Wikisource:Featured text candidates/Archives/2009

Featured

George Washington's First State of the Union Address

I've just added an image of what is reported to be the only printing of the address. I think this should be scheduled to be featured to coincide with the next state of the union address. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 15:19, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

• January 2009, just for clarification. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Wikisource:Confucianism} 00:17, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
• It is January. Can we feature this, please? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:59, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support Quite appropriate. Cirt (talk) 05:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support Having had a minor hand in this (locating an image of the manuscript), it's a pleasure to see the candidacy. Best wishes, Durova (talk) 05:44, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support and January is the perfect month for this. — Rlevse • Talk • 12:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support — JoJo • Talk • 11:05, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support now. FloNight (talk) 13:40, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

• Featured! - I realise it is now late January, however better late than never. Given how long Coker was one the main page this could always run throughout February. Suicidalhamster (talk) 15:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

  Thank you! John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Transcript of the 'friendly fire' incident video (28 March 2003)

This text was nominated in 2007, where a number of issues where raised. Many of the issues have been addressed, and if there are more to be addressed I think we can sort them out.

We havent featured an audio transcript yet, and this one has been verified by two people. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:20, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

• Support.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• Support Looks good. Cirt (talk) 05:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Now Featured! Having read the previous nomination and talkpage, there do not seem to be any outstanding issues. Suicidalhamster (talk) 15:53, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

J'accuse

Translation by Wikisource from French of a famous pamphlet. Yann 12:03, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support; I made a few tweaks a week or two ago. Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:32, 1 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support A notable document and valuable contribution to the project. Cirt (talk) 05:11, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Promoted. Jude (talk) 02:22, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

German Instrument of Surrender (7 May 1945)

Reason: A historically significant document, accompanied by a good image, which at this moment is a featured picture nominee on Wikipedia, and probably will become featured. I have tried to make the page meet the requirements imposed by the manula of style, and have also proofread it. ATM I'm the only proofreader, but the text is fairly short, so please if you can, proofread it. diego_pmc 12:52, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support - just did a proofread and it's looking pretty good. —Giggy 23:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Hesperian 00:31, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Mild support. I would like to see the image cut into two single pages, and the text moved onto the images. It would also be a good idea to leave this until Wikipedia decides to feature this. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • Cutting the image is no problem, but i don't really understand what you mean by placing the text "onto the images". diego_pmc 12:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
    • If you upload the pages to Commons as seperate images, I will take care of it. For this size a work it would be quicker to do it and show you afterward than to walk you through it here.--BirgitteSB 15:47, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
  • 'K, I've uploaded the images, see the document page. diego_pmc 18:41, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Alright, see Page:German Instrument of Surrender (May 7, 1945) - page 1.jpg and Page:German Instrument of Surrender (May 7, 1945) - page 2.jpg for the proofreading pages. Clicking on the image on the side of the text there will magnify it and these pages will keep track of who has proofread the text (i.e. I cannot mark it proofread because the wiki know I entered the text and the the person who marks it as proofread cannot mark it as validated etc.) The text from the proofreading Pages is transcluded to the main namespace. For small texts like this it is a bit of overkill, but I am sure you can imagine how the system is useful for larger works and it is good to be in the habit of using it whenever we have images.--BirgitteSB 23:49, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support Nice work. Promoted on enwiki 10 Aug. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

NOTE, I've validated the two image pages and created these two pages: Index:German Instrument of Surrender (May 7, 1945) and German Instrument of Surrender (May 7, 1945) — Rlevse • Talk • 02:33, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The Index page is great; the latter was a duplicate so I have redirected it to German Instrument of Surrender (7 May 1945). John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:38, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I would be nice if the page names agreed so you didn't go through a redirect when popping 'up' from one of the individual pages to the main page. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support — seems ready. Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support Very nice work. Cirt (talk) 05:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support — JoJo • Talk • 11:04, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support, excellent work, notable documentation - looks great! Dreadstar (talk) 16:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• I suggest we feature this on the main page in May as it will be suitably topical. Only 7 months since it was nominated! Suicidalhamster (talk) 23:22, 3 March 2009 (UTC)
• Support--Lookatthis (talk) 21:47, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

• Promoted --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 04:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

A specimen of the botany of New Holland

The first book ever written on the botany of Australia. See also Index:A Specimen of the Botany of New Holland.djvu. Hesperian 06:43, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support; all pages validated (glanced at some and they were fine), looks good. —Giggy 09:54, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support; looks good. My only suggestion is to link to wikispecies or wikipedia for each of the botanical names in the work. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:26, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm not keen on Wikipedia links. Check out this compromise; am I am visionary or a fruitcake? Hesperian 23:42, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
    • Both! Nice work! I have always expected that wikispecies would be exactly like what you have done with Wikisource:Banksia spinulosa. no fluff, just the taxonomy stuff and an expansive list of the sources. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Comment I don't really like the fact that the background of the images isn't blank. diego_pmc 12:30, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
  • What do you mean? That the page scans are dirty?; or that the colour plates need restoring to give them a white background? Hesperian 07:07, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
    • I mean that the illustrations should be extracted from the pages, and use them instead. Here's an example: Image:Cuore - front matter illustration.png was extracted from Image:Cuore - front matter.jpg, and it is better for use in the digitalized version of the text, than the actual page on which the illustration is. diego_pmc 06:59, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
• Support - Excellent work, it looks really good. Suicidalhamster (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support - Great work, a valuable contribution to the project. Cirt (talk) 05:09, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Looks like a great text. --Mattwj2002 (talk) 00:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Difficult text replicated well. Psychless 13:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

• Promoted. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 15:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Fatal fall of Wright airship

This is one of the best newspaper articles we have produced, it is verified, and it is a century ago that the event happened. It was quoted in Page:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu/7. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support Great work, a valuable contribution to the project. Cirt (talk) 05:17, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support - Fantastic transcription of the newspaper article. Psychless 14:06, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support; nicely done and a great article. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 14:38, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Promoted. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 12:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Charles von Hügel

A memoir compiled and annotated by Hügels's son. Interest in the subject has increased since its publication, but it remains as one of few sources of biographical material on Hügel. Transcribed from an online scan, it is, AFAIK, the only fully digitised version available. I think this would add some variety to the types of texts we feature, and is a good example of how an original scan can be enhanced.—unsigned comment by Cygnis insignis (talk) .

• Support. A good read. All pages proofed. [Disclosure: I helped proof this.] Hesperian 23:40, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support, well-structured, great value. Cirt (talk) 19:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support, I have to agree with the above comments, the text is very well presented and it looks quite good. The only thing I noticed is that the images included on Charles_von_Hügel/Distinctions, File:Carl von Hügel, awards 2.png, etc, are a strange contrast with their yellow background on the page, especially in comparison to File:Charles von Hügel portrait (Freres).png. Otherwise, it looks very good. Jude (talk) 01:24, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support Psychless 14:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
  • Promoted. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 03:50, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Flight 93 Cockpit Transcript

This is an important and interesting transcription that was submitted as government evidence; link to the PDF original is on the talk page. Ideally a djvu should be created from the PDF.

While we wouldnt want to have both this and Transcript of the 'friendly fire' incident video (28 March 2003) featured back-to-back, having two candidates means we can pick the best one, or we could feature both at times when they are most relevant, like on the anniversary of the events. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

• Support A valuable contribution. Cirt (talk) 05:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support for September '09. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 04:33, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support Psychless 13:34, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support, definitely, but as per User:Spangineer, I'd like to suggest that the closing admin leave off promoting this until September. Jude (talk) 00:03, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment I've fixed it now, but I'm disturbed a document with so many errors received such unanimous support, particularly since featured texts are protected. — The Man in Question (sprec) 04:42, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Is there a DjVu? Otherwise is there an .ogg? Is it validated? Against what was it validated? I think that either a DjVu or a link with {{listen}} would improve the value of the text. billinghurst (talk) 05:14, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

It would helped if I could have properly read. I have converted the PDF to DjVu and uploaded, and added it as an image to the page. Someone else want to work with this to d/b check. billinghurst (talk) 05:27, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

• Promoted. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 12:17, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

A Description of a City Shower

The following discussion is closed:

October 2009 -- billinghurst (talk) 02:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

This is a poem by Jonathan Swift, best known for his book, Gulliver's Travels. It provides rare insight into urban life in London at the time, and the economical, inustrial and social revolutions that were happening. The text has been proofread against three sites, and two books, on of which is linked to through Google Books. I believe it meets the style criterias, and it even has a relevant image to boot. Thanks. ---- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 14:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Support. I've moved the text to Page:Cyclopaedia of English Literature 1844 Volume 1 page 548.djvu, which is recorded as the source on the talk page, so it should be identical.

It would be good to find a pagescan of the original, and it would also be good to accompany this text with other PD resources about this work. See for example the many works mentioned in this PDF. note that the PDF says "O Hehir notes that when the poem was first published in the Tatler, it was accompanied by a different and “slightly misleading headnote . . . ”" so the text may not be fully appreciated without the original headnote. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:35, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Just an aside: The link to the .djvu page seems to be obscuring the first line of text of A Description of a City Shower. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 16:49, 28 May 2008

That is probably an undesirable side effect of {{Page}}, which has had a few changes lately. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:00, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Then we should fix it. Who knows how many pages it affects? ---- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 07:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesnt effect a lot of pages, yet. I have annotated a few more details about what it is supposed to do on the template page, and noted on the talk page that it doesnt do what it was doing a few weeks ago. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:40, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Following the virginia.edu link AD added to the talk, I see that they have a pagescan of the "first" page of this work in Tatler (p. 275), but only the tail end of the headnote is on this page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:45, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

virginia.edu also has page 276 and 277 (and some Tatler No. 9: [1] [2], and more). John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'd rather like it better if this one wasn't transcluded. The "[ page ]" text is over the first letter, "C", from Careful, which I find pretty disturbing. diego_pmc 13:32, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

• Support I like the image usage as well. Cirt (talk) 05:08, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support Psychless 13:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Oppose until this version is proofed against the page image and things like capitalization match. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 12:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
  • I've proofed the poem against the scan. It could probably do for another go over to validate it, since I might have missed some things (there were a lot of problems to fix).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 13:36, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I validated the page. Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:33, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per Spangineer. — The Man in Question (sprec) 04:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
• Support I propose in lieu of other suggestions that it becomes September 2009 FT. billinghurst (talk) 05:08, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Rider. Otherwise October 2009, if other more date sensitive works take precedence. billinghurst (talk) 05:32, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Prepared, protected and ready to go. Someone may wish to d/b check.

Added {{wikipedia}}, and information about the source, though someone may dislike it in the Notes and remove it.

-- billinghurst (talk) 02:09, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• I removed the image, "A Description of a City Shower" is said to have inspired William Hogarth's Four Times of the Day, a series of four paintings." is problematic for this project, eg. there is no citation for that. Someone may object, but it is why I hesitated in supporting the page after validating it. Cygnis insignis (talk) 08:35, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
  • There's a reference here (second paragraph in the "Background" section) that says it and supports it with a citation (to an offline text).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
    • JSTOR article "Hogarth's Mad King and His Audiences / Christine Stevenson /History Workshop Journal, No. 49 (Spring, 2000), pp. 24-43" has commentary relation to book

“

... apparent echoes of Jonathon Swift's 'A Description of a City Shower' (1710) ...

”

—unsigned comment by Billinghurst (talk) .

• Promoted --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

The Fight at Dame Europa's School

Sherurcij proofread and set up The Fight at Dame Europa's School. See Index:The Fight at Dame Europa's School.djvu I have proofread it also. The images are all uploaded to commons. It could probably use another proofreader or two, and some people might prefer that the first two pages appear in the main namespace. It is nearly ready for featured status. Recommendations for improvements are appreciated. --Mkoyle (talk) 03:45, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Support, this is an absolutely fantastic piece of work - we are the only ones to really host it like this, it can't be found on Gutenberg or anything. Its historical context is essentially a largely-forgotten war, and caricatures of contemporary world leaders are both amusing and significant. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Carl Linnaeus.} 19:01, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support Happy for this to be November 2009. -- billinghurst (talk) 23:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment I would like to see some commentary/notes around it. For a literary savage like myself, it meant nothing to me. So some context and introductory would be helpful. -- billinghurst (talk) 04:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Added. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Carl Linnaeus.} 23:09, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

• Support; great little story. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Promoted billinghurst (talk) 05:45, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Descriptive account of the panoramic view ...

This gem has been laying around for several years, contributed and developed by Hesperian. While I appreciated the scope of Source when I started, and was optimistic regarding its potential, discovering this work was nothing short of an epiphany; my interest in this sister-site was converted to utter devotion. This, for me, exemplifies why we are here, and offers a panorama of a much larger body of work across media wiki sites - including FA content at the other place.

The document is of high importance to the history of the state, and offers an insight into colonial views of the time. No other site or exhibition has ever come close to giving this work its full context. This has been triple validated, gone through several improvement drives, and intersects with our sister sites in the most elegant way.

My nomination is both disclaimer and pitch, but I strongly urge others to support its presentation as a featured text. Cygnis insignis (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Support, pretty obviously — Cygnis insignis (talk) 09:45, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Excellent nomination, btw. Moondyne (talk) 10:38, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
• Support, but only if Cygnis apologises for the "panorama" pun. Hesperian 11:56, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

I was just about to when I noticed your posted your view! Cygnis insignis (talk) 12:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

• Support

Promote December 2009 billinghurst (talk) 06:23, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Not featured

The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style ("Strunk & White") is an American English writing style guide. It is one of the most influential and best-known prescriptive treatments of English grammar and usage in the United States. It originally detailed eight elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition, "a few matters of form," and a list of commonly misused words and expressions. Updated editions of the paperback book are often required reading for American high school and college composition classes.

Strunk wrote this edition in 1918; White only revised it and popularized it in 1957, after Strunk had died, but this "Strunk & White" (to coin a phrase) is in the public domain. It's #21 on Modern Library's list of "the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century". Unlike my previous hasty nominations, this one is certified 100%, having been proofread by multiple Wikisourcerors.

• Support as nom. Quadell 23:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support. Cowardly Lion 00:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
• Support, in spite of the lack of pagescans. This appears to be an independent transcription, which would be good to proof-read against; also ISBN 097522980X and ISBN 0486447987 are modern reprints which might be accessible online to double-check any formatting issues. I think it could do with some tweaking first. The preface that appears with most online copies is missing[3], as is the frontmatter[4]. It should use {{header2}}, and link the title of the work on each subpage to the index page. In the notes field of each page there is a set of quick links to the other pages; I think this should be centered and made more prominent, and also appear at the bottom of each page. Also, the text often refers to other rules; this edition has faults, but it does use hyperlinks to give the reader a link where the text refers to another rule, which I thought was useful. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose on account of no pagescans.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:10, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
• Support per nom and Jayvdb (talk • contribs). Cirt (talk) 05:04, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose, because there are no page scans. Without them there isn't an original to compare against; transcriptions aren't original no matter how reliable we think they are. Psychless 18:13, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted. Jude (talk) 03:03, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

John Brown's Speech to the Court at his Trial

This is certainly an important event in U.S. history, and the speech was included in "The World’s Famous Orations" as chosen by Author:William Jennings Bryan. It is in the public domain, and has been proofread by multiple editors. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 01:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

• Support as nom. —Quadell (talk / swapmeet) 01:00, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
• I would support this but I'm curious as to where the article name came from. Perhaps "John Brown's defense speech" is a bit less cumbersome... or is this a standard naming convention? --Midnightdreary 16:43, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
• Support contingent on pagescans; there are many books that include this speech, incl. this which should be {{PD-1923}}, and suitable for upload onto Wikisource even if it isnt suitable for Commons. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 17:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose on account of no pagescans.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:10, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
• Weak support - Could use a bit of cleanup/formatting, pagescans, etc. Cirt (talk) 05:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted. Jude (talk) 03:06, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Morrill Act (1862)

{{closed|Not promoted|text= An important document, which also is cataloged as one of the "100 milestone documents" on ourdocuments.gov. Is accompanied by the first and the third (and last) pages of the document, being of very high resolution. diego_pmc 08:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• Support as nominator diego_pmc 08:49, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
• In order to be proof read, we need scans of all pages. If I understand correctly, one pagescan is missing? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

  Yes that's true, but the text is copy pasted from here. All except the title. Isn't OurDocs.gov reliable?diego_pmc 10:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

  We can assume that the text is intended to be faithful, but we cant be certain that they are faithful to those images (there may have been minor revisions prior to being enacted), and we cant be certain that we are not reproducing minor transcription errors, and we can be certain that formatting specifics have been lost in the process of converting it from a signed document to a web presentation. There is a (copyright?) image here that includes the three pages. That said, I've found page scans of Statutes at Large, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, which is good enough if we present our text as the official text, rather than as a transcription of the signed document. Also, there are two "Morrill Act", so this page probably needs to be renamed to make way for the second act by that name. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:25, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• For now I moved the page to Morrill Act (1862), and Morrill Act is a disambiguation page (though it only includes one doc). I'm looking for the other right now; if you know it, please add it to the disambiguation page. diego_pmc 11:57, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• See w:Morrill_Act and search for "second Morrill Act". A copy of it is here. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:13, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• I added Morrill Act (1890) in this nominated article, as the "next" article. Is that okay? diego_pmc 17:06, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

• Yea, that is ok. We dont have any strict rules about the prev/next fields. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 17:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

this is a great reason why we require page scans; the ourdocuments.gov page contains "shall shall". John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

• Question: it doesn't look like we have actually used any kind of scan to proofread this, right? Did we use the (difficult to read) images linked on the Morrill Act's page as a guide?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 14:09, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

  The text is based on ourdocuments.gov, which has been proven unreliable by this. I recommend delisting until pagescans have been found. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

  • Oppose until actual scans are found.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 15:03, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

My apologies. I did find pagescans back in April (Statutes at Large, 37th Congress, 2nd Session) and the same day Diego pmc uploaded the first and last pages, but the middle page is missing. There are substantial differences between the ourdocs.gov text and those images, so we either need the middle handwritten page in order to proofread it, or we need to upload the images of Statutes at Large and use those instead. I must admit that I think this text will be infinitely more interesting if we do both, as the differences between the two tell a story. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:23, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose Until above issues are addressed adequately. Cirt (talk) 05:05, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted. Jude (talk) 02:49, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Fort Sumter telegram

Not much to say. It is proofread, meets the style guidelines (from my POV), but of course that's always open for discussion, so that's why I'm opening it here. diego_pmc 14:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• Weak oppose Author page could use creating, other than that should be okay. Cirt (talk) 05:12, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted. Jude (talk) 03:11, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

...Prosecute Richard M. Nixon for Obstruction of Justice...

Saw this in the book I'm reading ("Almost History"). I was going to type it in, but the US National Archives had a copy on the web. Raul654 06:14, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Author pages are missing, there is no license tag, and there are no pagescans. Other than that, it is interesting, and recent events are a good reason for us to be putting a work about impeachment on the front page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:24, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Author pages and license created. We are still missing pagescans, however this is good evidence that our text is accurate. Without pagescans, I would like to see some other feature to accompany this before endorsing it. Maybe there are other sources which refer to this memorandum, or the importance of this memorandum can be put into the notes field, or into a Wikipedia article. We have U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Nixon (1974), which I have added a bunch of redlinks to; we are currently featuring ACLU v. NSA Opinion which could be used for ideas on how to improve this text. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:09, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

A proofread would also be preferable. I'm afraid I couldn't support this until these issues are attended to. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 08:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I looked it over and see nothing which requires proofreading. Raul654 (talk) 23:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Check out the Featured Text criteria for featured texts, namely point 2: Proofread: The work must be completely proofread by multiple editors to ensure that it matches the original as precisely as possible.. Jude (talk) 00:56, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

• Support - I did some minor formatting after a proofread, looks good - though a side-by-side image presentation would be extra sweet. Cirt (talk) 05:14, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted. Jude (talk) 03:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I Want To Go Back To Michigan

An early composition by Irving Berlin which, I hope, sets the standard for song texts at Wikisource. Complete source links are provided to the original files hosted at Duke University. Has been proofread by Adam Cuerden, John Vandenberg.

Includes a short description summary, a restored audio file of a historic recording that was made the year the song was originally released, and visually restored copies of the complete sheet music. Original unretouched copies of the sheet music pages are available at Wikimedia Commons and are each individually linked from the respective file hostings at Wikimedia Commons. Durova (talk) 00:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose for the moment: I'm sorry, but as a moral issue, I cannot support this any more than I can support K-K-K-Katy. Songs need to have their sheet music accessible to pianists and singers. This means providing a version of the sheet music without paper texture and the whitepoint set to give a pure white background (any other solution will cause distracting and often highly visible attempts by the printer to half-tone a very light grey, resulting in ugly speckles), and this needs to be set up in PDF or another layout format that scales it to the appropriate size. Anything else requires the person wishing to perform it to do all these steps themselves, which is an obstacle to use that I consider incompatible with featured status. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:15, 22 October 2008 (UTC) I went ahead and did this, I'll do K-K-K-Katy tomorrow, but K-K-K-Katy's score is in pretty appalling condition, so I thought I'd do the easy one first. Adam Cuerden (talk) 03:01, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. The original source is, first and foremost, a musical score. The Wikisource text is not. Therefore I don't see how anyone could possibly argue that the Wikisource text is an accurate representation of the original source. You may counter that Wikisource is ill-equipped to handle score transcriptions, and you'd be absolutely right; but I don't think we should be featuring inaccurate transcriptions simply because it is (at present) too hard to do any better. Hesperian 03:07, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
• Support contingent on w:Lilypond musical notation, or similar, being provided on the Wikisource page.
  I proofread the text against Index:Irving Berlin Michigan, and made corrections to bring our text closer into line with this printed edition. Adam's two PDFs are as good as we can do within our technical restraints, and I think it is within reason that we feature a musical score now on that basis, but I would dearly like to see musical notation added before this is featured, in a source format, so that our readers can import it into an open source music tool and re-use it. In doing this, our readers can see the direction that we are going in, despite us not being there yet. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:43, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

With respect, you're asking that I learn a new program, produce a score with it instead of the ones I'm familiar with, get it proofread by musicologists, and defend any and all fixes, all in an effort to reproduce a score we already have in a format that isn't human-readable, but which could be pasted into a subpage. Is this really a good expenditure of resources? Frankly, it seems about the equivalent of asking that every engraving found in a book be converted to SVG, no matter how fiendishly complicated.

While I certainly do agree that the production of modern scores is useful, I don't think Wikisource has either the resources, nor enough basic musicological talent to insist upon it as a basic requirement of any musicological text being featured.

In all honesty, there seems to be a lot of desire to begin handling music on Wikisource, but it really doesn't seem that the best way to do that has ever been discussed either with musicians or with people with experience at producing modern scores. This leads to some rather bizarre projects, such as Index:Irving Berlin Michigan, which, as far as I can tell, is a slavish attempt to reproduce all the formatting oddities of text in a musical score, sans the actual context that gives these odd layouts meaning (Obviously, it could be a useful proofreading tool, though I'd suggest that some way of notating repeats and such would help avoid further "I want to farm" mistakes).

I don't want to attack Wikisource's goals, but I think that some more discussion would improve the chances of achieving them, and make sure that reaching the goals would create as useful of content as possible. Adam Cuerden (talk) 17:54, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support Per nom, and I really like the usage of multiple media formats and bringing various projects together in this fashion. Cirt (talk) 05:18, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Not promoted Jude (talk) 03:14, 4 April 2009 (UTC)