GerardM wrote:
Hoi, I would not call it silly, I would call it an intellectual exercise. It is not necessary to call it silly.
Given that Wikisource is about source texts, I am less worried about the veracity of the content than I would be in a Wikipedia project.
Agreed.
There are several projects where the orthography is an exercise in original research as one often not formal orthography is insisted on. This is not restricted to the Belarus Wikipedia by the way.
It is always dangerous to change the orthography from what it is in the original work, but in a lot of cases in the public domain the work has already been done for us. If a Russian work exists only in the pre-revolutionary orthography that should be the standard, but it should not prevent us from adding a modern transcription.
On the other hand one still needs to be careful with English works published before 1800 that used a long "s". Those should be changed, but not at the risk of confusing them with an "f". One needs to be aware of the distinction between orthography and typography.
Ec