We have a complaint about Wikisource having a censored edition of a work by Robert E. Howard:
http://praxeology.net/blog/2008/08/08/he-picked-picts-to-depict/
It is in regards to:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wings_in_the_Night
by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard
There is no Wikipedia article for it, and only a few mentions which might help write a new article:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=howard+%22Wings+in+the+Night%22+-%22List+o...
To be honest, this blogger is spot on. Our editions for these stories are terrible, usually being uploaded by one person from a crappy online edition, altered to partial conform to another crappy online edition of unknown provenance :- rinse and repeat, until we have a very crappy edition indeed.
Example: http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=The_Call_of_Cthulhu&limit=100...
Weird Tales, and the many stories by Howard and Lovecraft, are mostly in the public domain, but they are incredibly hard to find pagescans of. archive.org has none that I can see:
http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Robert%20E.%20Howard%20AND%20mediaty...
I would rather have crappy editions on Wikisource rather than none at all, as it does invite more discussion and participation, and I think the key is to construct the best catalog possible, so that everyone links to us for their bibliographic data. I made a start on this last time I got a bit motivated on this topic:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Weird_Tales
There is heaps of bibliographic data within easy reach on various author pages:
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22weird+tales%22+site%3Aen.wikisource.org
There are a lot of sites that provide images of the front covers, which are mostly PD and could be uploaded to Commons.
http://members.aol.com/weirdtale1/covers23-32.htm
Slightly related, user Atomicsteve did some fantastic work along these lines with US-PD-no-renewal comics.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Atomicsteve http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Atomicsteve
It looks like some people are making pagescans available, .. for a price:
http://members.aol.com/weirdtales/moreinfo.htm
Is there any way we can organise a "bounty" with the foundation for donations to be collated and put towards purchasing pagescans of these rare items?
One source of hope is a PGDP project for "H.P. Lovecraft's Writings in the United Amateur (1915-1922)". No other related PGDP projects that I can see.
http://www.pgdp.net/c/project.php?id=projectID41ef39d98f43c&detail_level...
and in the PGDP forum is the following:
"As a bonus, I've uploaded the rest of Lovecraft in the United Amateur to a image hosting site, if you're curious about what was written in 1924 or want to help clear part of it. It's only 6 pages.
http://bayimg.com/eAEKIAabJ http://bayimg.com/EaekKaabj http://bayimg.com/faeKgAaBj http://bayimg.com/fAekiAABJ http://bayimg.com/FAEKjaaBJ http://bayimg.com/GaekFAabJ"
-- John Mark Vandenberg
John Vandenberg wrote:
To be honest, this blogger is spot on. Our editions for these stories are terrible, usually being uploaded by one person from a crappy online edition, altered to partial conform to another crappy online edition of unknown provenance :- rinse and repeat, until we have a very crappy edition indeed.
That kind of criticism has also been voice against Google Book Search. But libraries still refuse to burn these inferior books. They're kept on shelves, side by side with good ones. Library catalogs seldom indicate the difference.
So, should Wikisource behave like a library or like a publisher that prints a new edition (with up-to-date foreword) of the book?
My opinion is that digitization projects should be digital libraries. But many readers seem to assume that digitization projects are publishers that try to "promote" every book they digitize.
John Vandenberg wrote:
To be honest, this blogger is spot on. Our editions for these stories are terrible, usually being uploaded by one person from a crappy online edition, altered to partial conform to another crappy online edition of unknown provenance :- rinse and repeat, until we have a very crappy edition indeed.
Lars Aronsson wrote:
That kind of criticism has also been voice against Google Book Search. But libraries still refuse to burn these inferior books. They're kept on shelves, side by side with good ones. Library catalogs seldom indicate the difference. [...]
That is because Google Book Search is no other than a digital library: scanned books in pdf format. Nobody there is intended to create nothing but "digital photocopies".
If Wikisource is another digitization project into the galaxy of digitization projects that we can find nowadays on the net, then let's look for scanners and developers who are able of creating some good OCR software, let's look for contributors who are inclined to use them, and we will upload the files to Commons. No need of a Wikisource project to do that.
But, in fact, none of the wikimedia projects are copy/pastes from paper sources (or ''digitization projects''): * Wikipedia is an on-line encyclopaedia created by hundreds of contributors, not a copy/paste from a paper edition of some old encyclopaedia (even when it's lawful to copy text from encyclopaedias which are in PD, as some contributors actually do). * Wikiversity, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikispecies and Wikinews are all mainly related to the creation of new text, even when we can copy PD text from other sources. * Wikiquote is a new database of quotes from everywhere created by the contributors (and fr.wikiquotes has suffered the fact of partially copying the structure of another database). * Commons is full of contributors' works... and PD works, sure.
Why are there people who think that Wikisource is not related to the act of creating something? that is, why WS is not "like a publisher that prints a new edition", even when we are publishing a new encyclopaedia, new textbooks, a new quote database, new images... ?
When the creation of « another sister-project to the wikipedia about current events » was proposed in 2003, the response was:
« I think we should go further still and shoot for the ultimate goal of creating "Wikimedia." That's media with an "m." It would use Wiki-style rules to enable public participation in the creation and editing of all kinds of media. » (Sheldon Rampton, from http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-March/001887.html)
"Public participation in the creation and editing of" whatever you want has no relation with any kind of digital library.
I agree with you when you say that "digitization projects should be digital libraries", but the sister-projects to the Wikipedia were never planned as "digitization projects", and that is also applicable to Wikisource.
The main goals of the Wikimedia projects are "public participation" and "creation". I think we should not forget it.
And the blogger... is spot on ;)
LaosLos
LaosLos wrote:
Why are there people who think that Wikisource is not related to the act of creating something? that is, why WS is not "like a publisher that prints a new edition", even when we are publishing a new encyclopaedia, new textbooks, a new quote database, new images... ?
Could you please stay focused on Wikisource. What exactly is intended to be "created" in Wikisource? The whole purpose of Wikisource is to present source texts, as they were written. It's not really up to us to modify that content, is it?
Lars Aronsson wrote:
LaosLos wrote:
Why are there people who think that Wikisource is not related to the act of creating something? that is, why WS is not "like a publisher that prints a new edition", even when we are publishing a new encyclopaedia, new textbooks, a new quote database, new images... ?
Could you please stay focused on Wikisource. What exactly is intended to be "created" in Wikisource? The whole purpose of Wikisource is to present source texts, as they were written. It's not really up to us to modify that content, is it?
Well, I think this discussion is right on the subject.
Wikisource may not "create" something, but I think that it could rightly be argued that Wikisource publishes texts, even if these texts already existed before being published in Wikisource.
Regards,
Yann
--- On Wed, 8/13/08, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
From: Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se Subject: Re: [Wikisource-l] help needed searching for pagescans and front covers To: "discussion list for Wikisource, the free library" wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Wednesday, August 13, 2008, 10:45 AM LaosLos wrote:
Why are there people who think that Wikisource is not
related to
the act of creating something? that is, why WS is not
"like a
publisher that prints a new edition", even when
we are
publishing a new encyclopaedia, new textbooks, a new
quote
database, new images... ?
Could you please stay focused on Wikisource. What exactly is intended to be "created" in Wikisource? The whole purpose of Wikisource is to present source texts, as they were written. It's not really up to us to modify that content, is it?
While the focus is on accurately presenting texts; that is not all Wikisource is. In fact the more strongly we focus on accuracy the more complicated things are. As John points out, the static nature of texts is mostly a fallacy. While everyone knows that is would silly to type in "Bible" and arrive a the text of the Bible without making further choices on whether you are looking for a Jewish or Christian text much less which translation you are looking for, many other much more mundane texts have a variety editions. Any attempt to be accurate will also invlove creating indexes and researching the various editions and finding ways sharing that research to inform reader's choices. Then there are things like creating translation and adding value to text by wikilinks. I see Wikisource as creating a library rather than creating the texts. The core of a library is always created by others but it is the creation of useful bits around the texts that differentiates a library from a scrapyard of books.
Birgitte SB
Birgitte SB wrote:
Then there are things like creating translation and adding value to text by wikilinks.
In my opinion, translations (performed by wiki volunteers) should belong in Wikibooks and not in Wikisource, exactly because they are not (pre-existing, external) sources but creative efforts.
Copyright legislation recognizes translators just like authors, so the copyright to a wiki-translation belongs to the translators, who can license their work. (I'm assuming that the original authors are long dead and no longer can make such claims.) Whereas most books on Wikisource are in the public domain, where none of the wiki volunteers can claim copyright and thus cannot add any free license.
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
Birgitte SB wrote:
Then there are things like creating translation and adding value to text by wikilinks.
In my opinion, translations (performed by wiki volunteers) should belong in Wikibooks and not in Wikisource, exactly because they are not (pre-existing, external) sources but creative efforts.
That is a tough call. I havent seen a lot of discussion about this.
Wikibooks is about creating new books. Wikisource is focused on old sources. If a source doesnt exist in a language, or one isnt free yet, we see it as within our scope to let contributors create a new translation. It might a five line poem, or a 200 page court document. Or a dissertation. Would all those fit within the scope of Wikibooks?
We have lots of additional infrastructure to deal with sources. An example of one of the benefits of putting "new" translations on Wikisource is the interwiki system, with our "DoubleWiki" extension to provide side by side views
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:DoubleWiki_Extension
e.g.
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Criton?match=el
Copyright legislation recognizes translators just like authors, so the copyright to a wiki-translation belongs to the translators, who can license their work. (I'm assuming that the original authors are long dead and no longer can make such claims.) Whereas most books on Wikisource are in the public domain, where none of the wiki volunteers can claim copyright and thus cannot add any free license.
Of course, however all wiki-translations are GFDL on submission. All wikisource edits are GFDL on submission, however many edits are ineligible for copyright as the submitted text is PD.
As you can imagine, Wikisource is constantly dealing with copyright law, much like Commons. The most notable example is some wiki-translations of Russian works by Osip Mandelstam, which we had to eventually delete because we couldnt determine that the Russian text was PD in the U.S. I seriously doubt that such a complex copyright issue would have been plumbed to such depths on Wikibooks:
http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Scriptorium&oldid=...
fwiw, Project Gutenberg also allows contributors to donate translations, however they have let them retain copyright at times.
-- John
John Vandenberg wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
In my opinion, translations (performed by wiki volunteers) should belong in Wikibooks and not in Wikisource, exactly because they are not (pre-existing, external) sources but creative efforts.
That is a tough call. I havent seen a lot of discussion about this.
Wikibooks is about creating new books. Wikisource is focused on old sources.
Exactly, it all comes down to whether you consider a new translation to be "a new book" or "an old source". We can have different opinions on this. My personal opinion is that translations are new books. For example, the Church of Sweden in 2000 replaced its old official Swedish Bible translation from 1917 with a new one. It does make a difference which text you cite. Also, the translation from 2000 is under copyright, while the 1917 is in the public domain and freely available online.
However, this is not an issue where I take a strong position, it's more of a philosophical issue for me. I'm not active in Wikibooks and have no wish to tell them what to do. I'm not really active in Wikisource either, except that I (user:LA2) three years ago tried to introduce page scanning in Wikisource by uploading [[The New Student's Reference Work]] and [[de:Meyers Blitz-Lexikon]].
I would think that it is important for Wikisource to be a reliable source, one that users can trust and believe to be faithful. Page scanning is a way to achieve this, because "seeing is believing". Allowing freehand translations by unknown volunteers creates the same base for mistrust that Wikipedia suffers from. Perhaps freehand commentaries (user:XYZ's commentary on the Bible) are the next step? Such books exist, just like translations do. And where they don't exist, should they be written? Within Wikisource?
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 9:33 PM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
John Vandenberg wrote:
On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
In my opinion, translations (performed by wiki volunteers) should belong in Wikibooks and not in Wikisource, exactly because they are not (pre-existing, external) sources but creative efforts.
That is a tough call. I havent seen a lot of discussion about this.
Wikibooks is about creating new books. Wikisource is focused on old sources.
Exactly, it all comes down to whether you consider a new translation to be "a new book" or "an old source". We can have different opinions on this. My personal opinion is that translations are new books. For example, the Church of Sweden in 2000 replaced its old official Swedish Bible translation from 1917 with a new one. It does make a difference which text you cite. Also, the translation from 2000 is under copyright, while the 1917 is in the public domain and freely available online.
http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Bibeln_1917 :-)
Translations are a new work; no doubt about it.
However, this is not an issue where I take a strong position, it's more of a philosophical issue for me. I'm not active in Wikibooks and have no wish to tell them what to do. I'm not really active in Wikisource either, except that I (user:LA2) three years ago tried to introduce page scanning in Wikisource by uploading [[The New Student's Reference Work]] and [[de:Meyers Blitz-Lexikon]].
Then you will be comforted to see this:
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics
The German project now mandates pagescans for all contributions; I learnt this the hard way ;-)
We have page quality indicators to indicate how much trust a person should have in the text. We are still young and undermanned, so there is much room for improvement on how we quantify and present this trust metric.
I would think that it is important for Wikisource to be a reliable source, one that users can trust and believe to be faithful. Page scanning is a way to achieve this, because "seeing is believing". Allowing freehand translations by unknown volunteers creates the same base for mistrust that Wikipedia suffers from.
The same mistrust will occur whether the wiki-translation is on wikisource, wikibooks or wikipedia (which has thousands of Wiki translations without any clear evidence that it is a wiki translation).
On Wikisource we require that all wiki translations are clearly marked as such. See the pages in here:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Wikisource_translations
and our proposed guideline here:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Translations
In my opinion, Wikisource will be better prepared to deal with the problems of wiki-translations, as the project rejects all other unpublished works. Our intention is not to accept new works, so people cant wiki-lawyer in order to keep a wild adaption of the original.
Perhaps freehand commentaries (user:XYZ's commentary on the Bible) are the next step? Such books exist, just like translations do. And where they don't exist, should they be written? Within Wikisource?
Annotations can be included on English Wikisource. Annotated editions cant be styled after the persons name.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/WS:ANN
A recently finished annotated work is:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_Report_No._94-14...)
See:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_Report_No._94-14...
-- John
Lars Aronsson wrote:
Birgitte SB wrote:
Then there are things like creating translation and adding value to text by wikilinks.
In my opinion, translations (performed by wiki volunteers) should belong in Wikibooks and not in Wikisource, exactly because they are not (pre-existing, external) sources but creative efforts.
Copyright legislation recognizes translators just like authors, so the copyright to a wiki-translation belongs to the translators, who can license their work. (I'm assuming that the original authors are long dead and no longer can make such claims.) Whereas most books on Wikisource are in the public domain, where none of the wiki volunteers can claim copyright and thus cannot add any free license.
I think that translations belong to Wikisource much better than any other Wikimedia projects, for the reasons also mentioned by others (copyright, DoubleWiki extension, etc.). We already have translations by Wikisource contributors, both of old [1] and recent texts [2].
There is no such thing as the perfect translation. That's one of the reason why commercial editors translate old texts again and again instead of reprinting old translations. So if we accept the old ones, I don't see why we could not accept new translations.
Regards,
Yann
[1] http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/J%27accuse (Zola) [2] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Libre_comme_Libert%C3%A9 (on Stallman)
Lars Aronsson wrote: Could you please stay focused on Wikisource.
I stay focused on Wikisource and on the very first fact that Wikisource is part of the Wikimedia project, and not an independent private wiki.
It may be interesting to think and work together with the sister-projects rather than trying not to look like Wikipedia, not to link Wikipedia, not to speak about Wikipedia...
What exactly is intended to be "created" in Wikisource?
I totally agree with Birgitte about the fact that we are creating firstly a new kind of library: "adding value to text by wikilinks", even when there are people who are against visible interwiki links between Wikisource and Wikipedia or Wiktionary.
Regarding the translations, I don't really know where they should be: "a free library of educational textbooks" doesn't seem the best place for a French translation of "Free as in Freedom", but we can try to redefine Wikibooks (even if we are not staying focused on Wikisource). John has pointed out some interesting ideas in his last mail.
The whole purpose of Wikisource is to present source texts, as they
were written.
The whole purpose of Google Books, of Internet Archive, of Gallica,... is to present source texts as they were written... more precisely, as they were published.
For a while, some of us have copied many texts from other web sites (as they were published? who knows...), some others have typewritten the texts (no new edition? who knows...), and now we have the ultimate tool: we pick up the source texts from digital libraries and dream about having an exact copy of the text in html/wiki format.
It's not really up to us to modify that content, is it?
It cannot be denied that, every time, we will modify that content: * we will try to copy the errata from old paper editions while adding new errata... or is the dummy typewriter a machine?... perhaps it should be... * we will try to copy all the characters as they are and, eventually, we will discover that many old characters don't exist in Unicode... modern transcription?... in any case, time to make decisions. * images at the end of books, images in separate plates... more decisions.
It doesn't matter if we add changes unwittingly or intentionally, we are doing new editions, if you wish: "creating the text" or "modifying the content", but I think these are not the appropriate terms, because these imply some negative connotations that are totally fictitious. Anyway, in my opinion it is better to face the facts than dreaming about the perfect text.
How many "useful bits around the texts" make the text become a new edition? only wikilinks? plus web typography and colours? plus the navigation headers? plus the layout? plus some decisions about the text? about images?
In the publishing world there are only two kind of works based on old works: facsimiles and new editions, and we have not done any facsimile.
LaosLos
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 3:40 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:
John Vandenberg wrote:
To be honest, this blogger is spot on. Our editions for these stories are terrible, usually being uploaded by one person from a crappy online edition, altered to partial conform to another crappy online edition of unknown provenance :- rinse and repeat, until we have a very crappy edition indeed.
That kind of criticism has also been voice against Google Book Search. But libraries still refuse to burn these inferior books.
If a book made it to print, and into a library, it has _made it_ in my opinion. It has gone through the fire of the publishing world, and should be retained forever. Wikisource accepts any edition that has gone through this process.
What I would like to see is that people can turn to Wikisource for an accurate edition of the original article that appeared in a pulp magazine which is now PD. _Then_ people can write their own editions of these stories with full knowledge of the original.
They're kept on shelves, side by side with good ones. Library catalogs seldom indicate the difference.
In a real library, you can pick up the work in your hand, and see the publishing details.
At present, it is extremely rare to find a well attributed and verified edition of these stories, so the casual internet searcher has little chance of knowing which edition came first.
On Wikisource, these pulp magazine articles that are copied from the internet are not well described, so readers have no idea which edition it is that they are reading. I could tag them all with {{fidelity}}, but I would prefer to be surprised by someone saying "I have that issue in my attic", or "yea, these stories are an important piece of our culture: lets pool funds and purchase some pagescans".
So, should Wikisource behave like a library or like a publisher that prints a new edition (with up-to-date foreword) of the book?
An interesting question that Wikisource is trying to figure out. Opinions differ, as usual.
English Wikisource permits annotations without much restraint, which means we are often acting as a publisher, and some are suggesting we permit "user contributed" forewords as well.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/WS:S#Are_we_obliged_to_reproduce_Wikipedia.3F
-- John Vandenberg
wikisource-l@lists.wikimedia.org