I don't think the WSUG has failed! It's still a great focal point for Wikisource discussions and activity. I talk about it whenever I can. I guess in some ways you're right though. For example, in the recent blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/03/world-book-copyright-day/ about how much "WIkipedia loves books" there was no mention of Wikisource. So there's still a way to go in raising Wikisource to the level of general consciousness (in people, I mean, not some self-aware book transcribing AI). But slowly, we get somewhere. I keep having conversations with people who haven't heard of Wikisource—but who now have, and who usually think it sounds good. I'm happy to be slow and steady. I strive to one day over-take Project Gutenberg! ;) On Mon, 8 May 2017, at 03:13 PM, David Cuenca Tudela wrote:

Hi, IMHO, WSUG has niether failed, nor it's failing. Yes, it's Wikipedia which attracts more more attention, like before and many Wikipedians still don't know what we actually do in Wikisource, which is sometimes frustrating, but things are changing. I can talk about what's going on in Indic Wikisource projects. Community leaders have emerged in Odia and Marathi, who are collaborating with libraries right now for digitization. Tamils have already collaborated with Tamil Nadu state Government to release more than 2000 books under CC license and uploaded them in Commons and may be more. books are going to be released. Punjabi Wikisource has recently been created, which was a indirect result of Wikisource Conference in Wien. For my language, Bengali, we have never got so many active users, as we have now. A year and a half back, we had only 3-5 active users and now we have around 30, many of them are exclusive Wikisource editors. We have already uploaded around 10000 books till now, but couldn't create more than 2500 NS:Index due to lack of volunteers, OCRed 600000 pages, all happened in just a span of one and a half years. Other stats are rising too. We are trying to make it as the largest Bengali digital library in next 10 years, and if everything goes ok, we will do it. I think, Wikisource community likes to work silently, and that's why all the amazing works they are doing don't get noticed by the larger community. We should be present at WMF blog and social media regularly. There is an official Facebook page of Wikipedia , maintained by a foundation staff, why not pressurise him to run an official Facebook page for Wikisource, not only English but for other languages also. That will attract more volunteers for sure. We all are doing fine, maybe slowly, but steadily. I am optimistic. Best regardrs, I don't think the WSUG has failed! It's still a great focal point for Wikisource discussions and activity. I talk about it whenever I can. I guess in some ways you're right though. For example, in the recent blog post https://blog.wikimedia.org/2017/05/03/world-book-copyright-day/ about how much "WIkipedia loves books" there was no mention of Wikisource. So there's still a way to go in raising Wikisource to the level of general consciousness (in people, I mean, not some self-aware book transcribing AI). But slowly, we get somewhere. I keep having conversations with people who haven't heard of Wikisource—but who now have, and who usually think it sounds good. I'm happy to be slow and steady. I strive to one day over-take Project Gutenberg! ;) On Mon, 8 May 2017, at 03:13 PM, David Cuenca Tudela wrote: Hi all, I want to thank Carles for offering the scanner back to our community. In the Wikisource Community User Group sometimes believed that by creating an upper international organization, we would be able to affect the things happening at the base of our movement and at the top. But that has proved not to be true. The Wikisource Community User Group has failed to make a change in the world, and it is a pity, because we all seemed to share an understanding that our project would be very relevant for humanity. However, I have the strong feeling, and conviction that the approach we followed so far was totally wrong. And I want to acknowledge that general feeling. It is painful to accept, but to accept it will allow us to do things better in the future by relying more on the knowledge accumulated by chapters and thematic organizations about how to make things work. As a co-promoter (with Aubrey) of the WSCUg, I want to apologize for not being able to see this potential failure before. I hope that we all can agree that we are all humans and that we are allowed to make mistakes. Even if they are big ones. The intention was good, the result not so good. Sorry about that. Thanks for believing in the international wikisource community, a bunch of hyper-idealists following a crazy librarian's dream of a universal knowledge library... Let's take this impact, but let's keep trying. Every time with more force. I am totally convinced that together we can make it. Please, do provide input about how to reach our aspirations. Cheers, Micru On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 8:32 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) <nemowiki(a)gmail.com> wrote: Thanks for this update on the DIY scanner projects. Carles Paredes Lanau, 07/05/2017 20:18: You can check the books scanned in the following link: https://archive.org/details/bibliotecammb586 Only one? Or do you mean all the 89 items inhttps://archive.org/details/ bibliotecammb ? people from the museum weren't comfortable working with it, since it was very different from the scanners they used in the past. Interesting. Is there a description, even on the DIY scanner forums, of what differences were most impactful for them? Nemo _______________________________________________ Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l -- Etiamsi omnes, ego non *_______________________________________________* Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l _______________________________________________ Wikisource-l mailing list Wikisource-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l