Wikisource:Best practices

If you are new in Wikisource, you will need to tread carefully when editing Wikisource. The short version:


 * 1) Learn Wikisource's rules.
 * 2) Don't create new text from another third party website
 * 3) Don't edit text which is available.
 * 4) Ask for help appropriately.
 * 5) Don't validate , before proofread.
 * 6) Don't upload any book , without confirming the copyright status.

The purpose of this page it is not to provide a detailed answer to all of this topics, but rather to be a point of entry toward them when they exists, and help coordinate their creation when they don't.


 * More formal guidance is at Help:Beginner's guide to Wikisource.

Wikisource's rules
wikisource welcomes newcomers and tries to make things easier on them by asking everyone not to treat them harshly. However, when you intend to edit with a conflict of interest, you may be given much less slack than others. To avoid this, take the time to read and understand wikisource policies. Editors with close associations to the topic or subject may be in conflict of interest if they contribute to an article in any manner that removes relevant, well sourced information, adds un-sourced contentious claims or attempts to push a single point of view in a less than neutral manner. A starting point:


 * 1) If you are a Wikipedian please follow the For Wikipedians
 * 2) WS:WIW (What wikisource is)
 * 3) WS:SCOPE (What Wikisource includes)

Finally, you may also come across WP:IAR (Ignore all rules), which encourages wikisourcens to ignore the rules if it would not be sensible to follow them in a particular context or would impede the goal of improving wikisource. This doesn't apply to you if you're editing with a close association with the subject, as ignoring rules could be seen as not exercising great caution, and it is likely that you are not improving wikisource. In other words, if you interpret ignore all rules as a license to do whatever you please without keeping wikisource's improvement as your focus, don't be surprised if this leads to your being blocked.

Don't create new text
Avoid creating any new articles (or recreate any deleted articles) on any subject related to your associations. Similarly, avoid creating articles that discuss a company, product, or group you are affiliated with. If no article exists and you believe one should, you can make a request for someone else to post one at Requested articles. You may make a draft in your userspace (e.g. a page like User:yourname/yourcompany) to mention in your request, but be aware that material that looks like it belongs on a company's web page, or advertising, will be deleted even in user space. As an alternative to this, consider compiling a list of usable reliable sources for others to use, instead of a draft.

Don't edit articles
Don't make potentially controversial edits to articles related to your area of close association. Our guideline makes exceptions for reverting vandalism and enforcing biography of living persons policy. Similarly, don't add links, citations, or mentions to other articles that highlight a company or group you may be affiliated with. Instead, make suggestions on article talk pages and let others decide whether to implement them. (You may find it useful to add Request edit to your note on the talk page to help it draw timely attention.) A few exceptions can be made to this rule: making totally uncontroversial updates like removing typos, correcting or updating simple data, and removing blatant vandalism is fine; for anything else, seek input.

Another circumstance where you may edit an article about yourself is if the article contains unsourced negative information about you. In this situation, you may remove or correct the information, as encouraged by WP:BLP. However, you are advised to explain your actions on the talk page, otherwise other users may interpret this as vandalism.

Learn how to ask for help
At times, you may find working under these restrictions difficult because of a lack of a cross-section of the Wikipedia community that is involved. The best solution to such a problem is to seek the input of more editors. Wikipedia's dispute resolution policy describes a number of ways in which you can expose your problem to the eyes of many Wikipedia editors in the hopes of getting input representative of the whole of Wikipedia. However, be mindful that you don't engage in "forum shopping", in which you ask for more input after having already received plenty, in the hope that the result would be different; this is a kind of pushing.

If your concern is with an article about a living person, or with mention of one, there is advice at Biographies of living persons/Help and you can ask for assistance at the Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard.

Offline contribution and batch synchronization
Unlike a modern Code Versioning System (CVS), we currently don't provide obvious way to easily synchronize works hosted on Wikisource repositories to ease offline contribution. This is however something that is possible using some dedicated scripts or more generalist solution creating abstraction layer on top of Mediawiki API. This section should document both what is currently available on this regard, and related projects for improving the situation.

Related resources

 * Digitization
 * Wikisource Handbook