Wikisource:Scriptorium

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Proposals

Request that English Wikisource be added to Commons deletion notification bot

Per an earlier discussion, it sounds like it would be useful for Wikisource to be notified when files in use here are nominated for deletion on Commons. The Commons deletion notification bot run by the WMF Community Tech team provides such a service. We just have to have local consensus for using the bot and then make a request on Phabricator. If you have any opinion about this, please make it known below. Nosferattus (talk) 02:16, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support - not only useful for copyright reasons but for the fact that for almost every Index, there are hundreds of page namespace pages that would have to get mass-deleted / mass-moved etc. every time something is deleted, so better to know ahead of time to prepare our admins for that in advance. SnowyCinema (talk) 02:40, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

provisional support—provided that the notifications are restricted to files that are relevant to enWS and that the notifications are prior to deletion rather than post-deletion. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 05:42, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support, would be useful to be able to import files. @Beeswaxcandle: From what I can see of this bot's edits, it only makes "file has been nominated for deletion" pings, which are pre-deletion. Also, it only notifies a Talk: page when a file used on it or on its item is getting nominated, so I don't think we're going to get flooded by irrelevant files. — Alien  3
3 3 06:29, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support per all above. We should not be caught unawares by actions on another project. BD2412 T 05:15, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:27, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support - Very useful. The bot notifies by posting a message on the first 10 talk pages of a page where a Commons file is being used, upon the file being nominated for deletion. Ciridae (talk) 16:53, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support —Tcr25 (talk) 22:44, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

 Support and prepare to move things here accordingly.--Jusjih (talk) 00:58, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

 Support per the above. (User:CommonsDelinker does a similar thing but for already deleted files, which is also quite useful.) Duckmather (talk) 23:04, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

I have posted the Phabricator request here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T384484. Nosferattus (talk) 15:07, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: Another discussion here: Is the Index talk page the best place for this notification? Talk pages often go totally unnoticed on smaller wikis like this one, or the editors involved with those indexes may have left 10 years ago. Should the bot give the Scriptorium, Copyright discussions or some other main discussion space, a notice instead, so the entire community can become immediately aware? SnowyCinema (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

That is a great question. Feel free to open a new discussion about that so that we can collect more input. Nosferattus (talk) 15:58, 22 January 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: I agree that Scriptorium would be a much better place for such notifications. Besides, I understand that the above discussion was about files generally, not only about .pdf and .djvu files. Some index pages are backed by .jpg or other kinds of files too. Besides, we may need to upload locally some images used as illustrations of our works too. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 14:11, 1 March 2025 (UTC)

@Nosferattus: I am going to close the request as approved. Which other steps are you planning next? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:15, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: Thanks! I guess we just have to wait on the Community Tech team to implement support now. Nosferattus (talk) 19:29, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Bot approval requests

• See Wikisource:Bots for information about applying for a bot status
• See Wikisource:Bot requests if you require an existing bot to undertake a task

Repairs (and moves)

Designated for requests related to the repair of works (and scans of works) presented on Wikisource

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

Renascence and other poems

This should be moved to Renascence and Other Poems. In addition, the poems themselves need to be moved to title-case. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 22:28, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

 Oppose Moving the main page of the work, since sentence case is explicitly allowed by policy. We can move the pages of the individual poems, since all-caps is not recommended. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:34, 16 February 2025 (UTC)

Not voting here; regardless of policy, I have seen mass moves towards this title-case style and adjusted my own title cases here and at wikidata. I appreciate the uniformity and the fact that it is how I was taught to title things; two moot reasons for sure but honest. Perhaps that policy should be changed and voting can happen there. Typically this is not an area that gets votes.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 12:54, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

The problem with title case is that there are several different kinds to choose from. If the original book used some of the several kinds of title case, it could be given priority. However, that is not the case of this book, which uses all caps for the title, which should be avoided in WS. The original transcribing contributor chose to use the sentence case, and so their choice should be respected. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 00:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Preparation for death

The sub-pages need to be moved under the current title, Preparation for Death; in addition, they need to be changed to Consolation # from their current titles. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 04:41, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

You mean Consideration not Consolation - no ? -- Beardo (talk) 04:59, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea.: could you answer that question? I'm waiting for that to do the move. Thanks. — Alien  3
3 3 08:07, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Alien: I was working on cleaning up Consolation at the time, so I wrote down the wrong name. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:27, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Five excellent songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Five Excellent Songs ("The Constant Shepherd") (see Five Excellent Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 13:54, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Five favourite songs (11)

This needs to be moved to Five Favourite Songs ("The Golden Glove") (see Five Favourite Songs) for disambiguation purposes. In addition, the pages should be moved from Index:Five favourite songs (11).pdf to Index:Five favourite songs (10).pdf, as the latter is a much superior scan of the same edition. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:08, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

 Comment Index:(11) does seem to me to be the better scan. e.g. compare Page:Five favourite songs (11).pdf/5 and Page:Five favourite songs (10).pdf/5. The page scan for (10) is visibly more blurred. — Alien  3
3 3 08:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Other than that, the mainspace move is Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:10, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Alien: (10) is better than (11) because p. 4 is cut off in (11) (requiring reconstruct templates), while no text is cut off in (10). I would prefer that one of the indexes be deleted; we certainly don’t need both. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  Ah, indeed, makes sense. Blurring is negligible compared to cuts. Done — Alien  3
  3 3 14:45, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Five popular songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Five Popular Songs (Edinburgh) (see Five Popular Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:20, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:13, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Five songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Five Songs ("Robinson Crusoe") (see Five Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:43, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:15, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Index:Ukpga 18610100 en.pdf

This needs to be moved to Index:Offences against the Person Act 1861 (UKPGA Vict-24-25-100 qp).pdf due to file move on commons. ToxicPea (talk) 18:11, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:18, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Four Songs ("Duke of Gordon's three Daughters") (see Four Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:02, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four Songs (6)

This needs to be moved to Four Songs ("Roy's wife of Aldivalloch") (see Four Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:02, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 08:22, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four excellent songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Four Excellent Songs ("Home, sweet Home") (see Four Excellent Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 09:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four excellent songs (10)

This needs to be moved to Four Excellent Songs ("The Laird of Cockpen") (see Four Excellent Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:24, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four favourite songs (104185890)

This should be moved to Four Favourite Songs (Glasgow) for more useful disambiguation. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:41, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 09:37, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four Favourite Songs (2)

This should be moved to Four Favourite Songs (Newton-Stewart) for more useful disambiguation. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:41, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 09:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333: Just reminding that when moving some pages it is also necessary to fix all the broken links and also broken redirects have to be either fixed or deleted. Done now :-) --Jan Kameníček (talk) 10:18, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes I know, and most of the time moving I have spent updating links. Ah, I see, missed this TOC. — Alien  3
3 3 10:20, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

• Alien, Jan Kameníček: Thank you for all the moves! I’ve been cleaning up the NLS chapbooks with similar titles, and I run into a lot of these issues. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 14:35, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: No problem. Feel free to request similar moves whenever needed. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Four excellent new songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Four Excellent New Songs (c. 1780, Falkirk) (see Four Excellent New Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:47, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Four excellent new songs

This needs to be moved to Four Excellent New Songs (c. 1805) (see Four Excellent New Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 19:47, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Four Excellent New Songs (3)

This needs to be moved to Four Excellent New Songs ("Johnny's Grey-Breeks") (see Four Excellent New Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:15, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Afterglow

This needs to be moved to Afterglow (Buck) to disambiguate (among other items, An Autumn Love Cycle/Afterglow). TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:15, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Seven favourite songs (1)

This needs to be moved to Seven Favourite Songs ("Blink bonniely, thou E'ening Star") (see Seven Favourite Songs) for disambiguation purposes. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:04, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Tam Glen (1)

This should be moved to Tam Glen (Glasgow) (see Tam Glen), as that is a more comprehensible disambiguator. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 19:55, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Done --Jan Kameníček (talk) 21:16, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Index:Yiddish Short Stories - ed. Isaac Goldberg (1923).djvu

The OCR is one page out from the scans. -- Beardo (talk) 02:07, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Realigned. — Alien  3
3 3 13:20, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. -- Beardo (talk) 14:01, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Two songs

This should be moved to Two Songs ("The Blaeberries") (see Two Songs), as that is a more comprehensible disambiguator. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 12:54, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 16:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Replacement of Index:Doctor Grimshawe's Secret.djvu

The scan file here (a poor Google one) is missing multiple pages. There is a much better Library of Congress scan of the same edition already on Commons. Could someone change the index page so that it links to https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doctor_Grimshawe%27s_Secret_(1883).djvu instead of the current file? Once this is done, the existing transcriptions will need to be moved, as follows:—

• Index page name = Index:Doctor_Grimshawe's_Secret_(1883).djvu
• Page offset = -9 (i.e. text on /16 moves to /7)
• Pages to move = "14-42"
• Reason = "realigned pages"

Chrisguise (talk) 08:30, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Done. Be careful, though, it's not exactly the same edition. I deleted what used to be /14 and /15, because they aren't in this file. — Alien  3
3 3 16:47, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. According to A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1905), by Nina E. Browne, p.31, there was a large paper version of the book issued (limited to 250 copies). It says:

DR. GRIMSHAWE'S SECRET, a Romance; edited with Preface and Notes by Julian Hawthorne. 13+368 pp. facsimile, D. Boston, James R. Osgood & Co. 1883.

First edition.

A special large paper edition, limited to 250 copies, was also issued, which had an extra title-page, and an etched frontispiece by E. H. Garrett.

The original file was a scan of the large paper copy whereas the LoC one is of the standard sized book. However, a comparison of a few random pages indicates that the two versions were printed from the same type. Chrisguise (talk) 18:07, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Ok, good. Makes sense. — Alien  3
3 3 18:14, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

The Moon Pool (All Story Weekly, 1918) and The Conquest of the Moon Pool (All Story Weekly, 1919)

The works are "sourced" but not "scan-backed". The titles reflect the original publication, not the scan they were transcribed from. So, please move:

1. The Moon Pool (All Story Weekly, 1918) to The Moon Pool (1940)
2. The Conquest of the Moon Pool (All Story Weekly, 1919) to The Conquest of the Moon Pool (1948)

--RaboKarbakian (talk) 10:54, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

The Internet Archive document linked on the discussion page of The Moon Pool is dated September 1939 - so shouldn't that be moved to The Moon Pool (1939) ? -- Beardo (talk) 15:00, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

It completed its last part (installment) in 1940. We use the latest year here. We probably use the latest year because of the public domain day, which would not apply in this case, but I chose it for consistency and because public domain days keep flying by and we chose the last year for those. A lot of magazines split their volumes over two different years.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:29, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't they be moved within the source they're sourced from? i.e. Famous Fantastic Mysteries/Issue 1/The Moon Pool and Fantastic Novels/Volume 2/Issue 3/The Conquest of the Moon Pool? — Alien  3
3 3 16:50, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 - good point ! -- Beardo (talk) 19:23, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

I found and then lost a text that was hidden like this when I made one of the two All-Stories. Found it again! All-Story Weekly/Volume 98/Number 3/Fires Rekindled. If Famous Fantastic Mysteries doesn't exist--I just found that first one by accident. Oh! The New York Sun! Please, only do that "future linking" if you also do something like what is happening at The Sun, where I have been tossing redirects to when I find them.

And, of course, Famous Fantastic Mysteries does exist. I am moving this to a new discussion under "Other discussions"....--RaboKarbakian (talk) 09:34, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing. —Uzume (talk) 12:21, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Other discussions

Index lua issue

@CalendulaAsteraceae: All indexes I can find have "Lua error in Module:Proofreadpage_index_template at line 516: data for mw.loadData contains unsupported data type 'function'." now. I suggest we maybe revert at Module:Proofreadpage index template/config until we can sort it out. — Alien  3
3 3 19:07, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

(Note: it has been reverted and issue is now fixed.) — Alien  3
3 3 19:44, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks. People may still encounter the issue for a while until everything is updated. It's showing up on multiple pages for me, but I find that I can clear the problem with a null edit. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:58, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

How long? I'm still getting it. IdiotSavant (talk) 02:24, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Try purging the page. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:29, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Is there going to be a way to clear the problem automatically ? Or will each index need to be done manually ? -- Beardo (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

If we want, we could null-edit all indexes with a bot, but before undertaking mass site-wide actions I'd prefer waiting a week (so until the 18th) to see if it doesn't fix itself. — Alien  3
3 3 17:42, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

OK. Could a bot do a purge on all indexes ? -- Beardo (talk) 17:59, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

A null-edit is I think about equivalent (for our purposes) to a hard purge. What I mean is that doing a null edit also have the effect of a purge. We could also just purge, if we want to. — Alien  3
3 3 18:18, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

I still see indexes with this error and the "What links here" tool often does not work. The Orphaned Pages listing is full of pages which are not actually orphaned. -- Beardo (talk) 16:56, 22 March 2025 (UTC)

Ok, will try to patch something up to mass-purge things. — Alien  3
3 3 07:51, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

All wikipages do get "purged" eventually, it's just it can take quite a bit of time for indirect changes like this. You may want to check whether you can find some way to see the number of affected pages and watch that for a bit before firing up a bot (i.e. how big and whether and how fast it is decreasing). If you have to null-edit every single Index:-namespace page that's going to be a pretty big job (takes a long time and puts strain on the servers). Xover (talk) 10:26, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

@Beardo: How often are you finding some that still have the issue? I've just fished through about two hundred of them (to try and get a good way of selecting them), and I haven't managed to find one that still has the error. — Alien  3
3 3 14:39, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Special:LonelyPages&limit=20&offset=1430 - has 3,567 Pages showing nothing links to them, and that only reaches partway through letter A. Selecting any, going to the index and doing a hard purge, and suddenly the pages find that they are linked. There must be many multiple of thousands of Pages affected. -- Beardo (talk) 21:08, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

LonelyPages only gets updated once in a while, and last updated 07:38, March 22, 2025. — Alien  3
3 3 07:04, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

Generally updated every three days. Updated today. So now two weeks since the problem happened. -- Beardo (talk) 23:42, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Ah, indeed, it still lists them. It gives us a good means to know which indexes are affected: through api?action=query&list=querypage&qppage=Lonelypages&qplimit=500, and then by looping the continue.

In the 5000 pages in cache, there are about 3600 Page:s, from 147 distinct indexes. If we null-edit them, and assume 150 new indexes every three days, that would make 50 null edits a day, so about two null edits an hour. Which should be mostly fine on server load. @Xover: What do you think? — Alien  3
3 3 07:04, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

It's been about a month and still on. Will try to patch up some code and report after. — Alien  3
3 3 17:39, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Just to note that I've been going into Lonelypages at each update and null-editing the related indices. The current round didn't take long as there were a couple that had over 500 pages listed. For indices with only a few pages listed, the pages tend to be blanks that haven't been transcluded. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 19:12, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Proposal for interface admin

Catching issues with indices are pretty common. I propose that we should have an interface element in the MediaWiki namespace that tells users something like "If the index is showing [error], try purging the page" with some explanatory text on how to purge, etc. I am hopeful that this will reduce the requests, frustration, and overhead. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:22, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I mocked up this at mul.ws: s:mul:MediaWiki:Editnotice-106, —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

This thread wasn't about the now classic "Invalid Index" thing we've had for a year, it was for a mistake in lua code which had propagated an error to all indexes (but since it's been corrected it doesn't show up on new indexes, as the draft you made implies).

That being said, adding a mention of the Invalid Index thing in the editnotice sounds like a good idea. — Alien  3
3 3 18:34, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, that's why I created a sub-heading. The original topic inspired this topic, so I don't want to distract from the original one. If that wasn't clear, I had hoped that the L3 header would make it clear. Evidently not. :/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:37, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

'color:black' and related.

Enough. Various contributors have done various (background-color:black) migrations, across various namespaces.

Which of the approaches is the CONSISTENT and STABLE fix, otherwise the attempted fixes are a waste of time? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:32, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

For the record: as far as I know, there isn't only one solution. Replacing the black by currentcolor, removing it, and replacing it with a codex variable all three work in most cases. — Alien  3
3 3 17:55, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

<rant>It would be nice as with other issues to have ONE, CONSISTENT and STABLE repair to apply, which can be fixed using AWB in a short period, rather than a hap-hazzard, what 'seems' to work approach, by random contributors. </rant>

ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:35, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Okay ,I found the Codex.. And have some idea of which incantations to chant to tame the CSS.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I HAVE HAD IT. Some update I made a while ago doesn't work here and so was reverted. Perhaps someone else can make 'night-mode' behave in a sane way? Until then I'm sorely tempted to just disable the template that's causing the conflict. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Can someone else also please look over Template:TOC templates/styles.css and find the working version, and editprotect it, so I';m not thrashing around trying to NOT solve the problem please? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 13:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Yet another example of dots overlapping. : Index:Mazeppa (1819).djvu , I'm sorely tempted to just start disabling broken templates, until they get repaired. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 15:28, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Definitely not. The templates seemed working fine until this night mode play started. So, it seems to me that first everything should be made compatible with the night mode without disabling anything, and only after all this will be done the night mode should be deployed. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 15:50, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps you can figure out why in the instance listed the two templates don't work together? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:13, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

which.. is ... what .. I ... have ... been ... attempting to do. But some templates DO.. NOT.. WANT.. to work nicely together. Currently {{Dotted TOC page listing}} and {{AuxToc}} - Is there some aspect of overlapping CSS styles that I am missing entirely? With these two templates, I've tried various minor changes to try and get a stable template in BOTH light and dark modes and cannot seemingly pull it together. Can someone else please find the last STABLE versions of all the tempalates I've made attempts to repair, and actually implement something STABLE please? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:53, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Stop bothering with {{Dotted TOC page listing}}. It has long been an example of how not to do a template and playing with it further always makes it worse. It needs to die, but is too widely used at present. Also, DTPL and AuxTOC were never intended to work together, so trying to make them play nicely is not worth the candle. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 17:29, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

As stated above , I'm sorely tempted to just disable the template and break stuff in one massive outage, it.. should .. not ... need ... something that drastic to get things fixed.. I've tried various approaches to get working.. NONE worked. In Dark mode trying to set backgroundtext doesn't even actually seem to work properly anyway. FIX the template or it should be disabled immediately, I am FED UP running around in circles trying to improve things, only be told I shouldn't have bothered.. Drain of effort, seriously :( ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:39, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I did a quick test with {{Dotted TOC line}} which didn't work either, showing almost exactly the same problem. There should be ONE template that ACTUALLY works, instead of contributors playing hunt the glitch? As I said above, FIX or the templates should start to be disabled. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:50, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I've essentially had enough of playing find the quirk, especially when I can't actually find what went wrong in the first place, and it's not as if 'night mode' is actually something Wikisource asked for.. <rant> ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:53, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Of course if CSS had support for actual dot leaders... <rant>.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:07, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

ShakespeareFan00: Here is Inductiveload's toc to toc conversion script. It smartly replaces dtpl with the other one. If you want to massively relieve source from this template, this is how to do it. I make no promises about it fixing the AuxTOC problems, but this script could be run once every 3 months or so and repeatedly fix a lot of problems while allowing the very simplified use of the offending template.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 13:00, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:Dotted TOC page listing

Okay I was trying to get this working, and it now broken beyond being repaired apparently. I don't know what revert or change made it stop working anymore. Can somone else PLEASE find a STABLE version and lock it, so I'm not going round in circles trying to make this unstable clunker actually BEHAVE! ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

You've made me reconsider if it's actually worth the time to actually care, if technical problems like this are not going to be solveable on a realistic timescale.. Do not make me waste effort on this again! ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:03, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Ive now gone all the way back to the last version by a different contributor. And this page is now not rendering properly..

Page:The_Zoologist,_4th_series,_vol_1_(1897).djvu/522. At some point today it WAS working. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 22:10, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Names of UK Government Statutory Instruments

I queried that The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020 was moved and retitled to Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, when the SI clearly has the former title and was told that most of the other pages in Category:Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom remove the leading "The". Why is this done? I think it should not be. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:34, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I venture that users have attempted to align with Wikipedia's convention of dropping articles whenever possible (their style guide states that leading articles should be dropped unless they are "inseparable" to the name, and Wikipedia editors appear to have decided that the "the" is not needed for UK legislation). However, Legislation.gov.uk, Wikidata, and Commons files all include "the" for SIs. I'm not sure what Wikisource's style guide is for this, but I would assume we would want to maintain names as they appear in source texts, rather than changing them to align with Wikipedia article conventions. We don't have too many SIs in mainspace yet, so if anyone else has comments, it would probably be best to standardize them now. Currently some have "the" and some do not. Penguin1737 (talk) 17:59, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

What does the semi official SI guidance (seem to recall there is a guide linked on legislation.gov) say on titles? ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 18:18, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

The wikipedia style guide says "Do not place definite or indefinite articles at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name ..." - surely they are part of the proper name here ? -- Beardo (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Legislation.gov's guidance for ministers and staff writing them states: "The title should begin with ‘The…’ and end with the year in which it is made. The only exception to using ‘The’ in SI titles is when they start with ‘[His] Majesty’s…’". On legislation.gov, "the" is only omitted in a few cases where it appears in the original text, so few that it is likely data entry errors. There are historical SIs without "the" in the title, but they are mainly Acts of Sederunt and Adjornal by Scottish courts.

I also agree that "the" is part of the proper name of the act, and thus should be included in the mainspace name. Penguin1737 (talk) 00:35, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

General comment There is no problem here at enWS with the definite article being used at the beginning of a title. A defaultsort with the "The" moved to the end of the title should be used, which disposes of the need for redirects. We are not enWP and do not follow their titling rules, as we are reproducing published works rather than writing new articles. If the title, as published, begins with "The …", then there is no question that we should follow suit in our titling. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 09:08, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Comment I too adopt the practice of dropping the "The" for statutory instruments (as well as other legislation), as it would create a bunch of texts categorized under "T" in relevant categories. The only case that I can think of is in case the "The" forms the name of some organization (as an example, The Legislative Council Commission Ordinance instead of Legislative Council Commission Ordinance). Again, this represents my style — some might well prefer naming texts like Statutory Instruments/1964/1973! My opinion is that (a) if "The" is included, make sure the categorization is based on the second word in the title, and (b) do provide suitable redirects for others.廣九直通車 (talk) 09:39, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

If you want to change how things are indexed in categories, use DEFAULTSORT:, don't misname them. And use standardised, not personal, styles. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:20, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

For information: on the technical side: {{header}} defaultsorts automatically now. e.g. The Lady of the Lake is categorised as Lady of the Lake, The. (It can be overriden by invoking defaultsort manually when needed.) — Alien  3
3 3 11:27, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

It seems that the general consensus here is to keep the leading "The". Is everyone okay if I go ahead move the pages in Category:Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom to implement this? ToxicPea (talk) 15:50, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

FYI, I've now raised the same issue on en.Wikipedia: w:Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Statutory instruments of the United Kingdom. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:35, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-12

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• Twice a year, around the equinoxes, the Wikimedia Foundation's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team performs a datacenter server switchover, redirecting all traffic from one primary server to its backup. This provides reliability in case of a crisis, as we can always fall back on the other datacenter. Thanks to the Listen to Wikipedia tool, you can hear the switchover take place: Before it begins, you'll hear the steady stream of edits; Then, as the system enters a brief read-only phase, the sound stops for a couple of minutes, before resuming after the switchover. You can read more about the background and details of this process on the Diff blog. If you want to keep an ear out for the next server switchover, listen to the wikis on March 19 at 14:00 UTC.

Updates for editors

• The improved Content Translation tool dashboard is now available in 10 Wikipedias and will be available for all Wikipedias soon. With the unified dashboard, desktop users can now: Translate new sections of an article; Discover and access topic-based article suggestion filters (initially available only for mobile device users); Discover and access the Community-defined lists filter, also known as "Collections", from wiki-projects and campaigns.
• On Wikimedia Commons, a new system to select the appropriate file categories has been introduced: if a category has one or more subcategories, users will be able to click on an arrow that will open the subcategories directly within the form, and choose the correct one. The parent category name will always be shown on top, and it will always be possible to come back to it. This should decrease the amount of work for volunteers in fixing/creating new categories. The change is also available on mobile. These changes are part of planned improvements to the UploadWizard.
• The Community Tech team is seeking wikis to join a pilot for the Multiblocks feature and a refreshed Special:Block page in late March. Multiblocks enables administrators to impose multiple different types of blocks on the same user at the same time. If you are an admin or steward and would like us to discuss joining the pilot with your community, please leave a message on the project talk page.
• Starting March 25, the Editing team will test a new feature for Edit Check at 12 Wikipedias: Multi-Check. Half of the newcomers on these wikis will see all Reference Checks during their edit session, while the other half will continue seeing only one. The goal of this test is to see if users are confused or discouraged when shown multiple Reference Checks (when relevant) within a single editing session. At these wikis, the tags used on edits that show References Check will be simplified, as multiple tags could be shown within a single edit. Changes to the tags are documented on Phabricator. [1]
• The Global reminder bot, which is a service for notifying users that their temporary user-rights are about to expire, now supports using the localized name of the user-rights group in the message heading. Translators can see the listing of existing translations and documentation to check if their language needs updating or creation.
• The GlobalPreferences gender setting, which is used for how the software should refer to you in interface messages, now works as expected by overriding the local defaults. [2]
• View all 26 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, the Wikipedia App for Android had a bug fixed for when a user is browsing and searching in multiple languages. [3]

Updates for technical contributors

• Later this week, the way that Codex styles are loaded will be changing. There is a small risk that this may result in unstyled interface message boxes on certain pages. User generated content (e.g. templates) is not impacted. Gadgets may be impacted. If you see any issues please report them. See the linked task for details, screenshots, and documentation on how to fix any affected gadgets.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

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MediaWiki message delivery 23:48, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:Rbstagedir

A couple of points about this template.

First, in some works with rhs italic stage directions, if a character name appears in the direction then it is in normal text, not italic. Surrounding the relevant word with '' works fine except if it is the first word, when the template produces the wrong result. This error can be avoided by using the {{normal}} template (see following example).

[My name is Fred.

['Fred is my name.

[Fred is my name.

Second, the template assumes that a square bracket is required, which is not the case with a lot of works. It would be helpful if the template had the option to either include or not include the square bracket.

Regards, Chrisguise (talk) 06:12, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I'd suggest using classes for the brackets: with something like .wst-rbstagedir-bracket, which could be display:none'd through index CSS. — Alien  3
3 3 06:23, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

The New International Encyclopædia transcription uses fake sources

The New International Encyclopædia is a transcription of the 1905 version of The New International Encyclopædia. Only problem is, Volume 8 of the 1905 version does not exist on the internet. In a misguided attempt to work around this problem, User:Bob Burkhardt (aka User:Library Guy) created fake source pages for the 1905 volume 8 that he assembled from bits and pieces of volumes 7 and 8 from the 1903 edition, which is substantially different. See Index:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 08. If you zoom in on the actual images used for these pages, you will see that they have been modified in an image editing program, complete with fake page numbers and even a fake volume number. This defeats the entire purpose of having scanned-backed sources, which is to make the text verifiable. For now, I've removed the mapping to the page images on Commons and removed the fake cover image. I've also nominated two of the images for deletion: Commons:Deletion requests/File:NIE 1905 - title page.jpg, Commons:Deletion requests/File:NIE 1905 - p. 001.jpg. However, Bob created 40 of these pages on Commons before he gave up on the effort. I'm not sure what to do about the rest of it. Nosferattus (talk) 18:05, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Hathi has a copy of Vol. VIII, 1905 If we can get an Index set up from that scan, we can start to salvage what is possible to save. --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:44, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

Nice detective work, Pete! Nosferattus (talk) 18:51, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The Orphan of the Rhine

We have (at least some of) all of the “horrid” novels, except one: The Orphan of the Rhine. I have just obtained scans of all four volumes, and (with Alien333’s help in splitting three of the volumes) they are now available at Author:Eleanor Sleath, if anyone would be interested in proofreading them. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:17, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333 Hi, I've done quite a lot on some of the 'Horrid' novels (currently, working on 'Clermont' and 'The Italian', albeit slowly). Could you obtain volumes 1, 2 and 4 of 'Horrid Mysteries'; currently only volume 3 is publically available as a scan. If so, I think that would complete the set. I believe the volumes are in the nineteenth century equivalent of EEBO and ECCO. Thanks, Chrisguise (talk) 08:46, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm much better at manipulating scans than finding one. Hathi has V.1 limited-search only, if someone knows how to bypass their restrictions; Can't help you further though. (I don't even know what EEBO and ECCO are.) — Alien  3
3 3 09:50, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea.EEBO is Early English Books Online, a database of scans of (every?) book printed in English up to 1700. ECCO is Eighteenth Century Collections Online, a database which contains scans of books published between 1700 to 1800. I don't know how comprehensive it is. There's also one covering the nineteen century. I have access to the first two (also most(?)/all(?) of the content of EEBO is on IA) but not the last one. Chrisguise (talk) 10:02, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@TE(æ)A,ea. The version on Hathi is a modern one. The version that's partially transcribed is the first edition.

I don't have anything other than general access to Hathi. I've occasionally resorted to downloading individual page images and reconstructing books, which is a bit easier these days since they appear to have removed the restriction on page downloads. It used to be the case that you got 15-20 pages and then had to wait about half an hour to download the next batch. Chrisguise (talk) 10:10, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

• Chrisguise: My scans were actually from a collection of Gothic novels in the collection of the University of Virginia, which were saved in microfilm form c. 2002. I’ve had poor luck in finding EEBO stuff on IA; it’s great that you have access to the other two, though. When I was downloading a 170-odd page book the other day, I was only rate-limited once (and that might have been incidental), so it really is a big improvement. UVA does seem to have that reel of microfilm in their collection, so I’ll see if they’re willing to send it to me. (It’s in their off-site storage, though, so that might be annoying.) TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:54, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

  @Alien333 @TE(æ)A,ea.There's something odd happening here. I have just created the index page for volume 1 using what I thought was a file called 'Orphan of the Rhine v1.pdf' on Commons. To assist setting up the page list, I downloaded a copy, which contains 272 single pages. However, when I saved the index page Index:Orphan of the Rhine v1.pdf, it is linked to a file - with the same name - on Wikisource, which consists of 140 double pages. I would suggest that the Wikisource version needs to be deleted. Chrisguise (talk) 06:00, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

  Done. Probably there are a few others out there that should be deleted. — Alien  3
  3 3 06:07, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-13

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Weekly highlight

• The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking your feedback on the drafts of the objectives and key results that will shape the Foundation's Product and Technology priorities for the next fiscal year (starting in July). The objectives are broad high-level areas, and the key-results are measurable ways to track the success of their objectives. Please share your feedback on the talkpage, in any language, ideally before the end of April.

Updates for editors

• The CampaignEvents extension will be released to multiple wikis (see deployment plan for details) in April 2025, and the team has begun the process of engaging communities on the identified wikis. The extension provides tools to organize, manage, and promote collaborative activities (like events, edit-a-thons, and WikiProjects) on the wikis. The extension has three tools: Event Registration, Collaboration List, and Invitation Lists. It is currently on 13 Wikipedias, including English Wikipedia, French Wikipedia, and Spanish Wikipedia, as well as Wikidata. Questions or requests can be directed to the extension talk page or in Phabricator (with #campaigns-product-team tag).
• Starting the week of March 31st, wikis will be able to set which user groups can view private registrants in Event Registration, as part of the CampaignEvents extension. By default, event organizers and the local wiki admins will be able to see private registrants. This is a change from the current behavior, in which only event organizers can see private registrants. Wikis can change the default setup by requesting a configuration change in Phabricator (and adding the #campaigns-product-team tag). Participants of past events can cancel their registration at any time.
• Administrators at wikis that have a customized MediaWiki:Sidebar should check that it contains an entry for the Special pages listing. If it does not, they should add it using * specialpages-url|specialpages. Wikis with a default sidebar will see the link moved from the page toolbox into the sidebar menu in April. [4]
• The Minerva skin (mobile web) combines both Notice and Alert notifications within the bell icon (). There was a long-standing bug where an indication for new notifications was only shown if you had unseen Alerts. This bug is now fixed. In the future, Minerva users will notice a counter atop the bell icon when you have 1 or more unseen Notices and/or Alerts. [5]
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• VisualEditor has introduced a new client-side hook for developers to use when integrating with the VisualEditor target lifecycle. This hook should replace the existing lifecycle-related hooks, and be more consistent between different platforms. In addition, the new hook will apply to uses of VisualEditor outside of just full article editing, allowing gadgets to interact with the editor in DiscussionTools as well. The Editing Team intends to deprecate and eventually remove the old lifecycle hooks, so any use cases that this new hook does not cover would be of interest to them and can be shared in the task.
• Developers who use the mw.Api JavaScript library, can now identify the tool using it with the userAgent parameter: var api = new mw.Api( { userAgent: 'GadgetNameHere/1.0.1' } );. If you maintain a gadget or user script, please set a user agent, because it helps with library and server maintenance and with differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate traffic. [6][7]
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 22:42, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

disambiguate a portal?

I decided to tackle The Argosy and all of its name (and genre) changes. Then I boldly made Portal:Argosy and started to search for editions and volumes at Hathi.

The first thing I found was another magazine called The Argosy from Great Britain (late 1800s to 1901).

I thought for the portal to point to all of the Main for the various names of the American magazine but now I need to disambiguate. Can a portal do that?--RaboKarbakian (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

It can. See for example Portal:Georgia, which disambiguates between the country and the US state. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:32, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Coordinates display

Coordinates entered using {{coord}}:

{{Coord|52.657951|-1.078767|region:GB_type:landmark}}

52.657951°N 1.078767°W / 52.657951; -1.078767

are not displaying correctly; CSS should enure only DMS or decimal coordinates are shown. Users can configure this in their user.css file; see Template:Coord. Can someone import the necessary styles, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:07, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

If you need DMS or decimal, you should also add .geo-multi-punct { display: none } to your .css. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 15:09, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I know how to use it; the classes need to be styled for other users, and by default. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Default styles created as of Wikipedia.

dec {{Coord|52.657951|-1.078767}}: 52.657951°N 1.078767°W / 52.657951; -1.078767

dms {{Coord|52|39|29|N|1|04|44|W}}: 52°39′29″N 1°04′44″W

dec to dms {{Coord|52.657951|-1.078767|format=dms}}: 52°39′29″N 1°04′44″W

dms to dec {{Coord|52|39|29|N|1|04|44|W|format=dec}}: 52.65806°N 1.07889°W / 52.65806; -1.07889

• M-le-mot-dit (talk) 10:12, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Much better! Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:44, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Template:AuxBox and text embedded in images

I wanted to share how I've been transcribing text embedded in images, because I think it works really well and could be useful elsewhere. The template {{AuxBox}} was forked from {{AuxTOC}} a few years ago, and I've been using it to add a transcription of the text below the image. This has the benefit of allowing the text to be available as text, while also making it clear that the image and its transcription aren't provided separately in the original scan.

My only concern is that this might be considered a type of annotation per WS:ANN. Since I am using it only to provide two forms of faithful transcription at the same time, I don't think it should count - but if it does count as an annotation, I think we should make it an acceptable exception to WS:ANN (which I will propose as a separate discussion if we decide to go that way).

Here are some examples:

• Illustrated text: The Lamb by William Blake
• Manuscript facsimiles: Renunciation by Emily Dickinson
• Sheet music lyrics: Our God, Our Help in Ages Past by Isaac Watts

—Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 18:56, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I just want to clarify that this is specifically for text embedded in an image—i.e. when there is an image that ought to be included, which also contains text that ought to be transcluded. It would not be appropriate, for example, to use this approach to add a page scan as an illustration in the transcription. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 19:09, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

My two cents:

• Illustrated text: traditionally, this'd be the sort of stuff we'd do with {{overfloat image}} and the like; in such cases where separating the image from the text is not doable, what I have mostly done is add the text as alt text of the image. The issue with that way is that you can't add formatting in alt-text. AuxBox sort of makes sense to me as a solution to that problem, though it's not necessarily what I'd have chosen.
• Manuscript facsimiles: This is, to me, what borders on WS:ANN. Here the facsimile is used as a frontispiece, and the intention is to show the handwriting. If it was a full-handwriting text, it'd would be logical to transcribe that, and we wouldn't show the handwriting in mainspace; but in a case like this, why not just link PRINTED IN THE FIRST VOLUME OF HER POEMS to Poems (Dickinson)/Renunciation? Adding that here seems to me to be adding something to this work.
• Sheet music: that use I really don't understand. At any rate in cases like this, when all of the lyrics are in the score. Why readd it?

— Alien  3
3 3 19:43, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

I do see your point. I agree that alt text is preferable, though it's only really possible if the text is short and the formatting doesn't matter. Overfloat image is also a valid alternative, where it is possible to do so, though it does have its drawbacks (e.g. it assumes that the font size is fixed relative to the image size). With regard to manuscript facsimiles and other illustrations of writing, I do see your point and think that it's a very reasonable point. As for sheet music, the fact that Lilypond renders text content as an image has always bothered me, since the rendered image is no more accessible than the scanned image, so in such a case I actually think that providing a transcription is almost a necessity in such cases. Ultimately, my intention with all this is to provide an equivalent of "alt text" for accessibility or other purposes, while allowing it to be faithful to the scan regardless of length, formatting, etc. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 20:29, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

My suggestion how to keep the original text design and add the text in a form accessible to searching engines etc., is to use the {{overfloat image}} with the image including the original text + adding the text over it using color:transparent. I used this very rarely when I considered the text important and at the same time really did not want to remove it from the picture, such as with the title "CANTO II" included inside the image at Page:Conversion of St Vladimir.pdf/33. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:09, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Interesting. That's also a good way to do it. I personally think that {{AuxBox}} is a nicer approach, but ultimately they serve the same purpose. —Beleg Âlt ^BT (talk) 13:20, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

That's a good idea! Thanks for sharing it. — Alien  3
3 3 13:42, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikisource talk:Deletion policy#Work-based categories

There's a discussion ongoing there on that. — Alien  3
3 3 19:46, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

Page:s not linked from Index:

This is annoying for several reasons, but among other things it means that you can’t check changes to the Page:s from the Index:. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 21:12, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Can you link to an example of what this issue is? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

• Justin (koavf): This isn’t linked here, so nothing shows up there. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:39, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

  I understand that this is a problem associated with the Lua problem that occurred on 11 March. If you do a hard purge on the index page, that should restore the linking. -- Beardo (talk) 05:11, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

Copyright question

Hello! I have this following copyright related question:

In Brazil, in the Law 3071 of 1916, stated the following on Government documents: "Art. 662: Works published by the Federal, State or Municipal Government, other than public acts and official documents, fall into the public domain fifteen years after publication." (Art. 662. As obras publicadas pelo Governo Federal, Estadual ou Municipal, não seno atos públicos e documentos oficiais, caem, quinze anos depois da publicação, no domínio comum. - valid until 1998).

I've found this book, by the Press and Propaganda Department (DIP - see the back-cover) (government office), with speeches by Getúlio Vargas, in Portuguese, English and Spanish (without the translators name). While it is for sure PD in Brazil (both as a government work, anonymous [translations] and life + 70), would it still be PD in the US (as it is without copyright notice, or because if formally became PD in Brazil long before the URAA date)?

And following the question above: a work published in 1962 by the IBGE (government entity), formally PD 15 years after publishing (despise the digitization source attempting to claim restricted and non-commercial use due to the 1998 law, which did not had any explicit retroactive effect [for government works] for neither the 1916 nor the 1973 laws [the 1916 rule for governmental works was kept in the 1973 law]), but the author still below the life +70 years, would still be acceptable for Wiki Commons and Source?

Now, there's this Brazilian Bulletin, published in New York between the 1940s and 70s, by the "Brazilian Government Trade Bureau" (part of the Brazilian Embassy) and without any apparent copyright notice. Would it be PD in the US?

And to finish it: the U.S. Joint Publications Research Service translated some journalistic and political/ideological writings by Luís Carlos Prestes and Carlos Castelo Branco, both writers still decades away of being PD in Brazil. Would it still be acceptable here as PD-USGov, or does it really fails this policy?

Thanks, 22:17, 31 March 2025 (UTC) Erick Soares3 (talk) 22:17, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

The best place to post discussions concerning copyright is Wikisource:Copyright discussions. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:19, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

I thought about it, but its discussions are about works already available in Ws which may or may not be a case of copyvio ("deletion request" type of thing). Erick Soares3 (talk) 23:47, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Anyway, I raised the same discussion on Commons. Erick Soares3 (talk) 00:17, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Of course, Commons have different rules - though they might end up with the same answers.

With the first, unless it was published in the US, the lack of copyright notice is irrelevant.

The link in your last paragraph is not relevant - that is referring to translations made by the user. The relevant point is here - "A translation has a copyright separate to that of the original work. Both the original and the translation must be in the public domain for Wikisource to accept the translation." Although the translation is PD-USGov, the original is not PD. -- Beardo (talk) 04:34, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Actually, the copyright notice might be relevant. If an author or publisher dotted their i's and crossed their t's, printing a copyright notice in their work and renewing it appropriately, which was rare, even if it was in the public domain in its home nation on the URAA date, it might still have a whole 95 years from publication in the US. For example, Lehrbuch der theoretischem Physik and Histoire de la marine francaise are both 1932 works that were renewed and thus presumably didn't need the URAA.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:58, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

@Beardo: so, to make it clear that I understood it correctly: with the first and second (pub + 15 years; respectively PD in Brazil in 1955 and 1977, without being published in or complying with the US law) is a case of PD-1996? The Brazilian Bulletin would be a no-notice case?

@Prosfilaes: but in this case (the translations of Prestes and Castelo Branco), the original was published in Brazil, which never demanded renewal - and old newspapers usually didn't bother to print a copyright notice at the time (for much only books explicitly had it, but claiming the copyright either to the publisher or the author).

Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 11:31, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Help:Beginner's guide to copyright indicates that items without copyright notice could be registered later - so you will need to check that wasn't the case with the Brazilian Bulletin.

The rest, I leave to others to comment on.-- Beardo (talk) 23:46, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Looking at the IA database and the Stanford database, there's no mention that this magazine was registered (or if it was, the records haven't been scanned yet).

On the rest, I think that they are ok for Commons and Wikisource: at the very least those works never received any copyright protection in the US, and at the very “worst” they became PD in the US at the URAA date. This "pub + 15 years" thing is so old that most people (specially in Brazil) have never heard about. Thanks, Erick Soares3 (talk) 23:58, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

The Stanford database is limited to books. So plays, short stories, magazines, and other items not published as a "book" will not appear in the Stanford database. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:10, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

It's unlikely for any given non-US work to be renewed in the US, which is independent of the laws of their source nation, but it still happened at times.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:29, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

So, I will focus on the Government works, since they are less risk than the works of Prestes and Branco (but I will leave the links in their pages for future reference - and it is not like Google Books didn't have had approval to scan the US Gov works haha). Erick Soares3 (talk) 00:34, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

So, to close this discussion, this user answered my questions. Thanks everyone! Erick Soares3 (talk) 00:50, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-14

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• The Editing team is working on a new Edit check: Peacock check. This check's goal is to identify non-neutral terms while a user is editing a wikipage, so that they can be informed that their edit should perhaps be changed before they publish it. This project is at the early stages, and the team is looking for communities' input: in this Phabricator task, they are gathering on-wiki policies, templates used to tag non-neutral articles, and the terms (jargon and keywords) used in edit summaries for the languages they are currently researching. You can participate by editing the table on Phabricator, commenting on the task, or directly messaging Trizek (WMF).
• Single User Login has now been updated on all wikis to move login and account creation to a central domain. This makes user login compatible with browser restrictions on cross-domain cookies, which have prevented users of some browsers from staying logged in.
• View all 35 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• Starting on March 31st, the MediaWiki Interfaces team will begin a limited release of generated OpenAPI specs and a SwaggerUI-based sandbox experience for MediaWiki REST APIs. They invite developers from a limited group of non-English Wikipedia communities (Arabic, German, French, Hebrew, Interlingua, Dutch, Chinese) to review the documentation and experiment with the sandbox in their preferred language. In addition to these specific Wikipedia projects, the sandbox and OpenAPI spec will be available on the on the test wiki REST Sandbox special page for developers with English as their preferred language. During the preview period, the MediaWiki Interfaces Team also invites developers to share feedback about your experience. The preview will last for approximately 2 weeks, after which the sandbox and OpenAPI specs will be made available across all wiki projects.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

In depth

• Sometimes a small, one line code change can have great significance: in this case, it means that for the first time in years we're able to run all of the stack serving maps.wikimedia.org - a host dedicated to serving our wikis and their multi-lingual maps needs - from a single core datacenter, something we test every time we perform a datacenter switchover. This is important because it means that in case one of our datacenters is affected by a catastrophe, we'll still be able to serve the site. This change is the result of extensive work by two developers on porting the last component of the maps stack over to kubernetes, where we can allocate resources more efficiently than before, thus we're able to withstand more traffic in a single datacenter. This work involved a lot of complicated steps because this software, and the software libraries it uses, required many long overdue upgrades. This type of work makes the Wikimedia infrastructure more sustainable.

Meetings and events

• MediaWiki Users and Developers Workshop Spring 2025 is happening in Sandusky, USA, and online, from 14–16 May 2025. The workshop will feature discussions around the usage of MediaWiki software by and within companies in different industries and will inspire and onboard new users. Registration and presentation signup is now available at the workshop's website.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 00:05, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

How can I add a text without uploading the scans to Commons if they are on the Internet Archive?

I'd like to transcribe Biographical and historical memoirs of Northeast Arkansas, but I did not scan the pages myself; rather, the scans are on the Internet Archive. How do I go about adding this text? User01938 (talk) 01:43, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

I assume you mean the scan from the Library of Congress? [8] First thing needed to to download the PDF from IA, and upload it with full source info into Commons. Then, you'll need someone to insert a couple of blank pages between p.194 and p.195, shifting the OCR to make space. This copy is missing a portrait that which exists in the inferior scan from the Allen County Public Library. Ideally, someone should track down a copy with this portrait, scan the image, so that it can be inserted in the correct location.

Once the file is corrected and present at Commons, we can help you set up an Index page from which to begin transcription. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:55, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

@User01938: I've uploaded the pdf from Internet Archive, the missing portrait was found in HathiTrust. See Index:Biographical and historical memoirs of northeast Arkansas (1889).pdf. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 17:01, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Thank you so much! User01938 (talk) 03:44, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:05, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Authors by gender

Men who were authors are categorized under Category:Male authors. But women are under Category:Women authors. Shouldn't the one for men be changed to Category:Men authors? SnowyCinema (talk) 10:33, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Other way. I would match us to the terminology Commons uses, which is Category:Female authors (Female writers). Also because "woman" is not a gender, but male / female is. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd agree. "Men authors" sounds a bit akward. — Alien  3
3 3 17:45, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

 Comment: luckily, the transition won't be complicated. Only 23 pages that explicitly add "women authors" would need to be updated, plus changing the relevant line in the module, and that's it. — Alien  3
3 3 11:36, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Incidentally, this was brought up in 2017: Category talk:Women authors. The bigger issue is that we are not the only ones affected by this: WD: Category:Male writers (Q9717811) vs. Category:Women writers (Q7944338); ENWP: Category:Male writers vs. Category:Male writers, etc. I believe it is some sort of oversight but perhaps someone really wanted to exclude female authors of other species like monkeys! Okay, enough monkeying around. —Uzume (talk) 23:14, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Thinking of an anti-linkrot bot

We've often had the issue, that works sadly not scan-backed, but sourced to an internet page, can lose that source whenever said webpage becomes inoperant.

I've been thinking of a bot that could possibly help remedy to that. The workflow would be:

• When a page is created, if it's
  • a mainspace page with an external link in the notes field
  • a main talk page with an external link;
• then ask IA to archive the link.
• Then, a week later, if the page's still there and still has the link (to not do useless edits on vandalism/spam pages, which are prone to include external links), add (archived) after the link.

This would only be for new pages. It would also be useful to archive the still-functioning links of non-new pages. The issue with that would be detecting the "still-functioning" part. Does someone have an idea? And in general what do you think of this project? — Alien  3
3 3 11:34, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I am not sure we should consider pushing all links in new pages under your criteria to be archived at the IA Wayback Machine. As you mentioned, we do have considerable vandalism/spam and blindly pushing that to be archived elsewhere seems a poor approach. That said, I see the merit of your idea. Why not wait the week (or some other proscribed period for new link survival) and then both archive and add the link together? I know IA Wayback Machine archived content is available immediately after successfully archiving, although it does take considerable time for them to add such to their indices so one often cannot immediately search and find it. —Uzume (talk) 22:45, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I thought about waiting for archiving, but the issue is that, a week later, we do not know if the link's actually working or not, and so we might be archiving dead links, which is not very good either. This brings us back to the "can we check if a link is dead" question. — Alien  3
3 3 05:23, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Well frankly, I feel attempting to archive a dead link is better than attempting to archive blatant spam. The dead link will at least be mostly benign but the spam link will result in pollution of the archive. —Uzume (talk) 07:21, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

From this perspective, if we don't mind archiving dead links, it indeed makes it simpler.

We might even perhaps want to archive non-new pages, in that case? Though it's true that the concentration of broken links is higher in older pages. — Alien  3
3 3 19:42, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Code's done: User:Alien333/test#Link_archiving.

Test edits are [9] and [10]. Looks good to me. What do you think? — Alien  3
3 3 20:07, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

So, the updated workflow is:

• among the new pages
• that are rootpages
• in main or talk namespace
• older than a week
• and contain one or more external links (not counting links to ws or archive.org), for each link:
• try to ask IA to archive that link
• try to get archival status
• if both of the above succeeded
• and there isn't a {{wml}} or raw archive.org link on the same line as the link
• then add a {{wml}}

— Alien  3
3 3 13:07, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Policy on source-based transcriptions and Commons redactions of de minimis fair use

Wikisource has a strong policy against fair use (see Project:Copyright § Fair use) and I cannot say I have considered this deeply but I think this is a good thing as it allows excerpts to be made without having to consider the copyright implications of de minimis fair use when such excerpts are taken out of context (but I am not here to consider weakening our fair use policy). That said, the aforementioned Wikisource fair use policy says nothing about how to handle Commons content allowed under the Commons:de minimis fair use policy. Wikisource mostly consumes Commons media content via source-based transcription (see Help:Proofread); predominately via DjVu and PDF formats.

Historically Wikisource seems to have varying methods of dealing with Commons media containing de minimis fair use content. Wikisource has things like: {{text removed}}, {{image removed}}/{{FI|file=removed}}/{{FIS|file=removed}}, etc. However, I have recently noticed there is a growing de facto policy to require such fair use content to be redacted in essentially censored versions of such media and that such fair use censored media should be hosted at Commons (often to the exclusion of the original unredacted versions). Since Wikisource clearly has the tools to redact such fair use content locally (either via the above mentioned templates in transcribed Page namespace pages or in locally hosted media where appropriate), I feel Wikisource should not pressure contributors to upload censored versions of media to Commons with de minimis fair use redacted.

Notes: It should be noted, not all derived works contain only de minimis fair use content that is acceptable at Commons and Commons itself may require censored media versions with clearly copyrighted sections of content be redacted. Also Commons admits that much of its actual de minimis fair use content is not clearly identified. Commons has a method to identify such via its c:template:de minimis and when Wikisource runs into such copyright issues I believe to be a good policy to help Commons tag such media with this template in a sort of "best effort" approach (which in the future would in turn help us to identify such sticky content, letting us know when we need to employ local censorship redactions; perhaps Index pages could automatically have a warning when Commons media has such a template tag).

In any event, I would like Wikisource to adopt a solid policy on the handling of Commons acceptable de minimis fair use media content by expanding its fair use copyright policy to clarify its stance on such. I would prefer Wikisource local censorship over pushing for redacted versions at Commons, but one way or the other, I want to have our copyright policy expanded to clarify our handling of such. Thank you, —Uzume (talk) 22:05, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking, or where you think it is needed. You have said both "I am not here to consider weakening our fair use policy" and "I would like Wikisource to adopt a solid policy on the handling of Commons acceptable de minimis fair use media content by expanding its fair use copyright policy". Are you asking for explicit statement of current stance in some specific case or issue? Because Wikisource:Copyright policy has an entire section on "Fair use" that explicitly states the Wikisource stance and legal reasons for that stance. What more needs to be clarified? --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:51, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

I want a clarification on how to handle de minimis fair use content at Commons. I personally would like to see our policy specify local censhorship of such and thus not pressure contributors to create redacted versions at Commons but even if the decision is made in the opposite direction a clarification of that would be good. Thanks, —Uzume (talk) 00:12, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

• For the record, EncycloPetey, this is in relation to this document, which contains an image which had been deleted from Wikimedia Commons. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:45, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

  That is certainly, one example but hardly the only one. You might notice, I tagged c:file:Mallory v. Norfolk Southern.pdf with c:template:de minimis at 1018190383 which adds it to c:category:de minimis. Another example includes the heated debate related to c:file:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.pdf (which I also tagged de minimis.) vs. c:file:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (redacted).djvu at Wikisource:Copyright discussions/Archives/2022#Undelete Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music and relevant page:s (which suggests there was some earlier deleted discussion related to it). Clearly there were some high tensions in that discussion and the last thing I want to do is respark that flame, but in reading that, it seems there was significant pressure to have a redacted version uploaded to Commons (which eventually did occur). The discussion did mention {{text removed}} but for some reason that was not the end result. I am sure there are plenty of other occurrences. The point is, Commons is the primary backing store for most of our Proofread-based transcription and yet Commons has a copyright policy (which allows de minimis fair use) that is not compatible with the Wikisource copyright policy (which outright bans fair use entirely). So to avoid future issues, a clear policy on how this is handled here seems appropriate as an expansion of the existing copyright policy. —Uzume (talk) 04:59, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

  • Uzume: The earlier discussion is actually on the same page: § Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music lyrical passages. The second discussion was created because of the favorable termination of Commons’ lengthy discussion as to the PDF. As to its closure, I won’t rehash the debate (and don’t want to here, for the record), but I will state my continued belief that the closing administrator acted incredibly inappropriately in that case. As to your no-redacted-copies argument, I think that gets the relationship backwards. Normally, files for use in indexes would be stored locally, and thus need to follow our local rule against fair use; it is only because of Foundation policy that the files have been moved to Commons. Because of this, the files are really local, in their use, even though they are stored globally. I certainly have never seen any negative feedback on Commons’ side for redacting our PDFs in line with our policy, even if a PDF intended for Commons’ use would not need the redactions. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:17, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

    @TE(æ)A,ea.: It is nice to know about the rest of the discussion but besides that being rather hot-tempered, it is not really directly relevant to this discussion (except perhaps as just another example). It sounds like you are vying for de minimis redacted media at Commons. Even if you believe "the relationship" is backwards, that does not mean is it implemented as such or seen as such by most contributors. It seems to me there is always negative feedback with regard to any type of censorship but I agree it does not seem to be a policy issue for Commons (but just looking at any Commons DR with de minimis claims and there are those who vehemently argue against any such censorship). The unredacted versions in their entirety might be useful for other purposes like Wikipedia, etc. We have the tools to locally redact such things without requiring separate redacted version of the backing media so I do not seem the usefulness in creating and maintaining extra versions for such purposes. —Uzume (talk) 02:55, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

you make a good point that the "de minimus" rationale at commons is ideosyncratic and inconsistant. for exampe c:File talk:Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election.pdf. other government documents were deleted. I would go for a local exemption fair use of government documents with "non-free" citations, but there was not a consensus for that here. it would be more consistant and forthright. see also Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2007-04#Public_domain_materials_with_limited_fair_use_items. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 00:52, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Slowking4: Yes, on the one hand Commons claims "no fair use" but then on the other hand they have a policy supporting de minimis (which Commons claims is not a form of fair use but I do not see it that way; I see it as a very particular form of fair use) but then they waver around and only really defend that policy sometimes (but I do not really see that as a major issue for Wikisource). I do not recommend we adopt the Commons de minimis definition and instead consider it to be a form of fair use while we continue to ban all fair use (including the Commons de minimis policy) but I also recommend we document this difference of copyright policy between us and our major media backing store "sister" site and explicitly recommend we redact such parts with local templates (and not push for de minimis redacted media at Commons). We should also probably help them tag their media that contains such when we notice it. —Uzume (talk) 01:23, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

My two cents:

1. First complication is that the definition of de minimis is quite vague. The examples given here are arguably not de minimis, we are not talking about is something like court opinion quotes a sentence from an email from one company employee to another or something on that side of the spectrum. For example arguing about whether the various quotes on this page should be redacted because maybe the various government officials or translators still own the copyright for small excerpts from their speeches: Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/49. Instead, most cases where people complain are full images, which they are generally complaining about specifically because they believe the images are not de minimis.

2. Second complication, '"de minimis" might be in regard to the fact that they are in file space but then stripped out in main space. For example, when quoting a work that is part of the anthology, we might upload the tail of the previous work in the anthology because the transcluded work starts in the middle of the page. Assuming the text isn't de minimis, let's assume it is an entire copyrighted poem, we tend to say, while it isn't transcluded so that's fine even though we would agree that a transclusion of that poem would be deleted. MarkLSteadman (talk) 02:47, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman: Thanks for the feedback. I am not sure I fully understand your second point but as for the first, I believe it is a moot point. Commons has such a policy and some media contains copyrighted material under such a policy (be they small excerpts or entire works) provided Commons makes a determination that such contents is considered de minimis under their policy definitions. I agree they do not always seem to apply such decisions uniformly (but then neither does the US court systems). I think the bigger take away is whether we support de minimis. I feel this is a form of fair use and we should continue to ban fair use entirely. One of the nice uses of Wikisource is that reuse of its content is guaranteed to be freely usable and by its very definition de minimis means that derivative works focusing on the contained copyrighted material becomes a copyright violation. It is quite common to take pieces of something from Wikisource and use it in a different context. You can imagine how "Appendix A" depicted at Page:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (redacted).djvu/26 might have been transcribed on a separate subpage since such a construction is not uncommon but under that construction, the entire subpage would focus on the copyrighted content and thereby effectively construct a copyright infringement. Treating de minimis as a specialized form of fair use where fair use is banned rectifies this issue. —Uzume (talk) 03:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

The first point is about the pressure to redact which this policy is trying to solve. Almost every case where someone was pressured before, they would be pressured again. I don't think true de minimis is a concern based on the examples brought up. E.g. a whole song like Pretty Women is not de minimis. So what are we talking about? MarkLSteadman (talk) 03:25, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman: Well that clearly depends on one's point of view. Typically "fair use" rules out large chunks of copyrighted works such as the inclusion of entire works like Pretty Woman but de minimis is legally a separate beast and Commons treats it as such. Commons asserts that de minimis is not fair use and has a policy accepting such while rejecting fair use. I want our copyright policy to ban de minimis in the same way we currently ban fair use (or at least deem it as fair use for Wikisource and thus be banned in the same vein). I am not sure what you mean by "true de minimis". Your opinion is that the whole song Pretty Woman is not de minimis but de minimis is subjective and always context dependent by its very definition and the inclusion of an entire work can still be considered de minimis (e.g., c:File:A Porsche 997 GT2 in front of Boutique de parfumerie Guerlain, 356 rue Saint-Honoré.jpg contains the entire The Dark Knight poster making c:File:The Dark Knight movie poster - censored copyright.jpg a copyright violation if it was not censored) as at least within the confines of c:File:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.pdf, Commons did decided the entire Pretty Woman is de minimis (see c:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music.pdf). Besides specifying our policy on de minimis (which I am pushing for banning), it would also be nice to note the difference in policy between here and Commons and specify recommended procedures for handling such differences. I personally would prefer to avoid recommending redaction via censored media and instead rely upon transcription templating but that can be decided here via consensus and I am certainly not the only voice in such a matter (but you know what by vote would be). —Uzume (talk) 21:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

My point is that if we want to avoid pressuring people if they do de minimis but pressure them if they don't we end up in the same place where we are now because whether Pretty Woman is actually de minimis is irrelevant, just that the examples given are all arguable hence we will just argue about de minimis anyways. If you think we should be redacting "the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation," "leading position", "the Chinese Dream" on Page:2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF/19 because they are copyright infringing Xi Jinping give that as an example. MarkLSteadman (talk) 21:20, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

except for de minimus you are relying on the capricious rationales of commons functionaries, that provides no notice (or false comfort) to re-users. but if you have a local copy with a fair use warning, then WS controls the work, and provides guidance for re-users. --Slowking4 ‽ digitaleffie's ghost 13:33, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@MarkLSteadman: I really do not follow that rationale at all. How does one do de minimis? As far as I know it is a noun or adjective and I am unable to conceive of a way of doing or it or not. I want to avoid pressuring people to redact de minimis via media censorship but I also want to encourage it to be banned here and thus it needs to be redacted in another way and I support the templating methods used during transcription. That said, I believe the more important issue here is to add de minimis to our copyright policy banning it as we do with fair use. If/When we clearly ban it, such material needs to be redacted in one way or another. Currently it falls outside our copyright policy and contributors are being pressured to redact it however, it is not clear on the best/recommended way to accomplish such so it becomes confusing for contributors since: A) it is not specified in our copyright policy and B) there is no specified recommended way to handle the required redactions. This lack of clarity leads to confusion then arguments and heated tempers, etc. —Uzume (talk) 01:58, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Tech News: 2025-15

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

Updates for editors

• From now on, interface admins and centralnotice admins are technically required to enable two-factor authentication before they can use their privileges. In the future this might be expanded to more groups with advanced user-rights. [11]
• View all 20 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week.

Updates for technical contributors

• The Design System Team is preparing to release the next major version of Codex (v2.0.0) on April 29. Editors and developers who use CSS from Codex should see the 2.0 overview documentation, which includes guidance related to a few of the breaking changes such as font-size, line-height, and size-icon.
• The results of the Developer Satisfaction Survey (2025)  are now available. Thank you to all participants. These results help the Foundation decide what to work on next and to review what they recently worked on.
• Detailed code updates later this week: MediaWiki

Meetings and events

• The 2025 Wikimedia Hackathon will take place in Istanbul, Turkey, between 2–4 May. Registration for attending the in-person event will close on 13 April. Before registering, please note the potential need for a visa or e-visa to enter the country.

Tech news prepared by Tech News writers and posted by bot • Contribute • Translate • Get help • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

MediaWiki message delivery 18:52, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Double header

Why do I get a double title in the green header space here: The Courier-News/1956/Will Install Officers? RAN (talk) 23:56, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a double header. Could it be a transient error? Have you tried viewing while logged out? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:38, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@RAN: Probably because you are defining |title= while |section= is defaulting to |section={{SUBPAGENAME}}. —Uzume (talk) 00:41, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

The code that does that is here: Module:Header#L-416--L-419. If you want to remove the section entirely just define section to the empty/whitespace like |section=. Probably a better solution is to define |title= like |title=[[../../]] and leave |section= at its default (or explicitly define it to be {{SUBPAGENAME}}). —Uzume (talk) 00:59, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks! I restored "section=" and it is now fixed. I had converted it to "wikidata=". --RAN (talk) 01:03, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on bot task to tag untagged deletion nominations

It commonly happens, that sometimes, when people nominate a work for deletion at WS:PD or WS:CV, that they forget to tag it.

This makes more work for others, and pages can stay untagged for a long while (in one case more than a year) until someone notices it.

I've made a pywikibot script that can automatically find and fix instances of this (credit to @SnowyCinema for the idea of making one). More precisely, if:

• a section's title is of the form == [[Title]] == (including slight whitespace variations), and
• the page named "Title" exists, and
• it does not contain a deletion tag ({{delete}}/{{cv}}, including aliases), and
• the relevant section has not been closed (in which case it's normal for there not to be a tag anymore), and
• the deletion nomination is between one day old (to not tag stuff instantly) and one week old (it happens for some stuff to be untagged, e.g. when the content has been replaced), then:

it adds the relevant deletion tag to the relevant page.

The idea would be for this to run daily on toolforge, and for the edits to be made by User:333Bot. (I have the technical access necessary.)

User:Alien333/test#Nomination tagging contains the latest version of the code.

I have made a test run; the specifics (exact code version used (now outdated), input, output, logs) are at Special:PermaLink/14995363.

I've got three main questions:

1. Are there objections to a bot like this running?
2. Are there details (notably in the algorithm) that should be changed?
3. Should this remind the nominating user to tag? (current code doesn't.) Often, when a user does the work this does (tagging untagged noms), they drop a message, but this has been criticised. And if the bot should remind users, would it be better to do so in a message or in the edit summary of the tag addition?

— Alien  3
3 3 19:25, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

One thing to consider is that the section title is not always a pagename, and sometimes there are multiple items being discussed. In the event that the bot cannot find a linked pagename, it would be helpful to have the bot add a post to the discussion, asking: Have the pages under discussion been taggged with {template}? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:29, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd just made the bot not touch these, precisely because it's very hard to know which links in the nom are nominated pages. Adding a post to the discussion would be possible, if people agree. I think any interventions in discussions should be as concise and discrete as possible. E.g. for this specific case, perhaps something like Are the nominated pages tagged as such?—333Bot (talk) (with "tagged as such" linking to the top of the page, which give the tagging instructions.)

Maybe it shouldn't be phrased as a question? As the bot doesn't really expect an answer. Perhaps more like a reminder? — Alien  3
3 3 19:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

 Support the invocation of this bot, wholeheartedly (and thanks for tackling the issue!). I agree with the decision not to try to find non-links in section headers, since it actually could be that, for example, a section header is called "Two Discussions" and contain deletion discussions of 2 related works under them; but then, say that Two Discussions was actually the title of a real work or disambiguation page and then it accidentally gets tagged. Just a false positive I thought of.

But I will say that often L3s (===[[link]]=== rather than ==[[link]]==) link to works, so could those get added to the functionality? If it's not already there that is. Anyway, great work!!! SnowyCinema (talk) 19:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

On possible false positives: what are the odds that someone would link, in the section title, something which has nothing to do with the works, but exists? At any rate, in the year-odd I've spent here, I've never seen a deletion discussion where the title contained a link, and only a link, and that link was not one of the nominated pages.

On L3s: fairly straightforward, will implement. — Alien  3
3 3 20:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Alien333: Sorry, just to clarify, I meant if the section header was unlinked (eg ==Two Discussions==) and hypothetically the bot guessed where the work was despite there being no link (like ==Two Discussions== -> Go to Two Discussions -> Oops, that was a random disambig page.) And now I want to see if there's actually a work with that title on IA or Hathi... brb lol SnowyCinema (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

The bot only follows linked section headers (section headers with one link and nothing else), which seems to me a reasonable assumption because for single noms it's almost always the case. — Alien  3
3 3 20:12, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Can someone fix the Wikidata link to Wikisource

At Q85430571 it points to an obituary for them, and not the Portal for them. Portal:Cornelia Augusta Betts RAN (talk) 00:10, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Done — Alien  3
3 3 06:01, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

• Thanks! --RAN (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata and Sister Projects: An online community event

(Apologies for posting in English)

Hello everyone, I am excited to share news of an upcoming online event called Wikidata and Sister Projects celebrating the different ways Wikidata can be used to support or enhance with another Wikimedia project. The event takes place over 4 days between May 29 - June 1st, 2025.

We would like to invite speakers to present at this community event, to hear success stories, challenges, showcase tools or projects you may be working on, where Wikidata has been involved in Wikipedia, Commons, WikiSource and all other WM projects.

If you are interested in attending, please register here. If you would like to speak at the event, please fill out this Session Proposal template on the event talk page, where you can also ask any questions you may have.

I hope to see you at the event, in the audience or as a speaker, - MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 09:18, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/IndexPage

In 2006, Pathoschild moved this template to the mainspace, on the grounds that this is specific to a single work. But that was 19 years ago, and nowadays it's very common for work-specific templates to exist in the Template namespace, with the mainspace being a rather inappropriate place for it. I think we should put it back in the mainspace, and I think this should be uncontroversial, but since I don't work on EB1911 actively, I wanted to bring it up here first to make sure there weren't any technical considerations or objections before making the move? SnowyCinema (talk) 19:06, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I suppose you meant we should put it back in the templatespace, not mainspace? As the mainspace"s where it is now. — Alien  3
3 3 20:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes *** SnowyCinema (talk) 21:28, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

I do not have an issue with its current placement but I also have no issue in moving it. Nineteen years is well beyond "edit warring": be bold and go for it. —Uzume (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

Magazines, Newspapers and other works with many volumes

I have recently made some Main space and mostly red link pages for magazines. I did this because I want to put links for first publications at those first publications. The New Review is an example of this.

Problems with this include that some of the magazines and certainly the newspapers have a lot of volumes.

Meanwhile, there are articles that are already living within these Volume/Number spaces. Like All-Story Weekly/Volume 98/Number 3/Fires Rekindled.

There is a solution for this in use at The New York Sun which also accepts redirects. The problem with this is that it divides by year and not by volume, and it requires that human editing not happen. I divided Radio News by both year and volume. By Year, it can be navigated through the sidebar and by volume because that is how it is. A few of the magazines are issued with its volumes also evenly divided by year, but not that many of them.

What I have done at The New Review is nice because if a source exists, it can be pointed at. What is going on at The New York Sun is nice because buried links are no longer buried.

I bring this up here and now because I am wanting to tear Famous Fantastic Mysteries out of its AuxTOC so I can paste a link or two; and maybe I could be doing something else that would be better to get that link there. Like, maybe a {{tl:Volume header}} that scoops up links like {{tl:Periodical header}} but also accepts human edits (like above or below where it works) and is not dependent upon the year.

I also had an idea for a "future link" property at wikidata. Maybe the official name could be "Wikisource volume link". It is useless if the link will be "Book title/Chapter 3" but for "Amazing Stories/Volume 2/Number 5/War of the Worlds" or "Amazing Stories/Volume 2/Number 5/The War of the Worlds" or "Amazing Stories/Volume 02/Number 05/The War of the Worlds" as you can see, it would be very useful.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 10:11, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Duplicate ID's..

One of the major causes of Duplicate ID's seems to be a situation where Page:'s are transcluded, but on examining the Index: pages and the relevant lint error, the page numbering uses repeated "—" , dashes or generic page-names such as "img", "Plate" multiple times.

The use of "—" for blank pages isn't being challanged as it was my understanding that entirely blank pages, don't show page numbers on transclusion in any event.

Until another contributor pointed out some (re)introduced numbering errors, I had been attempting to update Index, in a good faith attempt to de-duplicate the names used. For images the approach had been to use "(<!--work numbering-->)" (typically a nnumeric or roman numeral seqeunce) or where there wasn't an internal numbering to use "(")" with the relevant facing page being used, (often with reference to a list of illustrations provided by the work being transcribed.).

For Front matter - The intended convention was to use roman numerals, based on any numbering in the work being transcribed, (or if there was a lack of relevant internal numbering to treat the first Half-title as page "i". (There are some works however where it would be possible to use conventional numbers (again based on the page numbering in the work concerned.)

I am however in the process of reverting many of my existing repairs, using the approach, as another contributor, very tactfully pointed out that there hadn't been a full discussion about this, and hence the changes were too bold or novel to remain.

What do other contributors think? It would be a very good idea to de-duplicate Index pages as much as possible. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 16:38, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

 Comment We also have published works with duplicate page numbers, sometimes with two, three, or more sets of re-used page numbers. Some examples I can think of off the cuff are Index:Tragedies of Euripides (Way 1894) v1.djvu, which has four sets of roman numbered "front matter" because parts had been previously published, and Index:Shakespeare - First Folio Faithfully Reproduced, Methuen, 1910.djvu, where the entire numbering restarts for each major section of the volume. We also have multiple "Ad" / "Adv" pages. So what problem are we trying to solve, and why is it a problem? Is it simply that we have used "Img" for image pages, and now this is a problem for some reason? What is the issue, and why does it need solving? --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:48, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Are these repeated numberings likely to crop up in the same transcluded section? If not then the repeated numbering per section is not an issue, (and a red herring). ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:34, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The problem seems to be that Mediawiki, doesn't like content having duplicated ID's within a single content page (possibly so that styles and classes can be unique maybe). This means that when two HTML elements share the same ID, it flags as a Linter concern. This would be relatively easy to solve, by de-duplicating the ID's in content. However on English Wikisource there are additional complications in Mainspace, namely 1) that the Page-numbering script, used when Pages: are transcluded, puts ID's for the floated left page links, (these are sometimes duplicated with in page content.) 2) Individual pages may contain duplicated ID's which aren't obvious until the transclusion stage.

(Aside: There seems to be a Linter glitch, which means the Duplicate ID count and missing tag linter counts appear to share a counter, when they really shouldn't) 18:12, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Have we tried alerting the developers, to have them know that page IDs such as: -, —, _, Ad, Adv, and Img are expected to be duplicated and to not flag them? --EncycloPetey (talk) 18:30, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm not aware that anyone has.. Feel free to raise a Phabriactor ticket. (BTW I favour the (fp-xxx) approach for images, as it means Wikisource would gain the ability to link directly to images within a Mainspace page with very little effort :) )

Anchors can do the same thing, and we're already using anchors. No need to invent an arcane symbolic system to label them. How often has linking to an image been an actual issue raised by anyone? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:00, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

I would agree in saying that the IDs that are repeated are not IDs people will be linking to (except maybe images). — Alien  3
3 3 20:21, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

A lot of the false matches are mostly due to the page numbering script (So I'm not now sure if filing a Phabricator ticket would do anything. Other than asking for an option to turn of Duplicate ID detection for the output of that script specfically..) . So what do we to remove the 'noise' to find genuine issues?. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:32, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Until someone with the skills and access knows that we're drowning in noise, the best we might do is try to craft some kind of local filter. But that is beyond my skill set. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:36, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

The approach I outlined above, (which was objected to), does actually solve the problem, By making the pagelist entries as unique as possible on the Index page, no other changes would be needed, and would not actually need any new filters, change to scripts, or tickets filed. It would however need other contributors to understand what the new approach was. (As you indicated, it's not as if the pagelist entries that would be updated, actually have incoming links. I am not entirely happy that "_" etc has been used on 'non-blank' pages... but that's a different issue.. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 20:58, 13 April 2025 (UTC)