User talk:Alastair Haines

Hello, Alastair Haines, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here. If you need help, see our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). You can discuss or ask questions from the community in general at the Scriptorium. The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page. John Vandenberg 11:28, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Free Bible project
Hi, glad to see you have joined our Free Bible project, and chosen to work on one of the most interesting books (in my opinion, of course). Note that it is necessary to note on the talk page which primary sources you are using. See Talk:Bible (Free)/Song of Solomon, and ask any questions you have, and read up on Wikisource talk:WikiProject Wiki Bible (there has been some recent discussion there that might interest you). John Vandenberg (chat) 11:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes! Welcome to the project, Alastair, and thank you so much for your work on 1'st Corinthians and the books that you are reviewing!!!--Jdavid2008 11:29, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hippolytus of Rome
Also, redirecting Author:Hippolytus of Rome into a book isnt appropriate. There are almost always many works about a person, so we want to catalogue them all. See what I did with Author:Theognostus of Alexandria. John Vandenberg (chat) 11:12, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * The redirects you created are not necessary, so I have deleted them. See Author:Theognostus of Alexandria <-- this is the page we want people to come to, and it is the page that Theognostus of Alexandria points to.

Google already takes the reader to the right pages, so redirects dont help.

Also, I just found out that we have Author:Hippolytus, and if you look at that page, you will see that we catalogue not just the writings of the author, but also works about the author. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

original texts
As you know Hebrew, and probably Greek and Latin, your future contributions will be "more" valued over on Hebrew Wikisource, Latin Wikisource and Greek Wikisource. Of course I'm not suggesting you leave so soon, however these projects have fewer hands on deck. In order to encourage more people to work on projects like WikiProject Wiki Bible, Open Mishnah Project and translations into other languages, it is necessary to have the primary sources hosted on these other Wikisource projects, including all fragments. Accessibility to primary sources has been one of the limiting factors; with digital images which can be uploaded onto Commons, everyone could see the primary sources and access accurate transcriptions of these texts, and contribute to the translation projects. Providing the primary sources alongside the translations will also help to dispel those who wish to discredit the translation - everything is done in plain sight, and it can be checked and improved by anyone. The Bible that anyone can edit. :-)

Here is the first portion of Genesis, with Hebrew provided: Tanakh/Torah/Bereishit/Bereishit.

However this layout has its problems, because what if I wanted to see JPS 1917 beside the KJV, or besides the Septuagint, etc ? To this end, Wikisource has an extension which goes beyond interwiki links -- we have "DoubleWiki", which allows two languages to be displayed side by side. Here is a nice example: ; this extension isnt perfect - see oldwikisource:WS:S for some tips. The take away message here is that we have technology to do the side-by-side presentation, and that technology will get better. What is needed is multilingual people to add the interwiki links.

At present, this "DoubleWiki" feature does not work on the pages of our Tanakh and the Hebrew, because we dont have strong, well organised, links between the two projects. e.g. on Tanakh/Torah/Shemot, it links to he:קטגוריה:שמות, which is a category rather than a page!

As an aside, our Tanakh pages are comprised of JPS 1917, so we have some unintended duplication there.

Regarding he:, I suggest you talk with User:Dovi, who is one of the most active.

In all this, I dont suggest you try to jump in and fix anything I am pointing out yet, because the projects need to communicate more in order to resolve many of these differences, and you will need to come to a better understand of the Wikisource projects before ruffling too many feathers. :-) John Vandenberg (chat) 16:35, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Two things quickly
 * My feathers are not ruffled; I mentioned that only because there are a lot of practises and technology differences between here and Wikipedia. As an example, I ran into some major problems on de.wikisource because I didnt read their policies, and that was after I thought I knew it all ! ;-)
 * I'm looking forward to what you can bring to Wikisource.
 * Since you were here last, English Wikisource has enabled email notifications, which means that you can change your prefs to request email notification when there are changes to either your talk page, or a page on your watchlist. This will allow you to keep involved without logging onto Wikisource every day to check your watchlist.
 * John Vandenberg (chat) 17:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

some software info
Here are two pieces of software that we have here on Wikisource

This essentially allows snippets of text on any page to the defined as a unit of text, and then "included" on another page.
 * Labeled Section Transclusion

An example of how it can be used is Bible/Jude/1/1 which calls Template:Bible/Jude to include the same verse from each translation.

This could be used for many purposes, such as when different edition use the same text, we could use LST to pull the text from the original edition into the later edition (and then display a little note to let the reader know where the excerpt has come from.

This extension allows text to be transcribed "beside" the images which have been uploaded and collected into an index.
 * Proofread Page

See Index:Emily Dickinson Poems (1890).djvu - the colours indicates how many proof-readers have verified that the transcription is correct. Note that each page starts with "Page"

The main way that LST is used at present is to take the text from the transcribed pages, and present it onto a normal page. See Too Late (Dickinson), note the "links to scanned pages" in the toolbox on the left hand side, and also click edit on that page to see how that page doesnt contain any text.

John Vandenberg (chat) 15:07, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Russell and Whitehead Principia Mathematica
I have obtained scans of Volume II and III of Russell and Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, however it is the the 1973 reprint of the second edition (1927), ISBN 0 521 06791 X. This probably means it is still covered by copyright in the US. I am downloading Volume I as well, and expect to find that it is also the second edition, but wont know for sure until I have it.

There is also a set of page scans in the University of Michigan Historical Math Collection, and they are definitely the first edition, so if all else fails, I will fetch all of those images and package them into a djvu file. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

User:Alastair Haines/Discussion papers

2 & 3 John
Are you done reviewing 2 & 3 John? Please update the project page if you are. Arlen22 (talk) 12:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Manuscript for 1 Corinthians 2:9
Hello! I'm self-publishing an edition of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The edition will include illustrations of the play as well as sources for the play. Currently, I'm looking for a manuscript of 1 Corinthians 2:9: "But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."

Could you refer me to any manuscripts that have that line? The earlier the better. I looked through your images of the Greek papyri, but I couldn't find any that seemed to have that quote.

I'd sure appreciate any help you can give. Thanks! SnappingTurtle (talk) 21:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)