LaosLos wrote: 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 (lars(a)aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se

--- On Wed, 8/13/08, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: 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

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: 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 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

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 9:33 PM, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote: http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Bibeln_1917 :-) Translations are a new work; no doubt about it. 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. 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. 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._94-1… See: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Law_Revision_(House_Report_No._94-1… -- John

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... 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. 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 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