Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2022-04

March Monthly Challenge

The March Monthly Challenge achieved, with 6392 pages processed (that means: proofread, validated or marked "without text"), another very good result. For proofread pages, the contributors set an excellent new record of 4718 pages. 1351 validated pages in March mean a decrease roughly by half compared to February in this category.

On the challenge page, one can find a detailed listing of all proofread and validated works, with links to the index pages.

Proofread works included works originating from various countries (The Scarlet Letter, Candide, Zakhar Berkut, Murder on the Links), non-fiction (Japan: Its History, Arts and Literature, Exposition and Protest, Braddock's Road), pieces from periodicals (The Dial), and works with difficult formatting and/or images (The Elene of Cynewulf, Divers voyages touching the discovery of America).

An important part of the challenge is the transclusion of works. The contributors transcluded not only the works proofread during the challenge, but also some that were already proofread but which weren't yet transcluded. This includes also large works, sometimes with a large number of subpages to be created in the main namespace.

The challenge participants continued to make important progress in several long-term projects. In the Women Writers series, Silas Marner and The Last Man (Volume 2) were proofread; in the LGBT series, Imre and On A Grey Thread. The Orley Farm series progresses to volume 16 of 20 in April.

The April challenge introduces a wide range of different texts with lots of different topics: American, Roman, and Canadian history; texts by German, Polish, and Canadian authors; works tagged Philosophy, Western, and Old English. Join the challenge and explore!----Tylopous (talk) 08:14, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Just curious: Image on page is out of proportion

I use a standard layout of {{FI}} for chapter end images as in Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/38 which is displayed in Firefox & Vivaldi in the expected proportions to the page, but on this page Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/259 with the same template settings the image is enormous. It's the same in Vivaldi which is based on Chrome. These are not the same images, just very similar. I switched them earlier but to no avail. Ineuw (talk) 05:59, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

P.S: The post was made while using Linux Mint 20.3. But in Windows 10 the results of the above mentioned browsers of the pages are the same.Ineuw (talk) 07:04, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

@Ineuw: I believe there was simply a typo on the latter page, with |width=90xp rather than |width=90px; compare. Shells-shells (talk) 07:22, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks! Ineuw (talk) 07:28, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Current featured text is a rerun?

The current featured text (Trees and Other Poems) was the featured text selected for April 2018, and the template {{Featured text/April}} has not been updated since then. This one is especially noticeable as a previously featured text because the blurb on the front page mentions that the author was killed on July 30, 1918—almost 100 years ago (emphasis mine). Would an admin be willing to alter the text to remove or update this?

Overall it seems that the selection of featured texts has been rather neglected lately. For example, there's the question above about WS:Featured text candidates being inactive, and according to {{Featured schedule}}, the latest new work was added in February 2020. Even before then there were plenty of gaps in the schedule, though it seems to have been a generally steady flow of works most of the time. What happened that made it peter out?

In my view, featuring texts is important and beneficial to readers and editors alike—readers get to experience new and interesting content, and editors are given recognition for the work done in bringing a text up to a high standard. At the very least, one new text per month should be possible to achieve with regularity. Is there any way this process can be revitalized? Shells-shells (talk) 05:15, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Shells-shells: What happened was probably what usually happens on all-volunteer projects: those most involved got busy IRL, lost interest in this particular aspect, quit editing, burned out, or were abducted by aliens. Are you volunteering to pick up the slack? Because you absolutely do not need to be an admin to do that (it's just convenient to be able to edit the blurbs and stuff directly).

Oh, and the April text has been updated to remove the anachronism. Xover (talk) 07:13, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

In that case, I shall hold my peace until I'm ready to submit featured text candidates for review. I do have a few in mind, but I'd like to go through them thoroughly to ensure a high standard (and for personal enjoyment as well) before going any further. Thank you for the prompt response! Shells-shells (talk) 08:33, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Way to view scans in diff view in Page namespace?

Title says it all: is there any way to see the page scan when viewing diffs in the Page namespace? It is often not particularly helpful to see what things have been changed from one revision to another without also knowing what the actual contents of the scanned page are. Does a setting or gadget exist that can do this? Shells-shells (talk) 05:36, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Shells-shells: No, sorry. The best you can do is view the page content (sans scan image). That's controlled by the Do not show page content below diffs setting in the "Appearance" section of the preferences. Proofread Page could in theory override this view to show its UI there, but it's a lot of work, one more bit of code that needs maintenance and is prone to breaking, impacts interactive performance, and most of the time most people do not want the scan image or page content there (i.e. they turn it off, hence the negative formulation of the pref setting). It could possibly be "faked" by a Gadget, but I don't think it'd be very robust and the results would be unlikely to make anyone very happy. Xover (talk) 07:04, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-14

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

• For a few days last week, edits that were suggested to newcomers were not tagged in the Special:RecentChanges feed. This bug has been fixed. [1]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 5 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 6 April. It will be on all wikis from 7 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 7 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).

Future changes

• Starting next week, Tech News' title will be translatable. When the newsletter is distributed, its title may not be Tech News: 2022-14 anymore. It may affect some filters that have been set up by some communities. [2]
• Over the next few months, the "Add a link" Growth feature will become available to more Wikipedias. Each week, a few wikis will get the feature. You can test this tool at a few wikis where "Link recommendation" is already available.

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

21:01, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Better labelling of hoaxes

Would it be possible to get better labelling of hoaxes? I just came across an insane rambling on social media that linked on The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion/Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion. I'm aware of the warnings on The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion, but these are not reflected on the daughter page... Stuartyeates (talk) 10:24, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

@Stuartyeates: That work only has the one daughter page at the moment (and no other translations hosted), so it should be pretty straightforward to add something in the notes field. I'll let other people talk about the more general policy question. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 02:14, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

It would be useful to have a way to avoid re-entering certain info into the header over and over again for every sub-page. Not just for this, but more generally. Theknightwho (talk) 10:06, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

I suppose for larger books, you can create a template that itself links to the header template, but automatically feeds through a specific note that you want presented on each pages that uses that sub-template. Whether this is in-line with WS policy, I don't know. Supertrinko (talk) 02:33, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

UCoC Enforcement Guidelines - Voting results

Hi all!

I want to inform you that the majority of Wikimedians have voted in favour of the proposed Guidelines for implementing the Universal Code of Conduct.

A total of 2348 community members took part in the vote.
Of that number, 1338 voted Yes and 945 No. There were 65 undecided votes.

• What does this result mean?

It means that there is enough support for the WMF Board of Trustees to review the Guidelines. It does not mean that the ratification process is complete.

• What happens next?

1. The UCoC project team will collate and summarise the comments provided in the voting process and publish them on Meta-wiki;

2. The Board of Trustees will review the text of the Guidelines and comments given during the vote to determine if any aspects need to be revised.

• What are the possible outcomes?

1. If the Board of Trustees concludes that there are aspects of the Guidelines that need further refinement, these comments, as well as suggestions from the community discussions, will provide a good starting point for the revision.

2. If the Board of Trustees decides to proceed with ratification, the UCoC project team will begin supporting specific proposals in the Guidelines.

You can find more details about the results and the accompanying statistics [on this page]. A summary of the voters' comments will be available on the same page.

Kind regards,
--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
Facilitator
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Tech News: 2022-15

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

• There is a new public status page at www.wikimediastatus.net. This site shows five automated high-level metrics where you can see the overall health and performance of our wikis' technical environment. It also contains manually-written updates for widespread incidents, which are written as quickly as the engineers are able to do so while also fixing the actual problem. The site is separated from our production infrastructure and hosted by an external service, so that it can be accessed even if the wikis are briefly unavailable. You can read more about this project.
• On Wiktionary wikis, the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [3][4]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 12 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 13 April. It will be on all wikis from 14 April (calendar).

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

19:44, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Movement Strategy and Governance News – Issue 6

Movement Strategy and Governance News
Issue 6, April 2022Read the full newsletter

---

Welcome to the sixth issue of Movement Strategy and Governance News! This revamped newsletter distributes relevant news and events about the Movement Charter, Universal Code of Conduct, Movement Strategy Implementation grants, Board of trustees elections and other relevant MSG topics.

This Newsletter will be distributed quarterly, while the more frequent Updates will also be delivered weekly. Please remember to subscribe here if you would like to receive future issues of this newsletter.

• Leadership Development - A Working Group is Forming! - The application to join the Leadership Development Working Group closed on April 10th, 2022, and up to 12 community members will be selected to participate in the working group. (continue reading)
• Universal Code of Conduct Ratification Results are out! - The global decision process on the enforcement of the UCoC via SecurePoll was held from 7 to 21 March. Over 2,300 eligible voters from at least 128 different home projects submitted their opinions and comments. (continue reading)
• Movement Discussions on Hubs - The Global Conversation event on Regional and Thematic Hubs was held on Saturday, March 12, and was attended by 84 diverse Wikimedians from across the movement. (continue reading)
• Movement Strategy Grants Remain Open! - Since the start of the year, six proposals with a total value of about $80,000 USD have been approved. Do you have a movement strategy project idea? Reach out to us! (continue reading)
• The Movement Charter Drafting Committee is All Set! - The Committee of fifteen members which was elected in October 2021, has agreed on the essential values and methods for its work, and has started to create the outline of the Movement Charter draft. (continue reading)
• Introducing Movement Strategy Weekly - Contribute and Subscribe! - The MSG team have just launched the updates portal, which is connected to the various Movement Strategy pages on Meta-wiki. Subscriber to get up-to-date news about the various ongoing projects. (continue reading)
• Diff Blogs - Check out the most recent publications about Movement Strategy on Wikimedia Diff. (continue reading)

--BPipal (WMF) (talk) 12:13, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

New redlinked category for scores has just appeared

A new Category:Pages which use score has suddenly appeared, but it is randomly populated with 94 pages (as I write this) out of the 2835 pages that the Special pages with score property list gives. Some of the contents of the new category are pages created today, while others are from several years ago. I cannot find what's causing these pages to populate the category and I also question its utility. Any thoughts? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:14, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/plugins/gitiles/mediawiki/extensions/Score/+/4bdd90940f205f54674e4a7358b1bc1724f7cb72 ?

Center text vertically

Is there any template for vertically centering text? I have pages like this in mind; countless other examples exist where it might be helpful. Absent such a template, should vertical centering be fudged with {{dhr}} as it is now in the linked page, or should the text be horizontally centered only? Shells-shells (talk) 05:39, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Always consider how it will look when it's transcluded to the Mainspace. Vertical centering doesn't make sense in the context of multiple pages transcluded together (even with {{page break}} between them). If there's a genuine need to push some text down, then by all means fudge it with {{dhr}}. Otherwise, it's not worth it. I usually align pages like this to the top of the page and put two blank lines after with a {{nop}} to follow. This gives enough vertical space before the next page. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:49, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

I was thinking mostly in terms of how texts display when exported to pdf or e-readers; it would just be nice to have these sorts of pages displayed with the text centered on the page rather than aligned to the top. I agree that mainspace rendering should stay as it is, and I wasn't even considering multipage formatting.

Anyway, this is a very trivial matter and your solution is perfectly satisfactory to me :) Shells-shells (talk) 06:25, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-16

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 April. It will be on all wikis from 21 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 19 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis) and on 21 April at 7:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Administrators will now have the option to delete/undelete the associated "Talk" page when they are deleting a given page. An API endpoint with this option is also available. This concludes the 11th wish of the 2021 Community Wishlist Survey.
• On selected wikis, 50% of logged-in users will see the new table of contents. When scrolling up and down the page, the table of contents will stay in the same place on the screen. This is part of the Desktop Improvements project. [5]
• Message boxes produced by MediaWiki code will no longer have these CSS classes: successbox, errorbox, warningbox. The styles for those classes and messagebox will be removed from MediaWiki core. This only affects wikis that use these classes in wikitext, or change their appearance within site-wide CSS. Please review any local usage and definitions for these classes you may have. This was previously announced in the 28 February issue of Tech News.

Future changes

• Kartographer will become compatible with FlaggedRevisions page stabilization. Kartographer maps will also work on pages with pending changes. [6] The Kartographer documentation has been thoroughly updated. [7] [8] [9]

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

23:11, 18 April 2022 (UTC)

Is There a Santa Claus? (New York Sun)

Can we move Is There a Santa Claus? (New York Sun) to the format the other articles use > "The New York Sun/1897/Is There a Santa Claus?" --RAN (talk) 02:25, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Sounds great to me! —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 08:44, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Since the page is locked, you might want to make a request at WS:AN. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 17:12, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Formatting poems across pages

Here is a poem what I wrote about the sad time that my dog passed away.

This is how it looks on one page:

I'm sad my dog has died
He was always by my side

Oh! Dear! My dog's passed away
I have never seen such a dark sad day
Will I ever recover without the love
Of my darling mother who is above

This it what it looks like split between two pages

I'm sad my dog has died

He was always by my side

Oh! Dear! My dog's passed away
I have never seen such a dark sad day
Will I ever recover without the love
Of my darling mother who is above

Is there any way of keeping a poem's central alignment across pages?AlwynapHuw (talk) 05:04, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@AlwynapHuw: Here on enWS I would have said to use {{ppoem}}, but that's not particularly easy to import to other projects so if this is for cyWS it may not be particularly practical. An alternative is to just drop the <poem>, formatting the text the same way you format prose text, and then force line breaks using <br />. A lot of people here have adopted that approach due to the limitations and quirks of the <poem> tag. I don't particularly recommend that approach, but it does work. Xover (talk) 06:32, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

tables and blocks spanning pages are always a problem. see also Template:Block_center#Spanning_multiple_pages --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 23:25, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Extramural promotion?

Is there a precedent - or possibility - for noting on the main page when another WM wiki promotes a WS text? Wikipedia's Did you know ... section leads with w:Chow Leung who co-wrote w:Chinese Fables and Folk Stories which has an entry here Chinese Fables and Folk Stories. Perhaps a "Recently mentioned work here" single line at top of page? Shenme (talk) 02:03, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

That could become complicated, and take a lot of work to maintain. How would we monitor all the other WM projects? What would be the benefit of adjusting the main page here in response to single-day mentions of related pages on other projects? For the specific instance you've noted, I think a better approach would be to ensure their page connects to our Author page using suitable WP templates. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:54, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

In principle, it doesn't seem that hard: you just have a bot scan what's on the front page of projects X, Y, and Z and then see if there's an associated link at the relevant Wikidata item. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:02, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Would video/audio recordings of town hall meetings also count under PD-EdictGov?

I see a lot of town websites including a video or audio recording of their town hall meetings, which show their discussions of legislature. Do these generally meet the criteria of being in the public domain on the basis of PD-EdictGov?

I remember us talking about EdictGov in relation to town hall minutes recently, and determined that those in paper form are public domain because they are created by legislative bodies. Would videos or audio recordings of the meetings also count as PD under the same premise? I ask this because 1. If they are public domain, they'd be a pretty hefty resource as it could award literally hundreds of hours of potential video and audio footage to Commons for free. 2. If they are public domain, we could use them in the Notes section of transcluded town minutes and agendas, as supplementary content. PseudoSkull (talk) 05:08, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

@PseudoSkull: The basis of EdictGov is that those subject to the law must know the law. So its core is that the text of the actual law is PD. This has always had a halo effect where other works that by some mechanism carry the force of law (administrative rulings, for example) are also exempt. That's recently been expanded to cover works authored by a competent legislative assembly, mainly with an eye to annotations, explainers, and so forth.

But a "Town Hall" is not usually arranged by the legislative assembly as a body, and even if all individual legislators are present it is not at all clear that this could qualify (in what role are they participating?). And a Town Hall usually has the general public present: anything they say will have different authorship and thus separate copyright determination. If any of them read prepared remarks (including questions written down in advance) those will be covered by independent copyright. And then there is the video recording itself, which maybe be by a commercial partner of the municipality. Below federal level it is not a given that works produced by, say, an employee of the city is exempt from copyright (PD-USGov exemptions are specifically for federal government) and the laws vary from state to state. So video recordings by an employee (not a legislator), or made for hire by an external entity, cannot be assumed to be PD. If made by an external partner (without work for hire coming into play, and we'd need to see the contract to be sure) then most likely they own the copyright in the recording and the municipality is using (hosting) the recording "by permission" (i.e. under a license agreement, and again we'd need to see the contract to be sure).

The bottom line is that we can't make any blanket assumptions about the general case except that these are in copyright, and any exceptions will have to be assessed case by case. Given the variability of state laws, lack of proper copyright management at most local governments, lack of transparency about contractual arrangements, and so forth, I don't know that this is an area in which I'd want to invest too much time and effort. It's likely that at least some such are PD (in some way; not, most likely, under EdictGov), but the effort required to find them and make the determination is likely to be substantial. Xover (talk) 06:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

yeah, local government is different than federal government. the supreme court case tends to open up state law, however you should take care with the building code, and other documents quoted in the public record. there are exceptions, such as the florida sunshine law, which would make a lot PD, but in general local governments are not covered, and do not explain it very well. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:23, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Tech News: 2022-17

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

• On many wikis (group 1), the software to play videos and audio files on pages has now changed. The old player has been removed. Some audio players will become wider after this change. The new player has been a beta feature for over four years. [10][11]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 April. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 April. It will be on all wikis from 28 April (calendar).
• Some wikis will be in read-only for a few minutes because of a switch of their main database. It will be performed on 26 April at 07:00 UTC (targeted wikis).
• Some very old browsers and operating systems are no longer supported. Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in very old browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10, Android 4, or Firefox 38 or older. [12]

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

22:56, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Let's talk about the Desktop Improvements

Hello!

Have you noticed that some wikis have a different desktop interface? Are you curious about the next steps? Maybe you have questions or ideas regarding the design or technical matters?

Join an online meeting with the team working on the Desktop Improvements! It will take place on 29 April 2022 at 13:00 UTC and 18:00 UTC on Zoom. Click here to join. Meeting ID: 88045453898. Dial by your location.

Agenda

• Update on the recent developments
• Questions and answers, discussion

Format

The meeting will not be recorded or streamed. Notes will be taken in a Google Docs file. Olga Vasileva (the Product Manager) will be hosting this meeting. The presentation part will be given in English.

We can answer questions asked in English, French, Italian, and Polish. If you would like to ask questions in advance, add them on the talk page or send them to sgrabarczuk@wikimedia.org.

At this meeting, both Friendly space policy and the Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces apply. Zoom is not subject to the WMF Privacy Policy.

We hope to see you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 00:35, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees election 2022 Call for Candidates

It's the election season again!

This year, the Wikimedia community has the opportunity to vote for two community-and-affiliate selected seats in the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, which oversees the Foundation's operations. Community-and-affiliate selected trustees and Board-appointed trustees make up the Board of Trustees. Each trustee serves a three-year term. This is an opportunity to improve the representation, diversity, and expertise of the Board as a team.

Please consider submitting your candidacy to join the Board of Trustees.
(Read the full announcement of the Elections Committee and the Board of Trustees)

---

The seats to be filled this year were previously selected by affiliates in the 2019 affiliate-selected Board seats process.
This year, a different method will be used:

1. Candidates submit their applications (by May 9; this deadline may be slightly extended);
   Any community member can become a candidate if they meet the general and special conditions outlined here.
2. Affiliates vote to shortlist six (6) names from the candidates' pool.
   Each affiliate carries one vote. The affiliate vote is scheduled to take place in early July.
3. The Community votes to elect two of the six shortlisted candidates.
   Community Voting is scheduled to begin on August 15 and end on August 29.
4. The Board will appoint the two newly-elected candidates as the new Trustees.
   This final step, which will conclude the election process, is expected to take place in early October 2022.

---

Election Volunteers:

Do you want to take part in the process as an election volunteer? Just add your name on this Meta page.

---

If you have any questions, please post them here, on Meta-wiki, or reach out to me directly.

Kind regards. --BPipal (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 27 April 2022 (UTC)
Facilitator, SEE
Movement Strategy and Governance
Wikimedia Foundation

Coming soon: Improvements for templates

Fundamental changes in the template dialog.

Hello, more changes around templates are coming to your wiki soon:

The template dialog in VisualEditor and in the 2017 Wikitext Editor (beta) will be improved fundamentally: This should help users understand better what the template expects, how to navigate the template, and how to add parameters.

• project page, talk page

In syntax highlighting (CodeMirror extension), you can activate a colorblind-friendly color scheme with a user setting.

• project page, talk page

Deployment is planned for May 10. This is the last set of improvements from WMDE Technical Wishes' focus area “Templates”.

We would love to hear your feedback on our talk pages!

-- Johanna Strodt (WMDE) 11:13, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

A lesson in advertising

The graph below shows page views for Portal:American literature over the past 90 days.

Page views spiked 2 days ago. This is when User:Feydey added a template link to the Portal from Wikipedia's article on w:en:American literature. The Portal was already connected via Wikidata, and listed in the left-hand marginal links, but this clearly was not drawing traffic here.

Our community would likely benefit from the advertisement and expansion of similar national literature Portals. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:05, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Glossary of commonly used terms?

sorry i'm a noob and have just tried my hands on adding a new pdf. i'm in the process of making the pagelist. i'm not a native english speaker, so i have trouble finding the correct words for the different pages of a book. for example, is "back cover" the phrase for the bottom piece of paper, which is equivalent to the "cover" in the front? i notice there's Wikisource:Glossary, but it has very few words. https://www.abebooks.com/books/rarebooks/collecting-guide/understanding-rare-books/glossary.shtml on the other hand has too many things, which confuse me.

i tried looking at featured texts to imitate. is there one that exemplifies most nuances users should pay attention to? RZuo (talk) 12:48, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

@RZuo: You can have a look at this "Book structure navbox" over on Wikipedia, especially the front and back matter sections; the articles linked there would explain most of the elements/pages you're likely to commonly encounter in a book. For example, the "back cover" can simply be called "Cover", or "Jacket" (if it is a jacket), or you could simply use a –. There's no hard rule in such cases. Also, don't be afraid of making mistakes; we all learn as we go. Cheers! Ciridae (talk) 15:14, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

See Help:Index pages#Parameters, particularly the two coloured boxes for details on how to do pagelists. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 23:11, 28 April 2022 (UTC)

yeah, we tend to ignore the "cover", dust jacket, and end papers, and skip ahead to the title page, and table of contents, as the main landing page for a work. such are digital works, not off the shelf. sorry about the lack of documentation, cheers. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:22, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Neat trick

I have discovered that, if a page has been deleted here, then restored, Wikidata remembers the original linkage and the link is automatically restored at Wikidata, which is a nice feature. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:21, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

That is convenient :) —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 22:44, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

assuming the wikidata number is not deleted, as not notable, on the rare occasion the wikisource is the only link. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:02, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

Scope of Category:CE biographies

Currently Category:CE biographies contains all articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia, whether they are biographies or not (e.g., Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Capsa, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Captain (In the Bible), Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Captivities of the Israelites, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Archdiocese of Capua, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Capuchinesses). The last word on this appears to be six years ago, when an editor noted this in the category header, but the observation that an incongruity exists is not a solution to it. Furthermore, this category is generated in all of these articles by default by the article header, so an holistic solution is required.

I see two possible solutions here. Either clean out the category by removing everything that is identified as not a biography (which will necessitate developing an alternative header for those pages), or rename the category to something like Category:CE articles, and then possibly manually add Category:CE biographies to those that are biographies (or, perhaps, add a "biography = y/n" parameter to the header, so that those toggled "y" will have the category added. BD2412 T 05:18, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

i would be more concerned about migrating to scan backed, such as Page:Catholic_Encyclopedia,_volume_3.djvu/366 , but horses for courses. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 22:04, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm (slowly) working my way through scan-backing Volume 1 and will eventually get on to the others. Part of my one-person battle to reduce the not-scan backed to less than 200K. Not helped by the further additions as fast as I reduce. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:45, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

we should have a contest for CE, like EB1911. it is a big lump, with lots of inbound wiki links. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:21, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

If there is no objection, I will go ahead and create a Category:CE articles, put Category:CE biographies in that category, and begin moving non-biographies to the supercategory. If I find a particularly large number of entries falling into another subset, I will likely make an additional subcategory for that subset. BD2412 T 07:24, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Transwikifying a Russian source with English translation from Wikipedia

A Wikipedia user has created a page containing an open letter from the Azov Battalion in Ukraine, containing the original text in Russian, and a translation (of uncertain provenance) at w:Draft:Address of the Azov Regiment to Russia. If this were moved to Wikisource, would it be two pages, one at ru-source, one at en-source? Or a bilingual page, sourced at either? What's the right way to proceed, assuming this kind of content is even appropriate here? (ping on reply, please!) Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 18:08, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot:, s:mul: is perfect for hosting multilingual texts. Since this appears to be an original text and someone's translation, I think that separate pages at en.ws and ru.ws is the correct course of action. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:37, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

I suggest treating the translation as a wiki-user translation, and therefore the enWS version should be in the Translation: namespace and can only appear once the ruWS original has been posted and accepted by them. On a quick look I can't see a license on the original text that would allow ruWS to host (probably because I don't read cyrillic text). Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:48, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

@Koavf: can you relink ":s:mul:"? It seems to be the same destination as s: – was that the intention?

@Beeswaxcandle: thanks. Although far from perfect, machine translation has improved by leaps and bounds the last few years, to the point that you can pretty much read the KP article at this Google auto-translation link. As far as licensing, if you follow their Terms of Use info linked at the bottom of the page, it says:

1. The use of texts posted on the site is allowed provided there is an active hyperlink to the site kp.ua not lower than the second paragraph.

I don't see an email address or a "contact us" page anywhere, otherwise I'd write and ask, to make sure, but that ToU seems pretty clear. I'm not as used to Wikisource as Wikipedia, and it seems to me that in Wikipedia context, this would work in a quote box where the source was listed at the top, as a kind of byline under the bolded Title, thus meeting their licensing condition. I don't know if that "source-on-top" formatting would violate any Wikisource practices or guidelines, but if that's workable, it does seem like we could copy the letter to s:ru:. Assuming that ru-s folks would be willing, that is, and that their practices aren't too different from en-source. Mathglot (talk) 06:43, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mathglot: s: leads to the English-language Wikisource (from English-language projects). s:mul: leads to the Multilingual Wikisource. That project hosts three sorts of content: 1.) multilingual content, 2.) content in languages that have a very small corpus and will never have their own subdomain, and 3.) content with bodies of literature that are large enough that they could be independent projects, but that haven't yet had enough editors working on those texts (similar to incubator:). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:26, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh, I see; thanks. I thought that was just a splash page and hub with no content of its own, sort of like www.wikipedia.org is for Wikipedia; I didn't realize there was actual content there, so thanks for cluing me in. It still sounds like, as you said in your first comment, that this should go first to :s:ru, and then the English translation would come here. Mathglot (talk) 09:44, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

If the English-language translation is some unrelated document (as it appears to be), then yes. If you have any recommendations on how to improve the look of s:mul: to make it more clear, I'm all ears. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:56, 3 May 2022 (UTC)

Proposal for creation of local Exemption Doctrine Policy (EDP)

The English Wikisource hosts many texts based on the justification that they are “government edicts,” and are thus in the public domain. (See {{PD-EdictGov}}.) In a recent case (decided March 31, 2022), Judge Chutkan of the District of Columbia determined that certain works, which are law, are not government edicts, but may be hosted under the statutory doctrine of “fair use.” This opinion is at odds with an earlier opinion; however, to avoid legal and WMF Legal issues, I propose that certain copyrighted works may be uploaded if they fall under Chutkan’s “fair use” analysis of legally binding works. Specifically, I propose that works incorporated by reference into binding law or regulation, by the federal government or any state or municipal government, be allowed on the English Wikisource. These works may need a new license tag template, which would mention the “government edicts” doctrine, ASTM II, and the new EDP. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:09, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

I would be inclined to oppose for two reasons:

• The "fair usage" analysis implies usage restrictions, effectively making these works non-commercial which we explicitly prohibit already
• The "fair usage" analysis depends on the economic impact on the holder of the work, exactly which parts are incorporated by reference based on the statue, etc. This and the other work-by-work analysis would need to be explained and included in whatever license template we create. This seems quite difficult to manage given it is fundamentally a subjective and opinionated exercise.

The proposed template maybe can include a disclaimer calling out that it is non-commercial and update the licensing policy to mention this exemption?

MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:29, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

• MarkLSteadman: Well, any “fair use” work would have usage restrictions—that’s why it’s “fair use,” and not “public domain.” There are many images on enWP, for example, which it would be inappropriate to reuse commercially, but which are used anyway under the doctrine of “fair use.” The judge states the following in the fair-use analyses:

  The “express text of the law falls plainly outside the realm of copyright protection.” ASTM, 896 F.3d at 451. Here, the standard is incorporated into law without limitation such that “the consequence of the incorporation by reference is virtually indistinguishable from a situation in which the standard had been expressly copied into law.” Id. at 452. Accordingly, “this factor weighs heavily in favor of fair use.” Id.

• This paragraph seems to closely parallel the language of Judge Marrero and the various circuit judges, when those Honorables chose to declare such works in the public domain. My proposal is mainly to accomodate Judge Chutkan’s opinion with the opinion and practice of other district and circuit courts. As for your second claim, that the fair use analysis is lengthy, this is another problem answerable to enWP practice. See, for example the “Summary” section of this file. The detailed sections allow for a thorough analysis of the statutory fair use factors, which would, of course, be done on a work-by-work basis. The proposed license template, to be included at the bottom of the page, should then link to an explanation of the justification for hosting the file, which would either be in Talk: or File talk: (depending on whether the work is scan-backed at the moment). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 03:25, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  If the community decides that it wants to host non-commercial / non-derivative works in some form as is practice at other hosting sites there is no legal issue stopping us but do we want to? Why is this any different from the other non-commercial works we routinely delete as not hostable? For a document that is licensed under CC NC and then referenced here would we prefer to host it under this more restrictive exemption and delete the other portions? Given an update to the licensing policy we may be able to come up with a structured process to allow hosting them (e.g. mandatory additional fields, link to the relevant legal code etc.) but it would beyond just mentioning the policy (like other licensing templates). MarkLSteadman (talk) 12:04, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

  it is different because US laws are PD, and the code is incorporated into law. but we have code officials trying to use copyright to charge rents. see also https://archinect.com/news/article/150195411/supreme-court-rules-that-building-codes-cannot-be-copyrighted --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 21:12, 9 April 2022 (UTC)

  The ruling says explicitly that is not the case citing that case: "Defendant’s second and related argument—that the standards are “government edicts”—fails.", "A government body that merely incorporates a standard by reference does not independently create any content, and therefore does not become an “author” of the standard. Defendant points to no authority to the contrary." The proposal explicitly says "copyrighted works may be uploaded if they fall under Chutkan’s “fair use” analysis" which is explicitly not public domain, and why would we ask for a specific exemption and new license tag if these works fall under the existing "US laws are PD" category instead of creating a new "Chutkhan fair use" category? MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:03, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

  who is "we"? you are inclined to oppose because "we can’t have an exemption policy because we already delete that stuff" = tautologies are us. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 00:11, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

  No, my point is that why would Wikisource create an exemption to host works Wikisource can already host because they are in the public domain. If work X is public domain, why not just use a PD license? Work X can't be both in the public domain and in need of an exemption because it is not in the public domain. MarkLSteadman (talk) 20:02, 15 April 2022 (UTC)

  Would de minimis apply here?--Jusjih (talk) 01:58, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

  Not generally, no. Xover (talk) 06:37, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

  How strict will we enforce the URAA restoration? I ask while we consider amending how strict our copyright enforcement will be, in case certain works are law while not government edicts.Jusjih (talk) 22:42, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

  yeah, for File:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.pdf they claimed "(Volume I pages 31, 34, 86, 91, 92, and 113) that may be copyrighted) are not fully free but believed to be de minimis for this work" ; this is a continuing problem with government documents, and their copyrighted diagrams and extended quotations. need an EDP since we cannot rely on commons to apply their extra-legal interpretation consistently. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 19:46, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

  • MarkLSteadman: Actually, that is the very reason I proposed the new EDP. It is because there are varying interpretations of the law that I saw a need for the policy, not counting the other reasons listed by other participants. The case of Chutkan’s opinion illustrates my point: some codes adopted into law, like those at issue in ICC v. UpCodes, are in the public domain; while others, like those at issue in ASTM v. PRO, can be posted only through the “fair use” doctrine. I believe that these two cases argue two different positions regarding the copyrightability of materials incorporated by reference into law. It is by this type of legal disagreement that a work “can[] be both in the public domain and in need of an exemption because it is not in the public domain.” At this stage in legal development, there are multiple views put forward in different cases by different judges, and I believe that Wikisource should accomodate these different views. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:47, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

  and for example, Korean Air Flight 801 - Aircraft Accident Report (NTSB), Jeppesen charts deleted at commons, [13], preventing the completion of the work. no de minimus there. --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 01:15, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

  If this is meant to cover the period of uncertainty because of the conflicting rulings, then that should be included in the policy statement. If the courts do decide on the Chutkan version and resolve the ambiguity in favor that these works are not PD-Edict is the plan to continue hosting them purely under a "fair use" license under this exemption policy? As currently proposed, I would interpret this as yes. MarkLSteadman (talk) 13:50, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

  • MarkLSteadman: Obviously, I prefer the result in the UpCodes case, where the works enter the public domain, rather than allowing the posting under the “fair use” standard. My proposal is entirely a stop-gap measure: it is intended to allow the posting of materials of this type while there is currently uncertainty in the law. If, at some point in the future, the law is resolved in favour of Chutkan’s approach, I think there would need to be a separate discussion on whether the use of the “fair use” doctrine is appropriate. The license which would be used to mark the works in question would have to mention the uncertainty, of course, warning potential reusers about the situation. This is similar to how U.S.-specific licenses warn reusers that the works in question may be copyrighted in different countries; as the law is uncertain, different judges may interpret the rules in different ways. If that is your concern, I will state clearly that this proposed policy would only exist so long as the law is uncertain. If Marrero’s interpretation wins, the license can be removed, and replaced in its entirety with PD-EdictGov; if Chutkan’s interpretation wins, a separate discussion can be had on how to proceed. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 16:39, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

    @TE(æ)A,ea. That addresses my first concern. If the template has enough info for actually doing the fair use analysis rather than merely being a pro forma hand wave then the second might be also be overcome. MarkLSteadman (talk) 16:50, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

    • MarkLSteadman: I think the focus would be on when works are incorporated by reference in whole. The inclusion of parts o8f works, where only parts are so incorporated, would be confusing and very case-specific, so I won’t focus on such a case. The license template could require parameters to allow a default fair-use declaration to be filled out. These would include mentioning the specific provision of law which incorporates the work by reference. Quoting from Chutkan: “Defendant’s ‘attempt to freely distribute standards incorporated by reference into law qualifie[s] as a use that further[s] the purposes of the fair use defense.’” “The ‘express text of the law falls plainly outside the realm of copyright protection.’” “The incorporating regulation does not specify that only certain provisions of this standard are incorporated by reference into law, nor does it indicate which specific provisions of the standard are relevant for regulatory compliance, suggesting that ‘a greater amount of the standard’s text might be fairly reproduced.’” These would all apply in such a case, so I think the process could work smoothly. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 17:29, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

  • "If this is meant to cover the period of uncertainty because of the conflicting rulings" - no, this is meant to cover the period of uncertainty of commons conflicting deletion decisions. when the courts or commons change their decisions, then the license can change, but i would not hold my breath. the PD US only local copies, will eventually be PD everywhere as well --Slowking4 亞 Farmbrough's revenge 20:01, 15 June 2022 (UTC)