[Wikiml-l] വിക്കിസോര്‍സും വിക്കിബുക്സും - ഒരു ചര്‍ച്ച

Fri Aug 15 07:29:15 UTC 2008

വിക്കിമീഡിയയുടെ [*Wikisourc**e-l*] എന്ന മെയിങ്ങ് ലിസ്റ്റ് കഴിഞ്ഞ കുറച്ച്
ദിവസമായി വിക്കിസോര്‍സിലും വിക്കിബുക്സിലും ഉള്‍പ്പെടുത്താവുന്ന
പുസ്തകങ്ങളെക്കുറിച്ച് ചൂടുപിടിച്ച നടക്കുന്നു. നമുക്കും അതു താല്പര്യമുള്ള
വിഷയമായതിനാല്‍ ആ ലിസ്റ്റില്‍ നടന്ന ചര്‍ച്ചകളില്‍ ചിലത് ഇവിടെ പോസ്റ്റുന്നു.

കൂടുതല്‍ വിവരങ്ങകള്‍ക്കു മെയിലിങ്ങ് ലിസ്റ്റിലെ ഈ
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikisource-l/2008-August/thread.html help
needed searching for pagescans and front covers
<http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikisource-l/2008-August/000425.html>എന്ന
ത്രെഡ് നോക്കുക.

ഷിജു അലക്സ്

----------------------------------------------------
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

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John Vandenberg to discussion
show details Aug 12 (4 days ago)
Reply

On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 3:40 AM, Lars Aronsson <lars at 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

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Lars Aronsson to discussion
show details Aug 13 (2 days ago)
Reply

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 (lars at aronsson.se)
 Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yann Forget to discussion
show details Aug 13 (2 days ago)
Reply

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
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Bibliothèque libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres

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Birgitte SB 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

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Lars Aronsson to discussion
show details Aug 14 (2 days ago)
Reply

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.

--
 Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
 Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
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John VandenbergThat is a tough call. I havent seen a lot of discussion about
this. Wikibooks...
Aug 14 (2 days ago)
John Vandenberg to discussion
show details Aug 14 (2 days ago)
Reply

On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 4:50 AM, Lars Aronsson <lars at 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=481333#Emergency_evacuation

fwiw, Project Gutenberg also allows contributors to donate
translations, however they have let them retain copyright at times.

--
John
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 നടക്കുന്ന വിഷയമാണു
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