Yes getting more traction for Wikisource would be useful, particularly
for non-English texts. The ability to show multiple languages side by
side is an excellent way of transcribing and translating texts,
however one that is rarely used by anyone. I would be surprised if
this attracted many new people who would stay on and become regular
wikisourcerers.

Having 'been around' for quite a while, dabbled in Wikisource and
lurked around its back passages, I still find it comparatively hard to
understand. If this is to attract newcomers, then it would be nice to
see this go hand-in-hand with improving both the guidelines on exactly
how to proofread (there's a complex multi-stage process that could do
with a simpler work-flow), the peculiarities of how text is marked-up
there and the rather convoluted underpinning process for turning a
document/book into a djvu file, loading it on Commons and then setting
it up as a book on Wikisource (phew). I'm fairly wizardly but I found
the "norms" hard to work out and arbitrary.

I agree with Charles' point about low-hanging fruit. With ancient text
transcriptions falling into disrepair (as University IT departments
cut back) there is significant educational value in publishing
transcriptions of Latin and ancient Greek inscriptions, however hardly
any are on Wikisource, as this is much harder than transcribing a page
from a 19th century journal. Having talked to a couple of academics
about this area, I personally would not recommend Wikisource to any
historians over a custom solution at the moment, mainly due to its
poor interface, lack of standards for transcriptions (e.g. how do you
mark up "this letter is likely to be a delta" or "this word is missing
from the original" apart from making generic custom pop up notes?) and
general clunkiness, which is a great pity.

Fae
--
faewik@gmail.com http://j.mp/faewm

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