Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2006-11

Proposals

{{Translator?}}

I want to encourrage everyone to start marking any translations which do not identify the translator with the above template. Perhaps this will encourage the people using these texts to provide the neccessary information. Please feel free to improve the templates. Also if you indentify the translator and remove this template please add the approriate copyright tag and the Category:Works translated from Foo. Does anyone else have suggestions?--BirgitteSB 15:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd rename it to {{Unknowntranslator}}. Also, how long will this be kept on the page? I suggest that it be kept short-term (a few weeks); otherwise, it shouldn't be worded as strongly and should be put on the talk page instead. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:51, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I have no preference about the name. However I do feel the strength of wording is approriate even if is around some time. It is modeled after {{refdata}}, which has been on pages for months. Perhaps it needs to link to a larger explanation like {{refdata}} does. I don't want to put a time limit on this until we know how many of these we have. Then we can schedule the whole process like we did for {{refdata}}. I am strongly against moving this to the talk page. Making these visible is the only chance we have at getting people to help us with the research. Although now that I think of it we could make the meassage weaker for now and stretghen it once we have a schedule in place. Do you have any suggestions for alternate wording?--BirgitteSB 17:27, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

For the sake of the people who reuse our content (this is a bigger issue on Wikipedia than here, admittedly), I don't like lots of metadata on the article page itself. However, we do it for incomplete texts and such, so it's probably not a big deal. However, if we're going to treat these as potential copyvios, we should keep the time short, and then if a translator doesn't surface, we delete. Later, an admin can undelete if it becomes clear who the translator was.

Also, I've tightened the wording somewhat, but I'm not sure that the last sentence is really necessary. I don't get the impression that works are interconnected very much on Wikisource, and I'm not sure it makes sense to delink the work on the author page. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 20:44, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

I took out that sentance. I certainly don't want to keep copyvio's around very long. However I want to make sure we have enough time do to at least a cursory search for the translator. If we end having a a thousand of these I would hate to only have two weeks to go through all them. We just don't have the manpower. But once we have an idea how many there are, I defiinately want to work out a schedule to make sure they are dealt with.--BirgitteSB 21:12, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

This is a good idea. I'll try to go through the speeches & tag them next week as I know we have a few translations there. AllanHainey 12:19, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Speeches are tagged. Some may not need to be (Nobel speeches) as I'm uncertain thee language they were given in. AllanHainey 12:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

This template is good. I will plan to use it here and make one at Chinese Wikisource as well.--Jusjih 13:05, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

How does this apply to original translations, such as the one for the Mishnah? Kari Hazzard (T | C) 15:16, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Dovi is the one to talk to in terms of translations for the Mishnah. I believe it's all user translated, but I am not certain on this.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 18:55, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I was more inquiring as to if we need to specify a translator for user translations in general. I ask because as a member of the project working on the Mishnah, it would alter the way I work if so. Kari Hazzard (T | C) 19:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

User translation are not a problem as long as the user releases their coprights under a compatible license. See Wikisource:Copyright policy. The reasin we wish to identify translators is first and foremost to determine the copyright of the work--BirgitteSB 19:06, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

When our users make their translations, they should indicate that they did them. Should we have a template for user translations?--Jusjih 14:49, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Bot account: YannBot

Hi,

I am requesting bot status for YannBot. I would like to upload scans of books, which will be presented with ThomasV's new Page feature. I would start with Brundtland Report. The first page is available at Image:Brundtland en-000.png. Yann 19:55, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The Image use guidelines recommend uploading these to the WikiCommons; shouldn't upload bots be on that project instead? —{admin} Pathoschild 20:59, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I don't think there is any use for these images outside Wikisource. Beside that people on Commons told me that they don't accept scanned books. I already have to argue for the Encyclopedy plates, which are half texts and half drawings. Yann 18:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

apparently commons and en.ws have not adopted consistent policies about scanned pages. I do not think that a contributor should be stuck waiting for a common policy to be arrived at, because that problem might take a long time to be solved. I support bot status. ThomasV 19:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

This is odd. We've had talks with other Commons people who gave us the impression that scanned books would be welcome (nay, even encouraged) on Commons. After all, de:ws uses Commons to host their scans. Have you recently heard that Commons won't take any book scans?—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:55, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

On #wikimedia-commons, I was told that scans are discouraged on Commons. But the main point is that scans are not useful apart for proofreading. And the policy seems to agree about that: Criteria for inclusion: scans of an original text (or an image plate for an original text) for illustration, proofreading, or transcribing; Yann 20:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that scans are generally used for proofreading. But we still will want to proofread text in several language domains. I don't like the idea of having to reupload an image to every subdomain for this purpose, with Commons a scan can be transcluded as needed. If we do not make this easy we will end up encouraging the use of a transcription to proofread a translation, which I think is a bad idea. How would other languages even know these scans are available if they are not on Commons? The development of these guidelines was done in collaboration with Commons [1], so I would not give much weight to whoever was on IRC.

On the other hand this is something we should talk about amoung all the subdomains. German and english apparently are using Commons, French apparently aren't, what is everyone else doing? There are other issues that have not really been discused that go along with this. And new features are constanly becoming available. I still don't understand how DejaVu works with all this.--BirgitteSB 13:26, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Here is what I suggest. Upload the book to distributed proofreaders, a site that takes scanned public domain books, OCRs them with a great program, and then has people check the pages through a fantastic system. They are the main source of books filtering into project gutenberg. They can work with it and turn it into a good HTML result even if it involves diagrams, figures, etcetera. The problem is the book might not be transcripted for a while, or even taken up as a project for a while. You can solve that last problem by taking up the job of project leader by yourself if you'd like. But my point is, if you'd like to set free some books which aren't entirely graphical, you'd be best off uploading them to distributed proofreaders, pgdp.net -72.227.119.208 02:11, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

We now have the same functionalities as PGDP. The purpose is to publish books here, so proofreading should be done here, IMHO. I have uploaded the scans to Commons. Yann 21:53, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Vote

• Oppose with this scope. Such images should be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons per the Image use guidelines. Although uploading a few locally is fine, doing so en masse is a problem. —[admin] Pathoschild 21:00, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion closed, no support after over a month. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot account: DamonBot

Per the bot policy, I am requesting permission to operate a bot on this web site.

Bot account: DamonBot

Purpose: to automate the process of uploading and updating the topics from the book "Complete Encyclopedia of Music"

Programming language: Perl

Degreee of human interaction involved: none, other than starting it; the bot is not intended to be a cron job, it is manually kicked off

Scope: this bot is for uploading newly-scanned entries from the music encyclopedia, and for applying edits and corrections as needed. The bot will not normally re-edit an article unless the article text has changed and needs to be updated on the web site.

The bot fits into the process of converting and uploading the contents of the encyclopedia. After I scan several pages (about 20-30 at a time), I run the pages through an OCR, proofread via the OCR software, and apply light wiki formatting (bold, italic, paragraph breaks, etc.). I store the edited article data in a series of large text files, with article separation lines. A separate Perl script chops up these data files into individual files, and formats each for use as wiki text (such things as the header and footer are added, and paragraphs are separated by blank lines). I then check these files into CVS. This bot then examines the status of each of these files against the content on the web site. If the content differs (including when there is no content, for new articles), then the bot updates the article. The bot retrieves articles by downloading the article's web edit form, and preserves all form fields for use when content is uploaded.

If the bot operates in CVS mode, then it will only examine articles which are currently out-of-date with respect to my CVS repository (such as when I make an edit to an article), otherwise the bot will examine all topics in turn, and upload changed content as needed.

The bot has a configurable edit timer, to space any edit to no less than some number of seconds (according to the bot policy, non-flagged bots should make an edit no faster than once a minute, flagged bots no faster than every 5 seconds).

According to the bot policy, if there are no objections to use of this bot, I will begin using it Friday, 29 September 2006, with a minimum 1-minute delay between edits.

If all goes well, again according to the policy, I will request a "bot flag" on the "DamonBot" account. I'll make this request sometime in October.

--Damon 02:30, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Before I feel comfortable supporting the creation of this bot account, I think that the script(s) which will be used need(s) to be touched up a bit. Currently as it stands, from my own observations, it's nearly impossible for humans to correct these (being the Music Encyclopedia's) pages. If you do, the script will overwrite them with the old copies that it had before when/if it goes to make another update. Also, when the script creates pages, there are many typos in the titles (especially for people whose names have been abbreviated). These pages cannot be fixed, because if they are moved the script will recreate them in the old (bad) title and we're back at square one. I may be wrong about this, but this comes from how I've observed the script operating over its initial few days' use.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:31, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I had thought of this, hence CVS integration. I'd like to be able to compare the contents of the wiki with the on-disk contents, and if they differ, to perform a merge between the two and save all changes. Perhaps there's an API for the wiki? I'd be nice to have some way to easily determine which version of a page is the most current. I could poll the history page, but that might get expensive in terms of load on the wiki. I don't want to replace how the wiki works, but I'm looking at many thousands of topics to upload and edit, and I can batch them far more easily on my HD than I can on the wiki itself. --Damon 04:31, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The API you're looking for is the MediaWiki Query Interface. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:35, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Vote

• Neutral. I see the bot was still running until 19 October 2006, but there was no follow-up to the comments above. Have Zhaladshar's concerns been addressed? Have the bugs been ironed out? Either way, I think the test run has gone on long enough to demonstrate the bot. —[admin] Pathoschild 21:08, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion closed, no support or follow up comment after over a month. —{admin} Pathoschild 05:21, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot account: TalBot

I eventually could not resist and created an account User:TalBot from which I'd like to run a bot. Its first tasks would be the ones outlined on Wikisource:Bot requests, namely the integration of roughly 1000 pages from two physics texts into the ProofreadPage framework. I've drafted a script in the Python language to process the first 10 pages from Experimental researches in electricity for starters. It relies on the pywikipedia library, is started manually and then runs non-interactively. Since this is my first bot script, and indeed my first Python program, comments and scrutiny by experienced users are appreciated. (Unfortunately there is no option to "dry-run" the script first.)

If there are no objections, I'll use the Wikisource:Bot requests page to link to the script source code and to provide an execution schedule.

If everything goes well and I've got the time, I can write scripts for other requests posted to that page.--GrafZahl 18:03, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll start a slow-motion test run of my bot at around 12:00 UTC today (unless there is opposition). It'll post details on Wikisource:Bot requests.--GrafZahl 08:07, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Bot flag
I'm formally requesting a bot flag for my bot, TalBot. Here's a summary what the bot achieved (and what trouble it caused):

• It is active since 5 October 2006.
• It moved all existing pages from Experimental researches in electricity to the new Page: namespace, placing soft redirects over the old names and making the pages ready for transclusion (protecting the navigation template).
• It has started doing the same thing for A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
• The bot had startup problems due to an assignment problem in pywikipedia's namespace translations. A bug report was filed and the bug has been fixed.
• Page moves behave unexpectedly different from page changes. For one, they are not throttled (not that much of a problem in this special case because the moves are interspersed with puts), and manual throttling via time.sleep interacts badly with pywikipedia's putthrottle. Moreover, failed moves do not raise exceptions, and what's worse, may return None which evaluates to False even if the move succeeds. These problems resulted in the creation of 16 unnecessary pages, which have already been speedily deleted. Two bugs have been filed regarding these issues, but not yet been fixed. The script has been altered to check for exact False returns, so hopefully this problem does not occur again.
• On very rare occasions, there is a loss of session data, which so far caused two anonymous edits by the bot despite pywikipedia's rule not to edit anonymously. I've not been able to track down or reproduce this problem yet and hope it doesn't occur too often.

All in all, with its teething problems cared for, I believe it is fairly safe to continue operating this bot.--GrafZahl 08:54, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you could throttle manually, i.e. be calling wikipedia.put_throttle() before each page move, if necessary -Sanbeg 15:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll try that on the next run.--GrafZahl 19:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

After no response in several days, I hope you don't find it too presumptuous if I continue running the bot in slow-motion, so it can at least complete its current page move task. It would really be extremely tedious to do all this by hand.--GrafZahl 08:56, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I looks fine to me, but I'm not super-familiar with this language. If the problems are as rare as you say, I don't see any problem. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 17:23, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Vote

• In order to get a vote actually going, I'm going to vote support for a bot flag.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 01:29, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support. GrafZahl is obviously capable in running a bot, and the test run shows some ingenuity and open-endedness. —[admin] Pathoschild 20:51, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
• Support; in case my comment above wasn't clear enough. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 01:54, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot status granted.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 23:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! The bot's "official" work will begin tomorrow. See the bot requests page for details.--GrafZahl 11:13, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Change the policy for inactive administrators

A discussion is ongoing at Wikisource talk:Administrator policy#Inactivity regarding possible changes to the policy regarding inactive administrators. Please comment there if you have an opinion on the matter. —[admin] Pathoschild 03:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• I support the change. It fixes (what I see to be) a few problems with the original wording as the discussion between Pathoschild and Spangineer has pointed out.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 03:54, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support; suggested change is an improvement. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 00:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
• Support as well --BirgitteSB 01:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Implemented. —[admin] Pathoschild 22:48, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Unenforceable copyright

There is discussion about allowing or disallowing unenforceable copyright at "Unenforceable copyright" (Copyright policy discussion). Please discuss there if you have an opinion on the matter. —[admin] Pathoschild 19:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Extend edit toolbar

French wikisource have a very nice toolbar with plenty of functionnality. This gives this as default toolbalr :

.

Are you interesting with that ? --Bertrand GRONDIN 20:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I could implement this, adapting the output to English Wikisource templates. I'd prefer TemplateScript for templates when it's completed, but my opinion as its author is no doubt biased. We can always switch templates over to that later if we like. —[admin] Pathoschild 20:53, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. I waver between being ambivalent to slightly not wanting it. All of these things (besides the templates) only take me a few seconds to code, so I don't really need to have automatic insert scripts for redirects, superscripts, and the like. Also, much of the coding is relatively common HTML/WML code, so unless a person were completely new to online editing, they'll probably know how to write most of the features the expanded toolbar would give. I think this would be something that would be good for maybe individual users to add the code to their own monobooks, but I don't see it being necessary to add for all users (unless of course, such a thing can be disabled by users who don't want/need it--then I would have less of a problem with expanding the toolbar).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 21:20, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I did not edit Wikipedia for a few days. When I did, bam! there was a bunch of new things on the toolbar. I can't say that I like it. --Benn Newman 01:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Please no. Most of them are used so infrequently it's not even worth the extra effort required to find the buttons that are actually useful. The only thing I can think of that would be nice would be a redirect button, but I'd rather stick with what we've got than add two dozen useless buttons. Even better would be cutting back to bold, italics, internal link, no wiki, and signature. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 02:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

In french wikisource, these new buttons are used frequently. We can adapt them to english wikisource on used template or tabs. I can create buttons and put them on commons for using them. Ask yann for that or Zephyrus. Test them on french wikisource on your own sandbox. You'll understand ;-) --Bertrand GRONDIN 21:49, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'll give it a whirl. Personally, I feel there is virtually no point to having buttons for external links, making headers, striking comments, adding images, making numbered or bulleted lists, poems, galleries, indenting, small text, superscripts, subpages, line breaks, or div classes. All of these are either trivial to do yourself (external links, subpages, indenting) or so infrequently used that it's useless to have them there taking up space (galleries, superscripts, small text, strike out). I do like the non-breaking space thing, but only for Wikipedia; I don't see much use for it here. Adding a header button has the potential for being useful, especially if it would look at the title of the page and automatically fill in appropriate fields (previous, next, title). --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 00:02, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Just toss it up as a half-dozen small mini-polls at once, "Would you support adding a header template button? An Author Page template? A textinfo template?", etcetera. Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 02:53, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the wiki section of the French edittools menu, fr:MediaWiki:Edittools, is a better solution than adding all these buttons to the toolbar. /81.229.40.100 11:09, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Questions

Crimen Solliciatonis

Anybody knows if this English translation from a original in Latim is copyrighted? At the top, From the Supreme and Holy Congregation of the Holy Office (...) The Vatican Press 1962. Copyright of Vatican works is so very complex to me :( . Lugusto ⁵⁵⁵ 15:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is copyrighted unless specifically released. the Vatican City State (or "Holy See") is a party to the Berne Convention, and follows Italian copyright law (ref. here in Italian), so either 70 years after the author's death for named authors (Art. 25), or 70 years after publication for anonymous or collective works(Art. 26). Physchim62 08:41, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The Comic History of Rome

commons:Category:The Comic History of Rome: wouldn't it be just grand to have this one on wikisource? 82.83.40.61 (de:Benutzer:Jonathan Groß) 20:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

monobook.js file & author page

Hi, I'm showing my own ignorance here but some time ago CSN helped me set up my monobook.js file to add the author template at the push one of the buttons at the top of the edit screen. As we've updated the author template can anyone let me know what changes I need to make to get it to add the new version instead of the old?

Thanks AllanHainey 12:13, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert either, but I'd start trying to change the line containing javascript:insertTags('{{Author|\\n Name=\\n|Dates=\\n|FileUnder=\\n|FirstLetterLastName=\\n|Wikipedia=\\n|Wikiquote=\\n|Wikicommons=\\n|TOC=\\n|MiscBio=\\n|Image=\\n}} to use the new parameter names instead and see if it works.--HTH, GrafZahl 12:40, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

hmm. you must write \n but not \\n. It will be better. --Bertrand GRONDIN 07:39, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

That's great thanks. AllanHainey 11:43, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Political agreements

Hi, i just created an account last night. This is the right place to put things like political agreements? I can't seem to find the right categories. I want to add the Road-Map for Peace, and past agreements signed between Israel and Palestine. Thanks Pockets23 15:01, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

The categories are a work progress at the moment. You may have better luck looking through Wikisource:Historical documents. The only thing you need to be careful of with these sorts of things is copyright, especially the copyright of english translations. It is important to research who actually wrote these documents and if you are really lucky it will be employees of the US gov't because everything they do for the federal gov't is public domain.--BirgitteSB 15:56, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Israeli government works are copyrighted (s. 18, Copyright Act 1911 as modified), the copyright status if works of the Palestinian Authority is a minor nightmare, but may well be governed by the same provision (inherited from the British Mandate). However there may be case law relaxing this, I simply don't know. Physchim62 08:47, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Wishlist

Things I'd love to see:

• Literary forms used in texts mentioned (in like a metadata field that could be searched for things like "quatrain")
• Type of poem searchable in a similar fashion (such as "fourteener" or "sonnet")
• The ability to search a text which is broken up into parts for all instances of a single word, without having to go into each segment and hit CTRL + F

Any plans on any of these? Jade Knight 09:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The categories can fulfill the first two, to a limited degree. Categories are most useful when they are kept to a sufficiently small number that users can remember them; maybe I'll write a categorization wizard, so users can check boxes and select menu options to output all relevant categories. That would allow us to easily scale the number of categories.

The last option is possible using Google's site-specific search syntax. For example, see a Google search for "site:en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine Weena". —[admin] Pathoschild 09:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Pagination

It would be helpful to include the original pagination to a text, as references from within the text or from somewhere else is often done with page numbers. Is there a sane way to do this?—unsigned comment by 128.198.53.157 (talk) .

There is no sane way to do this (that I am aware of). Plus pagination depends on a particular printing, so it is completely unreliable for most works.--BirgitteSB 22:15, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Of course, the appropriate source information would have to be included for things to make sense. I'm not suggesting that pagination be included for all works; but rather, if the need arises (and this is why I asked), it would be nice to have some feature to indicate page numbering. A more general mechanism that could be used to include side notes would also be great.—unsigned comment by 128.198.53.157 (talk) .

Do you have a particular text in mind?--BirgitteSB 01:48, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Thomas bayes' Divine Benevolence from 1731 is a response to John Balguy's Divine rectitude from 1730; references are given by page numbers. These two tracts prompted my original question. If there was some way to link to a particular point in a text, then page referneces could be sent to the appropriate place in the text; but this does not seem possible.—unsigned comment by 128.198.53.157 (talk) .

You can link to sections, like [[Page#section]]; it should be possible to create the section anchor without the heading in HTML, i.e. <a name="section></a> -Steve Sanbeg 18:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Just a side note: in my experience, pagerefs are used occasionally in scientific works. It is customary to give the page number, author, work title, edition number and publisher to make the reference unambiguous. I do not know how sensible they are in other types of works. Naturally, pagination info is available automatically if the scanned pages of the work are on WikiCommons (and with tools like ProofreadPage the page number of a certain location in a text can be found quickly). If the work is not available in scanned form, pagination info would somehow have to be input manually by the editor. I believe that's too much of a hassle.--GrafZahl 09:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Proofreading works without a source specified

I have (just) started working on proofreading poems (might as well do something with that > US$100 poetry book I have!). It seems that it is fairly common for different sources to have different spellings and punctuation. If a work does not have source information, the contributor is no longer contributing or does not know the source, and my reference version has different spellings etc.: should I change the work to my version, put my version as the source in {{Template:textinfo}}? (see also Wikisource:Text quality) --Benn Newman 00:42, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes--BirgitteSB 01:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

What exactly does Wikisource publish?

I'm just wondering what sort of things should be contributed here? Like classics or just any book? Texas Drama King 22:55, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

We accept a wide range of documents here. Many of the common ones include: novels, short stories, poems, speeches, government works, religious works. Basically, anything that has been pubished before (by some entity, be it government, an organization, or a printing press, for example) in a hard copy form and is either in the public domain (copyright has expired) or licensed under a GFDL-license. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 22:59, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

String Figures and How To Make Them

My girlfriend and I plan to upload scanned pages from Jayne's "String Figures and How To Make Them" to WikiCommons, so they can be OCRed/transcribed here at Wikisource. I'm fairly sure this text (most of it at least) is in the public domain, but I'd like to hear your opinion on some of the finer points lest this endeavour not be in vain. The facts:

• The work was first published in 1906 in the US.
• We would be uploading from the jurisdiction of the European Union.
• The author, Caroline Furness Jayne, has been deceased for more than 70 (indeed more than 95) years.
• However, we will not be using the 1906 edition but the 1962 edition. On the verso of the title page it reads "This new Dover edition, first published in 1962, is an unabridged republication of the work first published by Charles Scribner's Sons in 1906 under the former title: String Figures." I concluded from this that the 1962 work did not gain new copyright, because it lacks new originality, and even if it had, it would be in the public domain by now, since a copyright notice is nowhere to be found.
• Is the new title, String Figures and How To Make Them, copyrightable? If so, we'd have to use the old title, just String Figures.
• The work contains a foreword by Alfred Haddon, who has been deceased for 65 years now. I believe this means we (as opposed to US residents) cannot upload the foreword part until 2011.
• The book contains several photographs depicting people making string figures. I picked a handful of them at random and tried to find out when the photographers died by Wikipedia or even Google search. Results: zilch. The death dates of the people depicted are probably even harder to gain (do they matter at all?). What should we do about them?

Thanks for your comments.--GrafZahl 15:03, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Judging from what I recently saw with some Bobbsey Twin books, the only issue you'd be facing would be using the old title of "String Figures", not the 1962 title. The death dates of the people pictured is inconsequential, but if there is no licensing information contained in the book itslf for the photos, then they can be presumed to be Jayne's photos, and thus as PD as the book itself. As per the foreward, assuming it was published in the 1906 version of the book, it's fine for Wikisource certainly...though if you were worried about technicalities, you could eMail it to someone outside the EU to attach to the WS book. Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 05:58, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. We'll start scanning soon (tomorrow I hope) but before uploading, we'll wait to see what becomes of bug 7957. I guess it's legal for us to forward scans to someone who owns a copy of the book, and if that person can legally upload to Wikisource, we are set. Quite some loophole, one might think. Thanks for sharing this idea!.--GrafZahl 13:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

GrafZahl, if the book is PD, either by fact of publication date (that is, the material was previously published before 1923 and no significant changes have been made that would warrant a new copyright) or by no notice of a copyright (which seems to be the case with the '62 version), you should be able to upload it yourself (unless it's still under copyright, I guess you might not be able to). Regardless, if you want any help, I can upload the entire batch if you forward it to me and I can help with the OCR if needed.—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 02:28, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Appropriateness?

Would it be appropriate to transfer this USAF speech to Wikisource? THOR 19:59, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think so. --Pmsyyz 23:32, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Russian Stuff

I'm interested in adding some stuff written by Russian writers during the Soviet era. My understanding of the copyright situation for these works is rather fuzzy, but I think it's something like this: Under the Communist era all written works were state property, so with the fall of the Soviet state the works are effectively in the public domain. Is my assumption correct? Galanskov 07:43, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a hotly debated point, wherein nobody really entirely agrees on the copyright status of Soviet works. Personally I'm one of those who holds to the notion that the government-produced documents should be considered PD, but that is of course strongly contested. So if you're dealing with government texts...you're taking a chance. But non-government "private" texts most certainly do maintain a copyright just like in any country. λεμα σαβαχθανει ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 09:08, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Some government works are probably copyright exempt, laws especially, but ther is no blanket freedom as there is in the U.S. Private works are copyrighted for 50–70 years after the death of the author (a large grey area, yes, but that seems to be the current consensus). Physchim62 15:31, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Rule of the shorter term

On Possible copyright violations, the number of years since an author's death has been used for arguments for and against works being copyright violations. Since the United States do not use the rule of the shorter term, why would a work being in the public domain in its home country automatically make it public domain in the United States (except for works covered by {{PD-1996}})? —Benn Newman ^(AMDG) 02:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

A work published in the United States enters the public domain based on those criteria. However, a work published outside the United States and never published in the US are subject to different criteria, of which that is one. The requirement that the work not be published in the US really should be noted in the template; an oversight I've just corrected.

For more information, see User:Pathoschild/Help:Public domain (particularly, "Published outside the United States" and the references). —{admin} Pathoschild 03:39, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

For "Not published in the United States", read "Not first or simultaneously published in the United States" (my italics). Animal Farm would have been eligible for copyright restoration had the U.S. copyright expired at the end of 1973, for example. Works which were first (or simultaneously, that is within 30 days) published in the United States, and all works by U.S. citizens or residents, are inelegible for copyright restoration and they U.S. copyright status is covered by normal U.S. rules. Works by foreign authors which were first published abroad may be eligible for copyright restoration, which usually depends on their status in their "source country" on January 1, 1996. Hence yes, a work can be in the public domain in its source country and still under copyright in the United States by a variety of means: simultaneous publication in the U.S., restored U.S. copyright or multiple nationality or residence of the author. The United States does not apply the "rule of the shorter term", also known as "comparison of copyrights", as to do so would require U.S. judges to apply nasty foreign laws (they have to anyway, but that's another matter!). Physchim62 16:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Other discussions

You know what I'd love?

A tool that pops up a little window on my screen whenever an anonymous editor touches an article on my watchlist...I doubt there's such a thing out there, even for Wikipedia, but still :Þ Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 03:17, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Page progress template

I've created a page progress template, modelled on {{textinfo}}. This could be useful complementing {{textinfo}}, especially for larger works, where e.g. a single user can't be expected to proofread the whole thing.

Here is an example how the template might look like on pages. My idea is that it'd be placed on pages in the "Page" namespace directly (not on their talk pages), protected by <noinclude>…</noinclude> tags, to give editors an instant overview about what still needs to be done on the page.

I'd welcome any improvement suggestions/comments (or if you think this is a good idea at all). If it finds acceptance, I'd update Help:Adding texts#Advanced procedure accordingly.

--GrafZahl 13:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this template actually adds any benefit to the textinfo box as text completeness, formatting &other notes are all things that if relevant I would mention on the textinfo notes field.

I'm unclear too how overall level of completeness could be arrived at on a large work with a number of chapters in various stages of completeness.

I can't see a reason to introduce this, and I wouldn't want it put on the text page in any event as I feel the talk page is more appropriate. AllanHainey 11:56, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, maybe my idea is too complicated. What I'm looking for is a solution to the following problem. Imagine you have a work consisting of 1000 pages (A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism is such an example). Each page is proofread individually and it is conceivable that there are dozens of proofreaders who need to be mentioned. That per se can't be helped, but it seems daunting to me to grub this information out of 1000 page histories.

Maybe we should acknowledge more self-responsibility from editors and ask them to list themselves as proofreaders ("page 42 proofread by SomeUser" or something).

As for overall text quality of a work, the simplest thing would be to choose the minimum text quality of its pages. This problem already arises from the use of the {{PageQuality}} template alone.

I thought a page progress template (if we ever have one) should be placed on the page directly because the Page:-namespace is some sort of workspace anyhow. But the actual placement is maybe not that important.

--GrafZahl 09:30, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Suicide note licencing

This discussion was moved from Template talk:PD-suicide. // [admin] Pathoschild 02:04, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer but I can see no reason why copyright law would apply any differently to something written just before a person's death than to anything else written by that person. If the suicide is successful then the legal heirs of the person would inherit the copyright. Just because there are no specific laws on suicide notes doesn't mean we can assume that they are in the public domain. Haukur 17:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Even if they are clearly addressed to wider public? (i.e. Anonymous Jonestown suicide note) Or it was part of a criminal inquiry released by officials? If someone comes here and claims we are infringing on thier copyright; I have no wish to argue with them. However I have no desire to remove this whole category because there is a possibility the copyright is owned by someone, somewhere. That is simply copyright paranoia. An unfortunate thing about copyright is that is impossible to determine in a number of cases. Until someone gets a court decision, everyone (lawyers or not) is simply guessing on how a court might rule. --12.210.206.171 21:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC) This was me --BirgitteSB 02:22, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Publication doesn't remove copyright, I think we'd know about it if it did. I quite agree with Haukur, these things fall under fair use rather than any exception. Physchim62 15:15, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Speaking as a Journalism graduate myself, I can promise you that the first thing drilled into any reporter's head is "Fair Use can never justify copying an entire work" (See Religious Technology Center v. Lerma, 40 U.S.P.Q. 2d 1569 (E.D. Va. 1996) for an example), no matter how short, which leads into the question of whether the desired text is fairly considered public domain, or permission can be obtained. In the case of the suicide notes, they would almost certainly be ruled to be outside of copyright, but that is admittedly speculation - but keep in mind that many of these suicide notes were written by world-famous celebrities whose copyright would be very jealously guarded...yet not a single estate has ever tried to claim copyright of a note - the fact w:Courtney Love hasn't tried to get w:Kurt Cobain's suicide note copyrighted is simply because...she can't.

As Birgitte said, if anybody ever came here and claimed to be the valid copyright holder by virtue of their proven relation to the person in question, we would certainly remove the text giving their claims the benefit of the doubt - but the simple fact is, that's never going to happen. Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 12:34, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You claim knowledge as a journalism graduate, but you fail to adress the question: are these notes copyrighted or not? What one potential plaintiff may or may not have done is not really of any relevance. Wikisource is currently claiming that such material is outside of the realm of copyright, which seems to be a singularly reckless thing to do given the lack of cases either in the U.S. or elsewhere. A way out would be to say that we are using these under a presumed licence, but we should state that fact for the benefit of reusers. Physchim62 13:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Please read the template again. We clearly state that the copyright is unclear and we are presuming it is PD. Unfortunately the only way the copyright will become clear is when case law is available on the subject. If you are aware of any lawsuits on this or a similar subject, please share the cases with me I would certainly like to have more informationon the matter.--BirgitteSB 19:24, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

But I read the template, that's what got me arguing :) The copyright status does not seem in the least unclear to me: the copyright in the suicide note belongs to the author's heirs, and hence the note can only be used under fair use (or a presumed licence, which do not exist in w:civil law justdictions). These notes are not public domain and should not be described as such. By saying "there are no lawsuits, so we can do waht we like", you are merely inviting someone to sue us! Physchim62 12:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid we will just have to disagree about the clarity of the law here. From everything I have learned, in common law jurisdictions (which is where the servers reside) clarity is only obtained through court decisions. That said I know that the community here has an extreme amount of respect for copyright and if anything more substantial that armchair legal theories comes out about the copyright status of these; we will respect it. Also if we ever receive a complaint from someone who claims to own the copyright, we will take it down; not invite them to sue. --BirgitteSB 23:22, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Copyright law is complex but it isn't completely inscrutable. The point is that so far no argument at all has been advanced as to why copyright law would apply any differently to suicide notes than to some other text written by the same person. If you have such an argument, please present it. You're acting as if somehow the default situation is that texts are in the public domain and that something "more substantial than armchair legal theories" is needed to prove that they are copyrighted - this is exactly the opposite of our policies. We assume texts are copyrighted unless there is a good legal argument why they are not. If you want to use those texts under a vague "we can probably get away with it and we'll take them down if someone complains" argument then the template should reflect that and not misleadingly state that the texts are in the public domain. Haukur 16:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see my intial response. Suicide notes which clearly address the world at large lead me to believe they should be handled as manifestos. I do not believe all suicide notes will be public domain, however this discussion is about the template in general. I have never said documents are public domain by default.--BirgitteSB 23:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the manifesto template, I find it just as inappropriate. "This work is a public manifesto or speech which is not known to be licensed, and is assumed to be in the public domain." How is that not assuming that documents are public domain by default? "not known to be licenced" = "public domain"? A guy gives a speech (Karl_Popper:_Prague_lecture,_1994) and we assume the speech is in the public domain? Why ever? In the copyright sense public domain means I can do essentially anything I like with a work. Can I incorporate these suicide notes and 'manifestos' into a bestselling novel? Can I modify them as I like and republish them? No case has been made that this is the case. Maybe you can make a case for something like "this can probably be republished by anyone as long as it isn't altered and no money is being made" but that's not the same as "can be assumed to be in the public domain". Haukur 10:26, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

You mean a book like The World's Great Speeches, a German anthology of suicide notes, or "Or Not to Be: A collection of famous suicide notes? Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 17:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

(<--)OK First of all using a speech is a very bad example here. It completely muddies the waters over the scope of this disscussion. But since it now must be explained; here are some basics. (BTW does anyone else think we need to make and FAQ to the the copyright policy?)

• Speeches are uncopyrightable. Copyright only applies to works which are in tangible form. Orations are not tangible and cannot be copyrighted. I don't see a problem with saying these documents are public domain.

• Manifestos are obviously intended for public consumption. They are often put out by revolutionary groups who are not a part of normalized society. These people want to share their views with the world but have not consulted a lawyer about how to properly mark copyright on the homemade handbills they distribute through clandestine means while they are hiding deep in the jungle. I do not see a problem with these documents.

• Suicide Notes run the spectrum. I do not beleive we can presume they are all PD, but many of them clearly are meant to be for the world at large. Others are more personal. However I am interested in what was done about these copyrights for the book Sherurcij mentions. I really would like more information on this issue. I am not sure about where the line is here.

• Copyright Paranoia is when a person is convinced the exact copyright status of every document must be explictly confirmed in order for it to be acceptable. This is not possible far more often than you would like to believe. Copyright is often inscrutable for particular documents. Most people who become interested in copyright go through this stage before finding a balance. It is perfectly normal.--BirgitteSB 18:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

• "Speeches are uncopyrightable." <- Wrong. Unrecorded improvisational speeches are not copyrighted but some of the examples above, such as Churchill's speeches, certainly are. You can't publish a collection including Churchill's speeches without getting permissions from his grandson (or whoever now holds the copyright).

• "These people want to share their views with the world but have not consulted a lawyer about how to properly mark copyright on the homemade handbills" <- That doesn't matter, copyright will apply regardless of the legal savvy of the author. And even if they want their manifestos to become widely read they may not at all be happy with them being modified and commercially exploited, which is what you can do with material that is truly in the public domain. Once again, "we can probably publish this without getting into trouble" is not the same thing as "public domain".

• "I do not believe we can presume [suicide notes] are all PD" <- I agree. That's why having a template implying they are all in the public domain is not good. Haukur 23:11, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

OK here is the crux of the matter. Your position is that these areas should not be blanket claimed PD, but there is no clear blanket claim for anything. I do not believe this claim is worse than anything else that is equally likely to be incorrect. An indeterminate copyright template is thought to be a bad idea by people who know more than me. There will never be a clear answer in every case. Pushing for an definate answer in such areas is fruitless. I am more concerned with rooting out the more blatent copyright violations while hoping in the meantime I will be able to get some real legal opinions on these matters. If you would like to help root out copyright violations, I am currently searching out works that were not originally written in English and do not identify the translator. If you would like to start with authors whose names end in Z and work downwards it would be a great help. When these problamatic translations are found you can put {{Translator?}} on them. If you are more interested in copyright research you could be of great help by working to discover the copyright terms of foriegn goverments. We have a lot of foriegn constitutions and laws which may not be free of copyright. I need to know if the original laguage version is copyrighted before dealing with the issue of the translation copyright. There is much work to do in this area.--BirgitteSB 04:34, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm just concerned that this will end up like the PD-Soviet template on Wikipedia Commons. That was a very complicated issue and lots of people wanted to interpret any uncertainty in favour of keeping the images. At any point you could have argued (and I bet some people did) that there were more obvious copyvios to track down and delete. But in the end the PD-Soviet images did get deleted, with much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth.

I'll admit that I haven't explored the English Wikisource much. Looking around today it seems to me that it contains a lot of documents which are not freely licenced or in the public domain. Following just links from the main page I see Lee Harvey Oswald's diary, JonBenét Ramsey ransom note, Bin Laden's letter to the father of a captured militant and Amish school shooter's suicide note. I don't see why any of these would be in the public domain and as far as I can see no argument is being made that they are. Wikisource:Copyright says: "All works on Wikisource must be in the public domain or released under a license compatible with the GFDL. It is the responsibility of the contributor to assert compatibility with Wikisource's license" This is not in sync with what is actually going on. If this is meant as a "collection of documents we can get away with republishing" (and I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that) then the copyright policy should say so. Haukur 12:09, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Watch how slyly I act like every single one of those articles isn't mine...no, seriously though, the ransom note is an orphaned work where the author refuses to acknowledge authorship, so copyright doesn't apply (see the template for details), the suicide note we've already covered, Lee Harvey Oswald's diary was written in the Soviet Union prior to 1973, and the translation of bin Laden's note is a work of the US Gov't and automatically public domain. Sherurcij ^{(talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN)} 15:58, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll take these one by one. Orphaned works are not the same as public domain works. In order to qualify for Sec. 514 protection on orphan works you have to show that you "performed and documented a reasonably diligent search in good faith to locate the owner of the infringed copyright; but were unable to locate the owner". (I'll concede that this doesn't really make any sense here.) But as soon as a copyright holder appears and asserts their rights you would have to take the text down. That something was written—or even published—in the Soviet Union prior to 1973 does not put it in the public domain, this has been argued at great length on the Commons. Osama bin Laden holds the copyright to his writings and to translations of his writings. Haukur 17:32, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not understand what youf concern is regarding PD-Soviet. These issues will be uncertain until we can get lawyers to give us their opinions. Although I will say that I did get a response from w:User:BradP some months ago about speeches saying orations are not copyrightable. I had asked him about speeches in general, so this was not his examination of a particular case either. And that opinion was not limited to "unrecorded improvisational speeches"; he simply talked of orations. He also emphazied that there will never be a clear answer in every case. I do not anticipate that speeches will be determined copyvios. As for the rest we will simply have to wait until we can get another knowledgable person's response. We have deleted massive amounts of documents for copyright reasons in the past which had a long history of being part of the project. In fact there is actually a fork of the project because of this. We are not sqeamish here. This community can handle a copyright crisis, if it does come to that. However for the moment, I will continue to use my energy looking for documents which clearly must be deleted for copyright reasons as there is no small number of these. You are welcome to help.--BirgitteSB 17:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Is I will never take Scotland for granted an obvious enough copyright violation for you to delete? The text is taken from the website of the Conservative Party with no explanation on why it should be considered in the public domain. It's clearly a carefully prepared piece of oratory published in a tangible form. See a fuller discussion here Haukur 10:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Come to mention it, October's featured text is also a copyvio, as are all UK political speeches unless we have followed the rules of s. 58, Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. U.S. orations may be uncopyrightable (Brad should know), but UK speeches certainly are (once recorded in a tangible form). The question really should be "are these pieces freely reuseable?". If they are (e.g. GFDL translations), they should stay on Wikisource. If they cannot be reused for any purpose they should be deleted as per Wikisource:Copyright policy (and common sense). Physchim62 15:02, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just spotted this discussion, I don't have time to go through all the relevant links here & legislation which has been cited at this time, though I'll try to shortly. The justification of hosting the post 1923 UK (and other) political speeches was gone over & discussed in Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2006/03#Fair_use_&_Speeches & Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2006/05#Fair_use_and_speeches.AllanHainey 12:24, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Neither of these discussions contain any argument for why political speeches would be in the public domain under the law, it's just blithely asserted. Physchim62 has cited actual law showing that this is not the case. Haukur 08:48, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I am hardly going to go about deleting speeches as copyright violations after emailing Brad about this and recieving the reply that I did! I do not know why you think your opinions should have more weight with me than his. If you think that these speeches violate Wikisource policies, you are welcome to work through the consensus deletion process. I do not think you will succeed, but I honor consensus in these matters and would delete them if that is what the Wikisource community concluded.--BirgitteSB 15:49, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well some of them were too old to be copyright protected, and some have fairly clear copyright releases ("tell the world..." etc), but most are clear copyvio. Copyright trumps consensus deletion, but I have listed them on WS:DEL for all to see. Physchim62 09:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

What is the best method of displaying quotations within Wikisource?

I have seen blockquotes used in the Wikisource of articles like Texas v. Johnson.

Such as this phrase done with a colon ":"

or

Such as this phrase done with "blockquote"

I have seen a type of quote within a block of dashes ineffectively used in the Wikisource of Dred Scott v. Sandford

'Such as this phrase'

I have tried using the "cquote" style that is becomming common in the Wikipedia article pages but Wikisource doesn't seem to recognize this structure.

“

Such as this phrase

”

Can anyone supply the right code so that "cquote" can be used?

Or in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, no special quotation structure is used in Wikisource other than starting a new paragraph

Such as this phrase

4.228.219.205 01:51, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

You should use the same style of quoting that is used in the original source. I personally dislike the cquote style for Wikisource, although it is well suited for Wikipedia. And I do not think that Wikisource as a whole should a single style of quoting.--71.81.70.212 02:17, 11 October 2006 (UTC)this was me --BirgitteSB 02:18, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'll go along with using the same style of quotation structure as is used in the Wikipedia article. If the Wikipedia article is using cquote, is there a way to get the "cquote" style to work within Wikisource? Is there a best guess, second choice if cquote doesn't work?

4.228.222.116 00:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand me. You shouldn't use the style of Wikipedia but rather the style that the original document. In this case the same style that the court used in the pdf of the decision. --BirgitteSB 01:53, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Thats okay too. You don't see too many "cquotes" in the pdf versions of these documents. I like that standard. Does anyone else have an opinion about a quote format? 4.227.145.94 08:15, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

For hosting documents not accepted here

Hi,

I created a similar project to host documents which might not be accepted here, either because of copyright status or Wikisource publishing guidelines. It's called Wikilivres and currently hosts mainly documents in French and a few English ones. It is hosted in Canada, so any documents in the public domain in Canada is accepted. I have also much less restrictions regarding peer-reviewed medium publications. I propose that any document that can be published on Wikisource, should be published here, so not to duplicate work. See Wikilivres. I initially thought about publishing only French language documents, but I think now that it should become a fully multilingual project. Finally, I look for English (and other languages) speaking people to enhance this project. Any suggestions welcome. Yann 17:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

What is the Canadian law on this material? In general I thought that UK-law infuenced countries were stricter than the US, and civil law countries yet more so. I also never heard that the copyright rules anywhere depended on the language of the text. DGG 01:41, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Some documents may be PD in Canada by under copyright in the U.S. because of the "fixed number of years" doctrine in place in the U.S. until 1978. Physchim62 13:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The Canadian law is "public domain 50 years after the death of the author". Yann 09:36, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Even though Wikilivres site is in Canada, users in the USA who posts works copyrighted in the USA to that site without proper permission could still commit copyvio. Likewise, uploaders of images to Wikimedia Commons are to obey the laws of the USA, their physical presence, and the images where they are from.--Jusjih 11:13, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Text integrity and author intended changes

It has been argued before that Wikisource texts should not be tampered with (correct typos etc.). The {{sic}} template was created to mark uncorrected typos in the text. The template has no effect on the rendered text but shows up in the edit window. I agree that, generally, one should take a conservative approach towards the visibility of such indications, or even alterations. There are, however, some cases where alterations are both clearly intended by the author and are of considerable benefit to the users. One such example are errata from nonfiction works, such as A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (first errata page). In order to have both text integrity and convenience, I used ThomasV's javascript technology to enable users to apply/revert changes to a text quickly. See here for an example (to make it work, you need to copy the javascript from User:GrafZahl/monobook.js to your own javascript file). The original text is displayed by default. When the user selects the "enable errata" link from the menu on the left, the text is altered on the fly. Pressing "disable errata" brings back the original text. The choice of whether to use the original or the altered text is left to the user. More generally, the javascript can be used to define different groups of style switching which can be applied independently (for example one group for errata and another for displaying/hiding sic notes). I believe that, when employed in controlled dosages, this technology can be used to enhance source texts. What do you think?--GrafZahl 19:01, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems useful. I haven't tried running this one, but I've used similar features on some of the wikipedias, and they are helpful. -Steve Sanbeg 19:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

An expanded template I proposed in the last discussion about this is at User:Pathoschild/Template:Sic. {{sic|fuue|fuu}} outputs fuue (place your cursor over it). I don't really care which is used (if either), but this one is more functional and self-explanatory. —[admin] Pathoschild 03:10, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

However it is not default off which the two other proposals do. I really don't want to see this stuff, personally. --BirgitteSB 03:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Both methods can be combined. See this example (remember to copy the javascript). By default, everything is off. When you press "enable sic notes" on the left, the underdashes appear, along with the tooltips if you place the cursor over the respective text.--GrafZahl 09:55, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:En Wikisource book in the Commons

On the wiki commons I'd like to propose a sub-category called "Category:En Wikisource book" underneath Category:Wikisource. I'd like a reliable place where I can find the images I've scanned for a wikisource book. I had a category under this section but it has already been relocated, and the last thing I want is to lose track of the images due to typical wiki-daftness. Does this sound like a reasonable idea? Thanks. :-) — RJHall 19:17, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Not everything would be a book. So, en-Wikisource might be better. --Benn Newman 19:24, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

There already is a category for scanned texts on Commons, Commons:Category:Scanned texts. The subcategory commons:Category:Scanned English texts contains scanned images from books and other texts that can be used here on English Wikisource. /81.229.40.212 20:12, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

The anon is correct—scanned texts used on Wikisource could be used in other areas, and thus the Wikisource category isn't the appropriate place. Rather, it is for logos and similar images. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 22:45, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I've responded in more detail on your Commons talk. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 22:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I have a real concern about the lack of direct connection between Wikisource and the Commons. These images are an essential part of a book, and having them in the commons makes them subject to potential renaming or loss, for example. Now I'm starting to think that I need to make a copy of the images on Wikisource. (But I would have no problem with a duplicate image remaining on the Commons.) — RJHall 16:07, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a pretty strong connection; I for one an am admin there and a regular user here. Besides, Wikisource:CommonsTicker tells us whenever an image on Commons is changed, so anyone can go over and revert or do whatever is needed. There are templates as well to mark images as source material (see commons:Template:Original). Sure, images can get renamed or moved or whatever, but I think with the tools we have we can keep it under control. And if it gets bad, we can push Commons to let us protect source images such as these. In any case, it's the same problem that all other wikis have, and yet they are all encouraging uploads on Commons. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 16:23, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Okay. The commons:Template:Original you have listed actually appears to be related to obsolescence of an image rather than marking it as source material. Do you know if there a more appropriate template I could use? I didn't see anything on the Commons:Templates page. — RJHall 21:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

What do you want it to say? I created it last month for this very purpose (to keep Wikisource files from getting deleted). If you want to suggest better wording that makes it more clear that it's for source material, that's fine. The only thing is that the wording should not exclude things like CIA Factbook map images, since those are frequently updated but we need to keep the old ("obsolete") version. Or maybe we should just have two templates; that might work as well. It's up to us. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 07:31, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

If I am reading it correctly, the template, as listed, needs an original copy and a duplicate. Is that really needed? Is it intended for cases where there are two associated images in Commons, or when there is an image in, say, Wikisource, and another in the Commons? — RJHall 21:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Excellent point. I'm trying to code a version of the template that has the duplicate image as a optional argument instead of a required one. It's got a bug (it won't accept Image:Blah.jpg as an argument, just Blah.jpg), but I'll try to get that fixed so we can implement it. See commons:User:Spangineer/sandbox. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 03:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Should be working now (see Commons:Template:Original) --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 07:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes that should work. (example.) Thank you. — RJHall 22:57, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Open Shakespeare

Hi everyone, Shakespeare lovers may be very interested in this. Maybe WS should investigate what kind of cooperation is possible. Dovi 15:22, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

TIFF files on Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons currently does not allow TIFF files. There has been some discussion on #wikisource about seeing if we could get them allowed for scanned books. The JPEG files of the scans I have been doing are thirty times larger than the TIFF files; the PNG files are just slightly bigger (and they don't seem to work as well with scanset and even Commons admits that but "it unfortunately doesn’t work very well with photographs" which is basically what scans are). The reason given for not allowing them at Commons for not allowing them, "the software can’t convert them on the fly," does not matter for our uses. --Benn Newman 21:07, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Other suggestions include using the multi-lingual Wikisource our own "commons" for scanned text. --Benn Newman 19:24, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

If it's possible to get ScanSet fully up and operational, I would support uploading TIFFs here, since they are expressly forbidden on Commons. I don't think we could link to images on multi-WS, though, so I think that (although it would be a nice solution) is out of the picture unless there is some dev work going on behind the scenes (which, sadly, I don't think a dev would do).—Zhaladshar ^(Talk) 19:40, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Support as long as the inclusion criterion is as strict as it is on Commons. TIFFs are useless for Commons, but useful to Wikisource, I feel that this is a valid reason to ask for a small change in policy :) ! Physchim62 17:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we'd want it (whatever it may be) to serve our interests, not just a Wikimedia Commons that allows TIFFs. --Benn Newman 00:33, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I disagree; I think we should at least discuss with the folks at commons the possibility of putting the files there, since the goal of Commons is to serve as a general "media repository". Others, unassociated with Wikisource, may be able to use files, and keeping everything in one place makes that easier. I'll bring this up on Commons soon and see what kind of feedback we get. --Spangineer^wp (háblame) 01:20, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree lets try our best to get everything in the same place. --BirgitteSB 15:21, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

See commons:Commons:Village pump#TIFF files?. --Benn Newman ^(AMDG) 03:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

DNA mutation (cause)

I understand that DNA mutation occurs after a frequency change in the elleles; but what causes the frequency change?

You might want to try asking at the Science Reference Desk at Wikipedia. Physchim62 15:28, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Wik Bullies, Thugs and Ferals

Howcome the Australian editors with the help of some offshore admins are being totally rude and ignorant to new editors and claiming they are using 'sockpuppets' when I had to look up what that was, and am not etc?

Registered user 'Gretaw' has been blocked along with my block when Gretaw is totally absolutely nil to do with me. The admins who did this are either Gretaw or they have attacked a totally not involved reg wik user.

Whatever, the go at me on wikipedia has been pretty disgusting and bad form wik that you allow this bully stuff to happen on your site. Check out that Gretaw stuff and what Thatcher131, Golden Wattle, Longhair/Durova, and any other whinney ones - oh I forgot the pompous Sarah Uhart. There was the spree slope Grahame something also.

Bad show wik. Poor form and disgusting org. —unsigned by 203.54.9.127 14:30, 24 November 2006.

I am not sure what you are talking about. Can you please provide some links/diffs/whatever to support what you are saying? —Benn Newman ^(AMDG) 14:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry that your editing experience has been frustrating. However, please resolve your dispute with the editors in question on Wikipedia; the dispute resolution process explains how to do this. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:22, 24 November 2006 (UTC)