Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2023-06

For those who dislike using hws etc.
Please join the word-end portion to the word-start portion to complete the word as was done at the bottom of this page

For this to work, I thought of a gadget like nop that would place a small arrow like &#x2190; on the top of following page to indicate that the end word was transferred, as shown in this example and be  visible only in the page namespace.&#32;— ineuw (talk) 23:58, 16 June 2023 (UTC)


 * You no longer need to use a template. If there is a word spanning a page break, the software now automatically deals with the hyphen. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:52, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Note that hws/hwe is still needed in certain special contexts, mainly with split words inside footnotes. The reason is that footnotes and the automatic joining of hyphenated words are performed by two different MediaWiki extensions (Cite and Proofread Page), and in the context of a footnote it's Cite that wins. At some point in the future we're probably going to be able to persuade someone to expend the developer resources on fixing this case too, but it's technically complicated and low priority so it's unlikely to happen soon. Xover (talk) 08:22, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks. From now on, I will post my suggestion earlier, like ten years ago. :-) &#32;— ineuw (talk) 00:42, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:42, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

United States v. Trump and Nauta
Two indices seems to have been created for two versions of the same work: Index:United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta.pdf and Index:US v Trump-Nauta 23-80101.pdf. The former is of the version with black and white images and the latter has colour images. The proofread progress for the monochrome image version are pages 21–43, 46–49 and the progress for the colour image version is 1–23. Is there a preference for the version with colour images? DraftSaturn15 (talk) 06:45, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I could switch to that one. Is there an automated way to merge proofread pages, or should I copy my finished pages by hand? -- econterms (talk) 03:43, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Not necessary, Index:US v Trump-Nauta 23-80101.pdf is missing some pages and Index:United States of America v. Donald J. Trump and Waltine Nauta.pdf appears to be the more complete version (both in terms of proofreading and it has the penalty sheet at the end). I'll propose that Index:US v Trump-Nauta 23-80101.pdf be deleted because it's just the same work but minus a few pages. DraftSaturn15 (talk) 08:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:38, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Now We Are Six / Deletion of Commons files
Per c:Commons:Deletion requests/Files in Category:Now We Are Six, this book was first published outside of the US (without simultaneous publication), and since the illustrator died in 1976, the illustration are still copyrighted in both Canada and the UK (where editions pre-dating the US edition were published). I'll defer deletion of the files for a while. Please transfer the files to Wikisource if you wish to keep using them, and let me know when you are done (or do not wish to transfer them). Thanks. Regards --Rosenzweig (talk) 18:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Scrap that, I have researched the matter further, and the earlier publication dates for Canada and the UK are apparently wrong, and we do have simultaneous publication after all. Sorry to have bothered you. Regards --Rosenzweig (talk) 18:47, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Rosenzweig: On the contrary, we very much appreciate your diligence in researching this before closing; and yet more that you took the time to come tell us about the outcome so we can act accordingly. I'm painfully aware of the size of the backlog of DRs at Commons so putting in this much time and effort is both impressive and appreciated. Thank you. Xover (talk) 06:34, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:30, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

The Story of Bonnie and Clyde
I think, there is no reason to keep this text deleted. It was published in a 1934 book (page 242) that is PD due to not renewed copyright. Or is this a complete different text than I think? Ankry (talk) 15:02, 21 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @Ankry: Undeletion requests go on WS:CV (section heading "Undelete The Story of Bonnie and Clyde"). And the text at The Story of Bonnie and Clyde appears to be the same poem included in the book you link (I haven't checked textual differences, but it looks like the same work).But in this case… publication for copyright purposes requires it to be by or with consent of the author. This poem was written by Bonnie Parker and was never published during her lifetime. According to the book she gave one physical copy of the poem to her sister two weeks before her death, but this is neither publication nor transfer of title. In other words, figuring out whether that book constitutes publication for copyright purposes involves gaining knowledge of the specific chains of inheritance, wills, any contracts in play (like any contract between Jan I. Fortune and the Parker family), etc. It was rushed to press three months after Parker's death, and so far as I can see mainly credits Emma, Parker's sister, who is unlikely to have had legal title to Parker's copyrights at that time. I don't think this is very likely to be PD, and I very much doubt we'd be able to find sufficient evidence to make that conclusion in any case. Xover (talk) 15:36, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The discussion moved to WS:CV as suggested. Ankry (talk) 16:45, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
 * This section was archived on a request by: — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:28, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Speedy deletion notifications
There is a bold notification in Recent changes about a speedy deletion request, but the Category:Speedy deletion requests is empty... What could be the reason? -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 07:33, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It was a file and deleted by Xover. I wouldn't fuss what weird caching is going on. — billinghurst  sDrewth  10:29, 1 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Yup. It was a file deletion that hit a problem somewhere down in the depths of MediaWiki, which probably means that the category table wasn't updated like it normally is. It'll probably clear up on its own in a couple of days (there are periodic maintenance jobs to clear out such things). Xover (talk) 11:44, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

May 2023 Monthly Challenge
While I have not had anything to do with the work, please permit me to post the monthly summary anyway! The May 2023 Monthly Challenge finished a couple of days ago. The weather in some places is warming up and perhaps tempting people outside, so it "only" recorded 2726 processed (proofread, validated or marked without text) pages; still, as usual, beating the baseline target of 2000 pages handily. Congratulations to all involved!

In May, we saw the first edition of Great Expectations fully proofread and transcluded, finally fully scan-backing a work we've had since before English Wikisource had its own domain. Also proofread and validated were the 2022 Annual Report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and another step in the long-running project to complete the 15-volume Historic Highways of America: v. 13 - The Great American Canals, Volume 1.

Other proofread works included the 1766 Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, a translation of The Reign of Greed by Filipino author José Rizal y Alonso, the US Capitol Attack January 6th Report, Moods by Louisa May Alcott and Bulandshahr, an 1884 description of the North Indian district.

In the June Monthly Challenge, there are new and continued texts such as:


 * A Complete Collection of the English Poems which have obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal in the University of Cambridge
 * The Coral Island, the prototypical "boys on an island" novel that inspired Lord of the Flies (as a 1954 novel, by an author who died in 1993, that one is likely very far from the public domain!)
 * Hans of Iceland, Victor Hugo's debut novel
 * Heidi, the famous children's book by Johanna Spyri
 * The Works of H.G. Wells continues with volume 8 to proofread and volume 7 to validate.
 * An Outline of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
 * The Tibetan Book of the Dead, translated by Walter Yeeling Evans-Wentz.
 * The History of Woman Suffrage continues with its second volume of six.

And many more already, and probably a few more to come. Fun for all when those lazy June evenings get too boring! Inductiveload— talk/contribs 21:45, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-23
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * The RealMe extension allows you to mark URLs on your user page as verified for Mastodon and similar software.
 * Octicons-gift.svg Citation and footnote editing can now be started from the reference list when using the visual editor. This feature request was voted #2 in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * Previously, clicking on someone else's link to Recent Changes with filters applied within the URL could unintentionally change your preference for "". This has now been fixed.

Problems
 * For a few days last week, some tools and bots returned outdated information due to database replication problems, and may have been down entirely while it was being fixed. These issues have now been fixed.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Bots will no longer be prevented from making edits because of URLs that match the spam blacklist.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 22:51, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-24
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-gift.svg The content attribution tools Who Wrote That?, XTools Authorship, and XTools Blame now support the Dutch, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Polish and Portuguese Wikipedias. This was the #7 wish in the 2023 Community Wishlist Survey.
 * The Search Preview panel has been deployed on four Wikipedias (Catalan, Dutch, Hungarian and Norwegian). The panel will show an image related to the article (if existing), the top sections of the article, related images (coming from MediaSearch on Commons), and eventually the sister projects associated with the article.
 * The RealMe extension now allows administrators to verify URLs for any page, for Mastodon and similar software.
 * The default project license has been officially upgraded to CC BY-SA 4.0. The software interface messages have been updated. Communities should feel free to start updating any mentions of the old CC BY-SA 3.0 licensing within policies and related documentation pages.

Problems
 * For three days last month, some Wikipedia pages edited with VisualEditor or DiscussionTools had an unintended  (or its localized form) added during an edit. There is a listing of affected pages sorted by wiki, that may still need to be fixed.
 * Currently, the "" feature in VisualEditor is broken. Existing  keywords incorrectly appear as missing templates in VisualEditor. Developers are exploring how to fix this. In the meantime, those wishing to edit the default sortkey of a page are advised to switch to source editing.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Last week, an update to the delete form may have broken some gadgets or user scripts. If you need to manipulate (empty) the reason field, replace  with  . See an example fix.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * VisualEditor will be switched to a new backend on English Wikipedia on Monday, and all other large wikis on Thursday. The change should have no noticeable effect on users, but if you experience any slow loading or other strangeness when using VisualEditor, please report it on the phabricator ticket linked here.

Future changes
 * From 5 June to 17 July, the Foundation's Security team is holding a consultation with contributors regarding a draft policy to govern the use of third-party resources in volunteer-developed gadgets and scripts. Feedback and suggestions are warmly welcome at Third-party resources policy on meta-wiki.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 14:51, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

File:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf
Does anyone know who translated "The Fugitive Gold" and "Emancipation", or in general know where I can look for info on translations of Tagore's work? —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 00:23, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
 * If we don't then we shouldn't be overly concerned and we look to treat them as anonymous/pseudonymous works per Commons criteria, and maybe that is where we need to do that clarification. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Poll for June Wikisource Community meeting (Europe and Americas-friendly)
Hello fellow Wikisource enthusiasts! We will be organizing this month's Wikisource Community meeting in the last week of June and we need your help to decide on a time and date that works best for the most number of people. Kindly share your availabilities at the wudele link below by 22nd June 2023:

https://wudele.toolforge.org/BsgqYumphlryxu37 Meanwhile, feel free to check out the page on Meta-wiki and suggest topics for the agenda. Regards

KLawal-WMF and PMenon-WMF Sent via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:08, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Template: Reconstruct
The template works within the  template when only the first parameter (i.e. the reconstructed text) is used. If the second parameter (explanation of the basis for reconstruction) is used, it doesn't (see examples below).

First parameter only.

Including 2nd parameter. Chrisguise (talk) 11:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * ✅ the template was seeing the leading colon as wikicode, rather than a colon, which I have now forced. — billinghurst  sDrewth  12:59, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the swift response. Regards, Chrisguise (talk) 13:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-25
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg Flame graphs are now available in WikimediaDebug.

Changes later this week
 * There is no new MediaWiki version this week.
 * There is now a toolbar search popup in the visual editor. You can trigger it by typing  or pressing  . It can help you quickly access most tools in the editor.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 20:08, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Invitation for June 2023 Wikisource Community Meeting
Hello fellow Wikisource enthusiasts!

We are the hosting this month’s Wikisource Community meeting on 26 June 2023, 5 PM UTC (check your local time) according to the wudele poll.

The first half of the meeting will be focused on non-technical updates and conversations like events, conferences, proofread-a-thons and collaborations. The second half will be focused on technical updates and conversations, such as talking about major challenges faced by Wikisource communities, similar to the ones conducted in previous Community meetings.

If you are interested in joining the meeting, kindly leave a message on sgill@wikimedia.org and we will add you to the calendar invite.

Meanwhile, feel free to check out the page on Meta-wiki and suggest any other topics for the agenda.

Regards

KLawal-WMF, PMenon-WMF, Sam Wilson (WMF), and Satdeep Gill (WMF)

Sent using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:17, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Template:Hoyt quote
I've proofread/validated a few pages of Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922). Each quote is structured using this template. The existing transcriptions include two parameters ('topic', 'page') which are not mentioned on the template's help page. Do these parameters do anything useful? Chrisguise (talk) 12:29, 22 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @Chrisguise: No, there's no code that uses those params in the template code and there never was. Perhaps @BD2412 who added some instances of these parameters could shed some light? Was it perhaps intended as an annotation / metadata for a bot or something? Xover (talk) 13:35, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * My thinking at the time was to have a sort of data-driven approach through which we could eventually use the individual quotes on Wikiquote (and possibly Wikipedia), with the template providing all of the citation data useful to associate with individual quotes. The topic parameter would correspond to the Wikiquote topic page for this purpose, and the page number would generally be necessary for citations. BD2412  T 16:54, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

terms of use cc-by-4.0
I note that WMF has updated MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright per special:diff/13253847. This appears in numbers of places, though most prominently (to me) on all our edit pages above the "publish changes". — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:05, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Search tips is not useful
An unsuccessful search brought me to a page containing the following: Search tips Wikisource recommends that users of this site amend their default search preferences. We recommend that you use the setting Redirect mode with subphrase matching (advanced). This setting allows searching subpages and redirects for your search term. Wikisource reproduces many fiction and non-fiction works using content in subpages, placed under the title page of the work. This can include poetry, essays, biographical and scientific articles, etc. For this reason, your search term may not display or may not be prioritised if you use the default search setting. I have no idea how to follow these instructions, and no clue is given. Koro Neil (talk) 22:43, 16 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Special:Preferences — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:32, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Noting that there is a wikilink on that text to the same page. I am not certain how else to guide users into the setting so others are welcome to make suggestions at Mediawiki talk:search-summary — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:36, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Tech News: 2023-26
 Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Recent changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Action API modules and Special:LinkSearch will now add a trailing  to all  responses for bare domains. This is part of the work to remove duplication in the  database table.

Problems
 * Last week, search was broken on Commons and Wikidata for 23 hours.

Changes later this week
 * Octicons-sync.svg The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from . It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from . It will be on all wikis from (calendar).
 * Octicons-tools.svg The Minerva skin now applies more predefined styles to the  CSS class. This enables support for mbox templates that use divs instead of tables. Please make sure that the new styles won't affect other templates in your wiki.
 * Octicons-tools.svg Gadgets will now load on both desktop and mobile by default. Previously, gadgets loaded only on desktop by default. Changing this default using the  parameter is also deprecated and should not be used. You should make gadgets work on mobile or disable them based on the skin (with the  parameter in MediaWiki:Gadgets-definition ) rather than whether the user uses the mobile or the desktop website. Popular gadgets that create errors on mobile will be disabled by developers on the Minerva skin as a temporary solution.
 * All namespace tabs now have the same browser access key by default. Previously, custom and extension-defined namespaces would have to have their access keys set manually on-wiki, but that is no longer necessary.
 * The review form of the Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standardized user interface components.

Future changes
 * Octicons-tools.svg How media is structured in the parser's HTML output will change in the coming weeks at group2 wikis. This change improves the accessibility of content. You may need to update your site-CSS, or userscripts and gadgets. There are details on what code to check, how to update the code, and where to report any related problems.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe. 

MediaWiki message delivery 16:18, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Actioned
I have removed the  where aimed at both desktop and mobile. I don't have my head sufficiently around the mobile skins to make changes in that space. Anyone else want to make a recommendation? Is it just Minerva? Noting that mean we would also need to update for new mobile skins as required into the future. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:13, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Temporarily reverted; still not rolled out. — billinghurst  sDrewth  01:35, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Removed components again, and WMF staff have undertaken the mobile only component for skins=minerva — billinghurst  sDrewth  22:23, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Announcing the new Elections Committee members

 * You can find this message translated into additional languages on Meta-wiki.
 *  m:Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia Foundation elections committee/Nominatons/2023/Announcement - new members • 

Hello there,

We are glad to announce the new members and advisors of the Elections Committee. The Elections Committee assists with the design and implementation of the process to select Community- and Affiliate-Selected trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. After an open nomination process, the strongest candidates spoke with the Board and four candidates were asked to join the Elections Committee. Four other candidates were asked to participate as advisors.

Thank you to all the community members who submitted their names for consideration. We look forward to working with the Elections Committee in the near future.

On behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, <section end="announcement-content" />

RamzyM (WMF) 18:00, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Mobile display bug
It seems that mobile view has doubled footers on every page that is in the style of an index with scans. Includes both "main" pages and chapter pages. Examples: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Irish_Problem, https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Irish_Problem/A_Plea_for_the_Irish_Land , https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prose_Edda_(1916) , etc. But really all of them. This only seems to affect the English Wikisource, though, I checked a few foreign language wikisources and didn't see anything odd, but I could have missed something. Is this a bug, or is some mobile view template somewhere misconfigured? Happy to go file a bug on Phabricator if people are confident the master mobile layout is good, but I have no idea where to look.

I see that there was a merge ~11 hours or so ago and it mentions "mobile" in the title, but it sounds like it shouldn't have anything to do with this (it's about installing a module for OCR in edit mode, but this bug happens in read mode). I don't normally check the mobile version so I have no idea how "old" this bug is. SnowFire (talk) 06:09, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @SnowFire: I am going to arbitrarily pick the thread below about this same issue as the place to discuss this. :-) Xover (talk) 10:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Header template mobile view issue


Template:Header is producing its footer twice, on every page that I can verify where there is a "previous" or "next" parameter, on MediaWiki's mobile view mode (en.m.wikisource). Anyone know a possible reason why this might be happening? PseudoSkull (talk) 06:28, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @PseudoSkull, @SnowFire: The most likely cause is that MediaWiki (well, the Gadgets extension) just removed the option to load Gadgets conditionally based on a "target" that's either "desktop" or "mobile". As a result, all Gadgets now load on both desktop and mobile sites; but most of our Gadgets are not designed for and have not been tested on mobile, and certainly not with mobile-only and desktop-only Gadgets all loading at the same time. In other words, there are lots of possible reasons for this issue and most of them are both trivial and have an obvious cause. I'll take a look when time allows. Xover (talk) 10:17, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @PseudoSkull, @SnowFire: Yup, that was the cause. This Gadget (and a number of others) were being loaded twice as a result of the mentioned change. It should be fixed now. Xover (talk) 11:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Same user proofreading and validating a page
I thought that the system did not allow the same user to both proofread and validate a page. There are five pages validated here - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:I_will_repay.djvu - where the pages were all proofread and validated by the same user. Was this some sort of exception to the rule ? -- Beardo (talk) 10:59, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @Beardo: No, that shouldn't be possible; and in testing now it wasn't. I have no idea how that user managed it. AIUI this is even enforced server-side, so we even have had problems when admins try to restore a deleted page that had status "Validated". Xover (talk) 11:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @Xover - thanks. The user has now reset those pages, but I wonder if it has happened elsewhere. -- Beardo (talk) 11:43, 29 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Xover: Wolfinux validated the pages, but “Paulc00” proofread them. That’s not an account name, though, so I wonder how that happened. Other pages not validated, like Page:I will repay.djvu/21, also give the “Paulc00” as the person who proofread them. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:01, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I found out what happened! Go to the page User:Paulc00 and you will see that their account was renamed to "Wolfinux" on 18 June 2023. I think, then, that the filters only account for the username of the user, so it appears that the filter has no functionality to detect if a user is renamed. It's very clear to me what happened here; Wolfinux mistakenly validated the page because of the rename. PseudoSkull (talk) 00:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah - when I looked on the page history it showed the same user for both.
 * Do user change their names often ? Is this a glitch in the system that needs to be dealt with ? -- Beardo (talk) 12:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
 * User names change. I don't think that it is enough of a problem to get into a flap about it. The architecture of the internal labels for proofreading was never envisaging account renames, and would be a nightmare to look to implement in its current form. I'd note it and let it go. — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Structure of this page / do we need the subsections
Throwing out a half-baked idea to gauge community thoughts / sentiment (i.e. This Is Not A Proposal™, just an informal discussion that might or might not lead to an actual proposal later)…

This page (the Scriptorium) is currently structured with sections:


 * Announcements
 * Proposals
 * Bot approval requests
 * Repairs (and moves)
 * Other discussions

With all actual discussion happening in "Other discussions". "Bot approval requests" are few an far between, and rarely happen in that section. Could we maybe drop that section of this page? "Repairs (and moves)" is little used, and requests there tend to linger a long time before anybody sees them. It also tends to overlap a lot with Scan lab. Could we maybe diffuse this section's purpose to the Scan Lab, possibly combined with WS:AN or the bot requests page?

"Proposals" and "Announcements" inherently deserve / need to be highlighted like this; but at the same time they almost always want discussion down in "Other discussions", and recent experience indicates that the subsections here are not on their own sufficiently visible for most of our community (it's mostly watched by the very experienced community members, and not even universally among that group). That means there is in any case a need to supplement these sections with things like Watchlist messages, talk page messages, etc. And if those are implemented, does the separate subsections actually add any benefit versus just having a normal thread in among the other discussions with, perhaps, an "ANNOUNCEMENT: " prefix or something?

My hypothesis is that maybe we could do away with the current subsection structure (which is complicated, confusing for newcomers, and sometimes serves to hide as much as highlight), if we tweaked some of our practices in related areas (such as putting proposals in Watchlist notices).

Anybody have thoughts on this? What would we need to put in place in order for dropping the subsections not to loose anything significant? Xover (talk) 08:39, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Imo we do not need subsections. The discussions here are not too numerous so that we needed such a structure, and most people seem to ignore the upper sections anyway. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 22:44, 22 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Announcements isn't used; they get posted wherever. I like having Proposals and Bot requests separate.  Yes, they are seldom used, but making them prominent has been useful to me. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:46, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Autocategorize works by era?
Is there a particular reason we don't autocategorize works into categories like Category:Modern works or Category:Early modern works? I'm sure we could build functionality into the Header templates to categorize the front matter based on what date is listed. Hopefully there would be a lack of false positives there? What do you guys think? PseudoSkull (talk) 21:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The date is usually the date of publication. If we were to auto-categorize, then a 19th-century translation of Julius Caesar, or a modern edition of Beowulf would be categorized as a "Modern" work. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:19, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * An idea, then, would be to find the base work item's date at Wikidata, and that can be retrieved from the version item that's connected to our transcription. But, then again, if we integrated into Wikidata, we could fix a lot of structural problems here that are beyond the context of this discussion. PseudoSkull (talk) 22:36, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * There are huge problems with this, as the "date" on Wikidata can depend on edition or the work. Our links have frequently been placed on the work data item, when it should have been placed on its own edition data item.  Wikidata is far from being usable in this regard for publication data. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:40, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn't the translation issue simple to fix by saying if it is a translation by making Foo Translations a subcategory of Foo Works and placing the translations there and having early-modern translations under Early Modern Works --> Early Modern Translations? I am not even sure that categorizing something like The Yale Shakespeare or an illustrated edition of Beowulf with 1920s illustrations as a "Modern Work" is the wrong place or that an annotated Euclid published today with pages and pages of references to contemporary work should be called an "Ancient Work", categorizing modern editions as modern works and medieval editions as medieval works seems reasonable enough to me. MarkLSteadman (talk) 01:05, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * And I disagree. "Modern" is not simply a function of the date; it pertains to subject and style of composition. And no, the issue isn't so easily corrected. We also have to contend with facsimile copies, reprints, and reissues.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:31, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Doing this assumes that there are hard, well-defined boundaries between the eras. There aren't. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:36, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * And the boundaries, as defined, are based on European history. They won't apply well to works from India, China, or Japan. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * How many works were originally published in English from those countries that will be problematic? I assume categorizing post-1900 works worldwide as Modern isn't that big of an issue... And of those from the 17th / 18th century say, how many aren't by Europeans and hence European classification is a huge issue? Is it really important to have different classifications for works by Clive / Cornwallis et. al whether they were in India or Europe at the time? MarkLSteadman (talk) 01:14, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Why concern ourselves only with works originally published in English? Why ignore the corpus of older works in more recent English translations, for which even categorizing by the original date of composition will have issues? --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:29, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Translations have the date of the original and the date of translation. It isn't "ignoring" them to say we categorize on one instead of the other. If we want all translations / editions of The Analects or The Bible to be categorized by the wikidata "work" date  I don't follow the concern raised above by editions. All editions and translations of The Bible are classified as the same ("Ancient Works") because its a translation but all editions and translations of Beowulf are meant to have a different scheme based on the style or date of publication or whatever we come up with because it is originally in English?  A content-based classification scheme is certainly also a possibility and has its own merits, and deleting the whole Category:Works by era has a fair amount of sense, I am not particularly wedded to it. If we do want to keep it, I think an automated one is better since it will be more complete and consistent. I am fine with either one based of wikidata for the work or one based of the wikidata for version, edition, translation or one based on the header, with more guidance, if we think keeping this Category continues to makes sense, but using automation allows these issues to be captured and documented somewhere.  MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:17, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * All I'm saying is, if we're going to have the categories in the first place, and per the chart on the main category page, the category's placement is purely based on year of the work's conception, then it's painful to see this having to be done manually for each scenario. I would agree that the distinction of "Modern" and "Early modern" being the difference between 1899 and 1900 is very arbitrary, and maybe this would be a reason to have the categories deleted. But, if you think the categories have a place here, I just need to know what the rules of placing this category are. And if those rules are as cut-and-dry as the category makes it out to be, then it would at least make sense to automate them, in theory, even if Wikidata, or the data currently on WS itself, aren't consistent enough to allow us to do that. PseudoSkull (talk) 02:16, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with this completely. MarkLSteadman (talk) 07:22, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It might also be worth noting that authors are already automatically categorized into eras, based on birth and death dates. If it's not appropriate for works, then it probably isn't for authors either. (Personally, I don't really have an opinion, as I never use the eras for anything much; the Category:Works by date tree is quite sufficient usually.) Sam Wilson 23:13, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The categorisation of fiction and non-fiction works itself is quite different and I don't see that it fits into this approach, which to me is more fiction works (not that I am in anyway an expert). Noting that I never use those cats, and never put works into them. I would like to see a schema set out and whether that is applied by WD items or by some other configuration. — billinghurst  sDrewth  00:25, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Classifying "Early Modern" obituaries, or "Modern" books on dressmaking that actually date from 1901 doesn't feel right. These categories by era are for primarily works of fiction, as well as essays and philosophy, possibly for autobiographies.  Works in nonfiction may or may not fit the scheme. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:53, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Greek template malfunctioning (again)
The Greek template is merging characters that should not be merged. For example, the first three characters of the phrase should consist of three characters: delta, iota, and a mark to indicate ellision: the Greek equivalent of the apostrophe. It used to render this correctly, but now does one of the following, randomly, either (1) moving the mark over the preceding vowel, or (2) rending it in the correct location after the consonant, but failing to follow the mark with a space. Here is an example with a consonant instead of a vowel:.

This issue is not consistent, but may be affected by additional namespaces. For example, see: Page:The hymn of Cleanthes; Greek text tr. into English (IA hymnofcleanthesg00clearich).pdf/8 where the same text appears near the end of the first paragraph, but renders differently in the Page namespace than it does in the Mainspace.

It is also possible that the Module responsible was edited for the rendering of Modern Greek, which has different rules from polytonic Greek. This is why we formerly had separate templates, to avoid having Modern Greek rules override display of texts here. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:55, 28 June 2023 (UTC)


 * @EncycloPetey: Differences between namespaces suggest the webfonts module in MediaWiki is involved somehow. But this issue vaguely rings a bell as an old known issue. Are you able to reliably pinpoint when this behaviour changed?Are we sure about this modern vs. ancient Greek distinction? My very superficial skim suggest crasis is never marked in modern Greek, but in ancient Greek rendered in a modern font the coronis is always written above the vowel. It is also my understanding that the two variants have zero difference in meaning, so the distinction is purely stylistic and very minor (annoying, of course, for those who care about precision, but with little real impact).Also of possible relevance, the newest version of the font lists a fix for ("U+1FBD" is the Unicode code point for the non-combining coronis character; the other is U+0343 COMBINING GREEK KORONIS). This probably explains the missing space you're seeing in example #2.Based on this my initial guess is that the first issue is that the font treats U+1FBD GREEK KORONIS as a ligature-able character, in effect treating it as a combining character in certain combinations; and the second is a bug/limitation of the older versions of the font. The latter will require the WMF to update the font (that's going to take time). The former may be possible to work around on-wiki, but at best it'll take non-trivial amounts of research so I wouldn't expect it very soon and there's no guarantee. Xover (talk) 10:08, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * We definitely did not have this problem before the Module implementation. I can't pinpoint the change accurately, since I was busy outside of Wikisource during the early part of 2023. If we can't solve the issue quickly, we may need to return to the former Template implementation until it can be.  It may be that the Module and / or font implementation is not interpreting the coronis + space combination correctly, as that would explain both ways that the error manifests.  --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:59, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
 * @EncycloPetey: I reimplemented the old template implementation at Greek/sandbox and added your examples as test cases at Template:Greek/testcases. Looks the same in both cases to me. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 04:24, 30 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Then something elsewhere must have changed in the way Greek is being interpreted. Drat. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:26, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

So how do we get this issue corrected? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Generate polite messages to users in respect of pages they contributed to that are not-proofread or validated yet?
I am asking for opinions on something. Would there be any benefit to generating non binding 'suggestion' notices automatically, to users in respect of works they made a substantial contribution to, but which were not yet fully proofread or validated? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

In doing some de-linting previously, I found some stuff I'd worked on previously, and did not recalled I even had! :).

The other type of polite 'nudge' message, I was considering suggesting was a note to users about Page:s they contributed to which contained identifiable LintErrors (based on the Linter's output.). As indvidual users probbaly recall better why they formatted something in a particular way, they would be best placed to repair Linter raised concerns.

I'm sort of thinking that these should be opt-in subscriptions to some kind of bot generated report?

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 11:51, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Just leave them a polite and helpful message. Typically adding the welcome message is doing half of what you are saying, and then pointing to a diff of your updating to style. Also useful pointing to Help:Templates — billinghurst  sDrewth  14:08, 7 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm currently working on pages which involve quite a lot of manual typing in and formatting - I'd find it very useful on those to have a note appear as soon as I'd saved the page to let me know if the formatting is correct or not. It can be very hard to see from a visual inspection if all of the italics are properly closed, for example, particularly when there seems to be some odd autocorrecting going on at times where ' sometimes gets turned into a 'smart quote' (I have no idea if that's a function of my browser or some WS option I have turned on, but it's quite irritating!). Qq1122qq (talk) 14:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)


 * It's impossible for anyone to address concerns about what we see. But I could inform, being involved in computing issues for the elderly, and administering several public access desktops in a community center. It's a much observed and studied subject, on an almost daily basis. Particularly, editing in Wikisource is a challenge which has nothing to do with Wikisource, or the Wikimedia family of websites. I researched LCD / LED /etc., monitors for clarity of print and the few 24" desktop monitors that are available, are 3 times as expensive as the average decent quality monitor price.  However, this is a public forum, and may not be a topic of interest for everyone.&#32;— ineuw (talk) 18:45, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Sometimes there are not hard and fast rules about formatting, so an entirely automated tool to catch all formatting issues might not be feasible. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn't syntax highlighting available from the newest toolbar => the pencil character. Toggle that on and off and it gives you syntax on and off. Its whole purpose is to guide you on that stuff. I don't use that toolbar here, so I cannot give an authoritative statement. — billinghurst  sDrewth  06:47, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for pointing me to that - it looks like it will help with many of the syntax errors that creep in to my formatting from time to time. Qq1122qq (talk) 20:35, 8 July 2023 (UTC)