Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help
Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol
[edit]This is partially a request as well; when looking through this document I noticed that all of the references are broken. Should this be fixed by manually re-working all of the references, or just transcluding all of the sub-chapters as individual chapters? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:41, 8 November 2025 (UTC)
- @TE(æ)A,ea. The endnotes don't use note, required as part of template ref, to enable the functionality of the references. Instead, the endnotes are just numbered lists. So transcluding all of the sub-chapters as individual chapters on its own wouldn't help. And I expect any fix (e.g. authority references) would thereby be a pain to implement. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2025 (UTC)
- @TE(æ)A,ea.: a variant on {{pent}} could work, but all the footnotes would need to be reworked to fit it. ltbdl (talk) 05:55, 12 November 2025 (UTC)
- Confusingly some of the end notes do use note but not all of them. Regardless its still a pain to fix.
- Also is there any reason why this work uses layout 2? I can't see any reason why this would need or benefit from it.
- For whoever decides to fix the footnotes on this work I also wanted to point out that the footnotes on Introductory Material to the Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol are broken too. ToxicPea (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2025 (UTC)
- I just fixed the footnotes on the Introductory Report. The pages with the footnote/endnote text need to be transcluded onto the same page as the footnote/endnote anchors, otherwise the link has nowhere to go. —Tosca-the-engineer 22:55, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
- @Tosca-the-engineer When attempting to transclude footnotes in such a fashion, please be aware of two things. i) If {{smaller block}} or {{plainlist}} templates are opened within a section, close them within the same section, and then after the section tag, re-open them again, i.e. there should be something like a {{plainlist/e}} just before ## s2 ## and a {{plainlist/s}} just after. ii) When sectioning pages, there should usually be at least two section tags, ## s1 ## at the immediate start of the page, and ## s2 ## wherever you want the section break. If you don't do this, you will end up inadvertently transcluding entire pages. For reference, the "to-section" entry of the transclusion really means "to the end of s1", which may or may not be "to the start of s2" depending if you put a section end (####) between them. And if you don't set ## s1 ##, the first/last few references then appear on the wrong pages, leading to some of the note-links failing (should all be corrected now). Hope that makes sense, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 23:51, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
- If it's so easy, then why doesn't it say that in H:LST? the phrase "being set up to fail" comes to mind… —Tosca-the-engineer 00:01, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
- @Tosca-the-engineer Sorry if I (or the documentation) gave the appearance that it was so easy. There are some things on Wikisource for which the learning curve can be quite steep. And the documentation itself is often less than ideal... I guess I would overall recommend starting slowly, and working your way up to some of these tasks. And if you do get stuck along the way, please feel free to ask, rather than relying on (sometimes frustrating) documentation. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 01:24, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
- I'm glad you mentioned that the end of a section is indicated with
####, because that (rather vital!) detail isn't mentioned anywhere. (not for long though, because I'm putting it in thestupid*ahem* incomplete documentation right now) —Tosca-the-engineer 02:40, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
- I'm glad you mentioned that the end of a section is indicated with
- @Tosca-the-engineer Sorry if I (or the documentation) gave the appearance that it was so easy. There are some things on Wikisource for which the learning curve can be quite steep. And the documentation itself is often less than ideal... I guess I would overall recommend starting slowly, and working your way up to some of these tasks. And if you do get stuck along the way, please feel free to ask, rather than relying on (sometimes frustrating) documentation. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 01:24, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
- If it's so easy, then why doesn't it say that in H:LST? the phrase "being set up to fail" comes to mind… —Tosca-the-engineer 00:01, 14 December 2025 (UTC)
- @Tosca-the-engineer When attempting to transclude footnotes in such a fashion, please be aware of two things. i) If {{smaller block}} or {{plainlist}} templates are opened within a section, close them within the same section, and then after the section tag, re-open them again, i.e. there should be something like a {{plainlist/e}} just before ## s2 ## and a {{plainlist/s}} just after. ii) When sectioning pages, there should usually be at least two section tags, ## s1 ## at the immediate start of the page, and ## s2 ## wherever you want the section break. If you don't do this, you will end up inadvertently transcluding entire pages. For reference, the "to-section" entry of the transclusion really means "to the end of s1", which may or may not be "to the start of s2" depending if you put a section end (####) between them. And if you don't set ## s1 ##, the first/last few references then appear on the wrong pages, leading to some of the note-links failing (should all be corrected now). Hope that makes sense, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 23:51, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
- I just fixed the footnotes on the Introductory Report. The pages with the footnote/endnote text need to be transcluded onto the same page as the footnote/endnote anchors, otherwise the link has nowhere to go. —Tosca-the-engineer 22:55, 13 December 2025 (UTC)
Copyright status of text versus scans?
[edit]Hello! I would like to start a transcription project for Le Viandier. Because of the age of the work (14th-15th century), I am fairly certain that the text content of the book is in the public domain. However, the hosting database (BNF) states that commercial use (I assume of the scan itself?) is prohibited, so I don't think the scan can be uploaded to Commons? What are my options here? It's somewhat challenging to transcribe without the WS transcription tools that require Commons as a host, and it couldn't be validated by other editors. Thank you! —Kittycataclysm (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2025 (UTC)
- That doesn't belong en.wikisource; it would have to go to fr.wikisource, which may have different rules than us. As for Commons, see C:Commons:When to use the PD-Art tag. Anything like that is fine to upload to Commons.--Prosfilaes (talk) 03:15, 15 November 2025 (UTC)
- Got it—thank you! —Kittycataclysm (talk) 03:29, 15 November 2025 (UTC)
How to handle a document that uses two columns to display two languages
[edit]So I'm looking do this File:Geneva Convention on Road Traffic.pdf, however, the United Nations formatted the document with two columns, English on the left, French on the right.
Am I supposed to try and recreate the two column format, or just discard the French portion and only retain the English and eliminate the two column formatting?
There are also some places, such as the title pages (PDF Page 6, for example) where the two languages are presented in non-column format. Should these be handled differently than above?--The Navigators (talk) 20:42, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
- Fixed an issue with the linked file name.--The Navigators (talk) 22:03, 30 November 2025 (UTC)
- Generally speaking, we do not transcribe text which is not in English. When the text is on multiple pages, {{iwpage}} is used on the non-English pages; I’m not sure that there’s a settled policy for mixed-language pages, but I personally just ignore the foreign-language text in parallel columns. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 04:41, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
- Partly because there are a such a variety of different cases. E.g. are we talking about language-learning aides like an exercise in a textbook for English speakers? An English commentary on a foreign language text like the Bible? A book discussing translation of poetry? Keep in mind that it is straightforward to set up links between different language Wikisources, so full texts like this you can transcribe the French text on FR wikisource and just link to it if someone does want to compare the two versions. MarkLSteadman (talk) 05:02, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
- It's a United Nations treaty on road transport. It was apparently published in English and French; and when it was printed they put both languages into the same document, instead of printing an English version and French version. The majority of the document, each page has two columns: The left column is English, and the exact same text in French on the right column. I basically want to make sure what I'm expected to do with the French text before I start trying to transcribe it to avoid adding extra work having to redo it.
- There is a fair chance that I could take the French Text and send it over to FR wikisource, since it's all there, and I likely know enough French from high school to work my way through the Wikisource interface. That might be the best solution.--The Navigators (talk) 05:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
- Partly because there are a such a variety of different cases. E.g. are we talking about language-learning aides like an exercise in a textbook for English speakers? An English commentary on a foreign language text like the Bible? A book discussing translation of poetry? Keep in mind that it is straightforward to set up links between different language Wikisources, so full texts like this you can transcribe the French text on FR wikisource and just link to it if someone does want to compare the two versions. MarkLSteadman (talk) 05:02, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Tool needed..
[edit]Hi,
In checking some use of ppoem, I am in need of a tool that checks the start and end tags of a series of ppoem calls in a given page range, and gives an indication where the start and end tags of successive pages do not agree. (This is not detected as a LintError until the Page:'s are transcluded.
The current workflow is to check every single page, This is error prone and time consuming.
A better workflow is needed.
Special:ExpandTemplates can't expand a <Pages>...</Pages> tag, which makes one possible workflow, more tedious.
It's also shame there isn't an Special:ExpandTransclusion portion which would allow display ofthe generated output of given PAGES tag, with options for just the wikitext, or the whole HTML expansion as with Special:ExpandTemplates
ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:54, 1 December 2025 (UTC)
Proper handling of illegible sections
[edit]EncycloPetey has a history of telling me demonstrably false things (ie. "don't use {{ls}}"). Most recently I've been told that any page with {{illegible}} on it should not me marked as proofread. This is — at minimum — not a wildly shared notion. For example, the just-completed book Christ in the Clouds Coming to Judgment has lots of illegible sections on pages that are nonetheless marked as not just proofread but validated. I never know what to believe with EP, so can I get some other people's takes on the correct handling of illegible spots in text? Eievie (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
- I think it depends on what you're dealing with. Normally, a page with illegible text should be marked "Problematic" and the Index page marked as "Source file is incorrect", and a better scan should be found. However, this is not possible with some documents because they are so rare (or unique, such as manuscripts) that no legible version exists. In that case, I think it is completely reasonable to mark the page as "Proofread" even if some of the text is illegible. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 17:22, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
- Per Help:Page status: Proofread, "You have brought the page to the best condition you can where the text matches the scan" and Problematic, "indicates a problem that needs further work or discussion among contributors" which is suitably ambiguous as both can apply in this context.
- It doesn't help that we don't have consistent usage around what these various states mean (e.g. if marked problematic --> proofreading is no longer complete --> should not be published / transcluded). Maybe some day when the backlog is in better shape? MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:15, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
It is ironic that Elevie has opened this section about demonstrably false things, then proceeded to make a demonstrably false claim about me.
To clarify: Elevie had marked pages in the Index as Problematic [1] [2], but marked the Index containing those pages as fully proofread [3], despite containing pages they marked Problematic. Elevie then listed the work among New Texts [4] despite the pages marked as Problematic.
The concern I raised was the listing of an Index with Problematic pages as "fully proofread" and posting it to New texts [5]. I did not say anything about the use of {{illegible}}. That part of the conversation was entirely made by Elevie [6]. So what Elevie is claiming I said is demonstrably false; the issue here was the listing of a New text with pages marked problematic, which Elevie has done twice in the past week. Elevie has thus demonstrated a pattern of not following New text recommendations, which I why I raised the issue on their Talk page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:21, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
- Your comment here inspired me, so I added the missing text; most of it I could just guess, which is, I assume, where all the {{reconstruct}} came from. I agree that, usually, pages should be marked as “problematic” if there is unreadable text. However, this is only really useful as a motivation to have the pages marked “proofread.” Where this is not possible, there is no point in marking the page “problematic.” In this case, because the chapbooks are practically unique, there is no need for “problematic” status in this case. It seems that that unsavory individual has commented in this thread; it is best to ignore him, as he is generally a troublemaker who enjoys antagonizing people. I would have recommended that you make a comment to that point in his de-administration thread, but luckily that has already concluded. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:07, 2 December 2025 (UTC)
- I just want to step in here to say, let's keep this discussion civil please. This is not an appropriate forum for venting frustration against other users. If there are specific complaints that need to be addressed, please take them to WS:AN. —Beleg Âlt BT (talk) 15:10, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
The reference construction here eventually causes a 'stripped' tag error, when the page is transcluded.
'Too-Clever' solutions for Nested Footnotes like this, DO NOT WORK reliably.
Is there a less complicated way to get the intended output, without the parser throwing a tantrum? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
- @ShakespeareFan00 I am not sure how to check for a stripped tag error, but I have modified the page in question to (perhaps?) use a 'less-clever' solution. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:23, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
- w:Wikipedia:Nesting footnotes#What does work might be what you're looking for, or at least helpful. —Tosca-the-engineer (talk) 17:55, 12 December 2025 (UTC)
Apparently the parser cannot cope with nested footnotes, and attempting to the follow the advice given on the Help, DID NOT solve the problem.
How are footnotes like this SUPPOSED to be nested, so they actually render as intended?
I have tried various approaches, and I am having to conclude it's impossible at this point.
ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:44, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
- See also task T411851 on phabricator ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:13, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
- Well the initial problem was resolved, but this seems to be morphed into a quite frankly ridiculous situation, where I am effectively going round in circles, For some reason, mediawiki (and the linter) is apparently being pedantically literal as to what can be inside <ref>..</ref> tags!