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Scriptorium

The Scriptorium is Wikisource's community discussion page. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments. You may join any current discussion or start a new one; please see Wikisource:Scriptorium/Help.

The Administrators' noticeboard can be used where appropriate. Some announcements and newsletters are subscribed to Announcements.

Project members can often be found in the #wikisource IRC channel webclient. For discussion related to the entire project (not just the English chapter), please discuss at the multilingual Wikisource. There are currently 433 active users here.

Announcements

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Proposals

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Bot approval requests

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User:333Bot

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(See also #Thinking of an anti-linkrot bot.)

For non-scan backed works, sometimes the original webpage disappears and we lose the source. This task would archive automatically sources in new mainspace/talk pages at the wayback machine, and add {{wml}}.

To avoid archiving vandalism, it would only do this on pages older than a week. (It won't search beyond the 2000th created page.)

It uses pywikibot on toolforge. Source's at User:Alien333/test#Link archiving.

The idea would be to run this daily. Test edits: [1] and [2]. — Alien  3
3 3
08:59, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

As nearly two weeks have passed without objections, I activated this task per WS:BOT. — Alien  3
3 3
13:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The run is over. Before launching the cronjob I will change the code to prevent it from archiving links in mainspace works' content (there are few valid reasons for extlinks in works; but there are some). — Alien  3
3 3
14:48, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Did that, started cronjob. Will run at 16h14 UTC. — Alien  3
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15:53, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Note: For the last few days, it was stopped by an IA error on a certain page. I have now made it not crash on IA errors. — Alien  3
3 3
07:03, 29 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

User:333Bot 2

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(See also #Seeking feedback on bot task to tag untagged deletion nominations for details and discussion.)

Works proposed for deletion at WS:PD or WS:PDWS:CV should be accordingly tagged. Occasionally, people forget to tag them. This task would locate these and tag them.

It uses pywikibot on toolforge. The code's at User:Alien333/test#Nomination_tagging. It would run daily. — Alien  3
3 3
14:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

WS:PD or WS:PD ? Aren't they the same ? -- Beardo (talk) 18:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, you're right. Got mixed up. Meant PD and CV. — Alien  3
3 3
20:43, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Heads up: I started the cronjob. (No untagged nominations rn, so may do no edits.) Runs will occur at about 5h40 UTC. — Alien  3
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12:27, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Repairs (and moves)

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Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

Explanatory Notes Indices

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Please move the following indices to their new corresponding filename

ToxicPea (talk) 22:42, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Errr. Feel free to trout me, but I don't understand what you're asking for.
As in, move which pages to which titles? — Alien  3
3 3
15:59, 30 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • Index:Specialist Printing Equipment and Materials (Offences) Act 2015 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Specialist Printing Equipment and Materials (Offences) Act 2015 (UKPGA 2015-16 qp).pdf
  • Index:Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 (UKPGA 2003-31 qp).pdf
  • Index:Defamation Act 2013 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Defamation Act 2013 (UKPGA 2013-26 qp).pdf
  • Index:Modern Slavery Act 2015 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UKPGA 2015-30 qp).pdf
  • Index:Live Music Act 2012 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Live Music Act 2012 (UKPGA 2012-2 qp).pdf
  • Index:Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 Explanatory Notes.pdf to Index:Explanatory Notes - Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (UKPGA 2011-14 qp).pdf
This is to match filename move at commons. ToxicPea (talk) 19:29, 30 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Other discussions

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Contra-Props

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This article was published in a British magazine in 1941; the author died in 1946. Would this be still in copyright ? Or PD ?

(This was the subject of a previous query here which got archived without being answered - Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2019-09#1941_UK_publication) -- Beardo (talk) 22:51, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Looks copyrighted to me. — Alien  3
3 3
07:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Unless there's some reason they count as a US work, all UK works were restored by the URAA. The few exceptions are either Crown Copyright or were published by authors who died before 1926.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:26, 2 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
OK - I have put it as apparant copyright violation - Wikisource:Copyright discussions#Contra-Props -- Beardo (talk) 15:41, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
That page has now been deleted so this query can be closed. -- Beardo (talk) 01:48, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Manual indexing of news articles versus Automatic indexing of news articles

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I want to convert Brooklyn Eagle to an automatic-index instead of the hand-curated index. The hand curated index looks pretty, but is always missing articles. We can have The Brooklyn Eagle as the pretty one. See how it is done at Jersey Journal, scroll to the bottom and there is a link to the pretty hand-curated list, missing many articles. This is similar to how Commons does it, you have automatic index at Category:Foo, and hand curated one as Foo, that is always missing entries. RAN (talk) 17:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

More automated curation of Periodicals and Newspapers on this site in the future would in general be a good thing - there's a lot of good work being done across a lot of these works but the process of creating the main-space pages for them can get very tedious and repetitive. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose had to write janky programs to semi-automate their individual workflows for some of these works.
Your idea of a distinction between The Somewhere Argus and Somewhere Argus is interesting (and as I'm not a big user of wikimedia, not something I've particularly noticed on that site), but it doesn't seem particularly intuitive to me that one should be a raw list and another a curated view (or which way round those should be, and it seems quite a big departure from how work is generally presented here. Is it done anywhere else on this site? In the past I've seen a lot of resistance to the same work being included in different main-space pages.
In terms of a curated view, that may be better done by creating a Portal for that work. For example, when I worked through the July-Dec 1914 volumes of Punch, I created a summary of all of the books reviewed in that volume which I put here: Portal:Punch/Reviewed Books, that wouldn't really have been appropriate to put in the main page.
Alternatively, what's stopping you from having a list of highlights and the automatic index linked from the same page? That's effectively what The New York Times does - some of the issues are highlighted (those for which enough work has been done for them to have a complete contents page) but for the rest, there are year-based automatic lists using the {{header periodical}} template. Qq1122qq (talk) 09:56, 4 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • You are right, "Portal:Brooklyn Eagle" would be best for the hand curated ones, we should standardize on that, and migrate older ones to that format. Currently there are six styles of indexes for magazines and newspapers. There were at least ten different styles before I tried to standardized them. I eliminated the ones that were experimental one-of-a-kind ones. --RAN (talk) 19:25, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
    Don't we already have a standard format, as documented at Wikisource:Periodical guidelines ? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:24, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
By the way, I fixed Jersey Journal. There shouldn't be two separate mainspace pages for the same work, so I deleted the one that was simply a dump of subpages, and replaced it with the properly structured list that was previously located at The Jersey Journal.
In general, the automatic subpage listing should only be used as a temporary stop-gap until a proper page listing can be created. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 18:31, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
To your original point though - if you can find a way to automatically list all subpages, whether or not they have already been created, and in the correct order they appear in the publication, then that would be amazing and definitely we'd all make extensive use of such a system. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:14, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Automate portals, have them point to Main.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:50, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Is possible to add txt files on Wikisource?

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I need to upload complete works in Tibetan (in .txt format) to Wikisource, but I currently lack the technical skills to do so beyond adding basic transcription text. Could you kindly guide me through the process in a simple and clear step-by-step manner? through Wikimedia common or any other methods? TaDhondup (talk) 03:43, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

If you mean to English Wikisource, then I would like to point out that English Wikisource hosts only previously published works written in English. Unfortunately, it seems there is no Tibetan Wikisource, so Tibetan texts might be hosted in the multilingual Wikisource, see e. g. mul:Category:Tibetan. I do not know much about mul: processes, but usually it is recommended to upload files to Commons, and then proofread it. The text of the document has to be in public domain or released under some accepted free licence, see Help:Licensing compatibility. Accepted textual formats of the uploaded files are .pdf and .djvu per c:Commons:File_types#Textual formats. Pinging also Jusjih, who is the mul.ws admin and might be able to give more advice. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:01, 5 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your advices and I got a solution to so. Appreciate lots TaDhondup (talk) 03:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

QuickSurveys

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Apparently some new “feature” has been forced upon us again. These are annoying pop-up boxes which really mess up the formatting, especially if whatever text at the top of the page is centered (as it often is). Can this be disabled by default for everyone? TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:32, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Dropped a task (phab:T393436) to ask them to not barge into the content like this, but I don't have much hope.
And no, this extension and its parameters are a wmf thing, so we can't really do anything on our own. — Alien  3
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08:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have no clue what you're talking about. Can you tell me the steps to reproduce this issue? —Justin (koavf)TCM 11:49, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I can see it on any page that I open (and it is very disturbing), so if you do not, you might have it disabled in your preferences. See also the screenshots uploaded to the above linked phabricator task. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:54, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I don't. I'm trying to figure out which settings the original person has to see why he sees it, but if you're seeing it also, that is odd to me. I'm not sure why anyone is seeing this. I'm not. —Justin (koavf)TCM 12:19, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
In the preferences under the "User profile" tab there is a section "QuickSurvey extension" where the surveys can be set as hidden. Currently logged out users also do not see it, but if this feature stays, we can imo expect it will be used to display messages (e.g. pleas for funding) to them as well. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 12:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
These things are highly targetable and targeted, see mw:Extension:QuickSurveys. Probably you aren't counted as an active patroller here (and this precise survey is about patrolling tools). — Alien  3
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12:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just an example of what I am seeing: [3] --Jan Kameníček (talk) 13:06, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Might I suggest the following solution? : #bodyContent .ext-quick-survey-panel {display:none;}Beleg Tâl (talk) 00:57, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
There's a setting to always hide them; the concern is about not being able to opt out the community as a whole (except through site css, but Xover is the only active intadmin and has shown much reticence to adding that kind of stuff (see MediaWiki talk:Gadget-Site.css#Overriding_V22_paragraph_spacing)). — Alien  3
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08:18, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

We will be enabling the new Charts extension on your wiki soon!

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(Apologies for posting in English)

Hi all! We have good news to share regarding the ongoing problem with graphs and charts affecting all wikis that use them.

As you probably know, the old Graph extension was disabled in 2023 due to security reasons. We’ve worked in these two years to find a solution that could replace the old extension, and provide a safer and better solution to users who wanted to showcase graphs and charts in their articles. We therefore developed the Charts extension, which will be replacing the old Graph extension and potentially also the EasyTimeline extension.

After successfully deploying the extension on Italian, Swedish, and Hebrew Wikipedia, as well as on MediaWiki.org, as part of a pilot phase, we are now happy to announce that we are moving forward with the next phase of deployment, which will also include your wiki.

The deployment will happen in batches, and will start from May 6. Please, consult our page on MediaWiki.org to discover when the new Charts extension will be deployed on your wiki. You can also consult the documentation about the extension on MediaWiki.org.

If you have questions, need clarifications, or just want to express your opinion about it, please refer to the project’s talk page on Mediawiki.org, or ping me directly under this thread. If you encounter issues using Charts once it gets enabled on your wiki, please report it on the talk page or at Phabricator.

Thank you in advance! -- User:Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Page styles are not automatically applied in the Main namespace

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Help:Page styles#Where the CSS is applied says that Index page styles are applied "On the transcluding page when pages are transcluded using the <page/> [sic] tag", but this is not happening in practice. I noticed this when using the page styles to target the .references class, which works for Page:What's the Difference?.pdf/3 but not for What's the Difference?. prospectprospekt (talk) 21:36, 6 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

The style is applied; the issue is that the "automatic" references, when no reflist is included, appear outside of the content (.mw-parser-output); and templatestyles is limited to inside .mw-parser-output.
So adding {{reflist}} should do the trick. — Alien  3
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05:49, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Placing {{reflist}} on the very last page works. Going forward, I will do this instead of placing it in the Main namespace to make transclusion easier. prospectprospekt (talk) 14:55, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The discussion about page styles is interesting, but in this specific case is there any advantage to styling {{reflist}} instead of just using {{smallrefs}} in the main page? Qq1122qq (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Not really, it's just a matter of style. IMO, it's better to put as much as can be put inside the Page namespace, and we shouldn't treat references differently compared to, say, sizing templates. prospectprospekt (talk) 22:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

WS-EXport broke?

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Apologies for raising as people probably already know, it seems that WS Export is hanging (tested on LA and EN). Others reporting the same at Phabricator. JimKillock (talk) 16:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Do you mean using the Download button ? I have had problems with that - I thought that it was just my poor internet connection - but find that if I try several times, eventually it works. -- Beardo (talk) 15:10, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Aside from the slowness, it actually breaks every once in a while and needs to be restarted; due to scrapers. — Alien  3
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16:52, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Index:Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West.djvu not loading properly

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I've added an index through (what I thought was) the normal process, but it isn't correctly loading the pages and says "Error:Invalid Interval." I haven't done this in a while, so maybe I forgot something, but wanted to ask because I'm lost. Packer1028 (talk) 02:29, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Purged and should be fixed. MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:38, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
(This is a known issue with file caching.) — Alien  3
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05:19, 9 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks to both of you! Packer1028 (talk) 16:06, 10 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Second pair of eyes for unclear letter

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At Page:Poems Hornblower.djvu/110, the last letter of Draw with their very breath—the poisonous faith is not super clear. I think I see the beginning of the arch of an h going right from the vertical bar after the t, but I'd appreciate if someone could give a quick look and confirm or not. (Compare also the faith from The world's cold faith, a few lines above.) Thanks, — Alien  3
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20:51, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think your assessment is good. "poisonous faith" works with "inglorious views" and the soul straying from a "diviner walk".--RaboKarbakian (talk) 21:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree; scans of different copies of the same book show the same misprinting (BL, Bod), but the start of the arch of the 'h' is just visible in all. --YodinT 19:40, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks to both. — Alien  3
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09:16, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2025-20

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MediaWiki message delivery 22:37, 12 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: Wikisource: Preserving the Past for the Future

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https://diff.wikimedia.org/2025/05/13/wikisource-preserving-the-past-for-the-future/Justin (koavf)TCM 22:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Call for Candidates for the Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C)

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The results of voting on the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter is available on Meta-wiki.

You may now submit your candidacy to serve on the U4C through 29 May 2025 at 12:00 UTC. Information about eligibility, process, and the timeline are on Meta-wiki. Voting on candidates will open on 1 June 2025 and run for two weeks, closing on 15 June 2025 at 12:00 UTC.

If you have any questions, you can ask on the discussion page for the election. -- in cooperation with the U4C,

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 15 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Billingual template with Welsh Parliament Acts

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The formatting problems that @Penguin1737 complained about in Welsh Elections (Coronavirus) Act 2021 could be fixed by using the {{Bilingual}} template, however this creates its own formatting problems which I have shown at Wikisource:Sandbox. Additionally, the page numbers don't match up because the page numbers go up every second page due to the welsh version of a page using the same page number as the corresponding english version. Does anyone know how to fix this.

Additionally, could someone make a version of the Bilingual template that could be more useful for longer works such as Index:Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023 (ASC 2023-3 kp).pdf so whoever ends up working on that doesn't have to use the template over 200 times in one page. ToxicPea (talk) 02:33, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Not sure about the code for this, but would it be possible to transclude multiple pages at once like Template:Side by side using the <pages> syntax, but reset the display each page so that the first lines of each page line up? I'm sure there's some struggle with that preserving the indents using colons like appears when using Template:Bilingual... Penguin1737 (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The current practice for bitexts like this, is to transclude the English here, and the alternate pages at the Wikisource for the other language. The two can then be linked to each other in the notes section of the header. There are some exceptions here, and you can see an example at Modern Czech Poetry/October sonnet. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:35, 16 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The Welsh elements of Welsh Elections (Coronavirus) Act 2021 have been moved over to Welsh Wikisource, and the pages have been linked in Wikidata and mentioned in the notes section! Penguin1737 (talk) 22:29, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

File:Weird Tales Volume 13 Number 06 (1929-06).djvu

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This was originally uploaded to Commons with pages that were still in copyright redacted. Those are now out of copyright. What is the best way to restore them ? -- Beardo (talk) 02:19, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Upload a new version of the file over the top of what's there. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:52, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
That's assuming that placeholders were left. If not, then we need to first shift the Page:s to give room for the added pages. I can do that; ping me if it's needed. — Alien  3
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09:15, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thank you both. Yes, on this one, there are blank pages where the text was redacted, so taht should work fine. -- Beardo (talk) 00:03, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

HathiTrust

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Help:Image extraction#HathiTrust no longer works me; when I try running it, I just get Error 403.--Prosfilaes (talk) 08:27, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I haven't tried any programs myself, but there are a few image downloader programs for HathiTrust available on GitHub, this one for example. Perhaps someone with more knowledge of HathiTrust can vouch for a particular method. Penguin1737 (talk) 23:22, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Linking to Explanatory Notes for UK Legislation

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@Penguin1737 @廣九直通車 I've seen 3 different ways of linking to Explanatory Notes currently seen at Welsh Elections (Coronavirus) Act 2021, Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and Specialist Printing Equipment and Materials (Offences) Act 2015 and I feel like we should have some consistency with how we link to Explanatory Notes. How should we go about linking to Explanatory Notes. ToxicPea (talk) 22:25, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I did Welsh as I did because the King's Printer version included a formal title page including the mention of the explanatory notes. With Fixed Term Parliaments, it doesn't have that page, so the inclusion of the note makes sense. We could add that to ones that do have the title page. I personally don't know if using the "next" parameter like in Specialist Printing is best, because it prevents us from using that parameter to link to the next act that year, if that's something we wanted to do. I know it's done in some other countries that have full years of acts transcluded. Similar issue in Fixed Term Parliaments using "next" for the Schedules.
I think best is to link things mentioned within the title/TOC like in Scotland Act 1998, including Explanatory Notes if there, and then we can mention Explanatory Notes in the "notes" of the header, and leave "previous" and "next" for linking to surrounding acts. Penguin1737 (talk) 22:48, 17 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Page marked historical

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Heads up that I tagged Wikisource:Purchases with {{historical}} since it hasn't actually been in use in several years. —Justin (koavf)TCM 17:48, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

This project page is interesting and was unknown to me until just now. It is very similar to an idea that TE(æ)A,ea. and I have discussed recently, which would involve creating a centralized page in the Project namespace for requests for scans to be made where no scans appear to be accessible online (which would replace User:TE(æ)A,ea./Requests in their personal user space). My suggested name was either WS:Requests for scans, or making that a section of the WS:Scan Lab. FYI, because of the inter-library loan (ILL) system, very few books would actually need to be bought in order to be scanned anymore (as far as I understand it), but buying should definitely be an option for those who are willing to donate the material, in cases where ILL is not possible. All in all, the Purchases page has merit conceptually, but in its current implementation inserting {{historical}} was the right move. SnowyCinema (talk) 18:00, 18 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2025-21

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:12, 19 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

RfC ongoing regarding Abstract Wikipedia (and your project)

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(Apologies for posting in English, if this is not your first language)

Hello all! We opened a discussion on Meta about a very delicate issue for the development of Abstract Wikipedia: where to store the abstract content that will be developed through functions from Wikifunctions and data from Wikidata. Since some of the hypothesis involve your project, we wanted to hear your thoughts too.

We want to make the decision process clear: we do not yet know which option we want to use, which is why we are consulting here. We will take the arguments from the Wikimedia communities into account, and we want to consult with the different communities and hear arguments that will help us with the decision. The decision will be made and communicated after the consultation period by the Foundation.

You can read the various hypothesis and have your say at Abstract Wikipedia/Location of Abstract Content. Thank you in advance! -- Sannita (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 22 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Weird Tales file and index with incorrect name

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Index:Weird Tales Volume 02 Number 2 (1937-02).djvu should say Volume 29. Do you think I should ask for the file on Commons to be moved, and then to have the index and pages here moved ? Or just leave it as it is ? -- Beardo (talk) 02:15, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Given some of it is already transcluded, and that the index is not exposed to the end reader, I'd say leaving a comment like (typo in file name) in the index title field would be enough of a clarification. — Alien  3
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04:53, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
OK - thanks. -- Beardo (talk) 17:39, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Official Launch of The Million Wiki Project

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We are thrilled to announce the official launch of The Million Wiki Project!

Our mission is to enrich Wikimedia projects with high-quality and diverse content related to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This initiative focuses on creating new articles, multimedia, structured data, and more, covering topics from MENA countries, communities, and diaspora worldwide.

Who Can Participate?
All registered Wikimedians are welcome to join! Whether you're an individual contributor or part of an organization, your support is valuable. We encourage content creation in any of the six official UN languages (Arabic, English, French, Russian, Spanish, and soon Chinese).

What Kind of Content Are We Looking For?

  • New Wikipedia articles focused on MENA topics
  • Multimedia contributions on Wikimedia Commons (photos, videos)
  • Structured data for Wikidata
  • Language entries on Wiktionary
  • Public domain texts on Wikisource

Note: Make sure your content follows local Wikimedia guidelines and licensing policies, including Freedom of Panorama for media files.

Join us in bridging content gaps and showcasing the richness of the MENA region on Wikimedia platforms!
Stay tuned for more updates and participation guidelines. Reda Kerbouche (talk) 09:33, 23 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

New texts list

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Does a work count as "complete" for the purposes of the new texts list if the book has an index which has not been transcribed nor transcluded ? -- Beardo (talk) 03:56, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

No. There have been multiple discussions, notably at Template talk:New texts, where a consensus emerged that a work must be proofread and transcluded (but that there was not a need for validation). If you find an unproofread/untranscluded work, you can remove it.
Sometimes sub-works that are works in their own right without the others (such a play in a collection of plays) also get listed on new text; for such works, it looks like the pratice is to only require that their part of the index be proofread and transcluded. — Alien  3
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06:11, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Radio Times

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Please join the discussion at Talk:The Radio Times#Layout of Main Page and Individual Issue Pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:35, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

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Please could someone add a bullet point to Help:Beginner's guide to copyright about what happens regarding the hosting of scans of works which are considered out-of-copyright by this Wikisource, but not by Wikimedia Commons (for example, where they are still in copyright in Europe, but not the US)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:30, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

That's not a copyright concern, but a compatibility concern, so it's covered at Help:Licensing compatibility, which is linked from the bottom of the page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:55, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
It is a copyright concern, and is not about licensing.
The page to which I referred is styled as a guide for Beginners, and is where a beginner would reasonably look for such information. The page already discusses how other Wikimedia projects choose to respect non-United States copyright law, in contrast to this project, so the additional point under discussion is relevant there.
Furthermore, the subject is not covered at Help:Licensing compatibility, which includes only one mention of Wikimedia Commons; and that in a section which does not touch on the issue I mention, but is in a section about discussions of the prohibition of "no derivative" clauses. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:11, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The "Beginner's guide to copyright" is about copyright itself. Where our files are stored is not an issue of copyright law. The Licensing compatibility covers which items are allowed to be hosted here, which is affected by copyright status, but copyright is not the only concern, there are other licensing issues that affect what can be hosted here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:37, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Whether a file is stored locally rather than on Commons if often decided solely on it's copyright status, which is in turn wholly a factor of copyright law.
Again: the licensing compatability page does not mention this issue at all.
Again: this is not a matter of licensing. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:10, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
So then, you're looking for Help:Beginner's guide to sources? Again, where to upload a file may be affected by the copyright status of the work, but it's not a part of copyright law. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:26, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
No, I am not. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:31, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
This is the page that says: "Usually, the DjVu or PDF file should be uploaded directly to Wikimedia Commons (one of Wikisource's sister sites that holds images and files for general use). However, Commons chooses to respect the copyright laws of the home country of any work, which Wikisource does not. In cases where non-United States publications are in the public domain in the United States but not in their home countries, they should be uploaded directly to Wikisource instead. This method is the same as the method to upload and add images." Is that not what you are asking about? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:38, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
No. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:43, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Can you please clarify then? Because this looks to me to be exactly what you were asking about at the start of this thread. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:45, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Clarity of Help page

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User:Pigsonthewing has made this change to Help:Beginner's guide to copyright, with the comment "This is not tangent; it relates directly to the page's pre-existing point about projects "choose to respect non-United States copyright law. English Wikisource does not" and hinges directly on the copyright status of works concerned"

My concern is that this inserts a second tangential issue into a set of paragraphs explaining copyright law.

The text looks like this with the added text in bold:

Non-United States publications

The rules about non-United States publications can get complicated.

Some works may be in the public domain in the United States even if they are still under copyright in their home countries (these works should be uploaded directly to Wikisource, not Wikimedia Commons). Other works may be in the public domain in their home countries but still under copyright in the United States (these works are not eligible for inclusion on this Wikisource.

For example, the last collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1927

The text is concerned with the copyright status of works, not with the uploading of files. The added text is concerned with the uploading of files, which is discussed on the page Help:Beginner's guide to sources, which has a section devoted to the uploading of source files.

I believe the additions to Help:Beginner's guide to copyright are intrusive, because they insert a second topic into a paragraph that is already about a complicated topic. I also believe they are superfluous, because we already have a Beginner's guide page that explains where to upload files. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:03, 24 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2025-22

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MediaWiki message delivery 20:04, 26 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Works as a header

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Is "Works" by itself as a header in Portals meant to be read as "Works by" or "Works about"? I see it mostly used to mean "Works by" when I see it in Author space and it is separated into "Works by" and "Works about" when the two exist. That is why it looks odd in location Portal space as in Portal:Westbrookville, New York. IT looks like it the works were written by the location. RAN (talk) 03:15, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I replaced the L2 "Works about ..." to "Works" to keep it consistent with what's done on most other portal entries on the site. "Works" here means "Works about". However, as of right now there appears to be no official standard for which header to use. Wikisource:Portal guidelines and Help:Portals say nothing about a "Works" section or "Works about" section.
If "Works" sections should be changed to "Works about" by some informal vote here, then it's probably best to make it an official policy. We should consider also using bots to keep up with the maintenance that would be required to standardize all portal L2s one way or the other.
Wikisource lacking structure is a massive problem here IMO, since for example Wiktionary has their quite detailed "Entry layout explained" policy page, while the typical Wikisource culture is just to sorta do whatever we want in most areas that could be given a ruleset. This makes things like parsing our content especially difficult, for example. SnowyCinema (talk) 18:06, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
However, there are a number of portals where "works by" is applicable - government departments, for example.
If we want to be consistent, I think it would be best to have the same policy for both Authors and Portals. -- Beardo (talk) 19:39, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
That would not make sense for Portals unless they are People Portals. We would never have "Works by Philosophy" as a header. And on any larger Portal, it also makes no sense to have a "Works about" header, since potentially everything on the Portal is about the subject of the Portal. But there are also Portals where the content is neither by nor about; for example Portal:French literature, where the works are French literature, and not work written by French literature, nor works about French literature. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:44, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
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There is a red link in the monthly challenge for Author:Department of Defense - I understand that author page should not be created. Should that link instead to Portal:United States Department of Defense ? -- Beardo (talk) 19:42, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:45, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Please could somebody make that change - the work is "United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967". -- Beardo (talk) 21:40, 27 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
DoneAlien  3
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05:43, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Cheers. -- Beardo (talk) 21:07, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees 2025 Selection & Call for Questions

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More languagesPlease help translate to your language

Dear all,

This year, the term of 2 (two) Community- and Affiliate-selected Trustees on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will come to an end [1]. The Board invites the whole movement to participate in this year’s selection process and vote to fill those seats.

The Elections Committee will oversee this process with support from Foundation staff [2]. The Governance Committee, composed of trustees who are not candidates in the 2025 community-and-affiliate-selected trustee selection process (Raju Narisetti, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Lorenzo Losa, Kathy Collins, Victoria Doronina and Esra’a Al Shafei) [3], is tasked with providing Board oversight for the 2025 trustee selection process and for keeping the Board informed. More details on the roles of the Elections Committee, Board, and staff are here [4].

Here are the key planned dates:

  • May 22 – June 5: Announcement (this communication) and call for questions period [6]
  • June 17 – July 1, 2025: Call for candidates
  • July 2025: If needed, affiliates vote to shortlist candidates if more than 10 apply [5]
  • August 2025: Campaign period
  • August – September 2025: Two-week community voting period
  • October – November 2025: Background check of selected candidates
  • Board’s Meeting in December 2025: New trustees seated

Learn more about the 2025 selection process - including the detailed timeline, the candidacy process, the campaign rules, and the voter eligibility criteria - on this Meta-wiki page [link].

Call for Questions

In each selection process, the community has the opportunity to submit questions for the Board of Trustees candidates to answer. The Election Committee selects questions from the list developed by the community for the candidates to answer. Candidates must answer all the required questions in the application in order to be eligible; otherwise their application will be disqualified. This year, the Election Committee will select 5 questions for the candidates to answer. The selected questions may be a combination of what’s been submitted from the community, if they’re alike or related. [link]

Election Volunteers

Another way to be involved with the 2025 selection process is to be an Election Volunteer. Election Volunteers are a bridge between the Elections Committee and their respective community. They help ensure their community is represented and mobilize them to vote. Learn more about the program and how to join on this Meta-wiki page [link].

Thank you!

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Results

[2] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Committee:Elections_Committee_Charter

[3] https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Resolution:Committee_Membership,_December_2024

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections_committee/Roles

[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/FAQ

[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2025/Questions_for_candidates

Best regards,

Victoria Doronina

Board Liaison to the Elections Committee

Governance Committee

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:08, 28 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

We are looking for a pilot for our new feature, Favourite Templates

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Hello everyone! Community Tech are building a new feature, called Favourite Templates, that will provide a better way for new and experienced contributors to recall and discover templates via the template dialog, that works with both VisualEditor and wikitext editor. We hope this will increase dialog usage and the number of templates added.

Since 2013, experienced volunteers have asked for a more intuitive template selector, exposing popular or most-used templates on the template dialog. At this stage of work, we are focusing on allowing users to put templates in a “favourite” list, so that their reuse will be easier. At a later stage, we will focus on helping users discover or find templates.

We are looking for potential additional testers for Favourite Templates, and we thought you might be interested in trying it out. If so, please let us know if it is the case, we would be happy to set up a pilot. So far, the feature has been deployed successfully on Polish and Arabic Wikipedia, and we’re currently in talks with other projects for expanding the pilot phase.

In addition, we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for helping people find and insert templates. Some ideas we’ve identified are searching or browsing templates by category, or showing the number of times a template has been transcluded.

Of course, we are ready to answer your questions and to give you all the information you need. Thanks in advance!

SWilson (WMF) (talk) 05:23, 29 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

DTIC file - Colors in Terrain

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Is this PD-US-Gov?

https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA277204/page/n3/mode/2up

If so I'd like to put it on Wikisource. In addition it would be appreciated if someone with expertise could advise on how to reconstruct the XYZ values from the xy and luminance factors given. This is so I can make used of the dataset (with citation) in respect of other projects. (I would of course be happy with a relevant color chart being constructed as a semi-formal academic paper over on Wikiversity.) ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 09:52, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply

I think, unfortunately, it is not PD-US-Gov. I don't believe US Gov contractors count as federal employees for the purpose of copyright law, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation 27.404-3 specifically outlines that contractor producers of scientific and technical reports have blanket permission to reassert copyright on their research. That same regulation notes that the free unlimited distribution license which is noted on the document is just to the US Gov; I don't believe the public can tap into that license to redistribute.
Perhaps someone with more US Gov works experience can chime in though. Penguin1737 (talk) 23:13, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
Bother. Looks like I'll have to find the original journal articles directly then. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 23:38, 31 May 2025 (UTC)Reply
The source dataset seems to be a 1940's translation published in Canada of a 1943 Russian language work, This gets interesting. Can someone dig a little deeper? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:26, 1 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Have we lost some Validated Indexes?

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On 11 Sept. 2024 I updated Portal:Proofreading milestones with our 6500th completed index. I just went to check on progress to the next milestone of 7000 only to discover that there are only 5284 in Category:Index Validated. How and when did we lose over 1500 validated Indexes? Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:19, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

I place my bet on the index lua error from two months and a half ago. We have ~12k indexes that just don't have any categories (out of 35583 total indexes). I think some of those affected by the bug had all their Page:s already transcluded, and so the Page:s didn't count as orphan and we didn't find them yet. The categorylink table must just have not been updated. Confirmation of this: The first thus uncategorised index reported when I queried was Index:! Explosive objects in War in Ukraine, 2022 (01).jpg. It had page_links_updated set to 20250311190213, which is 11 march, the date of the lua index error. On a null edit, it disappeared from the list. We probably ought to get 'round to null-editing all these indexes. I'm really busy these days but I could patch up some code next week. 12k is not that much. If we say one null edit/min that makes 12k minutes, or 200 hours, or just over a week. — Alien  3
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12:07, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
(FYI: the complete list is here. To refresh (you need to have forked) just re-submit. Replag aside, should update instantaneously.) — Alien  3
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12:24, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hadn't thought of that, despite the fact that I've been null-editing Indexes via LonelyPages every three days. I'm part way through G with another update due this evening (my time). Any Index that is not pdf or djvu has been skipped over. Where there are Pages without an Index, I've left them for investigation later. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:58, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Any specific reason for skipping non-pdf/djvu indexes? Normally they should work like others. — Alien  3
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19:01, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Because the listing in LonelyPages is the Page namespace and the link to the Index doesn't appear as a tab in the same way. Thus easier to ignore at present and then deal with as a group later. I much prefer dealing with a single workflow at a time. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
By the way - the orphaned pages listing was actually updated yesterday - it starts again on the first of the month,
I have been trying to reduce the main pages on the orphaned pages list. A number of those have been works transcluded but affected by the index lua error. (And so not linked from anywhere else). I have tried adding other links as well. Of course, this means that main pages affected by the lua error do not show there if they already were linked from elsewhere. --
Beardo (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Beardo and Beeswaxcandle : the query I linked to above does give an exhaustive list, transclusion or no transclusion, exploiting the fact that broken indexes lost their categories. It also gives the indexes not the pages, so there's no trouble of reaching the index from the pages. If you want, I can reasonably easily get the list into a wikipage with links (as opposed to the quarry result of just page names). — Alien  3
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19:37, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've made a list at User:Beeswaxcandle/Sandbox2. Having already dealt with some, it's reduced in size by ca. 500 from the initial. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:21, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Would you mind other editors editing that page? So we can remove those that are done and keep track of where we're at. — Alien  3
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10:41, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I've forked the query to select .djvu indexes (page_title like '%.djvu'). 3600 are remaining. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 10:52, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
Welp, we do also have to do the PDFs. It's not a good thing, but many indexes are done PDF. — Alien  3
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10:54, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have no problems with other editors editing the page. Keeping track and not duplicating effort is always good. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:33, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
All DjVu indexes done. The page is updated. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 08:37, 4 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
All jpg, jpeg, webm indexes done. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2025 (UTC)Reply
All not .pdf indexes done (6,818). User:Beeswaxcandle/Sandbox2 updated. Now 5,641 pages in Category:Index Validated • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 09:18, 4 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

Tech News: 2025-23

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:54, 2 June 2025 (UTC)Reply

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This is listed as public domain on Hathi:- https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31210024780379&seq=15

However, it contains apparenty reprints of papers published in other works, which may need additional evalaution.

The author of the paper seems to have been an active Employee at the NBS (later NIST), So can someone make a determination as to this work's potential inclusion in Wikisource, given that the works itself is Federal?. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 06:00, 3 June 2025 (UTC)Reply