User talk:Vicarage

Welcome to Wikisource

Hello, Vicarage, 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

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• Proofread of the Month
• Monthly Challenge
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Have questions? Then please ask them at either

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

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Again, welcome! Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:26, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Gutenberg editions

Wikisource has moved away from pasting in Gutenberg editions. There are several reasons behind this.

First, if we can back a work with a copy of a scan, it permits the reader to verify that our edition is faithful to what was published. Gutenberg copies do not provide the scans, and we have found over the years that their proofreading s spotty (some proofreaders didn't do their job), some Gutenberg copies blend editions (part UK edition spellings, part US edition spellings), and we can never be sure what the source was for the Gutenberg text.

Because of these problems with Gutenberg, proofreading from a scan should involve checking the OCR against the scan, not pasting in new copy of the text from Gutenberg. So if a work has a DjVu scan Index already, it is potentially detrimental to add a Gutenberg link alongside it. --18:35, 24 September 2020 (UTC)

Gutenberg may not be ideal, but I feel that before people embark on the major task of doing a proof read they should be aware that others have already done similar work. That allows them to decide that another project is more worthy of their time. I worry that excluding gutenberg references (and the fact there is a template shows that someone felt them worthwhile) smacks of NIH, and make perfect the enemy of the good. I will raise this issue in the Wikisource:Scriptorium for wider visibility Vicarage (talk) 17:15, 26 September 2020 (UTC)