“ The following can be safely assumed: users wanted a text, they are connected to the internet, they know about wikipedia and wiktionary if they want to access that, they are at a source and where they want to go next is up to them. The reader is not stupid, or incapable of accessing information! It is not the business of a library to guide the user, to make 'useful' suggestions, quite the opposite. ”

“ I drive a bot which converts straight apostrophes into typographical ones, basing on a difficult algorithm to save straight apostophes when used as a part of wiki markup; I personally hate wiki markup when it encourages "not well formed tags", and the use of double and triple straight apostrophes to obtain italic and bold is one of the more insidious and "bad-formed" shortcuts to simplify formatting that anyone can imagine... no matter, this is wiki: a project based on an excellent database, with a user interface which violates any good rule of databases and of well-formed code... ”

“ Cygnis tends to be one who wants less complexity, not more. In this case, however, adding some complexity is considered by many users to be a significant benefit, because it makes it possible for text to appear on the correct page. This makes it a) easier for the user who validates the work to do so and b) easier for the reader to confirm that the text in the main namespace matches the page. (b) is really the primary purpose of the page namespace. Nearly all our readers read the main namespace, and only access the page namespace if they want to verify that the text is correct. ”

“ If someone does something foolish, we can't ask for a reliable resource because that is what we try to be. Moreover, a link to a source from wikipedia would be editorially reinforced by a link back - a circular reference. If the link is removed at the other end, the incorrect connection is retained here - this is worse. If we have a source that establishes a connection between texts, we don't need to create a new document. If wikipedia cites a document, the document should not have an internal link back to wikipedia or any other POV. We have published POV, there is a big difference. ”

“ There are millions of books and most are inherently useful, adding them to the catalogue is the priority; what wikimedia does with them is handled elsewhere, N, RS, V, peer review; why have that lot here too?!? If there a better way to present a book, maintain text integrity, simplify and increase contributions, gain serious and sober interest, and give the site a reputation for text integrity, then I have tried to implement it. ”

“ If a reader thinks it illegible they can use their preferences, if the width is too great in their opinion, which is likely on landscape screens, they can reduce the size of the window. Or rotate the screen to portrait for those with that clever functionality. It all about honouring user preferences and not supposing that what is 'right' when we look at it is going to be the experience of a reader reading it. Imposing any width requires changing everything else, and who decides whether our page is 300px or 800. ”

“ Pages generated by searches and so are more powerful, making them is very likely to redundant to the largest document arranged by subject, replete with overlays of redirects, dabs, portals, infoboxes, and everything else. If any references here are notable, i.e., worth creating a page for, it should be noted there. Put another way: Pages here would be the target, the end of a path, the important links here, the library, are the Authors and their references to other Titles. Do we make pages for every conceivable subject, biographical in this example, and link everything to everything? ”

“ Politics and religion will always be controversial, translation of the sources is not likely to be less so and it is, in most senses, new content. Wikibooks, or wikiversity, may have the apparatus to provide integrity and scholarship to new content, translation, annotation, etc., as wikipedia has with its policies, pillars and principles. 'Responsibility' and 'protection' are not central issues for me, but they would be a consequence of removing exceptions that overlap with scope of other wikimedia sisters. ”

“ Once you have a working example, put a quick note on the scriptorium. All ideas on templates are useful, but it takes a lot of time before the best way to do it. There is a handful of templates needed to do most things here, and it is easy to 'over-think' when finding new solutions. Someone made the point that a link from Page to mainspace would be handy, but adding a link is not the likely to be efficient. There are hundreds of Pages in a book, someone might need the link. The first user would be adding a template for the second proof-reader, to remove one click. ”

“ Creating the commons category sooner rather than later was very wise, stuffing around at commons adds another level of complexity for users who probably just want to do some proofreading as they pass by. It is definitely easy to focus on on aspect at a time, I open a bunch of upload forms in tabs and tweak the description and categories for each image. Adding the couple of key details, like volume and page number, is crucial when I get myself in muddle. ”

“ The user, who can use a computer and read, we don't need to make decisions for them. I swear that I have removed div classes in preview to read documents, or compare them to other documents, so it wraps properly and because I find it more difficult to read justified text on screens. Prose reduces my access to text at anything less than full screen. Similar issue with images, if a user doesn't think they are big enough they change their own preferences, but not if someone has decided to impose their own - overriding the site preferences and the users. ”

“ The earlier solution was to create a meta-text, a new edition, that incorporated both solutions; scans allowed me to objectively provide the actual editions here and cite the actual and a source there. The sceptics are satisfied and the trolls deprived of contentious and petty edit-war. It is moot, they are different editions and a proper citation requires that distinction. The point probably doesn't apply here, for reasons you have explained, but the final editors of that distributed proofreading were producing new editions and ignoring things like page numbers. ”

“ This always existed conceptually, wiki-software just makes that more convenient and the open site increases that potential. My position is exemplified by my work on 'deep linking' texts, and not just footnotes or the list of references, where an author quotes another I link to an anchor in the second work and the reader can see the actual context. All we are doing is providing a link when the reader would have had to stand and go to another part of a physical library. ”

“ Feeling proud enough of my new makeref () function to share the love: When I'm proofing and come across a footnote citation, I don't like to have to scroll down to the bottom of both image and text, find and proof the footnote text, and move it up into the citation position, before moving on with proofing. Instead I just dump a <ref></ref> where the citation belongs, and continue proofing. When I get to the bottom of the page, I proof the footnote text and then move the footnotes one by one to where they are cited. ”

“ At some point, proofreading old books and journals will become less interesting and bring in diminishing values, because newer copyrighted literature remains off-limits. But bringing the "sources" to the world in ever-improving editions and translations is work that never ends, and continually contributes ever more to "the sum of all knowledge." ”

“ The extra size on old book scans makes no difference and merely accentuates the flaws; is not worth the effort, those who control things like putting sections together and other more complicated things and prefer not to share the power. For me, it is a useless endeavour. An editor must see some positive result, or it is not worth the humongous trouble involved for no positive outcome. The joy of Wikisource is gone. I think Wikisource is for the very few. I forecast that most editors will not find it sufficiently rewarding unless they are plodding away on their own personal agenda. ”

“ The only issue I could foresee would be someone trying to copy it into an editor which doesn't support Unicode (as mentioned) , or someone perhaps following a link containing the marks in an outdated browser— but in that last case, most of Wikisource looks terrible anyway (i.e., in IE6) . Regarding sources for uploaded texts, I don't recall having uploaded any... although it was some years ago. Any which I proofread or replaced (I presume you're referring to Poe's works) I believe I also specified the source of and a link to using the textinfo template on the text's discussion page. ”

“ Agree, but scope, practical guidelines and contributors who 'get it' covers almost all problems. The goal of this site is to produce 'clean texts', legitimately published elsewhere, the separate namespace solution at least indicates that is not what we providing. Do you indeed agree that there is no one "correct" answer? If so, then what you consider to be the sole goal of the project, namely to produce proofread typing of text-scans, is not the only "correct" answer. The goal of this discussion is first and foremost for us to understand each other. ”

“ No worries, I enjoyed them both - My position is there is no consensus to apply a style preference to the text, here or at the sisters; indented page is needed to clear the page-scan links at left. To clarify: If I'm doing poems the class is not needed at all, so I don't add one. Opinions on what the widths, and the inclusion of justification, varies from User to User - and they are all right!! If there is a page full of text a reader can set that how they like, if a reader wants it another way there is any number of controlling that - but not if we impose one preference. ”

“ By Ns0 (take into consideration, it comes from layman tries of one user only so far... ) ALL data are put into one place only. You can guess that I've some (primitive! far from professional!) database experience; database-oriented fellows hate splitting of data here and there and hate redundancy too. ;-) . The link shown by Ns0 is merely a trick to use a little bit of the data contained by the template. To proof that Ns0 data are all what's needed to build Ns0 version consider that: Ns0 contains the name of final page and the title of a chapter ”

“ More new content needed creation, eg. the nav template for the "opinions", because the header has been re-purposed to the new titles and packaging. If we are repackaging the content, because the original is somehow inadequate, then the library in which it was found (Wikisource) becomes part of the citation. Apparently this required the creation of a cross namespace link to a new Wikisource:page to gather all this, and the rest above, I don't see a requirement for this. Creating new titles, and wrangling new content in headers and templates, solves problems that need not have emerged. ”

“ There are a lot of abandoned works in main-space, this is one of the huge advantages of the Page workspace, if people want to start something they can do that. cygnis insignis 07:03, 18 January 2011 (UTC) I think we have a fundamental disagreement because from where I see things we absolutely do have all of those works. The fact that they haven't been transcribed yet does not make them useless, nor does deleting the title pages encourage people to work them. Creating a title page and a table of contents is manifestly useful and will contribute to getting the work transcribed. ”

“ It is easy to criticize the newbie as inadequate. The answers give to my questions are not sufficient. They assume a lot of knowledge of the technical sort. Or else they merely repeat the obvious that I knew on the very first day. I humbly suggest that Wikisource work on being more helpful to newbies. I for one am no longer going to endlessly proofread articles for others so the technicians can do all that really interesting work. I feel like a grunge. Sorry! But if you are honest in wanting feedback, that is it. ”

“ As for #4, and the general concern that portals won't be NPOV because they reflect only what we have and what people think belongs in them—this is a potential problem, I agree. At some point in the future, if portals become popular, we will need to set some guidelines. I have a couple thoughts: first, if a controversial subject has more works on one side than on the other, someone who cares can add more works to make it balance. And there should always be a neutral description and link to Wikipedia (and other reference sources, such as EB, CE, and NSRW, if available) in each portal. ”

“ There is a greater number of people who reckon they know better than those who are legitimately published, opening the door to that has brought the site into disrepute. Do we want every armchair theologian producing a text based on what they reckon the author was saying. The quality of any translation is a matter for the other place, we should only show what was given. ”

“ As for merging, I assure you, the London Burns Oates and Washbourne edition, contained both (Part 1) and (Part 2) for the Treatise on Human Acts and (Part 1) and (Part 2a) and (Part 2b) for the Treatise on Habits as logical divisions in the table of contents, echoing Thomas Aquinas' own descriptions of his divisions within the text. I filled in the infobox for Treatise on Human Acts (part 1) which has a link to the London edition at the Internet Archive so you may look for yourself if you wish. ”

“ I could, no doubt, produce a comment from some previously active user to support my position, if not one of the many reactionary and inconsistent comments of that particular user, though I miss seeing both of them active in discussion and contributions. Despite past practices, most of which are unacceptable, producing a meta-text is a bad idea. This is one of the valid criticisms of the site, and one we and PG have moved away from. ”

“ Since it's a backwater page with little readership, you would probably post on the Annotation talk page your proposed changes and position, notify other user talk pages who are or where active at one time with Annotation discussions, as well as notify any other important Wikisource people or pages about the discussion. Then give it time (few weeks or a month) for people to contribute, then see what transpires. But I don't think you should use the main policy page itself as a place to post your opinions of the policy. Anyway, just wanted to let you know in case it's not on your watchlist. ”

“ You seem nice, pretty intelligent too, I'm sure we would get along in the RW. I know many fine and intelligent people who rather sniff the roses than mess about with old books, a perfectly legitimate view, you seem [ed] more interested in creating new sources than what we are actually (and successfully) doing here. I wish you every success with establishing an open project large enough to accomplish the difficult task of translation. If you are not willing to venture into an unfamiliar site with this project, which is understandable, I will be happy to do that for you. ”

“ Just because something is done most of the time doesn't mean it is the only thing that should be done. Nor that it best serves the Wikimedia vision at Wikisource. I suspect that most people who enjoy proofreading have nothing against other types of contributions such as translation and annotations, even if they don't engage in it themselves. What motivates your staunch opposition? It seems to go beyond the definition of "scope". The future: Someone else has commented that the future of this project may be in translations. ”