Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2018-02

Strange business with Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier

I have a strange situation with Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier. Following a Match & Split on Chapter III, the page itself seems to still have the text of the entire book on it; however, when I click "edit" I see only a pages index going up through page 23, and no further text on the page after that. I've tried two different browsers, and tried viewing while logged out, so I don't think the issue is specific to me. I also tried purging the cache, to no avail. Any ideas what's going on and how to fix it? -Pete (talk) 18:35, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Done Sorry, it was a simple issue...the M&S process had stuck all the extra text on the last page it matched. On the path to fixing it up now... -Pete (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

OCR scan is all over the place

I have read Help:Beginner's guide to proofreading#Common OCR errors but I don't see this error addressed. I am trying to finish A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays and the OCR scan has virtually random word placement. E.g. my next page scans as:

still it

absolutely certain (and this

is

resource, the great irrefragable
flesh-eater)

meat

that

intellectual vigour,

may be

And

dogma

necessary

is

etc. This is maddening. Why does it have this garbled text and how do I fix it so that I can just make small changes to a correct OCR scan instead of retyping the entire work by hand? I have encountered this before with some works I have transcribed (e.g. Aucassin and Nicolette (Bourdillon)) but not others (e.g. The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist, Original Stories from Real Life, and Pulchrism: Championing Beauty as the Purpose of Art). A fix to this will save me hundreds of hours of work.—Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:57, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Your editing toolbar should have an OCR button. Click on it and it will give you a much better OCR. Jpez (talk) 05:25, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Wow. I could kiss you. Thanks, Jpez. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:50, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

And if that OCR button doesn't give good results, you could also try the Google OCR button: oldwikisource:Wikisource:Google OCR (uses a different OCR system; other than that it's identical in fuction). Sam Wilson 07:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I actually couldn't get the button to display on mul.ws. Do you have any idea why that is? I unselected it and selected it again in my Preferences but it doesn't show up in the Page: namespace for me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:08, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

if you go to "preferences > gadgets > Editing tools for Page: namespace", there is a box to check. it stopped working for some preferences for me, but is working now. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 00:58, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

That's what I did in my comment above. I'll try again. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:00, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Editcount and checkboxes from editing screen displayed awkwardly

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T186442Unknown

The edit count is outside the subject bar, which is shorter than other wikis. Also, the checkboxes, like "Watch this page", are pushed right by one inch. I filed a Phabricator task (phab:T186442), which is closed as "invalid". The issue turns out to be a local wiki one and that MediaWiki:Gadget-enws-tweaks.css should be fixed, adjusted, or something. I inserted the screenshots at the task; you can go there and see. George Ho (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@George Ho: Please feel welcome to amend your special:mypage/common.css file for the class if it is a problem for you. I am not sure that it is problematic, though we can put it into the review mix. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:21, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Created my own "common.css". However, what about others using English Wikisource? Other language sites of Wikisource don't have custom-made similar to this, right? George Ho (talk) 23:36, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, I said that we would put it in for review (which has been done on css talk page), and as it was a purposeful change at some point reacting to a report alone is not good process. Your report seems to be look alone; nothing that you have said says it has broken functionality. What other sites do, or don't do, is mildly informative, not normative. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:19, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposal for keyboard shortcuts

I prefer to edit with the keyboard, so shortcuts like "Alt+Shift+E" to edit are valuable. In the Page: namespace, we don't have shortcuts for navigating pages. I'd like to propose that we 1.) add these and 2.) that they should be "Alf+Shift+→", "Alf+Shift+←", and "Alf+Shift+↑", for navigating forwards one page, backwards one page, and to the index. I want to get community feedback and consensus before going to phab:. Thoughts? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:08, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I edit mostly on a Macintosh, which has no "alt" key. I sometimes edit from a PC whose keyboard has no arrow keys. Keyboard shortcuts are not likely to be implemented like this when they apply to a single project and cannot be universal. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:29, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: In yet other systems, e.g. MacOS, the access key is the combination of the control and option keys. In this case, as above, hold down both keys together and then press the shortcut key. I can confirm--I've used them before. There is a MacOS or OS X equivalent to the Windows-style keyboard shortcut. Do you have a suggestion for different keys? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:39, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

No, I do not. But then I don't think this proposal is necessary or beneficial. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:40, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Any more or less so than the other keyboard shortcuts or are your objections basically irrelevant to this particular proposal? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:51, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I use keyboard shortcuts to copy, paste, and enter diacriticals all the time. My personal experience causes me to strongly dislike any keyboard shortcut that causes the current page to change. I have lost count of the number of times I have been robbed of much difficult editing, all because some accidental keyboard combination moved me to a new page in the middle of editing. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:54, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Fair enough but since you're saying 1.) that you don't use shortcuts and 2.) you are in zero danger of accidentally pressing them, then while your perspective is valuable as far as it goes, it's not really that germane here as the change would have no impact on you and I'm not seeing how it's a possible site-wide problem anymore than any other shortcut (in fact, much less since there is less of a prospect of pressing those buttons accidentally). Anyone else? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:03, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: So you do use MediaWiki shortcuts and there is a high likelihood that you would press "Alf+Shift+↑" on a keyboard that lacks those keys? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you are not able to understand what I've been saying, but at this point I don't think it's worth my time to continue trying to explain. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Well, thanks again for your perspective. I hope that we can enable shortcut keys for myself and other users who find them more accessible (e.g. those who have difficulty with fine motor skills). If you have some misgivings about these, you can post them elsewhere and maybe it will be more intelligible. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:52, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

•  Comment All of this relates to mw:extension:ProofreadPage, so probably is best put into and discussed in a phabricator: ticket. It effects all uses of ProofreadPage at all wikisources, in all languages, so even deciding a letter based on English words is presumptive. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:31, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

  As background for a phabricator request, please refer to mw:Help:Keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts have been around for donkey's years, so the accidental usage of shortcuts in general is unlikely; and generally you are more likely to be trying to save a page, and start to delete it,—BTDT, worn out the t-shirt—which is easily recoverable. — billinghurst sDrewth

  @Billinghurst: Sure, but I wanted to get feedback first to see what other users thought here. I'll open the ticket. phab:T186478. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:09, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

• Access keys for page forward/back notwithstanding, here is something that might appeal to people who dislike mouse navigation: User:Inductiveload/quick access.js. It collects all the toolbar and tab links into a single dialog and allows you to filter them and activate with the keyboard. Add the following to your user JS: mw.loader.load('//en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User:Inductiveload/quick_access.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');. You can invoke it with the "A" access key (so Shift-Alt-A in Firefox). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 12:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikimania 2018 call for submissions now open

On behalf of the program commmittee of Wikimania 2018 - Cape Town, we are pleased to announce that we are now accepting proposals for workshops, discussions, presentations, or research posters to give during the conference. To read the full instructions visit the event wiki and click on the link provided there to make your proposal:

https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

The deadline is 18 March. This is approximately 6 weeks away.
This year, the conference will have an explicit theme based in African philosophy:

Bridging knowledge gaps, the ubuntu way forward.

Read more about this theme, why it was chosen, and what it means for determining the conference program at the Wikimedia blog. Sincerely, Wittylama 08:22, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-06

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Bureaucrats can now add and remove the accountcreator permission by default. This means the user can help create a large number of accounts, for example for an editathon. Wikis can change this if they want to. [1]
• The Wikidata vandalism dashboard is a new tool to monitor vandalism on Wikidata labels and descriptions. It is filtered by language. [2]
• Info pages for file pages now show the file's SHA1 hash value in the table of basic information. This is so users can see that the file is the same as the one they uploaded. [3]

Problems

• Special:Export has a higher error rate right now. This means that the export does not always work. You should check to make sure your page exports worked. The developers are working on fixing this. [4]

Changes later this week

• When you review an edit made with the visual editor you can check a visual diff of your changes besides the wikitext diff. If you pick one diff type it will remember and show you that in future. The visual diff will now be the type first shown to new users. [5]
• When you use a gallery to show images you can define the size, like gallery widths="150px". You could use em or % instead of px but it would make no difference. You can now only use 150px or nothing (150). If you write something else, instead of treating it like px, it will not work. [6]
• The wording when you send a thanks message will change. Instead of Yes or No it will say Thank and Cancel. It will also be easier to understand that all thanks are public. [7]
• Redirects connected to Wikidata can create double Wikidata items. There will now be a tracking category for this. Wikis that don't want it can disable it. [8]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 February. It will be on all wikis from 8 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 6 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 7 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The Education Program extension will be removed on 30 June. It is replaced by the Programs and Events Dashboard. [9][10]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

20:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Comment

• The new Wikidata tracking category will appear in Special:TrackingCategories, I couldn't find a specific reference to its name so we will have to look at that when it is rolled out. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:54, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussion: ScienceSource proposal

At #ScienceSource proposal, Charles Matthews (talk • contribs) (re-)introduces a discussion.

Charles, to note that your previous announcement from October 2017 and this announcement look worlds apart, so that may be why there has been no commentary. Can I suggest that there may be an extended summation on why Wikisource should pay attention to the discussion; its relevance to WS; and where there is significant difference or roadblocks from what we have.

From my point of view the previous additions of open source science papers got stuck for a number of reasons. 1) What we wanted for enWS to match our existing collection was not a priority for the bot operators (they wanted a site to dump within WMF, we wanted something was aligning with existing works, configuration and data management) 2) This was highlighted in the lack of an interfacing collaborator to align the needs of the proponents and enWS, and finding that resource internally to WS with knowledge and capacity for such a large project was not available (huge commitment from smaller pool where already undertaking existing interests) 3) If they are coming into an existing site, bringing some technology, power, tools, etc. that can be utilised and enhance what exists are more likely to lure people from existing projects.

Note that these additions are still sitting in the Wikisource: namespace, and pretty much untended. How much they are viewed is unknown. In the end the differences between the approaches was that what was proposed was a bot addition of works in a flat manner, with no evidence of interlinking or curation. Curation and some of the finer details is relevant to numbers of contributors, so the clash of cultures is pertinent when looking to integrate matters of suitable difference. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:26, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt. I'll try to supply some of the missing links.

Last year I had a Wikimedian in Residence position, at the w:Betty and Gordon Moore Library, supported by ContentMine Ltd., which is a non-profit tech startup in Cambridge, England. It enabled me to connect some of the dots, by absorbing some librarians' concerns about the current scientific literature, and its open access subset. It introduced me to the text and data mining world as a tech subculture; where previously I had been absorbing the semantic web tech subculture that comes with Wikidata. I was on Wikidata from late 2014, taken there by work on the ODNB, the updated version of the DNB that brought me to Wikisource in 2009.

There was a Wikisource meetup at Wikimania 2017 in Montreal, and I attended. User:Daniel Mietchen advocated for more open access papers on Wikisource, and basically for repurposing Wikisource (all languages, which matters, since English does not dominate Wikisource at this time) to include open access papers as basic to the mission. (I paraphrase.) I knew, from the Vienna Wikisource conference in 2015, that people from French and German Wikisources have little interest in this direction. Indeed, I made the point that Wikisource starts with digitisation, and really on the community level that is still the focus.

That does not mean that I think Daniel's line of thinking lacks merit. The librarians' view is that text and data mining, of open access scientific literature and maybe more, should be happening; and they see the issue as one of barriers to entry to that field. Such as tech and intellectual property issues coming from the publishers' side, and this leads down a blame-game route, and a pile-on directed at Elsevier (I simplify). I was sharing an office at the Moore Library with one of the younger generation of librarians who regards this area as key to the future of the profession. I spoke at a text and data mining conference in Cambridge in July, where these points were hashed over.

My take is different. Namely:

(a) The text and data mining (TDM) world and the semantic web world have little contact, mainly because TDM is close to the black boxes of machine learning, which kill semantic content (while making you rich);

(b) Such contact as I'm aware of comes through WMF-funded projects (the ContentMine one, and a couple of others);

(c) The "barriers to entry" debate is big-scale politics and lobbying and trying to change the contractual and legislative climate, while on the other hand one can try actually to do some doable stuff, within the Wikimedia movement;

(d) There are nuances to TDM, which starts off maybe as a kind of sledgehammer for doing search, and also to semi-automation (e.g. gamification) as a way of uploading statements into Wikidata. Some common ground can be found in the technical side of annotation.

So, I have been working within ContentMine (now as a volunteer), to present a project that is a TDM platform, and is Wikisource-like in the sense of a wiki way of working on sources (with annotation in place of digitisation). And is tied to Wikipedia-like concerns on reliable sources. Grants aren't given to prototype platforms as such: you have to answer the question "what is it for?" in a convincing way.

I'd like to make the final point that science publishers are interested in adding a "value layer" to their papers, and Elsevier piloted a version last year. We have that here, in the convention about "light wikilinking". The publishers alone will not create a platform for a big cross-section of the scientific literature: why should they take an interest in papers they didn't publish? Charles Matthews (talk) 06:20, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

One of my problems is mixing modern and old stuff in a copyright-bound library like ours tends to produce very uneven collections. Dig through Project Gutenberg for the copyrighted works, and besides a few modern translations, you get a few propaganda pieces and other stuff that doesn't generally fit the tone of the collection. I've looked through public library catalogs that have etext collections indexed in, and you force people to separate out the four "Learn C# in 30 Days!" from dozens of "Interpolating ancient beetle reports using H. Gray's Coccinellidae collection: a C# approach", and the additions are more trouble than they're worth. Wikisource has a more mixed collection, but I'm afraid that dumping a large collection of text here will overwhelm the people trying to work on older texts and drive them away. I'm fine with the collection, but not as a part of Wikisource.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:33, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

go dump them; it will not drive me away, rather other factors will do that. we need to be open to new transformative uses of the project, or we may go the way of wikinews. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 15:03, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

We may go the way of Wikinews? We aren't a company; we don't have to do whatever we can to turn a profit. Other projects can and should be made instead of trying to transform Wikinews or Wikisource into something they're not.--Prosfilaes (talk) 18:05, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

One of the distinctives for the Wikisources is scan-backed text and yet we are talking here about "dumping" text that is not verifiable without going off to some other site—if that other site is not behind a pay-wall. Here at enWS we have only just reached 45% of the mainspace with a backing scan and the battle to decrease the large corpus of texts that are not scan-backed is offset most days by the addition of the effusions of the current incumbent of the Oval Office, along with various stories and texts copied from somewhere else. The addition of a further corpus of scientific papers without scans will not improve matters. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:23, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

This is a totally solvable problem: just make validated pages protected and if really necessary, have some process for including screenshots. The reality is that many texts are digitally-native or were not originally encoded as text in the first place (e.g. speeches) and Wikisource serves a valuable purpose presenting those as well as things in ink on dead trees. The validation-protection is totally legit since there is very little need to edit pages once validated and if it's really necessary, someone can post to the talk page or an admin board. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:29, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: At enWS we need to accept that modern works are paperless, and as such they will be electronic documents along which will/should not need proofreading, though maybe they will need formatting. We do have the scope with Wikidata for such works to be identified as "digital document", and that maybe some of the requisite components. — billinghurst sDrewth 20:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I have no problem with the addition of properly curated texts that are verifiable by a reader—provided that they meet WS:WWI. I also know that we will never reach 100% scan-backing here; 75% might be the best we can do. I was responding to the suggestion of "dumping" texts here. I'm aware that this is not Charles' intention, but it was mooted in the discussion above. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:59, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, I personally am not talking about introducing scientific papers here. Rather the opposite: I'd like to work on scientific papers, as a research project, on a custom platform. I think one thing that could come out of it, that could be of interest to Wikisource, is a style of annotation that would be independent of text type. w:Web annotation has not taken a real grip within Wikimedia, though there are certainly possible applications (e.g. m:Collaborative Machine Translation for Wikipedia); and it has not been adopted here, in the sense that Wikisource:Annotations remains in limbo as a possible guideline.

The "corpus" and "annotation" issues might actually be in a chicken-and-egg relationship, in that adding value to texts by annotation may not have apparent value in small samples.

In any case, it is certainly not that I don't value traditional Wikisource proof-reading. Charles Matthews (talk) 20:31, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

@Charles Matthews: et al

• Proofreading is a concept of OCR being imperfect. I don't think that it should define us as a site. It is a means to transcribe works only. That is a way to become a less relevant corner of the site where some will be comfortable but not reach our goal of being a library.
• I do think that we should be hosting published scientific works—not some little niche for works of a certain generation
• Our issue about annotation has always been how to do it AND still present the work in its original context. So the discussion is about the how, not the whether. We failed due to the technical aspects being beyond us.

— billinghurst sDrewth 21:02, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Proofreading as a "means to quality" is not intrinsic to the text, surely; but is intrinsic to the "extraction method". So we agree there.

Multiple extraction methods will benefit Wikimedia as a whole, and the existence of one method does not diminish another. We live in an era where the traditional Wikipedia method (human reads some source, extracts a putative factual statement, comes to a judgement on the reliability of the source, and writes it into Wikipedia adorned with a footnote that applies to some rather unclear area of text) is held up by some as a gold standard. Which seems to me to miss a point or two – it is more the goose that lays the golden eggs, than something infallible.

Anyway, what ScienceSource is intended to do includes getting past the "primary sources bad, secondary sources good" hurdle for facts extracted directly from the scientific literature by machine. I think the technique of annotation, which might use Wikibase, might also be seen to have further application. We'll have to wait, probably. I'd be happy to go into detail, to anyone who is that interested. Charles Matthews (talk) 21:39, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm not worried about published scientific works. I'm worried about having a Wiki that's 80% of articles from modern scientific journals and 20% older works. It'd be like having a Wikipedia that's 80% highly technical scientific works; people aren't going to look to it for non-scientific works, and people who might build the other 20% are likely to feel unwelcomed. Likewise, a Wiki that's 80% modern scientific journals might be hurt by having Negroes and Negro "slavery;" the first, an inferior race--the latter, its normal condition, whereas a general library has an easier time explaining why it has old racial hatred on its shelf.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:57, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

As I said above: the announcement of ScienceSource is not of a project intended to happen on Wikisource. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Just chiming in to say that I personally haven't given up on using Wikisource as a repository for open-access articles ("dumping" has never been the intention), but am focusing my current efforts on technical aspects of the workflows that would help us getting there (the pilot project here taught us a lot in this regard). Note that both WikiProject Source MetaData (which gave rise to WikiCite, which in turn was involved in launching the Initiative for Open Citations) and the JATS for Reuse initiative (which aims to improve the XML that forms the basis of importing the articles here) have been launched in large part to address the issues that were brought about by our attempts to make such a Wikisource corpus of open-access literature useful. On the way, we are building tools like Scholia that allow new forms of browsing literature (e.g. for a topic, person, work, journal, publisher, organization or funder), and I would welcome a closer integration of them with Wikisource, which could come about by any of these dimensions, with texts probably being central. I also remain interested in annotations, and would like to explore how we can include them in such semantic browsing, e.g. by systematically linking them with the corresponding Wikidata statements. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 14:05, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Whether to reproduce CC-licensed journal article in just text

I would like to republish/redistribute a CC-licensed journal article, seen here: [11][12]. I just found out about it when the copyright of the PDF version is disputed and subject to a Commons discussion. If it can be reproduced into Wikisource (without images), I think the issue would be formatting references. Does the CC BY v4.0 license require a licensee to make notes of changes or something? George Ho (talk) 03:11, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The paper is CC, and is available in PDF, so I would just upload it and we can build the Index/Page pages here. The images decision will follow and high res v. low res argument will tell us what is happening for Commons hosting. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:54, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

yeah, upload it here with CC license. i guess we need to route around that commons admin. sad. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 14:51, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

The commons admin is there on a point of principle, and should not be criticised for that, and as such it is not right to criticise an individual here. The community can deal with admins with an approach to consensus and I believe it will show through with those strengths. — billinghurst sDrewth 21:05, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

you can defend this or other deletionist admins if you will, for me they are an obstruction to be routed around, to do encyclopedic work. i do not see principle, but rather an ideology. principles require ethics or a code of conduct. not much collaboration, rather rule by fiat. Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 21:58, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

For the record, the image was deleted because the admin believed that the artist did not understand the details of what he was giving away and chose not to take someone's work, work he used to feed himself, because the artist was offering only the right to use the low-res version when that is not possible under a CC license. I'd call that "fairness" which is a fairly basic principal or ethic.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:13, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

"for the record" - i think it’s great an admin can flout the monkey-selfie consensus in solicitude towards "the artist [who] did not understand the details". i will try that excuse out next time i want to delete one of mine, and i am told "CC is irrevocable" or "Prado Museum can get stuffed" Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 04:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Have the decency to have your argument to their face at Commons, not snipe at them here. That community's decision that did not impact us, as such the criticism belongs there. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:40, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

@George Ho: this has been resolved at Commons and you should be able to upload the paper to Commons; the low-res version of the disputed file has been restored. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:21, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Uploaded as File:Countershading and Stripes in the Theropod Dinosaur Sinosauropteryx Reveal Heterogeneous Habitats in the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota.pdf. Now what to do with the PDF? George Ho (talk) 04:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I also created Index:Countershading and Stripes in the Theropod Dinosaur Sinosauropteryx Reveal Heterogeneous Habitats in the Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota.pdf, but I haven't yet created Pages. Must I use "CC-BY-4.0" as footer or something? George Ho (talk) 05:43, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The help that you seek should be covered in the help pages in your welcome message. The file at Commons needs a license, and the completed, translcuded work here will need a license, not required in Index: or Page: nss. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Problems with File:Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples.pdf

I uploaded File:Runic and heroic poems of the old Teutonic peoples.pdf, and none of the pages want to load. I can look through the PDF when I download it, but is there something I can do here, or should I try a different file from the Internet Archive? It's sort of an important book, because it's backing for Rune poems.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:38, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: Looks fine to me, though the page that I opened and saved didn't have the best OCR, and I would be tempted to refresh it. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:36, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Works recommendations and favorite quotations for Twitter

If this seems like a good idea to others, I would like to post Contributor #Wikipicks and favorite quotations at the English Wikisource Twitter account on occasion if anyone is game to share their favorites from works and quotes available here at Wikisource that can be linked to in a tweet. I wouldn't post User names (at Twitter) unless permission is expressly given to do so. If anyone is up for offering their favorites, feel free to leave work/quote picks at my Talk page. More than one per would be great! Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:57, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea, but you probably could have guessed that :) I'll try to send ideas your way from time to time. Let me know if there are other ways I can help. -Pete (talk) 23:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

One that I have been thinking of tweeting for Black History Month is Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 9/The "Free-State Letter" of Judge George H. Williams. But I think it might need pretty hefty trigger warning. It is understood as the decisive document preventing Oregon from becoming a slave state in the run-up to the American Civil War...but it was by no means progressive, by any reasonable standard. It was overtly racist, and made the argument in practical/economic terms. Important, but truly distasteful, piece of history. I'm on the fence about whether and how to tweet about it... -Pete (talk) 23:46, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Let's just say that if you or others are on the fence about a thing, I am likely behind a very high concrete wall... So if I don't tweet about a thing, it's because I'm not comfortable with my judgment concerning posting about certain subject matters. I'm not very bold in this area. Probably not the best social media person for the job ;) but I like to promote Wikisource, and am happy to do so as long as I am permitted to :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:14, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Index:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu needs some help

Hi to all. If anyone has time and a little patience. This work has been marked as proofread, though there are some issues where the footnotes have not been made into ref'd footnotes, and some situations where the foreign characters have been omitted and not been marked as such. The work also needs some transclusion of missing chapters. If anyone can give it some love that would be great. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:54, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Guidance on missing punctuation

On Page:Henry Stephens Salt - A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays.pdf/110, you will see at the very end of the page, there is a hanging sentence before "For..." without a period. What is the best practice for this: insert one anyway? Leave it as is with a blank space followed by "For"? Use some template like {{SIC}}? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Interesting question. I usually correct these little punctuation errors. But I'll be glad to hear about this from other editors! --Dick Bos (talk) 08:16, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The hyphen in the line immediately above is also missing. I usually just leave these as they are printed. If it's a particularly egregious typo, then I'll add {{sic}} after it (note that this is different from {{SIC}}). The one time I fix them, is in children's books—particularly those for early readers. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:29, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: What hyphen? I only see two in the scan and they are in the text: both are for instances of "dog-like". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:47, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Koavf: The word "outrage" as opposed to "out rage" as it currently shows. The hyphen that should have been printed at the end of the line is missing. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Generally I will only correct if it is required for clarity. I would usually wrap the added punctuation inside a <includonly> set, keeping the Page: as presented and the clarity in the transcluded work. I feel that this indicates for the {{sic}} that BWC said is their means. In this example, I probably wouldn't have, though have no complaints whichever choice. Here we are dealing with the typographer's work, not the author's, so not changing the intent of the author. — billinghurst sDrewth 11:59, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't understand the original concern. The sentence you mention concludes on the next page, with a period on that page, so why are you considering any change to that? --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:55, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I am seeing this differently from the rest of you. The missing hyphen, missing period, slight gap at the end of each of those two lines, and the missing part of the "f" at the end of the line below suggest to me a printing (or perhaps scanning) anomaly. I believe the hyphen and the period were both there in the original typesetting. -Pete (talk) 21:21, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Pete: if the error is small and there's a good chance it is a print or scan error, there is no harm in fixing it. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 03:12, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

If doing so please leave an inline html comment <!-- fixing punctation from scan--> — billinghurst sDrewth 05:19, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Two interesting reads

• On unintelligible manuscripts: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/transcribe-old-documents-unreadable-handwriting
• On digital versus print page layout: https://alistapart.com/article/a-simpler-page —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:10, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-07

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• TemplateStyles has been deployed to the Swedish Wikipedia. TemplateStyles is a feature to make it easy to add CSS to templates without administrator privileges. This allows for better adaptability to screen sizes, especially on mobile where are half our total page views. If your community would like to be the next to have the feature, please submit a task on Phabricator. [13][14][15]
• Registration pages now collect keyboard/mouse usage information for research on identifying spambots.

Changes later this week

• You can opt in to a new beta feature that lets you use visual diffs on history pages. [16]
• The visual editor shows and lets you edit templates in one way, and reference lists in another. This meant that templates that only contain a fake reference list, like {{reflist}}, would not get updated as you edited. Now they will update as you edit, but you will no longer be able to visually edit them as templates. [17]
• The abuse filter extension has a new feature contains_all that you may use to check if one or more strings are all contained in another given string. [18]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 February. It will be on all wikis from 15 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 13 February at 18:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 14 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The settings page and beta options for the mobile website are being improved. [19]

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

21:59, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

ScienceSource proposal

At m:Grants:Project/ScienceSource is a grant application to the WMF, and this announcement is the sequel to one I made here in October.

From the WikiSource angle, the proposition that the text of scientific papers should be hosted here hasn't actually flown, despite a discussion that reaches back to 2014, if I recall correctly. The proposed ScienceSource platform would be a chance, among other things, to hash out what could actually be done (at scale) with a large body of scientific paper text. The theme is "annotation", which could mean a number of things, and those things are not mutually exclusive.

I'm listed as a participant in the proposal. I'd like to think that some of the community here would support this pilot, as of interest in advancing "sources" within Wikimedia. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:46, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Final week for discussion. Charles Matthews (talk) 12:48, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

There is the following discussion on this page at #Discussion: ScienceSource proposal

PageCleanUp gadget?

Should I turn my PageCleanup user script into a gadget (under the "Editing tools for Page: namespace" section)? I know there are a few different scripts for doing the same thing, but none of them are gadgets at the moment. I'm not sure if the actual replacements it makes are the best, but I use it on pretty much every page and it does quite well. Sam Wilson 03:01, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

We should be looking to do something with Wikisource:TemplateScript as once on the management of preferred toys is gadgetfied. We are each so wedded to "our" clean up scripts, and not wanting to fluff around with coding when we could be proofreading, that we leave the collective good out in the cold. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:30, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

If we can have one master, and then have the ability to add components, and possibly without the risk of breaking the master, that would be absolutely brilliant. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:55, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes good points. I think that TemplateScript commands should be moved into the editing toolbar though. The sidebar isn't where people (well, new people, anyway; we all know where things are) expect editing buttons to be. Or even better, let's put TemplateScript (i.e. a easy-to-extend system of text manipulations) into the new Wikisource extension! :-) Then all Wikisources can benefit. Sam Wilson 03:55, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Moving the commands into the editing toolbar would not be good for me as they're about to turn the only good toolbar off. We need to keep the commands available without depending on a toolbar. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 04:40, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

New problem with the special characters toolbar

Hi there,

Since 14/02/2018 21:50 (UTC), I have issues with the toolbar for specials characters and custom toolbars in the Page: namespace. Whenever I try to add something, it adds it to the page at the beginning of the page and the header and the footer are duplicated into the main section of the page. For example, here: [20], when I add "Á" at the end of the first line (DICTIONARY OP THE SWATOW DIALECT.), this is what I get : <noinclude><pagequality level="1" Áuser="" />{{RunningHeader|left=77|center={{sc|dictionary of the swatow dialect.}}|right=77}}{{multicol|line=1px solid black}} </noinclude>DICTIONARY OP THE SWATOW DIALECT.

The problem does not affect main namespace.

The problem started at that time (21:50 UTC) approximately. Assassas77 (talk) 22:17, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

The same problem on pl ws. using anything from editTools inserts hidden footers and headers into the page text. Zdzislaw (talk) 22:49, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Same problem here. @Beeswaxcandle: ...do you use the custom toolbar as well? Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:55, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

it seems that this change: Create keyboard shortcuts for navigating in ProofreadPage(added a project to T186478: Create keyboard shortcuts for navigating in ProofreadPage: MW-1.31-release-notes (WMF-deploy-2018-02-13 (1.31.0-wmf.21)).) completely destroyed the possibility of using the editTools and toolbar :( Zdzislaw (talk) 23:00, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Ditto. Charinsert does not insert at the cursor but anywhere it feels like. @Londonjackbooks: it has nothing to do with the toolbar, which in your scheme of things inserts some template codes into the text (please correct me if I am wrong). This is an error caused somewhere else in the code. — Ineuw talk 02:59, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Ineuw: A description of what happens when I try to add a break to the first line of poetry using the <br /> button from my custom toolbar (placed after "glares. . . .", but that's not where it appears) Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:15, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

P.S. I am calling it a night, so I won't be responding for a few hours. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 03:20, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I understand, but the origin of the problem is not your toolbar, nor is it my character insert bar. There is a an error somewhere in the wiki code which affects all such actions. Since everything of this nature is affected, it will be easier for the programmers to locate and repair it. Until then, one has to type in all the codes. My only regret is that they never try out their changes in a real working environment before they release the new software upgrade.P.S. Rest well. — Ineuw talk 03:27, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, it's happening to me in Monobook as well. It's inserting at about 50 characters earlier than the insertion point. Happens both from the classic toolbar and from the charinsert at the bottom. I've got around it by inserting into the header box and then copy/paste to where it should be. However this is far too much of a nuisance, so I'm stopping after 1 page. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:28, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T187454Resolved

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
I wonder if this change has anything to do with it. Certainly it doesn't seem that there's been any recent change to the WikiEditor toolbar that would have caused this. @Matma Rex are you able to assist at all here? Sam Wilson 03:41, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

In relation to the char-insert/ SpecialCharcters insertion issue, I am also experiencing this. (Firefox 60.0a1 (2018-02-14)) on Windows 7.ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:51, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that Create keyboard shortcuts for navigating in ProofreadPage is related to this problem. This change seems to be the real origin of the problem (thank you Sam). I have opened a task about it with more explanations. Tpt (talk) 15:30, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Some weeks ago I made a feature request to add an alt-shift keyboard combination to open/close the header. Could this be the issue? I would not know how to track this down. — Ineuw talk 17:15, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

This should be fixed now. See the task for details. Matma Rex (talk) 00:26, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Working for me! Many thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:29, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@Matma Rex Thanks a lot for repairing this. Dick Bos (talk) 09:22, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Solved for me :) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:32, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-08

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• The explanation of the abbreviations on the recent changes page could overlap with the list of changes. This has been fixed. [21][22]
• You can now see statistics for pageviews per wiki per country. You can see this on maps or in a table. [23]

Problems

• Linter is reporting estimated counts instead of actual counts for some wikis. This is because of performance problems. You might notice a false higher number in linter counts for some categories. This will be fixed as soon as the performance problem has been fixed. [24]
• Last week the way that Visual Editor displays references lists was changed. As a result, the references generated by specific templates like {{sfn}} are not visible in the references list whilst editing. [25][26]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 20 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 21 February. It will be on all wikis from 22 February (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 20 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 21 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The way edit summaries and log comments are stored in the database is being changed. In the future this will make longer comments possible. [27]
• Edit conflicts could be solved in a different way in the future. You can test a new prototype.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

22:54, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Repair the file of Index:Willich, A. F. M. - The Domestic Encyclopædia (Vol. 2, 1802).djvu

Can anyone do a repair, which is needed for this index? As I understand there are duplicated pages in the file: page 314 of the file (No. 284 in the book) is duplicated by page 318, and the image page 315 is duplicated by page 319. The duplicates should be removed from the file. Currently there are not any proofread pages for this index, so the removal doesn't cause necessity of any subsequent page moves, only the index's page list must be somewhat rewritten (and I can do this task on my own). --Nigmont (talk) 14:52, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Done, also removed duplicated page near the end. -Einstein95 (talk) 08:14, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Einstein95: thank you very much! --Nigmont (talk) 17:49, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

How to best structure this text?

I have been building a transcription of Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier. The book contained two works, each of which has different titles on the title page and within the book; and each one contains a highly detailed TOC.

What is the best way to structure this overall? I am wondering if the main page should maybe look more or less like this:

User:Peteforsyth/Eleven front

But I don't have a good grasp of the range of possibilities. Can anybody point me to a transcription of a work with a similar structure, or offer ideas of how to best present this to the reader in a way that is both accurate and useful? -Pete (talk) 22:45, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: An option: Replicate Main base page as closely as possible to original (using transcluded title page); use {{Auxiliary Table of Contents}} to link to Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier/Part 1 & Part 2; at each Part subpage, you would transclude the intro and TOC Pages which link to chapters Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier/Part 1/Chapter 1, Chapter 2, &c. Londonjackbooks (talk) 15:31, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

An example where we've had two distinct works in one book is Moll Flanders and Roxana. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 16:55, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Thank you both for the suggestions and examples. This work is different from the Dafoe in a few respects:

• The works have their own chapters (many of them!)
• The title pages are literally the only thing that apply to both works. There is no overall introduction, and each work has its own TOC. There is a list of illustrations for the first work, but not for the second.
• The titles and subtitles are extremely long!

With all that in mind, I have an approach that I think I like. If you have a moment, please take a look before I go further. See the front page/overall page: Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains & A History of the Sioux War. It is minimal; note the "note" in the header. And see the page for the first of the two works: Eleven years in the Rocky Mountains and a life on the frontier

Please take a close look at how I handled the "header" at the second link, and in the individual chapters.

I feel there is no perfect approach in this case; the compromise I have made with this approach is to eschew the "sub-page" naming convention. To do so would involve multi-line, redundant names, and I don't see any benefit to the reader (as long as the structure is adequately communicated via the header info).

What do you think, @Londonjackbooks: and @Beeswaxcandle:? -Pete (talk) 18:50, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Some thoughts beginning from the Base page:

1. I would place an {{incomplete}} tag at the base page until the work is complete. This is for potential readers. Done
2. You need a license placed at the base page. Done
3. Linking to Parts I and II via the title page works for me.
4. Re: Part I: I would not exclude text ("Part I") from the transclusion. It may seem redundant considering you have covered it in the header, but it is part of the original.
5. It is usually strongly recommended to title pages with "Chapter 1", 2, etc. as opposed to I, II.

I understand your concern about the length of titles; the way you have handled it, at least readers can link to the base page from the header if they wish. Beeswaxcandle likely has more insightful thoughts on the above and on structure in general, so I will defer :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:52, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! I've taken care of the first two, thanks for pointing those out. (Not sure why the death year isn't having an effect on the PD template though, if you have any ideas if I did something wrong, let me know.) -Pete (talk) 21:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

And thanks for fixing my silly PD template error. As for #4, I'm not strongly opposed, but will wait for other opinions...I did include that on the page with a "noinclude" tag. Seems not uncommon for stuff that is less relevant to a digital presentation to get left out of the transclusion...another place I did it is here (page 7, redundant of title page, not included). And it seems to me that advertisements are routinely skipped. Is there really a hard-and-fast rule? Isn't access to a fully accurate rendition addressed with readily-accessible links to the PDF/DJVU file? -Pete (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Re: #5, good to know...I wish I'd realized that before I set up all those 25 or 30 chapters...arg! I will do "part II" that way, but I may leave moving all those pages around for last...sounds like a lot of busywork. But working with arabic numerals will make things easier in the future... -Pete (talk) 21:53, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Braces spanning lines

Could someone help with positioning the braces (and brace-text) for Page:Mary Lamb (Gilchrist 1883).djvu/16? I need to shift them down slightly without altering any other formatting on the page, but am not sure how to go about it. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:15, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Maybe use a table? Copying table formatting from past examples in my sandbox, how about something along the lines of the following:

Memoir of William Hazlitt, by W. Carew Hazlitt. 1867.

Spirit of the Age. Table Talk.	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	Hazlitt. 1825, 1826.
Autobiographical Sketches. Lakes and Lake Poets.	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	De Quincey. 1863.

William Godwin, his Friends and Contemporaries, by Kegan Paul. 1876.

Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

It would be a two-page-spanning table with lots of internal formatting. I'd like to avoid using a table for the two pages, if that's possible. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:02, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I am only copying someone else's smartness, but the way it is formatted, it seems as though only the affected portion needs to be a table? See in edit mode (refer to "p style" etc., which lies outside the table). Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

The spacing between consecutive lines is different with and without the table. So it looks odd if only a select portion is formatted as a table. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:20, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Doing something like this ought to be fairly portable without the need for tables:

''Spirit of the Age''. <span style="position:relative;top:1.4em;">{{brace2|2|r}} ''Hazlitt''. 1825, 1826.</span><br />
''Table Talk''.

''Autobiographical Sketches''.  <span style="position:relative;top:1.4em;">{{brace2|2|r}} ''De Quincey''. 1863.</span><br />
''Lakes and Lake Poets''.

The factor 1.4em represents "standard" line height and ought to suffice. 114.74.130.95 04:56, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Not quite what I wanted, but it seems to work well enough for what is required. Thanks. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:57, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Then please expand on precisely what it is that you wanted, anyway, and maybe a better solution will emerge in the ensuing discussion? Without pressure, as a couple of usable alternate approaches are available to fall back upon. 114.74.130.95 22:27, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Printing and binding Wikisource works

(I think this has come up before, but I can't find it now.) Does anyone think it'd be a good idea to be able to buy printed and bound copies of works from Wikisource? I'm thinking we could use Pediapress as a print-on-demand service and some of the proceeds would go to the WMF (and maybe we could figure out a way to earmark these funds for Wikisource work). A set of paperbacks called "Wikisource Classics" or something. I know there's the Collection extension which produces PDFs that can be sent to Pediapress, but it doesn't work well for the structures of works we have here. I'm thinking something more along the lines of generating LaTeX-formatted versions from works here, and hand-editing them where required (in such a way as to make it easy to incorporate future changes of course). For example, The Nether World when run through this script and tweaked a bit produces this PDF. What do you think? Sam Wilson 04:56, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea and a good way to raise money. How can I help? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:10, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Koavf: I think we should select a set of say five works that we could use as a test run. I've emailed Pediapress to see if their workflow can accomodate non-Collection-extension inputs (either PDF or LaTeX; I suspect the latter will work for them as it's what they're already using). Shall we coordinate this on Wikisource:Print on demand? If Pediapress can't do it, we can set up a Wikisource account on Lulu or something; Wikimedia Australia could possibly handle the payments. Sam Wilson 03:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Samwilson: This all sounds very sensible. I'd be willing to work on the CSS for laying out the books as well. I think we could do well to have some more deluxe editions of works later down the road but at the very least, we can include plenty of media from c:. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:44, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

The Nether World might be an excellent first choice, given that it is part of the Oxford World Classics series (indicating interest) yet there's no in-print non-cheap PoD edition out there.* However, I think we need to be able to reliably produce decent PDF and thus PoD works from more or less arbitrary Wikisource works. If a work has demand, we'll be competing against Oxford or Penguin or at least Dover; if it doesn't have any of those publishers, then there's pretty minimal demand for it. Our value will be in breadth, not in any one work.

(* Don't take this as a slam against PoD, but rather against all the publishers who seem to take Google scans or Gutenberg transcripts without ever pausing to make sure they're complete and usable.)

I think this is a great thing for people who like physical books and may want to support Wikisource. I think if you want to raise money, take a very good look at how much is coming in from stuff like PediaPress right now and how much you're actually going to sell. Capitalism can be a cold hard mistress.--Prosfilaes (talk) 22:47, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: Good point about fundraising. It'd be great if we could make some money out of it, but I guess that's unlikely. Even a small amount going to the WMF on each sale would be nice though, and if nothing else is better than that money going to Lulu or whatever else commercial service (although, I suspect Pediapress uses one of those services). So, more of an advantage for people buying the books than for us as a fundraiser perhaps.

As for creating these books from any Wikisource work, I think the issue is in the details: basically, my current approach is to generate, pretty automatically, the LaTeX source. This can then be edited by hand, to make the book as good as it can be (e.g. fix up tables, footnotes, put in proper headings, generate the ToC based on those headings, etc.). It's a bit of a jump from a facsimile edition (even an HTML-formatted facsimile such as we produce on Wikisource) but I think makes for a better bound book.

This is similar to the approach to epubs of Standard Ebooks, where they're not relying at all on a single-source/multi-output system but are instead just writing the epubs directly. The difference I see with Wikisource is that whatever derivative formats we produce, we should always be able to merge in the changes that we might make on-wiki. To this end, I'm putting the LaTeX source into a Git repostory, and can at any time re-run the generation process and bring in any changes — but also retain the local modifications.

—Sam Wilson 02:50, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

One possible option which occurs to me is maybe publishing collections of works, either in one or more volumes, of works which might have minor demand individually but which might be salable as inexpensive sets. Examples might be The Complete Works of whoever or maybe early volumes of The Complete Sexton Blake or a set of "banned books" in the PD or something along those lines. One other possibility might be somehow variations on the "Parallel Bible" concept. I have seen both 4 and 6 versions of the New Testament bound together into a single book with each version being one column running in each two page spread. So, maybe, as an example, the Parallel Gospel of John with 4 or 6 columns, possibly in several volumes to allow seeing perhaps a dozen variations side by side? John Carter (talk) 19:54, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Split a page in half

There are some pdf files with two pages on a single scan. Is there any automatic way on Wikisource to split a page in half? --Yousef (talk) 21:32, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

No, though there may be some third-party tools that can do this. If you can't find a better scan with separated pages, you can still proofread it; it's the same as proofreading a text with two columns. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:37, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Here’s what I used for Index:Casement Report.djvu: https://askubuntu.com/questions/56853/splitting-a-pdf-page-in-two . χ_chi (talk) 20:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Χ Was there a text layer prior to the split? There isn't one there now. — billinghurst sDrewth 22:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Good point. I should have mentioned this destroys the text layer. In my case, the text layer was not great quality. The OCR available through Wikisource seems to be doing an okay job as far as I can tell. χ_chi (talk) 23:42, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Labelling our templates as <span>/line or <div>/block

Hi to all. With all the recent conversation around linter filters and errors, and the misapplication of <span>/inline and <div>/block templates, it is incumbent upon us to start more clearly labelling our templates so people can overtly see what they are using. This also allows us to indicate appropriate use. I know that if people utilise the <templatedata> components that these specify inline or block, though not in a helpful way to guide their use. (more below)

I would suggest that we should develop specific markers that we can use inside {{documentation}} (unless we wanted to adapt that template itself).

TemplateData

Looking at enWP, about the only place that I see that they discuss inline v block templates is at w:Wikipedia:TemplateData/Tutorial, (noting though that WPs generally have less need for grandiose or extensive formatting between <span>s and <div>s within articles).

I also note that TemplateData allows for unknown and custom fields, which would apply to our /s,/e-paired templates which are custom blocks.

Anyway, putting it out there for comment. — billinghurst sDrewth 20:14, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree. In my opinion a better documentation should be enough. It would also be useful if the lint-checher were easy accessible to everyone, in order to make people aware of consequences of wrong use of templates. It is not easy to digest but instructive.— Mpaa (talk) 20:53, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tech News: 2018-09

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes

• Checkusers and stewards can now view private data such as the IP address in the abuse log. This data is removed regularly. [28]

Problems

• Last week's MediaWiki version was rolled back because of a bug. [29][30]
• Since the deployment train last week until late evening on 20 February UTC, when you thanked someone for an edit, the thank went to the latest unthanked edit to that page. It didn't matter which edit you tried to give thanks for. This has been fixed. [31]
• Special:Statistics did not take newly created pages into account since 13 February 2018. Because of this the statistics are recreated. [32][33][34]

Changes later this week

• Users with version 10 of the Internet Explorer browser will no longer get JavaScript on Wikimedia wikis. If you use this browser on your computer, you can try upgrading to a newer version. [35]
• The Wikinews wikis will switch to use the Remex parsing library. This is to replace Tidy. It will happen on 27 February. Other wikis will be recommended to switch soon when they have fixed the errors that must be fixed. Tidy will be removed in the middle of 2018. [36][37]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 27 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 28 February. It will be on all wikis from 1 March (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the next meeting with the Editing team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 27 February at 19:30 (UTC). See how to join.
• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 28 February at 16:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

19:52, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Maintenance of the Month

We haven't had a new task for Maintenance of the Month for quite a while. How about making the task for March &c. correcting lint errors? Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:13, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Comment. After having looked at many flagged pages, my conclusion is that there is no easy way to reduce the backlog. It is possible but time consuming. Each work has its own peculiarities and errors related to one work need to be addressed in such a way to maintain consistency with the rest of the work. The main root cause is the (mis)use of span and block templates. A strategy about that, mybe new templates, and awareness among users should be addressed first. There is only one easy pick, which is EB1911 Fine print template.
I do not know if not addressing these errors will have consequences in the future. — Mpaa (talk) 21:18, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

An aside from more important problems

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T188844

As soon as the more serious problem of the character insertion issue is on the way to be resolved, I am asking for info so that a cat can be revived, (namely, the one that's dying of curiosity.)

1. The text of proofread and saved pages, when reopened, are padded with numerous newlines at the end of the text. I am assuming that there is something is wrong when the page is saved initially.
2. In edit mode, on the right of the Summary box three digits are displayed. most of the time it is 255, but not always. Can someone in the know comment on this? Thank you. — Ineuw talk 03:12, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

The second one's easy; the edit summary can apparently be up to 255 characters long, and that's telling you how many characters you have left.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:34, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I find that there's a newline at the end for every time I preview a page. I just get rid of them before doing the final save. It started happening relatively recently, but I don't know when. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:08, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

Beeswaxcandle, you are 100% correct. the added newlines is a recent issue, perhaps two week or so. — Ineuw talk 17:07, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle: If the trailing lines are left is it impacting transclusion? I do know that mediawiki can give and take at the same time at the end of a page. If it is impacting we may wish to get a fix in play, if it isn't then we may be over-playing around mediawiki quirkiness. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:45, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think it's affecting transclusion as they're just part of the swallowed blank space at the end that gets converted to a single space. I get rid of them because they prevent me from seeing most of the page's text in the box at the same time. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:39, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

In my case there are as many as 10 newlines at the bottom of the page, but not always. This only happens to proofread pages and notice it before saving the page. So now before removing them, I will check the main namespace article first, and post the results. Perhaps the page namespace database was not compacted/optimized as frequently as it should be? But, I lean towards mediawiki quirkiness. — Ineuw talk 18:54, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

A eureka moment. Each page preview adds an empty line at the end of the text. Should this be reported as a bug? — Ineuw talk 21:59, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Probably why I never see it, I always clean up trailing lines and line breaks whilst editing, so I don't see that build up. — billinghurst sDrewth 00:52, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Created Maniphest bug report. — Ineuw talk 00:29, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

More questions of lesser importance

In the Mediawiki Commons, the UTC clock/re-query gadget shows local time, (in my case it's EDT). Will this be universally available on all wikies? — Ineuw talk 05:57, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

@Ineuw: that has always been under your control Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering — billinghurst sDrewth 00:43, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

I think that there is a misunderstanding. In (my) preferences/appearance, there is no such thing as setting the clock to display to local time. — Ineuw talk 00:54, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Also uploaded THIS IMAGE of what I see on that page. — Ineuw talk 01:04, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

The clock gadget reflects the general setting that you have for the wiki, it isn't independently set...Time offset — billinghurst sDrewth 01:08, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

FWIW, can I suggest the temporary images be pasted into phabricator and then linked here, instead of being linked that way. See phabricator:file and you can control the access and easily delete. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:16, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

@Billinghurst:We are talking about two different things. Look at the Commons/Preferences/Gadgets list. — Ineuw talk 09:26, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Some clarity in your point and questions would be helpful. To this point you have been talking the gadget UTC clock, that shows UTC. If your question is about running their local gadget that shows local time, then turn off the UTC gadget locally and from either your local common.js file, or your meta global.js file—depending on where you want it—call that gadget. Presumably it runs xwiki if it has been suitably coded. As a comment, our UTC clock gadget is simply running the script from mw: — billinghurst sDrewth 10:06, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you ${\ce {\times 3}}$. — Ineuw talk 19:42, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

"Contents" in transclusions

Dear English Wikisource Editors,

How to show "Contents" in transclusions like this? __TOC__ does not work.--維基小霸王 (talk) 02:41, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Using <pages> doesn't work for Wikipedia-like headings. One working way is:

__TOC__

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/12|num=6R}}

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/13|num=6L}}

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/14|num=7R}}

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/15|num=7L}}

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/16|num=8R}}

{{Page|Gujin Tushu Jicheng, Volume 100 (1700-1725).djvu/17|num=8L}}

-Einstein95 (talk) 03:47, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

This is too troublesome to make 10000 such thing. It also makes the source inelegant. I give up.--維基小霸王 (talk) 08:30, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

@維基小霸王: we generally wouldn't try to do so. Where there is a table of contents in the published work, then we would look to transclude that and have the pertinent links contained. Where there is not such a ToC, then we would utilise {{auxiliary Table of Contents}} and paste in the components we wish to do. You are correct that the code becomes ugly and typically for no real benefit. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:19, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

::::To note that the headings do work for transclusions, see example, if it isn't working at zhWP then check the local settings. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:22, 20 February 2018 (UTC) oh you mean <pages>, no, that has been set to remove numerous amounts of class coding like "indented pages" . — billinghurst sDrewth 13:27, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Title at the end of page does not show as title in transclusions

Title at the end of page does not show as title in transclusions. See 17R of zh:欽定古今圖書集成/曆象彙編/歲功典/第035卷. How to solve it?--維基小霸王 (talk) 04:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Use {{nop}} by itself on the last line of the Page: Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:18, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

It works. Thank you!--維基小霸王 (talk) 04:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Renaming State of the Union addresses

I cannot find a place to request moving (like the process in Wikipdida). So I bring this issue here. Currently the State of the Union addresses (see Category:State of the Union addresses) are named by President names and times (e.g., John F. Kennedy's First State of the Union Address, Barack Obama's Second State of the Union Address, etc.). However, it's controversial whether a President's speech to the Joint Session of Congress in the first year of his presidency can be seen as a "State of the Union address". Donald Trump's First State of the Union Address was moved to Donald Trump's Address to a Joint Session of Congress, and Donald Trump's First State of the Union Address was even nominated for speedy deletion. If the first-year speech should not be named the President's "First State of the Union Address", then all the other State of the Union addresses should be renamed by times (Second changed to be First, Third changed to be Second, and so on). But this solution might confuse many readers. I suggest naming the State of the Union addresses simply by year (e.g., 2018 State of the Union Address), following Wikipedia's style. By the way, could Wikisource have a specific place for discussing requested moves? I apologize if there is already one. --Neo-Jay (talk) 07:16, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Neo-Jay: I agree that there needs to be consistency in the naming but disagree with using years. Readers are more likely to search by President than by year. The Wikipedia style still misses out the 1971, 1989, 1993, 2001, 2009, and 2017 addresses for example, because they are not regarded as State of the Union addresses. Note also that Wikipedia currently has 113 SOTU articles whereas Wikisource currently has 232 pages, and it would make unnecessary work to expect one to follow the other. Traditionally, the US president does not make an official State of the Union address until the end of their first year in office. Please look at what the media reports have been calling the latest address by President Trump e.g. ABC, Business Insider, CBS, CNN, or Fox (whichever news source you prefer). This was the reason I asked for the speedy deletion and the move. Green Giant (talk) 09:19, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Green Giant: I also agree that the 1989, 1993, 2001, 2009, and 2017 addresses should not be named "State of the Union Address" and should no be included in Category:State of the Union addresses (just like the Wikipedia style). But naming by President and time may confuse those readers who do see the addresses in these years as "State of the Union" addresses (e.g., those editors who created those pages at Wikisource). And I myself search the State of Union address by year, not by President. I don't know how you come to the conclusion that readers are more likely to search by President than by year. Naming by year is clearer and less confusing to me. --Neo-Jay (talk) 10:09, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Neo-Jay: Yes, to your question about the name and that several pages are wrongly named. In terms of searching for an address, don’t you think people might look for JFK's last SOTU rather than the 1963 SOTU? I think it’s just more memorable by author or subject matter. Let me give another example. You may have heard of Winston Churchill's famous "We shall fight on the beaches" speech. I would warrant that there are more people who know that it was a rousing speech by Churchill during WWII than people who know exactly which year he made it in (even if they’ve avidly watched the recent movie). For the rest of your comment, well believe me, I’m a long-term Categorist/Structurist and I thought similarly to your proposal but I’ve come to appreciate that Wikisource has a different approach, which can be mystifying at first but given time it is understandable. On any of these articles/pages, there are three determining parameters, namely it is a State of the Union address (subject), who gave the address (author), and which year it was given (date), right? On Wikipedia, the primary parameter is the subject, which is why there is an article on the State of the Union. On Wikisource, the primary parameter is the author, and works are listed on the corresponding author page e.g. Author:Barack Obama#Addresses to Congress. This is why there isn’t a corresponding State of the Union page here but there is a Portal:State of the Union Speeches by United States Presidents listing them by chronological order. The date is a secondary parameter in both wikis and is useful for categorisation purposes. I don’t think we should rename 232 pages using just years as identifying parameters but I would suggest a compromise of naming them in the style of Donald Trump's 2018 State of the Union Address. This would remove the ambiguity about whether it is the first, second or third. Green Giant (talk) 11:10, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

@Green Giant: Naming them by President plus year (e.g., Donald Trump's 2018 State of the Union Address) sounds great. It indeed avoids the ambiguity. I support your suggestion. --Neo-Jay (talk) 11:20, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

do a redirect. the wikipedia propensity for arguing about naming conventions seems out of place here. the congressional record calls it: "THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (House of Representatives - January 29, 2002)" [38] Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 14:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

But there are apparently more than one "STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES". The issue discussed here is how to distinguish them, by series ordinal (First, Second, etc.) or by year (2016, 2018, etc.). What do you think of it? Do you mean using the full title of the congressional record, e.g., "THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (House of Representatives - January 29, 2002)"? If so, the current Wikisource pages should also be renamed. --Neo-Jay (talk) 15:01, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Q47346081 works for me. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47346081 Slowking4 ‽ SvG's revenge 15:11, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Could you please clarify what you mean? The Wikisource link at Wikidata's Q47346081 is Donald Trump's State of the Union Address 2018. Do you mean you support the style of "Donald Trump's State of the Union Address 2018", or support Q47346081's English label "2018 State of the Union Address"? --Neo-Jay (talk) 15:21, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

•  Comment Traditionally we like works to have the name of the presentation as published, and then do redirects to the casual nomenclaure used to identify the work. I don't like nominals and would prefer that we have actual years. In the final washup I don't personally care, those in the know politely work it out among yourselves, and put forward a before and after list of moves, and we can undertake them, and resolve any double redirects. I would suggest that Portal talk:Presidents of the United States is the preferred space for your conversation. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:36, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

  To note that we also need to remove possible ambiguity about addresses of other countries and their presidential speeches or whatever is produced. It may be why some are like they are, or just continuing what was first place so many years ago. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:41, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

• Since there hasn't been any further discussions, I think we should go to the status quo. Dash9Z (talk) 03:41, 9 March 2018 (UTC)