Gareth Owen wrote:
What (if anything) is the present consensus on including (short) PD texts in the 'pedia. I'm thinking of http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
This is not an answer to your question, just a reflexion: At some point, the titles of such texts will "pollute" the name space of Wikipedia. For example, should [[The Raven]] be the poem and [[Raven]] be a description of the bird? Should [[U.S. Constitution]] be a text about the constitution or the text of the constitution? To some extent, titles of works are a namespace of their own.