User:Jarry1250/Wikipedian's guide to Wikisource

I myself am still new to Wikisource, and I must say that being a newbie once more did come as a shock to me being, as I am, an administrator on the English Wikipedia. Even without having to learn the myriad of concepts that one picks up on any wiki - links, images, commons, etiquette, signatures (the list goes on), a fair chunk of knowledge and familiarity with Wikisource must still be acquired. I'm hoping I'll be able to document some of that stuff here, adding to the list as I go.

Realities

 * Wikisource has a much smaller user base than Wikipedia. You can't just rely on other people to do your hard work for you, so if you see something wrong, fix it!
 * Wikisource users devote more time to raw content building than Wikipedians; there is less spare time left over for tidying up community pages, documenting templates and so forth. There are many rough edges.
 * Wikisource is not what MediaWiki was built to handle; often, it feels like one must force a square peg into a round hole to get anything achieved. Thanks to the hard work of a handful of developers, however, the processes are getting a lot more streamlined, and it's getting easier and easier to focus on collaboration and mutual assistance.

The good bit

 * There is a lot less vandalism to worry about, or devote time to.
 * The list of things one can edit-war over is arguably smaller; whilst formatting can trigger debate, big pitched battle between editors with lists of references, accusations of POVism, The Truth(tm) are more or less impossible, because Wikisource takes its material directly from the printed (or digital) edition, word for word. Peace reigns.
 * People care about you.