Wikisource:News/2013-08

Translation namespace

The new namespace for Wikisource user translations, called "Translation", was created on 5 July 2013. It is now namespace number 114 and its associated "Translation talk" namespace is number 115.

This namespace will hold all translations of non-English works where the translation has been made by Wikisource users. Transcriptions of translations that are proofread as normal will still be found in the main namespace. The two are being separated to create a clear distinction between our verifiably pre-published works and semi-original works made by Wikisourcers. This is a result of the recent Request for Comment on annotations and derivative works‎.

The namespace is currently active and ready for use, with its own header template and some specialised tracking categories. However, some debugging remains. At present the back links from a work to the scans, via the source tab and the floating page-number links, are not generated in the Translation namespace. The Proofread Page extension only accounts for the main namespace and was not designed for this new division of content. When this bug has been resolved, the remaining texts in Category:Wikisource translations will be moved as well.

Bugs aside, some issues are outstanding. The Translation policy has yet to be formally approved, although it is also a product of the Request for Comment. The previous incarnation of the policy was created in 2006 and never achieved approval as a agreed policy on Wikisource. The method of handling redirects between the old page locations and the new pages in the Translation namespace is also in flux. As standard, redirects between namespaces are replaced with a soft redirect, which is then deleted completely some months later. Many translations have been present for years, however, and links to these works from external sites, blogs, forums, books or other media will be broken at our end if the customary procudure is repeated here. It is undecided whether this shall be just accepted and, if not, what form of redirect should be used.

New logo selection for Wikivoyage

Current Wikivoyage logo

Wikivoyage was launched as part of Wikimedia on January 15, 2013. The logo on the right had been selected for the project, but, unfortunately, it too much resembles the World Trade Organization logo. Therefore, a new logo selection process is ongoing.

Timeline

00:01 UTC, 26 July 2013:Voting begins
23:59 UTC, 1 August 2013:Voting closes; vote tally begins
5 August 2013:Wikimedia Foundation review of top 3 to 6 selected submissions
10 August 2013:Final modification period
17 August 2013:Finalists submitted for WMF review (if modifications chosen)
00:01 UTC, 22 August 2013:Final vote opens
23:59 UTC, 29 August 2013:Final vote closes; vote tally begins
31 August 2013:New logo officially announced

Anyone registered on any Wikimedia Foundation project before May 31, 2013, is eligible to vote. You can vote up to three logos in order of your preference. If you have made at least fifty main-namespace edits to Wikivoyage before May 31, 2013, your votes weigh more.

Wikisource vision development and open access

The original post (in English and Italian) is on the Wikimedia blog

June has been a full month for the Wikisource Vision Development project, with some awesome and some challenging experiences. We have so many things to tell you about that a few of them won’t even fit in this post. If you want further details, please drop us an email.

But let’s get started. First, David and Andrea attended different conferences: David was at LODLAM, a gathering of people interested in LOD (Linked Open Data) and LAM (Libraries, Archives, and Museums), which proved to be a great occasion to find partners and raise awareness about the Wikisource revitalization effort! The audience was very diverse, not only with representatives from cultural institutions, but also from some research centers and private companies. The Open Knowledge Foundation, Europeana, Digital Public Library of America, and other big players had representatives there. David was the only person from the Wikimedia movement, so he ended up representing “all the wiki things,” especially Wikidata.

On the other hand (and on the other side of the Atlantic), Andrea was participating in OAI8, the Open Access conference held every two years at CERN (but he was not the only Wikipedian there)

Open Access is an “open” movement dedicated to scientific and academic literature. It claims that scientific articles and books should be free (as in “free speech”), given that the academic community writes and controls its research for free (as in “free beer”). Why should we not treat academic and scientific knowledge as a “commons“?

Open Access and the Wikimedia movement are a match made in heaven. Both are committed to free access to information and both support free licenses like CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. This is paramount: It is our belief that Wikisource can be a fundamental asset for open access, as an integrated, connected digital library of high-quality, freely licensed books and texts.

To demonstrate this, we now are uploading a CC-BY licensed book on Wikisource: Oral Literature in the Digital Age: Archiving Orality and Connecting with Communities (2013). You are invited to help us with the formatting and you are very welcome to cite it as a source for Wikipedia articles.

Beside these conferences, as true Wikimedians, our work has occurred mostly online ;-) Of course, David could not help but set up several Request For Comments (he likes to ask for community feedback. A lot.) The first RfC is about the new workflow for uploading books when the three Wikisource-related Google Summer of Code projects will be finished. The second one is about sharing bibliographic sources used in all Wikipedias through Wikidata and if a new entity should be created for this information.

But here’s the best, most exciting news. Thomas, our beloved code wizard, explained his strategy for the Wikisource transition to Wikidata, and the Wikidata team approved. The Wikidata development team and Tpt will start working on the transition soon, and it is quite possible that the first phase, centralization of language interwiki links for author pages, will be active this summer.

Last but not least, don’t forget about the ongoing effort to create a Wikisource User Group. The more of us there are, the funner it is.

Andrea Zanni, User:Aubrey
David Cuenca, User:Micru

Featured text for August 2013

The featured text for August 2013 is Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia, an 1863 travelogue by John Davis.

Davis was part of the South Australian Burke Relief Expedition of 1861, led by John McKinlay, a search party sent by the government to find the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition. Davis was in charge of the four camels taken along with the party due to his experience with the animals in India. After discovering the fate of the prior expedition, McKinlay's party continued to explore. Meeting difficult terrain while attempting to transnavigate the continent, they diverted from the Northern Territory into Queensland and reached Port Denison (the modern town, Bowen) almost exactly one year after setting out. This book tells the story of the expedition based on Davis' journal of the events.

This featured text marks several anniversaries. The Burke and Wills expedition set out from Melbourne on 20 August 1860—153 years ago this month. McKinlay's expedition set out from Adelaide on 16 August 1861—152 years ago this month—and left Port Denison by boat, to return to Adelaide, on 17 August 1862—151 years ago this month.

The present work records one of several successful expeditions that have lately resolved for us the long standing problem of Central Australia. "Who shall cross this great 'Terra Australis' from sea to sea?" was a question so long before our eyes, and so long unanswered, that we did not expect so overwhelming a response as the last three years have given. And yet, within that brief interval, this previously unattainable result has been accomplished no less than six times over, if we regard Stuart's first two journeys as a virtual crossing of the country; a distinction we can hardly withhold from them, although neither of them quite crosses Australia, as was the case with the third. So much for a bold pioneering, and the confidence that arises from some little experience of the way. So far these preliminaries may serve to show how imaginary are many difficulties, even those of a long standing, and how often the "will makes the way." Who, for instance, that read in times gone by of Commodore Anson's disastrous experience in rounding Cape Horn, would ever have anticipated a time like our own when "the Horn," with its awful region of eternal storm would be as familiar to every ordinary merchantman as the seas of Europe? And now it seems quite likely that in a few more years the once mysterious interior of Australia will be but a great public highway for the commerce and enterprise of the colonists.

Collaborations for August 2013

The Proofread of the Month for August 2013 is focused on works by women authors. The first selected book is Marriage as a Trade (1909) by Cicely Hamilton. It deals with "the trade aspect of marriage. That is to say, wifehood and motherhood considered as a means of livelihood for women."

The Maintenance of the Month task for August 2013 is Portal classification review. Wikisource portals use an adapted version of the Library of Congress Classification. Review ensures that they are classified in the relevant classes and subclasses.

Administrator confirmations

Three administrators were confirmed in July 2013:

Five administrators will have their confirmation discussions in August 2013:

Milestones

The Wikisource projects continue to grow and reach important milestones. Two projects announced text unit milestones in July. Text units are individual content pages—which counts individual chapters, article, tables of content and title pages where they are separate—one or many of which can make up a single work. First it was the Spanish Wikisource reaching 80,000 units on the 3rd July. Then, on the 16th, the Slovenian Wikisource entered five-digits for the first time with their 10,000th text unit. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Wikisource celebrated their 10,000th page (including project pages, categories and other material) on the 6th July.