Wikisource:Proposed deletions

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Translation:Manshu

Ok, I think it's time we have this conversation…

Translation:Manshu describes itself as a Wikisource translation of A 9th century Middle Chinese text regarding the geopolitics of southwest China, particularly the historic kingdom of Nanzhao. It is an important historical source for the period. This translation is based upon a digitized version of the recompiled 1774 movable type edition edited by the 武英 (Palace Museum Library).

However, looking at it more closely it appears to be much more an original analytical work than anything that could be shoehorned to fit within our definition of a mere translation.

The front page is almost entirely original work (apart from a table of contents), partly semi-encyclopedic and partly meta-discussion about the effort itself.

Looking at Chapter 1 we find some actual translation, but mostly comparisons with a professionally published previous translation (Luce) that is quoted extensively, and translator's commentary that far exceeds the actual translated text itself. It also features a lot of images that obviously do not appear in any original, but have been picked to illustrate a particular point (i.e. how Wikipedia would construct an article).

Chapter 2 and onwards are the same, except they lack the extensive quotations from the published translation (Luce), but only because the effort to compare has not reached that point yet. Around Chapter 9 the translation appears incomplete with only the Chinese original text present.

Irrespective of the rest of this work, there is a question regarding the extensive quotations from the previous professional translation (link). It is a 1961 publication with copyright notice, so there is a high probability that it is in copyright (and thus the quotations are also copyvios). I haven't looked at this issue in detail, but if this discussion ends up keeping the work in some form we will have to address that separately (and if it is not in copyright, why are we not transcribing that instead of making our own?). The sole contributor to Translation:Manshu has a somewhat haphazard approach to copyright (e.g. claiming satellite imagery from Google Maps or similar as "own work") so the issue will have to be checked thoroughly.

But all that being said, this is also a great effort and a unique work that really should exist somewhere. If it were completed I'm certain it could have been professionally published, and it would be a real shame if all the effort that's gone into it was wasted. The contributor has not been active since 2018 (and the last large progress was in 2016), so I don't think it very likely that it will now ever be completed; but if a place is found for it even the partial translation is valuable, and could conceivably be completed by others at some point in the future. If the outcome of this discussion is that it is out of scope we should make a real effort to see whether a project like WikiBooks would be interested, and, if not, rather than simply delete it we should move it to the contributor's user space (a practice I am usually vehemently opposed to but am making an exception in this particular case).

In any case, it has kept popping up on my radar for various reasons, and I have always been torn on what to do about its issues. It seems clearly outside of scope per WS:WWI, doesn't meet WS:T, violates WS:ANN, and would most likely need cleanup to meet WS:COPY. So now I'm putting the question before the community: what do we do about this? --Xover (talk) 10:20, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

WS:T ought to address contributions like this, the first section on published works is redundant. Are there examples of Wikisource translations that have been in some way verified (validated)? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 14:43, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Not a lot, but they do exist. Translation:On Discoveries and Inventions is a recent example. --Xover (talk) 15:42, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

It could go in User space for the time being. Maybe Wikibooks would want it? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 13:55, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

I'm only able to comment on a small portion of this, which I hope might be helpful: https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First has no results for Man shu or southern barbarians as title; nor Luce, Gordon as an author name; nor do Cornell University or Southeast Asia Program or Oey or Fan, Cho seem to have a relevant renewal under their names. Southeast Asia Program as a title reveals registration of other of these data papers as copyrighted works, but no renewal of this one. This suggests the copyright was never renewed on the Luce translation (possibly this is not surprising, as these weren't exactly blockbusters...) and it is now public domain, judging by Help:Public domain#ref renewal. If accurate, this should resolve the WS:COPY concern. Good luck with the rest of this matter! Dingolover6969 (talk) 11:39, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Response by author

Hi there, I am the primary author, an admin on English Wikipedia. I would say I have spent upwards of 500 hours on this translation. During the time it is alleged that I have been inactive, I was a founding team member at a very important company you would have heard of, and provided some of the earliest COVID map coverage on Wikipedia (webm gif). Currently I run seven (7) companies and have a family, so it is fair to say I have 'other commitments'. I do still intend to complete the translation. Aside from time constraints, partly I have not been active on Wiki projects recently because I am living in China and this makes editing Wikiprojects a massive hassle due to the requirement for a VPN. Nevertheless, I noticed this deletion attempt by Xover and would like to respond objectively for the record. If we summarize the alleged issues they are as follows:

• The translation includes commentary
  • That is simply because it is a good (ie. transparent/honest) translation.
  • Any accredited historian will agree this is a good (positive) feature.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• The work is incomplete
  • I am still finishing, I am just ridiculously busy and have been so for five years.
  • Incomplete and pending further effort is often simply the nature of voluntary work.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• The work includes quotations from previous translations
  • Fully cited and contextually presented, in academia, this is clearly fair use.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• The work includes satellite derived images
  • These images were constructed with great care based upon detailed context and are both low resolution and substantially original work in themselves.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• The translation is done by the contributor and openly licensed instead of being an out of copyright work of someone else which has been uploaded
  • IMHO as a student of history original translation is *great* to welcome and should be encouraged.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• Violates 'What Wikisource Includes' (WWI)
  • Wikisource includes "Works created after 1925" / "Analytical and artistic works".
  • Wikisource includes "Translations"
  • To be perfectly honest I consider this assertion a truly baseless accusation that I frankly find highly offensive.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• "Doesn't meet" WS:T
  • Unclear what this means
  • The WST page clearly states that original translations are in-scope and acceptable (there is only one prior English translation and it is bad and incorrect)
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• Violates WS:ANN
  • I have never seen that page before in my life
  • Apparently it doesn't like parallel text
  • I would suggest strongly that parallel text provides the basis for most high caliber academic translations, it is my view that the policy page is wrong and further discussion to correct it should occur there.
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.
• Requires cleanup to meet WS:COPY
  • Unsure what this is actually alleging
  • Aside from original work there is only contextual quotations from other works in line with an academic translation
  • This does not in any way support 'delete'.

Sincerely, Pratyeka (talk) 10:12, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

I just noticed that Xover also deleted my maps. This is a great loss. I cannot recreate them as I do not have access to the context at the time. This is truly a tragedy. I am ... highly alarmed and stressed at this turn of events and will cease contributing further to Wikipedia projects. Pratyeka (talk) 10:21, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

Could someone with more time please go through the undeletion process on my behalf. It is... truly a great tragedy. Multiple academics had thanked me for this work. Pratyeka (talk) 12:55, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

@Pratyeka: These maps are not appropriate for enWS (or Commons), because they contain copyright material: the satellite photos. There is no allowance here, as there is at enWP, for fair use or de minimis, and resolution doesn't affect it. I imagine the "correct" solution is to either locate a suitable base maps from Commons (or NASA or other PD source), draw your own, or commission them via c:Commons:Graphics Lab/Map workshop.

If the presumption of copyright is incorrect (e.g. the photos are PD or freely licenced), then let me know and they can be restored and correct attribution and licence declarations made. In that case, they actually belong at Commons.

Sadly, being thanked by academics does not overrule copyright.

Even if these are copyrighted, I can also provide you with the files if you do not have access to them any more. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:00, 11 June 2021 (UTC)

@Pratyeka: I'm glad to see you're editing again. I'm not sure why you felt it relevant to mention that you have +sysop on enwp, but since you bring it up… as an admin on enwp you should be well familiar with the need to make policy-based arguments in such discussions and to familiarise oneself with the policy on the project. I have raised several policy-based concerns, and your response addresses none of them. However, to reiterate the challenges:

The text on Translation:Manshu is not a mere translation of a previously published work. It contains substantial portions of your own analysis, comparisons, and commentary: all of which is original rather than previously published content. In enwp terms, think of it as "original research": it's not a perfect analogy, but the problem is similar. This is out of scope for English Wikisource. In addition, you include extensive quotations from the other (professionally published) translation, but that translation is not public domain or compatibly licensed. Fair use content is not permitted on English Wikisource (and even on enWP only in very narrow and limited circumstances), which puts in violation of our licensing policy.

Now, as I wrote above, this is an impressive work and I am sure it is a valuable contribution to the knowledge in that area of study. It just isn't compatible with the policies on Wikisource. In other words, if it is to stay here it will have to be stripped down so that it only contains the translation, without embellishment, of the original text and all non-public domain elements removed. I imagine that's not your first choice as I get the impression it is the analytical parts of the work that interest you the most. So as an alternative, works such as this may be in scope for WikiBooks: their scope explicitly includes original works so long as it falls within their definition of "educational". As another Wikimedia sister project it is possible to import the pages between projects, even preserving revision history. If you need it we can try to facilitate contact with the Wikibooks community to get the ball rolling. --Xover (talk) 19:50, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This whole situation is insulting. The work is clearly a Wikisource translation of a work in the public domain, and is thus in scope, your complaints about the annotations aside. This discussion should never have been started, and much less dragged on this long. The problem with the maps is unfortunate, but the rest is irrelevant. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:25, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

  Indeed, and I would love nothing better than to see much much wider participation in discussions here and on WS:CV so that we could properly determine community consensus and within a reasonable time. That's why I so very much appreciate your efforts to participate in both venues! However, meanwhile we have to operate within the reality that exists. I am sorry if you found this insulting, but there really is no other way to address such issues. --Xover (talk) 18:54, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

  • I’m sorry, that was a bit much. My apologies. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:22, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Treaty of Versailles

This text has been compiled from several sources, and such compilations are excluded from Wikisource scope by WS:What Wikisource includes. Deleting the text will create space for addition of some original publication.-- Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:08, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don’t what the “compilation” was supposed to mean, as all three sources have the same, full text of the treaty (so far as I can see). It is not as if the “Treaty of Versailles” is a compilation of three separate works; it is one work, which has been published as a whole. Scan-backing may be performed against the copy in the United States Treaty Series/Volume 2. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 20:46, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

  The sources do not have identical texts. E.g. the given source https://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versailles.html does not have preamble and protocol, which are taken from another source. The source http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1920/1.html does not have the table with signatures which has been taken from elsewhere. Our text is a compilation, as it was also noted at its talk page. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

•  Delete Agree with the deletion rationale. Languageseeker (talk) 00:50, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
•  Delete The text currently hosted here is clearly a compilation from three separate sources and therefore corresponding to none of them; and two of the sources are secondary transcriptions from no known original. The current wikipage(s) at Treaty of Versailles should be deleted and, once the edition of the treaty published in USSL has been proofread, replaced with a redirect to that. Once multiple editions of the treaty have been proofread, the wikipage can be turned into a versions page.
  The treaty was published in the Australian Treaty Series (1920 No. 1), as well as the United Kingdom Treaty Series (004/1919 / Cmd. 153) and United States Treaty Series (Vol. 2 p.43); and probably in the United States Statutes at Large, although I couldn't find that version just now. All of these or either of them would be acceptable here, but separately and in context (for example, in UKTS Versailles was published along with a treaty between the UK and France guaranteeing protection to the latter in the event of German aggression).
  I think it's probably necessary here to clearly distinguish between the Treaty of Versailles as a legal construct, and the various editions of the text of the Treaty of Versailles. The legal construct should ideally have an identical interpretation irrespective of text source, and can in fact deviate from the plain meaning of the text if legal interpretation says it means something else. This interpretation can change over time, and can temporarily or permanently become divergent. But in essence, this "true treaty" exists as a meta-entity in the heads of legal scholars and so forth. The text on the other hand, exists in multiple editions and variants, that are, presumably, identical in terms of the legal construct, but can differ markedly and drastically in bibliographic and historiographic terms. Mostly not in terms of the text of the treaty itself, but perhaps in formatting and layout (unless it's a facsimile) and certainly in context (what addenda and prolegomena it is published with; or perhaps even annotation and commentary inserted into the text itself). The legal construct of the treaty on enWS only corresponds with a versions page (or possibly even a Portal); but it is specific published editions of the text of the treaty that are in scope for us to host. --Xover (talk) 08:00, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  Xover: The United States never ratified the Treaty of Versailles, because of the League of Nations; the US–Germany Peace Treaty (which was published in the Statutes) mentions that treaty and incorporates some of its provisions, but the text of the Treaty of Versailles is not to be found in U.S.Stat. I think one consideration which needs to be had here is the number of internal (and external from Wikipedia) links to this copy of the Treaty of Versailles. That is one of the main reasons I proposed keeping and backing to an existing scan: so that all of the links can stay operational. Your thoughts? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 17:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: Good point. I agree it'd be best if we could have a (policy-compliant) text of the treaty here, but I don't have the capacity to fast-track a proofread just now. If somebody else wants to volunteer I'm sure nobody would object to leaving the old one up for a while.

  When replacing it we need to delete the old page and recreate it just to keep Wikidata correct (it detects deletes automatically; but if we just replace the content the Wikidata will be wrong). But that's just a technical issue. --Xover (talk) 20:14, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment I've loaded a scan to Commons, and added a {{migrate to}} template. Can people who know this subject check that everything is OK, and perhaps begin transcription, if the scan is acceptable? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:37, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Incomplete work files in Special:PrefixIndex/Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access/

The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:

Deleted. Wikisource:WikiProject Open Access/Programmatic import from PubMed Central has been updated to explain the situation and to list the deleted pages so that they are easy to undelete if anyone wants to perform archeology there. Note that the pages should not be restored in place to live on in the state they are currently in; only to be extracted elsewhere (email/offsite), or as the starting point for concrete planned improvement efforts. For a continuation of the OA project as such, the pages should be regenerated by recitation-bot or its successor rather than undeleted.

Back when the Open Access movement was young and hopeful, WikiProject Open Access tried to use Recitation-bot to automatically import loads of Open Access scientific articles automatically. The plan was not uncontroversial (support/oppose were about evenly split in the discussion at the time) and succeeded about as well as any such bulk-import-by-bot projects (i.e. not at all well). The result is a metric crapton of incompletely imported working drafts that keep showing up in mainspace categories, triggering citation errors, template errors, broken image tracking categories, syntax errors, etc. Over the years I've tried attacking the problem by manually fixing each issue as they come up, but like most such zombie swarms they keep finding new ways to be an annoyance. In their current state they are not useful as even drafts for referencing (they are broken in significant ways), and there is absolutely no prospects of them ever getting fixed up. The majority of them are probably compatibly licensed, but as they have no license templates and were not evaluated individually (they made lots of assumptions about licensing status) we can't rule out that some subsets of articles or illustrations have incompatible licensing.

The affected pages are ~258 subpages and ~221 redirects under: Special:PrefixIndex/Wikisource:WikiProject_Open_Access/:

I am proposing that we just delete these now. It's been nearly a decade without activity, and no signs anyone is picking up the ball. And since these were programatically generated they can be programatically regenerated with no loss of data if the project becomes active again (but then, hopefully, with better quality). Alternately, if anyone really can't stand to see them deleted, we could just blank the pages and replace the contents with a message explaining how to restore the contents from revision history. It's be easier and cleaner to delete them, but blanking would solve most of the problems with them. Xover (talk) 14:05, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Just like technically problematic pages in the User: space, these pages aren’t harming anyone. There’s no real need for work on them, in my opinion. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:22, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

   Comment It's harder to exclude these pages from tracking categories and similar than userspace pages, which can be handled by simply excluding the whole namespace. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 04:25, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed. In general, arguing that one can just filter it out is about as convincing as arguing that you can just walk around the pile of poo on the sidewalk: it is strictly speaking true, but does not really address the issue at hand. Xover (talk) 08:36, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete hesitantly. There has been time to fix them, and we have asked. Their history I forget. If excluding them from WS: ns is the issue, unlike excluding them from User:, I would be comfortable moving them all to subpages of the bot account. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:18, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
•  Delete This is an abandoned project with no progress to make the dumps usable. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:31, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --Xover (talk) 09:25, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Portal:1901–1903—Reforming the Army

This collection of articles, first published here on the website of the US Army Centre of Military History, seems (in my opinion) to be toeing the line between government documents and self-published web content. What do you all think? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:46, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete and all the listed works, none of which identify the source. Well, one seems to indicate a non-government web page as the source, and there is no copyright statement of that page allowing us to host a copy. At best, these might have a source somewhere, in which case these are all secondary transcriptions. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:52, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

• • Hmm, interesting. I was under the impression that all five of the works in question were originally published on the CMH website (and in the public domain as PD-USGov). I do want to delete them, as out-of-scope, but if they are also second-hand then even more reason to be rid of them :) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 22:59, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
• Keep on both scope and copyright grounds. Given that the articles were posted on a government Web-site, they are presumably in the public domain. If evidence arises to the contrary, that can be considered, but I think that this case shows a strong base likelihood of no copyright. As for scope, they were published by the U.S. government, which clearly is not “self-published” insofar as we allow all manner of similar works published by the government officials who authored them. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:23, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

  While this is a valid point, I do not think that all web pages on all US government websites are automatically in scope just because they are published by the US Government. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 15:52, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

  Except that only one of the pages identifies a source on the website, which appears to be a secondary transcription. None of the other articles have any indication of their source material. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:11, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

  • EncycloPetey: Again, this indicates to me that the articles were written for the Web-site, not that they were written elsewhere and magically appeared there. Beleg Tâl: Why not? If we treat the U.S. government like any other publisher, the works are in scope because they were thus not self-published. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:00, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

    Except that the website isn't identified as a source for those other articles. There is only one article that indicates its source link. Maybe all the articles were on the website, and maybe they weren't. We don't have a pointer to the source URLs anywhere. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

    • EncycloPetey: I’m not sure that I understand your claim. Is it in reference to what is on Wikisource, or for the original articles? Here, at the portal, there is a hyper-link to the Army Web-site, which has the same listing as that at the portal. I don’t know why it would be necessary, if that is what you are claiming, to include a hyper-link on every article page. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:13, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

      But the content of the Wikisource copies does not match the web pages. A quick visual inspection shows that, at the very least, there are added images, changes to paragraph breaks, and possibly other changes not spottable with a quick glance. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:09, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

  @EncycloPetey I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. The articles are all there on the CMH website that I linked to, and it is very easy to add the links to the articles (which, of course, I intend to do if the community decides to keep them). —Beleg Tâl (talk) 01:27, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

 Comment Tangled web is Special:Contributions/CORNELIUSSEON. It was problematic at the time as the contributor was not really a communicator. So we have works like Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades. As these works are unfinished and we have no evident source, I would just say drop them all into the User:CORNELIUSSEON subpages and leave them there as the unusual contributions that they are. Maybe having some value, though not of a completeness or clear value to be in our main ns or our portals. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:28, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Maneuver and Firepower is available here as a complete PDF that we could create an index page and transclude: https://history.army.mil/html/books/060/60-14-1/index.html, (along with the other CMH publications which similarly were published). I am happy to spend the time setting up the index pages and sticking migrate to tags on them, but finding someone interested in actually proofreading and transcluding them to bring them in line with current standards is of course significantly more work. MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:58, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Where scans exist that demonstrate that they are within scope and able to be progressively proofread is all a start. As they are going to essentially be electronic works anyway, I think that we can more safely apply the "match and split" of the bot, which I am happy to do. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:03, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

This is available as a PDF here, however I know we need to convert to DjVu for match and split. MarkLSteadman (talk) 04:44, 16 May 2023 (UTC)

And match and splitted. On to the next of these ... MarkLSteadman (talk) 09:58, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman: What has been matched-and-split? To where? Nothing at the Portal shows backing by a scan. Was the result transcluded? --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

So far I have migrated to indexes:

• Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades (Matched and Splited)
• CMH 60-9: Military Police
• US Army Campaigns of World War II Series/Algeria-French Morocco
• US Army Campaigns of World War II Series/Tunisia
• US Army Campaigns of World War II Series/Papua

Next I was planning to work on:

• German Antiguerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944)
• Papuan Campaign

These are more of a project:

• The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge
• American Volunteer Forces in the War with Spain
• CMH 60-3: Infantry, Part I: Regular Army
• ARMOR-CAVALRY: Part 1; Regular Army and Army Reserve

This was in reference to the "tangled web" User:CORNELIUSSEON work that are official government publications, not the Reforming the Army Portal works. MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:39, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

So not any of the works listed at the Portal and directly relevant to the topic of the thread? --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

This thread started with "So we have works like Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades …" and the topic is what to do it with it. MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:56, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the thread drifted from the topic of the section and that these works should either be tagged for tagged for deletion and a new section open to discuss them or this particular thread should stop so that the main section can be resolved. MarkLSteadman (talk) 04:06, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Category:Songs by James Scott

Categorization by author is no longer in line with our current standards. These works need to be listed on the author page, Author:James Scott (1885-1938), not in a category. PseudoSkull (talk) 21:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

This can be speedied if someone removes the Category from all the pages that have it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:31, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Category deleted, for the list of works discussed below see here. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:46, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Works

•  Comment Has anyone else here looked at the "works" in this category? They are simply images, with no transcription of lyrics or the sheet music. None of the works in the category that I saw merit inclusion because they contain no text transcriptions at all. The page content is better suited to Commons, as they are simply images. If these pages are deleted, the corresponding data items will also need to be deleted, unless the images and content are first transferred to the Wikidata items. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:21, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'd disagree very heavily with deleting the works on the basis that they don't contain text, because they can be made into music sheets with our plugin, which can be considered legitimate and useful data that can be parsed textually. But, in their current form, they are literally just pictures of the scans, so  Abstain on my judgment for the transcriptions themselves. Hopefully someone will one day put in the work to make the transcriptions hold up by modern standards (adding sheet music and possibly the small amount of text provided), and I in no way oppose their existence in the case of a modern transcription effort, just that their current presentation isn't too much more useful than a Commons category. PseudoSkull (talk) 03:56, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

My point isn't that they contain no text, but that they contain no transcriptions. They are merely galleries of images. If they had music transcriptions, that would be fine. If they were picture books with transcluded images matched from an Index of the pages, that would be fine. But presently, these are <gallery> pages, which make them Commons content, not Wikisource. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:29, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete the works as well, per EncycloPetey. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:48, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
• Keep for now, I feel like the change in discussion focus is a bit much. To my knowledge, this was a standard process for early music transcription. I would be happy to actually transcribe the music, but with one question: is there a good system for cross-page transclusion of music? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:19, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: By "cross-page" do you mean sheet music that spans multiple pages in the source scan? In any case, I'm useless when it comes to LilyPond issues, but my go-to for questions about it is Beeswaxcandle. There is also a help page at Help:LilyPond but I can't tell whether it's up to date or whether it addresses your question. Xover (talk) 05:50, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

There are three ways of dealing with scores that go across page breaks. a) Do the score in the Mainspace and don't put anything in the Page: space (e.g. Essentials in Conducting/Appendix B—for this one I worked on it offline in Frescobaldi and uploaded the sound file to Commons); b) Put the whole score onto one of the pages in the Page: space and leave comments on the other pages indicating what has been done (e.g. Page:Fugue by Ebenezer Prout.djvu/235); c) Set each page of a score separately with various overrides on each page to set the bar number and hide time signature etc. (e.g. Cox and Box (complete)/Rataplan). This last is the least desirable option from a transclusion perspective as some pages of a printed score don't fit neatly on to a single Lilypond page and we end up with page-end scraps. This makes e-Book versions very difficult to download and use. Sound files also have to managed separately as otherwise they end up split per page as well.

All that said, I do not recommend setting these scores here on enWS as they do not form a part of a larger text. Most of them are already available in pdf format in IMSLP. Those that aren't should be uploaded there. If someone wants to re-typeset them, then any of IMSLP, Mutopia, or MuseScore are the best hosting venues. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:52, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

• Beeswaxcandle: I thought as much. I’m not skilled enough to do (3), and I think (1) defeats the purpose, so I’ll work with (2). Xover: Not in this case, but in cases where the scores include lyrics, it might be useful to have a separate, “annotated” page that just has the lyrics. These take a while, so it’ll be easier to just close this as keep and wait a year. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:01, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete as out of scope. Images, even images of text or musical notation, are for Commons unless they appear as subjunct to content that is in scope. If TE(æ)A,ea. commits to work on bringing them in line with policy I'm happy to postpone deletion; and if brought in line with policy there will no longer be a valid deletion rationale. --Xover (talk) 05:47, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment I will proceed with deleting these pages, but only after transferring the data and image links to Wikidata items for each song, such as I have done at d:Q4972501. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:17, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Xover: Given this, I am not able to transclude them. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:59, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Author:Wright

I am not certain of the value in having surname-based disambiguation pages in author: ns. They duplicate what is done elsewhere and are going to be a beast to maintain, and if we linking on pages in either author or main namespace they should never be to a surname alone. As such a page like this is not so much a disambiguation page, and more a finding aid and duplicating the maintained pages in WS:Authors-W#Wr — billinghurst sDrewth 05:16, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

 Delete for any surname disambig page, but commenting that surname-based redirects exist, such as Author:Shakespeare and Author:Hawthorne, which may also want to be considered. But the disambiguation page "Author:Wright" does not share the same value as those surname redirects to, since so many times when "Shakespeare" or "Hawthorne" are referred to in a work, we know who they're talking about. And it's easier to write Author:Shakespeare than the full name (especially as it exists now). But Author:Wright should never be linked to...so, it really serves very little purpose that a special page can't serve. PseudoSkull (talk) 05:21, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I was talking disambigs as they are listing, not redirects. Separate conversation that I am not raising. — billinghurst sDrewth 07:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

FWIW 731 author pages disambiguations. The single first names are tolerable, some others less so. See petscan:25586458 — billinghurst sDrewth 07:13, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Did a partial trawl through these and I see

• Author:Emerson
• Author:Dickens
• Author:Tolstoy
• Author:Austen
• Author:Churchill
• Author:Roosevelt
• Author:Obama
• Author:Dickinson
• Author:Einstein
• Author:Huxley
• Author:Linnæus
• Author:Hazlitt
• Author:Sumner
• Author:Shelley
• Author:Burns
• Author:Gauss
• Author:Neruda
• Author:Fisher
• Author:Fischer
• Author:Kvapil
• Author:Fairchild
• Author:Mourek
• Author:Svoboda
• Author:Mayer
• Author:Šrámek
• Author:Pichon
• Author:Villani
• Author:Scheiner
• Author:Staněk
• Author:Brož
• Author:Hilbert

and there are more. I see that Jan.Kamenicek has been creating these, more recently.

I will further proffer that in looking at some of the WhatLinksHere, some of these pages are problematic as people link to the disambig pages, presumably unwittingly, where it is a well-known dominant author, and that is an issue for us. Some of the surname pages, look to be more what we would have as Portal: ns pages, and more relate to the surname pages that exist at the wikipedias. [A reminder that disambiguation pages are not meant to be finding pages, they are used as a process of resolving conflicts in article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic.] — billinghurst sDrewth 22:56, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

 Keep. I consider them quite useful in cases when one remembers just the surname of an author. As for the maintenance, I can imagine that one day somebody will find a way how to keep the pages automatically, as they require only listing of a few pieces of information about authors who have their author pages in WS: name, birth and death dates, and description, all of which can be taken from WD. To me they look slightly more appropriate to the author NS than to the portal NS. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:38, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: I could imagine a situation where these types of author disambiguation pages would be useful, if they could be fully autogenerated (not just by bots, but the software). But in the current state, no. A great idea, but convincing anyone to want anymore WD integration whatsoever seems like an impossible feat. So I wouldn't count on this idea getting any support until the 2040s, meaning these surname disambig pages are better off just deleted now. PseudoSkull (talk) 10:48, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I still think that current manually maintained pages are better than nothing, and their existence may prompt somebody to automatize them. If we delete them all, nobody will ever think about their automatization. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:07, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• Keep all, as a general matter. A few of these might be worth deleting, but I don’t think they are all collectively incorrect. If just a last name is cited, it is useful to have these for ease of reference. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 20:04, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• @TE(æ)A,ea., @Jan.Kamenicek: They are wrong, and being linked to and left. It is simply wrong to be linking to a disambiguation page and they should meet red links, so that they know that it is incorrect. They are not being used as disambiguation pages, you are using them as some sort of link catcher which is out of scope. What are you automating? What are you trying to create? If it is topic or subject pages, they are not in the author: ns, they all currently sit in Wikisource: ns. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:44, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I agree it is wrong to link to them, but they are useful to readers (myself included) who search for an author and remember just the surname. If possible (which I do not know if it is), contributors can be prevented from linking them from the main NS, but imo it would be a loss to delete them. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:02, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete. There is a need for good tools to help identify partial or alternate author identities—I spend enough time trawling the name-based dab pages on enWP and on querying Wikidata to feel this need quite keenly—but manual Author:-namespace dab pages ain't that tool (it'll just be one more incomplete, unmaintained, and unmaintainable place to dump stuff). It also violates the principle of the redlink: red links encourage contributors to add the missing content (or update the link), but artificially blue'ed links discourage it. All Author:-namespace dabs for partial or alternate names should be deleted (redirects and dabs for actually ambiguous names should of course be kept).
  But we should give some thought to how we can serve the very real need better: going from a partial or ambiguous name mentioned in a text to determining the actual identity and linking it should be much much easier when information about that person actually exists in the Wikimedia-verse (has a wp article, exists in Wikidata, has a Creator: template on Commons, an Author: page here, etc.). --Xover (talk) 10:42, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Template:Old style

This is another of those templates that seems to be used to unnecessarily force a style rather than continue an existing font, and is contrary to our style guide. It just clags up proofreading, and adds template noise and unnecessity. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:39, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Keep How is it contrary to the style guide? Why should we have fewer options for styling text? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:34, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

@Koavf:

“	Formatting should be flexible and not interfere with access to the document, knowing that we are trying to reproduce works for modern readership, not provide facsimiles of the time and place. See also Help:Adding texts, Help:Beginner's guide to typography, and Help:Editing.	”
—WS:Style guide

“	Font face In most situations, Wikisource does not specify the choice of font for texts; this choice is left to the browser or reader. However there are some situations in which it is useful to specify a particular font, and this can be done with one of the following templates:…	”
—Help:Beginner's guide to typography

It is forcing a style on readers, it doesn't give flexibility, it is not allowing their choice of styling that they choose. The toggled layouts are our means for varying the presentation, similarly the {serif]<=>non-serif toggle. This template forces something that is not inherently part of our typography as you feel that it looks nicer or mimics the published work. That is not our choice, present the text and play with the size. However, all this does is unnecessarily make proofreading harder for no tangible benefit, adds extra coding burden for no value. We are meant to be keeping things as simple as reasonable possible for the readers and for the transcribers. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:26, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

How is this forcing a style any more than (e.g.) {{Serif}}? Any user can easily have local style sheets to ignore any CSS rule. How is proofreading harder? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

In most of the places I see this template used, it is placed contrary to the instructions on the template. It's being used to specify a particular font for no useful reason. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Is the idea that we should be using CSS styles instead? I can see the argument for replacing the repeated wrapping by defining it in the CSS of the whole work instead. MarkLSteadman (talk) 01:03, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

The template does not specify any particular font. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:32, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

These templates as set up and used to not work with the help:layouts, and then, instead of being used minimally, their use is 'abused'. Plus "Serif" is not similar as some works have clear SERIF and NON-SERIF components, so in that case it is replicating tht work. Further, the serif template is long-hosted, whereas the nominated template and its was created well after the style guide was created, not in consultation with the community, and would I argue in contravention to the style guide, and it can easily be managed in its removal. I will also note that abuse of the serif template should be remedied, and look forward to your assistance in doing so.

It is NOT up to all of our users to locally control their CSS to obviate the use of an errant template. Personal CSS is to be used where they want a look outside the published form we produce according to our style guide. You have that concept and expectation back to front.

With regard to it complicating proofreading. It is unnecessary and performs a stylistic function related to a typography of the publishing period, not to modern works. Adding it is adding burden to anyone assisting with any work, or later validating by having to continue that addition, or just having to read through it when doing any proofreading by making it busier to proofread. It fails the KISS test. It makes things busier to proofread. As I also said, PUT IT IN A LAYOUT if it is needed, don't enforce it within a work. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

"Plus "Serif" is not similar as some works have clear SERIF and NON-SERIF components," Some works have clear old style and not-old style numerals. Your arguments have as much weight as any template about style, from {{serif}} to {{color}} to the various stylings of {{hr}}. As I asked before: "How is proofreading harder?" if someone doesn't want to add it, no one is obliging him to. And if it is, then your argument applies literally just as much to any style template. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:09, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Can you link to an example of works with a clear distinction between old style and non-old style numbers?--Prosfilaes (talk) 19:21, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

E.g. The New Yorker/Volume 1/Number 1 uses old style numerals on the front page and its first ad but not in the running text of the first article or subsequent prose, but you do see it again (along with Roman numerals) in some subheadings. It's common for fine print or title or some kind of text that is otherwise offset to be in fancy number style, just like how some works will use serif or sans-serif for certain types of content or italicized/oblique and upright text. These arguments against style templates are thoroughly bizarre to me: if we want the ease of plain text, we can just strip out all formatting. Why have any style templates at all? Or why have some style options but not others? We can have various bold font weights and different sizes and {{color}} but not old style numerals? Just makes no sense. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:38, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

• Keep. Just like {{serif}}, it’s useful in some circumstances. Particularly, text in small-caps or all-small-caps looks better with old-style numbers (i.e., the numbers look like they are (all-)small-caps with old-style). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:47, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  Since many readers can't see the effect of this template because of their browser (I'm one of those people), how does that use "[add] value to the work or [help] distinguish content"? Why not simply use a font-size template? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:04, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

  I would think this is because of the default font choice in the browser rather than the browser itself as it is supported by all major browsers. For example it's been supported in Safari for 7 years Chrome for 7 years, Firefox for 8 years and edge for 3 years. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-numeric . Are we only going to support things assuming users haven't upgrade their browser in a decade or using a more esoteric browser? MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:47, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

 Delete I am yet to see these templated numerals used for anything other than because the look of it reproduces to some extent the font chosen by the publisher. In all the works I've been involved with here I am yet to need to reproduce a font difference in the numerals. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

 Comment In general I find it odd that we don't have the companion template to set lining numerals, which I would guess would also be prohibited for setting up a table in a document that generally uses text numerals? Re the general discussion I don't see a huge problem with it being used in, say, section headers or the title page where someone might stick {{small caps}} / {{sans-serif}} / {{blackletter}} / {{larger}} etc. all of which override the default preferences to match the general look. For the general body text, I personally think we should update the style guide to say avoid using it (just like someone wrapping every paragraph in {{serif}} would be abusing it), but the passages highlighted talking about "fonts" doesn't cover it. These typically come with the existing font, just like I wouldn't describe æ and ae as coming from different fonts, or AE and AE. MarkLSteadman (talk) 06:12, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I haven't bothered to use it myself in such situations, but I also haven't bothered to use serif often as well, hence I don't have a strong opinion. As a text / typography heavy site I can understand why for things like title page people want to use more of the large set of font features available, including the six different different types of numbers that a font can come with which can be set: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/open-type-syntax.html. MarkLSteadman (talk) 06:47, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

 Delete I've waited to hear arguments for keeping this template, but I don't find the supporting reasons convincing. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:55, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Additional pages at Index:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853).djvu

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Deleted; duplicate pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

There are a number of images appended to this index (rotated versions of page images within the work), which the transcriber used as a means of transcribing the respective pages. The pages in the work itself are proofread and the content is the same as the 'extras'. Therefore, the duplicate pages may be safely deleted. These are:
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 73.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 74.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 75.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 76.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 77.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 101.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 111.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 112.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 113.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 114.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 178.jpg
Page:Notes on the State of Virginia (1853) p. 183*.jpg
Chrisguise (talk) 10:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:33, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Doctrines to be Rejected

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Deleted as nonstandard regional copy without source. Now a redirect. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

This page is a redundant, corrupted copy of the historically accurate page Doctrines to be Rejected in the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith. According to the notes on the page proposed for deletion, the page was copied to Wikisource in 2007 from a website maintained by a single Christadelphian community member (see the footer of the page) rather than a more authoritative source like The Christadelphian Office. The page as it was originally copied to Wikisource is now only available via Wayback Machine and was already corrupted in its earliest recorded version (the phrase "Fellowship cannot be extended to anyone who holds, teaches, fellowships or countenances any of the doctrinal heresies referred to below" is not present in the original version and item 35 of the original has been substantially rewritten into two different items, 35 and 36,), and you can see further corruption take place on item 22 between the two versions linked to above, proving that the maintainer of this site was at least the source of some of the corruption that's now present on Wikisource in the page proposed for deletion. —unsigned comment by TsuyoiHato (talk) 08:29, 5 September 2023‎ (UTC).

I've got more information on this one! A researcher friend was able to track down a 1924 reference to the "Fellowship cannot be extended" amendment and also the restructuring of point 35: In 1924, a piece of correspondence published in The Berean Christadelphian (which had only started publishing a year prior) captures that this was a local amendment voted on for adoption in an ecclesia in Los Angeles, California. It's not part of the standard document or part of any standard version of the document that I'm aware of. I think the page is good to be deleted, but if not, it should be properly titled to indicate that these positions were not standard, mainstream Christadelphian beliefs. (I tried to add a link to an image of the correspondence, but it's getting flagged by the same filter. You can see the image at `imgur .com/a/Oal91W0`.) TsuyoiHato (talk) 20:34, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Index:R. G. Anand vs. Delux Films.djvu

This is not a scan of the original, but a copy of an OCR transcription of the original (as exhibited by the page numbers, in-text footnotes, and obvious mistakes (like “arc” for “are”) that would only be made by a program), making this not ideal for work. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 20:34, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what the judis.nic.in website is, but if you go via the India Supreme Court website https://main.sci.gov.in/judgments it gives a link to chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://main.sci.gov.in/jonew/judis/5032.pdf which seems to be the same version. So although not ideal, I suspect that it will be difficult to find a better version. -- Beardo (talk) 09:51, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

Index:The life of and character of Marcus Portius Cato Uticensis - collected from the best ancient Greek and Latin authors; and designed for the readers of Cato, a tragedy (IA lifeofcharactero00theo).pdf

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contributor request

The PDF file is causing problems. I will create a DJVU version, upload to Commons and create a new index page. Please delete, since no work has been done on this book. Regards, Chrisguise (talk) 11:02, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates/A Letter from Holland

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Deleted; not present in our scan and no source was provided to back the letter. It can certainly be recreated if someone finds a source, though it would need to exist in a new location. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

The work 'Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates' is being migrated from an unsourced version to a scan backed one. This letter is not present in the scan backed version and so needs to be deleted. -- —unsigned comment by Chrisguise (talk) 00:55, 27 October 2023.

The letter is dated 1873 and reflects her first visit to Holland, several years after she wrote the book. This shows that the unsourced version was a different edition. The ideal would be to find a scanned version that includes the letter, but I would have thought it better to keep this letter until then. —unsigned comment by Beardo (talk) 18:02, 29 October 2023.

It's clear from a quick search that the letter appears in the front of many PD copies of the book, so we shouldn't delete it just because we transcribed a different edition.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:19, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Translation:Mishneh Torah

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Deleted; long-abandoned incomplete Wikisource translation without a scan-backing copy in the original language. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Abandoned translation nominated per Wikisource:Translations#Wikisource original translations: "Works that are incomplete and abandoned for long periods may be nominated for deletion." Besides, the contributor seems to have tried to produce his own illustrated edition instead of bare translation. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:28, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

•  Comment No, the contributor was not producing their own illustrated edition, but was working from the copy at he.WS, which has the same illustrations to represent each of the "books" with an icon for the link. I cannot read Hebrew, so I do not know whether the he.WS copy comes from a verifiable source. I suspect not, unless it is from a very recent public domain digital edition. The he.WS page has a lengthy Talk page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 06:09, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

  I see. Though still not convinced about the illustrations, my main argument of the deletion proposal is different: abandoned translation. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:50, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

  If the translation were based on a stable scan in the original language, it could be kept. In this case, however, I don't see evidence of that at he.WS, which means there is no stable starting point from which future contributors could resume the translation. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:02, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:27, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Category:Shulchan Aruch

Work based category. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:32, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

 Delete PseudoSkull (talk) 08:18, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

 Keep There is no proscription against work-based categories, and we have more than a few. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:59, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: We do have such a proscription, see Help:Categorization#Excluded categories: "Pages within a particular work (instead, provide a table of contents on the work's main page)." --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:11, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

That's not a ban on work-based categories; it is a proscription against listing the pages of a work within a category for the work. That would be enough to remove any page listings from a category, but not be enough to warrant deletion of the category itself. We do have work-based categories that do not simply list the pages of the work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

 Comment In theory, a category like this could be used to contain all the works about a work... sort of a meta-category. For example, if you have a novel, you might have a category with 5 reviews of that novel in periodicals, and 2 academic papers analyzing the novel. We already have portals of this nature and, if I'm remembering correctly, Jan.Kamenicek has created some of those. So I don't know if I'd say the rule should exclude categories for works outright. However, of course, in this particular scenario, where the only content of the category is oodles of subpages of the same work, it's inappropriate. In order for my (possible) support, there'd have to be a number of works in the category that exist completely absently of the work in question, but happen to talk about the work in question. PseudoSkull (talk) 15:25, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the proposal is based on the fact that all the pages in the category are the work’s subpages. However, I am not convinced about work-based "meta-categories" either, as PseudoSkull has noted (although I could live with them): I consider the portal NS most appopriate for such lists, and if I am not mistaken it is also the most frequent current practice. The only exception which seems reasonable are categories matched with specific periodicals or encyclopedias (such as Category:Education articles in Popular Science Monthly or Category:EB1911:Cities), where the categorization is not meant to provide mere lists of chapters, but to allow various theme grouping. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

We also have Category:Bible, which is a category based on a work, and it is a large and important category given its many subcategories. See also Category:United States Supreme Court slip opinions which organizes the published opinions of the US Supreme Court as they appear by volume within the work. The reason for nomination: "Work based category" is insufficient to warrant deletion. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

As I already specified above, the rationale of this proposal is work-based category containing only subpages of the work, which is not in accordance with Help:Categorization#Excluded categories. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:47, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

And as I stated above, that point is a rationale for removing those subpages from the category, and not a rationale for deleting the category itself. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

1) The link I provided says clearly that such categories are excluded from WS, and 2) if the category is emptied by removing all the subpages, there is really no reason to keep it. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:56, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Your first point is not clearly stated at all; the section is called Excluded categories, but the relevant bullet point describes Pages rather than a category. Your second point is debatable; there are two separate copies of this work on WS, which could be listed in the category. And there may be works about this work that could also be listed. The fact that a category has been filled with forbidden content does not mean the category is not viable. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:35, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

You cannot separate the bullets from their heading. Bullets always have to be understood in the context of the text they are added to. Bullet "Pages within particular work" placed under the heading "Excluded categories", and under the text "the following types of categories … are not acepted:" (ended with a colon), clearly means "categories containing pages within particular work are excluded". However, it is also quite clear I will not convince you so let’s wait for more opinions to decide. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:06, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

If an otherwise valid category is loaded with subpages, that does not mean we then have to delete the category. I have clarified the confusing text, since it is not a policy page, but a Help page --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

No matter whether the emptied category remains or not, there seems to be consensus that the subpages should be removed from there. May I ask some bot operator to provide it, please? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:24, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Ten Days in a Mad-House

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Kept; backing scan found and connected to copy. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Incomplete work, and not backed by scan. No source, so no ready ability to complete it and nothing has been done to the work in ten years. The work itself would not be considered out of scope, and it does have a link through to Wikipedia article. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:08, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

•  Delete The work was abandoned shortly after it was started in 2011. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:56, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment If someone generates a DjVu from this scan at IA, we can save this historically important work. I looked for a scan some time back but could not find one. It would make a good candidate for the MC as well. --EncycloPetey (talk) 05:49, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

  I will upload a djvu file soon. Mpaa (talk) 16:53, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  File:Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887).djvu Mpaa (talk) 17:04, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Undelete Translation:Mishneh Torah

Please undelete Translation:Mishneh Torah and all of its subpages. I would like to start working on continuing this translation and want the old text as a starting point. Thanks a lot, Sije (talk) 20:47, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

What text will you be working from? Part of the problem with the previous copy was that it had no scan-backed copy on he.WS to work from. See Wikisource:Translations#Wikisource original translations, which notes that one of the things we want in a user-created translation is a "scan supported original language work ... on the appropriate language wiki, where the original language version is complete at least as far as the English translation". As far as we could tell, there is no scan-backed original copy on he.WS, and therefore no stable original copy exists from which to create a translation. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, it is not the practice of he.WS to provide scans of any books. Here is a 1566 edition of the first three sections of Mishneh Torah available at Google books. Would it be OK if I work from this text? Sije (talk) 21:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Sije: While I am not familiar with the policies and practices og heWS, they do certainly use Proofread Page to transcribe scanned originals side-by-side. See e.g. s:he:Index:Hebrewbooks org 38168.djvu.

In any case, this undeletion request is premature; once the work has been proofread on heWS is the time to request undeletion here. Xover (talk) 21:30, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Template:RunningHeader-centered

This template is unused and redundant to {{RunningHeader}} plus index CSS, and having it creates an undesirable maintenance burden. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 20:54, 16 November 2023 (UTC)