[Wikisource-l] Proofreading

[ThomasV]

It is nice to see that there finally is some communication
between subdomains about this topic. I said several times
that this issue should be discussed at an inter-wiki level,
and not just in the de.ws scriptorium.

First I need to explain that the de.ws community is
highly disciplined and organized. They have more
rules than the other Wikisources, and these rules
are well enforced by the community.

This high level of discipline and organization does
not exist at other Wikisources, where users have
more freedom to do what they like, rather than
what the community has decided. For example,
up to now, no other wiki has been able to make
scans mandatory with new texts. Another example
is that any new text added to the German wikisource
must be supported by at least two separate users,
who are committed to proofreading it twice.
If a text is not properly proofread it gets deleted.

The "double proofreading" rule existed at de.ws
before I implemented it in ProofreadPage. In the
old system, the rule was not enforced by software,
but by the community and its administrators. They
used to check the history of a page in order to know
if a page had been proofread by two different people.

I added the "two users" validation rule to ProofreadPage
more than 2 years ago. A consequence of this rule is that
anonymous users are not allowed to validate pages, and
I guess everybody understands why. (although it would
be possible to whitelist some fixed IPs, as I suggested in
bugzilla)

As I said in the bug, the double proofreading rule of
ProofreadPage is not meant to be secure or sockpuppet-proof.
It is just meant to be unambiguous. If we removed it,
then users would make their own interpretation of the
meaning of the buttons, and this would break the
current system. it is not a question of bad faith, it
is a question of poor communication.

Of course the system would not break apart on de.ws, thanks
to the very strict rules and good communication that exist there.
But it would certainly break apart on other wikis, because they
are more loosely organized and they do not have this high
level of discipline. This is why I think it would harm Wikisource
to remove the "two users" rule from the software. An any case,
I will not change the proofreading system of all Wikisources
just because de.ws wants it.

I am also not going to provide extra software for de.ws.
I did this for quite some time, because they requested an
horizontal edition layout, which is now available everywhere.
During that time, it is true that software updates in the
extension triggered more bugs at de.ws than elsewhere,
because everytime I made an update to the main code,
the javascript at de.ws was broken and had to be updated.
It was kind of a nightmare in terms of management, and
I received very little thanks for the time that I spent doing
it. In addition, you guys should understand that I am not
the person who decides when the code update goes live,
so it was not possible for me to warn people in advance,
or to update the de.ws javascript simultaneously with the
code update.

However, the fact that I have decided to stop providing extra
software solutions for de.ws does not mean that it is not possible
to do what they want. It is perfectly possible to configure a wiki
so that IPs can add the categories "proofread" or "validated". It
is therefore unnecessary to fork the software, and it would even
be quite stupid to do so. The germans used to use a template in
order to validate their pages (Seitenstatus) before I introduced
this buttons system. This should still work. Using local javascript,
they can even create buttons linked to this template, so that users
will not notice any difference from the current system. I already
proposed this solution in the bug, but my suggestion was not
considered, to say the least
(see https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20812#c7).

I will not program this solution myself, for 2 reasons :
- I am tired of working for de.ws and getting insults everytime
something does not work as dictated by local admins. Some
excuses and acknowlegdements of the work I did for de.ws
would be first needed.
- I think that it would be quite a bad thing for de.ws to start
using different proofreading rules than the rest of the community;
it would harm their reputation, and it would possibly create
discord between subdomains. Some de.ws admins are happy
to claim that they do not care about what other subdomains
think, because they have superior quality standards; however
I do not think that all the de.ws users share this point of view.

Even if I am not willing to program an extra solution for de.ws,
I know that some de.ws admins are perfectly able to program the
solution they want. They do not need me for that. They know it.

Thomas