[Foundation-l] Promotion of lesser known projects

Wed Jan 2 18:37:02 UTC 2008

Klaus Graf wrote:
> One can add de.Wikisource which is a project making historical Public
> Domain texts in German available with high quality standards. These
> standards are NOT (yet) shared by the other Wikisource projects, see
> also
>
> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#The_huge_leap
>
> Only de.Wikisource demands scanned texts (or digital photos) for
> contributions, most other Wikisource branches have a lot of texts
> which are unsourced. De.Wikisource has notes commenting the texts for
> lots of texts.
Much of what you suggest is not about to happen any time soon.  The fact 
is that splitting up the Wikisource communities created circumstances 
where each Wikisource develops its own standards and criteria.  The 
discussions which may have taken place leading up to these policies on 
de:Wikisource either did not take place elsewhere or did not have the 
same results.  At best, there have been few determined contributors 
willing to lead by example.  Simply telling people to do these gets nowhere.

There is a clear benefit to having to having our texts supported by 
scanned texts, but many of us who may work well with textual material, 
may not have the same technical ease when working with images of any 
kind.  Even adding a small number of illustrations that may otherwise 
accompany a text can be a problematic chore.  I am quite prepared to 
identify where I found my material, but I am quite content to have 
others do the work of digitization.

Commenting on texts is a great idea that could stand to be encouraged more.

I agree with the premise that we cannot hope to keep up with the massive 
digitization projects undertaken by well-funded institutions, but a lot 
of restrictive requirements is self-defeating.  The need is really for a 
balance somewhere between the minutiae of quality and the feeling that 
contributors are seeing a lot of growth.  Wikisource will not become 
great by trying to beat the big institutions at their own game. Thus we 
need to ask oursaelves what we can do to add value that no other similar 
project can do.  In doing so we cannot afford to get bogged down in 
standardized headings that do not allow for easy expansion without a 
complete understanding of tranclusion technology.  We need to allow our 
imaginations the freedom to find new ways of connecting data without 
being tied to formal structures that are so strict as to close off these 
paths.

Ec