[Foundation-l] [Wikisource-l] Universal Library

[John Vandenberg]

On Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Nikola Smolenski<smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> John Vandenberg wrote:
>>> I want to encourage wikipedians and wikisourcerers to join the
>>> OpenLibrary project, just like you should also join OpenStreetMap
>>> and other good projects for free knowledge and information. Bring
>>> your experience. If you get tired of one project, as I do
>>> sometimes, work on another one for a while.
>>
>> Tell me _one_ thing that I can do at OpenLibrary that I can not do at
>> Wikisource.
>
> Are you suggesting that in addition to collecting free texts, Wikisource
> should also collect information about texts, free and nonfree, like
> OpenLibrary does? If so, that is a very interesting suggestion, and I
> support it.

Yes, that is my vision.  We should have bibliographic information,
copyright details, list of chapter and summaries, list of older works
which are referenced and list of later works which reference it, etc.

However, the Wikisource community is not yet large enough to manage
that.  A year ago the English Wikisource community changed the
restrictions on who can have an Author page.

Previously our rule was: the author must have at least one "free" work.

It changed to: the author must either have one "free" work, or they
must be deceased.

English Wikisource often includes modern works on the Author page of
deceased people, listing biographies, posthumous collections, etc.

As our community grows, managed by people who are focused on old
works, we can relax the inclusion criteria.

This is like the English Wikipedia becoming more inclusive as it has
grown, because there are more people policing the edges.

Organic growth.

If this doesn't happen, I wont fret as there are more than enough
public domain works to keep me learning for a few lifetimes. :-)  I
think it is much more important that we revive interest in old works
which dont have a commercial publisher pushing new copies into
bookstores.

--
John Vandenberg