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Latest comment: 18 years ago by Pathoschild in topic Proposals

Proposals

Latest comment: 18 years ago63 comments16 people in discussion

Administrator policy: Confidence threshold

As discussed here under "Majority --> Consensus", the Administrator policy currently requires consensus to become an admin, but only a majority to stay an admin (through an annual reconfirmation or user-initiated motion of confidence). I think these thresholds should be the same, and that both should be consensus. The guiding principle behind reconfirmation is that "Administrator access depends on the continued support of the community". I interpret community support as consensus. If the community is split anywhere close to 50-50, then the admin is too controversial, in my opinion, to have clear community support. Another argument for consensus is that because it is deliberately vague, it can be gauged on a case-by-case basis, taking into account any irregularities. A strict majority would seem to preclude such flexibility. I therefore propose raising the threshold to stay an admin to consensus. Tim Smith 21:13, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I see the scheduled votes as being of no confidence, such that the opposition is taken into account. I don't expect every user to re-vote in support, again and again, year after year. Rather, the votes are a chance for users to oppose for whatever reason and have a meaningful discussion concerning their fitness for continued adminship. Thus, for example, a vote with no activity whatsoever is a good thing— it means nobody has any problem with their status. From that viewpoint, a consensus that would be required would be that of opposition; thus, using the usual definition of 'consensus', a mere 25% support would be required to keep administrator status. A simple majority (50%+1) is a compromise between this and the ideal of maintaining more than a small minority of support. :)
This issue is largely how we view the scheduled votes. Are we confirming administrators, or making them reapply for adminship? A higher percentage of opposition is entirely normal on a large project, particularly if the administrator is active in countervandalism or dispute resolution. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 00:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Some amount of opposition is normal, but if it grows so large that the admin loses community consensus, something is wrong. Reversing the burden, so that a consensus is required to de-sysop, would mean that an admin opposed by a majority—even sixty or seventy percent—of the community could sail scot-free through a confidence vote. That in my opinion is an untenable result. Even a 50-50 split is too divisive.
Your view would better be implemented as two stages: (1) a process to see whether a vote is needed, and (2) the vote itself. In stage 1, only opposition would be counted, so that as you envision, every user wouldn't have to re-vote in support, and no activity would be a good thing. But if the opposition reached an initiatory threshold, we would launch stage 2, where supporters and opposers alike vote to see if the admin has community support. The annual process would then simply be a scheduled version of the user-initiated procedure we already allow, in which an initiatory threshold (currently three established users) triggers a full vote.
I'm open to the above idea provided that whenever an admin undergoes a full vote, they need consensus to retain adminship. What do you think? Tim Smith 02:17, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
When I mentioned the full consensus in opposition concept above, I didn't mean that I supported it; I still prefer the simple majority ratio (50%+1).
I see no issues with a two-stage vote; if there is sufficient opposition, the administrator could be listed on the administrators page for a revote with sufficient notification of the community. However, I'm not sure a full consensus (as opposed to a simple majority) is a good idea; I don't think an administrator with 74% support has lost the community's trust. For example, if an administrator was initially promoted with 75% support but loses a single percentage point in their revote, should they lose their adminship? // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 03:25, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I would rather keep the votes simple, than have multiple stages. I understand where Tim's concern is coming from, but at the same time I wonder if it is a bit out of place here. Anyone who is a regular at deletions or copyvios knows that talk of percentages are quite beyond Wikisource. It is a good turnout, if we get two votes for deletion beyond the nomination. The nominations for adminship of course have better turnout, but this is not a community that is fond of a lot of "process."
Also we have not yet even had one of the confirmations happen yet. So I have two thoughts. First it is early to declare the current system broken. Also, confirmation was not a given when it was proposed, I worry it is disingenuous to throw out what we came to consensus on without even trying it. I worry that it will seem as if the people who were strongly for this agreed to anything just so it could be renegotiated once everyone was used to the idea. I know that this is not true. But I think is important to worry about the appearance of all this as well as the truth. I would like to run through some of these as designed and then reevaluate the way it works. I do not believe we will have to worry about controversial admins in the near future. --BirgitteSB 04:27, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree that exact percentages are out of place here; that's part of why I favor removing the percentage in the policy ("50% + 1 user") and replacing it with consensus. Although consensus for admin noms is usually taken at about 75%, that value is not rigid. As I said above, an advantage of consensus is that because it is deliberately vague, it can be gauged on a case-by-case basis, taking into account any irregularities. For example, if an admin is promoted at 75% and gets 74% in a re-vote shortly afterward, then consensus still roughly holds, and it might be reasonable to continue the adminship. If it drops much more, though, consensus would be lost. On the other hand, the current 50% + 1 user rule seems to allow no such flexibility. If an admin gets 50% + 1 user on one re-vote and a flat 50% on the next, they would presumably have to be de-sysopped. 50% + 1 user is too low in any case; an admin opposed by nearly half the community does not have its trust.
As I noted above, we already have a two-stage vote: the user-initiated one. But I'm open to the annual process being one-stage or two-stage. Consensus, though, is an implication of the guiding principle that "Administrator access depends on the continued support of the community." Since the support needed to become an admin is consensus, continuation of that support means continuation of consensus. Let's not wait until the system breaks before fixing it. I hope controversial admins never arrive, but if they do, toughening the policy will be much more difficult (see the English Wikipedia). Changing it now is easy and harmless. Tim Smith 06:36, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Here is where we disagree. I do not think changing it now is harmless. IIRC some people were quite leery of agreeing to this. I feel it would be harmful to the community if throw this agreement out in favor of tighter one, when we have not even used it once. It does not sit well with me. The whole discussion is quite hard to have especially with the label of controversial admins. It put some pressure on current admins that speaking against they will appear as though they plan on become one in the future. Honestly I am not against your ideas. I very strongly wanted a recall system I was will to agree with any kind of recall system other people were comfortable with. I plan on continuing to honor that agreement until we have had a few tests of the system to learn from. Then I will feel comfortable reevaluating this. I know your intentions are good here and your ideas make sense, I just feel the timing is off for this right now. --BirgitteSB 12:55, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Tim Smith's suggestion that the scheduled votes be in two stages seems increasingly good to me. To start an unscheduled confirmation vote, the Administrator policy states that "at least two established users (besides the proposer) must support the need for an election". Applying this requirement to the annual votes will decrease process by eliminating the extra criteria for de-adminship. That is, "Annual votes of confidence" and "consensus" (in the Administrator policy) will be merged into the single "votes of confidence". Such a vote can be called at any time, and occurs automatically one year after the last such vote; this simplifies the process quite a bit.

For example, I am up for confirmation in February 2007. During that month, any user would have the chance to note objections to my continued adminship; if at least three established users objected, a new election would be called in the usual way on the Administrator policy and advertised through Wikisource news. This is also more fair; supportive users may not bother participating in the annual votes, since they probably won't expect any opposition. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 02:34, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Does this mean someone will have to complain about inactivity in order to get a vote on an inactive admin?--BirgitteSB 18:26, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Inactive administrators don't require a vote to lose adminship, since inactivity is a separate criteria. Inactivity can be pointed out during the annual confirmation vote for simplicity's sake, but de-adminship could proceed without three established users or a full revote. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 23:39, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Tim's ideas make sense to me, but so do Birgitte's. In theory, I guess, I don't see a problem requiring "consensus" in re-votes, but at the same time I'm not sure that the advantage would be significant right now. Incidentally, do we have a definition of "established user" or is that left deliberately vague a la "consensus"? Anyway, I'm not sure that the "three" part will scale well. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 03:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

'Established user' is vague for now; it should be defined in a future guideline page on consensus. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 13:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Implement Wikisource:Image use policy

Creation

See parallel discussion at Commons:Village_pump#Wikisoure:Image_use_policy

I noticed that Wikisource doesn't have an image policy and that it could probably use one (evidence: [1]), so here's a proposal. It's based on the image usage policies for Commons, English wikipedia, and Spanish wikipedia. As it stands, the proposal outsources all image uploading to Commons as per Wikisource:Copyright policy and common practice, and explains what types of images might be useful here and a little bit on how to add them. Feel free to opine. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 19:06, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Hrm, my first instinct is to denounce the rule forbidding uploading images to WS - unfair to us lazy people everywhere!. Instead, I'd just run an informal policy of running a bot once a month to transwiki such images and update the wikitags in WS works. Second instinct, which is more of an idea, is just to give examples of what constitutes public domain right inside the useage policy - specifying which legal documents, works written by authors who died how long ago (and including a note about the dangers of using more recent translations), etcetera. But I'm glad to see somebody took the initiative of creating one, cheers :) Sherurcij (talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN) 01:05, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
We do need a policy here, but people should still be encouraged to use Wikimedia Commons to upload acceptable images for use at any Wiki sites.--Jusjih 02:19, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I believe you misread the policy as it dictates that all images be uploaded to Commons. I would love to see such a policy implemented, as I oppose hosting images locally within language subdomains. However I have always been discouraged from uploading scans to Commons, with the advice that they may not be appreciated. If that is not an issue this is my first choice of an image policy. --BirgitteSB 02:50, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I've asked this question at commons:Commons:Village_pump#Wikisoure:Image_use_policy. I'll probably post on the commons mailing list as well, since I think all Commons admins are on that now. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 12:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with the policy. The copyright section is redundant with the Copyright policy, and would likely become yet another page in need of updating should the copyright policy change; this would best be left to a 'see also' section. Half of the "Adding images to Wikisource" section is a tutorial, and would be better integrated into the help pages. Most of the rest of the section is a list of example uses, which is unneeded— users already know what they want to add an image for when they read the image policy.
The remaining content that is not tutorial material or redundant consists of "No images may be uploaded to Wikisource directly". That is, essentially, the only sentence on that page that would be policy— and I disagree. The WikiCommons is a repertoire of images potentially useful to Wikimedia projects, not an indiscriminate multimedia fileserver. There are many cases where images would be beneficial on the English Wikisource but not elsewhere: user portraits, scans of English texts, logos for WikiProjects on the English Wikisource, local test images, et cetera. I would instead soften that to "If images may be useful on other projects, they should instead be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons". However, it then becomes a guideline instead of a policy. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 15:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
You're right that really the only "policy" described is that no images may be uploaded here directly. The copyright info I feel is useful context and not likely to need updating frequently, since our mission isn't going to change. I'd also dispute your statement that people already know what they want to upload. That's true sometimes, but I suspect that many people are just interested in knowing how images are typically used here. Everyone knows wikisource as the place to send your text files, but the question of whether or not the texts can be illustrated is less clear. That's delving into a guideline, but it's still useful information.
As for why I went toward eliminating uploads here, I figured that Wikisource already has a scrict copyright policy (more strict than en:wikipedia, which allows fair use), and that as a result there would be no reason not to outsource everything, from a copyright policy compatability standpoint. For that reason Special:Upload on the Spanish wikipedia sends everyone to commons. You bring up interesting points with the image examples, however. Some of them I feel are easily defined as a separate class (local test images, user portraits, etc.), and these could be worded into the policy as exceptions. Interestingly, some Wikisource specific images are already located on commons (see commons:Category:Wikisource). As for English texts, however, they may in some cases be useful to other projects. I can think of two obvious cases—when there is something historically significant about the work itself (the U.S. Constitution, handwritten writings of national leaders, etc.), and when the text has images incorporated into it. The first case will apply only infrequently. The second could be much more broad: Images like Image:LA2-NSRW-1-0022.jpg could be cropped down if it was deemed that the illustration on that page was potentially useful to illustrate an article. Another example is of a book like Pilgrim's Progress—what better way to illustrate the wikipedia article than to use actual images from the original editions? That's far better than some glossy fair-use book cover image. Similarly, images from Audubon's work should be on commons, not here.
Personally, I like the idea of keeping wikisource's focus on text and thus avoiding the extra task of image handling (except in a few well-defined situations). But if people agree that it's better as a guideline, that's fine. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 15:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
If we do decide to upload everything to WikiCommons, it will be more complicated than you may have expected. We'll need to learn WikiCommon's category infrastructure and append to it; simply adding subcategories to commons:Category:Wikisource is not acceptable, since that is for images about Wikisource and not from Wikisource. We'll need to set up standardised filenames to avoid conflict, order images in categories, and simplify maintenance. All of this could be codified by the Image use policy, if we do decide to outsource. I'm willing to help set up standards if we do outsource, but the policy page should be a policy page, not a combination mirror/tutorial with one line of policy.
However, the copyright section is redundant and should be replaced by a simple link. Problems with copying policy content have occurred before; Wikisource:About mirrors some Inclusion policy content, and still told users we accepted reference data more than two weeks after we decided to exclude them. For all we know, some policy page somewhere may still reflect an ancient version of the inclusion policy. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 16:13, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
All of this could be codified by the Image use policy, if we do decide to outsource. Or even if not. Regarding the categorization, that was something brought up at the commons village pump. I'll make some modifications. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 16:18, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
After reading the above points I think a policy I would love to see would be something along the following lines. All images for use in the main project space must be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Local images should be limited to those used by english Wikisource local projects and user space. Regarding english texts, they are all of use to other language subdomains for proofreading translations. If we keep them locally the other langages will not know we have. I do not see the fact that Commons will not let us be sloppy in regards to naming or categorization as a reason against adopting such a policy. Perhaps we could have a place for contributors to notify everyone here what they have added/want to add at Commons so experienced editors can easily double check that the proper terminalogy and categories are being used. --BirgitteSB 02:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I didn't mean to discourage the adoption of this policy when I pointed out the unexpected complexity; I simply meant that if we do wish to have such an image policy it would need to be expanded quite a bit to cover such details. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 02:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

To more completely fracture the discussion, I've posted a potential model for categories at Wikisource talk:Image use policy. Please make any category structure-related comments there at Commons:Village_pump#Wikisoure:Image_use_policy, as there appears to be considerable support for hosting all text scans there. Thanks. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 12:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC) (update comment --Spangineerwp (háblame) 17:10, 22 July 2006 (UTC))

Man, you miss so much not having power and internet access for a few days...Anyway, I'm very excited that there is much support for hosting scans on Commons. That was the only fear I had about putting them over there: it seemed like people would just delete them. (And now with the ability to undelete images, that's even better.) I can't really say much about the policy, but most of my comments have already been covered by Pathoschild. When I get more time to think about it, I'll come in either here or on Commons to state them.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:03, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Hate to throw a wrench into this, since I think overall this is a good idea, but how would commons feel about protecting images we upload. It seems that they have quite a limited protection policy and I've already seen issues with commons users "being helpful" and updating the CIA World factbook images (which we use with what is supposed to be the 2004 version) to the current version. This is especially a problem for the maps, which may change yearly. If we have images uploaded to commons, for say the illustrations from a specific edition of one of the Oz books, we're not going to want just any commons user to replace it with another image from a different edition. - illy 13:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
Fortunately images can be undeleted now, so if there's a problem it can be rectified. And we have a commonsticker, so if an image that we use is changed we'll know. I also think it would make sense to include the actual version in the image title for the cases you're referring to, and that should help people realize that the version is relevant, not just the picture. So, for the CIA World factbook, say "2003 Map of Angola", "2004 Map of Angola", etc. A note in the image description would be worth having as well. These steps wouldn't eliminate the problem, but should help. All that said, however, I can see the potential benefit of protection. I'm not well-versed in commons protection policy/culture, so I can't speak on that, but it'd be worth looking into. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 14:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree that this problem could be worked around. I also agree that things like the factbook pages should have a year in the title, which is how I would have uploaded them (unfortunately there's a lot of images for the factbook and it will take a lot of time, or a bot, to change them). Notes on the image page would also be useful. But, we shouldn't have to be constantly protesting changes for what should be "source" material, which is what we're all about.
I'm not an active user on commons, but I did check out what their protection policy is. It seems that currently they only protect pages that have been subjected to repeated vandalism. To do so you need to get onto the IRC channel that the admins are on and try to talk an admin into protecting the page. I don't think this would work for us. - illy 14:26, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I've brought this up on commons. I'm an admin over there, so I can help out if problems arise, but obviously it usually won't be immediate. As for the policy, in my experience it's sometimes more lenient—I think it's fairly common practice to protect images that are appearing on the main page of other projects (like en wikipedia), so there is some small precedence for helping other projects in that way. Not sure though how other commons folks will feel about this particular idea; we'll see. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 18:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we'll have to protest changes—we just reupload the old version with the year in its title. This is especially easy now that old revisions are stored. Obviously though it's not as simple as protection and requires monitoring Wikisource:CommonsTicker (which we should be doing anyway), but it's not the end of the world. I just took care of one from July 6, and it didn't take much. In the future when we're uploading these things we'll just have to be more careful. I've added guidance on naming updatable images to the proposed policy, so that should help. If the problem continues even with preventitive measures in place, I think we could make a strong case for protection. At this point though, with only speculation to go on, it'd be a tough sell. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 22:25, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Policy or guideline?

I think the page looks much better with the changes since its original proposal. One final point I'm questioning is whether this should be a policy or a guideline; the difference is more than semantic. a guideline is very flexible, and allows users to circumvent it if they have a good reason to. A guideline outlines conventions and provides good reasons. On the other hand, a policy is rigid (albeit changeable), with any circumvention punishable by warnings, loss of edit or sysop access, and blacklisting in the countervandalism IRC channel. I certainly don't think uploading an image with the wrong filename constitutes valid grounds for any such actions. Rather, this should be a guideline page, possibly integrated into the Style guide. What do you think? // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 03:18, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Obviously the file names and such shouldn't be mandatory, but I'm not sure that that necessarily means that the whole thing should be a guideline. If it is, then the copyright policy may need to be updated to more explicitly apply to images. Also, I don't think it unreasonable to make it policy that certain images are uploaded to Commons, though you apparently disagree. There is extensive support for uploading images to Commons, and it will be a nuisance (extra work, more confusion) if people upload here. Users aren't banned for breaching policy once, in any case, so I don't think there's a problem with this. But it doesn't really matter. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 12:26, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
There is extensive support for the use of the standardised {{header}}, but that is only a guideline. The difference is what happens if a user uploads an image directly to Wikisource. Whereas a guideline explains conventions and why they're a good idea, a policy states exactly how one must behave, outlines sanctions if circumvented, and ties violation to the Blocking policy. Policies should be strictly reserved for cases where there is a strong possibility of disruption. I have no intention of ever blocking someone because they uploaded an image to Wikisource, any more than I have any intention of blocking someone for not using a {{header}}.
Every established user (in theory) is expected to know and follow every applicable policy. I'd much rather keep the number of policies to a strict minimum; there are already eight (Administrators, Blocking, Deletion, Protection, Bots, Copyright, Open proxies, and Inclusion). On the other hand, a guideline is more of a documentation page for conventions than a hard rule; you're not expected to know them all, they're just there so someone can point to them for information.
In my opinion, image use would be better defined as a guideline than as a hard policy. I don't really see how the Copyright policy would need to be modified to allow this; it already applies to all content on Wikisource. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 16:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'm just used to policy pages like w:Wikipedia:Image use policy, which contain tons of suggestions (I can't imagine blocking someone for some of the things that appear there) and does not mention consequences (except as they relate to copyright policy). Under your more strict view of what should be policy (which makes sense to me, now that I understand where you're coming from), Wikipedia's page would probably also be a guideline. Given Wikisource's definition of "policy", I have no problem with this being a guideline. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 17:12, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This disscusion seems to have stalled. I for one support this being a guidline per Pathoschild. However I would like to also see this guidline give recomendations on the naming and categorizing of images which have been cropped out of a scanned page for in inline usage. Also the titles of full-page scans of plates which are included in the internal page numbering.--BirgitteSB 16:50, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I see no problem adding more conventions to the table; I suggest that any such discussion be help on the talk page. Since discussion on the policy itself has stalled, I've reopened the poll. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 17:12, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Expand scope

I know this discussion has waned over the months, and that this is coming in pretty late. But I would like to propose we make a major change to this guideline/policy. I say we expand it to account for all files, of which images are just a portion. My biggest dislike of this proposal is that it is so specific; I would much rather have a broader document which takes into account more than just images.

The reason I bring this up is due to a question that appeared on the Requests for assistance page (see Wikisource:Requests for assistance#Acrobat/pdf reader files?). We have no reason to dictate whether these files are allowed or not, and by expanding the current proposal, we can take into account such things as audio files and the (probably never to happen) video file. I think such an expansion would go a long way in making it a better document. If people agree, I'll work on expanding the proposal (of course, such an expansion would probably require a total revamp of the page).—Zhaladshar (Talk) 17:26, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

A general File policy is a good idea. I propose implementing this policy now, and merging it into the larger policy once that's implemented. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 01:40, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Poll

This poll concerns the Image use guidelines, which state that images should be uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons (with relevant conventions) and outlines which images are useful to Wikisource texts.

Implemented as a style guideline. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 00:54, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Temporarily hide oldWikisource siteNotice

The local siteNotice is blank, but seems to be overridden by the siteNotice on the oldWikisource. That notice advertises the Wikimedia board election, which I don't think is relevant enough to visitors (or even most contributors) to display so prominently. I propose we add an invisible character to the local siteNotice to override the message until the oldwikisource removes it. If we wish to let contributors know, we should place a message in the watchlist text instead. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 04:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea; either way, I will end up using CSS to hide it. Site notices are always so ugly. Jude (talk) 04:46, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
It is not the old Wikisource site notice that overrides site notices on the subdomains. The election officials and the developers made an overriding site notice for all Wikimedia projects, and they will remove it soon. /82.212.68.183 09:57, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Hiding it sounds good to me. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 12:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
Hidden. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 16:41, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Allow text in other languages with translation for comparison

User:Sophysduckling and myself have been having dispute on wikipedia (see Wikipedia:User talk:Sophysduckling#More About Catullus, Wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Catullus) about posting transltions. He has agreed to move his translations to wikisource. However, he thinks(and I agree), that providing the original text and scansion with the translation is a good idea. See Wikipedia:Catullus 1. I think that this should be allowed on English Wikisource. --Samael775 15:58, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Many works contain two languages where there's no Wikisource in that language. If there is, the original should be placed in the appropriate language Wikisource and linked to. I don't really see the point of a side-by-side line-by-line comparison, though. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 16:37, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
There is an instance where parallel texts are very much in order, that of operas, which are usually sung in the original language, but for which English translations are routinely available. The same can be said about w:lieder. At the moment, there really aren't any opera librettos here, but obviously they would as welcome as are plays (the software is not up to musical scores, of course). And quite nearly the entire standard repetory is now out of copyright, as are their English translations. --Lycurgus 06:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Regarding music, we are going to having lilypond enabled whenever a developer gets around to it. As to the Catullus, I do not see any particular reason to put the latin here. Especially since we can use the the double arrow from the interwiki link to show la.WS and en.WS versions side-by-side (See this). I also do not understand why the scansion would be presented on Wikisource at all. Although I could see a place for forking the text with one regular presentation of the poem in English and a seperate annoted version with scansion.--BirgitteSB 16:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that showing two different languages sid by side can be very helpful, especially to students of the language. Most published translations of Catullus are in bilingual format, as it is very commonly used in Latin classes. I am not certain that scansion is important, or that it needs to be seperate from the original text, but I will ask the wikipedians who developed it. --Samael775 19:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, but we do not need to manually add the Latin version to the English WS. If we use an interwiki link to the Latin version WS, it is only a click away to get the texts side-by-side for purposes of aiding students with translations. The whole reason that extension was created was so that we do not have to duplicate texts by adding different languages to different domains; we can easily compare our language to any other with no extraneous duplication.
As to the scansion, I do not think this is appropriate for WS. We collect texts, not do "meta-work" like that. Scansion seems to be more appropriate for something like a Wikibook on Latin poetry or the Latin language.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 20:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Create Newspaper article subcategories

As of this posting, six of the thirteen newspaper articles listed in that category concern World War I. As such, I propose making subcategories all subjects that serve as the main for more than two newspaper articles on wikisource. -- Chr.K. 00:00, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

There was a past proposal to not do things like this but instead use CatScan to allow searching for crossovers between categories. Does anyone know what happened with that?--BirgitteSB 14:44, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
It's a pretty big job to program it directly into MediaWiki, as far as I can tell, so who knows how long it will take. But CatScan does work great, when the database is replicating properly. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 15:12, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
To Chris K.: Please, go ahead and do that. Remember, be bold when editing. Helping us with the category tree is immensely important (especially helping us allow for expansion of content is even better--which your proposal is suggesting; let's head off growing pains early by starting to break up the categorization now), so whatever changes you deem necessary, go ahead and carry out.
Birgitte: It sounds like you are talking about Pathoschild's proposal to add tags to pages and allow us to sort through them. As far as I know, that's still in the works; it's a fairly intensive process, so will take some time to do, so I believe it's still in the development stage or on the backburner at the moment.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 19:35, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Announcements

Questions

Latest comment: 18 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Case Law

A number of the problem pages we have left are dealing with case law. Is there anyone at all with definate ideas as to how these sorts of documents should be organized and named? --BirgitteSB 02:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

From the few cases I've added, it looks like many of our cases our incomplete. The ones I've added had a syllabus, summary, majority opinion, and the minority opinions as well. I'll find an example of what they normally look like. The naming isn't all that hard, but the actual content won't be very easy at all.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 02:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Other discussions

Latest comment: 18 years ago36 comments14 people in discussion

A better mousetrap

Just looking at my (in-progress) work at Moazzam Begg letter I'm struck by the fact a (gallery) tag that worked vertically along the right border of the page would be fantastic. No idea how, or if it's possible, but damned if that wouldn't be a fine way to display letters. Sherurcij (talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN) 06:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I can't find a way to do it. I'm going to assume, though, that there is not a way to get it done, as I'm sure people didn't think about wanting to have a vertical gallery (such a feature would hardly be used). I can't think of any way to get it done, but you are right: being able to do it would be fantastic. Maybe file a bug to add more functionality to the <gallery>?—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:33, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
It can be done without the gallery tag. I remember people talking about it when w:Frog was the collaboration of the week as it had a large gallery at the time. I setup this text with their method.--BirgitteSB 13:55, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Confusion

There's a contradiction between "what do we include" sections in these two pages, [2] and Wikisource:What is Wikisource?. Can anyone tell me which one is the "official".--24.211.184.243 04:59, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikisource:What is Wikisource? is official for this (the English) Wikisource. The other is from the days when there was only one Wikisource for all languages. It should probably be revised. --Spangineerwp (háblame) 05:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Talk:Crime and Punishment/Translator's Preface

See my note there. The translator is NOT credited. This is offensive. --Lycurgus 23:24, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Then credit her.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 00:16, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
How the effing hell? It's all template that I don't understand. --Lycurgus 00:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Click here. On the page edit screen, the header template takes up the first couple lines. One of the parameters is a "notes=" parameter. On the right side of the "=" write something like Translated by [[Author:TRANSLATOR'S NAME|]].—Zhaladshar (Talk) 14:24, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Business Valuation

1. What is the valuation ebitda multiple for a theme Hotel? Restaruants are 4 - 8 times ebitda; but, I don't know about hotels.

2. When buying a cleaning/janitorial company, what is the minimum profit margin - ebitda expected for an attractive deal for the buyer?

I don't expect you'll find much response to this question here; you might want to try Wikipedia's reference desk instead. Jude (talk) 23:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Uploading unpublished documents

I have two related issues about current policies on uploading unpublished documents. In both cases, copyright is not an issue (so please ignore that here). Both issues concern documents that have been written by a professor at a university in Sweden.
__________

In one case the original document has been published. I have translated the document from Swedish into English. As I understand Wikisource policies, I can then upload the translated document to Wikisource, without problem.

When any text is translated, though, there are always choices to be made about the words and phrases used. Did I make good choices when translating? This is a question that some people might reasonably have. So, I sent the translation to the professor. The professor is actually fluent in English (e.g. he graduated from high school in the U.S.A. and he spent much of his professional life reading English-language research publications). He recommended a few minor revisions, and then he gave his approval to the translation. Can I put a notice on the (revised) translation to say that it has been approved by the professor? The answer seems to be "no", because the notice is unpublished and so is not verifiable.

Ordinarily, a simple solution would be to ask the professor to publish the translated document on his web page at the university. In this case, however, the professor has now retired, and he does not have a web page. (He is emeritus, and is listed as being a member of the faculty on his department's web page.) Another obvious solution would be to ask the university department to which the professor belongs to publish the translated document on its web site. In this case, however, the original document was written for something that is unrelated to the department. The committee to which professor belonged for the context of writing the document has since been disbanded, and it does not have a web page at the university.
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The other case is involves another document written by the same professor. In this case the document has not been published. The document has been cited in other sources, though; so mentioning it in the Wikipedia article does not constitute original research. In fact, there is nothing important in the document that is not available in other sources. The other sources, though, are secondary sources. The document constitutes a primary source; so obviously it would be nicer to use it—either the original Swedish document or an English translation of it (or both).

As before, it is not feasible to have the document published on either the professor's web page or the university department's web page. In this case, although the document has not been published, it is on file with the university's administration; so some verification of the original (Swedish) document could be done by e-mailing, or otherwise contacting, the administration.
__________

In both cases, particularly the first, it would be useful if the (translated) documents could be uploaded to Wikisource. Under current policies, as I understand them, this is not possible. My suggestion, then, is that some mechanism be considered to allow such uploading. As an example, at present when copyright is an issue, there is a mechanism to verify that the document is under the GFDL (e.g. e-mailing wiki PR and having them check back with the copyright holder). So perhaps something like that could work here. Other mechanisms are obviously feasible. I suggest that some such mechanism would be valuable to have, as long as the principle of verifiability is maintained.

—Daphne A 12:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm very curious and have to ask (for ease of my own mind) how copyright is not an issue with these? Did the professor release its copyright or license it under the GFDL or a similar license? And, you know, that when you translated those works, you created a derivative work which is copyrighted by you unless you release it and/or license it?
Now, on to the issue you talked about. The whole purpose of the publishing clause is to ensure we can verify a text. It sounds like you have either a hard copy of this work or some kind of electronic copy, am I right? It sounds like you have something which we could ask this professor if he did in fact write it, and he would without a doubt say yes, he did. If this is the case, the text is verifiable, and does not go against our inclusion policy (it is a published work since it was written down in some form which can be verified 100%—"publication" for us is more than just being printed in a book). So, the question that needs to be answered: Do you have a copy of the work that is how the professor printed it? If yes, then it can be added. If no, more discussion would be needed to determine its appropriateness here. I hope this helps. If it doesn't please ask again and I'll be happy to help.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 13:31, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
On the issue of the translation into English hosting this isn't a problem you'll just have to note that it was translated by you and the Professor on the infobox on the talk page. I thought we had a policy/guidelines page on translations but I can't find it. AllanHainey 15:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
In the first case you can add your own notice without affecting the publication status. Wikisource users regularly add editorial notes about the text in a standardised {{header}} template; for an example of this, see Dulce et Decorum Est.
I'm a little wary about the second case. I see the publication requirement not only as one of verifiability, but also as equivalent to a certain amount of notability. Requiring publication provides an effective barrier against personal essays or user-written poems, which I don't think belong on Wikisource. Similarly, not everything a professor or undergraduate writes is a valuable contribution to the historical, intellectual, and cultural repertoire. Thus I'm less willing than is Zhaladshar to bend the publication requirement so freely; I can easily obtain a written copy of a friend's English essay, but that still doesn't make it notable or valuable. Perhaps we could decide exceptions on a case-by-case basis, but I don't think we should bend the publication requirement so freely. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 15:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I believe the second case was mentioned as a primary source. I would like to know exactly what sort of document this is to understand why you are defining it as a primary source. However we do currently accept primary sources, which are only published in rare cases (i.e. Diary of Anne Frank). It is debatable that many documents of public record are actually "published" by simply being scanned and put online, but they are cetainly another type of primary source we have accepted as a primary source.--BirgitteSB 16:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks kindly for your responses! First, regarding copyrights, it is my understanding (from what the professor told me) that there is no problem in that regard, but I will want to recheck this. Also, I would be happy (even proud) to put my translation under the GFDL. When I said that "copyright is not an issue", I meant only that I had no questions about what needed to be done for this, not that everything that needed to be done had been done.

Regarding the rest, perhaps some more background is appropriate. There is a leading child psychiatrist in Sweden named Christopher Gillberg. It has been alleged that much of his career's work is fraudulent. If so, that would have a significant impact on the field of research. Also, the truth or falsity of the allegations could affect whether or not tens of thousands of Swedish children receive special care, psychiatric drugs, etc. There is a Wikipedia article about him that tells a little. My draft tells a little more and also links to references that tell a lot more. (Note: when I saved the draft I was unaware of the various issues about which I am now asking; also the article is currently in dispute.)

Gillberg's university had an Ethics Committee. Gillberg (and others) told the media that the committee did a detailed, extended investigation of the allegations—and that the committee then exonerated Gillberg.

The two documents that I would like to put into Wikisource are from the Chairman of the Ethics Committee (strictly, the first document is co-signed by the other committee members). The first document—the one that has been formally published in a journal—is a letter that states explicity that the committee never exonerated Gillberg and that no investigation had been done. The second document is a letter to the President of the academy at the university that adds some significant details.

So, the documents are actually quite important in what could be a major scandal. This is only just now breaking into the English-speaking world. If I have understood correctly, you are saying that it is okay to save both the English translation of the first document and the Swedish original and English translation of the second document in Wikisource. (I realize that there is a Swedish version of Wikisource for the Swedish document.) Please let me know if I have misunderstood or if there are more questions.

—Daphne A 17:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Herodotus

So far as I can tell, WS does not have the full Herodotus, only Book 2, and then that without the standard paragraph numbering (as essential for citation as book, chapter and verse are for the bible); it also omits Macaulay's notes on the Greek text. All nine books are in Gutenberg format, downloadable in two files. This is not going to be particularly hard. The only issues are title, which would seem to automatically be this:

Herodotus/The Histories/Book /n/

and the issue of Macaulay's notes on the Greek text, which have been transliterated by the original transcriber into English; they are not particularly useful, especially in their English state. If they are to be kept, I would put these into nine separate articles. There are quite literally hundreds of notes for each of the nine books -- and I would keep them, as the footnote numbers are embedded in the G etext. Comments?--Lycurgus 15:03, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Do you have a link to the Gutenberg text? I can't really get a picture of the situation, so being able to see the actual text will be helpful for me in answering your question.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 15:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
H volume 1, H volume 2 --Lycurgus 17:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
More thoughts. This translation's only virtue is its immediate availability. It adopts a Graecian spelling for Greekisms, one that does not accord with modern practice; phoenix comes out as phœnix, Ilium is done is Ilion (when most of us in English call it Troy), etc. Without proposing to do so, one almost wants marginal notes to clarify matters. Yes, there are texts where marginal notes are probably in order. Chaucer and Malory in the original come to mind here, along with Edmund Spenser. --Lycurgus 21:46, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

118 educational comics offered to Wikipedia

Jean-Pierre Petit is a 69 year old french scientist well known in France not only for his work but also for a large set of didactical comics (see his bibliography on the french WP: everything but the "Livres" section are comics) that used to be sold in book stores until recently. These comics cover many (mostly scientific) topics and usually get to concepts studied in colleges and universities. See The silence barrier for example.

Some years ago, when his contract with his publisher ended, he chose to offer these books for free download on the internet and gathered a (still growing) team who does a great job at translating these comics in as many languages as they can. As of today, on his website Knowledge without borders, 22 comics are offered for free download in 22 languages (select a flag) totalizing 118 books. BTW, for whomever is interested, these comics are also available in "textless" version for everyone volunteering to translate them

A couple of days ago, he discovered Wikipedia and liked it (who doesn't ? ;-). He then wrote a message (here is a backup) on the Help Desk, proposing to give away all those comics so that they can be placed on Wikipedia, offering « scientific knowledge to as many people as possible ». Great !

Problems :

  • Some of these books were sold in book stores, and only the french version afaik. Some were not published because they were written after his contract ended. Therefore, I don't know if these comics should go to wikisource or wikibooks (that's why I'm writing this message on both projects, btw)
  • 118 books in 22 languages make a lot of tedious operations : registering on the appropriate wiki project, uploading, making cross-links to translated books, etc. It's even possible that there be no wikisource/wikibooks project for some of the 22 languages
  • JP Petit is not familiar at all with Wikipedia : the culture, the syntax, the licenses, how it works, what goes where, and so on.

My opinion is that he has many other things to do than to learn all these concepts and he would appreciate a strong coaching. Even better : if someone very familiar with Wikipedia could do the job on his behalf (uploading every file to the right place, adding the appropriate license, descriptions, crosslinks, ...), I'm sure it would spare him a lot of discouraging troubles. If you wonder, no, I can not be this hero (I don't know wikisource/wikibooks and I miss the time) but, if necessary, I could play as a mediator since I'm french and I have a fair grasp of wikipedia culture.

I hope his offer will interest you. Regards. — Xavier, 04:09, 19 August 2006 (UTC) (PS: JP Petit doesn't know me, I'm writing this on my own just because I support his idea of "Knowledge without borders")

Hello. Any of the works which have been verifiably published are sought-after on Wikisource; others should probably be uploaded to Wikibooks, if the community there is interested. The publication requirement goes for any language; if it's been published in French but not English, the translation would be appropriate here. Although I don't have enough time to add any texts myself, I'm willing to help any new user who'd like to add texts; they just need to add one and contact me, and I'll make any necessary changes with explanations. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 04:19, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Hello. Your help will be greatly appreciated, thank you. What you wrote raises several questions :
  1. For each language, JP Petit will have to open an account on the corresponding wikisource and/or wikibook website, right ? I'm pretty sure he doesn't speak Polish for example. How will he be able to upload those comics on http://pl.wikisource.org/ ? How will he manage to get help there since everything is written in Polish ?
  2. Similarily, some books are written in Laotian or Kinyarwanda. However, according to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikisource it seems that there is no wikisource project for these languages. Should these books be forgotten ?
  3. The comics that were not sold in book stores were published on the Internet nevertheless, and would certainly have been sold as is 20 years ago. I'm not discussing your policy, I understand the reasons why you must enforce it, but let me make a parallel : several years ago, Stephen King wrote a book that was published exclusively on the internet. If SK decided to put all his books it in the public domain, this particular online book wouldn't go in wikisource, really ? I ask because splitting these books between wikisource and wikibooks adds another level of complexity.
Thanks in advance for enlightening me on these issues. — Xavier, 16:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Good idea. Things get clearer for me now : first each page would be uploaded to commons. Then anyone would be able to reconstruct each book on the appropriate wiki project (wikisource for published books and wikibooks for the others). Thanks for the tip. — Xavier, 23:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

(←)The main problem I find with works (which I think are quite desirable for WS) is that they are currently released under a non-comercial license. This is an unacceptable license per our copyright policy. It is simply too restrictive for the goals of this project regarding promoting free (free as in Freedom, not as in beer!) knowledge. The Wikimedia Foundation, which Wikisource is a part of, relys on copyleft licenses to ensure the the downstream freedom of the work done at Wikipedia and other sister projects. I do not know how many people have worked on the translations or if it would be possible to get them to release their work under a different license even if the original author is interested in doing so. I do think it is worth the effort to try and explain the big picture of our stance on this issue to him. I can ask some of our French collaborators to contact him and make a case for this if you would like. --BirgitteSB 13:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

You're perfectly right, licensing is a crucial step and I realized JP Petit had not clearly stated in his original message that he'd like his books be freely modified/translated/sold. I'm already discussing with him about this specific issue. I also warned him that each author, translators included, must agree with the license he will choose. I'll keep you aware of his decision as soon as I get an answer. If he's ok to release his books under GFDL/CC, then we will certainly need some help in order to upload the pages on commons (118 books make a huge number of pages - though I might be able to automatize the task) and then reconstruct the books on wikisource/wikibooks. Do you think your collaborators would accept to assist us in this ? — Xavier, 23:21, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The eMails sent by w:John Mark Karr regarding JonBenet Ramsey...valid, or not? Copyright could apply, but then, they are also being used as evidence in the investigation against him, were released by the University professor they were eMailed to, and have been frequently released to the media to quote extracts from (though possibly under the veil of Fair Use) - so, opinions? Sherurcij (talk) (CRIMINALS ARE MADE, NOT BORN) 18:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

As they will be used as evidence in a criminal trial I would prefer not to host these on the grounds that there is a possibility of influencing potential jurors. Of course they are probably already influenced by the news but because someone else has done something is no reason for us to. Also they aren't GDFL and copyright applies. AllanHainey 12:17, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Spoken Wikisource type thing?

Hi, was looking through Wikisource but can't find any kind of recording service for the blind (something along the lines of Spoken Wikipedia). have I missed it, or would anyone be interested in setting something up? Currently less than 5% of all books are rendered into blind accessible materials, Wikisource is in a great position to go some way to correcting that. Thank you, Dev920 14:16, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think we've ever considered this on wikisource. As, once checked, our texts are more stable than wikipedia articles I think this could work quite well with wikisource. If you want to try to set up something like this I suspect it would be welcomed. I can't do anything on this unfortunately as I don't have time now (& in any event I doubt if my accent would improve the listeners comprehension of the text). AllanHainey 12:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
It's been considered before, and we've made a tiny start on it; see the category for spoken works. Feel free to record new texts and add them to the category using {{audio file}}. // [admin] Pathoschild (talk/map) 13:10, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I did notice that: but it seems to me that because they're from Librivox, the chapters can be read by people with virtually any accent, from none to heavy Southern America, which can't be fun for blind people if they want to enjoy the text. But I thank both for your support, and when I have more time (I have two long essays to hand in in two days time and I haven't written either), and I have a working microphone. I will set about setting something up. Thanks. Dev920 10:48, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Please do! That would be a great addition to Wikisource.—Zhaladshar (Talk) 17:44, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
What about machine generated audio files? We could put them in a different section, but it would be a good temporary solution until we can get more natural spoken selections. What do you guys think? --Mattwj2002 04:25, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Here are a couple of free open source programs that would work. FreeTTS Carnival
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