[Wikisource-l] Universal Library

Yann Forget yann at forget-me.net
Sat Sep 5 13:34:59 UTC 2009


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 at forget-me.net> wrote:
> David Goodman wrote:
> ...
>> information)  The accuracy & adequacy -- let alone completeness-- of
>> the bibliographic information in WS is close to zero,
>
> This alone shows that you know very little of this project, where I have
> never seen you. You claim to be an expert, but you talk about things
> which you don't know. So I won't pursue this discussion, it is quite
> useless in that context.
>
> ...
>> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann

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