it is an explanation of why you deleted Portal:Susannah Lattin, but it doesn't make sense. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:07, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose I can't see that a Subject NS is going to provide anything that the Portal NS doesn't already. I think a discussion could probably be had about whether we can be more liberal than we currently are with regards to categorisation — but that's not what's being proposed here (to my understanding; and I also think it's something that a greater use of Wikidata is going to help us with). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 10:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

How exactly is Wikidata going to solve this problem? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:18, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

I would imagine that every subject could have a Wikidata item, and it could have a property like described by source which lists the Wikisource items that mention it. This would mean that it'd be easy to create composite lists as well, which'd be cool. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 08:53, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose the Subject namespace is unnecessary, and the Portal namespace and Wikidata should be used for the purpose of linking related texts. However I agree that it would be nice to have clear guidelines on who/what deserves a subject portal, like Wikipedia's notability guideline for articles. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:10, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose — The appropriate place to link together works about a common subject or works focusing on individuals who are not themselves authors of works is not Wikisource as such organization/listing falls outside of our scope & mission. Wikipedia is the right place to do this - I suspect under either a Bibliography section or a Further reading section where all relevant works can be listed (including those still under copyright) as well as [inter]linked to (not just those copyright-free ones hosted on Wikisource) whenever possible.

  This is not the first time an idea like this has been floated on Wikisource. History has shown time and time again that its a "bad fit" & fraught with pitfalls for Wikisource. The eventual controversies that can arise when subsequent contributors question the fidelity and or accuracies of existing content, for example, within work X when presented with a new work Y and then contrasted further with the information provided by work Z; all of which typically cannot be reconciled in a fair nor objective manner -- that's not Wikisource's mission and why such organization or listing thrives when done in a community-based, ongoing encyclopedic effort such as Wikipedia. -- George Orwell III (talk) 20:52, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

An index of works on Wikisource is well within Wikisource's mission, and is hardly within Wikipedia's.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose: Last I checked, a person who is simply a subject and not an author can have a category. We've done it here before. If the person is also an author, an author page seems more appropriate. Someone feel free to correct me if something has changed. The Haz _talk 20:59, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Then we have an alphabetical list of writings about that person. What I want is a chronological list of writings and the ability to annotate them, perhaps by having the author in parenthesis. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:10, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

I think the system that Commons uses is probably the traditional mediawiki approach to this, in which you'd have some level of duplication: a category of all works mentioning a subject, and a page that lists much the same information but in a different format (i.e. on Commons this is done with categories vs galleries). — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 08:53, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment

• Please refer to earlier discussions like this in the archives of this page about subject and people who are not authors.

  We have been through years of the additions of Richard Arthur Norton that are either not in scope or edge cases for our scope. They have been repeatedly moved to his user ns subpages. For the person in question, the circumstances surrounding the death of this person are notable, the person was not notable within their own right. The articles transcribed should be down in full, and should be part of the newspaper in question as a subpage newspaper/year/article. We are not a directory listing for articles about people, and that would be nigh impossible to curate. A category can be created if necessary, and the person can have articles linked to them from Wikidata, by use of their referencing criteria. For the person proposed they would not be worthy of a Portal, though they may be a heading line within a portal if they are significantly pertinent. — billinghurst sDrewth 09:53, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

How exactly will we go down the slippery slope from having Subject:Susannah Lattin or Portal:Susannah Lattin to "nigh impossible to curate". We are in the computer age where nothing seems impossible. It would seem that a collection of > 10,000 authors and 320,968 texts would be impossible to curate, but we do it. The New York Times used to publish a paper subject index every two weeks and then recompile it every three months and then recompile it at the end of the year. Then they recompiled a cumulative index up to 1912 in 15 paper volumes. They did it again to cover the material from 1913 to 1929 in 68 volumes. All before computers, all done by hand on index cards before set in type for printing. Read about it here. So, to say it would be "impossible to curate" sounds silly compared to what others have done with even less silicon brawn. We should at least be experimenting. The difference between MySpace and Friendster; and Facebook was that Facebook continuously experimented with new useful features while MySpace and Friendster were static. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:18, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

• "... person can have articles linked to them from Wikidata". As a contributor to Wikidata, where experimentation is welcome, I can tell you that it has no mechanism to link to individual works. It has room for one link to a Wikisource page, which would be Subject:Susannah Lattin or Portal:Susannah Lattin, both of which have been deleted as "out of scope". --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:42, 21 June 2015 (UTC)
• Portal:Susannah Lattin has been re-added using the parameters of the classification system that the namespace is based on. I figured best to start it myself. Hopefully, folks can follow the parents and tangents from there. -- George Orwell III (talk) 23:00, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Our history here would say that the curation of such pages is nigh impossible. Your analogy to the NYT with their paid and professional staff and a management ability to set the standard and to undertake that work is unrealistic. While the person is important to you, it doesn't make the person important. The person doesn't make current notability guidelines at enWP, and any notability would relate to the crime that was undertaken and the death that results. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:07, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

• Perhaps more people would contribute if you created a more friendly atmosphere for new ideas. The problem is that the incumbents with delete rights see every experimentation as chaos, and so we do not get a chance to see if it is possible or impossible. Can you imagine Steve Jobs or Elon Musk fretting that a small experiment was "nigh impossible". --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:02, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Who cares about enWP? We have a set of works here on the subject.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:45, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

Navigation of the Portal: namespace is explained at Help:Portals#Navigating the Portal space. In the same way that Categories must have existing parents, so must Portals. The key subject of of the Susannah Lattin related articles is the very poor postpartum care she received. This means the articles best belong in the Medical portals. When we go to Portal:Medicine, we find a subportal Portal:Gynecology and obstetrics, which is empty other than a link to a further subportal for Abortion. Although someone, other than Richard Arthur Norton, has put the articles into the Abortion portal, the best place for them is on the Gynae/Obstetrics portal. When that portal gets too big, then a subportal for the Postpartum period could be created (along with others for Antepartum and Delivery). This process keeps works (be they articles, reports, papers, or whole books) within a consistent topic structure that is usable and understandable. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:00, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

If "categories must have existing parents" we will never be able to create a new top level category, ever. That statement must be wrong. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:16, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

@Hesperian: Re the naming of the portal namespace or subject namespace. What about the thought of a community consensus to create an alias of "Subject:" that redirects to Portal: ns. None of which relates to the content of what is in the space. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:12, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

• My comment is that bot creation of listings from Wikidata will be coming onstream in the reasonably near future. The real question appears to me "and how should they be used here?". Subject listings and author listings are two examples, but there will be more (for example author listings for collective works, listings by publication date). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:59, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

after having seen author pages with links from every article in the DNB, i would hesitate to say anything is impossible. subject or portals pages seem like a lot of work, but i wouldn't want to deny someone trying. how do we organize the body of texts so that wikidata can link to them? how do we organize common searches in a reader friendly way? a failed attempt that dies on the vine is better than none? Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 22:42, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposal on Wikidata for Wikisource

There is a proposal at Wikidata regarding how to link from a subject item (ie. Francis Bacon) to an item for a dictionary entry on the subject that happens to have a transcription on Wikisource. It will affect how data is stored with regard to texts on Wikisource. I think there are two main issues:

1. It seems that because there was next to no discussion on the original issue, the proposing user went ahead and started making bulk changes.
2. The proposal refers to items with Wikisource links as "Wikisource articles" which brings to light a bigger issue. They are not Wikisource articles, but in fact "items" that have transcriptions on Wikisource. Why should a book that's not on Wikisource be considered different from the same book on Wikisource?

If you care to read or comment, the link is here: Change described by source (P1343) qualificator for Wikisource articles The Haz _talk 00:13, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

On point #2: it is clearly better that the "metadata page on Wikidata for an article" should not be conflated with "article on Wikisource". Point #1 is of course "be bold". Charles Matthews (talk) 09:55, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

Good point, but to be clear, I meant that the user went and made mass changes with a bot within an extremely short period of time. This generally goes against the policy of being bold (which I also subscribe to at times). I was out of town for a day or two and came back to find all these crazy changes which broke how the data was linked. The Haz _talk 00:17, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The wikisource item is an instance of the creative work item. It is not the same thing, it potentially has spelling differences, it has potentially different encoding, etc. A printed paper book thing may have the same content but is not the same type of thing like a PDF thing or a wikisource thing. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I assumed there would be an item for the (general concept of the) 'work' and then separate (but linked) items for each of the editions (one of which would be the Wikisource one). Is that correct? Because things like genre etc. would be tied to the general work, and common to all editions (so to query for the WS work, we have to head back up the tree). I'm confused though, so might be missing the point! :) — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 04:54, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a pattern emerging I'm using for DNB-related items, that links to the "subject" using "main subject", with link back in the form "described by source"; and links to the edition of DNB using "part of". That at least captures the essentials, and I think it is sound. Wikidata is too young for "guidelines with everything", and some refinement, bells and whistles are to be expected. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:41, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. Yes, I guess there's going to be a while of sorting things out! :) It's exciting though. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:58, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@BoBoMisiu: This is not how it's been done for works on WS. An edition on Wikisource does not have its own item. Instead, there is an item for whichever edition was used and that item is linked to the same edition transcribed on Wikisource. This is similar to how Wikipedia articles do not have their own items, but instead are linked to from topic items on Wikidata.

@Samwilson: That's close to what's been done for works. However, since a single edition (not work) should only have one transcription on Wikisource, they are instead linked to from the item pertaining to the edition used. There may be a work item for a book, and another item for the 3rd edition. If the 3rd edition is available on Wikisource, then it is linked to from that item, instead of either the work or a separate "Wikisource" edition (since it is supposed to be the same in terms of text and images). The Haz _talk 03:07, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

And how will that work for translations of works not originally in English? That is, what if the work is Alcestis by Euripides, and we are dealing with a translation by a particular author, and that translation is in its 3rd edition? What gets linked to what? --EncycloPetey (talk) 12:51, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

@Hazmat2: I read through some of the WD and WS documentation. I was thinking of beyond WS system, specifically http://schema.org/Book relationships. Ah, so it is really split between WS and WD – the edition in WS and the work in WD. WS for content of edition, and WD for relationship of edition as instance of work. I think having a tree view of the WD data model, like http://schema.org/docs/full.html includes, would be very helpful to visually think through the metadata and what to add to a WD item. —BoBoMisiu (talk) 17:21, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Author name confusion

I had created the page Author:Thomas Claverhill Jerdon but then, thinking it incorrect, changed it to Author:Thomas Caverhill Jerdon. On further looking around, I am really confused about the middle name. There are plenty of references online to both forms. Internet Archive has creator pages for both. VIAF mentions both forms in the same link. English Wikipedia goes for Caverhill. DNB here says Claverhill. The picture on author page says Caverhill. Amazon says Caverhill. RootsWeb here says Claverhill but here, quoting his marriage record, says only C. But there should not be this kind of confusion. The author was an army officer; there should be some clear record of his name somewhere. Can anyone please help? Hrishikes (talk) 14:19, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

I found this. It's not necessarily definitive, but it's from a copy of records in Scotland that were republished from film.

Name: Thomas Caverhill Jerdon
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 12 Oct 1811
Birth Place: Jedburgh, Roxburgh, Scotland
Baptism Place: Jedburgh, Roxburgh, Scotland
Father: Archibald Jerdon
Mother: Elisabeth C. Millner Or Millar
FHL Film Number: 1067944
Reference ID: 2:18C6RNM

Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950. Salt Lake City, Utah: FamilySearch, 2013

The Haz _talk 00:28, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Whichever option is decided on, please create a redirect from the other spelling. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 01:05, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, a redirect is in order, I think. Thanks @Hazmat2: for coming up with a primary source. Hrishikes (talk) 01:20, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has Caverhill, by the way; which appears to be correct therefore. Charles Matthews (talk) 05:36, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The first reference in the Wikipedia article has this to say on the matter:

His obituary in The Ibis 1872 (p. 342) and all other works spell his name as Thomas Caverhill Jerdon. This spelling is also found in Hume's Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds Volume 1 (1889); M. A. Smith's The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma. Reptilia Volume 1. as well as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry by Christine Brandon-Jones. However Dickinson, E.C. & S.M.S. Gregory (2006) have suggested that Claverhill may be the correct spelling as indicated in the India Office Record, possibly a transcription error and further evidence to the contrary may be seen from Scottish records of the time such as "Reports of Cases Decided in the House of Lords, Upon Appeal from Scotland, from 1726 to [1822]. T. & T. Clark, 1853. page 683" PDF as well as the London Gazette- 13 August 1872 PDF.

So I think this settles the matter. Hrishikes (talk) 07:29, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Death registry says Caverhill [18], though noting that is transcription too. Agree with the consensus. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:35, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-26

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Some wikis can now be used only with HTTPS. This includes the English, Russian and Chinese Wikipedias, among others. Soon all wikis will use only HTTPS for all users. [19] [20]
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• On June 15, search was broken on all wikis for several hours. [22] [23] [24]
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15:23, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

A list of libraries

A useful list of digital libraries is available here, for getting scans of old books. Hrishikes (talk) 08:32, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Hrishikes, thank you. —Maury (talk) 08:39, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Why do we delete links to Wikipedia in our hosted texts?

Why do we remove links to Wikipedia from texts? When I am reading a text and want to know more about a town or a company or a person, why do I have to open a new tab, go to Wikipedia, and type in the search term, instead of just clicking on a link in the text. Again, as an outsider, a lot of things we do here are strange. Is there a rule I can read somewhere concerning transwiki linking? Or can someone explain why they are being removed from texts that I am adding. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:44, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a proposed guideline for this at Wikisource:Wikilinks. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:10, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't really say that we have to remove links to Wikipedia, does it? Anyone know why we are removing links to Wikipedia. See: here and here and many others. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:33, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

While the guideline doesn't specify removal of links to WP, it does warn against overlinking. The preference here at Wikisource is to link lightly, and only do so for clarity of the text. In the first of your examples, there's no need to link to Milwaukee, as it should be obvious that the Milwaukee Journal comes from there. Now that the article is named as a subpage under the Milwaukee Journal a link to that is no longer necessary. What is needed is a top page for the Milwaukee Journal that can have a "wikipedia" field in the header, which will link to the article over there. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:55, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

For decisions that are purely subjective, don't you think the person doing the transcribing should get the benefit of the doubt, and maybe not remove their linking. If you want to create a rule that says when the the name of the town appears in the name of a newspaper, NEVER create a link to that "city, state" article in Wikipedia, I will follow it. Otherwise can we resist the temptation to remove links that maybe you would not have added if you had transcribed the article. While it may be obvious to someone that the Milwaukee Journal comes from Milwaukee, it is not always going to be correct, the Moscow Journal may come from Moscow, Idaho, or the Washington Post may be from Washington state. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:22, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

well, some older transcriptions have more wikipedia style links; but more recently only wikisource links, especially with a q.v. some validaters may see removing links as "more current / consensus style". not worth arguing about to me. i would think a portal page for each work, linked from the header, with more information about location and time period would be useful. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 22:08, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Another reason to avoid over-linking is that more and more people are using Wikisource on ereaders (thanks to the terrific epub export tool) where links often don't even work and anyway are distracting from the text. This probably applies more to fiction than non-fiction. Some people use the {{wg}} template to make links grey (hehe see what I did there?) and less in-your-face, but this style often doesn't carry over to ereaders. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:30, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

This is what I subscribe to as well. I prefer no links, though in some non-fiction works I know that they can be "necessary." The Haz _talk 02:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

IMHO, normally, a work of fiction should not have annotations. A fiction is based on the society and culture of the reader and the reader is likely to understand whatever the work refers to. Annotations only distract from the pleasure of reading. But a slightly different perspective is warranted in case of historical fiction and translated literature. The reader may not have sufficient knowledge of ancient history; and in case of translated literature, most readers won't have a clue to exotic words or references in the work. Here annotations are required to help the reader understand properly a work from a different milieu. That is why, such works tend to have a Glossary at the end of the work; but even that may not be sufficient in all cases. Without making rigorous rules for each and everything, this matter should be left to the discretion of concerned editors who are the primary proofreaders of the work. Hrishikes (talk) 05:19, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• You can always go into the settings of your eReader and suppress external links. Since we cannot read minds, we do not know who wants them and who does not want them. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:12, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

For historical articles it is important to link to the historical people, and the places described. I don't want to have to guess who "Mayor Foo" was or "Governor Foo" or "Judge Foo" or what state Hackensack was in, or what a Bellanca 14-13 is. We don't need to burden the reader with doing the research to see who the mayor of New York City was in 1930. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:09, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• It would really be nice if Billinghurst would stop removing the links, or at least join the discussion to explain why he/she is deleting them. They are not even doing a decent job, they keep leaving stray brackets in the articles here, and here, and here, its is just making more work for everyone to fix it. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:23, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

:)I'd like to give my opinion on this subect. I think we should not link to wikipedia at all. The point of wikisource is to trancribe scanned books for the most part so as to provide accurate transcriptions of original works. Linking to wikipedia from the texts undermines the transcription project and the true essence of wikisource in my opinion. For example looking at this page The Iliad (Butler)/Book I it's very presentable and very informative and will be very useful for someone who is looking to get educated about the Iliad, but it has nothing to do with wikisource in my opinion, which is to provide an accurate transcription of the original. Whoever put this page together must have put a lot of effort into it but I think it would be better suited elsewhere. If someone wants to spice up a text with pictures and links they're better off doing it on something like wikibooks in my opinion. Jpez (talk) 19:58, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

We can't just force Wikibooks to handle what we don't want to. If these type of things should exist within Wikimedia, and I don't see why not, then they need to end up here. It may be your goal to simply provide accurate transcriptions, but it is my goal to provide source texts for actual use, which can include useful links.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:57, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm of like mind Jpez but wouldn't go as far as recommending never linking to Wikipedia at all. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia "mentality" is hard to back away from once they've got their way doing things hooked into you. This is why folks tend to [over] link their Wikisource pieces - they've been indoctrinated into believing interlinking is a must for everyone and everything (and I must do it for you to alleviate your burden or to optimize your benefits).

While the primary task at hand for us is to strive to accurately transcribe and faithfully reproduce previously published works, their is also somewhat of an unspoken desire here to retain as much of the "old school" reading experience that one might have with a printed book in hand as possible and without the politics of edit wars, territorial cabals and endless discussion over the smallest of detail.

Think of it this way: One might think peppering links for every person, place or thing is lessening the "burden" for the potential reader but isn't it also possible doing as much is robbing the ability of the reader to come to his or her own realizations about what warrants further investigation, the degree to which they comprehend the material overall -- even the degree to which they ultimately "absorb" the author's intent -- and similar nuances that can also be classified as 'beneficial' both at the same time?

The take away here is just because you can always easily interlink one thing or another doesn't mean you always should; when you do, make sure you remember that you're taking on the role of 'biased editor' instead of just 'faithful transcriber'. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:35, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

The history of this site is not to provide linking that does not have a clear value, and the links that you are adding are close to pointless to the articles; in that someone reading the articles is hardly going to need a modern day link to the Wikipedia articles to better understand the article. Your people links have been left, and the red links to our main ns were out of place. We provide the guidance about wikilinks and a simple reading of that would have made it evident why the links were removed. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:43, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

You are obsessively imposing your personal preference and pretending it is Wikisource policy. We cannot read the minds of people in the present or the future. The "clear value" should be determined by the person who is taking the time to transcribe a document, since they are the best person to determine that value, and they are the end user of the document. If one other non Wikisource editor were to read one of these documents over the next 50 years, I would be amazed, or even if you read them to catch the mistakes you are introducing with stray brackets. There is no Wikisource policy demanding the removal of links to Wikipedia. Imagine if Wikipedia people demanded the removal of links to Wikisource because they saw no value in them, I would hope that you would be the first person to complain. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 13:53, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikimedia is a comprehensive and cross-referenced project. Links between projects at any level can encourage the success of all projects, and should be favored. Cheers! BD2412 T 14:47, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I am removing valueless links to places that are not the context of the article. I am leaving pertinent links to people that are contextually relevant to the articles. I am removing redlinks that are nonsensical. I am moving some links to the header fields where we have set those header fields. This has matter been discussed for years and is available in our archive, and those discussions come through in Wikisource:Wikilinks. My editing is in line with that community consensus from the guidance.

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): You choose to ignore the community linking guidance, and continue to link in a WP way without a justification to why it should be linked, and how the link adds value to the transcription. This is not Wikipedia, our guidelines are developed with our experience and our knowledge of what works well to display these works. You should also read Wikisource:Annotations as some of your linking is interpretation that come into the zone of annotation and opinion. So please go and read the previous conversations, then come back with an informed opinion of our previous discussions, or follow the guidance in the editing. @BD2412: Yes, and we try to be comprehensive, though sensible and reasonable pertinent and relevant. We do not need trivial and links of little value, and when we have a 500pp work transcribed by multiple users the linking variability, and the (re|over)linking is problematic. At each of the wikis they have internal linking and external linking guidance, and so do we. Show me lists of wikipedia articles, or a wikibooks works that predominantly links off that wiki. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:53, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

• No, it is you obsessively imposing your personal style preference and pretending it is WikiSource policy. There is no rule demanding the removal of links to Wikipedia. The person taking the time and effort should be making the decision of what is important to link to, because they are the end-user, usually related to other projects that link here to Wikisource. I asked you politely, several times to disengage, and let others mentor me as to what changes need to be made, so I can make the changes. You refused to disengage, and in fact sped up your effort to remove all Wikipedia links, and example of extremely bad-faith. You do not have the ability to predict what people will find useful one year into the future, let alone 100 years or 1,000 years. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

  What rubbish. Follow the guidance, look at the discussions above, look in the archives, look at all the existing practice, look at what I have done, it all aligns. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:23, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I am not particularly familiar with Wikibooks, but we routinely link to Wikipedia from Wikiquote for names of notable people who don't have Wikiquote pages. BD2412 T 03:06, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

As do we. This isn't what is being argued here. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:23, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I read the guideline, there is no wording demanding the removal of links to Wikipedia, it is your personal preference. When people question your behavior don't say, "It is in the bible, go read the bible". If there is a rule demanding the removal of links to Wikipedia tell us the chapter and verse in the bible. I understand you dislike the links and do not find them useful, but you do not have to impose your personal preference. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:51, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Richard Arthur Norton I'd like to see the links that were removed to judge for myself if they were wrongfully or rightfully removed. Billinghurst is an administrator here and one of their jobs here is to to overlook and make sure the guidelines we have are being followed. Of course an administrator may overstep their boundaries and if so it should be brought to our attention if this is the case. I've had no problems with any user since I've joined wikisource and everybody has been extremely helpful so it seems strange to me that user:billinghurst would have something personal with you and has nothing better to do than to stalk your posts, so I'd like to see the links removed if possible. Jpez (talk) 06:45, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

There is no specific wording demanding the removal of [wiki]links because the understanding is to keep such linking to "a minimum" to begin with (i.e. no overlinking). From the works I've inspected, you are clearly linking more than what is germane to the content or to its comprehension. Initial contributors are always the worst when it comes to the aspect of linking; subsequent proofreaders always seem to approach it with a far more objective and realistic eye I'm afraid.

In addition & as a bit of friendly advice, you'd do far better by ratcheting down the personal tone and nature taken in some of your comments. To date, you've just about indicted every past present and future consensus policy maker on one level or another and it is getting a bit "too specific" & "too repetitive" even for my tastes. Please; we value passionate contributors but there are times when passion can cloud good netiquette and good judgment. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:27, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Why do we delete incomplete transcripts?

Is it true that we delete partial transcripts, rather than work to complete them? Left on my page: "You should provide a full newspaper article if you wish for the transcript to be retained." Some of the works I transcribed contain an ellipsis "..." when the original text cannot be read, or the OCR is garbled and needs to be compared to the original text. Can someone point me to the policy, so I can understand it better. Are we going to delete all the texts with article-quality categories less than 100%? If we are, lets get to it right away. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:35, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The guideline for this is Wikisource:What Wikisource includes#Excerpts. There's a difference between adding an excerpt from a full work, and not having finished adding a full work. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 17:13, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

That isn't very helpful. It says: "Random or selected sections of a larger work, are generally not acceptable". How many pages of text is a large work? We transcribe individual newspaper articles without transcribing the whole paper. Are we going to delete anything with an ellipsis? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 17:22, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• Not friendly: "You should provide a full newspaper article if you wish for the transcript to be retained."
• Translated into polite speak: "Don't forget to try and fill in those ellipsis, if you need help interpreting an original text, ask me and I can help."

if the original text is illegible, you can use the template {{illegible}} and set the page status to "Problematic" so that other will know to help with this passage. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:43, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

While the desire to host as much of an original periodical, journal, serial and the like is always preferable, reality always makes room for some degree of deviation from the stated "policy" on this. Of course, not every contributor is going to be willing never mind capable of providing the transcription of an entire newspaper page containing the specific article in question in every instance for example. What is "expected", in my view however, when adding/hosting works found in such ongoing publications as newspapers is having some degree of diligence in researching the article to determine it's most "recognizable and/or established" incarnation and whatever incarnation that may be, providing a "framework" that readers can easily follow & that others can logically add to.

The former point is loosely intended for R.A.N.'s benefit since several of his contributions seem to originate either from wire services like the Associated Press or from single member of a syndicated publishing family which typically means the piece was carried by more than one newspaper of the day. If so and, given a choice between exact [hypothetical] reproductions sourced in the archives of the Albany Herald, Sacramento Star and Chicago Tribune, the hope would be that the work is added under the most recognizable publication whenever possible, the Chicago Tribune -- which goes to the former point about framework.

In short, always strive to add/build a logical "framework" to host such articles. Illustrated, this means the content for the [fictitious] article, Aviator Sues to Marry Fighter Plane, should never appear as a true mainspace work (doing that can warrant deletion btw) but as sub-page in a logical framework for that previously determined "best" paper as Chicago Tribune/1921/June/Aviator Sues to Marry Fighter Plane, along with a mainspace redirect labelled the same article title accordingly.

This was a "short answer" covering only a slice of the entire hosting "policy pie", but I hope it clarified the matter for you some. -- George Orwell III (talk) 22:07, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Does Wikisource demand we use the related_author field?

For instance O Captain! My Captain! links to Abraham Lincoln in a conventional way and Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Clemens, Samuel Langhorne doesn't link to the author page. This change here converted the article from the clear lede where it reads that Eddie Scheider is the subject of the article; to a confusing lede where Eddie Schneider is now related somehow to the author of the Associated Press article. One is clear, and the other is trying to use an orange to fill a field designed for apples. Does anyone else find this confusing? I am coming in as a relatively new user, whereas you may be used to the way things are done. Is this demanded by Wikisource, or is this the imposition of someone's personal choice? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:07, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

The "related author" field in the header is relatively new and comes as part of sub-template {{plain sister}}. It's a way of linking to people who are also authors that we host in a way that Wikidata can get at. Wikidata can't use the Notes field as it's not structured. It is not "demanded" that the field is used, rather it is considered a good idea. It's newness means that older texts won't have it. With respect to the "related" part of the field name, in the Mainspace: it is nothing to do with relationships between authors. That's a strawman argument. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:35, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

I am not making a strawman argument, I am telling you how someone from the outside reads the awkward phrase "related authors". I am not attacking you, I am just pointing out things that are awkward and confusing. Software companies pay outsiders to beta test software to find out just these things that insiders are so used to, that they just ignore it. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 21:10, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

If pertinent our preference is to link to the author page from the body of the work, however, where you had them in the notes I moved them to the preferred alternate of the related author tag. So no, we do not demand you use the tag, you are welcome to provide one link from the body of the text. We don't use the notes field. There are discussion about this in the archives of this page. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:49, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Interaction detente

Can I request an interaction detente between myself and Billinghurst, and perhaps have George Orwell III or Slowking4 show me what changes I need to make to the texts that I am adding. I would rather have a mentoring session, and then I can make the needed changes myself. Billinghurst is imposing their own personal preferences, rather than policy, by removing all the links to Wikipedia. There is no rule that demands the links be removed. Even while it is under discussion, they are still removing the links, and leaving stray half brackets in the text. There are tens of thousands of older texts that need work done on them, there is no need to rush to change the ones I am just adding now. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 18:41, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

You could try bringing this up to them directly at User talk:Billinghurst. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:49, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

... or you can follow the guidelines and style in place for this site so we don't have to convert them to the preferred style. I am only working on them while moving them to be subpages of the newspapers for where they need to be. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:53, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

I can make those changes myself if you point them out, I can learn to tie my own shoelaces. You obsessively remove all links to Wikipedia despite there being no rule demanding all Wikipedia links be removed. There are tens of thousands of documents requiring someone's attention, but your spend your time removing links, which I then restore, a double waste of time. You also leave behind stray brackets, you rush into removing the links out-of-policy, and then don't even check your work for errors your introduce. I asked you to stop, but that just speeded up your removal of the Wikipedia links. You are implementing your personal preference, not a Wikisource rule. You also made up the rule that Portals are only for exceptional people, which isn't policy either. I understand that everyone who edits Wikipedia and its satellite projects has a compulsion to contribute, but sometimes it needs to be tempered. I prefer interacting with Beeswaxcandle who can point out needed changes, and direct me to the policy page, or show me a well formatted example. I can learn to tie my own shoelaces. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 13:32, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Easter egg links to Wikipedia

For example at Washington Post/1913/Cured by Serum why do we have an Easter egg type link to Wikipedia? The text has "sister projects: Wikipedia article." How does the reader know what they are going to get when they click on that link? It can connect to anywhere in Wikipedia. Any article can have multiple topics and multiple subjects, how do you choose one, and why hide the subject from the reader. Let them decide if the want to click on it, rather than make them click on it to see where it is going to take them. How do you decide which of the many topics in an article to link to? Am I going to click and be sent to an article on the physician, on his patient, on tuberculosis, on his cure, on pseudoscience, on scientific misconduct? —unsigned comment by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) .

Hover mouse over the link without clicking it and a tooltip will appear specifying the particular article being linked to. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:49, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Instead of having a workaround that needs to be explained, wouldn't it be more useful to just display the link target? Can we have more than one target? Most texts have more than one subject. I was told that we don't allow subject categories, but here is where categories would be useful. We tag photos at Flickr with subjects, we tag articles in Wikipedia with categories. Even porn in categorized to aid the user, why are we against adding useful things? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:24, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Linking to Wikipedia

Linking to Wikipedia is important to me. I am working on 40 volumes (Southern Historical Society's Papers) of men that were in the Civil War aka War Between the States as well as strange place names in states. Long ago when I first started studying that war when I saw a general's name I had no idea which side of the war he was on. I was not raised with that history. I don't link often because those who DO study that war will perhaps know many of the names and personalities as I do now. Still, there is a general I read about today that I have never heard of. On most occasions, Wikipedia gives the links needed for more and better information I encounter in these volumes as well as a photo of the person. Still, there is so much material to do that I don't often employ links but I support the idea of Wikipedia links in other works because we can learn more and clarify more. —Maury (talk) 07:01, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Maury, there is no problem, in general, with links to Wikipedia. A single inline link at the first mention in the text of a person who we don't have as an author is absolutely fine. The discussion going on further up this page is about links to Wikipedia that are either in the notes field of the header, or are to data that don't need linking. For example, a single link to your General is useful, but in the context linking to the Wikipedia article on Houston is not needed. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:46, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

• Is that Houston the person, or Houston the city ... If it is a city, is it Houston, Alabama or Houston, Alaska or Houston, Arkansas or Houston, Delaware or Houston, Florida or Houston, Georgia or Houston, Indiana or Houston, Minnesota or Houston, Mississippi or Houston, Missouri or Houston, Nebraska or Houston, Ohio or Houston, Pennsylvania or Houston, Tennessee. I can't tell from your conversation, and of course a reader of an original text does not know either. Other than your personal preference, is there a good reason not to link? Maybe you can read minds and foretell the future, but I do not know what every reader knows, and does not know. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:54, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Understood and Thank you. BTW, Sam Houston, a Virginian, was the man who represented Matthew Fontaine Maury so that Matthew could join the United States Navy. Matthew was living in Tennessee at that time. It's interesting how things and people connect. Without Sam Houston, for whom Houston, Texas is named, Matthew F Maury would not have been doing oceanography, laying out the Tracks in the Sea, Underwater Atlantic Cable on his Telegraphic Plateau for Cyrus Field &c, &c, &c.. —Maury (talk) 08:25, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I feel that I should cite a source for the above. One is in Ineuw's work on the Popular Science volumes. It is stated, In 1825 he [Matthew Fontaine Maury] obtained, through the Hon. Sam Houston, a midshipman's warrant in the United States Navy. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_37/July_1890/Sketch_of_Matthew_Fontaine_Maury —Maury (talk) 18:29, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Of course you know who General Foo is, and Major Foo, and Captain Foo, Jr. and the names may not match exactly with the name in Wikipedia. The Major Foo in the text may be John Foo of Virginia or James Foo from South Carolina in Wikipedia. A single text may contain a dozen names. It takes an expert in the field to make the connections to the biographies, and add annotations, and explain errors, and recognize typos. Asking each reader to figure these things out, each time they read the text, is silly. Place names also need an expert to link them to Wikipedia. A biography may say that the person was born in Fooville or Foo County or on the Foo family farm. Only a scholar of the text knows. The equipment they use also requires links, armaments are a specialty field. The person who took the time to transcribe and annotate the material should be the one to decide what links are relevant. The whole point of Wikipedia and Wikisource and Wiki Commons is to have a single reference work with interconnecting links. As I pointed out before, imagine if Wikipedia purged all links to Wikisource. You can always ignore a link, but when you want to know more about something, a link is essential. It is patronizing to assume we know what a reader knows, or doesn't know, so they do not need a link. It is ridiculous to assume what we know today will be common knowledge in 10, 100 or 1,000 years. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:26, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Foo who? Vietnamese? Is it a derivative of the Sun Yung Fooey family? I encountered Hung Chow and Wan Hung Lo once. No, Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ), I do not know the many people named Foo you have mentioned. I have enough trouble with the name Maury, Fontaine, and Morris to look for any Foo family. I agree with what you are trying to do though. I really do! I don't see the problem with it. It may be overkill in some cases but I prefer that over wondering and not knowing. (1947) —Maury (talk) 18:29, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

• General Foo went back to his farm after the war and went on to invent the widget. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 22:00, 28 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Don't forget Cindy Lou Foo, who was no more than two. At any rate, I put links to Wikipedia wherever I feel they'll be helpful to someone reading the page; see for example A Welsh Grammar, Historical and Comparative/Introduction, where they're all over the place (as well as a few inline links to Welsh Wikisource). Angr 19:12, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Annotations, typos, and errors

What are the hard rules on annotations, fixing typos, and errors of fact. Again Billinghurst has a very strong opinion on the subject and instead of giving advice, or showing an example, or pointing me to the Wikisource rules, he/she is just making the changes themselves to their personal preferences. And of course they are still removing links to Wikipedia in the texts I am transcribing. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 15:39, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

i see there is an existing example Harper's; Harpers Weekly:General Robert Edward Lee, that would make a model, although the yellow highlighting is a little jarring. Slowking4♡Farmbrough's revenge 11:47, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

The general rule is to represent the source text exactly as it is. So no annotations, no fixing of typos (although these can be marked with {{sic}}), and certainly no correcting of facts (or else we'd have to scrub a great many works altogether!). Basically, Wikisource captures editions of works as they were published. Annotated, synthesised, or otherwise modified editions can then be produced from the Wikisource texts (and published elsewhere—perhaps on Wikiversity, if it fits). And Richard, I'd really encourage you to assume good faith! I've been tinkering around on Wikisource for years, and have on (rare) occasion felt like people's actions have been directed at me, but honestly it's just not like that: we're all trying to do our best, and everyone here really does want everyone else to stick around and enjoy Wikisource! — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 01:28, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

@Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ): About errata, you can have a look at the linking at the upper portion of the page Nil Durpan/Appendix and the concerned page space. I have not yet done the linking for the whole page, but printed errata can possibly be handled in that fashion. If there is no printed errata, but you find one, sic and SIC templates can be used. But the work, aside from linkings, should be a true copy of the scan as far as possible. Hrishikes (talk) 06:12, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

File:Typescript copy of the reminiscences of John Caldwell. PRONI, T3541.5.3.pdf

Erm No license shown? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:41, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Upload by controversial user. Hrishikes (talk) 15:27, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

No file Index:Creativecommons bylaws.pdf

No file?ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:42, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

If you look at the file on Commons (commons:File:Creativecommons bylaws.pdf) you will see that it was deleted due to no license. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:09, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

So why was an index retained here?ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Because no one got around to deleting it. I've done so now. Angr 20:34, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Pages from the Page: namespace are now also deleted. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:35, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Tech News: 2015-27

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Long lines in code blocks now look better. [31]
• You can now see graphs in VisualEditor. [32]
• When you read a page on the mobile site, you can now see a link to go to its talk page. [33]
• The code coloring tool has changed. You can now use many more languages. It now also works on mobile. [34] [35] [36]
• You can look at a new site to learn how to reuse data from Wikimedia sites. [37]

Problems

• JavaScript was broken on some wikis due to a code error. VisualEditor and other tools that use JavaScript were broken. [38]

Changes this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from June 30. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis from July 1. It will be on all Wikipedias from July 2 (calendar).
• You can now use a tool in VisualEditor to add and edit code in color. [39]
• When you edit a sentence in the Translate tool, it can show you older translations. They help you save time if they look alike. The older translations should now work better. If you see problems, you should report them. [40]
• If you are an admin or have other special rights, you now need a strong password. [41]
• Bot and JavaScript coders: The old continuation mode of the API for action=query doesn't work any more. [42]

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs are the most important. The meeting will be on June 30 at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future

• When you create a new account, it will also create one on Meta-Wiki and mediawiki.org. [43]

Tech news prepared by tech ambassadors and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Image captions in Index:The Jungle Book.djvu

Any takers? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:40, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

We need more validators

Index:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu "It is hard to get good [any] help these days." —Maury (talk) 04:55, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

It'll be november soon enough. ;-) By the way, what's with the <mark /> element? — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 05:12, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I have never had a book completed in November. I really do not look forward to November for my works, other than I enjoy reading, and thereby validating, the works of others. My project stems from an old man doing family in history for his descendants because they asked him to. It goes back to France 1500's. The <mark /> you've asked about is a highlight for my own family purposes. I fully intend to remove all of them when I have finished the ditch-digger's work of proofing all pages. The one you validated was an ancestor or collateral kin surname that I was not aware of. Originally I was on Internet working on genealogy and found wikipedia and later wikisource for my love of old books and saving useful history, science, art, &c. The book you worked has a place where it is stated that the rest of the letters are lost but I have found that large section through genealogical research. A problem is that I cannot add it to the section stating the material is lost. It is letters to the Reverend James Maury, instructor to Thomas Jefferson Jefferson for 2 years after Jefferson's father, Peter Jefferson, died. Jefferson's Autobiography mentions Rev. James Maury as a "correct and classical scholar". I do genealogical research from time to time out of curiosity and for my grand-children. Thus use of the <mark /> until I get back to the page to work on genealogy. I thank you in all sincerity for your help. Still, we need more validations on other people's projects which I earnestly try to help, and have been working hard on by validating now -- not waiting for "November" which already has many books lined up. We know not all books get validated in November. They are backing up when they could be finished if only more people would help each other by validating a few pages once in a while and then going back to their personal projects. —Maury (talk) 12:49, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

The shoes fits. Maury, for many years I did lots of validations, indeed I did more validating than proofreading. But these last few years I am following through a big project and I don't validate at all. Thanks for all the validation you've done, of my work, and of others'. I'm sorry some of us are not reciprocating at the moment. Hesperian 01:00, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I shall also endevour to do more validating. :) I quite enjoy it. I spend most of my time doing post-validation proofreading, actually: downloading validated works and reading them (smooth-reading, the PG people call it), and usually catch quite a few errors. — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 03:01, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

@Hesperian, you have always thanked me for what small part of validating I did on your project but that is not what I seek here. I am glad you understand the situation about unvalidated books backing up. I don't mean just my books but rather lots of books others have completed. I doubt that you got a thank you from anyone for your "raw image" work either. I hereby thank you for what you have done with that work. It has helped me and still does. I think many of us get caught up in personal projects and leave them to be validated but November cannot get them all done. So what happens with books that are completely finished but not validated--we wait until November and November passes onward as it leaves many books behind. Meanwhile, we are working on still more projects. We start new works at their beginning while almost completed books are left behind in November's dust. So what happens to those? They are stored in a "temporary" archive. They accumulate there. They become our dusty archives. In this we do not produce as many books as we could. We stop short of that. We all need to assist each other if only a validation or two and not rely entirely upon November. —Maury (talk) 03:10, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

When I first arrived here I proposed that we should create a system of you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours system of validation agreements between users, or a board where people can post their recently done pages in need of validation and "swap" validations amongst each other. Maybe we should reconsider these ideas or something similar. Abyssal (talk) 14:05, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Are you Chris? He and I were running for Administrator at the same time but I backed out. Chris became an administrator and he did similar to what you have stated. He created an area where potential validators could sign up. Chris was a good worker but he disappeared. I placed my name on that list (where is it now?) and I have been validating people's works ever since. "Needless to say", so I won't say it. —Maury (talk) 14:34, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Abyssal, we've talked about this before and got nowhere -- or a very short distance. Number #5 on your talk page. Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help#Getting_texts_validated —Maury (talk) 14:45, 3 July 2015 (UTC)