Adam Smith

“ Also, a person's difficulties with an other project should not be determinative of how we deal with him in Wikisource. We have consistently judged a person on his behaviour here; similarly, one's right to vanish should be based on what happens here rather than on any other project. Whether we choose to blank or delete, it would be preferable to put a note on that user page to the effect that it has been blanked or deleted at the user's request. Subpages are often sought to be deleted by users who do not otherwise vanish. ”

“ So, we could establish a separate scale for formatting, so as not to detract from the text's quality in terms of completeness and reliability. As for sourcing, there's no way a work can be 75% without including the source edition of the work, it wont meet the "checked with a reference edition" criteria. But we need input from more users on this, because it seems this discussion is leaning towards increasing our standards of quality for texts, something I'm all for, but others might see as too much given the project's current condition. ”

“ I dont mind if my talk page doesnt say "Sherurcij" - it could say "renamed user 999", but a good stalker will still be able to pick your demeanor and writing style. To be effective, you would need to remove your posts from all archives. Deleting it doesnt remove it anyway; there are dumps that contain everything that hasnt been "oversighted". Also, if we give adminship out liberally to anyone with clue, a stalker can easily social-engineer the information out of an admin, and adminship turns into more than just a mop. ”

“ But the thing is that supporting IE6 can be a huge increase in effort for the web developer - it can easily result in several times the time and effort to fix any given problem. You get something working properly in, say Opera, and it works perfectly in every other browser - Fire Fox, Safari, even IE7 much of the time, but then you run into some horrendously complicated and subtle error due to the quirkiness of IE6. ”

“ A straw man is a mistatement of the opposite view to argue against something that wasn't said by anyone but yourself; the closest I see to that is the comment about multi-line titles, since nobody suggested making software changes to support more titles than we do now. If the software can handle a title correctly, then we should use the functionality; if someone might not know the correct title, we should use redirects. I don't see how we'd even get a coherent title policy if we required the title to be the result of some series of transformations on the published title. ”

“ The key is that it exists so that a person wanting to bring the text to the 100% level will know where to go to perform proofreading, or if he has any questions about the text. Another point to take into account is showing the completeness level for each chapter in the Table of Contents. It will often be easier to upgrade a single chapter than a whole book. Someone who sees that only a few chapters remain to be done may be more willing to take on one chapter than to start work on a whole book. ”

“ I think it is much harder and more distracting to read a text [1] that is full [2] of footnotes [3] than to read a text that is full of words written in blue. It would also be annoying for the reader to click on the footnote index, get to the footnotes, and see there's nothing there but a link to Wikipedia than to be able to just click on the Wikipedia link directly from the source text. (PS: You need to fix your preferences so your signature points to User:-jkb- rather than Uživatel:-jkb-, since "Uživatel:" is not a valid namespace here at English Wikisource.) ”

“ And yes, a training video produced for Burger King would be considered to be "published" by all legal standards. I'm really not interested in running around in circles chasing each other's tails. I just posted this as a head's up to let people know - and as I said, if you have specific problems, feel free to work them through constructively. But "al-Qaeda members making videos for al-Qaeda and having al-Qaeda publish them doesn't mean they're al-Qaeda's videos!" is really not accomplishing anything. ”

“ The "right" to list two separate reasons something is not copyrighted has nothing to do with any Wikisorceror's "ownership rights", just like I could put both a PD-1923 and a PD-no-notice tag on a 1922 document that was published without copyright notice. Technically only one is necessary - but in case there are doubts about one, the other backs it up. And since the wills were clearly made as part of the employment terms of the hijackers with al-Qaeda, filmed by al-Qaeda and published by al-Qaeda - yes, al-Qaeda would be the owner of the tapes, not the individual men themselves. ”

“ Author:Charles Spurgeon 18:05, 12 August 2008 (UTC) I agree with Eclecticology and Zhaladshar; if we allow user discussion to be deleted under right to vanish, as it introduces an ability to dodge accountability, and it is those who are left behind who are at put at most risk because the context of messages on their talk page has been removed. That confusion and the accountability issue, outweigh the persons right to "vanish" without a trace. Also, there is always a trace left behind and the intrigue causes people to dig and suppose and guess and eventually get lucky. ”

“ Which name is attached is meaningless, especially when taken in the context that WMF and WS allow multiple user accounts anyways (so long as they are not used to evade bans or stack straw polls) . We could be like the Citizendium and require people to verify their RL identities, addresses and employment/education history before they work on our project all in the name of "accountability" -- but that's not what Wikis, WMF or Web 2.0 is about. ”

“ I am a firm believer in the right to vanish, in an online world where privacy is an increasingly rare commodity as every major outlet seeks to gobble up and store what information it can -- WMF is well-served in pushing for the right to a "free internet" even when it inhibits us personally. Perhaps a compromise could be made, where Wikisource:Archived discussions is created, and whenever a user talkpage is deleted - the deleting administrator copies over any discussions other than the "Welcome", "Please note that X needs a tag", "I fixed you typo" and such to the archives ”

“ In essence a straw man argument is a generalisation from an easily supported specific situation to support a less obvious situation. The strongest argument for suppressing "The" from titles is really uncertainty about whether it belongs in a specific title. Some long-lived periodicals have not been consistent with its use in their titles. As for the two line title, a line break can be just as much a form of punctuation as the comma, colon or m-dash that is often substituted for it. I fully agree that the internet is full of sloppy transcriptions. ”

“ So for example, if the author Aeschylus refers to a specific real event in Ancient Greek times in one of his works, it might be worth linking to Wikipedia because readers may want to know what that event was to understand the author's work. I personally tend to link real persons to their biographies in Wikipedia, or their author page here, to provide background to the reader. ”

“ As I said, as-Sahab clearly licenses a number of their texts (including Zawahiri's press conference, a hijacker's will and others) as "PUBLIC DOMAIN" -- so your hope that simple repetition of "there is no evidence" is spurious at best, deliberately misleading at worst. I have said that I am assuming that an author who clearly labels a number of works as PD, and has never labelled any work as copyrighted should be assumed to be anti-copyright and those works without notice assumed to be PD -- but that I recognise that it would be better to get a blanket statement from as-Sahab. ”

“ For other works we need to allow for the probability that the translated title may already have been occupied by the translation of an unrelated work by a different author. Eclecticology 03:30, 7 August 2008 (UTC) While I think a blacklist may eventually be a workable solution, I think that not enough is yet known to compile one at present. The only reason we know the various Bibles will be messed up by the bot script is because they already has been messed up by a bot in the past. I don't think we know enough yet to predict what needs to be placed on the blacklist. ”

“ What makes a particular edition "authoritative" or "definitive"? Choosing one translation as more definitive than another requires a breach of NPOV. Whether one has been distributed more than another is of no consequence. Can we at least say that our German colleagues have settled the matter with regards to the original version? Past that, having our own wiki translation strikes me as a preferred option. ”

“ John Vandenberg (chat) 12:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC) Assuming the user is not a banned vandal, there is no reason "accountability" should play any function. While it may irritate you that everything signed "Sherurcij" on your userpage may one day in the future simply read "Deleted user account", that doesn't change the fact the comment is still there telling you that Chapter 23 is missing from Gone with the Wind, or that "somebody" sent you a link verifying publication information for that latest US report. ”

“ Proofreading without pagescans is silly, because one person will do a few chapters and another person will do a few chapters, but they are like to be different editions. see User talk:70.240.250.38 for the most recent example. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC) Well, Using DJVU files and the Page: namespace is a good thing, but it is a different issue. What I ask here is 1. What status do we give to PG texts? Is it reliable enough to be considered as proofread? If a WS contributor proofread a PG text, do we consider that the text is proofread by two persons? ”

“ Any browser change implies changes in how one does things in browsing activity; well-worn habits become subject to unpredictable changes. Eclecticology 16:25, 18 August 2008 (UTC) Just to clarify, I don't use IE6; I merely keep a copy of it, and most other browsers, around to see what the semi-moron browser does with good code. I use Firefox 3 as my primary browser, as does John. ”

“ Sorry, it's impossible to do it without resorting to 3rd party browser extensions such as WikiLook (which is such a nice tool you should have it installed anyway ^_^) . One must use dirty template tricks even to link to a specific definition/meaning of a lexeme from another Wiktionary lexeme (hence nobody does it and meaning glosses are used instead) . --Ivan Štambuk 23:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC) The results of such a proposal would be misleading because choosing the "correct" definition is often a POV matter. Good writers can easily intend several meanings to apply at the same time ”

“ That's what accepting personal responsibility is all about. Stalkers remain a very tiny fraction of the population; as such we should not let their antics dominate our policies. Eclecticology 11:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC) I'm quite sure it is entitled Right to Vanish, not Privilege Sometimes Extended as a Courtesty to Vanish. I know the Meta essay is dodgy on the issue to avoid people "demanding" it, but I think it should be considered what it is, and when requested, we should do our utmost, not the bare minimum, to help that user vanish. ”

“ Another good example: on Page 259 of An introduction to physiological and systematical botany, Smith writes
"Proud man is disposed to think that 'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,' because he has not deigned to explore it; but we find that even the beauties of the most sequestered wilderness are not made in vain." The 'Full many a flower' bit is an Alexander Pope quote, but most people won't pick up the allusion without a bit of help. The link takes the user directly to line of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard being quoted. ”

“ Author:Charles Spurgeon 20:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
This all seems like a series of self-serving excuses for keeping the subject material. "Historical importance" alone does not override copyright. Someone's will is a personal document, so one can easily question what authority an organization to which he belonged had to put a personal document into the public domain. Some of ibn-Laden's works are claimed to be in the public domain because they were written when he was in Afghanistan when that country had not recognized copyright law. ”

“ The most practical way to "automate" interwikis on Wikisource is to build a blacklist of pages the bot shouldnt touch, so we can add the complicated cases to the blacklist so these are only manipulated by hand. John Vandenberg (chat) 22:05, 6 August 2008 (UTC) Good. At least I think I understand the problem. Nevertheless, I'm not sure that the "blacklist" technique will be helpful; it depends too much on people putting things on the list in the first place. For the Bible much will depend on some kind of translation tree. ”