It concerns mainly WS. Yann -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Universal Library Date: Sat, 5 Sep 2009 02:29:28 -0400 From: David Goodman To: Yann Forget More accurately, the number of items there with adequate and complete information comes close to zero--or perhaps is actually zero-- One example for now, the first I looked at: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Vie_d’Alexandre_le_Grand Plutarque traduction Ricard, 1840 There were many eds. of his translation. The 1840 is not the first ed, which was 1798-1803, but presumably the 1837-1841 published by F.A. Dubois, Vol. and pages not specified. It makes a difference whether a translation was done in the 18th c. or the 19th. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_(Dryden_translation)/Alexander Lives by Plutarch , translated by John Dryden -- but it doesn't specify the edition at all. The French comes out ahead, but not by much. Neither specified just what copy was used, or even what printing, a basic necessity for checking the transcription. IAS and Google Book Search do. Not in the metadata, unfortunately, but they do show it in the scan. They also scan multiple copies from multiple libraries, a basic necessity for scholarly work. No responsible academic would prepare a text from a single copy. As for translation links, the enWS links to the frWS, the frWS links to the enWS, but incorrectly. They both link to the Greek, which gives no indication at all of which edition is being followed. It is very unlikely to be the one use by Ricard or the one used by Dryden. If you want to know, I do not work for the enWS because the accepted standards are so low I have no hope of fixing it; for the enWP I can at least have some effect. As for the frWP sourcing, I checked 20 articles. Half were unsourced entirely, or to primary sources from the subject of the article only. The frWP does an excellent job of sourcing to primary documentary sources--much better than the en. Neither do all that well otherwise, except for scattered articles worked on by good people. The deWP is the one that comes closer to adequacy. David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Yann Forget<yann(a)forget-me.net> wrote: -- http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres