User talk:Charles Matthews/Archive1

Hello Charles Matthews, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

You'll find an (incomplete) index of our works listed at Wikisource:Works, although for very broad categories like poetry you may wish to look at the categories like Category:Poems instead.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are held at the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page!

Yann (talk) 10:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Added to Author pages and DNB XX templates

Hi Charles. Been meaning to say welcome, especially to DNB, for a while. For your DNB contribs, I have added all up to Staunton to the relevant author pages, and added the DNB initials templates to same. If they have qv references and you choose not to wikilink these pages, feel welcome to add the hidden Category:DNB needs qv. This allows us to more easily go back and find those that needs follow-up. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:13, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. It takes a little while to get used to a new wiki! I have been going slowly, knowing that it isn't so easy to pick up everything at once. I think you might also be interested in my efforts over at enWP to get a matching DNB project up-and-running. I'm still wrestling with getting a complete listing of the biographies (not surprisingly). It is going to take a little while yet, and I'm working from some rather corrupt OCR scans (now where else I have I met that?) - but in a few weeks, perhaps, there will be a bit more to show and some checked listings. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:18, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I so understand. I have been working on building the Author pages at Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/List of Contributors for a few months, and regularly distracted by the contributors themselves, than the people writings bios. I have seen the growth and changes over at enWP. :-) -- billinghurst (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure "mammoth" really covers it all. You need to roll in a few mastodons and megatheriums too. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi there

Hi there. I'm a former Wikipedia editor, used to edit a bit during late 2004 - mid-2005, now edit infrequently. Good to see you on here, hope you're well. --Sunwell5^talk 22:01, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Hello ... well enough to drudge on wikis. Roll on Spring! Charles Matthews (talk) 22:06, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Certainly doesn't feel like spring here! The not-so-great British weather is afoul again! Hopefully I'll still be around here; travel and work have been taking up so much time lately. --Sunwell5^talk 22:09, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Transclude DNB Page: namespace components

It is possible with a little clever coding in the DNB Page namespace transcripts, ro transclude the text into the main namespace articles. Have a look at the code in place for Abbadie, Jacques (DNB00), and you will see that it inhales the right bits of the pages Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/15, Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/16 & Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/17. The magical guide is H:SIDE. The DjVu files are fairly recent as we had to wait until Commons lifted its max. filesize. -- billinghurst (talk) 09:00, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see, sort of. Certainly addresses the issue of having to proof-correct in two places. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:29, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I have had my hand held through the journey and I am often sitting in IRC #wikisource, if that is of convenience. -- billinghurst (talk) 09:43, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

DNB, Smith article

I would be glad to do this. My only problem (and this is a temporary one) is that this is a volume that I have misplaced, and have been unable to find for the last few months. I'll mount another campaign into the detritus of my bibliomania in search of the errant volume. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 16:08, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks! I have worked over at WP to make the article, so it's not now critical - but I'd like the article about this scholar to be created at some point. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:41, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning

... and thanks for the help with the clean-up. All reverted, and blocked, and blocked again.<sigh> -- billinghurst (talk) 10:08, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

You'd better delete Author:Tactical and Technical Trends, if not more (user pages). You say you're typically on IRC - I'll get Chatzilla, since this is likely to happen again. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:10, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Nominated for Adminship

Hi. As per our private conversation, I have nominated you to be an administrator on Wikisource. I chatted with the other party identified, and they were happy with me to proceed with the 'paperwork'. Thanks for agreeing to accept the challenge. -- billinghurst (talk) 15:05, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

• Congratulations you now have the flag.--BirgitteSB 19:27, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

• • Most kind! Charles Matthews (talk) 19:28, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Tool

I've written a quick'n'dirty tool that can show some DNB stats for wikisource, and list pages that are proofread/validated, but not transcluded to individual biographies. Might help with cleanup. --Magnus Manske (talk) 20:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. The good news is that there has been more progress that I thought: over 3%. The bad news - well, I knew already that things are somewhat messy. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:26, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

• It makes mistakes about Author:Charlotte Fell Smith, presumably because it is analysing the hyphenated redirect Author:Charlotte Fell-Smith. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:50, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

NEAT-O! -- billinghurst (talk) 12:13, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

redirect

Hi Charles. I noticed you are active and wanted to to double check something. We have a redirect to the author namespace; am I right in thinking that 1. it fits WS:CSD (Misc. 3) and 2. that it is not going to be useful dab for works with that title? Cygnis insignis (talk) 19:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

You're probably right. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:02, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ta. Cygnis insignis (talk) 20:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Push shove

Opinion sought Wikisource talk:Proofread of the Month

Original "redirects"

What do we do with these, e.g. CLAVERHOUSE, JOHN GRAHAM OF here? Do they get a section? A separate article? Do they get a redirect for the article? --Magnus Manske (talk) 21:31, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

In my view we ignore the "redirects" for the moment anyway - where there isn't an article. I suppose later links can be created on the pages to the relevant articles. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:08, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Robinson, Anastasia (DNB00)

I do not write good articles for WP, and thought that you may want to do something with this. -- billinghurst (talk) 13:10, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the thought! It's a wanted (music encyclopedia) article, so I'll add it to my list of "thoughts". Charles Matthews (talk) 14:21, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Spelling clash

Wikipedia shows "Mato Grosso". I added "Matto Grosso" as seen from several primary sources. There are two spellings for this same place and it causes search problems. Please look into this.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matto_Grosso
2. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Matto_Grosso
3. http://en.wikisource.org:80/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&ns0=1&ns1=1&ns2=1&ns3=1&ns4=1&ns5=1&ns6=1&ns7=1&ns8=1&ns9=1&ns10=1&ns11=1&ns12=1&ns13=1&ns14=1&ns15=1&ns100=1&ns101=1&ns102=1&ns103=1&ns104=1&ns105=1&ns106=1&ns107=1&redirs=1&search=Matto+Grosso&limit=500&offset=0

—unsigned comment by Brother Officer (talk) .

Sorry about forgetting to sign. —Brother Officer^Talk 02:36, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I will have to look at it tomorrow when I have some more time. -- billinghurst (talk) 02:35, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

This seems to be confusion. I have returned the Wikipedia redirect to being just that. Titles here follow original spellings. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:48, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Confusion it is. Beyond my transcribing two volumes on the Valley of the Amazon that use the spelling of Matto Grosso as opposed to only one choice of Mato Grosso on Wikipedia, click on that 3rd link above and note the "original spellings" of Matto Grosso in those many articles including the book about Teddy Roosevelt that also is there and mentions "Matto Grosso". I have seen the double t many times in these works and the single t as used on Wikipedia only once -- on Wikipedia. A search for Matto Grosso on Wikipedia would not bring up the spelling of "Matto Grosso" nor even show it as an option. It appears not to exist on Wikipedia, the free "encyclopedia". Please fix that. I had fixed it by eliminating that redirect and I am but a novice so someone smart can should be able to fix this situation. Anyway, I know about the place as I believe many thousands of other people and yet there in search shows that one spelling, that one area, that one source of Mato Grosso. Wikipedia encyclopedia is the best in the world but can be bettered as we learn and as time and tech passes onward into the future.

Moved from Billinghurst's page. Kind regards, —Brother Officer^Talk 07:44, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Look, it is not helping that you are bringing up a Wikipedia question on Wikisource, which is a separate organisation. If you use Google for the exact phrase, you will see that "Mato Grosso" has, crudely, more than 100 times the number of hits for "Matto Grosso". That will be why Wikipedia uses that spelling. There is a place on Wikipedia, w:Wikipedia:Requested moves, to bring up such issues. Your edits over there of the redirect are not helping matters at all, simply breaking the link for people who type in "Matto Grosso". Charles Matthews (talk) 07:52, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I am aware that Mato Grosso is the correct modern spelling and probably has always been spelled that way. However, numerous books and articles use the spelling of "Matto Grosso". I have pointed those out to you by links. Therefore, when doing a Wikipedia search one cannot find Matto Grosso although it was, at least in the past decades, used extensively. Also place names change just as word spellings and meanings change. What I have been is =trying to suggest= is have a search that will show both spellings. What I did with redirect was partly because I am a novice but figured out a way to get both spellings with articles and volumes searched. It worked. I am asking, is there not another way that is better to do this? These volumes and these articles are on Wikisource because I am placing them on Wikisource -- but I firmly believe not a lot of people know about Wikisource as much as they have heard and eventually tried, or will try, Wikipedia There are many links, or connections, between Wikipedia and Wikisource as well as Wiki Commons. It's not something new. Too, I do use Google for searches &c [chap44@gmail.com] as well as Bing and others. If you cannot remedy the situation just say so. It won't hurt me. I know the difference between the spellings but =an overall search could help millions of other people=. That is what I am saying. I did not start any conversation with you -- you joined in, which is fine. I only know Billinghurst and he has been a great helper and is well-mannered on Wikisource. Therefore, I always ask him the questions I have. I do not know how the entire system of Wikipedia, Wiki Commons, Wikisource, et cetera operates -- I have not sought that information and figured they all worked together to make a kinder and better world through volunteers throughout the entire system. Well, whatever, I have done my best in trying so I will work on this no longer. I have wasted my time and effort when I could have been working on the books and articles. So much for risking asking a question, eh? One might do that in the wrong place -- the "wrong organization" -- without knowing that, and all for what or whom -- others? Yes, others. Goodnight. —Brother Officer^Talk 08:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Type Matto Grosso into the Wikipedia search box. I have just done this, and it goes to Mato Grosso. So I don't know what you mean by "when doing a Wikipedia search one cannot find Matto Grosso". The mechanism for that is the redirect page you have been editing. What I have done is to edit the sisterlinks template at the bottom of w:Mato Grosso. It now takes the form {{sisterlinks|Mato Grosso|s=Matto Grosso}}, and anyone clicking there will be taken to Matto Grosso. Does this address your issue? Charles Matthews (talk) 09:12, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Type Matto Grosso into Wikipedia to search for Matto Grosso. I have done it several times and I get Mato Grosso but Matto Grosso exists in ye olde books and in articles. Wikipedia does not show Matto Grosso which is what I first searched for since that is the spelling in many old articles and books including two volumes that I transcribed on Wikisource. The redirect page, before I changed it, went to Mato Grosso when I wanted Matto Grosso. I see that when you looked at Mato Grosso you removed my small alert about Matto Grosso. It's okay with me because I know about the difference. I do thank you for what you have done for others with this situation. This reminds me that it is now Ramadan (also written Ramazan, Ramzan, Ramadhan, Ramdan, Ramadaan). Hang in there, Charles, it is only math. —Brother Officer^Talk 17:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Charles, in the "sister link", or whatever it is called, you connected to a temporary page that I created out of desperation when trying to get Wikipedia to also search for "Matto Grosso" (note two L s in that spelling. In that temporaty page I created there is information I gleaned from that third, long link shown above. These articles and books use the spelling of Matto Grosso. However that page that I created has no links and will have no new links as new materials come in with the "Matto" spelling. It was cut and paste from that page showing live links of works done and works that need to be completed uploaded by others and not myself. The sister link needs to connect to that long 3RD link shown above. If you look at what it is connected to now and look at the History, you will see that page was created by me because I could not get it to connect to the correct page which again is that 3RD link shown above. It seems to me that Wikipedia should be doing this but the volumes and articles with the spelling of "Matto Grosso" are located on Wikisource. I believe that you are smart enough that you can remedy the situation which is why I am once again posting here. I know that we both are tired of this but it is not for us, it is for the rest of the world. They The People need both spellings for all of the information as opposed to a portion due to spelling differences just as in the old days defence was the correct spelling for defense of today. Kind regards, —Brother Officer^Talk 18:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I have tweaked the sisterlink at w:Mato Grosso and I believe it now does something close to what you want, if not the way you want. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:27, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Vol. 28 back online

I have brought back DNB vol. 28, and recovered all the pages with editing. With the text layers being in place, I didn't recover some of the other pages that we had imported though not edited. Ping if there are problems with what has been done. Regards Andrew -- billinghurst (talk) 15:16, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Well done! I bet you are ready to sort out all the other troublesome volumes now ... not. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Stab stab stab. One at a time! If there is a better copy available, then we can have a go, or if we have editions where the text layer is not popping through, then let's identify those that are a priority and I will bruise the other side of my head. -- billinghurst (talk) 16:01, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Note at Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB. Wondering whether some of these conversations may be better real time? I have Skype (not that I am proficient), and I think that I still have an instant messaging account somewhere. -- billinghurst (talk) 03:19, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

• Hey, I keep meaning to mention the I did a couple of Blakes; fix the style if it is out of step. Cygnis insignis (talk) 19:35, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Author names added. Very interesting to see w:Anne Gilchrist (writer) there. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:45, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

She was the main editor of the subject of this stub, any shortcomings this work are attributed to the Rossettis. Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I can see my copy over my left shoulder. Not that I have read up on Blake, as I will one day. I'm too immersed in the 17th century at present. Charles Matthews (talk) 06:50, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Index:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu

Charles,

I just wanted to let you know that with Index:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu, I have uploaded a higher resolution copy to Wikisource that is 1200 dpi. (The old version is still at the Commons). They have the same filename but the one on Wikisource is taking priority because it is local. sDrewth wanted you to take a look and make sure it was indeed better. If it is then maybe we can have yannf delete the other one from the Commons and move this one to the Commons. Please let me know what you think, by leaving me a message on my talk page. Thanks. --Mattwj2002 (talk) 12:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Charles, to respond to your last comment on my talk page. I just used the information from the original Djvu file. Please feel free to change it as you see fit. I actually created the file from the DJVU from the PDF hosted at Google's web site for the text. Please let me know if you have any more questions. There is no text layer for this file, but since we have the text all ready, I think we'll be okay. --Mattwj2002 (talk) 17:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI [[Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB#Introducing Template:DNBset]]

Feedback and suggestions welcomed. -- billinghurst (talk) 12:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Pagelist bug?

Index:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu shows (for me, at least) that only page 61 of the range pages 59-65 are proofread, when it turns out they all are. Making a minor edit updates an individual page, but that can't be the solution, somehow... action=purge on the index page doesn't work, either. Any idea? --Magnus Manske (talk) 23:23, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

No, I don't know how the Index pages work. Try asking at the WikiProject Talk page, where people may be more competent. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:43, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Undiagnosed hiccough (reported), which is cured by a null edit on the Page: components. I am wondering whether it is an artefact of the change from {{PageQuality}} to the tag <pagequality>. I couldn't get AWB to proceed through and null edit all pages as a bot, so have left that task for the moment. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Charles. BTW, |contributor= implemented. Tried to see if I could tie in the {{DNB XX}} more readily, though it doesn't seem simplistic, so left for the moment. -- billinghurst (talk) 11:13, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Have we been missing linking?

All the extra DNB works that you have been adding links to Author: pages, it would seem that they have not been added at the time that the transcription has been done. Where have we (as a project) been slipping up in the process? -- billinghurst (talk) 22:22, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't believe I have added bluelinks, if that answers your question. I'm adding as I explained on the project talk page, and after pasting in a list I then remove duplications. I haven't come up with many missed author links that I have noticed: perhaps separately I have added a few from some recently-created articles, and in one or two cased there may have been DNB links on an author page that were not in their own section. I hope that sets your mind at rest - certainly no systematic troubles that I have noticed. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I hadn't fully comprehended the other message, and this now gives it context. Vol. 63 does have compilation data in the early pages of who did how many and what. billinghurst (talk) 10:31, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

The front matter in vol. 63 you mention is certainly interesting. Coming out of this effort to create redlinks on author pages (which was in part prompted by Magnus saying that it breaks to flow of proofing to have to fill in your own listings there) I was thinking that the most prolific contributors probably will need a subpage to house the DNB article listing. Once there are 100 articles there it is clearly taking over the page. I have some ideas for tabulating such a listing eventually. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:45, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that we just say to Magnus to not worry, collecting links from WHAT LINKS is fairly easy, and we are going to need to check anyway. Either way we are going to have to do an audit. Re articles per page, that conversation was started at one point, and we said cross that bridge when we have to. Do note the template {{author-subpage}} for that use. billinghurst (talk) 12:38, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I have ducked (going through) the biggest additions to author pages, where so far EIC, HMC and TC are all in three figures, and Thompson Cooper is over 400. My theories are something like this: working through a given author is interesting (for some people) because there is a consistent style and often a particular area of subject matter. I would like Author:Alexander Gordon to have a complete listing, for example, because he was a real expert in his area, and it fits with the way I'm building up on WP. That is over 700 articles with AG. No way right now to compile the whole listing except to go through volume by volume. Approaches are through the ODNB which will yield a couple of hundred, putting in the DNB AG template where I find it in the text and then check what links, and so on. Over time I'd want to tabulate those and which have WP articles, as my own kind of project page. Starting with vol. 1 and adding author names to a copy of the main listing would be a good idea, but like all per-volume approaches risks getting bogged down early in the alphabet. Still, we'll get there eventually on this. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:50, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

WRM-d

Interestingly William Rae McDonald was missed from the combined list of contributors from the consolidated volumes. billinghurst (talk)

Ah, you're telling me there is an explanation. There may be just the one article he wrote - he was an expert on Napier, it seems. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:35, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Yep. Ec and I are working of a compilation of contributors from the 1932 compendium, hence the differences in names. When we started that, it was easier than 63 rotten copies in other means. When we did the {{DNB XXx}} templates we found a couple more missing, and that served as a reasonable audit. When I have finished the author creation process, I do have the intention of going through and correlate author per volume, and the original use of names. billinghurst (talk) 12:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

DNB Conventions

I saw this. I must admit I had feared a change like this, but as a s:newbie its difficult to take all this stuff in and I guess it will cause a bit of rework. Is there a place where these conventions are listed? I know it is may be obvious to you guys, but I see [w:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles/DNB_Epitome_28 here] that the convention is not always kept to. Is this list existing or possible? Victuallers (talk) 12:29, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, not everything is yet documented in the way of titling, so I think the first thing to say is that it shouldn't be the most major worry: the articles can easily be moved around by title without breaking links. The current convention as I understand it is that we work to minimal titling with disambiguation done by dates. Obviously not everyone (yet) agrees: some people include a 'Sir' in the title, for example, where I wouldn't nowadays. Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB#Titling, which is where I raised all this, refers to the section Wikisource:WikiProject DNB#Disambiguation, which is what we officially have. I now agree with User:Eclecticology, in the matter of noble titles, post-nominal initials and so on, that we shouldn't include any of these. Obviously if you look at the listings we have you still see a variety of styles used, and we just have to try to converge more as we work through. If you have thoughts put them on the project talk page where others can see what is at issue.

One thing I was going to raise with you, that is related, is the treatment of subarticles (as in Lucy Hutchinson (DNB00)). I don't go for this splitting, actually, for one thing because the references at the end refer to the main subject as well as the subarticle topic, and they are now stranded on a different page. It would be better to set up a transclusion than to divide the article, in my view, and I'd prefer to consolidate. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

WP need articles

1. Tonna, Lewis Hippolytus Joseph (DNB00)
2. Tonneys, John (DNB00)
3. migrated Tonson, Jacob (1656?-1736) (DNB00) which also include Tonson, Jacob (1656?-1736) (DNB00)#Tonson, Jacob and Tonson, Jacob (1656?-1736) (DNB00)#Tonson, Richard with no WP article on the last.

WP has article w:Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna no transcription here at Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth (DNB00) -- billinghurst (talk) 16:02, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, not sure what you meant for the Tonneys article. Experimentally I've made the Lewis Tonna article on WP link back here as a conventional ext lk, rather than using the template. The Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna article showed up on the "Data capture" page; that list might end up as about 600 articles (there seem to be on average 10 per volume, but the first half of the alphabet is always favoured). Right now I'm giving some priority to the creation of longer articles. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

I have realised that my strength is not writing articles at WP. I am good with a mop and bucket! That it is a turbo super-sudsy classic mop doesn't seem to excite some people. Would you believe it?!?

Ah, they need articles for WP is all that it means. If I tell you, then I can absolve myself of complete responsibility. :-) billinghurst (talk)

Well, sure, just ask away, division of labour works. I don't like creating orphans, so the trouble with the Tonneys article right now is how it would fit in. That can involve creating article B so that you can create A ... Research required, but I'm not uninterested. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:31, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

There is actually much more about Tonneys in the ODNB, but nothing that is an immediate hook to hang him on. It's an interesting example of how the DNB grew out of the biobibliographical tradition, actually: starting with a book, or in this case just a title, people researched the lives just for the sake of it. We would never do that (actually Wikisource stands very much in that tradition, you'd have to say). There was an early disclaimer that people would not get into the DNB just for having written a book, but in practical terms that did happen. I don't supposed you know as much about Augustinians as Carthusians? (Was a joke.) Charles Matthews (talk) 16:41, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Must stop meeting like this

Yup, I see the changes. I'll get better at this wikisource lark sometime. Is there a good OCRd version nof the DNB you can point me at - if the ONDB DNB stuff is 1912, then presumably I should not be pulling text from there but from somewhere else? --208.51.151.2 16:52, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Sadly for vol. 1 the available scan is this which is rubbishy. The modus operandi for proofing can be seen in the context of Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/151: use the scan to check for any changes in the editions. I was going to get this done later on, anyway: the point is that with the text pasted and proofed in the page namespace one then reconstructs the free-standing article by transclusion. (Yes, it all sounds wacky first time round.) The state of the art transclusion template is {{DNBset}}, but there is a simpler transclusion method using {{DNB00}} plus the #section method, or just no transclusion at all (all three types coexist at present). From the project's point of view, creating the links from volume and author listings is a lot more important than anything else, otherwise the article might be in some sort of limbo for quite a while (and with 30,000 potential articles ... well, let's not go there). Charles Matthews (talk) 17:29, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

djvu

I saw you edits to my edits on O'BRIEN, MURROUGH here is a list in alphabetical sort of the djvu pages I have edited.

• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/17 CLAYPOOLE or CLAYPOLE, ELIZABETH
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/17
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/18
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/19
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/48 JOHN IRETON (1615-1689)
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/49
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/299 KEBLE, KEEBLE, or KEBBEL, RICHARD (fl. 1650)
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/300
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/313 O'BRIEN, BARNABAS
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/313
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/314
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/327
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/328 O'BRIEN, MURROUGH,
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/329
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/330
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/331
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/332
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/333
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/334
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/335
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/39 TEMPLE, JAMES (fl. 1640-1668)
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/40

I hope this is some help. When I first started importing DNB into Wikipedia I either did not see these pages or I did not understand how these volumes worked, so not all the DNB text I have used on Wikipedia has been placed in these pages. I'll go back through my sand boxes and see if there are any others and let you know if I modify any other pages. Regards Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 12:12, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks - I had your contributions to go on, but that saves time. I'll get through these at the rate of about one a day, since I'm currently working on various things in parallel. I had a few remarks I was going to pass on about style, but they are probably apparent in the diffs. The running head is to be put in by some method Billinghurst uses. I have switched over to {{sc| }} throughout, for small caps. Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Style Manual explains about hyphenation and other matters that don't really warrant repeating.

I'm nearly done going through Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Data capture, which is based on all WP pages showing {{DNB}} not filled in with a link over here to the article. If you ever want to add to that list, just do so, but please sign with five tildes so that we have a date for any new entries. (The page format right now is awkward for that, but disregard and place any updates somewhere.) I intend to chip away also at that list, to get everything DNB on WP referenced by some point in 2010. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:24, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I noticed your edits and will make such edits in future as they say monkey sees monkey does ;-) But something I had not made clear above. If I edit a page now I am doing the whole page to a greater or lesser extent (something I did not used to do) so taking the example of 30.djvu/299 RICHARD KEBLE, there may well be short bios on the same page which are to a similar level of cleaning as the article I am interested in. The dates (as you highlighted to me at Wikipedia) may have more mistakes because I don't know what they should be for people outside my area of knowlege. -- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 18:23, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I assume that if the text is advanced to status yellow that's the whole page done. There are actually a few more people on the project than a couple of months ago. If I run out of things to do, which is not so likely, I can forage around by looking over the shoulders of other participants. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:04, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

I've improved these pages:

• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/291 DOUGLAS, ARCHIBALD, Earl of Ormonde
• Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/328 DOUGLAS, Lord JAMES

If you have time please could you have a look at them and see if by the additional edits if I have included the additional changes you suggested. (I'll know by any additional edits that you make). Thanking you in anticipation --Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 11:16, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

The only obvious thing was the issue described in Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Raw materials#Way of working, hard line breaks showing up in the small-type references section (first of those). (And there the diffs don't show what is going on.) I have put a space in a [q. v.] in the second, because I prefer it, but there is no point pretending that the original had a constant spacing in its qv's, because it didn't. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:27, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Two AM-l by my reckoning

I see vol. 7 Miss Macdonell and vol. 35 Mrs John Macdonell, and I have disambiguated them to be different Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/List of Contributors#M

Yes, Alice and Agnes. See Template talk:DNB AM-l for what I did in this case, and other talk pages comments. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:36, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I misunderstood the summaries, that is what comes from working at 3am in the morning. billinghurst (talk)

Re: 1911-related templates

The "nofollow" just tells bots not to pursue the link further in their indexing efforts, yes? "nofollow" seems fine to me for external links. I wouldn't want to see "nofollow" for a Wikisource link. But maybe I don't understand "nofollow" or its implications as well as I need to. I think the URL feature of 1911 gets used less than it could be. I have also been concerned about linking, mainly from Wikipedia back to Wikisource, but also with intra-Wikisource links. I've been using {{Cite ...}} for links from Wikipedia and {{... Link}} for intra-Wikisource links. So far this has been done for Appletons' and EB1911. Thanks for letting me know about your efforts, and let me know how I can contribute. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 18:01, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

The point about "nofollow" is basically about prominence: as I understand the technical side linking from WP to WS via full URL will not help the prominence of the article linked to; while linking using the interwiki "s" will. So it is the desirable way to do it. I could just define another template {{1911WS}} over on WP by mimicking {{Catholic}} and {{DNB}}; but proliferating templates isn't a great idea if there is some way to upgrade existing ones. We are talking about three types of template, which I could call (a) attribution, (b) citation, (c) poster. The poster templates display as rectangles saying "Wikisource has ...", and the citation templates are what you place as inline references or as external links to a specific article. It is the attribution templates, the ones saying "This article contains text from ..." that I have been working on, to get them to link to specific articles here also.

The bigger issues seem to be to do with the reference material here, which is piling up without too much structure, and I could express the issues as coming from convergence (it would be better if each type of article production didn't have its own private habits, at least where things could be a bit more uniform) but also from the hypertext side. It appears to me that understanding the hypertext side might prompt some progress on discussing what "convergence" might even be desirable. This all came up because the Catholic Encyclopedia articles don't link across to WP or have a contributor field (ancient header), and I thought they should ... and so I started looking back and forth and assessing the cross-referencing generally.

This particular point about 1911 attribution to specific articles here is one point to understand. But the other thing starts at this end. There is {{ref links}} that has been created to consolidate articles on one topic; but I wonder how well that idea scales. The other type of idea is to have a "topic disambiguation" type of page that lists in one place the pages for a given topic with more than one article available. That seems more efficient; but the whole thread we had at the Scriptorium didn't really reveal which way to go on that. I thought anyway you might have ideas arising from the EB1911 side (not so restricted to biographies as the DNB is). Charles Matthews (talk) 18:52, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

User:The Code

Could you block him? --Xxagile (talk) 08:52, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

1001-

MATTHEWS, CHARLES, (2006- ), prolific contributor to wikimedia, prime mover of the Dictionary of National Biography digitisation project, . . . various accolades include the homage by this author to note his thousandth article milestone.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Wikisource, the free library, Dictionary of National Biography Project, Catholic Encyclopedia, etc.

C. I.

Why thank you. But don't dare ever say I'm notable ... Charles Matthews (talk) 21:41, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Am I not a reliable source ;-) Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:43, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not. Don't tell anyone, but 1-1000 turns out only to be 998, just not worth counting back to find out where I miscounted. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:17, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Now 4000! (give or take) I read some as they rolled in through RC, and often find the article exists if when I use DNB as a reference, so thanks for your efforts :) Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:53, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

We're between 20% and 25% done now. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:37, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a magnificent and valuable achievement, a great example of how to build a major reference work. I've started grabbing the works I see repeatedly referenced in the DNB, example, the ability for someone to build up the sources on individuals of interest is something you have laid the groundwork for. One really to starts to see where biographers are interpreting or merely repeating the earlier sources. By the way, Gilchrist's Life of Blake is as good as they [still] say it is - you will have a good read if you decide to pull your original off the shelf. Cygnis insignis (talk) 08:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

My slant is still rather from Wikipedia's angle: it's a baseline for a whole lot of history writing there. But that has more universal application, too, and I agree about the reference works involved and the "revivalist" feeling of getting back into older scholarship. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:34, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Catholic Encyclopedia

User:Billinghurst#Catholic Encyclopedia as a starting place. billinghurst (talk) 03:57, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

That was quick. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:20, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Mayou

Hi Charles,

A footnote at the bottom of Page:Makers_of_British_botany.djvu/108 refers to John Mayou making experiments with gasses, citing DNB under the heading "Mayou". I've linked that to Mayou, John (DNB00). As I'm not familiar with the organisation of the scans that back the DNB project, could I trouble you to verify that this is the correct link?

Hesperian 05:53, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Mayow in the DNB, and there are other spellings. I have put up the article at Mayow, John (DNB00). Charles Matthews (talk) 09:15, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Much obliged! Yeah, it was "Mayow" in my source too; I don't know what I was thinking. Hesperian 11:12, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

By way of thankyou (actually it was along my way anyhow) I have created Author:John Hill. Hill is credited with 76 DNB articles, and a further 8 are attributed to him. Thought I'd let you know in case you want to create a /DNB page or otherwise track it. Hesperian 14:50, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Puzzled now: Author:George Birkbeck Norman Hill is the only Hill who wrote for the DNB. And your guy is from the 18th century? Charles Matthews (talk) 14:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

"The Dictionary of National Biography gives 76 titles of his publications, exclusive of eight which are generally attributed to him." from the chapter "John Hill 1716—1775" in Makers of British botany p.86 The DNB was not one of those titles ;-) [marks imaginary score-board: Cygnis 3, Hesperian 247] Cygnis insignis (talk) 15:54, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Oh crap. What a dunce I am. 110-year-old corpses rarely contribute encyclopedia articles. :-( Hesperian 01:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Not to be outdone: Hill, John (1716?-1775) (DNB00). Amusingly, #3 on the list of 76 publications is a Greek title, and I encountered it instantly after explaining on the DNB project discussion page my qualification in Ancient Greek (from 1969). It gave me a fair amount of grief. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:49, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Walkthrough--comments

The Walkthrough is a very promising start. However, it still needs a very basic introduction to get a complete newcomer started:

• The Project is a work in progress
• We are not working on the articles in alphabetical order. Instead, we are working on articles of interest to editors and readers.
• We originally worked on articles without explicitly working directly with the physical pages.
• We now work by first proofreading the pages in the traditional Wikisource manner, creating one Wikisource page for each physical page of the original work.
• After creating the page or pages that cover an article, we then create the article by transclusion.
• When the project is complete, there will be two separate ways to access the Wikisource DNB: as articles, or as pages.
• Currently, many pages are not yet proofread and may be missing or hopelessly garbled. In general, only pages that contribute to completed articles have been proofread.
• To create a new article, you must first ensure that its source pages are available as text pages and in good order: you do this by creating them from the scanned images in the standard Wikisource fashion as described below. All pages have a scanned photographic image. Most pages also have a "text page" that was created using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The OCR result ranges from reasonably good down to complete gibberish. The bulk of the work of creating a new article is spent on editing the text pages to be a faithful reproduction of the original page.

-Arch dude (talk) 09:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the feedback. I can adapt this material for a background section. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:02, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

The page looks very good. I again tried to read it a a newcomer, and I have three minor suggestions.

• add a "in a nutshell" sedtion in the lede
• Define "PageReader." This is essentially the first word the reader will see, and it is not defined. FI this is Wikisource shorthand for a particular method of working, perhaps we can link to a more generic howto?
• Define "tranclusion." Again, we use it without defining it, and again, perhaps we can link to somewhere?

I will addthe "in a nutshall" verbiage myself (and I hope you will feel free to modify it) but I am unclear on the other two -Arch dude (talk) 23:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

So I had the name wrong: it is ProofreadPage, written by User:ThomasV, and is explained at global Wikisource:ProofreadPage and other pages. Yes, I need to go back and tidy that all up. There is the risk that starting with the technology makes the project look less accessible rsther than more, at least to some. But I think the line you are pushing here does mean we have to confront what is really happening at the start. (My introduction was quite slow, and it took a couple of months to figure out the standard way of working, as it then was.) Charles Matthews (talk)

Some DNB00 handholding, please

<ramble_on>I've done a few pages. So, I thought, if I proofread/validate a sequence of pages in, say, volume 01 of DNB00 I may understand some of the other problems that I've not encountered so far. Having done some correction, I thought about replacing an article or two with the transclusion. In article Abbott, Thomas Eastoe (DNB00), source Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/44 I came across a case where you (?) had applied changes presumably from a later edition (errata?). I removed these and placed them in the talk page, but I'm not at all sure what is best. Content to revert if needed, but I notice there was a discussion here that doesn't seem to have come to a consensus. Any thoughts or suggestions? Or is there a policy that I've not managed to find yet?Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 20:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

No, you're doing just fine. I'm using ODNB text, and that includes Errata corrections. I try to spot these as I go along, but inevitably some will get through on the first pass. We need to split up the Errata volume, and link articles to each erratum, perhaps through the "extra notes" field. It is unprofessional to have the errata in the article; but I intend to do a second pass, once we've collectively decided how to handle the Errata. (The informational content is better, which is why I decided not to lose sleep over this, but Wikisource policy says put the errors back in, so we need to display each erratum too.) Charles Matthews (talk) 20:19, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. I wonder if a template {{erratum}} might help? Something along the lines of {{SIC}}, with usage {{erratum|old text|new text}}. It could display the existing text, underlined, and pop-up something like [replaced by:new text] or [deleted]. I could have a go at that, what do you think? Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 20:49, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

That is one of the traditional theories, mentioned for example by User:Eclecticology. I haven't actually been here long enough to know any of the Wikisource 'deep magic'. The DNB is relatively full of mistakes, only a few of which were caught in the 1904 Errata. My view is that you read the DNB to know what it said in 1900, you read Wikipedia to get an update in 2010, and there is not that much point trying to make what is here 'truer'. (What Ec tried to do was to display the diff between the first edition and the 1912, I think, using strikethrough text. Didn't catch on, and we'll have to deal with the few articles that do that, some day.) It is sort of a shame that the project didn't start off with scans of the latest edition in the public domain. But it's the old thing of not allowing the best to stand in the way of the good: a version of the first edition DNB is something well worth having. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:59, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, that's all I need. I'll carry on as before. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 21:04, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry to be a pain

. . . and I know this is totally trivial, but is there a reason why you added the text of the title page to Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/6 when it already existed at Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_01.djvu/11? I'm trying to learn. Feel free to RTFM at me, but where? Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 21:00, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

No, it doesn't need to be there now, nor does the text on a few subsequent pages. This might be an artefact of some renumbering of djvus - otherwise hard to explain. I tend to put down strange artefacts to Billinghurst brewing something particularly strong - a platypus bill in the cauldron or something. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:19, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Joseph Henry Gilbert

Since you seem to be very amenable to such requests, might you create Gilbert, Joseph Henry (DNB00) please? I'm hoping it will yield decent bibliographic information upon which I may base an author page. Hesperian 12:13, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Died 1901, so is in DNB12. Not a problem, so I'll place the text at User:Charles Matthews/Gilbert, Joseph Henry for the present. It's Author:Ernest Clarke. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:57, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. Hesperian 13:03, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Very interesting. John Augustus Voelcker died in 1884, and the following year Gilbert published a memoir entitled The late Dr. Voelcker. According to DNB12, Voelcker returned the favour on Gilbert's death in 1901! Hesperian 13:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

(John Christopher) Augustus Voelcker had a son John Augustus Voelcker. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:33, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah. Hesperian 13:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Help with an English phrase.

I added an article at WP based on Cole, William (1714-1782) (DNB00). The article includes the sentence:

"While yet a boy he was in the habit of copying monumental inscriptions, and drawing coats of arms in trick from the windows of churches."

I'm an American, and I have never seen this usage if "in trick." I was hoping that someone such as yourself that actualy speaks real English can help. What does it mean? -Arch dude (talk) 14:07, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

It's a technical term in heraldry. According to the OED, it means drawing a coat of arms in outline, and indicating the colo(u)rs of regions by a letter or symbolic code. So it's a kind of obvious way of recording heraldry during "field work". Charles Matthews (talk) 14:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! With this hint, I found w:Tricking (heraldry) and linked to it from the WP Cole article. -Arch dude (talk) 23:52, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Better cheat to add {{DNBset}} if interested

Morning. I saw that you said that you have {{DNBset}} in a separate text file, ready to be pasted. I can offer two better alternatives. To create a button for your toolbar via your monobook.js file, alternatively to create a link in the left sidebar using the Custom Regex script from your gadgets. Or not. billinghurst sDrewth 20:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to comprehend. But the biggest use of time appears to be in copying names from field to field, rather than in pasting into WS. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Page:Dictionary_of_National_Biography_volume_63.djvu/137

Hi Charles, if you have spare time could you please take a look at the linked page and check whether I got it right? Thanks ~~ Phoe _talk ~~ 01:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

There was a small point of format (see diff). I've advanced the page to "proofread". Charles Matthews (talk) 09:04, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

œ to æ

Hi, I've seen that you corrected œ to æ at Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/32, which however was wrong. Unfortunately the respective page is of rather poor quality, so please take a look at my own version to check it [1] and see also at this redirect [2]. Best wishes ~~ Phoe _talk ~~ 20:38, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Re: DNB

Yep, I'm an intermittent contributor here. (The Browne article was only my second one.) There appear to be enough interesting British people who have a pre-1900 connection with Ethiopia/East Africa that I'll probably be contributing a few more exerpts from the DNB. Perhaps someday I may get motivated enough to contribute something that would be of great use to one & all: a copy of one of the editions of James Bruce's complete Travels in Abyssinia.... Google had made available, a few years back, 5 of the 7 volumes of the 1805 edition in pdf form, but has since removed them -- a sad development for an invaluable work that is in the public domain. -- Llywrch (talk) 20:28, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Couple of newbs. FYI

Left a messages on two userpages of potential DNBers who have dabbled on pages. billinghurst sDrewth 13:18, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

follow-up, I will always leave a message summary on newb's talk page of welcome and DNB so you can spot them in the user talk ns. billinghurst sDrewth

DNB

Hi, is it really your intents to remove all text outside the section you are working on ? [3] Phe (talk) 19:40, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

In that case, the text was on the wrong page (tracking error of the text layer relative to the djvu, which happens in some whole volumes). So, yes, that removal was deliberate (it's still in the history, in this case). Charles Matthews (talk) 19:43, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Couple more newb questions on DNB

• I transcluded pretty much every completed entry I had been transcribing into their own articles. Seeing your last comment, was that a mistake?
• Otherwise, I have Houseman, Jacob (DNB00), a see also entry. I haven't yet fully grasped the convention on these, it seems even from the TOC for volume 27 that there is more than one way of treating those.
• What cats should I add?

Sorry for being such a nuisance :) MLauba (talk) 16:55, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

1. No.
2. Doesn't matter so much. In theory - the volume ToCs will not include these "redirect" entries, while in pagespace the actual index pages of each volume will be wikified and will therefore link to all "redirects", which will be created some day. At the moment, no serious discussion since we are only 9-10% through the project.
3. Add Category:DNB needs qv if there are [q.v.] references that are not wikified. This is the only manual category that is important to the project work at all. Other categories are populated by templates.

One thing that would be helpful: you should link any articles created back from the author pages. There is a Magnus Manske tool that finds pages not linked in that way, but there is quite a backlog at the moment. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:22, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Done it all :) MLauba (talk) 17:57, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Many WP "DNB" articles are really from later editions

Hi, Charles. I notice that many of the "DNB without source" articles that you(?) are skipping(?) appear to not to have DNB00 articles at all. I assume they are from later editions. If you wish, we can distinguish them by changing their templates from {{DNB}} to {{DNB01}} or whatever. We can even add a new template: {{DNBXX}} when we know it's not DNB00 but we don't know the edition. Then, when you find such a article, you can change the article to the right template. IN the mean time, I can modify the templates to create separate "without" categories, and we can attack these articles when we get the sources organized on WS. Comments? -Arch dude (talk) 14:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This would be about Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Data capture: I think I'm the only person deliberately creating those articles, though of course others do make a contribution. I'm working down systematically, having now reached vol. 33. You are correct that most of the ones I'm leaving out that are still 'blank' (not in the big copyvio ruckus) are DNB01 and DNB12. The relevant templates w:Template:DNBsupp and w:Template:DNB12 do both exist (but I only noticed remembered the latter last night). So in answer to your question, yes, it would be a help in tracking this maintenance issue if, first, the DNB templates on WP were changed where appropriate to take account of the edition, and also if the categories were split as the category for w:Template:DNB now is. There is no reason why the relevant articles can't be created here, in principle. For DNB01 there is a scan at archive.org against which to check them. I'm not aware of an online scan for DNB12 (not yet a big issue), but I can't say I have looked, and there are people on the project who have the physical books. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:21, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, I will adjust the DNB01 and DNB12 templates and add a DNBother template. Each will create add to its own pair of categories, so the supercategory will have six additional subcategories, three "with" and three "without."

Naming

Please do me a favour and have a look at Parsons, Sir Lawrence (DNB00)‎ and Parsons, Sir Lawrence, 2nd Earl of Rosse (DNB00)‎ that I transcluded. Due to these two people having the same name, and not being sure of the naming conventions in such instances, these are the names I used but maybe they should be different. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Moved per the basic conventions (use the birth/death dates as the first line of disambiguation, otherwise go minimal and strip out titles). I did some format too. Couple of points: the wikisource-specific line below the editing box starts with the {{sc|}} template, and this can be applied to text such as "Earl of Rosse" by selecting and clicking. Same for the section markup (right end of that line); something less obvious is that the end section tag should be flush against the end of the text. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:22, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting my naming mistakes. While I see what you did I am not really know when it is proper to use small caps, Is there a place that talks about this? You also added some italics, not in the original scan, which I also don't know when to use them. Any advise appreciated. Cheers TTFN Ww2censor (talk) 19:44, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Style Manual#Style in biographical articles says we add small caps where the original has them - not exactly what you asked, though. Normally they come up like this: a reference within parentheses such as "(Smith, ABC of Wikis)", in the DNB house style, will have the author name in small caps, and the title in italics. So this is predictable, and accounts for a high proportion of cases. The other cases tend to be at the start of the article, where if you look you'll see that it isn't SIR but Sir. Aristocratic titles in the first sentence can be in a mixture of small caps and lower case.

Any other italics I added should have been for cases of ib. which is a ditto for titles of references, and so is also predictable once you know the style. I fully admit that these things are not the most visible if you are peering at the scans! So it helps to know a little about the DNB house style, which is pretty well consistent (unlike the MoS on another wiki I could mention ...) Charles Matthews (talk) 20:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try to follow your advise though as a newbie here you might watch over my shoulder for a while. Ww2censor (talk) 20:51, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Louisa, Countess of Albany

Please note the name of the individual is as above, and not Louisa Albany, Countess. I have reverted your change to Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Vol 1 Abbadie - Anne accordingly. If you feel that a different name is required for the article then please discuss with me. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 18:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Looks like a problem following our conventions here. I'll get back to you when I can see more examples of what the issue is here. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I suspects the problem lies in trying to align our conventions with those of the DNB, which are not always consistent. Both parties are quite happy with Personalname Surname, which gets presented as Surname, Personalname. Also just Personalname is OK. Both the above with or without dates. It starts getting tricky when we have Personalname of Place, or, as in this case Personalname, Title of Place, especially as this formula can transmute over the generations to the simple Personalname Place fomat identical to the surname format above. We have Adam of Walsingham, but Gerard de Camville is registered as Camville, Gerard de, the placename being some way along its transmutation into a surname (in this case later generations indeed dropped the de from the name. My own view, for what it's worth, is that we should follow the lead of the DNB as far as possible. Where there is an obvious surname, use that as the first name in the article, otherwise use the personal name. This formula does indeed cover the vast majority of the articles already. Hence my preferred title for the Countess Louisa artice. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 19:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

And, of course, I'll hold off creating the article till we can all agree. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 19:36, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Rereading what I wrote I see I made no sense. I look forward to your solution! Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 19:40, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict). Oh no, just create the article and we can discuss afterwards. I had two thoughts, (i) this is some case where the "surname" is absent because the Countess title is unusual in some way, or (ii) this is volume 1 of the DNB and even they were confused about the conventions at that point. If it is (ii) we just have to live with it. Otherwise we look out for other examples, and write down something about why the Countess title is treated differently. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:43, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

See also 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Albany, Louise Maximilienne Caroline, Countess of, but w:Princess Louise of Stolberg-Gedern

What they had apparently done by 1912 was to call her Albany, Louisa Maximiliana Carolina Emanuel; but my Concise DNB is back to Albany, Louisa, Countess of. And the ODNB has Louisa [Louisa Stuart], styled countess of Albany. This could be a one-off, therefore, with the Jacobite complication. Generally Countesses such as Hay, Lucy, Countess of Carlisle fit properly into our conventions. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:41, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I would hope that we could preserve the sort order used by the DNB, even if the names are slightly normalised. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 21:31, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually my conclusion is just that the Jacobite names are weird, and we should make them exceptions. James Francis Edward Stuart, the father-in-law, is already mentioned in the Style Manual; simpler to ring-fence. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:15, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

In a work like DNB where the content is finite, hence so are the names, I believe that we can allow for the sensible variations, especially as redirects are cheap on the system. I would rather be more liberal, than less liberal, in making it easier to find works. What you don't want is a swag of redirects hanging around going nowhere, or a redlink that is never going to be found to which to add a redirect. Meaning that we create a redirect to an article when we know that the article exists. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

problematic snippets

Dear Charles. Please excuse this distraction, but I seem to recall your name being dropped (if not your hand going up to volunteer) when people were discussing transcription of Greek. I recently converted Gutenberg's more cautious "[Greek text]" to actual transciptions of the characters in a scan. Not wishing to encumber our site with my overly ambitious attempts, I hope to find someone willing to check the snippets at Index:The Library (Lang).djvu. The handful of short quotes are tagged 'problematic', excepting the first so marked and perhaps another which need images. Regards, Cygnis insignis (talk) 21:00, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Hah, the first one I checked (p. 28) is indeed troublesome - seems to require ί with a superimposed dieresis like ï, and I don't see it available. But barring these complications, it's a clear scan and, yes, I can check it. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:07, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

But here it is from Word: ΐ. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

DNB Vol 25

Sorry to be a bother but there is something odd going on with, some of and maybe all of, Volume 25 whereby when creating a page from the scan produces text that belongs to a page about 5 pages previous. I was trying to create Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/384, which I did, but as the page 5 pages in front had already been created I had no way, that I know of, to rescan that page and move the text to the correct page I wanted to work on. I just started typing the page from scratch, but have not finished yet, but I did move the text initially created by that page to its appropriate page five pages previous 379 and in turn moved that text to page 374 leaving an editors not that the text there belongs to two pages. Makes sense? Can that be fixed or can one re OCR a previously created page? Ww2censor (talk) 18:56, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there are legacy problems from the original bot postings, and those we are aware of are logged on Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Progress. Some of these have been fixed up, but some remain also. If you consult that table you'll see information in the column marked "Best Scan", consisting of links to archive.org uploads of the DNB. It's a complicated picture in the large, because for some volumes there are multiple scans available; but for vol. 25 there is just one scan (not that good unfortunately, in the text version). So that's how to replace any text that was ever in the text layer of the djvus. There is more about this at Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Raw materials; often there are options to replace bad OCR scans with something better, too, but you need the full tabulated information to understand this, depending on the volume.

When matters are really bad or awkward, it will be easier to request my help in getting this done, in fact. Typing up whole articles isn't a good option, and it isn't necessary except in a relatively small number of cases. I'll look at this one now to see what can be done. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, the transposition of text in that volume can be handled, but that's a fairly bad scan to be working on. It falls into the worst 25% of the task, where there is really no alternative scan to work from. I csn go on and finish particular articles you want created. Unfortunately the whole business of working from the OCR text is uneven, and it pays to choose your targets (I spent much of 2009 learning this the hard way). Charles Matthews (talk) 22:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Anyway, I have nearly finished typing the one page but it is a pain. Ww2censor (talk) 01:12, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

To explain further, in the terms of the "Raw materials" page: I have access to the ODNB text, being in the UK, and therefore can go in and create articles in a way that is not usually so time-consuming for me. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:57, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

With Vol 25 specifically I found Index talk:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/source description which talks about the problems with this volume. Is there any way of re-creating a page that has already been created, so one could extract the correct text and move it to the appropriate page? While ODNB access is useful using ONDB text directly can throw up copyright violation problems such as this recently affected w:Talk:Katherine Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield which had used ONDB copied text though the article has now been rewritten, though much shorter and no longer a GA. w:William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough was deleted for the same reason but has been restarted without any copyvio text which is where I started to get involved here. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 14:51, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

For the technical issues you really need to talk to User:Billinghurst, who has sorted out a number of the volumes in an ongoing programme of fixing up what was not done right first time. I don't know a huge amount about it: my impression is that it goes like this: a scan from archive.org can be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons as such (one large upload per volume), and then posted over here. That is a question of moving large files. What is not easy, I believe, is to fix local issues with this or that page. Obviously picking up the pieces is a large job, which is why it is not all done by now: various volumes have had the scans reloaded and the glitches ironed out, but not all of them. We really need another technical operative who understands these matters, but I specialise in hacking the harder text issues.

I'm very aware of the ODNB copyright situation, since I prompted the investigation over on Wikipedia, after by chance coming across the copyvios by Craigy144 in working over our list (Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Data capture). To be completely clear, the ODNB website has both the modern articles (copyright), and text from the older DNB. What I rely on is the older DNB; which is not the edition we use here but the 1912 edition (despite the dates they post on those articles). So anything I use here is definitely public domain; but what I have to wrestle with is both format changes, and updates from the first edition to the 1912 edition. Why I was mentioning it is that for articles where the uploaded text we have here is really bad, and there is no alternate scan, I can create the articles as long as there is some image of the text to proof read from. In short, I can help cope in the situation "text bad but image readable", which covers a lot of the most grievous problems where others would find it very slow to contribute those articles. Hence it makes sense for people to ask me in certain cases, while they get on with something easier. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:14, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

You are quick Charles. I see what your ONDB use is and will ask if I find your assistance necessary in future. I did not realise you were the instigator of the Craigy 144 copyvio investigation. Again thanks Ww2censor (talk) 15:27, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

I asked User:Billinghurst about this but his solution is rather convoluted. I also found a good looking copy of vol 25 on google as I also saw that several pages of the archive.org uploaded version are marked as problematic. He said that you had done most recent audit so this source might be of interest if you don't know about it already. Cheers Ww2censor (talk) 03:47, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

I just did a quick review of our Vol 25 articles. we have 33 articles from vol 25 already. Of these, 30 use transclusion, using roughly 40 pages of the volume. This means that replacing the existing volume with the new better scan (should we decide to do so) will require attention to all of those articles and pages. Would it be useful to distribute this effort amongst the project members, or is this better done by a single person, or does someone have tools for this? If it's mostly manual, I'm willing to help as needed. -Arch dude (talk) 07:34, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's try to break this down. We use djvu files. I believe that djvu files are routed via archive.org: i.e. they are created, for our purposes, by uploading PDFs (I think) to archive.org, which then posts a djvu version. So starting with a Google scan that is not presently at archive.org involves a preliminary move there. Djvu files at archive,org can be used to update the scan of a volume presently at Commons. That involves a large upload there. Then the scene moves to Wikisource. There must now be a local copy uploaded of the volume from Commons. But before that, the existing work must be backed up. Then introduce the new local copy, sorting out all the page sequence glitches. Then put back the existing work at whatever the new djvu numbers are, and correspondingly update the existing articles with the correct transclusion data (where the state-of-the-art transclusion is used, this is just a matter of checking two page numbers). I notice that Billinghurst in checking a new volume also puts in the running headers (wherever they live - not sure myself - it's somewhere separate from the pagespace editing box). And there is the tweak to the displayed page numbers (i.e. the left-hand margin numbers in the transcluded pages), that happens at the same time, so they display as the book page numbers rather than the djvu file numbers.

That might be it as a description of what the process is. But I don't know that much - this is just what I have picked up. Certain parts involve use of admin tools. In particular the old djvu must be mass-deleted in order that the new djvu replacements have the next text layer available as you click (I believe). With a better understanding in the project of the different steps that are more routine, we could have collaborative efforts. And that would be good.

Perhaps if we go over the process in detail with those who know more about it, we could figure out what parts of the work could be shared, as well as educating ourselves some more. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:30, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

In reviewing the commons file File:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu I see that Billinghurst uploaded this, originally a google file but he replaced that with the archive.org file which is now being used here. However, this Google pdf file seems to be of significantly better quality than either of the previous uploads. Is it possible for someone to convert this pdf into djvu format (there dose not seem to be a Mac software I could use to do this but Windows software does exists, such as [4]) and upload that as a replacement. Then, seeing as there are only about 40 pages created from this volume, we should be able to copy out the text and replace it when the new replacement images have been done. Is that a constructive idea, because manually going through the 400+ pages and retyping many of them will take a long time. Ww2censor (talk) 17:11, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, I would just be guessing at the technical things. When I said files are uploaded to archive.org to do the conversion, that is what I have picked up. Uploading the djvus to Commons first is the standard way, and there are issues of size of file. If the starting file is Google's, there may be some legal hurdles (they don't allow people in the UK to see some of their Google Books DNB volumes, so I'm guessing there might be problems). I should say that any proposal should be broken down into an explicit sequence of steps, so that Billinghurst (who has done these things before) and any other people here who have a good background in the ProofreadPage extension can comment on whether everything is covered. Getting a clear procedure would also be the first move in deciding if the work could be shared out by project members; I'd certainly like to see that discussion made possible. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:33, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Where do you suggest we have a centralised discussion? Ww2censor (talk) 23:05, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikisource talk:WikiProject DNB would be the right forum. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:44, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Transclusion issue

Perhaps you can explain or even fix the issue I saw when transcluding Palmer, John (1742-1818) (DNB00). Near the bottom of the page you will notice a line break happening between the text from the end of page 142 and the beginning of page 143. It looks odd and did not occur between pages 141 and 142 even though I thought I had formatted the page ends and beginnings in the same way. Any ideas? TIA Ww2censor (talk) 16:10, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I take it you mean the break in the small-type references section. This problem with the format occurs because of the imposed format. Yes, it can be fixed up. There is the slightly artificial way you can see at work in Lyttelton, Charles (1714-1768) (DNB00) where the transclusion is fooled around with. That trades off the ugly line break against a slightly displaced page number in the margin. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Ok I see what you have done by moving the text to the previous page and no including it from the last page. It's a trade off. Perhaps you can get some time to validate the pages. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 16:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Vandal IP 67.237.170.58

This session is continuing to vandalise as I write. See 67.237.170.58. Is there anything you can do about it? Thanks Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 16:11, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Blocked for two hours. I'll post to WS:AN. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:17, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll keep watching. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 16:18, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

This IP is up to their old tricks again, see [5]. Are they due a longer block? Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 17:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello, is there anyobody out there? Have a look now at Special:Contributions/67.237.170.58. It's the same pattern of vandalism as before. Jan1naD ^{(talk • contrib)} 16:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Blocked for a week. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Another one

While proofing Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/145 I see two sub-biographies and wonder if these should be transcluded onto their own pages or just left in the main person's transcluded page. I'm not sure what to do with them. Thanks in advance. Ww2censor (talk) 16:49, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Keep the article together. Some people add the subarticles into the Volume ToCs or create links to them from author pages (I don't though). They occur in the actual Index for each volume. And they occur in the Epitome lists on WP. But it is going to be too confusing to divide articles, whatever we do about linking. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:55, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Fine, that's what I thought. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 17:25, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I would like to work on

William Henry Clinton [6] can I simply begin reading and typing the page? Sorry I do not have my user pages set up yet in wikisource. So please respond on this page if you don't mind or at my wikipedia page[7] Daytrivia (talk) 19:44, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

You can go copyedit any page. However ... it's not that simple. The page you have chosen is pretty bad text, and by referring to one of the project pages I can see that the text there can probably be replaced by better text. This will save you time. (The truth is that the DNB project here can throw up these complexities, so let me walk you through this a bit.) For volume 11 there are different scans posted at archive.org, and there is a better choice than was used in uploading the underlying djvu files. One place to find this out is at the project page Wikisource:WikiProject DNB/Progress (there are fuller lists of scans elsewhere, e.g. in my WP userspace). Following the indicated link on the "Progress" page and going to the plain text version of vol. 11, I find this text:

/begins

CLINTON, SIK WILLIAM HENRY

(1769-1846), general, elder son of General Sir Henry Clinton the elder, K.B., was born on 23 Dec. 1769. He commenced his career as a cornet in his father's regiment, the 7th light dragoons, to which he was gazetted on 22 Dec. 1784. He waspromoted lieutenant on 7 March 1787, captain into the 45th regiment on 9 June 1790, and lieutenant and captain in the 1st or Grenadier guards on 14 July 1790. He served in the campaign of 1793 in Flanders with his battalion, and was promoted captain and lieu- tenant-colonel on 29 Dec. 1794. He was next employed with Doyle's abortive expedition, and in 1796 became aide-de-camp to the Duke of York, in which capacity he acted, with but one slight intermission of regular duty in Ireland, until June 1799. In that year he was sent on a secret mission to the Russian generals Korsakoff and Suwarrow, and re- turned in October in time to take up his old appointment on the duke's staff at the Hel- der, and it was his duty to bear the news of the armistice of Alkmar to England. In June 1800 he was appointed to act as deputy quartermaster-general at headquarters during the absence of Colonel Anstruther in Egypt, and on 1 Jan. 1801 he was promoted colonel. In June of that year he was selected to com- mand a secret expedition, and on 23 July following he took possession of the island of Madeira, which he governed as a brigadier- general until the conclusion of the peace of Amiens in 1802. In April 1803 he was ap- pointed military secretary to the commander- in-chief, and on 26 July 1804 quartermaster- general in Ireland. In May 1807 he was sent on a secret mission to Sweden, and on 25 April 1808 he was promoted major-general, but he was not sent upon foreign service until the beginning of 1812, when he was ordered to Sicily. He there commanded the division at Messina until September 1812, when he pro- ceeded to Alicante to take command of the troops on the east coast of Spain. He was, however, superseded by Major-general Camp- bell in December 1812, who was in his turn superseded by Sir John Murray in March 1813, when Clinton took the command of the 1st division. This division he commanded at the battle of Castalla on 13 April 1813, but from that time he failed to live in harmony with Sir John Murray. That most unsuccessful general managed to quarrel with the admiral commanding, Admiral Hallowell, his second in command, Clinton, and his quartermaster- general, Colonel Donkin, and it is to this dis- union that the failure of the British army to take Tarragona was due. Lord William Ben- tinck took command of the army in the east of Spain on 17 June 1813, and on leaving it he sent Sir John Murray to England and again gave Clinton the command-in-chief. The general had now no very difficult task ; his wary enemy, Suchet, was obliged to fall back on France because of the advance of Wellington in the west, and Clinton had only to watch him, and then to form the blockade of Barcelona. At the conclusion of the war, Clinton was made colonel of the 55th regiment, and promoted lieutenant-general, and in January 1815, on the extension of the order of the Bath, he was made a G.C.B. He now took some part in politics. He had been elected M.P. for Boroughbridge with his brother in 1806 in the interest of the Duke of Newcastle, and after sitting for that place till 1818 he was in that year elected M.P. for Newark in the same interest, and sat for that town till 1830. In 1825 he received the office of lieutenant-general of the ordnance, which he held till 1829, and in December 1826 he received the command of the division of five thousand men which was sent to Portugal to maintain order there, and brought them back in April 1828. On 22 July 1830 he was pro- moted general, and in the same year he re- signed his seat in the House of Commons, and retired to his country seat, Cockenhatch, near Royston in Hertfordshire, where he died at the age of seventy-six, on 23 Dec. 1846. Clinton married in 1 797 Lady Dorothea Louisa Holroyd, youngest daughter of John Holroyd, first earl of Sheffield, and by her had a family of two sons, both officers in the Grenadier guards, and two daughters.

[Royal Military Calendar Napier's Peninsular War.l H. M. S.

/ends

So this is a much better starting point. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:07, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much. This is outstanding. I'm at work at the moment but can't wait to get serious. Daytrivia (talk) 20:35, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

You'll probably find it helpful to browse some of the links in the index towards the bottom of Wikisource:WikiProject DNB, to get a fuller picture. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:38, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Another great page. My goodness. So basically now all I need to do is copy and paste from corresponding link or use the best copy next to the scanned DNB text (complete page) and proofread it? Daytrivia (talk) 21:12, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

The proof-reading stage is to get corrected text opposite the page images. Doesn't matter how you do that. The creation of separate articles from the proofed text comes after that. Corrected text can be subject to text advancement (the radio buttons below the text box), but if you are not correcting whole pages, you should leave the status as "pink" for "not proofread". (I see I made a mistake myself about this on my most recent page for Scales, Thomas de (DNB00), as I was rushing away to make dinner. If you go to that article and click on the small numbers in the left margin, you'll get to the component pages. The bar just below the title is partly pink and partly yellow because the article runs over two pages, the first of which is proof-read completely, and the second of which has just had one section proof-read so far.) The markup and transclusion mechanism isn't that hard to understand, when you're ready for it. Charles Matthews (talk) 22:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Just curious if the The Jesuit Relations [8] has been considered as a project already? Daytrivia (talk) 21:32, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Not as far as I can see. There are numerous references to them in articles from the Catholic Encyclopedia, but that may be it. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:14, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

First try

About 20 lines of page 99 or 105 not sure.[9] Daytrivia (talk) 03:20, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

There were a couple of remaining typos. I have added some format lower down the page. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:59, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

What do I do with the H2 at end of the page? Daytrivia (talk) 23:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Delete it, as far as I'm concerned - we're not trying to reproduce the look of the entire page. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks so much for all of your help and time. I appreciate the template and the contributor correction. Love doing this. I just hope I am not creating too much extra for you to do e.g., [10]. While stumbling around, my wiki experience is being fine tuned and I am very grateful. Daytrivia (talk) 17:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I was given timely help with the DNB—think no more of it. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:15, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Do I need to wait for validation before creating an article? Daytrivia (talk) 02:36, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

No. Change of article status is independent of the ability to transclude said article. You will notice that status of its proofreading in the coinciding colour of the ribbon at the top of the page. In fact, that would be less than ideal to wait as it is more likely to be forgotten. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you much. Daytrivia (talk) 11:46, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Just a tiny question. When trying to proof this page [11] when I click to edit the article I need is in the footer? Daytrivia (talk) 23:02, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Not quite sure what is going on there. I see the <noinclude> tagging on the page, but it shouldn't be necessary, given that section markup will handle the transclusion to articles properly. (There can be issues of too much transcluded when the section marking is not properly disambiguated, but here "Stanhope, Charles" is followed by dates different in the two sections.) I see the header/main/footer division with the [+] gadget "on"; clicking on [+] on the bar of small icons above the editing box I get the undivided page with the main division only to edit, and this is all as expected. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:39, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

I must be missing something or not listening because have same problem here [12]Daytrivia (talk) 02:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Actually the issue there was that you had entered the page range as 12-15 when creating the article. It should have been 12-14, and what was going on is that with 12 to 15 as the range page 14 (as well as page 13) would be transcluded whole. This was just about visible on the article, because there was a small page number in the left margin, but below all the actual text. Fixed now. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look but why, I wonder, doesn't the whole article show up? I had 14 once but used 15 because it was the only way I could get the entire article.Daytrivia (talk) 09:02, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The majority of transclusion problems turn out to be in the markup: here you'd omitted the closing parenthesis on p.14. Took me several looks to see that. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:59, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again. Daytrivia (talk) 10:18, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

hyphens needed not endashes in section markup

Ahh that makes sense .... thx Victuallers (talk) 17:30, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Giving autopatrol to contributors

Gday CM. Just wondering whether you were considering/managing the new DNB contributors for the autopatrol bit. Cannot say that I have been overly watching their skill set to be able to judge whether it should be allocated or not. It would be great if you would be able to allocate the bit as and when. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:04, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

You'd like me to generate requests per Wikisource:Autopatrollers, to WS:AN? Yes, I can think about that. Simply listing the folk who edit for the DNB project would be something of an effort now, since there are many contributions. But it would be appropriate to recognise them in dribs and drabs (as it were). Charles Matthews (talk) 10:10, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

No, I meant that as an administrator you can allocate the right yourself (via their contributions page). I have been picking up the editors until recently, however, with so many new people, and not particularly watching their edits, it seemed more appropriate for you to tick them off as they reached a nominal standard. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:59, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

OK - I have done a bit of checking and quite a number of the people doing DNB work are actually on the autopatrolled list already, perhaps leaving a couple to think about at present. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I am presuming that you see the red exclamation mark in RecentChanges/Watchlist which indicates unpatrolled edits, aka editor not patrolled. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I have self-consciously been doing more patrolling since this came up. Charles Matthews (talk) 11:29, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Volume 28 page 2 proof

The style guide indicates I should have kept the original text rather than replace it. This adjustment can be made with the final edit. Thanks for the feedback...JamAKiska (talk) 01:43, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

You have new messages

Hello, Charles Matthews. You have new messages at Billinghurst's talk page.
Message added 11:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I think {{float left}} may be superior. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Author problem

For some reason I can't seem to get author GWER to come up right at [13] Daytrivia (talk) 15:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

The template hadn't been created yet - so I did it. In fact that author only wrote one DNB article. There are roughly 650 author, and 550 templates created so far. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:35, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. After visiting some of the help pages I presumed thst was the case but I was unsure how to create the template. Daytrivia (talk) 18:05, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I always go to {{DNB AA}}, because it is easy to remember, and just alter the author name and initials, copy without saving, and paste into the needed redlink. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:27, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

DNB page redundancy

Page number same as previous page [14] Daytrivia (talk) 22:28, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry but my mistake there is no redundant page number as I thought. Daytrivia (talk) 23:10, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Lady Eleanor Palmer

Would you look at [15] not sure about poem mark-up? Also cannot creat page for her for some reason. Thanks. Daytrivia (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

You had a line break in the <section begin>; I presume that was the issue with transclusion. Otherwise the poem markup was OK, but I have indented the lines. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks much. Also, just curious how does one get a better book page scan from say here [16] ? Daytrivia (talk) 18:23, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

That's the Read Online version. At http://www.archive.org/details/dictionaryofnati43stepuoft, go to the Full Text link for the complete plain text. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:36, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

I do use the Full Text link. I am curious about getting better scans of actual text on the right side of editing screen. I have noticed some that are unreadable.Daytrivia (talk) 22:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's true. Reloading the entire djvu set for a volume can be done, but it's a complex process. Billinghurst has done a number, but not all, of the necessary replacements. I have it in mind to figure out a way in which the project can collaborate, say over a weekend, in having a few people do the necessary work; but I don't have a full understanding myself of the required steps. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:02, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Something to think about. In the meantime much work to do. Thanks again.Daytrivia (talk) 15:01, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

DNB illegible text

Hi,

Just a note that I finished transcribing vol. 31 p 217 (source here is Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/223), and there's still plenty of stuff I could not figure out from the scans I had (and my total lack of grasp of Latin didn't help). You asked that I leave you a note in such cases, so that's done now :). Cheers, MLauba (talk) 15:15, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Proofread. Charles Matthews (talk) 15:36, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, transcluded. Article after article, we'll eventually finish this :) MLauba (talk) 16:08, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

FYI: fixed redlink on Catherine's page for Philip who I have worked on.Daytrivia (talk) 17:00, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Not sure

Hi again in the article Stanhope, William (DNB00) I used "Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn" as the next article here [17] is that alright?Daytrivia (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Skipping over the "redirect" items to the next actual biography is what I do. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:53, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Lots of John Andersons

I was working on John Anderson 1816 but don't know the correct way to format the fl after his name and therefore how to code the section headers for each John Anderson on that page plus those before and after. Please tell me or show me. Thanks in advance. Ww2censor (talk) 17:47, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Just Anderson, John (fl.1816) (DNB00), no space. Generally we do titles minimal, so no spaces that aren't actually necessary. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

It was not the transclusion name I wanted to know but the section headers at the beginning and end of each biography on the original DNB pages that are then used on the transclusion page. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 02:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I wondered. I use the same names for the article title and the sections; but not everyone does. Any names that transclude properly, without interfering with other sections on the page, are OK. I find it easier to use the same names, and when I do batches of articles it means I can paste quickly into a list of templates; but there is no actual requirement to do it that way. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:29, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Ok, that was what i wanted to know. So I will use whatever works based on previous pages I made or have seen. Thanks Ww2censor (talk) 11:56, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

No contributing author but...

Hi again at [18] there is no author indicated but at the beginning of the article [19] it says "(by courtesy) Lord Binning" ?? Daytrivia (talk) 20:14, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Author:Anonymous. The "by courtesy" will mean a courtesy title. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:45, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Want to experience new project creation

I noticed the helpful links at the top of your talk page. Would I be able to create a new project by using them? I would like to work on [20] from time to time if I can figure out how to begin it. Thanks. Daytrivia (talk) 16:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

No reason why not. It would make sense for you to ask for help in getting the djvu uploaded - I have no experience relevant to that, but you could ask Billinghurst. Then proof-reading a book does not require a serious amount of infrastructure, by DNB standards: just a single page in the main namespace to provide links to chapters. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:31, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks much. I would also like to help with problematic pages after an experience here [21] knowing there is a better rendition. Thanks again. Daytrivia (talk) 11:55, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, there are some very bad pages. To clarify my potential role: using the text available on the ODNB site, I can construct articles for the "problematic" pages. But because that text isn't the correct edition, I cannot also mark those pages and articles as proofread, unless there is another DNB scan against which I can check them. Where there is such a good scan, we can at least have articles that are status "yellow", even if the images are bad. In other words, there are a few points at which "validation" issues are going to appear serious, until some other scans are available, or some people with access to the physical volumes move in and proofread certain pages. But while this would count as the "endgame", we are nowhere near the point where this would stop the work going ahead on other fronts. In principle marking the worst pages with the categories saying "problematic" is helping map out what needs to be done on the project. There is no major structure yet in place to deal with these issues, but it isn't hard to see how I could do a batch of articles to cover any particularly bad patches of text or image, and if others flag up the issues as they find them, it makes it more likely that I'll put in time on this aspect of the work. (Right now I'm back after a break, and will probably get on with the letter S, since from the point of view of referencing issues having solid blocks is a major help.) Charles Matthews (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your clarification. And if I understand you correctly I could go ahead with editing and even creating an article by using googlebooks (plain text) but should mark it as problematic instead of proofread. This would be fine. Additionally I have access to the physical DNB volumes and perhaps when I gain more experience I will be able to help with providing better scans. Anyway I believe I will continue where I left off using the parameters you mentioned. Thanks again. Daytrivia (talk) 22:41, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the important thing to keep the process honest is that the use of text advancement should be conservative. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:03, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

A Compendium of Irish Biography

I started to recreate pages just by proofing but could do with some format pointers on this page for a start on: Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/25 specifically for the subject's name, footnotes numbers and what section headers/ends should look like. Also how should one link back to this index page Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/13. TIA. Cheers Ww2censor (talk) 04:40, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with the work going on there, but from A Compendium of Irish Biography/Index it seems clear enough: you can create articles by transclusion as for the DNB and list them there; but the header should be in the style used in the bluelinks on that page. That is, the header uses a different, more "relative" way of filling in the fields to get its links. There probably isn't a big template for it all. The usual idea would be to add piped links from Page:A Compendium of Irish Biography.djvu/13 etc. also. That's on creation: for anything else, it seems that Billinghurst is the person active in posting biographies, and he would be the one to ask about details. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:03, 16 April 2010 (UTC)