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User:SnowyCinema

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All of my contributions to this site, including talk page comments, user subpage contents, etc., are released into the public domain worldwide by me insofar as it is possible to do so. You may use my contributions for any purpose, even without accreditation. ❦ [\.|"|'|;|:|,|-|—]

Hi. I'm SnowyCinema (formerly PseudoSkull), and I find this site to be a source of endless enjoyment. My primary interest on this site is in the area of film, television, and animation, and (currently) novels. I'm currently working on a way to centralize transcription data with JSON, to automate many annoying facets of the transcription process.

I very often write software to help me and other users here at Wikisource. You can find the software projects I'm working on or have completed on my GitHub.

Some works that hold a special place in my heart:

  • Waylaid by Wireless (1909), by Edwin Balmer, my first book transcription
  • The Fighting Coward (1924), one of my first proofread films, not my first, but is the one I remember more than the actual first
  • Jalna (1927), by Mazo de la Roche, a very popular novel in its time, and also the first transcription I ever completed using the QT (QuickTranscribe) system that I'm currently developing
  • Fighting Back (1924), the 100th completed QuickTranscribe project

Philosophy

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My personal philosophy and work on Wikisource primarily revolves around increasing editing speed (and accuracy alongside it) through code and training of the eyes and hands. My personal belief is that transcriptions should be ruthlessly churned out here in abundance. Wikisource's ultimate goal is essentially a boiling of the ocean problem; there are so many works to transcribe, and even if we just count the most notable ones we've barely scratched the surface yet. As such, I don't care about spending 12 extra hours on a single novel for 110% accuracy on every minor detail of the text. Realistically, no one really cares if there are 3 typos across hundreds of pages, or if the margin or size of a chapter header is slightly off point from the original. What readers care about is "can I read it? can I understand it? does it look good enough for that?" These extra details, like barely-noticable templates, are not even secondary to the average reader; they're hundreds of priorities away.

Think of it like this. If a test is somewhere around a grade 98% or 99%, that's still a high A and one might say you passed with flying colors. That's what transcriptions will always be "graded" here, at best, even with the most careful scrutiny being applied. And people will love consuming it anyway, even if they see a "j" instead of an "i" somewhere or another. My primary concern is if the text is going to be usable for its intended purpose; to read. Quality is important, and I do think high quality production is absolutely important and I do strive for this, but ultimately I care about quantity and speed just a little bit more than quality, as much as other editors here may disagree. But Wikisource's notable lack of search-engine hits and low active contributor count is proof enough for the quantity-over-quality perspective to be a fair one.

Wikisourcerers I have met in real life

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Ideas

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en-N This user has a native understanding of English.
tl-2 Medyo may alam ang tagagamit na ito sa Tagalog.
da-1 Denne bruger har grundlæggende kendskab til dansk.
Users by language

SC's personal rules

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What I'll always do for every work.

  • No subtitles in wiki titles, unless there is absolutely no other way to disambiguate it. Simple titles only.
  • The exact wording of TOCs and front matter doesn't really matter that much. If I put "Chapter" instead of "Chap." in the TOC, idrc that much.
  • {{Hyphenation inconsistency}} in every work for every inconsistency no matter how far apart the inconsistencies are from each other.
  • No headers, no footers, in the page namespace. Below is why.

Thoughts

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  • I don't add headers and footers to pages, and I don't apologize for it. Here's why.
  • In general, I don't concern myself too much with styling. If I see something as too difficult to style (such as a boxed title page or ad), and not worth the effort, I use the simple solution. I believe in substance over style, and there are styling gurus here who can cover my tracks if they really want to make it look marvelous.
  • The concept of "usefulness" of a work is entirely arbitrary. Literally anything can be considered useful given the right context for its use. Anyone could provide some educational use for any work here that may be contestable on that merit. So I don't think an argument of usefulness is something that should generally be considered in a debate; we need some more stringent metrics than that. And usually, when the "uselessness" of a contested page is argued as a reason for its deletion, that's because the contesters don't have any better excuse than that to have the page deleted.
  • No work is ever truly complete; the project will always be a work in progress. Any transcription can be edited at any time. Our contributions are never perfect, so improvements are always welcome.
  • Our concern here is not whether what somebody said is true; it's just whether they said it at all.
  • I think, in the end, subtitles should be removed from our titling scheme. The result of including subtitles can be quite messy, so the simple title is easier to handle. It's also easier, then, to differentiate and find other works of the same name this way, so that proper disambiguation can be done. So, for example, the name picked was Peter Whiffle, rather than Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works (although I made the latter as a redirect, which I think is appropriate).

An unpopular opinion

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Versions should never be elaborated on in Portal, Author, or regular Disambiguation pages—only in Versions pages. So for example, you should never see something like this on an author page, or a disambiguation page (page using the {{disambig}} header):

It should always look like this on the author page:

* "[[The Tramp (Hill)|The Tramp]]" (1913), a song by [[Author:Joe Hill|Joe Hill]]

The Tramp (Hill) is a redirect page for now.

The former listing, IMO, is appropriate only for pages that use {{versions}}.

We should always, always, always be aware of the very real possibility that most poems, short stories, etc. are very highly likely to appear in other collections. And we should set everything up with this hierarchy in mind.

Rewards

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The Green C of Completeness
I hereby award you this Letter of Merit for completing all extant PD novels of Olive Higgins Prouty. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 16:39, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Works made by me (all released into the public domain)

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Nostalgia (from my younger years)

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  • Fantasy Writing (c. 2009), a cute short story I wrote that I only recently discovered in my trove of old papers
  • Armaneens, an unfinished comic book I made cumulatively when I was in middle school
  • Revengers of D'Equois, an unfinished novel I was writing in a notebook in around 8th grade

Modern

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  • "Only My Heart", a poem I wrote haphazardly, and I'm using it as a sort of placeholder poem in coding routines
  • Public Domainism (very haphazardly put together, only a draft now), a joke religion

Reminiscence

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"Didn't go to the theater? Well, why not? Oh, I did wish you'd gotten home last night. There was the best movie at the Palace—Charlie Chaplin in 'Shoulder Arms'—he's in the army, you know, and of course it's screamingly funny, but very touching, too. One place everybody gets packages from home except Charlie, and he turns away so sadly and eats the cheese out of the mousetrap."

Self reminders

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Lists

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Processed texts (hopefully this will be in the hundreds soon)
Hey you need to process these!
Current queue

I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

In case this is not legally possible:

I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse

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