Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2008-07

Proposals

Main page design (again!)

In reference to this discussion in the archives, I was wondering how the community would feel for a trial run of User:DarkFalls/Main Page 2 for a week or month? —Dark ^talk 06:17, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for it. The main page needs sprucing up. At least lose the guy on the ladder.--T. Mazzei 03:15, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The Three vertical sections look terribly stretched at 800x600 Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Percival Lowell} 03:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

800x600!! Are there still computers capable of resolutions that low!? :^) Actually a few years ago (~2005) some people asked me to fix some things on their computer. It was only capable of displaying 16 (that's not a typo) colours. But it was cheap...--T. Mazzei 03:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

We shouldn't make any assumptions about computer settings. For example, portable devices (with tiny screens) are increasingly popular. How good does it look at 300x300? ;) —{admin} Pathoschild 04:36:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Well any web design would look very "uncomfortable" with 300x300 screens, including the main page we have now ;) I've fixed the problem for slightly lower resolutions here (in 1280px and above, the collab will move to the left, under the featured text, while it will remain in the right, under the categories, for low res) , but it is impossible to fix everything to make it look spectacular with all resolutions... (there will be flaws with every design, such as large spaces with high resolutions) —Dark ^talk 09:40, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Sure. It looks like it could use some minor tweaks, such as having link names be consistent with the sidebar, remove the reduntant logo, and move some of the hard-coded styles into the site CSS, etc. But they're all fairly minor, so no reason they can't be done while it's live. -Steve Sanbeg 17:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

A trial sounds good. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:15, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I like the redesign as well, so agree with the suggestions for a trial. (p.s. the collaboration of the week is out of date and the bottom of the commons logo at the bottom of the page looks like it is cut off). Suicidalhamster 10:34, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

fixed —Dark ^talk 10:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

And it's on the main page. —Dark ^talk 00:34, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Congrats. I think the featured text should be given more of the page, but overall it is very efficient. For some reason the footer is appearing on the front page. Also, there is a comment on Talk:Main Page that the new design isnt as nice. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:45, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

SUL guidelines on Wikisource

With the implementation of Single User Login and the resulting requests for user renames and usurps I thought it might be time for Wikisource to think about how it is going to deal with SUL requests. Renames to accounts which have not been created are generally uncontroversial. However renames to accounts which do exist, and their subsequent forced renaming, is controversial. There is a debate going on at en.wikipedia on the bureaucrats noticeboard discussing this issue. One of the issues is whether target accounts with contributions to content should be allowed to be usurped, and whether only inactive accounts can be usurped. A relatively simple option for Wikisource would be to follow what the english wikipedia decides to do, however that obviously needs discussing. A request for usurpation is currently sitting at the bottom of this page so the issue is at least likely to crop up. Another side issue is whether we currently have enough bureaucrats to deal with the increase in requests. Suicidalhamster 00:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

For now I would suggest that we proceed on an ad hoc basis. The one request below isn't exactly a flood. If we get a lot of these request we can take another look based on our own actual experience. Eclecticology 17:20, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

So far I haven't seen any usurp requests that involved an account with significant contributions to the site. I have no issue usurping accounts that merely made a user page and added their thoughts to a deletion discussion. If we did get a more significant request and the contributions were copyrightable (rather than just importing PD material); I would definately hold off on making a decision for a few months to wait for a response from the inactive person. Of course if the community comes to consensus about a policy for usurpation I will follow the guidelines given in that.--BirgitteSB 18:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I am a bureaucrat on Wikiquote. It is a site of similar size to this and we have three bureaucrats. Our policy (q:WQ:USURP) is that we only usurp with agreement of the usurped account or if "the affected party did no significant edits for which their history should be retained to comply with GFDL and at least three weeks pass from your message to the affected party without response". Waiting months seems rather unreasonable to me. On whether a contribution is copyrightable, surely a contribution to a deletion discussion is at least as copyrightable as anything.--Poetlister 14:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that such an edit would be copyrightable (just as a user page edit would be) but I don't judge it to be a significant contribution. I personaly wouldn't lose any sleep over that. Of course as I said above if consensus is developed on a specific policy, I would follow it regardless of whether I would personally care to be less restrictive. Lacking such a policy I will follow my personal judgement as outlined above. Z of course may have a different opinion and be willing to usurp accounts that I am not. If the community generally finds my judgement is off-base, they will probably develop a policy at a speed equal to the degree they disagree with me. If you strongly believe Jeroen below should not be usurped (if he confirms his nl.WP account), I will hold off doing so until a policy is agreed on.--BirgitteSB 20:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

My advice is to ensure that the Jeroen here knows about the request, through messages on his talk pages and (if possible) by e-mail, then wait a reasonable time. If he doesn't reply, usurp him.--Poetlister 21:49, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I will definitely be leaving him a message and let it sit for a week if the other Jeroen can confirm his identity. But I already checked for email as my first thought was to ask the guy requesting the usurp to contact him by email and come to a general agreement (since our Jeroen also has the name at commons too). However Jeroen doesn't have email enabled here nor at en.WP. But my point is that I am not that concerned about an account that doesn't even have any contributions that would show up in a dump of texts, if people disagree with that they need to start building support for a policy. Otherwise everyone should expect me to act as I have described above in regard to usurping names. My remarks here were intended more to inform everyone what to expect of me without a policy, rather than to start an earnest debate of the merits.--BirgitteSB 23:54, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Personally if you and Zhaladshar are leaving messages on talk pages and emailing when possible, I cannot see any problem with usurping accounts with relatively few edits. Additionally I think its fine for you to use your own judgement regarding how long to wait and what counts as significant contributions. If we get a Usurp request for a name which has made lots of edits, we can work out how to cross that bridge when it happens! Suicidalhamster 13:12, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Questions

Published Texts about the United States' Civil War

I own original, autographed copies of two texts about the Third Wisconsin Infantry Regimenent, in which my ancestor served. Because of the family connection, I have transcribed each of them. I have not made scanned images of graphics from these texts, as attempts to do so have resulted in very inferior reproduction of those graphics. Further, due to the fragility of these texts and their value as family heirlooms, I would not be willing to attempt to scan all of the text. I used WordPerfect for this project. Here are the titles:

Title: A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin infantry, Author: Hinkley, Julian Wisner, 1838-1916. Publication: [Madison] Wisconsin history commission, Year: 1912 Description: xi, 197 p. illus. 23 cm. Language: English Series: Original papers; no. 7; Variation: Original papers (Wisconsin History Commission); no. 7.

Title: History of the Third regiment of Wisconsin veteran volunteer infantry 1861-1865. Author(s): Bryant, Edwin E. 1835-1903. (Edwin Eustace), Publication: Madison, Veteran Association of the regiment, Year: 1891 Description: xvii, 445 p., 1 l. front., port., fold. maps. 24 cm.

Can someone advise me how to convert these to formats suitable for inclusion in Wikisource? I JUST discovered Wikisource today, 18 May 2008, though I've been a Wikipedia user and minor editor for several years. I want to start to contribute more. I do NOT use Microsoft Word, but I do have the full Adobe Acrobat with pdf creating ability. Thanks in advance for assistance.

--Wisconsinator 15:34, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

You are more likely to develop usable text from Word Perfect than from Adobe Acrobat. Google Books has digitized both of these books but unfortunately makes them available to the public only in snippet view. At least there are copies out there that can be used for proofreading the texts that you add. Just begin with cutting and pasting from Word Perfect, and take it from there. It would probably be best to break the work up by chapters. There is no better way to learn than going ahead and trying things. Don't worry about the errors those can be fixed in the context of a specific dialogue. Eclecticology 16:59, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm concerned about doing it as "right" as possible from the start, in that I invested a GREAT deal of effort creating the WordPerfect version, which fairly faithfully reproduces the original, with the same pagination, drop caps, tabulation, et cetera. A very considerable amount of formatting will be lost in copy-paste, and I don't know that I would want to attempt a reformat in whatever new word-processing (I doubt that's the best phrase to use in this case) software I'm going to find myself using in transferring the texts to wikisource. Any further advice or suggestions or direction will be gratefully read. wisconsinator 04:00, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I have set up a "transcription project" Index:A narrative of service with the Third Wisconsin Infantry.djvu; if you can copy and paste the text onto the pages, we can all help with the formatting. Because we have a set of pagescans for this book, we do not need to replicate the formatting exactly. See Index:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu for a similar project which is nearing completion.

"History of the Third regiment of Wisconsin veteran volunteer infantry" isnt going to be as easy, as I cant find pagescans of the book. There are no tools to automatically convert from WordPerfect to Wiki, and while there are other tools to automatically convert from MS Word to Wiki, nobody has tried them for Wikisource (as far as I know). I would be happy to experiment with these tools if you send me the WordPerfect file.

Also, you can publish the WordPerfect document as a PDFs, and then Upload the PDFs to Wikisource so that others can download and print high quality editions of these works. Before uploading, you need to agree to release your PDFs as "free content"; ideally you should agree to put your PDF into the public domain, however it would be acceptable for you to decide to license it as GFDL or an acceptable "Creative Commons" licence. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:06, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Hello Wisconsinator, I am the person who has done much of the work on the Index:A Concise History of the U.S. Air Force.djvu which John mentions. I'm quite a stickler for faithful formatting myself, so I can imagine how much work you've probably put into those WordPerfect documents.

For a variety of reasons both technical and practical it's best for posterity's sake to do a wiki-version of the texts. But to reiterate what John said above, we can preserve the work you've put in to by converting the WordPerfect documents to PDF, which should look exactly the same as when you print them out.

I can tell you how to do this conversion on Windows. You want to download and install this software called "PDFCreator". What it does is create a fake printer in your system that generates PDF files. So install it, print out the WordPerfect document, and choose the PDFCreator printer, and you'll get a pop-up asking you where you want to save the file. If you get stuck at any point feel free to come back and ask questions.

Of course, I have to make the standard disclaimer that I'm not your computer guy and I'm not familiar with your computer, so I can't warranty any of the above advice. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 07:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

I have uploaded a PDF that Wisconsinator sent me, and moved that transcription project into "copy&paste" status. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:11, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Request for usurp User Jeroen

I am user Jeroen on the Dutch Wikipedia. I like to use the User:Jeroen also over here (SUL).. There are only a few edits from User Jeroen from November 2005. So hopefully it is possible to usurp User:Jeroen? Thanks in advance, --Jeroenvrp 16:07, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

The current owner of the name here is nl:Gebruiker:Jeroen-91. Perhaps we could move what he has done here to that name. That would free up the name sought to be usurped. Eclecticology 17:08, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Can you confirm you have this account name by stating that you made this request on you nl.WP talkpage?--BirgitteSB 17:09, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Done. Please see nl:w:Overleg_gebruiker:Jeroen#confirm --Jeroenvrp 15:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The Flowers of Evil

Hello, Two pages were made for this work, but I don't think that's necessary. On French WS, we have only one page for it, with some more sections for works added in the later edition. What do you think? Yann 18:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I prefer two pages, which is the usual practice on en-Wikisource. This makes it easier to work on them independently (for example, we can make a change only applicable to one edition with a simple edit instead of splitting another section). It also makes printing and navigation of the later edition more convenient. —{admin} Pathoschild 19:04:27, 01 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but then a 3rd page is needed for the 1868 edition. Yann 19:20, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

One page for all three would make most sense because that would make navigation easier. Let's remember that the pages in question are only tables of contents for the respective editions. To the extent that a poem appears in all three there is a good chance that it is the same poem. The three editions in question are the original French editions, so we haven't even gotten into the question of differing translations where even the titles of individual poems can vary. There is at least one pre-1923 translation (by Scott in 1909), in addition to the 1931 translation by Shanks that was used for the sample that I examined. A comparative table that shows which poems were included in each edition would be more useful. Eclecticology 20:17, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Separate pages makes sense when we're dealing with separate translations, or such. But where it's simply a later addition with a few changes, I think footnotes are the way to go. <ref>Note: In the second edition, Bardeleau changed "depths of love" to "breadth of love" Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:John Masefield} 20:52, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Sherurcij : the footnotes solution breaks the reading of the text. A comparative table might appear in some other place, don't you think so ?- --Zephyrus 11:49, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes it will. If two versions of the same poem vary only by a single word the footnote is likely the practical solution. Significant differences would require a different approach. Eclecticology 20:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

I would not have created two pages for this, but I also dont see a problem with keeping two pages since someone has bothered to lay them out that way, as they are only indexes/lists. The more lists we have, the better, IMO. Maybe a way to keep everyone happy is to to replace the dab page with a page that combines the two pages. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

The first and the second lists are incomplete, and a 3rd list would be needed if we make a list for each major edition, so just merging the two lists will not loose any information. Yann 12:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

In this case an appropriate table might list the titles on the left, and columns for each French edition where an "X" could be placed if the poem was in that edition. There could also be a column with links to the one or more English translations that are available. Eclecticology 20:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Now the French WS decided to create a list for each edition, so it might be easier to do the same for linking. Yann 08:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

-- to — (possible change?)

So many of our texts use -- as an em dash. This isn't good style, and I think a bot could fix all of them. Are there any instances where the change wouldn't be good? If not, could someone write a bot to do this? Thanks. Psychless 00:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Just make sure it doesn't pick up things like ---- which is a Wiki-code, or -- appearing in a table code, etc. Sherurcij ^{Collaboration of the Week: Author:Søren Kierkegaard} 03:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It's the "etc." that's worrisome in this kind of process. Eclecticology 04:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of -- in tables, maybe you're thinking of |-?. I think a simple regex replacement on article space, i.e. /(?<\!-)--(?\!-)/ to — should be safe, unless there's something else we want to preserve. -Steve Sanbeg 16:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Correct. There is no -- in tables. Also, unless someone can actually come up with an "etc.", I think the regex can be run as is. Psychless 22:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

This may affect your aesthetic sensibilities, but it's no big deal if these remain unchanged. If you can't be sure that it will affect nothing else then the caution principle favours not using your fancy technique. Do it manually instead. Eclecticology 23:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

It is quite possible that "--" appeared in print. The bot should only run on individual works, where a human has indicated that this transformation is desirable. The existance of " -- " is an indicator that the text hasnt been corrected based on a physical edition, as "—" is not usually surrounded by spaces. The spaces probably need to be removed during the transform.

Also, I think this discussion should be moved to WS:BOTR. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 23:37, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Can't this be done on a text by text basis using AWB? - Mtmelendez 14:31, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Due to little support, I withdraw my request. Psychless 01:17, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

South Hiendley page

I don't know if this is where I should ask, but I found a link to the Wikisource page South Hiendley on Wikipedia, but it had been deleted with the comment "encyclopedic material like this should be added to Wikipedia". The article does not exist on Wikipedia, so if there was any useful content on the Wikisource page, is it possible for it to be undeleted and transferred to Wikipedia? Snigbrook 23:22, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

If the content is suitable for Wikipedia, you can contact an admin, who have access to deleted material and can supply you with the data. A list of admins can be found here.- Mtmelendez 23:34, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Since it is so short here is the entire text that existed on that page:

South Hiendley is a small village in West Yorkshire, close to Ryhill and Hemsworth. Within the areas of the village are a Medieval Village mentioned in the Doomsday Book, called Hodroyd Felkirk, adjacent to this is Hodroyd Hall a Grade II listed building.

--BirgitteSB 01:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for providing it, as it is short I will probably start a new Wikipedia article rather than ask for it to be copied, still it could be useful for finding more information. Snigbrook 12:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)