User talk:Nihil novi

Fables and Parables
G'day, with Fables and Parables, I tagged it as incomplete because it doesnt appear to contain any test. Its just an excerpt from Wikipedia. What am I missing here? John Vandenberg 09:23, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's correct. It is only meant to inform readers where they may find Krasicki's texts.  Nihil novi 09:41, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh, I can see now that Wikipedia hosts the translation. That is not usually how we do things.  Usually, Wikisource hosts the translation, and Wikipedia just describes it.  The translation should be moved from Wikipedia to Fables and Parables.  Wikipedia has a template to direct readers to Wikisource.  see w:Template:Wikisource. John Vandenberg 11:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Yes, I'm familiar with the template.  But in this case, since Krasicki's texts illustrate the "Fables and Parables" article, for readers' convenience I'd rather keep them there. (Not every reader, especially one new to Wikipedia, will notice the template.)  Anyway, I think the sample texts don't constitute such a great volume that they need be separated from the article.  Nihil novi 20:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Why do you consider my change "damage" ? John Vandenberg 11:40, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry if my wording might have sounded harsh.
 * You'll notice that, after some changes were made, the spacings between the Constitution's articles varied randomly in width.
 * Also, I don't understand the meaning of "Excerpted from Constitution of May 3, 1791 on Wikipedia..." The text of the Constitution is not reprinted in that article.  Nihil novi 20:54, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi Nihil novi. I'm fairly new to Wikisource, but not Wikipedia; from your deletion log, I'm assuming your an administrator, so would you care to guide me a bit? Thanks! Also, there's an article for deletion: Monkeys. Qwerty Binary 13:56, 10 November 2007 (UTC) Sorry, my bad. A quick log-check reveals that you've neither deleted anything, nor had user rights changed. Sorry... I think I misclicked (I know, I clicked on your page, when I should have clicked on Jayvdb's page). But anyway, hello! =) Qwerty Binary 14:01, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
 * No harm done. Nice to have met you!  Nihil novi 20:49, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Xover, thanks for your response to the 22 May 2022 inquiry that I placed on the talk page of the editor who, on 30 January 2018, deleted from Wikisource my translations of selected Fables and Parables by Ignacy Krasicki.

I am grateful for your earlier help with a similar situation involving Aleksander Głowacki's (Bolesław Prus') On Discoveries and Inventions. I would indeed be most grateful for your help in the present instance.

I do most of my Wiki work on Wikipedia. It is my understanding, and hope, that use of my Wikisource talk page will enable me to receive notifications on my Wikipedia talk page, and on my email, of pertinent happenings here at Wikisource.

I would like to restore my deleted selection (62, or 52%) of Krasicki's 119 Fables and Parables, in essentially their original presentation, under my civil name as the translator. I do not at present expect to translate the remaining 57; and I would not like to see my work combined with that of other translators, which may be of poorer quality. Moreover, at least one online publication features, under my name, 39 of my translations that appeared, pre-deletion, on Wikisource. Combining my work here with that of other translators would thus be, if nothing else, awkward. If someone else should wish to make his own translations, I see no reason why his (or her) work could not be accommodated independently of mine.

I have my doubts, too, about asking someone to "verify" my renditions as, frankly, there are probably very few persons qualified, by the necessary level of bilinguality and translating experience, to do so.

However, I am most willing to consider your expert views in these matters. And I would prefer to share my work on Krasicki's Fables and Parables with the world through Wikisource than through another publisher.

Thank you for your kind assistance.

Nihil novi (talk) 20:05, 23 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Hi Nihil novi,
 * Wikisource hosts two kinds of translations: those previously published ("published" here means by a professional publishing house) and user translations. Previously published translations are not really treated as "translations" so much as just "a work" like any other, and are attributed to the author and the translator. User translations are collaborative works by Wikisource contributors (much like Wikipedia articles) and are attributed to "Wikisource". We can credit you under your real name on the work's talk page, as we did on Translation talk:On Discoveries and Inventions, but the header of the work's main page will just say "by Wikisource". User translations are, by nature, intended to be edited by multiple contributors, and it's not possible to "reserve" a translation for just one contributor. Previously published translations, on the other hand, are meant to be reproduced as published and should not be changed by other contributors.If it is important to you that no other users will change your translation and to be credited under your real name you may wish to investigate a traditional publisher.However, as you point out, it is unlikely that anyone actually will change any of your translations. We're perennially short on contributors, and contributors fluent in both Polish and English that are also interested in this particular form of poetry are unlikely to pop up very often. We got some assistance on On Discoveries and Inventions, but that was because we asked for help from another Polish speaker. I would be downright flabbergasted to see anyone actually change that translation in my lifetime because they randomly stumbled across it and thought they could improve it. It could happen, certainly, but it's not very likely (and the original will always be preserved in the page revision history).If you would like to proceed here, the first step will be trying to find a scan of the Polish original (one whose copyright has expired, obviously). I can try to help with this, but not speaking a word of Polish I probably won't be very effective. When we have a scan I can set up an index for it, like we did for Index:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu. The Polish original should be transcribed on Polish Wikisource at least as far as your translation (it might already be, I haven't checked). You'll then need to confirm somewhere I can link to it that you release your translation under something like, and then I can undelete the old text and we can start migrating it to the pages associated with the scan. Migrating the text is another operation with which I will be very little help.We do not require works to be completed 100%, and works can be "in progress" indefinitely. BUT… it is not inconceivable that policy will be tightened at some point in the future and start requiring works to be completed in order to be publicly visible (vs. sitting "on the workbench" in the Index:). There are no concrete plans for this, but the trend has been towards stricter quality criteria so it is something to keep in mind. Nothing would be actually deleted for this reason, of course, but it might be made much harder to find which would be nearly the same thing. I mention it because for an original translation like this that not just anyone can continue and complete that would be rather sad (vs. your average English book that almost any contributor would be able to complete the transcription for if it came down to it). Xover (talk) 20:53, 23 May 2022 (UTC)


 * Xover, do I, then, understand correctly that Wikisource policy may, in the future, disallow the placement of extracts – portions – of a longer work? Would the entire work then necessarily have to be translated?  Would an individual poem, say, that has been gathered into a collection; or short story from a collection; or a notable chapter from a novel; or a single notable letter published in a volume of letters, be ineligible?


 * With Krasicki's Fables and Parables, a certain complication arises from the fact that the fables include two with the identical title, "The Stream and the River"; two with the identical title, "The Lion and the Beasts"; two with the identical title, "Nightingale and Goldfinch"; and two with the identical title, "The Wolf and the Sheep".


 * May texts appearing on Wikisource be subsequently published by an electronic or print publisher, giving their Wikisource source? May the publisher or distributor then charge a price for the text thus distributed?


 * Is there no possibility of grandfathering in my selection of Krasicki's Fables and Parables, which was deleted because of a faulty copyright notice of which I had not been apprised?


 * Thank you.


 * Nihil novi (talk) 00:45, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I shouldn't overstate the risk of future stricter policy on incomplete works. It is a possible future development, but there is no current discussion of such a change. I mentioned it merely as one among several factors to consider when deciding whether you want to expend the effort to complete the translation.There is also a subtle distinction between excerpts of works and incomplete works. Excerpts, as such, are prohibited by policy; but the community's tolerance for works that are merely "not yet complete" is rather high. Where exactly to draw the line is not clearly defined, but, generally, works that are scan-backed and for which a substantial portion has been completed have been considered "in progress" rather than "excerpts". Based on the proportions you indicated in a previous message my guess is that this would fall within what the community currently considers "in progress" if scan-backed.A poem, a letter, or a short story is a complete work in its own right, and will usually be considered as such in the context of the excerpts policy. A chapter of a novel is not a stand-alone work and would usually be considered an excerpt. The edge cases are where there are multiple chapters, and maybe the front matter, of a novel or monograph completed. The community has ended up deleting some such as excerpts and keeping some as being merely "in progress". Works that are scan-backed tend to be kept, and the more complete the transcription the more likely it is to be kept. But this state of affairs is somewhat changeable and arbitrary so I don't recommend relying on the community not changing its mind over time.Multiple works or parts of works with the same title are not a problem, they just take a little bit of extra effort. Poems within a collection will typically be disambiguated with wikipage names like "The Stream and the River (1)" and "… (2)" (the title displayed inside the page would still be just "The Stream and the River"). For top-level works with identical titles we use disambiguation pages, like The Raven.Works hosted on Wikisource can indeed be republished, including commercially. That's one of the reasons for needing to be rather strict on licensing: we don't simply care about hosting a work ourselves, we want our content to be freely reusable by others for all sorts of purposes. Most of our permitted licenses do require attribution (i.e. typically a link back to the page here), but some do not even require that and a lot of our content is entirely public domain and does not even need a license. The GFDL was dropped (in 2008) because it imposed too onerous requirements on us and our reusers (some parts of works were not permitted to be changed; all changes must be logged and included; the full 30-page text of the GFDL must be included with every single copy; commercial use requires including the original's "source code" with every copy; etc.).There is no grandfather clause on the licensing; or rather, the 2008 cutoff is the grandfather clause. No content after that date may use the GFDL. In addition, our policy on user translations requires scan-backing and an existing transcription of the original on the relevant language Wikisource. It is not required to be complete, subject to the above caveats about what the community may decide in the future, so if you do not want or have time to complete the translation that is not a hard requirement. Xover (talk) 06:21, 24 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Xover, many thanks for this information, which clarifies some aspects of Wikisource aims and practices.


 * I gather that "scan-backing" means parallel reference to the original-language text. The Polish Wikisource lists works by Ignacy Krasicki  and holds their Polish texts, including that of Bajki i przypowieści (Fables and Parables) .  The latter should not be confused with Krasicki's less notable, posthumously published Bajki nowe (New Fables) or with the 1856 edition of Bajki i przypowieści (Fables and Parables), which inappropriately includes the New Fables.


 * From your description of the onerousness of the GFDL license, I can only regret that your Wikisource editor – instead of changing the license on my translations of selected Fables and Parables from GFDL to CC-BY-SA-3.0 or CC-BY-SA-4.0 – on 30 January 2018 deleted my translations, without even informing me.  I subsequently changed the earlier GFDL licenses on other translations of mine to CC-BY-SA-3.0.  (I still do not know, and would gladly learn, the essential difference between CC-BY-SA-3.0 and CC-BY-SA-4.0.)


 * When I asked whether my translations of selected Fables and Parables by Krasicki could be "grandfathered in," I had in mind restoring them under one of the CC-BY-SA licenses; under my civil (rather than pseudonymous) name, as they originally appeared; and blocked from editing by others than myself – the Wikisource practice with previously-published texts. (As of now, 63% of my Fables and Parables translations have appeared, under my name, on the electronic Polish Forum, placed there on 9 February 2017 – nearly a year before they were deleted from Wikisource. I am convinced that Polish Forum would have included all my translations, had I completed them before 9 February 2017. Some of the translations have also previously appeared in an English-language supplement to the American newspaper, Gwiazda Polarna.)


 * Many writings have gone through multiple translations, and it can be desirable to present more than one to the public. Conceivably, more than one version – complete or partial – of Krasicki's Fables and Parables might someday appear on Wikisource. To quote from the Wikipedia "Translation" article: "due to the inescapable necessity of interpretation... no two translations of a literary work, by different hands or by the same hand at different times, are likely to be identical."


 * My preference that my translations on Wikisource should appear under my civil name, rather than anonymously as "translated by Wikisource", is not motivated by vainglory but by a desire to reinforce a reader's confidence in the translator's competence. I have edited and translated a number of scholarly and literary books which continue to be cited and read.


 * I hope Wikisource staff may be willing to entertain my perspectives.


 * Nihil novi (talk) 04:34, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Xover, a third site, independent of Wikisource, that features some of my selection of 62 of Ignacy Krasicki's Fables and Parables that were deleted from Wikisource in 2018 is the Wikipedia article on "Fables and Parables", which presents 17 (27%) of them.
 * It would be nice if all 62 could be reunited, under my civil name, once more on Wikisource.
 * That would, of course, in no way prejudice the possible future creation of a Fables and Parables version "translated by Wikisource". (On the contrary, it would facilitate the latter – barring that Wikisource should decide to host two or more versions "translated by Wikisource".)
 * Thank you.
 * Nihil novi (talk) 18:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

3 May Constitution GFDL?
Since you were interested in this, would you have any insight on this? --Piotrus (talk) 18:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there a particular difference between the two versions that I should consider? Nihil novi (talk) 04:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

A Legend of Old Egypt
You are making changes to a published text and inserting footnotes. This is not allowed on Wikisource. We present the texts in the form they were published and without change. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:35, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

An inquiry
[ Moved here from User_talk:Beleg_Tâl#An_inquiry. --Xover (talk) 09:02, 16 June 2020 (UTC) ]

I understand that on 18 January 2018 you deleted from Wikisource an 1873 published lecture by Bolesław Prus, "On Discoveries and Inventions".

I know too little about the intricacies of Wikisource licensing to understand what might have been done in order to keep Prus' lecture on Wikisource.

I feel sure that this item is of value to scholarship and that no actual impediment exists to its being reinstated, if proper Wikisource licensing can be provided.

I would appreciate any advice you could give me on how this could be accomplished.

I work mostly on the English-language Wikipedia.

Thank you.

Nihil novi (talk) 05:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
 * The issue is that, while the Polish original is in the public domain due to copyright expiration, the translation was licensed only under the GFDL, which is not permitted. In order for us to host such a translation it has to be compatibly licensed, typically through either a public domain dedication like or through the appropriate Creative Commons license, . Technically all user contributions to Wikimedia projects (with a few exceptions that are not relevant here) are automatically dual-licensed under  and, but you had explicitly tagged your translation with only GFDL, which is what created the problem.Looking at the revision history of the deleted text, it looks like you were the one to translate all of it, and that it was an original translation (you didn't copy the text from anywhere)? If that is the case, it will be sufficient if you reply here stating clearly which license you intend to apply to your translation.There are also a couple of technicalities we need to fix: since it is an original translation by a Wikisource contributor (vs. a previously published translation) it needs to live in the "Translation:" namespace (i.e. we need to move the page to the correct place); and the translated text should be backed by a scan and proofread in the Page: namespace as well as having the Polish original proofread in the Polish Wikisource.Beleg Tâl is busy IRL right now, but if you need assistance with these things just let me know and I'll follow up on your talk page. --Xover (talk) 09:26, 15 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Xover (talk), thank you for your kind reply.
 * I am indeed the translator of Bolesław Prus' published lecture, "On Discoveries and Inventions", from the original Polish into English.
 * I found the original Polish text on Project Gutenberg: O odkryciach i wynalazkach: A Public Lecture Delivered on 23 March 1873 by Aleksander Głowacki [Bolesław Prus], Passed by the [Russian] Censor (Warsaw, 21 April 1873), Warsaw, Printed by F. Krokoszyńska, 1873.
 * The Project Gutenberg text can serve for verification of my translation.
 * I do not know the differences between licenses and  but will happily take your advice to add the latter.
 * If there is anything further I need do in this matter, or if I need to urgently return to this page (as I do not visit Wikisource daily), could I be notified at my Wikipedia talk page?
 * Please forgive my ignorance: what is "IRL"?
 * Thank you again for your help!
 * Nihil novi (talk) 03:02, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I've just found the definition of IRL ("in real life").
 * Nihil novi (talk) 03:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Hi Nihil novi. I'm moving this discussion here, to your user talk page, so that Beleg Tâl doesn't get a notification for every message. I am going to leave it here on Wikisource, rather than moving it to Wikipedia, since we strongly prefer that discussions regarding our project are had here (having that history here is part of the point of the wiki approach). Provided you have not turned that option off in your preferences, you should still get a notification by email every time someone posts a message here. If this causes undue inconvenience for you then please let me know and we can try to work out an alternative approach.Don't worry too much about the licensing stuff: normal people neither understand nor care about it, it's just that we have to care about it so we don't get sued into oblivion by litigation-happy copyright holders. The differences between GFDL and CC BY-SA are to do with the GFDL having requirements that are impractical, like including the full text of the license (some 30 pages or so, as I recall) whenever you use a GFDL-licensed work. The main thrust of both GFDL and the CC licenses is to make the content freely available, and with CC BY-SA that includes an explicit choice that the copyright owner (you in this case, for the translation) be credited in a suitable fashion and that anyone modifying or making derivative works must also release their changes under the same license. If you want to understand the full legal details you will have to consult a competent copyright lawyer (which I am most definitely not!), but that's the gist of it. If you're interested I can also try to explain other details about the licenses, but that would just be my layman's understanding.In any case, based on your indication that the translation is licensed under I have undeleted it at On Discoveries and Inventions. I also did a little searching and found that there's a scan of the original 1873 Polish publication already uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (the common repository for media files for all the Wikimedia projects) at File:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu. From there I discovered that the original has been proofread (transcribed) on the Polish Wikisource at O odkryciach i wynalazkach. Based on that I set up an index for it here, at Index:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu, and started to migrate some of the text there to illustrate the process.Here, however, I ran into a problem: it appears the translation may be incomplete, having large passages elided (possibly that was from the Gutenberg text you translated from?). My Polish is essentially non-existent, so I may very well have just misunderstood, but as best I could manage to compare, by employing judicious use of Google Translate, that was my conclusion. Our policy does not generally allow excerpts, so in order to host this work we would need to have it completed.Translations should also be done page-by-page in the Page: namespace (precisely so that we can spot issues like the above), and lacking any facility with Polish I am unable to do that. In other words, you need to take the text at On Discoveries and Inventions and split it out to each original page at the links you'll find on Index:Aleksander Głowacki - O odkryciach i wynalazkach.djvu. Don't worry too much about formatting and such, so long as what text belongs on what page is clear, and the translation as such completed, I can help with all the technical bits. Once all the individual pages are done, we combine them together at Translation:On Discoveries and Inventions for presentation.I am happy to help any way I can, but I am a little hamstrung by my lack of Polish.  Perhaps you could assist here? --Xover (talk) 09:02, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for researching Prus' lecture. It is really a fine piece of writing and, so far as I know, prescient to 20th-century efforts to create a "science of science". I omitted brief bits in the interest of brevity, but have since had some regrets, especially after I discovered that the existence of black Australian swans, mentioned by Prus, was not a whimsical made-up example of his but a fact.
 * I will try to supply the missing passages.
 * I have not been getting notifications, at my Wikipedia account, of Wikisource correspondence. Would you know how I could change this in my Wikisource and / or Wikipedia Preferences?
 * Nihil novi (talk) 22:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Regarding notifications, if you go to Special:Preferences (the "Notifications" tab of your Preferences, accessed through the link in the top right of any wikipage), you'll find a set of options to set what kinds of notifications you get and how they are delivered. You will in particular want to turn on the checkbox in the "Email" column for "Talk page message". When that is enabled, MediaWiki (the software that runs these wikis) will send you an email every time someone edits your user talk page (this page). You can also turn on email notification every time someone links to your user page (using the template, typically), which functions somewhat like an "@mention" on Twitter and similar. --Xover (talk) 12:38, 17 June 2020 (UTC)