Wikisource:Proposed deletions - Wikisource, the free online library

Wikisource:Proposed deletions - Wikisource, the free online library
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1 day ago
by Alien333 in topic
Translation:The snake catcher says
WS:PD
redirects here. For help with public domain materials, see
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WS:DEL
WS:PD
This forum is for proposing deletion of specific works or pages on Wikisource in accordance with the
deletion policy
, and appealing previously-deleted works.
Please add
{{
delete
}}
to pages you have nominated for deletion, or
{{
delete
|section name}}
when the section name here is not the same as the page's name.
What Wikisource includes
is the policy used to determine whether or not particular works are acceptable on Wikisource. Pages remaining on this forum should be deleted if there is no significant opposition after at least a week. Works in another language than English can be imported to the relevant language Wikisource (or to
multilingual Wikisource
if no Wikisource exists for that language) prior to deletion.
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should be tagged with {{
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after 7 days. For the archive overview, see
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Kamoliddin Tohirjonovich Kacimbekov's statement
edit
Latest comment:
1 year ago
32 comments
6 people in discussion
No source, no license, no indication of being in the public domain —
Beleg Tâl
talk
17:22, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Found the source:
[1]
Alien333
what I did
why I did it wrong
19:54, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
The text of the source does not match what we have. I am having trouble finding our opening passages in the link you posted. --
EncycloPetey
talk
19:58, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
(At least, a sentence matched).
EncycloPetey
Found it, the content that corresponds to our page starts in the middle in the page 44 of that pdf, though the delimiting of paragraphs seems to be made up. —
Alien333
what I did
why I did it wrong
20:00, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
That means we have an extract. --
EncycloPetey
talk
00:39, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
No, it appears that the PDF is a compilation of several different, thematically related documents. His statement (English’d) is one such separate document.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
00:53, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
In which case we do not yet have a source. --
EncycloPetey
talk
00:55, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
No, that is the source; it’s just that the PDF contains multiple separate documents, like I said. It’s like the “Family Jewel” papers or the “Den of Espionage” documents.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
00:58, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Sorry, I meant to say that we do not have a source for it as an independently hosted work. To use the provided source, it would need to be moved into the containing work. --
EncycloPetey
talk
01:55, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Well these document collections are bit messy, they were originally independent documents / works but they are collected together for release, e.g. because someone filed a FOIA request for all documents related to person X. I don't think it is unreasonable if someone were to extract out the document. I wouldn't object if someone was like I went to an archive and grabbed document X out of Folder Y in Box Z but if someone requested a digital version of the file from the same archive they might just get the whole box from the archive scanned as a single file. Something like the "Family Jewels" is at least editorial collected, has a cover letter, etc., this is more like years 1870-1885 of this magazine are on microfiche roll XXV, we need to organize by microfiche roll.
MarkLSteadman
talk
11:17, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
EncycloPetey
since this PDF is published on the DOD/WHS website, doesn't that make this particular collection of documents a publication of DOD/WHS? (Genuine question, I can imagine there are cases -- and maybe this is one -- where it's not useful to be so literal about what constitutes a publication or to go off a different definition. But I'm interested in your thinking.) -
Pete
talk
20:11, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Why would a particular website warrant a different consideration in terms of what we consider a publication? How and why do you think it should be treated differently? According to what criteria and standards? --
EncycloPetey
talk
20:23, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Your reply seems to assume I have a strong opinion on this. I don't. My question is not for the purpose of advocating a position, but for the purpose of understanding
your
position. (As I said, it's a genuine question. Meaning, not a rhetorical or a didactic one.) If you don't want to answer, that's your prerogative of course.
I'll note that
Wikisource:Extracts#Project scope
states, "The creation of extracts and abridgements of original works involves an element of creativity
on the part of the user
and falls under the restriction on original writing." (Emphasis is mine.) This extract is clearly not the work of a Wikisource user, so the statement does not apply to it. It's an extract created by (or at least published) by the
United States Department of Defense
, an entity whose publishing has been used to justify the inclusion of numerous works on Wikisource.
But, I have no strong opinion on this decision. I'm merely seeking to understand the firmly held opinions of experienced Wikisource users. -
Pete
talk
20:42, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
You misunderstand. The page we currently have on our site is, based on what we have so far, an extract from a longer document. And that extract was made by a user on Wikisource. There is no evidence that the page we currently have was never published independently, so the extract issue applies here. We can host it as part of the larger work, however, just as we host poems and short stories published in a magazine. We always want the work to be included in the context in which it was published. --
EncycloPetey
talk
20:55, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
OK. I did understand that to be TEaeA,ea's position, but it appeared to me that you were disagreeing and I did not understand the reasons. Sounds like there's greater agreement than I was perceiving though.
Pete
talk
21:36, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
I am unclear what you are referring to as a "longer document." Are you referring to the need to transcribe the Russian portion? That there are unreleased pages beyond the piece we have here?. Or are you saying the "longer document" is all 53 sets of releases almost 4000 pages listed here (
)? I hope you are not advocating for merging all ~4000 pages into a single continuous page here, some some subdivision I assume is envisioned.
Re the policy statement: I am not sure that is definitive: if someone writes me a letter or a poem and I paste that into a scrapbook, is the "work" the letter, the scrapbook or both? Does it matter if it is a binder or a folder instead of a scrapbook? If a reporter copies down a speech in a notebook, is the work the speech or the whole notebook. etc. I am pretty sure we haven't defined with enough precision to point to policy to say one interpretation of "work" is clearly wrong, which is why we have the discussion.
MarkLSteadman
talk
05:36, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
The basic unit in
WS:WWI
is the published unit; we deal in works that have been published. We would not host a poem you wrote and pasted into a scrapbook, because it has not been published. For us to consider hosting something that has not been published usually requires some sort of extraordinary circumstances. --
EncycloPetey
talk
15:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
From WWSI: "Most written work ... created but never published prior to 1929 may be included", Documentary sources include; "personal correspondence and diaries." The point isn't the published works, that is clear. If someone takes the poem edits it and publishes in a collection its clear. It's the unpublished works sitting in archives, documentary sources, etc. Is the work the unpublished form it went into the archive (e.g separate letters) or the unpublished form currently in the archives (e.g. bound together) or is it if I request pages 73-78 from the archives those 5 pages in the scan are the work and if you request pages 67-75 those are a separate work?
MarkLSteadman
talk
17:18, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
I will just add that in every other context we refer to a work as the physical thing and not a mere scanned facsimile. We don't consider Eighteenth Century Collections Online scanning a particular printed editions and putting up a scan as the "published unit" as distinct from the British Library putting up their scan as opposed to the LOC putting up their scan or finding a version on microfilm. Of course, someone taking documents and doing things (like the Pentagon Papers, or the Family Jewels) might create a new work, but AFAICT in this context it is just mere reproduction.
MarkLSteadman
talk
05:37, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
In the issue at hand, I am unaware of any second or third releases / publications. As far as I know, there is only the one release / publication. When a collection or selection is released / published from an archive collection, that release is a publication. And we do not have access to the archive. --
EncycloPetey
talk
17:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
We have access, via filing a FOIA request. That is literally how those documents appeared there, they are hosted under: "5 U.S.C. § 552 (a)(2)(D) Records - Records released to the public, under the FOIA," which are by law where records are hosted that have been requested three times. And in general, every archive has policies around access. And I can't just walk into Harvard or Oxford libraries and handle their books either.
My point isn't that can't be the interpretation we could adopt or have stricter policies around archival material. Just that I don't believe we can point to a statement saying "work" or "published unit" and having that "obviously" means that a request for pages 1-5 of a ten report is obviously hostable if someone requests just those five pages via FOIA as a "complete work" while someone cutting out just the whole report now needs to be deleted because that was released as part of a 1000 page large document release and hence is now an "extract" of that 1000 page release. That requires discussion, consensus, point to precedent etc. And if people here agree with that interpretation go ahead.
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:16, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
For example, I extracted
Index:Alexandra Kollontai - The Workers Opposition in Russia (1921).djvu
out of
[2]
. My understanding of your position is that according to policy the "work" is actually all 5 scans from the Newberry Library archives joined together (or, maybe only if there are work that was previously unpublished?), and that therefore it is an "extract" in violation of policy. But if I uploaded this
[3]
instead, that is okay? Or maybe it depends on the access policies of Newberry vs. the National Archives? Or it depends on publication status (so I can extract only published pamphlets from the scans but not something like a meeting minutes, so even though they might be in the same scan the "work" is different?)
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:45, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
If the scan joined multiple
published
items, that were published separately, I would see no need to force them to be part of the same scan, provided the scan preserves the original publication
in toto
. I say that because there are Classical texts where all we have is the set of smushed together documents, and they are now considered a "work". This isn't a problem limited to modern scans, archives, and the like. The problem is centuries old. --
EncycloPetey
talk
04:21, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
So if in those thousands of pages there is a meeting minute or letter between people ("unpublished") then I can't?
MarkLSteadman
talk
13:57, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
This discussion has gone way beyond my ability to follow it. However, I do want to point out that we do have precedent for considering documents like those contained in
this file
adequate sources for inclusion in enWS. I mention this because if the above discussion established a change in precedent, there will be a large number of other works that can be deleted under similar argument (including ones which I have previously unsuccessfully proposed for deletion). —
Beleg Tâl
talk
13:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
for example, see the vast majority of works at
Portal:Guantanamo
Beleg Tâl
talk
13:15, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
(@
EncycloPetey
, @
MarkLSteadman
) So, to be clear, the idea would be to say that works which were published once and only once, and as part of a collection of works,
but that were created on Wikisource on their own,
to be treated of extracts and deleted per
WS:WWI#Extracts
If this is the case, it ought to be discussed at
WS:S
because as BT said a
lot
of other works would qualify for this that are currently kept because of that precedent, including most of our non-scan-backed poetry and most works that appeared in periodicals. This is a very significant chunk of our content. —
Alien333
what I did
why I did it wrong
09:29, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Also, that would classify encyclopedia articles as extracts, which would finally decide the question of whether it is appropriate to list them on disambiguation pages (i.e., it would not be appropriate, because they are extracts) —
Beleg Tâl
talk
13:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Extracts are only good for deletion if created separately from the main work. As far as I understood this, if someone does for example a whole collection of documents, they did the whole work, so it's fine, it's only if it's created separately (like this is the case here) that they would be eligible for deletion. Editing comment accordingly. —
Alien333
what I did
why I did it wrong
15:00, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
We would not host an article from an encyclopedia as a work in its own right; it would need to be part of its containing work, such as a subpage of the work, and not a stand-alone article. I believe the same principle applies here. --
EncycloPetey
talk
15:36, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
Much of our non-scan backed poetry looks like this
A Picture Song
which is already non-policy compliant (no source). For those listing a source such as an anthology, policy would generally indicate the should end up being listed as subworks of the anthology they were listed in. I don't think I have seen an example of a poetry anthology scan being split up into a hundred different separate poems transcribed as individual works rather than as a hundred subworks of the anthology work.
Periodicals are their own mess, especially with works published serially. Whatever we say here also doesn't affect definitely answer the question of redirects, links, disambiguation as we already have policies and precedent allowing linking to sub-works (e.g. we allow linking to laws or treaties contained in statute books, collections, appendices, etc.).
MarkLSteadman
talk
02:57, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
They are non-policy compliant, but this consensus appears to have been that though adding sourceless works is not allowed, we do not delete the old ones, which this, if done, would do. —
Alien333
what I did
why I did it wrong
07:55, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
Reply
The Finalized Report on the 2024 Little Yamsay Fire
edit
Latest comment:
5 months ago
24 comments
7 people in discussion
Looks like transcription of some screenshots of web pages. Not in our scope per
WS:WWI#Reference material
: "Wikisource does not collect reference material unless it is published as part of a complete source text" ... "Some examples of these include... Tables of data or results".
Besides, the PDF file contains two pages with two tables from two separate database entries, so it is a user-created compilation, which is again not possible per
WS:WWI
(Besides all this, I still believe that our task is not transcribing the whole web, as this creates unnecessary maintenance burden for our small community. But it is not the main reason, though it is important, the main ones are above.)
--
Jan Kameníček
talk
22:04, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Keep
– These reports are published specifically by the United States government at least 3 months after a natural disaster that serve as the finalized reports. There is
an entire page
specifically about these sources. The PDF is Wikipedian-made but the tables are not. The U.S. government divides every report by county and by month. The fire was in a single county, but occurred in April & May 2024, therefore, NOAA published an April 2024 and a May 2024 report separately. The PDF was the combination of the two sources. To note, this
is an official publication of the U.S. government
as described in that page linked above: "
Storm Data is an official publication of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which documents the occurrence of storms and other significant weather phenomena having sufficient intensity to cause loss of life, injuries, significant property damage, and/or disruption to commerce.
" Per
WS:WWI
, this is a documentary source, which qualifies under Wikisource's scope per "
They are official documents of the body producing them
". There is way in hell you can argue a collection of official U.S. government documents does not qualify for Wikisource.
WeatherWriter
talk
22:26, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
The definition of the documentary source in
WS:WWI
says that "documents may range from constitutions and treaties to personal correspondence and diaries." Pure tables without any context are refused by the rule a bit below, see my quotation above. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
22:33, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
That is how the National Weather Service, a branch of the United States government publishes finalized results...Like
every single fucking natural disaster in the United States
is published in that format.
File:Storm Data Document for the 1970 Lubbock, Texas Tornado.jpg
is a 1970 publication (pre-Internet) and this is a physical paper that was physcally scanned in. That to is in a chart and table. If charts and tables produced by the US government are not allowed, then y'all need to create something saying no U.S. government natural disaster report is allowed because
tables is how the U.S. government fucking publishes the information
. Yeah, good bye Wikisource. There is literally no use to be here.
WeatherWriter
talk
22:39, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
That is absolutely OK that they publish tables, but our rule does not accept such screenshot-based material. Being rude or shouting with bold or red letters won't help. Although you have achieved that opposing arguments are less visible, it will not have any impact on the final result. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
22:53, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
If/when this is deleted, please make a note somewhere that
Storm Data
is not covered under Wikisource's scope, since both the 2024 wildfire and 1970 tornado document above are from Storm Data and they would not be under the scope. There needs to be some note about that somewhere that the U.S. document series
Storm Data
is not under Wikisource's scope.
WeatherWriter
talk
22:56, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Definitely not, it is not a matter of publisher. Besides, our rules are worded generally, we never make them publisher-specific. Speaking about Storm Data, they publish a monthly periodical, see
an example
which would definitely be in our scope. Unlike screenshots of their web. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
23:06, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
So
Storm Data
is allowed, but screenshots of
Storm Data
is not allowed? Is that correct?
WeatherWriter
talk
23:09, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
More or less. We don't accept extracts or user-created compilations, but if you have a government work as a whole, we'll generally take it. Screenshots of works aren't specifically in violation, but it's a horrible way to get a whole work. You can use podman on the HTML, or print it directly from your browser, and that will let the text be copyable.--
Prosfilaes
talk
00:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I went ahead and requested author-requested speedy deletion on it. No use to try to argue or debate. I know you are an administrator who clearly knows it isn't in scope and needs to be deleted. I don't want to argue or debate it anymore and just want to be done with Wikisource transcribing. I do indeed lack the competence to know what is or is not allowed for Wikisource, despite being a veteran editor.
WeatherWriter
talk
23:18, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
In general, I would lean towards
Keep
for reports by federal governments on official events. I know that we keep for example Civil Aeronautics Board / NTSB reports. Presumably, the NTSB dockets could also be added if so inclined. This seems to be the NOAA equivalent where the differences seem to be some level of "lack of narrative / description" and the proper formatting of the sourcing from the DB for structured data. I don't really think the first is particularly compelling to merit deletion, and the second is really about form not content. E.g. it might make sense to download the DB as a csv and then make each line a sub page to be more "official" but this seems fine to me (might make sense to upload the 1 line CSV anyways for posterity).
MarkLSteadman
talk
00:06, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
On this topic, I want to throw
2024 Greenfield Tornado Finalized Report
into the mix. This is a nearly identical format Wikisource collection (
and Wikisource
validated
collection
) for the NOAA finalized report on the
2024 Greenfield tornado
. I am wanting to throw this into the mix for others to see a better-example of NOAA's finalized report. Also noting the Wikisource document is listed on the EN-Wikipedia article for the tornado (see the top of
w:2024 Greenfield tornado#Tornado summary
).
WeatherWriter
talk
00:17, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It's not the NOAA finalized report; it's a stitched together collection of NOAA reports. It's not entirely transparent which reports were stitched together. It's clearly not
Storm Data
.--
Prosfilaes
talk
00:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Prosfilaes
Every URL is cited on the talk page. See
Talk:2024 Greenfield Tornado Finalized Report
in the "Information about this edition". To also note, the "Notes" section actually says, "This tornado crossed through four counties, so the finalized report consists of four separate reports, which have been combined together." I do not know how that is not transparent enough to say which reports are in the collection. The reports "Event Narrative" also make it clear for the continuations: For example, one ends with "The tornado exited the county into Adair County between Quince Avenue and Redwood Avenue." and the next starts with "This large and violent tornado entered into south central Adair County from Adams County." NOAA is very transparent when it is a continuation like that. If you have any suggestions how to make it more transparent, I am all ears!
WeatherWriter
talk
00:51, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Also quick P.S., this is in fact Storm Data. You can read the
Storm Data FAQ page
. Everything regarding what is an "Episode" vs "Event" (as seen in the charts aforementioned above) is entirely explained there.
WeatherWriter
talk
00:57, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
WeatherWriter
I missed those URLs because they're not listed on the PDF page. Someone should archive completely that Storm Data database, but that's not really Wikisource's job. We store publications, not user-created collections of material from a database. There is no "2024 Greenfield Tornado Finalized Report" from NOAA; there are four separate reports.--
Prosfilaes
talk
04:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Keep.
The nominator misreads the relevant policy. The fact that a document is in tabular form does not mean that it needs must be excluded; this is a good example of that fact.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
00:44, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
...and besides that it is a user created compilation. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:56, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Upon my request, the two reports compiled in our pdf have been archived by archive.org, see
here
and
here
. Archive.org is the service which should be used for web archiving, not Wikisource, where the two screenshot-based tables are now redundant and without any added value. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
15:13, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It might make sense to add these to field to wikidata for storm events, assuming the event itself is noticeable, given that it is built for handling structured data. But that is a question for the wikidata commmunity.
MarkLSteadman
talk
04:09, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It seems to me that the claim that the page is a compilation was not disproved, and so I suggest closing the discussion and deleting the page per
Wikisource:WWI#Compilations
. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
21:06, 15 September 2025 (UTC)
Reply
You’re out!voted 2–1—in fact, no one even !voted delete. --
unsigned
comment by
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
) 19:27, 15 September 2025.
Well, I am giving an argument that it is a compilation which is explicitely prohibited here. None of the two who voted for keeping disproved this argument. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
09:06, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
Reply
FWIW,
Delete
on Jan's premises.
SnowyCinema
talk
12:17, 19 September 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
As I see it, the principal objection is that two separate reports have been compiled into a single page. The logical solution is therefore to split the page into its component reports, and turn the current page into a disambiguation page. --
EncycloPetey
talk
21:43, 16 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
13 comments
5 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
Deleted as compilation;
Portal:Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
created; many inappropriate links removed; some redirected to other targets
Judging by the note at the bottom, it looks like a compilation. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:21, 21 October 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Shouldn't each of the amendments have its own seperate page ? Is it worth moving these ? Or start afresh ? --
Beardo
talk
01:44, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I suggest enabling contributors to start afresh. Such important documents deserve to be scanbacked. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
20:40, 28 October 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
There are a
lot
of pages that link to this. Is there a Portal that can be used as a replacement link? --
EncycloPetey
talk
21:18, 30 October 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Exactly how bad of an idea would it be to scan back all of these amendments on the same page from different sources?
ToxicPea
talk
19:56, 16 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
You mean deliberately create a compilation, which is disallowed by policy? Using a Portal makes more sense to me. --
EncycloPetey
talk
21:47, 16 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Portal sounds good. It can be created even with red links only, with the hope that the red links will prompt somebody to create the individual amendments' pages. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
15:45, 14 January 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I've created
Portal:Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
. Those 932 links are essentially
various amendments and other early constitutional documents having a pseudo-toc hardcoded with links to bill of rights etc and this page—this pseudo-toc arguably should be plain gotten rid of.
Damn Benchbot! It added links by default to what it imported *facepalm*, broken links by default, which were helpfully "fixed" to now point to this page. Of course, all of it hardcoded. I would be of the opinion of simply deleting all Benchbot's stuff as non-scan-backed copypastes, but that's a discussion for another time. At any rate, I think you'll agree to simply removing these links? There's no point linking "14th amendment" at the start of every court case ever.
Alien
3 3
22:58, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Agree. Thanks for taking care of all this! --
Jan Kameníček
talk
23:02, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Geez. Looking up close has led me to realise how terrible the BenchBot imports are. I've opened
Wikisource:Scriptorium#Getting rid of BenchBot imports?
about it, and won't finish chasing absurd links in that mess. —
Alien
3 3
21:06, 25 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
The page was deleted, but there are dozens of links still pointing to the deleted page that have yet to be cleaned up. --
EncycloPetey
talk
18:02, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I have taken care of all links not from BenchBot. There is no point wasting volunteer time to take care of dumps like those. (See also
#23k BenchBot pages
.) —
Alien
3 3
18:10, 21 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:41, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Translations of works by
Author:Olavo Bilac
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
12 comments
5 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
A priori grandfathered, no consensus to delete for other reasons
Translation:Milky Way
Translation:Abstraction
Translation:To Youth
Translation:Delirium
All of these are user translations without a scan-backed source at the Portuguese Wikisource. The first three have pages there but not scan-backed ones, but "Delirium" has no page at all on the Portuguese Wikisource.
I don't dabble in translations too much but my understanding is that, since these were created after the 2013 grandfather rule was established, these are candidates for deletion.
SnowyCinema
talk
14:41, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Neutral
, though I will note that these translations were
first uploaded in 2003
(including
the last one
) before being split to their current location; so the grandfather rule should apply —
Beleg Tâl
talk
15:55, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Ah, well then I guess that means there's no rationale available for deletion. I don't
love
that stuff like this is here, but if there's no formal rationale to use that would work then I guess I can just withdraw the nomination.
SnowyCinema
talk
16:04, 14 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Though
The Milky Way
has two sonnets translated - I can only see one of them in the old history. --
Beardo
talk
00:10, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It's from 2023
, apparently. @
Beleg Tâl
: granted, these are grandfathered from the requirements on translations: but besides that, this completely fails to give any sort of source or original. Even if this weren't a translation, we'd delete it. Do you think it should be kept, and if so, why? —
Alien
3 3
20:48, 22 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I honestly don't care either way to be honest —
Beleg Âlt
BT
talk
20:23, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
per Alien. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Surely the grandfather rule applies to all except the most recently added item ? --
Beardo
talk
16:02, 20 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
(unclosing) @
Beardo
: Sorry, I thought the discussion was settled. I'll ask you the same question: regardless of translation status, this completely fails to give any source or original. What's the point keeping it? —
Alien
3 3
17:17, 20 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Surely the sources are the texts in Portuguese ? Requiring those to be scan-backed is back-dating even further the policy that only became policy earlier this year. --
Beardo
talk
20:47, 28 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I am not talking about scan-backing and the WS:T requirements, but about simply having sources, because the portuguese pages have no trace whatsoever of source or origin.
forgot to sign last month
Alien
3 3
22:32, 22 February 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:40, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Translation:Hunminjeongeum
edit
Latest comment:
4 months ago
17 comments
5 people in discussion
Although the scanbacking was started in the Korean Wikisource, it seems to be stuck, see
here
. The work can be undeleted after/if the proofreading process of the original is finished. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
23:07, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Why are you deleting, the Hunminjeongeum??? Do you know you cant do that?? Who are you and why you want delete such important work?? Makes no Sence. NO!
Resits
talk
23:24, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Wow, such a bad atitude! Ur deleting colaboration from users, and not colaborating anything, Ur sabotaging, open work. If there work to be done, in proofreading of scans, why u deleting ALL translation in full page formate?? U cant do that!! So, this page is all good, tranlated. And u wanna delete it, and have bad scans not profread? makes no sence. vote against here. discrescpet for users colaborations!
Resits
talk
23:28, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
My understanding is that policy says "present" and "complete" and avoids saying words such as "proofread" or "validated". If we want to require proofreading, understandably, it would be helpful to clarify that is the expectation by setting it out. Right now it is compliant with the terms of the policy AFAICT,
MarkLSteadman
talk
01:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Good point. "A scan supported original language work must be present on the appropriate language wiki". It looks as if it complies. --
Beardo
talk
01:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
"Complete" could certainly be taken to mean "validated" or "proofread", I expect that was the intent behind the wording, but especially between "proofread" and "validated" there is a significant difference as we know. I would support an update / clarification to include a quality statement in the policy.
MarkLSteadman
talk
01:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I interpret "where the original language version is complete at least as far as the English translation" that if the text in the original language has only been partially transcluded, then it should at least cover the part which is translated into English. I can't see what "at least as far as" could mean otherwise. --
Beardo
talk
03:49, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I have always understood that it should be at least "proofread" because the status "not proofread" does not mean anything. But I agree that it would be better to have some quality statement included in the policy. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
12:58, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
If "Complete" = "Done" = "Validated" i.e. gone through ALL stages of the proofreading process, the policy statement "where the original language version is complete" could be read as "where the original version is validated" as far as the English version (e.g. if the first 10 pages are validated and the next 10 pages are only proofread, the English translation can cover the first 10 pages but not the first 11), but that seems especially strict.
MarkLSteadman
talk
15:52, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
"Completed" is used to mean different things in different places, so it really
does
need to be defined here.
By the way, this propsal really seems to have rattled some cages ! (See the recent change which I undid). --
Beardo
talk
20:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
: as far as I'm aware we almost always take "complete" to mean "proofread" (or for a mainspace page "is a transclusion of a proofread index"). —
Alien
3 3
19:52, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Agree. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:54, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
And also the other way: we never understand "complete" as "not proofread". --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:56, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
{{
incomplete
}} specifically refers to "are not available on Wikisource in any form, either as text content or page scans." Note
any
form so specifically
no requirement
on whether it was proofread against the scans or even for the text content any quality marker. As we specifically separate
completeness
from both
scan-baking
and even {{
OCR-errors
}} which is listed as
errors
a separate category form
completeness
. That may be how it is interpreted given how things have evolved but not how it is actually written out in our templates and policies.
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
The rule clearly says that the work must be scanbacked. So it is not completeness of the transcription
in any form
that is required, it is the completeness of the scanbacking process. While we may discuss whether "complete" means "proofread" or "validated" (and I agree it would be better to have it specified in the rule), it definitely does not mean "not proofread". --
Jan Kameníček
talk
13:14, 7 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
"Completeness of scan-backing process" is ambiguous is my point. Do we consider works that were match-and-split but still-to-be-proofread scan backed?
Yes, with "scan-backed" meaning all subpages of are transcluded from scans while "incomplete scan-backed" means only some subpages have been migrated, while others are still left in main untranscluded. E.g.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
would be considered a scan-backed work.
Yes, with "scan-backed" meaning all pages of work in main are transcluded and all pages of the work are transcluded. "Incomplete scan-backed" means that all pages in maing are transcluded from scans but not all portions of the work are present yet. E.g.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
would be considered a scan-backed work.
No, "completely scan-backed" means completing the scan-backing process to either proofread or done.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
would not be considered a "scan-backed" work.
On here now we recently deleted
The Indian Orphan
as "redundant to a scan-backed copy" but
Forget Me Not/1825/The Indian Orphan
is
not proofread
and hence according to the proposed definition isn't "scan-backed". So is that message wrong?
MarkLSteadman
talk
15:03, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
"scan-backed" and "scan-backed and complete" are different things. As far as I understand it, "scan-backed" is just your first point: all the text comes from a scan. "scan-backed and complete" implies that the scan-backing is reasonably complete (in which I'd place that "reasonably" somewhere near "at least proofread except for problematic or empty pages").
(On the specific case of
The Indian Orphan
: that was a self-published extract from a 1836 reprint, claiming to be the 1824 work; from this perspective being actually based on a scan of the real 1824 work was already enough to make the other one redundant.) —
Alien
3 3
15:55, 20 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Translation:Urd/1907/Pianist Sigvart Høgh-Nilsen
edit
Latest comment:
4 months ago
23 comments
7 people in discussion
Translation that isn't scan-backed in the
Norwegian Wikisource
Nighfidelity
talk
21:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
They are just not linked:
--
RAN
talk
18:39, 27 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Richard Arthur Norton
: the nows page is not scan-backed. —
Alien
3 3
15:49, 28 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Alien333
Can you rephrase what "scan-backed" means in this context? The scans are housed at Commons: File:Sigvart Høgh-Nilsen biography in Lordag on July 27, 1907.png Are you requiring that Wikisource must house the scans, rather than Commons? Isn't this something requiring a fix, rather than deletion? --
RAN
talk
17:48, 28 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It means that the page on noWS has not been
proofread against the scan
. This would need to be done at
no:Indeks:Sigvart Høgh-Nilsen biography in Lordag on July 27, 1907.png
by someone at noWS,
before
we can host the user translation here at enWS. —
Beleg Tâl
talk
22:36, 28 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Why do we need an index page for a magazine article just 5 paragraphs? Aren't indexes for whole books? --
RAN
talk
06:19, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
People should be rather adding whole works rather than single articles. I'm not saying you have to finish it all, just that when setting it up for work, instead of working on little parts here and there to be recomposed when there are enough of them, it'd be better to set up the index once and for all, so as to be done with it. (Of course, you are then free to only proofread and transclude a few pages of that.) (Well, that's what we'd do anyhow. But I suspect the NOWS people are probably not huge fans either of disconnected articles.) —
Alien
3 3
15:01, 29 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
This has been discussed multiple times. A magazine article or a newspaper article is a complete work. That is not a reason for deletion. We have over 500
The New York Times
articles ranging from 1851 to 1929 and as far as I can tell, the closest to a complete issue is one single day in 1929 with an index, the rest are single articles with no index, because an index is not needed for a single article. --
RAN
talk
19:17, 3 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
An index is necessary for something to be scan-backed. I might be tolerant of some other way of linking the scan, but this page doesn't have any link to a scan to check it. That's the whole point of the scan-backed requirement, that anyone can check the text versus the scan.
We permit single articles to be posted, but it's a lot easier when you load scans for the whole work as originally printed. Ideally, it would be nice to have an magazine or newspaper here. I'm more conflicted about newspapers; on one hand, it's unlikely we'll transcribe an entire newspaper, but on the other, so many newspaper clips are tiny texts that were never meant to stand alone; they feel like much worse violation of our no-excerpt rule than full chapters of a lot of books.--
Prosfilaes
talk
05:38, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Note that many magazines come in volumes so we are talking about uploading 6 Months or a year, etc. While it might be
preferred
to upload the whole issue it certainly isn't
necessary
. The two pages proofread here can be easily be moved when the whole work is uploaded to replace it when someone wants to.
Among other things, it means that know you need to go through and check all 500 pages for copyright status which may not be easy, so to get this one article I would need to go through 6 months of Norwegian writers to see what their death dates are to determine whether it is suitable for commons or not.
MarkLSteadman
talk
15:31, 4 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Magazines were originally printed in issues, and uploading them as issues would be better than uploading one page. I've found that volumes are sometimes too large to upload. In this case, since this is on no.WS, which presumably only takes life+70, I don't think it would be unreasonable to upload just one page. OTOH, for works on en.WS, I'd rather an issue be uploaded to here for concerns of Commons copyright instead of an excerpt uploaded to save that checking.--
Prosfilaes
talk
01:00, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It is reasonable to tradeoff having clearly licensed content on commons serving both NO WS and EN WS to doing localized uploads, and I am not sure what NO WS's policies are around content that isn't PD in Norway / the EU anyways. It would certainly be reasonable on their part for their admins to not want to deal with files / content that put them at risk for infringement. Even going through copyright clearance and redaction for a whole issue might be a pain.
MarkLSteadman
talk
05:28, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Does that mean that English Wikisource cannot have user translations of works that are PD in the US but not in their home country ? Or what ? --
Beardo
talk
14:06, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Say pg. 10-15 of a magazine isn't, but like here pg. 1-2 containing the article of interest for translation is in the PD in both countries. The point of discussion is whether to just upload the joint PD parts (pp. 1-2) but or whether we need to upload the whole issue to provide scan-backing and create the index file. My main point is that it isn't a trivial ask to the contributor to do so and may cause complications. I personally don't see the value in having an additional 20 pgs. in Norweigian a magazine lying around in the index file scan just for completeness in exchange for these additional complications. 15:27, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
MarkLSteadman
talk
15:27, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Separately, this causes issues for scientific journal as well, for example, I have held up scan backing
Layered Architecture for Quantum Computing
because the scan is of just the article, not the issue and I don't know what the policy to do actually is:
. I can't reassemble the articles (user compilation), i can't upload the individual article if we have a whole issues policy.
MarkLSteadman
talk
15:33, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Is anyone arguing against that? Yes, in that case just upload pages 1 and 2. But in general when uploading to enWS, not life+x, I'd rather see the whole magazine uploaded to enWS rather than one section uploaded to Commons.--
Prosfilaes
talk
22:20, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
That's your choice, but I don't think we should mandate people commit copyright infringement in their own country if they prefer not too. I am fine with a discussion going, "hey I saw you uploaded only pages 5-7, we would prefer if you uploaded the whole issue" and they responding by saying "I'd rather not because it's still copyrighted where I am."
MarkLSteadman
talk
02:01, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Then ask someone else to upload it if it's available online.--
Prosfilaes
talk
03:11, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
I believe www.wikisource.org will take works that are public domain in the US but not acceptable for copyright reasons on their language's Wikisource.--
Prosfilaes
talk
22:20, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Imagine requiring someone to load an entire issue of a newspaper, just to load one obituary, just because we want to have the obit to document a particular fact about that one person. If it can be read from start to finish, it is a complete work, whether a news article, a magazine article, a journal article, or an advertisement. We even have several works that are incomplete because parts of the complete document have been lost to history. --
RAN
talk
21:59, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Imagine that. We require people to upload the whole
History of the United States (Beard)
even if they just want, say, "PART IV. THE WEST AND JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY", and you're complaining because you just want to upload a tiny snippet of one issue of a work. You only want to document a particular fact about that one person; perhaps Wikisource is not the place to do that. Just upload the obituary to Commons, perhaps.--
Prosfilaes
talk
22:39, 5 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
That is the strawman fallacy. My argument is magazines articles and newspaper articles, and your argument is about a book. Books are usually read from cover to cover, magazines articles and newspaper articles are meant to be read individually, and are complete works. --
RAN
talk
02:59, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
It's not a strawman; it's not really a logical argument at all, and neither is your "Imagine requiring...". You're complaining about having to cross the street to pick up your mail to a postal worker who walks 10 miles a day.
Non-fiction books are often used in parts, often only the subjects or fields that the reader is interested in. Obituaries aren't meant to be read individually; people don't buy the newspaper for just one obituary. They read the obituary page at least, and usually newspaper readers read the headlines and other parts. Particularly "to document a particular fact about that one person" also applies to tiny parts of nonfiction books, and sometimes even tiny parts of fiction books.
Again it wasn't a logical argument; it was a statement that arguing that you shouldn't have to upload so much since you just want "to document a particular fact about that one person" is actively going to irritate certain of us, and it's not something that Wikisource actively supports.--
Prosfilaes
talk
06:51, 17 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Copyright Law Revision (House Report No. 94-1476)/Annotated
edit
Latest comment:
4 months ago
3 comments
2 people in discussion
Dates back to early 2008 (thus interestingly, this work is probably one of our earliest uses of ProofreadPage!). We now use the template {{
SIC
}} (and similar templates) for noting where typos and errors in the work exist, and all the annotations I can see here are simply noting where the typos are within the work. So, is there a point to having this separate "annotated version" that I'm not seeing, beyond what {{
SIC
}} can now provide?
SnowyCinema
talk
16:32, 23 November 2025 (UTC)
Reply
SnowyCinema
: Would you be willing to do the work of moving these footnotes to {{
SIC
}}s in the text? (We'd better do this first if we're going to delete the annotation.) —
Alien
3 3
19:35, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
Alien333
Yeah, I'll do it. Just give me a little time, though. (I'll announce here when I start on that.)
SnowyCinema
talk
19:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)
Reply
23k BenchBot pages
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
7 comments
5 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
~40k mainspace nonredirects pages deleted (~140k counting redirects and talk pages).
All pages in
Category:Uncategorized United States Supreme Court decision
and their subpages (
list
) (plus redirects of course).
Context:
BenchBot
was a bot run by
slaporte
which in 2010-2011 imported
118201
mainspace page's worth of US Supreme Court cases from
(relevant archive
here
), a website maintained by
BenchBot imports are a mostly unreviewed&unproofread mess of little wonders:
collapsed for sanity's sake
Things like
[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
|[[
Additional amendments to the United States Constitution
Amendment XV
Fifteenth Amendment
]]
]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
(sometimes even worse, and often multiple per page), or
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
nowiki
'Sec. 16. [...]
or this wonderful
table
attempt to make a table
Population
County
Hamilton............ 1682,027 1, Kearney............. 1591,571 1, Finney.............. ---3,350 3, Gray................ ---2,415 1, Ford.............. 3,1225,308 5, Edwards........... 2,4093,600 3, Pawnee............ 5,3965,204 5, Barton........... 10,318 13,172 13, Rice.............. 9,292 14,451 14, Reno............. 12,826 27,079 29, Sedgwick......... 18,753 43,626 44, Sumner........... 20,812 30,271 25, Cowley........... 21,538 34,478 30,156
---------
--------- ---------
104,793 186,552 178,
(notice also the
................ ---
which is clear proof of OCR) are legion, with also occasional links here and there to
of Amendment
This amendment
, capitals for what probably should be smallcaps, etc.
Someone took plaintext files and tried to make wiki pages out of it without supervision, which a) tends to be a bad idea and b) ended up quite badly.
These pages are a remnant of older times but are quite below standards for formatting, and especially due to the sheer volume impossible to take care of properly. We delete OCR dumps regularly, and this isn't much better.
Roughly 50k of these 118k pages are non-redirect; I estimate only about 1k of these are worth the keeping but the 23k in question are already very low-lying fruit with approximately zero risk: this category was added only by the bot on page creations, and was always removed on all the pages that had a tiny bit of content work done. These 23k are still just as the bot dumped them. Therefore I propose we delete them. —
Alien
3 3
22:00, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
per my arguments at the last discussion.
SnowyCinema
talk
22:55, 14 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
per nom. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
17:35, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
per nomination. Most of the formatted versions can be recreated if a scan is found.
Nighfidelity
talk
18:35, 19 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
for everything (including redirects) except the ~1k you have identified. I suspect the ~1k is also probably best deleted and started from scratch, but closer checking first seems warranted there.
Xover
talk
10:45, 4 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Note: I have deleted those 23k, and in doing so realised that in the steps I took to create that list of 23k from the pages in the category, a mistake in my code made me miss some 16k others (
User:Alien333/BenchBot/batch2
), which I will likewise delete, bringing the total number of nonredirect pages deleted through this discussion to about 41k. —
Alien
3 3
22:23, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:12, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Translation:The snake catcher says
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
9 comments
5 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
Deleted as user translation without scan-backed original
This is a user translation created after July 2013 without a scan-backed equivalent at the Chinese Wikisource. The Chinese version is at
zh:捕蛇者說
, but as it was not scan-backed, I am afraid this is not policy-compliant.
SnowyCinema
talk
17:03, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I should ping the creator:
Bousehje
as well as link to our policy page on user translations:
Wikisource:Translations
SnowyCinema
talk
17:05, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
what does "scan-backed" mean?
Bousehje
talk
17:11, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
well it was written in the 8th century so I doubt you could get a scan backed copy from the original publisher
But it's been public domain for centuries
Bousehje
talk
20:03, 24 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Bousehje
What basically needs to be done is that a scan needs to be uploaded, probably to Wikimedia Commons, of an original Chinese-language version of this text. It then needs to be proofread at the
Chinese Wikisource
with the ProofreadPage system. This process is explained at
Help:Proofread
and similar sources (
zh:Help:校对
at the Chinese Wikisource). Then, after all of the pages are proofread and transcluded, can a user-generated English-language equivalent exist here at the English Wikisource.
The original Chinese text does exist at the Chinese Wikisource but was not proofread with this process there, so that is not sufficient for the user translation provided to be hosted here.
SnowyCinema
talk
05:46, 25 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Right, maybe there's a museum that has an original Chinese text of this public domain essay, but I doubt any museum would let someone scan it.
Bousehje
talk
15:07, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It looks like the tale is included in this scan
c:File:SSID-13063005_增批足本古文觀止_卷90.pdf
(starts on page 8 of the PDF).
Tcr25
talk
16:13, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It doesn't have to be a scan of the 8th century original but a scan of a book edition which is in public domain in China. --
Beardo
talk
17:13, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:46, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Translation:Declaration of the union of Bessarabia with Romania
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
4 comments
3 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
Deleted; used translation without scan-backed original
User-generated translation of a Romanian declaration created today, which is linked to a text at the Romanian Wikisource. Per our user translation policy at
Wikisource:Translations
, the version at the Romanian Wikisource must be scan-backed, as this user translation was done after July 2013.
SnowyCinema
talk
15:36, 26 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Propose : weak
Keep
because better to have the content in English than not have it at all, especially given the current attention a reunion between Romania and Moldova has been getting in the media since the President Maia Sandu's comments saying she would vote for union. The Russians are also spreading disinformation about the previous union. Better to have the content available for others to see than not as a matter of source than not have at all.
Frank0051
talk
12:09, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Frank0051
Will you be able to scan-back
the original work
at the Romanian Wikisource? Here's an example of a text that was scan-backed there:
ro:Cerșetorii
SnowyCinema
talk
12:14, 27 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:45, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
"(full text)" sections of
An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language
edit
Latest comment:
5 days ago
7 comments
4 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
Kept, annotated so not the same as the originals
S-Sch
Se-Su
All of these should be deleted as redundant double transclusions. (I would have just speedied them, but since it seems like the project somewhat relies structurally on these pages, I thought I'd do a discussion instead.)
SnowyCinema
talk
16:36, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Is there a specific policy this violates? I'd generally find this sort of "all the words in the section" page more helpful to readers than the transclusion of a single word/definition to its own page, though I can see reasons for single-word transclusions too. Absent a policy violation, I'd !vote to keep. —
Tcr25
talk
17:13, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Tcr25
As far as I understand it, we can either have one or the other but we shouldn't have both. "Redundant—double transclusion" is in the list of speedy deletion rationales in the MediaWiki dropdown list. As far as my personal opinion on it, it should be deleted and this should be formal policy. I wasn't aware that it wasn't, but I agree that I can't find a specific policy this matches either. If it is kept on these grounds, I will bring this to a proposal next.
SnowyCinema
talk
17:55, 28 March 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This particular version is a little complicated because these are
annotated
full text versions which by definition are not redundant with the unannotated "clean" versions. Is there a reason the "annotated" versions (e.g.
An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/H (full text)
) are nominated by the "unannotated/clean" ones (e.g.
An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/H (full text)
) is not?
MarkLSteadman
talk
02:06, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Keep
Fully compliant with annotation policy: Text implemented with {{
Annotation switch
}}, clean version exists, "annotated" in the name per policy. If people don't think annotations should exist or that {{
Annotation switch
}} is the wrong apporach you should say that rather than hide it is "double transcluded" which our annotation policy requires (i.e. if the claim here is that the user should copy and paste the text into a new index and edit from thers. 03:45, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:45, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
As an aside, being able to speedy deletion without comment the work of someone without discussion is a great power and should be used cautiously, a glance at he note on the first one saying "This annotated version expands the abbreviations in the original entry A (full text)." and named An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/A (full text) with "Annotated" right there should have made this obvious.
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:52, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
19:39, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
On some controversies regarding origin and nationality of Nezami Ganjavi
edit
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Deleted as extract
This appears to be an excerpt, barely covering the abstract, with just Google Translate links to the ruWS transcription of the Russian original.
It is also, apparently, a user translation (the article hasn't been published anywhere in English that I can tell), although it seems plausible that the original author is also the translator. This text was the subject of a copyvio discussion in 2011 that ended with an OTRS-permission asserting GFDL licensing that I am not going to challenge, but I'll just note that the
publisher
claims copyright in the published version and the circumstances are suggestive of someone grasping for wider reach (i.e. self-promotion), which would tend to make that OTRS release dubious.
Xover
talk
17:05, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
per nom.
SnowyCinema
talk
19:27, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
18:55, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
VP Vance speaks to the press after strikes on Iranian nuclear sites
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Deleted as webpage copy
This is an excerpt of a webpage at whitehouse.gov, which is itself just a collection of excerpts.
SnowyCinema
talk
21:00, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete.
If this an excerpt, it can be completed; and the Web page is not a collection of excerpts, but a work in its own right. However, this should be deleted for the separate reason that it is a duplicate of a Web page, which can be archived through the usual means.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
01:02, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
18:56, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 9.pdf/1
(and others)
edit
Latest comment:
5 days ago
5 comments
5 people in discussion
Mass creation of pages as not proofread without any text.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
19:16, 8 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
as when I asked @
AramaicQueen
about them, they stated that
I hope someone picks the pages up later and turns them into articles like in the main Jewish Encyclopedia page. I do not have enough time to do it myself, so I am just starting and creating the page.
Nighfidelity
talk
15:47, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
The file has no text layer, so anyone wishing to work on this would need access to OCR tools. --
EncycloPetey
talk
16:41, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
: Please not that pages 479-503 are already proofread; so at least those pages should not be deleted.
Sije
talk
19:33, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
Which pages exactly should be deleted? —
Alien
3 3
08:03, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Portal:Poetry/Did you know
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Deleted
Subsection of a portal page that hasn't been updated since 2010. The reason why I nominated it is because this page is the only one like it in Wikisource.
Nighfidelity
talk
20:09, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
These are taken from en.wikipedia's DYK, right? That seems a bit odd and without any upkeep low value. —
Tcr25
talk
21:25, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
. If we're going to have a system like this, it should be consistently applied across many portals at least. But I don't even think I'd want this here even if that were the case. Portals are a place to list out works primarily, not list facts.
More broadly, every time we try and report information in prose like Wikipedia does it always comes with problems we can't easily deal with at scale. If people disagree with the information presented, the information is out of date, the information is biased in presentation, etc., we just don't have enough community monitoring / mechanisms to deal with the problem. This kind of conflict actually happens occasionally in the Portal namespace and in {{
header
}} notes sections, and every time I've encountered disagreement about informational sentences I've just truncated them. We're best at what we do best, which is to list works and transcribe them. My philosophy is to try and stay as far away from reporting as possible for this reason.
SnowyCinema
talk
05:02, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
08:13, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Category:United States Supreme Court decisions by court
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Deleted as unused
This category contains only
Category:United States Supreme Court decisions by court/Courts of Appeals
which contains categories for each US Court of Appeals. Since these clearly aren't Supreme Court decisions
Category:United States Supreme Court decisions by court
should probably be deleted and
Category:United States Supreme Court decisions by court/Courts of Appeals
should be moved to
Category:Courts of Appeals decisions by court
ToxicPea
talk
23:27, 9 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
JoeSolo22
FYI. My impressions is that this was meant to categorize SCOTUS decisions by the circuit they were appealed from, rather than cover the actual circuit decisions themselves. 03:35, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:35, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You'd be correct. I'd be alright if it was deleted though since it's not really being utilized.
JoeSolo22
talk
03:48, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
as unused. If someone is motivated to pick it up and properly classify things than make yourself known and this can be kept, otherwise dealt as unused and unnecessary.
MarkLSteadman
talk
03:57, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Actually
Category:United States Supreme Court decisions by court/Courts of Appeals
should just be deleted instead of being moved since
Category:United States Courts of Appeals
exists.
ToxicPea
talk
04:02, 10 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
08:11, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
British White Paper of Palestine of 1939
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Deleted as redundant
Not scan backed and redundant to
British White Paper of Palestine 1939
ToxicPea
talk
20:37, 11 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
08:11, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Index:Platzmann Julius - Letter to Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius - 1867-08-26.pdf
edit
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Deleted as not in english
This work is not in English and is therefore out of scope for English Wikisource. There is a version on German Wikisource but the pages are transcribed here in German and not translated into English.
ToxicPea
talk
02:13, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I think that if the user were planning to do a translation, then the Index could stay, but I agree that the Pages don't belong. --
Beardo
talk
02:51, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Pinging
Babbage
for comment.
ToxicPea
talk
03:00, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
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Alien
3 3
14:33, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Aus Der Bai Von Paranaguá
and
Index:Aus der Bai von Paranaguá.pdf
and associated Pages
edit
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Deleted as not in english
Another work by Julius Platzmann (see immediately above), but in this case, I cannot see that the work is on German wikisource (let alone being scan-backed), and several pages in German have been transcribed and transcluded. I think that all needs to be deleted, as not complying with our policies. --
Beardo
talk
02:55, 12 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:16, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Autobiography of George M. Craig (1939)
edit
Latest comment:
4 days ago
23 comments
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This work has allegedly been written in 1939 but I suspect it has never been published anywhere which would mean it is not elligible to be hosted here. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:35, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Well, we have many unpublished letters transcribed here, and even guidance about transcribing manuscripts, so I don’t see why this wouldn’t count. The main issue is that we are lacking a scan, but that’s not a requirement for completed works.
TE(æ)A,ea.
talk
22:07, 14 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I am afraid no works which have not been published anywhere can be hosted under current rules. The fact that a work has been published somewhere is a sign of its notability. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
14:13, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
That's not entirely true.
WS:WWI
has a provision allowing for unpublished research that meets specific criteria. Our policy distinguished between works
created
before or after 1930, not
published
. I'm unaware of any provision forbidding the inclusion of
all
works that are unpublished. There may be additional grounds under which this fails WWI, but lack of publication alone is insufficient as a criterion. --
EncycloPetey
talk
15:17, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Well, the header of to WS:WWI states:
Wikisource, ..., exists to archive the free artistic and intellectual works created throughout history, and to present these
publications
...
It is true that for works created after 1930 there is an exception mentioned regarding unpublished scientific research. However, this specific work does not fit under this provision.
Besides, WS:WWI specifically excludes self-published works. Thus it would not make sense to accept works which nobody published at all. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:04, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
We have more than a few manuscripts, hand-written documents, and other unpublished copies of works. If you believe all of these should be deleted for not being published, then that's a separate discussion. My point is that we do not exclude works
solely
on the basis of not being published. That is not a criterion sufficient in and of itself to exclude a work. --
EncycloPetey
talk
19:21, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
We routinely exclude works solely on the basis of being self-published. Not being published at all is even worse. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:30, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Again, if you believe that we should remove unpublished texts, simply for being unpublished, you should start that discussion, since it has not been a reason for deletion in the past. Since that is the only reason for nominating this text, I vote to
Keep
. --
EncycloPetey
talk
21:26, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It is a part of current policy, as shown above. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
08:54, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
It is also not true that "it has not been a reason for deletion in the past," on the contrary, works have commonly not been accepted based on this reason:
Quoting you from
User talk:PoliticalBuff
Wikisource is a library, and we curate
published
works.
or from
User talk:Humble Ayankwo#Unpublished works
All works must have been previously published.
Quoting
Billinghurst
from
User talk:Krantmlverma
If it has not been published previously, then Wikisource is not where the work should be.
or from
User talk:Liuenming
If a work has not been published, then it is not within our scope.
Quoting
Prosfilaes
from
User talk:Blumagik202
we are a collection of existing works, and don't include unpublished contributions.
--
Jan Kameníček
talk
09:27, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Quoting an explanation made to a brand-new contributor, intended to provide the broad sweep of what we do, is disingenuous. That first quote was specifically regarding a user-created list. The second, an original work of literature written by the contributor. The comments provided the generalities without covering contingencies and details. Or should brand-new contributors be given the full sweep of every possibility in their introduction to the community? Those comments were intended to explain that we're not a place for people to post their original literary compositions.
If we do not host
any
unpublished works, then we should not have
Index:The Vercelli Book.djvu
, because that's an unpublished medieval manuscript on parchment. --
EncycloPetey
talk
13:15, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The Vercelli Book has been published e. g. by the
University of Turin
and by others too, thanks to which its authenticity can be checked. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:37, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
The copy I pointed to was not. It is a manuscript copy, not a published copy. If we only host published works, then we can't host a manuscript copy. Likewise we have
Zodiac Killer letter, December 1966
, which is a poem carved into a desk, and
Text on the Column of Victory in the grounds of Blenheim Palace
, which is text on a monument. Neither of these are published. --
EncycloPetey
talk
18:52, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
We have the scans of the original manuscript and these scans had been published before they were uploaded to Commons. You may disagree with this reason, but it is the reason why I will not nominate it for deletion, and if somebody did, I would vote for its keeping. Zodiac killer letter was also published, otherwise it would not have the copyright tag it has. If you have a look at the discussion at
Wikisource:Copyright discussions/Archives/2023#Template:PD-Disavowed
(closed by you), you will see that the contributors to the discussion agreed that it had been published. I think it was also published in some newspapers. We also have the scan of the letter which was published at various online places too, although the uploader failed to note where they took it from. I think it was published in some books as well. Again, thanks to the fact it was (quite widely) published, there is no problem to verify its authenticity. However, the work we are discussing here, has not been published anytime and anywhere. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
19:30, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
You have two issues here: one from a discussion about a template where some of the commenters have talked about items that bore the template, and an issue about scans.
A discussion
closed
by me in accordance with what the commenters had discussed, though I did not personally voice any opinion on the issue, and the discussion centered on the need (or not) of a particular template. The matter was never investigated to determine that all had actually been
published
. Those who commented said they
probably
had been, and a few suggested that they might
not
have been published. Are you suggesting that saying something was
probably
published is sufficient reason to keep? Because I don't see any evidence presented in the discussion you've pulled in to demonstrate publication, nor was any actual effort made to check.
With regard to the second point: if a wrote out an Emily Dickinson poem in nice lettering on a piece of paper, scanned it, and transcribed it, Wikisource would host that copy? As long as someone else had published that poem elsewhere? You're saying that the copy we host does not itself have to be published at all, only some version of it has to be? So
we can host unpublished editions
, as long as we have a scan, even a manuscript, and as long as
some other edition
of that text exists that was published? --
EncycloPetey
talk
15:44, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I am afraid this discussion is getting too far away from the original point. So just briefly: in the linked discussion multiple people clearly consider ZK letter to have been published (not just "probably published") and rightly so, because it was published, as I have also shown above. As for your Emily Dickinson example, Wikisource would not host that "edition", but not because it was not published. It would not host it because it would be selfpublished. Honestly, I do not understand why you want me to react to more and more unrelated examples and I suggest not flooding this discussion with these further. Let's focus on the main point: Works which were apparently not published by anybody anytime are unverifiable, are not in our scope per WS:WWI and were deleted in the past too. Various border cases can be discussed in other discussions. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:15, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Re: "Works which were apparently not published by anybody anytime are unverifiable." I firmly disagree. --
EncycloPetey
talk
18:22, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Re: "your Emily Dickinson example, Wikisource would not host that "edition", but not because it was not published". So we
do
host works even if they are unpublished. I am forcing this issue because, as you have demonstrated, old discussions here get pulled as used to support future decisions. And a claim that WWI in some way might prevent unpublished works from being hosted,
which was also the sole reason given for nomination
, is in fact the very issue under discussion. --
EncycloPetey
talk
18:30, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Please, do not twist what I have written: I did not write that we host works even if they are unpublished, I did not mean it either and I am sure you are aware of that. The reason would not be that it was not published, because in your example it would be published. The reason for excluding would be different, i.e. selfpublication. I repeat my appeal to focus on the main point of this discussion. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
18:48, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
I say again: If you are going to claim that lack of publication is the reason for deleting a work, then discussion of that point
is
the main point of this discussion. So, how would my hypothetical effort be self-publication, but the transcription under discussion is not? Wouldn't the monument example I gave then be self-publication as well? --
EncycloPetey
talk
19:02, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Without scan backing there is no way to verify the authenticity. Given the three criteria for post 1930 created works, it fails the scientific, or analytic and artistic works as unpublished. It also fails the first documentary source criterion as it is not an official work by an official body. The only possible inclusion would be "They are evidentiary in nature, and created in the course of events.". but without providing a source to verify: "The source of these works must be noted in order to allow others to verify that the copy displayed at Wikisource is a faithful reproduction." it currently fails before getting to that question..
MarkLSteadman
talk
11:18, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
WS:WWI
says "Most written work (or transcript of original audio or visual content) published (or created but never published) prior to 1931 may be included in Wikisource, so long as it is verifiable." So WS:WWI clearly provides for never published work to be included. The division between pre-1931 and post-1930 works here I've thought to more of the letter of the law versus the spirit of the law; recent works are more likely to be self-publishing, whereas 95 year old works, if they're vanity projects, at least they're vanity projects people still care about. Whether we extend this to a work that's
merely
85 years old is a discretionary thing. I would like scans, though.--
Prosfilaes
talk
22:36, 19 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Yes, as you have also pointed out, this provision is for works created before 1930, and there is also the condition that it has to be verifiable. None of these apply to this work. --
Jan Kameníček
talk
09:01, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Index:The Holy Scripture (Myles Coverdale).djvu
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
2 comments
2 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
Deleted as redundant to
Index:Coverdale.pdf
think
this is the same edition as
Index:Coverdale.pdf
, which is a better scan and has further progress —
Beleg Tâl
talk
00:13, 15 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Alien
3 3
14:15, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Contributions by
User:Meksikatsi
edit
Latest comment:
6 days ago
3 comments
3 people in discussion
These come from Savant, an organization which that I could not find evidence to prove its existance. Unless there is proof, I don't see why this shouldn't be deleted for being self-published. See the discussion at
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Savant publications
for more info.
Nighfidelity
talk
11:22, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
Note that the list of contributions includes both works and Author pages for those works. --
EncycloPetey
talk
15:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Delete
Having read the Wikipedia discussion, these lack the criteria for inclusion in Wikisource. This could even be a hoax.
Yann
talk
09:25, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Pirate Party Declaration of Principles 4.0
edit
Latest comment:
3 days ago
2 comments
2 people in discussion
This version of the
Pirate Party Declaration of Principles
is incomplete and has no linked source; and I can find no English-language version of it anywhere. I suspect it might be an abandoned user translation. —
Beleg Tâl
talk
23:05, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Comment
The original Swedish version of 4.0 can be found at
File:Piratpartiets principprogram.pdf
Nighfidelity
talk
23:25, 20 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
Author:Charles Francis Kenny
edit
Latest comment:
1 day ago
3 comments
2 people in discussion
The following discussion is closed and will soon be archived:
kept, in scope
author page with no hostable works (and created in conflation with the author of
Half-Hours With The Saints and Servants of God
) —
Beleg Tâl
talk
16:43, 21 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
There's hostable works.
shows several recordings of his works before 1931, and it's easy enough to find evidence of PD sheet music, e.g. I uploaded
File:We're the Sunday Drivers (1927) - cover.jpg
and
File:We're the Sunday Drivers - First page.jpg
.--
Prosfilaes
talk
01:10, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. —
Beleg Tâl
talk
14:17, 22 April 2026 (UTC)
Reply
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