Federico Leva (Nemo) a écrit :
The strategic planning seems to have only few
proposals for Wikisource:
http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Proposals_for_Wikisource . I
think that Wikisource deserves more, so give a look aat the exissting
proposals, comment them, fix them, add more!
I have read your "make wikisource scalable" proposal.
There is one point that is commonly missed about the
function of Extension:Proofreadpage.
People often think about it as a tool for transcribing
text, similar to the tool they use at Gutenberg. Well,
that is how it looks like, and that's technically true.
However that is just just one side of the story. The point
is, we are on a wiki, where anyone can edit a text, and
introduce changes that are difficult to check. Readers
know this, and they have a priori no reason to believe
that Wikisource texts are faithful to their claimed source.
In this context, we need something to ensure that
Wikisource is reliable and trustworthy.
Try to imagine that you are introduced to Wikisource
and to the wiki concept for the very first time.
You are told two things :
"This is a text by Plato. You may edit it if you wish".
Your first reaction will be to think that the text might
have been modified since Plato wrote it, and that you
have no way to know about it. If you are curious, you
will probably try to see what it actually takes to modify
the text. If the text is provided without Proofreadpage,
you will realize that it is not so difficult to introduce a
small change in a text, and that this change might go
unnoticed, mostly because admins do not have scans,
or do not have the time to look for the relevant page in
scans. So your first impression will be confirmed :-)
This is the true goal of this extension. It does two things :
* it allows us to easily tell apart vandalism (or mistakes
mades in good faith) from true corrections.
* and most importantly, it shows to people that we can
easily tell appart vandalism from corrections, and that it
is not so easy as they think to introduce a mistake in our
texts. It is a trustworthiness tool.
Thomas