Wikisource talk:WikiProject US Code

Cutoff date for revision

Are you setting a cutoff for revisions or is the aim to have the complete USC upto the end of say 2007, and continue to update it?

62.56.83.49 13:51, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

It kind of a back-burner project right now but we may also keep archived versions. Duplicate the text as an archive at the cutoff and then update the main text till a new cutoff.--BirgitteSB 14:18, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Unless we can get a bot-parseable version or a database, I'm afraid this project will never be completed. Ideally, we would have a copy of every edition with names like "United States Code (2002)". —{admin} Pathoschild 23:47:58, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Never be completed. You seem to pessimistic today! :)--BirgitteSB 23:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this entire project is a bad idea

The United States Code is updated frequently and intricately. It will be very hard for us to keep a WikiSource version of it up-to-date and accurate. It will therefore be constantly either out-of-date, inaccurate, or both. Furthermore, there are good on-line resources already doing this better than we ever could.

My fear is that (a) readers will rely on our version; or (b) we are totally wasting our time when there are better Wikiprojects to do. (For example: The United States Statutes at Large is static. It constantly adds more, but never revisits old sections. We could use a lot of help on that!)

Over on Wikipedia, we've got a good template which links to Cornell's USCode. I suggest we copy that here.—Markles 12:22, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The size of the document makes the task daunting, yes, especially with so few active contributors to the project. But I’m not sure I’m yet sold on the best alternative being stopping work entirely. It’s beyond my technical acumen, but likely not others’, to write a set of scripts that would crawl the versions of the U.S.C. online at Cornell (or AltLaw [I’m comfortable reaching out to Stuart Sierra or Tim Wu if that would help], or the official site), import their text here (suitably wikified), and keep it updated as the source web sites change. That would address your primary concerns, I think.

Plus, there are opportunities to add value here at WS that aren’t currently addressed elsewhere. Because WS also holds court decisions, for example, a reader browsing one of our Code sections can study how a given section of the code has been construed by the courts by viewing the “what links here” page. WS can also hold scholarly commentaries on the code so long as they have been released under free content licenses (as I’m planning to do with a forthcoming article on the DMCA). Neither Cornell nor the other sites (which tend not to be interested in academic works) offers as much potential as WS does to duplicate the depth of content offered by proprietary vendors.

To take another example, because WS preserves edit histories of all pages, it should in principle be possible to trace the evolution of a given code section over time just by stepping back and forth through the edit list. (We have already provided some snapshots of the U.S.C. as of a specified date, for example: United States Code/Title 17/1976-10-18.). That would provide an especially valuable sort of historical research, I think, and it’s a capability that isn’t presently available anywhere else.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to consider. I’m not an aggressive exponent of this particular project (I’m perfectly happy to plug away on the Statutes at Large or The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787), but neither do I think it’s worthless. Tarmstro99 (talk) 13:58, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Wikisource:WikiProject US Code/subpages

There are a few hundred such pages, all of which seem to be redirects to the corresponding "United States Code" page dating from when the move was made in March 2007. With soft redirects these would have disappeared long ago. Eclecticology (talk) 17:58, 28 October 2008 (UTC) PS:There are so many of them that I wouldn't mind if someone used a bot to delete them. Eclecticology (talk) 21:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Keep, if you are referring to the pages listed in Category:United States Code by reference code. These are used by our {{USC}} template. Tarmstro99 (talk) 21:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This makes no sense. That template was developed before all the pages were moved. There are between 150 and 200 such links, but 438 of these subpages, so they are not all linked. Why not just revise the template so that it links to the correct page rather than to a redirect page. Eclecticology (talk) 20:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Wiki keep, {{USC}} is heavily used in content and discussion pages. It should not be subst:ed because many parts of USC havent been touched in years, so it is quite likely that pages will need to be moved around. Any redesign of that template (and thus these redirects) needs to be thoroughly discussed before implemented because ... if it aint broke, dont fix it! (or be bold and brace yourself).
There are more subpages than links because some of these deep-link into a page. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

This seems tantamount to support for double redirects. A procedure similar to what was done with Header/Header2 could easily apply here, beginning with new {{USC2}}. The orphaned redirects can still be deleted without damage; links to the others can either be replaced by the new template or direct links to the referenced section. (I believe that deep linking is not user-friendly, but the more general arguments can wait for a different time.) Thorough discussions are fine, and that's why I began by raising the point here. Eclecticology (talk) 16:53, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I have started {{USCX}} (USC2 in retrospect was misleading). It leads directly where we would want. Any improvements by someone more adept with templates would be welcome. Eclecticology (talk) 17:28, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

• This discussion will be moved to Wikisource talk:WikiProject US Code. Any decision to delete these pages will involve a large number of deletions and have the characteristics of a small project. A deletion proposal page is fine for introducing such a proposals, but it could become hopelessly backlogged if it keeps complex deletion projects that would take significant time to accomplish. Eclecticology (talk) 18:18, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Translation into other languages?

Well, I figured, that we could try to translate the US Code of Law, and work on all versions concurrently. I mean, come on! America's practically a melting pot of cultures and languages! So should be the US Code. --Alegend (talk) 22:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)