Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Samuel Klein wrote: There is a wealth of work done all the time by primary source researchers and publishers, which could be improved on by having wikisource entries, translations, c. Related question : how appropriate would large numbers of public domain texts, with page scans and the best available OCR [and translations of same], fit with what Wikisource does now? This is clearly a wiki project that needs to happen : OCR even at its best misses rare meaning-bearing words. If not Wikisource, where should this work take place? From my perspective it fits perfectly with the vision that I had of Wikisource on the first day of its existence. Tim Armstrong [[User:Tarmstro99]] has already done a considerable amount of valuable work relating to law on Wikisource. That has been mostly a one-man project to deal with a massive amount of material. Some have even proposed deleting all the US Code material on the grounds that we don't have the ability to keep it up to date. That has prompted some very interesting questions and ideas about how this kind of stuff might be handled, but taking those questions to the next level requires lots of work. Most regular Wikisourcerors already have long personal to-do lists to keep them busy. So the question is not really about whether Wikisource should host these goods, it's about recruiting volunteers to do the hard work. Ec On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:41 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
Robert Rohde wrote: On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: While there may very well have been widespread fraud, that alone wouldn't be enough to explain away a 29 percentage point spread. A strong line of national security scare-mongering is always good source of votes in the less educated parts of a country. We hear a lot about what is happening in Tehran, but very little about the rest of the country. It's easy to explain any margin you want when there are no monitors, no reporting of local tallies, and vote aggregation is controlled by a small group in one government agency. It's basically a matter of changing numbers in a spreadsheet. Regardless of what actually happened, it is pretty clear that the process of voting in Iran lacks the fundamental transparency necessary to provide confidence in the results. Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply fraud. It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is accurate because nobody believes them. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Дана Saturday 20 June 2009 18:29:24 Brian написа: This has reminded me to complain about Google Books. Google has the world's best OCR (in virtue of having the largest OCR'able dataset) and also has a mission to scan in all the public domain books they can get their hand on. They recently updated their interface to, as they put it, make it easier to find our plain text versions of public domain books. If a book is available in full view, you can click the 'Plain text' button in the toolbar. Unfortunately the only way I've found to download the full text of a public domain book from Google is to flip through the book a page at a time, copying the text to your clipboard. Often, these books are available in the Million Books Project too. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with humantranslations of Wikipedia articles
Дана Saturday 13 June 2009 18:20:36 picus-viridis написа: IMHO automatic translations into Polish are useless, as they only allow rough orientation in the contents of an article. It concerns not only How is rough orientation in the contents of an article useless? ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:41 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? Tim Armstrong is a sysop on Wikisource ... :-) more below.. On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 4:17 PM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Samuel Klein wrote: There is a wealth of work done all the time by primary source researchers and publishers, which could be improved on by having wikisource entries, translations, c. Related question : how appropriate would large numbers of public domain texts, with page scans and the best available OCR [and translations of same], fit with what Wikisource does now? This is clearly a wiki project that needs to happen : OCR even at its best misses rare meaning-bearing words. If not Wikisource, where should this work take place? If it was published, Wikisource accepts it. Notability is not a consideration. The only other open project of comparable size is [[Distributed Proofreaders]]. Here are our statistics: http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:ProofreadPage_Statistics Most of the Wikisource projects accept free translations. http://wikisource.org/wiki/WS:COORD The two English Wikisource featured translations are: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Balade_to_Rosemounde http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/J%27accuse (also translated into Dutch) The two biggest translation projects that I know of are: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(Wikisource) Another good one is http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Max_Havelaar_(Wikisource) We also have translations of laws, usually relating to copyright. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ordinance_93-027_of_30_March_1993_on_copyright,_related_rights_and_expressions_of_folklore From my perspective it fits perfectly with the vision that I had of Wikisource on the first day of its existence. Tim Armstrong [[User:Tarmstro99]] has already done a considerable amount of valuable work relating to law on Wikisource. Tim has been doing high impact work in this area. H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2008/06/17/an-open-access-success-story-just-in-time-for-cali/ U.S. Statutes at Large http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2008/06/02/public-records-one-jpeg-at-a-time/ http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Statutes_at_Large In regards the USC, the majority of it is a mess, but Title 17 is a great example of where we are heading. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_17 We also have transcription projects for the UK 1911 copyright act, which has influenced so many other countries. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:The_copyright_act,_1911,_annotated.djvu http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:A_treatise_upon_the_law_of_copyright.djvu More can be found from our freshly minted Law index: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Law Our two featured texts are: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/South_Africa_Act_1909 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ACLU_v._NSA_(District_Court_opinion) Most regular Wikisourcerors already have long personal to-do lists to keep them busy. So the question is not really about whether Wikisource should host these goods, it's about recruiting volunteers to do the hard work. If people want to help, but dont know where to start, my recommendation is that they start proofreading the Stat. volume 1, as this is goldmine of interesting documents, and will be an excellent example of crowdsourcing of transcription. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:United_States_Statutes_at_Large/Volume_1 Enjoy, John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions
But on the other end of the spectrum, on projects like the one I am active on (the Finnish Wikipedia)... Disruptive behaviour is not wired into our genes or our culture, but quietly co?perative behaviour has been. Our wikipedia is a paradise in comparison to many. For this reason personally I would consider it a great shame if we were to be granted flagged revs before say 750 000 or one million. And even as I say this, I know there are the chance brothers (Fat and Slim) that this devout wish will be observed. I consider it a great problem that solutions for problems larger wikis have are nearly without exception foisted on smaller wikis without much consideration of what their real effect there will be, and are they really ready for it. Could you may be motivate your opinion? Are you saying that there are no vandals on fi.wp (which I can buy) and that novices on fi.wp first read the rules and learn them by heart, and only then start creating articles? Cheers Yaroslav ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Stephen Bain wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higginsparkerhigg...@gmail.com wrote: Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.) They want people to use their service. Fair enough, given that the scanning and OCRing happened on their dime. How does that give them any special rights? There are no database protection laws in the US, and sweat-of-the-brow has been rejected as a basis for new copyrights. You're right, it doesn't give them any *special* rights. They have the same rights as any other computer owner. Specifically, they have the right to choose who uses their computers, and how they use them. Whether or not a terms of service is legally binding is really not the issue. (*) The issue is whether or not they have a duty to make it *convenient* for you to download the data. Of course they don't. Why should they be required to help you put them out of business? That kind of twisted logic might make sense in the non-profit world (although I still haven't seen the WMF step up to the plate and make it easy for people to make a full history fork, or even to download all the images), but Google is not a non-profit organization. Google would be Evil if it *didn't* protect itself against this, as it'd be breaking a promise to its shareholders. (*) Personally, I'm of the opinion that merely accessing a website is not sufficient to bind a websurfer to a TOS, and that at most a TOS which you do not have to even click agree to is a unilateral contract which can only impose promises upon the offeror, though this is not a legal opinion but merely my opinion of what the law should be. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:17 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: (*) Personally, I'm of the opinion that merely accessing a website is not sufficient to bind a websurfer to a TOS, and that at most a TOS which you do not have to even click agree to is a unilateral contract which can only impose promises upon the offeror, though this is not a legal opinion but merely my opinion of what the law should be. You know what, after further thought I'm going to withdraw that. First of all, I think Google does require you to click agree before you can access the service we're talking about. But more importantly, I'm going to cast doubt on my previously held opinion of whether or not a TOS should be able to bind someone who didn't click on anything. If I leave a bunch of Apples on the table at work and put next to it a sign that says Apples: $.25 each... I don't know, I'll have to think about it. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:51 AM, Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net wrote: Stephen Bain wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Parker Higginsparkerhigg...@gmail.com wrote: Except google isn't asserting any kind of copyright control over these books, they're just not making it convenient to download them in your preferred format. Maybe not The Right Thing, but not as boneheaded as suing a party who reprints public domain material, as was the case in Feist v. Rural (the supreme court case you mention.) They want people to use their service. Fair enough, given that the scanning and OCRing happened on their dime. How does that give them any special rights? There are no database protection laws in the US, and sweat-of-the-brow has been rejected as a basis for new copyrights. You're right, it doesn't give them any *special* rights. They have the same rights as any other computer owner. Specifically, they have the right to choose who uses their computers, and how they use them. Whether or not a terms of service is legally binding is really not the issue. (*) The issue is whether or not they have a duty to make it *convenient* for you to download the data. Of course they don't. Why should they be required to help you put them out of business? That kind of twisted logic might make sense in the non-profit world (although I still haven't seen the WMF step up to the plate and make it easy for people to make a full history fork, or even to download all the images), but Google is not a non-profit organization. Google would be Evil if it *didn't* protect itself against this, as it'd be breaking a promise to its shareholders. (*) Personally, I'm of the opinion that merely accessing a website is not sufficient to bind a websurfer to a TOS, and that at most a TOS which you do not have to even click agree to is a unilateral contract which can only impose promises upon the offeror, though this is not a legal opinion but merely my opinion of what the law should be. Whether Google is good or evil is off-topic, and irrelevant to boot. There are nearly _750,000_ books from Google that are available on archive.org, available in DJVU format with OCR. http://www.archive.org/details/googlebooks Microsoft donated many texts directly to IA, but that approach only netted 440,000 books. http://www.archive.org/details/msn_books See here for more of the collections: http://www.archive.org/details/texts Also worth noting, Project Gutenberg has digitised less than 30,000 books since 1971. Distributed Proofreaders has done 15,000 of those since 2000, so throughput is picking up. But, there are more than enough too keep everyone busy for a very long time. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: Whether Google is good or evil is off-topic, and irrelevant to boot. Whether or not they have a right to exclude bots isn't. Also worth noting, Project Gutenberg has digitised less than 30,000 books since 1971. Distributed Proofreaders has done 15,000 of those since 2000, so throughput is picking up. But, there are more than enough too keep everyone busy for a very long time. The interesting thing is, even if you don't use a bot, it's still faster to copy/paste from Google manually than it is to get the book and scan it in yourself (assuming you don't want to destroy the original, anyway). If you're going to make a project out OCRing books that Google has already OCRed, I don't see any point in reinventing the scanning or first pass OCRing part. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:07 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:54 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: Whether Google is good or evil is off-topic, and irrelevant to boot. Whether or not they have a right to exclude bots isn't. Actually, it is. This mailing list is about the Wikimedia Foundation and its project, and this thread is about Wikisource. Anyone who has done significant amounts of Wikisource work will tell you that they don't consider Google Book click through license to be an problem that needs discussing at this level. Do you think that 750,000 Google Books were manually converted to DJVU, and copied over to Internet Archive? Is there a book that you seek that isn't available at Internet Archive? I wrote a GreaseMonkey user script to scrape the text from Google Books; it is now broken and unmaintained because I no longer need to take text from Google Books, as the vast majority of the texts I want are now on Internet Archive, and that is a more productive workflow. Also worth noting, Project Gutenberg has digitised less than 30,000 books since 1971. Distributed Proofreaders has done 15,000 of those since 2000, so throughput is picking up. But, there are more than enough too keep everyone busy for a very long time. The interesting thing is, even if you don't use a bot, it's still faster to copy/paste from Google manually than it is to get the book and scan it in yourself (assuming you don't want to destroy the original, anyway). No, it is quicker to download the DJVU file from Internet Archive, upload it to Wikisource, set up a transcription project, and fix the OCR text there, and copy and paste it wherever you like. It takes about 10 minutes unless there is some copyright concern. If you're going to make a project out OCRing books that Google has already OCRed, I don't see any point in reinventing the scanning or first pass OCRing part. I suggest you take a look at a few of the DJVU files provided by Internet Archive. Then you can point out real faults that you see. -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
2009/6/21 Ray Saintonge sainto...@telus.net: Sure, transparency is a problem, but its absence alone does not imply fraud. It hurts the Iranian authorities even more if the vote count is accurate because nobody believes them. Evidence the numbers were made up: humans are not very good at picking random numbers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR200906204.html (This is way off-topic ...) - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with humantranslations of Wikipedia articles
2009/6/21 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Дана Saturday 13 June 2009 18:20:36 picus-viridis написа: IMHO automatic translations into Polish are useless, as they only allow rough orientation in the contents of an article. It concerns not only How is rough orientation in the contents of an article useless? It's not useless, but it's not all that useful. I find when translating from other Wikipedias to add to the English version of an article that it's the subtle and important details that get mashed to uncertainty. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 8:35 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: I suggest you take a look at a few of the DJVU files provided by Internet Archive. Then you can point out real faults that you see. I will. My apologies for misunderstanding your email. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 8:35 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: I suggest you take a look at a few of the DJVU files provided by Internet Archive. Then you can point out real faults that you see. I will. My apologies for misunderstanding your email. Okay, http://www.archive.org/details/catholicencyclo16herbgoog happened to be the first book I randomly picked from Google Book Search. There's no text version. And the text version I find of other editions seems to be much much worse than the google OCR results. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Google Translate now assists with humantranslations of Wikipedia articles
It also depends on the language pair. For Chinese to English, I wouldn't even bother with such a process (having a machine translate and then correct the errors); for Spanish to English I do this very frequently and it's a great timesaver. Mark skype: node.ue On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 7:05 AM, David Gerarddger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/6/21 Nikola Smolenski smole...@eunet.yu: Дана Saturday 13 June 2009 18:20:36 picus-viridis написа: IMHO automatic translations into Polish are useless, as they only allow rough orientation in the contents of an article. It concerns not only How is rough orientation in the contents of an article useless? It's not useless, but it's not all that useful. I find when translating from other Wikipedias to add to the English version of an article that it's the subtle and important details that get mashed to uncertainty. - d. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 8:35 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.comwrote: I suggest you take a look at a few of the DJVU files provided by Internet Archive. Then you can point out real faults that you see. I will. My apologies for misunderstanding your email. Okay, http://www.archive.org/details/catholicencyclo16herbgoog happened to be the first book I randomly picked from Google Book Search. There's no text version. And the text version I find of other editions seems to be much much worse than the google OCR results. http://books.google.com/books?id=TZ0UYAAJ strike two, not even there. http://books.google.com/books?id=PYAaYAAJ strike three http://www.archive.org/details/happinessessays00hiltgoog finally...let's compare the OCR: Great numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of the faffs of life, and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modern world. They cannot abandon the work of the world, but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. Greaf numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of thefaSls of life^ and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modem world. They cannot abandon the work of the worlds but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. --- Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of work and workers one cannot observe that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one's life in rest. Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of work and workers one cannotobserve that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one's life in rest. --- I guess that's acceptable. The Catholic encyclopedia results were much worse, though. Maybe it was a font thing, but I'm not quite interested enough to bother doing a more in depth study right now. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Iran?
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: Evidence the numbers were made up: humans are not very good at picking random numbers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/20/AR200906204.html (This is way off-topic ...) Convincing, surely, but not as definitive as reports that the Interior Ministry in Tehran (where votes are counted) remained closed during and after the election, with doors locked against employees who would otherwise be tallying ballots. ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
[Foundation-l] Google Books
subject line changed On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 12:55 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:23 AM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 8:35 AM, John Vandenberg jay...@gmail.com wrote: I suggest you take a look at a few of the DJVU files provided by Internet Archive. Then you can point out real faults that you see. I will. My apologies for misunderstanding your email. Okay, http://www.archive.org/details/catholicencyclo16herbgoog happened to be the first book I randomly picked from Google Book Search. There's no text version. Lucky you. Most of the other CE1913 volumes on Internet Archive have a DJVU file. http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Catholic%20Encyclopedia%20AND%20mediatype%3Atexts And the text version I find of other editions seems to be much much worse than the google OCR results. The OCR engines, especially tesseract which Google uses, have only recently started to handle multiple columns well, so old OCR output are of lesser quality. If an old DJVU has been copied over to Internet Archive, Google Books may have reprocessed that book resulting in better OCR being available that way. Internet Archive also reprocesses its DJVU files, and Wikisource has its own OCR button which allows per-page reprocessing to be done by an OCR bot in the background. However, CE1913 is not a good example as it would be a bit silly to use OCR from _anywhere_: there are multiple complete proof-read editions on the web, including on Wikisource ;-) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/CE1913 Also note that Google Books shows the volumes of CE1913 as mostly No preview available to me, probably because I am in Australia, and only one or two are Snippet view. http://books.google.com.au/books?q=intitle%3ACatholic+Encyclopedia; -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:41 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/infolaw/2009/06/19/using-wikisource-as-an-alternative-open-access-repository-for-legal-scholarship/ Interesting. How well does this fit with what Wikisource does? Here are seven articles from PLoS One. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Category:Plosone We have other published material that has been released under CC licenses: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Unhappy_Thought And books under various licenses: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bulgarian_Policies_on_the_Republic_of_Macedonia http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Russian_%22Fantastica%22 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Free_as_in_Freedom -- John Vandenberg ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] flagged revisions
Yaroslav M. Blanter wrote: But on the other end of the spectrum, on projects like the one I am active on (the Finnish Wikipedia)... Disruptive behaviour is not wired into our genes or our culture, but quietly co?perative behaviour has been. Our wikipedia is a paradise in comparison to many. For this reason personally I would consider it a great shame if we were to be granted flagged revs before say 750 000 or one million. And even as I say this, I know there are the chance brothers (Fat and Slim) that this devout wish will be observed. I consider it a great problem that solutions for problems larger wikis have are nearly without exception foisted on smaller wikis without much consideration of what their real effect there will be, and are they really ready for it. Could you may be motivate your opinion? Are you saying that there are no vandals on fi.wp (which I can buy) and that novices on fi.wp first read the rules and learn them by heart, and only then start creating articles? No, that is definitely *not* what I am saying. Admins on the Finnish wikipedia have on the occasion had to go to the lengths of blocking whole grammar schools from editing. What I *am* saying - and I suspect none of my countrymen would dispute me in this - is that in Finland vandals are vastly overrun by people of good faith editing and cleaning after the vandals. So much so that the vandals effect is easily negligible. Negligible over the long term, but also negligible in the moment. And thus, flaggedrevs would not provide nearly any added disincentive for vandals, but would add workload for the good faith editors, and slow down content production. Yours, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Re: [Foundation-l] Info/Law blog: Using Wikisource as an Alternative Open Access Repository for Legal Scholarship
Anthony wrote: On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 10:55 AM, Anthony wrote: Okay, http://www.archive.org/details/catholicencyclo16herbgoog happened to be the first book I randomly picked from Google Book Search. There's no text version. And the text version I find of other editions seems to be much much worse than the google OCR results. http://books.google.com/books?id=TZ0UYAAJ strike two, not even there. http://books.google.com/books?id=PYAaYAAJ strike three http://www.archive.org/details/happinessessays00hiltgoog finally...let's compare the OCR: Great numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of the faffs of life, and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modern world. They cannot abandon the work of the world, but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. Greaf numbers of thoughtful people are just now much perplexed to know what to make of thefaSls of life^ and are looking about them for some reasonable interpretation of the modem world. They cannot abandon the work of the worlds but they are conscious that they have not learned the art of work. --- Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of work and workers one cannot observe that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one's life in rest. Few people, however, really know how to work, and even in an age when oftener perhaps than ever before we hear of work and workers one cannotobserve that the art of work makes much positive progress. On the contrary, the general inclination seems to be to work as little as possible, or to work for a short time in order to pass the remainder of one's life in rest. --- I guess that's acceptable. The Catholic encyclopedia results were much worse, though. Maybe it was a font thing, but I'm not quite interested enough to bother doing a more in depth study right now. . Who is expecting OCR to be perfect anywhere? In the absence of real human proofreading I assume any OCR material to be fraught with errors. Wikisource aims to accurately reproduce what was published, including original errors. Scans alone provide the needed accuracy, but they are not suitable for the added value of wikification. Ec ___ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
