Bob Burkhardt

Hello Bob Burkhardt, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

You'll find an (incomplete) index of our works listed at Wikisource:Works, although for very broad categories like poetry you may wish to look at the categories like Category:Poems instead.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are held at the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page!

Stratford490 (talk) 21:12, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

See also

• User talk:71.174.236.5 (Groton Public Library)

Thank you for correcting my typos in the EB articles

A few of them are especially embarrassing. "Devolution to abstract principles of democracy and liberty"? I remember thinking that was a really strange way of using "devolution", and now I know why. Ha! Athelwulf (talk) 08:27, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

You're very welcome. Thanks for having your version there. It helped me find some stray characters and problems in the copy I was using (OCR text from archive.org which I had proofed but by no means caught all the problems). Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:54, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Full author template

Hi Bob, The {{Author}} template requests that its use be of the full template and to retain the order. If you are using Firefox as your browser, you can even get set it within your preferences to load the relevant Header and Author templates in the respective namespaces. Generally with new authors a quick attempt will be made to add relevant detail. I often find that Archive.org can give some basic detail, eg. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A(Carl%20Mirbt) Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 00:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Will do. Thanks for the notice. I don't mind putting in more detail if I can get the info quickly. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:28, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Sweet. I am doing many author pages for DNB and we seem to have a number of contributors in common. Happy to have a look for basic info in other sources if that helps. -- billinghurst (talk) 07:02, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Transwiki'd 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amsterdam (Holland)

Hi Bob. The text now at 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amsterdam (Holland) was on a talk page at WP with a request to move to WS. I have imported text, and wondered whether you would be able to work your EB1911 magic on the piece. Thanks! -- billinghurst (talk) 01:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Amsterdam isn't on my todo list, but I'm sure putting it where you did will eventually get it to someone's attention. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 01:55, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

k Thx -- billinghurst (talk) 02:54, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

EB1911 Volume 19

I meant to respond to this some time ago, but I got busy with other things. Thanks for listing these pages on the index page. My previous experiment with putting articles about the same encyclopedic subject together on the same page had mixed results. Linking to these from "works about" on an author page only works if the person is an author. Even looking at the EB alone show how incredibly complicated the task can become. (See my User:Eclecticology/EB Synopsis.) Wikisource has done little or nothing so far about material from old dictionaries (like Johnson's) where relatively short articles are commonplace. The optimal solution is likely somewhere between the two extremes of completely separate articles, and articles accumulated on a single page. Eclecticology - the offended (talk) 17:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Category:Britannica articles needing translations

I've created a new category, Category:Texts needing translations, and have moved all the articles from the Britannica articles needing translations categories to new Texts needing translations categories. I've proposed the old categories for deletion at Wikisource:Proposed deletions. I see you're still adding articles to the old categories, so you should probably start using the new ones or argue against the switch at Proposed deletions.--Prosfilaes (talk) 00:53, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

My apologies; I realized that I'd failed to completely follow through with the deletion by adding the notes on the pages and notifying you when I saw the new articles.--Prosfilaes (talk) 07:07, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

EB aid - EB1911 Article Link

FYI I have created {{EB1911 Article Link}}, so if you like it, you may use it. If you don't like the name of the template, we may rename it. An example of use of the template is in the article 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Epistemology. --Dan Polansky (talk) 20:35, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

EB1911 headwords

I have entered the article "Negotiable instrument" in EB1911, but I wonder whether it should better be capitalized as "Negotiable Instrument". EB1911 refers to its articles in title case rather than sentence case; this is not apparent in headwords, as these are written in all caps such as "BILL OF EXCHANGE", but it is apparent in links to articles, such as when the article "Negotiable Instrument" refers to "Bill of Exchange" in "see also"[1], capitalized as "Bill of Exchange" with capital "E".

In this edit, I have added to style manual that article names should be capitalized in sentence case ("Bill of exchange"), but I am no longer sure it is the best option; I codified what I have seen was the common practice.

What do you think of this issue? Do you know of any past discussion about capitalization of headwords of EB1911 articles? --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:53, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

modified edit

I made some changes to your edit here, revert them or let me know if you disagree. Regards, Cygnis insignis (talk) 19:34, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I answered at my talk, but another comment: I prefer your template, the links are appropriate and it is a simple citation style. You might check WP:MOS to see what the style is this week ;-) Is it possible to add an option to hide the icon? Cygnis insignis (talk) 23:50, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Done. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 10:10, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages for share Dictionary entries

At some stage there were some general pages created that lumped together EB1911, DNB and other dictionary/encyclopaedia pages. Many seem to have now been split back to component parts, though the co-joined pages still existed. I am now converting them to {{disambiguation}} pages, and it is probably how we can look to manage non-fiction pages where the same person is covered by multiple sources, eg. Blake, William and Monro, Robert. If you have any thoughts, happy to hear them.-- billinghurst (talk) 03:14, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Index:1911 Encyclopedia Britanica vol-1a-ad valorem .djvu

I presume you are aware that [[Index:1911 Encyclopedia Britanica vol-1a-ad valorem .djvu] is uploaded at Commons and available (other vols. I haven't checked.) At the DNB project we have been having great success using the Page: environment to prepare text for Proofread and Validated stages. If there is any of our learnings that we can share, we are more than happy to do so. billinghurst (talk) 11:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

We proof against the scans (held at Commons) and from the text layer we can import it and modify, transclude into main ns to look like this User:Bob Burkhardt/example. billinghurst (talk) 01:40, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, that volume at Commons doesn't seem to have a text layer. At DNB we have been getting the scans at least with a rudimentary scan which often means that we can start onto a proofread, rather than the initial transcription. -- billinghurst (talk) 01:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

1911-related templates

Hello - I assumed I'd need to talk to you at some point about matters of common interest; but what has come up was from an unexpected direction. In looking at how Wikipedia links to Wikisource pages via templates, I have found a few things to improve; but the situation with EB1911 is a bit more complex. The obvious template for what I'd want is {{1911}} over there; but the construction is somewhat awkward. For other things (DNB, Catholic Encyclopedia and a couple I have set up recently) you just pipe the template with the article name. The template {{1911}} allows one to put in any URL; and so a link to an article here is easy enough. But here's the catch: going via the URL would be a link subject to "nofollow", while a link using the interwiki code "s" would not. So being perfectionist about it, I'd like to see some modification or alternate template not subject to that disadvantage; and looking around I didn't see the exact thing I wanted. Charles Matthews (talk) 17:17, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Got a EB vol who would like some guidance

Gday. Via my talk page, I have had a query from Innotata who is looking for guidance on EB1911. I can answer the general questions, though I hesitate with some of the more specific guidance and templates that you have in play. Care to address them? Thanks. -- billinghurst (talk) 05:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Index:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu

Hi. I don't know if you noticed, but I uploaded File:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu. So, for that volume at least, we can use H:Side and track progress using Index:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu. I've been moving work that you've done on that volume into pages like Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/105, and then changing your main space articles to reference the pages like this. I wanted to let you know since I noticed you add a few more manually to that volume today. Thanks. Wknight94 (talk) 01:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

EB1911 - titles of nobility

Hello there. I would like to move 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pulaski, Casimir, Count to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pulaski, Casimir. The reason is that the part ", Count" is not boldfaced in the original, merely typeset in small-caps. Thus, the part ", Count" appears not to be part of the headword proper. Thoughts? --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:56, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Re "It isn't too critical here, but I am trying to stick to a simple rule, the rule being to include the title, with an exception for repeated last names where a repetition in the boldface section is excluded along with the title." I too am trying to stick to a simple rule, namely that what is boldfaced becomes the headword of the entry. What Wikipedia does is not really important for the design of headwords of EB1911.

Re "But my sense is 1911 Britannica favors the label "Casimir, Count Pulaski"." If Britannica wanted to have ", Count" in the headword, they would have used boldface for it, wouldn't they? Why would they use PULASKI, CASIMIR, Count instead of PULASKI, CASIMIR, COUNT?

I would move 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Platen-Hallermund, August, Graf von to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Platen-Hallermund, August. I have already done that with several similar entries some time ago. Here again, the original PNG has PLATEN-HALLERMUND, AUGUST, Graf von, which is quite indicative of what the headwords is, to me anyway. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:01, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Re "Yes, my simple rule is probably introducing more complexity than necessary. Let's use yours": Thank you. I am going for it, renaming the pages that I find. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:16, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

I have done some moving. I am not sure I have caught all of the articles, but many of them have been moved. I have removed the following titles: Baron, Baron von, Comte de, Count, Count von, Duke of, Freiherr von, Marquis de, Marquis d', Prince von, Ritter von. I have left the updating of the links to previous and next largely unfinished. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

EB1911 - disambiguating words

I think that disambiguating words in article titles of EB1911 should better be capitalized. So I would move 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Abbot, George (writer) to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Abbot, George (Writer). The rationale is that we use title case ("Eunuch Flute") in article titles, so we should also use it with disambiguating words. Is that okay with you? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:21, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I have posted a new section to Wikisource talk:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia_Britannica/Style Manual, as you proposed. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

EB1911 - splitting articles

Hello again, I for one do not like what you have done to the article Metaphysics of EB1911, splitting it to several pages. Before the splitting, it was possible to print the complete article from one page. I do not see the benefits of this splitting.

I may be in the minority with this opinion that splitting is better avoided, though. I do not know. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:46, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

It seems to be a hard-wired policy. The Wiki software complains if pages are over 32K. I ignore it unless there seems to be a natural way to split the article, and in this case there seemed to be one. I have trouble with really large articles in that my editor starts to feel the burden, and this is one of those articles. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 00:26, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

From what I understand, it is not a hard-wired enforced policy of Wikisource. While it is true that the wiki software complains on pages longer than some threshold, this is merely a setting in the wiki software that is in no way enforced. I admit that the split page 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Metaphysics had 286,338 bytes, which is a lot. It had 47,000 words. The part pages into which you have split it have each less than 100,000 bytes: 6,225 bytes; 27,822 bytes; 28,544 bytes; 54,017 bytes; 78,416 bytes; 48,703 bytes; 47,650 bytes. I do not know which editor you are using, but you could consider switching to one that handles long text files well. Then again, printing the whole article has been made much more laborious. Counting the number of words of the whole article is now more laborious, too. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

There is a section on this issue at the end of the EB1911 style sheet. I would present your case on the talk page for that, and perhaps elsewhere. I support the style specification as is. There is certainly a range of tolerance on this as with most things on Wikipedia. I think the article is much more electronically digestible split up. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:57, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I have posted to Wikisource_talk:WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica#Breaking up into multiple pages. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Clarify opinion on {{TextQuality}}?

Would you remind returning to the discussion at Wikisource:Scriptorium#Phase_out_TextQuality_templates_and_system and clarifying your position on the removal of the text quality radio buttons? There is wide support for keeping {{TextQuality}} in its current state for use in works not using the page namespace, but a number of users would like to remove the radio buttons to simplify the interface and not confuse new users. Your opinion on that would be helpful. —Spangineer^wp (háblame) 17:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Colliers

The standard practice for new texts is generally scan-based transcript. Would you like me to show you how to set that up? Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:43, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, see you found a problem with that, recent change! Cygnis insignis (talk) 22:45, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've provided links to archive.org which supplied OCR (this is the scan-based transcript you are talking about?). I'm doing better with Collier's than with Americana where I am still looking for scans for two volumes. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 22:59, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The search engine there sometimes produces results, but try adding "site:archive.org" to a google search as well.

Getting the djvu package here makes a big difference, anyone proofing or verifying the text would need to hunt out the text and corresponding scan; they don't bother and improvements don't happen, therefore the current practice. Let me know if I can help with that. Cygnis insignis (talk) 23:08, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've worked on it. All the Americana volumes are actually at Google Books too. I was missing six volumes, and getting it down to two is actually a big improvement. Searching at Google Books was pretty useless. A search on "Encyclopedia Americana" just turned up three or so hits, and I know they have over 40 volumes (counting duplicates)! I found some of the missing by trying archive links that were missing from the links that turned up in an archive.org searches, but looking for a sequence in Google ids is pretty impossible. I will try your idea of doing a Google search at archive.org.

I don't have the bandwidth to upload encyclopedia volumes to Wikimedia Commons. Google makes it very easy to get to a scan if they have the volume, just use their search in book. But all the volumes at Collier's are at archive.org. I do put page numbers in my transcriptions to even with archive.org, a section could be located easily with the archive.org reader. Of course the interested reader would have to know to look at my source comment. But the archive reader is not difficult to browse. Another alternative would be to add Google links for the ten volumes. That would give easier access to the scans, if only I could find all the volumes at Google. Their system doesn't seem to facilitate that task.

I think Dan Polansky has made some good points about the shortcomings of the transclusion approach. I also find it slows me down, though I do think reconstructing the full encyclopedia page is valuable. It is not that easy to browse through the completed pages though that I have seen, even if they are there and transcribed. No previous and next pointers that I have seen. I think the scan indexes are good to have as an alternative, but the non-transclusion approach can work OK. There are other alternatives for providing easy scan access, though not internal to Wikimedia sites. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 23:46, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm not aware of that user's views, but his initial impressions may help us to improve the scheme. You've made more contribs to that namespace, so it would be helpful if you describe how it slowed you down: one thing I can think of is that IA.org gives the text layer as one page, and you can search that when you have a particular article in mind. Other limitations are probably not related to transclusion, a matter of navigation and search I suspect. Cygnis insignis (talk) 00:12, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Born, Ignaz

Hi, I did this, is there any habits about the wp: links in header note when the page exists as Author:, remove it because it's easily reachable through the Author: page ? Phe (talk) 19:03, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

The style guide only mentions links to other articles from within the article text, and then only when the article explicitly refers the reader to another article. Personally I think links within the article text should be limited to this sort of link, and that other sorts of links, to author pages and other Wikisource contributions and even other articles not specifically referred to, just confuse things. But author links as you have done are enough of a convention, maybe they should be incorporated into the style manual as another sort of in-text link. Personally I just put something in the extra_notes or just omit linking altogether. I can live with your practice. It seems more succinct than my procedure, and, wherever the link gets put, I think it is better to have an author page link than not to have one. Probably should be discussed on the Style Manual talk page at some point, but I'm not ready to do that myself now. Thanks for mentioning the issue. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:31, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

'warning, old book' …?

Do you imagine that some innocent will consult this classic edition for their homework, rather than going to wikipedia or a better site? Do we add a disclaimer to every old book, other than noting the year? If the work has so many short-comings that we need to modify and make it more wikipedia-like, then why bother adding it at all? cygnis insignis 21:43, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

You have some particular work in mind? Your comment is enigmatic to me. I can only see Wikisource information providing support or background information for Wikipedia articles, not a substitute. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 21:50, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

An unsigned comment misled me, [2], so apologies. This relates to WS:PD#EB1911_category_hierarchy, which you have firmly opposed. cygnis insignis 22:04, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

NIE/Blake, Wm

Nice one. I could link some of the refs, the now rare Malkin for example, if you thought it useful. cygnis insignis 21:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I was surprised by all I found on Blake on the author page. Normally I don't do links on anything but q.v. stuff, but there is such a wealth of info on Wikisource, doing the links here could be useful to call attention to it. I hope to get to the eb1911 article as well. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 21:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

The author page needs a clean-up, by the untidy person who knows where it all is. That's why I offered to make the links ;-) The changing views on Blake are very interesting, I'm curious about how EB summarised him then and now. cygnis insignis 23:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I tried to make a start on the author page clean-up when I added the eb1911 article. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:55, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica Header

Please see Talk:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Header. -- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 03:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Please take another look. -- Philip Baird Shearer (talk) 23:15, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

EB1911: Classified list of articles

I want to draw your attention to 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Classified List of Articles, which I have extended back in April 2010. This page seems to be the best table of contents EB1911 currently has, organized by topics. I have used 1911_Encyclopædia_Britannica/Classified_List_of_Articles#Philosophy_and_Psychology as a worklist for articles on philosophy. Working from this list seems more interesting than proceeding alphabetically, as this list contains only some of the most important articles. The list is incomplete; I have only filled with links to articles some of the leading sections of the list. This is just FYI, as a way of recommendation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 16:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Proceeding categorically, and categories in general in EB1911, have never seemed that compelling to me enough to work on them or from them, at least lately. I did do a lot of musical instruments at one point. There the author as much as the category interested me. I do appreciate your contribution in helping organize this page. Maybe I will find something there at some point. Usually I am looking for specific names or topics that I have run into in my reading inside or outside EB1911. It started with Carl Schurz's memoirs and branched out from there. And I have found it interesting proceeding alphabetically, just for the things I run across, and also comparing ranges between the different encyclopedias I've been working on, and comparing how they handle a particular subject has been interesting. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:18, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Spaces

Any chance you know how to fix the spaces on this work? It looks ugly :D

I tried two edits. Looks better now? There are still problems, but perhaps other editors will drop by later. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 22:52, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's all I can really ask when Shanghaiing random passers-by :) Thanks!

trailing space, and 'returns'

You have this right, I'll try to explain what you discovered. A transcluded page adds a single return to the code, which becomes a space when rendered.

In edit mode:

A single return here
makes a single line.

Which renders as:

A single return here makes a single line.

So if the transcript in the Page namespace has a trailing return then the software reads that as two returns and makes a new line. Hope this helps, if you hadn't figured this out already. CYGNIS INSIGNIS 18:28, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. It will be good to have this reminder here, next time I do one of those. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:25, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

DNB01

Those adjustments were just the right touch. Thanks! JamAKiska (talk) 23:19, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. The next step will be to add a similar parameter to {{DNB Poster}}. I think a similar upgrade to {{DNB}} can be avoided by adding a verbatim notice to {{Cite DNB}} like {{Cite Americana}} uses. These two adjustments are on my list if no one else gets to them first. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 23:32, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

EB1911 indexes

Thanks for the message. I will bear the point about Mmoves in mind - to be honest I didn't realise the Move option was still there (didn't there use to be a tab captioned "Move"?), but I have discovered where it is now.--Laverock ( Talk ) 08:11, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Herbert Welsh

I thought that name rang a bell when I saw it... Welsh and Coates were neighbors in Germantown. Coates' husband Edward was also a member of the Indian Rights Association. Sorry... I just like seeing Coates-related info pop up on WS! Londonjackbooks (talk) 13:39, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. All kinds of interesting people show up on Wikisource. I had forgotten Welsh gave the talk at Carl Schurz's 70th birthday. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 14:32, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

PSM main namespace article titles

Hi. I noticed that you moved Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_30/March_1887/Sketch_of_Edward_L_Youmans to include the dot (ASCII 46/ANSI 046).

Your changes are problematic for several reasons.

1. I excluded them, (with most symbols), from the PSM main namespace titles to accommodate users with all manner of languages and computer backgrounds (MS-DOS, etc.) who type URL's. There is a (hi)story to this issue in my most recent employment prior to retiring (International Postal Union discussions and proposals), and based on these I decided to simplify the titles for all concerned.
2. At current count there are 3,920 main namespace titles.
3. There are numerous links in the indexes which would require change.

Each title also exists as a redirect, without the project name, volume and month/year, and duplicate article titles are resolved by disambiguation pages, courtesy of Hesperian. If you agree, the it's the redirects should be changed, but not the actual title. I am also aware that the Google search engine brings up all manner of variations of the name, and pages, regardless of the namespace.

Finally, I propose that desired changes by various editors should be collected in the project namespace, and implemented as a whole to maintain consistency. — Ineuw talk 06:38, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

This is a marvelous project, and it seems a phenomenal amount of work. My changes have been aimed at making it compatible with other projects, where if there is a dot in the title this is used in the file name. Some OS's may have a problem. I use an old OS, and Javascript crashes my browser when I edit so I have to turn it off. But it doesn't make sense to have the troubles of a very small minority of users drive the whole presentation. It makes more sense to provide work arounds for those users, like redirects for MS-DOS users, and browser reconfiguration for people like me. If necessary, some sort of project page to explain the work arounds can be provided. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 14:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Numbering of author contributions of PSM

Please don't remove the numbering of PSM contributions in the Author namespace, as you have for Author:Eliza Ann Youmans, which I restored. The project is dynamic and numbering greatly helps to eliminate errors and track the contributions. I track additions on a volume by volume basis, because there are ~60 authored contributions are added in each volume and without Wikisource:WikiProject Popular Science Monthly/Authors S to Z|THIS LIST, and numbering, I have no way of knowing whom to add.— Ineuw talk 18:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Again my changes have been aimed at making the PSM project compatible with other projects, for example EB11, where multiple titles by an author are not numbered, just arranged alphabetically. For PSM, a chronological arrangement seems warranted, but numbering looks odd. If this scaffolding can be hidden somehow it would be better, or perhaps you, or I, can rethink the bookkeeping. I will try to work through the project page on changes like this in the future. Thank you for this project. I have found many articles of interest in it. I am currently working on the biographies of the Youmans in Wikipedia. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 14:20, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Transclusion from EB1911 Index pages to Mainspace pages

I was wondering why you are not working first from proofreading an Index page [EB1911 pieces specifically] before you build a Mainspace page. You had done so in the past, e.g. this to this, but not recently. I updated Millet (1814-1875)—copying & pasting your Mainspace work over to the corresponding Index pages & transcluding back to the Main again—for he is "related" to some other work I have done. Just curious, & Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 16:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

With EB1911, I work off-line a lot since I have the source text and images locally. The transclusion amounts to more formatting work, and sometimes I am up to it and sometimes not. Ultimately transclusion seems the format the articles should end up in, but I feel I am moving things ahead by proofing without transclusion. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:05, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I guess it just makes it more difficult to eventually get the work up to a validated status, or to "Text Quality 100%" (the ideal end-state) in the end for those who don't have the benefit of working from a "local" or hard copy. Thanks, Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:42, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The main thing for me is to have the article available in Wikisource. The rest is icing on the cake. The transclusion software makes it easier to check the text, but sources are readily available enough that it is not that hard to check without transclusion, even if you don't have the images and text locally. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:08, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Quantity and availability is good, but quality is better... I can personally attest to the fact that you do quality proofreading work—having re-proofread your work after copy/pasting the Millet text to the Index page, and only finding maybe one typo, I think—but I've also come across some spurious text here at WS as well (not yours) that some other proofreader/validator might overlook in a match-and-split process. I'm just picky, and like to do things like re-proofread even validated pages at times... It's not that difficult to "check without transclusion" as you stated, but it is still easier and more efficient for a final validator to work off an index page. And even if you are doing articles piecemeal, you don't have to proofread an entire EB1911 index page (which can be daunting if you only want to complete a small article), just make <!-- note --> at the section heading that you have proofread that section already, like section 1 here. Just a suggestion! Thanks again, Londonjackbooks (talk) 19:24, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Just thought to add that if you choose to not use my above suggestion(s), I won't continue to hound you about it! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 22:53, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I am pretty comfortable with my approach, but I will consider your suggestion. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 23:10, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I think it is a shame that you do not use the transclusion method (See Using transclusion there is now script to help build the transclusion page), but as you are comfortable with your approach, to help other editors please include in your page creations the volume=number parameter in the header, and put the following into the body of the text to indicate page numbers:

<div class=indented-page>{{page break|page number 123|left}}

Text

{{page break|page number 124|left}}

More text

</div>

A reader of the page then has the full set of information for building a citation (encyclopeida, volume, article name and page number(s) -- the page number is particularly useful for citing specific parts of long multi page articles, and as the standard citing method for short inline citations on Wikipedia).

See for example: 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/O'Conor, Charles

--PBS (talk) 09:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions. I do include the volume number from time to time. And I do use transclusion from time to time, but in this work I tend to use it less and less as I find it too time consuming for the things I wish to achieve. I do try to make it easy for those who are interested to convert it to a transcluded format if they wish. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:26, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Actually, in some ways I think it might make more sense, especially for a choppy work like an encyclopedia where there can be several articles to a page, to transclude from the articles back to the pages for those odd people who wish to see things presented in the original page format. For me, the articles are the main interest. Some people have a fascination with pages. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:46, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Bob, just thought you might be interested to know I just uploaded one volume of The American Cyclopaedia, here: Index:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu

I read through the discussion above, and just want to say I wholeheartedly enjoy and appreciate the work you do, and agree that it moves things forward. There's always time to shift formatting around and tie things more tightly to the source material, but I agree that the best thing is to work in a way that is enjoyable for you, and advances your own goals, as long as they are generally consistent with Wikisource's goals. -Pete (talk) 20:51, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Pete, Thank you. I think the proofreading and formatting is the main thing. The tables in the AmCyc articles I've been working through lately (states of the United States) are really a bear, and the illustrations are not inconsiderable. I'm glad you can see this is moving things forward. Thanks for the AmCyc volume. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 21:03, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

A proposal for the PSM biographical article titles

This post is a long delayed reply to our previous conversations above, and I apologize for seemingly leaving this issue unresolved - for 30 days to be exact.

It may surprise you that after multiple reviews of my work, I also don't find the abbreviations appealing, and I propose the use of full names in the biographical article titles, while omitting and prefixes and suffixes and titles. The list of good reasons to do this is endless, and I don't wish to bore you, except that this follows Wikipedia guidelines for their biographical titles.

As far as the PSM project is concerned, the original publication did not follow any guidelines and they used the same format on majority of the bio articles. My only concern, as always, is the amount of deletions this generates.— Ineuw talk 05:30, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for alerting me here. I will reply at the PSM project talk page. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:03, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

re: {{Collier's}} and similar

Is there a reason why such dictionary templates link to Wikipedia but not to Wiktionary? - Amgine (talk) 18:11, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

This seems like a good idea. The only reason I can see against it is infrequency of use, where for infrequent situations the multi-purpose other_projects can serve. But given an encyclopedia like EB11 tries to be a dictionary, a specialized Wiktionary link would be useful frequently enough to make sense in {{EB1911}}. Perhaps it would also be useful for {{Collier's}} as well. And I know {{NIE}} gets into etymology. {{EB1911}}, due to its age, is a little odd in that if the Wikipedia link is to be disabled, as may be the case for someone who just wants to link to Wiktionary, the wikipedia parameter must be used with an empty value. For the other templates, this is not necessary. This behavior I think should be preserved for backward compatibility, but just for the wikipedia parameter in {{EB1911}}. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:14, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I think the best candidates for this add-on are the ones that have Wikisource link templates on Wiktionary. Here on Wikisource, these templates are noted on the talk page for the work in question. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 11:53, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

New document creation

I am sorry I am trying to paste a document about the Statutes of Laborers 1351, to be clear I don't know what the havoc I am doing and please help me find a way to create a document, please & thank you.--GoShow (talk) 15:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

See Help:Adding texts. Let me know if this gives you the information you need. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

PSM images

Hi. Thanks for your contributions to the PSM project, but please don’t substitute incorrectly named high resolution images with a low resolution versions. Please send me a message and I will rename my mistake. Thanks. — Ineuw talk 05:28, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Part 2

Can you please explain why you duplicated and used low resolution images in Volume 57 of PSM (before I ask for their deletion)? There are clear instructions on image naming, as well as detailed information on the preparation of the uploaded images. — Ineuw talk 07:57, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are talking about. I remember doing some images for an article about MIT some time ago, but I believe I named them according to the PSM convention, and they were high resolution. And I don't remember ever substituting a low-resolution image for a high-resolution one. This would make no sense at all. Can you give me a specific example(s)? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:09, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

One example is HERE. One problem is that all your uploads simply duplicated existing images instead of just replacing the old. In naming the images, I always omit the dots (.). And, use only lower case with the exception of a person’s name. This is to ease the work of anyone using a case sensitive OS like Mac or Linux.

Also, all your images were marked as low resolution by a commons bot.— Ineuw talk 18:20, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the example. This is the MIT article I mentioned. I see by the edit history for the page you mention, that there was no image linked into it at the time I did my edit, so I did no substitution, at least for that example. In this case "proofread" mostly consisted of linking in the image and deleting extraneous material. There was no substitution. When I saw there was no image linked into the page, I must have assumed the image just hadn't been uploaded yet. I should have done a search for the prefix string of the image name and double checked, and I will do that in the future.

The image I uploaded is a poor image, as I acknowledged in a comment when I uploaded it at commons: "This is a poor reproduction taken from the djvu file. A better reproduction can most likely be obtained from the page viewer at archive.org, but these scans are currently unavailable 'due to issues with the item's content.'" The version of the your image existing at that date does seem poor although nominally of higher resolution, but I don't think I knew about its existence at all. I see that today you uploaded a better version of your image today. You went to a different archive.org source, and I wish I had found that one when I did uploaded my version of the image.

So in retrospect I will fault myself for not doing a search for the image at commons, but I don't think I did too badly. You are right, I did upload low-resolution images, but only because that was the best I could find at the time. Running into the archive.org message was kind of a jolt, as I figured they had taken PSM completely off line, and I didn't think them capable of that sort of censorship. I did not do any substitution that I can see, and you should do one before you have the images I uploaded deleted.

Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:59, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the link to your detailed instructions on uploading images. I don't make a habit of uploading PSM images, and I just did it based on the images I had seen uploaded. I do appreciate the efforts you have made to prepare these articles. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikisource User Group

Wikisource, the free digital library is moving towards better implementation of book management, proofreading and uploading. All language communities are very important in Wikisource. We would like to propose a Wikisource User Group, which would be a loose, volunteer organization to facilitate outreach and foster technical development, join if you feel like helping out. This would also give a better way to share and improve the tools used in the local Wikisources. You are invited to join the mailing list 'wikisource-l' (English), the IRC channel #wikisource, the facebook page or the Wikisource twitter. As a part of the Google Summer of Code 2013, there are four projects related to Wikisource. To get the best results out of these projects, we would like your comments about them. The projects are listed at Wikisource across projects. You can find the midpoint report for developmental work done during the IEG on Wikisource here.

Global message delivery, 23:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Edward Breck

Hi Bob, in the german wikipedia we have an article about a man called Edward Breck who is born in the year 1869. In wikisource there is a dataset of Edward Breck who is born in the year 1861. As I assume this is the same person, I would like to know where the year of birth in wikisource comes from. Can you help me? -- Köllner (talk) 13:26, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Köllner, I just Googled "Edward Breck 1861 1929" to see what I got. archive.org I imagine is the source I used, but WorldCat also uses 1861, as does the English Wikipedia in the article Joseph Berry Breck. Googling "Edward Breck 1869 1929" turns up German Wikipedia, but nothing else. The same result obtains on German Google. I really can't remember the precise source I used, but Google is always my first resort. There could be something circular going on, e.g. these sources are relying on Wikisource, but I certainly didn't make up the birth year, though I could have typed it in wrong. The German Wikipedia has an interesting source, and I wouldn't be totally surprised if it were right. We seem to be referring to the same person. Bob Burkhardt, a.k.a. Library Guy (talk) 16:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Hi Bob, thanks for the hint. In http://www.iaak.uni-bonn.de/people/gillmeister/gillmeister-contribution-to-yonekura-volume, I found 1861 as well, so there must be a typo in the german wikipedia - was... -- Köllner (talk) 18:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

It's good to hear the sources are consistent. I appreciate hearing about this article and will study it more carefully. 71.233.62.241 18:04, 4 November 2014 (UTC) Better to log in before replying I guess. Library Guy (talk) 18:05, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

EB1911 edits - Thanks

Hi Bob, thanks for your work on proofing EB1911 pages and creating articles, good stuff!. I just thought I'd remind you that the "EB1911 footer initials" template is available for use, it floats the author initials to the right on the last article line (use a blank line after its use). It also automatically uses small-caps and adds brackets. I edited Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/136 as an example. "EB1911 footer double initials" is also available.

On the same page I also used ndashes for year ranges (e.g. 1824–1841) instead of hyphens (e.g. 1824-1841). I've noticed also the Gutenberg version of EB1911 (which is generally very good) uses hyphens, not ndashes for year ranges; so I fix those too when I use the Gutenberg text. Also on the same page I used a minus symbol instead of a hyphen for −47° F, and have bold commas in titles.

A few other things I've noticed about the EB1911 Gutenberg version (if you use that as a source like I do) is that it usually misses the space between initials on names e.g. “J.B. Smith”; it also sometimes is missing italics on things like “i.e.” — and math pages for variables, “x=y”. Gutenberg only has proofed text for about half the volumes though, so sometimes I use http://www.theodora.com/encyclopedia/ for partly-proofed text as a starting point. Keep up the good work! DivermanAU (talk) 18:59, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I've seen and used the "EB1911 footer initials" and find it just as easy and effective to implement the initials without a template. The placement doesn't exactly match Britannica, but I find it acceptable. The "float: right" sometimes looks odd in my experience. I've noticed the missing italics. I generally use a hyphen where you might use an ndash or minus just because it's handy, except once when a minus made a table easier to format. Certainly I don't object to other editors changing the hyphen to something else. I haven't tried theodora, and may look into that. I like the way Gutenberg leaves in the line-feeds between lines of text which I find makes proofing easier. They also place their figures, plates, etc., sensibly for the most part. I tend to "unwind" tables when needed (i.e. Britannica puts the lower half of the table to the immediate right of the upper half) since the electronic format is so much less restrictive than the print format. Thank you for your comments and your contributions. Its a big job! Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2016 (UTC) (a.k.a. Library Guy)

Smith v. United States (508 U.S. 223)

Hi Bob. I saw your name at Wikisource:WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases#Participants. If you have the time, would you please review Smith v. United States (508 U.S. 223). Thanks! - Wesboson (talk) 01:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I will keep it in mind, but mostly I was working on organizing the pages of Supreme Court chief justices. I'm not very active these days. Library Guy (talk) 18:58, 5 February 2017 (UTC) (a.k.a. Bob Burkhardt)

Poetry formatting

I noted that you were using tables to construct poetry, and I thought I'd inquire as to whether you knew there was a more direct (and easier—which isn't always necessarily better) way to format poetry. I looked at the first page of the poems and noted that it was another User who had initiated the table formatting, and guessed that you were merely emulating the same technique for uniformity... until I came to the realization that the other User was also yourself. As for myself, such formatting would give me cause for proofreading burnout—unless it was the only method available, and my motivation was sufficient! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 17:58, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I use "poem" HTML tags when I can. They don't seem to work well across pages when transcluded, and the tables give me more control, but if you have other alternatives, I would consider them. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 18:03, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I am not a fan of the poem tag, for similar technical reasons. I use {{block center}} with breaks (see use example—ignoring the sectioning). Stable and controllable Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:14, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Breaks may seem daunting, but I save them for last, and have a special button to apply them. Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:17, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

The breaks are a reasonable approach with block center. The chapter I just did with tables wasn't so arduous since I did a lot of copy and pasting. Your approach certainly has its merits. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 18:24, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

I merely had an "eek" experience upon seeing the tables—a personal reaction—and thought I would imply that other options were available... Whichever way works and is most agreeable to the user! :) Londonjackbooks (talk) 18:40, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

&c.

@Library Guy: Me again. I was interested in the letters from George H. Earle, Jr. to Mr. Pennypacker in The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian, and proceeded to validate when I realized that the original formatting created line breaks in the Main when page-transitioning... I am substituting {{fs85/s}}/e for {{fsx}} so no breaking occurs. I will continue to validate and adjust formatting throughout the remainder of that particular chapter for uniformity's sake. It may take me a few days to complete, but I just didn't want you to think that I was neglecting standardization if there was a delay in finishing what I started. Londonjackbooks (talk) 20:59, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for keeping me informed. There was a similar problem with {{EB1911 fine print}}, but fortunately this (obsolete) template has been allowed to persist in its non-block formulation for the sake of backward compatibility, and last I checked does not cause a line break when transcluded. It has been superseded by {{EB1911 fine print/s}} etc., and I wish a similar path was taken with {{fsx}} even though the latest browser behaviors do not allow line-height to be adjusted outside of block mode. (I'm pretty sure they once did allow line-height to be adjusted.) I find the spurious line break to be more annoying than the failure to adjust line-height in proportion to font-size. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:01, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikisource:WikiProject Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition

I noticed that you had contributed to Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, FYI I created a project page "Wikisource:WikiProject Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition", it is a copy with modification of WS:EB1911. -- PBS (talk) 09:35, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Presidents of the US

Please do not add incomplete works to "New Texts". The work should be completed before being listed. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:49, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

What makes this work "new"? --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:49, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

It has been in progress for a long time. I recently completed the appendices and the lists of illustrations, and added a plate that had been missing from the copy I was transcribing from. I don't think it has been listed before. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

I have also recently uploaded the four volumes to Wikimedia Commons and introduced corresponding index pages in Wikisource so the work can be transcluded. While doing this, I realized that someone had previously uploaded the first volume several years ago so that it could be transcluded. They were apparently stymied by a missing plate, and abandoned the project. The version of the first volume I uploaded was missing the same plate, but I think I have successfully dealt with the missing plate issue in the index page I developed. I copied over most of the pages they had put in transcludable format from the old index to the new one. At some point I should go back and clean things up a bit (look into getting the old index and pages based on it deleted). Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:18, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

The "New texts" template is specifically for "newly completed works". The work you added is neither new nor complete, yet you keep making reversions to put the text in, despite having had the error pointed out to you more than once. I have blocked you for two hours at this point. In future do not add incomplete, unfinished works to the New Texts list. If you believe there has been an error, discuss it before trying to overrule another editor. You may find, as in this case, that you were the one in error.

There also seems to be extraneous material added to our current copy of the work. Look e.g. at John Quincy Adams, where there is an extraneous portrait added into the chapter, but which portrait does not appear anywhere in our scan of volume I. --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:47, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

The illustration is not extraneous, and this is a newly completed work. When I originally worked on it, I abandoned it when it was missing the "Lists of Illustrations" for the four volumes and the appendices were very incomplete. The appendices were the main problem, because there were many tables and the tables were in the book sideways, so the OCR did not work. I had forgotten about this project actually, but ran into it again and typed in the tables of the appendices. I tried to get OCR support for the work by rotating the images and using Wikisource's OCR facility. But the OCR didn't work very well, and I didn't bother with it after completing a few pages. The portrait you speak of does appear in the List of Illustrations, and also appears in Google's copy of the work, but does not appear in the copy of Volume I used on Wikisource. So I proofread it from the external source. I would like to list this newly completed work. All the text of all the president's biographies is there, and also for the appendices. Let me know what you can't find, and I will show you where to find it. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 22:54, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Page numbers

{{helpme}} I notice the page numbers have disappeared from the transcluded document displays. Is there any way I can get them restored? I find them helpful. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 17:15, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

EncycloPetey brought this up at the Scriptorium. I am also experiencing same, and waiting for feedback. Londonjackbooks (talk) 21:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Apparently fixed. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:49, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Nice find in discovering vol. 15 p. 327 was missing

Hi Bob, that was a good discovery! I have been mostly successful in trying to create that missing page ( which I did by creating a new page Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/999). I've edited 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Jerome, St to incorporate the missing page. I did attempt to edit the index page Index:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu but I couldn't get that to work. DivermanAU (talk) 01:53, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

@DivermanAU: I had to do patches for some pages in Miscellaneous Writings and patched that index successfully. They are JPEG pages rather than DJVU, but things work OK, and the page images match the text. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:11, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

I tried your approach when I was patching things using a Google source on Manual of The Mother Church. I give the links to the Google sources on the Page talk. I used scan numbers that directly followed the highest number for the DJVU, and the image it displayed was invariably the back cover of the book. In the case of EB11 vol. 15 unfortunately the last page is not blank. NIE has bigger problems with missing pages. In that case, along with occasional missing pages, a whole volume is gone. I have been using the JPEG approach there with 1903 page images (the DJVU are 1905 images). This works pretty well, but sometimes there are subtle differences between the 1903 and 1905 page images. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:06, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Share your experience and feedback as a Wikimedian in this global survey

Hello! The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey. We want to know how well we are supporting your work on and off wiki, and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation. You have been randomly selected to take this survey as we would like to hear from your Wikimedia community. The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes.

Take the survey now!

You can find more information about this survey on the project page and see how your feedback helps the Wikimedia Foundation support editors like you. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this privacy statement (in English). Please visit our frequently asked questions page to find more information about this survey. If you need additional help, or if you wish to opt-out of future communications about this survey, send an email through the EmailUser feature to WMF Surveys to remove you from the list.

Thank you!

WMF Surveys, 18:36, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Reminder: Share your feedback in this Wikimedia survey

Every response for this survey can help the Wikimedia Foundation improve your experience on the Wikimedia projects. So far, we have heard from just 29% of Wikimedia contributors. The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes to be completed. Take the survey now.

If you have already taken the survey, we are sorry you've received this reminder. We have design the survey to make it impossible to identify which users have taken the survey, so we have to send reminders to everyone. If you wish to opt-out of the next reminder or any other survey, send an email through EmailUser feature to WMF Surveys. You can also send any questions you have to this user email. Learn more about this survey on the project page. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this Wikimedia Foundation privacy statement. Thanks!

WMF Surveys, 01:34, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Your feedback matters: Final reminder to take the global Wikimedia survey

Hello! This is a final reminder that the Wikimedia Foundation survey will close on 23 April, 2018 (07:00 UTC). The survey is available in various languages and will take between 20 and 40 minutes. Take the survey now.

If you already took the survey - thank you! We will not bother you again. We have designed the survey to make it impossible to identify which users have taken the survey, so we have to send reminders to everyone. To opt-out of future surveys, send an email through EmailUser feature to WMF Surveys. You can also send any questions you have to this user email. Learn more about this survey on the project page. This survey is hosted by a third-party service and governed by this Wikimedia Foundation privacy statement.

WMF Surveys, 00:44, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Searching "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman"

@EncycloPetey: I would be glad to use the new search feature instead of installing a search engine button. Where do I find it? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:10, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

It will be installed tomorrow. See the announcement in the Scriptorium. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:24, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Removal of hyphenation

Hi Bob, I saw you recently made changes to Page:EB1911 - Volume 07.djvu/53 etc. I can see what you're trying to achieve, but now the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Contract article has inconsistent sized Shoulder Headings. I believe the standard "EB1911 Shoulder Heading" template is too wide, it shows too much white space when the heading is a short word and is not like the printed book. "EB1911 Shoulder HeadingSmall" produces a spacing more link the printed book and does require some hyphenation (like the printed book does) to fit the headings in. DivermanAU (talk) 03:57, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I think it's a difference in emphasis. I am mostly interested in generating an electronic version which communicates the same material. The hyphenation makes the words less intelligible. I think "looking like the book" can be overemphasized when it saddles the electronic version with limitations of the print version, or saddles the editor with excessive requirements. We don't preserve the hyphenation in the text body, and I see good reason not to in the shoulder headings. When Wikisource's original wide format is used for the shoulder headings, it is consistent, and it provides room so that hyphenation isn't needed. Another of my hobby horses in this vein is figure placement. I think Gutenberg does well to move all the figures so they are between paragraphs. Especially since we don't indent paragraph beginnings, this makes it clearer where paragraphs begin and end. I think Gutenberg shows good taste here. I don't think they hyphenate the shoulder headings either. They do move figures between pages which I don't favor, and I undo those movements when I use their material. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 14:46, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind my chiming in. I mainly agree with Bob on this one, but at least on my browser, the shoulder heading is pretty close to the line above it. If it's possible to make it vertically centered in the space -- or closer to it -- I think that would be an improvement. -Pete (talk) 19:43, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree that removing hyphens in the Shoulder Headings is a good goal. I have now adjusted the Shoulder Headings in the Contract article so they are consistent (rather than a mix of Small and regular) to be width=8, so there are still no hyphens and the whitespace is reduced compared to the full-width (=10) setting. I've moved several of the Headings down one line in the source so that they do not appear on the first paragraph line when viewing the page at higher screen resolutions; I generally leave five lines of text in a paragraph before the {EB1911 Shoulder Heading}. I also agree with Pete, that the Shoulder Heading text could come down a fraction. DivermanAU (talk) 21:52, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I place {{EB1911 Shoulder Heading}} on a line by itself above the first line affected (made shorter than the full column width) by it. I would hope when the text is displayed at the original EB1911 column width (measured by number of characters) the Shoulder Heading would appear about in the same place as in the printed version. When it's displayed at greater widths, I can see how it might end up on the first line, and I don't have a problem with that. Seems like it should appear in the midst of (to the right or left of) any text that it appeared in the midst of in the printed text. With a wide display (measured in number of characters), that might mean being on the first line of the paragraph. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:13, 25 April 2019 (UTC)

New texts

Sikhim and Bhutan still has several pages left untranscribed. Until the work is complete, it should not be listed as a "New text". --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:40, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

These are index pages and advertising pages. In the past I've left them untranscribed sometimes and no one has objected. I don't consider them essential. Should I mark them up on the index page differently? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

The Index, the Table of Contents, the Title page are all considered part of the work. Advertising pages are optional, because they are not part of the work itself. But any work listed as a "New text" must be complete, including the index. --EncycloPetey (talk) 15:11, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Typically I don't transcribe the index, but I can see they have their uses, and should be included in the work proper. I will work on the index for Sikhim and Bhutan. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:24, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Bob Burkhardt,

The Wikimedia Foundation is asking for your feedback in a survey about your experience with Wikisource and Wikimedia. The purpose of this survey is to learn how well the Foundation is supporting your work on wiki and how we can change or improve things in the future. The opinions you share will directly affect the current and future work of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 14:34, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Bob Burkhardt,

A couple of weeks ago, we invited you to take the Community Insights Survey. It is the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual survey of our global communities. We want to learn how well we support your work on wiki. We are 10% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! Your voice matters to us.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 19:13, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Reminder: Community Insights Survey

Share your experience in this survey

Hi Bob Burkhardt,

There are only a few weeks left to take the Community Insights Survey! We are 30% towards our goal for participation. If you have not already taken the survey, you can help us reach our goal! With this poll, the Wikimedia Foundation gathers feedback on how well we support your work on wiki. It only takes 15-25 minutes to complete, and it has a direct impact on the support we provide.

Please take 15 to 25 minutes to give your feedback through this survey. It is available in various languages.

This survey is hosted by a third-party and governed by this privacy statement (in English).

Find more information about this project. Email us if you have any questions, or if you don't want to receive future messages about taking this survey.

Sincerely,

RMaung (WMF) 17:04, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Index:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu

Why is Index:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu tagged as needing OCR? The existing text layer looks fine to me. --Xover (talk) 18:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

The random page I tested did have an OCR layer as you say, so it may be the volume no longer needs OCR. I am not actively transcribing anything for this volume, and it has probably been a few years since I have checked into it. At one time I know there was a problem with some volumes not having a text layer. Thank you for your interest in EB9. Library Guy (talk) 18:39, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. I'll check a few more random pages and, if they appear fine, I'll change its status to ready for proofreading. I have some tooling for working with DjVu, including generating OCR text layers, so feel free to {{ping}} me if you run into any volumes that need fixing. --Xover (talk) 04:47, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your offer. I will keep you in mind. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:47, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Evangeline page headers

Hi—I noticed that you didn't reformat the header on Page:Evangeline 1847.djvu/19 like you have on the others, and it seemed like a good excuse to raise the topic.

I don't really care whether the headers are in spaced small-caps. I wouldn't imagine even the Featured Text process would. But I see the point, and if you intend to validate the work, feel free to make the change.

Just please don't leave the pages in an inconsistent state. So if you intend to continue, I suggest it would be better to make this change with a bot job. If you're not so keen on validating the whole work, I'd ask you not to change the headers, as future validators won't notice and it will be inconsistent. BethNaught (talk) 19:07, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. I planned to validate the whole thing since I've heard a lot about it but never read it. Up to this point in my editing work I haven't used bots. Perhaps I should consider it here, but in the meantime, I will work on remembering to change the headers as I go along. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 19:26, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you so much for validating this! Slow and steady wins the race, as they say :) BethNaught (talk) 19:36, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome! It was an interesting read. The text was very accurate. I just found that one hyphenation problem that I told you about. Library Guy (talk) 14:13, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I fixed a few problems you introduced to Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/219

Hi Bob, just FYI, I came across your edit last month to Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/219 and saw some good corrections but noticed a few problems you introduced with your edit on 23 Jan. These were (which I've fixed up now):

• The section tag for HYPOSTASIS was altered from "s5" so the article page no longer displayed the text on this page.
• {{tl:EB1911 footer initials|William McDougall|W. McD.}} was removed and replaced with "[[Author:..." which meant the initials no longer lined up
• the ndash in 1794–1870 was replaced with a hyphen

I used converted Gutenberg text to fix these problems plus a few other typos on the page (and updated the Greek transliteration). regards, DivermanAU (talk) 06:02, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your fixes. I try to be good about changing the transclusion when I change the labels. I slipped here. I usually use Gutenberg text for pages that are in range unless some reliable editors are offering text in Wikisource already. Differencing against Gutenberg text to find additional errors seems like a good idea. I guess I feel if I'm going to the trouble of proofreading a page, I can indulge some of my quibbles. I like hyphen versus ndash because it is on my keyboard and looks about the same. I like the simple format I used for the author link as the footer initials, which I did try to use for awhile, has a tendency to leak over into the next article on pages I've edited since I tend to crowd the articles close together. Perhaps I overindulged. Thanks for your contributions. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 16:24, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Another problem with {{EB1911 footer initials}} is that it can stray into the footnote rule when one is present. See my recent edit to Korea. Library Guy (talk) 19:05, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

@Library Guy: To fix the issue with {{EB1911 footer initials}} straying, just add a {{clear}} after it (or after {{EB1911 fine print/e}} if follows directly after). The benefit of using {{EB1911 footer initials}} is that is aligns the initials to match the printed text. I made an edit to Korea (actually Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/947) to demonstrate. I also added {{clear}} after the initials "E. F. S." later on the same page to fix the same issue. The problem on the page was noticeable when adjusting the width of the window so the initials just wrap to the next line. I also adjusted the font size of the author initials when they appear in fine print back to standard size to match the print version.

I did think about adding {{clear}} (or rather, the source for it: <div style="clear: both"></div> to the end of {{EB1911 footer initials}} template, but it affects the alignment if {{EB1911 fine print/e}} follows directly after the initials, which it often does.

An ndash for a year range is the correct character (EB1911 always has ndash for year ranges, sometimes for other number ranges. A hyphen is often, but not always, used for page ranges). ndash is the very first character in the "Wiki markup" drop-down list when editing (it's also in "Symbols"). On a PC it's Alt-0150 on the keyboard (numeric pad when Num Lock is on) –. Also see also https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html DivermanAU (talk) 20:58, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

So I will try using a {{clear}} next time I run into a problem with {{EB1911 footer initials}}. I will also look closer at what EB1911 is doing with number ranges. The distinction between an ndash and a hyphen has been pretty much under my radar when looking over source. Thanks for your feedback on these issues. Library Guy (talk) 21:11, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Summer on the Lakes

Did you intend for the first poem to be left aligned, and the poem following it to be centered? On a wide monitor that looks very odd. --EncycloPetey (talk) 01:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I decided not to center that one. That's how it looked to me in the book. It's rare I don't center a poem, and maybe this is just an experiment. In the book of course the effect is a lot less dramatic, but even with a wide monitor, although it looks odd, it's easy enough to move your head. The book itself is kind of an odd experience, so maybe this is an appropriate introduction. Read the poem at the end, "The Book to the Reader". For me though the most interesting experiment was patching together a TOC using the page headings which usually don't appear in the transcluded contents. I have found the chapter summaries useful for getting around the book. Library Guy (talk) 16:12, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

some advice for splitting an '11 article

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mechanics is showing up in the broken math cat. It is too big or too "expensive". Eh, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mechanics#1005 should take you to the page before the problem.

The advice I need is for how to split it. To split, as it logically presents itself, into Theoretical and Applied leaves two sentences on the main, if you count "Mechanics." as a sentence. Theoretical can be started on the main and then be split into "Static" and "Kinetic". I am not happy with a three split between Static, Kinetic, and Applied, though.

And now, a rant! Surely there must be some HISTORY that could have filled out the beginning of the article and left more than two sentences for the main!

Thank you for your time with my burden.--RaboKarbakian (talk) 19:33, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Rabo, Two sentences on the main page seems OK to me. I wouldn't bother splitting theoretical since it seems to fit in one file now. Probably just splitting into Theoretical and Applied will work fine. If not try a four-way split since both Theoretical and Applied have two major subsections. The broken math category may still show up though, and means you just need to find the equation that went wrong. Looks like quite a project. Thanks for working through it. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:02, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Transcluding using {{page}}

Hi!

When transcluding pages, please avoid using the {{page}} or direct transclusion from the Page namespace ({{page:...) when possible. The <pages/> should be use whenever possible. As a first-class parser tag, it has various back-end features that templates and direct transclusions don't, and cannot, have, for example automatic CSS inclusion, automatic page numbering, etc.

You can include a single page with the include attribute (which can take lists and ranges like 30-39,41), and a single section with the onlysection attribute.

Cheers, Inductiveload—talk/contribs 08:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I use <pages/> when I can. I will experiment with it again, but I think I have found when my figures are on separate pages, I can't integrate them into the text in a satisfactory way (no figures breaking paragraphs; no breaks in paragraph text due to separate transclusions). I know all these <pages/> features you talk about. Certainly having to manually number pages is a nuisance, but I want a product that communicates well, and I found with figures on separate pages I couldn't get the effect I wanted with <pages/>. I will try again. Perhaps I've learned enough since I last experimented. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 11:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I think for such needs, <pages/> should work just fine. For example, for The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 02, how about this:

<pages index="The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu" include="37,38,41" tosection="part1" />
<pages index="The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu" include="39" />
<pages index="The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu" from="41" to="50" fromsection="part2" />

If there's a need that is not being met, let me know, because perhaps it should be implemented in the extension.

Inductiveload—talk/contribs 12:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion. I have never used tosection in conjunction with include so perhaps that will do the trick. I will try it out in my next transclusion effort (with plates; no problem without) for the new Eddy or the Schurz migration (last effort for Schurz: The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (book)/Volume Two/Chapter 6). Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

to/fromsection work exactly the same with include as they do with from/to. Internally, the server treats "include=1-4", include="1,2,3,4" and "from=1 to=4" exactly the same. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 12:30, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I tried it out on The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (book)/Volume Two/Chapter 7 and using include with fromsection and tosection worked fine and was a lot more succinct than if I had used my old procedure, and no annoying messages when I trancluded or tags on my history. I will stay away from {{page}}. I would have never used it otherwise. There was an incident years ago on EB1911 when the indexes got screwed up internally somehow and only {{page}} worked, the other just displayed an error message. That lasted an excruciatingly long time (weeks I think), but finally got fixed and I haven't seen anything like it since. Thanks for putting me on the right track. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 15:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Billinghurst, @CalendulaAsteraceae, @Inductiveload:: It seems a lot of projects I've worked on over the years are getting trashed because people don't like {{page}} or code that has been deprecated. Can you folks take a more constructive approach? What is the big problem, and it must be gigantic, that people are all of a sudden trashing projects to fix them? Please be considerate and constructive. If you can't take the time to fix things properly get assistance. Places where I've had problems: The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Inductiveload: anchors removed), The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy (CalendulaAsteraceae: strange line breaks all over the place), Manual of The Mother Church (Billinghurst: Invalid Interval). I have taken time to fix these "fixes" but I'm beginning to feel that the deprecations are being used to declare some sort of open season to hunt down content or editors people have problems with. I don't think the way these changes are being handled is appropriate to Wikisource. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:04, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, I have only made one edit ever to TRoCS and that was after fixing a broken scan, in response to a "index needs fixing" template placed by you yourself. I'm not telepathic: if your use of deprecated syntax was needed for some reason (e.g. a specific incoming link to an anchor), as opposed to working around an issue like a broken scan, the "appropriate to Wikisource" thing to do is to leave a note <!--like this--> to let people know exactly why you did that (or use an explicit {{anchor}} to make your intention absolutely crystal clear and completely robust against implementation changes to any template or tag).

That said <pages/> also allows linking to pages either by #123 (page numbered 123) or #pageindex_123 (the 123rd page in the index), so there is no need for {{page}} at all on that page. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 12:54, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Inductiveload, @Jarnsax:: Inductiveload you are correct. The edits I was thinking of were made by Jarnsax. The edit you are talking about doesn't even come to mind. I try not to count on people being telepathic. I don't use deprecated code if I can see a work around. You have been a help with <pages/>, but it would be nice to have some documentation to refer to. My latest puzzle is how to handle transcluding JPEG projects without {{page}}. from and to don't seem to work, and include seems to be all or nothing. A particular project is Encouragements and Warnings were I ended up reordering the pagelist in the index to get the page sequence I wanted. I know as far as deprecations are concerned, I thought the link which was provided with the tag on my edit was useful, but it didn't provide workarounds for all the deprecations, or even list all of them. I finally found what I needed (a replacement for valign) in a CSS manual. Thanks for your response. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 13:26, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

The primary (local) documentation for <page/> is Help:Transclusion#Transcluding to main namespace (file-based indexes). Is there a particular construction that you need that isn't there?

Admittedly, image-based indexes are rather shakier than than file-based indexes, maybe because hardly anyone uses them. They have a completely separate code path for the pagination, so it's quite possible that there's just a bug in the back-end, which might be fixable. Again, without an actual report of a defect, no-one is likely to notice until they run into it themselves.

If you found there was a missing explanation for the deprecated HTML, all you needed to do was ask and I'd have both told you the web-standards-compliant solution and added the documentation, and I have now done so. In my defence (as much as someone who writes documentation for free, but not fun, needs one), it's really, really easy to miss things like that without anyone providing any feedback at all on the documentation other than "it's all a bit crap, isn't it?" (not you, just...people). But it's a wiki, not a slice of dead tree and a set of lithographic plates, so it can be improved. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:30, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Actually, looking at the code in question (here, for the record), the handling of image-based indexes only supports from and to (and from/tosection), not include, using full page names like this:

<pages index="Encouragements and Warnings" from="Encouragements and Warnings p01.JPG" to="Encouragements and Warnings p02.JPG" />

So your use of include=XXX is actually completely ignoring the include attribute and is just the same as using only <pages/>, which just transcludes all pages, in order from the index page.

I guess (but don't know, having not written this code) that it uses the full page name because it would be really painful to figure out the correct indexes for an image-based book if the filename didn't happen to have the numbers in them (or the numbers were somehow not sequential or aligned correctly). And include would be very awkward because filenames could quite easily and legally contain - and ,, so a maintainability/POLA approach was taken in the absence of a pressing need to make it very complicated to implement and document.

And, yes, this should always have been documented, clearly, since I didn't even know that's how it worked!

IMO, the best solution here, if there's not a way to use only from, to, fromsection and tosection as above is just to get a scan file made. WS:LAB would probably be able to run you one off pretty quickly if asked (as would I, when I'm at the right computer). Inductiveload—talk/contribs 17:48, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Inductiveload: I work on documentation when I have the necessary background. Like when I found {{hws}} etc. didn't mention the new auto-hyphenation feature in the transclusion software, I tried to integrate it into there. But I hope other people have looked it over and had their say, since I am a newbee on that particular feature's ins and outs. Working with projects that are footnote rich, like The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 1/Chapter 2, I find situations where I need to do fall back on {{hws}}, or move footnote continuations around, which would be hard to document. On the JPEG project Condition of the South I had no idea how to handle it without {{page}}, but on experimenting I found that setting include to anything includes all the text in sequence, which is what I wanted there. But maybe this isn't a reliable behavior as far as future software releases are concerned (?) and I should try out the from/to there and on this project and Encouragements and Warnings and I imagine there are others I need to check back on. It certainly is convenient. Moving the pages around in the pagelist seems like too much of a hack, but it is a simple fix. Thank you for the documentation link. Manual of The Mother Church is another place where a project got trashed with ill-conceived fixes of the {{page}} problem. I do a lot of work on Wikisource, and it is hard to see careless editing like that on projects I've worked on, and these people are not newbees I don't believe. I know things go faster if people don't check their work, but I think that should be second nature around Wikisource. I see I got myself into trouble by not checking on histories when I started notifying people on problems. But really I don't believe I've had so much trouble with people breaking stuff in the past. I really don't understand the fuss over {{page}}, and if they can't fix things responsibly, it would be good to know what projects do need fixing and I can go back to them. Using <pages/> is a lot more succinct, but the other stuff seemed to work OK without changes, and certainly I don't think warranted fixes that effectively trashed the projects. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 20:36, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, I personally don't make these fixes randomly because to do so and check that it's not broken (as one should) is a lot of work that I don't see as worth the benefit (which is to say, "I agree"). Though I do think it's worth the benefit to try to get, say, yourself to use the "standard" method going forward when possible, both to end-run around the issue of well-intentioned people breaking stuff in the near/middle future, and also preempt backlogs of legacy syntax in future (which can and does happen, and, annoying, usually happens long after the original contributors are inactive so breakages are less noticed). Notably, {{page}} is a local template and is not maintained centrally, having it forever stay in sync with PRP is not something that is enforced in any kind of technical way. But, IMO, it's certainly not an emergency today that's worth the risk of breaking something today (unless the "fixer" does indeed undertake to actually ensure it's fixed properly).

With include=1, the value of that is completely ignored by the software for image indexes (all it cares about is that it is set), so you can set it to literally anything else and get the same result. Certainly I would consider include=1 a rather dangerous syntax to assume, because it's quite possible (and valid) for someone to add an "indexed" mode for image-indexes to the ProofreadPage back-end that does do what one might expect (i.e. include only the first page in the index). Which would then quietly break all your transclusions, except the first pages. Inductiveload—talk/contribs 21:00, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bob Burkhardt: Sorry about the line breaks issue! If you notice any more I'm happy to fix them. —CalendulaAsteraceae (talk • contribs) 02:26, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@CalendulaAsteraceae: You really ought to go back to all of the projects you "fixed" with multiple pages and do them right. You would be able to track them down better than I would. People put lots of work into these projects. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 12:13, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Puzzlement

Hi Bob,

Regarding this revert. As you can see from the link in the edit summary of my original edit, the change was in response to a request at the Scriptorium. The underlying issue is what is known as "p-wrapping" and inconsistent behaviour by Mediawiki's parser. It tries to identify "paragraphs" of text and wrap them in HTML <p> tags (it's very Wikipedia-oriented, and assumes running text in paragraphs like a Wikipedia article). Sadly it does this in a really dumb way such that if it sees a block-level element (i.e. <div>) on a line it assumes it doesn't need to add the <p> , but then forgets about it on the next line and starts adding <p> tags to subsequent paragraphs. Block-based templates like {{EB1911 fine print/s}} / {{EB1911 fine print/e}} do exactly that: they add a <div> (/s) and </div> (/e). Thus, these templates always need a hard line break after the /s template and ditto before the /e template to avoid inconsistent behaviour that is very hard to track down and debug. Xover (talk) 07:51, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

@Xover: This sounds very esoteric to me. I've been using these two templates for years and I always just put them between paragraphs with no line breaks before and after and they have always worked fine, within a page and over multiple pages where instances go in the header and footer. Has something changed? Is the presentation (how the article appears) affected? Does it just offend people looking at low level HTML? Bob Burkhardt (talk) 10:04, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

I guess I have been following your procedure, always following the template with a line break, though occasionally I follow it directly with a {{clear}} when {{EB1911 footer initials}} ends the block. I am thinking above of a double line break before and after. I will have to study your edit more closely. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 10:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

So I revisited your two edits, restoring the one I reverted and modifying the other one. The edit I reverted in the footer is actually one I would favor since I have found when line breaks are retained in the last paragraph of the body text the page presentation gets affected if just about anything appears in the footer without a preceding blank line: in the body text the last line in the paragraph appears as separated from the rest of body text. Some people have made this into a religion about how you have to glob that last paragraph (remove the line breaks) when all that is necessary is a newline in the footer; the appearance of the transclusion is never affected in either case. Your other edit certainly modified a usage of {{EB1911 fine print/s}} I would never make, but my style is not to have the blank line before {{EB1911 fine print/s}}, so I modified the edit to get rid of the blank line before. I trust you will not object to this? Reexamining your description of your edit it sounds like nothing I would object to and fits in with my style. Thank you for your patience in explaining things. Bob Burkhardt (talk) 11:12, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

No objection, certainly. And you're right, this is really esoteric stuff. I'm a pretty technical person and it took me literally years to figure out what's going on there. It's also a pretty annoying way for the software to behave, and I think a lot of people (including the developers) want to change, but it's now so ingrained that changing it would cause a lot of disruption and in most cases users will not notice anything immediately wrong. It's the way we do things on Wikisource that tends to tickle this bug / misbehaviour, and we can mostly work around it by being strict about a newline after the /s template and before the /e. Note, it's not a full blank line; the /s just needs to be at the very end of a line (no text after it) and the /e at the very beginning (no text before it). Xover (talk) 20:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

User:Bob Burkhardt/example

Hi Bob,

The soft redirect on User:Bob Burkhardt/example makes the page show up in a maintenance category. Are you keeping it there deliberately, or is it just left behind after you moved the content to User:Bob Burkhardt/sandbox/example? If you have no particular need of it I would prefer to either delete the page or replace the content with something other than the soft redirect template (a normal hard redirect would be fine for this purpose). But if you need it there as is, no worries; I'm just trying to reduce noise in the maintenance backlogs. Xover (talk) 10:30, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

And the same is true for the redirect target, actually, just for a different reason (it's transcluding a missing file).

But I see now that neither Bob nor Library Guy—your multiples are confusing! :)—have edited since April. So in the interest of expediency I am going to go ahead and delete both the redirect and its target on the assumption that they are old and unused. When you come back and see this you can ping me (or any other admin) to have them undeleted if I was mistaken. Xover (talk) 15:00, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Life of Henry Clay (Schurz)/American Commonwealths

How did this name not work for you? I'm curious. PseudoSkull (talk) 18:57, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Harper's Weekly Editorials by Carl Schurz

Hello. I would just like to draw your attention to Wikisource:Proposed deletions#Harper's Weekly Editorials by Carl Schurz, as you are the creator of the discussed page. Thanks! -- Jan Kameníček (talk) 09:36, 9 December 2023 (UTC)