Herbert Spencer

“ There is also much material there that needs a great deal of work. One user did indeed object that annotations don't belong in Wikisource since they are creative, but the fact that there is a separate namespace seems to mollify even people who hold that view, since it clearly indicates that a different, though related, kind of Wikisource work is going on. An "annotations" namespace also helps us serve the public by overcoming the limitations inherent in aged, public domain versions of classical literature from generations ago, and include updated sourced scholarship. ”

“ However, illustrations may well be badly degraded by the DJVU compression, so you may also want to upload the JPGs to Commons as well, so that full-quality pictures can be extracted. People with bots (me for example) can help you batch-upload large numbers of files if this will be a problem. If the text is just text however, the DJVU alone generally suffices. I can also create DJVU files out of sets of JPGs for you, or tell you how to do it yourself quickly and easily with a script. Headers, footers, page numbers etc are added to the page-by-page proofread text, but not to the overall text. ”

“ The author template is not broken, the same functionality could be added to the header template; if a reader uses the sister links note at one page they know exactly where to look for at any other page. If it doesn't appear, and any user thinks to include a sister-link, they can add it to an part of the existing template rather than discovering and adding one of the various other templates. ”

“ What format is being looked at to supply the information? We encourage image files with text layers, though that is usually when we are proofreading / transcribing, which isn't going to be happening on this occasion. Our preferred means is .djvu file, and these are uploaded to Commons, which obviously makes them universally available. If they create a PDF file with a text layer, see instructions about conversion at the djvu link. Alternatively, mention where we can download a PDF file, and a number of us can assist. ”

“ Use the { { hw } } macro remove the hyphen (1) has the advantage that it fully preserves the source text. (2) has the advantage that it is much quicker and is less prone to error. I've so far been taking approach (1) , but am finding that this significantly slows down my editing and proofreading of text. Since all that hw does is preserve the intent of the typesetter and looses none of the intent of the author, I've come to the conclusion that I want to start using approach (2) . ”

“ The "Popular Science Monthly/Volume 86/..." nonsense, besides subverting the search function on Wikisource, also makes a mess of the category page, see here. Works that otherwise would not need a DEFAULTSORT, now need it (and obviously won't get it) . Also, the "title" space of the header template is designed for the name of the work, and not the name of periodical in which it appears. Using the "title" space for the periodical name in turn obviates the "author" space, and so the work title and author are cramped into the "section" space. Why do we have to make this harder than it needs to be? ”

“ Proposals Leave background colors alone I think Wikisource should follow Wikipedia in formatting as much as possible, by this I mean there should be consistency from page to page. So, for example, on Wikipedia you will not find one page with a pink background color and another with a green background color. Why should Wikisource be any different? Case in point: THIS. First, the reason why the DjVu scans look brown is because the paper is acidic. Acidity in paper is not a good thing. Paper should be white. Wikisource pages should be white. ”

“ This page tells the reader (briefly) what to expect and how to navigate that volume in page space. This violates the pure distinction between mainspace (for readers) and page and project spaces (for editors,) but it was the least bad solution I could come up with. For smaller works, the time to completion is small enough that we can (implicitly) ask the user to just wait until we are done, but for this project, Wikisource represents the only coherent, organized way to access the scans. ”

“ Having said that, having the illustrations on the page somewhere is highly encouraged, as they are often integral to the text. Generally speaking, the text will be in a single column, but it is up to the contributor's judgment (and is usually respected by others if it is a sensible choice) . For example, Remarks_in_Recognition_of_the_30th_Anniversary_of_CORA is arranged as one column, but the original is newspaper-style in many narrow columns. As for the JPG/DJVU thing, DJVU is preferred because it allows side-by-side proofreading and it allows automatic transfer of OCR data from the file. ”

“ Unprintables and invisibles are never really a concern to me, it is only the visible cruft that I dislike. It is unusual for invisible cruft to confuse that often. Apart from that, if you do know the characters that are regularly appearing in your works, we can readily & easily do a [search and remove] script that can be added via Pathoschild's regex gadget to your left toolbar by editing your monobook.js. Something like a line rm cruft that you would click once per page and voila, cruft removal. You would need to identify the cruft symbols to be removed so we could search for them. ”

“ When these 'original navigational pages' are transcluded into their Index's page they provide a guide to the existing and paginated links. A long way of describing something that becomes a simple way of enhancing a work in mainspace, I see many advantages to readers and contributors and little possibility of confusion or misdirection. I don't see how cross namepace links are useful for these pages when they are: Page: -> Page: Index: -> Page: (tranclusion) Main: -> Page: (makes me dizzy too) What is the advantage of adding namespace switching links in the Page:namespace? ”

“ However, works in the public domain can be freely used by anyone because they are no longer under copyright protection. This means that if you add something to a public domain work, you can file a copyright claim in only what you added to the PD work and the claim can only be in what was added, never in the PD work itself. ”

“ I'm not. My God, we can't even complete the Encyclopædia Britannica and now we are taking upon ourselves every article in every periodical in the public domain? For historical perspective? Sorry, but this will never happen. We are lucky to have "On Denoting". (3.) Look at the Sociology category page. What a mess! So to clean this up, we need to start creating #REDIRECT pages? Who exactly is going to do that? And why? If we started with the work titles to begin with, it would be totally unnecessary. (Notice The Study of Sociology is listed under T—we are still struggling with DEFAULTSORT) . ”

“ Many people contribute over the course of time to eventually improve things and complete them. In the meantime they can be rated for completeness and accuracy, or a note can be posted that they have not yet been reviewed. Regarding the "Annotations" namespace in Hebrew, it contains some of the most popularly viewed (and high-quality) material at Hebrew Wikisource, and is partially responsible for our high page-view ranking. ”

“ People are working on the the periodicals, so they need to have a form of presentation, and one shouldn't make a decision to disregard the items as a collection and from their historical perspective Aspects of the periodicals work to being better displayed in that format, especially with regard to the simple navigation of prev/next To the Category page, there is quite an easy means to manage that. ”

“ As a guiding principle, I aim to preserve the creative input of the author whilst ignoring the input of the typesetter. In the case of hyphens, this means preserving the "hard" hyphens that the author would have intended to be there regardless of page layout, while feeling free to remove those "soft" hyphens that were inserted by the typesetter whilst trying to make the author's text look nice on the page. Hesperian 00:18, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. We do not attempt to preserve the left-and-right justification, and more generally we do not attempt to preserve the printed lines at all. ”

“ I see no reason to link anything other than the page number in the original, why does the template link to the Page:namespace at all? In response to the notion of 'why not', I have already suggested confusion and misdirection being undesirable properties, I am extremely wary of anything that makes contributing to this site even more arcane. Cygnis insignis (talk) 11:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC) I agree 100%99% with Cygnis insignis. The main namespace is what our readers read. All our efforts should be directed at getting the main namespace right, so as to optimise the readers' experience. ”

“ No-one needs to be there unless they are contributing. Keeping the two namespaces as separate as possible is a fundamental design principle. Links that take the unsuspecting reader from the readers' view into our editorial namespace are Evil.
To address Billinghurst's example, I put it to you all that any reader who went to that index in search of references to Adam's Diary, would expect that "51" to take them to The Craftsmanship of Writing/The Power Of Self-Criticism#51, and would be utterly bamboozled when they instead find themselves at Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/65. ”

“ Icons have not become ubiqitious for no reason. But as I said, that is nothing that stirs me. And hey, if you see the kind of chrome I can offer, you even might like it. ;) Paradoctor (talk) 03:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC) I forgot to add that I have no objection to a small icon appearing next to "quotes" etc., like the 'inline, sentence style' template at wikipedia. 'Icon and short text' would assist the recognition, 'branding', without shouting about it, or 'advertising', with a separate banner. I will reiterate that it should appear with other metadata in the header ”

“ Source statistics I'm dragging into activity statistics of variuos source projects, looking for the causes of a trouble of it.source (I saw a nonsense low number of "good" pages) . Statistics, in my opinion, are only useful if numbers are meaningful, than can be a reward for contributors. ”

“ I wanted to give a user who had already navigated to the correct volume in mainspace, some help, rather than an (implicit) "tough luck: you are on your own." So, my postion is: Yes, page space is generally not for readers, but sometimes we need to make exceptions. -Arch dude (talk) 00:14, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
I attempted to modify Hesperian's template so it would take an input page such as User:Eliyak/test/2 (notice the "section" tags) and use this as a readable TOC. Unfortunately, at some point Mediawiki seems to have changed so that template looping (through redirects) no longer works. ”

“ I agree with both Hesperian and Adam on this point. Disambiguation pages of there is more than one work, and Notes field if it is the only work. I would think that we could even use {{wikisourcepar2}} within the notes if we needed something with a little oomph. These would also be two way links. With regard to where the work would be in the main namepsace, I would encourage it to be as a subpage of the parent work, we have Ineuw's work with PSM where this already has been done, some of the poetry. A redirect from the root level can be added as/if necessary to promote the work. ”

“ If a work has a disambiguation page already, I would add it there. See for example Observations, systematical and geographical, on the herbarium collected by Professor Christian Smith, in the vicinity of the Congo, during the expedition to explore that river, under the command of Captain Tuckey, in the year 1816. If a work doesn't have a disambiguation page, I don't think I would create one for a review; I would probably create a Wikisource: index instead. Hesperian 22:38, 27 March 2010 (UTC) If there aren't too many reviews, the Notes field of the header could be used. ”

“ The fact that we are transcribing printed paper books into an entirely different medium in which we have very little influence over typefaces, font sizes, margins, line widths, etcetera, implies a willingness on our part not to preserve layout exactly. ”

“ This came up before, the example was Wikisource:Yagan. Cygnis insignis (talk) 15:19, 26 January 2010 (UTC) Fair points. I am not so certain that I want something as insignificant as those in the author template, as they fade into the morass of a page. I would be happy with something small with an icon and no specific text beyond a generic [ICON link] . Maybe a line and a half in height (2/3 height of toolbar button?) , and 4-6em in length (2x width of toolbar button) . Standard, and neatly stackable. Usually it is only one per article, and very occasionally two. ”

“ Cold Fusion resources Most are under copyright and would not be easily copied to WikiSource. A few, however, are public domain. This one is the 1989 US Govt Dept of Energy report: http://www.ncas.org/erab/index.html --It says right there on the page that "Distribution is unlimited". ”

“ Turn the page and you're reading a chapter of Farley Mowat's Owls in the Family; and so on. If, as Ingram appears to think, no work can be an aggregate of works, I would ask which are the "works" in this case. Hesperian 09:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)
Oppose any changes. I like the ... what do you call it? nesting? I think having Popular Science/Volume/etc allows for an organizational structure that cannot be achieved by having it all in the main article space. The redirect also allows for someone searching for the page to find it. ”