User talk:Mudbringer

Welcome to Wikisource

Hello, Mudbringer, and welcome to Wikisource! Thank you for joining the project. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• Help pages, especially for proofreading
• Help:Beginner's guide to Wikisource
• Style guide
• Inclusion policy
• Wikisource:For Wikipedians

You may be interested in participating in

• Proofread of the Month
• Monthly Challenge
• Requested texts

Add the code {{active projects}}, {{PotM}} or {{Collaboration/MC}} to your page for current Wikisource projects.

You can put a brief description of your interests on your user page and contributions to another Wikimedia project, such as Wikipedia and Commons.

Have questions? Then please ask them at either

• Wikisource:Scriptorium; or
• Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help

I hope you enjoy contributing to Wikisource, the library that is free for everyone to use! In discussions, please "sign" your comments using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username if you're logged in (or IP address if you are not) and the date. If you need help, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question here (click edit) and place {{helpme}} before your question.

Again, welcome! — billinghurst sDrewth 10:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

A Living Chattel

If those mistakes are present in the published American edition, then they must be left in the text. Wikisource presents text that is faithful to the attributed source, without modification. In this instance, the text is the American translation, so regardless of what the British or original Russian have, we must stick to the American version.

If you need to add an annotation, it is possible to do so using the {{SIC}} template, which allows the original text to be preserved, while also having a pop-up note explaining what the text ought to say based on the kinds of comparison you are doing. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:22, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Gogol

Thank you so much for adding this text to Wikisource! We don't have enough Russian literature here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:59, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouraging message! I'm hoping to add several more works of Russian literature. The next one I'm thinking of starting is The Sweet-Scented Name by Fyodor Sologub. But actually the main reason I've started adding books now, is I want to work on an 11-volume French translation of a history of Russia by Nikolay Karamzin, and I thought I should first learn the ropes here in an English-language environment before trying anything really complicated over in French Wikisource. Mudbringer (talk) 04:20, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Page:Dracula.djvu/84

You may find the template {{...}} useful. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

*/ Slavonic Fairy Tales */

Mudbringer,

Go to Index:Slavonic Fairy Tales.djvu and validate the 2 TOC pages. I have been validating the other pages you proofread and I proofread those 2 TOC pages. Kind regards, —Maury (talk) 22:26, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Compenidum I.

Thanks - Page:Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices (1973).pdf/323 ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

You might also want to look at {{numbered div/link}} which generates the appropriate cross referencing in the contents :), I vaugely recalled there was a reason I wrote it ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: My pleasure. I have been looking at the template documentation, but I've found it easier just to learn by copying what you've been doing. Is there a reason why the summaries at the beginning of the chapters aren't being done? Mudbringer (talk) 12:31, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

The summaries/TOC weren't being done because I was focusing on getting the bulk of the text in place first, if you want to proofread away, as you seem to be more than capable :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 12:33, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I think I'm finished with ch 13. Here's a test transclusion. That was kind of fun, thanks. I'll try to do some more validation later. Mudbringer (talk) 06:06, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks - A note , on some of the higher number chapters I'd been using a margin setup of 2|-4 vs the 2|-3 elsewhere to give a slightly better look, but it's a personal choice. If you want to have a look at the summaries feel-free :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:06, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The text is now complete, if you wanted to do the index, summaries and validate what you can :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

modem -> modern, etc.

Wow! even with my glasses on I missed all those, huh? Thanks for all the fixes! Londonjackbooks (talk) 10:37, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi, @Londonjackbooks: thank you for noticing! It's amazing how easy it is to overlook these things. For several days I've been sifting through all the occurrences of "stem" and finding the ones that need to be corrected to "stern". In the process I've been tinkering with some ideas for systematically correcting OCR errors, which might eventually make a worthwhile help page, or some kind of activity that could replace the moribund "Maintenance of the Month", and hopefully lure an occasional neophyte into participating on the site. Mudbringer (talk) 11:12, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects

Thanks for doing so much validating on Index:Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects.djvu! That's great. :) — Sam Wilson ( Talk • Contribs ) … 23:31, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

@Samwilson: Thanks for the message. It's a fascinating book... should go through some more of it. I love reading books that give you a different picture on what life was like one or two hundred years ago. Just remembered, there was a sense of the word "truth" (conformity to rule) in there that struck me, which I used for an example on wiktionary. Thanks! Mudbringer (talk) 12:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the A Study of Mexico corrections

I have no especial interest in this work apart from casually noticing it had a lot of small typos and formatting errors present even though nominally fully validated (c. 2010) which I made a rapid sweep through and tried to correct just recently. As you have seen I obviously missed more than a few so thanks again for following up. One day it might be fully presentable but in any case I think it is already a lot better than it was. AuFCL (talk) 21:17, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Organizing fairy tales

I'd be grateful for comment here from anyone interested! If anyone thinks it would be appropriate to move the discussion to some other location, such as a Help talk page, please say so.

I've been working on Grimm's Goblins, and there've been all sorts of interesting discoveries on the way, but I'll try to keep to the main points, with Grimm's Household Tales as the primary focus. My understanding about the first thing I should be doing, when there are multiple translations of a tale is to make a {{translations}} page, but I've been running in to several {{versions}} pages, such as The Water of Life. I went ahead and changed Mother Holle into a translations page, but I'm waiting a bit before going further. Should I be ruthless about continuing this process, or am I misunderstanding something or being too pedantic? If there's only one translation, but represented by texts in different editions, my inclination would still be to start out with a translations rather than a versions page, so any additional translations could be added once they turn up.

Then there's the case where the title of a tale is ambiguous. I've made some progress organizing Cinderella, which is, as far as I can tell, used as the title of three different tales on Wikisource, so I disambiguated those, and listed all the translations/versions I could find for each. Maybe I've put too many different things on one page, but this level of organization seems appropriate to me.

Finally there's the case of related tales from different countries/regions/eras, which has the potential for serious confusion since they're commonly called "versions" of a tale (type), even though they could just as well be thought of as distinct works. The wording on Help:Disambiguation explaining that versions pages are for "different versions of essentially the same work, regardless of title or author" seem to invite confusion in this regard. It would seem to apply well to closely related "versions" such as Jack the Giant-Killer and The history of Jack the giant-killer, but I'm pretty sure the three main items on the Cinderella page are too distinct to be thought of as versions to list on a {{versions}} page. Since there are a lot of Cinderella-type tales, two of which are extremely well-known, I decided to make Portal:Cinderella, which I'm planning to expand to include closely related types in the "Persecuted Heroine" category. There are several other types I'd like to produce separate portals for. But there are many more interesting types than I could realistically make portals for, so in that case what I'd like to do is choose one tale as the representative, then put a note on all other tales of the same type pointing to just the representative, rather than listing all the related tales on the pages for each of the related tales, which seems to be the irritating practice on Wikipedia.

But then another perhaps silly thing I worry about, is that if I stick a pointer to the Cinderalla portal in the header of a tale, I'm depriving the reader of the joy of reading the tale with no preconception and thinking, "Wow, that's just like Cinderella!" (which is the sort of thing that got me hooked on fairy tales, actually).

Anyway, whoever would like to offer criticism or suggestions, I'm all ears! Mudbringer (talk) 18:39, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

It's an interesting and complex problem for sure. I haven't really looked at fairy tales yet, but I've done some folklore stuff and I'll explain how I do it:

• I'd only use {{translations}} for lists of English translations of a single non-English text, like The Water of Life or Mother Holle. Sometimes the single non-English text has several versions; perhaps they are different editions of the same work. I have created two {{translations}} pages where the original versions were significantly different; these two pages are Esther (Bible) and Pseudo-Clementine literature. Both of these works are essentially translations-of-translations so they differ wildly in content, but it's well-established that they are single works.
• I tend to use {{versions}} much more liberally, and it's possible that I use it where other editors would not. For example, I would have no hesitation to make Cinderella a versions page. It's the same story (a folk tale), but the versions by Perrault, Grimm, and Imbriani are independent. So in this case we are not listing works called Cinderella (disambig), and we are not listing English translations of a single telling of Cinderella (translations), but we are listing a number of versions of the same story.

I see this sort of thing very often in popular folk and religious songs. You have an old melody with a very recognizable metre and refrain, but many independent sets of lyrics; even the English lyrics are rarely translations from the original language, but are yet more independent new sets of lyrics. But most people I think would still think of them as being the same song, and you frequently see versions that are combinations of some verses of one version and some verses of another. Examples: Ar Hyd y Nos (All Through the Night); Men of Harlech; Immaculate Mary. A more modern example is O Canada: there is the original French version, and an English translation of it; there is the popular original English version, with several variations; and there are a few other original English versions. All of them would probably be considered versions of the same song, even though they are all independent sets of lyrics with the same tune and theme.

For an example closer to the work you are doing, have a look at some of Child's Ballads. That collection contains sometimes dozens of versions of the same folk song, which are wildly different from each other. Yet Child considers them versions of the same song, and so do I. See The Dowie Dens of Yarrow, The Water is Wide, and especially The Elfin Knight.

• Finally, if the works are really not the same work at all, but instead just have similar themes, throw up a portal for them. I like what you've done with Portal:Cinderella for example. A Modern Cinderella is a good example of a "version" of Cinderella that belongs on a portal rather than on a versions page.

I hope that was helpful and I'd be happy to discuss further if you like. :) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:00, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

fqm

The template {{fqm}} has a pad= parameter. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: thanks a lot! A useful feature that never registered with me. Mudbringer (talk) 02:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Spelling

Hey - thanks for doing all the spelling fixes. It's an important and often overlooked task. - I also want to mention that I've noticed some other editors fixing errors that are present in the original scan, and I don't think you're doing that but I want to make sure you're conscious of the need to preserve typos in the original scans. Thanks again! —Beleg Tâl (talk) 14:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

@Beleg Tâl: Yes, I'm being careful not to correct the actual typos. Sometimes with poor quality djvu images I'll correct b <> h or n <> u when it's ambiguous which is actually printed, so I may have over-corrected occasionally, although even there I try to consult a better quality image when possible to check what I'm doing. Mudbringer (talk) 14:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks from me too. Londonjackbooks (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

poem tag

I used to be fond of using <poem> for formatting poetical texts, but its behavior is irritating, erratic, and subject to future change. I use <br /> now, even though it is a little more work and looks messier when editing. I can be assured of exactly what it will do and that it will continue to behave in the same way in future. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:57, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Thanks, I'll give that method a try as well. Mudbringer (talk) 02:02, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

For the record, using <br /> at the end of lines rather than the poem tag does seem to prevent insertion of unwanted blank lines into copy-pasted text. Mudbringer (talk) 04:34, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you know how to add floating line numbers? If you do not, I can provide you with two methods of doing them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:06, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I just added them using {{line}} to the first page, tooltipped with the corresponding line numbers of the latin text. With a tooltip, line seems to work better than pline. Is there some other method you had in mind? Mudbringer (talk) 02:37, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

No, that was one of the methods I would have suggested. The only additional points I'll pass along are: (1) The template {{pline}} puts the line number in color, if that is desired. (2) If you're going to add in the Latin line numbers, which aren't present in the copy you're working with, you'll need to be sure to explain what you've done in the {{header}} notes at the top of each affected page in the Main namespace. This borders on "annotating", which is frowned upon somewhat in the Wikisource community. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:41, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Spellings and typo checking....

You knew about this list?

User:ShakespeareFan00/Typo words

There may be some false positives possible though :( ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: Thanks, I've seen it. I think that covers a lot of ground! Perhaps you might want to include /larg[^e]/, /prim[^e]/, /lime[^e]/ and some other common words that end in "e" but for which there are less common corresponding words that end in "o". Then there's /wh[^e]re/ ... Do you use those to check the text before saving a page? I do most of my editing in Vim, usually from a copy of the text for the whole volume downloaded from archive.org, or copied from googlebooks pdf when that has better accuracy, or sometimes diff-ing the two, and try to weed out as much of those scanos as I can at the beginning, but I'm not consistent about using a whole list of regexes. ... Then what I've also been trying to do is hunt down errors still existing on verified or proofread pages, which begins by searching e.g. page:"arid" in the wikisource search box, copying the results into Vim, weeding out the hits that actually say "arid" and then correcting the remaining pages that should be "and". Do you know if there's a way to limit a search to only verified pages? That would make life easier! Mudbringer (talk) 20:00, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't know, about limiting searches by proofread/verified status . This seems to be a current limit in the search facilities.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:06, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

Hi, How to Get Strong was one of the most frustrating files I've dealt with here. First the djvu failed, so I changed to the pdf. But the OCR on the pdf was awful, so I had to use the OCR button on most pages. Then in the middle of it all, my laptop had to be re-built so some of my shortcuts disappeared. You are finding some things that I'm kicking myself over, and others are my classic mistakes. I really do appreciate your attention to the details. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:07, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: I know the feeling - I've recently switched from XP to X, and am still floundering. The recent material on archive.org is really hard to work with. One thing I'm doing a lot recently is copying the ocr from google books pdf files, which is excellent quality these days, except that all the hyphens at line-end are missing. I'm afraid I haven't done anything thorough on this file yet, just spellchecking in Vim, which catches a bit more than the Firefox spellchecker. Is there any portion you'd like me to look at in more detail? Mudbringer (talk) 07:30, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Quotation marks

Hi,

Guess I should have checked the style guide beforehand… Thanks, I'll go and clean up the mess I've made :) Ælfgar (talk) 18:26, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

If you feel like doing it, I won't stop you! I only started proofreading this because I was surprised that there was no nice, clean version of the Chronicle in Modern English here, but now that I've read a large chunk of it, I can tell that John Allen Giles fully deserves his posthumous reputation as a sloppy scholar. His prose is awfully clunky and his formatting annoyingly inconsistent. When I'm done with this book, I'll start working on Anna Gurney's translation (I've just put the .djvu on Commons). Even though it's older (1819—the very first one to be printed, actually!), it's much more pleasant to read. Ælfgar (talk) 18:41, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

OCR checks, and related

Please. Let me know if you find missed scan errors in stuff if proofread, (and especially stuff I may have validated) so the relevant work can be rechecked in full. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:04, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

hi, @ShakespeareFan00: will do. Of your stuff, I think Mrs Beeton is probably what needs the most work. That was a titanic job! You can see the edits for a day I visited several pages here, but I may not have done any of those pages completely.　Mudbringer (talk) 13:50, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I took a close look at a few pages at lambs and did some investigating on archive.org. I think the thorniest problem with Mrs Beeton is that the ocr text for the djvu file on WS drops the first word or two of a line occasionally. But there's another copy published only one year before ours, that seems to have much better quality ocr. I think we can leverage that to greatly improve the text. Mudbringer (talk) 16:29, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Are you sure it's a comparative edition? There's at least 3 different versions on archive.org. I've started reviewing the whole of the edition we have from page 1.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:33, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: The pages I was looking at seem to be exactly the same. I have the two text files in my editor, and when I switch from one file to the other, the line with the missing word at the beginning is pretty easy to spot. Anyway, I think the results will be better if we look at a few pages in detail, analyze the problems, and work out global strategies for dealing with them. For example, I noticed that "arc" for "are" is a problem, and you can look for all the pages with that problem like this. Mudbringer (talk) 16:47, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Can you generate a list of all your edit summaries relating to this work? Or add the identified issues to the typo words list? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:05, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

I've given the first 100 pages. Can you check and comment? I also in giving these another look found some deprecated HTML, and old table approaches. Your feedback would be appreciated on this and this issue of {{frac}} for things like ¼ ½ etc.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 10:20, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I know very very little about tables. I'm sure I'll learn a lot when I get a chance to review what you've done, but it's not so likely that I'll be able to make any helpful comments. I'll try to make a bit more progress with Mrs Beeton, and report on the remaining issues and how to deal with them later this week. Mudbringer (talk) 12:48, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: Now I've looked at pages from both the mutton/lamb section and from near the beginning. It does seem the worst problem is that the OCR has dropped words/letters in an unpredictable fashion, which means that conventional proofreading would require a very slow, very painstaking attention to detail. You can see the problem on this page. But fortunately most of that seems to be easy to find by comparing the OCR of the 1906 edition. I have a macro in Vim, the text editor, where I have two lines of text to be compared, that scans up to the first point where the lines differ. I've used this to check existing WS text against Gutenberg text, for example. So, since I've got the tools handy, I guess I'll volunteer to make the fixes, but it will take at least a couple months. As for formatting, there are places where I'd do things differently, but if I make any serious changes I'll do that in a different edit to make them easier to reverse. Please let me know anything you think inappropriate. It's odd, the template fractions look exactly the same as the UTF-8 fraction characters in the final display text. Don't know which is better, but I suppose the templates are easier to work with. Mudbringer (talk) 02:10, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I've just been searching for instances of "alter" that needed to be changed to "after", and made corrections on about 150 pages. I didn't look at the proofreaders for most of them, but if you're interested, you can check my history and see if anything rings a bell. I did notice you on these two, though: Index:Gospel of Buddha.djvu and Index:Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent Buckley.djvu. The second of these turns up occasionally in the course of my error hunts. Another frequently erroneous word in which "l" needs to be changed to "f" is "lather". Haven't tackled that one yet. No progress with Mrs Beeton today, but I'll keep at it :) Mudbringer (talk) 17:23, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

You might want to check some of my recent efforts (mostly minor edits attempting to fix things.), https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ShakespeareFan00. I've been looking over some of my first efforts, with a view to "neutralising" all scan/type errors. I am suprised at how many I'm finding on a second/ third or even fourth pass. There should of course be no scan errors remaining, So based on feedback and my own memory I'm re-reading plenty of material. If you are able to generate a report on what pages I edited it might help focus your tools. I have a query on Labs (https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/16654 ) Listing everything I've edited in page namespace. Not all of these are problematic, and some are naturally repair/cleanup edits. Anything prior to August 1st is probably in scope for your reviewing tool.

Sadly I can't share my local watchlist with you as it has a number of works nominaly proofread which in the interests of "perfection", I am giving a re-read. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:53, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

The above query is everything https://quarry.wmflabs.org/query/20672 is much shorter list, albiet not entirely fool-proof with respect to jpg based entries, owing to the complexity of the concat function does things..

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:02, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Index:St Andrews Ghost Stories (1921).djvu

Gave this a second pass. Would appreciate you running your OCR scano finder over it :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:37, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Index:Goody Two-Shoes (1881).djvu

Another work I've given a second pass on.

Complicated by the use of long-s, but I've fixed up what I can as far as I am able the remaining scan errors in this. (i.e f vs long-s).

However, when you've completed the task of checking the other texts mentioned, a second set of reviewing eyes on this would be greatly appreciated. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 08:11, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for typsetting the title :) What about Page:Goody Two-Shoes (1881).djvu/35? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:58, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

I think I'll pass on that one ... I noticed that someone else is in the process of validating the work, so I'll just confine myself to words that have f's that should be ſ's. Mudbringer (talk) 14:00, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Index:The Cutter's Practical Guide 1898 Edition Part 1.djvu

The issue here isn't mis-spelling of which I am finding several. It's to do wiith precisely WHAT interaction of LST/ProofreadPage etc causes line-feeds. Can you decide on ONE approach for me and DOCUMENT who to implement it so I am not running around changing things back and forth and so its crystal clear where, mediawiki THINKS it's want's a {{nop}} to get a blank link between paragraphs and where it ACTUALLY decides to put them. Thanks. I am getting increasingly frustrated at the inability of wiki markup, to ever have consistency on this and other issues. 18:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I'm sorry, but I don't really understand what the problem is, or what you're trying to do with all those sections. Have you actually referred to them when transcluding? My impression was that section tags don't affect anything besides where to stop/start transcluding. I believe {{nop}} isn't necessary if the next page begins with {{c}}, which seems to be the case where you're having a problem. Sorry, but I know very little about how mediawiki actualy works. Mudbringer (talk) 19:07, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Okay, but as I said, I am increasingly frustrated with the lack of consistency.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 19:11, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologies, I seem to be on the verges of wiki-meltdown and perhaps I should take a breather. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:41, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Page:The Cutter's Practical Guide 1898 Edition Part 1.djvu/28

Billingshurst noted that that some of the fractions could be simplified to direct character equivalents, Do you have a script for doing this across a whole work? I don't feel happy doing it manually? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:58, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@ShakespeareFan00: I don't think Billingshurst is expecting you to do that, and I don't think you should. If someone changes the fractions, let it go ... but I think your policy was fine to begin with. One thing I'm beginning to learn about Wikisource is it's really important not to over-react to things people say or do. Just try to concentrate on doing what you think is best, and give others the space to do likewise. Mudbringer (talk) 12:13, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Page:Wiltshire, Extracted from Domesday Book.djvu/92

I have attempted to decode this.

I won't have got all the scan errors out first pass..

Concerns are h vs b , and the long standing longs vs f issues.

Will be looking over other pages in this carefully. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:45, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks

I have noticed frequently that your standard of checking the proof is really exemplary. When you validate, I feel confident that no more flaws will remain. Warm thanks and best wishes, Hrishikes (talk) 02:02, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:Woman of the Century link

Just wanted to bring this template to your attention. For use on author pages. — billinghurst sDrewth 14:22, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

template:ellipsis shouldn't be used

I have noticed that you have extensively been using template:ellipsis. There is some very specific wording on the template that indicates that it should be used preferentially to a proper ellipsis ≈hellip; or a variation. Can I ask for you to utilise ellipsis as the guidance in Wikisource:style guide. Thanks. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:59, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@Billinghurst:, I'm sorry for taking so long to reply. I've been using template:ellipsis for sequences of dots that are not "ellipses of omission" for which &hellip; is prescribed. I began using it after it was suggested to me by @EncycloPetey: It's a little distressing to be told one thing by one administrator and then the opposite by another. It's true that I've been using it "extensively" but I'm not aware of any actual harm caused by its use. I'm aware that the template documentation says it's use is not recommended and asks that it not be used, but it does provide the caveat "unless there is a stylistic reason to do so". For my work, I feel there is such a stylistic reason. Much of the material I work on will have anywhere from three dots to five dots, and often of four dots the first one is a period, and the three dots might be found after a line break, but if they're on the same line they'll be evenly spaced, which is the effect I get from using period+space+{{...}} (like this. . . .), but not the effect from using period+space+&hellip; (like this. …). I don't see any good alternative that would reflect the typography of the original. Particularly recently, I've tried to be very conservative about changing the style of projects begun by other users, but it's hard to remember exactly what all I've done. I'm sorry if I've used it anywhere that detracts from your work. Mudbringer (talk) 06:50, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

See discussion at Wikisource:Bot requests#Use of template:Ellipsis. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:27, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

pt.wikisource

Hello Mudbringer. I noticed your(?) edit in Mudanças recentes over at the Portuguese Wikisource. Do you speak Portuguese? I am contemplating eventually working on a book of poems over there to try and familiarize myself more with the language. I touched base at a User's talk page who I believe to speak English, but I have yet to get an answer. It is not a very active place. Perhaps that can eventually change. Anyway, just curious! Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Hi @Londonjackbooks: No, I don't speak Portuguese at all, but I read Spanish ok, so I can read Portuguese sortof, especially for fairy tales that tend to follow predictable story lines. I just got finished transcribing Tales of Old Lusitania, and matched up the English translations of the tales with the texts on pt.wikisource, and noticed that the translations while entertaining, really embellish and gloss over the originals. So I'm thinking of trying to translate some of the ones included in ToOL more literally, and possibly attempt a few that were left out. Which book of poems is it you are interested in? — Mudbringer (talk) 16:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Without much knowledge of the subject matter, I was thinking one of the Paquita volumes by Raimundo António de Bulhão Pato. But I am open to suggestions. I don't believe they have all the templates over there that I am used to using here, but I know they can be copied from here to there. I have done it once before for another sister project, but I will have to review the process again. But I don't want to be too bold over there until I get my feet wet. Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

That looks ... very ambitious! It definitely would be a significant accomplishment. After running a few stanzas through google translate, it seems not too hard to follow. I've worked on several of the different 'sources, and the Portuguese site seems more like the English one than most, but if there's any way I could be of help in figuring things out, please let me know! — Mudbringer (talk) 17:46, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:49, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Relative link

As for your edit on this page, I could not understand the purpose behind changing absolute links to relative. Relative links are ok (and preferred) in main namespace, but they will only create permanent red links in page namespace. Hrishikes (talk) 06:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I thought that relative links in the mainspace transclusion were preferable, in case the work as a whole ever needed to be moved, and figured that red links in the page namespace didn't matter. Since it's not likely this work will need to be moved, though, I see your point, and I'll change them back. Thanks for the heads-up. Mudbringer (talk) 06:06, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

@Hrishikes: Your advice here recalls a related issue I was wondering about. Italian Popular Tales has a lot of endnotes, and I've been transcluding the main text and the corresponding endnotes to the same subpages, to make it faster and easier to go between the two. So I've set the links as just the anchors, which means they're not red, but non-functional in the page namespace, e.g. here and here. Should these links as well be absolute links, in your opinion? Thanks. — Mudbringer (talk) 06:20, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

I think that's ok, anchors are meant to be functional in mainspace. Red links look ugly, so permanence should be avoided. Hrishikes (talk) 06:28, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Once a Week vol. 2

Back in '17 you did some work on Once a Week, Vol. II. You did a most admirable job with formatting the image and poem on page 35. Would you be interested in contributing some more tricky formatting to that magazine volume? (I am doing all the basic work to get it properly organized and transcluded, but I haven't studied up on advanced formatting topics.) I marked as "problematic" all of the pages that either have images more complicated than a full-width horizontal one, or else tables of various sorts. Thanks for any contributions you may do, Levana Taylor (talk) 18:09, 20 January 2019 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Mudbringer,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wikisource and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 14:31, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Mudbringer,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 19:12, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Mudbringer,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 17:02, 4 October 2019 (UTC)