Wikisource:Scriptorium

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Bot approval requests

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Bot approval request: CosmiaNebulaEB1926(2)Bot

I'd like to request authorization for a bot — User:CosmiaNebulaEB1926(2)Bot, operated by me — to help transcribe the 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica — the 13th edition / "New Volumes", a three-volume supplement to the 11th edition (continuous volumes 30–32) — which I am digitizing from scans I purchased and uploaded.

• Purpose: Upload machine-OCR'd page transcriptions to the Page: namespace at pagequality level 1 ("Not proofread"), as a first-pass layer for the community to proofread. The bot never marks pages proofread or validated.
• Scope: Page: namespace for Index:EB1926 - Supplement Volume 1.pdf, Volume 2 and Volume 3, plus the associated front matter (contributor index, table of abbreviations, contents/index pages). ~3,500 pages.
• Tools / framework: Python with Pywikibot. OCR is produced offline (Google Gemini 3 Pro); before each upload the wikitext is checked against a local MediaWiki Parsoid lint endpoint plus an unclosed-tag/brace check, so only lint-clean text is posted.
• Degree of human interaction: Semi-automated and supervised. I review output; the push script fetches each page's current revision first and skips any page whose last edit was not the bot's own — it never overwrites a human edit. I remain available and will stop the bot on any complaint.
• Throttle: ≤ 1 edit/minute while unflagged; ≥ 5 s if/when flagged, and 20 s during peak hours.

Happy to adjust scope, naming, or rate to whatever the community prefers. Cosmia Nebula (talk) 18:55, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Given it is for a single work you are working on and narrow in scope I  Support. Thanks for asking, here is the WS:Bots policy link for reference. 19:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 19:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

We tend to have a problem of OCR dumped => no one works on it immediately => discourages further work. It'd be better to add the OCR piece by piece, only if someone is actually going to work on that in the near future. — Alien  3
3 3 21:31, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Note that this does create work by creating lint errors that need to be addressed manually. It would be good to show progress on proofing volume 1 before moving on. MarkLSteadman (talk) 14:33, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

• Cosmia Nebula: The OCR-dump issue is one which I personally feel, but I believe that it less salient with respect to encyclopedias in particular. Some notes: in the header, both the page number and the article names are in a larger font. In addition, these are now usually handled in index styles. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 02:40, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

You're now using the bot for tasks that have neither been listed above, nor approved, and that is the addition of transcluded unproofread text into Mainspace, e.g. Astronomy, Athens, Athletics, etc. Any bot approval would be limited to the tasks approved, and would not extend to additional tasks outside that scope. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:07, 22 June 2026 (UTC)

 Oppose Based on my previous comment, and on edits like this one, where the edit summary indicates "merge local transcription", which is not part of the bot description, and which removes hyphens which are clearly present in the source text. This is wrong on two counts: (1) this function of the bot was neither announced nor approved; (2) such changes preserve errors in previous transcription which should be corrected by proofreading against the scan. A large number of such edits have been made today, which is troubling. --EncycloPetey (talk) 11:48, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

@Beeswaxcandle and @EncycloPetey, it seems that @Cosmia Nebula is continuing to do so, stating in the history of the Chemistry article, "EB1926: Chemistry/Colour for review". Nighfidelity (talk) 22:14, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

That page creation was done by the human, not the bot. It is therefore acceptable on those grounds. In general, we would prefer that pages that are in the "not proofread" state are not transcluded, but sometimes one has to do this to test a page layout in the mainspace. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:52, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

My concern was not page creation, but the editing of pages in a manner that makes them less like the scan, such as removing hyphenation that was present in the scan. This is being done by incorporating orthography from Mainspace pages, rather than proofreading against the scan. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:35, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

I was unaware of this bot request because it had not been placed in this section. I have just blocked it from editing in the mainspace until there is support for it to do so. At present, it may continue in the Page namespace at the throttled pace unless there is agreement to grant it the flag, or for it to be stopped. I note that the User page for this bot is yet to be created. Please do so. The User page should detail who owns the bot (including a link to the owner's talk page) and what it is being used for. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:31, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

A correction, and the full picture.

Correction. Some of the recent Volume 1 Page: edits (the Archaeology run) went out faster than the ≤1 edit/minute I committed to — a throttle misconfiguration in my own tooling, now fixed; the rate is back to ≤1/minute. They were all in the Page: namespace, and none overwrote anyone's work.

Not raw OCR. The bot uploads complex editions I prepare and check offline, all verifiable in the page history:

• Author signatures resolved to full names, including obscure ones — the printed "A. E. T." is resolved to Arthur Edward Twentyman at Page:EB1926 - Supplement Volume 1.pdf/1003, a name a plain search does not return; I traced it by hand.
• A section-addressing scheme: every section, subsection and sub-subsection has its own anchor, so a deep link such as 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica/Archaeology#III. CONTINENTAL EUROPE AND GREAT BRITAIN/Neolithic Civilisation/Eastern Circle resolves to the exact paragraph.
• Cross-reference clusters resolved to their targets — e.g. the World War see-also lists at Page:EB1926 - Supplement Volume 3.pdf/1155.

It uploads at level 1, "Not proofread," and never sets a page to level 3.

Pull, merge, push — the push is real, and it is not overwriting. The bot does push: it writes pages. But where another editor has changed a page, I pull their version, merge their change into the local edition, and push the merged result — their work is folded in, not discarded. An automated run skips any page whose last edit was a human's. Because each merge's lesson becomes a corpus-wide rule, the Volume 2 and 3 uploads already include what the Volume 1 edits taught.

Scope. I have limited the mass upload to Volume 1 Page: scans, by my own choice. The end goal is the whole work — all three volumes' Page: scans cleaned and uniform, and the mainspace article pages. When I judge the first pass ready, I will request a bot flag for a faster rate, and permission to upload mainspace pages, to begin mass-uploading Volumes 2 and 3 and the mainspace articles.

Point-experiments, and why they are necessary. I prepare pages on a local MediaWiki that does not have the ProofreadPage extension, so <pages> article transclusion and <section> / {{section}} anchors do not exist there at all — only the live wiki shows whether they work. I therefore test one page live before applying a pattern across ~3,000. Concretely:

• The section-addressing scheme: I confirmed on the live parser that a deep link resolves to the exact paragraph — 1926 Encyclopædia Britannica/Archaeology#III. CONTINENTAL EUROPE AND GREAT BRITAIN/Neolithic Civilisation/Eastern Circle. An anchor becomes a real <span id> only in the live render, and whether a fragment containing "/" and spaces resolves is parser-specific — untestable offline.
• A dense cross-reference cluster: I confirmed the World War see-also links on Page:EB1926 - Supplement Volume 3.pdf/1155 resolve to their articles and to section anchors (Camouflage → its Military and Naval sections). Offline, every one of these is a redlink.
• Contributor section-links: a contributor-table entry must display the printed section name ("General Survey") while linking to the verbatim head anchor (Agriculture#I. GENERAL SURVEY) — a display/target split in Module:EB1926 contributor table that needs the deployed module and live rendering together.
• Mainspace article transclusion: a mainspace article assembles from <pages … fromsection= tosection> slicing section spans across page boundaries; with no ProofreadPage locally, this renders only on the live wiki.
• Chemical illustrations: the Chemistry and Colour pages were pushed specifically to see how chemical illustrations — neither figures, plates, nor text — render in place; the edit was marked "for review". There is no way to judge that rendering except live.

Each is an individual, supervised edit — the same latitude any editor has — and each verifies the markup once before it is applied corpus-wide.

The bot's user page, User:CosmiaNebulaEB1926(2)Bot, is created, as requested. Cosmia Nebula (talk) 02:22, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

@Cosmia Nebula:

1. Using LLMs to communicate with other users is disrespectful.
2. Either you've been using LLMs without thorough checks, or you have a superficial knowledge of how wikitext works (shown by your attempts at chemistry diagrams). Either way, you should not be transcluding that.
3. Given all of that, I find it hard to believe that you've been manually checking everything. For instance, what would be your source for the A. E. T.? What tells us that's not just a hallucination.

— Alien  3
3 3 11:55, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

@Alien333, three points.

1. Every message I post is vetted by me, line by line, whether or not I typed the first draft. Linguistic assistance is not misrepresentation: the words are mine, I vouch for each one, and I am accountable for them as if I had keyed them myself. 2. Editors are permitted to make mistakes — that is the ordinary condition of building a Wiki project. A mistake on a single article page is not disruptive, and the Chemistry/Colour edits are not a mass edit, inherently bounded in scope, not a complex subject, not a controversial subject, not about living persons, not authored by living persons, and not disruptive to other pages (it is a transclusion, not a target of transclusion). It is deliberate, low-stakes, and bounded. 3. I first searched Google, DuckDuckGo, and Google Scholar for "A. E. Twentyman" and found nothing that expands his acronym. I then turned up a lead that Twentyman had worked with Michael Sadler, cited to a particular book. I went to that book — Selections from Michael Sadler (p. 42): it records "Mr A C Twentyman, who is now over ninety" in a BBC radio broadcast, July 1961, which places his birth in the 1861–1871 range.

Then I used ChatGPT to look for a "Twentyman" matching everything I had already found. It surfaced two documents: a 1910 Hermann Muthesius letter addressed to "A. E. Twentyman, London" (Werkbundarchiv / Museum der Dinge, dated 1867–1962), and the Shrewsbury School Register entry:

Arthur Edward Twentyman, b. 1867, [G.T.H.]; left : Hulmean Exhib. B.N.C., Oxon., B.A. (2nd Hist.), 1891; late Assist Master, King's College School, London; Board of Education, Whitehall, 1901.

I then checked both against the primary documents myself. Every datum lined up, so I recorded it in the notes and moved on. Cosmia Nebula (talk) 19:22, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

@Cosmia Nebula: Just a heads up about a small issue. Writing "@Username" does not send a ping to that person. You have to put {{Ping|Username}}. Alien333 is pretty active here and will probably see this thread anyway, but just in case you want to make sure that you send a notification, use {{ping}} and make sure that you sign your comments with ~~~~: not signing or going back and editing a comment without adding a new signature will not work. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:37, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the precisions on point 3.
Re point 1: it still subjects other editors to reading a wall of text lots of which is dispensable.
Re what you said about a need to transclude (and point 2): transclusion only helps to test transclusion. All the rest should be tested before transclusion. — Alien  3
3 3 20:28, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

• Having proofread over one of the pages, I really see the advantage this gives with regard to tables; what would have taken me several hours now takes me only ten minutes of cross-checking. Of 110 cells of one particularly large table, only two contained errors. The objections given herein evince a distinct lack of considerations of practicality. In addition, having done a bit more proofreading on EB 1926, the present scans have quite a poor OCR, so the bot (which produces a higher quality product) is much appreciated in that respect. I would understand an objection if the pages were marked as proofread, but they are not; a reasonable proofread of the not-proofread pages will catch the few errors the bot leaves behind. The recent Indian contributions, which mass-mark unedited OCR as proofread, are far more damaging than this, but received far less hostility. “Archaeology” seems to be remarkably well done, as well; of course, it will have to be checked before the pages are marked as proofread, but it seems a remarkably successful test run. All in all, I support the bot continuing its existing work. For transclusion, usually we wait until the pages are proofread, so I’d hold off on that; everything else looks pretty good, though. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 15:29, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

Requesting the bot flag now — for the Page namespace only.

The first-pass transcription of all three volumes is now prepared and uniform across the full ~3,000 Page pages — running headers, author signatures, cross-references, tables and section anchors all worked through. I'd like to upload the whole set in one pass. At the ≤ 1 edit/minute I've been running, that is roughly 50 hours — I'd have to leave my laptop running for over two days straight to get through it. A flag would let it run at a sensible rate (and keep the bulk out of Special:RecentChanges, which is what the flag is for).

To restate the safeguard from my post above: this is a real push, but it is not an overwrite. The run skips any page whose last edit was not the bot's own — a human's edit is pulled and merged into the local edition, never discarded. Everything goes up at level 1, "Not proofread"; the bot never marks a page proofread or validated.

This is for the Page namespace only. Per TE(æ)A,ea., I'm holding mainspace transclusion until pages are proofread, and am not asking to touch the mainspace block here. Cosmia Nebula (talk) 09:10, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Update, 18 July. On 10 July I said I'd hold mainspace transclusion until proofreading was further along, and asked for the bot flag for the Page: namespace — that request is still open, and I'd appreciate eyes on it. On mainspace, two things have changed my mind since. First, editors have begun hand-creating 1926 EB articles (Jebavý, Václav, Shintoism), so the articles are wanted now, and hand-built pages will inevitably diverge in format from the assembled set. Second, transclusion updates automatically as the underlying pages are proofread, so assembly and proofreading are not sequential steps. I'd therefore like to ask for a small demonstration batch of assembled mainspace articles (say 50–100), under whatever conditions the community sets, with the partial block narrowed accordingly; anything beyond the batch would wait for support here. (I mistakenly posted this as a new section at the bottom of the page yesterday; consolidated here.) Cosmia Nebula (talk) 22:53, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

•  Support for the creation and subsequent editing of pages in the Page namespace, provided that they are always marked as not proofread. I am hesitant to let the bot modify text on pages that have already been marked as proofread by human editors, as it could easily introduce mistakes and typos into the proofread text (as in the case pointed out by EncycloPetey). --

Repairs (and moves)

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

See also Wikisource:Scan lab

UK Legislation

Please move the following indexes to match file names.

• Index:Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025.pdf --> Index:The Online Safety Act 2023 (Category 1, Category 2A and Category 2B Threshold Conditions) Regulations 2025 (UKSI 2025-226 kp).pdf
• Index:Online Safety Act 2023.pdf --> Index:Online Safety Act 2023 (UKPGA 2023-50 kp).pdf
• Index:Public Order Act 2023.pdf --> Index:Public Order Act 2023 (UKPGA 2023-15 kp).pdf
• Index:Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022.pdf --> Index:Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 (UKPGA 2022-11 qp).pdf
• Index:Ireland Act 1949I (UKPGA Geo6-12-13-14-41 qp).pdf --> Index:Ireland Act 1949 (UKPGA Geo6-12-13-14-41 qp).pdf

ToxicPea (talk) 23:12, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Penny Cyclopedia

Could someone move all of the connected pages to the Penny Cyclopædia seeing as the latter is the actual title? See Encyclopædia Britannica and New International Encyclopædia for examples. Nighfidelity (talk) 03:11, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

Y Done. Yann (talk) 12:50, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Index:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu

Could someone move this to Index:William Mackintire Salter - 'Nietzsche the Thinker', 1917.djvu to match commons? ToxicPea (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Now we can only move 100 subpages at a time, but settings should be changed, so that we can move more (at least 500 at a time). Yann (talk) 12:54, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

The Power of Thought

For disambiguation, please move The Power of Thought to The Power of Thought (Hamblin) --RaboKarbakian (talk) 15:48, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Done!--RaboKarbakian (talk) 16:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Found

Please move Found to Found (Goethe) (or something else like Found (von Goethe) if that is more accurate) for diambiguation.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 14:23, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Done!--RaboKarbakian (talk) 15:46, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

The adventures of Captain Horn

This and it's chapters should be moved to The Adventures of Captain Horn (which even the header itself uses). Nighfidelity (talk) 18:27, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Done. Please check.--TunnelESON (talk) 03:50, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Index:Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.pdf

Thanks to User:Koavf's effort, the missing pages of Index:Customs and Excise Management Act 1979.pdf has been repaired. Consequently, can somebody help to move all pages of that index after page 6 (i.e. from the current p. 10) by 2 pages? For example, this page should be moved to p. 37 of the index, corresponding to the correct page number of the file.廣九直通車 (talk) 05:49, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

Other discussions

Advertising validated texts

Hi, Is there a place for advertising validated texts? I can't find one. I think it would encourage people to validate more texts, if the result is proeminently displayed somewhere (e.g. on the main page on French WS: fr:Wikisource:Accueil). Yann (talk) 20:06, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

We advertise Proofread texts. Validated texts of note can be nominated as possible Featured Texts, but that does not always succeed because validation sometimes leaves many errors in the text. We have a former Featured text currently under review because it is full of transcription errors. The situation on French Wikisource may be better, but we often have new editors contribute to validation without understanding what that actually means. How does French Wikisource manage this issue? --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:19, 16 April 2026 (UTC)

There is no particuler process. AFAIK, new users mostly want to proofread new texts. Yann (talk) 19:25, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

@Yann: At least twice,[1][2] it has been proposed to put a validated texts search box on the Main Page. Both Kaldari and Xover created working mock-ups for it (e.g. [3]). But it seems to have been forgotten about despite apparent support. I would definitely support having such a feature on the Main Page and it's kind of ridiculous that we don't have any way for visitors to discover our validated texts. Nosferattus (talk) 20:40, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Reading through the old discussions, it seems the only problem was that many of our validated texts weren't actually in Category:Validated texts at the time. Back then we only had ~2500 texts in the category, but now there are 4,350, which seems like a decent number. Kaldari, Xover: Is this something we could move forward with? Nosferattus (talk) 21:11, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Per Portal:Proofreading milestones, still missing much. (Maybe a situation like this.) — Alien  3
3 3 21:26, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

It looks like a lot of the validated indexes in Category:Index Validated are transcriptions of single images rather than texts per se, for example Index:"GIVE^ United War Work Campaign." - NARA - 512697.tif and Index:! Explosive objects in War in Ukraine, 2022 (01).jpg. This seems to explain some of the discrepancy. Nosferattus (talk) 16:01, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

@Kaldari, @Xover: Could we implement this? Yann (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Also, keep in mind that validated texts aren't necessarily transcluded into Mainspace. We'd need to also check that the work is fully transcluded, and that the primary page of the work includes contents so that a download will work. Validation alone refers merely to the status of the individual pages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:26, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, of course this status is for whole books. And yes, they should be properly transcluded to be advertised. Yann (talk) 09:42, 13 May 2026 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey, @Yann: The mockup that Xover created only pulls from Category:Validated texts, not Category:Index Validated. So it's restricted to mainspace transcluded works that have Wikidata items. I would love to see this implemented. What would it take to make this happen? Do we need to do an RFC or could we just try it out (based on the previous discussions)? Nosferattus (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

We could use fr:Modèle:Validations as a framework. Yann (talk) 19:33, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Bring in the template?--TunnelESON (talk) 00:18, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

@Yann, @TunnelESON, @Alien333, @EncycloPetey: I created Wikisource:Validated texts which could be incorporated into the main page (with some minor rearranging). It's based on a combination of Xover's mockup and some of the code at French Wikisource. The list is automatic and doesn't require any maintenance (which I thought would be best since there aren't a lot of people active here). I can also create a special category for works that shouldn't show up on the list if we need to sanitize it for some reason. If we add this to the main page, hopefully it would provide extra motivation for people to validate their favorite works. It would also finally give casual visitors a way to easily find finished works to read. Nosferattus (talk) 02:52, 16 June 2026 (UTC)

I'm not fond of that setup because (a) it takes up a lot of space, with a lot of space given to dates, (b) it highlights only the most recently validated texts, which fails to pull from most of our validated texts and could double-dip for works that are being proofread and validated in close proximity, with the same work appearing on the Main page twice in rapid succession, and (c) the work is merely a title. There are much better set-ups on other Wikisource projects. We don't need to reinvent a design when there are many good options already available. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:35, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest that we consider a design that would slot into the space currently occupied by Featured Texts. The FT project has been barely hanging on for years, and we are the only major language Wiktionary that has such a project on its Main page. It may be time to retire Featured Texts and replace it on the Main page with a section highlighting Validated works. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:38, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Given this discussion has sort of petered out again, I think I might second EncycloPetey's comment above about (mildly) pushing for the retirement of Featured Texts, to make room for something new. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 21:04, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

That's probably the best way to go. My concern is that for this new process risks getting as little engagement and work done and to go the way of FT. But hey, worst case is what we have now. I don't have the IRL time to stand up for this, but if anyone is ready to take time to make this process work then kudos to them and Wikisource will end up the better for it. — Alien  3
3 3 22:23, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

• Just looking over the page, it seems to be quite wrong. Many of the items are sub-pages, which wouldn’t even be listed at “New texts.” Several of the dates are nonsensical—the Articles of Confederation sub-page was validated in 2009, and hasn’t seen any edits (including Page:s) since 2024, yet is claimed to be validated about a week ago. TE(æ)A,ea. (talk) 00:07, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

  The date is when the text (not the index) is listed as validated, typically from wikidata as is the case here. MarkLSteadman (talk) 00:51, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

  @TE(æ)A,ea.: Regarding items being subpages, unless they are written by separate authors, could be considered stand-alone works, or have been translated separately, they should be removed from Wikidata, per Wikidata:Notability. That will in turn remove them from the category. Unfortunately, we have a bit of a catch-22 since no one can be bothered to maintain that category while it is unused, but no one wants to use it for anything until it is better maintained. Nosferattus (talk) 20:42, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I copied Template:Validated works from French WS, adding some of the latest validated works. Yann (talk) 15:06, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Djvu files

How to make small djvu files without using Internet Archive. I have been using pdf2djvu but i get really big file sizes. The internet archive have discontinued the creation of djvu files. Johshh (talk) 18:36, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

Sorry if this is pedantic, but have you done an Internet search for "how to optimize DJVu"? I see several online tools and recommendations for DjVuLibre, which is an offline FLOSS solution. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:21, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

@Johshh: How big? Because there is no real size limitations either on Commons or on Wikisource. DjVu files are usually small, compared to PDF files, which are not an issue either. At this point, size doesn't matter, quality does. Yann (talk) 20:29, 4 July 2026 (UTC)

I get 20mg files usually. I basicaly want the text to be highlighted and the background to be compressed. Is there any imagemagic scripts that i can use. And i also want colors. Johshh (talk) 20:42, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

pdf2djvu usually suffices. (It's what I use on a daily basis.) Note: do not directly take IA's PDF's, because they're horribly overcompressed: rather get the zip of the HQ images from IA, then make that into a PDF, the pdf2djvu. — Alien  3
3 3 21:17, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Unable to compile LilyPond input file

It doesn't work!

Pic57 (talk) 11:36, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Please give us more information as I can see a score with an attached sound file. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 18:50, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

It wasn't working before, it gave an error message "unable to compile LilyPond input file". Might have been a temporary issue, or maybe it's browser specific, but I see it working now as well. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 21:01, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

I saw an error message before, too, and it now looks fine. -- Beardo (talk) 21:53, 17 July 2026 (UTC)

Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies

Strange goings on:

1. 2008, User:Jefferyseow creates the following pages which have "Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies" in their titles and contain London Gazette notices relating to several companies named "TRONOH MINES LIMITED" and similar
   • London Gazette Notices Re Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies
   • London Gazette Notices Re General Meeting For Liquidators to Present Report to Members of the company Re Liquidation of Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies
   • London Gazette Notices Re Winding Up of Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies
   • London Gazette Notices To Creditors Re Appointment of Liquidators Re Liquidation of Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies
   • London Gazette Notices To Creditors Re Notice of Claims Re Liquidation of Foo Choo Choon Mining Companies
2. 2026 User:Beleg Tâl renames the pages to "The London Gazette/Number nnnn/Legal Notices" and replaces the content with several notices from the relevant issue but NOT the notice added in 2008

I worry that the 2008 addition was intended to make somebody look bad, and/or the 2026 changes are intended to sweep some misdeeds under the carpet. Jnestorius (talk) 11:31, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Those are the scan-backed versions of the original notices. AFAICT all the notices are still there: E.g. the first is now on pg. 4705 / 4706, the second is now on pg. 12553, the third is now on pg. 1431 etc. MarkLSteadman (talk) 13:01, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Aha, I was wrong about "NOT the notice added in 2008"; I searched for "Foo Choo Choon" instead of "Tronch". Jnestorius (talk) 23:31, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

Index:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf

Can we replace this index with Index:United States Reports, Volume 502.djvu? ToxicPea (talk) 19:52, 18 July 2026 (UTC)

The Statutes at Large (Ruffhead)

Can the unproofread pages in The Statutes at Large (Ruffhead) be deleted? They haven't been touched since 2019. It's clear no work has been done there — it's just OCR text, so when someone remakes that page they'll get all the content back. In the meantime, they're a huge nest of lint errors. They also have no headers, and letting the pages get remade means that the header template can be used, which would make the project easier. Eievie (talk) 02:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I would support getting rid of the ones that have lint errors, (or ones that haven't been edited in the past 3 or so years) but I have done some work on a few of them that I didn't finish the whole page, but did individual statutes on those pages, and so I left it as not proofread. Erblanchard57 (talk) 18:40, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-30

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 Reader Experience team has incorporated community feedback around the placement of watchstar and watchlist buttons for the Reading Lists beta feature, which would allow for saving articles for later reading – a wishlist item to bring the functionality to web. Editors are invited to enable the beta feature to test it out and share their thoughts.
• Suggestion Mode offers edit suggestions within the VisualEditor for improving Wikipedia articles. All suggestions are community-configurable. The TextMatch feature is a way for volunteers to create custom local suggestions. The feature searches in articles for strings of text, and now includes support for regular expressions. This gives volunteers greater precision and flexibility over the kinds of local suggestions they can create. Note: Suggestions can be targeted based on the edit count of the person editing as well as other aspects of the page. You can find examples from other communities for inspiration, including TextMatches that detect: typos, grammar-errors, potential advertisements, clichés, incorrect dash or hyphen usage, non-specific time keywords, outdated names, and more. Any feedback is appreciated.
• View all 27 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the SVG Translate tool could use an outdated version of a file, causing existing translations to be overwritten when new ones were uploaded, has now been fixed. Overall, in the last quarter from April – June 2026 about 337 community tasks were resolved by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Updates for technical contributors

• On Parsoid-enabled wikis, Parsoid now renders a maximum of 1,250 images per page. A new tracking category, "media-limit-reached", will be soon made available to identify pages where this limit is reached, making it easier to find content whose media output may have been restricted during rendering. See phab:T430854 for more information and to provide feedback.
• 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 05:46, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Edit pages in sequence

Hi, This tool is quite buggy. Sometimes it doesn't load the pages, so the same page may be edited twice. And it adds the edited pages in the Watchlist by default, and even if I don't specify this option. Could it be fixed please? Yann (talk) 19:54, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't think this tool has ever worked. This has been raised at meta:Talk:Wikisource EditInSequence#Problem after a few pages edit already. You could also try creating a bug report at Phabricator. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:30, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Forget-Me-Not and Forget Me Not

These are two different disambiguation pages; does anyone feel strongly about whether or not they should be merged into a single disambiguation page? —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Courtesy ping: @Chrisguise —Beleg Tâl (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

I would. Not sure how I missed the other page, or I would have done it myself. Chrisguise (talk) 20:39, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Support merging. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:24, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Support merging - especially as the latter has several hyphenated works on it. -- Beardo (talk) 20:48, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Only the book chapter should probably be excluded from the list, we usually include only such parts of books which are independent works (poems, short stories, essays etc.) that have been just gathered in a specific book. --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:55, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

• Merge Any time there are substantially similar names, they should be on one disambiguation page for sensible navigation. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:51, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Request for comment (the future of Abstract Wikipedia)

You are invited to voice your opinions in a request for comment about the future of Abstract Wikipedia. Thank you! Kowal2701 (talk) 12:25, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Seeking feedback on Mormon Standard Works

There are a few strands of Mormonism/the Latter-Day Saints movement, with by far the largest being the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. All Mormon groups have a compilation of what they consider sacred scripture known as the "Standard Works", which include Bible (King James) and the Book of Mormon, but also have varying editions of The Doctrine and Covenants and usual a compilation called The Pearl of Great Price. I'm not really sure how to represent the Standard Works as a kind of collective work here: I don't think that {{disambiguation}} or {{versions}} really makes sense, so I'm leaning toward a Portal page that represents what works we have hosted or scans on c: as well as listing how different groups arrange their standard works. Does anyone have a perspective on what the best practice would be here? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:50, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Based on your explanation, I would concur with your suggestion of a Portal, but I am no expert in the issues. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:06, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Agreed, this would be Portal material. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

I've been working on them a bit, and just have separated them by the group that published them (as in The Doctrine and Covenants.

Based on my understanding, pretty much all groups today accept the Book of Mormon but vary on whether or not it was divinely inspired/actually translated. The various groups have differing Doctrine and Covenants, and their various publications have different sections from their prophets/presidents following Joseph Smith. Only the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and any groups that split off from them, after arriving in Utah, accept The Pearl of Great Price as a standard work, though some portions of the material in it is accepted by the other various groups. And then they all accept the Bible, and I think that page is fine as is. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints just recently acknowledged the faithfulness of other translations to the original manuscripts, and expanded their list of approved translations (in Dec. 2025).

If the decision to do a portal is is what is accepted, I would just suggest having portals for the individual churches, and have their own accepted standard works and their various editions listed on their own portals. I do think a versions page works well though, if they are split by group like I've done on The Doctrine and Covenants. Because otherwise, we still have a ton of different editions from the various groups and I think it would get messy if we had to have individual pages such as The Doctrine and Covenants (Latter-day Saint) or The Doctrine and Covenants (Community of Christ), or The Book of Mormon (Latter-day Saint), etc. So I'd just have one Doctrine and Covenants page, one Book of Mormon page, etc. with the separation based on groups listed there. Especially since they would all accept the pre-1844 publications, and those would have to have their own page as well (or be duplicated across the various group pages for each book).

Hopefully that makes sense. Erblanchard57 (talk) 17:14, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

That does make sense, unfortunately, so it's hard to know what to do here. Is it helpful to have portals for twenty Mormon/LDS groups individually? Or to try to cram all of the info into one large portal that is about Standard Works? Both? ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:05, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Based on what I've seen, I don't think that a lot of the various individual groups publish their own editions; most of the smaller groups just use the Latter-day Saint editions. So I don't think it would devolve into 20 or more different pages, if we just do it by the publishing group on the individual pages of the various Standard Works I don't think it will get much larger than the current Doctrine and Covenants page. On a related topic, I've talked about the whole giant amounts of groups in the Latter Day Saint movement a little bit with User:Eievie at Category talk:The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I feel like we've come generally to a consensus there; I'm open to thoughts about that too. Erblanchard57 (talk) 18:30, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

D&C is also famous for being edited a lot over time, so the naming needs to account for edition/year too, not just sect. Eievie (talk) 00:03, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

Brinkley volumes

Currently, two of Brinkley's multi-volume works are at Japan: Its History, Arts, and Literature and China: Its History, Arts, and Literature, but it seems that they were supposed to be at Japan (Brinkley) and China (Brinkley) per the template {{Brinkley Volumes}}. Could an admin move these? Nighfidelity (talk) 16:43, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

@Nighfidelity The template is really just to list the indices on volume pages. It doesn't have to point to mainspace anywhere. If the red link in the template documentation was annoying you, I have updated it. But otherwise, please don't move/request the moving of the Japan and China volume transclusions based on this one template. Regards, TeysaKarlov (talk) 20:41, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-31

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

• Content Translation now supports dark mode, fulfilling a Community Wishlist request. This brings the tool in line with the accessibility features available in the Vector 2022 and Minerva skins, helping reduce visual fatigue for users translating content. [4]
• DiscussionTools' source mode and the 2017 wikitext editor will now offer autocomplete for links ([[), templates ({{), HTML and parser tags (<), and magic words (__), making it quicker and easier to insert links, templates, and other wiki markup while editing. [5]
• The Readers Growth team has concluded its experiment with mobile page previews and will not roll out the feature. Page Previews are a pop-up bottom sheet that appears when readers tap a blue link, showing a thumbnail, lead paragraph, and an option to open the article. The experiment showed flat retention and negative indicator metrics, suggesting that mobile web readers preferred navigating directly to linked articles rather than using page previews.
• The Reader Experience team has seen encouraging early results from the Reading Lists feature, with 93% of participating users reporting that it was useful. Reading Lists help active readers save articles for future reading and support their learning goals on Wikimedia projects. The team plans further improvements before expanding the feature to more users.
• The Explore Feed Refresh initiative was tested with new and casual Wikipedia app readers. The refreshed feed helps readers discover new and relevant content. After a 10.5% increase in engagement with the feed, Wikimedia Apps team has decided to scale the Home Feed redesign to iOS with the learnings from the Android release applied.
• View all 23 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where subject names in the Article Guidance feature were displayed with incorrect capitalization on French Wikipedia, has now been fixed. Subject names will now follow the correct capitalization rules for the language. [6]

Updates for technical contributors

• After running several Account Creation Experiments to improve registration completion rates, a new version of the username field on Create Account has been rolled out. It includes a popover summarizing the username policy to provide clearer guidance during account creation. As part of this change, the messages createacct-helpusername and createacct-username-help that several communities have configured will no longer be used. If communities want to customize the guidance shown in the new popover, they can instead edit the following messages: createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet1, createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet2, and createacct-username-policy-popover-bullet3. [7]
• Later this week, the CodeMirror syntax highlighter will offer themes. The themes can be picked from a dropdown menu in the full CodeMirror preferences dialog. For wikitext, available themes are default, colorblind-friendly (previously the colorblind preference option on Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing) and no-highlighting. For code languages (i.e., CSS/JavaScript/JSON/Vue/Lua), there are several themes available. These same themes will eventually be available for wikitext, too. [8]
• From now on, wikis can restrict editing in the "User" namespace to only the page owner and certain user groups. Read the configuration documentation to learn more.
• 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 18:49, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Afghanistan

Clicking the page numbers returns an invalid url error, despite it working when using the source button. Nighfidelity (talk) 14:05, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I suspect the the problem boils down to the double quotes present in the file name for the Index. If everything were moved to eliminate the double quotes from the file name, pages, etc., then the problem would resolve itself. --EncycloPetey (talk) 14:15, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Would Illegitimate Barrister agree with moving the file e. g. to File:Afghanistan(1920) sheet music.pdf? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 18:09, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

 Comment If this ends up being the solution, I am a file mover on Commons and can make the change there. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:14, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

No expiration texts absent on Monthly Challenge

Why are the no expiration texts not included in the August 2026 Monthly Challenge? SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 12:53, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Probably an error. Let me see if I can fix it. Nighfidelity (talk) 13:39, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Looks like you did. Thanks! SurprisedMewtwoFace (talk) 14:18, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

How to design home pages for a uniform view for all visitors?

I am encouraging my community to be engaged with Wikisource. How can I modify my home page to display the same layout?

For example, I am using Vector Legacy 2010, and designed my home pages without this consideration and this is not what visitors see. Any suggestion / direction is welcome. — ineuw (talk) 19:12, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

Issue is solved. The default theme for visitors is Vectra 2020. — ineuw (talk) 08:14, 2 August 2026 (UTC)

Does this pass WS:WWI

Specifically this 1955 book, an apparently uncritical book on the Jehovah's Witnesses, which was a best-seller and didn't have its copyright renewed. However, it was published by Vantage Press, a noted vanity publisher. Nighfidelity (talk) 20:48, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

The book was later republished many times, including some established publishers, see e.g. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL19463270M/Jehovah's_Witnesses . So I would say it passes. -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 23:11, 1 August 2026 (UTC)

I'm generally fine with things like that, though I'm inherently skeptical of the "best-seller" claim; it's easily manipulated by groups with money, either by pushing sales in the in-group or outright buying many copies of books and reselling them.--Prosfilaes (talk) 11:45, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Fair enough. I was able to find a secondary source for the claim, though. Nighfidelity (talk) 12:41, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Lists in columns

What's the best method to display a list in columns, like on Page:A century of Birmingham life- or, A chronicle of local events, from 1741 to 1841 (IA centuryofbirming01lang).pdf/562? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:49, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

@Andy: I'd use {{div col|cols=4|width=15em}}...{{div col end}}, it's quite simple. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 10:39, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:24, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Migration to Parsoid

Read this in another language

Hello everyone! I am glad to inform you that as the next step in the Parser Unification project, Parsoid will soon be turned on as the default article renderer on your wiki. We are gradually increasing the number of wikis using Parsoid, with the intention of making it the default wikitext parser for MediaWiki's next long-term support release. This will make our wikis more reliable and consistent for editors, readers, and tools to use, as well as making the development of future wikitext features easier.

If this disrupts your workflow, don’t worry! You can still opt out through a user preference or turn Parsoid off on the current page using the Tools submenu, as described in the Extension:ParserMigration documentation.

There is more information about our roll-out strategy available, including the testing done before we turn on Parsoid for a new wiki.

To report bugs and issues, please look at our known issues documentation and if you found a new bug please create a phab ticket and tag the Content Transform Team in Phabricator.

Content Transform Team 16:31, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

@MSantos (WMF): could you please tell us whenever you have a date? We've had bad experience with being warned of a deployment only one week before the fact. — Alien  3
3 3 08:11, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-32

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 Reader Experience team has developed a patch demo that wraps the page toolbar onto two lines when there is not enough horizontal space for all the buttons. This aims to reduce crowding in the Vector 2022 toolbar, which can occur on some language Wikipedias at certain screen widths. [9]
• The Reader Experience team is planning to launch Reading Lists, a Community Wishlist item, which is currently available to try in beta, as a full feature in September. Before then, volunteer translator help is needed for string translations into a number of languages. The feature supports reading and learning goals on Wikipedia.
• Next week, the table of contents on Wikimedia Commons file pages will be improved by consolidating the file page table of contents with the page table of contents. This will make it easier to understand a file page’s structure, navigate to specific sections, and share links to individual sections. [10]
• View all 24 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where some TIFF images failed to load after clicking their thumbnail, causing a broken image to be displayed instead of the full-size image, has now been fixed. [11]

Updates for technical contributors

• The variable and function selector in AbuseFilter has been updated to support search and autocomplete. It will allow filter maintainers to find the desired variable or function more quickly. [12]
• The MJPEG and VP8 formats are removed from the video player. The MP4 format (MPEG-4 Part 2) is added instead, which provides higher quality videos to older iPhone devices. It may take a few weeks to retroactively update all existing videos. The default format for modern devices stays the same (VP9/WebM). [13]
• 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 19:46, 3 August 2026 (UTC)

Problem with e-book creation

I am copying here a concern raised at Talk:The Man in the Panther's Skin: "Both the PDF and EPUB versions of this ebook skip directly from the contents page to Chapter XXVIII." -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:00, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: it seems that the chapters are sorted in the order of the internal links in the Preface, which comes before the Table of contents in the main page. With the Preface in the subpage, it may solve the issue. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 14:36, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

I see. The contents was created as a common table and I was not sure know how to include an auxilliary entry with the Preface (after moving it to a subpage) into the contents table, so I reworked it using the TOC row templates. I also thought that thus it might not be necessary to move the Preface into a subpage as I had read somewhere that the ebook tool prioritizes these templates to other links. However, now it is not possible to create the PDF at all: after a long waiting time I received a proxy error: The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. / The proxy server could not handle the request / Reason: Error reading from remote server. Is this error related to my change somehow? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 20:28, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

@Jan.Kamenicek: With the Preface as a subpage the epub export seems correct. The Pdf export is currently not working but it is not related to this particular book. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 21:31, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

I just successfully performed a PDF export. • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 11:05, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Great, thanks for solving this! --Jan Kameníček (talk) 11:27, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Images not loading

Hi, For many pages, particularly in Index:Albert Einstein, a biographical portrait - Anton Reiser, 1930.pdf, I get this error: Unable to open [object Object] Error loading image... Any idea how to fix these? Thanks, Yann (talk) 21:01, 4 August 2026 (UTC)

Now it seems to be displayed fine. Possibly related to an old bug, discussed e. g. at Wikisource:Scriptorium/Archives/2026-07#Problems with new index pages continue? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 08:58, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, it is most probably a continuation of the same issue. But now, it seems completely erratic. Yann (talk) 09:28, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

WikiClub Canada

Hello, I have attended most of the meetings of the new WikiClub Canada since it started earlier this year. I have turned out to be the most active Wikisource user showing up to these (many/most people not even having heard of it 😶).

I missed the last one in June, but I was informed afterward that some people there were very interested in Wikisource and not really anyone to answer their questions. So I got asked if I would do a 15min presentation about "Wikisource and how it works" at the next meeting which is a week from today (12 Aug). I am more than willing to answer questions, not as sure about making a Presentation, but anyway

My main hesitation is that almost everyone at these meetings does their work in English (such that the separate FR/EN ones have been merged due to lack of interest in the french ones rip) BUT I do 99.5% of my contributions in French and know the French WS way better than the English one where I really have not done much at all, and most of my thoughts on en.ws are actually about like. The differences between the two. Which is perhaps not the best introductory material

SO I was wondering if anybody here who is Canadian (resident) would be interested in attending. Possibly to actually do a presentation overview of wikisource, but my main goal is just to do general promo of the club and hopefully ensure that there will be at least one experienced en.ws user there. Of course as it is "open to everyone based in Canada and interested in Wikimedia projects" you can (and should) just come even if not responding to my particular request

Link again to register Psephos (talk) 19:08, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I might be able to make it, and I can definitely answer questions, though I'm not generally much good at making presentations. (There's a reason I copy stuff other people write on Wikisource, rather than writing my own stuff on Wikipedia, lol) —Beleg Tâl (talk) 20:35, 5 August 2026 (UTC)

I can email you a copy of the last presentation I did on Wikisource for the NZ equivalent. You can then tweak it as you desire, just flick me an email so that I can reply to it. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:38, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/46

Hi, The words on the right were placed there for typographical reasons and no longer need to be there. Shouldn't we render the lignes properly? Yann (talk) 13:19, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes, unless you have a specific reason for replicating the specific layout, they should just be put onto the correct line, like on this page from the same work -- Page:An Index of Prohibited Books (1840).djvu/64. Qq1122qq (which looking at the edit history I see you were responsible for correcting!) (talk) 13:33, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

No, not on this page. But OK, done. Thanks, Yann (talk) 13:49, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

 This section is considered resolved, for the purposes of archiving. If you disagree, replace this template with your comment. Yann (talk) 10:13, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

Portal:International Congress of Mathematicians

Hi, I am not sure what is the point of this page. External links are not scans, and the language of the proceedings is not English, except for the Congress in Cambridge and Toronto. Yann (talk) 20:27, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

I am interested by the proceedings available from this list, but I can't get them. Any idea? I can't get the copies of Google Books either. Yann (talk) 20:30, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

OK, I found the files for the Cambridge Congress (on French Gallica ;o) ). Yann (talk) 21:00, 6 August 2026 (UTC)

Request to add Edgar A. Guest poem "Little Things" (1926)

Hello, I would like to request the addition of a public-domain poem by Edgar A. Guest that does not appear to be available on Wikisource. Poem: Little Things Author: Edgar A. Guest Source: The Light of Faith. Chicago: Reilly & Lee Co., 1926, page 51. I own a copy of the 1926 book and can provide photographs of: the front cover, the table of contents showing the poem and page number, and the poem itself with the printed page number visible. If needed, I'm happy to upload those images to help verify the source. Text of the poem:

Little Things
Edgar A. Guest

Lord, make me strong enough to bear
My little round of anxious care.
The day returns. For this I pray:
Sufficient wisdom for the day.
Although I may not walk with kings,
Let me be big in little things.

Grace me with modesty and teach
me kindliness of thought and speech;
Let me not hasty be to chide
the children walking at my side,
And spoil with imperfections slight
The record which the day shall write.

Lord, make me big enough I pray
to triumph in a lesser way.
When petty disappointments rise,
Let me be patient, gentle, wise.
Missing the joy which greatness brings
Let me not fail in little things.

Lord, I would work and neighbor here,
Too big to hate, too wise to sneer.
I would be helpful, cheerful, kind,
Gentle of speech and broad of mind.
And though not far my circle swings,
Let me be great in little things.

Thank you for considering adding this work to Wikisource so it will be searchable and preserved for future readers. If additional information or photographs are needed, I'd be happy to provide them. Kind regards, Jenelle Chaplin Jenelle Chaplin (talk) 01:37, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

In general, requests to add a work should be made at Wikisource:Requested texts, and only if the work in question doesn't have an easily-accessible source file.

Since you own a copy of the book and can provide photographs, I would suggest making a PDF of the entire book (photographs can qualify as scans). Then you can add the text yourself. Edderiofer (talk) 02:04, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

There are several copies of that book on Internet Archive. So the best thing is to import one of those onto Commons, and then we can start working on the transcription here. -- Beardo (talk) 02:34, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Ah, I must not have checked very well. Yeah, let's do that then. Edderiofer (talk) 02:43, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

It's at File:The Light of Faith (1926).pdf. Nighfidelity (talk) 19:34, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Monthly Challenge stats

Hi, Monthly Challenge stats for today are 0 0 0. Something is wrong... Yann (talk) 13:56, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

I've noticed the same thing but thought it was just a problem with the cache, but it seems that it might be broken. Nighfidelity (talk) 18:49, 7 August 2026 (UTC)

Work with no scan images

What is our current position on works when no scan images are available, but the text is?

The pamphlet "Recollections of New Street, Birmingham, in the Year 1817" was scanned and published by the British Library. The OCR file is still available via their API, but the PDF is no longer online, no doubt as a result of their recent hack problems.

I have taken the former and marked it up, for now, at User:Pigsonthewing/New Street 1817, and would like to move it to mainspace. No other online source appears to offer it in human-readable form. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:48, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Without a scan to back it, the text would probably be tagged with {{no source}} and/or {{fidelity}} at the least. Nighfidelity (talk) 21:15, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Neither would be true; but {{Second-hand}} might apply; I could live with that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:22, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Now published, as Recollections of New Street, Birmingham, in the Year 1817. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 9 August 2026 (UTC)

I've replaced {{second-hand}} with {{no scan}}, since it's based on the OCR at least. If it was second-hand, it would not be allowed per WS:WWI#Second-hand transcriptions. —Beleg Tâl (talk) 02:21, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

The British Library does have a record of the text at least. Nighfidelity (talk) 21:19, 8 August 2026 (UTC)

Tech News: 2026-33

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

• A new ChartWizard is now available on Wikimedia Commons for users interested in creating charts from their own data. The wizard makes the Chart extension more beginner-friendly by allowing editors to create charts, such as bar and pie charts, without needing to use JSON. Users can still switch to the JSON editor if they prefer. Feedback on the new tool is welcome on the wish talk page.
• View all 19 community-submitted tasks that were resolved last week. For example, an issue where the Wikipedia iOS app’s Picture of the Day widget displayed the same image every day instead of updating daily, has now been fixed. [14]

Updates for technical contributors

• Math formula SVG images will soon be generated in the browser instead of on the server. MathML continues to be generated on the server and renders in the browser without JavaScript. Wikibooks will see this change on 12 August, Wikisource on 19 August and Wikipedia from 20-27 August. You can try this by selecting "MathML with SVG image (client side MathJax rendering)" in your preferences. This change is part of deprecating RESTBase and deprecating Mathoid. [15]
• Category pages will soon support sorting entries by the time they are added to a category. This will make it easier to find recently or long-standing categorized pages. It will also improve workflows for maintenance categories such as deletion backlogs and other time-based review tasks. You can use cldsort=timestamp URL argument in category view to sort the entries. [16]
• Gadgets and user scripts on Wikimedia wikis may now use ES2018 features and ES2019 features in JavaScript code. Previously, the platform only allowed up to ES2017. MediaWiki validates the source code to protect functionality from syntax errors and to ensure scripts are valid in all supported browsers. [17]
• 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 20:45, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

Wikimedian in Residence at The Gazette (UK)

As of yesterday, I am Wikimedian in Residence at The Gazette (encompassing The London Gazette, The Belfast Gazette and The Edinburgh Gazette).

Please see w:Wikipedia:GLAM/The Gazette for details, and let me know if you have any suggestions or requests. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:14, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

That's great. My question is how you brokered this relationship. I think that interfacing with long-term periodicals/newspapers here in the States makes a lot of sense and I've never been able to get anyone to seem to care. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:18, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

The project was advertised and I tendered. Wikimedia UK did the negotiation to set it up. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:11, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Are all issues digitized and available online? That would be the main interest for Commons and Wikisource. Yann (talk) 19:30, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

They are, but I do not plan a bulk upload. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:10, 12 August 2026 (UTC)

Spam

This edit is spam, so keep an eye on the user @Activelife1234 Eievie (talk) 06:16, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting. User blocked. Yann (talk) 06:27, 13 August 2026 (UTC)

| notes =

Is the notes section of the template for a work meant to point out errors in dates or errors in names in the original text, and other notations like that? Or is it meant for something completely different? RAN (talk) 21:58, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

The documentation for the Header template states that the Notes field is "notes to explain the work, to add context, or to impart concise information that adds value to the reader; for example, use of {{listen}}". In other words, bibliographic notes. The types of notes you mention belong on the Talk: page, if they are needed at all. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:56, 14 August 2026 (UTC)

• Pointing out errors in the original text, sure sounds like "context … concise information that adds value to the reader". That is exactly what I see when I see a reprint of an historical text. Can you explains why/how it does not provide "context … concise information that adds value to the reader"? I don't see the word "bibliographic" used in the definition. Why such an extremely narrow definition of what "context" is? And why would you want it on the talk page, where people leave non-contextual comments and anecdotes. I am not sure why adding "concise information that adds value to the reader" such as corrections to dates and names, somehow excludes using {{listen}} or even why {{listen}} is considered context. --RAN (talk) 01:09, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  The documentation I quoted describes the intended use of the notes field. The examples and wording seem to me to be directed toward explanatory information about the work itself, its publication, provenance, and related matters. That's why I referred to them as bibliographic notes. I wasn't suggesting that "context" is limited to bibliographic information in the abstract, only that the Notes field appears to be intended for that sort of material. Corrections to mistakes in the original text are certainly information that may be useful to readers. The question is not whether they add value, but whether they are the sort of explanatory notes contemplated by the Header documentation, or whether they are better suited to the talk page.

  In respect of your comment about people leaving non-contextual comments and anecdotes on a Talk: page, that is not the purpose of our Talk: pages and such comments should be deleted. If that would leave the Talk page blank, then tag it for speedy deletion with {{sdelete}}. Talk pages are for recording more extended bibliographical information (via the {{Textinfo}} template)—including source for non-scanned texts—and for discussions about how to improve texts.

  As for {{listen}}, I agree that it is not "context" in the ordinary sense of the word. To me, that example suggests that the Notes field is intended for ancillary information about the work and its presentation, rather than for textual criticism, emendations, or corrections. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 22:32, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

  Re "errors" in the text, it helps to be clear what you mean. E.g. are we talking about the text attributing authorship mistakenly, or including a forgery / misunderstanding of current events (e.g. responding to a report about another country that turned out to be false)? Those are more bibliographical. While errors in particular parts of the text are better handled by WS:Annotations, e.g. getting specific facts wrong, struggling with a foreign language / names / locations, scientific inaccuracies etc. MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:55, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Failed to Open SeaDragon (another round)

I am getting this error when I try to create any page from Index:Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology.pdf, even though the Index was created two months ago. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:21, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

 Comment Note that I can see the File just fine on Commons, and can view pages there, but the File does not show up on the local "File" page, nor does any image appear on the Index page. --EncycloPetey (talk) 13:47, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Solved. I've purged the cache of the file in Wikisource (adding ?action=purge to the URL). • M-le-mot-dit (talk) 16:23, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. I had tried that and several other Purge methods both here and at Commons, but to no effect. --EncycloPetey (talk) 16:25, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

{{Gutenberg}}

Should this be deprecated seeing as linking to Project Gutenberg (despite what Help:Project Gutenberg says) has been discouraged for a while? Nighfidelity (talk) 21:07, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I think we should definitely be consistent, but I also think that we should link to that site, particularly for works that we don't have here--that provides clear value to our readers who can access a work that is in the public domain and isn't here yet. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:10, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

I agree with Justin. Yann (talk) 21:22, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Strongly disagree with linking to PG for works that we don't host yet. We have evolved a long way from the state in 2006 when this template was set up—the major change being the introduction of ProofreadPage. The current uses of the template are historical and are gradually being replaced with scans, we don't need to add more to that backlog. It's also not our mission to provide a single bibliographical source for all available PD texts that are somewhere on the web. Even if new uses of this template were only on Portal and Author pages, it would derogate from the real value that we provide through our processes of making texts available here. So, yes, we should deprecate the template and mark the Help page as for historical interest only. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 21:50, 15 August 2026 (UTC)

Disagree with linking to PG works. If someone wants to curate links to Gutenberg works the correct place to do that is Wikidata/Wikipedia, not WS. In addition, it is awkward with our flow: When should the links be removed? When the Index is created? When it is validated? But even then it might be from a different edition, so does it need to be that edition? Unlike scan link --> Index link which has a natural and intuitive transition. And lastly, why not other sites? If you can link to [18] what about [19]. Having Project Gutenberg as a sui generis place is problematic as well as getting into quality curation of sites. 22:25, 15 August 2026 (UTC) MarkLSteadman (talk) 22:25, 15 August 2026 (UTC)