Wikisource talk:Community collaboration



The behind the scenes choosing of potential collaborations - please exercise some restraint and demonstrate common sense. If an author really only wrote two books, or has few public domain texts - it might be better for you to focus on the improvement yourself, rather than tying up a handful of members, potentially for months.

Please include reasons why you believe this author deserves special attention, perhaps wiki-linking to important works by the author. Providing a few potential sources of online text grabs wouldn't hurt your chances either.

Works will be listed to the growing list of waiting Collaborations, assuming that one or two other people support the addition of the author, and there are no complaints from others about the notability, texts or otherwise of the author.

You may consider using Category:Authors with no works as a springboard for ideas.

= Schedule =

Next collaboration
Interest seems to be greatest for The Sikh Religion, so unless there are objections, I'll put that up to start in May 2018. People interested in continuing to work on the Eminent Women series can certainly continue to do so, it just won't be advertised on the Main Page. I think 10 months is long enough for a single Comm Collab like that. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:06, 28 April 2018 (UTC)


 * As the last work put in the template was completed in December, I've put Eminent Women back in for March. Which buys time to make a call on what the next should be. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:19, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

We need a new work. Eminent Women has been up since March, 2021 after being up from October, 2017 to April, 2018. It's been getting very little attention though because on 1 May 2021, it was removed from Template:Collaboration, so it no longer shows up on the main page. I'm doing some tweaks to templates but we need to get it back there. --DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 00:51, 24 June 2024 (UTC)


 * Portal:Victoria County History and Nature (journal) would both be big collections to try. Alternatively, and more entertainingly, there are still a lot of public domain works by Wodehouse that need to be proofread. Cremastra (talk) 17:18, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem with Wodehouse is that while some of his works are PD in the United States, they are not in the UK and EU, and won't be until 2046. Contributors outside the US would risk violating international law to help put them online. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:04, 26 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Agreed, those works may be allowed here but their copyright status outside the US would make them inappropriate for a community collaboration. - DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 06:23, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * @Cremastra, Victoria County History and Nature both look like massive projects. The former looks somewhat niche. I'm not sure that I could personally support either but if enough people were interested in Nature, I would try to put some work into it, but I'd like to see something a bit more achievable.- DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 06:49, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Nature has been running in the Monthly Challenge repeatedly and not attracted much improvement, FWIW. Index:Nature - Volume 1.pdf. MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:58, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * We might attack missing works from Portal:Newbery Medal, since that is a long-standing prestigious award for children's literature, and because we have almost none of the books on the list. The down side is that it is an American award, so the winners are all US literature. The related British Award (the Carnegie Medal) did not begin until 1936, which would put its winners outside the scope of PD for purposes of US copyright.  So the Newbery winner list is an option, but I'd personally prefer a multi-national project. --EncycloPetey (talk) 07:08, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * The works of Burton and Balzac are both significant projects if people want ideas. MarkLSteadman (talk) 08:55, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * There was an ask to collaborate on the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 recently, so that might be a option as well. MarkLSteadman (talk) 09:37, 28 June 2024 (UTC)
 * At least not without some real commitments. I recall that being something people were trying to make some progress on 10 years ago or more. Seems like another massive project that would really need someone to lead it up and maybe set up a project page to show the status in a way that was easy for others to understand without extensive research. - DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 05:55, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I think I could probably get behind one of these. Of the two, Burton seems like the larger project. Balzac might be the more achievable to start with, maybe run it for a while and then do Burton if we're successful with Balzac? We really need to do some rebuilding work on the idea of Community Collaborations - DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 06:02, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * for Balzac, looks good. — Alien333 (what I did &amp; why I did it wrong) 15:36, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
 * We really need to think about getting this back up on the main page if we're going to put one of these up though, unless you watch this page or happen to look at a welcome message, you're unlikely to see it otherwise, see discussion I started here: Scriptorium - DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 06:04, 30 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Although it's true this is hard to see, and I arrived here more by mistake than anything else, I don't know if it's really a good idea to put something on the main page that's not really active yet. — Alien333 (what I did &amp; why I did it wrong) 15:38, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

= Proposals = Formally proposing that we do this: The works of Honoré de Balzac, it's not too massive like some other ideas and it appears to have a broad set of needs from finding scans, to doing all the technical work of preparing them, to image work, to getting everything set up for proofreading. - DeirdreAnne(talk • contribs) 17:05, 2 July 2024 (UTC)