User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )/Wikisource:FAQ

How do I get started

You can help by transcribing new texts and adding them to Wikisource, or you can help by correcting errors in existing texts by comparing them to the original source. Human transcribers make typos and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software introduces errors. Texts are transcribed, checked for errors, and then checked for errors again by a second person.

What texts can I add?

Texts added to Wikisource must be in the public domain and carry a valid copyright tag. Copyrights are complex, for a list of valid public domain tags, please see Category:License templates. Other welcome texts may have been released under a valid creative commons license.

What do I do when I have a question?

Post your question to Wikisource:Scriptorium and someone will be glad to help you, or point you to the relevant Wikisource rule concerning your question.

How do I handle typos and errors of fact in the original document?

Typos, such as common misspellings, can be handled two ways, 1) you can correct the typo and let people know you corrected it with an explanation in a footnote and replicate the typo in the footnote. Some editors prefer this method so that people doing a search will find the text. For example if the original text has "Abrahma Lincoln" and it is corrected to "Abraham Lincoln" it can be found with a search of the correct spelling. This is the way the New York Times handles corrections for their web based articles. 2) You can leave the typo intact and mark it "[sic]" to let people know that you are aware of it. You can then put the corrected spelling in a footnote. Errors of fact should be noted with a footnote. The New York Times corrects errors directly in their text and leaves a footnote such as "Correction: June 26, 2015. An earlier version of this article misstated ... It is 12 years, not 10."

What is an excerpt, and why are they banned?

An excerpt is a portion of a full text that cannot be read to completion. It may be a single page from a book, or a single paragraph from a page. However, if a smaller portion of a full work can be read to completion, it can be at Wikisource. For example, an entry from an encyclopedia, or a single article from a newspaper or magazine, or a single poem from an anthology.

Do I create links to Wikipedia and Wiktionary and Wikidata in the text?

This is controversial at Wikisource, some editors prefer no links, others editors always link. The subject has resulted in edit wars of adding and removing links. If you add links to Wikipedia, or to Wikidata, or to Wiktionary for an obscure word, do not overlink, the first encounter of that person's name or a place name may be sufficient. Do not engage in "interpretive linking", for instance, do not link "favorite food" to "tiramisu", since that fact is fungible, and may change over time. One of the advantages of linking to Wikidata is that the QID is stable. In Wikipedia there is a problem, in that common names are constantly changing, to disambiguate them. A person named "Bob Smith" may be moved to "Bob Smith (politician)" or "Bob Smith (New Jersey politician)" or to "Bob Smith (disambiguation)". "Bob Smith" may appear in a Wikisource document as "Robert Smith", or "Captain Smith", or "his son, Robert", or "his son of the same name", or "Robert John Smith" or "Robert J. Smith", or "Robert Smith Jr." or "Mr. Smith", or "her husband", or a half dozen other variations and permutations. You can search all of Wikisource for a QID by typing "insource:Q000000" with the number filled in, so long as the name was formatted with a Wikidata link such as "[[wikidata:Q0000000|Robert Smith]]". Wikilinks are important for geography, the reader should get help to identify Moscow as "Moscow, Idaho" and not "Moscow, Russia" or "Moscow, Tennessee" or "Moscow, Kansas". The only difference between Project Gutenberg and Wikisource is the ability to link to other Wiki Universe projects. Not taking advantage of that, merely duplicates the work of Project Gutenberg, at great effort, with no advantage.

Should I upload a scan of the original document?

Yes, it is important to have the original document stored at Commons so that the accuracy of the transcription can be gauged.

Can you give me an example of a well organized Wikisource page?

Author:Edgar Allan Poe is a good example to see how a page is organized to handle an individual. Click on one of his works to see how that page is formatted, then click on a "Work about Poe" to see how it links back to his author page.

Why are there so many ways that newspaper articles are named and aggregated?

See:Portal:Newspapers

Naming has been standardized, but there is considerable variation in how it is implemented. You may see "Dewey Defeats Truman" (bare title) or "Chicago Daily Tribune/Dewey Defeats Truman" (periodical/Title Case) or "Chicago Daily Tribune/Dewey defeats Truman" (periodical/Sentence case) or "The Chicago Daily Tribune/Dewey Defeats Truman" (periodical/no year) or "Chicago Daily Tribune/1948/Dewey Defeats Truman" (periodical/year only) or "Chicago Daily Tribune/1948/11/03/Dewey Defeats Truman" (periodical/full date). The optimal would be "Chicago Daily Tribune/1948/11/03/Dewey Defeats Truman" but all the other variations also exist, and at some time in the future they will need to be harmonized. The way individual articles from a common publication are aggregated and indexed also varies. It ranges from automated-aggregation to a half dozen ways of manually aggregating them in various formats, such as lists and sortable tables, with and without annotations. There are also various schemes to index them by year and month using categories. See for example: The New York Times. Others articles are aggregated under New York Times and others under Portal:New York Times and others under Category:The New York Times. There is a partial index of articles by year using Category:The New York Times by date. See for example: Troy Sentinel for an elaborate scheme to index a single article by date. All these variations will have to be merged and harmonized in the future. There are also article titles containing annotations such as "New York Times/1900/Advertisement: Epson Salts" and "New York Times/1900/Obituary: John Smith". There are also entries where the article has no formal title and a fragment of the first sentence serves as the title: "New York Times/1900/Today something amazing happened" or "New York Times/1900/Today something amazing happened …".