Author talk:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

New works to add? Why can I not eddit?

Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution Virginia Courtsesan (talk) 06:44, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Answered at User talk:Virginia Courtsesan. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:09, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, it is a separate problem - Lenin is a protected page. Virginia Courtsesan (talk) 19:14, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

@Virginia Courtsesan: Unprotected, you can edit it now. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:10, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Please add a copy of the April Theses too! 2603:7000:D03A:5895:B16F:9E03:C750:F6DF 00:29, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello. If you know any copyright-free translation, you can upload its scans to Commons and proofread the work. For details of the process see Help:proofreading. If needed, ask for more help in any phase of the process. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:49, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

There is a version of the April Theses included in The Proletarian Revolution The Proletarian Revolution in Russia/Part 1/Chapter 4, a work I started proofreading but need to finish at some point ... MarkLSteadman (talk) MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:21, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Complete Lenin works

Here's a complete set of his works: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/cw/index.htm Go nuts. 2603:7000:D03A:5895:A978:F848:5AD2:920A 13:27, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Copyright law in Russia on the URAA restoration date was life of the translator + 50 years, meaning the translator had to have died before 1946. The Collected Works were published in Moscow from 1960 to 1970. That means that the copyright was restored and is now publication date + 95 years in the US, absent some reason why a work published in 1970 is in the public domain in Russia in 1996. MarkLSteadman (talk) 16:28, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

To expand on the difficulties of current copyright law with translations and the URRA: Joseph Fineberg did some of the translations (e.g. volumes 4, 5, 20 and 23 of the Collected Works). Since Fineberg died in 1957, his translation is technically in copyright in both Russia and UK until 2028. If the translation was first published in Moscow (by e.g. Progress Publishers) or the UK (by e.g. Lawrence and Wishart) without simultaneous publication then the translation is copyrighted in the US because its rights were restored until 95 years after publication under the Uruguay Round. If it was published in the U.S. first (by e.g. International Publishers) it might possibly be in the public domain in the US due to non-renewal by looking through the copyright renewal records (this is believed to be the status of What Is to Be Done?). Unfortunately, the difficulties with copyright on translation prevent access to many worthwhile and important works as Wikisource requires a positive free license acknowledgement for hosting, not merely unenforcement. MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:36, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. This applies also to One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (The Crisis in Our Party). I have started a discussion at Wikisource:Copyright discussions#One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (The Crisis in Our Party). --Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:17, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Note that many of Lenin's work may have been published in various periodicals like The Call, The Masses, Soviet Russia, The Communist International, International Press Correspondence etc. in which case the translations are likely in the public domain. Also the Little Lenin Library was published from 1929 so the volumes of those will be for certain entering the public domain over the next couple of years. MarkLSteadman (talk) 17:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

 Comment There is nothing stopping the works at marxists.org being linked to from the author page. We allow offsite links to works that are legally reproduced, full text readable, and align with our scope. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:32, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

More complete list of works

Marxists.org has an incomplete but much larger index of Lenin's works: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/by-title.htm 2603:7000:D03A:5895:E9AC:F217:57B6:262E 14:08, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Hey @Billinghurst, maybe in the future you can help me fix my formatting instead of deleting my work, OK? Either that, or upload all of Lenin's works on my behalf. 67.243.114.117 16:09, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, if you want to contribute, there is a lot you need to improve besides text-formatting, your behaviour included.

As for Lenin’s works, it is quite unlikely that all of them can be added here. 1) It seems that many of their translations are still copyrighted in the US, see the discussion above, and 2) those which are elligible to be added here should be proofread using their original English publications, not copypasted second-hand transcriptions from various Internet websites, which are no longer accepted in Wikisource, see WS:What Wikisource includes#Second-hand transcriptions. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:29, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

That still leaves an enormous amount of work for us to do, right? Even if finding firsthand transcriptions is harder, we can still list the missing bits in his body of work, and that doesn't stop us from copying over what does meet Wikipedia's standards. What we, a top-ten most visited website have so far is nowhere near what marxists.org, a pissant blog from 2005, has managed to do, and I think that's embarrassing.

I'd also ask why Wikipedia doesn't want second-hand transcriptions anymore if other sites use them quite happily. Where can I learn the history of that rule? 67.243.114.117 12:30, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it is a lot of work and every hand willing to contribute in accordance with our rules and standards is more than welcome.

As for second-hand transcriptions: I do not know anything about the history of the rule, but I can offer my opinion: there is no need to copypaste texts here which can be found elsewhere, better to focus on offering what others do not have, i.e. typographic copies of original works checked against original sources. Second-hand transcriptions may contain various transcription errors or omissions, so we prefer direct transcriptions from the original sources, even more preferably from scans uploaded to Commons, which can be easily checked anytime by anybody. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I want help formatting the index of Lenin's work from marxists.org for Wikisource. Then, I want someone to help me check which of their copies we can nick for ourselves. I've also written to their editor asking for original transcriptions, and he's going to wire me to their legal team.

As I've said, you're more likely to read e.g., Frankenstein on Wikisource than on maryandpercyshelley.com. That's why I'm so adamant we do this. Can you help me any further? 2603:7000:D03A:5895:E9AC:F217:57B6:262E 20:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as I have already written, second-hand transcriptions from the Internet are not elligible to be hosted here. But in the Author:Vladimir Ilyich Lenin page there are some links to original publications, such as A New Letter to the Workers of Europe and America. If you want, I can help you with uploading the scans and creating the index page, similar to this one. Then you can proofread the text page by page, and after it is finished, it can be transcluded to the main namespace, like here. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Of course. But please help me format the index from marxists.org for Wikisource. ;D 2603:7000:D03A:5895:E9AC:F217:57B6:262E 12:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Whenever you say "… from marxists.org" you're lost. We don't want to import anything from marxists.org (they do a great job on their own without us cut&pasting their content), neither texts (those we want to proofread ourselves from scans of the original published editions) nor indexes to writings. Our author pages are not meant to be a bibliographical database: we don't list all works, only the subset for which we already have transcriptions (with some leeway for listing additional works for which a scan has been identified). In other words, based on what you've said so far, it does not sound like Wikisource is the right project to do what it is you want to do.

If you, on the other hand, want to help us do what we want to do then you are more than welcome, and there's more than enough work to do here for Lenin's writings if that's your interest. But then I'd suggest starting by familiarising yourself with Wikisource, how we do things here, and see if our interests overlap somewhere useful to you.

PS. As Billinghurst suggested below, getting a user account would make communicating and collaborating easier. They're entirely free, and last I checked you didn't even have to provide an email address to register (having an email registered is useful for other reasons so you might want to consider putting one in; it won't be made public anywhere). Xover (talk) 14:11, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Ohh I get it now. Yes, let's start with that one! 2603:7000:D03A:5895:E9AC:F217:57B6:262E 20:36, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

If interested, I have created the Index:A New Letter to the Workers of Europe and America.pdf whose pages are thus prepared to be proofread. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 17:53, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

I've proofread the fourth page like you asked. Shushimnotrealstooge (talk) 22:02, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

 Comment It is very hard to communicate with an IP address, so if you are wishing to be a valued contributor to this site, I would encourage you to create a user account so we can all work collaboratively with a more reliable means to talk to you. TIP: Please don't "AT" people with attitude--not here to make enemies, here to have contributions that fit our inclusion policy, and meet our style requirements.

Re deletion, I deleted one single page that was not clearly within scope. I have also spent a great deal of time fixing a previous work to bring it within scope. Maybe I didn't feel like beating my head against a brick wall a second time. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:58, 12 November 2023 (UTC)