Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2021-08

Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee (Aug 2 - Sept 1, 2021)

The call for candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee is now open. The full announcement is below. Xeno (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Read in other languages

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Movement Strategy announces the Call for Candidates for the Movement Charter Drafting Committee. The Call opens August 2, 2021 and closes September 1, 2021.

The Committee is expected to represent diversity in the Movement. Diversity includes gender, language, geography, and experience. This comprises participation in projects, affiliates, and the Wikimedia Foundation.

English fluency is not required to become a member. If needed, translation and interpretation support is provided. Members will receive an allowance to offset participation costs. It is US$100 every two months.

We are looking for people who have some of the following skills:

• Know how to write collaboratively. (demonstrated experience is a plus)
• Are ready to find compromises.
• Focus on inclusion and diversity.
• Have knowledge of community consultations.
• Have intercultural communication experience.
• Have governance or organization experience in non-profits or communities.
• Have experience negotiating with different parties.

The Committee is expected to start with 15 people. If there are 20 or more candidates, a mixed election and selection process will happen. If there are 19 or fewer candidates, then the process of selection without election takes place.

Will you help move Wikimedia forward in this important role? Submit your candidacy here. Please contact strategy2030wikimedia.org with questions.

New proverbs

[Moved from Talk:Main Page] Inductiveload—talk/contribs 23:04, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

How can new proverbs, recently published by ordinary people, be added to this database? I have a file of 300 beautiful proverbs, and they are translated into seven languages, and I have been given permission to publish them, please. ששון (talk) 22:18, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

@ששון: According to Wikisource:What Wikisource Includes, a modern work will be in scope for Wikisource if:

• They have been published in a formal sense (in this case, probably as a book, by an actual publisher, not a print-on-demand service). Publication on a website or blog is rarely acceptable.
• They are under a valid free licence that allows commercial reuse, even in modified form, by and for anyone. For example: CC-BY-SA is a valid license, CC-BY-NC is not, due to the non-commercial clause. A dedication to the public domain under the CC0 license is also acceptable. Note that if the work has been formally published, you probably need to clear this with the publisher. In any case, you will probably need to follow the directions at Commons:Volunteer Response Team to register a formal declaration that the work is, indeed, freely licensed despite also being published.

A good first step will be to let us know the title, authors, translators and ISBN of the work, as well as the exact licence the authors and translators have released them under. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 23:04, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

This is already on Wikimedia, File:מיינע_שפריכווערטער.pdf. Can you upload this on other wiki sites as well? ששון (talk) 03:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

@ששון: when a file is loaded at Commons, it is available to all the wikis as that is a shared repository, be it Hebrew Wikisource, or English Wikisource. The work at Commons will need to have OTRS permissions prior to any reproduction being undertaken. I have tagged the file and left you a messge on your Commons user talk page. So let that permissions happen first and then we can assist you with further reproduction. — billinghurst sDrewth 04:58, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the work, I am not certain that it would have been through a formal publishing process of a modern publisher, the work looks more self-published to me, not that I can read Hebrew. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:02, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-31

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

• If your wiki uses markup like <div class="mw-content-ltr"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl"> without the required dir attribute, then these will no longer work in 2 weeks. There is a short-term fix that can be added to your local wiki's Common.css page, which is explained at T287701. From now on, all usages should include the full attributes, for example: <div class="mw-content-ltr" dir="ltr" lang="en"> or <div class="mw-content-rtl" dir="rtl" lang="he">. This also applies to some other HTML tags, such as span or code. You can find existing examples on your wiki that need to be updated, using the instructions at T287701.
• Reminder: Wikimedia has migrated to the Libera Chat IRC network, from the old Freenode network. Local documentation should be updated.

Problems

• Last week, all wikis had slow access or no access for 30 minutes. There was a problem with generating dynamic lists of articles on the Russian Wikinews, due to the bulk import of 200,000+ new articles over 3 days, which led to database problems. The problematic feature has been disabled on that wiki and developers are discussing if it can be fixed properly. [1][2]

Changes later this week

• When adding links to a page using VisualEditor or the 2017 wikitext editor, disambiguation pages will now only appear at the bottom of search results. This is because users do not often want to link to disambiguation pages. [3]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 August. It will be on all wikis from 5 August (calendar).

Future changes

• The team of the Wikipedia app for Android is working on communication in the app. The developers are working on how to talk to other editors and get notifications. You can read more. They are looking for users who want to test the plans. Any editor who has an Android phone and is willing to download the app can do this.
• The Beta Feature for Discussion tools will be updated in the coming weeks. You will be able to subscribe to individual sections on a talk page at more wikis. You can test this now by adding ?dtenable=1 to the end of the talk page's URL (example).

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

20:47, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Comment

I see that we have:

• MediaWiki:PageNumbers.js
• MediaWiki:Gadget-PageNumbers-core.js
• MediaWiki:BookMaker.js

that utilise the class and I am unable to tell whether there is a "dir" direction issued. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:42, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

The first one is dead code kept for historical interest/no real reason, the second is read-only, so it's fine and the third is also read-only (but IMO we should have it turned off since the BookMaker tool is very broken.

Actually, no time like the present: phab:T288021, and I did suggest this before). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 00:35, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

FYI: breakage in some actions in ProofreadPage

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T288191Resolved

Seems that there were some changes to where/how some actions take place with regard to pope tricks and substitutions—templates and {{#tag:...}}. The outcome is that the expected actions do now work. For those who are good at these sorts of shortcuts/helpers, you may wish to pause that form of editing until there is a fix in place. — billinghurst sDrewth 05:19, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Duplicate Work "Ambulance 464"

I've just stumbled on a completed version of "Ambulance 464" while linking images into "Ambulance 464" This appears to be a duplicated project? Should the latter be removed or is it still required to be kept? Thanks Sp1nd01 (talk) 16:08, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

• Funnily enough, this was noticed several years ago. As the files are of identical editions, the djvu should be kept, and the pdf should be completely deleted. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2021 (UTC)
  • Ah I see, good detective work there! Do I need to do anything further to have it deleted, or will the post here be enough to get it done? Thanks Sp1nd01 (talk) 20:12, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

    Done Thanks for notifying. — billinghurst sDrewth 06:08, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the djvu file is missing two pages (28 and 29); the transclusion of chapter 1 was relying on the pdf file for the two missing pages. I found this out when I started to read this work (that now has a hole in it). Can the pdf be undeleted please? (at least until someone fixes the djvu file). Thanks in advance. — Iain Bell (talk) 19:44, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

Done @Iain Bell: and recovered the two pages. If there are more pages required then please let us know. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:56, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-32

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

Problems

• You can read but not edit 17 wikis for a few minutes on 10 August. This is planned at 05:00 UTC. This is because of work on the database. [4]

Changes later this week

• The Wikimania Hackathon will take place remotely on 13 August, starting at 5:00 UTC, for 24 hours. You can participate in many ways. You can still propose projects and sessions.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 August. It will be on all wikis from 12 August (calendar).
• The old CSS <div class="visualClear"></div> will not be supported after 12 August. Instead, templates and pages should use <div style="clear:both;"></div>. Please help to replace any existing uses on your wiki. There are global-search links available at T287962.

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Library is a place for Wikipedia editors to get access to sources. There is an extension which has a new function to tell users when they can take part in it. It will use notifications. It will start pinging the first users in September. It will ping more users later. [5]
• Vue.js will be the JavaScript framework for MediaWiki in the future. [6]

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

16:21, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-33

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

• You can add language links in the sidebar in the new Vector skin again. You do this by connecting the page to a Wikidata item. The new Vector skin has moved the language links but the new language selector cannot add language links yet. [7]

Problems

• There was a problem on wikis which use the Translate extension. Translations were not updated or were replaced with the English text. The problems have been fixed. [8][9][10]

Changes later this week

• A revision tag will soon be added to edits that add links to disambiguation pages. This is because these links are usually added by accident. The tag will allow editors to easily find the broken links and fix them. If your wiki does not like this feature, it can be hidden. [11]
• Would you like to help improve the information about tools? Would you like to attend or help organize a small virtual meetup for your community to discuss the list of tools? Please get in touch on the Toolhub Quality Signal Sessions talk page. We are also looking for feedback from tool maintainers on some specific questions.
• In the past, edits to any page in your user talk space ignored your mute list, e.g. sub-pages. Starting this week, this is only true for edits to your talk page. [12]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 August. It will be on all wikis from 19 August (calendar).

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

19:27, 16 August 2021 (UTC)

Modify PD templates to reflect Jamaica, which is 95 years pma

According to c:Commons:Copyright rules by territory/Jamaica, Jamaican works fall out of copyright 95 years after the death date of the author. Can our PD templates be modified to reflect this? For example, on the page Author:Eugene Wood, it should say: "The author died in 1923, so works by this author are also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 95 years or less." PseudoSkull (talk) 22:33, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

and Mexico has a term of 100 years. works first published in US are PD. the old template logic tends to go from 80 to 100. if you want to incorporate c:Template:PD-old-95 you would need a proposal to change wording.Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 13:27, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: @Billinghurst: your opinions? PseudoSkull (talk) 20:34, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Makes sense: {{PD-old-95-US}} created and plugged into {{PD/US}}. I am going to now pretend I didn't see how that template works. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: the {{PD/US}} template seems to be broken. It is showing an "Expression error" to me. Ciridae (talk) 08:17, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Ciridae: Where? I haven't seen issues in page visited in doing maintenance. Can you tell us what code you are using and which namespace? — billinghurst sDrewth 08:29, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: @Inductiveload: my bad. I forgot that I had to include the ADY in the template. Maybe the {{PD/US}} page itself should include an example with the year so it is less confusing? The Template page currently shows "Expression error". Ciridae (talk) 08:37, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Example added. — billinghurst sDrewth 10:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst sDrewth 10:10, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct - Enforcement draft guidelines review

The Universal Code of Conduct Phase 2 drafting committee would like comments about the enforcement draft guidelines for the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC). This review period is planned to begin 17 August 2021.

Community and staff members collaborated to develop these draft guidelines based on consultations, discussions, and research. These guidelines are not final but you can help move the progress forward. Provide comments about these guidelines by 17 October 2021. The committee will be revising the guidelines based upon community input.

Everyone may share comments in a number of places. Facilitators welcome comments in any language on the draft review talk page or by email. Comments can also be shared on talk pages of translations, at local discussions, or during round-table discussions and conversation hours.

There are planned live discussions about the UCoC enforcement draft guidelines:

• Wikimania 2021 session - 16 August @ 11:00 UTC - 11:45 UTC (recording of the session)
• Conversation hours - 24 August, 31 August, 7 September @ 03:00 UTC & 14:00 UTC
• Roundtable calls - 18 September @ 03:00 UTC & 15:00 UTC

The facilitation team supporting this review period hopes to reach a large number of communities. Having a shared understanding is important. If you do not see a conversation happening in your community, please organize a discussion. Facilitators can assist you in setting up the conversations.

Discussions will be summarized and presented to the drafting committee every two weeks. The summaries will be published here.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Many thanks! --Civvi (WMF) (talk) 14:26, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I have also opened up a local RFC to receive feedback here as well. It's pretty important to me that Wikisource has its voice heard regarding UCoC enforcement since there are some provisions in the guidelines which directly affect the various Wikisource projects. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:04, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

UK Newspapers: 1 Million become free-to-view (registration required)

The British Library have today announced:^[1]

Today's the day - one million 19thC newspaper pages free to view (and download) on the British Newspaper Archive. And this is just the start. https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2021/08/free-to-view-online-newspapers.html

and:^[2]

...Essentially, you need to register to access the free content, but won't be charged anything

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:30, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

References

1. https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424719234815434754
2. https://twitter.com/BL_newsroom/status/1424730642512809993

@Pigsonthewing: Wow, that's very interesting. Thank you for making a note of this. Until now, the BNA was very expensive (I think £15 per month), and I have often bumped my greedy little nose into that paywall. This, while not the full archive, is a great start (and by the end of the phase-in should cover a decent chunk of PD UK newspapers).

And thanks to any BL staff involved in opening the access who might come across this! Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:10, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

Have we asked the NLS about what Scottish Newspapers might be in their digital collections? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:12, 10 August 2021 (UTC)

There's some interesting discussion of this at c:Commons:Village pump#UK Newspapers: 1 Million become free-to-view (registration required). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:52, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

There's also an OCR dataset, according to [13]. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:46, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Update on the OCR Improvements

Hello! The OCR Improvements are complete. We, the Community Tech team, are grateful for your feedback from the beginning to the last stage when we were finalizing the interface.

Engine improvements

OCR menu in toolbar

Reliability

Prior to our work, the OCR tools were separate gadgets. We have added "Wikimedia OCR." It is available under one icon inside the toolbar on all Wikisource wikis. This tool supports two other OCR tools, Tesseract and Google OCR. We expect these tools to be more stable. We will maintain Wikimedia OCR.

The gadgets will remain available. The communities will have sovereignty over when to enable or disable these.

Speed

Prior to this work, transcription would take upwards of 40 seconds. Our improvements average a transcription time under 4 seconds.

Advanced Tools improvements

Multiple-language support

Documents with multiple languages can be transcribed in a new way.

1. Open the Advanced Options
2. Select the Languages (optional) field
3. Search for and enter the languages in order of prevalence in the document.

Cropping tool / Multi-column support

We have included a Cropper tool. It allows to select regions to transcribe on pages with complicated layouts.

Discoverability and accessibility of OCR

We have added an interface for new users. It is pulsating blue dots over the new icon in the toolbar. The new interface explains what OCR means and what transcription means in Wikisource.

We believe that you will do even more great things because of these changes. We also hope to see you at the 2022 Community Wishlist Survey. Thanks you again for all your opinions and support.

Please share your opinions on the project talk page!

NRodriguez (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) 01:57, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Manual cropping for multicolumn precision is a reasonable technological solution, and gives us a solution! Halleluja! And having three chances/choices at OCR success sounds wonderful too. Thank you. Shenme (talk) 03:05, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

The left-topped tables can be rotated for the ocr to read more easily.--RaboKarbakian (talk)

Gods' Man by Lynd Ward

The "wordless novel" Gods' Man by Lynd Ward was published in 1929. It appears it was not renewed (I can find renewals for the other 5 examples). So:

• This seems like it's in the PD due to that?
• The work is basically text-free, though it does have textual chapter headings - is this suitable for enWS or would it be a punt to mulWS? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 15:29, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Just to note it here, like I said off-wiki, I found the initial registration for God's Man (it's A 15797, https://lccn.loc.gov/29025173 © Nov. 13, 1929), and manually checked the renewal lists for 1955-59... the author's name shows up for a number of other works, but not this one. Seems clear as {{PD-US-no-renewal|1985|1929}}. Jarnsax (talk) 17:22, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with loading it here, given that it does have text in English.--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:39, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Template:Scan needed

I've been putting (scan needed) on pages manually, to indicate that there are no available scans known to exist online of a given work. We need a template for this... I suggest the name above. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:33, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Maybe {{Can't find scan}} → Can't find scan can be adapted (e.g. change formatting on Author/Portal? I'm not married to the name, either. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:01, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

WD property proposal: copyright registration

Quick note for anyone with interest in WD for WS-adjacent data: d:Wikidata:Property proposal/copyright registration. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:03, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Wikimania talk: OCR and other tools for Wikisource

Hello everyone,

I've organised a short session at Wikimania with the WMF Community Tech team. Will presented the latest tools they are working on that affect Wikisource. The session will also help us to understand a bit better the process of selecting community "wishes", every year requested in the Community Wishlist Survey.

Building 3 · Monday, August 16, 07:00 UTC

The speakers will be

• Sam Wilson, who is developing the new interface for OCR (GoogleOCR and Tesseract) that you have probably seen appearing in the last few days in the top right corner of the Page namespace. Sam will present his work and show a demo of the tool.
• Natalia Rodriguez, currently product manager of the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Tech, who will present the projects they are working on and talk about how the Whishlist selection process works.

The link to the session is this: 2021:Submissions/OCR and other tools for Wikisource.

It would be very much appreciated if you would show your interest in this page, as these meetings with Foundation employees are a precious moment of exchange with the community. Wikisource community is quite geeky, and often develops its own solutions to keep the Project running efficiently. We, the users, are therefore the first ones interested in the technical developments that take place behind the scenes. Thanks! --Ruthven (talk) 08:29, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

This talk is now on YouTube, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPwxgMpx3MM - Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:13, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

retroReveal

Colleagues who are having difficulty reading old, hand-written documents might find retroReveal, hosted by the University of Utah, useful; for a given image it produces a large number of varieties with different saturation, contrast, and colour filtering, etc. With a few test images I've found the readability markedly improved. Samples can be viewed here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:55, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Wonder how useful with some old English wills. Whilst I am good anything that helps to automate and process those would be very useful at times. (BTW I am happy to pull Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1384-1858 if anyone needs them.) — billinghurst sDrewth 03:42, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Adding an entire index's pages to your watchlist

I feel like this is a feature we ought to implement—to be able to add every page in a given index, whether created or not, into one's watchlist. I'd like to be able to see it in my watchlist for example if someone edits or creates any page for a given work. Is this something that's already technically possible somehow? And if not, as I already suspected, can we bring it up on Phabricator or something? PseudoSkull (talk) 19:38, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: You can add any page to your watchlist, whether it is created or not; add it manually through Special:EditWatchlist/raw. Generating your list is pretty easy from the respective Index: page. Otherwise I think this falls into phabricator request and the annual wishlist. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:39, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

This can be achieved "easily enough" with a script but the correct answer is to build it into the ProofreadPage extension: phab:T289466. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 09:11, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Noting that it will possibly generate a pretty intense watchlist. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:55, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

The same feature would also be good for "batch unwatching" indexes when you're touched many pages in them and now someone else is going though and validating but you don't care. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 15:48, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Something for the next Community Wishlist? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:52, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Find-and-replace across a whole work, redux

Tracked in PhabricatorTask T289506

Further to Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2021-06#Find and replace across a whole work, I have now raised a ticket on Phabricator, which some of you might like to follow. I plan to revisit this at the next Community Wishlist. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

New page blurb out-of-date

The header when creating a new page in the Page: namespce says "...click the OCR button on the toolbar...", with "OCR" being a blue button; that button is no longer available. I don't know where to change this. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:50, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

This is Wikisource:Scriptorium#new_page_notice <--there.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 21:04, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-34

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 Score extension (<score> notation) has been re-enabled on public wikis and upgraded to a newer version. Some musical score functionality may no longer work because the extension is only enabled in "safe mode". The security issue has been fixed and an advisory published.

Problems

• You will be able to read but not edit some wikis for a few minutes on 25 August. This will happen around 06:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance. During this time, operations on the CentralAuth will also not be possible.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 24 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 25 August. It will be on all wikis from 26 August (calendar).

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

21:58, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Read-only reminder

A maintenance operation will be performed on Wednesday August 25 06:00 UTC. It should only last for a few minutes.

This will affect your wiki as well as 11 other wikis. During this time, publishing edits will not be possible.

Also during this time, operations on the CentralAuth will not be possible (GlobalRenames, changing/confirming e-mail addresses, logging into new wikis, password changes).

For more details about the operation and on all impacted services, please check on Phabricator.

A banner will be displayed 30 minutes before the operation.

Please help your community to be aware of this maintenance operation. Thank you!

20:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library -- info, and their alert subscription

Not certain how many are aware of the The Wikipedia Library and the ability to gain access to libraries of information, some by simply using your WMF login credentials, others by applying for access.

So the first point is to raise the awareness to the community of this resource in case anyone was interest in using it here at enWS or for their work elsewhere at WMF.

The second point is to mention that they have a global announcements list, and I would like to suggest that we add this forum to that subscription list. If you think that it is a bad idea, please just speak up, mention why, and we can discuss the pros and cons. Of course, anyone is able to subscribe to that list for their own talk page somewhere on WMF. — billinghurst sDrewth 03:21, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Some good Wikipedia Library accesses for Wikisource:

• Newspapers.com (need to request access)
• NewspaperArchive.com (need to request access)
• JSTOR

Also the Loeb Classical Library is a nice resource, though probably not directly useful to Wikisource, since many of their editions are new and copyrighted and also there are no scans. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 09:09, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

With Loeb's, I have a collection from that Swedish website (arr), so I might be able to upload PD copies of volumes not available elsewhere.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:14, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

I quite agree that this Wikipedia Library is very useful. I use it, for instance, for searching information on authors. For instance via Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB). I can recommend this to all of you! --Dick Bos (talk) 07:17, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

No particular opinion on whether to subscribe WS:S to the announcement list (that's Books&Bytes I take it?), except to note that it is sometimes sent quite frequently even with very little content of actual interest. I'm still subscribed to it over on enwp, but I rarely bother to check it. Others may find it more useful, and it may serve to draw attention to this awesome awesome service!

Also, important to note on enWS (vs. enwp): please keep in mind that we cannot download even public domain scans or texts from any of the TWL services! The contracts that the WMF has with the providers generally prohibit "scraping" or "mass downloading" as a matter of contract law, not copyright, and overstepping there could jeopardise the entire TWL project. Use it as a research tool, but not as a source for texts or scans. Xover (talk) 07:51, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

The list is solely a WL announce list, it is not a newsletter. I am not advocating any person putting copyright material here, nor mass scraping contrary to the license of use. I am alerting people to its availability and that there can be contained works out of copyright. — billinghurst sDrewth 13:03, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps we could have their announcements, and TechNews, and similar, posted to a dedicated page, like [Wikisource:Scriptorium/Announcements] or [Wikisource:Announcements]? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:08, 15 August 2021 (UTC)

they seem to be english focused, i.e. "Meet these criteria for automatic access: 500+ edits; 6+ months editing; 10+ edits in the last month" [14] so you may have to keep asking for access. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 14:23, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I have created Wikisource:Scriptorium/Announcements and we can see how it goes. If the name is wrong, we can just move it and leave the redirect. — billinghurst sDrewth 01:48, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Public domain book?

Battle-Retrospect And Other Poems (1923, Yale Series of Younger Poets: New Haven, Yale University Press) by American author Amos Niven Wilder (1895-1993). Wanting to be 100% sure this is in the public domain before I upload. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 19:12, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Published in the US over 95 years ago. Not many things in the copyright world are simple, but this is about as good as we get! I say: go for it!

I see the IA doesn't have a copy of the 1923 edition, but Hathi does. Let me know if you'd like that imported. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 19:21, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Ah, I didn't check Hathi... I am rusty... But copyright seems to have been renewed in 1950 by Amos Wilder and "Reprinted with permission from the edition of 1923"... "First AMS edition published 1971" (as per IA 1971 copy, which I just borrowed to peek at). MY copy is the original 1923 edition. Does the renewal make the original not in the public domain? I do not know how this works. If you feel strongly that it is public domain, I would love for you to transport Hathi's copy here :) Thanks Londonjackbooks (talk) 19:29, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Anything that was published before 1926 is in the public domain in the United States. Note that later editions of a work may still be in copyright, however. Renewals expire at latest 95 years after publication in the US, meaning that since it's 2021, anything published 1925 or before is public domain. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:08, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Index:Battle-retrospect, and other poems - Wilder - 1923.djvu

(edit conflict) Anything published over 95 year ago (so, in 2021, before 1926, but not in 1926) is always fair game in the US (= at enWS). Which in this case is fortunate as Wilder died in 1993, so pma + 70 as 2063.

If this had been a non-US work, it would still be acceptable here, but the file couldn't be hosted at Commons until it was PD in the country of origin.

And there are cases of the reverse where a work PD in the country of origin is not PD in the US, due to URAA restoration. This extends the copyright term to 95 years after publication, so 1926 is still the magic number.

A later edition doesn't refresh the copyright on the original, but it can attract new copyright on new material. Note that from 1926–1963, even this new material had to be renewed (the renewal will detail what it covers). There is no way a 1971 edition could pull a 1923 edition out of the US public domain. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 20:23, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Ah, thank you both for all of that... and for the upload! I have been waiting several years to transcribe this book :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:30, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

had it not been renewed, it would have been public domain in 1950; the renewal would have expired in 1978, had not Copyright Act of 1976 and Sunny Bono intervened; and it was public domain in 2019. [15] but depends on what you mean by "100% sure", there are no guarantees. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 20:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001194952 = https://lccn.loc.gov/23007703 - The registration is here (it's A703230, and Yale University Press was the copyright proprietor, with a date of 12 April 1923. It was renewal was R61872, on 4 May 1950. The US copyright expired on Public Domain Day 2019. (1 Jan 1924 + 95 years) Just to nail it down. :) Jarnsax (talk) 22:47, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Excellent, Thank you :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 23:43, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The Confidence-Man

Please move this work and all subpages to The Confidence-Man (Melville) and redirect The Confidence-Man to The Confidence Man. Rationale: This work needs to be disambiguated from the short story The Confidence Man (Stettenheim). PseudoSkull (talk) 23:20, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: PseudoSkull (talk) 18:37, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Done — billinghurst sDrewth 08:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

{{greek}} vs. {{polytonic}} vs. lang=el vs. lang=grc

So having had two instances lately where using

{{greek}}        (monotonic ≈ modern Greek)

vs.

{{polytonic}}   (polytonic = ancient Greek)

actually mattered, I've been sensitized to these. Then when I thought "hey, shouldn't I be adding a {{lang|el|...}} around these" I went looking.

{{polytonic}} correctly sets lang="grc" for its enclosed text. This is the tag for "Ancient Greek".

{{greek}} also sets lang="grc". Not the tag for modern Greek lang="el". This is wrong and likely a leftover from before {{polytonic}} existed.

Or else we need a third template for Modern Greek, but then we'd need to find all the wrong uses, though there are many uses (3450?) and many wrong confused anyway.

How much of a mess to use lang="el" in {{greek}}. How much of a mess to continue making a mess with wrong usages? Shenme (talk) 04:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

And then there's Hebrew, completely different! {{hebrew}} says use a font that looks more ancient, but says/does nothing about language tag. {{lang-he}} will set language tag to lang="he". So to match the work I'd have to do {{lang-he|{{hebrew|ד}}}} to get ד‎ ? (it does work upon inspecting generated HTML) Bleh! Shenme (talk) 06:02, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

@Shenme:: so for Greek, I would imagine (code for "making it up") that nearly all Greek on WS is Ancient (grc). Only a handful of works are likely to be in Modern Greek (el), perhaps some dictionaries and phrasebooks, maybe "modernified" Ancient Greek (if there is such a thing), or maybe some untranslated quotation from a modern Greek author (monotonic Greek was only mandated in the 80s, so it's very new in WS terms).

For example the Catholic Encyclopedia is using polytonic Greek (you can tell because there are some breathings like "ὕ", e.g. here), so we can probably just bot them to {{polytonic}} on a work-by-work basis.

{{Greek}} denotes monotonic Ancient Greek, according to its documentation. Is that even a valid combination?

If not, we should probably move all uses of it to {{polytonic}} (but keep an eye open for modern Greek), and then redirect both {{grc}} and {{Greek}} to {{polytonic}} (because WS is overwhelmingly using polytonic Ancient Greek). Then, use {{el}} → {{Modern Greek}} to handle the rarer case. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 07:53, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

If you're going to collapse Greek and Polytonic templates to a single one, then please be sensible and redirect Polytonic to Greek. It makes absolutely no sense the other way. User sees Greek text to enter, they use Greek template to mark it. Nice and simple and no need to mess around with the arcana of monotonic vs. polytonic. Regardless of what is decided, I will continue to use the greek template in any and all works that have Greek text to be entered [and will continue to teach others to do the same]. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:55, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Right, but the point is that as it stands, {{Greek}} is not suitable for general use for polytonic Greek, because font support isn't universal (which is why ULS provides a font for it). So using it for anything that's actually polytonic Greek is wrong. On the other hand {{grc}} is a redirect to {{polytonic}}! AFAICT, nearly all Greek at Wikisource is Ancient Greek. It's is not your fault that {{Greek}} doesn't do the right thing in most WS use cases, but it might need fixing.

Assuming the only valid options are "grc + polytonic" and "el + monotonic/no ULS", it doesn't technically matter which one redirects to the other since {{Greek}} and {{Polytonic}} would be synonyms. But if it does turn out to be the case, then, yes, it makes sense for {{Greek}} to be the "main" template as that's more consistent with other templates and it's clearly the one a user would reach for when seeing Greek text. But I will need input from someone with a better education in classical linguistics than me about whether it's ever valid to have a "grc" lang code, but not to use the polytonic font support in ULS (i.e. the current status quo of {{Greek}}).

In the meantime, {{el}} → {{Modern Greek}} have been created for use in things that are unambiguously modern, monotonic Greek. This sets the correct HTML lang code (el), so it's also better for accessibility/i18n/etc. We'll also need to carefully check if there is any modern Greek chucked into {{Greek}} and change it accordingly. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:16, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Going from w:Monotonic Greek, modern Greek is only officially monotonic since 1982, and there's still sources writing it in polytonic Greek script. Modern Greek from 95 years ago is likely to be polytonic. OTOH, exact copies of pre-2nd century AD Greek works are likely to be missing accents and breathing marks, and we may have as much of that as modern monotonic Greek.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:35, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Stuff written in Hebrew script is not necessarily in Hebrew. Yiddish was written in Hebrew, and there's Jewish variants of local languages in many places of the Jewish diaspora, so Hebrew script might be any number of languages. Script in general can not be conflated with language.--Prosfilaes (talk) 10:06, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

What's the goal here? Do we really need these templates in 2021? When I look at Template:Greek, I see three lines with minor font differences, and no reason not to just go with the top line. Is there a significant audience that needs these templates to see Greek, Polytonic or otherwise, correctly? Systems from the last decade should all come with Unicode fonts that cover at least Polytonic Greek. mw:Compatibility#Browsers says MediaWiki doesn't support any browsers before 2013, and I don't think anyone running systems after that should need these templates.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:22, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea: I guess that's a question for the ULS team, since (I hope) they have a handle on which fonts are needed and which are not. I'd quite like to see the back of polytonic if there is no supported system without polytonic Greek support (not sure that's always a browser thing), because the provided font itself is pretty ugly.

However, a template is still needed because, webfont or not, the text should still have lang="grc" applied (and modern Greek should have el).

Indeed, enWP has deprecated their polytonic template in favour of {{lang|grc}}. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:39, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

---

After looking into this some more, it's clear that the {{polytonic}} template is redundant. Using the grc lang code is what is required to trigger ULS into serving a suitable font if needed.

So, now {{polytonic}} and {{grc}} are redirects to {{Greek}}, which uses the standard core template {{lang}} to apply the HTML lang attribute.

If users really want the old polytonic font fallback list (which always looked horrible to me, since it would end up at FreeSerif), they can add the following to their CSS (according to what font they want, and what they have installed):

[lang=grc] {
    font-family: Gentium, "Linux Libertine", "Palatino Linotype";
}

If enough users wish for a way to set this to some kind of "serify" font, we can make that a Gadget, which will apply evenly to all grc text, not just polytonic, which, in the age of Unicode, doesn't need special font support in 99% of cases. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:48, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Also, ULS does actually already allow one to set GentiumPlus as the font for grc text, but the way to do that is not well-exposed and needs a bit of a rigamarole: see phab:T289777 for the method. That task is also asking for a better way to set this though the ULS UI. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 13:34, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I completely disagree with the move to redirect Polytonic to Greek. The whole point of the Polytonic template was to render Ancient Greek (Polytonic) text correctly. I've edited thousands of pages in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica to use {{tl:Polytonic}} in place of {{tl:Greek}}. 'Polytonic' displays the Ancient Greek text very close to the printed version. There was a discussion a few years ago in the Polytonic page about which fonts to include (someone had added fonts which did not render Ancient Greek correctly, those fonts were subsequently removed.) Why not revert the 'Polytonic' change, rename it 'Greek' and create a redirect from 'Polytonic' to 'Greek'? The vast majority of texts in Wikisource date prior to 1982 when monotonic orthography was introduced in Greece, so Polytonic fonts should be the default for Greek text.
If we want to use Polytonic fonts, why stop us from doing so by changing the template? DivermanAU (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I've done similar work - not as much as DivermanAU - and followed the advice on the EB1911 project page style manual: use {{Polytonic}} "not to produce the characters, but because it renders in a more authentic font that shows the diacritics better." I assumed that was written by someone who understood the rendering choices, so unless someone proves that claim wrong I prefer the status quo. DavidBrooks (talk) 03:34, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The thing here is that there is no such thing as a "polytonic font". Pretty much all "major" fonts that users would have as the browser default font have full support of the code points (which may not have been true in 2005), so then it's just down to styling. As a rule, Wikisource does not specify fonts to users (if we did, we'd set serif fonts almost everywhere, and we do not), as fonts are a user choice via their user-agent (usually a browser, ereader, etc). The principle of user-agent choice is the reason mw:Extension:UniversalLanguageSelector exists in the first place, and is at least partly related to accessibility.

At least on my system, {{polytonic}} is actually rather unattractive, because I don't have those "nice" fonts like "SBL BibLit, SBL Greek", which I assume are there because someone had them installed locally, so it ends up at "FreeSerifCode2000", which, yes, looks a bit more like the original fonts only because it's a serif font, but also stands out unattractively when the rest of the page is as default. In the general case, there's no way to pre-empt what fonts users have installed, or want to use. So, RE 'Polytonic' displays the Ancient Greek text very close to the printed version. this depends very much on the fonts the user has locally. If you have "SBL Biblit", it might look amazing for you, but that's not a font Wikisource serves itself (they're also not freely licensed, so WS probably can't serve them), so most people will not have it.

If we did want to force "better" fonts for users for Greek, it should really be done based on the standard (as in, web standards) lang codes (grc and/or el), rather than on "directly-applied" case-by-case basis (i.e. by specifying polytonic vs Greek). There are a few ways to achieve that:

• Get phab:T289777 done, or implement some other way for users to dynamically change their per-language ULS font choices (which is what ULS is for)
• Continue to use Template:Greek/fonts.css
• Indexes set their own styles on [lang=grc] elements.
• Users set their own overrides at their commons.css on [lang=grc] elements on a per-user basis (ultra-flexible, but not very user-friendly)

Also, it's now possible to set the entire display of content to a serif font from the Display Options menu, so if you're after "as printed" display, that will get you closer than forcing fonts for a subset of instances of a certain language. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 09:15, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

The recent change to the 'Greek' template has meant that the display has also changed from serif-style to non-serif style ('Polytonic' used to make sure that other devices, like Chrome-books, displayed a serif style font). Until recently, most computers using the 'Greek' template showed the serif font, but now they don't. Can we please allow 'Polytonic' and 'Greek' templates to show serif fonts as before. DivermanAU (talk) 23:39, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

This is a good example of what I'm saying about you can't make assumptions about what users see: for me, and I imagine nearly all other Linux users who likely have DejaVu fonts, {{Greek}} has always been sans serif (DejaVu Sans). Polytonic used (the ugly, IMO, Code2000).

The right way to deal with this is probably to lean on ULS, because that's exactly what it is for (and it can also serve up a nice font to use: Gentium). However, since knowing how fast things move, phab:T289777 will linger for a very long time, so we'll go back to a manual fallback list for now. But we really need to sort this out at some point, as forcing a font choice on the user is, IMO, poor form.

I have also promoted DejaVu fonts above FreeSerif, because they are much more consistent with surrounding text if you're on a system that has DejVu fonts, and promoted DejaVu Serif above the Sans (same order now as FreeSerif/FreeSans). I'm not quite sure why the ultimate fallback is sans-serif, not serif, or why the last several fonts are sans, but the "top" ones are serifs. But at least now I think they'll at least be similar for most users. And mono and polytonic will now be consistent - as long as the language is Ancient Greek, the font will match.

I'll keep looking for a way to do this properly without having to pre-empt the user-agent. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 00:45, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for making those recent changes — the 'Polytonic' and 'Greek' template display on Windows 10 PCs now shows as serif font again. However, on a ChromeBook and a MacBook Pro, using 'Polytonic' still displays as sans-serif, whereas prior to 'Polytonic' being redirected to 'Greek', the display was a serif font. For what it's worth, the 'Polytonic fonts' template (as previously used by 'Polytonic' apparently ) has these fonts: 'SBL BibLit', 'SBL Greek', Athena, 'Foulis Greek', 'Gentium Plus', Gentium, 'Palatino Linotype', 'Arial Unicode MS', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'Lucida Grande', Code2000. DivermanAU (talk) 05:52, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Horsepower glyph

Does anyone recognise the glyph for horsepower, in the upper image caption on Page:Incandescent electric lighting- A practical description of the Edison system.djvu/139?

It looks like half an upper-case "H" joined to an upper-case "P".

How can I type it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:08, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: I think it's "㏋" (U+33CB). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:16, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

https://codepoints.net/U+33CB?lang=en agrees with you (that it's not just some other random symbol, but indeed horsepower) Jarnsax (talk) 22:04, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: &#x33CB; (what you see, not the markup) Jarnsax (talk) 22:07, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, both. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:09, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Community input needed: copyright of Philosophical Writings

At WS:CV#Philosophical Writings: Translators modern unpublished translation, or possible gifted translation there is an open copyright discussion for which broader community input is needed.

The work in question is a translation of an old text, and there are some incidental indications that the text was posted by the translator and that they may have intended to gift it to the web in some fashion. However, there was no explicit license tagging and there is no OTRS ticked for it, so it is impossible to know for sure that the translator 1) really intended a license that is compatible with Wikisource (e.g. without non-commercial and no derivative works limitations), and 2) actually understood the consequences of such a license. The suspected translator died in 2015 so it can now no longer be verified.

The discussion has been open since 2019 and there is no clear consensus either way among the participants (4 total).

In order to properly close this discussion we need more input from a broader swathe of the community. It requires no special familiarity with copyright or other arcana: just a willingness to read through the discussion and decide whether you, personally, are willing to accept what little evidence we do have as sufficient, or whether you would need more or stronger evidence (for example an OTRS confirmation).

There is no right or wrong answer (or clear policy) to this question; just your personal standard of evidence for unclear cases such as this.

Please post your comments in the linked thread (not here); and prefix your comment with either {{vd}} ("vote delete") or {{vk}} ("vote keep") if either of these is the ultimate outcome you think best. You can also comment without actually voting, as such, but a clear vote using the templates makes it easier for the closing admin.

PS. a similar issue obtains for the following discussion (WS:CV#Index:Civil Rights Movement EL Text.pdf) too. While the underlying issue is different, and possibly more complicated, it most importantly needs more input from the community. If you are inclined, reading through the discussion and posting your own conclusions would be very helpful! Xover (talk) 10:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Bilingual and Side by side templates fail to produce anchors to page numbers

If a work is transcluded using the templates {{Bilingual}} or {{Side by side}}, the page numbers do not work as anchors, although I remember that some (long?) time ago they did. For example The Bartered Bride (1908)/Act first#8 does not go to page 8. It might be connected with the fact that some time ago the visual appearance of the page numbers of pages transluded using these templates changed for some reason and their background got sort of purple hue (which also does not look very nice). Is it possible to fix at least the anchoring? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:37, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Not sure if this is helpful, but I transcribed Byron's Francesca of Rimini (I linked to a specific page number in the previous link to see if it worked), but did not use any of those templates. This was some time ago, so I don't recall the technical details about transclusion... Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:32, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

This solution looks interesting, although a disadvantage is that only every second page number is displayed. The two templates are good to display text side by side and provide all the page numbers at the same time. It used to work well, but something got wrong. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:51, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek:Yes, you are correct. Yet if you anchor to a page number that isn't visible, it will still take you to the correct target position on the page. ... I am curious... With the Bilingual and Side by Side templates, the page numbers render differently in the Main than normal... more vibrant and boldly colored than in typical transclusions. Graphicaly different, almost like an image, if that makes sense. I wonder, if that effect is removed, whether it would change anything...? I do not know how these things work technically... Londonjackbooks (talk) 00:42, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

@Londonjackbooks: Yes, you are right, the page numbers are rendered boldly colored, but I remember they used to render the same as it is usual. As for targetting the page numbers which are not visible in your system of columns: that is a good point. I will probably change the way of transcription in the works I am interested in as you have suggested if the problem is not solved, but generally it will not solve much, because there are many other works using the templates too. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:56, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. At a quick peek (and before coffee, caveat emptor), {{side by side}} has never produced page numbers, and {{bilingual}}, which just wraps {{side by side}} for its core functionality, just calls {{page number}} for its page number display. Nowhere in these templates is there code that would give you a linkable page number, nor has there ever been so far as I can tell. And speaking from a purely technical perspective, this is one of several reasons why these templates (all three of them) should not be used.

Londonjackbooks' method avoids all or almost all their problems (again, from a technical perspective), and while it's slightly less user-friendly (ymmv) and uses a display table for the effect, these are, I think, fixable issues. It has the crucial virtue of actually using the ProofreadPage extension for its transclusions, so it gets all the features and properties that are designed for that. My recommendation for now would be to follow their example. Xover (talk) 07:40, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-35

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

• Some musical score syntax no longer works and may needed to be updated, you can check Category:Pages with score rendering errors on your wiki for a list of pages with errors.

Problems

• Musical scores were unable to render lyrics in some languages because of missing fonts. This has been fixed now. If your language would prefer a different font, please file a request in Phabricator. [16]

Changes later this week

• The parameters for how you obtain tokens in the MediaWiki API were changed in 2014. The old way will no longer work from 1 September. Scripts, bots and tools that use the parameters from before the 2014 change need to be updated. You can read more about this.
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 September. It will be on all wikis from 2 September (calendar).

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not edit Commons for a few minutes on 6 September. This will happen around 05:00 UTC. This is for database maintenance.
• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes in the week of 13 September. More information will be published in Tech News later. It will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [17]

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

16:01, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Timeline of the public domain's future over the next handful of decades

I've created a timeline of approximately everything that will enter the public domain in the United States between 2019 and 2073. Take a look if it interests you or would be useful to you: User:PseudoSkull/Public domain

I know I left a few complicated bits out, but I didn't want to fill up my chart too heftily, so this gives a general overview of what the public domain will look like over the course of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act's lifetime. PseudoSkull (talk) 19:56, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the unpublished column is about. Isn't that just life+70?--Prosfilaes (talk) 20:00, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Not if it's anonymous, pseudonymous, or a work made for hire. PseudoSkull (talk) 20:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)

Dynamic layout changes

Dynamic layouts has gained a couple of new functions:

• You can choose serif or sans-serif fonts independently of the layout (previously, only Layout 2 had serif fonts)
• You can toggle the {{default layout}} override "live", without having to find and disable a gadget

Both these options will persist across page loads. The advantages of this are:

• It's quicker and easier to change display options
• It allows a greater flexibility for users wanting serif fonts (which is possible in these days of ultra-sharp screens)
• It allows even non-logged in users to configure their display options

There should be no changes to most users, but if you had the default layout gadget disabled (by default, it was enabled), you should change the new setting in the sidebar to "Default layouts off". The new-user default remains the same: "default layouts on".

This does make Layout 4 redundant, since it's just Layout 2 but with san-serifs. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 10:44, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

For works where the text will be confusing without serifs, do we (can we) create some verbiage in the form of a template that alerts readers to use a serif font and shows them how to accomplish this? I've looked at the verbiage by following the links, and it is not terribly helpful. You need to be very familiar with what is going on to understand what to do, and it took following multiple links to find even a little practical information.

I'd like to be able to alert readers for works such as The Vocabulary of Menander, where there are a lot of uses of "l" for line numbers and "I" for volumes or sections, and it is impossible to distinguish these characters in non-serif fonts. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:11, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Alternatively, is it possible to set the default font for a work to "use serif font" (which the reader can choose to turn off)? I see no documentation about how to accomplish this, if it is possible at all. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:21, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: There is currently no way to specify this. Note that overriding the user's fonts in this way is not ideal, because this also disables accessible fonts like OpenDyslexic, which are provided via ULS. So we'd have to have another switch for "disable default fonts".

Or maybe we just include it as part of the {{default layout}} and the use has both default font and layout, or neither? Inductiveload—talk/contribs 08:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

I also notice that the dynamic option is available in the Main namespace, but not in the Index or Page namespaces. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:44, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: This will probably be addressed in future as the display options, layouts and page numbering functions get split further apart (they're all kind of munged up together currently). For now, the gadget is not loaded in those namespaces. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 08:12, 1 September 2021 (UTC)

Proposal: Not proofread reduction drive

The ProofreadPage Statistics show that while we are keeping up with the French on proofread pages, we are around 1/4 validation, and 1/10 reduction of not proofread. [18] I would propose a contest, in the spirit of Tenth Anniversary Contest. We could run it like #wpwp with a hashtag in the edit summary to track contestants. perhaps #npr and #v ? November would be a good timeframe. I would be willing to throw $100 in the pot for each contest. Is there interest in such a contest? Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 19:56, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Would this be encouraging people who don't proofread well? (I should rename as "pirfeckshunis") Shenme (talk) 20:42, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

a general encouragement will have errors in it. the existing proofread pages have errors. that would be a problem, we wish we had. but if you want to patrol, disallow, and score keep. go for it. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:26, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

'patrol … disallow … score keep' Are you, Slowking4 Farmbrough's revenge, planning to adopt one of these roles, or designate who is, or be subject to one of those who are, or just sit back, open a bag of popcorn, and watch the fur fly when people behave in a point-scoring, competitive and inevitably vengeful environment? CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:24, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

that was not the experience at Tenth Anniversary Contest and #wpwp, but there was some shouting by loud voices at wpwp. the vindictive environment is a product of the loud voices, not the process. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 13:08, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

I support the idea of contests in general (obviously, see the Monthly Challenge!), but I do wonder about the usefulness of such a diffuse goal as turning any pages from red to yellow. We have have over 1 million not-proofread pages (nearly 250k of those are from a single user just pressing "save" on the auto-loaded OCR). Any kind of contest involving those pages would spread effort so thin we'd be lucky to see any completions at all.

Also, a lot of the red pages are actually Match and Split works where the text is substantially correct, but not manually verified, so not all red pages are created equal.

I (being heavily biased and not impartial at all) would suggest that choosing specific "not-proofread" works to focus on would be better, and indeed we can do this with the Monthly Challenge. Currently Index:Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf.pdf is an example of an MC work that started as an all-red Match and Split'd index. We could even have a dedicated month to "red page reduction" where all added works are fully red. It's already been proposed (disclaimer: by me) to have ongoing maintenance as a facet of the MC (for example, reserving a slot for a work WS:Requested texts per month).

Setting up per-user edit counts on the MC is pretty easy to add to the bot, though I would first want to check if people are happy with that, and if we'd need an opt out (or in) system to exclude those who don't with to be included in that aspect of the challenge. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 06:51, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

you could make a list of red works. the object of a contest would be to recruit new editors. and the hashtag method is inherently opt in. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 13:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• This does seem interesting, but I worry more about the logistics of what types of pages are not proofread. Perhaps a more limited approach (in the line of the 10th Anniversary Contest) would be good. A careful selection of some number of works filled with NP pages, with pre-set style guides, would help. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 23:52, 2 September 2021 (UTC)
  • the not proofread pages are an ocean of bot generated red saves, which increased recently with some of the million books on commons. a small fraction are pages with tables or images or harder formatting. i do not find preselecting works to be useful, but if you want to go for it. with the hashtag method, any contribution to backlog reduction gets counted. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 19:56, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
    • I have (without the hashtag) ran through Index:History of the First Council of Nice.djvu and Index:Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Comm’n.pdf; the first was a “bot” save, the second more or less the same (with a few adjustments on the born-digital OCR). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:59, 11 September 2021 (UTC)
      • excellent, we have zoomed ahead of the French [19] at that rate after 1000 weeks the backlog should be clear. (maybe i should just send you a check) here is a work list Category:Index_Not-Proofread --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 13:59, 14 September 2021 (UTC)
        • I’ve been looking around Category:Not proofread: I’m on Index:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu now. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:21, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

new page notice

The blurb when creating a new Page is currently:

"This page does not exist yet; you can create it by typing in the box below and publishing the page. If you are new to Wikisource, please see Help:Adding texts. If you are here by mistake, just click your browser's back button. If no text layer is automatically made available, click the OCR button [obsolete] on the toolbar to try to generate one. To open and close the header and footer fields, toggle . Also see Proofreading instructions. [links, etc]"

There is a very small audience for these instructions, most of which is out of date and unneeded by proofreaders. I recall their introduction as a reaction to a test or other by a 'new user', not fulfilling an actual need.

"This transcription page has not been created. For assistance see Help:Adding texts."

To the point, more helpful, and returns screen territory to users who see this more than once. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 13:00, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

yes. the instruction creep gets ignored, so less is more. but also some UX with veterans and newbies would be helpful.--Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 14:51, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, yes, it is really really annoying to see the same blurbishnessblup over and over. And over. Toggle this info or make it curt and direct. Shenme (talk) 20:53, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

 Comment can we have suggestions to improve or pointers the change that should be made rather than "I don't like it", "this is old", etc. Some of the pages for text are

• MediaWiki talk:newarticletext using file:Button ocr.png <= all new articles get some text

So pointers to the image in use would be great. Some of us don't see it either for blocking or with older toolbars.

Also noting that we have some paired text in special:preferences at MediaWiki:Proofreadpage-preferences-showheaders-label. — billinghurst sDrewth 02:13, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

• Two supports and a comment from the creator of the former text. Does anyone have a tweak to the replacement text—proposed above—before it is implemented? Cygnis insignis (talk) 16:59, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Template:PD-nonUK

I've been confused by this template for a long time and it's been bothering me, and it has occurred to me now that it's because of the template's vagueness and lack of specificity.

It currently says "This work is in the public domain outside the United Kingdom because the author has been deceased at least 100 years. However, owing to the subsistence of certain long-standing restrictions on publication and distribution, the work is NOT necessarily copyright or restriction free in the United Kingdom." What certain long-standing restrictions are these? Which UK laws apply here specifically? And does this only apply to certain old works in the United Kingdom, all old works originally published in the UK, or all old works regardless of country of origin? As someone completely unfamiliar with UK copyright law, I have no idea what someone ought to be worried about if they're in the UK.

Some past discussion on this matter: Wikisource:Possible_copyright_violations/Archives/2006/04#Book_of_Common_Prayer and Template talk:PD-nonUK#This perpetual copyright will eventually end

While it's been talked about before in these places, I think the wording of this template still needs to be more specific so our readers don't have to dig around our community chatter to find out why this template exists. Pinging User:Jusjih. PseudoSkull (talk) 13:36, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

There isn't a single route to this template. The uses I know of:

• Peter and Wendy: the play (not the book, which came later) was granted perpetual copyright in the UK (because just allocating funds for a children's hospital would be too easy): details here, but the law is a specific section of the CPDA 1988.
• KJV and Book of Common Prayer are another, totally separate, weird thing where permission to print the works is restricted by royal prerogative via letters patent, rather than copyright. The CPDA 1988 has a (non-specific) carve-out under para (1)(b) here (and I don't know if the actual letters patent are published anywhere, but if they were, we can have them too since, y'know, pre-1925).

Tl;dr there's not a single law that applies here, though both these cases are covered partly under the CPDA, which makes sense because that provides pretty much all relevant law in the UK. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 14:15, 25 August 2021 (UTC)

I started the template only due to others talking about the British perpetual copyright. I am unfamiliar with it, so correct the template as needed.--Jusjih (talk) 18:04, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Should no The and The be disambiguated?

There is Orange Grove (1866) by Sarah E. Wall, but there's also a book called The Orange Grove (1829) by Mary Martha Sherwood. Should they be disambiguated at a main Orange Grove page? This would put the wall text at Orange Grove (Wall) and the Sherwood text at The Orange Grove (Sherwood). @Billinghurst: if you think this is compelling, can you please make the more from Orange Grove -> Orange Grove (Wall)? PseudoSkull (talk) 18:32, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

I suppose it should be moved because "The Orange Grove" by Sherwood could just be referred to as "Orange Grove" in some sources. PseudoSkull (talk) 18:33, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

**If** we are to disambiguate, then we would go to "Orange Grove"; when they have been like that we have not forced a disambig, nor have we been concerned if someone does. It just means that we cannot have hatnotes until we do. Your call on what you would like done. — billinghurst sDrewth 08:39, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: After some thought, I would like the move to be carried out. Could you please initiate that process as I cannot? PseudoSkull (talk) 17:43, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Will do. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

"It sometimes seems wrong to omit a, some say the, definite article." [adapted from unattributed] CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:39, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Definitely would agree on produced works that we don't omit "A"/"An"/"The". The ability to group on disambiguation pages, and have redirects gets us around this issue, especially where the names of works are regularly referred to without these articles, and maintaining multiple disambiguation pages for each was leading to holes, confusion and related issues. I would also say that if we are doing a {{versions}} page that we would do that **with** the article not without as we do for disambiguation. — billinghurst sDrewth 23:25, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Wrong as it may be, many times I've seen book titles referred to in this way in works I've proofread, which in my mind makes it make sense for there to be redirects from articleless titles. Perhaps the writer had an incorrect memory that the external work title did not begin with "The", or perhaps they had some idea that omitting it was okay. PseudoSkull (talk) 12:05, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: it's all good in context, and we might see: '… the Orange Grove' as a reference to either work, but I'm guessing it is always The Tiger / Raven. Definitely following the context, by reading, than predisambiguation, by rule, is reasonable. (I didn't look deeply at teh examples, one is a red link) … actually, unbracket, one is a redlink :/ Cygnis insignis (talk) 12:24, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

and citation for authoress-ship please? Cygnis insignis (talk) 12:29, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

If I may... about the Monthly Challenge

Hi! I'm Ernest-Mtl, who started this kind of monthly challenge on the French-language Wikisource in 2019… Originally called Défi 5000' for 5000 proofread pages per month but later changed in October 2020 for Mission 7500 for 7500 proofread or validated pages… Before that, our community collaboration was simply called Défi du mois (Monthly challenge) but would barely meet the completion of a few books (about 1000 to 2000 pages per month).

Our experience showed a few things:

• Naming the challenge with a number brought the people to participate a *LOT* more… from less than 2000 pages per month, calling it Défi 5000, brought us to an average of 6319 pages per month in 2019 and now, with the Mission 7500, we have an average of 9456 pages in 2021 so far…
• Placing the actual results of the challenge on the main page from sensibly the same place you have yours actually to the upper right side column, just before new texts in a little container brought a lot more people because they don't have to scroll down the page.
• People like to see actual results of what they participated in… that's why we started to advertise how many books were publish with our challenge. For example, they can see in almost real time how many works were completed in the current month, for each month and for the whole year. Seeing the challenge permited to publish in 2019 305 books out of 589 on our complete wikisource project brought them to continue their implication.
• In the beginning, every month I was doing a post on the scriptorium to show the evolution of the challenge. Nowadays, it's not necessary anymore.
• We try to represent as much as possible all the country of publication every month (mainly France, Canada (Québec), Belgium, Switzerland) ; we try to have a variety of works as well : novels, poetry, theatre, science, novella or short-stories, etc…

It was rough to start but brought vigorous implication in the challenge. I hope the English-speaking community will make your challenge sky-rocketed! :)

--Ernest-Mtl (talk) 14:12, 11 August 2021 (UTC)

@Ernest-Mtl: thanks for the message! Some things I'm hoping to add to our MC:

• Tags in {{New texts}} for MC works
• Live progress bars for indexes (so it won't need a bot to keep them up-to-date) - the backend is nearly ready
• A way to record finished books would be good. Currently, validated books are the bottom of the page, but there's no global list of MC-completed works.
• I haven't done a Scriptorium post this month because I rushed the MC changeover
• I avoid naming after a number because I wasn't sure what we could achieve. 2000 seems a decent target for now — we hit that the first two months, missed by hair last month). We do have limited participation (myself included), possibly due to summer and also from lack of awareness or desire to work on shared works (?)

Thank you very much for the other notes, I will bear them in mind. I plan to revisit some of the implementation soon, when I have a bit of time and once some back-end facilities are ready.

And of course a big "thank you" for the idea and frWS implementation that we could "be inspired by" (or shamelessly rip off). The massive success of the frWS Défi is what made me so keen to give it a go here. ♥ from enWS :-) Inductiveload—talk/contribs 10:13, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Well, nothing is a rip off in a community project… We're all working with the same goal… sharing interests and bringing people together working toward a shared goal… lol PS: I've seen your system is a lot more automated than ours… We are still doing the counting by hand (almost) using the bookworm bot reports… I'm kinda jealous! hahahaha --Ernest-Mtl (talk) 14:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

excellent. we are keeping up with French in proofreading, but not validation. so let the competition begin. Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 15:03, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

@Slowking4: That could be a cute thing to do… finding 5 books in English and their French translations… Then creating a friendly competition… hehe --Ernest-Mtl (talk) 14:59, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: Thank you for your wonderful note and I'm sorry that I wasn't around during the summer. Your Défi was indeed the inspiration when I proposed this to Inductiveload. It's been utterly amazing to explore frWS and see the treasure trove of scan-backed works. Thank you for all your work.

@Inductiveload: I think that we should try these three things.

• Tagging MC texts in the New Text box. This might require a formal proposal because one particular, powerful member is against the idea.
• Moving the Collaboration box to above the New Text box.
• Instead of formally naming our challenge MC, we can provide a progress bar showing our progress towards the goal number_of_pages_completed [Progress Bar] 2000. Languageseeker (talk) 10:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@Languageseeker::

• There was a proposal for this in June, which got a bit of general support, but no further comments on the implementation proposed at Template:New texts/sandbox. Based on the very strong opposition leading to instant reversion of the download links for new items after proposal and implementation, that's not enough to convince me to move forward. I'd support a new proposal, though.
• Moving the Collaboration box to above the New Text box. This will definitely need a separate discussion.
• Instead of formally naming... porque no los dos? I have a little more work to do on the background logic for the stats in light of the new Lua lib for that, however. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:19, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Inductiveload—talk/contribs 11:19, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

---

While we're on the subject: the Monthly Challenge has just completely validated all three volumes of Sense and Sensibility, finally completing the progress on a page that has existing since 2004! Thank you everyone involved! Inductiveload—talk/contribs 19:34, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

It's a shame though, that the work still contained scores of errors because (I'm guessing) the text was matched-and-split to a scan of a different edition with different punctuation and spelling conventions. Validation can't be relied on as a sign of quality. BethNaught (talk) 07:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

@BethNaught: This is a real shame. Hopefully, this is the result of an older match-and-split that does not happen anymore. Thank you for revalidating this work. Languageseeker (talk) 10:57, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

The proofread and validation should pick up that we are in a different version and correct. Something askew there. — billinghurst sDrewth 12:10, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Impressions of Theophrastus Such

The work is currently the PG version of Blackwood ed., 1879, with subpages, a new version at Impressions of Theophrastus Such. Essays and Leaves from a note-book/Theophrastus Such so the title might be a dab for these. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 10:12, 1 August 2021 (UTC)

redated to stop being archived. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:37, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Done, though the new version does still need splitting to chapters. Also located and uploaded a scan for the PG version just for good measure. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 18:31, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Index:Swahili tales.djvu

The work contains English and Swahili, most of the other language, except where it intermixed with English (about half of the pages), has been done at old wikisource, eg Page:Swahili_tales.djvu/42. I propose they be moved here CYGNIS INSIGNIS 08:24, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

CYGNIS INSIGNIS 12:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:11, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Cygnis insignis (talk) 17:37, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Request for comment notification

Here is a link to a RFC on Meta concerning all Wikimedia projects. —unsigned comment by Lionel Scheepmans (talk) 03:47, 22 August 2021 (UTC).