James B. Morrow

“ Men of genius must not be harassed by money matters. Mr. Howells accepted my proposal, and immediately entered upon the most fruitful period of his literature.
"Neither Mark Twain no Mr. Howells is ever told what to write. Either can choose any subject he pleases, write as much or as little as he thinks fit, and there his worry and responsibility ends. Talent ought not to be hobbled with orders and instructions. So it happens that both Howells and Clemens are making more money than ever before and literature is being enriched by their art. ”

“ We cannot read the minds of people in the present or the future. The "clear value" should be determined by the person who is taking the time to transcribe a document, since they are the best person to determine that value, and they are the end user of the document. If one other non Wikisource editor were to read one of these documents over the next 50 years, I would be amazed, or even if you read them to catch the mistakes you are introducing with stray brackets. There is no Wikisource policy demanding the removal of links to Wikipedia. ”

“ One might think peppering links for every person, place or thing is lessening the "burden" for the potential reader but isn't it also possible doing as much is robbing the ability of the reader to come to his or her own realizations about what warrants further investigation, the degree to which they comprehend the material overall -- even the degree to which they ultimately "absorb" the author's intent -- and similar nuances that can also be classified as 'beneficial' both at the same time? ”

“ You can figure it out for yourself. It is customary to pay an author 20 percent of the selling price of his book. An edition of 100,000 copies at $1.50 each means $30,000 in royalties. However, no single book sells like that nowadays. Six or eight years ago it was different. The public has begun to discriminate and the popular taste, if I may use the term, is much improved. More and better books are bought than ever before. Nevertheless, not one in five out to be bought by anybody."
"Isn't there a large oversupply of writers in the United States?" ”

“ If it is a city, is it Houston, Alabama or Houston, Alaska or Houston, Arkansas or Houston, Delaware or Houston, Florida or Houston, Georgia or Houston, Indiana or Houston, Minnesota or Houston, Mississippi or Houston, Missouri or Houston, Nebraska or Houston, Ohio or Houston, Pennsylvania or Houston, Tennessee. I can't tell from your conversation, and of course a reader of an original text does not know either. Other than your personal preference, is there a good reason not to link? Maybe you can read minds and foretell the future, but I do not know what every reader knows, and does not know. ”

“ As I mentioned below, Wikidata and Wikisource mainspace pages (rather than Author: pages) now do have an accepted relationship, though some hammering out of details might still occur. Basically any text in mainspace here can have a metadata page on Wikidata. This is not to argue against an effort here, on categories, given enough consensus. But some consideration of where and what to emphasise, for projects involving hundreds of thousands of edits, is only sensible. ”

“ One man's hero is another man's goat - allowing one so-called individual in the Portal: namespace opens the door to adding ANY individual in the Portal: namespace; and history has shown us THAT repository eventually competes with Wikipedia rather than compliment/support it. ”

“ It appears that a group of people do not want the ability to link together articles on a common subject who are not authors, and do not even want to experiment with the concept. I am a newcomer and that flaw is obvious to me. ”

“ We have related texts on people who are NOT authors here at WikiSource, where Subject:Joe Foo would link them. The same arguments are always made at Wikipedia. We have lists so let us delete the redundant category, or we have a category so let us delete the redundant lists. Is the trick to just pretend everyone is an author as a workaround, Author:Joe Foo for a subject? The current method does not allow us to link articles by subject who are not authors. Is the workaround to create Portal:Joe Foo for people who are not authors but are the subject of multiple entries? ”

“ You also leave behind stray brackets, you rush into removing the links out-of-policy, and then don't even check your work for errors your introduce. I asked you to stop, but that just speeded up your removal of the Wikipedia links. You are implementing your personal preference, not a Wikisource rule. You also made up the rule that Portals are only for exceptional people, which isn't policy either. I understand that everyone who edits Wikipedia and its satellite projects has a compulsion to contribute, but sometimes it needs to be tempered. ”

“ For decisions that are purely subjective, don't you think the person doing the transcribing should get the benefit of the doubt, and maybe not remove their linking. If you want to create a rule that says when the the name of the town appears in the name of a newspaper, NEVER create a link to that "city, state" article in Wikipedia, I will follow it. Otherwise can we resist the temptation to remove links that maybe you would not have added if you had transcribed the article. ”

“ Howells, like Mark Twain, is doing his finest work now, but the very best he is capable of is yet to come. As a craftsman in letters he is first among American writers. He loves to toil with words, and there never was a more painstaking workman. ”

“ I prefer no links, though in some non-fiction works I know that they can be "necessary." The Haz talk 02:47, 24 June 2015 (UTC) IMHO, normally, a work of fiction should not have annotations. A fiction is based on the society and culture of the reader and the reader is likely to understand whatever the work refers to. Annotations only distract from the pleasure of reading. But a slightly different perspective is warranted in case of historical fiction and translated literature. The reader may not have sufficient knowledge of ancient history ”

“ It takes an expert in the field to make the connections to the biographies, and add annotations, and explain errors, and recognize typos. Asking each reader to figure these things out, each time they read the text, is silly. Place names also need an expert to link them to Wikipedia. A biography may say that the person was born in Fooville or Foo County or on the Foo family farm. Only a scholar of the text knows. The equipment they use also requires links, armaments are a specialty field. ”

“ Proposal on Wikidata for Wikisource There is a proposal at Wikidata regarding how to link from a subject item (ie. Francis Bacon) to an item for a dictionary entry on the subject that happens to have a transcription on Wikisource. It will affect how data is stored with regard to texts on Wikisource. I think there are two main issues:
It seems that because there was next to no discussion on the original issue, the proposing user went ahead and started making bulk changes. The proposal refers to items with Wikisource links as "Wikisource articles" which brings to light a bigger issue. ”

“ Maury, there is no problem, in general, with links to Wikipedia. A single inline link at the first mention in the text of a person who we don't have as an author is absolutely fine. The discussion going on further up this page is about links to Wikipedia that are either in the notes field of the header, or are to data that don't need linking. For example, a single link to your General is useful, but in the context linking to the Wikipedia article on Houston is not needed. ”

“ Sure enough, Mark Twain had written it six or eight years ago. You see what I mean. Skill in letters is very slow. A writer may have ideas, but he must be trained before he can set them into their proper surroundings. So we hear the complaints of amateur genius, of aspiring writers who fail to perceive their own imperfect craftsmanship. ”

“ Unfortunately, that is where the skin determines the gadget's line of menus (should) jump to its 'reserve' (a .css padding trick) and fit right in between the personal menus it just encroached upon on the right and the top of the vector tabs & search box beneath it. Normally -- one would think -- as soon as the left content begins to overlap the right content, the overflow attribute and whatever it is set to would determine the point where the gadget line on the left can no longer co-exist with the personal menu on the right. ”

“ You refused to disengage, and in fact sped up your effort to remove all Wikipedia links, and example of extremely bad-faith. You do not have the ability to predict what people will find useful one year into the future, let alone 100 years or 1,000 years. ”

“ Easter egg links to Wikipedia For example at Washington Post/1913/Cured by Serum why do we have an Easter egg type link to Wikipedia? The text has "sister projects: Wikipedia article." How does the reader know what they are going to get when they click on that link? It can connect to anywhere in Wikipedia. Any article can have multiple topics and multiple subjects, how do you choose one, and why hide the subject from the reader. ”

“ The Portal:Susannah Lattin was also deleted BY YOU, because Portals are reserved for exceptional people only, and there is no firm rule on who is exceptional and who isn't, so a small group of people with deletion rights decide who gets a portal. The exceptions come when what we host about that notable person overwhelms an appropriate parent Portal and splitting that portal by person is the best way to manage the portal's subheadings. ”

“ If the individual is not an author -- or simply does not have an author page here yet -- one can point to any other related site (including Wikipedia) ... the same way.Again, we are not Wikipedia. We have a different mission than Wikipedia. Our Categorization is not subject driven but work driven (in general) as a result. A portal might be applicable but the person in question probably needs to be "extraordinary" in some established or unquestionable way; portals help classify and collect topics generally. Plus when all else fails ”

“ User space is not the same as Wikisource space. User space can be deleted at any time and it is not indexed the same way, nor is it searched by default the way mainspace is. We need a permanent way to tie together documents on a common subject who is not an author. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 14:18, 20 June 2015 (UTC) Oppose I see no rationale provided to why we would want a Subject ns: and how that would benefit the project, or would be within the scope of the project. We have a portal ns: to cover our needs. ”

“ He is not the most popular author in the country, but technically he is the greatest artist. It is difficult to compare authors. Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray were illustrious, but you cannot stand them in a row and measure them. ”

“ A young man, but rich through his own eagerness and capability. By profession a newspaper reporter, who, bursting the bonds of a salary, sought acompetence and liberty. Now he is the paymaster of genius. ”

“ Two summers later I was editor, reporter, business manager, and pressman on the St. Johnsbury Republican, at a fixed salary of 50 cents a ay. In another year I began to write editorials for a larger paper. I remember I demanded a new fiscal policy for the nation, taking the ground that a tariff for protection was unscientific and inhuman. ”

“ We know not all books get validated in November. They are backing up when they could be finished if only more people would help each other by validating a few pages once in a while and then going back to their personal projects. —Maury (talk) 12:49, 1 July 2015 (UTC) The shoes fits. Maury, for many years I did lots of validations, indeed I did more validating than proofreading. But these last few years I am following through a big project and I don't validate at all. Thanks for all the validation you've done, of my work, and of others'. ”

“ There is an oversupply of mediocrity in all professions. But my philosophy is very broad in that direction. The more lawyers the better. It is so with physicians and writers. The poor ones will disappear and the good ones will go onward in development, live, and be of service to society. ”

“ The whole project is a work in progress. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:15, 12 June 2015 (UTC) You are just defending the status quo without seeing how someone from the outside, coming in as a reader, sees the flaws, and what is needed to be useful to the reader. None of what I have suggested diminishes the goal of " [providing] reliable sources to Wikipedia". Linking related texts by subject and by author does not require me to go to an author page or a portal. Especially since you already told me that the subject I am working on isn't worthy of a portal. ”

“ I had a talk with him which resulted in a contract to pay 30 cents a word for everything he wrote, whether it was printed or thrown away. No author had ever received more than 10 cents a word on a long contract. A. Conan Doyle, the Scotch writer and physician, was paid $1 a word within a year or two for a new series of detective stories, but the engagement was short, and a number of publishers were concerned. Mark Twain earns $59,000 a year. ”

“ How would a Subject who is a part of a Portal be managed? If a Subject is not the principal focus of a work, but is mentioned in the context of another Subject, should that work be listed on the Subject's page? How significant a mention is enough to cause the work to be listed? How will replicating the related Wikipedia article (s) be prevented? Should pages in the Index: namespace be listed? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:24, 20 June 2015 (UTC) Looks like User:Billinghurst decides who gets a portal and who doesn't and Portal:Susannah Lattin has been deleted too. ”