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Scriptorium

Announcements

Celebrating One Year of the Monthly Challenge

Today, we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Monthly Challenge. Despite a fair amount of skepticism at the start, the Monthly Challenge has proven itself a roaring success. In one year, we processed 53468 pages with 33340 proofread and 18428 validated. This accounts for about 17% of all the contributions to enWS in the past year. We’ve proofread and transcluded hundreds of works ranging from Old English to the Twentieth Century including all the novels of the Brontë sisters. In addition to proofreading, we’ve reduced the backlog of proofread texts that have not been transcluded from almost 750 to just above 300. None of this would have been possible without the amazing users like you who contributed throughout the year. There are far too many to mention and I’m sure that I’ll miss somebody, but I would like to especially thank Inductiveload for his amazing programming that has made this possible and Chrisguise, Tylopous, TeysaKarlov, MarkLSteadman, MER-C, Stamlou, ‎ ShakespeareFan00, Sp1nd01, Xover, and many more for all their contributions. You are truly what makes enWS work. I’m deeply grateful to every user who contributed to making this Monthly Challenge such a success during its first year.

Of course, much work remains to be done. Some of the titles made little progress despite their overall importance. So, we still have a long way to go. I invite everyone to head over to the Monthly Challenge page and help make the second year even better than the first. Languageseeker (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

1.5 million proofread pages

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

On 25 April, @Notsquaregarden: proofread Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 5.djvu/555, which was our 1.5 millionth page to be proofread. We achieved 1 million on 19 May 2019, so have proofread half a million pages in a little under 3 years. Over one third of the pages have been validated. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:23, 1 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

April Monthly Challenge

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The Monthly Challenge continues to deliver! In April, the contributors achieved about 6000 processed pages, which is three times the basic target of 2000. Over 30 indexes achieved status promotion to proofread or validated. That's over one work per day.

Thanks to all who made this excellent result possible: Not only by proofreading, validating, and transcluding, but also by answering requests for help, nominating new works, helping with administration, running bots, supplying missing tables, images, and scores...

This month, the MC enters its second year with a wide range of new texts to work on. Everyone can join and help making it a success!--Tylopous (talk) 06:47, 1 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Proposals

New Request for Comment on Wikilinking Policy is open

Latest comment: 3 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I have just opened Wikisource:Requests for comment/Wikilinking policy. You will find there a proposed complete overhaul/rewrite of the current policy, which is now ready for review by the wider Wikisource community. It is proposed that the RfC will be open for two weeks. Please make your comments there rather than here. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:33, 14 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Beeswaxcandle: I think 2 weeks / 72 hours is a little bit too aggressive, even for a presumed uncontroversial policy proposal like this. I understand the reasoning, but I just don't think the community is able to move that fast. For example, we have several long-time contributors that are currently in a phase where they check in only every couple of weeks. And I know for my own part that the local Covid status could easily make me too busy to check in here for weeks on end. We could still have an accelerated timeline (just not quite as accelerated as 2/72) if we notify of the proposal in an site notice and maybe even a talk page message to any established contributor that has been active in the last three months (or similar).

PS. And let me repeat my previous private kudos in public: you took my ongoing whining about the old policy and turned it into a concrete proposal for a new policy. Great work, for which I am extremely grateful! --Xover (talk) 09:25, 14 March 2021 (UTC)Reply

Proposal for creation of local Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP)

Latest comment: 2 years ago11 comments5 people in discussion

The English Wikisource hosts many texts based on the justification that they are “government edicts,” and are thus in the public domain. (See {{PD-EdictGov}}.) In a recent case (decided March 31, 2022), Judge Chutkan of the District of Columbia determined that certain works, which are law, are not government edicts, but may be hosted under the statutory doctrine of “fair use.” This opinion is at odds with an earlier opinion; however, to avoid legal and WMF Legal issues, I propose that certain copyrighted works may be uploaded if they fall under Chutkan’s “fair use” analysis of legally binding works. Specifically, I propose that works incorporated by reference into binding law or regulation, by the federal government or any state or municipal government, be allowed on the English Wikisource. These works may need a new license tag template, which would mention the “government edicts” doctrine, ASTM II, and the new EDP. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

I would be inclined to oppose for two reasons:

The "fair usage" analysis implies usage restrictions, effectively making these works non-commercial which we explicitly prohibit already
The "fair usage" analysis depends on the economic impact on the holder of the work, exactly which parts are incorporated by reference based on the statue, etc. This and the other work-by-work analysis would need to be explained and included in whatever license template we create. This seems quite difficult to manage given it is fundamentally a subjective and opinionated exercise.

The proposed template maybe can include a disclaimer calling out that it is non-commercial and update the licensing policy to mention this exemption?

MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

MarkLSteadman: Well, any “fair use” work would have usage restrictions—that’s why it’s “fair use,” and not “public domain.” There are many images on enWP, for example, which it would be inappropriate to reuse commercially, but which are used anyway under the doctrine of “fair use.” The judge states the following in the fair-use analyses:
The “express text of the law falls plainly outside the realm of copyright protection.” ASTM, 896 F.3d at 451. Here, the standard is incorporated into law without limitation such that “the consequence of the incorporation by reference is virtually indistinguishable from a situation in which the standard had been expressly copied into law.” Id. at 452. Accordingly, “this factor weighs heavily in favor of fair use.” Id.
This paragraph seems to closely parallel the language of Judge Marrero and the various circuit judges, when those Honorables chose to declare such works in the public domain. My proposal is mainly to accomodate Judge Chutkan’s opinion with the opinion and practice of other district and circuit courts. As for your second claim, that the fair use analysis is lengthy, this is another problem answerable to enWP practice. See, for example the “Summary” section of this file. The detailed sections allow for a thorough analysis of the statutory fair use factors, which would, of course, be done on a work-by-work basis. The proposed license template, to be included at the bottom of the page, should then link to an explanation of the justification for hosting the file, which would either be in Talk: or File talk: (depending on whether the work is scan-backed at the moment). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:25, 7 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
If the community decides that it wants to host non-commercial / non-derivative works in some form as is practice at other hosting sites there is no legal issue stopping us but do we want to? Why is this any different from the other non-commercial works we routinely delete as not hostable? For a document that is licensed under CC NC and then referenced here would we prefer to host it under this more restrictive exemption and delete the other portions? Given an update to the licensing policy we may be able to come up with a structured process to allow hosting them (e.g. mandatory additional fields, link to the relevant legal code etc.) but it would beyond just mentioning the policy (like other licensing templates). MarkLSteadman (talk) 12:04, 7 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
it is different because US laws are PD, and the code is incorporated into law. but we have code officials trying to use copyright to charge rents. see also https://archinect.com/news/article/150195411/supreme-court-rules-that-building-codes-cannot-be-copyrighted --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:12, 9 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
The ruling says explicitly that is not the case citing that case: "Defendant’s second and related argument—that the standards are “government edicts”—fails.", "A government body that merely incorporates a standard by reference does not independently create any content, and therefore does not become an “author” of the standard. Defendant points to no authority to the contrary." The proposal explicitly says "copyrighted works may be uploaded if they fall under Chutkan’s “fair use” analysis" which is explicitly not public domain, and why would we ask for a specific exemption and new license tag if these works fall under the existing "US laws are PD" category instead of creating a new "Chutkhan fair use" category? MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:03, 10 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
who is "we"? you are inclined to oppose because "we can’t have an exemption policy because we already delete that stuff" = tautologies are us. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
No, my point is that why would Wikisource create an exemption to host works Wikisource can already host because they are in the public domain. If work X is public domain, why not just use a PD license? Work X can't be both in the public domain and in need of an exemption because it is not in the public domain. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:02, 15 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Would de minimis apply here?--Jusjih (talk) 01:58, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Not generally, no. Xover (talk) 06:37, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
How strict will we enforce the URAA restoration? I ask while we consider amending how strict our copyright enforcement will be, in case certain works are law while not government edicts.Jusjih (talk) 22:42, 25 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Bot approval requests

See Wikisource:Bots for information about applying for a bot status
See Wikisource:Bot requests if you require an existing bot to undertake a task

Repairs (and moves)

Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

Index:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu

Apologies - I have not requested one of these before, so I will be a little bit more verbose than more experienced colleagues in an effort to get it right first time! I have two pages missing between /127 and /128, so I hope that my request is correctly formed as follows:

Starting at Page:Memorials_of_Capt._Hedley_Vicars,_Ninety-seventh_Regiment_by_Marsh,_Catherine,_1818-1912.djvu/128 until the end, please move the text by +2. Thank you. CharlesSpencer (talk) 13:14, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Bizarrely, on consulting another version of the text, it appears that the typesetters may only have skipped two on the page numbers, while the text itself may in fact be complete! Please hold off until I can triangulate from further editions. Thanks. CharlesSpencer (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Index:The future of Africa.djvu

Starting at Page:The future of Africa.djvu/9 until the end, please move the text by +4. Languageseeker (talk) 06:07, 4 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Done Mpaa (talk) 21:22, 4 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Mpaa Thank you!

Index:Incidents in the life of a slave girl.djvu

[[Starting at Page:Incidents in the life of a slave girl.djvu/5 until the end, please move the text by +4. Languageseeker (talk 01:05, 5 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Done Mpaa (talk) 11:10, 5 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Mpaa Thank you!

Index:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu

Starting at Page:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu/3 until the end, please move the text by +4. Languageseeker (talk) 14:44, 16 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Move request: The Village Pulpit, Volume II to The Village Pulpit/Volume 2

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments1 person in discussion

I found this on User:Inductiveload/false root pages, and I'd like to standardize the page structure. Specifically, the moves I'd like are:

Thanks! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 19:43, 12 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Copied to Wikisource:Administrators' noticeboard#Move request: The Village Pulpit, Volume II to The Village Pulpit/Volume 2. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 07:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

And done! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 17:18, 5 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Stories in In a Glass Darkly

Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

Came back to this collection and these subpages should be moved (note that "Mr Justice Harbottle" is being changed to "Mr. Justice Harbottle")

The roman numeral chapter redirects of Carmilla, Green Tea, Mr Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant will need to be updated else they become double redirects. Thanks in advance. -ei (talk) 06:29, 22 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

The Familiar is done. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:48, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Mr. Justice Harbottle is done, but these redirects need to be deleted. I had to create a linked list because the Search function will no longer allow me to track down redirects dynamically. Yes, I tried the recommended advanced functions by changing my default preferences, but the advanced functions do not seem to be working the way they claim to. Everything seems now to be designed to avoid detecting redirect pages and automatically adjusts page name spellings to avoid listing redirects. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:22, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Green Tea is done, but these redirects need to be deleted. I had to create a linked list because the Search function will no longer allow me to track down redirects dynamically. Yes, I tried the recommended advanced functions by changing my default preferences, but the advanced functions do not seem to be working the way they claim to. Everything seems now to be designed to avoid detecting redirect pages and automatically adjusts page name spellings to avoid listing redirects. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:38, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Carmilla is done. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:04, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

The Room in the Dragon Volant is done. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:08, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

All the redirects listed above in this thread have now been deleted. Xover (talk) 06:41, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Other discussions

Policy on substantially empty works

Latest comment: 2 years ago37 comments12 people in discussion

[This is imported from WS:PD, where it applies to multiple current proposals, and several other works].

We have quite a few cases of works that are "collective" or "encyclopaedic" in that they comprise many standalone articles of individual value, which are basically just "shell pages", with no substantial content of any sort, not even imported scans or Index pages. For example, and this isn't intended to make any statement about these specific works, they're just examples and they may well get some work done soon during their respective WS:PD discussions:

Auction Prices of Books, a four volume set of auction listings, by author. No scans, no content and a couple of notes in the header.
Central Law Journal/Volume 1, a single volume from a periodical, with a AuxTOC of numbers, and a title page, but otherwise empty. Has scans and Index.
A Critical Dictionary of English Literature, a three-volume dictionary by author. Currently has no scans, no title page, and a single non-scan backed article.
Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide, a top-level periodical page with a single volume number and no other content. No scans linked, though Bradshaw's Monthly Railway and Steam Navigation Guide (XVI) did once exist, it was deleted and Index:Bradshaw's_Monthly_(XVI).djvu exists and is partly proofread.

Based on the usual rate of editing for things like that, unless dragged up into a process like WS:PD, they'll remain that way a very, very long time. I think it is perhaps there might be a case to host a mainspace page for this work, even though there is zero, or almost zero actual content. Do we want:

Mainspace pages where this is a tiny bit of information like header notes, scan links and maybe detective work on the talk page (not in this case). This provides a place for people to incrementally add content. Also gives "false positive" blue links, since there is actually no "real" content from the work itself, or
Do not have a mainspace page until there's some content. Only host this in terms of scan links author/portal scan links, much like we do for something like a novel.

Personally, I lean (gently) towards #2, but with a fairly low bar for how much content is needed. Say, Indexes, basic templates, a title page and one example article. Ideally, a completed TOC if practical, especially for periodical volumes/numbers. It is fair to not wish to transcribe entire volumes of these work, it is fair to not want to import dozens of scans when you only wanted one, it is fair to only want an article or two, but it's not fair, IMO, to expect the first person who wants to add an article to have to do all the groundwork themselves, despite having been lured in with a blue link. That onus feels more like it should be on the person creating the top-level page in the first place.

I do see some value in periodical top pages with decent lists of volumes and scans where known, because these are often tricky and fiddly to compile from Google books/IA/Hathi, so it's not useless work, even if there are no imported scans (though imported is better than not).

We currently have a large handful of collective works listed for deletion right now in various levels of "no real content", and, furthermore, every single periodical that gets added can fall into this situation unless the person who adds, so I think we could have a think about what we really want to see here. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 15:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I believe that, if there is no scan as an Index: page, the main-namespace page should not exist unless it is being actively completed or is already mostly completed. A few pages (of the volume itself) is not very helpful, and is entirely useless if their is no scan given. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:59, 3 July 2020 (UTC).Reply

I think such preparatory information would ideally be on more centralized WikiProject pages (for the broad subject), both for clarity and to assist in keeping different efforts consistent -- but that it certainly should be retained as visible to non-admins. I think that the red vs blue link issue is minor (but not totally negligible) and outweighed by the disadvantages of hiding the history of previous efforts. I strongly encourage redirecting such pages to appropriate WikiProject pages (after copying over the details there). JesseW (talk) 18:11, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@JesseW: I agree that history shouldn't be deleted, but I think we should approach this in terms of what we want to see from these works, rather than what to do with the handful of examples at PD. There are hundreds of periodicals we could have but don't, and this applies to those as well. If we can come to a conclusion about what is and isn't wanted, we can make all the deletion requested works conform to that easily enough. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 20:55, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I think these pages are necessary to list index pages and external scans of multi-volume works (such as encyclopaedias and periodicals) especially if they are wholly or partly anonymous or have many authors or are simply large. I think it makes no difference whether such pages are in the mainspace, the portal space or the project space (except that it is harder to find pages outside the mainspace). The point is that these works often have so many volumes (often dozens or hundreds) that they must have their own page, and cannot be merged into a larger portal or wikiproject. If the community starts insisting on index pages, what will happen is the rapid upload of a large number of scans for the periodicals that already have their own page. Likewise if the community insists on transclusion. I also think it is reasonable to have a contents page in the mainspace, as it allows transclusion of articles. Most importantly, new restrictions should not immediately apply to existing pages that were created before the introduction of the restrictions. This is necessary to prevent a bottleneck. James500 (talk) 23:55, 3 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

move the works to a maintenance category, and i will work them; delete them and i will not: i find your sword of Damocles demotivating. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 01:55, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@User:Slowking4: I am not proposing a sword of Damocles. I agree that the imposition of deadlines is counter-productive. I do not support the deletion of any of these pages. I would prefer to see them improved. James500 (talk) 04:38, 5 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

TEA is on his usual deletion spree. not a fan. will not be finding scans to save texts, any more. he can do it. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 00:15, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

The entire point of moving this here, and not staying at WS:PD is to decouple from the emotions that get stirred up in a deletion discussion. Let's keep deletion out of this. If we come up with some idea of what we do and don't want, then we can go back to WS:PD and decide what to do. I imagine that all that will be needed will be a fairly limited amount of housework to bring those works up to some standard that we can decide on here, and all the collective works there will be easy keeps. Hopefully with some kind of consensus that we can point at to outline a minimum viable product for such works going forward. There are hundreds and thousands of dictionaries, encyclopedias, periodicals and newspapers that we could/will, quite reasonably, have only snippets of. How do we want to present them? What, exactly, is the minimum threshold? Let's head of all those future deletion proposals off at the pass, because deletion proposals often cause friction. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 00:47, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

and yet deletion is the default method to "motivate" quality improvement. i reject your assertion that "emotions get stirred in a deletion discussion", rather, anger is a valid response to a repeated broken process being kicked down on the volunteers. it is unclear that a minimum threshold is necessary, rather a functional quality improvement process is. until we have one, you should expect to see this periodic stirring of emotions, as the non-leaders act out. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 11:53, 9 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Slowking4: Thank you for presenting this opinion, and I'm sorry if I have not made myself clear. We do need to figure out how to avoid a de-facto process of using WS:PD as an ill-tempered ad-hoc venue for "forcing" improvements on people who have somehow managed to generate works that are so in need of improvement that another user has nominated them for deletion. Please also consider looking at #Re-purpose_WikiProject_OCR_to_WikiProject_Scans for an idea to have a "functional quality improvement process" to which such works could be referred upon discovery rather than kicking them straight to WS:PD. If you have other ideas or you have previously suggested something similar to address these frustrations, you could detail them there. Personally, I think we should always prefer improvement over deletion. Exactly what the remediation is (refer to a putative WP:Scans, WS:Scriptorium/Help, directly WS:PD as now, or something else) is not what this thread is for. This thread is for discussing, what, if anything, should be the tipping point for deeming a page "lacking" and doing something about, whatever "something" is. I don't think I can be much clearer that this is not about deletion. If we also have a better venue for improvements, then that's even better.

For example, my personal feeling and !vote on A Critical Dictionary of English Literature is "keep and improve", despite it lacking scans or even links to scans, having only one article and no other content, not even a title page: in short, failing almost every criterion suggested so far in this thread. The only thing it does have is have is good text quality of the one entry. I personally do not think this work should be deleted, but I do think it should be improved in specific ways. The first half of that sentence is not the focus of this discussion, the second half is. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

deletion threat has been an habitual method of communicating by admins since the beginning of the project. and text dumps have been habitual following in the guttenberg example. culture change and process change would be required to change those behaviors. we could may it easier to start scan backed works, but the wishlist was not supported. Slowking4 ⚔ Rama's revenge 21:00, 14 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I don't think this needs to be much of an issue going forward -- we all agree that it's OK to create Index pages for scans, even if none of the Pages have been transcribed yet; so the only case where this would come up is recording research where no scan has yet been identified as suitable to be uploaded. And for that, I still think a WikiProject page is the right location, not mainspace. (Or, if you must, your userpage.) JesseW (talk) 00:59, 6 July 2020 (UTC) I realized I may not have been clear enough here -- in my view, the ideal process goes like this:Reply

Decide on a work you are interested in (in this case, a periodical/encyclopedic one) -- don't record that anywhere on-wiki (except maybe your user page)
Find and upload (to Commons) a scan of one part/issue/etc of the work.
Create a ProofreadPage-managed page in the Index: namespace for the scan. (You can stop after this point, without worry that your work will later be discarded.)
EITHER
1. Put further research (on other editions, context, possible wikification, etc.) on that Index_talk page.
2. Proofread a complete part of the scan (an article from the magazine issue, a chapter from the book, a entry from an encyclopedia, etc.) and transclude it to the mainspace (and create necessary parent pages), and put the further research on the Talk: page of the parent mainspace entry.

If you can't find any scan, and don't want to leave your working notes on your user page, put them on a relevant WikiProject's page.

If you come across such research done by others and misplaced, follow the above process to relocate it to an appropriate place, then redirect the page where you found it to the new location. That's my proposal. JesseW (talk) 01:08, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@JesseW: It's not clear to me in your above whether when you use the term "index" you refer to a ProofreadPage-managed page in the Index: namespace, or a general wikipage in the main namespace on which an index-like structure (and/or a ToC, or similar) is manually created. Could you clarify? --Xover (talk) 05:14, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I meant the namespace. Clarified now. JesseW (talk) 05:17, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Hoo-boy. Y'all sure know how to pick the difficult issues…
My general stance is that: 1) scans and Index: (and Page:) namespace pages have no particular completion criteria to meet to merit inclusion, and can stay in whatever state indefinitely (there may be other reasons to get rid of them, but not this); and 2) the default for mainspace is that only scan-backed complete and finished works that meet a minimum standard for quality should exist there.
That general stance must be nuanced in two main ways: 1) there must be some kind of grandfather clause for pre-existing pages; and 2) there must exist exceptions for certain kinds of works that meet certain criteria. I won't touch on the grandfather clause here much, except to say I'm generally in favour of making it minimal, maybe something like "No active effort to get rid of older works, but if they're brought to PD for other reasons they're fair game". The design of a grandfather clause for this is a whole separate discussion, and an intelligent one requires analysis of existing pages that would be affected by it. It is always preferable to migrate pages to a modern standard, so a grandfather clause is by definition a second choice option.
Now, to the meat of the matter: the exceptions…
We have a clear policy to start from: no excerpts. Works should either be complete as published, or they should not be in mainspace. But quite apart from the historical practices that modify this (which are somewhat subjective and inconsistent, so I'll ignore them for now), there are some fairly obvious cases that suggest a need for more nuance than a simple bright-line rule alone provides. The major ones that come to mind are: 1) massive never-completed projects like EB1911 or the New York Times (EB because it's big; NYT because new PD issues are added every year); 2) compilations or collections of stand-alone works with plausible claim to independent notability.
For encyclopedias and encyclopedia-like things, we have to accept some subsets due to sheer scale of work. But when that is the grounds for exception, there needs to be some minimum level of completion. I'm not sure I can come up with a specific number of pages/entries or percentage, but it needs to be more than just a single entry (and, obviously, only complete entries). For this kind of exception to apply, I think it needs to be a requirement that the framing structure for it is complete: that is, the mainspace page should give a complete overview of the relevant work even if most of it is redlinks. That includes title pages and other prolegomena when relevant. For a periodical like the NYT, that means complete lists of issues with dates and other such relevant information (e,g. name changes etc.). For preference, these kinds of things should be in Portal: namespace or on a WikiProject page until actually complete, but that will not always be practical (EB1911 and NYT are examples of this). Mainspace or Portal:-space should never contain external links (i.e. to scans) or links to Index: or Page: space (except the implied link of transclusion and the "Source" tab in the MW UI provided by ProofreadPage).
For exception claimed under independent notability there are a couple of distinct variants.
Newspaper or magazine articles need to have a certain level of substance in addition to a specific identifiable byline (possibly anonymous or pseudonymous, and possibly identified after the fact by some other source, such as the Letters of Junius) in order to qualify. It is not enough to ipso facto be a newspaper article, a magazine article, a poem, or an encyclopedia entry. On the one hand we have things like dictionaries and thesauri, where an entry could be as little as two words. Or a one-sentence notice without byline in a newspaper. Or two rhymed lines (technically a poem) within a 1000-page scholarly monograph.
To merit this exception it should be reasonable to argue that the "work" in question should exist as a stand-alone mainspace page (not that we generally want that; but as a test for this exception, it should be reasonable to make such an argument). This would clearly apply to moderately long entries in the EB1911 written by a known author that has their own Wikipedia article. It would apply to short stories or novella-length serialisations in literary magazines by authors that have later become famous (or "are still …"). It would apply to various longer-form journalistic material from identifiable journalists (again, rule of thumb is notable enough for enWP article), including things in magazines that have similar properties. For most periodicals the most relevant atomic (indivisable) part is the issue not the entry or article, but with some commonsense exceptions.
It would, generally, not apply to things that are works by a single author, like a scholarly monograph that just happens to be arranged in "entries" rather than chapters. It would not apply to things that are essentially lists or tables of data. It would not apply to short entries in something encyclopedia-like or entries that are not by an identifiable author. The OED for example, iirc, is a collective work where entries are by multiple not individually identifiable authors (and each entry is mostly very short too); only the overall editor is usually cited.
For works claiming this exception too the framing structure should be complete, even if most of it are redlinks. The same general rules about Portal:/WikiProject and no external or Index:-space links apply. An exception would be for periodicals where new issues enter the public domain every year; and we should generally avoid including even redlinks for the non-PD issues here (but may allow them in a WikiProject page). For non-periodical works in multiple volumes where some volumes were published after the PD cutoff, including listings for the non-PD volumes (but not links to scans; those are a copyvio issue) is ok.
Poems, short stories, and novellas are a special class of works here. A lot of these were first published in a magazine (possibly serialized), and a lot of them exist as multiple editions in substantially the same form. Some exist in multiple versions. These should all primarily exist the same way as chapters as part of their various containing works; but there are some cases where we might want to have, for example, a series of connected pages of the poems of Emily Dickinson. I am significantly ambivalent about this practice, as it amounts to making our own "edition" or "collection" of her poems (in violation of several of our other policies), but I acknowledge that it is an established practice and it is something that has definite value to our readers. It may be that it is actually a practice that should be governed by its own dedicated policy rather be attempted to be handled within these other general policies.
For the sake of example; applying this to the works Inductiveload listed at the start of this thread would shake out something like this:
• Auction Prices of Books—This work appears to have no sensible subdivisions and is in any case by a single author. I see no obvious reason to grant this work an exception, except under sheer volume of work and even there I would want to see both a substantial proportion completed and some kind of ongoing effort towards completion (no particular time frame, but definitely not infinite and definitely not as an effectively abandoned project). In a deletion discussion I would very likely vote to delete the mainspace pages here (but, as nearly always, to keep the Index: and Page: namespace artifacts). I don't see this as a reasonable candidate for a Portal:, nor really a good fit for a WikiProject (though I probably wouldn't object to a WikiProject if someone really wanted one).
• Central Law Journal/Volume 1—A single volume is too little, so I would want to see a complete structure for the entire Central Law Journal, with level of detail for each volume similar to the one existing volume. Each article in the journal can be individually considered for a stand-alone work exception; but for the collection I would want to see at minimum a full issue finished to justify having the mainspace structure, and preferably multiple issues (in a deletion discussion I might insist on multiple issues). Index: and Page:-space artefacts can, of course, stay. A Portal: might make sense for selections from the journal, of articles that meet the standalone work exception. A WikiProject to coordinate work and track links to scans etc. might be a decent fit here, if someone wanted that. As it currently stands I would probably vote delete for the mainspace artefacts (with option to move whatever content has reuse value to a non-mainspace page for preservation; and undeleting if someone wants to work on something is a low bar).
• A Critical Dictionary of English Literature—The top level mainspace page has near-zero value, existing only to link to the single transcribed entry. For a credible claim to exception to exist it would need to be a complete framework for the work as a whole, and significantly more than a single entry must be complete. I would probably also want to see ongoing work, unless a substantial percentage of the entries were complete. The single finished entry is eligible to claim a standalone work exception, but I think it probably would not meet my bar for that (I might be wrong; and the rest of the community might judge it differently). In a deletion discussion I would probably vote to delete all the mainspace artifacts here (as always keeping Index:/Page: stuff) but with a definite possibility that I might be persuaded on the one completed entry (an absolute requirement for convincing me would be to scan-back it: as a separate issue, my tolerance for grandfathering of non-scan-backed works is small, and effectively zero for new/non-grandfathered works).
• Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide—Would need a full framework and a number of individual issues finished to merit a mainspace page. I see no credible subdivisions for a standalone work exception, but might be persuaded otherwise if, say, one of the train tables was used as a (reliable primary) source in a Wikipedia article (implying some sort of notability beyond just being raw data). In a deletion discussion I would probably vote to delete all mainspace artifacts here. If anyone made the argument, I would entertain the notion that there is value in treating train tables like poems, and hosting a series of train tables like we do Dickinson's poems; but that would require a substantial number of them completed.
For everything above my stance is nuanced by a willingness to accept temporary exceptions for things that are actively being worked: active being operative, but with no particular deadline to complete the work. We have differing amounts of time available, and some works are so labour-intensive or tedious to do, that my person threshold for "active" is a pretty low bar to clear. If it's months and years between every time you dip in and do a bit I might start to get antsy, but days or weeks probably won't faze me. And that the projected time to completion is very long at that pace is not particularly a problem so long as it is not infinite. Within those parameters I would always tend to err on the side of letting contributors just get on with it in peace, regardless of any of the policy-like rules sketched above.
I also want to emphasise that I think this is a very difficult issue to deal with. There are a lot of competing concerns, and a lot of grey areas that will likely take individual discussions to resolve. My balance point on this issue is partly formed by a broader concern about our overall quality (we have waay too many works of plain sub-par quality, and too many not up to modern standards) and a hope that by preventing the creation of these kinds of works (rather than deleting them after creation) we will be able to retain the good and desirable exceptions without dragging down quality, and without the traumatic and stressful events that deletions and proposed deletion discussions are.
And for that very reason I am grateful this issue was brought up here for discussion, and I hope we can end up with some clear guidance, possibly in the form of a policy page, going forward. And in any case, since it will create de facto policy, this is a discussion that needs to stay open for a good long while (there are several community members that have not yet commented whose opinion I would wish to hear before closing this), and depending on how well we manage to structure the consensus, may also require a formal vote (up in the #Proposals section). --Xover (talk) 09:03, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
Oppose. It is becoming clear that a policy on incomplete works in the mainspace is going to place enormous pressure on individual editors. I think it would be more effective to start a wikiproject devoted to scan-backing works that lack scans and so on. James500 (talk) 12:14, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
- @James500: FYI, this thread was made in order to provide an exception to the current policy of "no excerpts". A literal reading of the policy as it stands has a plausible chance of coming down delete on the mainspace pages over at WS:PD. This thread is a chance to come up with a better way to support such partial collective works. That we have several substantially incomplete and abandoned collective works lolling around in mainspace is actually the result of laxity in respect to stated policy (not to say I think it's a bad thing). The deletion proposals, whatever you may think of them, are actually not in contradiction to policy. That said, as always, there is scope to adjust policy. Which is what this is.
- Now, in terms of a WikiProject to scan back works, I think that is a good idea. See #Re-purpose_WikiProject_OCR_to_WikiProject_Scans above, which proposed to reboot Wikiproject OCR as a scan-backing Wikiproject. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:40, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  - The policy says "When an entire work is available as a djvu file on commons and an Index page is created here, works are considered in process not excerpts." A literal reading of that policy is that no scan-backed work is an excerpt (it is expected to be completed eventually). Further the policy refers to "Random or selected sections of a larger work". A literal reading of that expression is that it does not include lists of scans, or auxilliary content tables, as they are not "sections" (they are not part of the work), and that not every incomplete portion of a work is either "random or selected" (which would not include starting from the beginning and getting as far as you can, with intent to finish later). I could probably argue that an encyclopedia article or periodical article is a complete work. James500 (talk) 15:16, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
Nice wall of text, Xover (and I say that with great respect!) -- it generally makes sense and sounds good to me. As another hopefully illustrative example, take The Works of Voltaire, which I've been digging thru lately. I think this would very much satisfy your criteria as a large work, with sufficient scaffolding to justify the mainspace pages that exist for it. I would love to hear others thoughts on that. JesseW (talk) 16:07, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
@JesseW: Yeah, apologies for the length. Brevity is just not my strong suit.
The Works of Voltaire probably qualifies on sheer scale of work, yes. I don't think the current wikipage at The Works of Voltaire is quite it though: as it currently stands it is more WikiProject than something that should sit in mainspace (its contents are for Wikisource contributors, to organise our effort, not our readers, who want to read finished transcriptions). It also mixes a work page with a versions page in a confusing way. So I would probably say… Move the current page to Wikisource:WikiProject Voltaire; create a new The Works of Voltaire as a pure versions page, linking to…; The Works of Voltaire (1906), that is set up as a work page with the cover and title (and other relevant front matter) of the first volume, and an AuxTOC (and possibly also the {{Works of Voltaire}} volume navigation template). I don't know how tightly coupled the volumes of this edition are (does the first volume have a common ToC or index of works for all the volumes?), so some flexibility on format may be needed to make sense. But as a base rule of thumb it should start from a regular works page and deviate only as needed to accommodate this work (mainly the size is different).
In any case… With a volume or two completed (they're only ~350 pages each) I'd be perfectly happy having something like that sitting around. With less then that I'd possibly be a bit more iffy, but it's hard to put any kind of hard limit on that. And with somebody actively working on it I'd be in no hurry whatsoever regardless of current level of completion.
PS. I'm pretty sure a large proportion of the contents of these volumes are works that would qualify under "standalone works" that could exist independently in mainspace, regardless of what's done with the The Works of Voltaire page. Even his individual poems and essays can presumably make a credible claim here (because it's Voltaire; less famous authors would have a higher bar). Better as part of the edition, but also acceptable on their own. --Xover (talk) 16:56, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@JesseW: I personally take no issue with this page's existence (actually I think it's a nice work and good way to allow an important author's works to be slotted in piece-by-piece. I have some general comments which overlap with this thread (written before Xover's reply, so pardon overlap):

- First off, I differ with Xover in terms of the scan links: I think they're better than nothing, and I don't see much value in duplicating the volume list onto an auxiliary page just to add scan links. However, I can sympathise with the sentiment that our mainspace shouldn't direct users off-wiki (or at least off-WMF). But if we don't have the scans, and that's what the user wants, they're leaving anyway. Real answer: import moar scans!
- No scan links are necessary where the volume exists in mainspace and is scan-backed (e.g. v3)
- Ext scan links should only be used when there is no Index page or imported scan. Use {{small scan link}} or {{Commons link}} when possible (e.g. v2)
- The first volume list could probably be in an AuxTOC to mark it out as WS-generated content.
- The "Other editions" section belongs on an auxiliary namespace page (Talk, Portal or Wikisource). I suggest the Talk page is best in this case. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Xover: I am in agreement with the majority of what you say. Particularly, I think a framework around any collective work (be it a single-volume biographical dictionary or a 400-issue literary review spanning 80 years) is the critical prerequisite, plus at least some scans, the more the merrier. Where I think I differ:
- I am inclined to be a bit more relaxed in terms of how much of a work we need. As long as a single article exists, it's not "trivial" (e.g. only a short advert or some incidental text like a "note to correspondents", as opposed to an actual article), it's well-formatted and scan-backed, and a complete framework exists, including front matter and a TOC, such that's it is easy for anyone to slot in new pieces, I'd be fairly happy. Lots of periodicals have all sort of tricky bits like tables of stocks or weather tables and writing into policy that those must be proofread in order to get the "real" articles into mainspace would be a chilling effect, in my opinion. If you allowed an exception, it would be verbose and tricky to capture the spirit without saying "unless, like, it's totally, like, hard, man".
- I am not dead against scan links in the mainspace at the top level, when such a top-level page exists. See my comments on Voltaire above. I am against them where they could sensibly be on an Author page and they are the only mainspace content.
- I am ambivalent on the presence of, e.g., disjointed train timetables. It's not my thing to have a smattering of random timetables, but as long as they're individually presented nicely, it's not too offensive to my sensibilities. I might question the sanity of someone who loves doing tables that much, but whatever floats the boats! Also, I think that this might circle back to "good for export" - a mark which certainly would require completed issues or volumes. If you want to get that box ticked, you have to do it all.
- Re the "notability" aspect of individual articles, I'm not really bothered by that, as I don't think we'll see a flood of total dross because few people really want to take the time to transcribe 1867 articles about cats in a tree from the Nowhere, Arizona Daily Reporter, and, actually I think some of the "dross" can be quite interesting in a slice-of-life kind of a way (always assuming well-formed and scan-backed). And the real dross is usually so bad (no scans, raw OCR, etc) that it can be dealt with outside of this topic. I think part of the value of WS is the tiny, weird and wonderful, not just in blockbusters like War and Peace and Pultizers. I think I might like to see more of our articles strung together thematically via Portals, but that's another day's issue. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:35, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
  - @Inductiveload: We appear to be mostly in agreement. But… instead of me dropping another wall of text on the remaining points of disagreement, maybe that means we're in a position to try to hash out a draft guidance / policy type page with the rough framework? Then we could go at the remaining issues point by point. Because I think I'm in with a decent chance to persuade you to my point of view on at least some of them, but this thread is fast getting unwieldy (mostly my fault). It would also probably be easier for the community to relate to now, and much easier to lean on in the future. --Xover (talk) 18:31, 6 July 2020 (UTC)Reply
    - @Xover: If there are no more comments forthcoming after a couple of days, I think that makes sense. I don't want to railroad it: considering we have at least one !vote for "do nothing", I'd like to see if there are any other substantially different opinions floating about. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:41, 7 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

The quantity of text here has grown far faster than my ability to absorb it, so rather than continue to put it off, here's my position: I don't see any problem with transcriptions that are scan-backed, even if the transcription only covers a small fraction of the entire scan. If Sally chooses (say) to transcribe a favorite story, that happened to be published in an issue of Harper's back in the 1890s, and goes to the trouble of uploading the full issue, but only creates pages for the one story that interests her, I think that's great. It doesn't matter to me whether she intends to work on the other pages or not. If it's not scan-backed, but it's fairly high quality, I am personally willing to do some work trying to locate a scan and match it up to the text; I'd rather we take that approach, than deletion, though of course deletion is the better option in some cases where the scan is very hard to come by.

~~If all this has been said above, or if I've misunderstood the topic, my apologies. Please take this comment or leave it, as appropriate. -Pete (talk) 02:00, 8 July 2020 (UTC)~~Reply

Apologies, I see I had missed the point.

I disagree with Xover's statement that a top-level page for a publication, with a link only to a single article within the publication, has "near-zero value." Such a page can serve an important function linking content together in ways that help the reader (and search engines) find the content they're looking for, or understand the context around it. For instance, A Critical Dictionary of English Literature is linked from the relevant Wikidata entry. The banner on the Wikisource page clearly tells a Wikisource reader that they won't find a full transcription here; and with a simple edit, it could link to a full scan on another site, or (with perhaps a little more effort) even transcription links here on Wikisource. This page has been here since 2010; we don't have any way of knowing what links might have been created elsewhere in the intervening decade. (I do think that new pages like this should not be created without a scan at Commons to be linked to.) -Pete (talk) 02:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

I'm really bad with walls of text, so I have only read a tiny portion of the above discussion. But I want to mention a couple of things that I think are worth considering in this discussion.

Most of the time, a mainspace "work" that is only a table of contents, but which has none of the actual content, and is not actively being worked on, can be (and should be) deleted as No meaningful content or history under our deletion policy.
A mainspace work that has only a little bit of content, but that content is a work unto itself within the scope of Wikisourse, should be kept. Most periodicals are like this. For an example, see the Journal of English and Germanic Philology which only has one hosted article, but that hosted article is scan-backed and firmly within scope.
On some occasions, empty mainspace works do have value. I ended up creating the page The Roman Breviary, depsite containing no actual content, mostly because there are a lot of works that link to it, using many different titles, and if someone uploaded a copy of the work under one title then many of the links would remain red because they point to different titles of the work. This could be easily solved by creating redirects to a simple placeholder page, so I did. I tried to make the placeholder page as useful as a placeholder page can be, as it contains useful information about the history and authorship of the work, and links to the Index pages where the transcription will take place.

Anyway those are my 2 cents, sorry if they are redundant —Beleg Tâl (talk) 00:40, 29 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Proposal

Since there has been no extra input for a month, and not wanting this section to get archived without at least attempting a proposal, I have started a proposal #Collective work inclusion criteria above. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:00, 25 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

Since the proposal has now slipped off the main page (to here), with vague support for the first part (collective work inclusion criteria) and a fairly consistent opposition to the second (no-content pages), my plan is to transfer the first part, as guidelines rather than policy, to Wikisource:Periodical guidelines. As non-binding guidelines, they can then be worked on further in situ. Sound OK? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 08:10, 16 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

The example given in Wikisource:Periodical guidelines might be improved, PSM is and was an exercise that has gone its own way (no offense to @Ineuw:, this is a site under development and that is only one example).CYGNIS INSIGNIS 13:05, 17 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Cygnis insignis: You would be wrong to think that I am offended. Remember that when I started, I knew everything. By now, so much of that knowledge is lost that I am happy to listen. Would you elaborate please? — Ineuw (talk) 19:50, 17 April 2021 (UTC)Reply

I've created Bradshaw's Monthly Railway and Steam Navigation Guide (XVI) - it couldn't be done on one page, due to the very high number of template transclusions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:52, 1 September 2020 (UTC)Reply

@Pigsonthewing: The links in the toc on that page appear non-functional. Also, depending on just exactly which templates were the culprit, it is possible that you may be able to put all the content you wanted onto one page now due to some recent technical changes (template code moved to a Lua module which drastically improves performance and prevents hitting transclusion limits until much later). Xover (talk) 11:17, 14 September 2021 (UTC)Reply

Create the Draft namespace to hold substantially empty works? Then delete if no improvement after months?--Jusjih (talk) 19:22, 1 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

The issue is that the "substantially empty works" can have useful and complete content that stands alone. For example, an article from a scientific journal.

I would not want to see that either shunted into a Draft namespace to rot or deleted a few weeks down the line.

Index and Page namespaces provide our long term staging areas, and works can and do remain unfinished there for years. But what do we do when a self-contained piece of a larger work is ready? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 20:29, 1 November 2021 (UTC)Reply

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Universal Code of Conduct News
Issue 1, June 2021Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the first issue of Universal Code of Conduct News! This newsletter will help Wikimedians stay involved with the development of the new code, and will distribute relevant news, research, and upcoming events related to the UCoC.

Please note, this is the first issue of UCoC Newsletter which is delivered to all subscribers and projects as an announcement of the initiative. If you want the future issues delivered to your talk page, village pumps, or any specific pages you find appropriate, you need to subscribe here.

You can help us by translating the newsletter issues in your languages to spread the news and create awareness of the new conduct to keep our beloved community safe for all of us. Please add your name here if you want to be informed of the draft issue to translate beforehand. Your participation is valued and appreciated.

Affiliate consultations – Wikimedia affiliates of all sizes and types were invited to participate in the UCoC affiliate consultation throughout March and April 2021. (continue reading)
2021 key consultations – The Wikimedia Foundation held enforcement key questions consultations in April and May 2021 to request input about UCoC enforcement from the broader Wikimedia community. (continue reading)
Roundtable discussions – The UCoC facilitation team hosted two 90-minute-long public roundtable discussions in May 2021 to discuss UCoC key enforcement questions. More conversations are scheduled. (continue reading)
Phase 2 drafting committee – The drafting committee for the phase 2 of the UCoC started their work on 12 May 2021. Read more about their work. (continue reading)
Diff blogs – The UCoC facilitators wrote several blog posts based on interesting findings and insights from each community during local project consultation that took place in the 1st quarter of 2021. (continue reading)

—unsigned comment by SOyeyele (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 10 June 2021‎.

Index:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf

Latest comment: 3 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

First run through is done, and it's transcluded. Needs validation. Thanks in advance for any help. Jarnsax (talk) 18:13, 16 June 2021‎ (UTC)Reply

J3l

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe/Volume 1/The Domain of Arnheim —unsigned comment by 202.165.87.161 (talk) 18:52, 25 December 2021 ‎(UTC).Reply

Subscribe to the This Month in Education newsletter - learn from others and share your stories

Latest comment: just now1 comment1 person in discussion

Dear community members,

Greetings from the EWOC Newsletter team and the education team at Wikimedia Foundation. We are very excited to share that we on tenth years of Education Newsletter (This Month in Education) invite you to join us by subscribing to the newsletter on your talk page or by sharing your activities in the upcoming newsletters. The Wikimedia Education newsletter is a monthly newsletter that collects articles written by community members using Wikimedia projects in education around the world, and it is published by the EWOC Newsletter team in collaboration with the Education team. These stories can bring you new ideas to try, valuable insights about the success and challenges of our community members in running education programs in their context.

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About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: ZI Jony ^(Talk), Sunday 11:27, 30 June 2024 (UTC)Reply

Is Wikisource:Featured text candidates still active?

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Hi, out of curiosity, is Wikisource:Featured text candidates still active? It seems to have proposed texts dating back to 2018 without closure, and only a few edits this year. If it's not still active, is the process worth keeping? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 21:56, 18 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

It's been over a year since we promoted the last featured text and the last substantive discussion on that page is from December last year. It looks dead to me. Should we wrap up the existing discussions and mark the page {{historical}}? If not, is there a way we can reinvigorate the process? Nosferattus (talk) 14:49, 24 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

People need to make nominations and comment regularly on nominations. Without nominations and comments, the process cannot happen. But this involves actually looking at the work and compating transcribed text and punctuation carefully against the original. It involves checking links and internal structure. It also involves writing main page blurbs about the nomination. Most of these processes halted, and when those processes cease, the entire FT grinds to a halt. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:17, 8 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

Latest comment: 2 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

Hi, All DjVu uploaded to Commons up to number 31 (public domain both in India and USA), and all indexes created. Yann (talk) 23:29, 26 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Now that we have the scans, I would like to have a second (and more) opinion about the formatting and the table of content. This is a collection of many small and not so small texts, so I wonder what’s the best way to do it. See the index here. Thanks for your input. Yann (talk) 15:58, 31 March 2022 (UTC)Reply

Not sure what you're asking, but the volumes need to be moved from Roman to Arabic numbering per our standard style. Each item should have its own subpage within the volume. If that doesn't cover your question, please provide more detail. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that’s what I am asking. Is it necessary that each item to have a subpage, even it is only a few lines? For the first volume, I created subpages by year, but that won’t work later. Would a subpage by month be OK? Thanks, Yann (talk) 10:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Okay, think about how these items will be used or referenced. A few people will sit down and read their way through the volume(s), but most will want to just use a particular item, e.g. "Ghandi in his letter of ——— says …". We need a straightforward and precise way of linking from other works and from the sisters, thus I believe that one item per subpage is the best solution. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Just to add my 5 cents since Canada no longer mints pennies, sub pages are a pain because the only way I know how to deal with them is with the {{anchor}} and they must be enclosed with section tags.Ineuw (talk) 06:21, 2 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Another way to think about it is in terms of preserving the structure of the work as published: if the original work has a sane table of contents, one wikipage per entry in the table of contents is usually a good rule of thumb to start with. That can't always be applied directly (too many quirky tables of contents), but it's usually a decent starting point when deciding how to set up the transclusions for that text and it tends to make transcluding easier to set up since we're following the edition's structure rather than fighting against it. Xover (talk) 07:25, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Beeswaxcandle: Now each item can be linked, as they are subsections (#Letter to X (xx-xx-xxxx) -> === Letter to X (xx-xx-xxxx) ===. A subpage for each means thousands of new subpages. I will go with the consensus. Thanks, Yann (talk) 11:01, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Current featured text is a rerun?

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

The current featured text (Trees and Other Poems) was the featured text selected for April 2018, and the template {{Featured text/April}} has not been updated since then. This one is especially noticeable as a previously featured text because the blurb on the front page mentions that the author was killed on July 30, 1918—almost 100 years ago (emphasis mine). Would an admin be willing to alter the text to remove or update this?

Overall it seems that the selection of featured texts has been rather neglected lately. For example, there's the question above about WS:Featured text candidates being inactive, and according to {{Featured schedule}}, the latest new work was added in February 2020. Even before then there were plenty of gaps in the schedule, though it seems to have been a generally steady flow of works most of the time. What happened that made it peter out?

In my view, featuring texts is important and beneficial to readers and editors alike—readers get to experience new and interesting content, and editors are given recognition for the work done in bringing a text up to a high standard. At the very least, one new text per month should be possible to achieve with regularity. Is there any way this process can be revitalized? Shells-shells (talk) 05:15, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Shells-shells: What happened was probably what usually happens on all-volunteer projects: those most involved got busy IRL, lost interest in this particular aspect, quit editing, burned out, or were abducted by aliens. Are you volunteering to pick up the slack? Because you absolutely do not need to be an admin to do that (it's just convenient to be able to edit the blurbs and stuff directly).

Oh, and the April text has been updated to remove the anachronism. Xover (talk) 07:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

In that case, I shall hold my peace until I'm ready to submit featured text candidates for review. I do have a few in mind, but I'd like to go through them thoroughly to ensure a high standard (and for personal enjoyment as well) before going any further. Thank you for the prompt response! Shells-shells (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Way to view scans in diff view in Page namespace?

Latest comment: 2 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Title says it all: is there any way to see the page scan when viewing diffs in the Page namespace? It is often not particularly helpful to see what things have been changed from one revision to another without also knowing what the actual contents of the scanned page are. Does a setting or gadget exist that can do this? Shells-shells (talk) 05:36, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Shells-shells: No, sorry. The best you can do is view the page content (sans scan image). That's controlled by the Do not show page content below diffs setting in the "Appearance" section of the preferences. Proofread Page could in theory override this view to show its UI there, but it's a lot of work, one more bit of code that needs maintenance and is prone to breaking, impacts interactive performance, and most of the time most people do not want the scan image or page content there (i.e. they turn it off, hence the negative formulation of the pref setting). It could possibly be "faked" by a Gadget, but I don't think it'd be very robust and the results would be unlikely to make anyone very happy. Xover (talk) 07:04, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Better labelling of hoaxes

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

Would it be possible to get better labelling of hoaxes? I just came across an insane rambling on social media that linked on The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion/Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion. I'm aware of the warnings on The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, but these are not reflected on the daughter page... Stuartyeates (talk) 10:24, 3 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Stuartyeates: That work only has the one daughter page at the moment (and no other translations hosted), so it should be pretty straightforward to add something in the notes field. I'll let other people talk about the more general policy question. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 02:14, 4 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

It would be useful to have a way to avoid re-entering certain info into the header over and over again for every sub-page. Not just for this, but more generally. Theknightwho (talk) 10:06, 4 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

I suppose for larger books, you can create a template that itself links to the header template, but automatically feeds through a specific note that you want presented on each pages that uses that sub-template. Whether this is in-line with WS policy, I don't know. Supertrinko (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2022-14

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

Problems

For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [1]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [2]
Over the next few months, the "Add a link" Growth feature will become available to more Wikipedias. Each week, a few wikis will get the feature. You can test this tool at a few wikis where "Link recommendation" is already available.

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

21:01, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

UCoC Enforcement Guidelines - Voting results

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hi all!

I want to inform you that the majority of Wikimedians have voted in favour of the proposed Guidelines for implementing the Universal Code of Conduct.

A total of 2348 community members took part in the vote.
Of that number, 1338 voted Yes and 945 No. There were 65 undecided votes.

What does this result mean?

It means that there is enough support for the WMF Board of Trustees to review the Guidelines. It does not mean that the ratification process is complete.

What happens next?

1. The UCoC project team will collate and summarise the comments provided in the voting process and publish them on Meta-wiki;

2. The Board of Trustees will review the text of the Guidelines and comments given during the vote to determine if any aspects need to be revised.

What are the possible outcomes?

1. If the Board of Trustees concludes that there are aspects of the Guidelines that need further refinement, these comments, as well as suggestions from the community discussions, will provide a good starting point for the revision.

2. If the Board of Trustees decides to proceed with ratification, the UCoC project team will begin supporting specific proposals in the Guidelines.

You can find more details about the results and the accompanying statistics [on this page]. A summary of the voters' comments will be available on the same page.

Kind regards,
--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Facilitator
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Scope of Category:CE biographies

Latest comment: 2 years ago5 comments3 people in discussion

Currently Category:CE biographies contains all articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia, whether they are biographies or not (e.g., Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Capsa, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Captain (In the Bible), Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Captivities of the Israelites, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Archdiocese of Capua, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Capuchinesses). The last word on this appears to be six years ago, when an editor noted this in the category header, but the observation that an incongruity exists is not a solution to it. Furthermore, this category is generated in all of these articles by default by the article header, so an holistic solution is required.

I see two possible solutions here. Either clean out the category by removing everything that is identified as not a biography (which will necessitate developing an alternative header for those pages), or rename the category to something like Category:CE articles, and then possibly manually add Category:CE biographies to those that are biographies (or, perhaps, add a "biography = y/n" parameter to the header, so that those toggled "y" will have the category added. BD2412 T 05:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

i would be more concerned about migrating to scan backed, such as Page:Catholic_Encyclopedia,_volume_3.djvu/366 , but horses for courses. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 22:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'm (slowly) working my way through scan-backing Volume 1 and will eventually get on to the others. Part of my one-person battle to reduce the not-scan backed to less than 200K. Not helped by the further additions as fast as I reduce. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

we should have a contest for CE, like EB1911. it is a big lump, with lots of inbound wiki links. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:21, 16 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

If there is no objection, I will go ahead and create a Category:CE articles, put Category:CE biographies in that category, and begin moving non-biographies to the supercategory. If I find a particularly large number of entries falling into another subset, I will likely make an additional subcategory for that subset. BD2412 T 07:24, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2022-15

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

There is a new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [3][4]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).

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

19:44, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about Movement Strategy on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 12:13, 13 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

New redlinked category for scores has just appeared

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A new Category:Pages which use score has suddenly appeared, but it is randomly populated with 94 pages (as I write this) out of the 2835 pages that the Special pages with score property list gives. Some of the contents of the new category are pages created today, while others are from several years ago. I cannot find what's causing these pages to populate the category and I also question its utility. Any thoughts? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:14, 14 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/extensions/Score/+/4bdd90940f205f54674e4a7358b1bc1724f7cb72 ?

Extramural promotion?

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Is there a precedent - or possibility - for noting on the main page when another WM wiki promotes a WS text? Wikipedia's Did you know ... section leads with w:Chow Leung who co-wrote w:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories which has an entry here Chinese Fables and Folk Stories. Perhaps a "Recently mentioned work here" single line at top of page? Shenme (talk) 02:03, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

That could become complicated, and take a lot of work to maintain. How would we monitor all the other WM projects? What would be the benefit of adjusting the main page here in response to single-day mentions of related pages on other projects? For the specific instance you've noted, I think a better approach would be to ensure their page connects to our Author page using suitable WP templates. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:54, 24 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

In principle, it doesn't seem that hard: you just have a bot scan what's on the front page of projects X, Y, and Z and then see if there's an associated link at the relevant Wikidata item. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:02, 25 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Center text vertically

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Is there any template for vertically centering text? I have pages like this in mind; countless other examples exist where it might be helpful. Absent such a template, should vertical centering be fudged with {{dhr}} as it is now in the linked page, or should the text be horizontally centered only? Shells-shells (talk) 05:39, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Always consider how it will look when it's transcluded to the Mainspace. Vertical centering doesn't make sense in the context of multiple pages transcluded together (even with {{page break}} between them). If there's a genuine need to push some text down, then by all means fudge it with {{dhr}}. Otherwise, it's not worth it. I usually align pages like this to the top of the page and put two blank lines after with a {{nop}} to follow. This gives enough vertical space before the next page. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:49, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

I was thinking mostly in terms of how texts display when exported to pdf or e-readers; it would just be nice to have these sorts of pages displayed with the text centered on the page rather than aligned to the top. I agree that mainspace rendering should stay as it is, and I wasn't even considering multipage formatting.

Anyway, this is a very trivial matter and your solution is perfectly satisfactory to me :) Shells-shells (talk) 06:25, 17 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2022-16

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 later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [5]
Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.

Future changes

Kartographer will become compatible with FlaggedRevisions page stabilization. Kartographer maps will also work on pages with pending changes. [6] The Kartographer documentation has been thoroughly updated. [7] [8] [9]

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

23:11, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Is There a Santa Claus? (New York Sun)

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Can we move Is There a Santa Claus? (New York Sun) to the format the other articles use > "The New York Sun/1897/Is There a Santa Claus?" --RAN (talk) 02:25, 19 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Sounds great to me! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 08:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Since the page is locked, you might want to make a request at WS:AN. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 17:12, 21 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Formatting poems across pages

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Here is a poem what I wrote about the sad time that my dog passed away.

This is how it looks on one page:

I'm sad my dog has died
He was always by my side

Oh! Dear! My dog's passed away
I have never seen such a dark sad day
Will I ever recover without the love
Of my darling mother who is above

This it what it looks like split between two pages

I'm sad my dog has died

He was always by my side

Oh! Dear! My dog's passed away
I have never seen such a dark sad day
Will I ever recover without the love
Of my darling mother who is above

Is there any way of keeping a poem's central alignment across pages?AlwynapHuw (talk) 05:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@AlwynapHuw: Here on enWS I would have said to use {{ppoem}}, but that's not particularly easy to import to other projects so if this is for cyWS it may not be particularly practical. An alternative is to just drop the <poem>, formatting the text the same way you format prose text, and then force line breaks using <br />. A lot of people here have adopted that approach due to the limitations and quirks of the <poem> tag. I don't particularly recommend that approach, but it does work. Xover (talk) 06:32, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

tables and blocks spanning pages are always a problem. see also Template:Block_center#Spanning_multiple_pages --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 23:25, 22 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Transwikifying a Russian source with English translation from Wikipedia

Latest comment: 2 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

A Wikipedia user has created a page containing an open letter from the Azov Battalion in Ukraine, containing the original text in Russian, and a translation (of uncertain provenance) at w:Draft:Address of the Azov Regiment to Russia. If this were moved to Wikisource, would it be two pages, one at ru-source, one at en-source? Or a bilingual page, sourced at either? What's the right way to proceed, assuming this kind of content is even appropriate here? (ping on reply, please!) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:08, 24 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Mathglot:, s:mul: is perfect for hosting multilingual texts. Since this appears to be an original text and someone's translation, I think that separate pages at en.ws and ru.ws is the correct course of action. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:37, 24 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

I suggest treating the translation as a wiki-user translation, and therefore the enWS version should be in the Translation: namespace and can only appear once the ruWS original has been posted and accepted by them. On a quick look I can't see a license on the original text that would allow ruWS to host (probably because I don't read cyrillic text). Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:48, 24 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Koavf: can you relink ":s:mul:"? It seems to be the same destination as s: – was that the intention?

@Beeswaxcandle: thanks. Although far from perfect, machine translation has improved by leaps and bounds the last few years, to the point that you can pretty much read the KP article at this Google auto-translation link. As far as licensing, if you follow their Terms of Use info linked at the bottom of the page, it says:

1. The use of texts posted on the site is allowed provided there is an active hyperlink to the site kp.ua not lower than the second paragraph.

I don't see an email address or a "contact us" page anywhere, otherwise I'd write and ask, to make sure, but that ToU seems pretty clear. I'm not as used to Wikisource as Wikipedia, and it seems to me that in Wikipedia context, this would work in a quote box where the source was listed at the top, as a kind of byline under the bolded Title, thus meeting their licensing condition. I don't know if that "source-on-top" formatting would violate any Wikisource practices or guidelines, but if that's workable, it does seem like we could copy the letter to s:ru:. Assuming that ru-s folks would be willing, that is, and that their practices aren't too different from en-source. Mathglot (talk) 06:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@Mathglot: s: leads to the English-language Wikisource (from English-language projects). s:mul: leads to the Multilingual Wikisource. That project hosts three sorts of content: 1.) multilingual content, 2.) content in languages that have a very small corpus and will never have their own subdomain, and 3.) content with bodies of literature that are large enough that they could be independent projects, but that haven't yet had enough editors working on those texts (similar to incubator:). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Oh, I see; thanks. I thought that was just a splash page and hub with no content of its own, sort of like www.wikipedia.org is for Wikipedia; I didn't realize there was actual content there, so thanks for cluing me in. It still sounds like, as you said in your first comment, that this should go first to :s:ru, and then the English translation would come here. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

If the English-language translation is some unrelated document (as it appears to be), then yes. If you have any recommendations on how to improve the look of s:mul: to make it more clear, I'm all ears. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Would video/audio recordings of town hall meetings also count under PD-EdictGov?

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I see a lot of town websites including a video or audio recording of their town hall meetings, which show their discussions of legislature. Do these generally meet the criteria of being in the public domain on the basis of PD-EdictGov?

I remember us talking about EdictGov in relation to town hall minutes recently, and determined that those in paper form are public domain because they are created by legislative bodies. Would videos or audio recordings of the meetings also count as PD under the same premise? I ask this because 1. If they are public domain, they'd be a pretty hefty resource as it could award literally hundreds of hours of potential video and audio footage to Commons for free. 2. If they are public domain, we could use them in the Notes section of transcluded town minutes and agendas, as supplementary content. PseudoSkull (talk) 05:08, 25 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@PseudoSkull: The basis of EdictGov is that those subject to the law must know the law. So its core is that the text of the actual law is PD. This has always had a halo effect where other works that by some mechanism carry the force of law (administrative rulings, for example) are also exempt. That's recently been expanded to cover works authored by a competent legislative assembly, mainly with an eye to annotations, explainers, and so forth.

But a "Town Hall" is not usually arranged by the legislative assembly as a body, and even if all individual legislators are present it is not at all clear that this could qualify (in what role are they participating?). And a Town Hall usually has the general public present: anything they say will have different authorship and thus separate copyright determination. If any of them read prepared remarks (including questions written down in advance) those will be covered by independent copyright. And then there is the video recording itself, which maybe be by a commercial partner of the municipality. Below federal level it is not a given that works produced by, say, an employee of the city is exempt from copyright (PD-USGov exemptions are specifically for federal government) and the laws vary from state to state. So video recordings by an employee (not a legislator), or made for hire by an external entity, cannot be assumed to be PD. If made by an external partner (without work for hire coming into play, and we'd need to see the contract to be sure) then most likely they own the copyright in the recording and the municipality is using (hosting) the recording "by permission" (i.e. under a license agreement, and again we'd need to see the contract to be sure).

The bottom line is that we can't make any blanket assumptions about the general case except that these are in copyright, and any exceptions will have to be assessed case by case. Given the variability of state laws, lack of proper copyright management at most local governments, lack of transparency about contractual arrangements, and so forth, I don't know that this is an area in which I'd want to invest too much time and effort. It's likely that at least some such are PD (in some way; not, most likely, under EdictGov), but the effort required to find them and make the determination is likely to be substantial. Xover (talk) 06:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

yeah, local government is different than federal government. the supreme court case tends to open up state law, however you should take care with the building code, and other documents quoted in the public record. there are exceptions, such as the florida sunshine law, which would make a lot PD, but in general local governments are not covered, and do not explain it very well. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:23, 26 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2022-17

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

On many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [10][11]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [12]

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

22:56, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 29 April 2022 at 13:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 88045453898. Dial by your location.

Agenda

Update on the recent developments
Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Italian, and Polish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022 Call for Candidates

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

It's the election season again!

This year, the Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for two community-and-affiliate selected seats in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, which oversees the Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three-year term. This is an opportunity to improve the representation, diversity, and expertise of the Board as a team.

Please consider submitting your candidacy to join the Board of Trustees.
(Read the full announcement of the Elections Committee and the Board of Trustees)

The seats to be filled this year were previously selected by affiliates in the 2019 affiliate-selected Board seats process.
This year, a different method will be used:

Candidates submit their applications (by May 9; this deadline may be slightly extended);
Any community member can become a candidate if they meet the general and special conditions outlined here.
Affiliates vote to shortlist six (6) names from the candidates' pool.
Each affiliate carries one vote. The affiliate vote is scheduled to take place in early July.
The Community votes to elect two of the six shortlisted candidates.
Community Voting is scheduled to begin on August 15 and end on August 29.
The Board will appoint the two newly-elected candidates as the new Trustees.
This final step, which will conclude the election process, is expected to take place in early October 2022.

Election Volunteers:

Do you want to take part in the process as an election volunteer? Just add your name on this Meta page.

If you have any questions, please post them here, on Meta-wiki, or reach out to me directly.

Kind regards. --BPipal (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 27 April 2022 (UTC)Reply
Facilitator, SEE
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Glossary of commonly used terms?

Latest comment: 2 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

sorry i'm a noob and have just tried my hands on adding a new pdf. i'm in the process of making the pagelist. i'm not a native english speaker, so i have trouble finding the correct words for the different pages of a book. for example, is "back cover" the phrase for the bottom piece of paper, which is equivalent to the "cover" in the front? i notice there's Wikisource:Glossary, but it has very few words. https://www.abebooks.com/books/rarebooks/collecting-guide/understanding-rare-books/glossary.shtml on the other hand has too many things, which confuse me.

i tried looking at featured texts to imitate. is there one that exemplifies most nuances users should pay attention to? RZuo (talk) 12:48, 28 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

@RZuo: You can have a look at this "Book structure navbox" over on Wikipedia, especially the front and back matter sections; the articles linked there would explain most of the elements/pages you're likely to commonly encounter in a book. For example, the "back cover" can simply be called "Cover", or "Jacket" (if it is a jacket), or you could simply use a –. There's no hard rule in such cases. Also, don't be afraid of making mistakes; we all learn as we go. Cheers! Ciridae (talk) 15:14, 28 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

See Help:Index pages#Parameters, particularly the two coloured boxes for details on how to do pagelists. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:11, 28 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

yeah, we tend to ignore the "cover", dust jacket, and end papers, and skip ahead to the title page, and table of contents, as the main landing page for a work. such are digital works, not off the shelf. sorry about the lack of documentation, cheers. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:22, 30 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Coming soon: Improvements for templates

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Fundamental changes in the template dialog.

Hello, more changes around templates are coming to your wiki soon:

The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the 2017 Wikitext Editor (beta) will be improved fundamentally: This should help users understand better what the template expects, how to navigate the template, and how to add parameters.

project page, talk page

In syntax highlighting (CodeMirror extension), you can activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme with a user setting.

project page, talk page

Deployment is planned for May 10. This is the last set of improvements from WMDE Technical Wishes' focus area “Templates”.

We would love to hear your feedback on our talk pages!

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 11:13, 29 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Neat trick

Latest comment: 2 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I have discovered that, if a page has been deleted here, then restored, Wikidata remembers the original linkage and the link is automatically restored at Wikidata, which is a nice feature. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

That is convenient :) —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 22:44, 29 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

assuming the wikidata number is not deleted, as not notable, on the rare occasion the wikisource is the only link. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:02, 30 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

A lesson in advertising

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The graph below shows page views for Portal:American literature over the past 90 days.

Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues.

Page views spiked 2 days ago. This is when User:Feydey added a template link to the Portal from Wikipedia's article on w:en:American literature. The Portal was already connected via Wikidata, and listed in the left-hand marginal links, but this clearly was not drawing traffic here.

Our community would likely benefit from the advertisement and expansion of similar national literature Portals. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:05, 29 April 2022 (UTC)Reply

Editing news 2022 #1

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

The New topic tool helps editors create new ==Sections== on discussion pages. New editors are more successful with this new tool. You can read the report. Soon, the Editing team will offer this to all editors at the 20 Wikipedias that participated in the test. You will be able to turn it off at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing-discussion.

Whatamidoing (WMF) 18:56, 2 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2022-18

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

On all remaining wikis (group 2), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [13][14]

Changes later this week

The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 May. It will be on all wikis from 5 May (calendar).

Future changes

The developers are working on talk pages in the Wikipedia app for iOS. You can give feedback. You can take the survey in English, German, Hebrew or Chinese.
Most wikis will receive an improved template dialog in VisualEditor and New Wikitext mode. [15] [16]
If you use syntax highlighting while editing wikitext, you can soon activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme. [17]
Several CSS IDs related to MediaWiki interface messages will be removed. Technical editors should please review the list of IDs and links to their existing uses. These include #mw-anon-edit-warning, #mw-undelete-revision and 3 others.

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

19:33, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

New competition on English Wikipedia and related SiteNotice request

Latest comment: 2 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

A popular article writing competition CEE Spring (about Central and Eastern Europe; now with special subcategory about Esperanto) is happening on the English Wikipedia until the 31st May 2022. I warmly invite you to participate, write some article and win a valuable prize! If you have question, I will happily answer it on the competition page talk.

Also, for more wide outreach, I have just asked for a CentralNotice, which should appear also in this project. If you have a comment on the request, you are welcome to write it on the request page. --KuboF Hromoslav (talk) 18:29, 3 May 2022 (UTC)Reply

@@ Line 850: / Line 850: @@
 :33, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 <!-- Message sent by User:Quiddity (WMF)@metawiki using the list at https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Global_message_delivery/Targets/Tech_ambassadors&oldid=23232924 -->
+== New competition on English Wikipedia and related SiteNotice request ==
+A popular article writing competition ''CEE Spring'' (about '''Central and Eastern Europe'''; now with special subcategory about '''Esperanto''') '''[[w:en:Wikipedia:CEE Spring 2022|is happening on the English Wikipedia]]''' until the 31st May 2022. I warmly invite you to participate, write some article and win a valuable prize! If you have question, I will happily answer it on the competition page talk.
+Also, for more wide outreach, I have just [[:meta:CentralNotice/Request/CEE Spring 2022 English|asked for a CentralNotice]], which should appear also in this project. If you have a comment on the request, you are welcome to write it on the request page. --[[User:KuboF Hromoslav|KuboF Hromoslav]] ([[User talk:KuboF Hromoslav|talk]]) 18:29, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikisource:Scriptorium: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:29, 3 May 2022

Announcements

Celebrating One Year of the Monthly Challenge

1.5 million proofread pages

April Monthly Challenge

Proposals

New Request for Comment on Wikilinking Policy is open

Proposal for creation of local Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP)

Bot approval requests

Repairs (and moves)

Index:Memorials of Capt. Hedley Vicars, Ninety-seventh Regiment by Marsh, Catherine, 1818-1912.djvu

Index:The future of Africa.djvu

Index:Incidents in the life of a slave girl.djvu

Index:A history of Hungarian literature.djvu

Move request: The Village Pulpit, Volume II to The Village Pulpit/Volume 2

Stories in In a Glass Darkly

Other discussions

Policy on substantially empty works

Proposal

Universal Code of Conduct News – Issue 1

Index:Robert Carter- his life and work. 1807-1889 (IA robertcarterhis00coch).pdf

J3l

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The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

Current featured text is a rerun?

Way to view scans in diff view in Page namespace?

Better labelling of hoaxes

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Scope of Category:CE biographies

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New redlinked category for scores has just appeared

Extramural promotion?

Center text vertically

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Formatting poems across pages

Transwikifying a Russian source with English translation from Wikipedia

Would video/audio recordings of town hall meetings also count under PD-EdictGov?

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Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022 Call for Candidates

Glossary of commonly used terms?

Coming soon: Improvements for templates

Neat trick

A lesson in advertising

Editing news 2022 #1

Tech News: 2022-18

New competition on English Wikipedia and related SiteNotice request

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